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Posted by: mikwut ® 12/14/2002, 01:06:17 Author Profile Mail author |
I was visiting the archives recently to read over some of my exchanges with Craig C. when I was actively posting on the board. The way I always came to the board was to go to google and search rpcman. After posting for sometime I would search mikwut and usually a few of my active posts would come up and I could get to the board. Well I searched mikwut to go to the archives and a post by Martin where he mentioned my name came up. He was discussing the historical Jesus and the boat argument I had brought up with him in the past, and contrary to my better intentions I ended up reading it and a few other posts, and following the links Martin provided. I told myself I wasn’t going to return but Martin’s pushing the Myth idea weighed on my mind. I have been posting a little bit on the ZLMB board as of late and I thought to get it out my system I would start a thread over there on the historical Jesus. I had thoroughly researched this idea several years ago and I stay abreast, and have come to some conclusions. But, then I got to thinking, what the heck, and so here’s a response to Martin’s historical Jesus. Ironically, I also read an interesting exchange with Martin, Alf and Cal as well concerning Magic and Mormonism in which I will make some comments in conclusion because as irony would have it -it teaches a valuable lesson concerning this same topic. Before I get into the meat of it I would like to say that I like Martin, I like him a lot, I enjoyed my time I spent dialoguing with him and the rest of the 2Think group. I find him ironically engaging, thorough, and fun to dialogue with. I think he is funny and entertaining and makes his points in a wonderfully powerful and succinct way, he really makes this board. He is committed to his position and knows it well. But with this issue he is wrong. And this issue with Martin baffles me. I don’t understand why someone like Martin finds it having any legs at all instead of a complete embarrassment for skeptics. I don’t portend that any of my arguments against Martin are my own, I am simply articulating the majority stance of professional historians and anthropologists, many of which are not Christians themselves. Concerning the length, I took all night and today to write and paste all of this and I am afraid there is no other way. The mythicists pile on nonsense and each piece of nonsense takes a lot to respond to. So yes it is long, but it still could go on for many many times this length. When I studied the issue almost a decade ago I always conceptualized it as the best example of what C.S. Lewis dramatized in Pilgrim’s Regress. Argument would just get parroted over and over again until it began to appear as truth to some fringe folks. Here is a short piece that made me always think of the Jesus Mythologizers:
You see he is trying to argue. Now tell me, someone, what is argument?’
The tired old shoe of the mythical Jesus is just like the people C.S. Lewis depicted locked in a prison of regurgitation. Just think how radically far afield the mythicists are, even the scholars that dismiss the resurrection and supernatural elements in Jesus’ life in the Jesus Seminar don’t even throw the myth crackpots one bone, it isn’t even worth refuting for most scholars. Why? Because it already has. Even if we do grant the wildly outrageous view that the "Jesus-myth" has equal explanatory power then the simple idea that the Gospels relay real history with a historical person at their center, it would be rejected by simplicity. But, as I will explain, it doesn’t even get close to being on par with the historicity of Jesus so there is no need to even decide using simplicity since it fails to explain the vast majority of the details - passion of the few, triumph in closed locales, resistance to modification by subsequent cultures, uniformity in variegated sources, stretching silence arguments to credulity’s limit, depending on outdated, outmoded and already refuted sources and materials, attempting to logically connect it to myth which is not necessarily connected so doubling the errors - it never even makes it to the playing field with a historical Jesus. Just one wrong step by the mythicists in dismissing evidence through conspiracy or forgery or whatever creative means they employ sinks the whole ship. The most parsimonius and plausible explanation BY FAR for rational people and for the origin of Christianity in this regard is that Jesus actually existed. The Jesus Myth is a vastly minority view in scholarly circles and it is overwhelmingly propounded by NON-historians, for example G.A. Wells is a Professor of German and the most complex thinker but he himself has recently backtracked and stated that if the Q hypothesis is correct it would refute his mythical Jesus. Arthur Drews is a mathematician, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have never been published in any scholarly journal and don’t have any credentials they are New Age Spiritualists who can’t tolerate anyone being told your wrong. Martins other recommendations are old and tired rationalist atheists that have been refuted for almost a century and are quite frankly out of date. Doherty is educated and the closest to a real scholar but since he only regurgitates what has already been researched by the other low brows its hard to accept him as anything but an historian in coming to his ideas. I am sure he has inflenced Martin a great deal due his switching the older idea of a myth being in existence for many years before Christianity was even born to Doherty hypothesizing that Paul’s “spiritual” Jesus is actually the Jesus of history in total, but Martin seems to conflate Wells and Doherty and a few other crackpot fringees into his own idea that includes the savior myths and Paul’s spiritualizing akin to the old and refuted Arthur Drews with a little of everything that is currently chic thrown in the pot and stirred, something very strange as Doherty himself dismisses the longer tradition before Christianity. The melding of mystery religions and pagan thought to create the Jesus Myth is of course chic in these conspiracy circles due to the Nag Hammadi library and Dead Sea Scrolls entering popular books and thought more and more - but none of these scholars have the second important ingredient either, any real anthropological or mythical critical studies degrees or expertise. A huge gulf. Now, I don’t mention that the Myth idea is the minority view as proof positive that Martin is wrong but for two reasons I point it out. One, whenever we go outside the consensus of scholarly opinion we should walk very carefully. Secondly, Martin always cautions us himself concerning the importance of peer review because I believe consensus doesn’t amount to evidence per se but is based on evidence. As I mentioned to Martin when I was actively posting this whole idea has been peer reviewed extensively, one can go to any university with a quality periodicals section and have the librarians help them do a search of the articles of “Does Jesus Exist” in theological journals. Martins reasoning for not going further because 10-20,000 words is necessary is easily substantiated against him and is a serious problem here, each piece of “evidence” the mythologizers come up with has entire articles written just concerning it - it becomes an undaunting task. I have great disdain for the egoists and wackos such as G.A. Wells, Michael Martin, Freke and Gandy and Doherty for continually spitting out the same regurgitated arguments over and over and over after serious scholars gave it a fair hearing some thirty years ago, the same disdain Martin has for religious zealotry and charlatans and creationists. It is shock jock nonbelief in its crudest form. Before going into each of Martins arguments I would make a suggestion to those that are serious about this topic. The first book you should read because of its fantastic and enjoyable readability and what you will learn from it is Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) by Simon Schama, this book has nothing specifically to do with the Jesus Myth but it shows in an even entertaining way how with a little literary mix, historical constructivism can run wild in complex and sophisticated constructions that are not the least bit warranted but are consistent. The book is read by any undergraduate student before receiving a degree in history, and there is a reason why and Martin is making it very clear. The sources I quote from can then be researched and those books give a never-ending list of books and articles to consult, the periodicals are the best place to close the lid on this. I think it will become evident to honest people that misrepresenting the evidence, arguing from silence and creative inventive theories don’t make proof of anything and shouldn’t be considered history. Secondly, I would recommend Robin Lane Fox’s Pagan’s and Christians for a good overview of the religious landscape for the time in which Martin builds his myth idea. It again, doesn’t directly confront the mythical Jesus but rather takes the historical one for granted but you will see great inconsistencies once your familiar with a little of the landscape in how the mythicists construct the case. Great contortions take place for the case for a mythical Jesus to be made. For example, I read how Martin propounded one of the popular mythologizers ridiculous stretches concerning Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho where he attempted to make a case that something akin to his argument was being made anciently which is laughable, this whole idea is a few hundred years old and was born in the midst of hyper skepticism towards everything religious. He even uses the same forceful and proof positive language the mytholgizers use, listen to him make his point so adamantly, and then listen to proper context that SO EASILY is seen by anyone who has actually read the dialogue themselves. [Martin] 4) Positive evidence that shows that some early non-Christians knew that "Jesus" was a fabricated myth invented by early Christians.
Pay close attention to Martin’s pychological tactics with phrases like, “despair of modern historists”, “over and over again they laughed out loud”, “dynamite to historicists claims”, “most ignore the important work” and the like. None of it substantiated and all of it is completely false and right in line with his mythicist brethrens verbiage - how many Oxford or Cambridge scholars do you EVER read with such unabashed language? All of the major historians address the manipulative contortion of Trypho by mythicists cartoon portrayal of the dialogue. Trypho who was a skeptical Jew concerning Christianity when speaking with Justin states as follows: "When I had said this, my beloved friends, those who were with Trypho laughed; but he, smiling, says, "I approve of your other remarks, and admire the eagerness with which you study divine things; but it were better for you still to abide in the philosophy of Plato, or of some other man, cultivating endurance, self-control, and moderation, rather than be deceived by false words, and follow the opinions of men of no reputation. For if you remain in that mode of philosophy, and live blamelessly, a hope of a better destiny were left to you; but when you have forsaken God, and reposed confidence in man, what safety still awaits you? If, then, you are willing to listen to me (for I have already considered you a friend), first be circumcised, then observe what ordinances have been enacted with respect to the Sabbath, and the feasts, and the new moons of God; and, in a word, do all things which have been written in the law: and then perhaps you shall obtain mercy from God. But Christ--if He has indeed been born, and exists anywhere--is unknown, and does not even know Himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint Him, and make Him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing." Martin through smoke and mirrors attempts to make the statement appear like someone thinking his mythicist theory 1900 years ago, but such is folly and total misrepresentation of the facts. Throughout the entire debate with Justin the historicity of Jesus is taken for granted. Here are a just a couple of hundreds of examples:
The entire dialogue would hardly make any sense at all if Trypho believed anything like the Christians inventing a man of history. What Trypho meant in the trumped and parroted statement Martin is twisting, and which is clear to anyone who has read the dialogue, (probably, like me, for more constructive purposes than historical hocus pocus) is that the title “Christ” is being taken by the Christians and unwarrantedly given to Jesus, a man of history, but Trypho argues the Messiah has not come IN Jesus, or Jesus the man of history as taken for granted in the entire dialogue is not the Christ or the Messiah, he is simply telling Christians they are believing a false Christ not that they made up a historical one and are perpetuating a mythic fraud or any related theme thereof. So bad does this argument take Trypho’s words out of context it should put a serious mark on the integrity of this entire enterprise. None of Trypho’s other arguments make any sense if Martin’s contortion were valid such as the argument that Trypho makes parallel many other Jews, that the body of Jesus had been removed to refute the empty tomb argument. I truly laughed out loud when Martin quoted this because it was killed, buried, forgotten decades ago. I anxiously await any other ancient attempts he can make at this type of so called positive evidence. I assume he began with his smoking gun, lets hope not. |
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Evidence is lacking? Re: Mythical Jesus - A Mythical Idea! -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: mikwut ®
12/14/2002, 01:14:29
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[Martin] Yes! An important part of what I'm saying is that there is no legitimate evidence at all that points to a historical Jesus.
