We also dont know too much about Quirinius. There have been several explanations posted about this, you should look them up.
One thing I see over and over is an exchange like this:
Alice points out contradictions or other problems in the Bible.
Bob gives an explanation as to why this is not really a problem.
Alice points out that that is an explanation. A lot of people give other explanations. There doesn’t seem to remotely be any consensus.
Bob doesn’t acknowledge this and continues with the one explanation.
One would hope that we wouldn’t be seeing this here, but alas.
It would be a good idea when discussing such issues that you either post an explanation (with cites) that either has overwhelming support or acknowledge that there is no such explanation and what you believe is merely … what you believe?
Remsberg addresses Cyrenius [Quirinus] in the same book (The Christ) I mentioned, including some who try to make a go with the defense that he may have been governor twice. Remsburg critically takes care of this argument as do others.
The newadvent link I used above from Irenaeus is about Jesus’ age, and not why we need to have the four gospels that he addresses in book 3, chap 11, 8th paragraph. Sorry about that. But did find the controversy of his age of when he died interesting.
Father Raymond E. Brown’s Birth of the Messiah also examines the many attempts of apologists to reconcile the dates of the census and the reign of Herod, but concludes:
“As I point out at length in Appendix VII, this information is dubious on almost every score, despite the elaborate attempts by scholars to defend Lucan accuracy.”
Are there any records of censuses being done in that particular way?
The Romans didnt, but there are hints that Herod may have ordered such a census for descendants of David.
Alice points out that that is an explanation. A lot of people give other explanations. There doesn’t seem to remotely be any consensus.
Exactly. There is very little consensus on the facts of the Birth of Jesus. My opinion is that the stories are legend, not fact.
Greater understanding can be gained from the understanding of Pseudepigrapha. cite
Also without understanding Midrash it is difficult to get at what the original authors intended in their writing. cite
In other words a great deal of the text was never intended as history, but as creating a narrative that hearkened back to passages in the Old Testament to attempt to show the fulfillment of those passages in the Jesus character.
Citing the Bible as a source for historical fact will always be fraught because the various books were written for varying reasons and with little commitment to facts. They were rather written to cement the philosophical assertions of the author in the mind of the reader, without any intention of being taken literally. Both putting the words in the mouths of important men and referring to the Old Testament were intended to give authority to the point of view, not deceive or falsify. Yet the result is a profoundly unhistorical document.
What you infer about some skeptics doubting Pilate’s existence isn’t brought out in the wiki article or them shutting up about it afterwards either upon the discovery of the Pilate stone.
Something that should be pointed out about Carrier is the probabilities he gives using Bayes theorem for Jesus’ historicity. He puts the odds at 1/3 that there was some kind of historical Jesus, and 2/3 that there wasn’t. This is one set of parameters he uses to arrive at that figure. Other parameters he gives can make the odds higher against. But also keep in mind, Carrier was a historicist for the longest of time. A reading of Earl Doherty’s first book was what caused him some doubt on his original position, and had him doing a lot more research before he started going the mythicist way.
When the question is turned around, why do so many believers work so hard to spread that Jesus existed? It seems obvious, there is more at stake, not just for this life, but their whole eternal after life along with loved ones depends on it to be true, especially true for conservatives. And if the heavenly carrot isn’t big enough, there’s a really big stick for them waiting elsewhere, of where they are going if you’re not convinced of this god’s love.
I bet for most on SD arguing for or against historicity are sort of in that range of about 33%-66% on their certainty, but I haven’t really asked many how certain any are, and haven’t seen many say. I believe septimus put 95-99% certainty not only of Jesus but of of him being crucified by Pilate.
I’d be curious to others confidence levels on where they stand on their position too, if they want to share.
I answered this question on the page before:
*Well, I am not a Christian, or if I am, it is of the extreme doubting sort. I respect the words of Jesus as a man, certainly. But we dont need to prove Jesus. existed until someone tries to prove He never did.
I posted here in response to the question asked, which is exactly what we are supposed to do. We get about one How do we know for certain Jesus really lived? Thread a year. And so I respond.
Have I ever started a thread of “Jesus really existed and here is the proof?” I wouldnt be surprised if we have seen a thread like that, years ago in GD when witnessing was more common. But we get “How do we know for certain Jesus really lived?” fairly often.
