How do we know such an amazing amount about "Alcibiades" who lived 2400 years ago?

Great Debates
61

I don’t think any of the things that Luke is saying here is wrong, or that he’s unclear. The only thing that’s unclear is the interpretation of the passage (though it’s also possible that Josephus got the dating of the census wrong too, although I don’t believe that).

Let’s review (and I’d point you to this video here: Dr. McGrew, a philosophy professor at WMU, is addressing some purported historical errors in the Gospels and he gets to the census at about 15:00 and talks about it for about ten minutes).

He offers two possible ways to reconcile the text with Josephus: the answer that sounds convincing to me is that *the Greek text does not actually say that the census happened under Herod in 6 BC*.
  1. “Apographe” here can mean either the taxation itself, or the registration for the taxation.
  2. An alternate reading of the word for “this” is “itself” (the two would have looked the same in the early manuscripts which were in capital letters).
  3. An admissible reading, instead of

“…that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)”

Would be the following:

“…that all the world should be registered for taxation. (And the taxing itselfwas first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)”

  1. If we take the second reading, Luke is indicating that the census was begun under Herod, aborted (when relations between Herod and the Emperor improved) and was picked up again twelve years later and brought to completion under Quirinius.
  2. this would dovetail with a reference in Josephus to an oath of allegiance near the end of Herod’s reign, which would have happened around the time of a registration. No contradiction.
62

No, I don’t think that’s an adequate answer. You’re working under the assumption that miracles (i.e. violations of the laws of nature) don’t or can’t ever happen, and therefore if you see a text referring to miracles it can’t possibly be accurate. My answers to both these clauses are “why not?”

The laws of nature are inviolable within the natural order, but a supernatural entity isn’t subject to them any more than a dictator or an absolute monarch is subject to the laws of his own country. What are your specific grounds for believing that a story involving Jesus raising a dead person to life must be false?

63

Look, do you even realize just how much of a hareng rouge this census thing actually is? I’m not just saying that it is one to be nice. I’ll demonstrate:

It’s assuming that Luke does know his shit about the census, and the date for it, that gives you a range from 4 BC to 6 AD. In fairness, it’s much more likely that Luke made a mistake about the date, as mentioned, and that does seem to be what most people are going for, so forget any speculation about a later date for now (which, in any case, was basically just me pondering a bit). Another option, as y’all have amply demonstrated, is some contorted reading, aided by random speculation, that means that Luke didn’t make a mistake, but still places the birth of Jesus at ca. 4 BC.

So, let’s limit this to the following options for now: 1) Luke made a mistake, and wrongly places the census in the the reign of Herod, which means at the latest at around 4 BC, or 2) some contrived reading is possible that means that Luke didn’t make a mistake, but the date of birth for Christ is still around 4 BC.

The simplest and most reasonable explanation is that Luke made a mistake. The convoluted explanation is that he didn’t, and some contrived reading to demonstrate this can be concocted. Personally, I tend to prefer simple and reasonable explanations when they are available.

Here’s the funny part, so pay attention: If what you want to know is when Jesus was born, it does not matter which of these options is the right one. They are functionally equivalent. They both place the date of birth for Jesus at around 4 BC.

Now, whether or not Luke made a (relatively minor) mistake or not is, as for many things, only a problem if it’s a problem. As far as I can make out, in this particular case, assuming that he made one is an extremely low risk proposition. The only reason why it could possibly make a difference is if your project is not to figure out when Jesus was born, but rather to prove that Luke could not possibly, ever, have made a mistake. And that, in turn, can only be important if you insist that Luke is infallible. And, in my opinion, if you need to believe that Luke is infallible, you have way, *way *bigger problems on your hands than some minor kerfuffle about a census.

I suppose that some people might read a sentence somewhere like, for instance, “historians think that Luke made a mistake”, and take it to mean that “OMG SOMETHING IS *WRONG *IN THE BIBLE! CLEARLY THIS MEANS THAT JESUS DIDN’T EXIST!!! OMG!111LOL!”

Or maybe they take it to mean: “OMG, SOMEONE SOMEWHERE *THINKS *THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG IN THE BIBLE! CLEARLY THIS MEANS THAT THEY BELIEVE THAT JESUS DIDN’T EXIST!!! OMG!!! CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER!”

Or maybe that’s just how I, personally, picture the thought processes of some people (it’s especially funny if you do it with certain popes). But, yeah, no, such a sentence, at least as far as the census thing is concerned, really doesn’t mean any of that. It just means that a certain percentage of historians think that Luke made a mistake about something relatively minor, which has pretty much zero important consequences in any conceivable direction as far as the timeline or veracity of events go. It’s really not a big deal.

