The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

[outhouse]

The belief that John the Baptist existed is of no use to determine whether or not there was an actual person called Jesus of Nazareth. In addition, Christian writings declare Jesus of Nazareth was the resurrected son of God.

People in the time of Pilate [even today] believed that mythological figures like Jesus were real.

We don't care how little you know on this topic.

The Emperor was also called the "son of god" by the same Hellenist that turned unto Christians. So your point is non sequitur and not even relevant.

[Charles Wilson]

The authors were Koine speaking Roman citizens who did not want to be identified as rebellious Jews. So you do see the hiding of this fact in text covered up with spiritual rhetoric.

Notice John 11: 51. The HighPriest is hopelessly corrupt and the entire cult is about to be swept away and yet, BECAUSE he was H P "...he prophsied that Jesus should die for the people..."

[DCHindley]

The authors were Koine speaking Roman citizens who did not want to be identified as rebellious Jews. So you do see the hiding of this fact in text covered up with spiritual rhetoric.

Notice John 11: 51. The HighPriest is hopelessly corrupt and the entire cult is about to be swept away and yet, BECAUSE he was H P "...he prophsied that Jesus should die for the people..."

I would quibble with the statement that the "authors [of the canonical Gospels] were Roman citizens." It was not until around the 3rd century that every free person was granted universal Roman citizenship. Some town and city based Christians might have had city or colony citizenship if they owned or controlled property, but I suspect that most Christians were of the retainer class, a mixture of slaves, freedmen and a few free in their own legal right, clients whose bread and butter depended on good relations with patrons of the landowning class, who were citizens of Greek cities, or Roman citizens in Italy and Roman colonies in Greece and Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa.

As for the HP being "hopelessly corrupt," I think that is something to be proved rather than assumed. The aphorism "It's better for one person to die [as an example/deterrent to others of action] than the whole nation to perish [from the result of his agitations]" was IMHO a commonplace in the Greco-Roman equivalent of a banana republic run by Colonels.

My humble opinion is that many Judeans thought that this highest of the chief priests could occasionally, and involuntarily, utter prophesies by the agency of the Spirit of God. Romans did not think this unlikely when compared to Greco-Roman use of oracles uttered by high priests/priestesses channeling their god, almost against their will. Whether the HP actually said what is attributed to him is questionable, as this supposed prophesy is nowhere, to my feeble knowledge, confirmed by statements from sources independent of them.

DCH

[Charles Wilson]

Well stated, as usual, DCH.

With a substantial amount of hatred of the Jews in GJohn, part of the analysis is whether the actors here are reflecting actions at the orders of others (See: Any Police Drama interrogation) or whether they reflect the intentions of others (Would the HP WANT the Heat to beat up the Creeps).

John 18: 22 - 23 (RSV):

[22] When he had said this, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, "Is that how you answer the high priest?"
[23] Jesus answered him, "If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?"

Did Jesus get struck "properly" by one of the "officers" or was this an out-of-control moment? He wasn't struck by the HP. It can be quite nuanced. See Maccoby on how the H Priest Apparatus changed from book to book. You are right to demand proof.

Romans did not think this unlikely when compared to Greco-Roman use of oracles uttered by high priests/priestesses channeling their god, almost against their will.

Yes! We are here straddling Kant and Hegel. If I cannot get to das Noumena, all I have is Phenomena. However (To the OP...) if all I can get to is the filtered Roman/Latin/Greek culture, how do I know that there was a really, real person named Jesus, dba Son-of-God? You cannot get there and that is why there was a fierce war between the Hellenists in Jerusalem and those in the countryside with ummm...other agendas. See also Alexander Jannaeus and the entrenched War with the Pharisees.

outhouse is correct here.

Whether the HP actually said what is attributed to him is questionable, as this supposed prophesy is nowhere, to my feeble knowledge, confirmed by statements from sources independent of them.

Yes!, again and to the very Point. Nicodemus, "...a ruler of the Jews" doesn't have his speech verified either. Your considerable knowledge serves you well. Is the HP setting up the re-instatement of Human Sacrifice? On the face of it. Apologetix demands books be written to show that this is not so yet, there it is. The Roman "Devotio" writ large - "...so that the people may be saved".

Which is why this is all of a Set Piece. "Jesus" was a Construct, written around...well, you know. Peter was supposedly crucified upside-down, showing that his Story was to be inverted for the Glory of Rome.

Which leaves John in these nearby Posts of this Thread. Outhouse believes John to have been Historical and I might even go that far with him, realizing that this all "just literature". Slaughterhouse Five was just literature and I can barely read it - though I often do - because the Dresden Firebombing was True. Was Dresden Transvalued? Yes. If that could be Transvalued, what of a Story of certain Priests? Could that Story have been Transvalued? The question answers itself. Why?

Romans did not think this unlikely when compared to Greco-Roman use of oracles uttered by high priests/priestesses channeling their god.

