What counts as a historical Jesus?

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Belz...

A nice example, Hans, but I think we're talking bare possibility vs probability, here.

I think this is a perfect description of the nature of this discussion for many of us. Despite having changed my mind a bit as a result of the arguments from this forum's eminent JMer's I believe many of their arguments continue to be directed at a claim that an historical Jesus did exist rather than a claim that an historical Jesus might have or probably existed.

Originally Posted by AlaskaBushPilot

...

Christianity is a second-century phenomenon and there was no historical Jesus.

From my perspective, while I don't think AlaskaBushPilot's claims are provably wrong, I think the certainty he expressed with regard them is not justifiable based on the available evidence.

The issue generally discussed in these kind of threads is what was going on in first century Christianity. There is a lot of evidence that Christianity preceded the second century by some amount. That evidence isn't proof of much but I don't think there is anywhere enough evidence to conclude that Christianity didn't begin in the first century as AlaskaBushPilot seems to in the post above.

The evidence is not as strong that an historical Jesus existed as that there was evidence of Christianity in the first century,but I continue to believe that his existence is probable so I disagree that there is proof that he didn't exist as AlaskaBushPilot does above.

The most important evidence that an HJ existed are the writings of Paul. If somebody is going to assert that an HJ didn't exist the most important question is what is his basis for believing that this evidence is false. There are a number of JM theories about Paul's writings but I'm not sure which particular one AlaskaBushPilot subscribes to or why he decided that a particular theory about Paul's writings is provably correct.

JM theories on Paul:
1. Paul just made up the information about Jesus and the interface with the Palestinian Jewish Jesus movement.
2. His writings were forged and his story made up.
3. He wasn't referring to a flesh and blood human.

I put the theories in the order of most likely to least likely in my opinion. I don't think there is enough evidence to prove any of them false but I don't think there is enough evidence to prove any of them true either.

And on another note only somewhat related to this generally off topic thread (IMHO) I've become interested in the theory of David Trobisch that Polycarp was the original compiler of the NT and the forger of the pastoral epistles. As is true of all things like this, it is just another bunch of theorizing about this period of time without any firm proof but it seems like he has made a reasonable case for the idea:
http://www.trobisch.com/david/CV/Pub...Bible%20BW.pdf

I've looked around the web for comments on the theory and it seems like it has been pretty well received by scholars but not without some dissenters. I like the theory because for the first time a real human is tied to process of compiling the New Testament and a reasonable date is ascribed to the process: 156 to 168.

ETA: A real human besides Marcion that is whose Canon did not include many of the books in the present NT.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by davefoc

I think this is a perfect description of the nature of this discussion for many of us. Despite having changed my mind a bit as a result of the arguments from this forum's eminent JMer's I believe many of their arguments continue to be directed at a claim that an historical Jesus did exist rather than a claim that an historical Jesus might have or probably existed.

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but in my case they're really just aimed at the pretense that that's it, the existence of Jesus has been proven, you don't have to worry your head with it, just trust the guys we tell you to trust. History doesn't work like that on any other domain.

That said, I also do have a problem with abuse of probabilities. There is an ongoing redefining probabilities to mean "whatever version I like". Which really isn't what makes something probable or improbable. In fact, it's just a thinly camouflaged way of sneaking in an argument from personal incredulity, which is a fallacy for a reason.

Moreover, whenever I've seen anything even resembling actual discussing the likelihood or something, it was in turn a statistical fallacy, namely the base rate fallacy or similar. What is arguing are some generic things like "what is the probability that X would happen", or "what is the probability that someone would tell a lie / have a hallucination / whatever", while completely ignoring either the base rate or pretending that the conditional part doesn't exist.

For an example of what's wrong with that, consider the following. If I told you that I talked to someone on the train, how likely is it that it was just a hallucination. Well, pretty unlikely, right? There are far more people having actual conversations on the train than people hallucinating it. But what if I told you that I sat next to Elvis and across from Bruce Lee on the train and talked to them? Now that conditional flips everything around.

E.g., if you were in mid-January 2010, and someone told them they woke up at night and turned on the TV and saw something about a city being destroyed, how likely is it that it's an actual piece of news? Well, pretty high, since the Haiti earthquake happened then. It's a safe assumption that more people saw that on TV than mistook some disaster movie for actual news. But now what if they tell you that a giant dinosaur was stomping the buildings? Right.

It's pretty much a super-case of Darat's objection that we should look at not just how often people tell falsehoods, but how often they tell falsehoods when they're selling a new religion. There's that conditional probability right there.

I'd love to see a Bayesian estimate if someone actually wants to make anything "probable".

Originally Posted by davefoc

From my perspective, while I don't think AlaskaBushPilot's claims are provably wrong, I think the certainty he expressed with regard them is not justifiable based on the available evidence.

The issue generally discussed in these kind of threads is what was going on in first century Christianity. There is a lot of evidence that Christianity preceded the second century by some amount. That evidence isn't proof of much but I don't think there is anywhere enough evidence to conclude that Christianity didn't begin in the first century as AlaskaBushPilot seems to in the post above.

The evidence is not as strong that an historical Jesus existed as that there was evidence of Christianity in the first century,but I continue to believe that his existence is probable so I disagree that there is proof that he didn't exist as AlaskaBushPilot does above.

Well, I guess it depends on what he means with it.

By the estimates I've seen, Christianity even in the first half of the second century was lost in the decimals. It starts going up more significantly around the end of the second century. Which may or may not have something to do with a sect starting to go by our four gospels, instead of more vague BS. And then really starts going up in the third century, where everything starts going to heck in a handbasket, and, you know, suddenly that cult preaching an imminent apocalypse starts to look like it may be onto something.

So Christianity seems to have existed in the first century all right, but it really consisted of tiny groups which couldn't even agree about exactly what they believe in. Christianity as we inherited it, though, seems to be the result of some changes of direction in the second century.

And, really, I see you even present such a change yourself. Whether it was Polycarp or someone else, that's the kind of changing that gradually turned Christianity from some disjointed fringe churches that couldn't reach even an internal consensus, much less a consensus with each other, to something that has an official doctrine, a clear and believable narrative of what DID Jesus do, a (made up) chain of evidence for it, and the mandate to have a fixed hierarchy. And, as you yourself note, that kinda thing really starts to happen in the mid-second century.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

Well, I can't speak for everyone, but in my case they're really just aimed at the pretense that that's it, the existence of Jesus has been proven, you don't have to worry your head with it, just trust the guys we tell you to trust. History doesn't work like that on any other domain.

