The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

[neilgodfrey]

Both arguments . . . they can't both be true.

That's why I presented both. I was being very humble and not presuming that my argument should replace Tim's.

[neilgodfrey]

Why not engage with the actual processes and methods deployed in those posts?

Why not follow plausibility? its exactly what is used during this time period to determine historicity.

Fiction authors follow plausibility. Only "biblical scholars" use plausibility as the criterion of historicity as far as I am aware.

[neilgodfrey]

Very early interpolations have to be argued for entirely on internal evidence

Why?

(It point is a secondary one to the method I am attempting to argue for, but it's still of special interest since it sounds like another one of those idiosyncratic rules biblical scholars make to enable them to get the sources they want and need.)

[Paul the Uncertain]

A few times in this thread there have been references to uncertainty management in the legal arena. The very title of the thread is "The best case ...," suggestive of an adversarial context, of which the legal case is usually one.

It is an interesting direction for uncertainty management to take seriously and to pursue. As with science (to name a broad academic category), the emphasis in legal cases is on how the "system" collectively arrives at useful findings of fact, rather than how each individual practitioner would.

Agents within the systems (lawyers or scientists) comply with "honesty constraints" (evidence cannot be faked with impunity, or strategically withheld) and "efficiency" constraints (communications are restricted to relevant matters, for example), but agents have few or no rhetorical obligations to promote ("be fair to") opposing points of view. Instead, systems provide opponents opportunities to speak for themselves.

It follows that there is a role within adversarial systems for communications which are invalid (whatever that means in the nondemonstrative context, since all nondemonstative arguments are necessarily invalid, else they would be demonstrative) and "tendentious."

Naturally, the combination of being invalid, tendentious and differing from my own point of view can be obnoxious. But it is not the adversarial advocate's role to find the truth personally, but rather to participate in a collective effort that results in some approximation to the truth becoming accepted within the community which the effort serves.

While I have the typical modern (not to be confused with "postmodern") idealism that truth-approximation would go better if all individual agents' arguments conformed with shared norms, the evidence for that is shaky. Adversarial collective strategies are far older than the modern individualistic norms (early 19th Century for the domain independent ones; contemporary academic history's norms are youunger still), and they persist in the face of wide acceptance of the new ways.

Conclusion: Detectives, judges and jurors are all apt examples of evidence-based truth seekers, but it may not be their individual performances that most distinguish them. Rather it is the performance of the collective effort of which these agents are parts that may most richly reward some scrutiny.

If nothing else, viewing an agent as part of a larger system relieves the analyst of the burden of taking obnoxious disagreement personally. That can only be a plus, in my opinion, whether reading Carrier or some of his God Squad peers.

[Bernard Muller]

The historian always needs to establish what sort of text is being studied, first and foremost. That requires literary criticism as one fundamental process before we know what sorts of questions we can expect the text to be able to answer.

Many scholars tried to determine what sort of text the NT documents are and came up with different opinions.
I do not see here any "discovery" on that matter which will be widely accepted by critical non-religious persons.

Let's look at gMark.
In my view, gMark contains true facts and lot of embellishments & fiction, entwined together, sometimes within a verse or a sentence.
Why the true facts: because heard from trusted eyewitness(es) and put in the gospel to give it an air of authenticity.
How to determine there are true facts in gMark: because the author is embarrassed (yes I said it) and provided antidotes and damage control for them:

Examples: listed in http://historical-jesus.info/28.html
Here is an extract:

Solution 1: Disciples getting gag order from Jesus:
a) NOT saying Jairus' daughter was resurrected (5:43)
b) NOT claiming Jesus was Christ (8:30)
c) NOT telling about the events on the high mountain, which included transfiguration, God saying Jesus is his Son and Moses & Elijah alive in bodily forms (9:9-10)

Solution 2: Disciples being ignorant or kept in ignorance:
a) NOT aware of the (Christian) meaning of Jesus' future passion (8:33)
b) NOT understanding what "rising from the dead" meant (right after seeing Moses & Elijah!) (9:10)
c) NOT asking about the meaning of (among other things) Jesus' future rising (9:32b)
d) NOT told about the Empty Tomb (16:8)

