Considering Eusebius wasn’t even born until 200 years after they were all dead, it doesn’t even constitute proof of their existence, much less proof that they where even executed or that there might have been a resurection. If he was so copius about footnoting why don’t we have any primary sources about Jesus or his disciples? How about alteast a name of a primary source? Where these particular events even foot-noted?
I own a copy of N.T. Wright’s book The Resurrection of the Son of God. I’ve dropped in here to add, maybe too late, my take on what he set out to do in this book. First, he is an Anglican bishop and a biblical scholar. The book is scholarly in form and tone; I have a decent vocabulary but needed my dictionary close at hand to make sense of the book.
One of his goals is to refute suggestions that the gospels describe something other than a dead body coming back to life. He goes to great lengths and depths to demonstrate what was believed by Jews at that time about death, life after death and the possibility of reversing death. He then attempts to prove that witnesses at the time believed that Christ had truly died and truly risen from the dead in corporeal form. Essential to his argument is the belief that witnesses to these events were also witnesses to the oral tradition and the gospels describing the events. It is the basic argument that says that the gospels would have been refuted by eyewitnesses had they been false. Obviously, if the dating of the gospels is as stated by DtC and others, that argument doesn’t do much.
I read the book a year or so ago, and I don’t have my copy with me, but I don’t recall him actually trying to scientifically or legally prove that these events happened.
Again, you are being quite naive. First, Paul never knew Jesus or any of the alleged “Apostles” (i.e., the “twelve” that the Gospels speak of). Furthermore, Paul explicitly repudiated the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence (Galatians 1:11-12, NLT):
He not only states, he demands that he never learned about any alleged “Jesus” or alleged resurrection or anything else from anyone on earth. He insists that all of his beliefs about Jesus came from visions, which simply cannot be considered genuine evidence, let alone historical evidence.
Paul’s statement you quoted above is nothing but a theological construction based solely on his spiritual beliefs, allegedly imparted only in a “vision”, and in no way represents evidence of any historical resurrection (or, for that matter, any belief by Paul in a historical, earthly resurrection).
Nonsense. Consider, for just one example, the explosive growth of the early Mormon church. They grew so incredibly rapidly and successfully in large measure precisely because their beliefs (at least their early beliefs) were so radically outrageous that they were bitterly persecuted (sorry, Mormons; I’m not trying to bait you here). All we can say is that being persecuted leads to social forces that often produce rapid growth. We certainly cannot say that the factors leading to such growth provide “evidence” of anything.
So you cite Galatians 1 as your authority that Paul had no knowledge of Jesus’s earthly existence or resurrection, but a purely visionary experience, and yet you deny that Paul knew any of the Apostles, in spite of his claim that he did indeed meet with Peter/Cephas in that very same passage (v 18)?
Paul did not “explicitly repudiated the idea that he had earthly evidence of Jesus’ existence” - he only stated that he did not receive his teaching in the Gospel from anyone but the Risen Christ. Not that he had no knowledge of a historical Jesus.
We are close to agreement in general, but I must say that it seems to me you might not be familiar with the latest and closest scholarship in this area. Since you are a scholar yourself, I would think you would be quite interested in reading what one of the finest and most eminent religious scholars, Burton Mack, has to say concerning the alleged evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus. This is an extended quotation from his recent book: Who Wrote the New Testament? : The Making of the Christian Myth
Wait a second…are you suggesting that having faith is not reasonable? :smack:
Or far-out all-condemning wackos, like, say, Shirley Phelps-Roper (a video of her interview on Hannity and Colmes may be found here). :rolleyes:
Galatians 2:9:
Cephas (Kephas), is certainly Peter of the Twelve and James and John are quite probably the two apostles prominently named as brothers.
That is not what it says. It says that the message of salvation that he received was directly from God, not that he never heard any further information about Jesus from the other apostles or wider group of disciples.
(I have no idea what you intend by ‘alleged “Jesus”’. Paul is quite clearly talking about a person whom he believes (from whatever source) to have been the man Jesus who was executed by crucifixion and (whom he believes) arose from the dead.
This is hardly scientific proof that such a person as Jesus lived, but you push beyond the available evidence when you claim that Paul believed that his only source of all information was based on visions. Given that Paul certainly knew some of the twelve (at least to argue with), it is unlikely that he never heard any stories from them.
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. And I’m well aware that you realize that sheer numbers mean nothing whatsoever.
The specific phrase in question is widely considered to be a Christian interpolation; a forgery (just like the other passage in Josephus). This, according to Peter Kirby and G.A. Wells at least, is the view of many scholars, including Schurer, Zahn, von Dobschutz, Juster, Karl Kautsky, S.G.F. Brandon, Charles Guignebert, and Twelftree.
I have seen no reliable evidence at all that these people Paul speaks of were among the alleged original “twelve” of the Gospels rather than early Christians who happened to have some of the same names. Could you provide persuasive evidence of your statement?
