Mark and John don’t have birth narratives, so I agree we don’t know what they knew about the subject. IMO their silence implies that nothing was known about the origins of Jesus, except that he grew up in Nazareth, which conflicted with the idea that the Messiah must come from Bethlehem – hence the labors of Matthew and Luke to get him from Bethlehem to Nazareth, in two completely different ways. But as I said, that is just IMO.
However, it is abundantly clear that Luke did not know anything about Matthew’s story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, because his account directly contradicts it. As I noted in an earlier post, Matthew has Mary and Joseph fleeing to Egypt, cowering there for however long Herod’s reign lasted, and then still fearing Archelaus, evidently staying away from Jerusalem until Jesus was at least 10 (when, according to secular historians, Archelaus was replaced by the Roman administration under Quirinius, who then ordered a census).
Luke has them gaily going to Jerusalem six weeks after Jesus was born, presenting him in the Temple, and even having him proclaimed the Messiah, all under Herod’s very nose. They then travel unmolested back to Nazareth, returning to Jerusalem each year for Passover.
Those accounts are irreconcilable to any objective person, but you are welcome to try.
Historians look for corroborating evdience. They do not accept even alleged eywitness testimony without coroborrating evidence, and they do not accept impossible claims period.
I was only saying that lack of witness is a worse problem than bias. Non–primary claims are not a per se disqualifier, but without corroration they lack strong value, and when the claims are impossible, they lack any value at all.
The New Testament was not written by witnesses to anything, but by 2nd or 3rd (or 4th or 5th) tier converts. Those who wrote the NT had no reason to believe what they were writing other than it’s what somebody else told them to believe.
I’m not an enthusiastic lay person except maybe in this particular case. I simply asked if there were any unbiased accounts by witnesses of Jesus performing miracles. I would be equally interested in any unbiased accounts of by witnesses of any part of the life of Jesus. And by witness, I mean anyone who was there and by there I don’t necessarily mean present at a (any) miracle. A primary source, to shorten my question.
If you think the Slaughter of Innocents was historical, I can only roll my eyes. Historians of the time mentioned far less significant acts than that one, and Luke is clearly unaware of the story since he has Joseph and Mary go right back to Nazareth after jesus’ birth without any Egyptian soujourn at all (one of many contradictions with Matthew).
We would also know if it Augustus had ordered a census of the world (never happened), but the far more significant contradiction between Luke and Matthew (who says nothing about a census, but has Mary and Joseph already living in Bethlehem when Jesus is born, and only relocating to Nazareth after the trip to Egypt) is that they set their nativities ten years apart.
There are some other clear fictions in those stories as well (aside from the supernatural). For instance, people were not required to return to their hometowns to register for a cenus. Never happened. And it would have made no difference to Joseph even if such a requiremnt had existed since he )according to Luke) lived in Galilee and the census of Quirinius only applied to Judea.
Uncorroborated claims for miracles are not exactly made more believable when the person making the claim can be shown to have made factually false claims elsewhere.
It implies no such thing. It only means that Mark and John did not write about his origins, period.
And if I had made any claims regarding that topic, your objection might have some merit. I said no such thing, though. At no point did I offer any opinion, one way or another, regarding any discrepancies or contradictions between the accounts.
Moreover, you apparently think that if two accounts contain discrepancies, they must be summarily rejected. Again, that is not how historians operate. Historians acknowledge that there may be discrepancies between the accounts, but they seek to find the core of truth between them. This involves recognizing that certain details are secondary or tertiary in nature, as well as attempting to reconcile them whenever possible.
The issue of how to reconcile those accounts – or if they can be reconciled – is an interesting one, but one that goes far beyond the scope of this thread. This thread is not about Biblical inerrancy, after all. It’s about whether Jesus performed miracles on demand or not, and why he supposedly declined to do so. Saying “But there are discrepancies between the stories!” does not automatically invalidate either version of these accounts, and no self-respecting historian would consider this to be sufficient grounds for rejecting a set of historical accounts.
There is no eyewitness testimony of any kind for Jesus. We don’t have a single word written by anyone who actually knew him. The closest we have is Paul, who claimed to have known some of the apostles (specifically Peter, James and John), but Paul does not claim that Jesus performed any miracles other than “appearing” to people after he died (he does not mention an empty tomb or physical resurrection, he only makes vague references to “appearances”). Paul says virtually nothing about Jesus life at all. He is only concerned with the resurrection.
There are no extra-Biblical claims for Jesus performing miracles either. There is almost no extra-Biblical reference to him at all that is anything close to contemporary. Josephus and Tacitus both make brief reference to him as the founder of a religious movement who was crucified by Pilate, but that’s about all they say about him.
Again, I made no such claim one way or another. As usual, you’re attacking a position which was neither stated nor implied.
What I said is that the objection raised by brocks, i.e. “Why don’t we have more historical records regarding the killing of these infants?” is historically naive. It assumes that one should expect to find exhaustive historical records of such matters, which is is simply an unreasonable expectation given the technology and social culture of the time. The issue of whether it actually occurred or not is a related question, but it’s not the same issue at all.
