France on Jesus

[Steven Carr]

http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth21.html

France (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340746173/internetinfidels) has been praised on this forum for 'thoroughly trashing' Wells.

France writes :-
The brief notice in Tacitus Annals xv.44 mentions only his title, Christus, and his execution in Judea by order of Pontius Pilatus. Nor is there any reason to believe that Tacitus bases this on independent information-it is what Christians would be saying in Rome in the early second century. Suetonius and Pliny, together with Tacitus, testify to the significant presence of Christians in Rome and other parts of the empire from the mid-sixties onwards, but add nothing to our knowledge of their founder. No other clear pagan references to Jesus can be dated before AD 150/1/, by which time the source of any information is more likely to be Christian propaganda than an independent record.

France writes that all reconstructions of Josephus are speculative.

He writes about rabbinical sources 'Their polemical nature and their lack of interest in factual data does not create confidence in their potential as historical evidence for Jesus.'

This is hardly a trashing.

France is forced to resort to speculation that the Gospels were written in the 60s. He gives no arguments at all for this, perhaps fearing that any arguments he gives would be 'thoroughly trashed' by Wells.

He gives no good reasons why a difference of 20 years between his datings and Wells datings makes such a huge difference.

He writes about Luke's mention of the census 'The historical problems are well known, and the case against Luke's accuracy here is a strong one.'


Yet, Christians are prepared to go on record on this forum saying that France has 'thoroughly trashed' Wells!

[Bede]

Steven,

France wrote a book called the Historical Evidence for Jesus which does directly take on Wells. In it, France rejects the so called secular references as historically useful (and I largely agree) but correctly points out that the Gospels alone are historical proof enough for the points I suggested were known about HJ.

The Jesus myth case rests on a number of fallacies:

a) Non theists have got it into there heads that elite Roman historians and/or Josephus are somehow reliable and disinterested sources whereas anything Christian is not. Simply comparing when Josephus mentions an event in both JA and JW shows he even contradicts himself from time to time!

b) We should expect more on Jesus from these non Christian sources. Iasion goes on about this and in my Alex guise I dealt with it a while back. The lower grade headbanger will without fail bring in the miracles of Jesus here but that, of course, is a straw man.

c) Pauls letters are silent about HJ. Actually, they need serious reinterpretation to support the mythic case. They tell us little about Jesus but make no sense without him. This is Dohertys speciality.

d) Some sort of organised literalist orthodoxy was in a position to alter the record and silence dissent long before the fourth century. The absense of evidence is taken as evidence - ie its a conspiracy.

e) That extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text. Yuri likes this and CX seems to be catching the bug too. I would like to see concrete evidence for changes and interpolations of the kind given by Bart Ehrman. He does show some corruptions though nothing that effects the standard HJ model.

f) Vorks theorum: if Vork can make up a story to explain a text, that story is just as likely as the plain reading of the text. He applies this to disbelieve everything he does not like.

g) Crossans conundrum: just because we cannot figure out HJs philosophy or motivations does not mean we cannot work out the basic story of his life or claim he did not have one.

If you suffer from these fallacies (and around here they are catching) then France does not beat Wells. If you accept good quality historical methodology as used in academic departments around the world then France obliterates Wells although he does not manage to prove as much as he thinks he can.

Yours

Bede

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by Bede:
Steven,

France wrote a book called the Historical Evidence for Jesus which does directly take on Wells. In it, France rejects the so called secular references as historically useful (and I largely agree) but correctly points out that the Gospels alone are historical proof enough for the points I suggested were known about HJ.


Which is virtually nothing, if I remember rightly, even if we take your word for it that France 'trashes' Wells. As far as I can see, France does a lot of agreeing with Wells, and then goes in for special pleading on the Gospels.


The Jesus myth case rests on a number of fallacies:

a) Non theists have got it into there heads that elite Roman historians and/or Josephus are somehow reliable and disinterested sources whereas anything Christian is not. Simply comparing when Josephus mentions an event in both JA and JW shows he even contradicts himself from time to time!

Are you saying that Josephus is not as reliable an historian as Mark?

At least Josephus names sources. Gospel writers never do.

As an historian, don't you know that evidence of critically examining sources is one of the marks of a good historian?

We can work out what they did with sources. Matthew and Luke change Mark to suit their agenda.

b) We should expect more on Jesus from these non Christian sources. Iasion goes on about this and in my Alex guise I dealt with it a while back. The lower grade headbanger will without fail bring in the miracles of Jesus here but that, of course, is a straw man.