[neilgodfrey]

Quite apart from the evidence for Philostratus's sources being fabricated, imagine how different the discussion over the historicity of Jesus would be if we had even a late source claiming to be relying upon identifiable written reports of eyewitnesses throughout his biography!

Not so very different. Unlike with Apollonius of Tyana, we have the alleged "written reports of eyewitnesses" in the form of the Gospels of Matthew and John. I don't suppose the haze of uncertainty over the exact form of Philostratus's sources should be a boon for the man of Tyana, relatively, over the man of Nazareth.

"Alleged 'written reports of eyewitnesses' is exactly what we don't have in the gospels of Matthew or John. John's 'beloved disciple' is anonymous, not an identifier. This anonymous "source" is a source for explicitly tied to miracles. There is no comparison with "I am using the writings of so-and-so who did such-and-such with the person we are writing about" -- which is almost standard for ancient historical works. There is no comparison to

There was a man, Damis, by no means stupid, who formerly dwelt in the ancient city of Nineveh. He resorted to Apollonius in order to study wisdom, and having shared, by his own account, his wanderings abroad, wrote an account of them.note And he records his opinions and discourses and all his prophecies. And a certain kinsmen of Damis drew the attention of the empress Julia note to the documents containing these documents hitherto unknown.

If we had anything comparable to that statement in the gospels we would be having a very different kind of debate about the historicity of Jesus.

If our earliest evidence for Jesus were in fact as straightforward and relatively consistent as we have for Hillel I can imagine the debate would be of a different nature than it is today.

The "earliest evidence" for Hillel could also be more consistent because it simply doesn't exist anymore. In the chronological place where in the case of Jesus we usually put things like Paul's letters, for Hillel we have a gaping chasm of nothing.

What we don't have we don't have. We can't argue a case by speculating the existence of lost evidence.

We might also have more consistent evidence for Jesus if we had the diaries of his disciples that may have been lost.

Do you mean that "we" accept these persons as having a certain historical existence?

No. I didn't mean for my comment to force a conclusion. If anything, I mean that historians who touch upon these subjects do not generally show any great angst regarding their status as historical persons, despite the epistemological gap to having true certainty.

There is a reason for not showing any great angst. Historicity is simply not a major question. It makes no difference to very much at all if Hillel or Apollonius did not exist. Historians are often lazy -- historians themselves say that -- and simply take stuff (face-value accounts) for granted without much thought. They are spoiled by the abundance of evidence for modern times -- we don't need to check the archives every time we want to write about Bismarck to be sure he really existed -- that too many of them do not stop to ask the deeper questions on their methods.

That doesn't mean their methods are justified. They are regularly challenged. That there have not been serious and public challenges in the case of Apollonius is unsurprising. Who cares. But one will see the facing up to the lack of evidence for such persons addressed in the studies that do exist on them. Remember Demonax. Look at the serious studies on Hillel and Apollonius and the legendary foundations, the complete lack of certain information, that we have about these figures is immediately clear. It is no big deal. Jesus is the exception. You can't make explicit the logical conclusions of many studies about sources of the gospels without getting into hot water.

Do we do "histories" of any of those as founders of religious cults?

For Apollonius and Hillel, in some sense (ignoring a lot of possible nit-picking and, particularly, discounting any interpretation of your phrase "founders of religious cults" that would be inconsistent with Apollonius or Hillel) my eight ball is saying that the answer is "yes".

There's relatively little information on Apsethus the Libyan. You could substitute Pythagoras there if you want.

Forget my "founders of religious cults" phrase if that is problematic. I wrote in previous comments detailed arguments about the situation with Apollonius and Hillel.

As for Pythagoras, we do have serious evidence for his existence.

[neilgodfrey]

to Neil,

None of the above quotations are evidence for either Paul or Mark being in any way the least embarrassed by the crucifixion. If they were embarrassed by those quotes they would have suppressed them -- as biblical scholars continue to argue about the way subsequent evangelists suppressed details about the story of John the Baptist until finally John removes the baptism altogether. Mark demonstrates no embarrassment -- the later evangelists are embarrassed by Mark's lack of embarrassment.

Hebrews speaks of despising the shame. That's not embarrassment. That's glorying in the death of a classical hero, the one who is unjustly rejected and punished, like Socrates, or Plato's wise man who sees what's outside the cave.

Who reads the crucifixion scene in Mark and feels inclined to hide what they have just read, or deny it, or put it out of mind, because they are so darn embarrassed that they just read about Jesus being crucified. Nobody. The tale is a glorification of the "shame" -- that is the way of salvation, after all.

I think you are twisting the evidence. The Crucifixion being an apparent (at first look) embarrassment and shameful event not only appears first in Paul's epistles & Hebrews & gMark, but also much later in Octavius of Minucius Felix (Ch XXIX).
The fact that Paul & 'Hebrews" & gMark glorified that Crucifixion and brought to it a magnificent salvatic meaning does not cancel what underlays below all these goody speculations.

Twisting the evidence?

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. - Galatians 6:14

For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. -- 1 Corinthians 2:2

There is a difference between "offence" and "embarrassment". They have different meanings and it is wrong to conflate them.

