BTW, here is a much more nuanced and reasonable presentation of Doherty’s arguments. I’m not familiar with Richard Carrier, so I can’t vouch for his honesty or credentials, but he presents the arguments and criticisms of mythicism in an apparently balanced way, while acknowledging that he ultimately does find the mythicist argument convincing.
Between this thread and that essay, I’m finding myself edging closer to a mythicist position, but to be blunt, it is in spite of, not because of, your debate, ambushed. Your exasperation and mocking tone, your inability to see anyone who disagrees with you as an honest debater, and the constant overstatement of your case as obvious and undebatable all lessen your credibility and that of your position in the debate. If I do end up convinced of your position, my first words to you will be, “Get off my side!” It’s clear there are good arguments for mythicism, but your presentation of them has been arrogant, rude, uncritical, and unthoughtful. That may score points in high school debate club, but it wins you nothing around here.
I’m currently neither a historicist or a mythicist, but completely at an impasse on the question and have given up trying to draw a conclusion absent any new data. I’m not trying to argue for the HJ position, just providing some information about what it is (as I’ve also done for the MJ position).
As to who Paul called adelphoi, it is true that Paul called many people “brothers,” but he only called one “the brother of the Lord.” There actually is an arguable distinction there. One does not have to look beyond modern analogues where it is common for members of the same churches or congregations to call each other “brothers and sisters,” but they are calling each other bretheren of each other, not of God, and the latter would not at all be the likely inference being made by anyone hearing a pastor talk about “brothers” helping out at the picnic," or “sisters” raising money for Haiti. Since Paul only uses “brother of the Lord” for James, and everyone else as “brothers,” a very reasonable argument can be made that the convention was for Paul’s communities to call each other “brothers” (of each other), but that his appelation for James was unique and distinct.
You don’t have to agree that this is convincing, of course, but it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis, and the mythicist position would have to show some reason why it can’t be correct in order to invalidate it. I’m not saying it proves historicity, but overcoming Paul’s appelation for James as “the brother of the Lord,” is not as simple to dismiss as representing Paul’s ordinary use of the word to refer to congregants. I also don’t think it can be explained as being a special designation for the head of the Church without more proof than simply saying so. I’m not aware of any historical or modern analogues where everybody else is each other’s collective “bretheren,” but the pastor is a “brother of the Lord,” himself.
As to Josephus. Yes, I’m aware of the problems with the Testimonum Flavianum, but the James passage is, nonetheless generally accepted as genuine. I’m not arguing for or against it. I don’t know. I was listing it to give a complete catalogue of what is typically used to support the historicist position (which is still, by far, the mainstream scholarly view).
Thanks. That was my impression, but it’s hard to tell just looking at a couple of websites. And he doesn’t have a faculty position AFAICT, which doesn’t mean anything, but makes it a bit harder to check out his standing.
Exactly. If you’re going to explain it and claim it clearly refutes something then you need something more solid than a plausible counter story. Do we have documented evidence that James led a certain group and/or that it was the practice of the day to give these leaders an informal title like the one described.
I’d want the same for the contention that all the references Paul made about Jesus death and resurrection and other comments that lend themselves to a living being, were actually thought to have taken place on some other spiritual plane. It’s possible, but minus solid evidence it’s only an interesting theory.
I have read that some researchers don’t believe Paul wrote all the letters attributed to him. There is a stark difference between II Cor. and some of the other writings. But I do believe Paul spread Christianity causing it to be what it is today. Christians need to read the words of Jesus and heed them, not worrying about the rest of the Bible.
Good Point. We can’t be sure all the quotes attributed to Jesus were really said by Him. No one can guarantee that. But there is a thread running through them of love one another. So I think one can believe these quotes actually came from Jesus. They are not new teachings, they were said before by other great teachers. I look upon these teachings as the path to peace and happiness. After all Jesus said “I came to bring you life, and life more abundantly.” Following His teachings will do just that.
How are his “inciting unrest”, trial, and execution presented in the earliest of documentation? In the Gospels, they’re all presented in a way that’s quite complementary to Jesus. I am not knowledgeable of the evolution of references to these (alleged?) events prior to the gospels.
