Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

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So, you want to ignore the origins of the jesus myth because we are only interested in jesus?

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No, I'm saying that for the purposes of working out what the historical Jesus was like or if there was a historical Jesus it doesn't matter whether Horus or Mithras were based on real people

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If you want to know who (if anyone) the jesus character was based on then you must include the characters that the jesus character was based on.

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For the purposes of this discussion I don't think that we need to go into that.

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What claims regarding mithra are dubious?
The striking similarities seem to be fairly well accepted.

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From what I've heard the claim that the similarities predate Christianity is dodgy for a start.

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Recourse to unknown sources doesn't present any evidence for the existence of Jesus

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Sure it does. The more independent sources existed, the more likely that there was a historical Jesus.

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I'm not required to present any evidence, since I'm arguing the more parsimonious claim.

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You are at least required to show that you ARE making the more parsimonious claim, So far, you haven't come close to doing that.

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But as it happens I've presented abundant evidence. You've simply not seen fit to grapple with any of it.

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As it happens you haven't presented any evidence of significance.

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The context is clear that Tacitus is simply explaining the beliefs of Christians - not independently corroborating the existence of "Christus." How would he possibly have been able to do that, anyway? 30 years and hundreds of miles from where Jesus supposedly lived?

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The argument, as I have heard it is that Tacitus would have had access to official records (which appears to be true) and could have dug out the record of Jesus' crucifixion. Another is that there would have been an official investigation of Christianity, which Tacitus would have had access to. As I say, I don't believe it, but I can't disprove it.

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's precisely because we know that Tacitus was a skeptical and not especially credulous person that we know that he's not referring to Jesus as a real historical person but merely as an element of Christian belief.

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Except for the fact that the text does not support your interpretation.

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I've dropped nothing. Your claim has been rebutted, and even if it had not - you've already admitted that there's evidence as well that the Josephus material is a forgery.

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No, I haven't admitted any such thing. I've said that one of the two possible references is at least partly Christian, but not that any part of it is a deliberate forgery.

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That is the case, Paulk. It's just been made to you.

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So your reason for expecting this evidence, given that Jesus existed is...that you expect this evidence if Jesus existed. That's not much of an argument.

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You already have what? A "historical Jesus" that isn't the historical Jesus?

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As you know perfectly well we have an idea of the historical Jesus that would meet your criteria. All we need to work out is whether it is likely that such a person existed.

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What on Earth are you on about, here? Where have I ever questioned that Christianity exists?

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Simply for completeness I am eliminating things that you might consider "extraordinary" in your argument.

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This makes no sense. You keep making this claim but it's unintelligible. What "stories about their origins"? You've already agreed that the Christian story of Christian origins is a complete fiction - Jesus didn't rise from the dead, Jesus didn't do any miracles, Jesus didn't give the Sermon on the Mount, etc. So we already know for a fact that Christians have buried their true origin story under a mountain of fiction. Why is this a claim that, uniquely, I have to provide evidence for, when you already accept it to be true? Or do you?

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It makes perfect sense. You're the one taking the position that the Gospels MUST be complete fiction. I take the tentative position that the Gospels are based on a real person, who admittedly did no real miracles (but may have faked some, like a modern faith healer), did not come back from the dead - and who probably wasn't of Davidic descent or born in Bethlehem either to name two more differences.Te question is whether the story was merely exaggerated and embellished (admittedly to quite a great degree) or whether it was replaced by a complete fiction and lost as you claim.Since it is almost inevitable that exaggeration and embellishment would occur, and it seems unlikely that the original story would be completely lost, it seems that the burden is on you.

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Please explain why the person that the jesus character was based on doesn't matter when discussing the jesus character.

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This topic is about the historical Jesus. If there wasn't one that's all that need be said.

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From what I've heard they aren't dodgy.
There are definite similarities.
They may not all be as clear-cut as some mithra's supporters might want, but they still exist.

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It's the dating that is the problem. Roman Mithraism - which is what you are talking about - shows up relatively late in the 1st Century. If you can't show that the Mithraists had the idea first, the question of who copied who (if there was any copying) is still open.

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Interestingly though, there is a more varied selection of archaeological evidence for mithra than for jesus.

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I presume you mean for the Roman Mithras cult over the Christianity of the same era. Mithras was never a real person.

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Though it seems that if the jesus character is based on a character in a pre-dating religion, then you would rather not discuss it.

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I don't want to discuss it in this thread, because it would be off-topic.

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But if jesus is a copy of a different character then you need to identify that historical character, as there is no actual historical jesus.