Even before I had heard of Hans Munsterman I had become aware of the notion that an HJ might not have existed. I tried to find evidence/analysis that could prove that an HJ had existed. It was a largely futile effort although I learned a bit along the way. Almost the only conclusion I feel confident of about an HJ is that the available evidence is just not strong enough to draw any conclusions and I suspect with perfect knowledge of everything that is knowable today about an HJ it would still not be possible to know whether he existed or not.

Quote:

That said, I also do have a problem with abuse of probabilities. There is an ongoing redefining probabilities to mean "whatever version I like". Which really isn't what makes something probable or improbable. In fact, it's just a thinly camouflaged way of sneaking in an argument from personal incredulity, which is a fallacy for a reason.

This is an area where we share the same view. People just have too many biases with regard to this kind of thing and the data is too uncertain to trust anything they say that doesn't include the basis for their assumptions.

Quote:

...

I'd love to see a Bayesian estimate if someone actually wants to make anything "probable".

I have some idea of what Bayesian analysis is and it would be nice to apply it to something like this except that the input to Bayesian analysis is numeric data and who the hell knows what the chances are that anything is real here? We make a guess based on our view of what humans are like and what is plausible and isn't plausible but just speaking for myself the confidence I have in my guessing on this varies a lot overtime and I suspect that Bayesian analysis of this would just provide another example of the truth of the concept of garbage in garbage out.

Quote:

Well, I guess it depends on what he means with it [referring to AlaskaBushPilot's post].

I agree with this. My post that quoted AlaskaBushPilot was a bit of a simplification of my view of his post. If he meant that he believed that nature of Christianity was principally formed in the second century with some activity in the late first century then I think his view is much more likely to be correct. Although I still think he is probably wrong.

Quote:

By the estimates I've seen, Christianity even in the first half of the second century was lost in the decimals. It starts going up more significantly around the end of the second century. Which may or may not have something to do with a sect starting to go by our four gospels, instead of more vague BS. And then really starts going up in the third century, where everything starts going to heck in a handbasket, and, you know, suddenly that cult preaching an imminent apocalypse starts to look like it may be onto something.

So Christianity seems to have existed in the first century all right, but it really consisted of tiny groups which couldn't even agree about exactly what they believe in. Christianity as we inherited it, though, seems to be the result of some changes of direction in the second century.

And, really, I see you even present such a change yourself. Whether it was Polycarp or someone else, that's the kind of changing that gradually turned Christianity from some disjointed fringe churches that couldn't reach even an internal consensus, much less a consensus with each other, to something that has an official doctrine, a clear and believable narrative of what DID Jesus do, a (made up) chain of evidence for it, and the mandate to have a fixed hierarchy. And, as you yourself note, that kinda thing really starts to happen in the mid-second century.

All true I suspect, but this discussion is about the back story and whatever the back story was, there were very few people involved. If an HJ existed he was a small time guy with a small following so its not surprising there weren't many people involved initially. So the fact that there isn't much to go on about the nature of first century Christianity doesn't provide much probative information on the issue of whether an HJ existed or not.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by davefoc

Even before I had heard of Hans Munsterman I had become aware of the notion that an HJ might not have existed. I tried to find evidence/analysis that could prove that an HJ had existed. It was a largely futile effort although I learned a bit along the way. Almost the only conclusion I feel confident of about an HJ is that the available evidence is just not strong enough to draw any conclusions and I suspect with perfect knowledge of everything that is knowable today about an HJ it would still not be possible to know whether he existed or not.

Yep, that's pretty much my point. We'll probably never really know what on Earth (or in Heavens) really happened there.

Which is a pity, really.

Originally Posted by davefoc

I have some idea of what Bayesian analysis is and it would be nice to apply it to something like this except that the input to Bayesian analysis is numeric data and who the hell knows what the chances are that anything is real here? We make a guess based on our view of what humans are like and what is plausible and isn't plausible but just speaking for myself the confidence I have in my guessing on this varies a lot overtime and I suspect that Bayesian analysis of this would just provide another example of the truth of the concept of garbage in garbage out.

Well, as Richard Carrier makes the point, you don't necessarily need exact numbers to make a rough estimation. You just need to be generous enough with the numbers you pull out of the ass and be reasonably able to defend why it can't be higher or, as the case may be, lower than that. Well, he doesn't say "pulled out of the ass", but you get the idea.

For example, looking at my Godzilla on TV example, what are the odds that if a city is ruined, it will be by a giant monster. Well, for all we know, it's zero, but let's say one in a thousand? I'm sure we can dig up information of at least one thousand cities which sustained some massive damage from just about every cause, from tsunami to earthquakes to warfare. Just WW2 alone will get us a few hundreds. We don't have any information of any destroyed by a giant monster, but let's grant the possibility that the one my hypothetical friend saw destroyed by Godzilla on TV is one. So we have one case in 1001, close enough to one in 1000 for having some easy back-of-the-napkin maths.

Ultimately it boils down to error bars. No number you ever calculate will be exact. It will be an interval centered around that value. Which also means we can calculate just one end of the interval, and if we're generous enough with the assumptions, it will just leave some bigger room for a Godzilla or Jesus to be real. So you can pretty much do a case of, "I don't know exactly how probable it is that Santa exists, but if we can agree that probability X can't really be higher/lower than Y, then we can say that he's no more likely to exist than Z%."

[DOC]

Originally Posted by TimCallahan

Though this is only indirect evidence, we have the two conflicting Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. Both of them go through rather embarrassing story-telling acrobatics to explain why Jesus really came from Bethlehem, even though he actually came from Galilee...

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

There is no evidence that Jesus was born anywhere.

[DOC]

Originally Posted by dafydd

There is no evidence that Jesus was born anywhere.

Sounds somewhat like Obama.

[MarkCorrigan]

Originally Posted by DOC

Sounds somewhat like Obama.

Except Obama provided his birth certificate.

Your joke is cute and all, but it's inaccurate and kind of stupid.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

You believe the story because the writer wasn't a good enough liar?

[ddt]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

Oh, back to the Nativity story. You don't get tired of writing the same tripe over and over again. The census was not invented - there was one under Quirinius, in 6 AD, when Judea was annexed to Syria. Luke copied that one from Josephus, likely - with one error: that the census wasn't Empire-wide but only pertained to Judea.

So, how you're going with that translation of Luke 2 which we discussed in the "Evidence of the NT" thread?

Matthew, on the other hand, invented the massacre of the innocents out of whole cloth. Nobody else attested to that, not even Josephus who listed a whole lot of other misdeeds of Herod the Great.

As to "easily checked": WTH do you mean? It's not as if in those times, most people could get down to a library and review a book "The world in 750 AUC" or something. Most people couldn't even read. Especially Christians.

