Steven DiMattei: Case Against Mythicists

[Blood]

Steven,

Do I have this syllogism correct?

1) Mythicists have a "flawed methodology," are "untrained in ancient literature," and these things combined "reek of childish and sloppy methodology and assumptions."

2) Richard Carrier is a Mythicist.

3) Therefore, Richard Carrier has a "flawed methodology," is "untrained in ancient literature," and these things combined "reek of [Carrier's] childish and sloppy methodology and assumptions."

[Blood]

I would largely disagree. Perhaps we should define "biblical scholar." I use the term to describe someone engaged in historical methodologies or textual criticism. Most so-called biblical scholars are theologians. Apologists are certainly not biblical scholars. Second, Livy? Really, I recall reading his Histories, the beginning, in grad school. Telological interpretive frameworks everywhere. And yes this is the point, understanding the gospels as similar to (albeit they are also a radical departure from) "history" writing as it was practiced by Livy, Plutarch, Josephus... And the biblical scholar I know of, and myself included in this assessment, concur that the gospels are, I'll out do you here, 96% ahistorical! But what does this have to do, IF ANYTHING, with mounting arguments for or against the historicity of Jesus?

A radical departure from history writing is not the same as history writing. It's a completely different genre actually. I don't understand why that is so controversial to you.

Do you believe Esther, Ruth, Judith, Daniel, Tobit, Tobias et al. were historical figures?

I could care less about the question. And now, granted the gospels difference to historiography, it is written in the conventions of ancient historiography... I believe. I'm not read up on this. But Luke even comes out and says so much. Does that means its historical? I never said so much.

There is absolutely no corroboration between the genre and method of a "gospel" and any other previous ancient historiographical genre or method. Bible scholars tell us as much when they assure us that the gospels are sui generis, without peer or precedent. They do not map to any known previous historical writing from the Greco-Roman world. However, they do map quite well to the genre of narrative theology, or as I call it, pseudo-history. This includes not only canonical-but-fictional books like Daniel, but extra-Biblical texts such as Philo's Life of Moses.

[ficino]

Again, I think the real question, and more interesting one is: how and why did the Jesus of the gospels get created. Further.... and this is one of the core things to the religious experience, there doesn't have to have been any historical Jesus for Christianity to exist, since Christianity is built on an invented religious symbol, Jesus Christ. There's the interesting topic: the Jesus of Christin faith never existed historically!! This I believe is what the mythicists set themselves out to prove, which I'm all on board, but they erroneously confuse this with claims that Jesus---whom we know nothing about---never existed.

Tell me, just where did you find this Jesus, "who we know nothing about" - this Jesus, who is not the "invented religious symbol, Jesus Christ" ?

If you can't tell us anything about this Jesus - then please drop all the negative vibes towards the ahistoric/mythicist perspective.

A Jesus figure without that gospel story is useless for theology - and useless for history. Fine, great for arguments for plausibility, for giving NT scholars their pay-check, and for selling books - but for those seeking to understand early christian origins a nobody Jesus is, likewise, useless.

Hello Steven, thanks for your considered remarks above.

Maryhelena said better what I was getting at in my last question. Since I think we're agreed that the gospels are already either interpretations or even largely inventions, then it is problematic to try to press out historical nuggets about Jesus from them. This is the drift of the criticism of the "criterion of embarrassment" made by Rafael Rodriguez in Jesus, criteria, and the demise of authenticity / edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne (London ; New York : T&T Clark, [2012]), but I think this criticism could apply to the whole enterprise of justifying claims about the real guy, Jesus. Since our evidence even for his itinerant preaching, his collection of followers, his getting into trouble with the authorities, his crucifixion, all boils down to the gospels -which we've agreed are largely forms of invention for certain purposes-- then, IF we strip away the gospel representations, we're left talking about a guy to whom we can safely attribute almost no qualities. What would be the consequences, for example, if there was no identifiable community of Nazareth until after the Revolt?

I could have added re Douglas Walton on burden of proof: in his seminal article, "Burden of Proof" (Argumentation 1988) he gives the example of Michael, accused of being a spy. The FBI conducts a detailed investigation and comes up with nothing to support the charge. Walton thinks it a plausible conclusion that Michael is not a spy, though not an absolutely certain one. We can do the thought experiment to imagine, instead of a contemporary FBI, a historian 50 or 100 yrs later making a strong case that Michael was unjustly accused, exonerating him. This sort of work entails a move from "absence of evidence" to a plausible negative assertion. The argument might even be made stronger if the historian could show that the charges furthered someone else's purposes. Obviously, the evidence presumed for this case goes way beyond what there is for claims for or against a real Jesus in the first century, but the logic seems similar.

