On "Scholarly Consensus"

[DeistPaladin]

This topic came up in another thread and I thought it needed its own. It's certain to come up any time the existence of Jesus is ever questioned.

On the one hand, "appeal to authority" is a recognized logical fallacy and for good reason. Even experts are required to provide reasons for what they believe and why.

On the other hand, we need to rely on experts in our life because it's just not feasible for us to try to learn everything. We need a mechanic to tell us what's wrong with our car. We need a doctor to tell us what's wrong with our health. Generally, when there is a consensus, I tend to accept it unless I find reasons to have doubts.

AronRa once confronted a creationist who doubted the scientific consensus that evolution offers the best explanation for the diversity of life and predictions for what to expect (or, in his words "is true"). Aron's response wasn't "shut up you crackpot, all the scholars say so." Instead he offered, "I can prove it to you, and then I can prove it again, and then I can prove it some more." An evolutionary biologist can defend the consensus on evolution by crushing any reasonable doubt with the weight of the evidence.

By contrast, when I first started studying Christianity and reading the Bible, I wondered what the "real story" was. I was expecting to find, as most people would expect, that Jesus was a regular religious leader who was deified by his followers after his death. In particular, I had a sort of Miguel from "The Road to El Dorado" image in my mind. Specifically, a religious and moral teacher who sought to soften the austere god of the OT and was eventually killed by the priests for it (not unlike the plot of the movie I just cited).

When I did my digging, I found surprisingly little for a man who had led such a large, popular and revolutionary ministry. Given the controversy he generated, I was expecting commentary by historians who lived in that century with some details about the ministry from a 3rd party perspective. I'd heard Philo commented on him but found nothing. The scraps, even those cited by apologists, were late (post 1st century) and oblique. Tacitus is the strongest evidence that there was any man behind the legends at all and his 2nd century reference is so oblique that it doesn't even mention Jesus by name.

Then I ran across the Jesus myth hypothesis. Intrigued, I started asking questions and found that, when confronted, scholars can't offer much reason for believing in some historical core aside from the assumption that there must be some man behind the legends. Even today when I confront "historists" as to what we can know about this enigmatic "Historical Jesus", I get nothing more than "a religious leader".

I remember recently being indignantly told, "We know more than that! He was a revolutionary religious leader." My sarcastic response was "Oh, thank you for adding that one adjective. That very helpful to understand the real person behind the myths."

So yes, scholarly consensus does mean something to me but whenever questioned, even scholars need to provide rational reasons why they believe what they do.

I am going to read Ehrman's Book, "Did Jesus Exist". Who knows, I may be convinced but I'll need to read more than "the Bible says..."

[MindForgedManacle]

I forget, is Aron a paleontologist (or has a degree in it)? He has a rather good grasp on a lot of biology.

[Minimalist]

Ehrman's evidence for a historical jesus....outlined in Jesus Interrupted...was less than compelling. He actually trotted out the long-discredited TF. He lost a few points in my estimation with that one.

[DeistPaladin]

Ehrman's evidence for a historical jesus....outlined in Jesus Interrupted...was less than compelling. He actually trotted out the long-discredited TF. He lost a few points in my estimation with that one.

I just am mystified by his behavior. He's spent his career ripping apart the Bible, showing how its changed, all the problems of pesudo-epigraphy, all the problems of interpolation and how murky the waters are when you go searching for the "true story". In fact, much of my knowledge of the subject, I owe to his research and reading his books. What is this Historical Jesus to him? Has he even defined this character beyond "some religious leader" or did I miss it?

[Minimalist]

Ehrman thinks that jesus was an apocalyptic preacher. He is smart enough to dismiss all the miracle shit and thinks - much as Thomas Jefferson tried to do - that he can get closer to the historical jesus.

But jesus exists in the pages of only one novel. Just like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. What if someone were to argue that Scarlett did not own Tara? What justification would there be for that?

Ehrman is trying to make a cow's ear out of a silk purse. He takes the magical tale that idiot xtians claim to believe and wants to boil it down to some dumb shit who walked around and got himself killed.

