• ernestm
    1k
    An entirely new interpretation of historical evidence,
    exercising rational skepticism
    that denies neither atheism nor the Nicene creed
    as possible truths.


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    Contents

    - Preface
    • Who am I, what do I believe, and why's it special?
    • What is 'proof'?
    (1) Of 'Historical Evidence'
    • How much are historical documents reliable?
    • How much is oral history reliable?
    • What about Judaic history?
    • Why are there parallel accounts?
    • What other documents are there?
    (2) Of Rational Explanation of Scientifically Impossible Events
    • Did Jesus learned Egyptian medical knowledge?
    • Are there rational explanations of miracles and the resurrection?
    (3) Of Hermeneutic Corroboration
    • Did Romans and Greeks feel guilt?
    • Does the hermeneutic change corroborate the New Testament?
    (4) Of the Theist vs. Anti-Theist Debate
    • What of believers?[
    • What of unbelievers?
    • What of St. Thomas' Resolution?

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    Preface

    Who am I, what do I believe, and why's it special? After learning Latin and Ancient Greek from age 10, I studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford University, where I was trained in rational skepticism and the philosophy of science. Now I am 60 and retired in Chico (CA).

    Regarding belief, it evolved while researching this project. I eventually found myself considering the disciple St. Thomas, because like me, he was a rational skeptic, asking to put his fingers in Jesus' wounds to know the truth. Jesus did not say 'get thee hence' or 'shame on thee for doubt.' Instead he said 'go ahead,' afterwards saying 'Ὅτι ἑώρακάς με, πεπίστευκας; μακάριοι οἱ μὴ ἰδόντες kai πιστεύσαντες" ("Because you've perceived me, you believe; blessed are those who haven't and yet believe," John 20:29). From the perspective of science, Thomas made a request for validation of sufficient hypotheses to corroborate a theory as being undeniably true.

    I thus extrapolate an apparently new theological position based on empirical skepticism: I cannot know whether there is an afterlife, without direct experience of it--but if there is an afterlife, then nothing could ever please me more than meeting Jesus! An all-knowing God must know I am sorry for what I've done wrong. After I pass away, I can only ask if I really must make God's beautiful son suffer for my stupid sins. More ardent believers indicate I don't get the blessing they do for believing beforehand, but no worries, my education makes up for it.

    What is 'proof'? Upon shared a little homily, ‘Christ’s Passion, the Shit Sponge, and Beyond’ on Facebook, almost all of the ~100 replies within 3 days scorned, with absolute and unequivocal certainty, that all four gospels are entirely made up from beginning to end, because there is no 'proof.' Well, as of the current day, there are mathematical proofs, in the form of tautologies; yet according to the philosophy of science, a hypothesis can never be proven, only corroborated. Those many demanding 'proof' need to adjust their expectations about what actually can be known about events 2,000 years ago, instead considering what might've actually happened with a neutral and open mind.

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    (1) Of 'Historical Evidence'

    How much are historical documents reliable? Now, perhaps it seems too obvious to me that up to the time when the Church Fathers selected the books for the New Testament, ALL historical accounts were written from oral reports, frequently handed down over spans of 300 years (and even longer in the case of Homer). Thucydides (460~400 BC) is widely purported to be one of the best historians ever, but he entirely made up speeches he never heard, and which even might not have been given at all, simply by imagining what he thought could have been said over the vast expanse of the three Peloponnese wars he described. Unless one is a wildly enthusiastic fan of 'Game of Thrones,' realistically, it remains difficult even to imagine Generals, standing in battlefields, conducting long rhetorical debates with various inhabitants of besieged cities, too frightened to open the gates for parlay. Moreover, when gathering oral accounts, Thucydides decided himself which were most accurate and conflated all his sources into one storyline, without stating ANY differences in accounts he heard, setting an awful precedent for thousands of years of equally questionable reportage. It wasn't until the last century, when structuralists examined the speech patterns and dialects across different Greek city states, that anyone even questioned whether the speeches in Thucydides were accurate at all. But he is lauded as one of the best historians ever.

    Much the same is true for all the greatest pieces of 'historical evidence'' we now have about the ancient world, even in Plutarch's 'Parallel Lives,' which is continually presented as genuinely unquestionable fact. Plutarch's history goes back to Alexander the Great, over 500 years earlier, in 356 BC. It was written somewhere in around 200 AD, and the earliest existent copy is from 800 years later. No one thinks to say it is all invention, despite the far lower degree of authenticity, not only of the textual and verbal traditions he passed on, but also in the far later age of the oldest manuscript we have. On Alexander the Great, Plutarch's is one of the few 2nd- or 3rd-generation reports we have, assembled from a few lost sources and oral traditions, again conflating all sources into one storyline. No one says Alexander the Great obviously didn't exist, instead pointing to cities named after him that could equally have been named for a God; or frescoes and statues of him as 'proof,' rather oblivious that the earliest ones were still made centuries after Alexander's death.

    How much are oral traditions reliable? Another ignored fact is how oral traditions worked at the time. As described in my separate essay 'on Oral Traditions,' they were not simple ramblings as people tend to thing of storytelling now. There were separate groups telling the story in different places, and in each group, one of the younger adults would be asked to tell the story for the children. The older adults listened, providing corrections and embellishments from their own memory. Of course, there were different opinions on how the story should be told, and different memories of the original events too; but overall the unity of each group in preserving a story would certainly compare quite favorably to the different stories one now hears, for example, about Trump, derived from MSNBC, Fox TV, etc.