So a question was asked, and I answered. I do feel the “need” to do that, as it is something I have studied quite a bit.
So in answer to your question: “Why so many “christians” feel the need to validate their beliefs by proving Jesus did exist?” - I have no belief and I dont think anyone here is attempting to validate their beliefs by proving Jesus did exist. And that wasnt the question posted by the OP.
*
Are those “hints” in any historical record? Is there any historical record of Herod’s order to slaughter the innocents? What, if anything, corroborates those hints and tales?
That’s my problem with biblical tales - lack of corroboration. Stuff happens that someone would notice and record. The whole Exodus myth has zero corroboration. The Nativity tale is cobbled-together from existing myths stuffed into an imaginary timeline. The Crucifixion myth has no historic basis in either motivation or execution. Resurrection stories - so many of them, all contradictory. I couldn’t be convicted of jaywalking on such evidence. Well, I could, but that would take A Miracle. :dubious:
But people gonna believe what they wanna believe and I can’t change that.
And a Happy Festivus to all!
Exodus is mostly a myth, IMHO.
As I said before :There is very little consensus on the facts of the Birth of Jesus. My opinion is that the stories are legend, not fact.
However, you are incorrect about the Crucifiction.
Tacitus: Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
Eddy, Paul Rhodes and Gregory A. Boyd (2007). The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition. Baker Academic. p. 172. ISBN 0801031141. …if there is any fact of Jesus’ life that has been established by a broad consensus, it is the fact of Jesus’ crucifixion.
Process
Crucifixion was typically carried out by specialized teams, consisting of a commanding centurion and his soldiers.[98] First, the condemned would be stripped naked[98] and scourged.[42] This would cause the person to lose a large amount of blood, and approach a state of shock. The convict then usually had to carry the horizontal beam (patibulum in Latin) to the place of execution, but not necessarily the whole cross.[42]
During the death march, the prisoner, probably[99] still nude after the scourging,[98] would be led through the most crowded streets[90] bearing a titulus – a sign board proclaiming the prisoner’s name and crime.[42][91][98] Upon arrival at the place of execution, selected to be especially public,[91][90][100] the convict would be stripped of any remaining clothing, then nailed to the cross naked.[15][42][91][100] If the crucifixion took place in an established place of execution, the vertical beam (stipes) might be permanently embedded in the ground.[42][98] In this case, the condemned person’s wrists would first be nailed to the patibulum, and then he or she would be hoisted off the ground with ropes to hang from the elevated patibulum while it was fastened to the stipes.[42][98] Next the feet or ankles would be nailed to the upright stake.[42][98] The ‘nails’ were tapered iron spikes approximately 5 to 7 inches (13 to 18 cm) long, with a square shaft 3⁄8 inch (10 mm) across.[43] The titulus would also be fastened to the cross to notify onlookers of the person’s name and crime as they hung on the cross, further maximizing the public impact.[91][98]
The issue with that argument is that the vast, vast majority of ancient documents do not exist anymore. Scholarship of what documents we do have requires using other methods than corroboration to try and verify those documents. In the historical world especially, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
One of these tactics has been mentioned–when the record admits information that is inconvenient to their message. That suggests that said information did actually exist, and needed an explanation.
This is very much untrue. We have plenty of evidence of people being executed by the Romans. We’ve even found archaeological evidence–a foot bone. And there is plenty of evidence for the execution of the revolutionary preachers. Those aren’t proof, but they are a historical basis for there existing one specific revolutionary preacher who was executed in this manner.
That said, the parts I didn’t quote are arguably true–though I wouldn’t say the Resurrection stories are contradictory. It is true that there are multiple such stories, and that it is rare that one story is covered by more than one source, but they don’t tend to actually contradict one another. None require Jesus to be in two places at one time, or anything like that.
At least, as far as I remember.
Stuff like this always cheeses me off. If you want to say you are a Jew or Christian who is too sophisticated to believe that there was actually a Flood, or an Exodus, or a conquest of Canaan led by Joshua, or a Solomonic empire that stretched from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, great. The scholarly consensus today is that none of that actually occurred, but if you want to say that you still find it edifying or instructive for the “higher truths” these stories contain, knock yourself out. Same with Christians and the birth narratives and wonder tales of Jesus.
