Actually, i am willing to grant Ramsay the adjective “great” when applied to his archaeological investigations. He did, indeed, provide a wealth of information reagrding the "map"of Asia Minor in the first century and he did it at a time when archaeology, itself, was in its infancy. I think swipes at his credentials in that regard are unnecessary.
That said, it remains true that he was working in the infancy of archaeology as a discipline and not every conclusion he reached would necessarily be supported with the evidence we have accumulated in the 80 years since he retired from the field.
More troubling, to me, are the constant claims from sites with religious agendas that persistently claim he was trying to refute various books of (Christian) Scripture. There is simply no evidence that I have been able to find to support such a claim. It seems to be an odd aspect of one particular variety of Fundamentalist Christian writer that they must portray everyone who has provided any claim supporting their side as a skeptic or atheist or unbeliever who tried to “disprove” Scripture only to be persuaded of its accuracy on the (rather scanty to my eyes) evidence. (It is rather like the frequent claims among the same group that Charles Darwin recanted of his Theory of Evolution on his deathbed. They need to portray all their supporters as having been converted from unbelief while characterizing their opponents as having “seen the light” (although never soon enough to publicly recant).)
I think it is unfair to denigrate or dismiss the efforts of Ramsay–although there is no need to accept his word on “authority” when the evidence clearly points in another direction.
Your harping protestations have become quite tiresome. Furthermore, you are being quite dishonest as you keep putting words in our mouths. I never demanded proof, I only demanded reliable evidence, and you have provided no such thing. Your so-called “evidence” boils down to nothing but the NT itself (which cannot be evidence – evidence, I wrote, not proof – of itself) and later writers simply repeating obviously embellished hearsay.
So not only is there no proof, there’s no reliable evidence whatsoever.
I wasn’t trying to denigrate him. His work, as far as it goes, looks legitimate. I just think that characterizations like “one of the greatest archaeologists of all time” are hyperbolic and I know that his alleged skepticism is an exaggeration. From what I recall from reading about him in offline sources. he was always a Christian, he just wasn’t always a Biblical literalist. He wasn’t trying to “debunk” Luke, he just didn’t necessarily expect that Luke would always be accurate. For whatever reason, what he did discover was more impressive to him (and more persuasive to him personally of the historicity of the NT) than what he expected when he began.
You either didn’t read my post very well or you are misrepresenting my position. I do not claim that Jesus was “entirely mythical” – hell, I don’t even know what that means! What I said was that I have no burden of proof to establish that Jesus didn’t exist. What I said is that it is impossible to prove that someone didn’t exist and that therefore the burden of proof is on those who wish to establish the historicity of someone like the NT Jesus. And no one has ever done that, as Mack and others have pointed out. The data are simply insufficient.
I readily admit that the consensus of those who have looked for a historical Jesus believe that some historical person was at least in some vague, often unspecified way the most likely source of the inspiration for the Jesus Christians believe in. While I don’t understand on what valid grounds they hold this belief, I differ from it only in degree and also in my belief that the historical inspiration for “Jesus” was a composite of several people rather than just one. This is hardly an assertion on my part that “Jesus was entirely mythical”. You have misrepresented my position and those who think like me.
And let me repeat: when it comes to establishing the existence of something or someone, the burden of proof falls on the those attempting to establish it.
I had not thought you were denigrating him. I just thought that the poor man should not have to suffer the dismissal of other posters (in the eyes of the viewers at home) simply because some religious zealots have mischaracterized his efforts.
Cecil doesn’t like gushing and I’m sure you don’t either, Diogenes, but I want to second what I found to be an exceptionally good reply on that whole question (it’s far better than mine!). Thank you.
I contend you are reading something into my statements that isn’t there, because I again deny that Jesus was “completely imaginary” and I deny I ever made such a claim or even hinted at it. To believe that Jesus was completely imaginary, one must posit that he was a completely invented character bearing much of the attributes and words the NT presents from virtually nothing in a single person’s imagination in a single moment in time, which is a preposterous view that I most adamantly do not accept.
