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

[TheMessiah]

Here you go again --- you do realize that none of what you're saying sounds rational? It sounds incredibly anti-rational and desperate. Historians are ''accepting'' a fairy tale? These people are experts in their field - and it's pretty desperate for you to attempt to dismiss what they do because you personally don't agree with the same claims.

Do you think it's credible to say climate-change is a Liberal conspiracy?

Also, here is the /r/askhistorians page, aside from the Gospels etc (which are analysed in the historical world), there are several non-Biblical sources which historians analyse.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/co...cal_jesus/

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion

It doesn't matter what they accept, it matter what demonstrable, objective evidence they have and they just have nothing.  Historicity requires multiple independently verifiable sources.  The Bible is one.  There are no others.  There are only second, third and worse sources from people who were not eyewitnesses, they were just recording what they heard from others who also were not eyewitnesses.  By this logic, in another 2000 years, Harry Potter will be a historical person because there are a lot of people who have written about him.

It just doesn't stand up to any rigor, sorry.

''It doesn't matter what they accept, it matter what demonstrable, objective evidence they have and they just have nothing.  Historicity requires multiple independently verifiable sources. ''

Said no ancient historian ever.

Ancient sources are scarce - historicity from ancient sources only need be one or two sources, and that's at the very least to confirm someone existed. For Jesus, ancient historians have two; Josephus and Tacticus, which are not biblical. The two references, with the forgery edit cut out, confirm HJ as a human - which is about as much as one would expect for Jesus. These sources don't claim Jesus was a magic-man, that's what we're using for the basis of HJ.

Also, I have been over this multiple times, they were not ''repeating'' eye witness accounts. Tacticus, was an anti-Christian Roman senator who made sure that his sources were reliable:

Here is some detail on how Tacticus kept his sources reliable:

A more common way of dismissing this passage is to claim that all Tacitus is doing is repeating what Christians had told him about their founder and so it is not independent testimony for Jesus at all. This is slightly more feasible, but still fails on several fronts.

Firstly, Tacitus made a point of not using hearsay, of referring to sources or people whose testimony he trusted and of noting mere rumour, gossip or second-hand reports as such when he could. He was explicit in his rejection of history based on hearsay earlier in his work:

My object in mentioning and refuting this story is, by a conspicuous example, to put down hearsay, and to request that all those into whose hands my work shall come not to catch eagerly at wild and improbable rumours in preference to genuine history.
(Tacitus, Annals, IV.11)

Secondly, if Tacitus were to break his own rule and accept hearsay about the founder of Christianity, then it's highly unlikely that he would do so from Christians themselves (if this aristocrat even had any contact with any), who he regarded with utter contempt. He calls Christianity "a most mischievous superstition .... evil .... hideous and shameful .... (with a) hatred against mankind" - not exactly the words of a man who regarded its followers as reliable sources about their sect's founder.

Furthermore, what he says about Jesus does not show any sign of having its origin in what a Christian would say: it has no hint or mention of Jesus' teaching, his miracles and nothing about the claim he rose from the dead. On the other hand, it does contain elements that would have been of note to a Roman or other non-Christian: that this founder was executed, where this happened, when it occurred {"during the reign of Tiberius") and which Roman governor carried out the penalty.

We know from earlier in the same passage that Tacitus consulted several (unnamed) earlier sources when writing his account of the aftermath of the Great Fire (see Annals XV.38), so it may have been one of these that gave him his information about Jesus. But there was someone else in Rome at the time Tacitus wrote who mixed in the same circles, who was also a historian and who would have been the obvious person for Tacitus to ask about obscure Jewish preachers and their sects. None other than Josephus was living and writing in Rome at this time and, like Tacitus, associated with the Imperial court thanks to his patronage first by the emperor Vespasian and then by his son and successor Titus. There is a strong correspondence between the details about Jesus in Annals XV.44 and Antiquities XVIII.3.4, so it is at least quite plausible that Tacitus simply asked his fellow aristocratic scholar about the origins of this Jewish sect.

[The Grand Nudger]

I, currently, find the josephus and tacitus angles entirely unconvincing.  Convince me?

[TheMessiah]

I, currently, find the josephus and tacitus angles entirely unconvincing.  Convince me?

Why do you find them unconvincing?

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, hey, maybe you have a different angle...which passages from either are we considering?  I wouldn't want to spend too much time arguing some point you aren't making........that -other- point, from earlier, btw..any more clarity on that? In the meantime, trot em out - lets see the text in question.

[Cephus]

Seems to me , a layman, after reading much of this thread and doing a little wiki searching to fill in the gaps what My take away was this.

