Jesus was an obscure preacher who left a small cult following hanging around the temple in a remote and self-isolating Roman province. He didn’t make many waves, died an unremarked death and was not really noted beyond the obscure religion he was a member of… in purely historical terms. It was St. Paul / Saul who turned this into a mystical cult that quickly spread across the Roman world. But - that started over 20 years after Jesus and also in outer provinces, thus not really remarked upon.
The other thing to remember is that as mentioned, a lot of “contemporary” accounts of ancient history just appear to us that way because an account from a hundred years or more after the events, based on hearsay, is assumed to be contemporary 2000 years later by non-scholars. Herodotus, for example told us how the pyramids were built - but that was 2,000 years before he saw them. We probably know as much or more on the topic.
Not quite but almost–that what has come down to as Euclid or Pythagoras most certainly is a bunch of people, and we’re comfortable with that based on the colossal nature of the work and the paucity of biographical information. And we’re talking (pre) Modern Europe here, not guys with sandals.
Many people are comfortable with a similar historiography of Shakespeare: the “couldn’t have been one guy because it’s colossal” part added to the extraordinary paucity of biographical details commensurate with our desire for them.
I don’t think ‘wasn’t written about by his contemporaries’ is accurate, depending on what you mean by contemporaries. The dating of the Gospels is uncertain, they could in theory date from anywhere from 40 - 120 AD or so. But in general I find the historical-critical arguments for late dating of the Gospels (Mark around 70, John around 90-110, Luke and Matthew in between), and the arguments of John A.T. Robinson and others for a pre-70 dating for all four Gospels and most of the rest of the New Testament to be very strong. If that’s the case, then the Gospels were written within 35-40 years of the death of Jesus, which counts as ‘contemporary’ to me. And at least one of the Gospels, John, purports to be written by an eyewitness (the unnamed Beloved Disciple).
I don’t have any positive belief in inerrancy so I wouldn’t be that surprised if the Gospels contradicted each other in some details, but I think there are fewer contradictions than many people assume, and that a lot of the supposed contradictions (e.g. the controversy around the birth date of Jesus, involving the census of Quirinius in 6 AD and the death of Herod in 4 BC or so) turn out not to be real contradictions on a closer examination. If you explain precisely which contradictions you have in mind, then I could perhaps offer you an explanation of how they could be reconciled.
Martian Bigfoot, accounts containing miracles, raising of the dead, healing of the sick etc. are ‘obvious bullsh*t’ if you start from the metaphysical premise that the laws of nature are inviolable and miracles can’t occur. I don’t see any good reason to adopt such a premise, though, and so I don’t see any reason to dismiss the miracle accounts of Jesus (or for that matter other historically documented miracle workers, Christian or otherwise) as false a priori. One needs to examine the actual accounts and weigh them against alternative hypotheses (and yes, the conclusion one comes to is at least partly going to depend on what prior probability you place on supernatural events happening).
I should probably point out that I mean “obvious bullshit” in the nicest possible way. For the purposes of this discussion, don’t take it as any kind of insult. History is full of delightful obvious bullshit, much of which I love (and I include the miracles of Jesus on that list). The Trojan war, Romulus and Remus, the crazy-ass parts of Herodutus, King Arthur, Robin Hood… well, you can go on forever.
Also, no, you shouldn’t assume anything to be false a priori. But you should recognize bullshit when you see it, or you’ll never get anything done.
The thing is that if you’re doing history, you sort of have to try to figure out what might actually have happened. You need to have your bullshit detector on, and if the Gospels aren’t setting it off in a big way, you should take it back and ask for a refund. To repeat myself from earlier, I really think people are forgetting just how outlandish the Gospels actually are. Maybe it’s just familiarity that breeds contempt, but they really are some very crazy texts indeed. They are not your average slightly dubious biographical accounts.
Sometimes, when you see people discuss these things, you get a feeling that the problems with the historicity of the Gospels have to do with some kind of obscure technical issue. Or, people get hung up on minor things. For instance, Jesus is supposed to have been born around 1 AD. But he was also supposed to have been born in the reign of Herod, whom we have dead according to other sources in 4 BC. Then, he is also supposed to have been born at the time of the Census of Quirinius (the census referred to in Luke), which took place in 6 AD. Both Herod and this census figure in Roman imperial history, and we know about the bit of history that happened between them. So, some of the accounts about the birth of Jesus must be wrong.
