For the last couple months I have dipped my toes, from time to time, into the enticing waters of the myth-history question about Jesus. I find the issue at once fascinating and repulsive, for, while it seems that the entire issue is so set about with difficulties and imponderabilities that it can never be settled, it also arouses fierce passions in those who are engaged in the dispute which I find it hard to understand. I had begun to read Bart Ehrman’s book, as well as Robert Price’s and Richard Carrier’s, but each time that I approach them I find that I reach a point at which I find it difficult to go further. I try to attach significance to this — other than a natural tendency to start on projects and to give them up for lack of interest — and, to a large extent, it seems to me that the problem for me lies in the jello like consistency of the materials involved in the discussion, written materials, traditions, and authorities which give a sense of substance to the discussion, indeed, but which also, I am afraid, simply refuse to stay put.
Let me take an example. I am reading R.Joseph Hoffman’s piece “Controversy, Mythicism, and the Historical Jesus,” which he has put up at on his blog. It is his contribution to a consultation on the historical Jesus called The Jesus Process. When I read it first it seemed very convincing. Especially convincing, it seemed to me at the time, were his comments about the contest between history and myth in early church tradition. He contrasts what he calls the “Hollywood parody of the second century church” with
the leaders of a young religious movement struggling against a tide of religious mythicism. The living tradition that Irenaeus defends is historical tradition,
extending from Jesus to John and the very early church fathers like Papias, and the defence against the mythicisers like Marcion and Cerinthus. Hoffmann goes on to suggest that this early historiography of the Jesus movement
includes before the fourth century a critical element that rivals anything in secular historiography.
And here he refers to Papias’s on the evangelists and Eusebius on Papias’s ability as a reporter.
I’m not in a position to assess these claims professionally. Hoffmann has pointed out before my slight accomplishments in practically every possible field of endeavour, and I’m not prepared to challenge his expertise as a scholar of early Christianity. Yet it seems to me, faced with the claim that what distinguished Irenaeus from Marcion, for example, is Irenaeus’ concern for history against the “anything goes” mythicism of Marcion, is not necessarily the great historical knowledge of Irenaeus, but a need, if there were to be any semblance of authority at all in the early Christian movement, to have some way to fix the tradition in time; and what better way could there be than to claim knowledge of a determinate historical trajectory for both the events and the teachings of the early Christian tradition?
At one point Hoffmann says this:
Put a bit flatfootedly …, the gospels do not show sufficient consistency to be pure legend and are not abstract enough nor sufficiently symbolic to qualify as “myth.”
Yet at the same time (shortly before this), he had already said:
The question of what he [Jesus] taught and the completely useless attempt of various Jesus seminars and quests to isolate authentic sayings will surely go down as one of the most regressive episodes in biblical-studies history.
I find it hard to square the two statements, but both would make sense if we presupposed that what the early church fathers were doing was the historicising of something (possibly something quite non-historical, which would explain the lack of consistency) that was in the process of developing as myth. What would happen, I wonder, if we were to stop a mythmaking process in flight and try to fix it as history? Perhaps we would have something that would “not show sufficient consistency to be pure legend,” and, on the other hand, would not be sufficiently symbolic to match what we think of as myth.
Think of this in terms that are still at the heart of questions about Christian orthodoxy. In face of the critical study of the Bible over the last three centuries, questions about what Christians are to believe often come down to questions having to do with the reliability of the gospel traditions as reflecting the words and deeds of Jesus. And many Christian apologists point to the historicity of the resurrection as a strong ground for belief in the truth of the Christian gospel. However, if trying to isolate the authentic sayings of Jesus is a regressive step, in what sense is it being supposed that Jesus is an historical figure? From the standpoint of the faith of which Irenaeus was an early exponent, a faith rooted in historical events, and supported by the unique teaching of the person at the centre of those events, it would seem strange to say that trying to isolate the authentic teachings of Jesus is regressive, even if, from the biblical-studies point of view, this is how it appears. Of course, this does show how far biblical-studies have strayed from what Christian practitioners of the critical-historical study of the Bible thought they were doing; for it was all along supposed that the critical-historical study of the Bible would not betray, but would, in the end, confirm the faith of the church.
Of course, it did not, which may be why trying to isolate authentic sayings of Jesus is regressive. After all, of what interest can that be except to those for whom Jesus is religiously central or important? But this is precisely the point that the early historicisers of the Jesus legend wanted history to do: to support their claims that there was an historical person at the heart of their faith, and that this was not something that could be freely constructed in the way that Marcion and Gnostics wished to do. That they could point to a moment in history when a man named Jesus was born, and a moment when he died, and what happened in at least some of the intervening years: this was the point of claiming that Jesus really lived and died, taught and acted, in the way that stories about Jesus said that he had. As a priest the Jesus Seminar at the time seemed to me to be important, precisely because it claimed both that Jesus was a figure of history, and that, as a figure of history, certain things could be claimed about him with confidence. Yet, if the attempt to isolate the very words of Jesus himself is regressive, in what sense can he be thought to be a figure of history? Historical figures must be more the ciphers upon which people can erect imaginary lives; the real person, wie er eigentlich gewesen ist, must be discernible amidst the various things that he is said to have said and done. Whether Jesus was a wisdom teacher in the Cynic tradition (as some members of the Jesus Seminar suggested), whether we can discern, beneath the pious patina of the evangelists, a fairly typical early rabbi (as Geza Vermes seems sometimes to suggest), or whether he was, as Schweitzer said, an apocalyptic figure, prophesying the end of the age; if Jesus is an historical figure, we should be able to say, with a reasonable degree of confidence, which one of these he more closely resembled.
But whatever is said on the question of Jesus’ historicity — even if Papias or Eusebius would not have been able to understand what we mean by that question — we cannot, I think, take it, as Hoffmann wishes to, that this is even partially settled by the claim of Irenaeus and other proponents of early orthodoxy, that he was. For they had every reason, in terms of controlling the message, to choose history as a way to do it. If people are going off in all directions, like some people in New Age religion today, each following their own preferred experience or interpretation of whatever is thought to lie at the heart of the earliest Christian movement, then one way of retaining control of the message would be to attempt to fix it in history in such a way as to forbid these uncontrolled and uncontrollable tendencies from dissipating the message in a thousands of short-lived movements each claiming their own tenuous orthodoxy. This would not have been the first to use history as a fixative for belief, and will not be the last either. But the resort to history does not show that we are dealing with history; the most that it can show is that there is sufficient awareness of the dangers of the ungoverned imagination to want to use any available technology to take possession of and control the message.
