The other way to look at it is that is an unreliable account since part is clearly wrong there is no logical reason to assume automatically that any of the rest is correct.
I like the following sub-debate! It can be considered in isolation while ignoring all the other arguments on both sides. And here it is, at the top of a page, as though it “wants” to start a new thread!
The binary contrast here is sharp. Indulge me and allow a slightly hyperbolic paraphrasing:
A. “The lie about Bethlehem (contrived to fulfill a prophecy) and the census was to avoid an unpleasant truth about Nazareth (or rather, not-Bethlehem).”
B. “No, the error about the census just makes it more likely that other facets of the story, including Nazareth, are also lies, whether intentional or accidental.”
Poll question: Which is likely to be closer to the truth?
[A] Statement A
** Statement B
(septimus has already voted in this poll.)
A and B for me.
It does mean that it is likely that many other parts of the story are lies. But not the Nazareth part. The made up parts (like the Virgin birth, there to fulfill a prophecy that didn’t really exist) were done for a reason, to support the claims. Why make up something which did not support them?
None of which has much to do with whether Jesus existed.
I think there’s a misconception about how these kinds of mythic stories develop in mainly oral, semi-literate cultures.
It’s unlikely that one guy sits down and thinks intentionally about how he going to fool everybody, and deliberately makes up a story and decides what details and miracles to fabricate. (Yes… Mormons… Ron Hubbard… etc., but that’s generally not the way real myths develop in oral cultures.)
Rather, the story gets retold… and retold… and retold… to groups of people who go out and tell other groups of people. Each time the story gets slightly embroidered. Memes and and general religious ideas and stories that are ‘just around’ gradually get added. There’s a kind of broken telephone effect that shapes and magnifies the story.
e.g.
Early retelling:
Narrator: So Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah…
Listener 1: Wasn’t there a prophecy that the Messiah would be from Bethelem? So how could he be from Nazareth?
Narrator: Well, I don’t know, but the prophecy must be true. Maybe his parents came from Nazareth, but they just happened to be in Bethlehem when he was born. Anyway, so his birth had been predicted.
After a few more retellings (by people who heard the previous version, or by the same narrator anticipating questions):
Narrator: So Jesus’ parents were from Nazareth, but they were in Bethlehem when he was born. That fulfills the prophecy that says the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
Listener: Why were they in Bethlehem?
Narrator: No idea, they just were.
Listener 2: Wasn’t there some kind of big census around that time? I remember my grandfather telling me what a big fuss there was. That was when Quirinius was governor, I think. Wasn’t that about the same time as Jesus’ birth? Maybe that was why they were in Bethlehem.
Narrator: Yes, I’m sure that must be the reason. Anyway, so his birth had been predicted by some magi as well. You know, those guys who make predictions from the stars.
Listener 3: If the prediction was that the Messiah was supposed to king, that must have really upset whoever was king at that time.
Listener 4: Wasn’t it that bastard, Herod? Yes, he must have been really upset if he heard about the Messiah!
After a few more retellings:
Narrator: So Jesus’ parents were from Nazareth, but they were in Bethlehem when he was born, for the big census held by Quirinius. That fulfills the prophecy in Micah that says the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
Listener: Why did they have to travel to Bethelem for the census?
Narrator: Dunno. I guess Caesar must have decreed it. Anyway, three magi had also predicted his birth from a bright star. Then that bastard Herod got to hear about it, and boy was he upset!
Listerer 2: I bet he tried to kill him, like in all the stories you hear about prophecies.
Listener 3: But how would he know where to find him? He must have looked for all the children that were born at that time.
And so it goes… something along those lines. 
After many years and many retellings and versions, it eventually gets written down. But there’s a grain of truth to start with.
Yes, Jesus was from Nazareth, and he influenced a lot of people who then went out and told stories about him.
Yes, probably Jesus addressed a big crowd near Bethsaida, and there wasn’t enough food for the people who came to listen to him. Then a boat arrived with a load of bread and fish, some rich guy picked up the tab, and it got sorted out… and the story got embroidered…
Yes, almost certainly Jesus was crucified by Pilate with the support of the Temple authorities. But no, the earth didn’t shake, and the sun wasn’t dimmed, and the curtain of the Temple wasn’t torn in half… but that certainly adds a nice dramatic touch when you tell the story!
