What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

How do you know when your knowledge is "complete"?

You don't. That's why absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.

I think this is similar to statistics, sampling, etc. So absence of evidence is useful information IMO.

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We have archaeological evidence that the term Chrestians was in use in Rome by 37 AD.

The Chrestiani inscription naming Jucundus, Antonia Minor and her husband Drusus establishes Chrestianity in Rome during the Augustan period.

What if Christianity existed before Jesus in anticipation of a Christ (Son of Man as portrayed in the Book of Enoch), and then Jesus claimed to be that anticipated Christ?
Here is a quote from a review of "The Jewish Gospels" by Boyarin that I've mentioned earlier. I think this idea would explain a lot about the development of Christianity.

Boyarin looks at the first and second centuries where you have some Jews focusing on the book of Daniel and expecting a mediator figure as redeemer, some even expecting the mediator to be the suffering servant. There was widespread bi-theism or binitarianism within Judaism where Jews perceived God as an unknown God and a lower logos of God. The ideas of a complex godhead (a God with two or three persons) have their origins in the Judaism of Jesus’ time and before him. Many, perhaps most, Jews were expecting a Redeemer who was an anthropomorphic divine being, known as the Son of Man.

https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/03/0...sh-gospel/

[watchamadoodle]

You don't. That's why absence of evidence is not evidence of anything.

I think this is similar to statistics, sampling, etc. So absence of evidence is useful information IMO.

Nester, I want to correct what I said above, because it depends on the meaning of "absence of evidence". Like if I claimed that Bigfoot usually visits my house twice a year, and the History Channel installed surveillance cameras for 5 years with no sign of Bigfoot, then that is useful information IMO.
I suspect that isn't what you meant by "absence of evidence".

[Mudhammam]

I think this is similar to statistics, sampling, etc. So absence of evidence is useful information IMO.

Nester, I want to correct what I said above, because it depends on the meaning of "absence of evidence". Like if I claimed that Bigfoot usually visits my house twice a year, and the History Channel installed surveillance cameras for 5 years with no sign of Bigfoot, then that is useful information IMO.
I suspect that isn't what you meant by "absence of evidence".

Basically, the "proper" way to state the argument, to avoid any informal logical fallacies, would not be that your surveillance---in NOT capturing (negative) Big Foot's presence---is evidence FOR (positive) the conclusion that Big Foot doesn't exist. For all we know Big Foot is very good at avoiding the camera, or he has an invisible body suit. Rather, we would say: No positive evidence = no positive reason for accepting premises and conclusions affirming Big Foot's existence.

In Jesus' case we can say what type of evidence we would want to make an informed conclusion as opposed to the type of evidence we have. The absence of that evidence makes any hypothesis very sketchy.

[Pizza]

In other words, we need evidence for the assumption there would be evidence if the claim in question was true.

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Could have worded this better.
I'm not saying "Yeshua existed" is very close to 0. I'm saying comparing that to another claim(mythicists claim) that is according to you very low isn't saying much.

I take a much weaker view that we don't know much of anything about this Yeshua person to say anything interesting. At this point it's hard to separate the man from the myths(and I'm not just talking about the supernatural stuff). The historical Jesus is like the historical Laozi.

Maybe I'm not getting your points properly, but I think you guys are misunderstanding how an HJ scholar may come to the conclusion that Jesus once existed. It isn't merely because he was mentioned in some book. It's more about reading between the lines to see hints pointing toward a person who more likely existed than not because they don't seem to make sense otherwise.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. I'm just saying the likelihoods aren't going to be amazingly high one way or the other.

[robvalue]

Yeah...

The "wouldn't make sense otherwise" argument is a bit of a stretch to me. I certainly would never accept that such arguments establishes anything to such a stage where I would call it beyond reasonable historical doubt. At best I'd say it's a reasonable estimate.