Again, there *are *big deals to consider. This one just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

64

I’m not even saying any of that. Maybe miracles did happen with one guy, or a few guys, somewhere. And besides, you have no idea what kind of weird stuff I believe, and take to be self-evident, in private. Trust me, there’s some pretty metaphysically questionable stuff in there. That’s not the point. I am saying that miracles don’t happen on average. Your bar for accepting a story with miracles in it is clearly lower than mine. Fine, you get to live in a world where more miraculous things, and fewer historical things, have happened, than I do.

In another thread I was talking about the early Islamic conquests, and exactly why the Muslim armies were so good. The reasons are not at all clear to historians. One possibility is that they had something going on in terms of tactics or similar that isn’t fully understood. Another option is that they had God on their side. Maybe you’re comfortable with the second option (although, for some strange reason, I happen to doubt it). I would be more comfortable with one along the lines of the first. Why? Because the explanation “they had God on their side” is a bullshit explanation. Doesn’t mean that it’s not true. It just means that it’s bullshit, so I’ll keep looking for a different one. Because that is a more sensible strategy on average.

The thing is, this has been going on for so long that we’ve lost sight of the question. This isn’t about you or me. It’s about what a reasonable person might reasonably think. Specifically, it’s about this from earlier:

What Nemo seems to be doing here is claiming that people are unreasonably treating the sources on Alcibiades and the Gospels differently. He’s saying that if you trust Xenophon or other historians who have written about Alcibiades, you have to trust the Gospels, because they’re not different to a reasonable person.

What I’ve been arguing ever since is that they are different, in an important way. The difference is the amount and the grade level of the bullshit in them. This makes it reasonable, for a hypothetical reasonable person, to trust one story more than the other. It’s not a case of accepting the Greeks willy-nilly, or picking on the Gospels just to be a poopy-head.

65

Except that other experts place the death of Herod @ 1BC.

The thing is, if Luke was given the same weight as other period writers we’d use this to show Herod died in 1BC. And, there’s no reason to assume he’s wrong. No period writer actually states when Herod died, it’s calculated by the dates of his heirs and when they stepped up. But the idea of co-rulers was common in those days (and Herod was out of it his last few years, very sick) and dates of ascendancy were often fudged to show legitimacy.

Thus Jesus was born about the time the ancients say he was.

66

Yes, he was probably born around 4 BC. You could yank the death of Herod up to 1 AD if you prefer an unreasonable answer to a more reasonable one, but there’s no conceivable good reason to do so. Not even a good theological one. The Bible never claims that Jesus was born in 1 AD, so why the hell does it matter? That is, I suppose, unless you happen to be dating Dionysius Exiguus.

67

  1. Your drawing of the distinction between “miraculous things” and “historical things” assumes what you’re supposed to be demonstrating, that miracles can’t be historical. Well, why not? It also obviates what you just said, that you don’t necessarily disbelieve in the possibility of miracles. If you don’t think miracles can be historical, then in what sense are you not saying ‘miracles can not happen, ever’?

  2. If a ‘bullsht explanation’ doesn’t mean ‘false’, then what exactly does it mean? You’re going to have to clarify what you mean by 'a bullsht explanation’, because to me that equates to the same thing as ‘false’.

  3. I don’t think God was ‘on the side of’ the Muslim armies, because I’m not a Muslim. That doesn’t mean I’m closed to the idea that some other supernatural agency was on their side. For that matter, maybe God was using the Muslim armies to afflict Christendom: the Old Testament frequently talks about God using enemy empires (Babylonia, Persia, etc.) to afflict Israel for its sins, so it’s not impossible something was going on. If a Muslim was making the case that the Islamic conquests were the result of a divine miracle, I’d certainly argue with him, but I wouldn’t do so on the grounds that “your argument involves miracles, a naturalistic explanation must be preferable”. Rather, I would argue on the grounds that the Muslim view of God is incoherent and deficient.

68

I don’t see that this is a contrived reading: the original word could equally mean “itself” instead of “this”, and if that’s the case then a census that was aborted and then picked up some time later would be a very natural reading.

I don’t think Luke was infallible, necessarily, but I do see him as a generally reliable source, so if there’s a purported contradiction we ought to examine it in detail and see if it’s a real one.

