You people took offense when I said that Butterflies and Wheels was Harry’s Place Lite. Well, just look at the garbage that Edmund Standing posted there about Che Guevara. It seems that Standing will be joining Harry’s Place as a regular in fact. If anything, you should join forces with Harry’s Place as a group since there is so little to distinguish between your crap and theirs.
Oh now that’s really wounding, Louis – there is everything to distinguish my crap from Harry’s Place’s crap. There’s all the difference in the world. Mine is mine and theirs is theirs. It’s silly to talk about ‘you people,’ by the way, I’m entirely responsible for the content, I mean crap, here.
Around 5,000 Muslims, most of them immigrants to Italy, took part in the march, with some carrying banners depicting the Star of David defaced by Nazi swastikas. Palestinian march ended in Muslims burning Israeli flags and the demonstrators diverting from their previously agreed route toward the Milan Cathedral where they staged an impromptu prayer to Mecca.
The sight of ranks of men and boys kneeling in prayer in the piazza directly in front of the Gothic building incensed many Italians, with photographs carried on the front pages of many newspapers.
Mario Borghezio, who is also an MEP, said: “The prayer to Allah recited by thousands of fanatical Muslims is an act of intimidation, a slap in the face for the city of Milan, which must remain Christian.”
While trying not to stoke the controversy, the Catholic Church was deeply uneasy with the mass prayer outside the Duomo, which is the world’s largest Gothic cathedral and the third-largest Roman Catholic church in the world, after St Peter’s in Rome and Seville cathedral.
This is on the Jesus Project. I understand that the Project will examine whatever evidence there may be for Jesus’ existence, evaluate it and come up with unbiased conclusions. This is a very good idea. Most people take it for granted that this mythological figure was a real person, while in actuality there is less evidence for his existence than there is for William Tell or King Arthur.
The only contemporaneous writing about him is in the bible–there is no mention of him elsehere at the time he supposedly lived. One would think that the name and deeds of someone as important as the son of god would have filled countless books and reports written by Roman commentators, but there is not a word, unless we want to count the forged insertion about Jesus found in Josephus.
I do not know of any new evidence on Jesus’ existence, so I predict that the members of the Jesus Project–at least those who are not burdened by preconceived notions of his existence–
will come down firmly for his probable nonexistence, but I look forward to reading the Project’s reports, and perhaps I will learn something new.
Jesus belongs to an illustrious club: the club of probably nonexistent religious figures, whose members include god himself, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, Abraham and Moses. So, let’s not feel too sorry for Jesus if it turns out he never was, because, after all, he is a member of this highly exclusive club, and how many of us can say that about ourselves?
Many people can’t bear the thought that what you see is what you get, and they reject the commonsense notion that everyday reality is all there is. They want to be saved, but unfortunately there are no saviors hanging around waiting to be called up for duty, so, with no real ones around, some unrealistic dreamers did what they thought was the next best thing: they invented a savior… and his name is Jesus.
It is quite possible for a historical figure to be turned into an invented saviour – the two are not mutually exclusive. Look out for an article of mine on this topic at B&W soon.
‘One would think that the name and deeds of someone as important as the son of god would have filled countless books and reports written by Roman commentators’.
You’re assuming that a marginal Jewish figure in an obscure corner of the Roman empire would be seen as important. I doubt many people had even heard of him, outside very small Jewish circles. And if it weren’t for the strange triumph of Paul, we probably would have never heard of Jesus at all either. We know of Jesus because he was de-Judaised and inserted into a Gentilised salvation system. How many people have heard of the early groups who presented Jesus solely as a Messianic Jewish figure? Groups that fed into what we know as the Ebionites, for example. If Jesus had stayed a solely Jewish figure among a solely Jewish audience he and his followers would have long faded from view.
In those days, Judaic law proscribed admittance to the sacred areas of the Temple by any who were not rabbi’s; thus, the addressing of Yeshua as rabbi.
In addition, the rabbinical laws did not permit an unmarried man to become a rabbi.
This Yeshua/Jesus fellow, at the least, had a wife by the age of 18, and probably lots of sons and daughters.
Circa 1 A.D., the average Roman male’s lifespan was 28. The same lifespan should have applied to most men in the Roman era and empire.
Therefore, the teenager years were not a time of frivolity, but of responsible manhood.
The new testament refers to the vote of the Jewish crowd as to the crucifixion of Yeshua(jesus) or the criminal Barabbas. Bad choice of words for those old boys writing the scriptures.
“bar Abba” translates “son of the father”. If the rebel leader, Yeshua, and his teenage rebel son were presented to the crowd, it is highly likely that both Yeshua and the crowd would want to spare “bar Abba”, the son of Yeshua/Jesus.
