Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[TheMessiah]

"Even without looking at the Gospel material"?

How can the Gospels be counted as evidence of Jesus? They are the claim.

The magic in the gospel is nonsense; but the historical time and characters are real, e.g. Pontius Pilate

[TheMessiah]

Pg. 344 - "On the Historicity of Jesus"  Richard Carrier.

They key line here is 'Christ, the author of this name, was executed by

the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius'. This is the first-ever
reference to a historical Jesus outside the NT, dating to around 116 CE (very
near our cut-off date for usable evidence). 100
If the passage is authentic. I elsewhere demonstrate (following the arguments
of scholars before me who have argued the same) that this line is
probably an interpolation, and that Tacitus in fact originally described
not the Christians being scapegoated for the fire, but followers of the Jew- ·
ish instigator Chrestus first suppressed under Claudius (as reported by
Suetonius: see §1 1). The line about Christ being executed by Pilate was
added sometime after the mid-fourth century. Before then, no one, Christian
or non-Christian, ever heard of this persecution event under Nero,
or of any reference to Christians in Tacitus; this event is not mentioned
even when second-century Christians told stories of Nero persecuting
Christians!

We have one manuscript of Annales and it uses the word "Chrestianos" and ultraviolet scanning shows that some helpful scribe in the Middle Ages clumsily altered it to Christianos.
Xtians were not above writing bullshit stories for their boy.

Speaking only for myself, I can't take seriously anyone who proposes a "Historical Jesus" because they cannot seem to even agree among themselves what is meant by the term.

Whereas, I know what an MJ is.  He's bullshit.  Just like all the other gods, goddesses and demons that primitive men concocted.

Nobody is disputing that magical Jesus is bullshit; this is known. The line about Christ's exectuon was not added in the middle ages, (a) passage was altered to reflect the alterer's viewpoint. The middle ages alteration was done by a Christian, who tried to alter the text. However the original references still exist.

However a historical man named Jesus, who died a peasant's death is well-attested; as shown in the OP post, it categorically tears through the myth argument.

[Dystopia]

I have a question - Why are the gospels automatically dismissed as unreliable in its entirety? There's certainly a load of horsecrap (probably most of it) but shouldn't it be analysed like any other historical document to find which contexts are reliable and not? Why do I see people on this board instantly label all the bible as invalid? Don't all myths need some kind of real life event to serve as an inspiration?

[Minimalist]

Yes, we know about him from Philo and Josephus and his own inscriptions and coins.

The French Revolution happened.  But a Tale of Two Cities is still fiction.

Atlanta burned during the Civil War.   Gone With The Wind is still fiction.

See a pattern?

[TheMessiah]

I have a question - Why are the gospels automatically dismissed as unreliable in its entirety? There's certainly a load of horsecrap (probably most of it) but shouldn't it be analysed like any other historical document to find which contexts are reliable and not? Why do I see people on this board instantly label all the bible as invalid? Don't all myths need some kind of real life event to serve as an inspiration?

Well, that's the point.

Historians don't discard the Gospels; bloggers might, but most Historians do not. The Gospels provide insight into the time; they have real people in them - what Historians do, is discard all the magical horsecrap and examine what is said - and then use that to contrast it to the socio-political atmosphere of the time.

They're actually pretty good as historical sources, for gaining knowledge into the context of the time.

[TheMessiah]

Yes, we know about him from Philo and Josephus and his own inscriptions and coins.

The French Revolution happened.  But a Tale of Two Cities is still fiction.

Atlanta burned during the Civil War.   Gone With The Wind is still fiction.

See a pattern?

That's because they really are fictional stories.

Is Jesus being a magical God fiction? Sure.

Is Jesus being a poor preacher who thought he was the son of God but ended up getting executed fiction? Probably not; there were quite a few people who attempted to claim themselves as the Messiah.

In fact, the death of Jesus (which is very well attested) is perhaps why Judaism changed - because Jesus in reality, was just a man and he died an embarassing death.

From the link.

Clearly the gospel writers were going to some effort to find some kind of scriptural basis for this rather awkward death for their group's leader, one that let them maintain their belief that he was the Messiah. Again, this makes most sense if there was a historical Jesus and he was crucified, leaving his followers with this awkward problem. If there was no historical Jesus at all, it becomes very difficult to explain where this bizarre, unprecedented and awkwardly inconvenient element in the story comes from. It's hard to see why anyone would invent the idea of a crucified Messiah and create these problems. And given that there was no precedent for a crucified Messiah, it's almost impossible to see this idea evolving out of earlier Jewish traditions. The most logical explanation is that it's in the story, despite its vast awkwardness, because it happened.

Jesus most likely did really die via Crucifixion (and thus, his followers at the time were left in a very weird position) - because if Jesus was purely fictional, then it becomes very, very hard to imagine why they would write him to have died via crucixation.

[Minimalist]

They're actually pretty good as historical sources, for gaining knowledge into the context of the time.

Like what?  The census of Augustus which never happened?

Please explain what historical "facts" can be gleaned from the gospels that are so important in your eyes?

[Minimalist]

Is Jesus being a magical God fiction? Sure.