I mean, you’ll hear people discuss things like that, as if that’s what is important. However, that kind of thing is fairly benign. If the problems with the Gospels were on that level throughout, I’m sure everyone could live with them just fine. Your real problem is that your story has a virgin birth, a dude walking on water, and people being raised from the dead. At that point, you’re in fairy tale territory.
Now, if you decide to accept the bullshit in the Gospels as historical fact, you then have a couple of pretty major problems that have nothing to do with the Gospels per se. Basically, if you’re a historian, the entire rest of your day is now ruined. The first problem is that you now have to find a way to handle the down payments on the bridge I sold you in Brooklyn. But the larger problem is that you can’t cherry pick. You can’t give Jesus special treatment just because he happens to be Jesus and not, say, some guy called Brian. Sure, maybe miracles happened once with one guy somewhere, but there’s no methodological justification to randomly play favorites. If you take the Gospels at face value, there’s no reason not to also believe that Romulus and Remus really were raised by a wolf, or that Romulus, at the end of his life, literally went up in a puff of smoke. Or not to believe the crazy-ass story that Herodotus tells about the childhood of Cyrus the Great. See, the Gospels aren’t particularly unique in being full of obvious bullshit. Bullshit runs thick everywhere.
But this isn’t about Jesus. This is about Alcibiades.
Why should you be less suspicious about the biographical accounts we have of Alcibiades? You shouldn’t be. You should look for obvious bullshit. Is Alcibiades, according to, say, Plutarch, healing the sick and walking on water? Is he going up in puffs of smoke? If he is, that is a damned good reason not to trust Plutarch. I’m pretty sure you can agree with that. But he doesn’t. The accounts we have about Alcibiades tend to make sense and check out. Although we’re certainly not clear on everything, such as, for instance, exactly how he died. Which, ironically, may be the only thing we’re completely clear on in the case of Jesus.
Ok, the claim that we don’t have written works from Egypt or Mesopotamia is manifestly bullshit. The more accurate answer is that these two did not have literature that was taught in Western European and N American schools for the past 200 years.
It really isn’t the same thing, though. The written works we have don’t tend to be on the level of Greek writing. At the risk of sounding Graeco-centric, I think it’s fair to say that the Greeks are different. If the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians or Phoenicians had been blessed with their own Herodotuses or Thucydideses, our impression of those cultures would surely have been very different indeed. And if the Roman historians hadn’t looked at Greek historical writing and said “yes, we’ll do some of that”, our impression of the Romans and everyone they met would have been very different, too. (Of course, a bunch of those “Roman” historians were, in fact, actual Greeks.) I mean, look at the periods of Roman history that aren’t covered well by ancient historians. Then imagine it all looking like that. That’s a bleak prospect.
I agree. If you read carefully, my point was we don’t have the equivalent Egyptian literature - discourses on politics like Plato’s Republic, the stage plays, the stirring epics like Illiad and Odyssey. We have for example, Book of the Dead, we have prayers and instructions and legends of the Gods on the tomb walls. It was a more regimented, rigid society with less apparent of the frivolous possibly heretical musings on a multitude of topics that make up much of our Greek heritage.
Plus, as I said - the expansion of the Greek culture into the Hellenistic colonies ensured their literature was spread all over the eastern Mediterranean (i.e. as far as Rome), while the Egyptians, when they weren’t being overrun, never got much further than Libya and Lebanon.
John is certainly a contemporary. He was a Apostle. Paul/Saul, even tho he never met Jesus during his life, is also a contemporary. We are not sure who wrote the Gospel of Mark but he certainly could have been a contemporary, and if he was Mark the Evangelist then he met Jesus.
Another point is that in the days before Google or reference libraries, a lot was passed down with oral tradition. Human memory is an amazing thing; some people have recited the entire bible or Quran from memory. When literacy was rarer, and notes and diaries were less common, many people would have a more complete recall from memory. With easily available written resources, we’ve just gotten lazier and less practiced.
So an account written from oral tradition decades after the fact is not necessarily less reliable. We also have items like the apocryphal gospels to show that there was a widespread oral tradition attesting to certain knowledge.
