Did the man "Jesus" exist?

[ant]

to interpret the bible as literal history is absurd

What's absurd is how you came to the conclusion that I do.

Hint:
To get an idea of my position here, read all my posts under "Did the man Jesus Exist?"

[Robert Tulip]

to interpret the bible as literal history is absurd

What's absurd is how you came to the conclusion that I do.
Hint: To get an idea of my position here, read all my posts under "Did the man Jesus Exist?"

Well I have probably read all your posts here, and I agree with youkrst that you are talking crap ant.

This most recent one about ducks makes no sense. Patronising youkrst for observing that if it looks like myth then it probably is myth gives the distinct impression you are saying that things that look like myth are not myth, ie that you interpret the bible as not myth. If it is not myth then it is literal history.

The duck line is not a nursery rhyme, it is basic logic. If Jesus quacks like a myth, then the real burden of proof is on those who say he is not a myth. Of course, the political burden of proof is very different from the logical burden of proof, because incumbents can sit in their castle and say nya nya ne na nya and poke their tongue out with their fingers in their ears, a very popular method of childish theology when an argument has no evidence to back it up.

[ant]

I

if it is not myth then it is literal history

.

That is unsound reasoning, Robert. That is called the fallacy of false choice.

I am sorry. Yukrists' seem to be more antagonistic to my views and opinions than anything else.
Some of my "crap" you dismissed without directly addressing.
It's understandable when a person is protecting a position that has holes in it that can not be filled.

But that's all good, Robert. You've admitted it's not a closed case. That was a small victory in itself.

Thanks

[DWill]

In trying to reconstruct the actual process of the writing of the Gospels we are looking through a glass darkly, as Paul put it. The entire period is hidden by the fragmentary nature of the records, by the deliberate effort to promote religious stories that are not plausible, and by the massive historical success of these religious fantasies. Achieving objective knowledge may well be impossible on many of the details.

I think your last sentence should be absolute--it will not be possible to achieve objective knowledge. My point has been that to be as objective as possible, it helps to avoid a kind of embedded judgment that I see in your language. "Religious fantasies," "deliberate effort to promote," etc.--this is polemical, as much as to you it seems plain as day that one can call it true. When in other contexts you speak of myth, it is consistently without that kind of censoriousness; it is in fact with approval. But one could just as well call any myth a religious fantasy if desired.

And yet, some readings are possible and some are impossible. One method is to start with modern scientific reason, and say that events that are compatible with science are possible history and events that are incompatible with science are impossible myth. This already narrows down the Bible, putting all the miracles into the mythical category.

It may well be that some writers were personally convinced that impossible events actually happened, through divine intervention. And yet, looking at the provenance of these stories, whether the physical resurrection, the virgin birth, the feeding of the five thousand, or any other of the miracles ascribed to Jesus Christ, if we hold to a scientific outlook, we regard them as myth, not fact. Somewhere in the oral tradition, someone deliberately invented a story. Later tradition may have accidentally added to this story, in ways that were completely sincere, but the fact remains the germ is fantasy, not fact.

I don't believe that the Jesus in the bible has biographical integrity for much the same reason as you first state. He is not historical in that sense any more than Daniel Webster is historical in S.V. Benet's story "The Devil and Daniel Webster," or Abraham Lincoln is historical in the new vampire movie. If events did not happen, the people in the narratives aren't historical even if people by that name were known to have lived. This is the situation that the word 'apocryphal' fits so well. We know that the church declared many stories about Jesus apocryphal. What many have done on their own is to recognize that they're all apocryphal. But notice how much can get into apocryphal stories that reflects facts about the times and its people. When you cite the contents of the Gospels stories, you omit some of the narrative framework that doesn't connect with the miracles of the embedded parables. That is important as well when we are judging the stories as being, in part, like history. Therefore it is possible that in this stew, the ingredient of history mixes in with legends, traditions, and myths. In your view, you don't seem to allow scope for folkways to have done much of this mixing in a much less than deliberate fashion over the course of at least several decades. The manipulation and deliberation you imply probably isn't a hallmark of the oral tradition.

Considering the entire story of the individual existence of Jesus Christ, the fact that many people sincerely believe and believed in him does not make it objectively true. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. This objectivity gap involves what we call allegorical purpose, the use of imaginative fiction to point towards a deeper truth. So, when DWill says the combining of stories did not constitute myth, it is hard to see in what sense this might be true. Sincere and honest belief in a myth does not make it any less a myth.

