Reddit reviews On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
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Hmm. I would love for Sam to interview Richard Carrier next to see if he convinces Sam that the historicity of Jesus, like many 'fringe' historians believe, is in doubt.
edit: his book, On the Historicity of Jesus, was peer reviewed and published by a major academic press, and is the first book on the subject to do so. That was in 2014. Carrier and other mythicists believe there is not enough historical evidence to say 'Jesus, the man, probably existed,' and if you read his arguments, they're compelling. Notice, he doesn't say 'Jesus definitely never existed,' just that the other side hasn't met their burden of proof.
His earlier book, Proving History, outlines many of the problems in the field of Jesus studies, namely, that no historical criteria has led any two scholars to the same conclusion about the actual life of Jesus the man. To quote:
>“I won't recount the whole history of historical Jesus research here, as that has been done to death already. Indeed, accounts of the many “quests” for the historical Jesus and their failure are legion, each with their own extensive bibliography. Just to pick one out of a hat, Mark Strauss summarizes, in despair, the many Jesuses different scholars have “discovered” in the evidence recently. Jesus the Jewish Cynic Sage. Jesus the Rabbinical Holy Man (or Devoted Pharisee, or Heretical Essene, or any of a dozen other contradictory things). Jesus the Political Revolutionary or Zealot Activist. Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet. And Jesus the Messianic Pretender (or even, as some still argue, Actual Messiah). And that's not even a complete list. We also have Jesus the Folk Wizard (championed most famously by Morton Smith in Jesus the Magician, and most recently by Robert Conner in Magic in the New Testament). Jesus the Mystic and “Child of Sophia” (championed by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza and John Shelby Spong). Jesus the Nonviolent Social Reformer (championed by Bruce Malina and others).
>Excerpt From: Carrier, Richard C. “Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.”
(It goes on from there.)
Other scholars think the ratio is more likely to be 0%. Source: Richard Carrier.
Aside from Finklestein's book, there is Robert Price's Holy Fable: The Old Testament Unencumbered by Faith. Robert Price is a former evangelical minister-turned-atheist, but with a deep understanding of the bible. It is maybe a bit too skeptical, but it's still got a lot of good info.
In general:
The Torah / Pentateuch was written by (at least) 4 different sources, and compiled (much?) later. There's the Elohist, the Yahweist, the Deutoronomist, and the Priestly source. This explains why there are 2 different versions of a number of stories - for example, there are 2 creation stories; Noah is simultaneously the "only righteous man" God could find, and also a lazy drunk; there are two full sets of 10 commandments, only 3 of which overlap (so there are actually 17 commandments) etc. Someone (likely the Deutoronomist) compiled the book, and not wanting to risk being wrong, included multiple stories and tried to make them jive with one another.
Generally speaking, Moses is nearly universally agreed to have been a myth, along with Joshua. There is no archeological evidence that ancient Hebrews were ever in Egypt, or ever wandered in the desert for 40 years, although stories of Pharaoh may have come from a time when Egypt ruled the Levant (Moses is an Egyptian name, from the same root as Tutmose or Ramses).
The ancient Hebrews were, most evidence supports now, one of many Canaanite tribes, and happened to be the one that managed to stick around. They were also polytheistic for a very long time into their existence - a number of stories have been altered to whitewash this out. The 12 (13? 11 plus grandsons? sources are all over the place on this one) sons of Judah/Israel heading the 12 tribes of Israel are likely figureheads that were ret-conned into existence as more tribes joined with the Hebrews through conquest. Kind of like "Oh, well, we'll join you, we're probably related somewhere way back anyway!". There is also little to no evidence of an epic conquest of the holy land, a. la. Joshua, and many of the vast cities and huge fortresses referenced in the book of Joshua were, archaeology says, minor hamlets with hundreds or thousands of people at most.