[catsmate1]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

There is no evidence Jesus was ever born. Your religion is built on nothing.

Originally Posted by DOC

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

But when was the story invented? When the majority of xianity was fabricated in second through fourth centuries?

Originally Posted by DOC

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

Which doesn't alter the fact that the census story is a fabrication........

Originally Posted by DOC

Sounds somewhat like Obama.

Rubbish. Barrack Obama has lots of proof of his birth despite the screechings of a scattering of desperate bigots. Your Jesus has none.

[dafydd]

Originally Posted by DOC

Sounds somewhat like Obama.

Obama actually exists, there is a difference.

[Beelzebuddy]

I woke up this morning with an theological dread
Jesus's existence was doubtful again.
This happens all the time.
He's historical.

...historical jesus...
...historical jesus...
This comes in handy a lot of the time.
I can accept pretty much any doctrine I want,
...historical jesus...
or ignore it, when it gets too inconvenient,
because some of it's probably made up.
...historical jesus...
But now and then I wind up asking myself,
if any of it is really true, or if He's just a myth,
like Rasputin, or Leno.
...historical jesus...
So I made a thread on JREF, it turns out they get this a lot.
They weren't really fans.
...historical jesus...
Apparently having about four origin stories,
even though they all pretty much mostly agree,
...historical jesus...
except for most of the specifics, and a few of the generals,
is looked down on.
...historical jesus...
They kept going on about "Jesus" being a really common name,
I tried to use a couple of the other things he was called
they didn't buy it.
...historical jesus...
I guess I'm fine just ignoring them and telling myself,
that whatever I want to believe is still true,
...historical jesus...
Even though it doesn't always make sense,
I'm still pretty attached to my historical Jesus.
...historical jesus...
...historical jesus...

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

But nevertheless, they invented just that: a world-wide census that was provably false, and quite verifiably so.

But even that seems ho-hum, when you realize that Matthew invented stuff like

A) a 3-hour long solar eclipse. It's something that was trivial to check without even being an authority. You know, "hey, grandma, do you remember a 3 hour darkness in the middle of the day?" Yet obviously nobody bothers checking.

B) the same eclipse being on the Passover, i.e., ON A FULL MOON. It's a physical impossibility, and known even at the time to be so. No wonder the early Christians are so pissed off at science, and Augustine warns that mathematicians (which at the time were also the astronomers who tracked the stars, planets, eclipses, stuff like that) are in league with the devil.

And again, it was trivial to check. In fact, now we can check the writings of astronomers and philosophers at the time, and nothing like that is mentioned by any astronomer at the time. Or in fact, EVER. At the time it would have been even easier to check, since eclipses were introductory stuff for anyone with an education. You didn't even need to travel far and wide to check what's known about them, as there were enough astronomers and manuscripts about it in any town.

Nor do we see the astronomy crisis that such a falsification of all they knew about such eclipses had ever happened. Much lesser observations about the sky cause quite the brouhaha, but a a solar eclipse when it's on the other side from the moon? Nobody seems to have heard of that at all.

C) some zombies being up for three days, and then going into a MAJOR town. We're not talking about inventing a minor event in some minor village like Nazareth (which actually may not have existed at all at the very beginning of the common era.) We're talking a frikken zombie invasion, at a time when Pilate and a couple of his cohorts were in town, and in a major metropolis like Jerusalem. There were literally tens of people around who could have confirmed that it never happened.

D) the massacre of innocents that DDT already mentioned.

Yet Matthew obviously has no problem inventing THAT kind of ridiculous BS. Nobody bothers to check.

In fact, from what I'm seeing on this board, it seems that such a ridiculous lie is actually a plus. The... intellectual proletar who want to believe at all cost, will just get "nah, they wouldn't invent something like THAT" ammo to rationalize their belief instead of actually checking.

[HansMustermann]

Plus, you know, speaking of stuff that is easy to check, take Luke's version of Jesus preaching in his own town's synagogue. Whereas in Mark they just find him lacking credibility, Luke embellishes the story to such an extent that everyone threatens to chuck Jesus off the nearest cliff.

Problem is... Nazareth is in a valley. To get to the nearest place you can chuck anyone off of, you have to take a rather long hike and do a bit of climbing. I can just picture the crowd huffing and puffing as they amble their way to the nearest cliff with Jesus in tow.

Or take Mark himself, and his turning a tiny lake in a valley, because that's what the Sea Of Galilee is, into something that can have storms that threaten a boat capable of holding 13 people. Doesn't take much checking to see that that's bogus. Plus the incident where it takes half the night for the apostles to row the couple of miles to the other shore, giving Jesus time to have some prayer time and then leg it on the water past them.

Or in the same Mark, inventing customs like releasing a prisoner or various other stuff that was trivial to check, because it supposedly happened, again, in a major city like Jerusalem. There were tens of thousands of people from Jerusalem around who could testify that such a custom never existed. But nobody asks them.

Or Mark again, inventing that someone would (A) have a purple cloak around, although it was reserved by LAW for the Emperor, the gods, and certain representatives of the emperor when acting in his stead in Rome, (B) ruin it on a freshly scourged convict, never mind that it was so expensive that probably even Pilate couldn't afford one, and (C) break the law in the process and risk angering the Emperor too.

And you know, neither the locals, nor people like Josephus or Philo who are very hostile to Pilate and would love such a slam dunk case of him breaking the law, ever mention this.

And again, it's something happening in a major city like Jerusalem, and it's far more recent than that census. But nobody asks the refugees from Jerusalem whether they remember something like that.

Etc.

So yes, the fanfic... err... gospel writers WOULD invent ridiculous BS. Whatever you can pick as a "they wouldn't invent THAT" case, the fact is that they invented far more preposterous and easy to check stuff, yet their audience doesn't seem to ever check.

In fact, I propose this simple test to determine if a gospel writer lies: is he saying something?

[davefoc]

This thread has taken a bit of a turn and I don't want to discourage the change in direction but could we interleave a bit on a different topic?

I was thinking about the early church fathers and their alleged connection to some of the apostles:

Polycarp - disciple of John the apostle
Ignatius - student of John the apostle
Clement - consecrated by Peter

And other alleged connections like Mark the Evangelist as founder of the Church of Alexandria. And of course the miscellaneous books of the NT allegedly written by some of these folks

I had pretty much decided that they were all bogus. The idea I have is that an HJ and his associates would have been a group of probably illiterate rural folks that never would traveled to meet the people they allegedly connected with let alone have the skills to write well in Greek.

