Ch. 2: The Hypothesis of Historicity (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)
Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 2:50 pm
Ch. 2: The Hypothesis of Historicity (On the Historicity of Jesus by Richard Carrier)
Quality books. Great conversations.
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Carrier’s analysis of this amazing line is a superb demolition of the type of idiocy that faith can produce, giving religion such an appalling reputation for mendacity and corruption.DB Roy wrote:specious claims as "We have more evidence that Jesus existed than we do that Alexander the Great (or Julius Caesar) existed." This is simply false. Cynically false.
The appalling thing here is that there are many people, notably the 42% of Americans who believe in Young Earth Creationism, who want to believe there is more evidence for Jesus than for Alexander, and so will be willingly sucked in by this and similar Christian Big Lies.Hitler wrote:“in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”
I loved Carrier’s use of the internet to check on the existence of Betty Crocker http://www.walkerart.org/minnesotabydes ... ty-crocker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Crocker and Colonel Sanders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders. Checking the evidence for Jesus is almost as easy.DB Roy wrote: We all have the internet today, folks, it's a simple matter of looking up a few entries. When you don't even do that, you're either too lazy to research or you're too stupid. No excuse either way.
This pervasive delusion of religious scholarship illustrates the power of emotional sentiment in governing people’s beliefs, as well as the corrupt desire for personal advancement. Bart Ehrman’s apostasy from scholarship to craven apologetics got him onto the cover of Newsweek, although some might say he sold his soul. Preferment in religious institutions and endorsement from mass media is based on toeing the line, in a syndrome that creates genuine belief in the Historical Jesus, with an ability to suppress the cognitive dissonance between this false belief and all legitimate methods of scholarship.DB Roy wrote: I would expect a true historian to know how to weigh evidence. Anonymous accounts have to sit at the bottom of the barrel of historical accuracy. How can you possibly give an account even the tiniest amount of credence when you don't know who wrote it?? Especially when it is clear it was copied from an earlier writing?? When I hear some guy with a college degree who stands out in his field of expertise say something like, "An examination of the New Testament writings indicates that there was a real man at the center of it all, this man called Jesus," I can only roll may eyes and shake my head. He has NO RIGHT to come to that conclusion because the available evidence does NOT suggest any such thing and he, of all people, should damn well know it.
This summarises the key principle of method in Carrier’s book, and presents an amazingly powerful logical and evidence based argument that the whole idea of a historical Jesus is an absurd forgery. The simple case, which Carrier assembles like a skilled attorney, is that at every point, the real data fits with the hypothesis that Jesus was invented and does not fit with the hypothesis that Jesus was real. That is such an important basic finding that I am going to say it again. The simple case, which Carrier assembles like a skilled attorney, is that at every point, the real data fits with the hypothesis that Jesus was invented and does not fit with the hypothesis that Jesus was real.DB Roy wrote:
applying Bayes Theorem to the question of the historical Jesus what evidence should we expect to find if we posit that he is historical? What evidence would we expect to see if he is not?
Excellent and incontrovertible summary of the application of this simple powerful logical tool of Bayes Theorem to the Bible. The only way to rebut your arguments here is to depend on blind faith. Alas that is an all too common expedient.DB Roy wrote: Well, for starters, we have enough writings from the time in which he lived that he himself should have written something. If he did, nothing of it survives. There should be people outside of Church literature referencing him. Other than a forged passage in Josephus there is nothing. Other references, which are very scant, merely reference the Jesus legend and don't tell us anything about a historical Jesus. We don't see what we expect to see of an historical Jesus. What would advocate of a non-historic Jesus see today? No writings from this Jesus--check. No credible references to him in his time or the generation after--check. Earlier personages that are similar to Jesus who would have lived in the same general region such as Joshua ben Pandira and the Teacher of Righteousness--check. Some of the earliest artwork depicting Jesus were actually of Hermes the Good Shepard--check. The earliest known image of the crucifix depicts a man with an ass's head splayed on a cross. The standard bearded, silken-headed Jesus didn't come about until the 6th century. That's checkmate, mate.
Me too.DB Roy wrote: Now I must get back to my reading of this truly fascinating book.
