Historical Jesus?

[david]

No Bjorn, I'm not from Russia, but I'm also from U.S. or England. I'm from south Europe.

[ignorantianescia]

Hello David, I still owe you a welcome. Please enjoy these fora.

What Mr. O'Neill means with newbie, though, is that you're a (relatively) new user of this forum, not that you're new to history and archaeology.

Deef, though it would surprise me if not some people calling themselves apologists use dreadful arguments and defend the undefendable (literal inerrancy of the Bible), I do suppose it would be overstating to call them the apologist camp.

[david]

Hello ignorantianescia!
Thank you for your welcome.
I'm not an apologist I'm just a truth searcher. After I will have degree from history and archaeology in my hand, that I will join to the "apologist camp." But like I said above, I'm looking the Bible and also Islam trough difference lens like other Christians. And like I also said above, I always use scholary work to defend religion.

Best wishes

[timoneill]

Dec 14, 2010 14:24:42 GMT david said:

Hi!
First Tim if I can call you like that I'm not a newbie.

You are a newbie to this forum.

And about Mormonism, Islam and Christianity. I don't believe in the book of Mormon from one big reason: They are saying, that the God from TBM is the same God in the bible. But if you check Mormon theology and bible theology you can see a big differenc, already in the second book of Nephi.

That’s nice. But the fact remains that if an “Argument from Success” doesn’t convince you that Mormonism is true then perhaps you can see why it won’t convince anyone about the truth of Christianity. Lots of religions have been successful. Clearly not all of them are true. So “success” does not equal “true”. The success of Christianity also tells us absolutely nothing about whether Jesus existed.

And about archaeology and the bible. If archaeology would be so low like archaeology in the book of Mormon, I would probably loose all faith in the bible and events mentioned there.

The fact that there was a Temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus does not mean that Jesus rose from the dead. Or even that he existed. As I said, Shirley Maclaine’s book is full of references to places and people who we can verify as existent. That doesn’t tell us a thing about the veracity of the New Age claims she makes.

And I still don't know, why are you attacked those three steps mentioned above?

Because none of them substantiate the existence of Jesus in the way you claim they do.

All those steps I copied from the major historical books, on how to proof existence of historical person.

They simply don’t work for someone as marginal as Jesus. They work fine for someone more prominent, but if you try to use them in the way you did to prove Jesus existed a Myther could demolish you with ease.

And I believe, that shorud of Turin is much more complicated, to say, that it's medival froud. Shroud was very damaged in fire and then nuns revamped the shroud, and when they made carbon tests, they were taking pieces from those medival cloths. This is one of the theory.

No, that’s not a “theory”, that’s one of the ways desperate Shroud believers have tried to explain the carbon dating results away so they can cling to their belief in this silly fake relic. The samples used in 1988 were very carefully chosen precisely to avoid that kind of mistake – do you really think the three best carbon dating labs in the world would make such a basic error as to take the samples from a repaired section of the cloth? The results also don’t fit the time period when any repairs were made anyway, so that “theory” won’t fly.

The carbon dating results fit with a Medieval date, which in turn fits with everything else we know about the Shroud. It appeared suddenly in the Fourteenth Century, when it was exhibited to make money for the De Charny family at a point when they desperately needed cash. Smelling a rat, the local bishop investigated the so-called Shroud and found it was a fake, having uncovered the artist who admitted faking it. He ordered the De Charnys to stop exhibiting it at once and they obeyed. After Bishop Henri died they got back up to their old tricks and began exhibiting it again, so the new bishop appealed to the Pope, citing the evidence of his predecessor that it was a fake. Despite being a relative of the De Charnys, the Pope had to agree that it was a fake and he also ordered them to stop exhibiting it as the real shroud of Jesus. It was only in the Fifteenth Century when it found its way to Italy and the knowledge that it was a fake was lost (until the documentation about the bishop’s case to the Pope was discovered in the Nineteenth Century).

This also fits with everything else we know about the Shroud. Its image depicts Jesus with long hair and a forked beard, in keeping with Fourteenth Century artistic conventions. A historical First Century Jew would have regarded long hair as a Greek affectation and would have kept his hair and beard trimmed short. The image has hair that hangs to its shoulders as though the figure was upright, again in accordance with Fourteenth Century art. This makes no sense if the figure was lying down. The image has the arms in a position that allows the hands to cover the groin. That position would be impossible for a dead body to maintain. The image has the eyes well above half-way up the face, in keeping with Fourteenth Century artistic conventions. That would mean Jesus would have been some kind of deformed mutant. The image has reddish “bloodstains”. Real blood would have turned black centuries ago. Descriptions of the image from the Fifteenth Century talk about how clear and vivid it was. So why is it so faded and faint now – why has it faded so much in just a few centuries after being vivid and clear for 1500 years before that?