It’s not naive at all. It’s wishful thinking to say that it is. It would not be an obscure event. It’s something that historians of Herod would have mentioned.
Well yes, that is what I was (humorously attempting) to show with my quote of Justin Martyr. Some of the themes between Christianity and Paganism are very similar.
This sounds similar to a YouTube vid I saw. I am familiar with Justin’s work. In the quoted work he is indeed trying to do a few things: stop persecution. Point out that the beliefs are similar - but Christianity is superior (Paganism is Satanic mimicry), and I think (IIRC) he was trying to establish Christianity as an “old” religion - which was something of a black mark (as I understand it).
Of course this discussion ignores the Dialogue with Typhro where he is attempting to explain Pagan similarities (and for lack of a better term “Hebrew inconsistencies”) to the Jew Typhro. There he is defending Christianity against many charges, one of which is the incorporation of Pagan ideas. I believe he even “defends” the virgin birth narrative, which Typhro says is similar to Pagan Demi-god births AND Typhro says the Christians corrupted the text.
I’m not sure how any of that is really unique. Certainly the specifics, I’ll grant you. The broad themes do not seem unique. Further, I’m not convinced that all of these beliefs were there at the outset of Christianity. It seems to me they evolved a great deal.
You say that the similarities aren’t there, yet you reference dying and rising gods. Sure, the deaths/raising had a different end goal, but the basic structure is very similar.
It’s like it’s either a one to one copy or it doesn’t count as similar. That seems like ignoring the issue to me. By that criteria all religions are completely unique. It’s also hard to explain the evolution of the bible. To take one instance: in the Old Testament Satan was not the big bad. He was an angel who did God’s bidding. In the new testament he’s the big bad and rules over Hell. I can’t help but notice that the general story has morphed a bit to be like Zoroastrianism. Now, is it the same? No. It certainly seems influenced to me though…
Very true and the Dialogue with Typhro illustrates this very well. As I mentioned, one sticking point was the virgin birth - which is not a Jewish idea.
Luke explicitly says that Joseph was compelled to go to Bethlehem, not because it was his home town, but “because he was of the house and lineage of David.” He would have us believe that the world-wide census of Augustus compelled a man to return, not to his home town, but to the town that his ancestors lived in 1000 years before he was born.
Even today, with all the resources of research libraries and the internet, not one American in a hundred would have any idea where his ancestors lived 1000 years ago. And yet we are to believe that everyone in the Roman Empire not only knew, but made a possibly years-long journey, say from northern Gaul to Alexandria and back, just to pay a tax.
It is simply impossible that a record of such an insane decree would not be found outside of Luke.
ITR, I realize that we both have a different knowledge base and different experiences, so what might be convincing To me is not to you. That’s fine with me and I’m not going to try to press you (or others) to share my opinion. It’s cool if we simply disagree.
That said, I am curious about your perspective on the Vespasian miracle I posted on the other page. What are your thoughts on the similarity of the miracle itself and the Idea that the “spit equals healing” Miracle that (supposedly) came out of Egypt?
Horseshit, both to your misrepresentation of my position, and your argument in general.
I do not expect exhaustive records, nor even records that comply with modern standards. I expect that when we have records from that time that give a standard of reporting with regard to mundane events, we should expect that we would have similar records of spectacular events, if they really happened.
Absence of evidence is indeed evidence of absence for something like a worldwide census that required everyone to journey to his ancestral home. It is simply inconceivable such an event occurred, but that not a single record from the entire Roman Empire corroborates it, other than Luke’s misdated tale.
Likewise, the verse I gave about the tombs opening up and disgorging all the Jewish prophets to walk the streets of Jerusalem cannot possibly be true. It’s not talking about anything Jesus did, that the priests might want to suppress; it’s talking about Moses and Elijah and Solomon walking the streets of first-century Jerusalem. It would have been the biggest event in Jewish history; there would be high holidays dedicated to it today, instead of a lamp that burned longer than expected. And, incidentally, if those prophets had mentioned that they were resurrected because of Jesus, everyone hearing it would have been converted on the spot.
Instead, not even the other Gospel writers mention it.
You can hide behind “it’s not strictly what the OP asked” if you want, but you are not fooling anyone.
No. I think that if two accounts contain glaring, irreconcilable contradictions, at least one of them is false.
I agree here. The idea that tombs opened and dead saints came out is too fantastic not to have been mentioned elsewhere. It seems obvious to me that this is simply legendary embellishment creeping into the text. To take it as historical strains credulity to the breaking point. No other Gospel, no other historical source mention it?
That’s beyond the pale to me. It’s a throw away line in the gospel it’s in. Sure, it’s logically possible for it to have happened and no one thought to mention it, I suppose…
If it happened, why wouldn’t it have been mentioned?
Second biggest example of burying the lead in the entire Bible. The first is, “He made the stars also.”
Six days to create the earth; a few seconds to create trillions of stars. Makes sense only if you think the stars are just a couple thousand twinkly little lights attached to the sky, or maybe just holes in the dome of the firmament, letting light leak through it.