However, once allow Hoffmann’s point regarding the historical claims of the early church fathers like Irenaeus, and we inevitably must side with the orthodox in the dispute with Gnosticism and Marcion. Hoffmann points out that
[t]he battle between orthodox writers and the Gnostics (and their forerunners) was foremost a battle over the theory of atonement or redemption: if Jesus did not possess flesh, it was thought, he could not have redeemed flesh.
Well, yes, this is true, and this is a good reason for the orthodox to support the notion of an historical figure named Jesus who possessed flesh and so could redeem it. But this also has a tendency to relativise his claim that the mythicist appeal to Hellenistic and other mystery traditions is pointless. It is pointless, Hoffmann claims, because
we have no examples from classical antiquity of a religion that insisted from the beginning on the historical existence of its founder in both explicit and implicit ways and no way of explaining why Christianity would differ so markedly from the cults in this respect.
Of course, we don’t know that this was something insisted on from the beginning. But, even so, since it seems clear that existence in the flesh is a definitive part of the orthodox theory of the atonement, there is every reason to suppose that Christianity might have been a mystery religion in every respect like the others with the exception that it necessitated a real flesh and blood saviour, just as Mithraism depended on real flesh and blood bulls. If so, then the nisus towards historicisation was present within the Christian mystery from the start, as, indeed, it still is — both to control the message, and to provide a redeemer. Is it so certain that the early Christians could not have modified the mystery traditions with which they were acquainted to accommodate a variation on them? If it is not, then it can scarcely be used to suggest that the parallels between the Christian mysteries and other mystery religions –parallels which were eagerly seized on by the Gnostics and other syncratistic movements seeking to indiginise Chrisitianity to local beliefs and practices – are simply inapplicable in the case of Christianity, because Christianity is based on historical events and a real person. For this would have given any of those who wanted to claim that Christianity was unique amongst the mysteries a good reason to stress the historicity upon which they claim their mystery was really based, even in the absence of evidence that it was so based.
I raise these points, not because of my extensive familiarity with the scholarly literature dealing with the historicity of Jesus, but because of the unsatisfactory nature of the history proposed, a history which is really just a cipher, without any determinate content, without any identified sayings of the person whose history it is, and no sign whatever of which events in his life can be considered to have really taken place. As a last example, take the following, only one of the things said by Bart Ehrman in his new book on the historical Jesus. He is talking about the supposed references to Jesus in pagan writings, and, in particular, in this instance, to Tacitus, who spoke of one “Chrestus” in relation to the fires that destroyed parts of Rome during the reign of Nero, for which the Christians were held responsible, some of them in consequnece murdered in particularly hideous ways. Apparently some “mythicists” have suggested that this was a later interpolation into the text, about which, with some justice, Ehrman comments as follows:
But surely the best way to deal with evidence is not simply to dismiss it when it happens to be inconvenient. Tacitus evidently did know some things about Jesus. [p. 55 in the Kindle version]
The use of the strong epistemic word ‘know’ is simply out-of-place here. At most it could be said, as Ehrman seems to recognise in the next paragraph, that he had heard some things about Jesus. (But he still thinks that this is enough on which to base the claim that
high-ranking Roman officials of the early second century knew that Jesus had lived and had been executed by the governor of Judea. [56])
By this time the claim that Jesus had been crucified by the procurator Pilate would have been well established in the Christian story (even though, more accurately, he should have been known as the Prefect or Governor of Judea). But that he calls him the procurator shows, it seems to me, that Tacitus got his information from Christians, not high-ranking Roman officials. There is no reason not to suppose that Tacitus had heard it. But that he had enquired into the reliability of his sources may reasonably be thought to be doubtful, as Ehrman seems to recognise (and then at once ignores). Pilate was, as I believe, sent home because he was overly harsh in his rule in Palestine. That someone might have been crucified by Pilate would therefore have occasioned no surprise, especially the founder of a dangerous superstition, which is plausibly thought to be Tacitus’ own gloss on the story.
Richard Carrier has a new post up summarizing his exchanges with Ehrman and McGrath about Ehrman’s book. It is interesting to me that Carrier highlights the problem of “Paul” (another enigmatic figure) who seems not to have had any connection to a historical Jesus, only to a revealed or imagined Jesus. I certainly have no expertise in this area, but also wonder about the evidence for post-Jesus evangelism by those who supposedly knew Jesus in the flesh. There just seems to be so much myth-making with Christianity through the ages associated with miracles and martyrs.
The thing that keeps me coming back and back to the issue is that, as a priest, it was becoming clear that the amount of credence that could be placed in the reliability of the gospels as an historical source was diminishing day by day. When you realise that many of the pericopae are straight historicising of Old Testament prophecies and stories, and that this applies particularly to the birth and passion narratives, but is also quite evident in the sayings sources, it is hard to say with confidence that there is an historical figure at the centre of things.
Christians often rely (cf William Lane Craig) on the passion stories and the supposed eye witnesses to the resurrection as the means of justifying faith, but there is no way that the gospel accounts, discordant as they are, can reasonably be used this way. And when you recognise that many of the stories show a rejection of Judaism in favour of a more mythicised conception of the present and immediate future, it seems unreasonable to go on treating both the stories and their main character as historical.
The problem became quite acute when, one Sunday, many years ago now, I stopped myself in mid sentence, and realised that I had become quite accustomed to using the Pharisees as a foil to Jesus, just as they are used in the gospels, as a way of setting off Jesus as unique and worthy of attention, and his words as having special force. So I spent some time learning bits and pieces of Jewish tradition, and the relationship of Judaism and Christianity, and recognised that Jesus would have been, in almost every way, a Pharisee, but one who had been raised to the nth power by myth, and it became hard to think of him as a real Jewish man. This made his final rejection by “his own people” more intelligible, because the character of Jesus was designed, it seems, from the beginning, with this tension with Judaism in mind.