69

Well, there probably is one, but it’s a minor nitpicky thing. Look, it does not matter. Whether or not Luke is right or wrong about the particulars of a census moves his reliability an inch in either direction. Reporting miraculous events is what moves him about a hundred miles in the direction of the unreliable. People aren’t going “WTF?” when reading the Gospels because of the census. They’re going “WTF?” because of the miracles. Sort out the census, and they’re not going to go “oh, well, that’s all fine, then”. They’ll still be going “WTF?”, and rightly so. The reliability of the Gospels isn’t riding on the damned census. The census thing isn’t bullshit. It’s riding on the miracles. The miracle stuff is bullshit.

You can claim that the miracle stuff is true, but you can’t claim that it’s not bullshit. And reasonable people will call out bullshit.

70

Fair enough, I should clarify that.

I mean “having a form and structure that is similar to the sort of things that usually turn out to be false, and/or that appear in fairy tales or similar fictional stories, and/or that make no sense whatsoever when seen in the light of everything else we know about the world”.

71

The distinction I’m drawing is between historical events as in “the sort of things that usually happen in history, that are influenced or driven by human actions, and that can be explained rationally”, and miraculous events, which basically amount to “a wizard did it”.

My main objection the latter, and all forms of bullshit explanations in general, is that they don’t usually get you the answer to whatever you’re asking. They make you stop doing history way before you should. I can land on the explanation that God was on the side of the Muslim armies, and be done with it. Or I can go deeper, and find out things about cavalry tactics, generalship, and the relative strength of the opposing sides. Similarly, I can land on the explanation that Romulus and Remus were suckled by a wolf, and be done with it. Or, I can go deeper, and find out things about the early history of Rome and the historical development of the Republic.

72

There’s the George Washington Principle:
“It’s easy to tell the truth when you’re the one holding the axe.”

Also note that by throwing a silver dollar away across the Potomac, he set the silver standard for Washington spending and government waste.

The historical evidence for Socrates is similar to the evidence for Jesus - a number of followers and a critic write about him, in a time very close to the memory of all the people who would read what they wrote, who would be in a position to remember specific episodes. SO complete and total fiction would be difficult to get away with.

73

Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates is certainly different from Plato’s, and Xenophon’s also differs. It’s one of those cases (they’re really annoying) where more evidence just makes things worse, instead of the other thing around. I’m willing to bet that if another portrayal of Socrates surfaces, in a lost play or something, it’ll just muddy the waters more.

They’re not *that *different, though, so the problem shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. It’s not like he’s a Hobbit or a Swede in any of them. More importantly, unlike in the case of Jesus, none of them are all that outlandish. Again, there is a rather important difference here that everyone seems to be ignoring or forgetting about: Unlike Jesus, Socrates is not a magical wizard. It’s not like anyone says that Socrates was in the habit of levitating or anything. Or, well, actually, Aristophanes does say that, but only as a joke.

BTW, not exactly apropos of anything, there’s something I find slightly amusing about some Gospel apologists and the “fiction would be difficult to get away with” angle. On the one hand, you have the argument that: “Well, if it wasn’t true, surely someone would have called bullshit on it? Hence, it must be true.” But on the other hand, you have the scores of people, from antiquity up to the present day, who *are *calling bullshit on it. There’s something about that which is so circular that it more resembles a magic roundabout.

“This is true, or people would say otherwise!”
“I *am *saying otherwise! Tons of people have been saying otherwise, since forever!”
“Well, that doesn’t count, because *other *people would have been saying otherwise. People wouldn’t believe it.”
“People don’t believe it.”
“People at the time wouldn’t believe it.”
“People at the time didn’t believe it, and those people were generally pretty darned gullible. The whole business started out as a tiny cult, that few people took notice of. It seems to have been a very hard sell, which only got easier as you got further away from the ‘at the time’ point. Later, the cult was persecuted, which seems to indicate that people still didn’t believe it.”
“Well, *some other *people at the time wouldn’t have believed it.”

I suppose one could spiral around a few more times.

74

Anyway, I have now pinned down what has been bugging me this whole time and caused me to post so much in this thread. It’s the following:

There seems to be a trend or two developing on this board, concerning the historicity of Jesus, and of other people in history. If they keep propagating, I fear that the whole board is going to turn into lala-land, so I guess I feel a compulsion to stem the tide. These issues have to do with people generalizing from the problem of Jesus to the problem of everyone else, most likely soon to include Napoleon, Hitler and my grandfather Bill.

The thing is, you can’t do that, because there is something fundamentally different about Jesus, which sets him apart from most other people: Jesus (as portrayed in the Gospels) was a magical wizard.

OK, so, a word on the “Jesus didn’t exist” business. Which, for the record, is not a movement that I support at all, as it tends to get rather silly in its own way. I’m just noting that it seems to be a thing. Anyway, the logic here is very simple:

Jesus was a magical wizard.
Magical wizards don’t exist.
Hence, Jesus didn’t exist.