I hope you don't think I'm arguing that the intensity of anyone's belief in anything is evidence of its factual truth. But if the illiterate and literate authors of the Bible do believe in miracles and the resurrection, they of course report them as truth and do not mean for them to be allegory. Part of what happens when the ability to believe literally in such things slackens, is that symbolical or metaphorical readings come to the fore. This happened as history advanced. What I've been arguing for is simply the preservation of a societal context that is more likely to be historically accurate. This would mean that even if astrological or other mythical motifs attach to the NT accounts, they don't constitute the "real" meanings the writers meant to convey, under the cloak of a literal story.

In baseball, if we tell a story about one player who was the greatest hitter, pitcher and fielder of all time, combining true anecdotes from many sources with the intent that people believe it, we are engaged in the production of myth. In religion, if we combine numerous sources to produce a plausible account of a wonder worker, aiming to meet the emotional desire of the public for a real savior, we are engaged in the production of myth. That is how Christianity started. It does not matter if final authors were consciously and deliberately falsifying, what is important is whether their sources were historical or imaginative.

Thanks for the attempt at cross-cultural understanding with the baseball example. I don't object to calling Jesus a myth, so I would also have to agree that myths are somehow produced, from elements that are going to vary from era to era and place to place. But why do sources have to be either historical or imaginative? We have many examples of apocryphal stories about people who we know existed. Haile Selassie is divine figure for Rastafarians, e.g.

[Interbane]

As I read through this debate, the below confused me:

Ant, you're falling victim to your bias. The following half dozen or so responses to the debate after this, I saw glaring issues with. One or two is normal I'd think, but half a dozen is pattern enough to show that you're not fighting against your bias.

I don't mean to say you're wrong about each point; you could very well be correct. But in each one, at least the answer you're requesting is right there in open view(even if it's an answer that would turn out to be false with further explanation. Play devil's advocate with your thoughts more.

I'm sorry if that's harsh, but it's much more apparent after DWill pointed out some sloppiness on Robert's part, as if you smelled blood then started getting sloppier yourself.


I'd be happy to go over the debate, but unless you can close off tangential discussion yourself by being more unbiased, the discussion would explode out of proportion. I'm sure there are some excellent points you could make, but don't try so hard that you fail to double check your mental offspring.

[tat tvam asi]

Dwill, it's hard to imagine that something like the loaves and fishes allegory was thought to be a literal miracle in history by the gospel writers, because the symbolism about the sky view (what the sun, moon, and constellations were doing) of the time period is so glaringly open. The same goes for Luke 22:10 referencing the passage of time from the age of Pisces to Aquarius and how the 12 signs must follow the water bearer into the following world age.

But I suppose that because the gospels don't appear firmly into the literary and historical record until well into the second century, then does seem entirely possible that the gospel writers might have taken sets of carefully arranged religious symbolism from oral traditions and simply wrote it all down thinking that the oral religious stories were miraculous historical events from the last century. And as copiest's continued to reproduce these works over and over again it would seem that the further from the source we go the more inclined the copiest's would be to think they were promoting a supernatural historical account from the first century.

[ant]

I'm sorry if that's harsh, but it's much more apparent after DWill pointed out some sloppiness on Robert's part, as if you smelled blood then started getting sloppier yourself.

Not harsh. I appreciate your honesty.

[Robert Tulip]

In trying to reconstruct the actual process of the writing of the Gospels we are looking through a glass darkly, as Paul put it. The entire period is hidden by the fragmentary nature of the records, by the deliberate effort to promote religious stories that are not plausible, and by the massive historical success of these religious fantasies. Achieving objective knowledge may well be impossible on many of the details.

I think your last sentence should be absolute--it will not be possible to achieve objective knowledge. My point has been that to be as objective as possible, it helps to avoid a kind of embedded judgment that I see in your language. "Religious fantasies," "deliberate effort to promote," etc.--this is polemical, as much as to you it seems plain as day that one can call it true.

There is a lot of objective knowledge. History has abundant attested facts, for example the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD by Rome, and the numerous corroborated details from books and archaeological records. Absolutely, we have objective knowledge of the lives of historical figures.