    What about Judaic history? The time during the first Roman emperors was very turbulent in Judea. Quite a large number of different people attempted to dominate the region and/or usurp the Romans. One effort notably terminated in a huge siege of a mountaintop fortress called Masada. The Romans spent almost a year breaking the fortress, forcing an army of slaves to build an earthen ramp, 375 feet high and thousands of feet long, to reach the citadel. On this we have "The Jewish War" by Josephus (75 AD). The original Hebrew, Aramaic versions, and later Greek translations are mostly lost. The earliest entire version is Slavonic from 1463 AD. It states an ironclad siege tower containing a battering ram was hoisted up the ramp and placed into position to strike against the rebels’ casemate wall. However, archaeological remains indicated the mound never reached the citadel itself. Instead, it appears catapults and basilica also bombarded the citadel's inner buildings so much that even a giant cistern, partly subterranean, was broken open, leaving the besieged with barely no water. It's also believed all the besieged solders and families committed suicide before the siege end. So it appears Josephus is not very reliable in reporting history. But there are accounts of an individual that could have been Jesus, mentioned in passing, in some earlier remnants of Josephus' writing from 75 AD, but not others.

    The lack of historical accounts about Jesus outside Josephus is often construed as counter-evidence of his existence. On the other hand, Judaic and Roman historians had no reason even to acknowledge his existence at all in their own history, because they totally denied his significance. If anything they would have denied his existence, because they were losing converts to Christianity. But they didn't deny his existence either. They simply said nothing, because he wasn't really important to them at the time.

    Why are there parallel accounts? In marked difference from historical conventions practiced throughout the era elsewhere, the historians working for the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, (272-337 AD) did something entirely unique, making the recorded account of the oral tradition, overall, about an order of magnitude MORE reliable than other sources. Perhaps most importantly, when the four gospels were selected to be reliably preserved, with continual efforts to make every syllable as genuine as possible for millennia, they DID NOT conflate the four accounts into one storyline like everyone else did, but meticulously kept all of them as different as they were, so that future readers could decide themselves how to resolve discrepancies across the separate descriptions.

    The differences between the gospels are frequently stated as proof they are wrong. But the historians felt it important to make the record as genuine as possible. Thus they not only preserved the four different accounts as they had been handed down separately in different provinces of Rome, but also, moreover, traced direct lineage of each account through individual people who had been remembering and repeating them since the disciples first starting sharing their 'good news' (the literal meaning of 'gospel'), in order to choose four, not one but four, out of hundreds of documents, as the ones which would be painstakingly transcribed by hand and handed down through the centuries until the first printing press in 1440 AD. Even before then, more copies of the bible were handwritten and carefully translated into multiple languages than any other book in the world.

    We know that the historians went thought at least a hundred documents, with at least a thousand prior copies that had been made before, to choose and make these four separate accounts as the best, authentic ones. There is NO OTHER historical evidence from that time that has anywhere near that much 'evidence.' Nothing. The current biblical canon remains as it was formally defined and widely circulated ca. 350 AD, by which time there were copies of multiple collections of documents, including gospels and letters, which were not old at all for that era, dating back only 150 years or so to 150~200 AD (or perhaps earlier, but earlier versions have not survived).

    What other documents are there? In later time, those with more interest in saving souls than historical evidence tried to destroy all the other documents completely. And they formed 'a single message' that everyone could agree on, allowing the doctrines to survive terrible persecutions and, even more importantly, the majority's massive ignorance and inability even to read or write. About a dozen texts not in the bible were preserved by the church including The Acts of Thomas (see the Gnostic Society Library). Scattered remnants of surviving texts include the Dead Sea Scrolls. More recently, in 1945, a large cache of comparatively well preserved and totally lost documents were found in Egypt.

    nag-hammadi-codices.jpg

    As a collection of some of the earliest bound books we now have, this 'Nag Hammadi library' is comparatively well preserved. Books are far more compact than scrolls, and they contain yet more accounts and letters that in total corroborate the history stated in the gospels. Unless one chooses to twist the translation of words such as 'spirit' to such devious ends, none of the other scriptures outside the bible describe Jesus as deceitful evil or demonic, such as one frequently might now hear about both Trump.

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    (2) Of Rational Explanation for Scientifically Impossible Events

    Any rational inquirer could justifiably claim the documented evidence belies no more than ridiculous supernatural beliefs. A very small number of people have before suggested that there exists more rational explanations, and they've been very popular. For example Lloyd Douglas' book "The Robe (1942) was a bestseller for more than a year. Few now alive read the book, instead watching the movie, which does not mention Douglas' rational explanations.

    In the spirit of rational empiricism, I extend Douglas' hypothesis to explain all events described in the New Testament canon, such that they all can be explained by the laws of science we now know.
    Immediately I am obliged to add, this is not a denial of the possibility that there were supernatural events, either in total or part. Rather, I present it as an alternate hypothesis that could explain one or more, or even all the miracles, and even the resurrection too, if one is not inclined to accept the scientifically impossible deeds of Christ as recounted in the gospels. In the past I speculated that Jesus obtained such extraordinary knowledge for the time by divine inspiration, but now I have a feasible rational explanation for that too.

    Did Jesus learn Egyptian medical knowledge? It is not an unreasonalbe hypothesis that Christ could had learned otherwise unknown medical techniques from scrolls that had been plundered from the library of Alexandria, after its first major fire in 145 BC.

    According to canonical texts, Joseph took his family to Egypt immediately after the census, escaping Herod's massacre of the innocents (Matthew:2:13-15), although many historians now think this massacre was 'only' of Herod's own sons. Joseph brought his family back to Nazareth after the death of Herod in 4 BC (Luke 2:4). Jesus was an avid learner and could read at least Hebrew (Luke 4:16-20). So at least one opportunity existed for Joseph to purchase scrolls for Jesus according to canonical history, or Jesus could even have obtained them himself. There is a gap in historical accounts of Jesus' life before adulthood of about 10 years. Jesus and/or Joseph could have been in Egypt then, only returning for the annual passover feast (Luke 2:41). Others have speculated Jesus was studying in Alexandria during this time, particularly because after Jesus' death, St. Mark lived and died in Alexandria (est. 61~68 AD). Others who knew Jesus may well have lived in Alexandria, due to the size and power of the early church there. Moreover, there would have been both religious and political objections to mentioning Jesus' 10-year stay there, because Israel was created from slaves who rebelled from Egypt.

