Evidence, Miracles and the Existence of Jesus

[laconicsax]

(Published in Faith and Philosophy 2011. Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2011. Stephen Law. Pages 129-151)

Abstract

The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt. Many believe the New Testament documents alone suffice firmly to establish Jesus as an actual, historical figure. I question these views. In particular, I argue (i) that the three most popular criteria by which various non-miraculous New Testament claims made about Jesus are supposedly corroborated are not sufficient, either singly or jointly, to place his existence beyond reasonable doubt, and (ii) that a prima facie plausible principle concerning how evidence should be assessed – a principle I call the contamination principle – entails that, given the large proportion of uncorroborated miracle claims made about Jesus in the New Testament documents, we should, in the absence of independent evidence for an historical Jesus, remain sceptical about his existence.

Introduction

Historians regularly distinguish two kinds of claims about Jesus:

(i)    claims concerning Jesus’ existence and the non-miraculous events in his life, such as his teaching and crucifixion.
(ii)    claims concerning Jesus’ divinity and the miraculous – such as walking on water, raising the dead and, most notably, the resurrection.

Philosophical reflection has made contributions regarding how we assess evidence for the latter – Hume’s writing on miracles being perhaps the most noteworthy. Here, I explain how philosophical reflection might also make an important contribution regarding how we assess evidence for the former.

The focus of this paper is solely on what history, as a discipline, is able to reveal. Perhaps historical investigation is not the only way in which we might come to know whether or not Jesus existed. Alvin Plantinga suggests that the truth of scripture can be known non-inferentially, by the operation of a sensus divinitatis.  Here we are concerned only with what might be established by the evidence. The key question I address is: is it true that, as most Biblical historians believe, the available historical evidence places Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt? In particular, can we firmly establish Jesus’ existence just by appeal to the New Testament documents?

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2012/04/published-in-faith-and-philosophy-2011.html

[Speck Tater]

1. You should fix "Existance" before the grammar cops brand you a "moran". nt

[laconicsax]

2. Thanks. That'll teach me to post without proof-reading.

[zeemike]

3. The problem with the evidence is the miracles.

Plain and simple.
For instance what evidence do we have rot the existence of Troy....before a German armature discovered the city most experts believed it was just a myth because the story told was full of heroes and gods which we know don't exist...right?
But at the same time no one is saying that Socrotees or Plato did not exist....and the reason is that nothing was said by them that sounded impossible...and so we accept the evidence for their existence.
And BTW Jesus never claimed to be god....he called himself The Son of Man and said God was his father....it is only later that people started calling him god.

[laconicsax]

6. You're taking the Gospels at face value.

There's no good reason to assume that they are accurate or even meant to be taken as historical fact.

[zeemike]

10. And that is true of everything including what happened in this century.

All it takes is a carefully constructed argument that relies on inconsistencies....and there is nothing that does not have them.
Some say the Holocaust never happened and they rely on inconsistencies to make their points.

[laconicsax]

14. Got it--questioning the historicity of Jesus is the same as Holocaust denial.

[zeemike]

19. I did not say that

I said the process of it is the same....but one is far closer to us in time and because of it more believable or unbelievable....and makes no difference whether it is true or not.

[laconicsax]

22. You made the comparison, own up to it. n/t

[longship]

7. No, let us ignore the miracles.

Rather let us look at the historic claims.

1. There was no census at the time of the putative Jesus' birth. Furthermore, only a fucking idiot would require that people go to their distant ancestor's birthplace to be "enrolled". The Roman society was very ordered. There is no account of any such thing as is reported in the gospels.

2. There is a progression in the story of Jesus in the gospels. Mark, the apparently first written (sorry Christians, the evidence is overwhelming), has the most crude Greek. It also has a different story which has been termed, the Messianic Secret, where the apostles are idiots. They never know what Jesus is about. And when they bring up possible Messianicship, he shushes them telling them to zip their lips. In Mark, Jesus is unable to perform miracles in his home town, where everybody apparently doesn't like him too much. And don't get me started about the so-called resurrection story in Mark.

