John the Baptist is Historical

[outhouse]

John the Baptizer in so many ways that we can't really doubt he existed historically.

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Agreed. The man holds credible historicity. Every aspect of his legend/mythology holds exact credibility to the exact time period, anthropologically speaking.

People who attack Johns historicity "often" do so out of desperation as a vehicle to promote a hypothesis that has nothing to do with John.

Anyone who does such simple is throwing what can ever be known about the past, in the garbage can. These people can and do try and create any history they want from any kind of evidence regardless the weight of evidence carries.

Criticism is fine to a point, excessive criticism is just that.

[Giuseppe]

People who attack Johns historicity "often" do so out of desperation as a vehicle to promote a hypothesis that has nothing to do with John.

True, true. The mythicists should be grateful with Christians because they have not interpolated Jesus in Josephus in the same astute manner John the Baptist was.

[outhouse]

People who attack Johns historicity "often" do so out of desperation as a vehicle to promote a hypothesis that has nothing to do with John.

True, true. The mythicists should be grateful with Christians because they have not interpolated Jesus in Josephus in the same astute manner John the Baptist was.

John could have been interpolated to some extent in Josephus.

Do you think we throw out all his historicity because the gospel text is all that is left ?

[neilgodfrey]

Gospels present John the Baptizer in so many ways that we can't really doubt he existed historically.

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Agreed. The man holds credible historicity. Every aspect of his legend/mythology holds exact credibility to the exact time period,

Since when does credibility itself determine whether or not a person or event is historical?

Where Thucydides lacked sources he simply decided to make up an account to fill in the gaps. But it was all concocted credibility.

Herodotus in writing about the history of how Cyrene was founded relied entirely upon myths but he decided to remove the miraculous and divine elements from them and add a few more "historical sounding details" to make his account sound like "credible history".

Ancient rhetoricians are known to have taught the art of creating, fabricating, credible, believable, accounts that sound like real biography or history. Rosenmeyer in "Ancient Epistolary Fictions" provides examples of how even in letter writing creative writers were taught the art of adding little incidental details and throwaway seemingly irrelevant references to add verisimilitude to their works of fiction.

Aristotle himself, iirc, said good fiction must be credible.

[outhouse]

Ancient rhetoricians are known to have taught the art of creating, fabricating, credible, believable, accounts that sound like real biography or history.


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100% agreed. There is only a handful here that know this. It is this art form every participant here should know full before being allowed to post.

Learning this was the day my eyes opened wide. Without this knowledge one has no clue about what is or is not historical.

. Rosenmeyer in "Ancient Epistolary Fictions" provides examples of how even in letter writing creative writers were taught the art of adding little incidental details and throwaway seemingly irrelevant references to add verisimilitude to their works of fiction.

Agreed in full.

It was the ONLY writing style used during these biblical textual periods. The greeting in the header, to the body of the letter, to the conclusion, all for the sole purpose of building authority of the content and building authority of the author/s, so that it could have the maximum effect of its reader's which was in this time [most people do not even know] a group thing.

How many here do you think actually know how they folded up and tied papyrus?

Since when does credibility itself determine whether or not a person or event is historical?

Its my opinion that credibility is earned by being able to look at the whole picture and not over attribute historicity.

In this case the context lies in the hypothesis that explains why they wrote what they did, when they did.

Appeal to popularity, is not what credibility is about. IMHO I'm not asking to appeal to credibility. I asking to understand why certain hypothesis are created.

[outhouse]

But I have to ask Neil. Do you doubt there was a Aramaic baptizer that was beheaded who worked the Jordan river?

As a minimalistic perspective only attributing the small core of the NT textual legend?

[neilgodfrey]

But I have to ask Neil. Do you doubt there was a Aramaic baptizer that was beheaded who worked the Jordan river?

As a minimalistic perspective only attributing the small core of the NT textual legend?

If all we have is a story and we don't know (we can only surmise) who wrote it, when or why or for whom, and the details of the story are not confirmed independently by other sources, then I see no reason to accept the story as historical. That doesn't mean it isn't historical -- it might be, but we cannot know. (It's like my maths teacher telling me he failed me for getting a right answer when my method of arriving at it was fallacious. My right answer was just luck. So if new evidence turns up to prove John the Baptist was historical etc then fine -- but that doesn't mean I am wrong to have my doubts till then.)

On the other hand, if I can see that there are strong literary and theological reasons for creating a John the Baptist figure, then it is reasonable to conclude that John the Baptist is a literary and theological creation.

[outhouse]

Fair enough. I respect a well thought out very honest direct answer.

Thank you for your opinion.

[oleg]

I would have loved to display numerous unrelated sources about John the Baptizer. There is an earliest source written in Aramaic that includes verses in the Gospel of John. There are thus comparative four verses all somewhat alike. More commonly we see the three Synoptics sort of similar, going back to a common Aramaic source.

Earliest source in Aramaic ?
This? http://www.thearamaicscriptures.com/

The Khaburis Codex is the complete Peshitta New Testament containing 22 books

This codex dates from the medieval era. What do you mean by "earliest source"? The oldest extant copy of the Peshitta, so far as I am aware, is not earlier than Codex Alexandrinus, or Codex Vaticanus, for example. The sixth century Codex Fuldensis containing the earliest known version of the Diatessaron, is written in Latin, not Syriac.

Some members of this forum confound mythicism and legend.

Jesus is a mythical character. John the Baptist, may be a legendary, fictional character, or he may have been a genuine historical figure, the data is inconclusive. However, John the Baptist, so far as I am aware, was never associated, in any text I have read, with supernatural conduct. No one has written, for example, that JtB raised the dead, cured blindness by spittle, eliminated epilepsy by hand waving, or walked on water. The role of bathing to enhance cleanliness is well known in ancient and contemporary Judaism.

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2456-baptism

Text praising a Jewish leader who promoted the health benefits of bathing and cleanliness, has nothing to do with "mythicism". It is a legend, not a myth, that Adam's submission to the forum, this thread, claiming historical evidence for the existence of John the Baptist as an historical rather than a fictional character, represents a scholarly clarification of JtB's status. Paraphrasing Adam, I would love to see some links to ancient manuscripts supporting the title of his thread.

[Adam]

Thank you for your submission, Oleg.
You have a legitimate point of view, even though we are at almost opposites. You recognize that the lack of attriibutions of miracles to John the Baptizer greatly diminish the odds of flat-out unhistoricity to JtB.
I had planned to respond in advance to your last paragraph, fair request as it is. However the scholarly apparatus available to me is not up to the job. Reuben Swenson's 1975 Horizontal Line Synopsis of the Gospels chose the most available translation (the RSV2) instead of the most appropriate (a literal like Young's or the Concordant, both uncomfortable wooden). I am awaiting the arrival of my order for the English Standard Version, but suspect it will either be unsuitable or too cumbersome to work with (in conjunction as I hope with Swenson's tome).