    We also know that the Egyptians possessed extraordinary and lost medical knowledge. For example, the Egyptians at ;least knew how to perform surgery, demonstrated by a mummy from 400 BC in the Rosicrucian museum, San Jose, CA (BYU Professor Finds Evidence of Advanced Surgery in Ancient Mummy, Brigham Young University, 2015).

    Usermontu-mummy.jpg

    Carbon dating has verified the remains to be genuine, but debate does continue whether the surgery was performed before or after death. X-rays have shown the pin to have a spiral shape, resembling almost exactly that used for attachment of prostheses now. Also, sampling the cement revealed it to contain organic resin, similar to modern bone cement (Medical Mystery of Usermontu: Why the Discovery of 2,600-Year-Old Knee Screw Left Experts Dumbfounded, Ancient Origins, 2015). Here I speculate that the pin was inserted after death in this case to reattach the leg, but prosthetic attachment had already been long practiced, with only this example of the technique surviving.

    9-inch-drill-in-the-knee-mummy.jpg?itok=cFlc0EOC

    Are there rational explanations of miracles and the resurrection? So maybe Joseph found and brought tracts, otherwise unpreserved and now lost, from Egypt when he yearly traveled up to Jerusalem, to see Mary and Jesus for Passover. As well as perhaps including some translations of Buddhist texts on āryāṣṭāṅgamārga from three centuries previously, maybe the tracts described lost secrets such as:
    • How to perform artificial respiration (resurrection of Lazarus)
    • How to stitch a man's ear back on with needle and thread after it had been cut off (Peter at Gethsemane),
    • How to clean a cruddy infection out of an eye with sand and water (John 3:5).
    • Perhaps other kinds of knowledge, such as how to make a delicious rosé by putting heated water in porous jars that previously held thick wine (and many other such miracles in Luke's gospel). Similarly, when Jesus handing out little pieces of bread and fish (whether once or many times, depending on how one treats the Gospel differences), there were thousands of people there who had traveled great distances to reach the grassy hilltop whence he spoke. So they probably had brought some food and wine for themselves for refreshment before their return. Upon hearing his lessons on giving to others, they could have shared their repasts all around, together enjoying an enormous picnic that otherwise would not have happened (again, an unprecedented event within all history that we know). Now some would say that is not a miracle. To me, it is.
    • And finally here, possibly, how to induce a coma by sucking a shit sponge the roman soldiers carried to wipe their arses (crucifixion). It's discussed a little later here, but for more on that, please see my separate homily, 'The Passion, the Shit Sponge, and Beyond.'
    There it is. A rational explanation, now, for the miracles and resurrection, if you prefer rational explanation. It only surprises me no one has ever proposed it before.

    I could provide many more rational explanations. After several decades of thinking about it, the last event to defy reasonable interpretation was Christ's ascension into sky after death. Cynics have said it was merely a convenient theological addition, to rid themselves of the problem of what happens to a resurrected body. But now it seems most likely to me that he chose to climb the heavenly Mount Sinai, as did his ancestors Abraham and Moses, and passed away there alone.

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    (3) Of Hermeneutic Corroboration

    Hermeneutic: (from Hermes, messenger and soul guide of the Greek Gods): wisdom in interpretation. Hermeneutic theory is "a member of the social subjectivist paradigm where meaning is inter-subjectively created, in contrast to the empirical universe of assumed scientific realism (Berthon et al. 2002). Other approaches within this paradigm are social phenomenology and ethnography. As part of the interpretative research family, hermeneutics focuses on the significance that an aspect of reality takes on for the people under study" (University of Colorado).

    Did Romans and Greeks feel guilt? In 2015, I speculated where there was any case in Pre-Christ Roman texts where people felt guilty about something they'd done wrong. There is valor, humor, and desires to improve civilization in Stoic manners, but no guilt as we understand it today. I asked some friends and family knowledgeable in the field, including two with PhDs who had specialized in history and archaeology. They were surprised they had never heard the question before, but almost instantaneously agreed I was right, to such an extent no further discussion ever took place.

    So what of the pre-Christian Greeks? They were very adept at shaming others, but even of those shamed, there is no clear indication that they ever took personal responsibility for what they had done wrong. Instead, they blame the Gods and other people for inflicting fates upon them that they could not escape, from Helen of troy's 'abduction,' all the way to Oedipus blinding himself because he did not know he had killed his father and married his mother. So I asked my friends again. They paused longer, but said they couldn't think of any example of Greek guilt either. A year later, someone at Oxford I don't know gave a lecture on it (reprinted in Armand D'angour, Shame and Guilt in Ancient Greece, New Imago Forum, to psychoanalysts and academics, 2016). The author avoids committing to any absolute statement as to whether the Greeks ever took personal responsibility for what they did wrong, but it contains no concrete example that they did.

    Emotional guilt was instead known commonly to the Israelites, who were the first society to attempt a system of rational law based on divine justice (compare to, for example, Draco's tabulation of totally random rules in Athens (620 BC); and the far more common systems of punishment based solely on opinions of the rulers at the time, without any clear statement at all as to what crimes actually were). Prior to that, there is some idea of guilt in the Egyptian judgment in the afterlife. But it was a very different idea than it is now, based on terror of Gods, whether living or beyond life. When we look back to those eras, we tend to assume everyone had much the same judgments and emotions we have now, but we are looking at an extremely savage time, and the social mechanisms to enable such judgments and emotions to blossom in civilization had not fully evolved.

    Does hermeneutic change corroborate the New Testament? According to the texts, Jesus introduced astounding teachings on love, hope and forgiveness that were totally alien to the cultures of the time. I speculate that the hermeneutic change was far more significant than merely proving he was alive. The novelty of his lessons could have been no more than amusing, and simply disappeared, but somehow thew grew with significant alacrity. It remains unclear how his teachings gained so much traction at all, amidst the far louder rhetoric and more powerful means of rich and well-entrenched opponents.