Historians are in disagreement. Any testimony of Jesus the man or the myth is suspect and in doubt. There is no consensus. Which sounds a lot like hands in the air and nothing like concrete evidence.

Historians disagree as to what particulars we can know about Jesus' life beyond things like his baptism by John and his death by crucifixion under Pilate. The number of historians who disagree that this Jesus really existed is, according to mythicist demigod Richard Carrier, about seven.

Seven

There are thousands of historians. To say that is not a consensus would be tantamount to viewing the number of scientists who are creationists and proclaiming that there is no agreement as to whether or not macroevolution really took place.

But you can't know any of those things.  Those are, at  best, stories in a book that has been shown to be historically unreliable at best, complete mythology at worst. All anyone is doing here is pulling the argument from authority.  It doesn't matter if 5 billion historians believe something, it only matters what the existing and demonstrable evidence actually says.  Their opinion means jack squat.  Unfortunately, we have a lot of people whose religious beliefs depend on this single individual being real, but it's also a cultural icon that lots of people, religious or not, simply assume to be real because they've spent their lives thinking that it's got to be so.  What we really need to do is evaluate the evidence and only the evidence and leave the cultural and religious nonsense behind.  All that ought to matter is the evidence.  If the evidence doesn't directly indicate that Jesus existed as a real person, then we need to reject that idea, pending further evidence in the future.

[Cephus]

I, currently,  find the josephus and tacitus angles entirely unconvincing.  Convince me?

Why do you find them unconvincing?

Because neither were an eyewitness  and Josephus was a forgery?

[The Grand Nudger]

Don't jump the gun Cephus...Messiah may be referring to some -other- citation....making some -other- point.

[Secular Elf]

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.

Having studied Early Christian history myself a bit, What I know about the start of Christianity is that modern Christians themselves are unaware of the complexities of how their religion started.  They think and claim that Jesus was the son of a god who preached in Galilee and was killed by the Roman authorities, rose from the dead, charged his apostles to spread the word about him, then went up into heaven, his apostles spread the word, a new religion is born, and Paul the Apostle spread the word of Jesus around the Mediterranean, and all of this they know from the New Testament, and were largely monolithic in their beliefs, and that is all they need to know.

Well I know for a fact from my readings on the subject it ain't all that simple and that view is a myopic one at best.

Point number one: The followers of a rabbi named Yeshua ben-Yusef, mostly his family and friends at its very beginnings, were Jews, raised in the Second Temple Judaic tradition.

Point number two: The first Christians were Jews.  Or as modern scholarship calls them, Jewish Christians.  They fell into three main groups: Ebionites, Nazarenes, and Elkasites.

Point number three: the Early Christians were MORE diverse in their theology and beliefs than modern Christians, therefore they were most certainly NOT monolithic in dogma and beliefs (their views on Jesus's divinity, or Christology, varied and there were scores of different groups, many were gnostic).

Point number four: Because of continuing influx of gentiles into the religion and of conflicts with Roman authority (three Roman-Jewish Wars from 60 to 115 CE) and the Romanization of Jerusalem and the province of Palestine in 135 CE, Christianity had split off from Judaism by 140 CE.

Point number five: Jesus lived and died from ca. 4 BCE to 30 CE.  Nothing was written down about him until about 60 CE, and various versions of his life and teachings were circulating among the different groups of Early Christians that reflected their various beliefs concerning him (either gnostic, adoptionist, or docetic).  And the Canon of the New Testament was not developed until AFTER Marcion of Sinope, a Roman cleric who founded a different variety of Christianity called Marcionism.  He rejected the Jewish Torah (Old Testament) and organized a collection of Christian literature into the Gospel of Marcion, which included Luke, some writings of Paul, and his own writings called the Antithesis.  He did that by 140 CE and the Roman Bishop excommunicated him for that.

Point number six: A group of Christians, whom Bart Erdman named Proto-orthodox, were the only group of Early Christians who held to a Pauline Christology (Jesus as god in both flesh and spirit, as opposed to adoptionist--Jesus was divine because God adopted him at his baptism, or docetic--Jesus was divine because he was spirit only and his appearance as a flesh-and-blood man was an illusion, or gnostic--Jesus was sent by the real God and not the creator of the material world, to save mankind from the material world through secret knowledge) and viewed themselves as the only true holders of correct belief and doctrine.  It was they who eventually became the power and controllers of the Christianized Roman State and called the rest of Christianity that was not orthodox heretics.  It was they who summarily went about eliminating those who were not orthodox in their Christianity.