Jesus healed the slave of the Centurion so that the poor fellow could go back to being a slave. Very nice son of god who heals in order to condemn a person to a miserable life.
There are too many instances of shoddy facts. The scriptures should have been written by Wall Street lawyers, not fishermen or illogical rabbinical types.
The Jesus Project should address the whole ridiculous tale including the transparent plagiarism from the old testament in which at least Genesis was “borrowed” from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
This comment is on Edmund Standing’s position that there was an historical Jesus. First, the fact that some god-men actually existed as ordinary Joes whose resumes were doctored up a bit by their fervid followers does not take away from the fact that other god-men never existed at all. I think that the burden of proof rests on the one who wishes to assert a position, in this case that Jesus existed. The fact that his existence is plausible isn’t enough to show a substantial likelihood that he really existed. There are also facts that suggest that his existence was implausible: “St.” Paul never referred to an earthly flesh-and-blood Jesus, but only to an ethereal spiritual one; there were other Jesuslike “saviors,” some of which were imaginary, who preceded Jesus (Will the real Jesus please stand up?); even the New Testament writers can’t agree on where or when he was born, what he said and what he did. So I agree that it is possible that some deluded mope named Jesus lived, but I think that the evidence for this is weak, and I say that the case for Jesus’ existence is unproven. I’d say there’s a 90% chance that Jesus is wholly imaginary, a 10% chance that Mr Standing is right, and a zero chance that Jesus existed and is truly a savior. I’d say more, but I’m hungry and soon I’ll be out the door to a buffet restaurant.
This thread has deteriorated but to get back to the Jesus Seminar for a moment….it’s obviously important to determine if there really was a Jesus….but not important to christians who have adopted pauline christianity as their one, true religion. It’s important to atheists who can then say “see, there wasn’t a jesus it’s all made up nonsense..” or “well there might have been a jesus but we’ll never know anything about him..”. So really, who among the rational cares about this? haven’t we yet gone beyond these eschatological jewish prophets? Well i guess not since it seems that 44% of americans think that jesus is coming back in their lifetime….now that’s really scary because these idiots are voting at federal, state and local levels….
the word is “straitjacket” NOT “straightjacket” derived from “strait” for narrow passage as in being “in dire straits” of the “strait of Gibralter”. It derives from a Middle English word for binding or confining “streit”, whereas “straight” comes from a Middle English word for “stretching”.
An area where these often get confused is in the Biblical saying “Strait is the gate” often rendered as “straight is the gate”.
Admittedly, in these days of gay rights struggles, it may be tempting to view conventional thinking as a “straightjacket”. Nonetheless, the correct word for the confining garb used in mental institutions is and always has been “straitjacket”.
I continue to repeatedly see similar confusions between “principle” and “principal” and people writing about the “tenants” of a belief-system (which should be “tenets”), and often see in print “baited breath” (it should be “bated breath” – bate meaning to hold back or restrain), but it’s a tad depressing to see this in a high-level publication like “Butterflies and Wheels”
Edmund Standing’s argument in “Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a Historical Jesus” does not, I think, ultimately undermine the Jesus mythicist position – because those who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not saying something quite so straightforward as is widely thought. Most people who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not, I think, committed to the position that there was never a wandering religious figure named Yeshua who attracted some followers – and maybe even who was seen by those followers as some sort of prophet, or even the Jewish messiah. Some claim that there probably was no such person, others are more agnostic about it, but I don’t think that it has much bearing on the real point of saying Jesus was a myth.
What is the real point, then? The conclusion of the Jesus myth arguments is that the stories told of this figure are so clearly mythological that those stories cannot possibly bear any meaningful, content-rich resemblance to an actual historical person. If there ever was a historical wandering religious radical named Yeshua – and we have no good way of establishing such a person’s existence one way or another – that historical person of no great importance bears so little resemblance to the mythical Jesus that calling that person the “historical Jesus” is a little ludicrous and more than a little misleading.
In my opinion, Standing’s own argument makes the case as well as any ‘Jesus myth’ advocate: The Rastafarians’ mythologized Haile Selassie is a largely imaginary figure bearing only the most tenuous connection to and almost no content-rich resemblance to the actual historical personage of Haile Selassie. Unlike Standing, though, I contend that the hypothesized future historian who had only the myths to judge from would in fact be making the CORRECT judgment if they concluded that this mythological Haile Selassie never existed as an actual historical personage. He didn’t. Some person named Haile Selassie existed, and shared a few traits with the imaginary person the Rastafarians talked about, but that historical person bears so little resemblance to the invented person that saying that the mythology was based on any actual history would be misleading at best: Almost none of the ideas and ideals attached to the imaginary Haile Selassie have anything to do with the actual ideas, ideals, and actions of the historical Haile Selassie – so equating them falsely asserts that two very different entities are the same entity.