The distinction you describe here between faith and scholarship should be the case, but unfortunately it is not. The historicity of Jesus Christ is a unique problem, at the centre of western civilization, framing the dominant cultural theory of meaning, and this immense immense influence bleeds over into scholarship, with interest in these questions often driven by confessional motives. If we look at academic historians of Christianity like Michael Grant in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, we find an assertion that “The author looks at the gospels with an historian's eye, in search of the authentic Jesus. He seeks to separate those portions of the gospels that refer to the true career and teachings of Jesus, from the subsequent additions or inventions by the evangelists. The gospels are studied in the same way as other ancient historical sources, endeavouring to reconstruct what really happened and to uncover the truth of the historical Jesus.”DWill wrote:Just to note, in both of these longer posts asserting lack of any historicity regarding Jesus, two views that used to be kept separate are conflated. The one view is that of the Christian faithful, which in general would attest to the occurrence of acts and events in the Gospels. The other is that of the majority of academic historians of Christianity, in which judgment of the reality of those events is suspended, but the assumption that Jesus lived is retained.
That critique applies to Ehrman and Aslan, but not in my view to Crossan, Borg and Pagels, whom I respect despite their acceptance of historicity.DWill wrote: These historians see a milieu in which belief in Jesus arose from the ground up, somehow organically. That is what they study. Scholars such as Crossan, Borg, Ehrman, Aslan, and, indeed, Elaine Pagels, have conventionally been placed in opposition to theologians and historians with direct affiliation to Christianity, i.e., apologists. Under the mythicist view, the two groups have become one, apologists all.
The notion and the man are two completely separate things, as Carrier explains regarding similar examples such as King Arthur. Of course the myth of Arthur was immensely influential in the English construction of cultural identity, but that is a completely separate question from whether Arthur actually lived, which is what historicity asks about.DWill wrote: Historicity can be a little tricky to define. It's intended primarily to indicate things that really happened, but in another sense it can refer to things believed to have happened that became an influence in subsequent history. So the notion of Jesus has obvious historicity, which mythicists wouldn't deny, I'm sure.
No, mythicism contradicts the task of conventional views, by applying the same standards of evidence to the gospels as historians apply in other less culturally fraught topics of study. Your calling this a ‘parallel’ only creates confusion by asserting more validity in apologetic literature than it deserves.DWill wrote:What they deny is that the belief originated in the way it was said to have done throughout the ages. They are saying there is a different historicity surrounding the origin of Jesus that was buried intentionally or simply obscured because of the manner in which Jesus needed to be translated from heaven to earth. That's the mythicist's task, to demonstrate that other historicity. It parallels the task of the from-Jesus-to-Christ historians who have been rashly labeled apologists.
I disagree. In all this debate, I am reminded of Bertold Brecht’s great play The Life of Galileo, in which Galileo mocks the Pope for refusing to look through the telescope. Carrier’s use of Bayes Theorem is like Galileo’s telescope, a technical method that is viewed with fear and ignorance by those who are not familiar with it. But the clarity and elegance of this simple method means that the weight of evidence can be considered objectively.DWill wrote: Which side owns the weight of evidence will never be answered objectively.
“Appropriate” is a highly charged political term. Believers don’t find it “appropriate” for people to prove that their beliefs are false.DWill wrote:The assessment required doesn't depend only on bits of discrete, claimed evidence, but on judgments that must often appeal to the audience's sense of appropriateness, likelihood, compatibility with the culture of origin. and impartiality. Each side sees each of these matters in different light.
Those two small words “as if” in the middle of your comment here conceal a great mystery. That is the Docetic Heresy, which was a capital crime for more than a thousand years, saying that Jesus only seemed to be real.DWill wrote: The mainstream now holds that Jesus, if not actually historical, arose as if from a human being. If there truly is a paradigm shift underway, as Robert believes, the balance will shift and the from-Christ-to-Jesus side will gather force.
Be all that as it may, my point was to question the lumping of two distinct groups with the designation 'apologist.' If we're going to preserve the distinctions that meaning depends on, it seems we need to acknowledge that someone whose one similarity with orthodox believers is that she feels that some Jesus was at the origin of what became Christianity, isn't an apologist. The older word for such a person was apostate or heretic. The conflation of the two hints of the crude sectioning of politics and even of propaganda, as does the allegation that in historicists the power of reason is zapped by unconscious "confessional motives."Robert Tulip wrote:The distinction you describe here between faith and scholarship should be the case, but unfortunately it is not. The historicity of Jesus Christ is a unique problem, at the centre of western civilization, framing the dominant cultural theory of meaning, and this immense immense influence bleeds over into scholarship, with interest in these questions often driven by confessional motives. If we look at academic historians of Christianity like Michael Grant in Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, we find an assertion that “The author looks at the gospels with an historian's eye, in search of the authentic Jesus. He seeks to separate those portions of the gospels that refer to the true career and teachings of Jesus, from the subsequent additions or inventions by the evangelists. The gospels are studied in the same way as other ancient historical sources, endeavouring to reconstruct what really happened and to uncover the truth of the historical Jesus.”