No, sir, my views are much more nuanced and I ask you to note this. To put it briefly (and therefore crudely and imprecisely), I think that the composite figure that was at some point given the name “Jesus” more likely arose prior to the early years of the first century CE (perhaps as early as roughly 100 BCE) and may possibly have been given the initial impetus by the model of the Righteous Teacher of the Essenes (though I am certainly not convinced that this is so; it’s little more than speculation). I think we have to posit a pre-Millennial origin for the synthesis (NOT outright invention) of Jesus out of various wandering Cynics and others (and possibly the Righteous Teacher model) along with their sayings (which I believe eventually became Q) to account for the belief in this (unknownst to them) composite character in the pre-Paulines.
I agree with your later post in this thread that it is absurd to believe Paul or his contemporaries constructed Jesus; that’s simply too late in time. In fact, I don’t believe that Jesus was synthesized at any one specific point in time. Accretions (and that’s what I believe Jesus was) only occur gradually over time.
But the main argument is that the are simply too many “Jesuses” for it to be possible that there was a single historical figure who served as the inspiration for the NT’s Jesus. Let me repeat part of my earlier quotation from Mack:
Mack has thus compellingly argued that there can be no “historical Jesus” per se and that this character can only be a composite of several individuals (whether one of them happened to be named Yeshua is besides the point). Such compositions are never “entirely imaginary” or “entirely mythical” since they are based – however loosely – on historical people. But the characters are mythical (again, in the sociological sense) nonetheless.
As I’ve pointed out to others, you have no foundation for that claim. Where is your evidence that the Cephus (or anyone else) that Paul writes of was one of Jesus’ direct disciples? One of the NT’s original “Twelve”?
Hell, if you can establish that Cephus was actually one of the Twelve, you have effectively established the existence of the historical Jesus! You are talking about a plainly historical person who would have directly witnessed the life and teachings – if not the miracles and resurrection – of Jesus himself!
If there were evidence for that claim regarding Cephus, the quest for the historical Jesus would have long been effectively settled and I would believe in HJ. I beg you as I have begged the others making that claim to produce the evidence!
Had you posted your views expressed in Post #183 earlier, I would not have inferred that you were making the claim I posted. Your posts prior to that spent a lot of time denying what we might know about Jesus without saying much beyond the denial. Without the proposition of an alternative source for the Jesus story, a denial that he might be real pretty much leaves us with only a subtext that he did not exist.
I find your view that Jesus must have been a combination of multiple people to be a bit odd, given the lack of evidence you have presented, but it at least addresses the issue of where or how the story might have originated.
Yep!
On the other hand, I can hold that Paul wrote a letter to a group of people in which he mentions a direct personal conflict with a person named Kephas and names James and John with the presumption that his audience would know the persons to whom he referred. He also mentions them in the context of the leadership of the Christian community. Does this “prove” that Kephas/Peter was one of the Twelve? No. But it provides a context in which three names that are associated with the leadership of the nascent church are identified by a contemproary witness as being leaders of that church. To posit that all these named people were simply constructs of later authors with no serious connection in reality is possible, but it seems rather unlikely. Certainly I cannot prove beyond a doubt that they existed in the context in which we find them, but I find the various coincidental and mutually reinforcing references much more plausible than some other construction. You may claim that there is “no foundation” for that supposition, but I would contend that such mutual “coincidences” suggest a more plausible (not proven) context than hypothesizing about multiple same-named persons suddenly coalescing into a legendary figure with no antecedents. YMMV
Well that is technically true because you said it, then took it back then danced around the edges of saying it again
ambushed in Post 86
There are other alternatives, by far the most likely explanation (grossly simplified) is that the Apostles and Jesus never historically existed and that the Gospels were written by people who wished to create a faith-inducing narrative that combined in a chronological and easy-to-understand manner the many divergent stories they had heard (and believed, though unjustifiably) about what they didn’t realize was actually a mythological (in its sociological sense) figure created by their forbears and neighbors
ambushed in Post 108
It is, of course, true that most historians and NT scholars do believe that Jesus was a historical person. However, as you can see in my reply to Lissa above (post 105), Burton Mack (among many others, though they are in the minority) compellingly argues that there are inadequate grounds for such a belief
Then Diogenes called you on your misunderstanding/misinterpreting of Mack to support your assertions of mythicising in Post 116 we see your tone change.