Didn’t ambushed already address this directly by stating that “the brother of the lord” was a specific title used by James’s group? Do you dispute that claim? 'Cause it looks like you’re ignoring it.
I didn’t ignore it, I addressed it in my next paragraph:
I think Ambushed’s is presenting a bare hypothesis, but isn’t saying why his hypothesis should be preferred to a hypothesis that Paul was being literal (in the specific case of James), especially since we have little in the way of historical or modern analogs for church’s referring to leaders as unique “brothers” of Gods.
I missed that - I guess I was fooled by the fact that the paragraph I quoted is pointless white noise unless no explanation at all for the unique designation has been presented. As an explanation was presented, one should go directly to shooting it down or dismissing it, and then in a footnote add that in the absence of that explanation the ‘generic brother’ explanation doesn’t cut it. By reversing the order and emphasis of the arguments you threw me completely.
I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing a cite for the practices of James’s church (including for the damning claim that it preached a purely spiritual Christ, which in my opinion would utterly demolish the theory that he was Jesus’s direct relative even if Paul had called him “James, born of the same loins as Jesus two years later, who constantly complained of having to wear Jesus’s hand-me-downs”.)
And if he went about having sex with 8 year olds, I’m sure it also would have been presented in a complementary way. The point is that it’s something which requires sugar coating, not something which is in and of itself a good thing.
I think one point being made or that should be clear from this thread is that when the available evidence is so sparse several plausible explanations may fit the available evidence. Without more evidence what makes one entirely plausible explanation better than the other? Personal preference?
Well you have to realize that nearly all ancient history is based on a paucity of information. Because one bowl with a picture of a snake on it was found in a village from 18,000 years ago, the people of that village may or may not worship a snake god. Knowing that snake gods seem to be linked with (male) fertility in other cultures, we thus presume that this village worshiped a fertility god.
And that will go into the history book: The Fertility God of Ancient Timbuktu
As the most popular and plausible theory among the scholarship, it becomes accepted history. It’s entirely based on guesses, probability, and whoever was best at selling the idea, but so it goes.
If you think that they should have just said, “We honestly have no idea.” Well then, we’d really have to toss out half of every history book in the world.
I addressed those points in the order that Ambushed presented them.
There aren’t any. All we know about the Jerusalem church is what is found in the Pauline corpus, and that’s next to nothing but that they observed Jewish law, and that Paul says Jesus “appeared” to them. We don’t have any surviving writings from any of Jesus’ original followers and really have no idea what they practiced, or what they specifically believed about Jesus (or about anything else except that they kept kosher).
This is not true at all. Historians seldom say they know something for a fact without some very good evidence. Interpretive hypotheses are presented as such. There are many things about ancient history which can be well corroborated by archaeological and documentary evidence. Narratives and specific meanings for symbols are not invented out of whole cloth.
The Bible is actually an anomaly in that a lot of trained historians are more willing than they should be to accept (or at least unwilling to voice perfectly reasonable skpeticism out loud) certain Biblical narratives as generally historical by default when they don’t afford that courtesy to any other ancient literature (especially religious literature).
Well yes and no. My example was extreme compared to reality, but your statement is also extreme in the sense that once an opinion achieves majority status, that it’s simply the predominant position tends to glossed over in further usage. Only if some new evidence comes to the fore that sets it back does it become worthwhile to really question the state of things again.
But, it does only get to that point if the predominant position is pretty strongly held to be probably accurate.
If you went back in time and could actually verify stuff, I’d guess that we have…dunno 80-85% of everything correct for anything older than 1000 years? Obviously it will vary by region.
Opposing comericalism in the temple, then getting picked up while engaged in a peaceful activity and then summarily railroaded and executed? It sounds like a heroic tale of being oppressed by the Man to me. (Which is kind of why I asked what the other representations of the situations were, if any. If he was arrested while publicly decrying Rome, that would be different maybe.)
Relative levels of plausibility? I don’t think that “entirely” plausible describes either option in this case - there are implausiblities that must be accepted for both outcomes (Josephus overlooked the one messiah that really made history/not a single original early document clearly stating a mythicist position survived).