But following along HansMunsterman's idea about trying to get a numeric feel for how likely something is; What are the chances that at least somebody from their group spoke Greek and traveled into Asia Minor and Rome to communicate with the early Church fathers that seem very likely to have existed? Is there one of these interactions that has the ring of truth to somebody?

ETA: Does somebody have a feel for the level of Greek that the average Joe was capable in first century Judea?

[ddt]

Originally Posted by davefoc

This thread has taken a bit of a turn and I don't want to discourage the change in direction but could we interleave a bit on a different topic?

You mean DOC's interruption? Hopefully it'll blow over...

A question in another direction and more germane to this thread: has anyone already read Richard Carrier's latest book "Proving History"? And would you recommend it?

[HansMustermann]

To start with what I think is the most slam-dunk argument against the idea of anyone there having any such direct knowledge from Peter or really any apostle, is that the church was thinking that Peter and Cephas are different persons. Which is understandable if they were just reading some letter and didn't know Aramaic, to figure out that it's the same name translated. But it's a major wth for a church supposedly founded by Peter, and which had a ton of people who supposedly talked to him, were consecrated by him, etc. And even had a gospel written by supposedly none other than Peter's personal secretary.

You'd think that a bunch of guys living around Peter, and talking to Peter, and getting their facts about the early church from Peter, and being led by Peter, and that for years on end I might add, would at least learn his frikken name at some point. Don't you think?

Well, the letters of Ignatius are on par with the pastorals, really, in that they're late forgeries. Ignatius was at best some minor local zealot, and if he ever wrote anything, we're missing it. Some people much later though got into overdrive with trying to paint an image of the church which was all about hierarchy and having one doctrine. I.e., the "orthodoxy" that was arbitrarily invented in the second half of the second century, is arbitrarily extended backwards to the very beginning.

The pseudo-clementine epistles... well, let's just say the hint is in the word "pseudo"

Both are, if you will, an appeal to tradition... even if they have to forge letters and invent the tradition out of whole cloth.

A bunch of parasites, whose motivations are pretty easy to see in the Timothy forgeries (do not muzzle the ox and all that), are quite fond of controlling others and making a living out of it, so they forge and invent a tradition where not only it was always so, but they have saintly and apostolic endorsements for it too.

And really, they were going into overdrive with it. They wrote at least some four dozen gospels alone in the name of various apostles, plus a whole bunch of apocalypses, acts, etc. Plus, yeah, epistles from every name they had ever heard of, or could somehow connect with Christianity. Or even just about any big name they could think of. They forged even a whole correspondence between Seneca The Younger and Paul. They made Tiberius and Trajan be secret Christians. Etc.

Truly, to lie to such extents while insisting that it's the Truth with a capital T -- and in some cases to include a warning against believing forgeries in a forgery they were writing in the name of some apostles -- those guys must have walked bow-legged on account of their gigantic balls

[Greediguts]

Hello all.

I found this Professor's blog to be interesting and may add something to the HJ/MJ discussion:

Vita Brevis - The New Oxonian

The blog contains 3 articles regarding the historicity of Jesus, an examination of Earl Doherty's work, and finally looking at Richard Carrier and his use of Bayes' Theorem.

[HansMustermann]

That said, I'm not sure I'd attack it from the angle of how many peasants from Galilee knew Greek (well enough.) While the percentage is likely extremely low in the rural areas, it's really only relevant if someone claims that, say, the epistles of Peter, John, and so on, are written by exactly those apostles. Then it is probably relevant to estimate: if you took 12 more or less random fishermen and other lower class, for no other reason or qualification than being there when Jesus goes "ok, you guys leave everything and come with me", what's the chance that even one of them would not only know how to write, but also be fluent in Greek and skilled in literary devices and sophistry?

Unfortunately, we're a century or two for that to still be relevant. Nowadays even religious scholars are aware that Peter's epistles weren't written by Peter, and in fact they can't even be both written by the same person. Or pretty much everyone agrees that the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John aren't written by the Mark, Matthew, Luke or John that the church tradition ascribed them to. (Although knowing that they're not written by Mark or Matthew doesn't stop some people from trying to equivocate those with the different Mark and Matthew mentioned by Papias anyway.)

What is still contested isn't whether any of those wrote their respective stuff, or even if they knew Greek or Latin at all, but whether there still is a reliable chain of information anyway. And that's pretty hard to attack purely from the angle of what language would Peter speak, since it only takes a translator for that to stop being a problem. In fact, it's so obvious that it occured to people in the very early 2nd century CE: that's what got us the invention of Mark as the personal translator and secretary or Peter.

Seriously, it's like the God of the gaps all over again. From the original claim that that stuff is written by literal eye-witnesses and best buddies of Jesus, or, as the case may be direct associates of Peter or Paul, when that got untenable, now it's been dropped down a notch to just claiming that, basically, "yeah, ok, so it may have been written 60 years after the fact, by people who never even saw the region or knew anything, but it's still reliable because THEY HAD WITNESSES." The BS support handwaved is that the place was teeming with all sorts of eye witnesses of all those miracles, and even hostile witnesses (e.g., from the Pharisees) who would have corrected any mistake. That you couldn't have made up any detail, no matter how small, without a bunch of people going "no, that's not how it happened!" at you. And that of course, those writing the fanfics... err... gospels would, of course, correct the text to such a degree that verily none of those gazillions of witnesses found anything to object.

Which I guess is a good setup for illustrating what I mean by actually using Bayes instead of just trying to handwave through a base rate fallacy. Before I get started, if anyone somehow missed what Bayes is about... well, I'm too lazy to type it all, but just so we're on the same page about the variables and formula, I'll just copy this from Richard Carrier's pdf. Or you can get it off wikipedia, or whatever.

P(h|e.b) = P(h|b) x P(e|h.b) / [ P(h|b) x P(e|h.b) + P(~h|b) x P(e|~h.b) ]

Where:

P = Probability (epistemic probability = the probability that something stated is true)

h = hypothesis being tested

~h = all other hypotheses that could explain the same evidence (if h is false)

e = all the evidence directly relevant to the truth of h (e includes both what is observed
and what is not observed)

b = total background knowledge (all available personal and human knowledge about
anything and everything, from physics to history)

P(h|e.b) = the probability that a hypothesis (h) is true given all the available evidence (e)
and all our background knowledge (b)

P(h|b) = the prior probability that h is true = the probability that our hypothesis would
be true given only our background knowledge (i.e. if we knew nothing about e)

P(e|h.b) = the consequent probability of the evidence (given h and b) = the probability
that all the evidence we have would exist (or something comparable to it would
exist) if the hypothesis (and background knowledge) is true.

