Why I don't see myself as a Christ Mythicist

[MrMacSon]

The letters of Paul serve as evidence. The Pastoral Epistles serve as evidence. Acts serves as evidence. Josephus serves as evidence.

The only evidence they serve as is (i) theology; & (ii) literary genres.

Not proof ... not even evidence of miracles

reference to miracles = strawman red-herring fallacies.

but certainly sufficient evidence to establish an historical Jesus as an example of inference to the best explanation.

= circularity. That is a 'begs-the-question' fallacy.

[Jax]

But when you tunnel down, it all seems to come to Paul.
.

lol. What makes you think I tunnel down like that?

• ie. How dare you accuse me of tunnelling-down that rabbit-hole

Joking aside, I think 'tunnelling-down' is a huge problem in this field: the problem.

Many people can't see the forest for the trees; or the network for the tunnel they're stuck in; or whatever metaphor that applies.

OK. I'm game. What take do you have on this?

I'm new here so please be mindful of the fact that I simply don't know your views on this subject.

Thanks

Jax

[MrMacSon]

Mythicism has all the qualities of a underwhelming mantra chanted with unfounded confidence and unseemly belligerence.

You're going to have to do better than supercilious, pious, sanctimonious assertions like that ...

[MrMacSon]

OK. I'm game. What take do you have on this?

I'm new here so please be mindful of the fact that I simply don't know your views on this subject.

Thanks, Jax

Sure, I was just having a gentle joke about the implication I 'tunnel down' -

But when you tunnel down, it all seems to come to Paul.
.

Tunnelling down is fine, especially for those that know Greek etc, but I think it's also as important or necessary to look at the overall picture of how we go from a Judea & Jerusalem based Judaism to Christianity at, I think, a largely as-yet poorly-determined point eg. I think Origen was as much Jewish as he is said to be Christian.

Hence my 3-4 sects comment up-thread.

[neilgodfrey]

The letters of Paul serve as evidence. The Pastoral Epistles serve as evidence. Acts serves as evidence. Josephus serves as evidence.

Not proof ... not even evidence of miracles, but certainly sufficient evidence to establish an historical Jesus as an example of inference to the best explanation. Mythicism has all the qualities of a underwhelming mantra chanted with unfounded confidence and unseemly belligerence.

Evidence of what? How can anything "serve as evidence" if it lacks independent corroboration and if we cannot know its original form?

Josephus is only evidence for what a text dated over a generation after the supposed event says. By normative standards of historical research that is not evidence for anything that happened 60 years earlier.

[GakuseiDon]

The gospels are of unknown provenance, authorship and date. Moreover, their narratives have no independent support for historicity. They are accordingly worthless as evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Out of interest, are they also worthless as evidence for the non-historicity of Jesus? I.e. can a positive 'mythicist' case be supported using the Gospels and the letters of Paul?

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

Your point a) is bereft of any independently corroborated evidence for a historical Jesus. It is nothing but a hypothesis combined with a misuse of secondary sources.

Tacitus and Josephus offered independent non-Christian evidence about the past existence of Chrestus/Christus/Jesus called Christ. Therefore Paul's testimony is corroborated and certainly the gospels did not deny that.
Also, the Christians of Corinth were subjected to an understanding of a worldly Jesus, that Paul wanted them to forget: http://historical-jesus.info/20.html

Your point b) is again a reliance upon uncorroborated information.

Even if uncorroborated, that does not mean the information is all false. For example, a lot of events in Josephus' works are not corroborated by any other historians (that would include three main events during Pilate's rule, as in Ant. XVIII, 3.1-2 & 4.1). Shall we discard these events because of not corroborated?
Also, the front end of Antiquities is full of religious OT stuff which has been, for the most part, derided by critical analysis. Because of that, shall we consider Josephus totally unreliable when he described events into the Hellenistic & Hasmonean & Roman period prior to his lifetime (many of these events uncorroborated)?
That does not mean we should accept everything he wrote, but only after studying critically every parts of his writing, using all relevant sources available (which, as I recall, one of your historian did about Titus and the destruction of the Temple), including what we know about the author through his own writings (because that's pretty well the only way to know about him).

No historian worth his or her salt would employ such a method with sources like that.

You are right. With sources like that (concerning the beginning of Christianity), an investigator (the kind who solves cold cases), with a huge lot of time, is much better than your kind of historians who want to play safe and avoid to go through religious muck in order to find valid information and anyway don't have time to do that.

Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

The gospels are of unknown provenance, authorship and date. Moreover, their narratives have no independent support for historicity. They are accordingly worthless as evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Out of interest, are they also worthless as evidence for the non-historicity of Jesus? I.e. can a positive 'mythicist' case be supported using the Gospels and the letters of Paul?

The question does not arise. As I said, clearly I thought, there may have been a historical figure of Jesus behind them but that's beside the point because we can know nothing about him.

I think many scholars (certainly the more critical ones) see the gospel Jesus as "mythical" or certainly theological. He is obviously literary -- that's almost a tautology! That's the only Jesus we have in the gospels. We have no other. Work with what we have. This has nothing to do with whether Jesus was historical or mythical. In the gospels he is evidently a literary character and we can do no better than work with that Jesus and attempt to understand the gospel origins and character --- and the origins and character of that literary Jesus.