    His new ideas resulted in spiritual growth of compassion, and love, together with the positive nature of the afterlife, looked to with hope rather than fear (unlike any other tradition of the time ever). Cultural response of the opponents included Nero's feeding early Christians to lions, because they didn't mind dieing, and the Roman crowds just adored watching it, without any guilt at all. This icon from 320 AD shows 40 Christians who were fed to lions all at once. One Christian, on the left, changed his mind at the last minute and was permitted to leave.

    FortyMartyrsofSebaste.JPG

    It is impossible to imagine at all how so many people professing faith in Christ would join together in such an apparently defeatist effort, and let themselves be so persecuted. Not only does it beg the question of whether there is no empirical evidence for the Holy Spirit working in the world, but also, regardless that, there must have been some genuine historical antecedence (as perpetuated by the Nicaean council, however one regards the creed they defined). But here, I put aside how much corroboration should be necessary to consider belief in the Holy Spirit as rational too.

    New teachings by themselves would not be enough to convince people that another way of life might be better. Even now, people are extremely resistant to changing their mind about virtually anything at all, only scoffing at others being wrong. So it seems to me Jesus'' medical knowledge, described by people of the time as miracles, was totally necessary to affect the change for the better he sought. Some would scorn that as fraudulent, but amidst the ignorance and savagery of the time, I personally do not find it in myself to be so condemnatory.

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    (4) Of the Theist vs. Anti-Theist Debate

    There are many extreme reactions to the rational perspective presented here, from both sides of the religious divide.

    What of believers? Virtually all believers find it impossible even to accept that there might be a rational explanation for gospel events that fits within the scientific laws of our universe. On the side of believers, I can imagine, for example, that there was a Creator. With His mighty hammer he struck on an anvil of heat, aiming to send a spinning arc of flame, that is our sun, through time and space. Over the last centuries, many have strongly criticized viewing our planet as the center of creation, because our planet is not at the geometric center of Euclidean space. Nonetheless, its orchestration of complexity, down to the DNA strands evolving in us, is the ‘entropic’ center of the Universe. There is more complexity here than anywhere, most especially within ourselves. almost 7 billion strong, each of us with more neural synapses than stars in all the known galaxies. One cannot deny the possibility of divine intention in some manner or other.

    But the Nicaean creed, which is the foundation of virtually all churches today, requires belief in the scientifically impossible. The resulting spiritual and physically violent conflict is immense, not only between theists and antitheists; not only between Christians and Jews and Islam; not only between different branches of Christian churches themselves; but also in inescapable doubts of each and every believer. But why is this even necessary? Would it not be even more extraordinary that Christ could indeed have done all that he did WITHIN the laws of the universe that His father created?

    What of unbelievers? On the side of atheists, I can say there are reasons to doubt many specifics of the accounts handed down. That is another topic for far more extensive contemplation. Nonetheless, the overwhelming corroboration of evidence, from the historical to the hermeneutic, makes it rather unreasonable indeed to insist that Christ never existed at all, whether rational science can explain the supernatural events or not.

    Maybe the accounts or miracles and death, or coma, are fraudulent, the intentional extent of which would never be more than opinion, even in any heavens and hells of the afterlife. Nonetheless, however fraudulent the account may be, there is still a massive amount of corroboration of his existence, to a level unlike that for any other event of the epoch. That makes it extremely unlikely indeed that Christ’s existence was only a myth.

    If one does not believe Jesus to be a divine incarnation, then he cannot be blamed, in person, for deeds which his followers have only committed in delusion. Instead, he remains a beautiful and extraordinary doctor of the human spirit, advocating in parables that even the most uneducated could understand, entirely new ideas of love and forgiveness, without which our race might well have destroyed itself already.

    What of St. Thomas' resolution? This homily started by indicating how to extrapolate logically from the skepticism of St. Thomas. He did not accept that Jesus actually had been on the cross without feeling the holes in his limbs. This is exactly how the scientific method works: he wanted experiential corroboration before he could believe the claim true. St. Thomas could very much speak for the reasoning person of science today. Unfortunately, references to St. Thomas in the canonical gospels are few. But there is the 'Acts of Thomas' of his later life preserved by the church itself, indicating its significance. Then in 1945, a gospel by St. Thomas himself was found in the Nag Hammadi library, hidden during the long dark ages, all the way through the emergence from the enlightenment, to the current era of scientific skepticism. With excitement I worked on my own translation in early days of research, only to find, to my complete astonishment, that it contains virtually no statements of historical events in Jesus' life at all. The text instead simply describes enough to set the stage for a fantastic set of Jesus' replies to questions. In the answers, Jesus often emphasizes how to find the Kingdom of Heaven--not necessarily only in whatever afterlife there is, but also, possibly, here on Earth as well. Those familiar with St. Thomas' work usually feel St. Thomas just didn't consider further historical events important.

    The first chapter of St. Thomas' gospel, in my own translation, is here:
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/long-lost-gospel-st-thomas-ernest-meyer/

    So now, as discussed already, we have no necessary proof that that there is an afterlife. In accordance with rational empiricism. We can only wait to genuinely know of it, after our own passing. Yet it is fairly truthful to say, like St. Thomas, we still can turn to the marvelous lessons of Jesus to find joy here on Earth, right now, with all people joined together by the spirit of hope, love, and forgiveness, every day. All churches today may say I have no faith. In one respect, they would be correct. The scientific method frowns upon belief without empirical ratification. But in another respect, I still believe in the lessons of Jesus.

    Whatever faith I may be felt to possess, this homily has shown that the textual evidence for the existence of Christ is an order of magnitude greater than for any other person of the era. It can only remain a matter of opinion whether or how much the gospel accounts of miracles, and inconsistencies between the gospels are fraudulent, intentionally or not. St. Thomas puts the quibbles of inconsistent historical details aside. Indeed, instead of recounting historical events at all, he focuses on his memories of Christ's lessons. For Jesus still leads us to a kingdom of perfect joy, eternal beyond time.
  • Ciceronianus
    2.9k
    Well, the existence of "shit sponges" as used by the Romans is pretty certain. Perhaps we should be content with that.