Solution 3: Disciples being too dumb to notice extraordinary events:
a) NOT "seeing" the miraculous feeding(s) (6:52, 8:4, 17-21)
b) NOT considering "walking on the sea" or/and the following stoppage of the wind as divine miracle(s) (6:52)

Solution 4: Damage control on witnessed failure & objectionable conduct/saying:
a) Jairus' daughter not resurrected (damage control: 5:42).
b) Rejection of Jesus in his hometown and his failure to heal people there (damage control: 6:4, 5b).
c) Near-impossibility for wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God (damage control: 10:27).
d) Disturbance in the temple (damage control: 11:17).
e) Peter saying Jesus cursed at a fig tree which withered later (damage control: 11:22-25).
f) Disciples falling away after Jesus' arrest (damage control: 14:27b).

And then there is also that from http://historical-jesus.info/

- Why give Jesus four brothers and at least two sisters (Mk6:3), rather than emphasize his uniqueness?
- Why base him among the uneducated villagers of Capernaum, his new home (Mt4:13), a poor town in Galilee?
- Why bother to have him get a "mother-in-law" (Mk1:30) out of bed?
- Why give him a few "unschooled" fishermen (Mk1:16-20, Ac4:13) as his main followers?
- Why have him say: "you are worth more than many sparrows" (Lk12:7/Mt10:31)?
- Why tell his own people wanted "to take charge of him" and saying: "he is out of his mind" (Mk3:21)?
...
- Why start Jesus' public life right after the arrest of John the Baptist, who attracted a much larger audience: "Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him [John]" (Mk1:5a)?
- Why have Jesus declaring "among those born of women there is no one greater than John [the Baptist]" (Lk7:28a/Mt11:11a), lowering Jesus below John (conflicting with Mk1:7!)?
...
- Why have Jesus disowned by his companions and crucified as "king of the Jews" (Mk15:26) for the benefit of Gentile Christians?

We can argued a lot on each point, but nevertheless, it certainly does not look that "Mark" created the Jesus' story from scratch, but from somebody who really existed. Which of course does not conflict much with what Paul said about the earthly poor humble Jew of no reputation dealing only with other Jews and then crucified as Christ (I already explained why Paul replaced "king of the Jews" by "Christ": to be more acceptable to Gentiles, etc.).

And then, we have the testimony of Tacitus' Annals and Josephus' Antiquities 20 in favor of Jesus/Christ existence.

So why the embellishments and fiction?
Because the Christians could not accept anymore that the Jesus so much glorified (as a heavenly entity) by Paul & probably by other contemporary preachers had given no sign he was divine with extraordinary power during his life on earth.
And we can see the evolution of that divine glorification of human Jesus from Paul's epistles (which did not have any) to gMark, then gMatthew, then gJohn & Revelation.

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

We have modern examples on how a man who certainly existed was extremely glorified during and after his life:

Ron Hubbard: see the Scientologist version and the one from Wikipedia:
http://www.scientology.ca/faq/scientolo ... bbard.html
Note: according to the leader of the Scientologists, Hubbard would have resurrected after his bodily death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard

Haile Selassie: see here for the Rastafarians beliefs about him, as extracted from Carrier's OHJ:
http://historical-jesus.info/106.html
And here for the Wikipedia entry about the late Ethiopian emperor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie

And for a person of a lot less status (humble), there is Rosa Parks:
By a simple act (remaining seated in a bus, then arrested), Rosa Parks (a humble seamstress then) provided the spark which gave birth to the momentous modern Civil Rights Movement, led by others from the start. Decades later, she was considered its "Mother" and revered as an icon, despite the fact she withdrew from it early on.

Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

The historian always needs to establish what sort of text is being studied, first and foremost. That requires literary criticism as one fundamental process before we know what sorts of questions we can expect the text to be able to answer.

Many scholars tried to determine what sort of text the NT documents are and came up with different opinions.

How many works do you know that presume anything other than that the Gospel of Mark is a theological interpretation of real historical events? I cannot think at the moment of "different opinions" about Mark from "many scholars"? They all approach the text of Mark with that single a priori understanding.