I stopped at once speaking of Jesus in the same way again, and over the next few years began to see that Jesus seemed less and less credible as an historical figure. He only made Christian sense as a mythicised version of a radical Pharisee, because nothing that you could say about him fit in comfortably with his attributed Jewish context, at least as an historical character; so the supposed sitze im leben of the parables and miracles seem to be misleading; they would be much more at home in a Hellenised Jewish context where myth was already in play. But once you turn Jesus into a myth, you make him theologically irrelevant to Christian faith, just as Hoffmann says. I tussled with that for several years, and one member of the congregation, a retired priest, used to say to me that I should slow down, or I would talk myself out of a job before my retirement came!
Still, I don’t know that it could be shown decisively that Jesus was pure myth. I think that is an issue that will be forever unresolved. But that there was an enormous amount of mythmaking in the story about him, supposing the story to have an historical kernel, is undoubted, so much, I think, that we have to say that the Jesus of Christianity is a myth, even if there was a real person at the heart of it. Regarding Paul, Hoffmann has interesting things to say. He suggests that if it had not been for the struggle with the gnosticising tendencies that Paul’s letters might have sunk without a trace.
I think one of the inherent problems with arguing for a “single” Jesus is that, as you point out, he’s been seen as so many different types of man and preacher. Is he the “tell no one” ghostbuster/demon hunting Jesus of Mark? Or is he the kick-ass political revolutionary Jesus of John? There are so many different facets to the Jesus myth that, to me at least, it practically SCREAMS “composite character”.
So, I’ve decided that Jesus is a mythological being whose earthly exploits are a compilation of those of many of the 1st century preachers. Including, if I may be so bold as to speculate, John the Baptist (who we know existed) and Rabbi Hillel.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Of course, no less a personage than Christopher Hitchens disagrees with me. His argument is that if Jesus were an ahistorical person, there’d be no need to get Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to fulfill the “house of David” prophecy. He’d be Jesus of Bethlehem and that’s that. That’s a pretty strong argument — but of course arguments aren’t proof of anything, since they can be argued.
But there’s just no evidence anywhere for a Nazarene named Joshua. None at all. And certainly not one who preached to thousands and was hailed as a king before running afoul of the authorities. Show me that Jesus, and I’ll gladly change my mind.
Until then, not.
One problem with the Bethlehem story is that the City of David is more naturally seen to be Jerusalem, for it was David who transformed it into the capital, and even brought the Ark of the Covenant to reside there — supposing, of course, that there was a King David, and that he did as the stories say! Besides, Luke has Jesus start in Nazareth and has to get them to Bethlehem, and Matthew has them living in Bethlehem and has to get them to Nazareth. This would make more sense if both Bethlehem and Nazareth are mythical destinations that simply both had to be included in the story, and are handled in different ways. Hitchens’ account never convinced me.
Unfortunately I don’t have time to comment extensively now (probably to Eric’s great relief), but I would offer this suggestion. If we compare the synoptic gospels with each other it is apparent that Luke used Mark as one of his sources, as well as either Matthew or some common underlying source. This tells us something about both Mark and Luke. In Mark’s case it indicates that Luke, who had access to firsthand witnesses, believed that Mark’s account was historically accurate. In Luke’s case we can see how he handled his sources, and this gives every indication that he was trying to be a careful historian. It is especially noteworthy, given his close association with Paul, that he did not try to put Paul’s words into Jesus’ mouth. My conclusion is that Luke, at least, should be taken at face value.
I’m wondering if Eric has read Bishop Robinson’s book “Redating the New Testament”?
I find all talk about him as real or not irrelevant to the real critique that as a moral leader he is the scam of the ages as Jako Miklos observes in
Confronting Believers.”
I would read websites like Vridar (here’s one recent post http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/larry-hurtados-wearying-historical-jesus-question/ ) to get another view. Hoffman has become a little too erratic and (frankly) unhinged for me to take his scholarship without a huge grain of salt. None of the evangelists show any evidence of having first hand accounts of anything – there’s been a lot written on that that I’m surprised anyone thinks that who isn’t an apologist. Tacitus most likely was repeating things he had been told – to use him as any kind of evidence is laughable. I think both Doherty and Carrier rip that apart – Carrier at his site, Doherty at Vridar.
Two comments to throw into the mix: one is that there is now a movement among researchers to apply the same tools to researching the life of Mohammed as that of Christ, with predictable results:
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/fjordman/unmasking-muhammads-dubious-existence/
The other is that an “A-Ha!” moment for me concerning the Christ stories and their transmission came when I learned that a community of Aboriginals in the Northern Territory of Australia has a legend that they were visited in the 1960s by President Kennedy, who guaranteed them land rights. They weren’t, of course: what presumably happened is that some member of the tribe thought it would give their claim more legitimacy if they coupled it with the name of an important person, and that was the most important name they could find. And now, after only fifty years, the story is enshrined as part of their ‘oral tradition’ — that is, it is told to each new generation of young Aboriginals as if it were actually true, and recorded as such in their ‘official’ histories.
The regional population in Biblical times were largely of the same calibre — factually ignorant by modern standards, illiterate, story-loving and totally indifferent to what we would today regard as ordinary standards of accuracy. It doesn’t surprise me that they should have made up wild stories about a hero-god who never existed: I’m inclined to believe that there are probably much wilder ones which the church successfully suppressed once it became a little more concerned about its credentials.
How do we know that? A claim that he based his gospel on material “handed down” from those who were *originally* eyewitnesses is not a claim that he talked to eyewitnesses. Second, even if he did so claim, that wouldn’t mean it was necessarily true, it could have been an empty claim to boost his credentials.
How do we know that Luke had a close association with Paul? I know there are traditional claims to that effect, but what is the evidence?
Not sure i would called Luke a reliable historian. He talks a good fight in his prologue, but he seems awfully cavelier in his methods, eg, putting the ascension on the day of resurrection in his gospel and then 40 days later in the Book of Acts. No doubt these two passages can be harmonized with a lot of text twisting and wishing thinking, but I think this event is about as clear an example that Luke wasn’t even pretending to narrate historical events.
As a historian, Luke was no Thucididyes. He wasn’t even up to Herodotus’standards.