3. Matthew and Luke are the ones with the birth narratives. But the one all Christians know are a morphing of the two. If you read them side-by-side, they tell a different story. Many of the facts are contradicted by historic facts. E.G., Herod's actions.

4. The text of Jesus' sayings in Matt and Luke are in different order and in different context, but are nearly word-for-word the same. This strongly argues for a common external source, the putative Q document which had the sayings of Jesus, like a collection of (as the Reasonable Doubts podcast termed it) Hallmark cards.

So we have Matt and Luke using Mark and Q (and possibly other sources) to construct their gospels.

Don't get me started about the zombie plague in Matt 27:51-53. I wonder if they were after brains?

Google synoptic problem for questions without answers.

Did Jesus actually exist? I don't think anybody can say either way from the evidence. Outside the gospels, there is nothing, although the Romans were a very organized society. Many of the purely historic claims in the gospels are clearly wrong. E.G., Nazareth did not exist as a settlement at the time of Jesus' putative birth, but did when the gospels first arrived on the scene in the second century CE.

Lots of stuff to consider here. Sorry for the ramble, as usual. I am no Biblical scholar, but I do pay attention to the arguments of some who might be.

[zeemike]

8. Well I know what I am in for.

But here goes.

The first one is the classic....we know all about life back then...and we know, presumably because you posses all the records ever written of that time...that no census was ever taken at that time.

The second one is back to the miracle thing...and that you know all about the progression of the story...what ever that means.
The third one is the false assumption that the two should have told the exact same story even though their experiences were much different...and again the We know all about life back then complaint.

Then four is the exact opposite of three...that they agree to much...
And round and round we go in an never ending circle that no one can counter.

My contention is that if the gospels had never mentioned anything you could not believe then you would take them as history....just as you do the accounts of other ancient figures.

[longship]

11. "All the records"??? Nobody claimed that.

History is a messy thing. But Romans were literate and kept records. The thing is that the Roman records conflict with the gospels. There was no census at the putative time of Jesus' birth. Nor was there any record of Herod's murdering of the innocents (only reported in one gospel).

Nazareth did not exist as a community in Jesus' childhood, but did when the gospels first appeared.

And so it goes...

This is about redaction criticism. How did the gospels come to be written? Is there any historic evidence for the events, outside the gospels themselves. Since the four gospels in the Bible -- there are many more not blessed with that distinction -- first appeared in the second century CE, one has to look at them through both historic and cultural eyes.

Culturally there are many similar stories going back into antiquity that parallel the Jesus resurrection. The suffering servant of Mark goes back and is even explicitly mentioned in Psalms, but predates that in old scrolls of the Cumron (sp?) community.

Some of these, like the virgin birth, a clear mistranslation from the Hebrew Bible, is repeated throughout many religious traditions all over the world.

The gospels echoed the culture of the day, a people for whom a wheelbarrow was emergent technology.

[zeemike]

13. How much of the Roman records survived time?

Can you tell me that?...1/100 of a percent or less?...And yet you can say that sense no records of it exist it must never have happened.
Not to mention that the exact year Jesus was borne can't even be reliably found sense the Gregorian calendar was way off.by at least 7 years....
But just take that one thing you said...that Nazareth did not exist at that time....how do you know that?....because there is no Roman record that says so?...as if the tiny portion of the Roman record that exist tells it all.
And if you were Herod would you have made a record of killing all the new borne babies?...and if he did what would be the chance of it surviving?
And where it the proof of redaction?...it is all just assumption...you assume that it was redacted over many years but you have no proof of it other than your feelings that it was.
But Plato may have been redacted too because his thinking is found in other literature all over the world too...redaction is a theory unless you have some proof of it.

My point is this....don't give us theory as fact...and that is what is most often done in this subject...and it seems to me like an attempt to intimidate by acting like if you don't accept it as a fact you must be stupid or uninformed.
But don[t take this criticism to heart...the fundamentalist do the same thing...the method may be different but it is the same and for the same reason...to convert or to bring people out of their ignorance and become what they want to prevent.