In my view, gMark contains true facts and lot of embellishments & fiction, entwined together, sometimes within a verse or a sentence.
Why the true facts: because heard from trusted eyewitness(es) and put in the gospel to give it an air of authenticity.
How to determine there are true facts in gMark: because the author is embarrassed (yes I said it) and provided antidotes and damage control for them:

Correct, it is your view.

You have no way of knowing that the Gospel of Mark is a mixture of true and fictional (cum theological) narrative details. That is the prevailing model and I know of no-one in the mainstream scholarly world of religiously dominated biblical studies who has questioned it. Even Spong accepts one small detail behind the elaborate Passion Narrative as historical.

How can you say an author was "embarrassed" by something he wrote when you don't know who the author was or the circumstances and background to his writing? Or do you "know" all of that somehow? What evidence is there in Mark that anything written was an embarrassment to the author?

The argument based on criteria such as embarrassment is inevitably circular.

What other field of historical inquiry uses "embarrassment" alone as a criterion to determine what is a fact? What other field of inquiry uses "embarrassment" as at least one criterion to determine and what is and what is not a "fact" in anonymous and unprovenanced documents?

This is all fantasy make-believe "scholarship". Well, that's a bit strong. Scholars have gone down ideologically predetermined paths before, before they have been obliged to wake up and turn directions. But there is no hope for a field of study doing that while it is dominated by a single ideological interest.

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

How many works do you know that presume anything other than that the Gospel of Mark is a theological interpretation of real historical events?

I did not know that. What would be these many works? Can you indicate a few? Certainly I would not go for "theological interpretation". gMark is a lot more worse than that.

You have no way of knowing that the Gospel of Mark is a mixture of true and fictional (cum theological) narrative details. That is the prevailing model and I know of no-one in the mainstream scholarly world of religiously dominated biblical studies who has questioned it. Even Spong accepts one small detail behind the elaborate Passion Narrative as historical

Because "Mark" made excuse on some facts & sayings which was not serving his theological/christological agenda. If these facts and sayings were not believed true, then there could not be invented because that would create confusion and doubt.
For example: why would Peter keep secret the title, Christ, he gave to Jesus? "Mark" provided the excuse that Jesus asked the disciples should tell no man of him (Mk 8:29-30). That's confirmed by other clues in the NT, including Paul's epistles, showing that Peter & James never became Christians.
Of course, that would be embarrassing if Peter and other disciples were never heard to say Jesus was the Christ.

Another example: "Mark" several times tried to downplay the fact that Jesus was seen as a would-be future temporal king of the Jews by some, starting before his crucifixion: http://historical-jesus.info/29.html
"king of the Jews" is treated as an embarrassment, more so because his audience was mostly Gentile converts.
If "Mark" invented the wording of the sign on the cross, he would have "the Christ" instead.

What other field of historical inquiry uses "embarrassment" alone as a criterion to determine what is a fact? What other field of inquiry uses "embarrassment" as at least one criterion to determine and what is and what is not a "fact" in anonymous and unprovenanced documents?

None I know of. But you narrow the field considerably. And that does not mean the criterion of embarrassment cannot be used here.
If you don't like "embarrassment" what about damage control and/or against the grain oddity (relative to "Mark" theology/christology) somehow counteracted by the author.

This is all fantasy make-believe "scholarship". Well, that's a bit strong. Scholars have gone down ideologically predetermined paths before, before they have been obliged to wake up and turn directions. But there is no hope for a field of study doing that while it is dominated by a single ideological interest.

I do not have any ideological interest.

Cordially, Bernard

[neilgodfrey]

to Neil,

How many works do you know that presume anything other than that the Gospel of Mark is a theological interpretation of real historical events?

I did not know that. What would be these many works? Can you indicate a few? Certainly I would not go for "theological interpretation". gMark is a lot more worse than that.

Misunderstanding here. I am saying that all biblical scholars who work with the gospels in their reconstructions of Christian origins presume, assume, take for granted, that their gospels are one kind of literature and no other. They all assume, presume, take for granted, that they are genuine historical/biographical narratives overladen with theology. My question was to ask if you knew of any exceptions.