Nonsense, unless you contort and strangle the evidence beyond all recognition. Martin is then incredibly better informed, more objective and a better historian than historians like Martin Hengel, Ian Wilson, Graham Stanton, Walter Wagner, or skeptical nonbelievers like Robin Lane Fox or Michael Grant, who certainly has no theological axe to grind, and who indicates that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for a large number of famous pagan personages - yet no one would dare to argue their non-existence (Michael Grant, Greek and Roman Historican: Information and MisInformation. London 1995) or John Meier who notes that what we know about Alexander the Great could fit on only a few sheets of paper; yet no one doubts that Alexander existed (John P. Meier - A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.) Interestingly, I read a paper from a friend about 12 years ago who was working on his doctorate where he constructed a plausible argument for the non-existence of Alexander the Great using the same methods that are employed by the Jesus Myth crowd, it was really all Barbarians and the embarassment brought about the great Alexander myth with a famous philosopher by his side to boot to avoid the humiliation of being conquered - I wonder if Martin buys that too. I wonder if he now should join Mormonism because the same data he uses can consistently be argued for the Mormon apostasy. I have also read a similar sophisticated manipulation to show Hannibal is not a historical person. Charlesworth has written that "Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E (James Charlesworth - Jesus Within Judaism) E.P. Sanders nearly says the same, “We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place. (The Historical Figure of Jesus. Penguin Press, 1993). On the Crucifixion, A. E. Harvey writes: "It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world." (A.E. Harvey Jesus and the Constraints of History, Philadelphia: Westminster) James Dunn provides an anecdote referring to Wells' construction, he writes:
"The alternative thesis is that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. The fact of Christianity's beginnings and the character of its earliest tradition is such that we could only deny the existence of Jesus by hypothesizing the existence of some other figure who was a sufficient cause of Chrstianity's beginnings - another figure who on careful reflection would probably come out very like Jesus! James Dunn The Evidence for Jesus."
The hardened skeptic and Emeritus Professor of History, Morton Smith wrote:
"I don't think the arguments in (Wells') book deserve detailed refutation."
"...he argues mainly from silence."
"...many (of his arguments) are incorrect, far too many to discuss in this space."
"He presents us with a piece of private mythology that I find incredible beyond anything in the Gospels."[Martin] Not that I expect you meekly to accept everything I say on the subject without question, but as in the case of the complex issue of the influences to Pauline thought in which you were previously making some spurious comments of no real consequence because the subject was so wholly unfamiliar to you, the issues surrounding the historicity of Jesus are so incredibly deep and thorny and elaborate that it is often enormously difficult to adequately respond to your questions in less than 10,000 words. And I just will NOT go to those lengths, not even for you. You very much need to do a great deal of your own homework before you can fully discuss the intricacies with me or even to understand why your and other traditionalist Christian observations only appear to make sense on the surface and are in actually deeply flawed. (more about this at the very end.) But this time, I'll make something of an exception...
Oh, the irony, the delicious irony!!! I wonder Martin, I could provide you with several deep and thorny issues that would take many words for responses that make another construction that appears to make sense on the surface something completely different as well. In fact my best examples come from the radical post modern revisionist historicity. I knew you had a little postmodernism in you. ;).
[Martin] As for Tacitus' alleged reference to "Christ" and Pilate, those claims are utterly without merit, especially for advancing the case of a historical Jesus. You need to dig deeper to understand just how worthless that passage of Tacitus' Annals really is.
Do you know what the word "provenance" means? A text's provenance refers to its source of origin, who wrote it, when and where it was written, it's history, it's history of possession, it's history of being referenced by other writers, whether and how much it was modified by later writers, whether any or all of its passages have been forged or interpolated, and the length of time between when the original was written and the date of the oldest extant copies.
The quotation in question that is alleged by some to have been written by Tacitus has an exceedingly poor provenance. This tells us right off the bat that it is not at all trustworthy.
Even in the most flattering case, it is not a first century contemporary source, and contrary to your later remark and completely in line with my brief comments elsewhere, it in no way refers to or confirms any historical Jesus! But first let's examine some details...
The passage in question which is ostensibly Tacitus' is claimed at least by conservative Christian scholars to have been written during the second or third decade of the second century (~110-120). But there's no good reason at all to think Tacitus was the actual author of that passage and there's excellent reason to believe that it was a deliberate Christian insertion done much later to sell the pro-Christian myth of the existence of extensive first century Christian martyrdoms.
That is because the passage in question states the utterly non-credible assertion that Nero martyred a "vast multitude" of Christians around 64 AD in an alleged effort to turn the blame from the great fire upon them. Thus, the passage it its own disproof of legitimacy! Christianity would have been a very tiny cult in Rome at that time from which it would have been physically impossible to extract a "vast multitude" for martyrdom! Furthermore, Rome was exceptionally tolerant of any and all religious beliefs and they bent over backwards to accommodate the Jews in particular (and there is no question at all that nearly all Christians of that time were Jews first and foremost). It's been pointed out by archaeologists and historians quite astutely that there is absolutely zero evidence that any structure any larger than a regular house existed for communal Christian worship at the time, which would never have been the case had there been "vast multitudes" of Christians in Rome at the time.
But it gets even worse!
This alleged persecution of Christians by Nero would have been an extremely noteworthy historical event which, had it actually taken place, it would have been carefully recorded by all contemporary historians, both Jewish and Roman, and the news deliberately spread far and wide precisely because Nero would have wanted it extremely well known throughout the empire that it was the alleged Christians who were to blame for the fire and not himself. Yet not a single historian -- not Josephus and not Philo -- ever reported anything like it! It is almost certainly a fraud.
Not only that, regarding the provenance I mentioned to above, no one made reference to this alleged 1'st century passage until after the 15'th century! Let me ask you: Is it more likely that the passage was fraudulently inserted in the 15'th century, or that no one -- not even the most fervent pro-Christian apologist who would have jumped for joy to have reported it -- ever noticed it for fourteen centuries??
(I'd also like to point out that an important book published in 1878 reported that the entire Annals of Tacitus was the complete fabrication in the 15'th century, forged then by the first modern person to "discover" it, Italian writer Poggio Bracciolini.)
The complete absence of the passage and any reference to it throughout all of history until the 15'th century is damning proof that the passage didn't exist prior to then. Neither Eusebius nor any other Christian writer or apologist -- not even Tertullian who often quoted Tacitus at length -- EVER heard of any such passage as the one in question! It's even more certainly a fraud in light of these facts.
But let's play stupid and ignorant like the conservative Christian historicist apologists of our own day and pretend that the passage of Tacitus to which you refer was a legitimate product of that second century quasi-historical writer. What does it actually say about Jesus? Nothing, of course! But what about someone named "Christos" and Pilate?
The passage speaks of a "founder" named "Christos". Think about that, Vicki! You and other modern Christians claim that the name of the purported founder of Christianity is alleged to have been Jesus, not "Christ"! "Christ" is not a name at all, it is a title: "The anointed one"! It's roughly equivalent to referring to a religion being founded by "King" or "Sir". It is dubious in and of itself. Apply your reasoning skills to that point, please. Isn't it FAR more logical that (assuming legitimacy of the passage) Tacitus simply worked backwards from the name "Christians" and simply assumed that the group was founded by the name highlighted in the name of the religion, "Christos/Christus"? Just as the Mohammedan religion (as it was most commonly called until fairly recently in the English-speaking world) was founded by Mohammed?
But what of the reference to Pilate? That also turns out upon examination to convincingly self-destruct your historicist thesis! For in the passage in question, it speaks of "Christos'" crucifixion at the behest of "the procurator, Pontius Pilate"! But Pilate was NOT a procurator at the time the alleged "Jesus" would have been crucified!
So how are we to explain that a famous early second century historian like Tacitus was so ludicrously wrong? If we stay with the ignorant conservative Christian pretense that the passage is a legitimate second century report, then the only possible explanation is that Tacitus did NOT get his information from any reliable historical source, but rather simply repeated what he had heard indirectly from Christians of their own foundation myth!! And that's why he blathered on so cluelessly about "Christos" and a "procurator" named Pilate (who was actually a prefect at the alleged time of the alleged crucifixion of the alleged "Jesus")
And then there's this fact, which has always been about the only one to penetrate your often misdirected and over-active defenses in the past: The alleged Tacitus passage contradicts the New Testament! Read Acts 28:30-31:
For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him.
Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, right during the time (~ 64-66 AD) when Nero was allegedly slaughtering "vast multitudes" of Christians, Paul was "boldly and without hindrance" preaching Christianity with nary a mention of this alleged terrible plague of Nero's martyrdom of "vast multitude"! So which do you want to believe, Vicki? The Bible or "Tacitus"?The passage is obviously fraudulent, Vicki. Disregard it (and all like it) utterly and completely. There really are NO legitimate, independent, extra-biblical sources that validate or even speak of any historical Jesus. You need to accept that as a certain fact.
