Talk:Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ/Archive4

This is an archive page, last updated 3 May 2016. Please do not make edits to this page.

Archives for this talk page:

<1>, <2>, <3>, <5>, <6>, <7>, <8>, <9>, <10>, <11>, <12>, <13>, <14>, <15>, <16>, <17>, <18>, <19>, <20>

, (new)(back)

Oh, good Lord

Evidently the trouble with "mythers" is that they're transhumanists. - David Gerard (talk) 15:39, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Messianic Claimants

This is one point I'd like to see addressed in the article. There were supposedly plenty of other messianic claimants; Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana etc. Carol R. Fontane (a theologian) has commented that miracle workers who could raise the dead were 'a dime a dozen' back then. If we suppose these rival claimants existed, and it seems likely that they did given the fact that inhabitants of Israel would have been expecting a Messiah, doesn't it seem a bit improbable that people decided to write a book wherein a messiah that never existed fills out all the old testament prophecies rather than an actual claimant. It just seems probable to me that disciples of an actual claimant would have a vested interest in stretching things to suit their own worldview. It doesn't seem all that surprising that they would write a hagiography of sorts and just make sure their leader fills in all the old testament criteria he was supposed to. Then again, if messianic claimants were not actually common, this whole argument is invalid. The idea that there were many real living claimants in that region (each with a vested interest in exaggerating their own works) and that the one who managed to gain the most influence was not even based on a real person just seems a bit absurd. I find this one of the more persuasive arguments, so I think it's worth rebutting in the article, even if it is not that common. --Danfly (talk) 13:20, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'd say that was valid. Perhaps we should make more of the fact about the the fact that this article refers to the possibility of the existence of a real physical, historical Jesus rather than a magical, miracle-working, son-of-Zeus one.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 13:42, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

The article mentions how Simon of Peraea is noted nowhere outside Josephus, but Josephus is generally considered a reliable enough source (because he's exceedingly dull) on contemporary history. Anything we can skim from Wikipedia on the subject? - David Gerard (talk) 08:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, error, in 2000 a tablet came to light to do with Simon of Peraea! It suggests Simon died and was resurrected after three days ... “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”[1]- David Gerard (talk) 08:56, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I think we should expect, that along with those other messiah claimants recorded, there were likely many others lost to history. Such claims from leaders of new religious movements are common, throughout history; especially so in a culture with a strong degree of messianic expectation. Due to the vagaries of time, the written or archaeological materials which have come down to us are a small fraction of what originally existed. It seems likely, that along with the known messiah claimants, there were many others who were maybe more minor, maybe more unlucky, and all trace of them has been lost. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:21, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

A list - the BCE and 1st Century ones are bound to be good material. Not sure where to fit it into the present article or I'd have added it myself - David Gerard (talk) 18:55, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-Rational bias. There is a lot of "anti religion" "anti Christianity" bias in this piece that isn't Rational or Wikilike. ;-) There is a knee jerk reaction by some that "the bible must be false" because of the extreme nutjobs claiming it is TRUTH!!!!!!!! I think some sane (yet still critical, sharp and snarky) middle ground can be met that does accept modern scholarship about Jesus (most modern scholars in the field do think he existed, they just think he was a man, a teacher, a self-identified prophet like the other 100s during that time). --En attendant Godot 23:20, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidence that mark didn't know nazareth?

I have to ask if there are citations about Mark and his knowledge of the Holy land. and why that is at all relevant? No one thinks the author of "mark" is a disciple. Secondly, historians world wide DO accept the gosples as some measure of truth. just saying "that's bolloks" is no better than Christian Science saying "geology must be wrong because i say so". If you are going to counter what is generally considered to be a basic measure of how we look at history : 1) the Gosples, specifically Mark and Thomas, written within 30 years of Jesus' death, can be taken as some measure of a historical text, because while exaggerated, they are relaying some basic level of fact. 2) When documents are found that purport a history of a church, a government, or a person's life, historans take them as modified truth unless there is compelling reason to believe the facts were made up. That is not the case for the early books of the bible. there is no reason to think they were pulled literally "out of the blue".--En attendant Godot 21:25, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