Perhaps the problem is that the Jesus myth advocates overstate their case by framing it as an existence claim in the first place. The question is not whether some person existed, but whether a particular person existed – the one described in the gospels. Of the historical Jesus, Standing writes “the fact that the ‘accounts’ of his life that we have are so manifestly devotional and filled with mythological content is not in itself a definitive argument for the absence in history of a figure on whom they are, however fantastically, based.” I agree. However, the mythology *is* a definitive argument for the absence from history of any figure who bears enough resemblance to the mythologized person to be intelligibly or usefully referred to as the same person.
The proper target of the Jesus myth argument is not really the notion that there was some physical entity who once existed, a homo sapien called “Yeshua” by himself and his peers, or that this person might have had some loose connection to the growth of a body of myths. Those who make that the target are aiming their arguments in the wrong direction. Rather, the target should be the claim by believers that the personage they believe in – the person whom Standing rightly says has been mythologized and distorted almost beyond recognition – actually existed. The Rastafarians’ imagined Haile Selassie never existed; the Haile Selassie who did actually exist was instead a perfectly ordinary tyrant in a time and place (20th century Africa) where many other tyrants also existed. Similarly, the Christians’ imagined Jesus never existed; the Jesus who did actually exist (if any) was instead a perfectly ordinary religious radical in a time and place where many other religious radicals also existed.
In short, the historical Jesus that plausibly may have existed is not the same Jesus people want to believe existed – so the latter Jesus is indeed just a myth.
‘Most people who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not, I think, committed to the position that there was never a wandering religious figure named Yeshua who attracted some followers’.
This is certainly the position I have come across on many atheist websites.
‘Perhaps the problem is that the Jesus myth advocates overstate their case by framing it as an existence claim in the first place’.
Indeed.
‘The conclusion of the Jesus myth arguments is that the stories told of this figure are so clearly mythological that those stories cannot possibly bear any meaningful, content-rich resemblance to an actual historical person’.
Again, I’m unconvinced this can be established. In order to accept this version of mythicism, you are willing to accept that there was some sort of ‘religious radical’ named Yeshua, but then you also claim that there is absolutely nothing in the Gospels that can tell us anything about what he taught. I see what you’re saying in terms of stories ABOUT Jesus, claims of miracles, and so on, but I don’t think it’s so clear cut regarding the question of what he may have taught.
Jewish apocalypticism runs through much of the New Testament and is found many times on Jesus’ lips. It seems entirely plausible to me that this is indeed in continuity with the teachings of a First Century Jewish radical. Apocalypticism itself relies on mythical notions, but that does not in any way mean that people who have taught apocalyptic ideas are themselves mythical. There are apocalyptic preachers today, and not just in Christianity.
There are Messianic Jews today – some of them very radical – so by what criteria are you going to definitively establish that the Gospels show nothing that may be taken to accurately indicate the presence in history of an apocalypticist called Yeshua? I think a very convincing case regarding the apocalyptic Jesus can be, and indeed has been, made.
Anyway, as you note, the main target of my article is those who persist with this radical claim that it can be ‘proved’ that there was no historical figure at the genesis of Christianity at all. Do a few searches, and you will find many atheists now promote this.
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Edmund. I think perhaps I had a mistaken understanding of what the Jesus myth promoters actually claim because I see this problem – like most epistemological questions – in terms of the burden of proof.
I would have thought that the arguments AGAINST a historical Jesus would be counterarguments aimed at the arguments made by those who argue FOR a historical Jesus: The burden of proof clearly belongs on those who wish to claim that there is any substantial core of historical fact to be discerned in a collection of stories which are, as you put it, “so manifestly devotional and filled with mythological content.” Actually, that’s a bit too strong: I think that the character and content of specific claims about history are paramount in determining where the burden of proof lies – and that is what I missed in your original argument, because I haven’t actually read all that much of this Jesus myth literature, and that not recently.
My impression is that the typical “historical Jesus” claimant wants to support the existence of a historical person whose character, ideas, ideals and teachings strongly resemble those of the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels. I think that sort of claim has a very high burden of proof – and no one who makes such claims has come anywhere close to shouldering that burden, let alone carrying it anywhere. The existence of that particular historical figure – the one who strongly resembles the Jesus of the Gospels in many substantial ways – remains highly implausible at best. Moreover, the implausibility of such a person’s existence is directly proportional the the claimed strength of the resemblance.