ambushed in post 116
This I take to be equivalent to stating that no one has ever established the existence of a historical Jesus. This is precisely what I believe. I make no flat assertions that Jesus was a mythological figure, I merely offer that as a compelling alternative hypothesis to explain the New Testament.
So **Of course you did ** say Jesus was a myth there is no doubt about it – you say it twice in fact– but you took it back – sort of – before I noted it. That may have been, a bit, assh*lish of me but it certainly didn’t call for the supercilious tone you answered with.
As to the “Explosive Growth” has anyone read Rodney Stark’s famous analysis in the Sociology of Religion? It purports to show early Christianity and Mormonism probably grew at about the same rates and places an enormous emphasis on Christian Women as the growth engine (rather than mass conversions).
So I joined the parade and piled on **JT Thunder ** a bit. And am feeling guilty (and fearing lightening bolts). I had this saved to argue with Diogenes with on the cross thing, but he typically took a sensible position rather than being a harda$$…
So I offer this the Nazereth Inscription – which Christians Apologists for over a century point to as “evidence” of the Resurrection. I DO NOT. Let me say is that all it shows is that about 41 AD the Romans in Galilee were concerned about people messing with Graves and (to the point of this thread) people removing the entombed. I think it shows (again) that the Romans were really sensitive to this being an issue with the Jews and were trying to keep peace. Others say it shows a concern - apologists it is easy to overstate the importance – there are always laws against grave robbers.
The witnesses testified that the had seen the tablets, not that they had seen them delivered by God or the angel Moroni. Nothing miraculous about that.
Moreover, as I have repeatedly said, such testimony could count as evidence, although not necessarily compelling evidence. There is no inconsistency between accepting the apostolic accounts and the claims of Smith’s alleged witnesses as evidence, as this does not necessarily compel one to draw firm conclusions in either situation.
Nonsense. If people saw him dead beforehand, and if they saw him alive afterwards, then this would be reasonable verification thereof. For that matter, if they saw multiple credible testimonies from people who claimed to have interacted with the resurrected man, along with corroborating details, then one can likewise verify the resurrection. Absolute proof? Perhaps not… but once again, we are not dealing with absolute proof, nor do archaeologists typically expect to do so.
For the purpose of this discussion, I am not asking them to do so. Once again (and hopefully, for the last time), we are merely talking about whether there is EVIDENCE for that claim, not whether the claim is itself correct. One must first establish the evidence before drawing the conclusion.
Moreover, if we are going to automatically dismiss the testimonies of people who existed “two thousand years ago,” then we must chuck a huge portion of ancient seculary history. This is clearly a double-standard. I’m willing to accept an increased degree of skepticism with regard to miraculous claims, but to suggest that we should automatically disregard their testimonies is not the hallmark of sincere investigation.
And FTR, we are talking about multiple individuals, not just “a couple of guys.” Once again, I do not claim that this proves anything, but let’s at least characterise their accounts accurately.
Again, not taking their word for it. In a courtroom, one may considere the testimonies of alleged witnesses without necessarily assuming that their accounts are 100% accurate. Once more, it is a matter of weighing the evidence first before drawing the conclusions.
And why not? Ramsay believed that the accounts of Luke would be readily disproven by archaeological evidence. He proved himself to be wrong.
"Sir William Ramsay, born in Glasgow on March 15, 1851 to a third generation Scottish lawyer, was appointed as the first Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford in 1886. Archeology was a very young science. Few that held the formal title of “archeologist” even existed.