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Only if that historical character is close enough to Jesus to count. Horus certainly doesn't, and Roman Mithraism seems to be VERY loosely based on older Mithras worship, so the original of Mithras would likewise be way too old.

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Since you seem to accept that there wasn't an historical jesus, I guess this discussion is closed.

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Well it would be if you were right. But you're wrong. So it isn't over.

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Then we should discuss how older religions helped define the jesus character.

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Only if it is relevant to the topic. And if you can actually bring anything to the subject instead of wasting time with posts like the last couple.

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But the problem is just that - "Q" doesn't exist. You can't put forward sources that don't exist as "independent support" for your claims.

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Of course we can, to the degree that we can identify their influence and reconstruct them. What we can't do is use the fact that we don't have these sources NOW to support a claim that they never existed, no matter what the evidence.

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Here's a hint, Paul - when you're making up sources that would conveniently corroborate your claims if they existed you're not actually providing support for your claims - you're engaged in patent nonsense.

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Here's a hint Crash, when you accuse people who come to conclusions you don't like of being dishonest - just BECAUSE they come to conclusions you don't like - it's pretty obvious that you're acting like the nastier sort of apologist.

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Which I've done. The more parsimonious claim is the one that assumes the existence of the least number of entities the existence of which is not required. Since the "Mythical Jesus" position has one less unnecessary entity, it's the more parsimonious of the claims. QED.

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Of course the entities in question are ASSUMPTIONS, not people. And you need an equally full explanation to make a valid comparison and you don't.For instance we don't NEED to assume that other people exist at all. Solipsism is very parsimonious by your standard. And if there's no real need to explain why we see other people then solipsism wins. So your version of parsimony simply doesn't work.

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The records you previously claimed didn't exist? How did Tacitus have access to them if they didn't exist, and if he did refer to records, why didn't he say that? Again, your recourse is to imaginary sources. How can you expect that to be convincing?

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Since I don't claim that Tacitus consulted any official records (did you fail to notice that I explicitly stated that I didn't believe that he did ?) and I don't claim that the records didn't exist when Tacitus was writing - only that they don't exist NOW that isn't exactly a valid objection. (I do suspect that the detailed records would have stayed in Jerusalem and been destroyed earlier, but that's not much more than my personal opinion).

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Why are you putting forward arguments that you don't believe?

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Because they exist and they are relevant. If you want to insist that there are no extra-Biblical references to Jesus then you are wrong. If you want to insist that there is no need to discuss Tacitus because Tacitus must have relied on Christian sources you need to deal with the arguments to the contrary. This is how you make a case, by dealing with the objections, not just by ignoring them.

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Except that it does, as I've demonstrated. The context is quite clear. Do you need it quoted again?

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No, you need to read it again. There's nothing that implies that Tacitus did not personally believe that Jesus existed.

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So, not written by Josephus but put forward as though he did.

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That's the precise definition of a "forgery."

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Not when it's an accident, as it may be. And even then there may be a genuine reference to Jesus there.

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Yes - that it's reasonable to expect some actual evidence if Jesus actually existed. Not imaginary evidence from imaginary sources, which is all you've been able to provide.

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Plenty of people lived and died without leaving any records that survived to the present day. So you still need to make a case which is more than opinion.

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No. Wrong. What we need to work out is whether there is any actual evidence that such a person existed and was the basis of the Jesus mythology.

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The Gospels and Paul's epistles are such evidence. Where's the evidence that there was no such person ?

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And where did I ever indicate that I considered it "extraordinary" that Christianity existed? Please be specific.

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You claimed that there was something extraordinary about the origins of Christianity if Jesus existed but you were very unclear about what it was. Thus I had to eliminate things that you MIGHT have meant.

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And how would the Gospels be based on such an individual? Please be specific.

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It seems pretty obvious. The first Christians tell (mostly true) stories about their dead leader. As these leaders start to die, their followers come to the realisation that maybe the world isn't going to end very soon and maybe it would be a good idea to write things down before it's too late and do so (Mark is supposedly based on Peter's teachings). The author of Luke even claims to have done considerable research on the matter. And so we get the Gospels. And later on, more Gospels, too.

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But again, you're not making any sense. What story was "replaced"? If there was no historical Jesus then there was no real origin Christianity to "replace." So what could possibly have been replaced?

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Obviously the real story would be how Christianity ACTUALLY began. Unless you want to argue that Christianity didn't have an origin your question makes no sense to me.