His actual doctrines, like the Sermon on the Mount, are less likely to be altered, because that was what made him remarkable and interesting in the first place, that was what made him a subject for stories.
And it’s those ideas that have changed the lives of many people through the centuries:
Love your neighbor as yourself
Turn the other cheek
Love your enemies
Forgive injuries
The lowest and poorest people have value
The rich should use their wealth to help the poor
Don’t judge people
The worst sinner can repent and change
Be merciful and humble
Etc.
There are many great inspiration passages, like that of Paul in Corinthians about love.
Yes, most Christians don’t live up to those standards, and never have. But those are still the standards clearly and repeatedly set down, and some have always done their sincere best to follow them. Those are the aspirations that give meaning and value to Christianity. Everything else - even whether you believe in God or not - is just the packaging. My two cents.
Right. The Bible scholars call it the criterion of embarrassment; more generally, it’s known as a declaration against interest. Even if someone is known to be a liar, if he says something that makes his case look bad, there’s a good chance that he is either telling the truth about that particular thing, or he is saying it to conceal something even worse.
I think it has everything to do with it. The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke are dispositive for me on the question of Jesus’ existence. There is simply no good reason for them to create fictitious (as they clearly are) stories about why Jesus was born in Bethlehem but raised in Nazareth, unless their alleged Messiah was known to be from Nazareth.
Try Brian Pitre’s The Case for Jesus.
Brant Pitre.
There are various discussions online as to who Arthur was. Or might have served as a model. He could well be a composite of two or more historical figures, embellished over the years in the way that the oral tradition always is.
Geoffrey of Monmouth was just the YouTuber if his day.
It reminds me of a 1979 interview in Rolling Stone by David Thomas of Pere Ubu. The interviewer noted how Pere Ubu was wildly popular in Europe, but they were ignored in their hometown of Cleveland. David Thomas replied the mentality is “I went to high school with them, they can’t be any good.” Jesus trying to scare up some business healing the sick in Nazareth is comparable to Pere Ubu headlining at the Cleveland Agora. David Thomas happens to be a Jehovah’s Witness, but that has no bearing on it because he gave the RS interview before he recorded any of his Jehovah songs.
I never knew about that. That’s pretty wild. Salome, of all people, wanted to party with Jesus but he told her no.
Pretty much you can do that for most any history or Bio. Gibbons Decline and Fall is marred by his extreme anti-church beliefs, which led him blaming the Destruction of the Library of Alexandria on the Christians. Do we then throw out all the rest of that seminal work? Or much of Asimov’s science writings or Brysons?
Yeah the birth stories, while not proven incorrect are quite dubious.
Not that Salome. The daughter of Herodias is not named in the Bible, and the story of her dance is not known from a source outside the Bible. Josephus says that Herodias had a daughter named Salome, and that John the Baptist was executed by Herod, but that’s all.
The Salome of the Gospels was simply a female follower of Jesus, present at the crucifixion and the empty tomb, but nothing else is known about her.
Either one of them on its own would be quite dubious, because of all the miracles, the bizarre census, etc. But together, at least one of them must be false, because even the non-miraculous parts contradict one another. Matthew has Jesus being born no later than 4 BCE, while Luke has him being born no earlier than 6 CE. And Matthew has Jesus’ family fleeing to Egypt while he is an infant because Herod sent soldiers to kill him, based on no more than a rumor from foreign astrologers. They remained there however many years it took Herod to die, and then were warned in a heavenly dream to stay out of Judea because the new ruler Archelaus also wanted to murder Jesus. Archelaus ruled for another ten years.
Luke says the six-week-old Jesus was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem, half a mile from Herod’s palace, and there proclaimed the Messiah by various holy people. Even without Temple spies, a paranoid Herod would certainly have heard of it, because Luke says it was told to everyone interested in the subject. But Herod ignores this eyewitness testimony, and Joseph and his family were not harassed or molested in any way; they simply concluded their business at the Temple and then went home to Nazareth. Luke adds that they returned every year to Jerusalem for Passover, directly contradicting Matthew, who has them staying out of Judea for over ten years.