"Ramsay was an historian who held nine earned (not honorary) doctorates — one each from Oxford, St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Edinburgh, New York, Bordeaux, and Marburg. He was one of the founding members of the British Academy, and was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1906.
"According to the London Times (April 22, 1939, page 14), “Ramsay’s abiding fame will rest first on his comprehensive exploration of Asia Minor; … and secondly, on the new method which he developed and taught to students of ancient geography. On account of both he received worldwide recognition.” The obituary talks about Ramsay’s interesting and original approach to this new archeological science, “Taking into his purview sites of all periods down to the Byzantine, he sought the help of evidence neglected or little used before, notably that of local coin types, and that of Christian authors and legends, and set out to interpret the ancient geography of Asia Minor by noting the relative positions of points on roads and by applying the method of exclusion to administrative groups of towns, of which some members were already fixed with fair certainty in the map.”
"Insisting on first-hand acquaintance with the facts, he read the manuscripts then extant himself in their original Greek and Latin, and used these to form the framework of his searches. His authority on the geography and history (i.e., archeology) of Asia Minor became legendary. After several visits and years of work in the area with other famous scholars, he wrote nearly a hundred articles for the ninth edition of the Encyclopeadia Brittanica and scores of other works that were spread out here and there.
"The academic community clamored for him to compile his work into a single volume. The Royal Geographic Society published his magnum opus, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor in 1890. He wrote in his introduction, “My scheme has been (after several experiences of the difficulties caused by accepting wrong conjectures of modern writers) to make an absolutely fresh work founded on the ancient authorities alone, in which the geographical situation, the natural surroundings and the commercial advantages of each city should be set forth in an account of its history.”
“He retired in 1911 after being knighted five years earlier during the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the University of Aberdeen (where he was a professor of Latin) for his ‘distinguished service to the scholarly world.’”
In the same discussion, Liberal also said,
“Incidentally, it was in St. Paul the Traveler and the Roman Citizen, 1884, that Sir Ramsay discussed how his extensive research changed his mind. He wrote:”
"Among his credentials listed are Honorable Member, Athenian Archaeological Society, 1895; former Professor of Classical Archaeology and Fellow of Exeter and of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Levering Lecturer in Johns Hopkins University, 1894."Was he nothing but a loon? The evidence suggests otherwise. Moreover, merely raising the possibility that he was a loon does not prove (or even suggest) anything. Anybody can sling mud; providing reason to believe that Ramsay was a raving lunatic is much more difficult.
BTW, in the interest of accuracy, I should point out that Liberal did cop to a few errors in his initial post. Six of Ramsay’s doctorates were indeed honorary, and he held three prestigoius chairs rather than four. None of this detracts from the fact that he was still an archaeologist with an exceptional reputation that few men in history (if any) could match. The acclaim and honor placed on him by both academics and society at large still remain.
Now that you’e done with yet another appeal to 19th Century authority, what is that you think Ramsay actaually proved? What did he even provide evidence for? Many of Homer’s locations in the Oddysey were real too. So what?
King Kong climbed up the Empire State Building in New York. New York is real! The Empire State Building is Real! Therefore we have evidence that King Kong was real!
Smith himself never claimed he saw them buried by God or Moroni. Those around him apparently believed his claim that he had been told where to find them. Let’s also add into the equation that Smith was not a rich man, and coming by enough gold to make the tablets would have been extremely difficult at best.
Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. The words of a handful of apostles are enough to make you believe that a man rose from the dead but the words of dozens of witnesses who actually saw the tablets (and swore to it by affixing their signatures) isn’t “compelling?” Aren’t you giving a higher standard of proof to the Mormons than you give to your own faith?
I noticed you ignored my question about whether they were certain of their identification of Jesus after the crucifixion.
Again, I ask that you not make statements about what archaeologists and historians do when you obviously are not familiar with the workings of either field.
And, as yet, no evidence besides the words of the apostles themselves, has been established.