He talks much about the mythicists.....but offers little in the way to support his own position.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehr...f=religion


You know that I think the xtians are batshit crazy to believe such utter nonsense that is in their fucking bible. But when he goes off on this tack Ehrman wants us to believe in a story that isn't even written in the fucking bible. Maybe we can call it The Gospel of Bart?

[DeistPaladin]

Ehrman thinks that jesus was an apocalyptic preacher.

Oh, well then, if that's the criteria, I'll wager there were at least a dozen. "Yeshua" was a common name and doomcriers/messiah-wannabes abounded in 1st century Judea.

He is smart enough to dismiss all the miracle shit and thinks - much as Thomas Jefferson tried to do - that he can get closer to the historical jesus.

Kind of like a "Historical Superman" then. You know, a real Clark Kent but without any of the super-powers or fighting any super-villains or doing any of the super things in the comics. But other than all that, he's just like... um, just like... Oh wait, then he's not really Superman, is he? The story of a regular-guy-Clark-Kent would bear no resemblance to the comic book character. And so he winds up not existing anyway.

My wife writes stories and she draws inspiration from real-life people and real-life events. Does that make her fictional characters and fictional stories any less fictional? She's not alone. Invariably, few fictional authors just make up the story whole-cloth. Art imitates life.

Take all the wonder-working god-magic away from Jesus and you've gutted the whole story.

He takes the magical tale that idiot xtians claim to believe and wants to boil it down to some dumb shit who walked around and got himself killed.

And once again, there were probably hundreds. Pilate had a massive amount of blood on his hands to have been considered too brutal for Roman sensibilities.

The question I would love to ask Ehrman if I ever got the chance (I know what your answer would be but I'd love to see him tackle this question himself):

"Prof. Ehrman, what can we ever know about The Historical Jesus?"

[Minimalist]

Pilate had a massive amount of blood on his hands to have been considered too brutal for Roman sensibilities.

And yet, Tacitus tells us that during Tiberius' reign all was quiet in Judaea.

Both stories cannot be true.

[DeistPaladin]

And yet, Tacitus tells us that during Tiberius' reign all was quiet in Judaea.

Both stories cannot be true.

Ah, I was not aware. I'll have to look that up sometime. Everything I'd heard up until now was that Pilate ran things with an iron fist and crucified many Jewish leaders.

Or perhaps the reason all was quiet is everyone was scared shitless?

[Minimalist]

Things were quiet in Judaea because in 6 CE, Augustus granted the petition of the nobility to remove Archelaus and allow them to become a Roman praefecture. The Prefect made his headquarters in the city of Caesarea - why hang out in shitty old Jerusalem with a bunch of jews? - and enjoyed the sea side air. The Sanheddrin had a degree of local autonomy and Augustus granted certain exemptions from military service and taxation.
Tiberius left those policies in place.

After the revolts which accompanied the death of Herod the Great things must have seemed quiet indeed....until Caligula came along and started fucking things up.

[DeistPaladin]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehr...f=religion

Just read the first paragraph:

In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, [...]

Nice. Open by poisoning the well via false association.

is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed?

Argument from incredulity.

This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians

Straw man.

These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

Ah, so anyone asking questions is going to be black listed?

"Are you now or have you ever been a mythicist?"

Historical sources like that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind. Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of Jesus' life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus' closest disciple Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would think his brother would know it.

Finally, we've gotten past all the ad hominems and fallacies and have an interesting argument to consider.

My question is two-fold:
1. How authentic is the reference?
2. Does "brother" mean biologically or in the Christian sense, brother in Christ?

Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the "pagan" savior-gods

Back to straw men. The mythicist argument isn't based on this assertion. The basis is that there is no proof.

But prior to Christianity, there were no Jews at all, of any kind whatsoever, who thought that there would be a future crucified messiah.

Neither did Jesus fit very many of the other characteristics of "messiah". Neither did the Jews have any concept of salvation or an intercessor deity. The latter was completely blasphemous if the OT is any indication. Christianity is an amalgamation of pagan and Jewish concepts, with frankly more coming from pagan ideas.

based on a range of compelling historical evidence

Did I miss it?

EDIT TO ADD HIS CONCLUSION:

Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed.

It's not a matter of liking. It's a matter of what we can know.