Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

Who says they didn't believe in it themselves? The exact same thing that was "in it for them" if it had happened to be true, because as far as they knew, it was.Try to understand that I'm not saying that the Gospel authors knowingly fabricated a lie. They believed that Jesus had existed for the same reasons you do - that's what they were told by people they assumed were credible. And they wrote down the stories of Jesus to spread the One True Faith. It just didn't happen to actually be true.

No, obviously not. 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!"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. No, quite the opposite is true. Being Jesus or being Historical Jesus? 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. Identifying the leader of Christianity is not necessary for either the Historical Jesus or the Mythical Jesus positions; not even in Historical Jesus is the Historical Jesus actually the leader and founder of Christianity. He's already supposedly dead, remember?In both positions you have a lost origin of Christianity, started by someone with (let's be generous) a rocky relationship to the truth, at best. But knowing absolutely nothing about this figure besides the fact that he's a serial liar, you take his claims of the existence of Jesus at face value.That's credulous and stupid. 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.That's pretty specific! And it goes way, way beyond what the present state of our knowledge is able to support. It goes so far that it's a serial fabrication on your part. 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. The Mythical Jesus position is more parsimonious because it's more general, requires the existence of entities that aren't particularly significant - human liars and storytellers in the First Centrury - and doesn't try to draw conclusions that are any more specific than what the evidence is able to support.The Historical Jesus position has none of those advantages, and is only supported if you take claims credulously at face value, make maximal assumptions about the reliability of off-hand references to individuals who may or may not have existed, and extend the evidence far, far beyond what it can actually defend. It's an exercise in wish fulfillment, not an exercise in history.

I think the question answers itself, doesn't it? I think the cases for Socrates and Mohammed are marginally better than for Jesus.
I don't know why the evidence for existence should vary dependent on what other people believe about him though, maybe you can explain that in more depth. Yup. Is there something extraordinary about people taking real events and sprucing them up with some magic? Then I'm not taking claims at face value, and nor are historians. For instance, Mark is taken as having more credibility than John who has more credibility than a 7-year old modern child. But some historians do trust other things the Gospel writers wrote. Such things as what Jesus said and did.

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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.

Do you have any evidence to support the notion that proponents of Historical Jesus tout their claim with 'absolutely no doubt whatsoever'?

Because more people have been good teachers than have been the focus of a major world religion. Ergo it's less extraordinary to be a good teacher than it is to be the focus of a major world religion.And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Did somebody repeal that when I wasn't looking, or something? Not at all. But there is something extraordinary about a specific person becoming the focus of a major world religion, when so many religions - most of them, by far - have fictional people as their focus. Well, ok. Now we're getting somewhere! Given, though, that both Mark and John are serial fabricators with no regard for the truth when lying serves the interest of their faith, why should they be given more credibility than a 7-year-old talking about Santa Claus?Or, to put it another way - what's the evidence that supports the claims of Mark, John, Paul, and the rest of the Bible authors? And what is the basis by which they do so? You had no answer for that when I asked before. Is it the evidence, or is it faith? If faith is the only basis to say that Jesus existed then why should I accept that proposition?

Well, sure. Were you looking when Jon, a proponent of the Historical Jesus position, opened up a thread that insisted that having any doubt at all about the existence of Jesus was akin to being a religious fundamentalist who ignores the evidence for evolution?Can you point out where the doubt in the Historicity of Jesus can be found in the posts of PaulK? Or even your own?

Of course, you can criticise the strength of Jon's initial claim, but he has since been using 'more likely than not' which seems to be indicating tentativity rather than 'no doubt whatsoever'. I've not even seen PaulK make the claim one way or another, he seems focussed on his perceived flaws in your position. As for me?

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Showing that a person actually existed 2000 years ago is very difficult. Especially a person in that time in that place. There is evidence for a historical Jesus - the five Gospels and the letters of Paul and that's really the meat and bones of it. Is it conclusive? No.