Bob Wheeler (# 5). You say:
If you compare the gospels, it is evident and Matthew and Luke had Mark, both had a common source (referred to as Q), and each of Luke and Matthew had independent sources of their own. There is no evidence what the authors of the gospels, supposing that they were the work of single hands, believed about anything, except what they were writing. Certainly, there is no evidence that Luke took Mark as historically accurate. As Hoffmann points out, the idea of historicity was probably not available to them in any case. The beginning of Luke suggests that it is based on research, and pretends to accuracy, but then he would say that, wouldn’t he? That is, if he was commending his work as a dependable account of how things happened. But there isn’t a shred of evidence that he had access to eye witness testimony, or thought that he had. These are literary products from start to finish.
I am familiar with JAT Robinson’s rather quixotic late book. I used to own it, and read it when it came out. As I recall, he tried to date all the gospels before 70, which was academically as dead as a doornail when it was written. Having forgotten his arguments now, I only have access to my own memories of reading it, and finding it irrelevant to the contemporary study of the gospels. The gospels will always present a problem, because they are so contradictory, even with all their evident reliance on some of the same source material. The disagreements over the passion stories, and the various courts in which Jesus is thought to have appeared, and what was said at them: all these are quite plainly written without any knowledge whatever of what took place. It is hard to suppose, after these fictions, that the scourging and crucifixion are any less fictional. Dominic Crossan has found contemporary parallels to the scene where the soldiers mock Jesus, and he has demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to my mind, that the whole passion narrative is a case of prophesy historicised, and not history remembered. The same also obviously goes for the birth narratives, which are made of whole cloth, based on OT typologies.
The contest between Jesus and the Pharisees is, I believe, a reflection of the Hellenised/mythicised Judaism of the Christians in contest with the more orthodox rabbinic Judaism which was then in the process of development. Christianity itself retains some of these elements, but rewritten for a largely pagan audience. Indeed, there is very little that is said by Jesus — anything that retains any value now — that was not part of the Jewish tradition or that was not already said by some of the famous contemporary rabbis (like Hillel). There are, however, elements in early Christianity (and in Jesus) which are quite rebarbative, especially the acceptance of intertestamental ideas of hell and eternal punishment. Jesus does seem, at one level, to have attained a high moral level, but this is deeply tainted by an absolutism, especially regarding himself, that is both highly dislikeable and in many cases immoral. The famous story of the woman caught in the very act of adultery, which is often taken as representing a high morality, seems to me to be anything but. First, a woman caught in the very act should have produced her paramour, but didn’t. And the challenge, “He who is without sin… ” would surely have provoked at least one self-rigtheous one in the audience. The same goes for the Good Samaritan. This may show Jesus’ generosity, but he also tells the Canaanite woman that he had come only to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel, which would have excluded the Samaritans, and nothing in the story really tells people that Samaritans are not unclean and not to be avoided, only that there was at least one who was merciful. And the comment on the empty piety of the Jews that is also present in the story is particularly unlovely.
I so many ways, the story of Jesus is not the story of a perfect man, even though it has been interpreted mythically as though that is what he was. But Jesus was often abrupt with his family in the gospels, he was wrong about the apocalyptic return of himself in glory, he had scant sympathy for any who would not follow him, and if John is taken as anywhere near expressing something of Jesus nature (and there are elements of this in the synoptics as well), he is so self-obsessed that he comes off as not only absurdly egotistical, but also as a very questionably moral human being. That is not to deny the occasional bright spark of moral insight, but none of these are unique to Jesus, and the effect of the whole is destructive, it seems to me, to morality. I spent most of a lifetime struggling against the less attractive aspects of Jesus persona and message. I cannot for the life of me see what it is about this man that has made him such a great influence in history — though, even then, he is streets ahead of Mohammed.
The lagely ficticious nature of the Gospels is strongly suggested by the fact that the Epistles, which were written earlier and much nearer to the time, do not contain any of the stories and sayings that were attributed to Jesus later. These letters also seem to be addressing Christian communities that have been established for much longer than the timescale given in the Gospels would allow. There is also a disjoint between the appointed twelve disciples and those who actually did the preaching. Why was a late convert like Paul needed to spread the word? What happened to the disciples? Most of them seemed to have gone back to fishing. Of course, if the Gospels were made up the answer is obvious, there were no twelve disciples to begin with.
Stonyground says “The lagely ficticious nature of the Gospels is strongly suggested by the fact that the Epistles, which were written earlier and much nearer to the time, do not contain any of the stories and sayings that were attributed to Jesus later.” Why would letters, addressed to communities in the first two decades of Jesus’ death, need to give an account of his life and teaching? They are letters addressing specific issues concerning belief, practise and behaviour of people who were quite probably alive during Jesus’ time. In any case people wrote things down, stories were transmitted orally and gradually collected and eventually the first gospel was written, with a mixture of earlier sources and embellishments, interpretation, secondary material etc. The first gospel (Mark) was written anywhere between 40-75CE and the last, John, without historical value was written no later than 120CE. There is argument and evidence to support such dating in the literature including recent work by critical scholars who are historians and not believers. Mythicists by necessity, date the gospels unrealistically late but have no proper evidence and argument to support it. It is clear that Matthew and Luke used Mark and other source material containing many more sayings and evidence of their redactions can be. The first three gospels, the synoptic gospels, do contain some historical material. There is evidence of both Aramaic and Greek sources and some of the material fits well into the first century Jewish culture, some Markan material assumes things of his audience that only Jewish people concerned with Jewish Law at the time would know, and these things are altered or explained or left out by later gospels. There is all sorts of evidence for some of the material being historical. While twelve may be symbolic, Jesus had a close group around him and throughout the mission they obviously varied. Paul opposed the early disciples and was quite probably jealous. Only three appear in later tradition and this is probably because the others left disillusioned because they did not believe in the resurrection. This would explain was Matthew makes the embarrassing admission by trying to explain it away – he says Jesus rose and appeared but some doubted, while Luke doesn’t – he just says that Jesus rose and appeared. It’s probable that Peter had grief visions and told the others. Probably only James and John went off and had similar grief dreams – Jesus had told them and convinced them that he would rise…. and didn’t. The rest of the disciples are left out after that, so anything further is just speculation. But Paul was concerned with a Gentile movement and accomodating them which is what the church became but Jesus was addressing Jewish people of Israel and the “Law of God”, hence the opposition after he died.