Thus, I think that the arguments of the Jesus mythicists SHOULD be (and apparently aren’t, from what you say) aimed at the specific sorts of “strong resemblance” historicity claims that believers make. I would even say that your clever and instructive Haile Selassie parallel works as a powerful counterargument against the existence of an historical Jesus who bears a strong degree of similarity to the obviously mythical Jesus of the Gospels. The historical wandering apocalyptic preacher named Yeshua, if he ever existed, probably bore as little resemblance to the heavily mythologized Jesus of the Gospels as the historical tyrant Haile Selassie bears to the highly mythologized savior Haile Selassie of the Rastafarians – and for similar reasons having to do with the goals and needs of those who wrote the myths.
In the end, I substantially agree with your conclusion: “That there was a historical figure, most likely a Jewish apocalyptic preacher, whose story was greatly embellished by devotees who misrepresented and exaggerated him in many ways seems to me entirely plausible.” Sure, the existence of a wandering religious radical named Yeshua of no particular contemporary importance – probably one of many apocalyptic preachers wandering the region at the time – is plausible. But such a character bears little resemblance to the historical Jesus that the overwhelming majority of believers in a historical Jesus seem to be pushing for. There’s still no good reason at all to believe that THAT Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, ever truly existed.
Put another way: The historical Jesus you say is plausible simply shouldn’t be the historical Jesus at stake at in the ‘Jesus myth’ debate. These Jesus myth promoters are making a fundamental rhetorical and logical error by attacking the wrong conclusion. The existence of your sort of tenuously historical Jesus shouldn’t even interest atheists or secular historians enough to argue against: Such a figure’s historical existence would have no impact on the truth or importance or “universal message” of Christian belief, which is really what the historical Jesus faithful want and why they argue so strenuously (and implausibly) for His existence.
At most, your argument for a historical source figure around whom the mythical Jesus was constructed offers a sociocultural context that helps explain the rise of Christianity: I’m sure you would agree that such explanations have no more to do with whether Christianity is true or right than sociocultural explanations for why Marxism caught on in the early 20th century have to do with the truth or rightness of Marxist doctrine.
What’s important in the end is that the historical Jesus who might plausibly have existed isn’t very interesting from a believer’s point of view, and the historical Jesus who believers are really interested in isn’t at all plausible. If the Jesus mythicists don’t understand that they should stick to arguing about the existence of some particular conceptions of the historical Jesus rather than making a ridiculously broad claim about the nonexistence of any and every possible historical person on whom the Jesus legend might have been built, then I won’t count myself among them. Instead call me a Jesus agnostic, or perhaps a Jesus apatheist: I can’t imagine why anyone would get worked up about the only sort of historical Jesus whose existence can be plausibly supported.
Regarding George and Edmund’s interchange, I would like to add that it has been my observation that as in most things, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the squeakiest wheels in the Jesus debate are typically the ones with the most radical claims. To be certain, there are kooks on both sides. There are some mythicists who claim that not only was Jesus entirely mythical, but that there was a literal conspiracy to create him as part of some larger plot. I have no time for such nonsense, and I don’t think serious scholars like Richard Carrier or Robert Price do either. Likewise, there are historians who claim that there are natural historical parallels to virtually all of the miracle accounts. (These seem to be the same kinds of people who try to explain the twelve Egyptian plagues in the same way, and find remains of an old boat.)
In my reading of the public dialog between members of the Jesus project, it seems clear to me that one of the questions they are addressing is just what, if anything, can be said about who a historical Jesus would be. For every ten Jesus historians you throw into a pot, ten versions of Jesus rise to the surface. To my skeptical eye, this raises the question of whether there is even enough evidence to claim that a historical Jesus was a preacher, or that his name even remotely resembled “Yeshua.” If there is enough evidence to point to ten different kinds of Jesus, that means there is probably not enough evidence to sort one out as “the most probable” and have it satisfy scientific and historical demands for proof.
Speaking of Carrier, on his blog yesterday, he was quoted as saying rather directly that the finding of the Jesus Project may well be that there is insufficient evidence to establish historicity or mythicism. I wholeheartedly agree with this level of openmindedness. History is, unfortunately, not always as exact as science, and some things really are gone forever. One of the things which might be gone is enough evidence to satisfy the burden of proof regarding Jesus. If that is the case, the only epistemologically sound position would be one of Jesus agnosticism. While I’m sure that this doesn’t sit well with atheists who would like to point fingers at theists and laugh, the more thoughtful of us should realize that the question of Jesus never was important in the first place.
You people took offense when I said that Butterflies and Wheels was Harry’s Place Lite. Well, just look at the garbage that Edmund Standing posted there about Che Guevara. It seems that Standing will be joining Harry’s Place as a regular in fact. If anything, you should join forces with Harry’s Place as a group since there is so little to distinguish between your crap and theirs.