[longship]

18. Well, we are talking across each other here

The point is that the historic records do not jibe with the gospels on key points. That only says, and I am stating this carefully, that there are no documents validating the life of Jesus in Roman records. An apologist might argue so what. Indeed, I might agree.

But more than several historic events in the gospels are falsified by historic documents. The census never happened at the time accounted in the gospel. Herod's reign does not align with events in the gospels. Nazareth was not settled during the time of Jesus' childhood, but was when the earliest gospels appeared. Etc., etc., etc.

No one of these is a falsification. But the hammer blows of history comes down hard on the historic Jesus when you look at the whole picture. Nota bene, I would never, ever state that Jesus did not exist. Instead, I think that the evidence is thin, and that the gospels have elements of mythology to which I cannot subscribe.

Jesus may have existed -- I doubt it -- but may have. Certainly his putative speeches have profound significance. I doubt the Republican party could survive the Sermon on the Mount. Would it only be that they would actually read it.

[zeemike]

20. But when you get down to the nitty gritty

What historical evidence do you have that proves that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus?....is it because it is not mention in Roman records and so must not have existed?...Or is there some founding document of the village that says just when it was founded?...and is it so hard to believe that people lived there probably hundreds of years before Jesus but that it was not named as a village until merchants move their?

And in every case I have seen where someone says they have proof of some thing or the other when you look at it closely it is suppositon based on the theory that they know all about life at that time....but I am open to anything new that you can show me that qualifies as proof of it.
And I have had this discussion many times and have yet to find one that meets the standards of scientific proof....and it is only fair to insist on that standard because you would require that of me if I told you Jesus was real.

[longship]

21. Archaeology

The same science that says that there was not an army of 600,000 men, with their spouses and families, their cattle and other infrastructure necessary to support such a population in the Sinai Peninsula at the putative time of the exodus. There is evidence of as few as a dozen people living in the area centuries before then. But nothing about this Biblical history. Make no mistake, 600,000 men would leave an impact that would not be wiped out for millennia. There is nothing there, but not for lack of looking.

Nazareth was not settled during Jesus' childhood. The Biblical story was written after it was.

[zeemike]

29. Really?...you know that?

And just what kind of evidence do you think those people wold have left if they were nomads living in tents with flocks of cattle and sheep?...Do you think they would build stone houses and they would still be there?...Bedouins have been living in the desert for centuries and have never built permanent structures....for obvious reasons...they had to move often to new grazing lands....so again you are using the assumption that if they were there we would know it.
And you still have not told me what evidence that people were not living at Nazareth at that time....and if you do I bet it will be the same thing...if they were we would know all about it.

But let me relate something I saw on TV about and archaeologist that found some human bones in a Pueblo village and he examined them and say "butcher marks" on the bones and then went on to say that the Anasazi people must have resorted to cannibalism...because he found some marks on the bones...and he said it with certainty...
In no other science would such thin and inadequate evidence be accepted as proof....no one can tell from scratches on a bone that it was made by cannibals...you can guess that it was but you don't know that and cannot know that...those scratches could have been made by any number of other circumstances.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Meh.

Historians disagree over the extent to which claims about Jesus’ miraculous nature – and, in particular, his resurrection – are supported by the historical evidence.

The article is faith based nonsense. The historical evidence for Jesus is weak by objective standards. The historical evidence for miracles is a ludicrous proposition.

[laconicsax]

5. It looks like you skipped the conclusion.

Law uses a number of rational arguments to conclude that there is definitely reason to doubt the historicity of Jesus.

That doesn't strike me as faith based nonsense.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. I couldn't get past the quote I cited as it is preposterous.

The historicity of Jesus is debatable by reasonable people, the woo isn't.

[laconicsax]

16. Suit yourself. n/t

[zeemike]

17. Don't be so sure on that either.

If you took your Ipad back to that day they would think it a miracle too...hell even 100 years ago.
And we know enough now that even the virgin birth may be possible...and actually are cattle is mostly from virgin birth with artificial insemination....but what if some future time they had a computer that could send the information to the egg in a woman's ovaries with the information to create the other half of the chromosomes so that the sperm was not even necessary?
that is not all that far fetched now that we know those chromosomes are made up of only 4 elements....and the only thing necessary is the information of how they are assembled.