[ficino]

1. that our earliest manuscript of Tacitus is from the 12th century

Irrelevant. Plenty of manuscripts are only found in medieval times. That's pretty normal transmission.

2. no classical writer knew anything of christians relating to the fire
3. that the first ancient writer who wrote about a persecution of christians regarding the Neronian fire was the christian chronicler Sulpicius Severus

Except Tacitus. To claim otherwise is a circular argument. You can't a priori deny Tacitus and then say that no one mentions the incident. Moreoever, Suetonius mentions Christian persecution under Nero. It's not hard to figure out that Tacitus was drawing his own conclusions, which the ancient historians did quite often. Fire in Rome started by Nero? Check. Christian persecution under Nero? Double check. Ergo, Tacitus mused, Nero probably accused the Christians to get rid of the accusation that he himself started the fire. It's bait and switch to claim silence surrounding the Neronian persecution (as spin implied by #4) in saying that no one says that Christians were persecuted by Nero by stating that no one after Tacitus until Sulpicius connects it to the fire. spin bungled that one up.

Moreover, there's no motivation for Christians to write such scathing commentary about themselves, accusing themselves of belonging to an destructive superstition (exitiablilis superstitio), being terrible people who hate humanity (odio humani generis) coming from Judaea, that holy place in the time of Sulpicius, but clearly the source of evil (and thus, by extension, the source of a depraved guy named Jesus) who start fires. By contrast, Josephus' Testimonium Flavianum, which clearly has been tampered, says nothing evil about Jesus or Christians at all.

Cui bono? This makes Nero look good (since he was in Antium, and could not have started the fire) and Christians bad.

Suffice it to say, I'm skeptical that this is an interpolation or has been majorly tampered.

Hey Chris, have you had a chance to read the discussion of Tacitus that took over the "when was the term christians first used" thread for a while?

viewtopic.php?p=4977#p4977

If you're interested, I'd invite you to go through that discussion and then reply over there. You may want to revise your view that rejection of the TT is "a priori". You may also want to develop your suggestion that Tacitus' account makes Nero look good. Unless I misunderstand your "Cui bono?" expl. above. Tacitus pretty clearly is making Nero look bad throughout.

[stevencarrwork]

Is Srd44 going to use the Popeye approach to historicity?

1) Popeye was based on a real historical person
2) Therefore, Popeye existed.
3) Therefore, mythicists are methodologically ignorant, full of 'childish and sloppy assumptions'.

Case in point. My conversation with you ended, before it ever started. I really can't tolerate ignorance, poor reading skills, and lack of critical insight. Your words reflect more you than anything I ever said, thought, or implied.

So somebody comes along, chides people in his very opening post for 'childish and sloppy assumptions' and then says he can't tolerate such people.

And then he employs the Popeye definition of historicity.

I think we have a troll among us

[stevencarrwork]

1) The first issue is acknowledging the flawed METHODOLOGY employed by Mythicists. For example, if it is the the case that the existence of a historical 1st c. Jew from Galilee rests on no literary evidence of this man in the time period he existed, no literary remains produced by himself, and no mention of him by any historian, etc., (which by the way would entail 98% of the people living then, see next paragraph) then the mythicists USE EXACTLY THE SAME METHODOLOGY in arguing for the non-existence of Jesus --- i.e., there is both no evidence of his existence NOR of his non-existence! If you're going to attack a position (the historicity of Joshua the Jew) then you cannot argue against it NOR can you argue its opposite using the same problematic methodology --- i.e., the non-evidence of existence or non-existence.

I see we have repeated once more the claim that Paul is silent about a crucified criminal.

Paul is not.

He tell us exactly what he thinks of people killed by the governing authorities in Romans 13.

Basically, people crucified by the Romans got what they deserved, They were rebels, killed by God's agents, agents who did not bear the sword for no reason, and who held no terror for the innocent.

Does this even begin to sound like Paul thought the Romans had crucified the Son of God?

How did God's agents kill the Son of God?

[Tenorikuma]

Thank you for the response, Dr. DiMattei.

Who said anything about "belief" "heavenly father" --- if this is the general line taking by mythicists then aren't they blurring 2 questions together, which I addressed in #3? Whether Jesus existed has nothing to do with how he was believed by later groups, and/or their theological claims about him. Aren't mythicists blurring the distinction between did Joshua a Galilean Jew exist of did Jesus Christ God all mighty exist.

It's relevant because belief in a heavenly Jesus is the only thing we have evidence for. That seems to be the starting point for all Jesus theories. The historicist position assumes that the theological Jesus of the Bible was directly inspired by a specific, non-magical human individual who lived and died in the first century, and about whom no reliable biographical data was ever recorded. That's certainly not impossible, but it's not the only conceivable theory that explains the beliefs of Christians either.

