The Tide Turns

[Bertie]

I agree that disbelief in a historical Jesus is an idea gaining momentum. Unfortunately, this probably has more to do with the rise in atheism generally than awareness of the better arguments against the historical Jesus. Ask a typical Jesus-disbeliever why he doesn't think Jesus exited and you'll probably get —

• "Pagan Parallels": Mithras, Horas, Easter, virgin births, and all that.
• Invalid Arguments from Silence: All those people who "should have written about Jesus" even though hardly any of them should have written about non-supernatural Jesus.

There's also a lot of ignorance about basic facts of researching history, like "OMG, the earliest copy of such-and-such text is from the Middle Ages" (yeah, like just about every other surviving bit of ancient literature) and Dan Brown stuff like "OMG, Constantine made the canon at the Council of Nicea" (um, no, it was really mostly complete by the end of the 2nd Century) and on and on.

[Stephan Huller]

That's right. The unfortunate thing is that I remember talking with Price back in the 90s and we'd say how much it sucks that religious scholars dominate the field with their presuppositions. Now all that's happened is that the same people who complained about that old projecting of personal biases seem to be happy doing the same thing themselves and collectively in an ever growing assembly of non-believers.

The real question for me is the gap between 'Jesus wasn't a human being' which I think can be attested in the earliest sources and 'the gospel narrative was wholly mythical' which I think is impossible to prove and IMO smacks of an overt attempt to dismiss Christianity. There is no evidence whatsoever that Christians didn't think that the Passion narrative didn't happen or was entirely made up.

Whenever I mention this, the answer from mythicists is 'but angels don't exist so therefore it's a myth.' But there are people who claim that they met aliens on a certain day in a certain place. They didn't construct these lies or exaggerations as 'myths' which is the leap many of these people want to take.

[MrMacSon]

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The real question for me is the gap between 'Jesus wasn't a human being', which I think can be attested in the earliest sources, and 'the gospel narrative was wholly mythical', which I think is impossible to prove and IMO smacks of an overt attempt to dismiss Christianity. There is no evidence whatsoever that Christians didn't think that the Passion narrative didn't happen or was entirely made up.

Whenever I mention this, the answer from mythicists is 'but angels don't exist so therefore it's a myth.'

Given the ongoing tensions today among & within the three Abrahamic religions today, discerning their origins & genesis might help provide some clarity to those who participate in perpetuating or addressing those tensions, or those affected by them.

[MrMacSon]

.
... stuff like "OMG, Constantine made the canon at the Council of Nicea" (um, no, it was really mostly complete by the end of the 2nd Century) ..

What canon are you referring to?

The Catholic encyclopedia infers otherwise - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm

[Stephan Huller]

Oh give me a break. While the canon was more or less polished and refined in the fourth century, the building blocks are clearly already witnessed by Irenaeus - especially the concept of the fourfold gospel, the names of the four gospels, the names of the Pauline letters and the names of virtually every other document in the early Church.

[MrMacSon]

Despite what Irenaeus 'witnessed' becoming the building blocks, especially the 'canonical gospels, there were still lots of other groups focusing on other texts.

Against Heresies 3.11.7 acknowledges that many heterodox Christians used only one gospel, while 3.11.9 acknowledges that some used more than four. The success of Tatian's Diatessaron in about the same time period was indication that Irenaeus's fourfold Gospel was not broadly recognized.

[spin]

the Herakles saga lacks the historical anchor the gospels provide,

Just so we are all on the same page here, what gospel provided "historical anchor" are you talking about? Is it the fact that historical figures such as Tiberius are named, or that christian preserved classical sources refer to Jesus, or something else?

[Ulan]

the Herakles saga lacks the historical anchor the gospels provide,

Just so we are all on the same page here, what gospel provided "historical anchor" are you talking about? Is it the fact that historical figures such as Tiberius are named, or that christian preserved classical sources refer to Jesus, or something else?

Yes, I meant the naming of historical figures within the texts, which gives the texts the air of history, which of course doesn't mean that it is history, but gives you a rough pointer of where to start looking for clues.

However, now that I think about it, I'm not really sure whether the Herakles stories mention any clearly historical figures. It's been a while that I looked at them.

My main point in that post was that you can lead the task to prove the historicity of a man who was Jesus or his prototype ad absurdum by asking for proof that the supernatural God in heaven was his father. This is disingenuous and doesn't even match mainstream historicist models.

[GakuseiDon]

However, now that I think about it, I'm not really sure whether the Herakles stories mention any clearly historical figures. It's been a while that I looked at them.

IIRC, they do. The stories generally place Herakles just before the Troy war, and have him interacting with people of around that time.

[ficino]

To me someone who has an accredited PhD in history from a recognized university has the prerequisite for a newspaper to call her (or him) a historian.

what utter nonsense.

As far as I can tell, Paulkovich holds no academic appointment.

How sad, you are better than that, ficino.

Socrates: " ... For you apparently it makes a difference who the speaker is, and what country he comes from: you don't merely ask whether what he says is true or false."
Phaedrus: "I deserve your rebuke ... "
Plato, Phaedrus 275C (tr. Hackforth)

I deserve your rebuke, bcedaifu. I was partially speaking in the character of the person a blogger whom I do not name, who speaks of non-professionals with considerable skepticism. But I did not let on that I was playing around in this way.

On the other hand, as Tevye said ... I am trying to limit my focus these days to publications in refereed venues.