    But if not, it's also pretty certain that Lucius Flavius Silva led a legion to Masada, given the remains of temporary castra and an encircling wall around that place, not to mention the remains of the giant ramp that eventually provided access by elements of the legion. Whether the pet Jew of Vespasian and Titus, Flavius Josephus, provided an accurate account of what happened then is unknown, however, as you note. The Romans weren't quite as devoted to detailing the legions' victories in gory detail as were the ancient Assyrian kings when describing their conquests, so as far as I know there's no Roman account of what took place either, beyond the fact Masada was taken.

    Tacitus refers to someone who may be the person we call Jesus being executed per the order of Pontius Pilatus (whose existence is apparently established by part of an inscription found in Caesarea Maritima). I think Suetonius made some reference as well. Flavius Josephus did too, but it's thought that part of that reference is a later Christian forgery.

    As for the accounts of the accepted and unaccepted Gospels, and the various Councils held as Christianity assimilated the Empire and pagan culture and philosophy, the extent of the history involved and the evidence of it became unimportant and I think largely ignored when Christians began their persecutions not only of pagans but of other Christians over such questions as whether Jesus was a god or God, or some other kind of divine being but not quite a god or God, and just how the Christian God was three persons in one God. It didn't help, of course, that Jesus never cleary called himself God (there were other sons of God or a god wandering all over the Empire in the first century) except as he was portrayed in the last of the Gospels, that of John. Over the years heretics were identified and condemned, and eventually an orthodoxy was established. Historicity just wasn't much of a concern in the early Church, I believe.
  • unenlightened
    8.7k


    I wonder, respectfully, what difference it makes to you? For myself, I do not expect to be performing or witnessing miracles, so what I have from the Gospels is an illustration of how to live. Love your neighbour, heal the sick feed the hungry, don't be greedy, and so on. The truth of this is not a matter of history, but of human nature.

    It seems unlikely that the whole existence of Jesus is made up and equally unlikely that every word of the Gospels is gospel truth. If one buys into the divine Son of God and died to Redeem us doctrine, well that's another matter, but I'm not clear that there is strong evidence in the gospels or anywhere for that.

    Have you come across either Maurice Nicoll's writing on the New testament, or Robert Graves' King Jesus, the latter a heretical retelling of the gospel story as a mytho-magical attempted coup that went wrong? The former is a very measured spiritual reading of the esoteric meaning of the Gospels.
  • SophistiCat
    2.2k
    Yeah, because there hasn't been enough Christ myth stuff on the internets, we had to have some of our own. Actually I was wondering why it took so long.
  • ernestm
    1k
    it's also pretty certain that Lucius Flavius Silva led a legion to Masada, given the remains of temporary castra and an encircling wall around that place, not to mention the remains of the giant ramp that eventually provided access by elements of the legion.Ciceronianus the White

    oh ok. There is almost nothing on the subject by comparison in terms of documentation. What we have are rather good archaeological ruins whence events were reconstructed. Unfortunately Jesus was a carpenter and didnt make piles of earth a thousand feet long.
  • ernestm
    1k

    thank you very much for the references. I have been rather buried in the Nag Hammadi, working on a new English version of the gospel of Thomas which maybe you would particularly like also, because it makes no mention of any historical events at all, and simply recounts his teachings in a new way )
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    What are you talking about and why should I care?
  • Zophie
    176
    science does not attempt to 'prove' a hypothesis about the material world. There are mathematical proofs, in the form of tautologies, but in scientific research, a hypothesis can only be corroborated, never proven.ernestm
    I thought scientific proofs turn hypotheses into theories. And do tautologies offer anything meaningful?
  • ernestm
    1k
    well the exact definition has changed over years.

    When sufficient corroboration has been accumulated, then hypotheses about an abstracted rule for those hypothesses can make a 'theory' I (an abstracted rule for group of hypotheses) 'true' in a general sense, although there can still be exceptions.

    For example, consider whether water could spontaneously jump out of a glass. So the probability of that happening is more than the age of the known universe so they say, its generally true that the water wont jump out the glass, although its still considered a simplification, because in the field of quantum mechanics, its false.
  • A Seagull
    615
    in various Facebook boards, almost all of the 100 replies I got within 3 days were criticisms, were certain, in NO UNCERTAIN terms, that all four gospels are entirely made up, from beginning to end.ernestm

    Just shows you shouldn't believe everything you read on fb, in fact you shouldn't even take any of it seriously.
  • ernestm
    1k
    On The Nature of ANCIENT ORAL TRADITIONS

    When I described all historical documents from the time, I mentioned that Plutarch's Lives, (ca. 200 AD) contained oral traditions dating back to the birth of Alexander the great (July 356 BCE). I should have added that it is one of the few secondary or tertiary sources on Alexander the Great. Earlier written accounts of Alexander the Great are entirely lost. Plutarch combined the lost texts with oral traditions into one seamless discourse.

    In the current day, it's natural to assume that oral traditions were less reliable than written texts. For example, one frequently voiced criticism of the gospels is that they were written down long after the actual events, starting with the Gospel of Mark, first written down between fifty and a hundred years after Christ's death. If one puts oneself in the shoes of historians of the time, one sees a different perplexity. Should a historian rely on written text more than oral tradition? In the current day, one needs to understand the methods of oral tradition at the time, in order to understand the perplexity.

    My father's mother and her siblings, who moved to the USA to escape the Russian Pogrom, often practiced the same oral tradition with me when I was a child. Also in those days, TVs were black and white, and had few channels. So once a week, after dinner, my grandmother would start telling a story about the family's past to all the guests. My grandmother's brother and sister would sit listening, occasionally interjecting only a few words. At first my great aunt would interject short corrections if she said something wrong, or a question if my grandmother said something she was not sure about. My grandmother would back up in the story and retell it, until my great aunt approved. So they corrected each other's memories, this way, in oral traditions.

