Loading...I had an interesting email from a reader the other day, in which he pointed out that the “multiple attestation” for the existence of Jesus is virtually matched by the “multiple attestation” for the resurrection of Jesus. At first I thought his point was the Christian apologetic one, that therefore since the resurrection is just as well (not quite, but still pretty well) attested as the very existence of Jesus, doesn’t that show that Jesus was probably raised from the dead? When I responded to that question, it turned out that he was actually saying the opposite: since we (meaning he and I) don’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but *that’s* well attested, doesn’t that call into question the very existence of Jesus, which has comparable attestation. Multiple attestation can’t “show” it, in this view.
As I think about it now, my response to *both* points (the Christian apologetic and the non-christian mythicist) is probably the same, that when dealing with the two phenomena – 1. the existence of Jesus and 2. the resurrection of Jesus – we are dealing with two *in*commensurate things, not two commensurate things, so the historical probabilities necessarily shift. More on that in a moment.
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I can’t figure out why a group of 1st-Century Jews would concoct a messiah from the obscure village of Nazareth who ends up getting crucified without liberating Israel. Unless they had to deal with the fact that their leader from Nazareth did get crucified before the kingdom of God was established, and then had to come up with some theology to explain it. I think a real Jesus and an apologetic theology is more believable than the entire creation of a messiah that the Jews saw as nonsensical, as even Paul acknowledged (1 Cor. 1:23).
Me either.
Bart,
You don’t think anyone would invent a crucified Messiah if they wanted others to convert, right? How about this: The gospel authors were under orders from early Pauline church leaders to create a fictional sacrificial salvation figure who just happened to need an appropriately grisly end to elicit the requisite sympathy. Stoning was the normal penalty, and it was meted out to JAMES. The church leaders/gospel authors morphed James into Jesus after his death to avoid interference from successors. Since Hegesippus records several quotes from James which the gospel authors attributed to Jesus, perhaps the whole idea was to write a story about him from the start, piecing him together from life-story details of John the Baptist and James the Just. The birth and death narratives are strikingly parallel for John and Jesus throughout the narrative, and James is covered up thoroughly by invented Judas. Remember, Paul didn’t know of a Judas, and if he did, he would certainly have used him as an example of what happens to those rejecting Christ.
I’m sure you have other points that indicate a real Jesus. But I don’t think they outweigh the evidence of a cover up of James’ preeminence.
Hegesippus:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html
I can think of more plausible scenarios. The gospel authors weren’t under orders. Jesus had been declared the universal sacrifice. Naturally, followers wanted to know more about their savior. Authors wrote, not ‘fiction’, but ancient bios narratives showing what kind of person they believed Jesus to be. Bios stories need not be factual, just descriptive. The other purposes of the gospels were evangelistic and apologetic. They had to explain how Jesus died. The Jews couldn’t kill him, since Rome did not delegate capital punishment. But they also had to show him innocent (and from later doctrines, sinless). So they show him being falsely accused as a Zealot.
If James was a disciple / apostle (by the Jewish definition), then he definitely would have been teaching the same things Jesus taught, even using the same words. And yes, there were differing accounts about James, Judas, Thomas, and others.
Because their audience wanted a scapegoat community absolution figure like the pagan mythology they were used to? Just a thought.
Sorta in line with today’s blog, I took German in prep school and college over 50y ago, and the enduring meaning in my little brain of the word “Quelle” is spring, as in water coming out of the ground. Many NW Europeans held springs to be holy.
Spring and source overlap a lot but is the primary meaning of the word source and secondary spring?
I am looking forward to tomorrow’s post.
Good question! I don’t know the history of the term’s usage….
I know that I shouldn’t barge in here, but I think I can help, speaking a Germanic language as my native tongue. I don’t see any primary or secondary meaning of the word “Quelle,” but when used in different contexts it has different meanings (you don’t even think of the other meaning, depending on what you are talking about). They are related with “Quelle” probably being used as a “spring or fountain” and later getting the more figurative meaning of “source.” To put it differently, if English did the same, ‘spring’ would mean a fountain (as source of water, the place where it begins). Later people would have spoken about the concept of a source (a place where a issue began) also as a ‘spring’ but without thinking of water. So “Quelle” is in this context has nothing to do with holy springs.
