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Richard Carrier’s “On the Historicity of Jesus” now out

ruby sparks said:
joedad said:
whollygoats said:
Me?

I decided to pick this up:

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I'll try to stir in a little literary criticism in with my historical criticism...
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Most novels can be historicized, certainly the classics. What the vast majority of jesus scholars fail to understand is that any character in any novel is an inspired invention by an author, but that the character is fictional. So why the double standard with gospels?

It's very likely that if we had all the things that were ever written about this ancient superman, scholars would have a different take on historicity. Conveniently for them, 99% of that corpus is gone.
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The epistles and other early christian texts don't have the form of a novel.
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Urban legends aren't novels either, but they're just as fictional.

I mentioned cuneiform earlier because much of the cuneiform is untranslated today. It is writing that ended just as the gospels were being penned. Were we to find an account similar to the Jesus tale like we did the Noah tale, the academic shift toward mythicism would be on.
 
joedad said:
Urban legends aren't novels either, but they're just as fictional.
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I've already replied with some points about about urban legends. If you're not swayed that's fine.

Actually, we've done your novels/fiction 'thesis' too.

I reckon we're unlikely to agree on this.
 
joedad said:
whollygoats said:
I'll try to stir in a little literary criticism in with my historical criticism...
Click to expand...

Most novels can be historicized, certainly the classics. What the vast majority of jesus scholars fail to understand is that any character in any novel is an inspired invention by an author, but that the character is fictional. So why the double standard with gospels?

It's very likely that if we had all the things that were ever written about this ancient superman, scholars would have a different take on historicity. Conveniently for them, 99% of that corpus is gone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and, in the meantime, I can't get these 'scholars' to venture an opinion on whether Yeshu bar Yehovah or Apollonius of Tyana would win in a smackdown. A buncha non-committal weinies. And we haven't even mentioned Hercules. Or, Mithras.

I don't believe that Ovid, Hesiod, nor Aesop, wrote in novels, either. So?

Also, it seems to me that some scholar, Dennis McDonald at Claremont, suggests that the Homeric epic might well have been the primary literary influence for the gospel writers. But then, epics are not novels...are they?
 
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ruby sparks said:
joedad said:
Urban legends aren't novels either, but they're just as fictional.
Click to expand...

I've already replied with some points about about urban legends. If you're not swayed that's fine.

Actually, we've done your novels/fiction 'thesis' too.

I reckon we're unlikely to agree on this.
Click to expand...
Short better archaeological evidence not much will move, agreed. But it's worth stating that we're discussing a subject that is more art than history.
 
joedad said:
ruby sparks said:
joedad said:
Urban legends aren't novels either, but they're just as fictional.
Click to expand...

I've already replied with some points about about urban legends. If you're not swayed that's fine.

Actually, we've done your novels/fiction 'thesis' too.

I reckon we're unlikely to agree on this.
Click to expand...
Short better archaeological evidence not much will move, agreed. But it's worth stating that we're discussing a subject that is more art than history.
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This issue can be approached from several disciplines, one being theological, another being historical, and others in between. I'm obviously only interested in doing history, or trying to. So it might be better, imo, to say that history itself, and particularly ancient history, is itself an imprecise discipline which is part art (or one of the 'humanities'). That's why we can't say anything much about it except in terms of likliehoods. But, and it's quite a big but, it does impose certain accepted standards of methodology, which imo Jesus ahistoricists often depart from, and then it can become...untethered...from the methodologies which it relies on for credibility, and can become inconsistent or even special pleading. Historians generally are not averse to this also, this 'becoming more speculative' on any aspect of ancient history. Disagreement is rife. Consensus and strength of argument matters more than in the sciences.

So, for example, Josephus' citations, assuming they were original, would not be a clincher. All they would be would be bits of evidence that under normal circumstances would be treated as authentic (to Josephus), and fairly early (very early and close to home for the Ananus incident).

Even then, all they might tell us is that there were (very) early christians who claimed they had had a Jewish founder guru called Jesus.

No ancient historian can ever tell us anything much for sure when it comes to minor figures. I can't even think of a piece of archeology that would be indispuatble either. Jesus ahistoricists may be right. I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

But, for example, if we accept that we are stuck doing ancient history on a minor figure (at the time) as best we can, then I personally think it's worth noting that many if not most of the experts on for example, Josephus, are non-christians. They are Jews. Robert Eisler might be one of the most famous. His detailed analysis on Antiquities of the Jews involved comparing in detail all the extant versions, including some more recently discovered such as the Slavonic version, and he concluded that Josephus briefly mentioned Jesus twice, once regarding the stoning of James (which even many ahistoricists don't speculate is an interpolation*) and a shorter reference in chapter 18, later expanded upon by Christians. To repeat, the guy was a world expert on the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus and was himself a Jewish scholar, and neither of them had an interest in upping a case for Jesus. In fact, whether Josephus mentions Jesus or not is not generally or mainly what most Jewish Josephus scholars are interested in. Josephus is just their main source of history about judaism of that time.

When it comes to early christian writings, we are, imo, dealing with 'internal' religious writings, not historical ones. I would not consider any of the writers historians by a long shot.



