Did Jesus Actually Exist?

@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

And that's not from a review of the evidence, but simply from the application of Ockham's Razor. It's simply more plausible that someone named Jesus (or Yeshua or whatever) actually existed than to create him out of thin air.

Can you expand on this plausibility argument? From my perspective, I see the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth as fairly analogous to the historicity of John Frum and the cargo cult around him. In the mid 20th century, Polynesians started up a cult worshipping American airplanes that had delivered cargo to their islands, then stopped when the war was over. Among the cult's objects of worship is a mythical American by the name of John Frum. Given that these Polynesians made up John Frum out of thin air, how isn't it pretty plausible for first-century Jews to have done the same with Jesus?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier wrote:

1) some higher education in history of antiquity or philology (a BA is not enough; theological or philosophy 'expertise' is not enough);
2) teaching or having taught in academia about the same sorts of topics;
3) scholarly familiarity with at least some of the sources (e.g. Louis Feldman, mentioned by Set, is THE living expert on Josephus, so I grant him much more status on this issue than say to a specialist of ancient neo-platonic thought); and
4) published in peer-reviewed journals.

Does that make sense?

Of course it doesn't make any sense!
1 - Who are you to define what higher education is?
2 - Academia teachers in sister disciplines or topics would do for me.
3 - Define again who is familiar or "expert" in such matters!
4 - That's quite hypocrite as peer-review journals are swarmed by the tenants of the orthodox view.

In the end, scholarly opinions are not formulated by an academic head count.

Do I need to remind you Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei (e pur si muove!)?

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Quote:

I never said that the hearsay evidence for Alexander is no better than the hearsay evidence for Jesus

So coins and such dating back to that period and a major city name for him also dating back to that period are hearsay evidence??????

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Can you expand on this plausibility argument? From my perspective, I see the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth as fairly analogous to the historicity of John Frum and the cargo cult around him. In the mid 20th century, Polynesians started up a cult worshipping American airplanes that had delivered cargo to their islands, then stopped when the war was over. Among the cult's objects of worship is a mythical American by the name of John Frum. Given that these Polynesians made up John Frum out of thin air, how isn't it pretty plausible for first-century Jews to have done the same with Jesus?

But John Frum wasn't made up out of thin air. There really were American GIs in the New Hebrides islands, and at least one of them probably identified himself as "John from" somewhere. If the natives had no contact with Americans and had still invented John Frum, that would be an entirely different story, but that's not how it happened.

In any event, if Jesus were entirely made up, why would he have such a messy life story? If we take Zeus, for instance, we can find that he has a pretty straightforward life - he had an awkward childhood, during which his father ate all of his siblings. He went through a period of youthful rebellion, after which he became king of the gods and went around shagging various Earth women. Jesus, in contrast, has no childhood at all - at least not officially. He is born and is carried by his parents to Egypt. Then we don't hear about him at all until he begins his ministry, some thirty years later. He goes around a remote backwater of the Roman empire, saying a lot of inscrutable things and recruiting a bunch of hippies, until he is nabbed by the authorities and executed for being a general malcontent and troublemaker.

If I were inventing a messiah, that is probably the worst version I could come up with. The question, then, is: cui bono? Who benefits from concocting Jesus - that Jesus - out of whole cloth? If, for example, we ascribe the Jesus "myth" to Paul the Evangelist, then we must ask why he came up with such a maddeningly Delphic and evasive messiah. Pilate, for instance, asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews, and Jesus responds: "it's you who says that." What a jerk! If I were inventing a messiah, I'd have him answer "YES!" rather than the equivalent of "I'm rubber, you're glue."*

In short, invented gods generally have a much cleaner "back story." Jesus doesn't. That suggests to me that Paul and the rest of the gang were using the materials that they had at hand, rather than making stuff up as they went along.

* Bearing in mind the Zeddemore's Law, which states: "when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'YES!'"

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

So coins and such dating back to that period and a major city name for him also dating back to that period are hearsay evidence??????

Yes.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

Yes.

I do not thing so as those items created during his own lifetime seems more then concrete evidence that have nothing to do with hearsay evidence by my understandings of the term.

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@BillRM,

BillRM wrote:

I do not thing so as those items created during his own lifetime seems more then concrete evidence that have nothing to do with hearsay evidence by my understandings of the term.

Then you don't understand the term.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't know anything about the sources for Jesus's life, and it's not a topic that interests me enough to learn more about them.