I have always been intrigued by the story in Eusebius regarding the grandsons of Jude (Jesus’ brother allegedly). You may be familiar with the story Eric, recounted in Book 3 of the History of the Church. The two grandsons were hauled before Domitian and interrogated. He let them go, deciding that these farmers were harmless enough. Eusebius says he got thisstory from Hegesippus. What do you make of this Eric, and of Eusebius in general?
Louise, I think what Stonyground is saying is that, if Jesus had been a real person, and there was a developing oral tradition within the communities that recognised Jesus as (variously), Lord, Messiah, God, Divine Man, etc., who had actually lived and taught and did miracles, then letters written by Christians to guide the growing churches might be expected to have used the example of Jesus more often as a basis and guide for any advice they had to offer. And yet that is not what we find. What we find is a fairly developed mystical religious sense of Jesus as (for example in Paul or the letter to the Hebrews) a sacrifice for sin, and yet very little sense of Jesus as a man who actually lived and had things to say.
Regarding the evidence of things being historical, I am reminded by what the Argentinian writer Borges is supposed to have said when answering a person who thought one of the characters of his stories was real. “No, it’s just fiction,” said Borges. “But you said he lives on such-and-such a street,” came the response. “Well,” said Borges, “it is not all that difficult to say that someone lives on such-and-such a street.” The same goes for the gospels. If we think of them as later works, trying to give verisimilitude to the main character, then it would pay the author or authors to try to make them seem as local as possible, with local colour that only the locals would know, even to the extent of throwing in a Greek or Aramaic word from time to time.
Mike, I have not read Eusebius for nearly thirty years — possibly more, as the years seem to pass very quickly. And even then, I did not really assess his reliability, though clearly there is a bias running through the whole thing, especially in his near deification of the emperor. I know that Gibbon criticised him, and thought his history unreliable, perhaps because he was too much of Constantine’s party, and enjoyed the emperor’s favour. However, it is said that his biography of the emperor is quite reliable, and uses many primary sources. I do not know about the historiography of the Ecclesiastical History.
As to Jesus’ brothers. Well, first, did Jesus exist? And then, if he did, why do the brothers not turn up significantly by name during his ministry? They are mentioned in Matthew (13.55), but there they are (James, Joseph and Judas — or James, Joses, Judas and Simon in Mark 6.3) just ciphers, to explain the people’s awe at Jesus’ wisdom, for he was “one of the boys”, as it were. Then he turns up in Paul as an apostle, as a leader in the Jerusalem church. There is a James mentioned in Acts, but he is not identified as Jesus’ brother. So, perhaps Paul’s use is added simply to give historical weight to his claim to be the Apostle to the Gentiles, sent by the heavenly Jesus himself, and not owing his position to anyone else. It’s not really compelling evidence, even had the supposed James ossuary turned out to have been very old, for there James is mentioned as son of Joseph and brother of Jesus — too much information, one is bound to think — and so it turned out.
But, again, I don’t know where the truth lies. I just did not find the bit from Ehrman very convincing, that’s all. Of course, he has much else to say, so I shouldn’t judge too quickly. It’s just that, where someone is trying to make a case, it is necessary to play his strongest hand.
Not sure what you’re implying here “throwing in a Greek or Aramaic word from time to time.” The New Testament gospels were written in Greek and so were the epistles. The New Testament is Greek! In various translations it is glossed so well you don’t notice irregularities in texts. The author of Mark is clearly at least bilingual as many Jews were and there are not only Aramaic idiom literally translated into Greek where they don’t make cultural sense but also clear examples of translating from written Aramaic at times where difficulties can be identified as misreading of Aramaic letters that look similar, like a reish for a khaf or a zayin for a vav, or missing a holam or dagesh. Other parts of the text a more fluent Greek. This happens in Matthew and Luke as well which is part of identifying. Of course the gospels came to represent highly theologised and embellished texts, but close analysis of manuscripts can reveal vital pieces of evidence. I recommend and honestly hope you have the time to read, Maurice Casey’s “Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of Hiis Life and Teaching” (T&T Clark, 2010). Maurice is not a Christian and doesn’t believe. He would have joined the BHA in the 70s if it hadn’t been for the aggressive atheism even then. Even Michael Goulder, a former BHA President in Burmingham and friend, felt the need to identify himself as a “non-aggressive atheist”. The book is a summary of Maurice’s life work as an Aramaic and Greek expert with other semitic and languages too, and he is a historian who taught and reached in the Department of Religion at Nottingham. I wish I could lend you my copy. I think it might be around $20US or cheaper copies on-line.
Prefects usually also had the title of “procurators”.
Louise, of course the gospels were written in Greek. But the question whether Jesus spoke Greek or not has always been considered a relevant question to ask, so that, whether some of the Jesus sayings contain original Greek material has been thought to be relevant. That was the point I was referring to. Can’t think of examples off the top of my head, but there are occasional Greek words that have been thought to be original to Jesus. However, I acknowledge I put this point rather clumsily. As to the question whether Jesus was or was not historical, I remain fairly non-commital. I’m not sure it is an issue of huge importance, since, as it seems to me, the Jesus depicted in the gospels is largely a mythical figure, especially when you get to John, and in Paul, of course, he disappears into a cloud of smoke. I am not a New Testament scholar by any stretch, and make no great claims for my point of view. It’s just that I began reading Ehrman, and some of it seemed just a bit superficial. For instance, he speaks of Tacitus, acknowledges that Tacitus probably learned what he did from Christians, and yet goes on to claim that Tacitus knew something about Jesus. That didn’t scan for me, and still doesn’t. I will certainly keep my eye open for Goulder’s and Casey’s work. (Interesting aside. Michael Goulder once was a speaker at a Sea of Faith conference. While there he wore a cassock as his regular dress. A couple years later he had left the priesthood, and frequented Friends meetings. From high church Anglican to British Humanist Association in a few easy lessons!) Anyway, I’m wondering what and why you are speaking of the aggressive/non-aggressive atheist. What exactly is an aggressive atheist? Secondary question, since you seem to know what you are talking about, and my Greek was never good enough to make the judgement. Ehrman says that all the gospels are written in a fairly cultured Greek style. I was always under the impression that Mark is an exception, and that his Greek is rather rough and tumble, with hard, unpolished edges.