There is very little evidence for the existence of David. There is an inscription on a very old (non-Israelite) stone tablet that may reference the "House of David" from several hundred years after David was supposed to have been around. I'm willing to concede that he may have existed, but he was likely a "chieftain" rather than a king. Almost all scholars agree that there was never a united kingdom of Israel and Judah. Jerusalem, at the time of David (10th century BCE), was a very small village or outpost, and there is also no evidence of a first (or Solomon's) temple. There is, however, ample evidence of a 2nd temple (which was greatly expanded by Herod near the BCE/CE switch).
1,2 Kings was written either during the Babylonian exile, or shortly after it. There are just too many anachronisms (bronze weapons, camels, etc) for it to have been written during the time of its subjects, and its subject matter (continued allegiance to Yahweh will bring you victory, breaking Yahweh's commandments will bring you strife) is clearly aimed at explaining circumstances to an Israelite population that has experienced lots of strife.*
1,2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah (originally all one work) looks to be a redaction and rewrite of 1,2 Kings in large part, but by the priestly source - who is working hard to clean up the image of certain people (David had Uriah killed? Nah, let's skip that. David's sons did bad things? Nix it. etc) at the same time that he's working to ret-con a place of prominence for priests of his tribe.
Anyway, skipping ahead to the New Testament, I would also recommend another extreme skeptic's book: Dr. Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus. Dr. Carrier's position is well outside the mainstream consensus, but there's no denying that A.) He is extremely well versed in his subject area, and B.) the mainstream consensus is very conservative, as it is made up of largely religious institutions and believers who all have a vested interest. So his book is good for contrast, and the truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
For starters, the earliest parts of the New Testament are the letters of Paul. Paul, for sure, wrote 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans 1-8. The rest are kind of up for grabs, with some possibly by Paul, and some certainly being forgeries and written as late as the 2nd or possibly even 3rd century. Paul's Jesus is very vague (as in, celestial, not earthly, and working through revelation), and Paul nearly goes out of his way to not talk about Jesus' earthly life - even in places where Jesus ostensibly talked about specific topics that would indisputably bolster Paul's arguments.
Next, we have Mark. Mark's gospel was written first, and Mark's Jesus is somewhat timid and understated. Mark also has little understanding of Galilean geography (the vast "Sea of Galilee" that witnesses such horrible storms is, in reality, a pond that you could kayak across in an hour, for example). Then, Matthew wrote his gospel, using Mark as a source, along with possibly the "Q" source, or possibly just adding things that he had heard or liked. Matthew's Jesus is a scholarly rabbi, and he talks of how Christians should keep the Jewish customs along with the new customs of Christ. Matthew also corrects Mark - a lot. Then, we have Luke, who uses Mark and possibly "Q" or possibly Matthew as his source. Luke's Jesus is the Gentile Jesus, who brings new rules and is for everyone, not just Jews. Those are the Synoptic gospels; then we get to John.
Oh, boy. John... is nuts. John's Jesus is large, in charge, and slinging miracles and witticisms in every direction. There's nothing about helping the poor or healing the sick, but there's a huge serving of hating the Jews. John also contains a number of Gnostic themes that have likely been toned down over the years - John's gospel is the one that is most obviously cut up and rearranged and altered. There's a lot of things like "And then Jesus did his first miracle. And then he did many other miracles. And then he did his second miracle", or Jesus teleporting, popping up all over Galilee, one place after another. But anyway, it’s likely that John’s gospel was so popular that it couldn’t be kept out of the New Testament, once the Council of Nicaea got around to picking which books got in, so it had to be altered in order to tone it down a bit.
The contents of Acts are impossible to square with the letters of Paul - Acts tells a story of the early church, huddled together, building outward, ministering to Galilee, growing larger in harmony. But Paul - Paul does not get along with the so-called fathers of the church in Jerusalem. We also know, partly from other sources, that the early church was very fractured, and only now looks harmonious because the winning faction got to poke and rewrite a lot of the history.
The rest of the New Testament was largely written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and can't have any relevant information to share about the life and times of Jesus, having been written several generations at least after the last person that could have ever met him had died.