My personal view: the Gospels are based on some historical truth, but there is a lot of distortion layered on top. The problem is, we can't tell which bits are the historical truth and which bits are the distortion. I think, all we can say with probability, is there probably was some religious leader called Jesus, who probably had some links to another religious leader called John the Baptist, and Jesus was executed due to some combination of the Romans and the Jewish religious authorities (the exact factor each contributed is impossible to ascertain), and his followers then claimed he had risen, some of the sayings in the Gospels probably go back to Jesus (but we can't really say which ones). Whether Jesus started the claims of his divinity or messiahship, or whether his followers did so after his death, we can't really say. Yeah, I think that's about it. Four canonical Gospels in 89 chapters, 3779 verses, and all I think we can know with any significant certainty can be summed up in one paragraph. And a lot of people wouldn't even accept this paragraph. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:12, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I think Godot is approaching this cautiously (which is good), but at different angle. I should first point out that saying historians worldwide DO accept that the gospels contain certain truths is not entirely accurate. Many historians and scholars may accept small fragments of the stories may be somewhat accurate, but as a whole the gospels are not reliable. "The gospels are not eyewitness accounts"-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School. Even my own professors willfully admitted to my face that "the gospels are not historical records." Even several bishops are skeptical if we have anything about Jesus (like Shelby Spong). In the case of Mark, careful examination of the text reveals that he was perhaps not a local, due to his lack of geographical sense of the area. just because they were written 30 years after he died does not grant them special credibility. Historians seek contemporary evidence, that is evidence within the lifetime of such person, not something written several decades after the person is dies. The issue here is not whether the authors were pulled things out of the blue (but since the vast majority of the stories contain extraordinary stories that never happened - like the dead rising that walked in the streets of Jerusalem) but whether what can we verify what did happen. The gospels on their own provide very little, there is no external sources to verify their claims. Most importantly, we must remember that these books were written in a time when myths were always being born, exchanged, elaborated and corrupted, and they were written to an audience susceptible to such fables. Based on that, there is compelling reason to suspect that these stories were made up - supported by the lack of ordinary and extraordinary proof. On a final note, I should stress the point nobody here is arrogantly discarding the stories of Jesus simply because we do not believe in them or have a grudge against him, it is simply the fact that an important man like Jesus should have left some historical evidence, but as this article explains the evidence is lacking. Feredir28 (talk) 17:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

In all truth Feredir, i'm not sure that this article knows what it wants to talk about. If you want to talk about the MYTHIC man of jesus, i'll back out right now. cause nothing in the bible should suggest to anyone that this man turned water into wine, cried for a friend, or rose from the dead. But if this article is about A particular prophet or teacher running around in or about 30 CE, doing the same thing as a host of others, and likely being killed for it - i gotta say that it's problamtic to me to toss out 30 known churches who arose within 100 years, under his name; gosples we know of, we have, or we are guessing are around that discuss Jesus, etc. This was not an important man to anyone but a few hundred people (in my belife anyhow), so i'm fine with listing all the places we do NOT have documents for, but I'm skeptical with saying "therefore he did not exist", nor with this endless desire to discount the gosples as proof that some dude walking around did exist.

So i guess what i'm asking is this - are you trying to disprove that any man, important to so few a people who happened to be teaching existed. or are you trying to disprove that the mythic Christ didn't exist. if it's the second, as i said, i'll happily bow out. if it's the first, i'll fight (grrr. heheh) for some measure of how modern scholarship looks at the Historical Jesus. --En attendant Godot 18:23, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I think that this article is only showing the weakness of evidence for a actual historical man, not whether if he existed or not overall. I figured if the discussion wanted to address a mythical man, take it to the Jesus myth theory page. The confusing part is how we are addressing Jesus - as a mere wise-man-sort-of-thing or the miracle worker known as the Son of God. This article mainly addresses the latter (because it is by far the most dominant view), showing that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - and that is what this article is explaining, the evidence is lacking. As for the proof of Jesus as just a mortal man (which causes the positive evidence for him to be minimized), the proof is still curiously weak. I hear your points mate, and they are valid. Yes, churches did arise under this man's name, but we know they all did not have a clear idea who this guy was (some believed he was never historically born), and we also know that "Jesus" did not show up until with a man named Paul. Finally, I am not trying to disprove anything. Rather, I am only asking for positive evidence and examining them (if any show up). Just as I would ask a creationist to show me proof there was a global flood, I would ask for any person bring forth contemporary historical proof that directly points to Jesus of Nazareth. And when they bring up things like Josephus, Shroud of Turin, Tacticus, whatever, this article shows why these "proofs" do not hold any weight. Feredir28 (talk) 18:47, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Methodology