So a Jesus described as doing miracles is a straw man when it comes to asking ourselves what Jesus did. I fail to see why Gospel accounts of Jesus's activities are 'strawmen', if attacked by sceptics.

c) Pauls letters are silent about HJ. Actually, they need serious reinterpretation to support the mythic case. They tell us little about Jesus but make no sense without him. This is Dohertys speciality.

Paul's letters make much sense with Doherty's interpretation. At least as much as orthodox Christian views which radically disagree about what Paul meant.

And, of course, both Wells and Doherty hardly refer only to Paul's letters, although few people who 'obliterate' their work bother to inform their readers of this fact.

d) Some sort of organised literalist orthodoxy was in a position to alter the record and silence dissent long before the fourth century. The absense of evidence is taken as evidence - ie its a conspiracy.[/b]

What abscence of evidence? We can see that manuscripts vary.

e) That extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text. Yuri likes this and CX seems to be catching the bug too. I would like to see concrete evidence for changes and interpolations of the kind given by Bart Ehrman. He does show some corruptions though nothing that effects the standard HJ model.

There is plenty of concrete evidence for changes. See D.C.Parker's 'The Living Text of the Gospels'. Certainly dating a book by the remaining manuscripts is wrong.

f) Vorks theorum: if Vork can make up a story to explain a text, that story is just as likely as the plain reading of the text. He applies this to disbelieve everything he does not like.

And France covers Vork where exactly?

g) Crossans conundrum: just because we cannot figure out HJs philosophy or motivations does not mean we cannot work out the basic story of his life or claim he did not have one.

And this is covered by France on Wells, where exactly?

If you suffer from these fallacies (and around here they are catching) then France does not beat Wells. If you accept good quality historical methodology as used in academic departments around the world then France obliterates Wells although he does not manage to prove as much as he thinks he can.

So France obliterates Wells, because Vork, Yuri and Crossman commit fallacies. Should I point out to you the straw man nature of your post, or can you see it for yourself?

[CX]

Originally posted by Bede:
That extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text. Yuri likes this and CX seems to be catching the bug too.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact I don't think extant MSS are terribly useful for dazting the autographs owing to both their paucity and lateness. Rather I think we need to look at the issues and attitudes presented as well as things like christological development in order to reasonably date NT texts.

[Vorkosigan]

f) Vorks theorum: if Vork can make up a story to explain a text, that story is just as likely as the plain reading of the text. He applies this to disbelieve everything he does not like.

Specific examples please. Or quit this lying and misrepresenting.

Oh forget it. May as well ask you to stop breathing.

[Bede]

Originally posted by Vorkosigan:
f) Vorks theorum: if Vork can make up a story to explain a text, that story is just as likely as the plain reading of the text. He applies this to disbelieve everything he does not like.

Your take on the baptism is the best example that comes to mind.

[Bede]

CX, I am sorry I misunderstood you. I did say "seems" rather than "is" as I was not entirely clear where you stood. I am pleased that what I thought was a sneeze was just you clearing your throat.

B

[Bede]

Steven,

The Wells that France is addressing claims Jesus did not exist and all my remarks must be read as challenging that viewpoint.

I am not claiming the evangelists were good historians, merely that there work has much historical value. Josephus is not an awful historian but badly biased and happy to twist facts and sources.

To claim that particular miraculous spectaculars are not picked up by other historians and so nothing in the Gospels can be trusted is fallacious and the use of said miracles in arguments about HJ is a strawman.

We must disagree on Doherty on Pauls letters.

There is no evidence I know of that manuscripts have been amended or suppressed to fit a literalist agenda.

All the fallacies I mention are espoused by some mythicists although not necessarily Wells. However, they seemed relevant in a discussion about the Jesus Myth. Sorry if you do not think so.

Also, note I have read Frances book which refers to Wells and base my views on that. It was to this that other Christians have been refering (perhaps rather hyperbolically) when claiming Wells has been answered, not the Leader U article.

Yours

Bede

[Layman]

Originally posted by Steven Carr:
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth21.html

France has been praised on this forum for 'thoroughly trashing' Wells.

....

Yet, Christians are prepared to go on record on this forum saying that France has 'thoroughly trashed' Wells!

Don't you think its -- at best -- disenguous to claim that France fails in his task when you did not even read the source I offered? I never refered to a small article at leadersu. I specifically mentioned his book, The Evidence for Jesus. Therein, he specifically takes on Wells' Jesus-did-not-exist theory point by point. And yes, I think he trashes him.

[lpetrich]

Bede:
The Jesus myth case rests on a number of fallacies:

a) Non theists have got it into there heads that elite Roman historians and/or Josephus are somehow reliable and disinterested sources whereas anything Christian is not. ...


