I was quite surprised to find appeals to the Talmud and Eusebius to justify "the assumption" that Second Temple persons claimed genealogical links to David. Since I've mentioned Steve Mason in this thread I'll draw on him again to propose a more valid way to approaching the sources:
As historians, that is, we cannot claim to know what happened unless we can show colleagues how we acquired this knowledge, and we can only do that after a systematic investigation. This point is often neglected. Historians either feel compelled to believe something (“Until someone can show otherwise, I am happy believing X. ...”) or the public expects us to believe things, as though not knowing what happened were a moral failure. But belief is the province of religion, not history. Ancient historians must make their peace with uncertainty because that is where the nature of surviving evidence requires us to live much of the time. Our job description is to investigate responsibly, not to know what happened.
Another consequence of understanding history as methodical inquiry is that we must receive all claims about the past, whether ancient or modem, with skepticism and methodical doubt, kicking their tires and looking for their limitations in relation to the questions we are pursuing. They will have limitations, and so there is never a prospect of declaring any ancient source adequate or “reliable” for our inquiry. This lesson was hard to leam when the great Thucydides and Livy were knocked off their pedestals as “authoritative” accounts. It remains a problem in areas of ancient history with religious connections (#3 below). But history, as one application of critical thinking, must rest on ceaseless probing, questioning, and therefore doubt about what has been given.
When a historical argument survives scrutiny and is thought to explain a range of overlapping, independent evidence better than other hypotheses, our acceptance is only ever provisional. We then look for ways to connect it with other provisional scenarios, constantly comparing and revising our views of whole and part to see what needs refinement or complete rethinking.
p. 63 of
A History of the Jewish War, A.D. 66-74
Here's the followup (pages 67-68) ... the "
#3 below" referenced above:
3. Finally, all historical research is shaped by modem contexts, and the study of Roman Judaea is no exception. Contemporary political, social, and religious concerns can shape discussions in ways both obvious and subtle. For one thing, scholars who specialize in this field do not uniformly work in departments of history or classics, as historians of other parts of the Roman empire usually do. Their departmental homes are just as likely to be in religious studies, Jewish studies, archaeology, biblical studies, or theology. If even those who understand themselves to be historians and nothing else differ significantly in method, the potential for disagreement over aims and methods is likely to be all the greater in this field. On top of that he all the potential stakes in this period held by Jews and Christians of various kinds, religious and non- and anti-religious scholars, Zionists, post-Zionists, and anti-Zionists.
Consider two examples of what might seem innocuous debates about semantics, which can both create misunderstandings of a kind not found in the study of Roman Egypt or Britain. First is the spillover of concerns about the Bible and its authority. Only in this area do we encounter debates over what are styled maximalist and minimalist approaches to ancient history. These categories extend disagreements about the usefulness of biblical accounts for Israelite history to involve the post-biblical and “New Testament” or even later periods. Minimalists are said to nurture what their opponents consider an unhealthy “hermeneutic(s) of suspicion,” a failure to trust sources that have done them no harm and do not merit suspicion.
These debates cause confusion to no purpose. If history means disciplined inquiry into the human past (above), then we investigate problems by interpreting and explaining whatever evidence is available, all of it but no more than that. Methodical doubt of all claims, our own as well as others’, is the animating principle of critical inquiry.
Any source we used needs to be understood in terms of its sources, the aims of its author, the context and audience of the author, the literary and intellectual conventions of the time of the author, etc etc etc. No source can be approached as a stone monument with the heading, "List of Historical Facts".
The further from the time period being researched a source is, the more overwhelming will be the justification required for its use.
Mason in the above quote refers to those "who understand themselves to be historians" and hints at a difference between historians who work in ancient history departments and those who work in religious studies. A regrettable example of the latter as for method of research is Peter Schafer. To repeat his statement of method that I posted in another thread:
But Schafer, to my mind, opens himself up to serious criticism with his statement of methodology in
Jesus in the Talmud p.7:
Unlike Maier and many of his predecessors, I start with the deliberately naive assumption that the relevant sources do refer to the figure of Jesus unless proven otherwise. Hence, I put the heavier burden of proof on those who want to decline the validity of the Jesus passages. More precisely, I do not see any reason why the tannaitic Jesus ben Pantera/Pandera (“Jesus son of Pantera/Pandera”) and Ben Stada (“son of Stada”) passages should not refer to Jesus, and I will justify this claim in the book.
Does that not come across as a classic introduction to the sin of confirmation bias?