Jesus Studies Historiography

[toejam]

cienfuegos said: "If you apply the very same methodology to accepted "truths" like "John baptized Jesus," "

I've never "accepted it as a "truth", only a sound historical conclusion. Sound historical conclusions are not claims of truth. I think this is where we keep diverging - we have a different understanding of what we mean by that term. Yes, I suspect John did baptise Jesus, and so in that sense one might label my suspicion my belief. But it is not a claim of truth.

"Or it could be that the prominent position of the story in gMark made it difficult to erase completely"

That seemingly didn't stop the author of John removing massive other portions of Mark/synoptic tradition...

"That isn't the question. John F. Kennedy appears in the fictional film Forrest Gump. We can agree that Gump was fictional, and JFK was real?"

Terrible analogy. We have no tradition of anyone or any community believing the Gump was real.

"Unfortunately, Paul says nothing about John baptizing Jesus which would be strange if Paul knows the story and talks about baptism. Why wouldn't he mention it?"

I don't see any necessary reason for Paul to reference John the Baptist in limited amount of letters we have. There's nothing "strange" here. I'm currently listening to an audiobook on the history of Christian theology. After 15hrs or so worth of lectures, I don't recall the lecturer mentioning John the Baptist at all yet. Does that mean the lecturer doesn't know of the story of John the Baptist story in the gospels? How many hours would it take to read Paul's letters? 5? And most of time he's addressing things like church organisation and the relationship between faith and works - not the early history of Jesus' ministry. This expectation of yours for Paul to retell Jesus' earthly ministry is a bogus argument from silence. No where in Paul does he ever say that Jesus was crucified in outer-space either.

"To me, your position is based on a personal preference for maintaining that Jesus might have existed"

Nope. I have no personal preference to his existence or otherwise. A suspicion/belief is not a personal preference. I suspect/believe you have worn a tie at some point in your life. It is not my personal preference that you have, nor an "acceptance of truth" that you have.

"Against all this, you have a hunch that 1 Thess 2:14:16 is authentic"

Nope. I told you - I'm 50/50 on whether it was authentic or interpolated.

[MrMacSon]

cienfuegos said: "If you apply the very same methodology to accepted "truths" like "John baptized Jesus," "

I've never "accepted it as a "truth", only a sound historical conclusion. Sound historical conclusions are not claims of truth. I think this is where we keep diverging - we have a different understanding of what we mean by that term. Yes, I suspect John did baptise Jesus, and so in that sense one might label my suspicion my belief. But it is not a claim of truth.

If it's not a claim of truth, it can hardly be a conclusion: it can be a proposition, to be tested.

[andrewcriddle]

Ok, defend this widely accepted historical fact: John baptized Jesus.

Tell me, how do scholars defend this "historical fact?"

That's all I am asking.

Formally speaking you are probably correct that the arguments usually given to defend the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John are arguments for the baptism being very early tradition, not necessarily for historicity.

If (to take an extreme case) one argues that establishing that Jesus was believed during his lifetime to have been baptized by John does not necessarily mean that Jesus was baptized by John then it is difficult maybe impossible to argue against that position.

This sort of scepticism would however if applied to ancient history generally result in nihilism. (For example you appear too ready by your principles to believe the claims of ancient writers to have been close accquaintances of Socrates).

IMHO the tradition in John that Jesus and some of his disciples associated with John for a period is historical. If so the baptism og Jesus would have been common knowledge in that group. But I don't claim to be able to demonstrate this.

Andrew Criddle

[cienfuegos]

So, let's try this: How did the author of the Gospel of Mark know that Jesus was baptized by John? Who was his source? Who was the source of that source? If we go back to the beginning, who was the original witness who passed along this historical fact, one of the facts considered most secure by historicists. Where did that fact come from? If Jesus was baptized by John, who witnessed it and passed on that information?

External criticism favors Peter as the source for what was written in GMark, and Peter was the brother of Andrew, who was one of the two disciples (the other was Philip) of John the Baptist who were present when Jesus came for baptism. Andrew wrote the Signs Source in GJohn that might have been available for Mark to read. If not, Andrew could have told Peter and/or Mark.

Was this information relayed to the author of gMark? Or did Peter, Andrew, and Philip forget to mention it to "Mark,""Luke," and "Matthew" and just relayed it to "John?" Because,as I read it, Jesus had no disciples until after he was baptized. Only John mentions disciples of John joining Jesus. If Peter was the source of the Gospel of Mark, it is curious that it is Mark that makes no mention of any disciples witnessing the baptism. According to Mark, Jesus calls his first disciples after John is already in prison.

As for the subsequent comparison with Socrates, in Wiki we find"
"The oldest surviving complete manuscript for many of the dialogues is the Clarke Plato (Codex Oxoniensis Clarkianus 39, or Codex Boleianus MS E.D. Clarke 39), which was written in Constantinople in 895 and acquired by Oxford University in 1809."
Plato does not identify himself as the first-person author of this, and anyway it had been written 1300 years before. It appears to be pseudonymous by Socrates himself, which no one claims to be the fact.

I don't see how this is relevant.

[cienfuegos]

Ok, defend this widely accepted historical fact: John baptized Jesus.

Tell me, how do scholars defend this "historical fact?"

