Q: How do we account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ? He has made such an impact upon history that we even measure our calendar by Him. 2000 years on and millions still follow Him.
A: Since the previous FAQ proved to be rather ridiculous, I've decided to answer two in a day and get this farce over with. Now, the historicity of Jesus. There's no such thing. Not a shred of evidence outside the Christian writings, and self-reference hardly counts as evidence. The theory of Jesus as a historical figure relies almost entirely on the four gospels, anonymous texts (the names of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were added to the titles - or, rather, the titles themselves were added - only around 180 CE, out of thin air) supposedly based on older texts which, will you look at that, are lost, nowhere to be found. What all of this means is that:
The almighty god of the Judeo-Christian tradition sent his own son - that is, himself - to save mankind from a ruling he himself had issued and, in so doing, he had to sacrifice himself to himself. In the process, though, he forgot to write down anything of his own, no revelations and no prophecies, trusting oral communication to be enough. And now we have a canon Bible, with four gospels said to be an accurate report of the deeds and words of Jesus and his apostles but whose earliest versions available are written in Koine Greek - whereas the languages of the alleged Jesus and his apostles had to be Aramaic - and which are anonymous as well as undated. That is basically to say that the belief of all Christians around the world is based on secondary documents, translations - if they actually are translations of previous texts - whose source texts are not available for quality assessment because, apparently, this almighty god did not care enough about the original manuscripts to prevent them from being lost or destroyed. Not only that, but these translations - although officially recounting the same events - also contradict each other more often than would be acceptable even for a historical document by a human, fallible, mortal author. One example, but many others could be made, is that of the description of Jesus' lineage. The authors of the gospels trace Jesus' genealogy to the house of David through Joseph, Jesus' human father. As they do this they contradict each other, which is difficult to imagine if said authors had actually been contemporaries of Jesus. Matthew says Jesus descended from the house of David through Solomon, whereas according to Luke it was through Nathan. Then Luke tells us that the name of Joseph's father was Heli whereas Matthew says it was Jacob. Then again, all attempts to trace Jesus' genealogy back through the house of David through Joseph are rather silly, if Jospeh really wasn't Jesus' biological father as the Bible would have us believe. All these incongruences are difficult to justify and the only explanation is that the authors of the gospels were not really Aramaic-speaking contemporaries of Jesus and that the Greek "translations" we have are actually the originals, written by later authors to support the Jesus myth.
It is then easy to see how using texts inherent to the very Christian faith in order to prove Jesus' historicity is a clumsy choice at best. Unfortunately for Christian apologetics, non-Christian sources are not all too useful either, and actually make the situation even worse for proponents of an historical Jesus. Sometimes Christians like to claim there to be an impressive amount of first-hand historical evidence of the existence of Jesus. Unfortunately, there is not a single document dating back to the alleged Jesus' lifetime, or immediately after, and bearing witness to the man's deeds and words. Not from Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian contemporary of the alleged Jesus, outside of a later, Christian interpolation recognised as such even by prominent apologetics. Not from a contemporary and rival historian of Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, who, in the words of Photius, 9th-century Patriarch of Constantinople, "makes not one mention of Jesus, of what happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did." Not from anyone else. There is an impressive lack of whatever historical reference to a Jesus for centuries - and for decades even as far as Christian writings go - after his alleged lifetime and death. It's as if he had been forgotten and rediscovered by historians who, as a result of tradition and religious compliance, were obliged to take his existence for granted, as is still the case. Well, it's about time we destroyed the myth of a general consensus in the scholarly community.