Anyway, that's a more-or-less short version of some of the ins-and-outs of some major episodes of the Bible.
* Totally my aside: the concept of religious guilt, IMO, stems from here. In olden times, gods were like mascots - you moved to a new place, you adopt the local gods -
or, you get conquered, it must have been that their god was stronger, so why not jump on the winning bandwagon. The Deutoronomist, the likely source of the idea of the "covenant with god", introduces the idea that believing in a god is a two-way street. Believe enough, and do what he wants, and good things will happen -- but don't believe, or don't do what he wants, and now bad things happen, and it's kinda your fault. The aim was to keep the Hebrews from converting to Babylonian or other Canaanite gods.
Cue thousands of years of catholic guilt, etc.
You really can't go that far. There's plenty of debate on that subject. The problem is nearly all Jesus scholars are Christians, who clearly have a vested interested in Jesus actually having existed.
Here's a an example of two articles from reputable sources that disputes historical Jesus's existence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/18/did-historical-jesus-exist-the-traditional-evidence-doesnt-hold-up/?utm_term=.e4d85d9499a1
https://www.livescience.com/13711-jesus-christ-man-physical-evidence-hold.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Remember, there is not one single mentioning of Jesus that was written during his supposed life. Such a thing just does not exist. 2,000 years of people wanting it to be true have planted many many fakes (Shroud of Turin, for example). But that's not even the real problem with finding out if a particular person existed such a long time ago. Physical evidence decays, gets translated improperly, gets lost or destroyed.
I'm not saying he did, or did not live. I'm saying that your original statement "that virtually all scholars agree existed" is not true. These events happened too long ago to verify 100% that any of it happened at all. Combine that with 2,000 years of mistranslations, faked artifacts and most scholars having preconceived notions, it's just not possible to verify these things.
I understand you will disagree. But consider this: Nearly all active Mormons scholars believe the golden plates really existed. And that only supposedly happened in 1823. Time muddles the true events of everything. 2,000 of time muddles the true events a lot.
Edit: a few words
No, not that likely at all: On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
Reposting my comment from earlier in the month:
Non-religious academics
Religious academics
At the more apologetic end, there's the recent book by Brant Pitre: The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ.
At the "rejecting the idea of Jesus" end there's:
Neither of which have found wide favor among either religious or non-religious academics (Ehrman and Casey's work being direct rebuttals for many of the arguments).
Thanks, just checking whether there was something new.
Carrier talks about this in his "On the Historicity of Jesus". His claim about Tacitus is that he was probably quoting the Gospels indirectly through Pliny, so Carrier claims it might not be an independent source.
He reviews a bunch more, including Josephus, in his chapter 8 "Extrabiblical Evidence".
If I wanted to fact-check Carrier, I would start by reading both his and Ehrman's blogs when they argue with each other, and both Carrier's and Ehrman's books on the topic.
I don't have a personal opinion on the existence of Jesus either. I asked only because it would be interesting if there were an easy way to poke holes in Carrier's work, since Carrier is so thorough.
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt by Richard Carrier
Faith On The March by A. H. Macmillan
>Neither did the early Talmudic authors deprive Jesus of his miracles, but too asserted that they were worked through demons.
Wikipedia says the earliest parts of the Talmud are from 200 CE, so they probably are reacting to what they saw in the Gospels rather than independently corroborating them. If they responded "it's all a lie! There was no Jesus!" then that brings their own religious doctrine into question (there was no Moses), so strategically I can see how "demons" is the best response.
Carrier does a fine job of examining Josephus and Tacitus. I'm not interested in rehashing that. Look it up if you care.
>Who are the authentic ancient historians, in addition to these, who found the whole narrative "unconvincing on any level"?
There may be a misunderstanding. The relevant historians are modern. They have PhDs and I have watched some of them on YouTube, so they are authentic historians; the historicity of the historians is not in doubt. They study ancient history, but they are young and spry historians, not deceased ancient historians. Carrier is a fine example. Ehrman disagrees with him. If you can parse out Ehrman's relevant counterarguments, I would be thankful.