Oh now that’s really wounding, Louis – there is everything to distinguish my crap from Harry’s Place’s crap. There’s all the difference in the world. Mine is mine and theirs is theirs. It’s silly to talk about ‘you people,’ by the way, I’m entirely responsible for the content, I mean crap, here.
the gathering storm
Around 5,000 Muslims, most of them immigrants to Italy, took part in the march, with some carrying banners depicting the Star of David defaced by Nazi swastikas. Palestinian march ended in Muslims burning Israeli flags and the demonstrators diverting from their previously agreed route toward the Milan Cathedral where they staged an impromptu prayer to Mecca.
The sight of ranks of men and boys kneeling in prayer in the piazza directly in front of the Gothic building incensed many Italians, with photographs carried on the front pages of many newspapers.
Mario Borghezio, who is also an MEP, said: “The prayer to Allah recited by thousands of fanatical Muslims is an act of intimidation, a slap in the face for the city of Milan, which must remain Christian.”
While trying not to stoke the controversy, the Catholic Church was deeply uneasy with the mass prayer outside the Duomo, which is the world’s largest Gothic cathedral and the third-largest Roman Catholic church in the world, after St Peter’s in Rome and Seville cathedral.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/4208395/Muslim-apology-over-prayers-outside-Milan-Cathedral.html
This is on the Jesus Project. I understand that the Project will examine whatever evidence there may be for Jesus’ existence, evaluate it and come up with unbiased conclusions. This is a very good idea. Most people take it for granted that this mythological figure was a real person, while in actuality there is less evidence for his existence than there is for William Tell or King Arthur.
The only contemporaneous writing about him is in the bible–there is no mention of him elsehere at the time he supposedly lived. One would think that the name and deeds of someone as important as the son of god would have filled countless books and reports written by Roman commentators, but there is not a word, unless we want to count the forged insertion about Jesus found in Josephus.
I do not know of any new evidence on Jesus’ existence, so I predict that the members of the Jesus Project–at least those who are not burdened by preconceived notions of his existence–
will come down firmly for his probable nonexistence, but I look forward to reading the Project’s reports, and perhaps I will learn something new.
Jesus belongs to an illustrious club: the club of probably nonexistent religious figures, whose members include god himself, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, Abraham and Moses. So, let’s not feel too sorry for Jesus if it turns out he never was, because, after all, he is a member of this highly exclusive club, and how many of us can say that about ourselves?
Many people can’t bear the thought that what you see is what you get, and they reject the commonsense notion that everyday reality is all there is. They want to be saved, but unfortunately there are no saviors hanging around waiting to be called up for duty, so, with no real ones around, some unrealistic dreamers did what they thought was the next best thing: they invented a savior… and his name is Jesus.
It is quite possible for a historical figure to be turned into an invented saviour – the two are not mutually exclusive. Look out for an article of mine on this topic at B&W soon.
‘One would think that the name and deeds of someone as important as the son of god would have filled countless books and reports written by Roman commentators’.
You’re assuming that a marginal Jewish figure in an obscure corner of the Roman empire would be seen as important. I doubt many people had even heard of him, outside very small Jewish circles. And if it weren’t for the strange triumph of Paul, we probably would have never heard of Jesus at all either. We know of Jesus because he was de-Judaised and inserted into a Gentilised salvation system. How many people have heard of the early groups who presented Jesus solely as a Messianic Jewish figure? Groups that fed into what we know as the Ebionites, for example. If Jesus had stayed a solely Jewish figure among a solely Jewish audience he and his followers would have long faded from view.
In those days, Judaic law proscribed admittance to the sacred areas of the Temple by any who were not rabbi’s; thus, the addressing of Yeshua as rabbi.
In addition, the rabbinical laws did not permit an unmarried man to become a rabbi.
This Yeshua/Jesus fellow, at the least, had a wife by the age of 18, and probably lots of sons and daughters.
Circa 1 A.D., the average Roman male’s lifespan was 28. The same lifespan should have applied to most men in the Roman era and empire.
Therefore, the teenager years were not a time of frivolity, but of responsible manhood.
The new testament refers to the vote of the Jewish crowd as to the crucifixion of Yeshua(jesus) or the criminal Barabbas. Bad choice of words for those old boys writing the scriptures.
“bar Abba” translates “son of the father”. If the rebel leader, Yeshua, and his teenage rebel son were presented to the crowd, it is highly likely that both Yeshua and the crowd would want to spare “bar Abba”, the son of Yeshua/Jesus.