J. Quinton, yes, sometimes Prefects were Procurators, but normally, if a man were Prefect, that is what he would have been called. It’s the higher rank. Thus Tacitus’ use of ‘procurator’ suggests that his source was Christian, because a Roman official, speaking of a Prefect (and procurator) would have called him Prefect.
Luke certainly understood the concept of historicity and believed that he was writing real history. He tells us in his prologue that he had carefully investigated everything, that he had access to eyewitness accounts, and that his stated aim was to establish the certainty (asphaleian) of the record. That certainly sounds like historiography.
Luke was an educated physician who, as his prologue shows, could write excellent classical Greek. He was undoubtedly familiar with the work of Herodotus and Thucydides. His style varies from passage to passage, indicating the conservative use of underlying sources, some of the semitic.
Luke was a traveling companion of Paul, and if he wrote prior to the martydom of the apostle, as the abrupt ending to Acts would suggest, then many of the eyewitnesses would have still been alive and could have corrected him in the case of any inaccuracies. John, in fact, appears to have done exactly that in his gospel. Not enough time would have passed to permit extensive mythologizing.
Why would Luke have used Mark as one of his sources if he did not think that Mark was historically accurate?
The fact of the matter is that we have four gospels from four different authors. Either all four gospels are correct (the events actually happened), or they are all false. They stand or fall together.
It is, of course, possible to deny practically anything if one is really determined to do so. But the problem with modern liberalism is that it denies too much. Not only were all the biblical writers either self-deluded or engaged in conscious forgery, but the entire Christian church for centuries was taken in by the scam. In the face of that kind of skepticism, does the evidence really matter anymore?
But Eric objects that the historical Jesus, to the extent that we can actually know anything about Him, was arrogant and obnoxious. But Jesus was not arrogant or obnoxious, if the claims He made about Himself were actually true.
No, that’s not what he says, He said that accounts had been handed down from those who were originally eye witnesses. That’s not the same as saying that he had access to eye-witness accounts.
How do you know that?
How do you know when Luke/Acts were written?
But they were not independent, the later authors copied from the earlier ones.
Or, alternatively, some things in those gospels actually happened and other things didn’t.
The examples of Scientology and Mormonism are recent examples of religions forming, and both were blatantly and fraudulently fabricated. And those entire religions were and are taken in by the scam. And, yes, the evidence does matter.
That Jesus spoke Greek has been discredited by critical scholars. The common language was Aramaic, and his teaching would have been as evidence demonstrates, in Aramaic. Many Jews were bilingual and spoke Greek as a second language, especially in Galilee. This would have been true of Jesus. Only scatterings of conservative/fundamentalist ‘scholars’ suggest he taught in Greek, like Stanley Porter who believes ” love the challenge of developing students who are passionate about learning New Testament Greek, the language that God used when he wished to communicate with us directly about his Son, and in which the New Testament is written.”
PS There are doubts about Ehrman’s competence in Greek, and he has no Aramaic. He’s out of date with critical scholarship, and in particular non American scholarship.
Bob Wheeler: “Not enough time would have passed to permit extensive mythologizing.”
Bob, how much time is that? Hector Avalos points out that the mythologising around the claimed Marian apparitiion at Medjagorje happened very quickly indeed, and that those right on the scene had already started the process. If, in fact, Jesus is myth all the way down, then how much time is needed? As to Luke’s prologue, it’s not quite so rich as you pretend, and the kind of historiography that modern historians have in mind had not developed to that level as early as the author of Luke’s gospel. Even Thucydides, more self-consciously historical than Herodotus, did not have the same level of concern for “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” as Ranke. That he was a companion of Paul has never been demonstrated. Was he a physician? And what did that mean at the time? As coelsblog points out, scamming people with religion has never been particularly difficult. Think of Jones and the Jonestown mass “suicide” Or Mormonism, which is certainly a scam, and still devoutly taught by a great many people, not least a candidate for President of the United States.
Louise, as to whether or not Jesus spoke Greek, that would depend at least on whether he was an actual person in history. While I have come to no conclusion about this, I do think some of Ehrman’s early arguments are a bit weak. What I will say, however, is that the person as depicted in the gospels is very unlikely ever to have existed, so I fiind it hard to understand why it would have been important to hook him into history. Yet I acknowledge that it is generally thought that Jesus did not teach in Greek. In that case, though, one would have expected a bit more Aramaic tradition to have come down to us. Since we have no Aramaic originals, and the gospels are relatively early, the lack of Aramaic sources is suspicious. How did an original Jewish movement, as we imagine, get turned into a chiefly pagan movement so quickly?
Louise, my note crossed your latest. I did not know that about Ehrman. I should have added the question: ON what do you base this claim?
Coelsberg,
1. Mark took down what he had heard from Peter, and Luke used Mark as one of his sources.
2. Paul mentions Luke in several of his epistles — Col. 4:14; II Tim. 4:11; Philemon 24).
3. Scholars differ on the date of Luke, but conservative scholars point to the abrupt ending of Acts as evidence that Luke/Acts was written while Paul was still in prison. John A.T. Robinson argued that the entire New Testament was written before the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
4. The fact that the later authors copied from the earlier ones attests to the authenticity of the earlier ones. And comparing Luke with Matthew and Mark it is evident that Luke exercised editorial restraint in his use of sources. (My own solution to the “Synoptic Problem”: Matthew wrote first, in Hebrew or Aramaic. Mark used the Hebrew original of Matthew to crosscheck the information that he had received from Peter. Luke used Mark and a Greek translation of Matthew. John, probably writing near the end of the century, know of the existence of the synoptic gospels, and wrote his gospel to complement theirs. I’m relying here on Irenaeus, as you might expect).
Eric,
I’m afraid historians have moved beyond von Ranke — they now question whether or not it is possible to tell the story “wie es eigentlich gewesen’” and that was when I was in school, well before Post-Modernism! I think that a historian is duty bound to report the facts accurately, and not fabricate material, But the interpretation of the facts, and the overall narrative, is bound to be subjective. Each of the evangelists had his own editorial slant, or “Tendenz” as the Germans like to call it, and there are puzzling anomalies of detail. But I am confident that the main events of Jesus’ life and ministry are reasonably certain. If I were to write a life of Christ, it would probably look like Alfred Edersheim’s The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. (And it would NOT look like Strauss’ Das Leben Jesu!