>It is surprising to many that for the legitimately traditional Christian, the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth is actually irrelevant to the question of the reality of the Logos, the real object of Christian faith.
If you take as given that Jesus didn't exist, what remains of Christianity? I would really appreciate it if you would point me at the Logos that doesn't depend on Jesus.
Yea. Check out On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt
A concern: is it reasonable though to compare what are ultimately highly dissimilar entities? The stock market always retains some fundamental partial real-world value. With the stock market, even in '29 style crash, there is always some universally accepted residual physical value.
With the church there is NEVER a universally accepted physical value in the theology of any kind, only a vaguely individually determined emotional one, sometimes called 'spiritual', but it's emotion all the way. Personally, I would have difficulty relating the two.
One book I'd recommend that might appeal to your approach is Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt.
Carrier uses Baye's Theorem to analyze the probability of Jesus' existence. As one reviewer noted:
"Carrier rigidly applies the logic of Bayes' Theorem to the evidence for the historicity of Jesus -- and finds no reason to conclude he actually existed. While the author's rigorous use of Bayesian method makes this book a tough slog at times, it is difficult to imagine how it might be refuted. . . . Put together, our prior knowledge and the subsequent evidence shows that is far more probable that Jesus was a mythical figure who was later given a historical-sounding life story than it is that he was a historical figure even remotely resembling the figure in the Gospels."
If one comes to a logically, even mathematically, based conclusion that Christ never existed then the question of the church being 'true' is moot.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
And then there's Richard Carrier who argues the opposite.
http://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus-Might-Reason-Doubt-ebook/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421015615&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+carrier
Well technically those records from the mid 100s are saying that christians exist, and they did. The epistles of Paul were written in the 50s, the gospel of Mark written in the 70s, Matthew and Luke written in the 80s or 90s, and John, the revelation of another John, the revelation of Peter, and the ascension of Isaiah and many other Christian stories written in the 100s to the 300s before the ecumenical councils were started in 325 when they decided to narrow down Jesus eventually settling on the trinity by the fourth ecumenical council pushing out Gnosticism like the gospel of Thomas, Marcion, and Origen as well as Aryanism, Nestorianism and other "heresies" leading to the church of the East, Coptics and other early schisms. After the next four councils they came to the idea about iconoclasm where the Eastern Orthodoxy was against the use of iconography and the Catholics stuck with icons such as the crucifix, statues of Mary, and other icons. This was all by the time of the 600s.
Soon after this time the orthodox christians, Coptics, Islam and other sects went their own ways. In Islam Jesus is the chosen human messiah but not the son of God nor was he crucified before his ascension. In some Eastern religions Jesus is sometimes seen as another transcendent beings like the Buddha and Buddha is sometimes seen as a reincarnation of Vishnu in some forms of Hinduism.
Zoroastrianism heavily influenced monotheism and the traits of the supreme god found in most abrahamic religions. It added the concept of heaven and hell. It added armageddon. Many forms of Christianity didn't start out believing in an afterlife but the Catholic concept of heaven, hell, and purgatory was under question by Martin Luther especially the concepts of the church selling something that allows them to skip purgatory and changing the message of the bible from the originally intended meaning. As a result most protestant religions don't have a complicated hierarchy with bishops, archbishops, popes, and such but they'll have a pastor and perhaps deacons and that's about it. The eastern orthodoxy has a few of their ecumenical decisions but the Catholics kept it going up until they went from 7 to 21 with 15 or 16 being related to the protestants being excommunicated and doomed to hell. In the first Vatican council (ecumenical council decision #20) the church rejects rationalism, materialism, and atheism and anything that could cause problems with the church doctrines. More recently (since the 1960s) they have gradually adjusted to science and with the removal of hell and the acceptance of evolution and the ongoing pedophilia the church is falling apart and might again break into multiple denominations.