The idea that the Shroud is genuine simply makes no sense. All the evidence points to it being a clever Medieval fake – hardly surprising since the Middle Ages was the heyday of fake relics.

You need to think more sceptically.

[david]

Hello Tim O'Neil!
I think you have right about this quote:

They simply don’t work for someone as marginal as Jesus. They work fine for someone more prominent, but if you try to use them in the way you did to prove Jesus existed a Myther could demolish you with ease.

So, then you teach me, how to defend Jesus existence, of course just his historical existence.

Thanks for the answer.

[timoneill]

Dec 15, 2010 0:09:07 GMT david said:

So, then you teach me, how to defend Jesus existence, of course just his historical existence.

Firstly, it’s best not to overstate the small amount of evidence we have. I regularly see apologists reeling out a laundry list of extra-biblical writers who they claim confirm the existence of Jesus. It usually goes something like “Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phlegon, Mara Bar-Serpion, Josephus, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Quadratus, The Epistle of Barnabus, Aristides, Justin Marytr, and Hegesippus” and seems to derive from fundamentalist apologist Josh MacDowell.

The problem here is that almost none of these are actually evidence of Jesus at all, since almost all of them simply refer to Christianity and note that they worship a “Jesus” or “Christ”. That doesn’t prove Jesus existed any more than noting that the cargo cults of Vanuatu worship John Frum means that John Frum existed.

Of all the writers listed above, the only one that can be said to genuinely refer to Jesus as a historical person is Josephus. The others simply refer to him a the object of the worship of Christians. Tacitus refers to him in a way that indicates that he believed Jesus was historical, but we have no idea where Tacitus got his information about Jesus so this can be dismissed as Tacitus simply repeating what Christians said about their founder, which doesn’t really help us.

This means we are left with a very small amount of evidence that indicates Jesus was historical. One key piece of data is Paul’s reference to meeting Jesus’ brother James in Galatians 1:19. This is significant because, obviously, a non-existent person can’t have a brother for Paul to meet. It’s also interesting because Josephus also mentions in passing the execution of a certain James “brother of the Jesus who was called Messiah”. So we have one mention of a brother of a Jesus who was called Messiah in a non-Christian author and another reference to someone meeting a James who seems to be the same person.

This is something of a smoking gun for a historical Jesus and it’s very difficult for the Jesus Mythers to argue away. Of course, they try. They usually argue that “brother” here doesn’t mean “sibling” but simply “a follower” and that Paul doesn’t say “Jesus’ brother” but rather “the Lord’s brother” so could be talking about Yahweh rather than Jesus anyway. They can’t explain why this James should be singled out as “the Lord’s brother” if this simply means “a follower” or why Paul doesn’t refer to anyone else this way. They dismiss the Josephus reference in a number of ways, usually by claiming the reference is a later Christian interpolation or that the “Jesus” mentioned is actually the “Jesus, son of Damneus” mentioned later in the same passage.

The other key argument for Jesus’ historicity is the fact that the gospels often have to deal with aspects of his life which are awkward because they don’t fit their claim that he was the Messiah very well. It’s hard to see why these awkward elements would find their way into the story if he was a fiction, or a mythic being or a historicized personification of an idealized Messiah figure etc.

For example, Matthew and Luke go to great lengths to “explain” how a guy from Nazareth came to be born in Bethlehem. Clearly the idea of a Messiah from Nazareth was an obstacle to some people and needed to be explained away. So Matthew and Luke both tell elaborate stories which set Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem and then explain why he grew up in Nazareth. The problem is, their stories contradict each other and are even set 10 years apart. Clearly both stories are fictions. So why would they be going to this elaborate effort if Jesus never existed? This only makes sense if he did exist and was known to be from Nazareth, giving the gospel writers a reason to “explain” this awkward fact away.

The same can be said for other elements in the story. Mark and Luke both have Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan. But Matthew recognizes that this doesn’t quite fit with the idea of Jesus being God’s pure and holy Messiah – why would the Messiah need to have his sins washed away? So Matthew inserts an passage where John objects to the idea of baptizing Jesus and Jesus commands him to do it anyway. The gospel of John goes even further – in that version of the story, the baptism is removed altogether and John simply declares Jesus as the Messiah while baptizing other people. Again, the baptism was clearly awkward for the gospel writers. But it was also something that three of the four felt they couldn’t simply remove. So why is this awkward element in the story in the first place, unless it was a memory of something historical that happened?


Ditto for other elements: Jesus being unable to perform miracles in Nazarath, Jesus needing to take two attempts to heal a blind man, even Jesus being crucified. These are all awkward elements that get played down, removed or “explained” in later versions of the tradition. They all point to a historical core with a historical person.