Bob. Where does your confidence come from? It is mere legend that “Mark” was related to “Peter”, and took down what “he” said. That the author of Luke made use of Mark seems undoubted. But then why give priority to Matthew? That Paul mentions a Luke in his letters does not mean that this Luke was the author of Luke. On the face of it, it seems unlikely, since Paul gives no inkling of know anything that the author of Luke claims to know. John A.T. Robinson’s dating of the NT writings is really a scholarly sport. It is so implausible as to raise questions about his credentials. (Someone remarked that, as a bishop Robison spoke like a professor, and, as a professor, spoke like a bishop. His work lacks consistency.) I read the book when it first came out, and was not impressed by it. I lend no credence to the theory, and neither does any scholar of substance. As for the priority of Matthew, that is not very likely, although possible with a little bit of jiggery-pokery, though more than is necessary to establish Markan priority. Of course, I am aware that intepretation is important in history. This is a point I have made again and again. Nevertheless faithfulness to the primary sources is preeminent. In the case of the gospels it is not altogether clear what the primary sources amount to. But the theory of a Hebrew or Aramaic Matthew is just a guess, and does not have much to support it. Basing anything on this is hugely unstable. The fact that you can gather so many questionable assumptions in such a small space shows that the whole project of using the gospels to produce even a roughly reliable picture of Jesus — even if we supposed him to be a real figure in history — is remote. Basing faith on such a foundation is pretty perilous.
I see that Eric has given a reply, but to join in. Your claims are largely conjecture supported by very little evidence. We don’t know who the “Luke” of Luke/Acts was, we don’t know that he was called “Luke” (that is just a tradition to link him to Paul), and we have no evidence that he was the “Luke” mentioned by Paul or that he was a companion of Paul. And we have very little idea when he wrote; yes you can argue for a date of AD70, but equally one can argue for AD120. And we have very little evidence that he had any sources other than Mark and Matthew (from which he copied extensively), or that he had any access to eye-witness accounts (as oppose to stories claimed to have originated in eye witnesses). I’m also puzzled as to why you think that the fact that Luke copied from Mark and Matthew is evidence that Mark and Matthew are authentic.
Similarly we don’t know who “Mark” was. We don’t know what his name was, or when he wrote, or who he knew, or on what information he based his writings. Any suggestion that he got his information directly from Peter is pure conjecture (if he had, why didn’t he say so?). This sort of stuff (assigning identities to the gospel writers) seems to have been largely made up by the early Church (Eusebius?), in order to bolster the gospels’ credibility.
The Jesus-historicity debate is my current most guilty pleasure (since swearing off torture and genocide; Yahweh’s example turned my stomach on that kinda thing). It all seems to revolve around the absence of evidence: what does THIS silence mean? doesn’t THAT silence contradict it? But only the mythicists acknowledge that. Historicists raise hypothetical texts from the void and call them primary historical sources. At best, they scramble over a few scraps of Paul that MIGHT refer an actual person, to “illuminate” the rest of the Pauline corpus, which PLAINLY refers to Christ as a purely spiritual entity.
It is historicists who, by necessity, date the gopels as early as they can, with no evidence but mountains of empty argumentation. Late dating is simply standard critical conservatism; or it would be in any other historiological field.
I saw the greatest minds of our generation – well, Bart Ehrman, anyway – brought low into utter demagoguery over this…
The great irony is that, on the central question, I’m actually on the historicists’ side: I’m at least 95% sure that there was one living primary prototype for the gospel character. This has nothing to do with any argument made on either side of the historicity debate, but with the only actual primary evidence, which both sides assiduously ignore.
Most anyone who follows Biblical archeology long enough, and has reasoning skills beyond those of a fifth-grade fundamentalist, will learn to disregard the most sensationalistic claims automatically. Even I, who used to find this kind of hokum downright titillating, haven’t checked out the last few Noah’s Ark sites. Maybe I need testosterone treatment. Or maybe my capacity to be titillated by such things has been swamped by the Talpiot ossuaries. To analogise, if an actual former island, submerged some 10,000 years ago, strewn with the ruins of some high civilisation including a great ringed harbor, were discovered outside the straights of Gibraltar, would interest in the lost continent of Mu drop proportionally? Well, okay – nobody cares about Mu anymore, anyway. (*sigh*) But I’m sure academics and others
would line up to bash the claim Atlantis had been found…
BTW – that the James ossuary inscription contains too much information is one of the IAA’s claims against it – ALL of which were refuted at the trial. There is genuine patina in the “brother of Jesus”. It still might be an ancient forgery – as might the known Talpiot ossuaries – but that’d be pretty sophisticated fraud for early Christians.
Greetings,
Eric, Dr. Richard Carrier took Ehrman to task in his review of “Did Jesus Exist?”.
He gives a full account of the disagreement between Ehrman and others, including Carrier, before, during and after the the book’s publication.
I warn all that this blog post is a monster, with links to others!
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1794
I also took the liberty of asking him a question regarding something he mentions in the first of three videos from this post:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1789
My question is here, his reply appears below it:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1789/comment-page-1#comment-17290
He’ll be publishing his own book on the historicity (not!) of Jesus sometime soon.
Kindest regards,
James
Thanks to all for the links. Whether I will get to them or not is moot. Actually, while I do make the occasional remark about the historical/mythical Jesus, the question does not excite me very much. As I have said before, it does not seem to be an area where anyone can really find the clinching piece of evidence/argument, and the whole process is like passing through the intestines of a snake (several times). I find it hard to get a handle on the idea of historicity here. I can understand that there may have been a lone individual at the centre of the first myth-making about Jesus, but it seems to me that, whoever he was, that historical figure is now inaccessible, since the myth-making is so thick. Take any saying or deed of Jesus — prescinding from the birth and passion — and of course someone may have said or did (or at least may be claimed to have done) those things. But this wouldn’t add up to a unitary person, and the texts themselves are so at conflict with themselves, that it is hard to believe that they preserve a useful tradition. Hoffmann says it is pointless to try to discern the actual voice of Jesus, one of the most retrogressive steps, he suggests, in contemporary Jesus scholarship. But that seems to suggest that finding a real man at the centre of things seems a pointless gesture. My main point is that you cannot take this tradition and reasonably use it to provide the foundations for a religious belief. Not that any religious belief is reasonable, you understand, but simply that the origins of religions are so lost in confusion and contradiction as to make their standing as legitimate enterprises questionable, at least from a stricly rational point of view. Anyone who has tried to “preach” the gospel should be aware of this, if they have genuinely tried to make sense of the sources in a religious context in a world marked by genuinely successful endeavours to discover the truth about the world. Even the attempt to use Jesus as a mythical/figurative being at the centre of a narrative in terms of which one can place one’s own life simply fizzles in the end. It’s not much wonder that people like Luther and Augustine simply despaired of rationality in the end.