I empathize. I, too, don't care much about the historical Jesus one way or the other. It's just that much of the reasoning around him strikes me as a prime example of smart people fooling themselves and reaching stupid conclusions as a result. This phenomenon intrigues me from a psychological and sociological perspective.

To think about this phenomenon clearly, one first needs to establish a baseline of what the available evidence reasonably supports and what it doesn't. That's where my interest in the sources comes from. And that's where I'm coming from when I do this little role-play of mine: "Let's pretend we're a jury, and that Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are witnesses. What would a typical jury instruction tell us to do about their testimony?" I still think it's an instructive mental exercise, even though your responses have persuaded me that there's no rigorous analogy between legal and historical rules around evidence.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

Then you don't understand the term.

True if a physical object such as a coin or a city for that matter dating from the man own lifetime can somehow be hearsay evidence.

If hearsay can be such things as a coin with his name and image on it from that time period then I would assume that a modern picture of a person taken from a security camera is also hearsay evidence?

Below definition of Hearsay seems to have nothing to do with physical objects.

Quote:

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/hearsay-evidence.html

The rule against hearsay is deceptively simple and full of exceptions. Hearsay is an out of court statement, made in court, to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In other words, hearsay is evidence of a statement that was made other than by a witness while testifying at the hearing in question and that is offered to prove the truth of the matter stated. For example, Witness A in a murder trial claimed on the stand: "Witness B (the "declarant") told me that the defendant killed the victim." The definition of hearsay is not too difficult to understand. But the matter can become very confusing when one considers all of the many exceptions to the general rule against hearsay - See more at: http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/hearsay-evidence.html#sthash.zu966gA7.dpuf

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@timur,

Are you comparing the Catholic Church in the early renaissance with modern academia? Academia are "the tenants of the orthodox view"?

If yes, that's again a great example of how one single obsession about one single dude leads the hyper-critic to throw away knowledge altogether. When the knowledge tools we have (e.g. academia) contradict the hyper-critic on one of his or her pet topics, he/she will try to undermine these tools. The hyper-critic is not really after knowledge. His aim is generally to undermine whatever knowledge we have on the issue, to obscure it, rather than propose some original knowledge.

In short and at the extreme, one single disagreement with some science can lead the hyper-critic to dump all science.

Another example of this ignorance seeking pattern: Set has decided that Wikipedia is not reliable, because wikipedia contradicted him on Jesus and perhaps other things. As a result, he can't avail himself of this great knowledge tool which wikipedia is. Of course articles can be tampered but it's rare because wiki remains on top of things, has identified the issue a long time ago and has developed tools to control it. And of course the sources are usually mentioned, allowing anyone to check the info. Which is what I have done on this thread to significant results. I can do that precisely because I am not paranoid vis-a-vis wikipedia, and am ready to accept new knowledge from wikipedia that may contradict my current thinking. Set cannot do that, which is why he is so misinformed on this particular topic.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

But John Frum wasn't made up out of thin air.

That sounds as if we have a mostly semantic mismatch about the concept, "made up out of thin air". We seem to agree it's fairly plausible that ancient Jews came up with Jesus much as Polynesians came up with John Frum: They amalgamated many individuals of a type into one specimen with a particular, common name. If we count that as "not made up out of thin air", then I agree with you: Jesus was probably not made up out of thin air.

On the other hand, wouldn't the same be true of Madame Bovary, Inspector Culombo, and the entire cast of Doonesbury? I suspect your semantics are overbroad.

joefromchicago wrote:

In any event, if Jesus were entirely made up, why would he have such a messy life story?

Because one way for a story to spread, regardless of its truth or falsity, is by supplying conversation fodder. Confusing passages, gaps in the plot, and other forms of messiness provide lots of conversation fodder. ("But why would anybody want to thread a camel through a needle's eye?")

joefromchicago wrote:

If we take Zeus, for instance, we can find that he has a pretty straightforward life

I don't see a contradiction here. Different stories have 'found' different ways of making people retell them regardless of their truth or falsity. In particular, the Zeus story has found different ways than the Jesus story has. For example, the Zeus stories tend to be easier to remember because they tend to be told in hexameters. Also, they contain more sex and crime than the Jesus story does.

joefromchicago wrote:

If I were inventing a messiah, that is probably the worst version I could come up with.

I'm not so sure of that. Your very own argument, "this story is so messy it's implausible that someone should have made up", increases its apparent credibility over the obvious ways of inventing a messiah, which in turn makes people re-tell it regardless of its truth or falsity. Think of it as the Handicap principle in the evolution of species, applied to the evolution of stories. Under this model, the messiness of Jesus's biography could have given the memes of Christianity an evolutionary advantage, much as completely useless tails are giving the genomes of male peacocks an evolutionary advantage over birds with more useful tail shapes.

joefromchicago wrote:

Bearing in mind the Zeddemore's Law, which states: "when someone asks you if you're a god, you say 'YES!'"

