How do we know X existed?

[ABuddhist]

If the NT does not have some basis in real events and persons, then what exactly would NT Studies scholars study? NT Literature, I suppose, but are they really trained to do that? Better than other classicists? Well, neither of us holds a brief from the classicist community, so that question will just have to hang, I think.

Surely this reveals why NT scholars are so reluctant to concede even the possibility, let alone the fact as more radical scholars (whom they dismiss as crackpots) propose, that their foundational text is fiction. They do not want to admit that they are studying what Nagarjuna called Gandharvan tales, other people might call fairy tales or myths, and I call propaganda, fiction, and forgeries based upon a real crucifixion (and which others have even less confidence in).

[neilgodfrey]

FWIW Moses Finley (already mentioned in this thread) seems to have accepted broadly traditional dates for the NT writings.

This is comparable to saying that anyone who speaks or writes of Jesus as if he were Christ, was born of a virgin and rose from the dead is a believer in those things. And if the person who ever says such things is a historian then that somehow suggests that historians believe those things.

Often in posts discussing some point about the Bible I will speak as if it is a given that that the first gospel was written around 70 CE and the others soon afterwards, that Jesus lived and taught in the early first century, and so forth -- simply because that information helps contextualize the main point I am trying to make and I don't see that it makes any real difference to that main point by presenting it in a context others can accept and quickly understand so they don't get distracted by other issues from the one I am trying to make.

Point #1: Moses Finley probably never studied the same things New Testament scholars studied, though he did engage with at least one of them on an occasion.

Point #2: when addressing anyone who embraces a certain viewpoint then it is generally sound custom to express a sharing of that viewpoint if it facilitates the larger point of conversation. (See my note above on how I write sometimes. I am sure most people do something like that.)

Point #3: One can in certain contexts speak of things from the perspective that they are part of our common public and cultural knowledge without "believing" in those things. We can speak of being like Robin Hood or Santa without believing in Robin Hood or Santa, etc etc etc etc

And above all, if I am not a specialist in a certain area, I will always defer to the mainstream views until I take the trouble to dive into the serious research of those specialists myself. Most times I emerge with both a clearer understanding of the specialist viewpoint and the reasons for it and accept it myself -- with the same provisions as the specialists do.

I'm sure there must be a name for this sort of thing: trying to establish a point by saying Dr So-and-So expressed the point (implying that our audience "follows" Dr So-and-So so they should be embarrassed if they don't agree with good Dr on that point.)

[ABuddhist]

What's in it for them? Your prescription amounts to the abolishment, not the reform, of their livelihood. Maybe that's a good idea in its own right, but ultimately that's a question of their securing funding to support their research program. As long as there are students who aspire to be pastors and Templeton Foundations to make grants, then there will be NT scholars to train the students and to spend the grant money, less "overhead" paid to the school that employs them, ensuring that administrators welcome their presence on campus.

Surely this amounts to a concession that the field of NT studies is not disinterested in its subject, but has a distinct interest in preserving the idea that the NT has truth within it in order to attract Christians' money and interest. This same money and interest, of course, ensures that many NT scholars are Christians.

A key doctrine of Christianity in many of its forms is that Christianity is the only way to avoid an eternity in a hell-realm. How does this belief, within Christian NT scholars' minds, not lead them to avoid researching and supporting certain conclusions about the NT? Very much, I would think. And Christians remain influential within NT studies, as I think nobody would disagree (except perhaps karavan).

I am aware that similar problems exist within Buddhist studies in the Anglophone world (because some scholars of Buddhism are themselves Buddhist). But the problem is lesser because most influential scholars of Buddhism in the Anglophone world are not Buddhists themselves.

[ABuddhist]

FWIW Moses Finley (already mentioned in this thread) seems to have accepted broadly traditional dates for the NT writings.

Do we have evidence that he had done any research about the matter? Because if he was just accepting the consensus without doing any research at all, then his opinion would be valuable in law courts but could not be accepted as evidence within historians' writings that the consensus is correct.