- - - - - -
Now, regarding the archaeological finding of a artifact bearing the name of Pilate, BFD: big friggin' deal! I had already addressed that kind of thing previously. I wish you would read more carefully!
You seem to have some crazy notion that just because the Jesus stories are pure myth, it would "follow" that no word or name or anything else whatsoever can possibly be true or accurate! That's such a silly idea, don't you agree? As I said before, we can walk down Baker Street in London and see flat 221-B, but who on Earth would be so naive and clueless as to think that is evidence of the biological existence of Sherlock Holmes!As I've also already said, the New Testament myth-developers not uncommonly referred to very well-known and legitimately historical people, institutions, and events. Everyone in the area knew who Pilate was, who Herod was, who Julius, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, etc., etc., etc. were and so these mysticists used these names as part of their myth-making. That's all there is to it! No mystery there at all, and certainly no evidence for a historical Jesus!
3. In your post (the one I printed out) you state that the "references to the supernatural deity named Christ are in no legitimate sense extra-biblical references to a historical Jesus." Martin, in the quotes by Tacitus he appears to refer to a physical Jesus, one that was "condemned to death" and "executed". How do you see these as references to deity? Are there additional ref's to Jesus by Tacitus?"
I've already addressed that above, of course. Nowhere does even the fraudulent passage in Tacitus refer to any Jesus! The passage speaks only of a "Christos" and whose alleged reference to an alleged crucifixion are entirely like Paul's purely divine, heavenly crucifixion of the supernatural deity "Christ".
[End Martin]Concerning the passage being a forgery contrary to what Martin implies very, very few historians would assert that this passage is a forgery, in all the relevant Oxford and Cambridge published books I find none. The evidence is strongly in favor of the genuineness of this passage. The passage is in perfect Tacitean style (see Dorey, T.A. ed. Tacitus. London: Routledge, 1969). The passage appears in every known copy of the Annals (although there are very few copies of it, and none dates earlier than the 11th century - which eliminates Martins ridiculous notion of a 15th century forgery (Dorey)), and the anti-Christian tone is so strong that it is extremely unlikely that a Christian could have written it. Indeed, the Tacitean polemic against Christianity is so strong that it was one of two things Tacitus was condemned for in the sixteenth century. [Dorey, page 149].
The gang that Martin is fond of in this issue certainly enjoys the forgery route because this one piece of evidence does indeed bring down the whole house of cards. Concerning the Church Fathers not mentioning the passage all one needs to read is the entire passage from which the quote comes from and find how disfavorable the whole thing is towards Christians - why would a Church Father quote such a unfavorable source to Jesus and Christianity as a whole? As well, Tacitus wrote for a very limited audience of his peers. The Annals very likely were not even in the Church’s hands at such an early date. When one reads actual historians on this subject the idea of it being some kind of Christian Forgery is as ridiculous as the fifteenth-century conspiracy thought line. (For an indepth reading see Ronald Syme, Tacitus. Oxford: Clarendon)Concerning Tacitus’ reliability which Martin also questions, the answer here is: Absolutely! The Tacitean literature is full of praise for the accuracy, care, critical capability, and trustworthiness of the work of Tacitus.
Let's look at a number of quotes from scholars in the Tacitean camp:
Syme, who was regarded as one of the foremost Tacitean scholars, says "the prime quality of Cornelius Tacitus is distrust. It was needed if a man were to write about the Caesars." He adds that Tacitus "was no stranger to industrious investigation" and his "diligence was exemplary."
Chilver indicates that "for Tacitus scepticism was inescapable is not to be doubted."
The Tacitian scholar, Martin, though noting difficulties about discerning Tacitus' exact sources, says that "It is clear, then, that Tacitus read widely and that the idea that he was an uncritical follower of a single source is quite untenable."
Grant, while charging Tacitus with bias, error, and "unfair selectivity" in various areas (especially associated with the Emperor Tiberius), nevertheless agrees that Tacitus "was careful to contrast what had been handed down orally with the literary tradition." Elsewhere he notes that "There is no doubt that (Tacitus) took a great deal of care in selecting his material."
Dudley notes that despite problems in discerning what sources Tacitus used, "it may be said with some confidence that the view that Tacitus followed a single authority no longer commands support."
Mellor observes that although he made use of other sources, including friends like Pliny, Tacitus "does not slavishly follow, as some of his Roman predecessors did, the vagaries of his sources." He adds (ibid., 31-2) that, "If research is the consultation and evaluation of sources, there can be little doubt that Tacitus engaged in serious research though it is not often apparent in the smooth flow of his narrative." Tacitus "consulted both obscure and obvious sources," and "distinguishes fact from rumor with a scrupulosity rare in any ancient historian."
Benario tells us that Tacitus "chose judiciously among his sources, totally dependent upon none, and very often, at crucial points, ignored the consensus of his predecessors to impose his own viewpoint and his own judgment."
Wellesley remarks that investigation "very seldom shows (Tacitus) to be false to fact" and that archaeology has shown that "only once or twice is Tacitus found guilty of a small slip." He adds: "When the sources differ and the truth is hard to decipher, (Tacitus) takes refuge in ambiguous language or the balance of alternative and sometimes spiteful variants," rather than doing original research to determine which option is the truth. We may note that there is no such ambiguous language in the Christus cite.
Finally, Momigliano, while pointing out that Tacitus was of course "not a researcher in the modern sense," nevertheless says that he was "a writer whose reliability cannot be seriously questioned." He cites only one possible major error by Tacitus, but puts it down to him relying on a trusted predecessor rather than official records.Concerning the objection of Tacitus using procurator instead of prefect, this was a favorite objection by Wells, but Chilton and Evans write, "(t)his 'error' should not be taken as evidence that Tacitus' information is faulty." Two reasons may be cited for this:
1. Evidence indicates that there was a certain fluidity in the usage of these terms.
2. Tacitus may have been anachronizing on purpose.
We should first consider the difference between these two titles. A procurator, as the word implies, was a financial administrator who acted as the emperor's personal agent. A prefect was a military official.
1. What evidence is there for the easy interchange of these terms? Meier notes that in a "backwater province" like Judea, there was probably not much difference between the two roles. This assertion is backed up by literary evidence. Philo and Josephus were not consistent in the usage of the terms either: Josephus calls Pilate a "procurator" in Antiquities 18.5.6, the story about Pilate bringing images into Jerusalem. In practical terms, "both the procurators and prefects in Judea had the power to execute criminals who were not Roman citizens." Practically, in this context, "A difference that is no difference, is no difference." (For what it is worth, the Secular Web's Richard Carrier has now stated: "It seems evident from all the source material available that the post was always a prefecture, and also a procuratorship. Pilate was almost certainly holding both posts simultaneously, a practice that was likely established from the start when Judaea was annexed in 6 A.D. And since it is more insulting (to an elitist like Tacitus and his readers) to be a procurator, and even more insulting to be executed by one, it is likely Tacitus chose that office out of his well-known sense of malicious wit. Tacitus was also a routine employer of variatio, deliberately seeking nonstandard ways of saying things (it is one of several markers of Tacitean style). So there is nothing unusual about his choice here."
2. Tacitus may have used an anachronistic term for his own reasons. The first reason may have been to avoid confusion. Sanders, cites inscriptional evidence that the position held by Pilate was called "prefect " in 6-41 A.D., but "procurator" in the years 44-66, so he deduces that Tacitus was simply using the term with which his readers would be most familiar. (This is a far better point than we may realize: Being that Tacitus' readers were - like he had been - members of the Senate and holders of political office, we must suppose that this "error" escaped not only Tacitus' attention, but theirs as well! We may as well suggest that a United States Senate historian's error of the same rank would pass without comment!)The second reason for this use of terminology may be deliberate anachronizing on Tacitus' part. Kraus and Woodman note that Tacitus often uses "archaizing, rare, or obsolete vocabulary" and also "avoids, varies, or 'misuses' technical terms." They do not cite the prefect/procurator issue specifically, but it is worth asking, in light of this comment, if the usage might not have been simply part of Tacitus' normal practice. (In fact, Harris does indeed suggest a conscious [or unconscious] anachronizing.)
All of the above, therefore - along with the fact that this is not cited by Tactiean scholars as a problem - shows that there is certainly no grounds for charging Tacitus with error or degrading the reference to Jesus because of the alleged procurator/prefect mixup.
And what about Tacitus reference to ‘Christos’, again it is no objection at all, Wells also offers this objection, it is not considered at all problematic by any Tacitean or other historian. Rather than find some deficiency in Tacitus because of this, it is more plausible to recognize that Tacitus would use the name with which his readers would be most familiar - and that would not necessarily be the name that Jesus was executed under. Furthermore, simply referring to "Jesus" would not explain how it is that Jesus' followers were named Christians; Van Voorst further makes the point that Tacitus is actually issuing a subtle corrective here! The text of the oldest manuscript, and most likely reading, spells "Christians" with an e ("Chrestians"). In naming "Christ," Tacitus "is correcting, in a way typical of his style of economy, the misunderstanding of the 'crowd' (vulgus) by stating that the 'founder of this name'...is Christus, not the common name given by the crowd, Chrestus...he calls attention by his somewhat unusual phrase to the nomen of the movement in order to link it directly--and correctly--to the name of Christ."
It should be further added that the NT itself tended towards the direction of using "Christ" as though it were a proper name, and that Tacitus (and Pliny as well) may be reflecting this.
[Martin] (Another part is that Jesus/Joshua wasn't intended to represent a historical personage, but that's a matter for the 15-20 thousand word post I will most likely never submit here.)