The first paragraph of this article is problamatic. First, you say that the gospels are unique and must be treated *differently* because they represent a man who will become more mythologized., more powerful, and more influential than any man in history, then you end saying "So we have to look closely at whatever evidence there is, using our full historical knowledge as well, as if we were talking about any other first-century Judean."... except that's not what you are doing. Historians DO look at the life of jesus from contemporary records, and they include the gosples as part of that -- just like we do with Aztec "children of gods", Egyptian references here and there across the valley as valid, etc. There is a process of how we look at historical texts, and this article consistently says "we should not do that with Jesus. rather, we should speculate, because we do not like how powerful and how twisted and how mythologized he was." --En attendant Godot 15:18, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

"Historians DO look at the life of jesus from contemporary records"... contemporary records? (And you aren't referring to the gospels.) Please, share. Feredir28 (talk) 17:43, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes actually, I am referring in part to the Gospels. When we are trying to recreate history, we assume 1) anything that is claimed to be fact, is, until valid evidence exists to question that. 2) We assume in religious documents that the players are not made up, as this has never been proven to be the case in any religion - we assume that those players are then exaggerated, mythologized, deified or demonized as the case may be. By this article's standards, we should toss out everything about the Aztec leaders we have, because they were associated with gods, said to have visited the gods, and said to be in direct contact with the gods... but that's not what we discount, we discount the GODS part, not the leader's part. Another comment just added talks about how a famous historian did not mention Jesus. he does not mention any of the other known 100 -200 messiahs of the 400 year period in and around Jesus. So did they not exist? My challenge to you all is to present what you know, as in Feredir's newest comment, and let the readers say "ah, that is where I'll go" rather than adding this nonsense that the gospels are not looked at as historical evidence, when in fact in every single class I've take or taught, and all the texts we use, they are considered by historians to be part of the recorded history. It is our job to sift fact from fiction, but not to create fiction ourselves in doing that. I think most of this article does that well, but i think we and other atheists/rationalists are simply too quick to dis miss the gosples out of hand, when that is not how academics study this stuff. And yes, I can list article after article, book after book by religious and non religious scholars who are considered the top scholars in ancient Middle east who say what i'm arguing.--En attendant Godot 18:16, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

WFG says:

• anything that is claimed to be fact, is, until valid evidence exists to question that.

So using this methodology how do you work with a claim that Jesus raised somebody from the dead? I'm sure there is and answer, I'm just wondering what it is.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 18:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

No, using Occam's (sp) razor, i think people with a brain say "that is a valid reason to question that". As i said, when you compare jesus with the aztec leaders, the "evidence" is quite similar. no one else was writing about these leaders but the people who believed that they walked with god. Ok, most of us can say "probably didn't walk with god, nor raise the dead, but probably existed cause why would you lie about the names." When we find a biography of a girl who lived in Germany, and who was to have lived in a house attic, though we do not know anything else of her at first, we say "ok, there's little reason she lied about existing... but what did she write about, and how do we take it in?" if we then find another book, with the exact same title but a different name, "the diary of Susie Frank" we say "ok, now we have evidence that one or the other if not both, is not likely real. It's just using basic logic of "what would someone say, why would they lie, what would be their motive to lie". usually, the names of people tend to be real. it is not a common historical fact to just pull names out of the blue. But then the propaganda and agenda come into play. and we do need to filter "fact" from "fiction". but I find it highly problematic that the one evidence we do have, of a dude walking around telling people to toss mustard seeds is discounted in a way we do not do with other religions. Again, if the mob rules that what you want is an article that is not based on modern academics, but on "doubt first and prove it to me before I'll accept it", then say so at the top and i'll stay out. but that just doesn't seem like a rational approach. I think you say "this is the little we do have, biblical accounts that are sketchy" "this is what we know ISN"T there - birth cirtificants, cruixfiction records, and any mention by any other historian of the day" and "this is what we can guess" - then let readers take it off on their own.--En attendant Godot 18:35, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