But we cannot accept that based on anything other than blind faith, since there is absolutely no reliable evidence that these people actually witnessed anything or even that they actually existed. All we have is an unreliable text that cannot be considered evidence of itself.
It’s not true that it’s “widely” considered an interpolation. I noted above that its authenticity is disputed but those dissenters are still a minority. You’ll also notice that I said Josephus seems to mention James as a brother of Jesus. I was answering a question about evidence for the existence of (at least some of) the apostles. I was citing the evidence (meagre as it is). I’m not particularly trying to argue for the authenticity of the James passage (I’m doubtful about “called Christ” myself), but its still, by and large accepted by the mainstream, and, unlike the TF, it has an early attestation by Origen.
I’m sure I never said anything about “the twelve.” I was answering the question about “apostles.” Paul said that Jesus “appeared” to Cephas and James and he called them “apostles.” I also said that Paul’s letters do not make it clear how he perceived their relationship to Jesus. Whether they were part of a larger “Twelve” is not something I am attempting to argue, but Paul does offer primary evidence that people by the names of Cephas/Peter, James and John were early leaders of a Jesus movement in Jerusalem. He calls them apostles and he calls James “the Lord’s brother.” Make of it what you will.
With respect, while I will accept a mild hit, that too seems to be something of an exaggeration.
You’re right that I probably should have researched him myself, but wasn’t that JThunder’s job? Especially considering that I explicitly asked him for better evidence? And even though Greenleaf authored a respected text on legal evidence, is their much of a foundation for JThunder’s wildly exorbitant praise?
Obviously I cannot know (and I do not have evidence for) what any of them was actually aware of, but it is very highly probable that if the Josephus passages that Eusebius gives us were extant – especially in their interpolated if not out-and-out fabricated state – at least one of these men would have known about it. Josephus was too important a source for it to be likely that all of them would remain ignorant of his work (although, of course, this is still possible).
Yes, the latter is certainly possible. However, I still think the likelihood that they are his invention is greater based on the fact that he is – suspiciously, I believe – the first to have learned of them. As a previous poster has pointed out, Eusebius was certainly not above deception.
And plenty of time for these other writers to have learned of Josephus work even if the passages in question only barely mentioned any Jesus the Christ or the Gallilean, let alone if they were in the state Eusebius gave us.
And I was addressing whether a statement found only in a dubious text with no independent evidence may be itself considered evidence of anything. And I still strongly contend that it cannot. My point is entirely relevant. Your statement implicitly assumes that the record of a given testimony is reliable, and one simply cannot assume that with a 2000 year old religious sales manual.
I have seen no reliable (certainly not independent) evidence that the “Peter/Cephas” to whom Paul refers was the “Peter/Cephas” of the Gospels. If you could provide such, I would be most happy to examine it. You would be the first in my experience to be able to do so.
True, in Gal 1:19 Paul speaks of Peter being an Apostle, but you must not forget that Paul strongly insisted that he, Paul, was also an Apostle. So Paul obviously does not consider the word “Apostle” to be defined (at least exclusively) as one of the original Twelve of the Gospels.
That is at best a matter of personal opinion. Paul never provides a historical context for Jesus’ life, which is virtually impossible to accept if Paul thought Jesus was a historical figure. As I wrote earlier, he did not even seem to know where or when Jesus even lived! If Paul is read without Gospel-colored glasses, it is very easy to accept that Paul’s Jesus was not historical at all but rather the supernatural-only Christ of his “visions”. His seeming (but absolutely minimal) references to normal, historical humanity (such as his “born of a woman”, etc.) may at least arguably be better understood as referring to a supernatural-only being who, while he “descended from heaven” did not descend completely out of the heavenly sphere unto Earth but rather only to the lowest level of heaven where earthly activities and norms are merely “mirrored”. This latter view is persuasively argued by Earl Doherty in his scholarly work, The Jesus Puzzle
I don’t see any compelling argument that Jesus was completely imaginary.
I certainly see ample evidence that the Gospels cannot be used as a historical witness outside Christian mythology.
However, it would seem to me that it is much more plausible that a Jewish preacher named Y[sup]e[/sup]shua existed and was the person identified by the earliest adherents of what became Christianity than that some wholly unknown individual made up an entire religion out of whole cloth based on a non-existent person. Wholly imaginary creations tend to be presented like Seth or Thetans with a clearly identified “mediator” such as Jane Roberts or L. Ron Hubbard. The closest analog to that scenario might be Paul, but Paul was clearly in conflict with others who shared a mixture of shared and differing views regarding either Jesus or the new religion. Had Paul launched the religion based on an imaginary person, he should have been able to control the beliefs and direction of the new religion by simple claims of authority and not have to run around the Eastern Mediterranean stomping out heresies or arguing with other elders of the religion.
It is one thing to say that we will never discover the historical Jesus.
It is something different (and far less plausible) to say that there never was any such person.