I don’t have a problem with the logic. However, there are obvious problems with the premises, which are both questionable. Maybe magical wizards do exist. Or, maybe Jesus wasn’t a magical wizard. To cut to the chase on this, and speaking for myself: My money is on Jesus being a non-magical dude, who some people, for whatever reason, claimed a bunch of outlandish things about. But that is not the point here.

The problem is that some people, including both believers and non-believers, seem to be forgetting that Jesus was, or was claimed to be, a magical wizard. I don’t know why, as it’s kind of central to his career, but they really do seem to be. So, they take the idea that Jesus didn’t exist, and generalize it in a completely loony way, by making it the premise of a new argument. This goes as follows:

There are reasons for questioning the existence of Jesus.
Jesus is the same as any other historical figure.
Hence, there are reasons for questioning the existence of all historical figures.

Then, before you know it, Julius Caesar didn’t exist, George Washington didn’t exist, Napoleon didn’t exist, and his horse didn’t exist. Or, if you do believe that they existed, you’d better also believe everything in the Gospels. Because, hey, there is *nothing *out of the ordinary going on in the Gospels. And then I’ll to have leave this board and hang out on Reddit.

The worst problem isn’t even the “you gotta believe everything in the Gospels” part. That’s nothing new. A rather more troublesome consequence is the opposite issue. Some people seem to now think that extraordinary proof is needed in order to believe that anyone in history existed, or that claims about their lives can be brushed aside lightly as fiction, because the existence of those people is somehow inherently unlikely. This is because the whole discussion of history around here is getting Jesus-ized (if that’s a word). Again, no. The existence of people is not inherently unlikely. It’s just the existence of magical wizards that is inherently unlikely. The historicity or otherwise of Jesus is not a benchmark of any kind that is relevant for the historicity of Alcibiades. Jesus is not your average guy.

So, everyone can take it easy already and stop it with the ongoing historcal existential crisis. Alexander the Great did exist. It’s not really up for debate. The episode with the Gordian knot, for instance, may be bullshit, but that’s a different matter. No one has invented all of history. The past more or less happened. Are we cool on that? Great.

How we got into this situation in the first place, I have no idea. I do know that people saying things like “the situation for the historicity of Socrates is the same as for Jesus” is not helping. The situation would be the same if Socrates was, or was claimed to be, a magical wizard. But no one says he was. No one says that Alcibiades, Hitler, or my grandfather was either. To be honest, I think this is pretty Jesus-specific for most everyday purposes. It is also not helpful when people say things like “the Gospels display the same historical and cultural detail that we expect from a historical text”. Well, no they don’t, because they have one very important element in them which sets them apart from other such historical texts: You guessed it, it’s the magical wizard.

So, it would be nice if we could all at least recognize this rather important difference.

And just to cut y’all off at the pass, I know what you’re about to say: “Aha! You’re the one who said not to give anyone special treatment! But now you’re treating Jesus as special! Gotcha!” So, to be clear: No, I am giving everyone an equal opportunity to be, or not to be, a magical wizard. So far, Alcibiades isn’t one, Socrates isn’t one, Napoleon isn’t one, and so forth. Jesus, however, is or is claimed to be one. That’s not my fault, it’s his. Or, well, you know what I mean. If Alcibiades was claimed to be one, I wouldn’t simply ignore it, since it’s the kind of detail that would sort of stand out. And I won’t ignore it in the case of Jesus. I’m giving them the same treatment.

And to cut you off at the other pass: Much like “bullshit” in this context, I mean “magical wizard” in the nicest possible way. Don’t take it as an insult. If anyone prefers “miracle worker, Son of God, our Lord and Savior, who died on the cross for our sins and was resurrected”, that’s fine by me. “Magical wizard” is just less of a mouthful.

75

The historicity of both figures is fairly certain, but even so, the case for Socrates is stronger. The accounts of Christ’s life are all post-mortem, the Synoptic Gospels and the Antiquities of the Jews all being composed 60 years after his death while the Gospel of John wasn’t written until ten years after those. While that is in living memory, it’s certainly long enough to cast some doubt.

Socrates, on the other hand, was alive and well when the Clouds was being performed in Athens. The tale of him standing up in the audience and gesturing to the similarities between his own ugly mug and the mask the actor may be apocryphal, but Plato’s account of the play being a contributing factor to his trial just doesn’t make sense if Socrates was a shared fiction amongst poets, philosophers and historians. There’s nothing even remotely as compelling of an argument on the historical Jesus’ side…

76

'Magic wizard" is inherently an insult because, for Christians, magic is a sin. it refers to trying to control the supernatural through human agency rather than submitting to God’s agency, and it clearly wouldn’t apply to a God-Man himself, or others working on God’s behalf. I understand what you mean, but you can think of a better and more accurate term.