The problem is, you're relying on the motives of the authors, and they could have any number of bizarre reasons for writing things the way they did. To assume they use the same thought processes as us is a mistake I think, and who knows what kind of pressures, agendas or just plain weird notions would cause them to write stuff.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I don't feel the need to "be convinced" by something just because other historians do, if I'm evaluating the same evidence that they are and reading their arguments. In fact, I literally can't choose to be convinced. Either I am or I am not.

I understand the desire to come up with best guesses and piece together vague ideas, but I am wary that you're doing a "jesus of the gaps" argument where a "don't know" is more honest. If the evidence isn't there, it isn't there. But I suppose that as long as you justify your "conclusions" with the fact that they are a reasoned estimate and are not claiming "this is what probably happened" then that's fair enough. Just I don't really care about an estimate because it doesn't convince me.

[GrandizerII]

Yeah...

The "wouldn't make sense otherwise" argument is a bit of a stretch to me. I certainly would never accept that such arguments establishes anything to such a stage where I would call it beyond reasonable historical doubt. At best I'd say it's a reasonable estimate.

The problem is, you're relying on the motives of the authors, and they could have any number of bizarre reasons for writing things the way they did. To assume they use the same thought processes as us is a mistake I think, and who knows what kind of pressures, agendas or just plain weird notions would cause them to write stuff.

Of course, this is just my opinion. I don't feel the need to "be convinced" by something just because other historians do, if I'm evaluating the same evidence that they are and reading their arguments. In fact, I literally can't choose to be convinced. Either I am or I am not.

I understand the desire to come up with best guesses and piece together vague ideas, but I am wary that you're doing a "jesus of the gaps" argument where a "don't know" is more honest. If the evidence isn't there, it isn't there. But I suppose that as long as you justify your "conclusions" with the fact that they are a reasoned estimate and are not claiming "this is what probably happened" then that's fair enough. Just I don't really care about an estimate because it doesn't convince me.

I can't agree with this thinking because, by such thinking, you'd have to pretty much dismiss most of what scholars think likely happened ...

Scholarship isn't just about reading books and gaining knowledge from information explicitly stated in them. It's also about trying to get into the minds of the authors at the time.

Hell, you'll probably not find anything art scholars say to be credible because their job is pretty much interpreting what the art is trying to convey.

[robvalue]

Well, I have a particular problem with the gospels because we have no idea at all who wrote them. So trying to get into their head seems like virtually guesswork to me.

But sure, maybe I'm too sceptical about it all. I can't help it, it's like atheism, it's a state of mind. If I read the arguments and evidence and it doesn't change my belief, that's just the way it is. Doesn't mean I'm right at all, no one should take my opinion seriously. Just calling it as I see it.

If all history is based on as weak evidence as this, I'd be loathe to believe very much of it. I'd rather draw no conclusion than the wrong one.

[GrandizerII]

Well, I have a particular problem with the gospels because we have no idea at all who wrote them. So trying to get into their head seems like virtually guesswork to me.

Why must you know who they were in order to do a proper critical analysis of the text? We do have an idea of what kind of people they were, but not who exactly they were.

I'm just confused by this thinking, that's all.

[robvalue]

Because we're not talking about the text, we're talking about the motivation behind the text. If we just go by the text in the gospels, it's horse shit. Hearsay accounts by some random person, as far as we know. I'm referring to this:

reading between the lines to see hints pointing toward a person who more likely existed than not because they don't seem to make sense otherwise.

You can't do that without knowing something about the person writing it, in my opinion.

[GrandizerII]

Because we're not talking about the text, we're talking about the motivation behind the text. If we just go by the text in the gospels, it's horse shit. Hearsay accounts by some random person, as far as we know. I'm referring to this:

reading between the lines to see hints pointing toward a person who more likely existed than not because they don't seem to make sense otherwise.

You can't do that without knowing something about the person writing it, in my opinion.

We (including you) do know things about the person/people who wrote them. We don't know their names, but we do know that they were, for example, Christians in the first century who saw Jesus as the Messiah risen from the dead, baptized by John the Baptist, etc.