Terrific! Many many thanks!
I second Bart.
Thanks a bunch.
Right. English speakers don’t think of a metal coil when they speak of a spring of fresh water (unless they are terrible punsters!)
If you are willing and interested, could you tie in some general comments on the miracle stories of Jesus in the different sources. Generally speaking, how do we understand them? How did these stories (and so many of them) , which are central to Jesus’ ministry as presented in the gospels, arise if they are not historical? I don’t think they happened but I’m trying to wrap my head around it all. Obviously stories decade after decade which changed over time before they were written down, but why so many of them and how did they get invented?
I’ll try to get to that…..
I’m cautious about such strong claims for sources, none of which we have. Your source of apples is Safeway; mine is Nob Hill. We lack the information to tell us both came from the same farm. These sources could be multiple pools of mythic / legendary tradition. We have no visibility inside that black box of ideas of earliest Christianity to trace them to an original source, much less tell whether that source itself was historical or philosophical / mythical. We have enough visibility into the larger body of thought around the Greek mystery religions of the time to see that many ideas of Christianity would be at home in that body. That’s what I’ll be looking at as I read Did Jesus Exist? this month. In particular, what allows us to conclude that Jesus was a real person, while rejecting that most other comparable figures are mythical.
I’m just curious, but who are other comparable figures?
Well, some are much better attested (Caesar Augustus). But few lower class peasants are attested this well — none I suppose.
Other comparable figures are Appolonius, Mithras, Zeus, Attis, Cybele, and so on. Today, Christians consider these, as well as the entire Roman and Greek pantheons, mythology. To say that one figure from the time was real and all the rest mythical is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. Were it not for the fact that Christianity is earth’s majority religion, that question would be obvious.
In that day Jesus (Joshua) was indeed a common name. Christ (anointed) was a title. Quite a few people of that day believed they were anointed by God to a specific purpose. Most commonly, to act as prophet (like John the Baptist) or Zealot, and to accomplish the defeat of Rome.
Multiple Attestation is neither a theory nor a hypothesis. It’s a standard of evidence, one of many. Modern courts of law, and ancient Jewish law, required multiple witnesses to accuse someone of a crime. If a drunk walks up to you and tells you he just saw Justin Beeber at the mall, you dismiss the idea. But if several separate people tell you the same thing, you take it more seriously.
The real question about MA is 1) what is it? and 2) does it prove anything?
The answer to 1) is *a theory* and the answer to 2) is *not very much*.
Not only is MA a theory, it is often associated with other *hypothetical criteria* for assessing the historicity of past events, mostly because it lacks *independent legitimacy* on its own. Therefore, it cannot, as you seem to suggest, determine historical probabilities in and of itself. Just because ancient documents have described a person or an event on separate occasions, isn’t enough to verify, with any degree of confidence, the accuracy of those descriptions. In fact, the sources themselves may only SEEM independent and may not identify anything more than common *motifs*. As usual, the devil is always in the details. When it comes to biblical narratives, what is attested to in similar ways is also *contradicted* in multiple ways.
Also, your car accident analogy is pretty far fetched when compared to biblical sayings and happenings. Even witnesses to crimes and accidents require cross examination in court, and almost never do they tell the *same story*. And when you say, “we have lots of witnesses lying behind our early Christian writings,” the focus for me is on the word “lying,” not necessarily intentional misrepresentation, but “subconscious prejudicial prevarication.”
I’m not so sure MA is a “theory.” It’s simply how we normally verify whether something has happened or not.
Here’s a short list of definitions describing the word *theory* taken from Webster’s Third.
1. “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.”
2. “A proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.” (I prefer this one.)
I also like 7. “guess or conjecture.” It’s listed as a synonym for “hypothesis.”
As I recollect the first person to develop this theory/hypothesis as a means of explaining the historicity of biblical events is John Dominic Crossan. Am I right about that?
If it were not a theory/hypothesis, the *verification* would be closer to 7. than 1. or 2.
Last of all, since we are talking about verifying the supposed existence and/or resurrection of Jesus Christ, we ought to remember, or at least recognize, that THE NAME ITSELF IS MISLEADING. No one was ever born in ancient Judea or Galilee with that appellative.