[quote=“TonySinclair, post:214, topic:844978”]
Either one of them on its own would be quite dubious, because of all the miracles, the bizarre census, etc. But together, at least one of them must be false, because even the non-miraculous parts contradict one another. Matthew has Jesus being born no later than 4 BCE, while Luke has him being born no earlier than 6 CE. …/QUOTE]
Those dates are suppositions, based upon what we currently know about Herod and Quireuus and the censuses.
However- what we currently know is pretty sparse.
wiki:
Herod died in Jericho,[17] after an excruciatingly painful, putrefying illness of uncertain cause, known to posterity as “Herod’s Evil”.[60][61] Josephus states that the pain of his illness led Herod to attempt suicide by stabbing, and that the attempt was thwarted by his cousin.[62] In some much later narratives and depictions, the attempt succeeds; for example, in the 12th-century Eadwine Psalter.[63] Other medieval dramatizations, such as the Ordo Rachelis, follow Josephus’ account.[64] Most scholarship concerning the date of Herod’s death follows Emil Schürer’s calculations, which revised a traditional death date of 1 BCE to 4 BCE.[65][1][3][66][67] Two of Herod’s sons, Archelaus and Philip the Tetrarch, dated their rule from 4 BCE,[68] though Archelaus apparently held royal authority during Herod’s lifetime.[69] Philip’s reign would last for 37 years, until his death in the 20th year of Tiberius (34 CE), which implies his accession as 4 BCE.[70] Some scholars support the traditional date of 1 BCE for Herod’s death.[71][72][73][74] Filmer and Steinmann, for example, propose that Herod died in 1 BCE, and that his heirs backdated their reigns to 4 or 3 BCE to assert an overlapping with Herod’s rule, and bolster their own legitimacy
So, since we dont KNOW when Herod died, it’s hard to fix a date.
[quote=“DrDeth, post:215, topic:844978”]
So if I understand your citation, most scholars agree on 4 BCE, and all documentary evidence indicates 4 BCE, but some scholars “propose” a date of 1 BCE based on a hypothesis that Herod’s sons were trying to gaslight people who certainly would have known they were lying. Why they would need to bolster their legitimacy, when they were appointed by Augustus Caesar himself, is not stated.
And even this latest possible date is still 7 years too early to reconcile with Luke.
Is that about it?
[quote=“TonySinclair, post:216, topic:844978”]
It’s based on the fact we dont *know *when Herod the Great died. We have opinions. “*Most scholarship concerning the date of Herod’s death follows Emil Schürer’s calculations…”
- Which means, they are trying to figure it out, his is the best guess, we dont know.
Why do you say Luke and 7 AD?
As you point out, most can calculate Jesus birth in Matthew being born 4 B.C. because of the days of Herod, and those that accept Luke place it as late as 7 A.D. since Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria until 7.A.D… It gets interesting when others try to reconcile the two, while still not being convincing.
But wait, there’s more! In Remberg’s classic The Christ, there were about ten different opinions regarding Christ’s birth coming from Christian scholars. Remburg in his day shows Dodwell placing it at 6 B.C. Chrysotom 5 B.C., Usher also settled on 4 B.C., Irenaeus 3 B.C., Jerome 2 B.C., and Tertullian 1 B.C… Some place it in 1 A.D., others 2 A.D. and others still in 3 A.D. If you have any questions, don’t take it up with me.
Looking on the bright side, just pick a date, any date, around this time, and you’ll find at least one source that will go with that date being Jesus’ birth.
In the OT, the word faith is used only twice in the KJV. In the NT, it’s used hundreds of times. In tough situations as these, it’s a good time to rely on it.
I didn’t. I said your latest possible date for Herod’s death was 7 years too early (for the Quirinius census of 6 CE that must be what Luke is referring to, although it wasn’t empire-wide, didn’t affect Galilee, and didn’t require people to go to where their ancestors lived 1,000 years earlier).
But that was indeed a mistake. I have a degree in math, not history, and I subtracted -1 from 6 to get 7, but I forgot there was no year 0, so I should have said Herod’s latest possible death date was still 6 years too early, rather than 7.