Jesus healed the slave of the Centurion so that the poor fellow could go back to being a slave. Very nice son of god who heals in order to condemn a person to a miserable life.
There are too many instances of shoddy facts. The scriptures should have been written by Wall Street lawyers, not fishermen or illogical rabbinical types.
The Jesus Project should address the whole ridiculous tale including the transparent plagiarism from the old testament in which at least Genesis was “borrowed” from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
This comment is on Edmund Standing’s position that there was an historical Jesus. First, the fact that some god-men actually existed as ordinary Joes whose resumes were doctored up a bit by their fervid followers does not take away from the fact that other god-men never existed at all. I think that the burden of proof rests on the one who wishes to assert a position, in this case that Jesus existed. The fact that his existence is plausible isn’t enough to show a substantial likelihood that he really existed. There are also facts that suggest that his existence was implausible: “St.” Paul never referred to an earthly flesh-and-blood Jesus, but only to an ethereal spiritual one; there were other Jesuslike “saviors,” some of which were imaginary, who preceded Jesus (Will the real Jesus please stand up?); even the New Testament writers can’t agree on where or when he was born, what he said and what he did. So I agree that it is possible that some deluded mope named Jesus lived, but I think that the evidence for this is weak, and I say that the case for Jesus’ existence is unproven. I’d say there’s a 90% chance that Jesus is wholly imaginary, a 10% chance that Mr Standing is right, and a zero chance that Jesus existed and is truly a savior. I’d say more, but I’m hungry and soon I’ll be out the door to a buffet restaurant.
This thread has deteriorated but to get back to the Jesus Seminar for a moment….it’s obviously important to determine if there really was a Jesus….but not important to christians who have adopted pauline christianity as their one, true religion. It’s important to atheists who can then say “see, there wasn’t a jesus it’s all made up nonsense..” or “well there might have been a jesus but we’ll never know anything about him..”. So really, who among the rational cares about this? haven’t we yet gone beyond these eschatological jewish prophets? Well i guess not since it seems that 44% of americans think that jesus is coming back in their lifetime….now that’s really scary because these idiots are voting at federal, state and local levels….
With regard to
“Taking Relativism Seriously” by Andrew Taggart
the word is “straitjacket” NOT “straightjacket” derived from “strait” for narrow passage as in being “in dire straits” of the “strait of Gibralter”. It derives from a Middle English word for binding or confining “streit”, whereas “straight” comes from a Middle English word for “stretching”.
An area where these often get confused is in the Biblical saying “Strait is the gate” often rendered as “straight is the gate”.
Admittedly, in these days of gay rights struggles, it may be tempting to view conventional thinking as a “straightjacket”. Nonetheless, the correct word for the confining garb used in mental institutions is and always has been “straitjacket”.
I continue to repeatedly see similar confusions between “principle” and “principal” and people writing about the “tenants” of a belief-system (which should be “tenets”), and often see in print “baited breath” (it should be “bated breath” – bate meaning to hold back or restrain), but it’s a tad depressing to see this in a high-level publication like “Butterflies and Wheels”
Edmund Standing’s argument in “Against Mythicism: A Case for the Plausibility of a Historical Jesus” does not, I think, ultimately undermine the Jesus mythicist position – because those who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not saying something quite so straightforward as is widely thought. Most people who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not, I think, committed to the position that there was never a wandering religious figure named Yeshua who attracted some followers – and maybe even who was seen by those followers as some sort of prophet, or even the Jewish messiah. Some claim that there probably was no such person, others are more agnostic about it, but I don’t think that it has much bearing on the real point of saying Jesus was a myth.
What is the real point, then? The conclusion of the Jesus myth arguments is that the stories told of this figure are so clearly mythological that those stories cannot possibly bear any meaningful, content-rich resemblance to an actual historical person. If there ever was a historical wandering religious radical named Yeshua – and we have no good way of establishing such a person’s existence one way or another – that historical person of no great importance bears so little resemblance to the mythical Jesus that calling that person the “historical Jesus” is a little ludicrous and more than a little misleading.
In my opinion, Standing’s own argument makes the case as well as any ‘Jesus myth’ advocate: The Rastafarians’ mythologized Haile Selassie is a largely imaginary figure bearing only the most tenuous connection to and almost no content-rich resemblance to the actual historical personage of Haile Selassie. Unlike Standing, though, I contend that the hypothesized future historian who had only the myths to judge from would in fact be making the CORRECT judgment if they concluded that this mythological Haile Selassie never existed as an actual historical personage. He didn’t. Some person named Haile Selassie existed, and shared a few traits with the imaginary person the Rastafarians talked about, but that historical person bears so little resemblance to the invented person that saying that the mythology was based on any actual history would be misleading at best: Almost none of the ideas and ideals attached to the imaginary Haile Selassie have anything to do with the actual ideas, ideals, and actions of the historical Haile Selassie – so equating them falsely asserts that two very different entities are the same entity.