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Yes we should be skeptical. Our conclusions remain tentative etc etc.

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I'm just arguing that the character Jesus Christ can weakly be traced to a real person about which we can derive a very limited history.

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There is evidence, it's just not fantastic or conclusive.

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The historical Jesus is much like the historical Appolonius. Very little can be discerned, but there is some weak support for the notion that an apocolyptic jew called Yeshua or similar, preached an impending end times, people thought he was a messiah, and his contingent was possibly armed, and after he was executed, the apologetics to explain why their Camping didn't fulfill Messianic prophecy started.

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There is no evidence that necessarily demonstrates Jesus' existence. And I didn't claim as such.

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As I said, the apparent conflict of meaning is down to what we mean by evidence. You mean 'something that could only be if Jesus existed', which is not how I was using it. I referred to that kind of evidence as conclusive and from the outset I said I did not have that kind of evidence.

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There's probably more, but that should cover it.

That doesn't mean anything. Luke could simply be based on Matthew, or the reverse. Mark may simply have not wanted to write those things down.None of that is any kind of evidence for a "Q source" that provides independent evidence of the existence of Jesus. It's turning parsimony on its head to conclude that because two things share something, they must therefore share it with an otherwise unevidenced third. Incomplete plagarization doesn't prove that no plagarism took place. No, your Q source is the fabrication. You've given me no reason to believe that it even exists, or that it ever contained anything that would lend support to your position. It's hardly a fabrication to point out that you're putting forth an argument that relies on an inaccessible source for support. To put forth an argument based on evidence you can't present?My, the illness is even worse than I suspected! No, it addresses inconvenient evidence. But in this case, the Josephus evidence comes "pre-addressed", because it may not be an authentic reference. Thus, because we can't draw any reliable conclusions from it, it supports neither side of the argument. It's as irrelevant as the beliefs of a modern-day Christian that Jesus existed.Evidence that you just can't know if it's real is no better than evidence you know isn't real. Testimony or sources you can't verify have to be rejected - again, on the principle of parsimony. But you did claim that I did:

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If you want to insist that there are no extra-Biblical references to Jesus then you are wrong.

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"You". Since you were talking to me, that's me. But I never claimed that there were no extra-Biblical references to Jesus, and the material you quote to substantiate your accusation was said by Panda, not by me. There's an abundance in the text to suggest that. Here it is again:

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"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from who the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius, at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. And a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

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It's as clear as day. By way of comparison here's the Netflix summary for Star Wars IV:

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In a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas cemented his status as a pop culture legend with this classic battle between good and evil. This is the original, unenhanced version that thrilled moviegoers during the film's initial theatrical run. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), with the help of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), face off against Darth Vader to save Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) and destroy the Death Star.

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Now, taken at face value, you'd have to conclude that somebody at Netflix was a space traveler with knowledge of other galaxies! There's nothing in this text that literally indicates that Star Wars is a work of fiction, and that there was no such person ever as Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, or that the Death Star isn't a real thing.But because we're not acting like total idiots when it comes to evaluating claims made on a Netflix summary, we know that we're talking about what's true within the fictional context of the movie. Similarly, because we know that Tacitus didn't make or indicate any effort to determine the "truth" of the religious beliefs he describes, we know that he's not referring to anything but what's true within the religious context of Christianity. And what's your evidence for this view? And what's your evidence for this view? Not at all. Why would they join a religion they knew was fake?Why would the person who first made up the Jesus story have had anything to do with the religion? That's not at all obvious and clearly not the case. The religion would have been started by the first people who believed the stories, not the first people to make them up.It's the same way that L. Ron Hubbard started Scientology but wasn't a convert to it. He knew it was fake! And what would be his interest in somehow preserving the "original" origin of Scientology given that the "original" origin would convince people not to join the religion? Even Superman has his weaknesses. It's as easily explained by good storytelling as real history.

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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 ?