I’m not sure what your ultimate point is. You seem to be trying to make a Mythicist argument. MA is used by all historians and is the best tool we have for determining what we think happened. Yes, it is possible to make mistakes. It is also part of the fabric of academic rigor and research just like the Scientific Method. All you are doing is looking for multiple proofs. In MA you are looking for multiple sources and in SM you are looking for repeatable experiments or observations.
I think the problem is that people get fixated on the bible as a The Book without understanding that is was not written that way. It was written over a couple hundred years with some sources closer to the events and others further away. Originally a community would have been lucky to have had a copy of one letter or then perhaps two. As they were copied more became available. The point is that they were written with limited sources. By studying the material you can tell who sourced what. This gives you distinct sources and MA.
If your point is that MA can produce errors, of course it can which is why you always hope for more sources. Definitive proof is a desire that anyone wishes for. The whole point of a historians life is to reconstruct what happened and how.
ARGGGHHH! TOMORROW!?!?! It’s like waiting on the next episode of The Sopranos! 😉
The danger of course is that Q, M, L, John, Peter, Thomas etc. could simply be riffing off Mark.
Yes, that’s why you have to do a source analysis *first* to determine who was using whom. Only after that can you make claims about multiple attestation.
Question is though, how sure can you be that all the sources you mention are independent? They may go back to different written narratives but we seem to know nothing about the oral sources that all of this is based on.
We have had so much information on the written texts over the years but little on the oral traditions during the period after the crucifixion. Perhaps you could do a blog or two on that subject, Bart. Would love to hear you thoughts on this plus any recommendations for reading material.
You have to do the analysis as dispassionately as you can. That takes years of work! But, yes, oral traditions need to be figured in. As with all historical tasks, this one involves levels of probability.
Terrific question which I have asked you myself in the past probably more from the “apologetic” viewpoint. I think one of the answers you gave me was that some of these sources that document the existence of Jesus, like the Gospel of Thomas, do not mention the Resurrection. Hence, there is less attestation to the Resurrection than to the existence of Jesus. Another part of the answer that you gave me is that historians cannot document supernatural events because a supernatural explanation is the least likely explanation or it would not be “supernatural.” So, someone moving the body or some people making up a story are more likely explanations than an extraordinary supernatural event. I look forward to tomorrow’s post.
More than likely based on normal practices his body was taken down and thrown onto an offal heap. His friends then retrieved the body and he was put into some type of tomb. Grave robbers open the tomb because it looked like a good mark. Then wild animals took the body. Hey, work with me here. It’s as good a theory as any.
I’m not trying to be trite but there is much that we cannot determine. I recently got into a debate with a mythicist on Facebook of course. I think the problem is that some atheist think the best way to ‘defeat’ Christians is to make Jesus disappear. I think the argument is a sideshow. History is full of people of whom we actually know very little of. Myths and religions often come from traditions of people elevated to godhood by time and distance.
The real issue comes to faith and the loss of faith. I lost mine as did Bart over the issue of suffering. I think the real value of this is to grasp just how difficult and untrustworthy history can be. In the end if we took the position of the mythicist we would have to forget about too much of our history. It is more important that we look at history with a critical eye, not a prejudiced one. That critical eye is what allows us to see the Bible not as The Word, but as a book created by follower who were human.
Every time I have a question about the Bible, you somehow have a post about it already. Thank you!
Yeah, there’ve been a lot of posts over the past 9 years! Over 5 a week, every week!
I know there is multiple independent attestation and the criterion of embarrassment for Jesus’ baptism by John but wouldn’t Jesus have put an extreme hardship on his family who lived hand to mouth by leaving them just to be baptized? Are we also to assume that Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother who lived in Capernaum was a follower of John who was a multiple days walk to the Jordan River? How could Jesus and his followers leave their families to fend for themselves? Would they have relied on other family members to take care of their won families while they were traveling around?
Yes, probably so. And for the disciples’ families it would have been much worse, since they were married and leaving behind a wife and children in a world where women could not work out of the home and so could survive only through the generosity of (already poor) family or friends, or by doing things unthinkable. Not a pleasant thought. But Jesus did endorse it. The reason: he thought the end was imminent and the most important thing was to get people to repent so they could come into the approaching kingdom.