The almighty god of the Judeo-Christian tradition sent his own son - that is, himself - to save mankind from a ruling he himself had issued and, in so doing, he had to sacrifice himself to himself. In the process, though, he forgot to write down anything of his own, no revelations and no prophecies, trusting oral communication to be enough. And now we have a canon Bible, with four gospels said to be an accurate report of the deeds and words of Jesus and his apostles but whose earliest versions available are written in Koine Greek - whereas the languages of the alleged Jesus and his apostles had to be Aramaic - and which are anonymous as well as undated. That is basically to say that the belief of all Christians around the world is based on secondary documents, translations - if they actually are translations of previous texts - whose source texts are not available for quality assessment because, apparently, this almighty god did not care enough about the original manuscripts to prevent them from being lost or destroyed. Not only that, but these translations - although officially recounting the same events - also contradict each other more often than would be acceptable even for a historical document by a human, fallible, mortal author. One example, but many others could be made, is that of the description of Jesus' lineage. The authors of the gospels trace Jesus' genealogy to the house of David through Joseph, Jesus' human father. As they do this they contradict each other, which is difficult to imagine if said authors had actually been contemporaries of Jesus. Matthew says Jesus descended from the house of David through Solomon, whereas according to Luke it was through Nathan. Then Luke tells us that the name of Joseph's father was Heli whereas Matthew says it was Jacob. Then again, all attempts to trace Jesus' genealogy back through the house of David through Joseph are rather silly, if Jospeh really wasn't Jesus' biological father as the Bible would have us believe. All these incongruences are difficult to justify and the only explanation is that the authors of the gospels were not really Aramaic-speaking contemporaries of Jesus and that the Greek "translations" we have are actually the originals, written by later authors to support the Jesus myth.
It is then easy to see how using texts inherent to the very Christian faith in order to prove Jesus' historicity is a clumsy choice at best. Unfortunately for Christian apologetics, non-Christian sources are not all too useful either, and actually make the situation even worse for proponents of an historical Jesus. Sometimes Christians like to claim there to be an impressive amount of first-hand historical evidence of the existence of Jesus. Unfortunately, there is not a single document dating back to the alleged Jesus' lifetime, or immediately after, and bearing witness to the man's deeds and words. Not from Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian contemporary of the alleged Jesus, outside of a later, Christian interpolation recognised as such even by prominent apologetics. Not from a contemporary and rival historian of Josephus, Justus of Tiberias, who, in the words of Photius, 9th-century Patriarch of Constantinople, "makes not one mention of Jesus, of what happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did." Not from anyone else. There is an impressive lack of whatever historical reference to a Jesus for centuries - and for decades even as far as Christian writings go - after his alleged lifetime and death. It's as if he had been forgotten and rediscovered by historians who, as a result of tradition and religious compliance, were obliged to take his existence for granted, as is still the case. Well, it's about time we destroyed the myth of a general consensus in the scholarly community.
3 comments:
Greetings all.
The four Gospels are sympathetic historical documents but they are still historical documents. Should we arbitrarily reject all autobiographies as totally worthless? I think not. Even your own comments in these faqs are written from your own personal bias but that does not mean I should not take what you have to say seriously.
The four Gospels are mostly anonymous in the sense that the authors do not explicitly say who they. However, John implies that he is the author of his Gospel and through internal evidence we know Luke wrote his Gospel as well. And I see no reason to reject Matthew and Mark as written by them (we ought to accept them as the authors, in my opinion, I mean). The writers of the Gospels are not claiming to be somebody that they are not which would be a more serious problem than anonymity. That the original Gospels are lost is not surprising for the originals of many (all?) ancient documents are lost. There is nothing scandalous in this fact and there was no conspiracy to cover anything up.
As you rightly say, our knowledge of Jesus is not restricted only to the Gospels. The Talmud, for example, written right after the events, speaks about Jesus in very unsympathetic ways. That is certainly not self-reference. As for Josephus, most scholars (Christian apologists or otherwise) regard the passage as partially authentic. In other words, while there was apparently later Christian interpolation, the interpolation was done on a legitimate passage, from the actual pen of Josephus, about the historical person named Jesus. Yet again, to be blunt, you have demonstrated that you know very little about what you are criticising. I sincerely mean no offence by making this objective statement of fact, though. Again, Josephus was not a Christian so he is not self-referential.
Next, on the Christian view, Jesus did not send Himself, and the ruling was not given by He Himself, nor did He sacrifice Himself to Himself. To suggest otherwise is to conflate Jesus with His Father. As an aside, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I really think you ought to know what it is you are criticizing before you criticize it.
Further, oral communication is enough to spread any message. I don't see a problem with that. I also fail to see anything wrong with translations, anonyminoty, or undated writings. We do know what the originals more or less said because of text critical analysis so it is not accurate to say that the originals were "lost or destroyed" so that they "are unavailable for quality assessment". If you don't want to believe me then read "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman. This man is well known as hostile to Christianity so is not self-referential. At the same time, he is a fully credentialed text critical scholar.