You are idealizing cherry-picking.  The gospels tell a tale of a magical godboy who goes around driving out demons.  You are embarrassed by that depiction so you try to ignore the parts that you don't like.

It's like homophobic fundies who insist that the bible demands death for queers but working on the sabbath no longer counts!

[TheMessiah]

They're actually pretty good as historical sources, for gaining knowledge into the context of the time.

Like what?  The census of Augustus which never happened?

Please explain what historical "facts" can be gleaned from the gospels that are so important in your eyes?

I never said ''historical facts'' can be gained from it - but is it important to understanding the context of the time? Absolutely.

This post articulates it better than I can myself.

That said, the Bible was written by ancient people, and reflects a historical point of view. The tricky part with any ancient source is whether or not it can be corroborated with any other evidence. We have to consider the same issues when we deal with Herodotus, or Thucydides, or Caesar, or any of the other ancients who left texts describing their circumstances. We have to consider what the purpose is of this text. This is something that many people misunderstand about the Bible. They take something like Genesis and the Creation story, and say that since there is so much evidence for evolution, one cannot trust the Bible to report history accurately and it is all made up, when a proper understanding of genre (the purpose of any written text) will show that Genesis (especially the first few chapters) are much more in the wisdom literature and poetry tradition, and not history.
Many parts of the Bible were never written with history in mind. Some, however, were written with an eye to actual events. For example, there is archaeological evidence for King David's existence, as well as several other kings including Ahab[1] and Jehu[2] . Similarly, many of the non-Israelite characters in the Bible have been historically corroborated, such as Nebuchadnezzar[3] , Cyrus[4] , the pharaoh Shishak[5] , king Mesha of Moab[6] , Ben Hadad of Aram[7] , and many others. Therefore, The Bible is capable of providing additional insight into the happenings of the world in which it took place. However, this insight must be understood to be coming from the ancient Israelite perspective. If you don't trust texts by other ancient nations (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the histories of Herodotus, the Iliad and Odyssey, etc) without archaeological or other textual corroboration (such as two accounts of a battle taking place, etc), then you have some methodological difficulties.
This book is excellent at taking what we have in the Old Testament and comparing it with ancient sources and archaeology:
Grabbe, Lester L. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?London: T & T Clark, 2007[8]
You ask what defines something as a good source. All of them are good sources, you just have to remember that all are biased, and our understanding of the sources corresponds with our understanding of the biases as well as archaeological confirmation of elements of the story.
For example, we have Ahab king of Israel, famously a "bad guy" in the Bible. In the Bible we see him interacting with Ben-Hadad and Hazael of Aram. In extrabiblical texts, we seen that Ahab was actually a fairly powerful king, contributing 2000 chariots and 10000 men to the Battle of Qarqar, a number probably made possible due to his earlier conquests of Moab and other nearby small countries. These earlier conquests are attested to by the Mesha Stele, written by Mesha of Moab and describing how they threw off Israelite rule after Ahab's death. Therefore, much of what is written in Kings and Chronicles (especially the later parts) is often taken to be historical, because enough of it has been corroborated by records from neighboring countries. Other parts of the Bible are understood to be more metaphorical, such as Noah's Flood. There is no geological evidence for a worldwide flood, as one might understand it to be described in Genesis 7. However, there are numerous other accounts of a major flood from other Near Eastern texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh[9] , the Sumerian King List[10] .
There has been evidence of flooding recovered around the Jemdet Nasr period (3000-2900 BC) and extending as far north as Kish. Also, there was evidence of major flooding uncovered by Robert Ballard in the Black Sea area[11] through the Bosporus Strait in 5600 BC. So there is evidence of regional flooding happening occasionally, but nothing on the global level. Therefore we see aspects of mythology and metaphor in that story, and it is not considered to be a reliable "historical" account of something happening.
So to sum up, parts of the Bible were written with the intention of recording historical happenings, these are mostly considered to be the "historical" books, and where they mention things that can be corroborated in other sources, they are corroborated. Many other parts of the Bible were not written from a historical perspective, but from a theological one, and therefore we use those texts in the same way we use other texts from the same period, to understand the people who wrote them, rather than understand the historical happenings of the period.
Does this make sense? It's sometimes hard to see what I've written in this tiny box. If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them.

[abaris]

The gospels are a collection of campfire tales floating around at the time. Someone simply compiled them.

So the better question is why were they compiled? What was the agenda? Did sommeone commission them?

Even apart from the supernatural elements in the Jesus account, there are fallacies concerning Roman legal procedures, especially in the province of Judea at the time. We're not even talking about a trial against a Roman citizen but about a jewish trouble maker, who was nothing but scum in the eyes of the Roman authorities. Dangerous scum if he really claimed to be the king of jews and it's next to impossible that one of his disciples or family members would have breathed even one second longer than wonder boy himself. The Romans weren't chicken hearted when someone questioned their authority. The best thing they could hope for was being shipped as slave material to some provincial market, but even that is unlikely.

Pilate finding no fault in a man claiming to be the king of jews is ludicrous. Also offering him up for amnesty. The jewish priests, who were string puppets of the Romans at the time in question, don't stand the realtiy check either. And the list goes on and on, down to the disposal of bodies when someone was crucified.