This is a completely unwarranted assumption and I will have more to say concerning it. Maybe, and I still only offer maybe, if we lived 150 years ago and if most of our sources are old and dead we could warrant such a false belief but I am remiss as to how anyone can today, particularly a refined and thorough skeptic such as Martin. C.S. Lewis decades and decades ago gave his statement in Mere Christianity concerning how familiar he is with myth, fable and legend and that the Gospels were nothing close for this very reason and he didn’t even have the new understanding of the likes of say Mircea Eliade at his disposal. He mentioned this in one sentence to dismiss this type of sloppy thinking. The Jesus myth propounders are notorious for using the word myth but never show the Jesus Myth in stark comparison to other myths outside of general similarities like Dying and Rising Savior myths such as Mithra and Krishna for which I will cover shortly. But those familiar with the REAL mythic world see an enormous difference here. “The world of the Gospels is so different from anything I encounter in the mythic world I need not further comment” (Thomas Stone, The Recurring Cycle of Dying Savior Myths) Taking the nice and cozy abstract idea of “hey there were spiritual and mythic beliefs at the same time, and hey here is a list of 12 disciple leaders, born of virgin Saviors, etc.. so Christianity must be one of those” into a historical concrete idea has never been done and Martins seeming confidence is the emperor with no clothes.
[Martin] Josephus is the only alleged contemporary extra-biblical source of a reference to one or another New Testament "Jesus", and even if one strips away what even most ultra-conservative biblical scholars admit was a blatant Christian forgery,
This is false. Most scholars, liberal and conservative a like hold to the theory that it is a interpolation and don’t do as the minority and Martin do in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. See J.P. Meier, Jesus in Josephus: A Modest Proposal or Rethinking the Historical Jesus chapte 3. For an extensive bibliography on this passage see W. Bauer, “The Alleged Testimony of Josephus in New Testament Apocrypha, Hennecke and Schneemelcher Fortress. Also the History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. G. Vermes and F. Millar Edinburgh. Interestly the way the scholars fall on this issue is strikingly similar to the way the scholars fall concerning fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls being from the Gospel of Mark and Dating to the year 50 AD, the majority of scholars reject such a hypothesis but a small minority accepts it. So I wonder, what a quandry Martin is in, if he goes with the minority on throwing out Josephus altogether then why not accept the dates of the Gospel of Mark to the year 50 making his syncretization theory also answered.
[Martin] what is left was clearly not written by Josephus. This noted historian wrote of quite a number of different Jesuses (it was a common name of the day), but in each case he either clearly identified the Jesus in question by parentage and other explicit means
such as when he states, “the so called Christ” perhaps.
[Martin] or else he emphasized that he could not be more specific and explained why he couldn't be. Neither of these is true of the two alleged "references" to Jesus in his works, so neither of them can be considered legitimate.
Well, this is sophisticated research and judgment indeed! Just think this model out loud and figure how many historical sources from yesterday, 5 years ago, 2000 years could be easily proved a fraud because the writer didn’t follow a preconceived superficial pattern the debunker has determined.
All of the other alleged extra-biblical "references" are either late and explicitly pro-Christian (such as Irenaeus, the second century "heresy" stomper) or else are late and refer not to any historical Jesus but rather to Christians and/or their worship of and belief in Christ. This latter category of alleged references by Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Suetonius cannot be construed as references to Jesus. (Need I emphasize that references to the supernatural deity named Christ are in no legitimate sense extra-biblical references to a historical Jesus?) And the alleged Talmudic references are very late and what's worse, they are mutually contradictory and must be rejected as legitimate evidence.
Mythogizers are so quick to show how every reference is just forgery or conspiracy and readily just throw them all out of hand without ever quoting or dismissing what the Josephus, Tacitian, Pliny, Seutonius scholars themselves say on the subject. I will cover the other historians and the Talmud later on, but first off his fallacy (which his sources use as well) is to lump all these references to Jesus together and quickly discard them with conspiracy and forgery charges all with absolute statements of beyond doubt. They are mostly separate sources in space and time. No historian treats ALL of the primary sources as equal but contrary to what Martin thinks Tacitus and Josephus are considered strong evidence for the historical reality of Jesus and crackpots screaming and yelling conspiracy doesn’t change real scholars reasons why. The only historian who we might expect to mention Jesus is Josephus, a Jew who wrote a history of his people up to 66AD, which is called 'Jewish Antiquities'. In fact, Josephus does mention Jesus twice and so Jesus Mythers have to devote a lot of attention to attacking the relevant passages. Their job is made easier because Josephus, a Pharisee, probably felt nothing but contempt for Jesus which meant later Christians tried to 'correct' his negative wording.
Most historians clearly state the relevant passages are extrapolations. The majority opinion on Josephus is that the parts of the passage from book 18 of 'Jewish Antiquities' which are in parentheses below are the additions of a Christian scribe trying to make Jesus appear in a better light.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, (if it be lawful to call him a man); for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. (He was the Christ). And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; (for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him). And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18, 3, 3
To support this idea we can look at the works of the Christian father Origen who was writing in the mid-third century. This was while Christianity was still a minor cult with no power or influence. It was generally ignored by the authorities as long as it kept its head down. Therefore there is no way that Christians this early could have either corkscrewed Josephus so that no undoctored copies were available or got away with quoting something from Josephus that was not there. We have no reason to suppose that a sharp guy like Origen would even have tried and so can be sure that the copy of Josephus he read and quoted from was unamended by earlier Christians. We can be doubly sure of this because Origen flatly contradicts the modern version of Josephus where the Jewish historian is made to say Jesus was the Messiah. Origen makes clear he said no such thing.
What use would the early fathers have had for a passage in Josephus saying Jesus was not the Messiah? An educated Jew saying this would not be helpful in an apologetic sense as it would demonstrate that the prophecies in the Old Testament were not nearly as clear cut as early Christians would have liked to have believed. And because no one ever challenged Jesus' existence, they never had reason to point to a critical Jewish source to prove he did. Hence Josephus was not quoted by the few earlier Christian writers.
So what exactly did Origen say? Here are two passages which say basically the same thing and which reinforce each other:
And to so great a reputation among the people for righteousness did this James rise, that Flavius Josephus, who wrote the "Antiquities of the Jews" in twenty books, when wishing to exhibit the cause why the people suffered so great misfortunes that even the temple was razed to the ground, said, that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ. And the wonderful thing is, that, though he did not accept Jesus as Christ, he yet gave testimony that the righteousness of James was so great; and he says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James.
Origen - Matthew X, XVII
For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless-being, although against his will, not far from the truth - that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ) - the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice.
Origen, - Against Celsus I, XLVII
This tells us that the later passage about 'James, brother of Jesus called Christ' certainly existed in Josephus in Origen's time because he uses the phrase 'called Christ' twice. It cannot be a Christian interpolation as they called James either 'James the Just' or 'James the Brother of the Lord'. The reference to 'James, brother of Jesus called Christ' is still found in Antiquities 20 and this by itself torpedoes the idea that Jesus never existed. The ridiculous idea that Christians were going around doctoring copies of Josephus while they were still a persecuted minority is just laughable. Origen also says that Josephus did not believe Jesus was the Messiah so our present day passage on Jesus in Antiquities 18 cannot have existed although the passing reference to Jesus in Antiquities 20 is further evidence that he was actually mentioned in less flattering terms.[Martin] I hold that there is every reason to believe -- and no legitimate reason to doubt -
That alone should raise many a skeptical eyebrow for sure. It is strikingly overbalanced.
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What about Savior myths? Re: Evidence is lacking? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: mikwut ®
12/14/2002, 01:25:33
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Of course the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence points to a first century BCE pre-Christian “movement”, you didn’t do research you just read popularizers and mythologizers. The current model used for this type of comparison attempts looking for 'numerous, complex, detailed' similarities, which reveal underlying parallels, and Christianity fails every tool. Martin has lumped several mythic categories together here so I will address the relevant categories. First, are the Dying and Rising Gods such as Adonis, Baal, Marduk, Osiris, Tammuz and Eshmun, a scholar named Frazier is the champion of the mythicists generalities here, his book The Golden Bough has thoroughly been discredited by the modern scholars I have named here such as Burkert, it is something of a classic for the fringee myth crowd and like fundamentalists no falsification of it will ever satisfy them. The next crackpot fringees like to use is Kersey Graves who published in 1985 The World’s sixteen Crucified Saviors which so general it is abstract and ANYTHING could be claimed to be a precursor of the supposed mythical Christ. Walter Burkert of Harvard whom I cannot recommend enough is referring to this category when he states, “The Frazerian construct of a general ‘Oriental’ vegetation god who periodically dies and rises from the dead has been discredited by more recent scholarship. There is no evidence for a resurrection of Attis; even Osiris remains with the dead; and if Persephone returns to the world every year, a joyous event for gods and men, the initiates do not follow her. There is a dimension of death in all of the mystery initiations, but the concept of rebirth or resurrection of either gods or mystai is anything but explicit” (Ancient Mystery Cults. Walter Burkert. Harvard:1987). From, Classical Mythology (6th ed), Mark Morford and Robert Lenardon. Longman:1999we read, “Despite its faults, Sir J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough remains a pioneering monument in the field. It is full of comparative data on kingship and ritual, but its value is lessened by Frazer's ritualist interpretation of myth and by his eagerness to establish dubious analogies between myths of primitive tribes and classical myths” The category of Dying and Rising Savior Myths was popular for atheists a century ago but scholarship has moved on. I would reccommend the following scholars for reading and refuting in total any and all supposed borrowing of Christianity of these other religions: Walter Burkert of Harvard, and Charles Pengrase, and M. L. West. From their work we learn that similarity of general motifs is not enough to "prove anything"; we must have "complex structures" (e.g., 'system of deities', 'narrative structure').
1. Ideally, we would need to establish the historical link first, before looking for borrowings.
2. Differences between structures/stories/complexes do not disprove influence, as long as the parallels are 'too numerous' and 'too striking'.