And there are no contradictions between the Gospels. Since you only gave one purported example, that is all I'll address here. The genealogies are in Matthew 1 and Luke 3. In Luke "the son" is written in itallics in the King James Version which means it was added by the translators (it was not part of the untranslated text). In Matthew the word is "begat" which means "bring forth" (1080 in Strong's if you want to look it up). A man may properly be said to bring forth his great grandchildren. In other words, there is no contradiction between Heli and Jacob. The two genealogies consistently diverge in a significant way only after David which leads me to believe the divergence was intentional as opposed to say, merely both Matthew and Luke making up names. Without doing a detailed analysis of the Old Testament characters, one simple sollution might be to alternate. In other words, Matthew lists David, Solomon, Roboam... and Luke lists David, Nathan, Mathatha... so we say it was David, Solomon, Nathan, Roboam, Mathatha... Jacob, Heli, Joseph. A comma means "was an ancestor of" and there is no contradiction at all.
As for your subsequent comments, my dear Fabio, they have been addressed above. In conclusion then:
a. there is historical evidence for a real person named Jesus.
b. He has made an impact upon history and we do measure our calender by Him even if we change B.C. and A.D. to B.C.E. and C.E. respectively.
c. A billion people profess to still follow Him today.
The statements you have made in this post (faq 8) are way off the mark and, hence, do not militate against these concluding remarks of mine or the original question you were addressing. If you are not going to pretty much make stuff up, I ask you then, how do you account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ?
Salutations to you all!
I just checked out the website where the faqs that Fabio is addressing where comming from. What I found is that this 8th question is the last one. Once I finished responding to Fabio's responses to the original questions (which is now) I was going to sum up the whole interchange over at my own blog which is evangelicalapologist.blogspot.com
I would certainly welcome any of you that is interested-including you Fabio-to check out what I have to say there and, if you so desire, leave some comments there. Thanks to you Fabio for the oppurtunity and thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read what I have had to say
"That the original Gospels are lost is not surprising for the originals of many (all?) ancient documents are lost. There is nothing scandalous in this fact and there was no conspiracy to cover anything up."
Not all ancient documents are claimed to be the word of whatever god.
"The Talmud, for example, written right after the events, speaks about Jesus in very unsympathetic ways. That is certainly not self-reference."
The Talmud, or rather the Mishnah and the Gamara were written from 2 to 5 centuries after the alleged lifetime of Jesus. That's hardly "right after the events." Plus, all the passages from the Talmud that are claimed by Christians to be evidence of Jesus' historicity are highly debated and disputable, as there is no reason to assume that the Balaam of the Talmud is the Jesus of the Bible. Until you can prove otherwise, the Talmud makes no mention of Jesus.
"As for Josephus, most scholars (Christian apologists or otherwise) regard the passage as partially authentic."
Hardly at all. There are two passages naming a Jesus in the Antiquitates Judaicae and both are later, Christian interpolations. Other than those two, Jesus is never named. Ever.
"As an aside, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I really think you ought to know what it is you are criticizing before you criticize it."
You ought to know what you believe before you start defending it. Saying like a broken record, as you rightly pointed out, that I am wrong won't make me wrong. Support your claims, that would be a nice change.
"Further, oral communication is enough to spread any message. I don't see a problem with that. I also fail to see anything wrong with translations, anonyminoty, or undated writings. We do know what the originals more or less said because of text critical analysis so it is not accurate to say that the originals were "lost or destroyed" so that they "are unavailable for quality assessment"."
I study translation and I can tell you there's plenty wrong with translations. Particularly when you start basing a metaphysical belief upon them. And for the record we know nothing about the originals since they're NOWHERE to be found. It is EXTREMELY accurate to say that they were lost or destroyed, IF they EVEN existed. Please, don't piss me off.
"A comma means "was an ancestor of" and there is no contradiction at all."
There is a discrepancy which you can only solve by playing sudoku with words. So much for your argument.
"a. there is historical evidence for a real person named Jesus."
None whatsoever.
"b. He has made an impact upon history and we do measure our calender by Him even if we change B.C. and A.D. to B.C.E. and C.E. respectively."
He had no impact upon history, Christianity as a political and often military power did. I wouldn't be too proud of it.
"c. A billion people profess to still follow Him today."
Argumentum ad Populum. Worthless in a debate. You're back to square one.
"how do you account for the historical Person of Jesus Christ?"
Again, there is no such thing.
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