First of all I’ll make a minor but not entirely trivial quibble. The birth of Jesus, the crucifixion, and the resurrection are events in the story of Jesus, not themes. Concepts such as forgiveness, salvation, divine love, and sanctification are themes.
Now whatever else we may be wrong about, we Christians are necessarily right about what’s the relative importance of the various aspects of our own religion. What’s most important is that Jesus offered forgiveness and love and provided a means of salvation through His death and resurrection. The events in the life of Jesus are important to the extent that they communicate information about these topics to us. (In fact the Greek word logos used to describe Jesus in John’s gospel, though normally translated “the Word”, can also mean “the message”; thus Jesus is a message.) This is how Christians have seen it from (at latest) when Paul wrote his letters until now. Hence if there were pagan myths with similar events but completely different meanings attached to them, then from a Christian perspective there’s no similarity in the most important aspects.
However, that still leads the question of whether there are meaningful similarities between the events of Jesus and pagan myths. Now I’d say that if you define categories of events broadly enough, there’d be similarities between any person’s life and pagan myth. Consider all the similarities between the life of Barack Obama and pagan myths:
[ul]
[li]Obama lived in Hawaii and Indonesia, then Chicago, then went to Washington D.C. where he lead America in several wars and finally killed his arch-enemy Osama bin Laden. Likewise in Virgil’s Aeneid the main character spends time on several islands, goes to a city whose name starts with ‘C’, then goes to a capital city, fights several battles, and kills his arch-enemy Turnus.[/li][li]Obama had a long race against a woman named Hillary Clinton. Likewise Hippomenes had a long race against a woman named Atalanta. In both cases everyone expected the woman to win at the start, but the man actually won.[/li][li]Obama had two daughters. So did Tyndareus.[/li][li]Obama was educated by Harvard, the most famous university of its time. Likewise Alexander was educated by Aristotle, the most famous teacher in Greek history.[/li][li]etc…[/li][/ul]
So the question becomes whether alleged similarities between the life of Jesus are strong enough to be more meaningful than these. I do not think that they are. Concerning the case of the resurrection, those promoting a Pagan copycat hypothesis have three main candidates: Osiris, Attis, and Adonis. Adonis is both too late and wasn’t really resurrected. For Attis, material about the resurrection postdates Jesus (though the character predates Jesus) and it barely qualifies as a resurrection. That leaves only Osiris. As already mentioned, in Egyptian mythology Osiris was dismembered by Seth, after which his wife reassembled the pieces (except one piece of the male anatomy) and Osiris ruled in the land of the dead. Further, the Osiris cult was a minor one with no influence, and didn’t exist in Palestine. (Or Greece, for anyone who wants to try the claim that the life story of Jesus was made up among the Hellenistics.) So if we’re supposing that someone made up the story of Jesus being resurrected with intended reference to Osiris, it raises the same questions as before. First, why reference something that virtually no one knew or cared about? Second, why make the Jesus story so different from the Osiris story? Third, if it was intended to remind people of Osiris, then why did it fail so badly, since no one noticed this until modern times? So there’s three reasons to doubt that it was an intended reference to Osiris, any one of which would be enough.
Likewise for the similarity of healings by Jesus and Vespasian, what can I say? Perhaps the former is a copy of the later, perhaps the later a copy of the former, but I find it most likely that it’s a coincidence. While the similarities may seem strong, there are dozens of stories in the gospels and thousands of pagan myths. With such a large number of possible pairings there’s got to be a few with similarities.
Another way to look at this is to ask whether there’s anything Jesus could have done after death that couldn’t be stretched to look like a copy of something else. If Jesus died a noble death and just stayed dead, you could say it was a reference to the death of Socrates. If He died and went to Sheol it would function much better as a copy of Osiris. If He died and became a tree you could point to Adonis. If He walked back from the the land of the dead to the land of the living you’ve got Orpheus. And so forth.
As a final note, though, the backup reason I have for rejecting any Pagan copycat hypothesis is simply that scholars have turned against it. In the 19th and early 20th centuries some real scholars took it seriously. Today the scholarly community has turned overwhelmingly against it and some quick reading will show why. James Hannam’s website has a good summary article. The book by Boyd and Eddy that I linked to above has more in-depth discussion as does Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, and N. T. Wright has written a lot on the topic.
We’re not promoting a “copycat” hypothesis, so that’s a straw man. We’re pointing out that the Jesus cult which started as a (failed) Jewish apocalyptic movement in Galilee and Judea became influenced by pagan themes after the original cult was destroyed in 70, and Paul’s idiosyncratic, distorted (probably by psychosis)heretical movement suddenly became the “orthodox” version by default. Pauline Christianity was essentially refitted as a fairly conventional mystery cult with conventional pagan themes (heroic demi-god, escape from murderous king as an infant, the harvest myth themes of dying and resurrecting, rirtualized by the consuming of wine and bread as “body and blood.”
The only thing original about itwas that the hero was a Jew. It wasn’t tha Christians were copying pagans, so much as that pagans were modifying the Jesus cult.