You are treating Alcibiades, Napoleon, etc., all the same, but I wouldn’t say you’re treating them fairly, since you’re denying the possibility out of court that any of them had supernatural powers. My question still stands, how do you know that a miracle claim must be false?

The aforementioned Tim McGrew (I like much of his stuff, though not everything) had a debate with the execrable Bart Ehrman last year on this stuff, and Ehrman raised a similar point to you. Not about Napoleon or Alcibiades (who as far as I know never claimed to do miracles), and Ehrman even conceded Roman Emperors weren’t good examples either, since the accounts of their miracles were usually written much later and could plausibly be attributed to court biographers trying to please the royal establishment. He did bring up though, the Baal Shem Tov, and said “if you believe the miracles of Jesus, why don’t you believe in the miracles of the Baal Shem Tov.” McGrew and Ehrman then got into an argument about the relative historical accounts and got bogged down in the weeds about Christian vs. Jewish persecution, but I can speak for myself here and say that, if there are written eyewitness accounts of his miracles, corroborated by multiple people, and if they are as detailed and match up as well with known historical facts as the reported miracles of Jesus, than I have no major problem in principle with believing that the Baal Shem Tov performed miracles. It wouldn’t make me think his religious views were right, or to convert, but in principle it’s no more fair to automatically dismiss his miracle accounts than those of Jesus.

77

Even the standard historico-critical dating of Luke and Matthew puts them at 50 years after Jesus’ death, not 60. More importantly you can’t assume that in your argument since the dating of the Gospels is one of the points on which historico-critical and conservative-traditionalist scholars disagree. John Robinson, again, argued for a pre-70 dating of all four Gospels (and possibly some of the apocryphal gospels as well). That would put them at most 35 years or so after the events, not 60.

78

(Not quoting the whole post, but responding to it.) I’m a Christian and pretty much agree with you. I think the basic problem is people inherently like extremes and fail to see the “excluded middle”.

The Bible is a collection of accounts with a lot of partisan baggage. So you have people on one side pushing it as the literal Word of God (despite the fact that the Bible itself describes the Word of God otherwise). And you have people on the other side pushing it as pure fairy tale (despite the fact that Bible is similar to historical accounts from the same time period).

Instead, historical accounts (and modern news stories, too) should be evaluated more carefully. Just because one part of the account is incredibly implausible does not mean another part that is credibly plausible should be discarded. Christians need to separate their religious faith from the historical analysis of an ancient text (even the Bible). And non-believers need to have a consistent standard applied across all parts of the text (even the Bible) while not throwing the bulk of history.

79

Since the question about Alcibiades has essentially been answered, and this has largely become a debate about the historicity of Christ, let’s move this over to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

80

Fine, so we can pick another term. The issue is not with the nomenclature. And, look, in this thread I’ve been referring to Plato, one of the great and most influential thinkers in the philosophical tradition, as a “known bullshitter”. If he can look past that and see the point I’m trying to make, I’m sure Jesus can, too.

You know, speaking in a general sense, sometimes it feels like Christians are the most defensive, insecure and humorless people on this side of heterosexual men. I’m not sure why that is, but it seems to be a thing. Fetch me a devout pagan, show him a Greek myth, and I have no doubt that he would agree that, yeah, that is one crazy-ass story. Just once, I would love to see a Christian agree that the Gospels constitute one crazy-ass story. Because, you know, they do. It’s a crazy-ass story coming out of a world that was cranking out lots and lots of crazy-ass stories. They are entirely of their time and place, namely the wider ancient Mediterranean world. And it feels to me like was a much funnier time and place than where the current crop of Christians tend to hang out.

Instead, Christians insist that the New Testament is mundane, of all things. That’s not doing the texts any favors. It makes them sound a lot more boring than they are. Inherently, the Gospels are not boring. If you read them, it turns out that, much like Greek myth, they’re balls to the wall outrageous. For starters, there’s a *wizard *in there. You’re not *supposed *to teach them in a boring and cranky fashion. I actually think it’s putting people off, just like the way a really boring teacher can put people off Shakespeare. So, Christians everywhere, lighten up, OK? Cracking a smile won’t send anyone to Hell.

Wait, are you claiming that Napoleon had supernatural powers? That’s an interesting idea. It might explain a few things. It’s probably worth its own thread.