The sources for the Jesus miracle events are more credible than those for other reputed miracle-workers.
That's not the point. Famous emperors who ruled over half of Europe were all well-attested -- there's no question about that.
The question was about the reliability or credibility of "anonymous" documents/sources. And this example demonstrates that anonymous documents are not rejected just because they are anonymous. Not even if they contain miracle events and are propagandistic.
So complaints that the gospel accounts are "anonymous" are not a reason to reject these as a source for the events of the 1st century.
That's not
your preferred point, but that is the point.
The complaint has been made over and over that the gospel accounts are "anonymous" and therefore not credible. Do we agree then that this complaint is not legitimate? that anonymous sources ARE used as credible sources for historical events? and thus that this is not a legitimate argument for rejecting the gospel accounts as a source for what happened in about 30 AD?
The anonymous document to which you appeal has some information about someone we already know existed from tons of other evidence.
But the new information in it is accepted, because the source is reliable, and that the source is "anonymous" does not undermine this reliability. It doesn't matter what the subject matter is --- it is still just as reliable whether the source is "anonymous" or not.
If it contains something too weird to be believed, then it is rejected regardless whether it's "anonymous" or has an author's name attached to it. Other accounts which have an author's name attached are still not believed for miracle stories, regardless of having that name attached. Having the name attached does NOT make the miracle story more credible.
However, having other accounts or sources reporting the same or similar events does increase the credibility. Something weird in it might be rejected, but the additional sources supporting it make it more difficult to reject the weird event(s).
That is the whole freaking point.
No, there is no point in comparing Jesus to Charlemagne and simplistically saying that because we have more evidence for Charlemagne therefore Jesus must not have existed. There is no point to something so silly.
The important point is that the anonymity of the source is irrelevant, regardless whether the document is about someone famous and powerful or about someone who was obscure during his lifetime. This doesn't change whether the "anonymous" document is credible or not.
Your anonymous GMark is a story about someone who may or may not have existed, but we have not a single shred of supporting evidence for the existence of this individual that doesn't come well after the existence of this one document, . . .
The epistles of Paul, prior to Mark, are evidence for his existence. Paul clearly places Jesus into history, at some point before 30-40 AD.
But further, the evidence we have, including the other N.T. documents, are closer to the events reported than what we have for many or most events of that historical period, when the events are typically not reported in the documents until 50-100 years after the events happened.
E.g., much of the events in Tacitus and Suetonius and Plutarch happened more than 100 years earlier than these writers wrote about them, even events for which these later writers are our only source. So that Mt and Lk and Jn are some decades later does not negate these as credible sources.
. . . and that one is neither contemporary in time nor geography with the story it tells.
It is relatively close in time by comparison to the sources for most of our history of the period. Throwing this out because it is separated by 35 years or so from the events would mean throwing out a major chunk of history which we accept routinely, if we follow that rule consistently. You are applying this standard to the gospel accounts only out of prejudice and ideology, not out of anything scientific or objective or skeptical.
As to the geography, we don't know where Mark was written, but that does not undermine its credibility.
The goofy incident in Mk 14:51-52, at the arrest, indicates someone close to the event who saw what happened. No later writer had any need to make this up. So at least this, and probably some other parts of it, originated from someone close to the events.
The anonymous document about Charlemagne is culled for possibly historical nuggets of truth while the extraordinary claims of miraculous elements are summarily dismissed. Do that with GMark and you've got the story I would agree we can . . .
But we have
not just this one source, but 4 (5) total sources attesting to the Jesus miracles, and these extra sources make the Jesus miracle stories more credible than those about Charlemagne, for which we have only this one source (i.e., the only one near to the actual events). Unless you mean that all miracle claims must be "dismissed" summarily as false based only on your ideological premise that no such events can ever be true regardless of the extra evidence.
But for those who don't agree with this dogmatic premise but are open to the possibility of something unusual, such events are a reasonable possibility if there is extra written evidence attesting to them, i.e., evidence relatively near to the period of the events.
. . . get from it all along: Itinerant preacher gathers fanatical cult following, pisses off the wrong people, gets Jimmy Hoffa'd. That's it. That's GMark.
No, you still have to explain the Paul epistles and the later gospel accounts. There was no reason for these others to be spreading the same stories. There's no explanation why so many educated persons were joining in to this one itinerant preacher cult and into no others also. If this one cult hero did nothing special, why was he singled out from all the other unknown various and sundry itinerant preachers who also did nothing noteworthy? Why didn't other writers also produce "gospel" accounts for some of the other itinerant preacher gurus running around and accumulating fanatical followers?
Until you answer this, you do not have the story "we can get from it all along" -- you have to explain why we don't have dozens of other similar stories about other itinerant preachers and their cult followings which were just as noteworthy as this one.
No Jesus showing up after the crucifixion, nobody knows where the hell he is. Just an ambiguous story about "He'll be back!"
Yes, and a story not worth writing down, about a person of no distinction. Why would anyone write about this character who did nothing noteworthy? a character mythologized into a god even though having no distinction from all the other miracle guru figures who were not worth writing about because they were dismissed for lack of any credibility? If Jesus did nothing noteworthy, as your scenario says, he too would have been dismissed, and we would not have any record of him as a miracle myth hero.