[mlinssen]

It's all plain and simple really: no one starts to study NT texts because he doesn't believe in Jesus - on the contrary.
Whether someone really believes or whether he's prone to uphold the status quo doesn't make a difference, the result is the same: the status quo of NT studies upholds the belief or at the very least the myth - and those who deviate and wet the bed are excommunicated

Partly it's only human to do as the group does, but more importantly there just can not be any question about the historicity of Jesus, or the entire field might as well abolish itself

So the entire field resorts to circular reasoning and the feeble tool of majority agreement (among themselves) and that will never change.
End of story

[Paul the Uncertain]

@ABuddhist

Surely this reveals why NT scholars are so reluctant to concede even the possibility, let alone the fact as more radical scholars (whom they dismiss as crackpots) propose, that their foundational text is fiction.

Yes, what you quoted is the "practical" side of that reluctance. As I've said to Neil along the way, I also believe that there is a psychological component.

I cannot see how somebody can be certain of the truth of a proposition (e.g there is a historical core to the NT) in one siutation (faith, sola scriptura, etc.) without that at least influencing their assessment of the same hypothesis in a different context (scholarship "from a historical perspective"). Certainty is more than a "bias."

In the limiting case, accept what's held to be certainly true as outrightly false? Holy cognitive dissonance.

Surely this amounts to a concession that the field of NT studies is not disinterested in its subject, but has a distinct interest in preserving the idea that the NT has truth within it in order to attract Christians' money and interest. This same money and interest, of course, ensures that many NT scholars are Christians.

It is a touchy subject, as you can imagine. However, everybody else in the academy works on what gets funded, whether by external money, internal subsidy, or student tuition money. There's no reason to expect the Divinity School or Religious Studies Department to be different.

except perhaps karavan

@mlinssen

Partly it's only human to do as the group does,

Yes.

but more importantly there just can not be any question about the historicity of Jesus, or the entire field might as well abolish itself

I think the field could tolerate recognizing the question as uncertain but accepted, and maybe even be better for it. I don't think there's any danger of ever proving that the NT has no historical core or that no "minimal" HJ ever lived. I suspect that as long as there are Christians, there will be funding for research and teaching premised on that historical core being there.

@Neil

No, Paul. You are getting way off base. You are making this personal. Please keep to the topic: the practices, methods, standards themselves.

There is nothing "personal" in the quote box except a polite mention of something you have done repeatedly and something else you have not done at all. I am entitled to review that state of the evidence and arguments so far.

Then demonstrate, show us, where the methods of the historians of ancient history are arbitrary.

As soon as you show me where I said they were "arbitrary." I have consistently upheld their reasonableness as aspirations for people who work in the field where the methods are said to be practiced. Reasonableness in an approriate context is not arbitrariness.

You have simply ignored the points I have been making and are not jumping back to sweeping claims that I thought had been shown to be false -- according to the words of the historians themselves.

I have recognized them as the unevidenced autobigraphical aspirational statements that they are. I have repeatedly asked for evidence that these statements accurately reflect how typical historians really work.

I don't see how failing to discuss evidence you haven't provided is "ignoring" your points. They are what they are, I have said what they are, and there's little more to say about them.

This is absurd. Behaviour is how people act.

Behavior includes speaking, writing, teaching, researching, ... and many other things. Is "behaviour" some sort of cuss word down under? It's a neutral word around here, meaning anything that any people do.

It sounds like you have decided to simply ignore what the differences in methods -- even from the word of the scholars themselves -- in both fields.

I've described both countless times. I guess I suck at ignoring things as badly as avoiding discussion and comparison.

Well I do know that every historian's work I have read has adhered to those methods,

What about the work they did, if any, in pursuing their investigation before publishing the result? For example, has no history professor ever presented "work in progress" in class, in discussion with grad student advisees, or at a departmental seminar? If any have done, have none of them ever forecast where the work might end up? Not even when asked directly?

Do you have evidence for this never happening? Even mathematicians do that as an ordinary part of their professional activity - it's something they are paid to do. But historians are too rigorous to follow suit?

There - I've discussed your point.

If you don't, I wonder why you are so quick to defend one against what I have said are both my observations and the observations of both nonbiblical and historical Jesus historians.

Whom did I defend? "One" what? My position is that members of one specific pofession enjoy no presumption of authority over how members of a different specific profession ought to do their jobs.

The only things you've shown that anybody has done "wrong" are that some NT scholars have used likeliness language to describe loveliness achievement, and some have falsely equated their methods with typical academic historians' methods. I agreed with both your observations. That's not a defense.

Right. I dare say by "haven't done a thorough verification" you mean that you haven't done a verification or comparison at all. Am I right?