3. Parallels must be 'striking' (i.e., unexpected, 'odd', difficult to account for).
4. Some/many parallels/parallel motifs are superficial (i.e., identical on the surface), and 'prove nothing'.
5. Parallels that can be used to support the possibility of influence need to be numerous.
6. Parallels that can be used to support the possibility of influence need to be complex (i.e., with multiple parts and interrelationships).
7. Parallels that can be used to support the possibility of influence need to be detailed.
8. The details in alleged parallels must have the same "conceptual usage" reflected in them (e.g., they must be used with the same meaning).
9. The parallels must have the same ' ideas underlying them'.
10. The similar ideas in alleged parallels must be 'central features' in the material--and not just isolated or peripheral elements.
11. Details which are completely unexpected (to the point of being unexplainable apart from borrowing) are strong evidence for borrowing
12. Details which are almost irrelevant to the new context, but which have function in the old context are strong evidence for borrowingThe Scholars would take categories where many parallels exist but on other neutral ground have established that no borrowings could have taken place and then determined the criteria. Christianity’s parallels are rather benign. With this in mind here are some quotes on the influence of the Dying and Rising Gods.
Mircea Eliade, says "The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts" ("Dying and Rising Gods" The Encyclopedia of Religion [Macmillian: 1987]). Why have modern scholars abandoned this notion? In part because there is no evidence of any pagan god who dies and then rises from the dead!
Take for instance, the myth of Osirus. He does indeed die - he is killed by his treacherous brother, Seth - but he never rises from the dead, triumphant over death never to die again. His wife, Isis, regathers most of his dismembered corpse, but it never "reconstitutes" or comes alive again. Instead, he goes to the underworld, where he becomes judge of all who seek to enter the afterlife. There is no true resurrection in the myth of Osirus.
The same is true of Attis, Adonis, Mithra, Tammuz and Balder; they all die, but the myths do not present them as returning to life again. So one could hardly call them "dying and rising gods"! There is no real precident for the Resurrection of Christ in pagan mythology.
We should also note that the fact that the death of these divinities is nothing unusual. We are so used to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea of an eternal God, Whom death cannot touch, that we sometimes forget that pagans did not believe that their gods were innately immortal. Their lives often had to be sustained, perhaps by eating a substance which gave them immortality (such as ambrosia), but they could still potentially be killed under particular circumstances.
So the even the deaths of these gods did not necessarily have some deeper meaning, involving some grand sacrifice for the world. They were simply part of the tragic epic of their lives; cruel twists of "Fate", to which pagans believed all are subject, both men and gods.
Contrast this with the death of Christ. First of all, He does not die as God, but as Man. He is immortal in His Deity, and therefore must assume a human nature in order to partake of our mortality (the pagan dying gods do not become man). Second, His death is a sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. None of the "dying gods" were ever said to have died for sins, or for anyone else, for that matter. Third, His Crucifixion was part of a greater Divine Plan, not merely a cruel fate.Critics of the "pagan christs" hypothesis point out many other differences as well. Jesus' death is an historical fact, while the "dying gods" are just myths with no historical basis. The Lord laid down His life willingly, while the "dying gods" were all slaughtered against their will. And the Crucifixion was a paradoxical triumph, not a defeat like the deaths of the pagan gods. The cult of Tammuz, for instance, was primarily a funeral rite for the god, mourning his fate with no sense of victory in his passing. Contrast that with the strong Christian emphasis on the Resurrection, and the rejoicing of the Paschal Season!
So the surface similarities between Jesus and certain "dying gods" actually mask much deeper differences. When one considers these profound differences, it becomes hard to see how Jesus' sacrificial death for sin could have been copied from paganism.
“The oriental myth of the dying and rising saviour-god (Tammuz, Bel-Marduk, Adonis, Sandan-Heracles of Tarsus, Attis, Osiris, the Cretan Zeus, Dionysus, and cf. the Mithras sacrifice and the double life of Kore) constitutes neither the native soil of the Gospel nor a true parallel to it. Egeirein and egeiresthai hardly occur at all in the relevant passages…. It is rather said that the god is delivered (Firm. Mat.Err. Prof. Rel., 22) or that he or the deliverance has come from Hades (Plut.Is. et Os., 19 [II, 358b]; Phot. Bibliotheca, 242 [MPG, 103, 1281a], or that he lives (Ps. Luc.Syr. Dea, 6). Indeed, sometimes the continued life is only partial (Arnobius, Adversus Nationes, V, 7 and 14 [A. Reiffenscheid in CSEL, IV]; Paus., VII, 17, 12), or perhaps even symbolical in the form of budding almonds or figs in the myths or wild jubilation and dramatic representation in the cults. Decomposition may take place (Diod. S., III, 59, 7). The resurrection of the god is not original in the Attis cult. Plut.Is. et Os., 11 (II, 355b); 58 (II, 374e) contests the historical character of the myths. Imaginary erotic pictures simply express the unfailing power of nature. The case seems to be rather different when we come to Dionysus. In him the Greeks perceive not so much the successiveness as the identity of life and death. We thus have an advanced identity mysticism of a speculative type. While the spiritual and ethical note is almost completely lacking in the eastern world, it is present here, but in a form very different from that of the NT, In neither case do we find the distinctive eschatological concept, e.g., of R. 6:10. For all the points of contact and mutual influence between the NT and the surrounding world, there is the decisive difference that in the NT NT the kernel and basis is spiritually and ethically significant history rather than nature myth or speculative myth. (Theological Dictionary of the New Testamnet)[egeiro, ‘arise’]
I could go on for hundreds of pages and each of the mythic figures Martin lists and thoroughly and in deatiled minutia discredit his ignorant thinking.
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Re: What about Paul? Re: What about Savior myths? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: mikwut ®
12/14/2002, 01:36:32
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Martins last sentence is pure and complete unadulterated abject nonsense. The only way to get to where he thinks he can is through incredibly general and wide sweeping parallels. Quickly concerning things such as the Logos - it would be similar to me (who am hardly such) being dubbed a syncretic surf dude if I ever used the word awesome. Martin gave away where he is getting this stuff here when he said “Damascus” - that’s Eisenman, and here is just a sampling of what has to historically be switched and moved and contorted for Eisenman’s academic conspiracy to be true:
The Dead Sea Scrolls should be dated much later, to the time of the New Testament - but there is an academic conspiracy afoot to cover up that fact.
As for the New Testament, it was written very late - and used the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the works of Josephus (dated c. 90 AD) as sources. It is a far less reliable source than the Pseudoclementine Recognitions, which was a source for the NT: In fact, the story of Paul being surrounded by a bright light from heaven is merely a copy of a story in the Recognitions of the tombs of two brothers that were miraculously whitened every year.
The Gospels are too anti-Semitic to have been written by Jews; they were all written by Gentiles. Anti-Semitism stands out in such teachings as, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” and “A prophet is never accepted in his own land and in his own hometown.”
Early Pauline Christianity is guilty of a massive conspiracy to cover up the role of James and the Holy Family in the early church.
Many events in the NT are adulterated overwrites of actual events. The election of Matthias to replace Judas is an overwrite of the election of James to apostolic office. The stoning of Stephen is an overwrite of the stoning of James by Paul’s command. Events have even been lifted from the works of Josephus and overwritten, then placed in the NT.
Many persons listed in the NT simply did not exist: Stephen, Judas Iscariot, the apostle James, and Zebedee the father of James and John. Nazareth probably did not exist either. Timothy and Titus are the same person, as are Silas and Silvanus.
Anti-Jamesian polemic is the point behind Paul’s analysis of those with weak faith in the Book of Romans.
The early Christians, the Essenes, and the Sicarii are all pretty much the same movement.
The probable genius behind the conspiracy was Paul’s companion Epaphroditus, who is identical with the Epaphroditus who sponsored Josephus and the Erastus mentioned in the Corinthian correspondence.
Other than that, there are all the usual fallacies involved: Straw men, overreading of texts, outright errors, grasping at greasy straws, word games, and so on. Little else really needs saying.The conclusions speak for themselves. Robert Eisenman lives in a world of fantasy that Martin is swallowing.L.H. Schiffman professor at NYU and DSS expert says of Eisenman:
"What you essentially do is load on a whole lot of associative material that may or may not be parallel, and then deny all criteria of dating which specifies anything that we can possibly use -- one by one they're all written off -- then you take a fundamentally correct position (that all this stuff has got to be reevaluated and requestioned) and turn it into a bunch of jumbled information, which has nothing to do with the subject at hand.... Thus theory presents the notion that the entire set of documents is talking about a certain period, whereas virtually everybody believes that it dates to another period. So you must simply write off all evidence which doesn't fit your view."
In his 1994 book titled "Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls", Schiffman goes on to say:
Second, the scrolls are not the documents of an early Christian sect. Contrary to claims by certain sensationalists, the scrolls never mention Jesus, John the Baptist, or James the Just, the "brother" of Jesus. Further, the scrolls in no way reflect Christian beliefs. The only way to make such an outrageous claim is to radically redefine Christianity to accord with the scrolls. In fact, the most recent carbon-14 testing has confirmed the dating that had already been established by paleography, which is the study of the shapes of Hebrew letters and of other ancient writing. Since all the material was composed before the rise of the early church, the Dead Sea Scrolls cannot refer to those events. [page xxi]
He [Eisenman] has advocated the view that the scrolls are closely linked to early Christianity, an approach that has gained few adherents. [page 25]
A similar view has recently been espoused by some who wish to claim that the scrolls refer directly to the early Christian movement. This view, as I previously maintained, is impossible to accept on chronological grounds. [page 120]
It must be stressed at the outset that the scrolls contain no references to Christianity. Christianity is a movement that began as a Jewish sect and then developed into a separate religious group. Because the sectarian documents [i.e., Dead Sea Scrolls] were authored before the careers of John the Baptist and Jesus, the scrolls make no mention nor do they even allude to these New Testament figures -- not withstanding specious claims to the contrary. [page 371]Commenting on the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls accomplished by two independent Carbon-14 tests and paleographic techniques (all of which confirmed one another), Professor H. Stegemann said of Eisenman's hypothesis regarding the scrolls:
Therefore one may dismiss Dr. Eisenmann's ideas in this field. (quoted in "The People of the Dead Sea Scrolls", Garcia-Martinez and Barrera, 1993, p. 25)
DSS expert J.T. Barrera has added:
The thesis that Qumran manuscripts reflect Judaeo-Christian origins rests on incorrect dating of those manuscripts. (ibid, p. 25).