Sound advice for sure. I'll keep it in mind the next time somebody asks. Also, don't cross the streams.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

That sounds as if we have a mostly semantic mismatch about the concept, "made up out of thin air". We seem to agree it's fairly plausible that ancient Jews came up with Jesus much as Polynesians came up with John Frum: They amalgamated many individuals of a type into one specimen with a particular, common name. If we count that as "not made up out of thin air", then I agree with you: Jesus was probably not made up out of thin air.

On the other hand, wouldn't the same be true of Madame Bovary, Inspector Culombo, and the entire cast of Doonesbury? I suspect your semantics are overbroad.

I think some of those fictional characters were actually based on real people, so I wouldn't say that the authors created them out of thin air. But you're right, it's a semantic point, so I won't belabor it.

Thomas wrote:

Because one way for a story to spread, regardless of its truth or falsity, is by supplying conversation fodder. Confusing passages, gaps in the plot, and other forms of messiness provide lots of conversation fodder. ("But why would anybody want to thread a camel through a needle's eye?")

Well, here I revert to Ockham's Razor. Your scenario is unnecessarily complicated - why would anyone choose such a convoluted scheme when a more straightforward one is available? It's like an ad agency saying to a client "we've come up with an ad campaign that doesn't identify your product, denies that it's manufactured by you, and that has a confusing tagline. People will talk about it, and it will boost sales tremendously!" Frankly, I find that implausible.

Thomas wrote:

I'm not so sure of that. Your very own argument, "this story is so messy it's implausible that someone should have made up", increases its apparent credibility over the obvious ways of inventing a messiah, which in turn makes people re-tell it regardless of its truth or falsity. Think of it as the Handicap principle in the evolution of species, applied to the evolution of stories. Under this model, the messiness of Jesus's biography could have given the memes of Christianity an evolutionary advantage, much as completely useless tails are giving the genomes of male peacocks an evolutionary advantage over birds with more useful tail shapes.

Again, I find that highly implausible. But if you can cite a comparable example in the world of religion or commerce where that sort of strategy was consciously employed, I'd be happy to discuss it.

Thomas wrote:

Also, don't cross the streams.

Crossing the streams is baaaad.

1 Reply

Joe...Thomas...

...just want to thank you both for the discussion you are having...and the class with which you are having it.

We see much too little of this kind of thing these days in A2K...as I said, I thank you both for it.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Seconded. Joe saved this thread.

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@joefromchicago,

joefromchicago wrote:

I think some of those fictional characters were actually based on real people, so I wouldn't say that the authors created them out of thin air.

So, can we agree that Jesus Christ is about as historical as Emma Bovary, Columbo, and Michael Doonesbury? If we do, I consider this point settled not just semantically but substantively. Don't be surprised, though, if theologians and historians categorize you as a Jesus-denier for holding this view.

joefromchicago wrote:

[W]hy would anyone choose such a convoluted scheme when a more straightforward one is available?

Because the Jesus story evolved in the Roman Empire, a selective environment where the pagan myths had already 'cornered the market' for straightforward schemes. The Christian memes had to find a niche of their own in order to thrive.

joefromchicago wrote:

Again, I find that highly implausible. But if you can cite a comparable example in the world of religion or commerce where that sort of strategy was consciously employed, I'd be happy to discuss it.

In your semantics, would postmodernism fall into the category of "religion or commerce"? In mine, it's a little bit of both. Postmodernist art is exhibited by first-rate museums like the MoMa, and sells for obscene prices at auction, not because it's attractive or expressive or thought-provoking, but precisely because it's not. For example, Christopher Buffer introduces his book Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction with a sculpture named Equivalent VIII, a nondistinct rectangular pile of bricks. It is now a permanent exhibit in the Tate Gallery. And it's precisely its dearth of aesthetic worth to which it owes its place in the Tate Gallery --- or so it seems to me.

I would say similar things of postmodernist philosophy. Although its tide seems to have ebbed a bit since I left academia in 2000, its literature is epidemic at Continental-European universities. It's all over the curriculum and the seminar rooms. Its authors attract a myriad devoted followers among students and professors alike. But why? You would think it has to be because its authors have important things to say and thought them through in an original, useful, and insightful manner. But they haven't. Some German author once said of an adversary that "he muddies his waters to make readers think they are deep". The name of this author evades me --- Lessing? Heine? --- and he certainly wrote before the 20th century. But he had the postmodernists' number even then. I bet that if Derrida started writing* in French as plain as Ayer and Dennett's English, he would lose most of his followers.