Ambushed, I think you’re misunderstanding Burton Mack just a little (which is easy to do, he can be quite coy about committing himself to a position on a Historical Jesus). Mack is not a mythicist in the vein of Doherty or Wells and he has said that he believes that some kind of historical “founder-teacher” was at the root of the earliest Jesus movements (see Who Wrote the New Testament? pg. 46). What he does say is that he does not believe this figure is recoverable from the “mythicized” character of the Gospels. When calls the Jesus Seminar a “failed quest.” he’s talking about their effort to locate and define what is historical about Jesus from what is myth. His position is not that Jesus did not exist (in fact, he believes it was necessary for the pre-Pauline movement), his position is that it is impossible to know anything about him and that the endeavors of scholars like Crossan, Meiers and Brown to extricate him from his mythos are fool’s errands, doomed to failure. He doesn’t think they’re looking for someone who doesn’t exist, he thinks they’re looking for someone who can no longer be found and that it’s a waste of time to try.
I thank you for your clarifications and I apologize for seeming to suggest that you did not qualify your statements. I intended no such implication but agree that my words seem to imply that. In truth, I was merely speaking for the open record and certainly not impugning your clearly considerable knowledge in this area.
But that’s neither my intent nor is it in the least my burden of proof! Rather, it is the believer’s full burden of proof to establish through reliable, multiple, independent, credible sources that Jesus was NOT a mythical construction! I am not and cannot provide evidence nor compelling argument for the non-existence of something or someone, as I am certain you must be fully aware. Fortunately, that is in no way my responsibility.
Furthermore, I don’t know what you mean by the phrase you used. My view is not that Jesus was “completely imaginary”, but as I wrote above:
So in your opinion is a singular mythological, non-historical figure given by his inventors the name of Yeshua created as a composite of actual historical (if unknown) figures who bore little relationship to the New Testament Jesus (one of whom may or may not have been named Yeshua) “completely imaginary” or not? That’s entirely up to you, as I make no claim that Jesus was imaginary. My claim is that since there is absolutely no reliable, independent evidence for the historical existence of anyone relatively similar to the New Testament’s Jesus, there is absolutely no justified grounds for believing in such a historical personage. And believing something which has no justification is foolish.
You have no foundation for that view. Furthermore, the considerable quantity of incredible material and manifest invention surrounding the NT Jesus not only means that there are no grounds for believing in a historical Jesus behind the NT, but further that one must bring considerable doubt and skepticism to the question as well.
You can only believe that this is implausible if you already believe in the historicity of someone like the NT Jesus, which as I’ve shown is totally unjustified. You have to show strong, independent evidence that there indeed was a historical person behind the NT mythology to justify such a logically inverted statement. No, given the propagandistic, faith-selling contents of the New Testament, it is actually tremendously implausible that a historical Jesus ever existed.
Let me start off by saying I didn’t express myself particularly clearly in that post. It seems as if I were trying to establish that Mack flatly denied the historicity of Jesus, but I should have made it plainer that what I was trying to do was indicate that Mack argued that no one had credibly succeeded in reliably establishing his historicity, due primarily to the four criticisms of the entire field he laid out. Now, you probably don’t quite agree with this view either, but given Mack’s slight but non-trivial ambiguity, I’m not sure we can decide who’s view is closer to Mack’s intent.
I have a slightly different take on page 46. He writes (starting at the bottom of p 45):
Now, given that Mack used the phrase “historical Jesus” three times and also wrote “very much” here instead of “anything” gives the impression that Mack seems to minimally accept the idea of Jesus’ historicity. But surely you will admit that this is not much to hang your hat on. More to the point, I hold that the lengthy excerpt I posted previously from that work denies that there has as yet been any successful establishment of the existence of a historical Jesus. So page 45-46, in my view, can arguably be better seen as casual, off-hand references that he had no intention to be taken very seriously. I don’t think there’s nearly enough there to justify a conclusion.
Here I must disagree more strongly on a particular point. He did not say that it was merely the Jesus Seminar that was a “failed quest”, he said that what had failed altogether is the entire quest for the historical Jesus, by anyone. 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.
The evidence of a Risen person from the dead going back 2,000 years can only be taken on faith;faith in the writers, and faith in the person telling the story.
One must consider the fact that there was no News papers, Radio, TV.Telephones,or Computers, news traveled very slowly,and people learned things after the fact,sometimes long after.
I lived for many years on a farm without electricity,or phone. I know how long it took for news of the 2d world war to get to us,which was by newspaper.That was on Sunday. Traveling to a town 50 miles away was a day’s trip. So one can imagine how long it took for word to spread.also not knowing about a coma, or being knocked unconscious,then waking up must have been to some as a resurrection;also taking in to consideration of how different people see things and retell the event is a matter of whom to believe. It doesn’t mean they were liars or ignorant.
There are people nowdays who say they saw flying saucers etc. it doesn’t mean they are lying,but they very well may not be believable.There are some who will believe them and some who will not. That is how human nature is and could not have changed thast much in the past 2,000 plus years.
Monavis