You have no way of knowing that the Gospel of Mark is a mixture of true and fictional (cum theological) narrative details. That is the prevailing model and I know of no-one in the mainstream scholarly world of religiously dominated biblical studies who has questioned it. Even Spong accepts one small detail behind the elaborate Passion Narrative as historical

Because "Mark" made excuse on some facts & sayings which was not serving his theological/christological agenda. If these facts and sayings were not believed true, then there could not be invented because that would create confusion and doubt.
For example: why would Peter keep secret the title, Christ, he gave to Jesus? "Mark" provided the excuse that Jesus asked the disciples should tell no man of him (Mk 8:29-30). That's confirmed by other clues in the NT, including Paul's epistles, showing that Peter & James never became Christians.
Of course, that would be embarrassing if Peter and other disciples were never heard to say Jesus was the Christ.

Another example: "Mark" several times tried to downplay the fact that Jesus was seen as a would-be future temporal king of the Jews by some, starting before his crucifixion: http://historical-jesus.info/29.html
"king of the Jews" is treated as an embarrassment, more so because his audience was mostly Gentile converts.
If "Mark" invented the wording of the sign on the cross, he would have "the Christ" instead.

You evidently cannot see the circularity and question-begging nature of your response. You are beginning with the assumption that they are historical narratives (entwined with theological embellishments) by an author with very specific interests and then making arguments based upon those two assumptions. You fail to see the logical fallacy in your responses above.

It is the kinds of arguments you set out above that I have been pointing out are logically invalid; they assume the answer to the question and then find ways to rationalize the data to support the initial assumption. That's not how scholarly research in any field -- except large sections of biblical studies! -- with any basic intellectual rigour works.

A more valid approach is to read the gospels without any assumptions as to historicity or other genre, and to avoid mind-reading an author of whom we have no knowledge whatsoever.

What other field of historical inquiry uses "embarrassment" alone as a criterion to determine what is a fact? What other field of inquiry uses "embarrassment" as at least one criterion to determine and what is and what is not a "fact" in anonymous and unprovenanced documents?

None I know of. But you narrow the field considerably. And that does not mean the criterion of embarrassment cannot be used here.
If you don't like "embarrassment" what about damage control and/or against the grain oddity (relative to "Mark" theology/christology) somehow counteracted by the author.

"Damage control" and "going against the grain" are nothing other than subfields of embarrassment. I don't exclude those at all. I cannot think of any instance where such criteria (merely expressions of embarrassment) are used to establish the historicity of events.

For that matter, I do not know of any historical studies that use "criteria" of any of the kinds found in biblical studies to establish the historicity of events or persons. Historicity rests on "hard evidence", not criteriology substituting for evidence.

This is all fantasy make-believe "scholarship". Well, that's a bit strong. Scholars have gone down ideologically predetermined paths before, before they have been obliged to wake up and turn directions. But there is no hope for a field of study doing that while it is dominated by a single ideological interest.

I do not have any ideological interest.

I have no reason to doubt you. I am sure you don't. And there are scholars in the field of biblical studies who are not religious, too. But they are a minority and they are accepted in the academy because they embrace the fundamental assumptions and methods of the majority.

[MrMacSon]

Let's look at gMark.

In my view, gMark contains 'true facts' and lot of embellishments & fiction, entwined together, sometimes within a verse or a sentence.

Why 'the¹ true facts': because [supposedly] heard from trusted eyewitness(es) and put in the gospel to give it an air of authenticity.

How to determine there are 'true facts' in gMark: because the author is embarrassed² (yes I said it), and provided antidotes³ and damage control for them

These would be better biographical accounts if a man Jesus was so important, or one would expect there would be better other accounts, biographical or otherwise, written in the 1st century, if the man Jesus was so important.

All we have, otherwise, is speculation by the likes of Irenaeus 150 yrs later.

¹ you make true facts a definitive article

² embarrassment is not a criteria that provides veracity or validity

³ anecdotes by an 'embarrassed' author does not guarantee veracity