But there is a continuum from certainty through uncertainty to falsehood, as Plato describes in his allegory of the divided line. With Biblical details, there is massive controversy about where they sit on the line. True believers think it is absolutely certain that Jesus died on the cross and miraculously rose from the grave, and will fix you with a steely eye if you doubt the substitutionary atonement. Liberal Christians generally agree that our universe is governed by the laws of science, and interpret miracles as imaginative parables, while accepting that Jesus was a historical figure. Then we have the more polemical view that I am promoting, that to assert that Jesus Christ was a real person makes no sense and conflicts with the best reading of the evidence we have.

In the examples that DWill disputes here, I think it is obvious that the church engaged in "deliberate effort to promote" implausible stories, especially all the miracles. Only fundamentalists now think these stories are plausible. The "massive historical success of these religious fantasies" is attested by the fact that questioning the Apostles Creed would put you in a very difficult spot over the centuries of Christendom. I have linked to the creed, and stand by my assessment that objectively speaking it is fantasy. Jesus Christ was not born of the virgin Mary, and he is not sitting at the right hand of the Father. These credal visions are myth, not fact.

When in other contexts you speak of myth, it is consistently without that kind of censoriousness; it is in fact with approval. But one could just as well call any myth a religious fantasy if desired.

The debate around myth depends on how it is interpreted. If myth is seen as symbolic, that is okay. If myth is seen as literal fact, that is psychosis, or at least neurosis. I have a soft spot even for the Apostle's Creed, but only as myth, not as fact. My dispute is with the fundamentalists who assert that mythic fantasy is objective reality. And that includes the myth of God.

in this stew, the ingredient of history mixes in with legends, traditions, and myths. In your view, you don't seem to allow scope for folkways to have done much of this mixing in a much less than deliberate fashion over the course of at least several decades. The manipulation and deliberation you imply probably isn't a hallmark of the oral tradition.

I think you have misread me on this one DWill. A while back we discussed the Chinese Whispers process, whereby a story that was known to be fiction gradually mutated into a story believed to be fact, without any deliberate deceptive intent at any point in the chain of transmission. We could even assume good intentions on the part of the Church Fathers who burnt the Library of Alexandria and destroyed classical learning on the grounds that everything except the Bible was Satanic. They had a vision of God in which evidence and logic simply did not fit. Did they deliberately manipulate? I think you have to conclude that yes they did manipulate, even if they held the deluded view that their fantasy was fact. The effort to suppress heresy was orchestrated by armies and bishops over many centuries. It was not just an accident of oral history.

I hope you don't think I'm arguing that the intensity of anyone's belief in anything is evidence of its factual truth.

No, but your statement "That few or none of them might have happened, ... seems not to indicate that the purpose of the writings was to be mythic and allegorical" does open up some wiggle room around whether the Gospels were intended as fact or myth. The stated purpose was to record "the things that have been fulfilled among us" (Luke 1), even while Jesus also said he concealed his real teachings for secret initiates and that everything said to outsiders was parable(Mark 4). This seems to imply that even his own existence was parable.

We have a binary either/or logic here. Either the Gospel authors believed Jesus lived or they did not. Christians regard the intensity of the Evangelist's belief as evidence of its factual truth, suggesting that invention on such massive and systemic scale is implausible. Logically, acceptance of intensity as evidence commits the fallacy of argument from authority, but it does have real weight.

But if the illiterate and literate authors of the Bible do believe in miracles and the resurrection, they of course report them as truth and do not mean for them to be allegory. Part of what happens when the ability to believe literally in such things slackens, is that symbolical or metaphorical readings come to the fore. This happened as history advanced. What I've been arguing for is simply the preservation of a societal context that is more likely to be historically accurate.

In the interests of historical accuracy, the big question here is the direction of memetic mutation of the Christ myth. Were literal miracles the original belief, which has since been watered down by modern allegorical reading, or was an allegory actually the original intent, which was watered down into literal story for popular consumption in the Gospels? My view is the latter. The resurrection started as a cosmic myth of the annual fertility cycle of the seasons, and then had the carnal details of the Jesus story added as part of a messianic construction.

This would mean that even if astrological or other mythical motifs attach to the NT accounts, they don't constitute the "real" meanings the writers meant to convey, under the cloak of a literal story.

To speak of "real" meanings with such archetypal material is very difficult. Much of the "real" meaning was in the subjective fantasy of believers regarding Jesus as a personal lord and savior. This personal 'reality' has psychological meaning, but is not scientific.