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I would go so far as to say that it's a certainty that exaggeration and embellishment occurred. Ergo, it's most likely to assume that the exaggeration and embellishment parts go so far as to include his actual existence. Once you're lying about nearly everything, why not lie about the rest?

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Because that would be stupid. If you have exaggerated and embellished to glorify an individual the last thing you do is replace him with an imaginary creation. A lot of the exaggeration and embellishment wouldn't even be conscious falsehoods, just the usual failures of memory. So there is no real continuity here. You can't use the existence of exaggeration and embellishment to argue for the complete falsehood of the Gospels.

Someone founded Christianity.From your posts I gather that this person should meet the following criteria:1. It must less extraordinary that they, rather than a historical Jesus, would found Christianity.2. It must be more parsimonious to conclude that they founded Christianity3. They must be better documented than Jesus, including independent non-Christian sources.So, who is it ?

Since you won't support or even explain your assertion other that stating that there are similarities which somehow undermine the idea of a historical Jesus there's nothing for me to discuss.

If Crashfrog claims to have a better explanation for Christianity than a historical Jesus, then the burden of proof is certainly on him to show that he does. And that certainly includes showing that his explanation is less vulnerable to his own arguments. If it were not then his arguments are irrelevant.

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But that is not what you asked.

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And the reason that I asked is that Crashfrog's own arguments seem to require him to propose some known figure.

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You are doing exactly the same as a someone claiming that if a physicist doesn't believe in god then he must be able to explain how the universe began - else god is trve and the physicist is wrong.

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Obviously it is NOT "exactly the same". For instance Crashfrog is the one proposing a vague hand-wavy idea, while arguing against a plausible naturalistic explanation. And the criteria I am asking Crashfrog to meet come directly from his own arguments against my position. If they cannot reasonably be applied to his alternative, it is for him to explain why.

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And CF has explained why 'no historical jesus' is self-evidently more parsimonious than 'an historical jesus'.
Other than linking a definition of 'parsimonious', I see little more he can do to explain it to you.

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Actually he hasn't explained adequately even given his own misunderstanding of parsimony. He has to explain why his explanation assumes fewer people than a historical Jesus - and he hasn't done that.

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1) 'People made up the jesus character' is not "a vague hand-wavy idea". It is a very definite defined idea. Your understanding of it may be vague, though.

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Obviously you missed the part of the discussion where Crashfrog was using "it was made up" as his sole explanation for everything. It has got a bit further but only because of the work of Crashfrog's opponents.

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2) 'People made up jesus character' is "a plausible naturalistic explanation" - so there is nothing wrong with choosing that argument over the less parsimonious argument you are putting forward.

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You are assuming here that all plausible naturalistic explanations are equal, aside from parsimony. This is not true. I've already explained why you are wrong about parsimony, and you are clearly object to my even asking Crashfrog to show that he has a better explanation on his own terms. Rather odd that, if your position really were rational.

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3) You are expecting someone to identify the originator of a religion when discussing the historical jesus - and when they say that they can't, you'll shout "I WIN!".
But you have also failed to identify the originator of the religion - instead you have asserted it was jesus and then claimed that an historical jesus existed, while providing no evidence.

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Now you are being dishonest. The only reason for asking for the name is because Crashfrog's arguments imply that the founder of Christianity ought to be a known historical figure. And of course, we have the Gospels, Paul and the possible references in Josephus for evidence.

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4) Your claim that arguments need to be applied equally is seriously flawed.
If you said unicorns existed, I could expect you to show me them. If you said unicorns did not exist, then I could not expect you to show me 'a lack of unicorns'.
You are asking to be shown 'a lack of historical jesus', when it is you making the claim that an historical jesus exists.

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Of course I am NOT asking for that at all. I am asking for an alternative explanation, not a disproof.It seems clear that you do not have an explanation which involves a known historical figure, which in itself calls into question your claim to be more parsimonious, even on it's own terms. It is also clear that you have no reasonable explanation of why Crashfrog's arguments would not work equally well against any alternative explanation that you might bring up. So why poke your oar in instead of leaving it to Crashfrog ? Do you believe that he doesn't have an answer either ?

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Yes, but perhaps not explicitly or intentionally. Maybe they didn't even ever know they'd done it.

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Of course, inventing the story is not quite the same as founding Christianity. But if you can come up with a plausible explanation which doesn't include a founder who knows what he is doing, then please produce it. And the evidence.

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It is by definition less extraordinary, since it's more common for a religion to be based on lies than on truth.

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Of course that is just a vague generalisation. Being a bit more specific, Muhammad, Buddha and Joseph Smith all existed - as well as others. Fictional founders seem to be something of an exception.