I don't see any expression of doubt in the below, Mod. I just see an incredible certainty combined with an admission of very poor evidence. For instance:

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I'm just arguing that the character Jesus Christ can weakly be traced to a real person about which we can derive a very limited history.

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Can you show me where you express any doubt that "the character Jesus Christ can weakly be traced to a real person about which we can derive a very limited history"? You don't seem to countenance any possibility that Jesus Christ can't, even weakly, be traced to any real person.

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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.

The weakly was meant to imply the evidence only supports the trace weakly, as is consistent with everything else that I said. Unless you propose that I was tentative at all other times, but somehow became certain for a single post?

Well, but that's what we're interested in. Whether the mythology is based on any historicity. The religion is based on the mythology; specifically it's based on belief in the mythology.Do I have to explain what "belief" means, as well? I presume not. You don't know that. Which I've done. Part of the evidence is the lack of evidence that it happened any other way, and another part of the evidence is that it's been observed to happen this way all throughout human history. We even ave direct observations of it occurring in the 20th century in at least two instances. Not necessarily, and even if there were - who cares about them? It's impossible for us to know anything about them except by extension of analogy from modern-day de facto leaders of leaderless grassroots movements. The topic is whether we can connect Christianity's origin to any specific individual, and it continues to be the case that there's no evidence to suggest we can except via make-believe. And my preference is to play as little make-believe as possible when it comes to history. The advantage I'm claiming is less unsupported speculation, less "detail" that is nothing more than assumption and over-extension of evidence. Less post-hoc explanation of inconvenient lacunae in the historical record.All of which contributes to the greater parsimony of my position. It's the position that is more circumscribed by the evidence. Your position goes off on wild flights of fancy for which there is no evidence. Oh, so we're doing science, now? I thought we were doing history, which everyone, including you, assured me was "not exactly a science."It's funny how the evidentiary rules seem to change throughout this discussion, due to the multiple contradicting views of historical knowledge offered by Historical Jesus defenders. One day, we can know so little about history that it's impossible to contradict one's belief that there really was a Jesus, not that he was named Jesus or was crucified or rose from the dead or anything. The next day your knowledge of history is so exact you're able to say exactly who could have lied, and about what - and that they certainly wouldn't have lied about this! No, the tentative conclusion that he was most likely mythical. Don't ascribe to my position a certainty that I haven't claimed. The only thing I know for sure, PaulK, is that neither you nor anyone on your side have presented enough evidence for a truly reasonable and judicious person to conclude that Jesus actually existed.

This is also a false claim. Well, gosh, maybe it has something to do with the fact that they started a religion that venerated the fictional character Jesus Christ instead of one that venerated themselves. If they had set themselves up as the sole and unique prophet of the religion - as L. Ron Hubbard did - the surely we would know exactly who they are.A similar phenomenon can be found in the incipient "Jedi" religious movement. We know who created the Jedi mythology - George Lucas and a host of other "Expanded Universe" writers - but, because we assume these people are not insane, we can conclude that they didn't believe in it. But the person who actually started the Jedi religious movement - the movement of people who literally claim "Jediism" as their religion, venerate a "Force", and subscribe to a set of ethics based on the goodness of acting with reflection, forethought, and out of peace vs. the badness of acting rashly out of anger or fear - is unknown to history, even though it only happened ten years ago.And why wouldn't he be? He didn't start a religion to venerate himself, but to venerate principles that he thought were timeless and true regardless of the fact that he learned about them in a fictional movie. I'm sorry, Paul, but I've done this over and over. Your continued contention that I've somehow failed to do so is your greatest lie in this thread, and violates the forum guidelines:

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Avoid any form of misrepresentation.

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Enough, Paul. There's no reason to persist in your dishonesty. You know my position, and I know you know my position, and my argument that it's the more parsimonious one has been sufficiently convincing. The proof of it is that you've presented no rebuttal but to pretend I've never made the argument. Frankly, I'm disgusted.