Is this assertion of sound method borne out in Grant's text? No. There are massive problems about the reliability of the gospels which Grant simply ignores, taking on face value claims that should be understood as purely parabolic. You cannot work with the assumption that Jesus lived and suspend judgement on the gospels. The two are mutually incompatible. The assumption that Jesus lived involves a failure to suspend judgement.
Surely you have enough respect for Pagels not to believe she would hold back from fear of offending the pious. The pious are not her audience.Pagels, Borg and Crossan are similar in my opinion, as writers who are primarily interested in deriving ethical lessons. I have read quite a bit of their work, and with Pagels especially, my sense is that there is a careful avoidance of sensitive questions of historicity which could get her in trouble with the pious. Her work on Gnosticism is controversial enough without buying into the mythicism debate. Unlike Ehrman, Pagels does not make untrue assertions.
The idea of Arthur is part of history, just as the idea of Jesus is. Myths that we now see as fiction, without any controversy, are part of history, too, since they were carried forth and arguably influenced events. Of course the belief has no bearing on the historical reality. The aspect that is my only interest in this topic is the historicity of the belief, the description of how the belief in Jesus arose. Historical accuracy regarding any person need have little to do with that question.The notion and the man are two completely separate things, as Carrier explains regarding similar examples such as King Arthur. Of course the myth of Arthur was immensely influential in the English construction of cultural identity, but that is a completely separate question from whether Arthur actually lived, which is what historicity asks about.
The Christ Myth is central to the European conquest of the world, providing moral comfort to the Conquistadors as they baptized infants before killing them. But the beliefs held by a Cortez do not pertain to the historicity of Jesus.
I'm talking about the works of such people as you and I have mentioned, not writers of apologetics. The confusion may be caused by your regarding these writers as apologists, an assessment with which I strongly disagree.No, mythicism contradicts the task of conventional views, by applying the same standards of evidence to the gospels as historians apply in other less culturally fraught topics of study. Your calling this a ‘parallel’ only creates confusion by asserting more validity in apologetic literature than it deserves.
It's also difficult to explain how Jesus became Christ, so there are difficulties on both sides, and I'm glad you don't underestimate the distance left to go in your own task.I agree that reconstructing a plausible story of how the non-historicity of Jesus was forgotten remains an immensely difficult problem. For Carrier, the task is to show that it was forgotten, and the problem of why and how this happened is something for further research. [eta - So his focus is more on the method of Christianity than its motive. That is a core theme I will return to.]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bayes Theorem works in here regarding the Jesus Christ story or myth as we find it in the Gospels. If it claims to provide proof that these events could not have been true, that can not extend to the kind of minimal historical reality that historicists of the stripe I am talking about (non-apologists) assume. I also am content to let others believe what their faiths dictate. I don't see the need to prove to them that their belief is impossible.I disagree. In all this debate, I am reminded of Bertold Brecht’s great play The Life of Galileo, in which Galileo mocks the Pope for refusing to look through the telescope. Carrier’s use of Bayes Theorem is like Galileo’s telescope, a technical method that is viewed with fear and ignorance by those who are not familiar with it. But the clarity and elegance of this simple method means that the weight of evidence can be considered objectively.
I would change that word if it makes you think of propriety. I had in mind more of an intellectual appropriateness. And again, believers aren't part of the picture I'm painting.“Appropriate” is a highly charged political term. Believers don’t find it “appropriate” for people to prove that their beliefs are false.
That's not where I was going with the "as if." With Docetism, there was someone there, but he was not really a mortal. That belief would make it easier to believe that he rose as spirit, since he already was one.Those two small words “as if” in the middle of your comment here conceal a great mystery. That is the Docetic Heresy, which was a capital crime for more than a thousand years, saying that Jesus only seemed to be real.
Seeing that Docetism is not far removed from ideas found in the Gnostic writings, we do have expression of it, though the Church of the time would rather that not to have been the case.As Carrier points out, the winnowing of the data by the highly selective sieve of the church means we don’t have any Docetic writings, only tender instructions from bigots that we must block our ears to such Satanism or face the wrath of the executioner. The great fear instilled by the kings who killed off all these “as if” writers and pulped their books remains a palpable cultural force, pushing this whole debate into the margins, and out of the mainstream. We can talk about it on the internet, but there is nothing in universities or the media about this great “as if”. Like the suffering servant, this whole discussion is despised and rejected.