No, some of the heuristics I readily recognized as restatements of similar heuristics used in other fields, some aren't even restatements. Those have already been analyzed by other people and by myself. I've posted at least one example of that ("loveliness" going by different names in different fields, and having different aspects in different fields as well).

You're just assuming that New Testament scholars can't be as fallacious in their standards of logic and methodology as I and others have observed.

The only thing you've observed as fallacious is how some of them speak, and I have agreed with you. You've offered no surrebuttal to my refutation of your claim of fallacious circularity, which was based on a dimension of merit introduced by your own witness.

So you are ignoring my request that you actually examine what nonbiblical historians do (did you even read their quotes explaining their methods?)

No to ignoring your request. Yes to having read. And?

and choosing to ignore pointing out why those methods should not apply to the study of Christian origins and the historical Jesus.

I disgree with you about the applicability of those methods to the problems mentioned. I have repeatedly explained why I disagree with you. You have even quoted numbered item (1) from my previous post, which states four reasons why. Asked and answered, counselor.

Sorry, Paul... I really can't bring myself to read the rest of your reply. I'll have to leave it there for now.

Works for me.

[mlinssen]

I don't think there's any danger of ever proving that the NT has no historical core or that no "minimal" HJ ever lived.

All we need to do is to trace back Marcion to Thomas, and that's being worked on as we speak - by most respected scholars, and I'll pitch in there as well

Then Thomas needs to be proven to not be about any minimal HJ, and that's already done

It's all been undone already

[andrewcriddle]

It's not an assumption nor is it unevidenced that NT scholars and nonbiblical historians have different defintions or ideas of what constitutes a fact. It's a studied and evidence-based fact that they do. I have had exchanges with some of them (and read enough of their works) that makes that "fact" as plain as the nose on lying Pinocchio's face. Larry Hurtado, for one, flatly claimed that the "eruption" of the Christian movement in the early 30s and subsequent persecution by Saul of the church were facts of history, raw data to be explained, incapable of denial. He could not see that those points were nothing more than narratives that only appeared long after the 30s and had no corroborating evidence to support their veracity.

If NT scholars are "pursuing a different goal" that is not to their credit. It implies that they are seeking to support an ideological narrative of Christian origins. NT scholars will tell you that they are pursuing historical inquiry just like nonbiblical historians are doing.

I don't think that rejecting/ignoring the Dutch-Radical position implies that NT scholars are adopting principles alien to those of nonbiblical ancient historians. FWIW Moses Finley (already mentioned in this thread) seems to have accepted broadly traditional dates for the NT writings. Without holding a Dutch-Radical position, most of the above claims (e.g. setting aside whether or not Paul as persecutor was called Saul) seem facts in the sense of plausible statements supported by relevant evidence and with no evidence to oppose them. We agree that they are not facts in the sense that the existence of Julius Caesar is a fact but nor is the claim that Xenophanes referred to Pythagoras a fact in that sense.

Andrew Criddle

What does the Dutch-Radical position have to do with what you quoted of my words?

I did mention the Dutch-Radicals in another context, and I did say I thought they applied "normative" historical methods more than mainstream NT scholars, but I also said our more recent "minimalists" apply the same normative historical methods and have come up with very different views on the when and why and how of the OT books.

I have also pointed out in some other comment that it can very respectably be argued that the letters of Paul belong to the mid-first century.

Are you concerned that my view of what constitutes sound historical method leads to a less than secure basis for the historicity of Jesus? Is that the bottom line here?

The word "fact" can have different types of meanings in different contexts, but I think the quotations of historians that I have presented in this thread should make it clear in what sense we are talking about facts in the sense of "Is it a fact that X existed?"

A "plausible statement" is not necessarily a fact, of course. Not is it necessarily a fact if it is "supported" by relevant evidence. That word "support" covers a multitude of meanings. Conspiracy theorists come up with what to them are plausible scenarios with "supporting relevant evidence".

And sometimes we discover that events we thought were facts are not facts at all. So sometimes we learn that people we once thought were historical never existed, either. And I am sure I have come across events that we once thought never happened really did happen -- though I cannot recall examples at the moment. We learn.

On reflection I should not have brought up the specific case of the Dutch Radicals.
My point was that if one holds a date for the main letters of Paul in the mid 1st century CE then they establish (in some sense of establish) Christian activity in the 30's and Paul's opposition to it.