Perhaps the problem is that the Jesus myth advocates overstate their case by framing it as an existence claim in the first place. The question is not whether some person existed, but whether a particular person existed – the one described in the gospels. Of the historical Jesus, Standing writes “the fact that the ‘accounts’ of his life that we have are so manifestly devotional and filled with mythological content is not in itself a definitive argument for the absence in history of a figure on whom they are, however fantastically, based.” I agree. However, the mythology *is* a definitive argument for the absence from history of any figure who bears enough resemblance to the mythologized person to be intelligibly or usefully referred to as the same person.
The proper target of the Jesus myth argument is not really the notion that there was some physical entity who once existed, a homo sapien called “Yeshua” by himself and his peers, or that this person might have had some loose connection to the growth of a body of myths. Those who make that the target are aiming their arguments in the wrong direction. Rather, the target should be the claim by believers that the personage they believe in – the person whom Standing rightly says has been mythologized and distorted almost beyond recognition – actually existed. The Rastafarians’ imagined Haile Selassie never existed; the Haile Selassie who did actually exist was instead a perfectly ordinary tyrant in a time and place (20th century Africa) where many other tyrants also existed. Similarly, the Christians’ imagined Jesus never existed; the Jesus who did actually exist (if any) was instead a perfectly ordinary religious radical in a time and place where many other religious radicals also existed.
In short, the historical Jesus that plausibly may have existed is not the same Jesus people want to believe existed – so the latter Jesus is indeed just a myth.
George, thanks for your response.
‘Most people who argue that there was no historical Jesus are not, I think, committed to the position that there was never a wandering religious figure named Yeshua who attracted some followers’.
This is certainly the position I have come across on many atheist websites.
‘Perhaps the problem is that the Jesus myth advocates overstate their case by framing it as an existence claim in the first place’.
Indeed.
‘The conclusion of the Jesus myth arguments is that the stories told of this figure are so clearly mythological that those stories cannot possibly bear any meaningful, content-rich resemblance to an actual historical person’.
Again, I’m unconvinced this can be established. In order to accept this version of mythicism, you are willing to accept that there was some sort of ‘religious radical’ named Yeshua, but then you also claim that there is absolutely nothing in the Gospels that can tell us anything about what he taught. I see what you’re saying in terms of stories ABOUT Jesus, claims of miracles, and so on, but I don’t think it’s so clear cut regarding the question of what he may have taught.
Jewish apocalypticism runs through much of the New Testament and is found many times on Jesus’ lips. It seems entirely plausible to me that this is indeed in continuity with the teachings of a First Century Jewish radical. Apocalypticism itself relies on mythical notions, but that does not in any way mean that people who have taught apocalyptic ideas are themselves mythical. There are apocalyptic preachers today, and not just in Christianity.
There are Messianic Jews today – some of them very radical – so by what criteria are you going to definitively establish that the Gospels show nothing that may be taken to accurately indicate the presence in history of an apocalypticist called Yeshua? I think a very convincing case regarding the apocalyptic Jesus can be, and indeed has been, made.
Anyway, as you note, the main target of my article is those who persist with this radical claim that it can be ‘proved’ that there was no historical figure at the genesis of Christianity at all. Do a few searches, and you will find many atheists now promote this.
Regards,
Edmund
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Edmund. I think perhaps I had a mistaken understanding of what the Jesus myth promoters actually claim because I see this problem – like most epistemological questions – in terms of the burden of proof.
I would have thought that the arguments AGAINST a historical Jesus would be counterarguments aimed at the arguments made by those who argue FOR a historical Jesus: The burden of proof clearly belongs on those who wish to claim that there is any substantial core of historical fact to be discerned in a collection of stories which are, as you put it, “so manifestly devotional and filled with mythological content.” Actually, that’s a bit too strong: I think that the character and content of specific claims about history are paramount in determining where the burden of proof lies – and that is what I missed in your original argument, because I haven’t actually read all that much of this Jesus myth literature, and that not recently.
My impression is that the typical “historical Jesus” claimant wants to support the existence of a historical person whose character, ideas, ideals and teachings strongly resemble those of the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels. I think that sort of claim has a very high burden of proof – and no one who makes such claims has come anywhere close to shouldering that burden, let alone carrying it anywhere. The existence of that particular historical figure – the one who strongly resembles the Jesus of the Gospels in many substantial ways – remains highly implausible at best. Moreover, the implausibility of such a person’s existence is directly proportional the the claimed strength of the resemblance.
