allenmaher said:
The likelly hood of some messianic jewish figure in early 1st century pallestine and/or gallalee... pretty darn high. Jesus was a common name at the time (Josephus mentions the name 20 or so times attributed to various individuals), so some figure combining the two is entirely possible. Messianic jewish groups and early christians in the mid 1st century, that we have credible historical evidence of. Speaking with certainty about life events and atriibuting them with certainty to a figure mentioned in passing 30 to sixty years post mortem, well that is what I have issue with. When scholars consider the reality of pagan figures, even more recent ones like Ragnar Lothbrok it is always with a certain scepticism as to the events surrounding the figure. The two pagan historians in the quote were not writing religious texts but rather extensive histories of the Roman and Greek periods according to the standards of the time. We don't atribute the same credibility to Homeric odysies or the Hyms of Orpheus for example in the helenistic period of Polybius. Nor are Plutarch's works on Isis and Osiris given the same creedence as his Lives of the Roman Emporers. The reason I chose ahistorical rahter than mythical as a term was because I don't consider the argument from absence to be substantive proof. Calling a 1st century figure a myth requires much more proof than that line of reasoning. The historian you quoted is very credible, but the work you quoted from Jesus: A Historians Review of the Gospels recieved this criticism from a christian historical critic who rather liked the work: "By which I am certainly not arguing that there was no Jesus. I fully believe in Jesus and his ministry, although not entirely as it has come down to us through the Gospels. But I would be more comfortable with the work of an author designating himself a historian, calling his work a history, if he indeed relied on original sources. Of which there are none. Grant himself notes this, and seems to have realized the challenge any historian faces with this subject, as he ends his book with just such questions of validity as I am posing here. Any study of Jesus employing sources that come anywhere near to his own lifetime is limited to the Gospels. Moreover, we cannot even depend on the oldest versions of the Gospels as truly accurate evidence of the life of Jesus in that Jesus, his companions, and the people around him must have spoken primarily Aramaic, Hebrew, or Latin, while our oldest forms of the Gospels are in Greek. So already we have been as distanced from Jesus from a linguistic standpoint as we have been from a temporal one. Consequently, from my perspective at least, this book would have been better described as a literary analysis of the figure of Jesus within the Gospels rather than a history." |
That'd be fine if it wasn't for the fact that the bible does tell quite a bit of history and has quite a bit of history backing it up.
Where you make your mistake is by making the same mistake as that critic. You are treating the bible as if it is one source.
It isn't.
The difference between Grant and the guy you listed, is that he is more or less treating the bible as one source.
While in reality it is a collection of sources collected together by the romans. Some more historical than religious. The Gospels for example aren't classified as relgiious texts. But instead, as biographies, that mention mythical aspects. So they are very much seen like Plutarch's lives of the Roman Emporers. Which coincidentally I remember as being quite a fun read from my jr highschool days. Next time i'm back hom i'll have to pick up my copy.
Again you'll find scant a historian to suggest that jesus didn't exist. Outside obvious crackpots like Atwill. Your entire premise is flawed just on the basis of it... well not being true.
You can argue and come up with a bunch of reasons why historians all eat with their forks in their left hands. Yet if every hisotrian is eating with his right...?
You can come up with all the justifications you want, and yet, we're standing in the cafteria at lunch time, and the results are directly observable. Your arguement on what historians believe is simply undone by the facts on the ground.
Crossan, Ehrman... really every secular expert just takes the historical jesus as fact.