In what sense do you mean that Xenophanes' referring to Pythagoras is not a fact?

We don't have Xenophanes' poem except via Diogenes Laertius. That is data or the historical source. What becomes a fact is the result of how the historian interprets that raw data: and that requires a knowledge of Diogenes Laertius and his writings and an analysis of those writings and their context as well as the historical chain from Xeonphanes to DL.

The quote from Xenophanes reads

Once they say that he was passing by when a dog was being beaten and spoke this word: "Stop! don't beat it! For it is the soul of a friend that I recognised when I heard its voice."

We depend upon DL (or more probably his source) for our belief that this is referring to Pythagoras.

Andrew Criddle

[andrewcriddle]

FWIW Moses Finley (already mentioned in this thread) seems to have accepted broadly traditional dates for the NT writings.

Do we have evidence that he had done any research about the matter? Because if he was just accepting the consensus without doing any research at all, then his opinion would be valuable in law courts but could not be accepted as evidence within historians' writings that the consensus is correct.

He was commenting on the attempt by Sherwin-White in Roman society and Roman law in the New Testamentto argue for the historical accuracy of the NT. He holds that Sherwin-White is correct to regard the NT documents as roughly contemporary with the events they describe but wrong to regard this as any guarantee at all of accuracy.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

On reflection I should not have brought up the specific case of the Dutch Radicals.
My point was that if one holds a date for the main letters of Paul in the mid 1st century CE then they establish (in some sense of establish) Christian activity in the 30's and Paul's opposition to it.

Indeed they do, though somewhat tautological. But I don't see how that relates to understanding the ways historians come to understand "what happened" in the past.

(Just for what it's worth -- my interest in how historians interpret sources, the many different types of historical reconstructions that they undertake, the whole gamut of the very nature of history from the ancients through Leopold von Ranke through to the postmodernists and its many diverse forms today is grounded in years of study and interest in the whole question of history itself. It's relevance to Jesus is brought out here but the Jesus question is only a very item in a much larger field, one that has the curious potential to inflame "attitudes" -- though not so curious really.)

In what sense do you mean that Xenophanes' referring to Pythagoras is not a fact?

We don't have Xenophanes' poem except via Diogenes Laertius. That is data or the historical source. What becomes a fact is the result of how the historian interprets that raw data: and that requires a knowledge of Diogenes Laertius and his writings and an analysis of those writings and their context as well as the historical chain from Xeonphanes to DL.

The quote from Xenophanes reads

Once they say that he was passing by when a dog was being beaten and spoke this word: "Stop! don't beat it! For it is the soul of a friend that I recognised when I heard its voice."

We depend upon DL (or more probably his source) for our belief that this is referring to Pythagoras.

Andrew Criddle

Yes, that's right; we do. And that leaves some room for discovering who-knows-what about Pythagoras up ahead. But for now one might decide it's the "best we've got" and it tilts the balance towards historicity of Pythagoras.

The point I was trying to make is that the view that Pythagoras was historical rests on a late source, say, (I am simplifying here -- there are other sources, too), whose purported and recognized author demonstrates in various ways (an essay can be written here elaborating these ways) that he knows of a source about Pythagoras contemporary with Pythagoras -- such that, our late author appears to have reasons to believe that his source is a reliable indicator of historicity of Pythagoras.

It's not much. But it is a reason for belief in historicity that rests on a known author (DL) who in various way gives us some confidence that such a point is believed historical, and that that belief derives from an unproblematic contemporary source.

We simply don't have comparable evidence for Jesus. We do have comparable evidence for other figures, such as Socrates and other names I listed in that table earlier.

The evidence is such that the historicity of Jesus is necessarily a hypothesis proposed to explain the sources that we have. But by the standards I listed from historians themselves I don't think we can say his historicity is a bedrock fact.

(GDon was asking for figures whom historians consider in the "grey area" for historicity and Pythagoras would probably come as close as any: but notice what the discussion involves -- it is, as hopefully clear by now, about known and in various ways testable and contemporary sources.)

--------
eta....

The evidence is such that the historicity of Jesus is necessarily a hypothesis proposed to explain the sources that we have.

Of course, in practice Jesus is for most an assumption based on a belief that there is some level of "gospel truth" to the story.