The certain fact is that the New Testament texts show many parallels and points of contact with the texts from Qumran. As the Essene writings are more ancient than the Christian writings it is logical to assume that the former could influence the latter. Undoubtedly, just as two parallel lines never actually meet, a Qumran text and a gospel text can run parallel without it meaning that the first has influenced the second directly. Study of comparative literature and comparative religion has often fallen into "parallelomania" (Sandmel), which confuses parallel with tangents and similarities of form or content with direct contacts or influences. (ibid, p. 203)
If only the points of contact between the New Testament texts and those from Qumran are noticed, a distorted view of them both results. It is important not to forget the points of disagreement, which we have not considered here but turn out to be more numerous and, in general, more significant. (ibid, p. 220)[Martin] It bears repeating that nowhere in the early epistles -- whether by Paul or anyone else -- is there any unambiguous reference to any historical Jesus or a historical ministry.
The only reason they are unambiguous is because of the mind bending credence you have given to crackpots and conspiracy lunatics who prey on a unsuspecting public by use of shock and manipulation of evidence.
[Martin] The Canonical and other Gospels can best be understood as representing the "Outer Mysteries" of Christianity as a Gnostic Astrological/Solar Mystery Religion wherein Joshua/Jesus represents the Jewish version of the Intermediary Son/Sun figure previously associated to varying degrees with Krishna, Dionysus, Osiris, Mithras, etc. These Outer Mysteries were ALWAYS given as parables / allegories that represented a myth-imbued Inner Mystery, and the stories of the Jesus/Christ of the New Testament is clearly no exception! I'll give an example to help elucidate what I mean...
The New Testament story regarding the marriage at Cana wherein Jesus/Christ is told to have miraculously turned water into wine is to those with clearer eyes a transparently obvious nod to Dionysus/Bacchus the Wine God at one level, and at a deeper level which subsumes the former is clearly an allegory to the Miracle by which the Sun (Son) converts Water (in the form of rainfall and irrigation) into Sacrificial Grapes at the time of Harvest as the Sun goes into decline. Even the marriage is powerfully symbolic, as Jesus/Christ is said to be the "Bridegroom" in the same way that Dionysus the Wine God was held to be the "Bridal One".
I repeat: If you strip away from the New Testament all the syncretization of mythologies and esoteric philosophies, nothing whatsoever remains. Certainly no historical Jesus is to be found!
Baloney, utter baloney. Robin Lane Fox points out a huge amount of differences between the early Christians thought, theology and practice it is striking, the most common example being Christian Charity it certainly doesn’t get stripped away and I would challenge Martin to show through sources how. I also point out the incredible inconsistency again. When it comes to science and to how we should form our beliefs peer review and the majority of scientists is sacrosanct for Martin, yet here with arguments from silence, misrepresentation and calling the very abstract concrete Martin parts ways with the consensus opinion of professional historians and social and religious anthropologists, and holds hands with crackpots who can’t let go of bygone and discredited thinking. Concerning the mystery religions, these initiations into the various cults were not 'required' for all membership (like baptism was for Christians at this time), but was an 'optional' rite available for those who wished it:“It should be noted that in most cases there exist forms of a ‘normal’ cult alongside the mysteries, that is, worship for the non-initiated, independent of possible candidacy for myesis or telete…In Rome, Mater Magna had her great festival in the spring, but the reported dates of taurobolia are unrelated to calendrical events. In any case, mysteries are seen to be a special form of worship offered in the larger context of religious practice. Thus the use of the term ‘mystery religions’ as a pervasive and exclusive name for a closed system, is inappropriate. Mystery initiations were an option activity within polytheistic religions, comparable to, say, a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela within the Christian system. Ancient Mystery Cults. Walter Burkert.
John Macquarrie. God Talk: an Examination of the Language and Logic of Theology. (Harper and Row, 1967), writes, "Myth is usually characterized by a remoteness in time and space...as having taken place long ago." The Gospels by contrast concern "an event that had a particular definite location in Palestine...under Pontius Pilate, only a generation or so before the New Testament account of these happenings" (p.177,80) . Sherwin-White, writes, "The agnostic type of form-criticism would be much more credible if the compilation of the Gospels were much later in time...than can be the case...Heroditus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, [showing that] even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historic core”
Eta Linnemann. writes, "The eyewitnesses [both sympathetic and hostile] did not disappear from the scene in a flash after two decades. Many are likely to have survived until the second half of the A.D. 70’s...Who at the time would have dared to alter the ‘first tradition’ beyond recognition?"
Michael Grant writes, "Modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory [that inspiration for Jesus’ death and resurrection was drawn from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian nature myths of Osiris, Mithras, etc. It has again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars" (p.200). J.Gresham Machen thoroughly refutes the theory in The Origin of Paul’s Religion. (Eerdmans, 1925), especially chs. VI and VII on mystery religions in the Hellenistic age. He notes for example, that most of those pagan sources asserted to have inspired Christianity are actually dated after Christ by one to three centuries. To name just one, the first mention at all of any Roman Taurobolium rite was the 2nd Century, and the full-blown rite in which blood from a slaughtered bull covered the candidate who was then "reborn forever," is dated the third century after Christ. The few sources which preceded the First-century were so superficial in their similarity to Christ as to fade into irrelevance. And they were theologically abhorrent to monotheistic Israel. Machen has been thoroughly verified by the modern scholars I posted above.
So look what the mythologizers have got to do, they have to push the dating of the N.T. to late, late dates that begin to stretch credulity to limits and even then suffer from not enough time. On top of that they have to push back the source material for their apparent borrowing sources to where we have factual data to actual support it. On top of that they have totally dismiss the New Testmament as even remotely reliable and totally forget the fact eyewitness into the first century seamlessly carry the implied historical understanding and impliedly write they way. On top of the that the modern understanding we have myth has dramatically changed the landscape where the atheists old parallels are anything but anymore.
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What a load of fatuous sophistry! Re: Re: What about Paul? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Martin ®
12/18/2002, 10:22:43
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Mikwut, you're an appallingly dishonest man.
I hope you realize that you are doing great damage to your own case with all your lies and distortions and have thus lost your credibility.
- Martin(I will have more to say on this subject later)
Modified by Martin at Wed, Dec 18, 2002, 11:18:44
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Re: What about Savior myths? Re: What about Savior myths? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Martin ®
12/17/2002, 17:03:34
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We need to get at least a broad, reasonable handle on how and why such a vast amount of pre-Christian, foreign mythology ended up in central elements of the Christian Myth. Answering that question in detail is the work of the new ahistoricist consensus of scholars and historians, and Burton Mack in his 2001 book The Christian Myth has issued the call for them to turn even more closely to those questions now that all the quests for a historical Jesus have been objectively observed to have failed miserably.
This is a complex subject that simply can't be summed up compellingly, particularly not in a space-limited forum like this. The case for how and why any particular myth appears in one form or another -- however concretely or abstractly, in full or in part -- in the Christian myth simply cannot be proven with the source texts available to us and must remain the work of Mack and his colleagues. But that these diverse, pre-Christian myths are now part and parcel of the Christian myth is simply undeniable, no matter how desperately mikwut and his orthodoxy-constrained parrots wish it were not the case.
The wisest intellectual approach to this subject must therefore be one of adopting the view best concordant with the principle of parsimony -- a parsimony which must account for all the relevant evidence. This is the way many other historical and scientific views are decided. I submit that the syncretic mythical, philosophical, ideological, social experimental theory of the origins of the Gospels and their Christology represents BY FAR the most adroit and parsimonious explanation.
What are the basic elements of the traditional view of Jesus and Christ that are also in common with several non-Christian mythologies?
- Thought to be predestined to birth during a special, if unstated, period of history.Now, mikwut and other desperate traditionalists hate to be faced with these lists (most of which are more extensive), because they know that their laughable counter-"arguments" are pitiful and hopeless in the face of such lists' powerful effects for parsimony. Mikwut in his flagrantly desperate orthodoxy-enslaved posts has suggested that if the myths which went into the manufacture of the Jesusian / Christian myth are not closely matched to the Christian Myth it means that these other myths have no real relevance and thus the Christian stories must be considered historical truths. And the sad truth is there are actually a great many people (who are mostly known as Christians) who swallow such specious nonsense!- Miraculous conception effected by spiritual entity.
- Virgin birth, usually celebrated on or around December 25.
- Birth usually heralded with stars or other astrological event.
- Special lineage (i.e., in Christ's case, from David's lineage).
- Threatened in infancy, generally by tyrant fearful of new arrival.
- Parental flight to foreign land (very often Egypt) to escape threat.
- Bestowed with title of "Savior", "Son of Man" and often "Son of God".
- Considered to be a God or God incarnate.
- Considered to be co-equal with God or Gods.
- Myths and fables featured often hidden astrological references.
- Performed many miracles, often involving fish and especially including healings, casting out of demons, restoring sight or hearing, and raising the dead.
- Participated in special communal meals, often commemorative.
- Suffered a visceral and humiliating death, usually held to have taken place around the Vernal equinox.