But more to the point, what I'm interested in is WHAT ARE THE METHODOLOGICAL CRITERIA WE WOULD USE TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION of Jesus' existence or non-existence?

I'm very interested to hear more about your methodological criteria. First, though, I think a key question needs to be answered. I assume that as a scholar of the historical Jesus, you are familiar with Sources of the Jesus Tradition, edited by R. Joseph Hoffman. How would you answer the fundamental question posed by Ronald A. Lindsay in his chapter, "Assessing the Evidence: Philosophical and Legal Perspectives"?

If you are not familiar with this chapter, here is an excerpt that summarizes the question:

What set of facts must be true before we are prepared to give assent to the claim "Jesus never existed," or give assent to the claim "Jesus existed"? Permit me to suggest that arriving at a consensus on the key set of facts relevant to such claims is an indispensable part of any investigation of the historicity of Jesus. Concluding that some isolated assertions in the Gospels or Epistles are likely true, or likely false, will not help us in addressing the fundamental question. Do not confuse the trees with the forest. Moreover, arriving at this consensus fairly early in the process is important if an investigation is to achieve any credibility. Determining at the end of my inquiry into the historical evidence that certain facts are required to support the claim that Jesus existed risks branding the investigation as disingenuous, one designed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion.

[Chris Weimer]

Hey Chris, have you had a chance to read the discussion of Tacitus that took over the "when was the term christians first used" thread for a while?

viewtopic.php?p=4977#p4977

If you're interested, I'd invite you to go through that discussion and then reply over there. You may want to revise your view that rejection of the TT is "a priori". You may also want to develop your suggestion that Tacitus' account makes Nero look good. Unless I misunderstand your "Cui bono?" expl. above. Tacitus pretty clearly is making Nero look bad throughout.

Yes, and more! I was arguing with spin over this 10 years ago. "Good" is a poor choice of words, but I meant it as a comparison to the earlier stories, upon which Tacitus remarks, which blamed Nero. Tacitus here doesn't blame Nero. Why would a Christian editor want to keep that there, if we're playing fast and loose with criteria for interpolation. spin's reading is a poor, unsubstantiated, and "from the gut" reading.

Even giving the parallel passage with Sulpicius Severus up (which reads as a witness), it doesn't affect the Pontius Pilate passage at all, and the correlation with Suetonius is stronger still. Point to me, I suppose, the smoking gun?

[outhouse]

Paul persecuted, and he himself was persecuted.

Of course, Paul gives no indication whatever that he persecuted people while Jesus was alive. Why didn't Paul persecute Jesus? Hadn't he heard of him until he was dead?

Because Jesus had no fame at all until he was martyred at Passover.

The mythology started and grew after his death.

Paul only persecuted his own kind, Hellenistic Proselytes to Judaism and Gentiles. The movement failed in Judaism.

[srd44]

Again, I think the real question, and more interesting one is: how and why did the Jesus of the gospels get created. Further.... and this is one of the core things to the religious experience, there doesn't have to have been any historical Jesus for Christianity to exist, since Christianity is built on an invented religious symbol, Jesus Christ. There's the interesting topic: the Jesus of Christin faith never existed historically!! This I believe is what the mythicists set themselves out to prove, which I'm all on board, but they erroneously confuse this with claims that Jesus---whom we know nothing about---never existed.

Tell me, just where did you find this Jesus, "who we know nothing about" - this Jesus, who is not the "invented religious symbol, Jesus Christ" ?

If you can't tell us anything about this Jesus - then please drop all the negative vibes towards the ahistoric/mythicist perspective.

Again, I think you're conflating 2 separate issues. Historians can't tell you anything about 99.9% of the individuals that existed in antiquity. And "negative vibes" ??? I'm simply stating that one cannot argue for the non-exitence of ancient individual based on NO EVIDENCE or LACK of EVIDENCE for their existence. You seem to want hard answers. Well, there are none.

A Jesus figure without that gospel story is useless for theology - and useless for history.

Indeed, but history, one could argue, is not built on objective individuals, its built by the interpretations of those individuals by later generations. All that history has left us is the Jesus of the gospels, of the scholars, of billions of Christians. If this is not an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus, this in itself does not invalidate Jesus' existence. Again, the mythicists offer no EVIDENCE for such claims. And frankly they're absurd, since again applying the same methodology 99.9% of the past would also have to be non-existent.

Fine, great for arguments for plausibility, for giving NT scholars their pay-check, and for selling books - but for those seeking to understand early christian origins a nobody Jesus is, likewise, useless.

Wrong, a "nobody Jesus" i.e., a non-historically accurate portrait of Jesus has everything to do with early Christianity. You seem to assume there is no subjective interpretive or mis-interpretive process in forming history of traditions.