That is a book my cousin the preacher recommended to me because he knows I find such books amusing. Others he’s also recommended to me in the past are Josh McDowell’s, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, and Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ too. He’s been on a mission to save me since a young kid, I’m now 61, and he hasn’t gave up yet.
These are popular writings that are very selective with whom they quote from, and have plenty of problems we could talk about. There are good arguments that can be made for and against the historicity of Jesus on both sides. These are not the authors you want to go to to find them though. Van Voorst and Ehrman are an improvement for historicity, but still lacking. I’d make time to do a thread on any of these in the future if someone is serious about defending their work. Just not now, barely have time for this.
Briefly, Pitre makes the claim that the gospels were not anonymous after all. But mainstream scholarship hasn’t been moved. He’s also very generous on his dating of manuscripts too, trying to provide an earlier date, when he should be showing several centuries of latitude for many of them he gives. In the second chapter on page 15, take the first two e.g., for "Gospel of Matthew. " He lists only as second century and leaves it at that. My sources show a range of late second century, and some going into the fourth century.
If Pitre could actually date some of this stuff to early 2nd century, it would be worth noting, but still wouldn’t make his case. Even a bigger breakthrough if they could find some 1st century source, even bigger, let’s finally have the originals (not happening).
In the middle of the second century, there are a few early church fathers that mention two. Before all four gospels gets named, we have to wait until Irenaeus addresses it in Against Heresies, Book II, Chapter 22 written about 180 or thereabouts. He also insists there just had to be four. A short read with many interesting finds you can read on the newadvent site.
For a quick primer, seek out the late scholar and ex-Catholic priest, Joseph McCabe, he knew the ancient languages well, was the Catholic’s golden boy, but finally went his own way, and took the education, and all of the books he had been exposed to, to write hundreds of his own books, and became public enemy number one to the CC. Even though McCabe’s book was originally published in 1925, this twenty minute read could use some updating, but it still has many valid arguments that scholars are still making for it today for historicity. In McCabe’s day, he knew many of the epistles were corrupt, and some weren’t actually written by Paul, but the figure given today is much higher. Anyway, for some reason, in the link I provide, is the same I have in book form, with the exception that the link has the entire 3rd and 6th chapter missing from his book (no idea why), and what fully satisfies McCabe that there probably was a historical Jesus of some kind and is addressed in the third chapter of his written book.
So when arguing with the mythicists in his day, McCabe has this to say about "Paul and Jesus"in the third chapter. Since the link doesn’t have it, I’ll quote bits of it here:
McCabe further argues it is no use arguing that this or that Epistle is not genuine when it runs throughout the Epistles, and to do so, he thought was an eccentric opinion of Van Manen, when saying that they all are spurious. If you’ve never read from McCabe, you truly are in for a real treat.
So how does the mythicist camp handle these? They think for Paul the resurrection is a celestial event. Carrier’s latest tome doesn’t even require any conspiracy. His work was peer-reviewed and published by a respected academic press, and if you don’t know how to do Bayes Theorem, not to worry, you can get a lot out of it and just ignore that aspect. I did.
Today, of the fourteen Epistles credited to Paul, the usual concensus among mainstream scholars is usually seven that are genuine. From those seven mentioned, Carrier argues that Paul never once mentions any of the miracle working going on as in the gospels. He further says, we also know there is no teaching or saying ever ascribed to him. No mention of the virgin birth, his baptism, nothing of Joseph or Mary, no physical description of him, and no mention of Pontius Pilate. In those works, by Carrier’s count, the crucifixion is mentioned over fifteen times, the resurrection over thirty, but never any of the details. So is this an earthly or celestial resurrection? Doherty, Carrier and others argue for the later, and if you have a lot of spare time on your hands, you read and compare and decide for yourself who has the best arguments if your interest takes you that far. I’m afraid in order for me to reach an opinion would require a re-reading of all 1,700 pages from both Carrier and Doherty, not to mention re-reading the Epistles again too, time of which I don’t have, and even if I did, doubt I could still firmly find myself in either camp. But like others, I still enjoy seeing good arguments made for either side.
If you decide to go down these rabbit holes, there really is no end in sight. You’ve been forewarned.
Thanks for the recommendations, Razncain.