The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

[neilgodfrey]

What the hell is this discussion about, for god's sake? Paul!, You have a lot to answer for!

[Ben C. Smith]

The model of which you speak is what you are calling the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model. As for my suggestion, you read at least part of it, and even commented on it; but the details hardly matter in this case. I am wondering how well any suggestion that Paul was not writing about an historical Jesus fits into the model that you are calling the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model. In short, I am not sure my positions even fall within the constraints of that model, let alone that I have some "need" to justify it. But I cannot tell for sure until you let me know whether the epistles of Paul being ignorant of any historical Jesus is something that supports that model.

I don't know what you are asking of me. Can you, or a third party, clarify?

You wrote:

I'm wondering if I'm seeing a pattern here -- something in common with Paul and Ben and Bernard:

That pattern? That we "need" to explain the prevailing model of Christian origins (the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model) within constraints that justify that model.

This implies that I, Ben, have a "need" to stay within the constraints of the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model. My suspicion is that my own pet theory of the moment does not even conform to the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model. But, if my pet theory of the moment does not stay within the constraints of that model, how can I have a "need" to stay within the constraints of that model?

So I am wondering whether my pet theory, which happens to be that Christianity as we find it in Paul and several other early writings knew nothing of an historical Jesus, conforms to the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model after all....

[neilgodfrey]

So what do you want to ask me about, Ben?

(Please be specific, concise and relate any statements to what I have actually said. Thank you.)

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben, I do not read long long and longer comments. If you want me to answer something specific then ask it concisely.

Start with this one, then. How certain must the good historian be of the purported facts s/he is using before mounting an hypothesis based upon those facts? Is it as certain as a jury should be before convicting a purported criminal, or does the historical standard fall somewhat short of that?

You've lost me at the start, sorry. When you say "facts" I tend to think of information that has been decreed "certain" by the normal standards of "yes/no". But then you go on to surmise a situation where a fact is not a fact but a mere opinion.

I said purported facts, and what I mean is the data which I use to draw other conclusions. For example, if I have a person's birth certificate, and I trust her brother's statement that she died when she was 65, I can determine the date of her death. However, if there are those who doubt the brother's statement, then the "fact" that she died when she was 65 is what I am calling a purported fact. Heck, even the birth certificate could be forged or even in error, so the birth date is also a purported fact, though perhaps less dubious than the brother's statement. These are "facts" which I, for one, am taking as factual, based on my own assessment of the evidence for each, in my case for a particular date of death for her, but others may come to different conclusions. (This is obviously just a hypothetical example, to illustrate what I mean by purported facts. A real example is coming up.)

Please give examples from real life if you think I am all at sea here.

If I, as an historian who aspires to be a good one, think that Nero really did slay his own mother, should I wait before publishing until I have proof enough to convict him of matricide in a court of law, or does the standard of historical evidence fall short of the legal standard?

[Ben C. Smith]

So what do you want to ask me about, Ben?

(Please be specific, concise and relate any statements to what I have actually said. Thank you.)

Again, does my recent hypothesis/suggestion (to wit, that Paul and other early Christians had no knowledge of any historical Jesus) fit into what you are calling the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model?

(This relates to what you wrote here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3346&start=410#p74309.)

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

What the hell is this discussion about, for god's sake? Paul!, You have a lot to answer for!

The OP issue was addressed and resolved to the evident satisfaction of all participants. The discussion then moved from Dr Craig's specific "case" to the building of historical cases in general, occasionally returning to the HJ problem.

We all have our crosses to bear in this. Here's what I think my part's been about lately: Natch, it relates to something of yours:

a purported fact

There's a lot of that in investigations. The birth certificate may be somebody else's. Even somebody else in the same family - if a child dies, that name may be reused by the same parents for a later child, as in something I'm currently working on. Or it's just a coincidence of names, and in good faith, a genealogist matched the wrong one. That, too, happened on a key marriage record in this same case.

What makes the wall stand is not just the strength of each brick, as welcome as that is, but how the bricks fit together. And no, it's (strictly) unlike a chain, whose strength is bounded above by its weakest link. Plus, wall building can help to identify a defective brick - I've corrected the marriage problem. However, the earlier genealogist built a good wall overall. As foundational as the bad brick was (misidentifying the subject's mother!), the wall was robust against this outright but contained failure.

Both walls are approximately true. The new one is a uniformly better approximation than the old one, but it's still not the truth, whole and only, of the woman's life. So, what you call "a purported fact," I might call an estimated fact. Shrewdly combine some individually inadequate and shaky estimates and you may end up with a pretty solid grand estimate. Another poster mentioned "triangulation." That's also how we get high-definition imagery of planets 100 million kilometers away. Hours of what is nearly noise combine into a moment of panoramic crystal clarity, as confidently as that WW II happened.

BTW, for all I know, the original investigation might have begun with the false marriage record, and nothing else in hand. So what? The other bricks would have turned up, how they fit together is an impersonal fact. The only thing within the investigators' control that could have prevented the wall being built is saying "This marriage record could be crap. I'd better not ask of it any questions that it can't answer all by itself with full confidence and exquisite precision."