P(~h|b) = 1 – P(h|b) = the prior probability that h is false = the sum of the prior
probabilities of all alternative explanations of the same evidence (e.g. if there is
only one viable alternative, this means the prior probability of all other theories is
vanishingly small, i.e. substantially less than 1%, so that P(~h|b) is the prior
probability of the one viable competing hypothesis; if there are many viable
competing hypotheses, they can be subsumed under one group category (~h), or
treated independently by expanding the equation, e.g. for three competing
hypotheses [ P(h|b) x P(e|h.b) ] + [ P(~h|b) x P(e|~h.b) ] becomes [ P(h1|b) x P(e|
h1.b) ] + [ P(h2|b) x P(e|h2.b) + [ P(h3|b) x P(e|h3.b) ])

P(e|~h.b) = the consequent probability of the evidence if b is true but h is false = the
probability that all the evidence we have would exist (or something comparable to
it would exist) if the hypothesis we are testing is false, but all our background
knowledge is still true. This also equals the posterior probability of the evidence if
some hypothesis other than h is true—and if there is more than one viable
contender, you can include each competing hypothesis independently (per above)
or subsume them all under one group category (~h).

Now let's say that:

- our evidence e are the episodes in Matthew where the Sun has a 3-hours long eclipse on a full moon, and there's a 3-day long plague of zombies in Jerusalem, and the slaughter of innocents, and so on. You know, all the enormities in there.

- our hypothesis h is that our friend Matthew did indeed have access to enough reliable and impartial eye-witnesses, and actually would cross-check every event with them, and correct his version if the witnesses say it ain't so.

I reckon, he needs some 3-4 witnesses to even cover all that happened in Jerusalem, because any less and someone wouldn't be on scene for one or the other of them. I mean, according to the Bible, even the apostles themselves weren't witnesses to everything Jesus did or everything happening at the trial (they wouldn't be sent with Jesus to Caiaphas and Herod and so on) and so on.

- our body of evidence b is all we know on the topic, including that it's biological and physical impossibilities, and more importantly that a lot of people would have had good reason to write about those events (e.g., for an astronomer at the time, that eclipse would have been THE most significant event ever) and yet none of them did.

- P(h|b) is basically, what are the odds that Matthew would have such witnesses and actually be meticulous about cross-checking every single claim, if we didn't know anything about the evidence, i.e., what he's writing about. Usually this one is handwaved implicitly as the one number that matters, presumably because it can be argued to a lot higher than the rest.

Actually that's fairly low anyway, because in that age, everyone made up public speeches and such. And generally people didn't check even flat out claims that someone was born of a god. Or apparently in Apollonius of Tyana's case, his mom made him with TWO gods. (Holy gangbang, batman!) Plus, resurrections, raising the dead, public miracles, etc. People didn't exactly have the requirement to have two corroborating witnesses at the time.

Plus by the time of Matthew we're getting past the median life expectancy at the time. Someone who was, say, a couple of years old at the time of the crucifixion, to be over the immense infant mortality spike already, would already have over 50% chances to be dead. But you wouldn't trust the memories of a 3 year old at the time, so, really, you'll want someone who was at least an adult at all at the time, i.e., 13 years old. Which is already on the tail end of the curve.

So not only checking with several witnesses wasn't a given at the time, even HAVING those eyewitnesses around that cover enough of Jesus's ministry in one place is going to be a problem.

So let's say... one in ten? Though as we'll see, it won't make much of a difference even if I start with a prior of 50-50, so I'll actually go with 50-50. Which is the general "I don't know" kind of prior.

- P(e|h.b) is the probability that we'd actually have that evidence e, or something similar, if our background knoweldge is correct AND the hypothesis is correct. What are the odds that a Matthew who scrupulously checked it with several reliable eye-witnesses, and actually corrected the manuscript if the witnesses disagreed, would end up writing about a 3-hour solar eclipse on a full moon and a zombie invasion that spans several days?

Well, now that one ain't very likely, is it? Basically the only ways to reconcile both requirements is one or both of the following:

A) all witnesses Matthew has access to are nuts. Schizophrenia being about 1%, for even 3 witnesses to be schizophrenic, we have a 1 in a MILLION chance. Of course, back then it was higher without medication, and we are talking some old people too, but by the time you get to 4 witnesses, it kinda compensates for that.

B) the solar eclipse and zombie invasion DID happen, but all those people who had good reasons to be interested in such events, somehow forgot to write about the most significant event in their profession EVER. Well, that ain't very likely either. If every astronomer at the time had just 1 chance in 10 to just omit writing about the most significant astronomical event ever (which is a very generous chance, much higher than is realistic to expect) then you only need 6 of them to have 1 in a million odds, and a dozen of them give you a 1 in a TRILLION chance of it happening. We actually have more than a dozen, IIRC.

When we add the other stuff in there that nobody wrote anything about, well, let's just say it's multiplied not added, so the chance of all that stuff happening in major cities and nobody ever writing about it is truly insignificant.

So let's go with just the 1 in 1,000,000 chance that Matthew is carefully crosschecking it with a bunch of witnesses... who are thoroughly insane.

- P(~h|b) is 1-P(h|b). Since I said I'd go with a ludicriously gullible 0.5 as the prior P(h|b), this one is 0.5 too. Which makes the maths a lot easier, since we can just reduce the 0.5 above and below the fraction line.

- P(e|~h.b) is basically what are the odds that you'd end up with such ridiculous miracle stories if Matthew ISN'T checking it with a bunch of reliable witnesses, including the case that he's not checking it with anyone at all.

Well, let's say 1 in 10, basically allowing that 90% of those writing successful religious propaganda, aren't making up anything TOO extraordinary. I'm being way generous there, but let's go with that.

So basically we have our probability that the hypothesis is true be
0.5 x 0.000001 / [ 0.5 * 0.000001 + 0.5 * 0.1 ] = 0.000001 / [ 0.000001 + 0.1 ] = 0.000001 / 0.1 = 1 in 100,000

(Given that we don't have any real accuracy beyond the order of magnitude, 0.000001 + 0.1 is pretty much just 0.1)

So basically really, the chance that G.Matthew is actually cross-checking his story against eye-witnesses, are 1 in 100,000 or less. Actually with some more realistic numbers, it would be a lot less.

And basically, really, that's how one argues "probably" with Bayes.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by Greediguts

Hello all.

I found this Professor's blog to be interesting and may add something to the HJ/MJ discussion:

Vita Brevis - The New Oxonian

The blog contains 3 articles regarding the historicity of Jesus, an examination of Earl Doherty's work, and finally looking at Richard Carrier and his use of Bayes' Theorem.