Anything else is simply chasing questions that are not historical in nature. The Pentateuch is not evidence of a mythical Moses or Balaam's ass. Nor is 1 Kings evidence of a mythical Solomon or Elijah. The question simply does not arise in critical scholarship.

[neilgodfrey]

to Neil,

Your point a) is bereft of any independently corroborated evidence for a historical Jesus. It is nothing but a hypothesis combined with a misuse of secondary sources.

Tacitus and Josephus offered independent non-Christian evidence about the past existence of Chrestus/Christus/Jesus called Christ.

No, they can't. T and J are late secondary sources that cannot corroborate anything from the early first century. The best they can do is inform us what T and J believed in their day. But of course there are also problematic issues with the authenticity even of that secondary evidence so they are even less useful than secondary evidence usually is for such inquiries.

Also, the Christians of Corinth were subjected to an understanding of a worldly Jesus, that Paul wanted them to forget: http://historical-jesus.info/20.html

All we have is a document that says, in your words, that its author purports to say that he does not want readers to have a "worldly understanding of Jesus". I cannot see how that is evidence for a historical Jesus.

Even if uncorroborated, that does not mean the information is all false. For example, a lot of events in Josephus' works are not corroborated by any other historians (that would include three main events during Pilate's rule, as in Ant. XVIII, 3.1-2 & 4.1). Shall we discard these events because of not corroborated?
Also, the front end of Antiquities is full of religious OT stuff which has been, for the most part, derided by critical analysis. Because of that, shall we consider Josephus totally unreliable when he described events into the Hellenistic & Hasmonean & Roman period prior to his lifetime (many of these events uncorroborated)?
That does not mean we should accept everything he wrote, but only after studying critically every parts of his writing, using all relevant sources available (which, as I recall, one of your historian did about Titus and the destruction of the Temple), including what we know about the author through his own writings (because that's pretty well the only way to know about him).

I never said uncorroborated information is false. I said that it is uncorroborated. That means we are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to knowing if it is reliable or not.

We cannot be confident of anything a single, uncorroborated source says. True. Yes, that means we cannot simply swallow much of Josephus naively. That means that we are limited in the sorts of things we can "know for a fact" in ancient history, true.

If you are referring to Steve Mason, then I can say that he does not fall into the trap that you seem to think he must by the principles I am stating. I suggest you read his book if you think otherwise.

With sources like that (concerning the beginning of Christianity), an investigator (the kind who solves cold cases), with a huge lot of time, are much better than your kind of historians who want to play safe and avoid to go through religious muck in order to find valid information and anyway don't have time to do that.

You are describing the fallacious "nugget" theory of historical method. It's lots of fun. Really stimulates the imagination. Opens up many avenues for intellectual creativity. And as we see in your comment it even gives a sense of superiority to its practitioners. But it's simply all built on fallacious methods. It only produces muck that has been reshaped into something more pleasing to its author.

[GakuseiDon]

The gospels are of unknown provenance, authorship and date. Moreover, their narratives have no independent support for historicity. They are accordingly worthless as evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Out of interest, are they also worthless as evidence for the non-historicity of Jesus? I.e. can a positive 'mythicist' case be supported using the Gospels and the letters of Paul?

The question does not arise. As I said, clearly I thought, there may have been a historical figure of Jesus behind them but that's beside the point because we can know nothing about him.

I agree. I've often said that if there was a historical Jesus, then he might as well not existed, since we can know very little about him.

But that doesn't stop us from doing reconstructions, either pro-historicity or pro-mythicism. The issue is around the word 'know', implying 'certainty'; this is reflected in whether a logical argument can be considered 'valid' or 'sound'.

A 'valid' argument is one where the conclusion follows from the premises. A 'sound' argument is when were the conclusion follows from the premises AND the premises have been established as 'true'. To my mind, you are too quick to dismiss the premises of historicity arguments, because you don't consider the premises as being established as true. I respect that approach, but I also respect arguments that are based on premises even if they are assumed, as long as the assumptions are reasonable.

So when you say that the gospels are of unknown provenance, I say 'so what?' If a premise is that the Gospel of Mark was written by someone living in the 70s/80s CE, then we can examine arguments based on that premise. If more information comes in that disproves that premise, then any arguments based on that premise becomes invalid. This is how science works: not all premises are 'known' 100%, but arguments change as premises are established as more likely or not.

One thing I liked about Dr Carrier's "On the historicity of Jesus" is that he went through the premises underlining his argument in his 'Background knowledge' section. The historicist argument needs to do the same. I think the historicist argument's premises do tend to be assumed, but the assumptions are reasonable. They still need to be spelt out so the argument can be examined; but I think if they are spelt out, a valid argument for historicity exists.

I think many scholars (certainly the more critical ones) see the gospel Jesus as "mythical" or certainly theological. He is obviously literary -- that's almost a tautology! That's the only Jesus we have in the gospels. We have no other. Work with what we have. This has nothing to do with whether Jesus was historical or mythical. In the gospels he is evidently a literary character and we can do no better than work with that Jesus and attempt to understand the gospel origins and character --- and the origins and character of that literary Jesus.

What assumptions are reasonable to make about the Gospel of Mark, in your mind? Is it reasonable to assume that the Gospel of Mark was received as about an actual person? Is it reasonable to assume that the Gospel of Mark as written around the 70s or 80s CE, in your mind? What makes an assumption reasonable when it comes to the Gospel of Mark?