[Warren Stupidity]

24. So Mary was artificially inseminated by a computer from the future?

And you claim there is evidence for this absurdity?

Oh wait no, you are just making shit up and saying "it could be". Fine. That is a story. A myth. A fairy tale. It is the same category of seriousness as creationist mythology.

[zeemike]

26. No I am trying to point out to you that what you think is impossible may not be.

And so your claim that it is a myth because of the possibilities of it is not conclusive at all...
The problem is thinking that we know enough to say something is imposable....we clearly don't
And because of that error in our thinking we are not qualified to say something is a myth unless we made it up yourself.
You can theorise that it is a myth and you can believe that it is a myth but you have no empirical evidence to prove it....just as you can believe in string theory but have no empirical evidence that it is a fact....so what you have there is a theory not a fact.

[Warren Stupidity]

30. you need to provide evidence for your claims.

Otherwise you are just making shit up. That aint a theory.

[zeemike]

31. I am not making any claims

I am questioning your claims....I will tell you I don't know the truth and cannot know the truth...that is my claim...that we don't know the truth and cannot know it from small fragments of evidence that we have.

[Warren Stupidity]

37. My claim is that there is no evidence for 'miracles'. If you have seem please provide it.

Your claim was:

"And we know enough now that even the virgin birth may be possible...and actually are cattle is mostly from virgin birth with artificial insemination....but what if some future time they had a computer that could send the information to the egg in a woman's ovaries with the information to create the other half of the chromosomes so that the sperm was not even necessary?
that is not all that far fetched now that we know those chromosomes are made up of only 4 elements....and the only thing necessary is the information of how they are assembled. "

Which is just an astounding load of nonsense that is some sort of argument for something that you are absolutely unwilling to commit to.

[zeemike]

39. Well the words "may be possible" should have informed you

That I was speculating
But what I said is true...we know now that there are 4 elements that make up the chromosome and we have decoded much of it...and will decode it all....and so it is possible with a powerful enough computer to store and transmit that information ...it then could be up to the biologist to find a way to make it happen....like they have done so much lately.
so my speculation does have evidence...but I have no idea whether it could be done or not...but there is evidence that it could.
and the evidence is the fantastic strides we have made in science and techknowledge.

[rug]

9. Where's the evidence for this assertion?

"The vast majority of Biblical historians believe there is evidence sufficient to place Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt."

Don't worry about supplying evidence for "vast majority", I'll settle for some evidence of a simple majority.

[laconicsax]

15. Is it my responsibility to cite sources for someone else's claims now?

Ask humblebum: he's made that claim before.

[rug]

27. If you posted it as a true statement, yes.

Or you can distance yourself from a claim without evidence.

That is the rational thing to do.

[laconicsax]

38. I made no claim; I am under no obligation.

If you want sources, I suggest you contact the author of the paper.

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. It's generally acknowledged. For instance:

That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead.

Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html

Ehrman has had a few more scholars who think the existence of Jesus is unproven pointed out to him since writing that last month ("Arthur Droge, professor of early Christianity at UCSD. At the Amherst conference in 2008 Droge said publicly that he had no idea whether there was a real Jesus&quot , but there aren't many. When one says it, it's notable.

[Warren Stupidity]

25. "but there aren't many. When one says it, it's notable."

Mostly because the jobs that exist for degreed biblical historians are funded by theists who do not want to hear about the objective historical evaluation of this issue.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. The reasons for the majority aren't relevant

rug wanted some evidence that the vast majority of biblical historians think a historical Jesus existed.

[rug]

28. "a small but growing cadre" is a far cry from a majority, let alone a vast majority.

This is the preceding paragraph:

"In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen, and in which there are resounding claims that the American president is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization, the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political, economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus never even existed?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. The "small but growing cadre" are those who say he didn't exist

The vast majority is the group that says he did.

[rug]

33. Edit. I stand corrected.

[trotsky]

35. I think you need to re-read it. n/t

[rug]

36. You're right. I misread it.