* Partly because it only says 'Jesus, so-called Christ' and not 'Jesus who was the Christ', which latter is more like what a Christian would write (and apparently did, in the likely Testimonium Flavium interpolation). Josephus may not even have known what the word 'Christ' (Christus) meant. There is evidence that it was spelt, even by Christians, as 'Chrestus', for a very long time. The Koine Greek word Chrestus originally meant 'kind' or 'useful slave'. 'Christos' means annointed, but didn't exist in Greek prior to Christianity, as far as I know. The original Hebrew would have been 'Massiach' (messiah).
 
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Something which, tangentally, I find interesting is the fact (it's not really disputed) that Pauline christianity won out and so the NT is mainly Pauline-coloured, gospels included to at least some extent. It is generally accepted that there was an earlier 'Jewish Christianity' based in Jerusalem which gradually lost out. Along it's relatively short way, it may have split into factions (eg Ebionites and Nazarenes for example) which were not only treated as heresies by 'Orthodox' Pauline Christians but by the Jewish authorities too (Gamaliel II banned Nazarenes from Jewish temples shortly after he was appointed as President of the Sanhedrin in 80AD). It is said that the Jewish authorities never considered Pauline Christianity as a heresy because it wasn't considered Jewish.

This is more about 'early christianity' than it is about whether it had a founder called Jesus, but it can add to a general understanding of what was going on at that time in that place. Which surely none of here would give much of a shit about if Pauline Christianity had gone the same way (into the dustbin of history) as The Jewish versions.
 
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Because the TF was first referenced by Eusebius, a proven forger and propagandist, and done so centuries after the fact, I give this reference and anything coming from Eusebius zero cred.
 
joedad said:
Because the TF was first referenced by Eusebius, a proven forger and propagandist, and done so centuries after the fact, I give this reference and anything coming from Eusebius zero cred.
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Maybe. Maybe not. Then we'd be getting into a conspiracy theory. And some of the TF is arguably very un-Christian. But in any case, the century before Eusebius, Origen refers to Josephus' account of the stoning of James, Jesus' brother, which is the one I've mainly been talking about. Also Justin Martyr earlier than Origen. And Iraenius and Clement back in the 2nd C.
 
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Guys and gals on the thread, I have a busy week coming up and am hoping to avoid any more copious posting on this unresolvable quagmire topic, though will read posts and try to keep my finger away from the reply button. Merry xmas all. Don't forget to think of holey jeebus on his birthday. :playful:
 
if anybody wants me to spill the beans on this passage I will, but I was hoping for some entertainment discussing it with ruby sparks
 
There are certainly issues with Israel. That being said, anyone who equates modern Jews with Nazis is displaying a deep and utter ignorance the history of the Nazi regime.
 
none said:
if anybody wants me to spill the beans on this passage I will, but I was hoping for some entertainment discussing it with ruby sparks
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Sure, none.

I'm pretty familiar with Josephus' Antiquities.

Do you consider the TF to be an interpolation, or a redaction and rewrite? Or, something else entirely?


Which of the two potential revisions do you think occurred first?
 
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Perhaps Jesus, son of Ananus, cited by Josephus thus:

But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God, one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against the bridegroom and the bride, a voice against all the people." Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at these ill-omened words, arrested the fellow and severely chastised him. But he, without a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, only continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the magistrates, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor; there, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither sued for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his utterances, responded to each lashing with "Woe to Jerusalem!" When Albinus, the governor, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these cries, he answered him never a word, but unceasingly reiterated his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go. During the whole period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but daily, like a prayer that he had conned, repeated his lament, "Woe to Jerusalem!" He neither cursed any of those who beat him from day to day, nor blessed those who offered him food: to all men that melancholy presage was his one reply. His cries were loudest at the festivals. So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until in the siege, having seen his presage verified, he found his rest. For, while going his round and shouting in piercing tones from the wall, "Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the temple," as he added a last word, "and woe to me also," a stone hurled from the ballista struck and killed him on the spot. So with those ominous words still upon his lips he passed away. – Book 6, Chapter 5, Section 3 of the historian Flavius Josephus' The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem
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Mayhaps, that Jesus, the Yeshu ben Hananiah, was the 'real' Jesus and all those 'christians' got the symbolism all wrong? It sure sounds like the gospel Jesus, trashing the temple and enduring 'enhanced interrogation' by 'authorities' in public. Perhaps 'christians' should be wearing Roman rocks around their necks? Or, little catapults?

But the story is even murkier when you realize that the 'judicial murder of James' described in the passage (Ant. XX.9) was undertaken 'illicitly' by the then High Priest, Hananiah ben Hananiah (Ananus, son of Ananus)...brother of Jesus, son of Ananus?...and successful intervention by upset elites with the new Roman governor got Ananus deposed and replaced by....wait for it.....Jesus, son of Damneus.

To be honest, I smirk quite immaturely about "Jimmy was done in by an anus, son of an anus, and the Romans replaced an anus with Jesus son of damn us." Hey...It's all Greek to me.

Jameses and Jesuses are replete in Josephus. For a better understanding of the whole 'name game' in epistle and gospel work, with 'James' front and center, try reading Robert Eisenman's James, the Brother of Jesus, in which he makes it ever so clear the muddled ambiguity of scriptural name references. Pick one. Pick more than one. I think that you must assume that all the 'sources' have been tampered with. Repeatedly.
 
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