Thus, I think that the arguments of the Jesus mythicists SHOULD be (and apparently aren’t, from what you say) aimed at the specific sorts of “strong resemblance” historicity claims that believers make. I would even say that your clever and instructive Haile Selassie parallel works as a powerful counterargument against the existence of an historical Jesus who bears a strong degree of similarity to the obviously mythical Jesus of the Gospels. The historical wandering apocalyptic preacher named Yeshua, if he ever existed, probably bore as little resemblance to the heavily mythologized Jesus of the Gospels as the historical tyrant Haile Selassie bears to the highly mythologized savior Haile Selassie of the Rastafarians – and for similar reasons having to do with the goals and needs of those who wrote the myths.
In the end, I substantially agree with your conclusion: “That there was a historical figure, most likely a Jewish apocalyptic preacher, whose story was greatly embellished by devotees who misrepresented and exaggerated him in many ways seems to me entirely plausible.” Sure, the existence of a wandering religious radical named Yeshua of no particular contemporary importance – probably one of many apocalyptic preachers wandering the region at the time – is plausible. But such a character bears little resemblance to the historical Jesus that the overwhelming majority of believers in a historical Jesus seem to be pushing for. There’s still no good reason at all to believe that THAT Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels, ever truly existed.
Put another way: The historical Jesus you say is plausible simply shouldn’t be the historical Jesus at stake at in the ‘Jesus myth’ debate. These Jesus myth promoters are making a fundamental rhetorical and logical error by attacking the wrong conclusion. The existence of your sort of tenuously historical Jesus shouldn’t even interest atheists or secular historians enough to argue against: Such a figure’s historical existence would have no impact on the truth or importance or “universal message” of Christian belief, which is really what the historical Jesus faithful want and why they argue so strenuously (and implausibly) for His existence.
At most, your argument for a historical source figure around whom the mythical Jesus was constructed offers a sociocultural context that helps explain the rise of Christianity: I’m sure you would agree that such explanations have no more to do with whether Christianity is true or right than sociocultural explanations for why Marxism caught on in the early 20th century have to do with the truth or rightness of Marxist doctrine.
What’s important in the end is that the historical Jesus who might plausibly have existed isn’t very interesting from a believer’s point of view, and the historical Jesus who believers are really interested in isn’t at all plausible. If the Jesus mythicists don’t understand that they should stick to arguing about the existence of some particular conceptions of the historical Jesus rather than making a ridiculously broad claim about the nonexistence of any and every possible historical person on whom the Jesus legend might have been built, then I won’t count myself among them. Instead call me a Jesus agnostic, or perhaps a Jesus apatheist: I can’t imagine why anyone would get worked up about the only sort of historical Jesus whose existence can be plausibly supported.
Thank you for enlightening me.
Regards,
George
Regarding George and Edmund’s interchange, I would like to add that it has been my observation that as in most things, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the squeakiest wheels in the Jesus debate are typically the ones with the most radical claims. To be certain, there are kooks on both sides. There are some mythicists who claim that not only was Jesus entirely mythical, but that there was a literal conspiracy to create him as part of some larger plot. I have no time for such nonsense, and I don’t think serious scholars like Richard Carrier or Robert Price do either. Likewise, there are historians who claim that there are natural historical parallels to virtually all of the miracle accounts. (These seem to be the same kinds of people who try to explain the twelve Egyptian plagues in the same way, and find remains of an old boat.)
In my reading of the public dialog between members of the Jesus project, it seems clear to me that one of the questions they are addressing is just what, if anything, can be said about who a historical Jesus would be. For every ten Jesus historians you throw into a pot, ten versions of Jesus rise to the surface. To my skeptical eye, this raises the question of whether there is even enough evidence to claim that a historical Jesus was a preacher, or that his name even remotely resembled “Yeshua.” If there is enough evidence to point to ten different kinds of Jesus, that means there is probably not enough evidence to sort one out as “the most probable” and have it satisfy scientific and historical demands for proof.
Speaking of Carrier, on his blog yesterday, he was quoted as saying rather directly that the finding of the Jesus Project may well be that there is insufficient evidence to establish historicity or mythicism. I wholeheartedly agree with this level of openmindedness. History is, unfortunately, not always as exact as science, and some things really are gone forever. One of the things which might be gone is enough evidence to satisfy the burden of proof regarding Jesus. If that is the case, the only epistemologically sound position would be one of Jesus agnosticism. While I’m sure that this doesn’t sit well with atheists who would like to point fingers at theists and laugh, the more thoughtful of us should realize that the question of Jesus never was important in the first place.