"Established Facts."

[DasAmericanAtheist]

Re:

I dare say that we might be getting slightly off topic and--more importantly--away from, what I estimate, is Theo's point.

History cannot, for both practical and philosophical reasons, establish that someone did not exist. Bart Erhman is right to note in his debate against Craig on the historicity of the resurrection, that: history cannot tell you what definitely happened, but only what probably happened [my paraphrasing]. After establishing this (the certainty of uncertainty), it becomes a matter of which narrative is more likely.

History functions by using the same tools as the scientific method; an hypothesis is formulated based on existing knowledge and built from existing questions. This hypothesis is then tested in a similar fashion to that of laboratory research.

I might, for example, want to explore whether or not Cleopatra ever journeyed to Tibet. I'm free to ask this question on the basis of pure speculation, but it won't likely get me far. I would be better advised to see if any document suggests such a journey, or find some connection between Tibet and Cleopatra that might have slipped under the radar. I would then ask myself, "if Cleopatra did travel to Tibet, what sort of archeological evidence am I likely to find?" and go about locating any such evidence. Perhaps I find a kind of bead known to be used by Egyptians at the time of Cleopatra's reign at somewhere between Alexandria and Tibet. (To get to the point) I publish my findings, and the peer review process takes over.

No matter how much evidence I accumulate, I will never establish the fact of the matter, only the probability of the matter.

But there is a fact of the matter. That fact of the matter would be that I have certain pieces of evidence that suggest that something took place and further, that I have probable cause to infer from the facts at hand that the most likely explanation is "Cleopatra journeyed to Tibet."

Even if all I had was the bead, there would be no way to establish, as a fact of the matter, that Cleopatra did NOT journey to Tibet--only that is might be unlikely.

If instead I found a document by a more-or-less contemporary historian discussing that Egyptians believed that Cleopatra journeyed to Tibet, all I can establish is that Egyptians believed Cleopatra journeyed to Tibet. If I find a document by a more-or-less contemporary historian recounting Cleopatra's journey to Tibet, all I have is a report by an historian which would add credence to the notion that Cleopatra journeyed to Tibet. This later example still would not prove the fact of the matter--it can only suggest that at the time the document was produced the historian had reason to conclude that Cleopatra journeyed to Tibet and that the further details also took place.

Whether or not the historians cited by xians to support an historical Jesus are complete forgeries, it would only establish that the current evidence is really, really bad evidence. It might also suggest that all xians are utterly unfounded--historically--in their belief in an historical Jesus...but even if THAT is the case, all I have established is that at this particular time with this particular evidence, the belief in an historical Jesus is unfounded.

Just as in the scientific method, the theory is up for revision given the submission of new research, so, too, it is with history.

But this is not the point.

Whether one believes that there was an historical Jesus or not, is a matter of epistemology and each person is entirely free to set their own criteria for their epistemology. We may disagree with it, but it will not change this fact.

If really bad documentation is all a xian requires for their belief in an historical Jesus, there is nothing to be done. We can argue that their epistemology is flawed, short sighted or whatever else...but their epistemology is theirs to define.

The evidence might not suggest that a Jesus identical to that recorded in the gospels ever existed, but it would suggest that SOMETHING happened. So, even if we reject, on epistemic grounds, that an historical Jesus existed, there is still a fact of the matter. Whether it be that xians at the time simply believed that an historical Jesus existed, or whether it proposes a detailed account of the life and times and teachings of an historical Jesus--there is still something that went on.

We can thereafter only establish probabilities.

But even THIS is not the issue being presented. Theo is not questioning that there is a fact of the matter. The argument being presented is: what sorts of facts of the matter are admissible as evidence for something. And more importantly, how one can establish a fact of the matter.

In this point, Craig is not only deceptive in his methods but it wouldn't matter anyway! Even if ALL historians throughout ALL of time have ALWAYS believed in an historical Jesus who did everything that the gospels recount, it would say nothing to the fact of the matter--ONLY that historians believe a given thing.

Even if Craig weren't lying through his teeth, would the consensus of historians be epistemic justification for belief in the resurrection?

No. Why?

Because historian cannot comment on miracles, only whether or not a given people believed a miracle took place. Historically speaking, miracles are prone to rejection--because history can only establish what probably happened and a miracle, by definition, is improbable.

And again it would come down to a question of epistemology.

Craig, however, should know better than to present historical consensus of a miraculous event as an argument. He knows damn well that there is no solid epistemic justification for belief in miracles and his argument here--even if not a lie--would be little more than a very impressive sounding appeal to authority.

J.

 

[lonelocust]

Re:

DeistPaladin made in essentially reasonable detail the arguments against the best evidence for an historical Jesus.