Thanks for the link Greediguts. I think it is relevant and I intend to spend more time reading it. Unfortunately, the guy is a talker and getting to the gist of his argument takes a bit more time than I have right now.

His main point seems to be that all this writing exists about Jesus and its basic function is to push some kind of theological idea about Jesus and not to prove he existed because everybody assumed that at the time of the earliest writings about Jesus because he had actually existed.

I am not in the mythicist camp but I am leery of that argument. I believe Christianity evolved in a preexisting gentile religion that was based on Judaism and the Septuagint. The group was called God-Fearers and is referenced by both Josephus and the author of Luke. The group had a belief that a Messiah was on the way. A mythicist scenario is that the God-Fearer group was primed to believe in a Messiah, somebody just made up one or the hint of one and the belief in the Messiah's existence just swept through the God-Fearer group. This created a big demand for information about this nonexistent Messiah and the Jesus fiction writers satisfied the market for it. I think this scenario is a plausible explanation as to why the Jesus literature came to exist and it doesn't require a physical Jesus.

I also noticed that he hung part of his argument on Paul's writings. I was with him on this. Despite a lot of effort on my part to find more evidence to support the existence of an HJ, Paul's writing still stand as the best evidence (HM might argue the only evidence). I don't think Paul created the idea that the Messiah had come and gone. My view is that this preceded Paul and that Paul made his living as a public speaker to God-Fearer groups that were looking for information on the new (at that time) religion based on Jesus as Messiah. Assuming my scenario is even roughly correct it seems likely to me that the trigger for this move towards belief in a Jesus/Messiah fellow was the existence of an actual Jesus.

[pgwenthold]

Originally Posted by davefoc

His main point seems to be that all this writing exists about Jesus and its basic function is to push some kind of theological idea about Jesus and not to prove he existed because everybody assumed that at the time of the earliest writings about Jesus because he had actually existed.

The flaw with this approach is that it has turned non-falsifiable.

How would the story be any different if Jesus didn't exist?

The approach comes down to, "The bible is not inconsistent with Jesus not existing, so we can say he did."

Hans has pointed out very clearly that this is not a valid approach. You need to have a reason to say he existed, not just a counter to those who say the bible doesn't give us a reason to say he did.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by davefoc

His main point seems to be that all this writing exists about Jesus and its basic function is to push some kind of theological idea about Jesus and not to prove he existed because everybody assumed that at the time of the earliest writings about Jesus because he had actually existed.

He may have existed, don't get me wrong. But those people wouldn't actually have any way to know that he existed, since they weren't there. (We can know they weren't there, nor had a steady supply of witnesses, because they do swallow the aforementioned enormities.) What they are doing is: they believe that Jesus existed. They're just trusting someone else that Jesus existed.

And while it's theoretically possible that they even had some good reason to believe those people that Jesus existed, if the writings don't share those reasons, then essentially we're back to the problem I mentioned before: what we actually have only needs belief in Jesus to explain the origins of the church. For all the data we have, we don't have anything that would require anyone personally knowing Jesus to explain. We just need a bunch of people believing in Jesus to explain everything adequately.

Just like, say, the origins of Mormonism don't really need the existence of the angel Moroni or an ancient lost tribe of Christians to explain. All that's needed to explain it is that some people believed Joseph Smith about the angel and his translation.

[davefoc]

I spent a bit more time reading through R. Joseph Hoffmann's essay.

I didn't find it easy. It is done in an academic style that I don't like. Lots of references to the views of various people, less than clear statements on exactly what the point of the author is and a lot assertions for which the basis is not made clear in close proximity to the assertion.

At least some of his arguments are directed at disproving mythicist theories instead of proving the existence of Jesus. These are relevant to counter arguments of a particular Jesus is myth scenario but they are not probative with regard to the question of whether an HJ existed.

Along these lines he expressed his disagreement with tying the Jesus story to preexisting mythology. This has been discussed often in these HJ threads and I never thought much of those efforts either. Even if one found parallels for the Jesus religion in preexisting beliefs it doesn't preclude the possibility of an HJ and as Hoffman notes the parallels aren't all that strong.

Near the middle of his essay he makes the statement that the preserved controversy is the "surest proof" of a real Jesus. If this is the surest proof of an historical Jesus then there is no proof of an HJ, which I think is actually the case. A lot has been made of the controversies preserved in Paul's letters and the gospels. They do, in fact, give the ring of plausibility to at least some of the stories in the NT. It is easy to imagine the tension between the law following Palestinian Jewish Jesus sect and the gentile believers in the Jesus/Mythology. I think it was this preserved controversy that most affected my own early thinking about the question of an HJ. i.e. it seemed real so maybe it was real.

There is a problem with this line of thought, of course. Successful hoaxers need to add details that ring true to their audience to give their efforts the best chance of being believed. In this case, I suspect that there was an ongoing tension between the gentile followers of the God-fearer groups and the Hellenistic Jews that still continued to follow some aspects of Judaism including circumcision. It seems at least possible that early New Testament hoaxers would have been motivated to capture this controversy in the stories they were creating to give the ring of truth to their writing.

What is required to add credibility to the notion of an HJ is evidence as to why the authors of the NT who were separated in time, location and culture from first century Palestine are credible witnesses of events in first century Palestine. Despite a lot of words, in the end, I didn't see where Hoffman accomplished that at all.

[davefoc]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

...
Well, the letters of Ignatius are on par with the pastorals, really, in that they're late forgeries. Ignatius was at best some minor local zealot, and if he ever wrote anything, we're missing it. Some people much later though got into overdrive with trying to paint an image of the church which was all about hierarchy and having one doctrine. I.e., the "orthodoxy" that was arbitrarily invented in the second half of the second century, is arbitrarily extended backwards to the very beginning. ...

I was under the impression that the first seven epistles of Ignatius were generally considered genuine (excluding some interpolations perhaps) and it was only the later ones that were considered definite frauds. What is your source for the idea that they are all fraudulent.

Although, I appreciated your post, I was hoping that you might step back a bit from the mythicist crusader and put forth the best case for any kind of contact between the early church fathers and a Palestinian Jesus sect. What is a scenario where such a contact might have happened or do you believe that such contact is flat out impossible? Could the Jesus sect have consisted of Hellenistic Jews living in the Palestine area?

One clue to all this is that at least some of the Hellenistic Jews living outside the Palestinian area seem to have taken up some form of the new Jesus religion. We don't know much about them although the NT book James seems to have been written by one of them and there are clear references to them by early church fathers. Perhaps a Palestinian Jesus sect interacted with this group which was the path by which the Jesus story made it into the God-fearer group?

