Ask A Historian

[Mudhammam]

You're assuming that it happened in one fell swoop.  Like everything else, it evolved.  I suggest Richard Carrier's On The Historicity of Jesus.  I have an electronic version if you PM an email address I'll send it to you.  After that, compare the reasons for believing the Historical Jesus routine with it. 

Thanks but I'll probably buy a copy of his book next year when I do a survey on the origins of the main religions. Perhaps you can clue me in on his take of this point; the crucial issue for that particular argument is dating the NT, especially given the characters that play such a dominant role in the story (the Herods, Pilate, etc.), and at least a handful of them seem (even by Carrier's standards as far as I know) to be reliably placed in the middle to late first-century. The earliest of their respective genres, and their nearly unanimously agreed upon dates of composition, say Galatians (49-52 CE), Mark (65-75), and Hebrews (60s), all seem to contain the notion of a Jew who died by crucifixion. Of course the myths evolved, though naturally one would expect them to move upwards towards the incredible and not the other way around. Even if he wants to argue that something like Euhemerism occurred, and I'm not sure that's really a great comparison, it seems like the earliest texts in the ballpark of what can be described as a distinctly Christian mythology or essential tenet of the faith contradicts that assumption.

[Minimalist]

Here is from Carrier's conclusion:

I know many devout Christian scholars will balk and claim to find all

manner of bogus or irrelevant or insignificant holes or flaws in my arguments,
but they would do that anyway. Witness what many Christian scholars
come up with just to reject evolution, or to defend the literal miraculous
resurrection of Jesus (which they claim they can do even with the terrible
and paltry evidence we have). Consequently, I don't care anymore what

Christian apologists think. They are not rational people. I only want to know
what rational scholars think. I want to see a helpful critique of this book by
objective, qualified experts who could live with the conclusion that Jesus
didn't exist, but just don't think the case can be made, or made well enough
to credit. And what I want from my critics is not useless hole punching but
an alternative proposal : if my method is invalid, then what method is the
correct one for resolving questions of historicity? And if you know of none,
how can you justify any claim to historicity for any person, if you don't
even know how such a claim can be justified or fal sified at all? Also correct
any facts I get wrong, point out what I missed, and if my method then
produces a different conclusion when those emendations are included, we
will have progressed  Even if the conclusion is the same, it will nevertheless
have been improved.

[Minimalist]

Decided to go all in with this.

Here is Carrier's conclusion on the gospels...after a long dissection of them.

The Gospels generally afford us no evidence whatever for discerning a

historical Jesus. Because of their extensive use of fabrication and literary
invention and their placing of other goals far ahead of what we regard as
'historical truth', we cannot know if anything in them has any historical
basis-except what we can verify externally, which for Jesus is next to

nothing. They are simply myths about Jesus and the gospel. They are not
seriously researched biographies or h istorical accounts-and are certainly
not eyewitness testimonies or even collected hearsay. Their literary art and
structure are simply too sophisticated for that.

And

The consequence of this to the present query is simple: from the survey

in this chapter it's clear that if we went from pericope to pericope assessing
the likelihood of it being true (rather than invented to communicate a
desired point or to fit a pre-planned narrative structure), each time updating
our prior probability that anything in the Gospels can be considered rel iable
evidence for a historical Jesus, then that probability would consistently
go down (or level off somewhere low), but never rise. 243 In fact I have not
found a single pericope in these Gospels that is more likely true than false.
These Gospels are therefore no different than the dozens of other Gospels
that weren't selected for the canon (as discussed in Element 44). They are
all just made-up stories.

[Dystopia]

Min, considering that liberalism has only been around since the late 1700's and mostly early 1800's, as well as everything that comes along with it (like capitalism, neo-liberalism, human rights, internationalism, etc.) - Do you think that in the next lifetime we will witness the collapse of the liberal system? (Specially considering that we are consuming too much resources and the wealth disparity is increasing)

[Minimalist]

I suspect that there will be a serious breakdown because of resources in various places.  We are already seeing it in Africa as a result of spreading dessication which leads to war.  The next place to suffer will be the sub-continent because there are too many people and not enough water.  I would expect Europe and North America to be relatively less impacted due to the lower population levels with the proviso that they will be faced with waves of immigrants and neither place has any coherent plan for dealing with them.

