Kasz216 said:
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. |
I just watched the Atwill documentary... his flavian arguments were exceedingly weak, verging on nonexistant. Don't lump me in with that argument, I found it unconvincing.
I completely disagree with the value you see in the gospels for history, internal inconsistencies aside, they don't align with historical events and personages (Herod, cencus, taxation, etc..). I also think that equating the Cannonical gospels with Plutarch's lives of the Roman Emporers is a false equivelency. I completely agree that the bible is a collection of works scrounged up in the time of Constantine. The problem with viewing them as history is that they seldom agree with one another even on simple things such as chronology and the begats (one has wise men and a star, the other shepherds and angels sans star and wise men for example, or house, inn, manger variations etc...). In the time of constantine the literalist view was in the ascendancy due to the outcome of the battle for the empire and the purges of the koptic and other sects, not to mention the favouratism afforded the pauline sect. Certainly at the time of writing of the various gospels, the literalists were not alone, and many early christians placed very little importance on gospels as a form of historical record. The gospels excluded from the cannon had even less cohesion than those included. This does not make a good case for a historical work, or four historical works, suppoedly written from Q or some other source document within a few decades of one another.
The majority of my history profs, but not all, found the historicity of Jesus niether fact nor fiction, but a grey area which was not covered by the historical record. Mind you thier definition of historical fact was rather strict (primary sources of which there are zero, or supporting evidence from another source, a few lines in Josephus (one dubious) and a mention from Tacitus, both sources are not contemporary). The few that did, were associated with religeous groups (like my father the theologian and historian). So I certainly did not experience the unanimity of opinion on the subject that you have, but the first century was not my main interest. (late british empire and the politics of representative government well that is another story)
If you want to define the historical jesus to a mesianic jewish figure who had a brother and was executed in the time of Tiberius... then I am in (supporting sources even if they are late and some dubious). If you want to attribute anything else from the gospels as some sort of historic fact then I am not (e.g. parthenogenisis, various magical events).