Those are the facts as they are known about Early Christianity itself.  As far as the actual history of Jesus himself I have some doubts, but I am holding final judgment on that for later.   For it seems to me that Acharya S., who is an archaeologist, trained in Classical Antiquities, should know what she is talking about.  I have read some of her articles, though I have not read any of her books yet.  She steadfastly defends the Mythicist Position she holds, and without ad hominem attacks, as some of her opponents seem to do against her.

To quote from my own writing on the subject of Early Christian History, I took a neutral position in explaining how people view Jesus:

Modern people regard Jesus in varying ways as well. To many conservative, orthodox or liberal Christians, Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world, no question and end of story. Yet on the other hand, other Christians not so orthodox may place more emphasis on his doctrines of kindness and living a proper life than on his godhood. Those who are not so religious may say that Jesus is a great philosopher and do not consider him divine at all. Yet, still others , such as archaeologist and mythicist D.M. Murdock (pen-name Acharya S.), Dominican priest Thomas L. Brodie, and New Atheist activist Richard Carrier , hold to a mythicist position, that Jesus was not a real historical figure and is merely a construct that is a borrowing from previous and contemporary 1st Century CE Pagan religions. And still others, such as atheists, hold that no matter if he was historical or not, he certainly could not have been a son of any god.

-- A Summary History of Christianity Part Three: The Early Church--The Ante-Nicene Period (115 – 325 CE)

[This work is largely non-published, other than what I have shared with friends on Facebook and the Atlanta Freethought Society]

 

[Mudhammam]

I'll let Min handle the tacitus and jospehus bits, if he can muster up the patience to do it for the hundredth time.  I'm glad that you and I agree that your comments are not the mythicist argument.  Seems a little perplexing now, though, since neither you nor mythicists argue that point....it was introduced, by you...because?  Hmn, let's check the tape.

Yeah, it must be so difficult for Min to reproduce Carrier quotes. Such hard work.

Nota bene: Richard Carrier is not a god. Mythicists should stop quoting him like Christians quote Jesus.

Let's "check the tape." By which I mean, don't selectively edit the conversation. Here, I'll repeat it for you:

The Gospels have been doctored for centuries by people with an agenda. Regarding them as evidence of a human Jesus would be like regarding For Whom the Bell Tolls as evidence of Robert Jordan.  Everything sounds in place, but none of it is proven real, because we have no other evidence of either protagonist.

It's circular argumentation.

To which I said:

I don't know about your comparison, but if it is anything like the irrational garbage that other mythicists here espouse, you might want to re-consider how similar the two are. It's a circular argument to say, "Jesus probably didn't exist because the texts about him are corrupt and include embellishment; therefore Jesus probably didn't exist."

lol...shameless.  If I hadn't already upvoted you I would.  Reconsider how similar what two are?  

I've learned over the past couple of weeks what a dumbass you are but at least I thought you were being insincere. Guess not.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

when mythicists use the same texts to argue for their case... well, except the ones that clearly require a historical Jesus,

and which ones.....if you would be so kind, are the ones which clearly require a historical jesus?

Gee, I dunno, maybe their claims that he had a human father and mother? (The former whom they said practiced carpentry). That he had brothers and sisters? (one mentioned by Josephus). That he was baptized by John, a character also confirmed by Josephus to be historical, a point all the Gospel writers go through pains to explain in the context of their theology? That he died by crucifixion... a claim so central to the Christian ethos that it turns up on almost every page? (Hint: celestial beings don't usually die a common criminal's death by known historical executioners).

Need I say, "derp"?

"The bible says so" isn't so great for historicity...it's perfectly fine for observing....what the bible says, which is the subject of the mythicist position. The mythicist position doesn;t argue in the manner that you're claiming. That the bible says something..to a mythicist, is just the acknowledgement of whats contained in the narrative, not it's historicity. Perhaps you'll appreciate the difference...and come to understand why you're still pitching straw?

Did you not want an opportunity to respond to what a mythicist position actually argued?  No objections to the quoted statement in my last response? Are we having a discussion about the mythicist position or your misapprehensions of it?

When the mythicist is not creating a story out of thin air, he relies on the same texts that historists do to construct his narrative. So which part should I oblige? The texts about Jesus' divinity and post-mortem celestial existence, the texts about Jesus' humanity that mythicists dismiss ad hoc, or their silly and groundless explanations for why the texts say what they do?

[TheMessiah]

Why do you find them unconvincing?

Because neither were an eyewitness  and Josephus was a forgery?

Eyewintess accounts are not needed for people in the Ancient world; there are no eye-witness accounts for Hannibal. The first mentions come 60 years after his death - what is needed is at-least a few good mentions of whether Jesus existed, as a feasible human, which is what we have.