Then there is the middle east where, eventually, someone will develop an atomic bomb and use it on the shia or sunnis and then the shit will really hit the fan.

[Jenny A]

That raises the question - what is English and does it actually exist?

That could be legitimately asked of any language.  Like species languages are constantly evolving and blur at the boarders.

[Minimalist]

Excellent point, Jenny.  I'm always amused that the Rosetta Stone was used as the key to deciphering hieroglyphs in Egypt.  One supposes it is better than nothing but the Rosetta Stone is Ptolemaic, from the 3d century BC.  Using it to decipher Old Kingdom hieroglyphs is a gap of well over 2,000 years.  It is simply unthinkable that Egyptian did not evolve at all during such a span of time especially when you consider that it had its own Imperial Period and then was overrun by Asiatics, Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, Persians and Greeks in turn.  There had to be loan words from each of those cultures if nothing else.  

[Pyrrho]

My guess is that the Rosetta Stone was used to decipher inscriptions from its era, and then they could work backwards from there, to earlier times.  Much like one could use a modern dictionary to try to figure out words of the past, though one would not be able to trust it completely, and it would get less and less trustworthy as one moved back in time.

If I recall my history correctly, they had almost no idea what Egyptian hieroglyphs meant before the Rosetta Stone, so it got them started on figuring things out.  (Imagine how hard it would be to try to get started without it.)  I would not be surprised if there are some Egyptian hieroglyphs that they don't presently understand, and some that they may have gotten wrong.  But the Rosetta Stone is something that would be extremely helpful when one was trying to figure out the older writings.  Just as a knowledge of modern English would be helpful in figuring out English of several hundred years ago, though the changes would present difficulties.  Still, an understanding of modern English would be far more useful in understanding old English than an understanding of Mandarin would be for understanding old English.

If one wants to understand very old English, if one has the time, it might be helpful to gradually work one's way backward, by reading increasingly older works, so that one will get some sense of how things have changed over time, as well as ideas on the rate of change, etc.

Of course, this is mostly me speculating; you are the historian, how did they figure out the older hieroglyphs?

[Minimalist]

Such as Beowolf?

http://northvegr.org/sagas%20annd%20epic...f/021.html

Beowulf in Old English

3035 ærran mælum; þa wæs endedæg
godum gegongen, þæt se guðcyning,
Wedra þeoden, wundordeaðe swealt.
ær hi þær gesegan syllicran wiht,
wyrm on wonge wiðerræhtes þær
3040 laðne licgean; wæs se legdraca
grimlic, gryrefah, gledum beswæled.
Se wæs fiftiges fotgemearces
lang on legere, lyftwynne heold
nihtes hwilum, nyðer eft gewat

If I recall correctly though Champollion was reading texts from the New Kingdom when he made his breakthrough.  In the 1820's Egyptian texts were still a rarity in Europe and they worked with what they had.

[Pyrrho]

You know that what I stated is true.  I am not trying to suggest that language does not change, nor am I suggesting that it may not be difficult to figure out what the changes were.  But if you look back at my earlier post, you will see a suggestion about how to deal with such drastic differences.  For the benefit of others, I mean, of course, that one can look at intermediate examples to try to figure out the changes.  Making a huge jump in time is going to generally be much more difficult than looking at things closer in time.  With English, this would work well for getting back to Beowolf (if anyone wanted to do such a thing).  If one understands English of this century, looking first at English from the 1900's would be useful.  After one has mastered that, one then looks at English from the 1800's.  After mastering that, English of the 1700's.  And so forth.  If one takes many small steps, it is much easier than trying to take a huge leap all at once.