There is a story about Osiris on the Ikhernofret Stela(circa 1850 BC) that contains a dying and rising savior motif over three days. The great antiquity of this passion motif and its similarity to Holy Week suggests we have to look beneath the personal psychology of believers if we want to speak of "real" meaning.

My view is that a long term vision of the unity of heaven and earth is central to the intent of the Gospels. Scientifically, that would require analysis of astronomical cycles.

why do sources have to be either historical or imaginative? We have many examples of apocryphal stories about people who we know existed. Haile Selassie is divine figure for Rastafarians, e.g.

This is the debate over evemerism, the claim that the Gospels elaborated fiction around a real person, Jesus Christ. My view is that evemerism is unlikely for several reasons. The meaning of the title Jesus Christ, Anointed Savior, suggests a widespread yearning in the early common era, with the idea of the Christ emerging at the same time in different places. The trauma of the destruction of Jerusalem produced a need for a 'one for all' figure who could sublimate the evil and unite the good in a message of perfect love. So the primary source, like the emotional resonance of a pop song, was mythic. The idea that people wanted to believe was the one that gradually emerged. Components that resonated with the popular desire were kept, while those that did not resonate were discarded. The psychology is very complex, so it is often hard for us to say why which stories made the cut. But the main context is the psychology of dealing with the massive suffering and destruction inflicted by Rome.

The complete absence of Jesus Christ from contemporary independent history makes it far more likely in my view that we do not have a case of evemerism - starting from a person and turning them into a god - but rather mythmaking - starting with a god and turning him into a person.

[Robert Tulip]

Dwill, it's hard to imagine that something like the loaves and fishes allegory was thought to be a literal miracle in history by the gospel writers, because the symbolism about the sky view (what the sun, moon, and constellations were doing) of the time period is so glaringly open. The same goes for Luke 22:10 referencing the passage of time from the age of Pisces to Aquarius and how the 12 signs must follow the water bearer into the following world age.

But I suppose that because the gospels don't appear firmly into the literary and historical record until well into the second century, then does seem entirely possible that the gospel writers might have taken sets of carefully arranged religious symbolism from oral traditions and simply wrote it all down thinking that the oral religious stories were miraculous historical events from the last century. And as copiest's continued to reproduce these works over and over again it would seem that the further from the source we go the more inclined the copiest's would be to think they were promoting a supernatural historical account from the first century.

Tat, it is hard to imagine people believing in miracles when you have a natural worldview. But the Christian worldview is supernatural, about the intervention of a supernatural entity on our planet. This gives a 'get out of jail free card' to belief in all the fables.

I myself used to think that perhaps the physical resurrection was possible because Jesus was special, perhaps he was a man with a unique spiritual energy that was manifest in healing and levitation etc, incarnating a moment of cosmic wholeness and attunement. But as I read more I came to see, as you put it, that the symbolism is glaringly open. This means that belief in the fables and miracles actually detracts from our ability to see the symbolism.

This entire question of miracles illustrates how theory structures our beliefs. If we start with the incorrect theory that miracles are possible, we find ourselves on a broad and easy path that leads to a fanciful and deluded set of opinions. If we start with the correct theory that miracles are impossible, the way is narrow and hard, but leads to truth, including the recognition that the miracle stories of the New Testament are parables - allegory for naturally possible events. This narrow path of science also leads inexorably to the recognition that the Jesus Christ of the Bible was invented, and that ancient cosmic mythology played a very big part in the invention process. Jesus Christ explained this distinction between the narrow and broad paths in his Sermon on the Mount at Matthew 7:13-14.

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Tat is applying a theoretical framework whereby the ancient authors used observation of the sky as a template for their mythology. This framework, which I agree with too, is simply impossible for most people to see. It is necessary to go back to the basic assumptions and patiently build up an explanation so that others can understand what this talk of ages might mean.

[Robert Tulip]

Debate between Bart Ehrman and a fundie.


Comment: http://respectfulatheist.blogspot.com.a ... ebate.html

I have not watched it, but from the commentary it seems that Erhman's argument for the historical Jesus is like an entry ticket, as no one who disagrees with this item of faith would be listened to by any public audience in the USA. His opponent apparently agrees there are some "metaphors" in the Gospel of John, and this is supposedly a big concession. Shades of the Licona zombie debate.