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It is by definition more parsimonious, since we know that liars and storytellers have always existed and in great numbers, but we don't know that Jesus existed.

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If we are going to compare like with like, what aspect of "being Jesus" is not known to exist. Jews exist. Cult leaders exist. The Romans crucified people. We can go on. Is your claim to parsimony based on anything more than the vagueness of your explanation ?

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No, not at all, because there's no requirement in the Mythological Jesus that the first Christian mythmaker be anybody in particular. It is necessary in the Historical Jesus position that the Historical Jesus be Jesus, specifically. Be one specific person. Ergo the documentary requirements are higher.

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But I am not asking for anyone that specific, just a documented historical figure who plausibly founded Christianity (and by that I would mean the leader rather than someone who was merely an inventor of stories). Or at least an explanation which explains WHY we should expect documentation for Jesus, but not for your alternative leader.

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We don't care who the first Christian mythmaker is, because First Century storytellers are thick on the ground. Could have been anyone. But the Historical Jesus actually has to be Jesus. That's a considerably more extraordinary claim, for which no evidence - extraordinary or not - has ever been presented.

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The only thing that seems to be "extraordinary" about it is that it is more specific than your vague proposal. There is nothing extraordinary ABOUT the historical Jesus, apart from being the first leader of a religion that happened to become very important (and that more to do with people like Paul and Constantine than him). And the same would apply to ANY proposed founder of Christianity. So again, all you have is vagueness, but vagueness is not a strength in an explanation.

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So what's the evidence for this "reconstructed Q", and what does it say about Jesus independent of the Gospels?

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The evidence, in brief is the material shared between Matthew and Luke, that is NOT shared with Mark. In addition it is argued that the differences between Matthew and Luke are evidence that Luke did not copy Matthew (or vice versa). Thus, the argument is that there was a shared source which can be reconstructed from the shared material.Naturally it is not derived from the Gospels because two Gospels are derived from it.This pushes back the origin of the Jesus story, yet again, which adds credibility to it.

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I never claimed that they never existed. I simply claim that you can't use sources about which almost nothing can be known as evidence for your position, for the very simple reason that as "evidence" you can state that it very conveniently states whatever you need it to state, and I can't inspect it to judge whether that's the case.

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But your reason is nothing more than a fabrication. A pure invention on your part.

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Don't get ahead of yourself, Paul. You've yet to demonstrate anything about the supposed "Q source", least of which that it lends any support at all to your position or that it even ever existed.

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But I am not getting ahead of myself. You made the accusations, clearly without knowing what you are talking about. Indulging in preemptive slanders is hardly an honest tactic, not one that I need hesitate in criticising.

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This is nonsensical, just another example of how defending the Historical Jesus requires someone to take all leave of their senses.

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On the contrary, it makes perfect sense. If you simply object to assuming the existence of people without need - and feel free invent ad hoc "explanations" to avoid really explaining observations - then there is nothing to stop you sliding into solipsism.

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How are they relevant if they're not to be believed? How is a wrong argument at all relevant? How does it defend anything? How does it lend support to any conclusion?

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Because it isn't KNOWN to be wrong, and because a fair assessment does not ignore inconvenient evidence.

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Obviously people have talked about Jesus outside of the Bible. So that's another claim that you've utterly misrepresented

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It is ? The claim was: And before you argue that you didn't say that, I never claimed that you did.

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Yes, there is - the fact that he's referring to the state of Christian belief. Just as someone summarizing Star Wars refers to Darth Vader, but we know that he doesn't believe in the existence of a real Darth Vader.

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There's nothing in the text to suggest that, just your assumption that Tacitus cannot have believed that Jesus was a historical character. So you really are making a circular argument here.

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An "accident"? How does that work, exactly? Regardless, I'm prepared to accept that the forgery was accidental.

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If you had been paying attention instead of jumping to the conclusion of "forgery!" you might have noticed that I suggested that marginal notes might have accidentally been incorporated into the main text.

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But plenty of people did not become the central figure of a major world religion. That makes it rather different.

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Actually it doesn't make much difference. You still need to provide reasons why we should expect more of a record than we have.

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Any attempt you make to argue that the Historical Jesus was "just folks", just a regular dude, nobody that anybody paid any particular attention to, undercuts your case that he actually was the Historical Jesus. Because if he was "just folks" then why would anybody bother to make him the central figure of a religion? It makes no sense.

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But i've argued that he was a cult leader, and a wanna-be Messiah. Not that important to people at large, but very important to his followers.