Instead of a wall, we'd now have a rubble strewn field. But I suspect that you'd still be happily telling me that you've read in several books that that's how history "must" be done. "We" need to appreciate rubble, and not even ask about any wall that could possibly fall down.

As Wolfgang Pauli used to say of other superficially attractive but utterly non-starter theories, it's not even wrong.

If you're going to hear condescension in that mute dismissal, then at least hear where the dismissal is directed: at the proposal, and not at anybody sincerely proposing it.

At least I try to keep it impersonal, unlike your

If you take seriously fanciful speculations without any basis in the data itself (but based only on your own fanciful imaginations about anything that might conceivably be related somehow to the data)

Red really existed as a particular woman or else she did not is both a tautology and a dichotomy. No fancy of mine makes it so, no bluster of yours divorces the dichotomy from extant narratives that refer to some Red, singular. In recognizing the dichotomy, I am not speaking with rocks about fish. Having some experience of such problems, I would expand the negative leg into a set of affirmative hypotheses (she is a stock character, several somewhat similar women existed, but Red isn't anyone in particular, ...). That's craftwork, not fancy.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

So I am wondering whether my pet theory, which happens to be that Christianity as we find it in Paul and several other early writings knew nothing of an historical Jesus, conforms to the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model after all....

What is your definition of a historical Jesus? A minimal human Jesus who existed in the near past (relative to Paul), or the Jesus of the gospels? or something else?
Do you think:
a) Paul was totally silent about that minimal Jesus?
b) If no, Paul did not know more about that Jesus other than what he wrote about him?
c) Other epistles might have been silent about any historical Jesus, but does that mean their authors rejected any historical Jesus?

Cordially, Bernard

[Paul E.]

Ben:

I think you've hit on a major problem of comparing legal standards to historical methodology. In the American legal system, the constraints of when a claim can be made or a charge brought, or what can or cannot be presented as evidence, or what arguments can or cannot be made, etc., all have rules which may or may not be necessarily related to the ultimate question of "what actually happened." The legal system has other considerations and different underlying concerns than the academy. It seems to me that with respect to historical methodology, any well-defined question, heuristic, analysis and synthesis is fair game, and the academy can take it from there.

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

Neil wrote:

History is imagined by researchers as they pore through data.

This is no different than the methods I employed as a researcher.
However I would change "imagined" by "deduced", giving us:
"History is deduced by researchers as they pore through data."
Depending of the quality & quantity of the data investigated, and, I would say, the honesty (such as bias free) & competence of the researcher, the deduced history will have various degree of certainty.
And that would be applicable for any historical inquiry.

Cordially, Bernard

[Ben C. Smith]

I think you've hit on a major problem of comparing legal standards to historical methodology. In the American legal system, the constraints of when a claim can be made or a charge brought, or what can or cannot be presented as evidence, or what arguments can or cannot be made, etc., all have rules which may or may not be necessarily related to the ultimate question of "what actually happened." The legal system has other considerations and different underlying concerns than the academy. It seems to me that with respect to historical methodology, any well-defined question, heuristic, analysis and synthesis is fair game, and the academy can take it from there.

While I actually share many if not most of Neil's concerns to the effect that biblical scholars are often credulous and unmethodological, yes, I have found historians to be very conscious of the fact that they are not doing what is done in court. On pages 149-150 of Understanding History, Louis Gottschalk (a former historian of the French Revolution) writes, for example:

In a law court it is frequently assumed that all testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by examination and cross-examination create doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modern law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus tends to be overemphasized. In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; certain kinds of witnesses are "privileged" or "unqualified" and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept from testifying.... The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant.

Historians are also free to indulge in hypotheses which would be ruled out of court before they even got off the ground. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier write on page 77 of From Reliable Sources, for instance:

Although it is a simple process to think up hypotheses, it is no simple task to formulate hypotheses that actually link the observed pieces of evidence—that can explain the facts available, not those that the scholar might wish to have. Often, it takes many tries before the scholar can formulate a hypothesis that really works—one that satisfactorily accounts for the known evidence. There is no formula for success in this difficult venture. .... The difficulties of applying the so-called scientific method to historical research means that historians must often satisfy themselves with rules of logic that appear less watertight, making statements that seem probable, not "proved" in any "scientific" sense. .... But historians never have just what they want or need. At one extreme is the historian limited to one source. Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is, for example, the only source scholars have about the private life of Europe's first emperor. Like many of the political biographies written today, this one is more hagiography than critical biography, and in the best of worlds historians might well refuse to use it as evidence about Charlemagne's life and his character. But historians, although conscious that they are prisoners of the unique source and bear all the risks that this involves, use it because it is all they have. At the other extreme are historians studying the recent past. They have a great many sources, and in many ways their problems are thus fewer. But even here there is no certainty.

From what I understand, this kind of dive-in reasoning, meant simply to take parsimonious account of all the available evidence, has no place in a criminal trial, but is much more at home in a "free inquiry" situation in which a person's life does not hang in the balance.