Again, I tell you that no real historian or achaeologist takes a *single work *as concrete evidence that something happened. They would try to iodentify the site mentioned from internal clues, and then they would go and search the area for signs of inhabitation. Only if evidence of inhabitation, a battle or camp were loacted would they give credence to the claims.
For pete’s sake, even the journals of Lewis and Clark are subject to historical skepticism. Archaeologists are always excavating newly-identified sites trying to see if Lewis and Clark were accurate.
As another example, take the ancient city of Jericho. Archaeologists have studied the cite and from the evidence therein, they know there was a city (multiple ones built on the same location, actually, atop the ruins of the last) and that it was burned and destroyed a couple of times. (They see charred wood, items left in the rubble that citizens would not leave behind in a simple abandomnent, etc.). They also know that there were walls around the city, which at some point did collapse, but that’s not all that unusual, because most defensive walls fell at some point or another. That does not mean that Joshua caused them to tumble with a blast of his trumpet. (The desturction dates far before Joshua’s time.)
The acoounts ARE by a handful of people who CLAIM that others witnessed the event, but do not name them.
“Taking into his purview sites of all periods down to the Byzantine, he sought the help of evidence neglected or little used before, notably that of local coin types, and that of Christian authors and legends, and set out to interpret the ancient geography of Asia Minor by noting the relative positions of points on roads and by applying the method of exclusion to administrative groups of towns, of which some members were already fixed with fair certainty in the map.”
"Insisting on first-hand acquaintance with the facts, he read the manuscripts then extant himself in their original Greek and Latin, and used these to form the framework of his searches. His authority on the geography and history (i.e., archeology) of Asia Minor became legendary. . . .
“My scheme has been (after several experiences of the difficulties caused by accepting wrong conjectures of modern writers) to make an absolutely fresh work founded on the ancient authorities alone, in which the geographical situation, the natural surroundings and the commercial advantages of each city should be set forth in an account of its history.”
[/quote]
Uhhh . . . could you point to the part again which says he was out to disprove the Biblical accounts?
Seems to me what Ramsay is saying is that he did not think the scriptures would be accurate in the placement of ancient cities, things they saw there, or the cultures they encountered. Not surprising. I wouldn’t take the “Odessy” with me as a map if I were going back in time to ancient Greece. Ramsay says NOTHING about archaeology proving the miraculous claims of the apostles.
I apologize for my previous comments. I was going off your claims that “the greatest archaeologist of all time” (who I, as a historian who works closely with archaeologists had never heard of) went out on a mission to disprove the Bible, which to me, would be the actions of a loon, not to mention that of a piss-poor archaeologist. Now that I know he did not, I retract it.
What I and others suggested was that the story of his findings and conversion sounds a bit mythicized (and guess what: it was, just as predicted!) and that merely citing his reputation and telling his story in the copy-paste parlance of a breathless evangelical tract is not itself an argument that Luke was an accurate historian as he felt he was.
This is doubly unfair of you because it is simply another dodge from any attempt to discuss exactly what it was that convinced Ramsay. Every evidence seems to suggest that he was, just as you pre-attacked DtC for, overly impressed with the fact that Luke did not place his acocunting of events in a mythical geography.
You’ve focused almost exclusively on characterizing substantive criticism as merely slinging mud or attacking his reputation. But it wasn’t anyone else that tried to rest the argument almost entirely on an appeal to his reputation. If your hyberbole has to be deflated, it’s your fault for relying mostly on hyperbole and not presenting any sort of accounting of his actual arguments to discuss. You attempt to shift responsibility here is stunning and shifty.
If this is the point on which people have declared
then the people writing those web sites (or the works on which they are built) are singularly dishonest. The Tübingen Theory was not an effort to deny the Scriptures and an adherent of the Tübingen Theory would, generally, have believed that the Scriptures were true. The only issue that the Tübingen Theory brought to the discussion was a characterization, rooted in Hegelian dialectic, that various books of the New Testament were written to support either a “Petrine” or a “Pauline” theology which were in conflict. Ramsay discovering various archaeological facts that supported the geography and history of the Eastern Mediterranean while investigating the facts on which Luke based his story was a bonus.