The protestants went on another path and in the 1900s the rise of fundamental literalism led to a resurgence of young earth creationism and flat earthers while just a few decades earlier the seventh day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah witnesses and Baha'i came out of the various religions holding fast to creationism and the existence of Jesus.
While these beliefs account for the majority of held religious beliefs (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism) only the abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Baha'i rely on Jesus being historical. Scholars who hold these beliefs will claim they have evidence that Jesus matches their religious idea such as an empty tomb pointing to a resurrection. The scholars who try to establish historicity on either side will fall back to some random Jewish rabbi, perhaps Jesus ben Annanias or Yeshua ben Yosef who was a preacher mulch life the more established John the Baptist and like John was killed and remained dead while his followers shared their memory of him by word of mouth so that he gradually gets more and more absurd and magical by the time the gospels were written. Others will point out that Jesus was a spiritual being probably hundreds of years before the first century when Paul, Peter, Timothy, and others spoke of their visions (related to gnostic Christianity) and it was another couple decades before a Greek speaker unfamiliar with Judaism and the geography of the region wrote the gospel of Mark. Other stories were also in circulation in the following decades such as the Q document so the authors of Matthew and Luke took the various gospels at the time like Mark, Q, and possibly a couple others and combined them with the contradictory birth narratives I pointed out previously. The kept the same crucifixion but added a resurrection which was later added to mark and gave Judas different reasons for betraying Jesus. Then in the next five decades wildly different concepts of Jesus arose such as an attempt to state he was just an ordinary person that was possessed by the son of God. The gospel of John, using gospels like the gospel of Thomas and a sayings gospel was written so that he became more of a superman character. He left off the birth narrative starting with the popular baptism cult of John the Baptist and this time he wasn't turned in by Judas at all but instead told Judas and his army that he is the one they seek. After this there were various acts of the apostles and revelations about Armageddon and various apocrypha that the early church leaders decided to leave out so that they could say Jesus was born to a virgin, died by crucifixion, and had a bodily resurrection from the dead. They left behind just enough contradictions that they decided upon the trinity so that he could be an eternal being equal to the father and spirit and after the death of the son the holy spirit is released to the apostles to spread to the early church.
Basically by the 300s there was a dominant sect holding to a divine human Jesus and that was the sect that set up the early church considering everything else to be a heresy including Islam when it rose up out of Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity. Throughout the middle ages they produced a lot of hoaxes like cups, foreskins, pieces of petrified wood, and a shroud. As time went on it was just assumed that Jesus was a historical figure and it was the consensus about 100 years ago. Since then the consensus has come under scrutiny so that Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier are at the head of each side of the debate and neither of them hold fast to the gospels being reliable depictions of Jesus nor are the documents that came 100 years later saying that christians exist. There are many people holding many different religions. It doesn't automatically make their beliefs true. Josephus was tampered with by Eusebius and the rest don't really make any claims about a Jesus being real but only relaying what the christians had said about their beliefs such as a messiah who was crucified by Pontius Pilate 100 years ago. By this time everyone who could corroborate his existence had died and while he would have been still alive Philo of Alexandria wouldn't be wondering where he was and Justin Martyr wouldn't be saying that he predated the demigods that were being worshipped by at least 1500 years before Jesus was supposed to have lived.
Here are some books from both sides of the debate:
Richard Carrier: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably a spiritual mythical being first and a man later)
Bart Erhman: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053K28TS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Jesus was probably an ordinary man but we can figure out more about the historical Jesus)
Robert Price: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0OPUZM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Debunking the religious apologetics put forth by Lee Strobel)
Lee Strobel: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01863JLK2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(Defending the divine human Jesus of Christianity)
I'll let you decide.
It maybe he didn't exist at all
On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QSO2S5C/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jUYxCb233PSW3
Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00772ZH8Y/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_oVYxCb3MF1Z9J
https://youtu.be/mwUZOZN-9dc