    Every couple of years, my grandmother would retell the same story, remembering and emphasizing the corrections from last time. Over the years my great Aunt had to make less and less corrections, instead interjecting small elaborations, with a big smile. My Great Uncle's role was entirely different. He would sprawl on the sofa, pretending to be dozing, surreptitiously watching to see if the guests were bored, if necessary jumping up and saying "hey, that's enough stories for one night. You can tell us the rest next time. let's get an ice cream cone" or the like.

    So that's an oral tradition from me, hahaha, about oral traditions. Families like my Russian grandparents, as well as churches in groups, have been telling stories like that for 5,000 years. With other listeners correcting the storyteller's mistakes, they were repeated with a far greater level of accuracy than most people of the current day appreciate.

    In ancient times, historians writing new texts would combine oral traditions with written texts. First there is a question of how much the written texts might contain mistakes or deliberate errors. And there remains debate on how many of the oral traditions were added to the bible as we know it today, Maybe scribes would sometimes add pieces of information they heard from other places, thinking it better than the written copy they had.

    When the early church fathers formalized the current canon of the New Testament ca. 350 AD, there were already differing versions of the scrolls written up to 300 years earlier. The older surviving scrolls took priority when the Testament text itself was formalized, only using newer scrolls if originals had decayed too much to be readable, either on the scroll edges or entirety. At least a dozen main sources, in total, had been handing down these texts separately. For example the Gospel of Mark came from Egypt, because that's where Mark went after Christ's death. There were newer copies of Mark's gospel all around the Roman Empire, some together with other original gospels. Then newer copies of original gospels from other places also made it back to Egypt.

    When the historians working for the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, were frrst formalizing the New Testament contents, they faced a different problem than any other historians to that day. In the past, there were scant records and story collecting from oral traditions was a difficult task, requiring much travel. But for the New Testament, there were too many texts and copies. There was ten times as much different content as in the current New Testament, and another order of magnitude of different copies.

    So oral traditions were not included. There was no room for them in the size of the New Testament as it is now, the bible is already enough scrolls to fill quite a fair-sized truck. Instead, Constantine's historians found the oldest written texts from different places, tracing their lineage through the churches that kept them, and their congregations, back to the original disciples. So there were no oral traditions added or substituted to the New Testament at the time it was formalized.

    Even so, there was a period of oral tradition, varying between 50 and 150 years for each of the gospels. Many have criticized this lack of reliability, with a ridiculously large majority stating the entire New Testament was total myth. One of the cultural facts I omitted in my last post was that oral traditions were remarkedly reliable if you compare them, for example, to the continually conflicting accounts of political events on TV broadcasts over the last decade or two.
  • I like sushi
    4.3k
    This person will interest you if you haven’t come across her already:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Kelly_(science_writer)
  • Zophie
    176
    so they say, its generally true that the water wont jump out the glassernestm
    I'm really not sure if "scientific" is an appropriate label for your work or not.
  • Echarmion
    2.5k


    I am not particularly knowledgeable about the subject, but it was my general impression that at least the majority opinion among historians is that Jesus was a real person, it's just noch clear to what extent we can trust the details of his life.

    Arguments I have heard against Jesus being a historical person usually fall into two broad categories.

    One is about the lack of any biographical information concerning Jesus in the Gospels, and the similarity that the very early accounts share with widespread jewish stories about angels. The earliest account after Jesus' supposed death that uses the name doesn't describe a person, but a sort of angel. The argument here goes that Christinity perhaps started out like many other jewish sects, and that the heavenly being they worshipped gradually transformed into a historical person in their accounts.

    The other category is the lack of any contemporary mention of Jesus, or any kind of jewish preacher that might fit. There are no records of disturbances in the jewish community, nor are there any records of a new religion forming in the decades after, until the first gospels show up. An interesting comparison in this regard is with the rise of Islam, where some kind of religious leader is mentioned in contemporary accounts and we do have early reports of the religious practices of the arabs after the invasion, though these accounts suggest that Islam didn't exist as an organized religion until much later.

    What's your take on these two points?
  • Frank Apisa
    2.1k


    What possible difference does it matter whether "Jesus" ever lived or not?

    There were some teachings that somebody (or a group of somebodies) developed that has morphed into an ethic, of sorts, that many people live by today.

    "Did the 'Christian ethic"'develop?" is an easier question to answer.

    YES...of course it did.

    How?

    What difference does it make "how?"

    It has.

    We can deal with the fact that "it has" without dealing with whether or not Jesus, the person described in the Bible, ever lived.

    ASIDE: There seems to be amble evidence that this guy, Paul, lived...and had a following. That seems to be a much more important aspect of Christianity (and the ethic) to deal with than whether or not the Jesus character did.
  • Ciceronianus
    2.9k
    oh ok. There is almost nothing on the subject by comparison in terms of documentation. What we have are rather good archaeological ruins whence events were reconstructed. Unfortunately Jesus was a carpenter and didnt make piles of earth a thousand feet long.ernestm

    Assuming those Mark quotes in his Gospel were accurate, he was a carpenter with four brothers. I don't know about you, but I was brought up in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and we never heard about those brothers. I suspect that was because either the Church didn't think such things were important if they were true, or the Church was hesitant to tell its members that God the Son (who was also God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, depending on what person was involved at the time) had brothers.

    I think many people aren't inclined to accept the Gospels as historically accurate because of the extraordinary claims made by them in some cases and by others regarding not Jesus the man, but Jesus as God or magician (wonder-worker). According to John's Gospel Jesus said with some clarity that he was God. If he did, it seems very odd that he didn't according to the other canonical Gospels. Did Matthew, Mark and Luke forget he made that claim? Did they think it unimportant that he did? It's not likely. Also, Jesus said according to certain Gospels those standing with him would see the coming of the Son of Man and the establishment of his kingdom. That didn't seem to happen. If the Gospels are unsound or conflicting in these most important requests, why believe them to be accurate otherwise?