Bede, be reasonable. Mythmaking about revered heroes and founder figures is so common that it requires special pleading to conclude that that had never happened to Jesus Christ.

Bede:
b) We should expect more on Jesus from these non Christian sources. Iasion goes on about this and in my Alex guise I dealt with it a while back. ...


Which is essentially claiming that Jesus Christ had been a nobody -- which is contrary to what the Gospels say about him having become a big celebrity.

Bede:
c) Pauls letters are silent about HJ. Actually, they need serious reinterpretation to support the mythic case. ...


And where does Earl Doherty go wrong here?

Bede:
d) Some sort of organised literalist orthodoxy was in a position to alter the record and silence dissent long before the fourth century. The absense of evidence is taken as evidence - ie its a conspiracy.


There does not need to be a conspiracy. Existing documents like Paul's epistles were simply reinterpreted, and literalism developed some decades after JC had allegedly lived and died, meaning that there was nobody to contradict literalism from first-hand knowledge ("I never heard of any religious prophet named Joshua from Nazareth").

Bede:
e) That extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text. ...


Any alternative methods?

[Steven Carr]

Originally posted by Layman:


Don't you think its -- at best -- disenguous to claim that France fails in his task when you did not even read the source I offered? I never refered to a small article at leadersu. I specifically mentioned his book, The Evidence for Jesus. Therein, he specifically takes on Wells' Jesus-did-not-exist theory point by point. And yes, I think he trashes him.

What a pity that when preparing an article on his book, France left out all the bits which trashed Wells, while keeping the bits which trashed consverative literalism and blind acceptance of minor references to 'Christ' 80 or more years later.

[Yuri Kuchinsky]

Originally posted by Bede:
e) That extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text. Yuri likes this and CX seems to be catching the bug too.

This is a clear misrepresentation by Bede.

Of course I've never said that "extant manuscripts are the only acceptable way to date a text" -- which is an obvious absurdity.

In fact, I've already explained my position on this repeatedly and in some detail. What I'm actually saying is that the gospels are primarily political documents, and so they should be expected to reflect the changing theology of early Christian movement. So we can fully expect a lot of continuous "adjustment" there on the part of orthodox Catholic editors -- until both the Catholic theology and the gospel text were more or less fixed permanently ca 300-400 CE. These are not merely some "minor copying errors" that I'm talking about, but the deliberate theological corruptions by later editors.

Thus, if Bede prefers to see the history of the gospels apart from those bitter political battles that afflicted Christianity over the first 200 years or so of its existence, then he will get a falsified history of the gospels.

So here we see how the agenda of an aggressive Christian apologist like Bede happens to be fully in accord with the agenda of our so-called secular-oriented academic NT industry. Both of these camps -- the Christian apologists, and our so-called "liberal" NT scholars alike -- still work together hand in glove to perpetuate the false myth that our canonical gospels are the "original 1c documents". But this is, quite simply, a deception.

Regards,

Yuri.

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." -=- VOLTAIRE

[Bede]

Yuri,

Please can you give me an example or two, with evidence, of specific changes made to the Gospels and also explain why embarressing details like Jesus expecting the imminent end of the world and being rejected by his family were not expunged?

Thanks

Bede

[Layman]

Originally posted by Steven Carr:
What a pity that when preparing an article on his book, France left out all the bits which trashed Wells, while keeping the bits which trashed consverative literalism and blind acceptance of minor references to 'Christ' 80 or more years later.

Well, since his book was targetting Wells and his article was not, why would you be surprised about the differences? And he rejected the "minor references" to Christ in his book as well.

[Yuri Kuchinsky]

Originally posted by Bede:
Yuri,

Please can you give me an example or two, with evidence, of specific changes made to the Gospels
Bede

There are thousands of examples. How about Jesus being baptised by John?

In Mt and Mk, Jesus is baptised by John. But in Lk, it looks like Jesus is being baptised by... the Shadow!

(Luke 3:21 RSV) "Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, (22) and the Holy Spirit descended upon him..."

So what happened there? Well, it looks like some later Lukan editor wanted to distance Jesus from John. And so, according to Lk alone, John had already been arrested -- just before Jesus is baptised! (See the preceding verses in Lk.)

And the same thing also applies to Jn, basically. So it's quite clear what's been happening there. As the movement became increasingly more Gentile, there were some efforts to distance Jesus from his Jewish background in general, and from John the Baptist in particular. These changes were probably made in mid-second century.

and also explain why embarressing details like Jesus expecting the imminent end of the world and being rejected by his family were not expunged?

As to "the imminent end of the world", not everything could have been expunged. And why expunge something that still remains a big selling point for all sorts of preachers even today?