- Bodily restoration or resurrection, typically three days later.
- Ascent, typically bodily ascent, into higher sphere or heaven.
But while a historical story might have one or two aspects which merely coincidentally match one or two elements of the mythical outline, when we correctly observe that the Christian fable matches ALL of those common mythical elements, it becomes obvious that it is anti-parsimonious in the extreme to hold that there is any historical truth underlying the Jesus of the Epistles, the Gospels, and the Church. The historicist view is therefore correctly seen as astoundingly improbable and complicated and is thus directly opposed to the principle of parsimony.
If we're going to employ Occam's Razor, the only conclusion is that both Jesus and The Christ can only be mythical!
It is the fact that we were all raised on the Gospel fables being presented as historical accounts and were also raised to assume the New Testament Myth is basically historical that accounts for the great difficulty that even some atheists and other freethinkers have recognizing the purely mythical nature of the Christian story. Note that even if there were some Cynic and/or Stoic itinerant philosophers whose statements were later borrowed and embellished for the creation of Q and from there to the Gospels, that is absolutely NOT to say that there ever was any historical model for Jesus! The notion that a historical Jesus was the model for the Christian Myth simply isn't rational when one considers all the facts and the overpowering mythic parallels to other religious myths including astrological and/or sun gods and Mystery cult GodMen and/or Greco-Roman Gods and/or etc., etc., etc.
Here is a list of various Saviors of whom various aspects of their myths have parallels to the Jesus/Christ Myth (even though not all of them preceeded the invention of the Jesus Myth):
Adad of AssyriaThe claim that one of them, Jesus of "Nazareth" (a land which didn't even exist by that name) is actually historical is simply too daft and ignorant to credit!Adonis of Greece
Alcides of Thebes
Attis of Phrygia
Baal and Tuat, "the only Begotten of God," of Phoenicia
Bali of Afghanistan
Beddru of Japan
Buddha of India
Cadmus of Greece
Crite of Chaldea
Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam
Divine Teacher of Plato
Fohi and Tien of China
Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico
Hesus or Eros, and Bremrillah, of the Druids
Hil and Feta of the Mandaites
Holy One of Xaca
Indra of Tibet
Ischy of the island of Formosa
Ixion and Quirinus of Rome
Jao of Nepal
Krishna of India
Mikado of the Sintoos
Odin of the Scandinavians
Osiris and Horus of Egypt
Prometheus of Caucasus
Salivahana of Bermuda
Tammuz of Syria
Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls
Universal Monarch of the Sibyls
Wittoba of the Bilingonese
Xamolxis of Thrace
Zoar of the Bonzes
Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia
Zulis, or Zhule of Egypt
As for Krishna parallels specifically, let me point out that I personally never made a big deal of it, even though it represents an intriguing parallel to the Jesus myth. I cited the Religious Tolerance web site to show that traditional Christianity is at least as closely associated with Eastern religious concepts as Mormonism, nothing more. However, since mikwut has taken it out of context and used it to advance his orthodox crackpottery of a historical Jesus, I would like to direct the reader to some knowledgable and informative references which directly contradict mikwut's foolish pseudo-arguments:
(From Religious Tolerance site -- by no means am I in agreement with all of the following, which is far too kind to Christian mythology!)
Linkages Between Two God-Men Saviors: Christ and Krishna
Specific Similarities Between The Lives of Jesus and Krishna
Was Jesus' life a copied from other saviors/god-men/heroes?
Linkage between Jesus and various Pagan saviors: Introduction
Parallels between Christianity and ancient Pagan religions
Life events shared by Yeshua (Jesus) and the "Mythic Hero Archetype"
Parallels between the story of Jesus and Osiris-Dionysus
THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF JESUS: Fact or fable?
(From elsewhere on the web):
Pagan Christs: Attis, Jesus, Krishna, Mithras, Osiris
The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ
Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled
Hare Jesus: Christianity's Hindu Heritage
Krishna and Jesus: Will The Real Savior Please Stand Up?
Shaken Creeds: Part II: The Virgin Birth Story
The Celestial Virgin of Sun Worship.....Becomes the Virgin Mary of Christianity
The Virgin Birth Of Jesus Christ As Recorded In The New Testament... Is It A Sun-Myth Retold?
The Krishna and Christian Jesus Parallels
Examining the Crucifixion Of Jesus and Parallels to Crucified Sun-G-Ds
The list goes on and on showing the truly astonishing degree of similarities between the Jesus Myth and the myths which gave rise (among several other unrelated elements) to its construction. If you remove the myths from the "biography" of Jesus, NOTHING REMAINS!
- Martin
Modified by Martin at Wed, Dec 18, 2002, 09:14:33
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Regarding Burkert et al & mikwut's bogus claims Re: What about Savior myths? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Martin ®
12/17/2002, 18:33:55
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Here's a response from Earl Doherty to mikwut's obsolete, orthodoxy-slavish, and utterly wrong-headed attempts to minimize the fact that today's New Testament scholars know perfectly well that the mythical parallels predating the New Testament are utterly inseperable from the Christian Mythology. Please note that I have NEVER claimed that Christianity is derived per se from earlier myths, and be sure to also note EXACTLY what silly claim has been discredited and what has NOT been, which contradicts mikwuts bogus and obsolete pseudo-scholarship:
In the early part of this century, based on the ground-breaking work of respectable scholars like Richard Reitzenstein and Franz Cumont, sweeping claims were made about Christianity's derivation from the Greek mysteries by the "History of Religions School". At the center of these claims was the concept of "dying and rising gods," as in Wilhelm Bousset's scenario that ancient thinking had merged all the mystery deities, including Christ, almost into a single collective myth across the ancient world, about the suffering and dying god who is resurrected and thereby confers salvation. As time went on, such claims became discredited when it was seen more clearly that the myths and artistic representations of the various hellenistic cults actually contained nothing tangible about any resurrection of the god from the dead.However, pendulums have a habit of swinging too far in the opposite direction. Many scholars writing from the 60s to the 80s have claimed that there was virtually no common ground between Christianity and the mysteries. Some of them tried to knock down the mysteries to little more than social guilds and intercessionary exercises; people appealed to the cultic gods for help in coping with life's problems, somewhat as Christians do of the saints in heaven. For example, see Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (1987), and Gunter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries (ET, 1967).
Wagner in particular was anxious to discredit the mysteries as having any possible influence on Christianity. He went so far as to say that not only were the so-called savior gods never thought of as resurrected, but that no concept existed within the cults that the initiate partook of the deity's nature, that he linked his destiny with that of the god, that baptismal rites in the mysteries were any more than ritual washings. He claimed to find no evidence that Attis and the other cultic deities were the ground for personal hopes of immortality or of quality of life after death. Wagner chose to interpret in one direction every point of ambiguity, every gap and uncertainty in the very sparse evidence we have about the cults. (Their injunction to secrecy seems to have been faithfully observed for a thousand years!) But Wagner thereby painted himself into a corner, for he was left with the problem (which he never addressed) of explaining what their appeal was. Why was Christianity locked in a virtual life and death struggle with the cults for 200 years, a struggle whose outcome was far from certain? The need of the age was for personal salvation, especially after death. It is intellectual dishonesty to try to cook the meager surviving evidence of the mysteries to suggest that they did not in their own way offer precisely that.
As for the question of dying and rising gods, from the 2nd century BCE and even earlier, the Jews developed a concept of the righteous dead rising to participate in God's Kingdom, which was to be established on earth. Physical resurrection was therefore required. Jews had always been very "this world" oriented and had a weak concept of a spiritual afterlife. The Greeks, on the other hand, were very different. Christianity's second century opponent, Celsus, said that the doctrine of resurrection of the flesh "is so repulsive that there is opposition to it even among Jews and Christians. . . the soul may have everlasting life, but corpses ought to be thrown away as worse than dung." Obviously, we should not expect those who held such an outlook to invent gods who are resurrected in flesh to bestow the same fate on humans. Proving that the Greek savior gods were not conceived of as "rising from their tombs" is to knock down a straw man.
The existence of significant conceptual differences should not be allowed to obscure the fact that both Christianity and the mysteries were an expression of the same needs and urges, that both proceeded from a common pool of religious impulses of the age, and that cross-cultural influences could help shape the particular expression each group formulated for itself.
As for the question of comparative dating, rites like those of Eleusis and the god Dionysos predate Christianity by many centuries. Mithra (Mithras in the Greek) was an ancient Persian god who seems to have been adopted by hellenistic circles in Asia Minor around 100 BCE. (See the fascinating The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, 1989, by David Ulansey, who has located the basis for the Greek cultic myth in an astronomical discovery of the time.) When was Attis added to the cult of the Great Mother Cybele? Dates vary. But cults do not form overnight, nor do the ideas underlying their rites and myths spring fully into being at one moment. The basic concepts and practices of the mysteries were ancient. They undergirded much of the religious expression of the era. Both Christianity and the cults were an outgrowth of them, even if Christianity had its own particular Jewish content as a prominent part of the mix. No one today is going to claim that Paul's Christianity is derived from the equivalent of the fully-formed cults we see in the second century CE.
Wayne Meeks represents a recent swing of the pendulum back toward a more median position. In The First Urban Christians (p.182, n.44) he says: "On the mysteries, I wonder if MacMullen has not been too skeptical. Apuleius Metamorphosis 11.6 presupposes some kind of personal immortality that will be enhanced, though not created, by the initiation. The initiate in the Elysian Fields, in "the subterranean vault," will still be Isis's worshipper and under her protection. So, too, MacMullen is too cavalier about the Mithraist promise (according to Celsus) of the soul's ascent through the seven planetary spheres. Bousset's description . . . erred in details and drew too schematic a picture, but this was nevertheless a powerful kind of belief apparently shared by many, not least by the Christian and non-Christian Gnostics. . . . Teachers of rhetoric recommend that speeches of consolation include reminders of the soul's return to the divine realm as a source of comfort for the bereaved."