[HansMustermann]

Well, I think that, if nothing else, Paul is bringing over some ideas that the Essenes had been cooking up. So contact between the Greeks and SOME stuff coming from some Jewish gang awaiting Jesus, is a given. It's only one data point, but still, one example is enough to show an "X exists."

My point isn't that such contact is impossible. It obviously isn't. My point is that we really have no reliable information to know what such groups were, who were the guys that travelled around, what was their theology, and so on. Or indeed even whether they actually existed.

The earliest information about ANY Palestinian sects comes relatively late in the 2nd century, and tends to point at offshoots of Paulinity, using modified gospels of those churches of Paul, rather than anything pre-existing.

More importantly, it's from rather unreliable sources. E.g., Tertullian thinks the Ebionites get their name from an arch-heresiarch called Ebion, and he actually spends some time refuting heretic claims of this Ebion. If, as the general consensus seems to be, Tertullian just made up a name based on his own imagining a bogus etymology for their name, then really, Tertullian is making stuff up. There is no real reason to take any other information about them from him as reliable.

In effect, if we believe those guys, then really there is no original palestinian Jesus group that they ever heard of. They only know of offshotts that decided to mix Christianity with keeping the Law too. Something which we see even in Paul's writing as an idea that people in his congregations were getting, so it really doesn't need anything more to explain why whole such groups existed a century later. And if we believe they're talking out the ass, which they seem to be, then we have no information at all.

So, really, we don't know. There COULD be a sect in Palestine that first reached the conclusion that the Messiah had come already, and they could be what started it all. It even seems like a rather plausible scenario. But without any real evidence, it's hard to know if it's also true.

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by Greediguts

Hello all.

I found this Professor's blog to be interesting and may add something to the HJ/MJ discussion:

Vita Brevis - The New Oxonian

The blog contains 3 articles regarding the historicity of Jesus, an examination of Earl Doherty's work, and finally looking at Richard Carrier and his use of Bayes' Theorem.

Thanks for the link, Greediguts!

[HansMustermann]

As for Ignatius, well, you can start for example here:
http://www.bible.ca/history-ignatius...ries-250AD.htm

There's actually a lot less than a consensus that they're authentic. The Catholics want to make them authentic (and btw, it's the LAST seven, not the first) because they suspiciously endorse exactly the kind of organization they came up with later, plus an endorsement by name of the Catholic Church. (Which is one WTH, as there is no evidence that anyone used that term until much later.) But really, their whole argument boils down to "we can be sure 8 are forged, therefore the other 7 are genuine." That's it. There is no evidence that anyone had even heard of them until the mid-3'rd century, which is weird for some letters addressed to bishops all over the darned place, or really anything that would count as evidence for their being genuine. It's just those that aren't proven to be fakes.

Which is a bit thin as support, wouldn't you think?

Plus his story is really tripping suspension of disbelief.

We're talking a guy who, without even being a citizen, simply demands to talk to the Emperor Trajan while the emperor is going with the army through Antioch to fight the Persians. And actually gets to talk to Trajan, just because he asked. That's the first WTH.

... apparently for no other reason than to profess his Christianity (WTH?) and is promptly sentenced to be torn by wild beasts for being a Christian. Which is yet another WTH, since there are no records of persecutions against Christians by Trajan at that time. In fact, it would only be 2 years later that Pliny the Younger starts persecuting Christians in Anatolia (and actually at exactly the other end of Anatolia than where Antioch was), and Trajan actually asks him not to actively seek out Christians, and to not follow anonymous tips. But OK...

... and supposedly this Ignatius was actually hoping he'd be executed, or at least seems glad that he is sent to his execution. Not really the most stable person, but ok...

... except instead of just executing him on the spot, like Pliny and really everyone else did, Trajan sends him to be executed in Rome. For no obvious reason, really, since Trajan was going in the other direction. Ignatius isn't even going to be part of some show Trajan will be at, so WTH?

Seriously, WTH? Trajan wasn't into shows of repression, and even as a warning, executing him locally would have sent a more valuable message to his local followers. Why Rome? Why not the local arena in Antioch? Or Ephesus, which is actually on the way they supposedly followed?

Don't you think a more plausible scenario would have involved his going a whole 100 yards or so to the nearest execution place? And good luck writing fast enough to produce 7 long rambling letters in that time.

... and this trip turns into a sort of a band tour, as instead of just going to Rome, they haul the guy all around a quarter of the mediterranean coast, spending a couple of days in each major city along the way, letting him write letters, meet with local elders, etc. This guy is pretty much paraded like a super-star, not like a convict in chains.

... his own account -- in as much as I can say "own" about a forgery -- paints this surrealistic picture: "From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only grow worse when they are kindly treated" That's page 5 from his epistle to the Romans.

WTH? Does that sound even remotely plausible? So now not only he's sent by Rome, but they make him fight wild beasts all over the place, and even while on sea, and even keep him chained amidst ten leopards. Do you really think that someone could actually survive such repeated fights with ten leopards, until they find lions in Rome, which are apparently his nemesis because they do finish him off? Also, do you think the leopards would just sit and let him write?

So basically if it's not a forgery, then good ol' Ignatius is a liar. He's inventing his own pious martyrdom fiction.

... then there's the curious fact that, for someone who supposedly was pretty much THE second pope, and who obviously remembers to write when he's hauled to his execution, there is no mention or letter of him before that.

Which is really curious. He paints a totally ahistorical image, of churches subjected to one bishop who rules them all with an iron fist like Sauron, and whom you should obey like he IS Jesus Christ... yet we just don't see him do what it would take to achieve that. (Nor achieving anything resembling that great unity.) Where are the letters to churches to bring them under his authority? Where are his rulings on matters of theology? Where are the epistles admonishing against heresies? Don't you think he should have written some before being hauled to his execution, if he actually was the second pope?

It's only after he is taken to his execution, that suddenly a bunch of letters appear in his name.

[DOC]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified. The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason. Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

Originally Posted by tsig

You believe the story because the writer wasn't a good enough liar?

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

[DOC]

Originally Posted by catsmate1

There is no evidence Jesus was ever born.

Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus, and the alleged great historian Luke would have disagreed. Most historians don't include people in their history writings unless they were born.

[ddt]

Originally Posted by DOC

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

Groan.

Originally Posted by DOC

Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus, and the alleged great historian Luke would have disagreed. Most historians don't include people in their history writings unless they were born.

As it happens, the authenticity of the Josephus passages is the most recent subtopic of the "Evidence of the NT" thread, as you're acutely aware as you frequent that thread. So why don't you engage further in the discussion there?