And as to "being rejected by his family", I now have some pretty good evidence that this in fact was _added up_ by the Gentile-oriented editors!

Yours,

Yuri.

[Toto]

I am bumping up this year-old thread, since I have just read France's The Evidence for Jesus. I was looking for the thread in which Peter Kirby was looking for a reviewer for this book, and stumbled over this instead.

The posts in this tread give a good idea about the book. I will add a few things about The Evidence for Jesus - it is a very slim volume. It is also a very good book, at the $4.95 I paid, perhaps the most cost-effective book on the historicity of Jesus that I've bought. It is well written, from a fairly scholarly point of view, and not full of dreadful apologetics.

It is, however, utterly unconvincing on the subject of the existence of Jesus. France thinks that nothing specific can be learned from Josephus, but he thinks that there must have been some mention of Jesus. Otherwise, he thinks that there is no clear evidence of Jesus outside of the gospels. And the best that he can say for the historicity of the gospels is that they might very well represent what people who knew Jesus remembered.

But parse this first sentence:

The basic divide among interpreters of the gospels is not between those who are or are not open to the results of historical investigations so much as between those whose philosophical/theological viewpoint allows them to accept the testimony of the gospels, together with the factuality of the records in which it is enshrined, and those for whom no amount of historical testimony could be allowed to substantiate what is antecedently labelled as a 'mythical' account of events.

For those who are open to the historical possibility of the 'supernatural' dimension of the gospel accounts, they offer not a detailed list in chronological order of all that Jesus said and did, but a rich collection of events and sayings which need not be doubted as accurate memories of what actually happened. . .

Perhaps this refers back to the introduction, where France attacks "extreme scepticism with regard to the primary evidence for Jesus, the canonical gospels." Instead of extreme scepticism (sounds like a new Olympic event), France seems to prefer a moderate amount of gullibility.

[Vorkosigan]

Toto, are there any new arguments in that book of France's we should be aware of?

Also, it is sad that France labels mythicists people who antecedently decide that the gospels are not true. I've never met anyone who "antecedently" decided the gospels weren't true.

Vorkosigan

[Toto]

There are no new arguments, just a useful summary of the evidence. His chapter on archeology had the most new information for me.

The book appears to have been written in response to a controversial BBC series on the historical Jesus broadcast in 1984, which France felt gave too much attention to fringe theories, like John Allegro's and Morton Smith's. But he does seem to approve of revising the story of Jesus based on historical investigation. He ends the book noting that in the series "there was a repeated sequence in which a plaster image of Jesus was dramatically exploded. It was a very traditional image (appropriately described by one critic as 'kitch') of a white-faced Jesus with long, wavy hair and a rather sickly expression. As the pieces of this shattered 'Jesus' floated in slow motion across the screen, we were invted to consider the possibility that our old image of Jesus was now destroyed beyond repair by historical investigation, and that it was time to adopt a new one. It was, perhaps, not in the best of taste, and some were understandably offended. But even if this was not the most diplomatic way to make the point, was there not a point worth making?"

Can you imagine something like that on American TV?

[Vinnie]

Yuri,

Please can you give me an example or two, with evidence, of specific changes made to the Gospels and also explain why embarressing details like Jesus expecting the imminent end of the world and being rejected by his family were not expunged?

Thanks

Bede

-5 Versions of Mark
-The redaction of John
-Layers of Q if you accept the existence of Q and is reconstruction (e.g. Formation Q)
-Layering of Thomas
-2 Corinthians is more than one Pauline Epistle Combined (if you accept this majority view)
-Tons and tons of interpolations that could be easily cited.
-The fact that all the earliest texts as bestwe can reconstruct (even second century data) appear to already be mixed texts.

Of course, I don't doubt the overal textual veracity of most ECWs. I just frown upon views or theories based upon too specific a reading of them as if they were textually stable.

Speaking of the end of the world isn't that the reason E.P. Sanders gives for the additional ending of John? Apologizing for the mistake?

2 Peter closes the issue for good a 130 AD with its comment that a day to the Lord is like a thousand years. But yeah, MT, LK, and MK seem to have kept them intact with some apolgizing. But thse and other instances serve as checks on the level of creativity. In fact, things like Mark's paucity of Gentile related material serve to caution us from applying too high a level of creativity to Mark. Just as certain as Mark was creative is the fact that Mark worked with firmly embedded tradition.

But at the same time, once the Gosapel tradition was firmly embedded (late 2d) wouldn't it have been more difficult to cut out various traditions wholesale (a generalization of course)?

And couldn't embarrassing traditions about Jesus family be alleviated by sayings like the one that goes something like "whoeever accepts my word is my brother and mother".

Vinnie