[neilgodfrey]

We don't need to use the lowest standards of historical research as the base line for investigating Christian origins. Rather, I like to think we are more impressed by the most serious and professional of historians and how they work.

We have had plenty of historians who don't question their sources but naively take them at face value and write hagiographies of their heroes. One example is an old article by Judah Goldin who wrote in the Journal of Religion:

A full-length portrait of Hillel, then, is altogether out of the question. On the other hand, the several unmistakable features of his personality and contribution are so luminous that the essential significance of the man survives distinctly. When we are through with a review of our sources, we shall still be unable to say whether Hillel was tall or short. But of his spiritual stature there will be no doubt: for piety, ethical zeal, love of learning, and sensitivity to social welfare —what I would like to call the “constituent ideals of the civilized mind”— were the recurring motifs of his life.

In other words, we have no sure evidence but we do have lots of inspiring legends and late stories that we cannot help but admire, so here we go ....

We can do better than that, surely.

If we are going to be serious about debating Christian origins and addressing the question of the evidence we have for the historicity of Jesus we need to be serious about historical methods and not just fall in with the lowest common denominators in the field. Biblical scholars all too rarely demonstrate any knowledge of how historical research is done in history departments -- except when they do point to the LCDs.

It is that low bar that has invited challenges to the status quo in the first place.

So we have outsiders having historically pointed out what too many of them are too often overlooking:

The best historical narratives will always preference primary documents..... An inscription of the time of Pericles prevails over a sentence of Thucydides. A surviving letter from Claudius cancels a page of Suetonius.

....

.... a solid induction drawn from a an authentic Christian oracle, like the Apocalypse, a letter from Paul duly criticized, a document validated by the editor of the Acts must prevail over any sacred narrative. If we wish to undertake the primitive history of Christianity, we have to start with the documents, and not by the narrative of the Gospels and the Acts. Constructed thus, this history will have great gaps. But what it will hold will be firm.

The above is a kind of selected translation from the following by Couchoud in his "Apocalypse":

Aux récits historiques les meilleurs seront toujours préférés les documents directs. Si particulier, si incomplet que soit un document, s’il est bien localisé et suffisamment daté, l’historien d’aujourd’hui en tire ses plus sûres inférences. Une inscription du temps de Périclès l’emporte sur une phrase de Thucydide. Une lettre conservée de Claude annule une page de Suétone.

Combien plus forte est l’application de cette règle à l’histoire des religions! C’est là surtout que le récit à forme historique peut naître par généra- tion spontanée et grandir par de merveilleuses proliférations. . . .

En bonne règle une solide induction tirée d’un oracle chrétien authentique, comme l’Apocalypse, d’une lettre de Paul dûment critiquée, d’un document valable transmis par le rédacteur des. Actes doit l’emporter sur toute narration sacrée. Si l’on veut entreprendre l’histoire primitive du christianisme, il faut commencer par les documents, et non par le récit des Evangiles et des Actes. Construite ainsi, cette histoire aura de grandes lacunes. Mais ce qu’elle tiendra sera ferme. Procéder comme on a fait pour restituer l’histoire primitive de Rome, par-dessous le récit légendaire de Tite-Live.

If we see historians relying upon little more than a superficial criticism of the narratives in the sources -- and many do -- we don't have to say, Ah, so that's how historians work, so it's okay for us to do that too when looking at the history of Christian origins. That's what so many biblical scholars do. They don't question the fundamental outline of the Gospels-Acts narrative. That is a given.

Demonax, Apollonius, Hillel -- all of these are open to doubt historically. By the same standards so is Jesus. And it's not only a few crackpot online nobody mythicists who think so.

[neilgodfrey]

I think you are twisting the evidence.

If Paul thought that crucifixion of a messiah was an embarrassment because Jews thought a messiah could never be crucified then we would expect Paul to make arguments at some point addressing that concern. He doesn't. He nowhere attempts to address a belief that a messiah could not possibly be crucified. But he does address the controversy over his teaching that the crucifixion of the messiah meant an end to the law for salvation for gentiles. That's where the offence was.

[Peter Kirby]

Demonax, Apollonius, Hillel -- all of these are open to doubt historically. By the same standards so is Jesus.

I agree with this.

[outhouse]

I would quibble with the statement that the "authors [of the canonical Gospels] were Roman citizens." It was not until around the 3rd century that every free person was granted universal Roman citizenship. Some town and city based Christians might have had city or colony citizenship if they owned or controlled property, but I suspect that most Christians were of the retainer class, a mixture of slaves, freedmen and a few free in their own legal right, clients whose bread and butter depended on good relations with patrons of the landowning class, who were citizens of Greek cities, or Roman citizens in Italy and Roman colonies in Greece and Asia Minor, Syria and North Africa.



DCH

Well we know the text are a product of the Diaspora that came out wealthy enough communities to have a scribe. Some of the authors/compilers were pretty well educated.

I would agree most Christian fit your description.