I do want to address the question of motivation. If it's not interesting to a specific person that is fine, but personally I am intellectually fascinated by whether or not a specific historical Jesus ever existed. I also find the apparent appeal to motive arguments suggesting that someone only wants to argue against the historical Jesus in order to disprove Christianity in some way both spurious and distasteful. I will accept that there were no attempts made to dismiss an argument with a fallacious appeal to motive, but it did come across that way. While I reject the assertion that the only reason to question the historicity is in an attempt to debunk Christianity - having, like DeistPaladin, rejected the divinity of Jesus long before I realized the weakness of the evidence that there was so much as a mortal man in whose divinity I could fail to believe - even if that were the case, it holds no bearing on the intellectual question. If one fails to share another's intellectual curiosity on a subject, I would personally advocate not discussing it rather than calling another's intellectual curiosity (or even another's debunking-motivated curiosity) into question as an argument that the question is not worth adressing.

Moving on, Theo, I presume your remembered four sources were Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and Suetonius (whom you mentioned).

I will have to wander into my paper book collection and perhaps a library to support the view that the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus alleged mention of Jesus, is considered in consensus to be a forgery with a a concession that it is *at best* a substantial edit which gives us no information as to what the original might have said. (I am at work currently.) Arguments include the complete lack of mention by earlier apologists who in other writings quoted Josephus.

Pliny the Younger mentioned only Christians, and said nothing of Jesus.

Tacitus, while discussing largely Christians DOES state that they followed Christ who was crucified. He alone seems to be actually making any statement that said Christ (no name, "Christ" being a title) was a person who started the movement. Tacitus was in Rome and not Judea and was again writing c. 100 CE, himself quoting the event to have happened 96-63 years after the fact, and would not be considered a primary source. It seems far more reasonable to me personally that he was reporting what the Christians were saying, but there seems to be the possibility that records such as execution records from Judea were available to him, and he was reporting from that.

Suetonius was writing about "Chrestus" (a common given name of the time), not "Christus" and certainly not "Jesus".

While I agree that "the critic of Christianity is well-advised to accept this perspective", or at least that whether or not an historic Yeshua of Nazareth started Christianity is quite irrelevant to its objective or metaphysical untruth, it does not speak to my curiosity.

"To imagine a conspiracy that reached Rome with a hundred years is to aggrandize the first generation of Christians"

There are two issues with this. First, I don't see (perhaps you could expound?) why a "conspiracy" is necessary. If you are referring to for example the "conspiracy" that forged (or highly altered) the Testimonium Flavium, and made other blatant insertive forgeries, it occurred far later. To simply call the spread of Christianity a "conspiracy" seems odd. To me, "conspiracy" speaks at least somewhat of purposeful deception. I see no reason that the spreaders of the sort of Christianity that claimed a flesh-and-blood Christ did not themselves believe in said Christ. I also do not see that a real man who did not feed the multitudes nor rise from the dead makes the spread of a religion that claims a man who DID feed the multitudes and rise from the dead easier than if no such man existed. From whence comes the "conspiracy".

The other point would be that assuming that Christianity "reached" Rome "with[in] a hundred years" presupposes that it had a specific starting point in time and a specific and distant starting point in space. That is to say, if no man existed in 1-30ish CE in Judea, one need not deduce that the religion needed to spread all the way from Judea to Rome and/or that it needed to do so in less than 100 years. However, given that a religion based on a man doing things he didn't do is accepted as spreading from Judea to Rome in less than 100 years, there is clearly no doubt that a religion based on false premises COULD spread from Judea to Rome in less than 100 years.

"although that seems to be what actual historians have to say about the Jesus Myth and its proponents."

And this, right here, is what intrigues me. I wish to know why on that. I have drawn from this discussion that you've read fewer books than I on it (I'm not trying to invoke authority by any means here, and I can't seem to rephrase this to not sound like it. Please bear with me here.) and thus are probably not equiped to answer the question I initially asked, which is WHY are historians so convinced. Sanders is in the minority for accepting Josephus certainly, and not being at least incredibly unsure whether Suetonius can be imagined to have been speaking of Jesus, so he's probably not the source for me to consult on what makes Tacitus' statement and Pliny's description of what Christians said historically convincing. I do continue to be interested in our layman's discussion of these sources.

 

[Marcus]

Re: Re:

I do want to address the question of motivation. If it's not interesting to a specific person that is fine, but personally I am intellectually fascinated by whether or not a specific historical Jesus ever existed. I also find the apparent appeal to motive arguments suggesting that someone only wants to argue against the historical Jesus in order to disprove Christianity in some way both spurious and distasteful. I will accept that there were no attempts made to dismiss an argument with a fallacious appeal to motive, but it did come across that way. While I reject the assertion that the only reason to question the historicity is in an attempt to debunk Christianity - having, like DeistPaladin, rejected the divinity of Jesus long before I realized the weakness of the evidence that there was so much as a mortal man in whose divinity I could fail to believe - even if that were the case, it holds no bearing on the intellectual question. If one fails to share another's intellectual curiosity on a subject, I would personally advocate not discussing it rather than calling another's intellectual curiosity (or even another's debunking-motivated curiosity) into question as an argument that the question is not worth adressing.