But don’t pretend it was never intended to be historical, and don’t pretend that the vast, vast majority of Christians and Jews didn’t take it as historical for thousands of years. That is simply false. I see it more and more from liberal Christians and Jews who don’t like the idea of their holy books looking ridiculous in the light of modern scientific, historical, and archaeological discoveries. But pretending that everybody knew all along that the Biblical narratives were just instructive allegories is not a tenable position.
Go ahead, cite St. Augustine. Yes, he quibbled about the meaning of a “day” in Genesis. But his writings clearly show that he had no doubt that young-earth creation, the Flood, the Exodus, and all the rest actually occurred. Yes, the Bible contains poetic passage, allegorical passages, parables, etc. Those are fairly obvious, but they have nothing to do with the historical narratives in the Bible that were accepted as true by 99% of Christians and Jews until relatively recently.
19th century Fundamentalism was not born when people decided to take the Bible literally. It was born when people decided not to stop taking the Bible literally.
I objected to the crucifixion story’s “motivation and execution”.
Motivation: Roman governor Pilate was not about to take orders from Jewish leaders he despised, whom his soldiers pissed on from atop fortress walls.
Execution: Heads-up wasn’t the only Roman method. Seneca the Younger wrote: “I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet”. I’ve read that many crucifixions were head-down and low to the ground so dogs would savage the remains which could never then be peacefully interred, a horrible fate. Do records exist of Romans allowing the crucified to be collected and buried?
I object to Tacitus because no chain-of-evidence.
Tacitus wrote his Annals ca. 116 CE. No original manuscripts of the Annals exist… It is the second Medicean manuscript, 11th century and from the Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino, which is the oldest surviving copy of the passage describing Christians. That’s nearly a millennium later. We have no way to know if the Christus passage is an interpolation. I distrust anything Xian enthusiasts have had their hands (and pens) on for many centuries.
Those Jewish leaders had people who could whisper in the ears of important people, that Pilate was ignoring some dude committing treason. In fact he was removed from Office due to complaints on how he handled another insurrection.
True, when the soldiers were executing yet another in a line of 1000, they got inventive. There were other styles, sure. But that doesnt meant that the head up, arms on crossbeam wasnt common.
On the topic of Jesus’ crucifixion, don’t most historians think it was not Jews, but the Romans (and perhaps some top Jewish kleptocrats in league with the Romans) who wanted Jesus dead? The Gospels are written to deflect blame from Pontius Pilate to minimize antagonizing Roman rulers.
On another matter:
[quote="DrDeth, post:235, topic:844978"]
Exodus is mostly a myth, IMHO.
[/QUOTE]
**'Mostly'** is the key word here. There are strong similarities between Joseph's scenario in Egypt and what is known from Egyptian documents. The destruction of Jericho has been dated via [sup]14[/sup]C as very close to the 1493 BC date deduced from the Bible. This was shortly after the Expulsion of the Hyksos. Later in that same century, in the time of Pharaoh Thutmose III, there is an Egyptian reference to "Yahweh in the Land of the Shasu." * A reference to "Yahweh" centuries before most non-Bible scholars are willing to speak of a Jewish religion!*
A problem with equating the Expulsion of the Hyksos with Moses' Exodus, is that there was a second expulsion, of Apiru (Hebrew), from Egypt about two centuries later. Perhaps the Biblical exodus was a conflation of these two expulsions. (Of course, the idea of an *expulsion* contradicts the Biblical assumption that Pharaoh resisted a *voluntary exodus*. Perhaps the shift, even if fictional, was useful to the religious writers.)
Enough is known about ancient Egypt and the ancient lands of Edom and Canaan that guesses about the Exodus are possible. [I started a thread hoping to solicit comments on that problem](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=882051), but interest was almost non-existent.Great link, although I’m only 15 minutes into it. Hope I can get some free time to finish it this week. Familiar with most of those names. Price is always a great read (and entertaining), and appreciate him putting all of those sources together in one place. There has been more scholarly works coming out with this, and it’s got more rethinking their position of Jesus’ historicity as well. I didn’t see Thomas L. Thompson listed, wished he would have included him, he’s every bit as credentialed and qualified in such matters.