However, all that being said, I think we have to take it as written that biblical scholarship has really had its day. The halcyon days when people thought it was going to deliver the goods for the Christian religious project are long gone, as Avalos points out. The only thing that keeps a historical Jesus as a living possibility is the guild of biblical scholars, who would lose their livings if they acknowledged that Jesus is no more historical than Hercules, however interesting the myth in either case.
Eric – I know him and know his work well. Agreed, the Jesus presented in the gospels is heavily mythologised and embellished with story telling and interpretation etc. It’s a matter of critical analysis of texts and historical context, language etc. Ehrman’s arguments are flawed, a mass of wrong assumptions – it was written for a popular audience not for a critical one. It reflects the sloppiness of his other recent work. Maurice Casey is publishing a more comprehensive and explicit argument and refuting mythicist arguments later this year. We haven’t decided on a title but the publisher is T&T Clark. I spotted it on Amazon today – I don’t know who put it there. It has a wrong title, wrong date, and wrong price!! I’ve alerted T&T Clark. But Ehrman was not the man to ‘demonstrate’ the existence of a historical figure. He is out of touch and hasn’t got the necessary tools or skills.
“each time that I approach them I find that I reach a point at which I find it difficult to go further”
I have this same problem, though for a different reason. I really have no interest whatsoever what a historical Jesus may have looked like. The question, as it seems relevant to belief, is whether or not there’s sufficient historicity to the biblical narrative; beyond that it’s a question for historians, And since I’m not a historian, I wonder just what good it would do me to even try – all I’m going to bring to the table is my own biases and prejudices without any of the training and perspective that would come with actually training as a historian.
So I call myself a reluctant seeker in this. Unfortunately, at least to my mind, to be an atheist among Christians is to have some knowledge of the historical nature of the claims. To ignore it will put you on the side that you’re going against the historical consensus, or that you’re rejecting Jesus from a place of ignorance. So having a familiarity with what evidence there is seems necessary.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond earlier, but my modem gave up the ghost!
The traditional account about the origin of the gospels, of course, is derived from Irenaeus, writing ca. AD 190. But how do we know he was telling the truth?
1. The internal evidence from the gospels themselves. The “Sitz im Leben” of Matthew points to a very early stage in the church’s history when Christianity was a largely Jewish phenomenon, most likely before the start of the Jewish War, and very possibly before the martyrdom of James.
2. Mark definitely seems to tell the story from Peter’s perspective, in some cases adding vivid details that are missing in Matthew.
3. The author of Luke/Acts changes pronouns from the third person to the second plural in parts of the narrative of Acts, suggesting that at that point he himself was a participant in the events he was describing (Acts16:10-17; 20:5; 21:18; 27:1-28:16).
4. The author of John clearly identifies himself as “the beloved disciple” who was an eyewitness of the events he described. By process of elimination the disciple in question is almost certainly John.
Thus the internal evidence supports Irenaeus.
Furthermore Eusebius was able to quote Papias in support of Irenaeus’ statements regarding Matthew and Mark.
We add to this the fact that the four gospels were widely circulated and accepted as authentic by the church at a very early date.
Modern critics, of course, challenge all of this. But I think that their method is suspect. They begin by taking the available evidence (outlined above), and subject it to severe examination, and conclude that none of the testimony is reliable. But they then develop their own theory of authorship based on a highly subjective reading of the gospels and their own reconstruction of early church history. The net result is that they have gotten ridden of the evidence and replaced it with speculation! They are in the position of rejecting the authenticity of all four gospels. Isn’t the real reason for this that they simply cannot accept the notion that the historical Jesus actually performed miracles and rose from the dead?
If Luke set out to write a history of Jesus, one would think that he would have used sources that he thought were reliable. Since he know Mark personally (Col. 4:10,14; II Tim. 4:11; Phlmn 24) he had reason to believe the trustworthiness of Mark’s gospel. He evidently felt the same way about Matthew.
Bob:
1. The “Sitz im Leben” of Matthew in particular is best described by Celsus, as a work of theatrical fiction, evolved to appeal to the popular appetite for miracles.
2. Mark was surely originally a product of some Petrene church (I’d guess Alexandrian); but almost as surely, those “vivid details” were lost on ‘Matthew”s audience, and dropped accordingly.
3. The immediate sources of Luke/Acts are perhaps the least recoverable of all NT obscurities (though they drew heavily on Josephus). When Marcion introduced them to the Roman church(es), they seem to have set off the worst wave of redactionism until, perhaps, the 4th century.
4. John “clearly identifies himself” at the end of our recieved text. But if an older text cropped up without that, it wouldn’t surprise anyone. John is a composite of three major sources (plus who-knows-how-many minor ones), meant to discredit some Johannine gnostic sect (like proto-Mandeans), and still subjected to revisions through the next few centuries.
None of this directly addresses Ireneas’ reliability, except to cast doubt on his sources (which are not “internal evidence”). The four gospels, in many variations, circulated and evolved throughout the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and even 5th centuries; different versions of each being accepted by various churches. If anybody got rid “of the evidence and replaced it with speculation”, how can you presume them to be modern scholars rather than ancient fanatics?
What sources are available to a modern critic that were not available to an ancient church father, lets say Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, or Jerome? Who is in a better position to know? An “ancient fanatic” or a nineteenth century German scholar with an axe to grind with the Prussian government?
As for the “wave of redactionism” set off by Marcion, Marcion was the chief redactor, and the modern critics were taken in by his scam. Codex Bezae evidently carries his text of Luke, and some of his emendations (the “Western non-interpolations”) have been picked up in some modern English translations (e.g. RSV – 2nd ed, 1971).