Of course, hardcore Mythers have answers to all this. But these arguments, in my experience, work far better at convincing reasonable objective people than the ones you were using.

[noons]

Dec 15, 2010 1:06:17 GMT timoneill said:

Dec 15, 2010 0:09:07 GMT david said:

So, then you teach me, how to defend Jesus existence, of course just his historical existence.

Firstly, it’s best not to overstate the small amount of evidence we have. I regularly see apologists reeling out a laundry list of extra-biblical writers who they claim confirm the existence of Jesus. It usually goes something like “Cornelius Tacitus, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, Thallus, Phlegon, Mara Bar-Serpion, Josephus, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Quadratus, The Epistle of Barnabus, Aristides, Justin Marytr, and Hegesippus” and seems to derive from fundamentalist apologist Josh MacDowell.

The problem here is that almost none of these are actually evidence of Jesus at all, since almost all of them simply refer to Christianity and note that they worship a “Jesus” or “Christ”. That doesn’t prove Jesus existed any more than noting that the cargo cults of Vanuatu worship John Frum means that John Frum existed.

Of all the writers listed above, the only one that can be said to genuinely refer to Jesus as a historical person is Josephus. The others simply refer to him a the object of the worship of Christians. Tacitus refers to him in a way that indicates that he believed Jesus was historical, but we have no idea where Tacitus got his information about Jesus so this can be dismissed as Tacitus simply repeating what Christians said about their founder, which doesn’t really help us.

Well, the laundry list of historians doesn't directly prove Jesus' historicity. However, I think it does, at least somewhat, cut into a claim made by many mythicists. That is, they claim that the early Christians worshiped Jesus as a metaphorical or mythical figure rather than a historical figure. If the writings of those historians all describe second-century Christians worshiping Jesus as a historical figure, then it shrinks the window of time in which they could radically alter their belief system, and makes that central claim of the mythicist position far more dubious.

[unkleE]

Dec 14, 2010 11:42:40 GMT timoneill said:

Dec 14, 2010 9:42:51 GMT david said:

And about archaeology ..... it helps, us to have some more trust in gospels.

Garbage. ..... does MacLaine mentioning these places and people in her autobiography mean we should accept her claims about warriors from Atlantis and past lives?

I am not a historian, but it seems to me that it's not as simple as this. Let us take the example of John's Gospel.

1. A long time ago people thought it was historically accurate so they felt justified in believing it to be the truth.

2. Some time later, as the methods of historical analysis were developed, people came to see problems with accepting it as historical - the differences with the Synoptics, the style of writing, it's supposed late date (some said late second century), etc. Many scholars (I would think the majority) concluded that it had a tenuous basis in history - some even called it a poem or a spiritual romance.

3. But then it was established that it was written earlier than once thought. And now I have a paper from an archaeological symposium where the author reports on a score of geographical references peculiar to John that the author got right. He concludes that the narrative sections of GJohn go back to eyewitnesses familiar with Jerusalem before AD70, and that these sections are "accurate, detailed and historical".

So the latest archaeology has at least partially removed one of the reasons why GJohn was considered to have limited historical value (its late date). Thus it might reverse some of the previous critical conclusions about John and so has added to the evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Would you or the other historians here agree?

[deef]

Dec 15, 2010 1:06:17 GMT timoneill said:

Firstly, it’s best not to overstate the small amount of evidence we have. I regularly see apologists reeling out a laundry list of extra-biblical writers who they claim confirm the existence of Jesus.

I often mention Celsus and Porphyri. While they are relatively 'late' writers I think they're valuable as a source. They're both staunch attackers of christianity and its 'historical truths' but they don't give the slightest impression they doubt Jesus' historical existence.

I think it says something that Jesus' existence has never been doubted by ancient christian, non-christian and anti-christian sources up until the über-sceptical 19th century.

[david]

Thanks for the answr Mr. O'Neil. So this textual analysis, can be more effective like secular evidence. So can I use your comment in my future book?

But I still have one question about secular historians, which you are mentioned above. Encyclopedia Britannica(I'm a regular reader) said, that Tacitus, Lucian, Suetonius, Pliny the yunger, Jospehus,... are proof, that Jesus existed. Here I'll give you addresse, where to find this: The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 22, 15th edition page 336, under the letter J. This is not my comment, but their. And National Geographic(regular watcher) confirm that and also History channel.

And now in 25th December, History cahennel will release new documentary abot the Turin shroud.

Best wishes

[humphreyclarke]

Deef posted these lectures from Yale.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQ2TS1CiDY

Which I think are very good. Bart D Ehrman did a similar course for the Teaching Company on the historical Jesus which is also decent but covers very similar ground. His 'Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium' is a good intro but I found his 'The New Testament - A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings' to be the most useful.