P.S, the Josephus passage should not wholly be discarded. We can decipher what was said by Josephus and what wasn't.

There has been a long debate about what parts of this reference to Jesus are authentic to Josephus or even if the whole passage is a wholesale interpolation. Proponents of the Jesus Myth hypothesis, naturally, opt for the idea that it is not authentic in any way, but there are strong indications that, apart from the obvious additions shown in bold above, Josephus did mention Jesus at this point in his text.

To begin with, several elements in the passage are distinctively Josephean in their style and phrasing. "Now (there was) about this time ..." is used by Josephus as a way of introducing a new topic hundreds of times in his work. There are no early Christian parallels that refer to Jesus merely as "a wise man", but this is a term used by Josephus several times, eg about Solomon and Daniel. Christian writers placed a lot of emphasis on Jesus' miracles, but here the passage uses a fairly neutral term παραδόξων ἔργων - "paradoxa erga" or "paradoxical deeds". Josephus does use this phrase elsewhere about the miracles of Elisha, but the term can also mean "deeds that are difficult to interpret" and even has overtones of cautious scepticism. Finally, the use of the word φῦλον ("phylon" - "race, tribe") is not used by Christians about themselves in any works of the time, but is used by Josephus elsewhere about sects, nations or other distinct groups. Additionally, with the sole exception of Χριστιανῶν ("Christianon" - "Christians") every single word in the passage can be found elsewhere in Josephus' writings.

The weight of the evidence of the vocabulary and style of the passage is heavily towards its partial authenticity. Not only does it contain distinctive phrases of Josephus that he used in similar contexts elsewhere, but these are also phrases not found in early Christian texts. And it is significantly free of terms and phrases from the gospels, which we'd expect to find if it was created wholesale by a Christian writer. So either a very clever Christian interpolator somehow managed to immerse himself in Josephus' phrasing and language, without modern concordances and dictionaries and create a passage containing distinctively Josephean phraseology, or what we have here is a genuinely Josephean passage that has simply been added to rather clumsily.

As a result of this and other evidence (eg the Arabic and Syriac paraphrases of this passage which seem to come from a version before the clumsy additions by the interpolator) the consensus amongst scholars of all backgrounds is that the passage is partially genuine, simply added in a few obvious places. Louis H. Feldman's Josephus and Modern Scholarship (1984) surveys scholarship on the question from 1937 to 1980 and finds of 52 scholars on the subject, 39 considered the passage to be partially authentic.

Peter Kirby has done a survey of the literature since and found that this trend has increased in recent years. He concludes "In my own reading of thirteen books since 1980 that touch upon the passage, ten out of thirteen argue the (Antiquities of the Jews XVIII.3.4 passage) to be partly genuine, while the other three maintain it to be entirely spurious. Coincidentally, the same three books also argue that Jesus did not exist."

The other mention of Jesus in Josephus, Antiquities XX.9.1, is much more straightforward, but much more of a problem for Jesus Mythicists. In it Josephus recounts a major political event that happened when he was a young man. This would have been a significant and memorable event for him, since he was only 25 at the time and it caused upheaval in his own social and political class, the priestly families of Jerusalem that included his own.

In 62 AD the Roman procurator of Judea, Porcius Festus, died while in office and his replacement, Lucceius Albinus, was still on his way to Judea from Rome. This left the High Priest, Hanan ben Hanan (usually called Ananus), with a freer reign than usual. Ananus executed some Jews without Roman permission and, when this was brought to the attention of the Romans, Ananus was deposed. This deposition would have been memorable for the young Josephus, who had just returned from an embassy to Rome on the behalf of the Jerusalem priests. But what makes this passage relevant is what Josephus mentions, in passing, as the cause of the political upheaval:

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so (the High Priest) assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Messiah, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

This mention is peripheral to the story Josephus is telling, but since we know from Christian sources that Jesus' brother James led the Jesus sect in Jerusalem in this period and we have a separate, non-dependent, Christian account of James' execution by the Jerusalem priesthood, it is fairly clear which "Jesus who was called Messiah" Josephus is referring to here.

Almost without exception, modern scholars consider this passage genuine and an undisputed reference to Jesus as a historical figure by someone who was a contemporary of his brother and who knew of the execution of that brother first hand. This rather unequivocal reference to a historical Jesus leaves Jesus Mythicists with a thorny problem, which they generally try to solve one of two ways:

Well, hey, maybe you have a different angle...which passages from either are we considering?  I wouldn't want to spend too much time arguing some point you aren't making........that -other- point, from earlier, btw..any more clarity on that? In the meantime, trot em out - lets see the text in question.

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