Your scenario has to explain why this particular itinerant preacher was singled out for this mythologizing and no others were.
Follow this a bit longer and you've got an ongoing development of people BS'd by Paul into believing he's "Channeling" Jesus, . . .
But there were easily hundreds of gnostic-type gurus running around "channeling" this or that hero or cosmic entity or martyr for one cause or another. There was no reason for an educated person to write down any such stories, or believe them, which he knows are just the inventions of those charismatic preachers. Your premise that people of the 1st century were idiots who would believe anything is refuted by the fact that there is only this one case where they did believe such a thing and it was taken seriously enough for anyone to write it down.
Paul was not the only one BS'ing people into believing something. Why was all the other BS'ing ignored and only this one case of it recorded in documents for the future?
. . . along with further mythologizing about people who actually did see Jesus after his disappearance (safely removed in time and distance from anyone who could gainsay these claims).
But if it was this easy to promote a hoax we would have many other similar hoaxes recorded in some kind of "gospel" accounts and circulated around by this and that cult. Surely there were many other crusaders and fanatics and demagogues and charlatans, like Paul or the early disciples, who would have succeeded in getting their mythic hero or miracle myths circulated and published.
They too would have played whatever games necessary to make their claims irrefutable and would be in the historical record promoting their own saviors or messiahs. And yet there are no others. Nothing that anyone thought credible enough to write down for us. The closest possibility of it would be Apollonius of Tyana, for whom there is ONLY ONE source which is 150 years after the events reportedly happened.
When you're wrong just admit it. Try it sometime. You may try starting with the Joseph Smith / miracle thing.
No doubt there have been faith-healers who had some degree of success and caused a few recoveries to happen. Joseph Smith might be one who had some success, but most of those stories obviously originate from disciples -- both those telling the story and the ones cured.
And there is something very artificial about the accounts, such as they are. No one wants to post here the actual text of these supposed miracle events, because they are very unconvincing. They are difficult to find because Mormons themselves seem to be unimpressed with them, or maybe even embarrassed by them.
One of the story-tellers, Fanny Stenhouse, might be a little more credible, because apparently she was an ex-Mormon who continued to believe the stories long after her original experiences when she was a member of the flock.
http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Healings_and_miracles/Fanny_Stenhouse_accounts .
Her accounts are suspicious, goofy, and not something you want to use to prove that miracles really happen. (Read them yourself to see if they are convincing, or if maybe she's a little wacked out.) In these accounts there is still the problem that the one healed seems to always be a disciple who had been a captive of Smith's charisma over many years.
If the one healed is a devotee caught up in the psychological grip of the faith-healer's personality, this might in some cases produce some beneficial effect for the victim who recovers, helping to cause a recovery of some kind which medical science cannot yet explain.
If there is real evidence that a recovery took place, then so be it. Believing in Christ obviously is not an insistence that no healing or miracle can ever take place other than the ones Christ performed 2000 years ago.
Rather, in those rare cases where a real healing is produced, there is this limited power which sometimes can be accessed if the conditions are right. The historical record shows that
Rasputin the mad monk apparently was able to heal a child with a blood condition. And there have been some non-Christian faith-healers who may have had some success. It's rash to just rule out all healing claims absolutely as delusional with no exceptions.
There were probably faith-healers like this 2000 years ago, and 500 and 1000 and 3000 and 6000 years ago as well. Perhaps the original Asclepius was a practitioner who had some success, maybe using psychology as well as normal medicine, and acquired a reputation for unusual success, and his reputation continued on for centuries later to the point that he became mythologized into a healing god.
A faith-healer who has the aid of a religious tradition behind him gains a great advantage at this. All the Christian faith-healers, including Joseph Smith, needed the Christ healing tradition as a backdrop upon which to build their reputation. Just as the healings at the Asclepius temples required the centuries-old religious traditions.
The extra psychological boost may have played a role in causing some victims to recover sooner, while also convincing many disciples to believe a cure happened which either did not really happen or which was going to happen anyway and was attributed to the healer by the disciples.
But normal faith-healers of this kind were not unusual 2000 years ago and did not get recorded in writing, as most people did not believe the claims or that the guru really had any special power, since it was restricted to only the faithful devotees of the cult.
A Joseph Smith 2000 years ago would have been forgotten and not recorded into the historical record as Jesus Christ was. In fact there probably were some other Joseph Smiths between 1000 BC to 1500 AD, and all of them were dismissed as not important or distinct enough to be "immortalized" into the written record.
But in modern times, with the widespread publishing industry, some of the faith-healers got popularized into public celebrities because of the vast expansion of publishing in recent centuries.
These popular faith-healer celebrities are not in the same category as Jesus the Galilean healer of about 30 AD, who stood out and was recognized by so many observers that some of the educated ones felt it necessary to record the events in writing for posterity.
The Jesus healing stories are of cases where the victims healed were not long-standing devoted disciples of the healer. Also he was not part of an entrenched religious healing tradition, which is the norm for conventional faith-healers and something without which they could not establish their authority or credibility among the believers.