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Right, but why would anybody know that story? The early Christians would have believed that they were following someone who had actually lived, so the fact that Christianity had been started based on a figure that didn't exist would have been unknown to Christians, so who would possibly have written it down? There's nothing to be replaced.

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Obviously the people who first joined the religion would know how it started ! They did it ! So how did that get forgotten ?

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Do you just not understand how lying works, Paulk? I'm surprised - you've done quite a bit of it in this thread.

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Of course, I haven't told a single lie in this thread.

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We're talking about the proven fact that it's a lot easier to embellish and glorify a fictitious individual who supposedly lived a while back somewhere over there - distant enough in the First Century to be beyond all capacity for fact-checking by the local audience - than it would be to embellish and glorify a real man with feet of clay.

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It hardly seems proven, it's easy enough to write hagiographies. And there are occasional signs of Jesus' "feet of clay" in the Gospels if you bother to look.

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I don't understand the question. What's so implausible about someone telling a story, and somebody else believing it and then telling it to his friends as though it were true? "Hey, you'll never believe what I heard at the tavern today! Apparently there's this guy in Judea who was crucified by the Romans - and came back from the dead!"

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That's just starting a story, not starting a religion. And it is not even as plausible as my version of how the story got started, which at least provides reasons for why they came up with that story. (And don't forget that Christianity STARTED in Judaea).

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There's no need to provide "evidence" for this because telling a story that someone overhears and believes is such a mundane and regular occurrence that we can simply assume it happened in the First Century, same as it happens over and over again through human history and in literally everyone's personal experience. To ask for "evidence" is to deny that people lie to each other, are successful at it, and tell stories. And that is truly an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence. The burden of proof remains on you, PaulK.

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On the contrary, I am just asking you to give some evidence that it happened that way. I am not asking for the evidence you claim at all.

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No, quite the opposite is true.

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Then by all means provide evidence.

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Being Jesus or being Historical Jesus?

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The historical Jesus of course, since that is the one we are discussing.

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I have no idea who the first "leader" of Christianity was, and neither do you. Perhaps it was nobody - perhaps it was a movement without leaders, similar to the modern-day Anonymous or to other such grassroots movements.

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Even if that were true, there would have been de facto leaders. But OK, as a concession, I will accept clear references to Christianity as a movement. Are there any for the period prior to Paul's conversion outside of the Bible ?

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Well, yes. It is more specific. You proponents of the Historical Jesus position are claiming a very extraordinary power of specificity to be able to connect a major world religion to a specific human individual lost to history with absolutely no doubt whatsoever.

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No doubt at all ? That seems to more accurately describe you. But thank you for confirming that the advantage you are claiming is vagueness and lack of detail.Just as an aside, one of my criticisms of Intelligent design, it is that in one respect it is even less scientific than Creation "Science". Creation "Science" at least puts forward proposals about what happened and if they are shown to be untrue at least they were falsifiable proposals. ID generally refrains from putting forward concrete proposals at all, and when it does they are largely ignored even by ID supporters. ID supporters also believe in the virtue of vagueness, while scientists prefer concrete proposals.

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It goes so far that it's a serial fabrication on your part.

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Yet another of your slanders.

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The reason the Mythical Jesus position seems so much less specific is precisely because it is constrained by the actual evidence, which supports only very general conclusions at this time.

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Except, apparently for the conclusion that Jesus was mythical. Odd that the one thing you insist on, is held to be true largely because it is vaguer than the alternative.So do you have a real, rational argument beyond vagueness and slandering anyone who dares to disagree with you ?

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This is a false claim.

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Oh I'm sorry. "Jesus didn't exist" is your "explanation". Message 161

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No, they do not. They imply only that if Christianity has an actual historical basis that figure must be a known historical figure. Historical Jesus proponents have already determined who that figure is - Jesus - but they've yet to present any evidence for his existence or for anything about him that would connect him to Christianity. They're simply reasoning backwards from taking the claims of Christianity at face value, and proposing post-hoc excuses for how Jesus could exist but there wouldn't be any evidence of it.

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You are going to have to explain why the actual founder and/or leader (whoever they were) can remain unknown to history while a historical Jesus must be known outside of the Bible.

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Because the Mythical Jesus proposes the least unnecessary entities, it's the more parsimonious position. This is clearly convincing to anyone who has not had their brains scrambled by the effort to defend the indefensible.

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Please provide your concrete mythical Jesus hypothesis and show that it is more parsimonious that the historical Jesus hypothesis.