You're entirely correct that I made no claim that the motivation of the people arguing against the historicity of Christ had any bearing on the validity of their arguments, which would indeed be fallacious. I find your implication that this was my motivation both spurious and distasteful.

Seriously, though. I would lay very large sums of cash on the proposition that nobody ever lost faith in Christ's divinity after being convinced that he never existed, so implying that anyone claims this is the case is a bit of a strawman. Looking back, I probably wasn't clear in my other argument - I don't think that everyone with an interest in disproving Christ's historicity does so in order to disprove Christianity, but I do think tat this is a major motivation for the majority of people who do so. Again, if the Christians had died out in the same way as the Pythagoreans, the historicity arguments would be confined to a small handful of people interested in a particular bit of history.

The reason I call people on it is because of that majority motivation. I'll gladly take you at your word that it's of genuine academic interest for you, and I wouldn't want to denigrate that for a moment. For those that think that denying the historicity of Jesus for the purposes of debunking Christianity, however, it's very relevant to point out that there is no way to give convincing evidence that the Jesus in the bible isn't based on a real person due to the very nature of historical evidence from antiquity. Their efforts would be much better spent simply showing that the accounts in the gospels are self contradictory and give details that contradict more reliable historical sources, so even if Jesus did exist, the gospels are no more than stories embellished around him.

 

[lonelocust]

Re:

I will and do accept that there is perhaps as much evidence that Jesus was historical as that Pythagoras or Socrates were. Everything is second hand and based on personal testimony at best. In the case of Jesus, there seems to be far more motivation for that evidence to be fabricated. (I am taking Christian writings into account here. Tacitus is the only non-Christian possible historical source that Jesus existed as a person.) I personally feel extremely agnostic about whether or not Jesus was based on a specific historical figure, though if I had to say which way I leaned it would be towards the Jesus stories being a blend of several historical people plus mythological components, which is essentially what the Christ Myth advocates put forward. As to the rest of the details (Christianity came out of Alexandria, not Jerusalem, and out of a specific pre-existing sect of mystical Judaism), those seem to be a bit speculative to the point where I'm quite skeptical.

The beef of the Christ Myth hypothesis is true whether or not there was an historical Jesus. That is, virgin births, birth-death-resurrection-ascension, etc. are pre-existing mythological archaetypes. Some stories in the Gospels and words ascribed to Jesus there are lifted essentially whole-cloth from older sources, and not just the Old Testament. That all holds up whether or not there was a guy. Along with, as you said, the internal inconsistencies, there's no need whatsoever to claim that Jesus never existed as a man to argue against the validity of the Gospels.

The one point where I think it is relevant to a religious argument whether Jesus existed is when Christians attempt to put forth that we know things about Jesus historically and can extrapolate from there. If we even take it as a given that a specific Jesus existed and started the religion of Christianity, we know absolutely nothing about him beyond that. Even assuming that Tacitus wasn't at all taking the word of what Christians said they were dying for and being nuisances for, and had managed to look up 80-year-old records that weren't destroyed in the recorded fires and record losses and confirmed that Pilate (whom Tacitus did not report to be governor) executed the founder of the Christian religion, we again know exactly zilch except that he started Christianity and was executed. There is no empty tomb to point to. I mean, there's a tomb, that is empty, in Israel, to which Christians make pilgrimages. There's no reason at all to think that's the tomb of this guy. There's another tomb elsewhere that has been put forth as being the tomb of that guy because it has sarcophagi with the names of all the reported family of Jesus (Miriam the mother, Joseph the father, James the brother, Miriam the wife, and I think some others, of Yeshua). There's no reason to let someone start with "Well we know these things about the historical Jesus", because we do not.

This actually disappoints me slightly, because I'm a fairly big fan of liberal Christians. However, their arguments tend to go along the lines of "We know Jesus existed, and we can find out what he REALLY SAID about loving our neighbors and shit, and we can debunk all those hateful fundies with the REAL JESUS' message of love and peace and service." But I see no way that they can validly make such arguments.

 

[TheJilvin]

Re:

After my own analysis:

1. Jesus existed and was probably crucified
2. Jesus was buried, but not in a tomb.
3. The empty tomb story is not historical.
4. The resurrection did not occur.
5. There is no evidence all of the apostles were martyred.
6. Even if all of the apostles were martyred, it is clear from a study of what happens when religious sects face a downfall that people are willing to KNOWINGLY die for a lie.

 

[lonelocust]

Re:

Would you care to share your line of reasoning, Jilvin?