With both examples in mind, I submit to you that it's precisely because of its useless obscurantism, not in spite of it, that postmodernism can attract such a devoted following. Therefore, I submit, it does match the pattern you were asking about.
___________________
* Well, technically Derrida is dead, so he'd pull off a Second Coming if he started writing at all. But I trust you get my point.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

So, can we agree that Jesus Christ is about as historical as Emma Bovary, Columbo, and Michael Doonesbury? If we do, I consider this point settled not just semantically but substantively. Don't be surprised, though, if theologians and historians categorize you as a Jesus-denier for holding this view.

We can agree that Jesus was as historical as the real people who inspired Emma Bovary, Columbo, and Michael Doonsbury (if, indeed, they were inspired by real people -- I have no clue). As for being called a Jesus denier, it wouldn't bother me. I've been called worse.

Thomas wrote:

Because the Jesus story evolved in the Roman Empire, a selective environment where the pagan myths had already 'cornered the market' for straightforward schemes. The Christian memes had to find a niche of their own in order to thrive.

That doesn't really follow. If pagan myths were successful because they were straightforward, then that provides a model of success for other religions to emulate, not to reject. But we don't have to go back to antiquity for examples. Scientology was invented less than a century ago, and its cosmology is pretty straightforward. It's completely insane, to be sure, but it's not difficult to understand, and that's despite the fact that it's competing with hundreds of other far more well-established religions. I don't think that was a coincidence. Indeed, that's exactly the kind of thing we should expect from a religion that is made up out of thin air.

Thomas wrote:

In your semantics, would postmodernism fall into the category of "religion or commerce"? ...

With both examples in mind, I submit to you that it's precisely because of its useless obscurantism, not in spite of it, that postmodernism can attract such a devoted following. It does seem to match the pattern you were asking about.

That's an interesting point. I think we agree on the basics of postmodern art and philosophy. In technical terms, it's all argle-bargle (to quote Antonin Scalia). I do think, however, that postmodernism could not have arisen any earlier than it did. Before postmodernism, there had to be Freud and Nietzsche and Wagner and ... well, a whole lot of other Germans who screwed things up for the rest of us.

In antiquity, there were mystery cults, but the mysteries were more in the nature of being secret clubs rather than being theologically obscure. Gnosticism drew on some of those traditions and was totally messed up, but then it also drew on Christianity, which, even at that early date, had an overly complex theology precisely because of the convoluted story of Jesus's life and teachings.

I don't deny that theological obscurity can have a kind of "evolutionary" advantage - Buddhism comes to mind as an example, although Buddhism, as we've discussed, isn't really a religion. But it still strikes me as implausible that anyone starting a religion would choose that strategy by inventing a figure like Jesus. More likely, they were forced into that strategy by the messy facts of the real Jesus's life.

2 Replies

I don't have a "beef," unless it is the ludicrous insistence onf claiming a "legal" basis for the evidence about the existence of historical figures. I will simply repeat that thre is no contemporary evidence for the putative Jeebus, and that at the least, the coinage of Philip and of Alexander constitutes contemporary evidence for Alexander. The quality of the hearsay evidence for Alexander is much better than that for the putative Jeeubs, as well.

In fact, the entire passage is hilarious, because it's a common whine of the religionists--to the effect that there is no evidence for Alexander. Joe himself introduced the subject of the quality of hearsay evidence. The quality of the hearsay evidence for Alexander is much superior to that for the putative Jeebus. As for "legal," i don't subscribe to the notion that those who are not initiates of the arcane mysteries cannot be allow in the sacred precincts of the Temple of The Law, and that they therefore cannot be assumed to understand the jargon which the priesthood of The Law employ.

1 Reply

@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I don't have a "beef," unless it is the ludicrous insistence onf claiming a "legal" basis for the evidence about the existence of historical figures.

Then you have a beef with Thomas, not with me.

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

I don't really care who you allege is responsible, it's still hilariously silly. Was it a civil suit? Yahweh and Son versus Macedonian Dynasties Incorporated?

1 Reply

Allow me to repeat:

Joe...Thomas...

...just want to thank you both for the discussion you are having...and the class with which you are having it.

We see much too little of this kind of thing these days in A2K...as I said, I thank you both for it.

1 Reply

Did Jesus Actually Exist?

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