Even more recently, Hyam Maccoby has reopened the case for Paul having much in common with ideas which were central to the mysteries. He explores the fact (in Paul and Hellenism) that Paul's interpretation of the eucharistic (thanksgiving) meal is unlike Jewish concepts (even blasphemous from a Jewish point of view) but very close to Greek sacramentalism. Paul's language resembles that of the Greek cults, even if there are important distinctions in meaning and application. Paul's Christ who dies a violent death (at the hands of the demon spirits of the firmament, if we are to judge by 1 Corinthians 2:8: see my Supplementary Article No. 3) is unrelated to any previous Jewish ideas of God's salvation, but fits in with the many Greek savior gods who "are the centers of rites in which their deaths are rehearsed for some salvific purpose" (p.65). I would highly recommend all the books of this British scholar.
And so on. It is undeniable that Paul was a hellenistic Jew who grew up in pagan surroundings. If in Tarsus, this city was the birthplace and focal point of the hellenistic Mithras cult, with its sacred meal so like the Pauline version of the eucharist. It would be foolish to claim that Paul enjoyed complete immunity from the religious concepts that permeated the atmosphere he breathed. This absorption does not have to have been conscious—or static. Paul's was an innovative and roving mind, and many ideas in early Christian theology are thought to proceed from him. Yet no one's ideas spring out of nothing, unrelated to precedents. Paul can be no exception.
Paul's Christianity compared to the mysteries may well have been a superior expression on several counts, for it contained an ethical dimension the Greek cults notably lacked, and his concept of dying and rising to Christ through baptism was more subtle and profound than any parallel in the mystery rites. But this does not disprove that some of the roots of his ideas lie in broader, humbler hellenistic precedents. On the other hand, if we do not impose the Gospels on Paul and his contemporaries, we find that the conceptual differences are not as great as some like to think.
The claim (constantly reiterated by scholars) that the cultic myths are just that, whereas Christianity is grounded in the record of an historical man, is something Paul and the other epistle writers never make clear for us. And is the concept behind 1 Peter all that different from the post-death activities of Osiris and other savior gods in the underworld? For if Christ was brought to life only "in the spirit", and subsequently went to the Jewish Shoel to raise to heaven the souls of the righteous dead (3:18-19), where is the dramatic point of contrast with the cult deities? If Paul maintains (1 Cor. 15:50) that "flesh and blood can never possess the kingdom of God and the perishable cannot possess immortality," can we say that his thought about a post-death "spiritual body" (modelled on Christ's own) is essentially different from the Platonic, or that he has not been absorbing hellenistic influences? Can we say that he envisions Christ's resurrection (now seen by modern liberal scholars as not involving a corporeal return to earth) much differently than did the Greeks of their gods? The great contrast arises only when Christ is historicized and made to walk out of his tomb with the wounds still fresh in his side. The very fact that early writers like Paul never draw attention to Jesus' historical humanity as a significant point of contrast with the competing deities of the other salvation cults—one of the most amazing silences of all!—should provide compelling evidence that for them no such contrast existed.
An excellent article which tries to maintain a middle ground is "Mystery Concepts in Primitive Christianity and In Its Environment" by Devon H. Wiens (1980). I know only of its publication in a German series of scholarly papers on the ancient Roman world. An older classic on the subject is A. D. Nock's Conversion (1933) which, though written by a Christian apologist, is full of solid data and comparisons concerning the mysteries. Gary Lease, in his article "Mithraism and Christianity" (also in that German series) declares that: "The insight has become widespread that Christianity shared deeply in the cultural and religious milieu of the Near East during the beginning centuries of our common era. Indeed, one may quite accurately say that Christianity is first and foremost an Oriental religion, and like so many of its counterparts during the Hellenistic and late antiquity periods, it drank often and deeply from the same spiritual and cultural wells which nourished contemporary movements in that age of upheaval.".
- Martin
Modified by Martin at Tue, Dec 17, 2002, 19:37:25
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Legitimate evidence IS completely lacking! Re: Evidence is lacking? -- mikwut Top of thread Archive
Posted by: Martin ®
12/27/2002, 15:56:52
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mikwut again merely name drops and intentionally befuddles and misdirects. As he has done throughout this thread, he drops names in lieu of providing an actual, credible argument. Yet that's very wise of him, since there's no valid, rational argument he can make to justify his position!He tosses off a few non-credible and/or discredited, hackneyed old lines of error, nonsense, or misdirection, but we can all see that he knows that all he's got going for him is the ability to drop the names of better known credulists of various stripes who, like mikwut himself, don't have any independent evidence of Jesus' existence either!
Here's an example of one such moldy oldie... Mikwut repeats Karyn's and John Meier's irrelevant misdirection ploy: "[W]hat we know about Alexander the Great could fit on only a few sheets of paper; yet no one doubts that Alexander existed."
First of all, even "a few sheets of paper" is infinitely more than we have of contemporary historical records of the Earthly existence of Jesus, which amounts to nothing at all!
Utterly unlike the alleged "Jesus", Alexander the Great's existence is demonstrated by very extensive archaeological evidence of his vast wake of destruction and construction of the very same cities the historical records of his conquests report. Major cities, buildings, and artifacts bore his name during his lifetime and for centuries later. Also unlike Jesus, from whom we have nothing in the way of his own writing, Alexander has left at least several stone tablets engraved with his own words (here's one: Letter of Alexander the Great to the Chians). We also have contemporary historical records of treaties with Alexander, etc.
We know from later historians that at least Hieronymus of Cardia and Demetrios of Phaleron wrote near-contemporary histories (within 10-20 years) of Alexander's death. The fact that these haven't survived is of less importance than the fact that they existed, were contemporary, and their existence is widely attested to.
And here's the kicker, folks: Although the respected historian Josephus wrote not one word about the New Testament's "Jesus", Josephus clearly mentions Alexander the Great and describes major events of his life. I quote now the first paragraph of Chapter 8 of Book XI of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews
1. ABOUT this time it was that Philip, king of Macedon, was treacherously assaulted and slain at Egae by Pausanias, the son of Cerastes, who was derived from the family of Oreste, and his son Alexander succeeded him in the kingdom; who, passing over the Hellespont, overcame the generals of Darius's army in a battle fought at Granicum. So he marched over Lydia, and subdued Ionia, and overran Caria, and fell upon the places of Pamphylia, as has been related elsewhere.HOWEVER, if I were to embark on a program of researching the historicity of Alexander as carefully as I have the historicity of Jesus and found the independent historical evidence for Alexander to be as non-existent as that of Jesus, I would likewise immediately cease to believe that Alexander actually existed!mikwut then proceeds to more evidentially worthless name dropping. He cites Charlesworth, whose clear desperation to retain at least some portion of the discredited Testimonium Flavianum led him to cheat and deliberately mistranslate specific words to buttress his desperate but failed arguments.
Mikwut cites E.P. Sanders who, while very much a widely respected scholar, is nonetheless a credulist who buys into nearly all of the standard Gospel mytho-biography of mainstream Christianity and is also far too easily convinced of the legitimacy of a portion of the completely discredited Testimonium Flavianum. Nevertheless, he writes: [I]f we measure the general impact of prophetic figures by the degree of disturbance they caused, we shall conclude that Jesus was less important in the eyes of most of his contemporaries than were John the Baptist and the Egyptian..." Sanders also writes: "Roman sources that mention him [Jesus] are all dependent on Christian reports." Finally, he admits: "But knowledge of Jesus was limited to knowledge of Christianity; that is, had Jesus' adherents not started a movement that spread to Rome, Jesus would not have made it into Roman histories at all. The consequence is that we do not have what we would very much like, a comment in Tacitus or another Gentile writer that offers independent evidence about Jesus, his life and his death."
A. E. Harvey is well-known biblical exegete and a fairly traditionalist, credulist Christian apologist. With the exception that he admits there's a great deal of myth and confabulation in the Gospels and has doubts about the Gospel's reliability regarding the alleged Resurrection, his "testimony" that mikwut cites is evidentially worthless and is indistinguishable from the witnessing of any other credulist Christian's.
mikwut then foolishly quotes Christian apologist James Dunn's infamous, uninformed, and deeply flawed assertion circa 1985: "The alternative thesis is that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible." Yet elsewhere in this thread, mikwut openly admits the inarguable fact that an extensive Christian (i.e., Messianic leader/teacher) movement had been brewing for perhaps two centuries before the common era! Furthermore, not only was there no such thing as a "coherent and consistent complex of traditions" within that thirty years, there is NO record alleging the existence of a historical Jesus with historical attributes in recent history until late in the first century at the earliest! The Church Fathers didn't even refer to any so-called "historical" traditions until well into the second century, and even those (such as the first ones, given by Ignatius) were PURELY CREEDAL RECITATIONS rather than reports of historical fact!
All in all, Dunn's more recent views and statements -- which have received forceful challenges and repudiations even from those in his own camp (along with Räisänen and others) -- are more supportive of the mythical thesis than he seems to realize or at least admit. He reluctantly admits that Paul's writings are not particularly convincing evidence of the existence of a historical Jesus for non-Christians and that Paul's "visions" could easily have been purely subjective, even though he personally aligns himself with traditional historicist opinion and is one of those crackpot credulists who laughably contends that Paul never referred to a historical Jesus or ministry or even quoted Jesus' words because -- get this -- it would have spoiled the "in joke" nature of the Christian community! At least he now reluctantly admits that Wells' clarified arguments have substantial weight and are very difficult to answer.
I find it hilarious that the obviously desperate mukwit relies on a proxy like the extraordinarily dubious Morton Smith to poke insults at GA Wells!