    Personally, I think it's likely there was Jesus the man, but that Jesus as God was created, and don't see that creation as primarily beneficial. You say the pagans had no concept of guilt. Certainly they didn't have the Christian or Jewish conception of guilt, but it isn't clear to me that they were the worse for that. There's an interesting book, There is No Crime for Those who Have Christ by Michael Gaddis. The title are the words of a Christian of the 5th century justifying religious extremism. No crime, no guilt.
  • B G Upadh
    9
    there is only a mare possibility that he does not exist. Any major historical event on that magnitude cannot be man made stories. Your assumption is right, he exist, but not to that extent, which been largely exaggerated. Maybe for different reason Political or power shift from here and there. But who knows, what happens then. Like some wise person once says we dint have proof he exist, but as well we don prove that he didn't exist.
  • ernestm
    1k
    I would have to agree that hermeneutic technicques do not seem particularly scientific to me either, lol, but thats what they way they are. You know when you reach the fringes of knowledge, one has to use alot of conjecture and so on. I have the same thing about string theory too.
  • ernestm
    1k
    Well I would have to agree that some of the gnostic texts go way overboard, and I can totally understand why the church declared them sacriligous and destroyed them Others are very beautiful and its a great shame they were lost, just glad after so long some of them were found again.

    It doesnt surprise my jewish historians dont mention him. He just wasnt an important person to them. I have heard some people saying, the fact they didnt proves he didnt exist. Well that means alot of people didnt exist, doesnt it.

    If you think about it, the Jews would have had very good reason to say there was this false sect and he didnt really exist. They were losing their own as converts. I think they just decided not to say anything at all. And I have to say, the technique of thinking about what writing we have DOES NOT say is a very powerful technique. Very powerful. Its worth practicing )

    I can point to my own experience. No one else suggested he used lost scrolls about medicine to impress people. No one else said he intentionally induced a coma by sucking on a shit sponge. I never heard anyone even say it was a shit sponge. Thats what it was. Thats why it was there. No one hought it through. After 2000 years I cant imagine why. Moreover, I talked with a couple personal friends about the romans having no guilt. They were astonished. They said it was an incredible observation and agreed with me. I talk to classical depts in universities. I moight as well be throwing mud at a wall. Im not important, they say, if I want to write about it go to the bursars office and buy a phd. Well there you are. Thats what I have to say about it.
  • ernestm
    1k
    Assuming those Mark quotes in his Gospel were accurate, he was a carpenter with four brothers. I don't know about you, but I was brought up in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and we never heard about those brothers. I suspect that was because either the Church didn't think such things were important if they were true, or the Church was hesitant to tell its members that God the Son (who was also God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, depending on what person was involved at the time) had brothers.Ciceronianus the White

    Oh. Well it's an uncomfortable subject for the Catholics. Ive actually written some historical imagination on it to put it in context, but Im not sure this is the right place to share it, because its not really philosophical. But I do remember once seeing a controversial painting of Jesus with his four brothers, with a splinter in his finger. I cant find it. Do you know who painted it?
  • ernestm
    1k
    According to John's Gospel Jesus said with some clarity that he was God.Ciceronianus the White
    Well of course Ive thought about it. But also he never claimed he was THE son of God, he said he was THE SONE OF MAN, He said he prayed to his Father, and the funny thing is, the word he uses in that context means 'daddy.' Fundamentalists use this to say we should have a close personal relationship. Personally I think he missed his blood father alot, and alot of the things he said were distorted. Thats what I think, I cant prove it, I respect other opinions, and its one of those things about him we can never 'know' per se and it remains a matter of faith. Its taken me a long time to talk about it, Im not sure I talk about it as well as I should, but what really annoys me, actually REALLY annoys me, is how I usually cant talk about it at all without getting into hugely emotional arguments on one side or the other. So Im glad at least we can have a neutral conversation here!

    I do feel it appropriate to respond about my own beliefs, I have to follow St. Thomas on it, I really do. i love his gospel too, which mentions nothing about historical events at all. Jesus said to pray, he was a beautiful man, so I do, it has helped me however ridiculous you think it may be, Regarding adamant assertions of Godhood, Its like Thomas said about sticking his fingers in the nail holes. When Im dead Ill know what the truth is. Until then, I kind of would love to see jesus in the afterlife, but I dont want Jesus suffer for my sins. I thought about this alot during services. and talked with priests about it, and I have to say, this position is very, veryalienated from BOTH sides of the religious divide.

    If there is an afterlife, I really would have to ask God if I actually HAVE to ask Christ suffer for my sins. I cant think I can trust others to tell me what is right for me in that respect. So I pray to St. Thomas. Im not sure about the intercession of saints either, Im not sure if he really hears me, but Jesus says to pray, so I do, and I find it helful. Usually I have a laugh with my teddy about it afterwards. We have alot of fun together D
  • Ciceronianus
    2.9k
    But I do remember once seeing a controversial painting of Jesus with his four brothers, with a splinter in his finger. I cant find it. Do you know who painted it?ernestm

    I didn't know there was such a painting. I'll see if I can find it.
  • ernestm
    1k
    maybe its easier to find, Ill look too later, I hadnt looked for a while.
  • Ciceronianus
    2.9k
    But also he never claimed he was THE son of God, he said he was THE SONE OF MAN,ernestm
    Well, he comes as close as can be to claiming godhood.

    John 8:58 - "Jesus said to them, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.'
    John 6:35 - "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."
    John 8:12 - "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."
    John 10:9 - "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved..."
    John 11:25 - "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live."

    That doesn't leave much room for a God who isn't Jesus.

    The transition of the Empire from pagan to Christian has always fascinated me.
  • ernestm
    1k

    One reason the painting of jesus with a splinter and his four brothers was controversial is that it portrayed his humanity. Of course some people did not even like the thought that he could even get a splinter by mistake.
  • ernestm
    1k
    Well the next post has alot in it. It really does. I;ll come back in a few days to hear what you think of it.
  • ernestm
    1k









    I'm sorry this is a little long, but I really think you will find it worth reading. MANY people are VERY eager to argue about whether Jesus was truly divine, but as far as I can find, no one has ever really thought through all the implications of considering his life in rational terms. Not to the extent I present below.