His “mind unfavorable” was not a belief that the Gospels had been imagined out of whole cloth, but a belief that many of the details would have been shaped to support the story. He never set out to “disprove” the Gospels or Acts and such a claim goes beyond error into the realm of falsehood. No believer of the Tübingen Theory would have considered the Gospels “false” or spent any time trying to “disprove” them.
That he found so many of the people and places in the works of Luke described correctly was a valuable contribution. Of course, it then had the unfortunate consequence of opening him to too readily accept errors such as his claim for the census at the time of the birth of Jesus (I know, we’ve argued over that before, as well).
I, for one, do NOT say that Ramsay was attempting to disprove the Scriptures in general. In fact, I have said nothing about his treatment of the Scriptures as a whole, except for Luke and Acts.
We could quibble about what it means to “disprove,” but the point remains that Ramsay initially thought that the Lucan accounts were of late authorship and that their reliability would be in question. As F. Fyvie Bruce said, “When Ramsay first set out on his archeological work, in the late 'seventies of last century, he was firmly convinced of the truth of the then fashionable Tubingen theory, that Acts was a late production of the middle of the second century AD, and he was only gradually compelled to a complete reversal of his views by the inescapable evidence of the facts uncovered in the course of his research.” Moreover, even if we disregard this particular detail, the heart of his claim remains: He is an exemplary scholar who gives a glowing account of Luke’s accuracy, despite initial skepticism. To say that we have no reason to believe the gospel accounts is, at best, an overstatement.
BTW, the following are Sir William Ramsay’s own words on this issue:
“I may fairly claim to have entered on this investigation without any prejudice in favour of the conclusion which I shall now attempt to justify to the reader. On the contrary, I began with a mind unfavourable to it, for the ingenuity and apparent completeness of the Tübingen theory had at one time quite convinced me. It did not lie then in my line of life to investigate the subject minutely; but more recently I found myself often brought in contact with the book of Acts as an authority for the topography, antiquities, and society of Asia Minor. It was gradually borne in upon me that in various details the narrative showed marvellous truth.”
As I said, we may argue about what it means to “disprove” Luke’s accounts, but the point remains. Ramsay was forced to conclude that Luke’s accuracy is exceptional, even though he was previously disposed against this conclusion.
Which are, as it happens, the words already quoted, above, from which I extracted the smaller quotation.
Well, the actual line I quoted from you (which I attribute to your quoting one of authors who has tried to lionize Ramsay out of all proportion and not to your own particular views) was:
I see no evidence that Ramsay ever intended to disprove anything. He went out to the field with one preconceived notion of history that he simply accepted and when he found contrary evidence, he dutifully reported it. (Good on him.) On the other hand the Tübingen Theory was already in serious decline from other attacks upon it even without his efforts.
Examples of the sort of dishonesty I keep encountering on some sites include (from this site
No one outside such websites makes any mention of his family being “atheists,” his father died when William was six, making the claim that the “family” raised him to be atheist suspect, and the “lap of luxury” claim is a bald lie. Beyond that, Ramsay’s own claims are that his goal was to explore the area where Europe and Asia met–with no declaration he intended to “disprove” a biblical account.
Luke’s accuracy was only “exceptional” if one takes the most extreme view from the most extreme Tübingen proposals of a very late second century author. His accuracy is about adequate for any literate author of the late first century–sort of like lauding the typical Doper for knowing the geography of the current era. What sets some people to thinking that Luke’s accuracy was “exceptional” was that some of the stuff he recorded (as current events) when he was writing happened to have undergone name changes or loss of provenance after 1800 years of Roman, Byzantine, Caliphate, and Ottoman disruption, so came as a surprise to the people of the late 19th century.