[joobz]

Originally Posted by DOC

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

that's the same Luke who made up stories regarding Jesus' birth, Right?



---
I feel like we've danced before.

[Akhenaten]

Originally Posted by DOC

Just because you grew up in a city that doesn't mean you were born there. You have no evidence Jesus was born in Galilee.

You have been completely unable, despite your best (albeit pathetic) efforts, to provide the least skerrick of evidence that Jesus was born anywhere.

Originally Posted by DOC

And it really doesn't make much sense to invent the census {taxation}story that could easily be checked out by the people, especially the ruling Roman authorities of that day.

Why in the name of Jupiter would the Romans care what was in the fairytales that the local rabble were making up to amuse themselves?

Does the CIA fact check Mills & Boon novels?

As for 'the people' - in those days of no paper they'd be doing well to check out events occurring in the next village, let alone in some far-off province that few of them would have even heard of.

And to top it all off you're still making the demonstrably false assumption that the story was written as the events were unfolding, and not decades (at least) later.

Originally Posted by DOC

If you wanted to invent a story, you invent one that can't easily be verified.

Why? Bleevers aren't interested in verification unless, like some, their faith is too weak to sustain their bleef, in which case they just make up stuff, pretend it's actual history and Voila! Instant verification.

Ask me how I know this, DOC. I double-dog dare you.

Originally Posted by DOC

The authors could have just said Joseph had work to do in Bethlehem or a relative was sick and they went to Bethlehem for that reason.

Or they could have told the truth. Funny that your suggested solution is to have them make up something that you consider more believable rather than just sticking to the facts.

Well, not funny, so much . . .

Originally Posted by DOC

Why bring the most powerful man in the world, Caesar Augustus into the story, if you don't have to. That's not a good way to hide an alleged fabrication.

It's called argumentum ad verecundiam. Quite common amongst those who wish to add a veneer of respectability to the drivel that they feel compelled to spout at every opportunity.

If you'd like some examples of this taking place in this very forum, let me know and I'll give you a few links..

Thomas Jefferson would approve, I'm sure.

[Akhenaten]

Originally Posted by DOC

Originally Posted by dafydd

There is no evidence that Jesus was born anywhere.

Sounds somewhat like Obama.

There's no evidence that President Obama was born, eh?

Congratulations, DOC. In a month of stiff competition you've managed to post the stupidest thing I've read on the entire Forum.

[Akhenaten]

Originally Posted by DOC

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

Why are you trying to present this bilge here when you know very well that it's been torn to shreds scores of times in the thread you started in order to present it and from which you flee like a startled gazelle every time some actual evidence appears?

Originally Posted by DOC

Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus, and the alleged great historian Luke would have disagreed. Most historians don't include people in their history writings unless they were born.

Again, why are you interrupting the discussion in this thread with this nonsense rather than dealing with the many points raised against it in both TTTWND and in my "The Incredible odds of fulfilled bible prophecy" thread?

[Lucian]

Originally Posted by DOC

Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus, and the alleged great historian Luke would have disagreed. Most historians don't include people in their history writings unless they were born.

Icelandic Christian historian Snorri Sturluson included Odin and Thor as historical personages in his historical work Heimskringla. Why would he have included them if they hadn't been born?

Put the Thor back in Thursday!

[HansMustermann]

And Justin Martyr was considering the sons of Zeus (among others) to be real and miraculous, he just thought that Satan did it

But actually that way of solving the cognitive dissonance is still the kind of thing that annoys me. And, yes, a lot of people seem to actually be very willing to take every legendary guy from every story older than a couple of hundred years as real, historical people.

The same people are perfectly willing to believe, and quite rationally so, that modern authors can simply make up fictive characters like Superman. Or like the widow of a Nigerian prince who has some millions to transfer. Or like a sockpuppet to agree with one, or to champion a strawman version of the opposing argument. Etc. But people living anywhere between 500 and 5000 years ago? Nah, man, those couldn't possibly make up Achilles or Robin Hood.

Sometimes extending even into quite modern times. E.g., people believing that Sherlock Holmes is real.

And that's really my problem. It's not even about Jesus per se, or being a "mythicist crusader", it's really that historical gullibility that gets my goat. That every single version of a Superman or Wonder Woman has got to be based on some real person, if it was made up in 1000 BC. Because apparently back then people didn't know how to make up stuff, or something.

It's just that people are less hung up on the others.

[Akhenaten]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

And that's really my problem. It's not even about Jesus per se, or being a "mythicist crusader", it's really that historical gullibility that gets my goat. That every single version of a Superman or Wonder Woman has got to be based on some real person, if it was made up in 1000 BC. Because apparently back then people didn't know how to make up stuff, or something.

DOC has used this exact line of 'reasoning' (that fiction didn't exist circa 30 CE) to defend his claims that the synoptic gospels are accurate historical records.

[pakeha]

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

... If you have already figured out what bits the messiah must fulfil, and what's the name that encapsulates who you expect it to be, you don't really need a real guy to build a gospel on. You already have a guy: that fleshed out concept of who you expect. It's no harder to build a story from a concept guy like Superman or Captain Kirk or Han Solo, than it is to build it from a real guy. Once you have enough of a concept of what that character would be like and what he'd be expected to do or say, you can just go ahead and write the novel.

So at the end of the day, we can't say Jesus actually existed.
We can he might have or 'probably' did.
And that's as good as it gets?

Originally Posted by DOC

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

Originally Posted by HansMustermann

...But anyway, ok, so Luke is lying about who he is and how he knows that, but the only question is how well did Luke research that stuff anyway. Turns out that not so good either. Well, to be fair, he's head and shoulders above Mark in that aspect, as he seems to have at least tried to figure out the geography, customs and history of the place, and he IS using Josephus extensively. Plus he seems to have had SOMETHING resembling court transcripts at some point, which, you know, is one more source he's using. So the guy at least tried. ...

DOC, please stop.
Unless you're actually the Amazing One, indulging in some black humour...

[catsmate1]

Originally Posted by DOC

More so because he (gospel writer Luke) was considered a great historian (at least according to archaeologist Sir William M. Ramsay).

Originally Posted by DOC

Roman historian Tacitus, the Roman/Jewish historian Josephus, and the alleged great historian Luke would have disagreed. Most historians don't include people in their history writings unless they were born.

I see you're still peddling the same old, long debunked, lies to support your delusions.
The Testimonium Flavianum is a forgery. Tacitis mentions "Christiani" and provides no proof for your god. And as for the "great historian Luke" we've covered those particular nonsensical lies many times before.