    So a good place to start is with Jesus' four brothers. I will clarify the reasoning on this as I discuss the evidence, but regrettably, its likely they were half brothers. Later they were probably counted among his disciples, whose exact count and members varied over time, simplified as a total of twelve. But Jesus' father wasn't there, and Mary had to make money, so it's likely they were half brothers. That's NOT a nice thought, is it. But it's worth actually considering in more detail, because it has ALOT of implications. First there is the mention of them in Mark, the earliest and shortest of the gospels:

    “(jesus) began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.” Mark 6:2-3

    Hmm. Seems like they really could have been half brothers, doesn't it, the people in the synagogue being so offended? It must have become a debated topic VERY early in the church, and it is rather a signification of the true dedication of the scholars who worked on the gospels that the mention of his brothers remains there, and was not deleted. What a horrible thing to have to say at all. This is why I had to wait a long time before I could talk about my ideas. What can one say without making alot of people very angry, because it goes beyond debates about Jesus' nature, to include the feelings of many women who have found great consolation in praying to Mary. What can one say. Well, Mary certainly got alot of people praying to her. Hats one thing. Another thing is, Jesus had to be oldest son for reasons of claimed inheritance line.

    And that approaches the issue of immaculate conception.

    Well in preface to that, I have to say, I really do, its an awful thing for a woman giving birth not even to be allowed to use a pub table for it. Awful! One can console oneself that the innkeepers probably had reason to believe the child a bastard, considering the prior remarks in the gospels, so maybe one can find a little justification for them not helping a woman giving birth, but even so, what would Jesus have thought of that himself growing up? Its clear Joseph had money to pay for a room, because it says the pubs were full. There's no reason for the apostles not to say Joseph was too poor. Couldn't even one visitor even let Mary have a bed to give birth? No! We have the parable of the good Samaritan instead!

    Anyway, however much money Joseph had, one thing he'd really want is not for Mary to give birth in horse shit, not to mention cow shit, goat shit, chicken shit, and camel shit.

    At least camel shit doesn't smell so bad, when you burn it to stay warm.

    Burning other shit smells horrible, and doing so makes a disgusting mess, and that's one Joseph would have had to do to keep Mary warm. I feel all the romanticism of his birth is nothing less than abominable, frankly, now that it has even extended to this deplorable illusion that children have to suffer under, that there is a Santa Claus, who could be viewed, in ancient terms, as a bizarre jolly God, now controlling 15~20% of the world economy--For nonbelievers, a new God not acknowledged as a God, because the old Gods were too hard to believe in any more. And for believers, too pretty a way for remembering the wise men (but not the camel shit) in gift giving, totally and completely dwarfing the appalling circumstance of Jesus' birth.

    Then there is considering how Joseph was not with Mary all the time (and how Jesus could in fact have asked his father to bring scrolls from Egypt as presents, so the boy could learn more, we know he was an avid learner):

    Now when (the wise men) were departed... (Joseph) arose and took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt; and was there until the death of Herod (Matthew 2:13-15

    I am obliged to note that Jesus' time in Egypt may have been added to fulfill a prophecy that St. John then mentions; but WHY is it mentioned here that Joseph stayed in Egypt? It certainly inst necessary to the story that the church requires faith in, and one has to bear in mind all these words had to be painfully transcribed many times. The other main mention of Joseph in the texts indicate Joseph met Mary annually in Jerusalem:

    Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?[” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

    ...well..running away like that...that does sound like Jesus was saying Joseph might not have been his blood father, and was trying to figure out what Mary told him about the immaculate conception . again, what a horrible thought. We can discuss the immaculate conception more if you wish, they are not uncomfortable thoughts to me any more, but it could REALLY hurt the feelings of other people.

    What a horrible thing Jesus had to live with, which is the other part of what I think about him getting hold of medical scrolls from Alexandria, and why he decided to do what he did in the first place. Most people would call it fraudulent and scoff at it. Well I thought more about it than they did. Perhaps it was fraudulent, but its certainly NOT something to scoff at. There you are. That's what I believe.

    As to his claims to godhood, if you read what I wrote you previously about my beliefs, you'll understand better that I totally abstain. Considering what he achieved, certainly he could have been, and as I say, how much more incredible would that be, if he achieved all he did without needing to break the laws of science that the Creator, if indeed a Creator exists, had established for humankind on this planet, the entropic center of the universe So I follow St. Thomas on it, who despite his skepticism is counted among the faithful. I'll know the truth when Im dead, and before then, I abstain )

    Your assumption is right, he exist, but not to that extent, which been largely exaggerated. Maybe for different reason Political or power shift from here and there. But who knows, what happens then. Like some wise person once says we dint have proof he exist, but as well we don prove that he didn't exist.B G Upadh

    Well I can understand what you say about exaggeration. On the other hand, though, I do have to indicate there was a major change in social attitudes about him. It's difficult to believe that could happen either. I know the tendency is to dismiss it out of hand, but why? Why was there was so much change because of him, and him, specifically? Is it equally reasonable, in fact, to dismiss claims of the Holy Spirit at work as being more exaggeration?
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    Before you get to something like considering whether something happened or not, there is all this work relating to accounts of what happened or not to be considered.

    If one has decided to weigh accounts upon a scale a number of other people agree to use as a system of measure, then the method is the result. Nothing can be "verified" through using it because the use of the measure is also an argument for its use.
  • ernestm
    1k
    I dont feel your comment actually shows any appreciation of the extent of my own thought on the topic. I would have to ask you to read the first post, and the one immediately before yours, before replying to me again.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k
    I have read it.
    I have read a lot of the text you are referring to.
    So, whatever.
  • ernestm
    1k
    well it seems to me I already said what you did in the second paragraph, in fact. I dont see what your comment adds to what I said. Apologies.
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