The only problem is of course, some of these writings were edited for self-serving and dogmatic purposes. For example, many of the descriptions of the worst depravities of the Roman emperors are thought to be slanders made (safely, decades later) by political opponents. It’s believed later writers embellished the Josephus’ writings to make him more agreeable to Christian orthodoxy. Half the fun for historians is trying to read between the lines.
wiki: Since the work of Emil Schürer in 1896[46] most scholars have agreed that Herod died at the end of March or early April in 4 BCE.[47][48] Evidence for the 4 BCE date is provided by the fact that Herod’s sons, between whom his kingdom was divided, dated their rule from 4 BCE,[49] and Archelaus apparently also exercised royal authority during Herod’s lifetime.[50] Josephus states that Philip the Tetrarch’s death took place after a 37-year reign, in the 20th year of Tiberius (34 CE).[51] Other scholars have continued to support the traditional date of 1 BCE.[52][53][54][55][56] Filmer and Steinmann in particular have thought that Herod was named king by the Roman Senate in 39 BCE, but he died in 1 BCE, and Herod’s heirs backdated their reigns to 4 or 3 BC.[20][57]
His being a historical person is more doubtful. Mostly covered by Plato, a well know bullshitter and a “student” of Socrates, and also by another disciple, Xenophon. Almost everything known about Socrates was written by one of his disciples, nothing Socrates wrote himself exists.
*As for discovering the real-life Socrates, the difficulty is that ancient sources are mostly philosophical or dramatic texts, apart from Xenophon. There are no straightforward histories, contemporary with Socrates, that dealt with his own time and place. A corollary of this is that sources that do mention Socrates do not necessarily claim to be historically accurate, and are often partisan. For instance, those who prosecuted and convicted Socrates have left no testament. Historians therefore face the challenge of reconciling the various evidence from the extant texts in order to attempt an accurate and consistent account of Socrates’ life and work. The result of such an effort is not necessarily realistic, even if consistent.
*
Epic of Gilgamesh is taught. So is the Code of Hammurabi. But most of what we have from those dates and eras is lists of rulers and tax records. And a few stories of the gods- which the Epic of Gilgamesh might fit, note.
Congratulations, you have now proved that Herod might, just might have died in 1 AD. You still have six years to fill up until the Census of Quirinius.
But, look, I have exactly zero interest in debating this particular point (although everyone else is free to keep at it). Maybe the long shot explanation, if you’re try really, really hard to find it, is that there is no contradiction. The simpler explanation, the one that people would put their money on if the story was about Brian instead of Jesus, since with Brian we’re doing history instead of proving theological points, is that there is a contradiction.
But, as I said, that’s neither here nor there, since all that is frankly nitpicky. The larger point is that this isn’t really what makes the Gospels different from the sources on Alcibiades. What makes them different is that Alcibiades isn’t walking around performing miracles or returning from the dead.
"Wright then explains how this can relate to the enrollment of Quirinius:
I suggest, therefore, that actually the most natural reading of the verse is: “This census took place before the time when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
Socrates is a good one. The problem even has its own Wiki page.
As for the existence of Socrates, as I said in another thread, the clincher as far as I’m concerned is Aristophanes’ play The Clouds. The idea that that Plato and Aristophanes would get together and invent a person from angles that different is just silly. So, it’s safe to say that he at least existed, unless you’re into wearing tin foil hats. The problem, of course, is in the “angles that different” bit. What he actually had going on is hard to tell.
BTW, I’m totally stealing the description of Plato as “known bullshitter”.
He can suggest that all he wants, it doesn’t make it more reasonable. We know that there was a census of Quirinius, when it took place, and in what circumstances. The most natural reading of the verse by far is that this is the census in question. What you have in your cite is a long shot reading.
We do know those things. What we dont know is what Luke meant by* protos*. It becomes more clear, from other usages by Luke of that word, that he means “before” .
“The question of Quirinius and his census is an old chestnut, requiring a good knowledge of Greek. It depends on the meaning of the word protos, which usually means ‘first’…But in the Greek of the time, as the standard major Greek lexicons point out, the word protos came sometimes to be used to mean ‘before’, when followed (as this is) by the genitive case (p. 89).”