[noons]

Dec 15, 2010 13:52:39 GMT david said:

And now in 25th December, History cahennel will release new documentary abot the Turin shroud.

Frist, as a Christian, I don't need the Turin Shroud to be authentic (and I'm probably speaking for most here when I say that). Also, I don't have much confidence in the History Channel anymore. They used to call it "The Hitler Channel" for good reason, but now it's almost all Nostradamus/2012, aliens and other pseudohistory, and reality shows. America: The Story of Us was good, and WWII in HD was amazing, but there hasn't been anything else recently.

[timoneill]

Dec 15, 2010 9:20:57 GMT unkleE said:

Dec 14, 2010 11:42:40 GMT timoneill said:

Garbage. ..... does MacLaine mentioning these places and people in her autobiography mean we should accept her claims about warriors from Atlantis and past lives?

I am not a historian, but it seems to me that it's not as simple as this. Let us take the example of John's Gospel.

1. A long time ago people thought it was historically accurate so they felt justified in believing it to be the truth.

2. Some time later, as the methods of historical analysis were developed, people came to see problems with accepting it as historical - the differences with the Synoptics, the style of writing, it's supposed late date (some said late second century), etc. Many scholars (I would think the majority) concluded that it had a tenuous basis in history - some even called it a poem or a spiritual romance.

3. But then it was established that it was written earlier than once thought. And now I have a paper from an archaeological symposium where the author reports on a score of geographical references peculiar to John that the author got right. He concludes that the narrative sections of GJohn go back to eyewitnesses familiar with Jerusalem before AD70, and that these sections are "accurate, detailed and historical".

So the latest archaeology has at least partially removed one of the reasons why GJohn was considered to have limited historical value (its late date). Thus it might reverse some of the previous critical conclusions about John and so has added to the evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Would you or the other historians here agree?

Not at all, for the reason I've already given. Researchers in 2000 years might well be sceptical about using Shirley Maclaine's Out on a Limb as an accurate guide to life in California in the 1980s and, given the whacko supernatural elements in the text, they'd be right to. But if an archaeologist then discovered that, in fact, there really were a lot of New Age bookshops in Palm Springs in the 1980s this doesn't mean that MacLaine's supernatural claims are correct.

And the archaeology doesn't even help us with the historicity of Jesus. The writers of John can get all kinds of geographical details right and still be telling a story about a non-existent person. Fiction writers do this all the time.

[timoneill]

Dec 15, 2010 13:52:39 GMT david said:

Thanks for the answr Mr. O'Neil. So this textual analysis, can be more effective like secular evidence. So can I use your comment in my future book?

No problem.

But I still have one question about secular historians, which you are mentioned above. Encyclopedia Britannica(I'm a regular reader) said, that Tacitus, Lucian, Suetonius, Pliny the yunger, Jospehus,... are proof, that Jesus existed. Here I'll give you addresse, where to find this: The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 22, 15th edition page 336, under the letter J. This is not my comment, but their. And National Geographic(regular watcher) confirm that and also History channel.

I've already explained why almost none of these are "proof" of anything of the sort. Almost all of them simply mention a "Jesus" or "Christ" as the figure Christians worship. That isn't independent evidence that this "Jesus" or "Christ" actually existed. As I've said, someone can note that the cargo cults of Vanuatu worship "John Frum" but that tells us nothing about whether "John Frum" existed historically.

Only Tacitus and Josephus refer to Jesus as a historical figure, though we can't be sure if Tacitus wasn't simply repeating what Christians said about their "Jesus". I'd argue he wasn't, but it can be argued either way. Which leaves us with just Josephus.

He mentions Jesus twice - in Antiquities XVIII.63-64 and XX.9. But the first of these has been added to by Christian scribes or is perhaps a wholesale Christian forgery, so we can't be sure of it at all. Which leaves us with Antiquities XX.9, where he mentions the execution of Jesus' brother James. That's it.

Which is why I say that you can't overstate the case by claiming there are lots of extra-Biblical texts that prove Jesus existed. There are actually perhaps two or three and only one that we can use with any confidence.

And now in 25th December, History cahennel will release new documentary abot the Turin shroud.

Which I'm sure will be as credulous and stupid as all the other crappy documentaries on the subject.

[david]

Hi, Mr. O'Neil thanks for the answer. Months ago I posted question about credibility of Josephus work about Jesus. So James Hannam posted one good response for credibility of Josephus work of Geza Vermes. You can find this in second part on history subject.

But, if you have right, then Geza Vermes, Hershel Shanks, Michael Baigent, Rymond E. Brown, all BAR and others are wrong about archaeology and Bible.