That's all I am asking.

Formally speaking you are probably correct that the arguments usually given to defend the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John are arguments for the baptism being very early tradition, not necessarily for historicity.

If (to take an extreme case) one argues that establishing that Jesus was believed during his lifetime to have been baptized by John does not necessarily mean that Jesus was baptized by John then it is difficult maybe impossible to argue against that position.

It is not the case that it has been established that Jesus was believed during his lifetime to have been baptized by John. My position is that the whole story was made up by the author of gMark. If my position is correct, we would not expect any evidence from before the 70s that there was a belief that Jesus was baptized by John. And that is indeed the case.

This sort of scepticism would however if applied to ancient history generally result in nihilism. (For example you appear too ready by your principles to believe the claims of ancient writers to have been close accquaintances of Socrates).

No. I have been clear that Jesus studies have to follow the same methodological principles that are followed by other disciplines. That starts with source criticism. I was very clear in my response to toejam that source criticism gets you in the door. I then said, you have to evaluate each piece separately. The problem with the Gospel evidence is that it doesn't get you in the door. You can't get past source criticism: they are not useable sources for the history of the origins of Christianity. I went on at length about evaluating Plato. Just for the record, what claims of Plato or Xenophon did I say I believed?

EDIT: Ah, I see what you mean here now. We have multiple attestation that these two and others were close companions of Socrates. We have their extant writings. We can evaluate these sources. We know who they were. All the things we don't have for the authors of the Gospels, we do have for the likes of Plato, Xenophon, and Antisthenes.

IMHO the tradition in John that Jesus and some of his disciples associated with John for a period is historical. If so the baptism of Jesus would have been common knowledge in that group. But I don't claim to be able to demonstrate this.

Andrew Criddle

Your sources are 1) unsound, and 2) conflicting. In this case, a double negative does not make a positive.

[neilgodfrey]

Cultural Jews were not happy about their religion being wildly perverted by Romans and Hellenist.

What is that supposed to mean?

[cienfuegos]

cienfuegos said: "If you apply the very same methodology to accepted "truths" like "John baptized Jesus," "

I've never "accepted it as a "truth", only a sound historical conclusion. Sound historical conclusions are not claims of truth. I think this is where we keep diverging - we have a different understanding of what we mean by that term. Yes, I suspect John did baptise Jesus, and so in that sense one might label my suspicion my belief. But it is not a claim of truth.

"Or it could be that the prominent position of the story in gMark made it difficult to erase completely"

That seemingly didn't stop the author of John removing massive other portions of Mark/synoptic tradition...

"That isn't the question. John F. Kennedy appears in the fictional film Forrest Gump. We can agree that Gump was fictional, and JFK was real?"

Terrible analogy. We have no tradition of anyone or any community believing the Gump was real.

"Unfortunately, Paul says nothing about John baptizing Jesus which would be strange if Paul knows the story and talks about baptism. Why wouldn't he mention it?"

I don't see any necessary reason for Paul to reference John the Baptist in limited amount of letters we have. There's nothing "strange" here. I'm currently listening to an audiobook on the history of Christian theology. After 15hrs or so worth of lectures, I don't recall the lecturer mentioning John the Baptist at all yet. Does that mean the lecturer doesn't know of the story of John the Baptist story in the gospels? How many hours would it take to read Paul's letters? 5? And most of time he's addressing things like church organisation and the relationship between faith and works - not the early history of Jesus' ministry. This expectation of yours for Paul to retell Jesus' earthly ministry is a bogus argument from silence. No where in Paul does he ever say that Jesus was crucified in outer-space either.

"To me, your position is based on a personal preference for maintaining that Jesus might have existed"

Nope. I have no personal preference to his existence or otherwise. A suspicion/belief is not a personal preference. I suspect/believe you have worn a tie at some point in your life. It is not my personal preference that you have, nor an "acceptance of truth" that you have.

"Against all this, you have a hunch that 1 Thess 2:14:16 is authentic"

Nope. I told you - I'm 50/50 on whether it was authentic or interpolated.

I would say "50/50" is a hunch. My point really was to demonstrate how naive your critique of the scholarly opinion of 1 Thess 2:14-16 (if not 13-16) is. You might not have picked up on that.

You haven't added anything new. You are maintaining that bible scholars should be allowed to use a different methodology (special pleading) to develop what are called "sound historical conclusions." It is my position that you cannot claim a "sound historical conclusion" based on unsound evidence. So far you have been unwilling to engage in methodological discussion but have only continued to assert that the actuality of this event (one of two supposedly ironclad facts about the life of Jesus) is a "sound historical conclusion." It is just this sort of sloppy thinking and failure to apply a methodology that I wanted to discuss in this thread.

[outhouse]

Cultural Jews were not happy about their religion being wildly perverted by Romans and Hellenist.

What is that supposed to mean?

means you need to learn what your debating LOl because that is probably how Christianity was born.

Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Re ... ic_Judaism

Come on! you don't know about the Bultmann - Hengel philosophy? Well they both were right but context is key.

We see the socioeconomic divide from Hellenistic Jews in Sepphoris, and real traditional Aramaic Jews in Nazareth, oppressed not by Romans but by Hellenistic Jews.