OK. So perhaps you point would be better expressed:

• "anything that is claimed to be fact, is, until valid evidence exists to question that unless there is a valid reason to question that"

Because negative evidence tends to be thin on the ground in these cases.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 18:45, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Godots response to my earlier comment. I was hoping for something more than the gospels, but lets move on. I would not say that we are trying to recreate history, rather we are trying to investigate it. As for the comment that historians base everything on assuming it is a fact I think is also incorrect. It is generally accepted that Moses did not historically exist, as also characters like William Tell. Based on your second point, are you saying that historians think that Thor or Krishna were based on actual people and then later deified? As for these Aztec leaders, where they reported by men who never met them? We know that men who claim to receive contact with the supernatural is not uncommon, it happens all the time, so we do not make an exception for Jesus and rule that he must not have existed. The recent addition of the Philo point is not to show that the other messiahs did not exist simply because he did not mention them (we can find dozens of other historians at thee time who can), but rather it shows the problem that contemporary historians who should have known about a important character as Jesus of Nazareth should have mentioned him. Feredir28 (talk) 19:01, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Bob. yes, much better. I"m not a great writer. sorry.--En attendant Godot 19:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Fed - "such an important character". but i guess that's the point - he wasn't important. Like most of the many known messiahs (and how many others not known), they had small bands that followed them. They say "oh, john the baptist is famous, let's make sure in our writings, we have a story of our guy meeting him". Why would there be any record of him, any more than there were of many guys who started churches during their day? HE did not become "important" instill well after his death, and by then he was a myth built on a dude that preached. Your basic assumptions here is that people make up their leaders and their heros. There is almost no historical evidence that this is true. people mythologize them, they do not make them up. Aztecs, I guess my writing really sucks, but what i was saying is that everything we know about the leadership of the Aztecs comes from religious writings about how their named kings met with gods, (had sex with gods in some cases), were born from gods, etc. Yet we accept the list of kings/leaders as genuine. even though the only source was a religious one detailing the more than mundane deeds. When I work with indian people and they tell me of the great and wonderous deeds their great great great x however many greats relatives did, I doubt the acts (was the first to meet a white man; was the first one of his village to ride a horse) cause those are the things people lie and exaggerate about. But i don't doubt that the name of the guy in the story is the real name, or that he is in some way related to the man telling me the tale. RE: moses - I'd be curious what scholars you are reading, that tell you moses is or is not real. I've not read any from academic sources say "he's not real", though i do know that few think a Egyptian pharo's kid (adopted or not) would be at all likely to leave to join a rag-tag tiny band of slaves and workers... but that there was a holy man named Moses who helped his people figure out their first code of laws is exactly the kind of thing people preserve in oral tradition. but i'm happy to read the scholars you are referncing, as my Old Testiment reading of modern scholarship is not as indepth as my NT readings.--En attendant Godot 19:11, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm not really interested in Aztec or other myths at the moment. The question is: Why should we accept anything the gospels say is true? Let's consider the problems.

• They were not written by the people who were claimed to have written them.
• They were written many years after anybody who could conceivably have been around at the time was dead. Consequently any direct quotes from Jesus are at best doubtful and at worst (and most probably) invented.
• Some of the material such as people being raised from the dead and other miracles is clearly invented.
• The books contradict each other - for example the stories of Jesus' birth differ.
• Where the information in the gospels could be confirmed by outside sources it is generally found to be incorrect.

Consequently the parts of the gospels which we can check are found to be invented, contradictory and wrong. This being the case are we not justified in being highly sceptical about the parts of the gospels which we cannot check? Wouldn't it be odd if the unverifiable bits - and only the unverifiable bits - turned out to be correct?Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 11:34, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Given the reality of dealing with a society that is mostly illiterate, and who's records that might have existed have long deteriorated save for a few scraps, how do you all think history should be done. By your theory, it stands to reason no one at all ever existed, cause we cannot prove them - or at least the vast majority of them. All I am asking is that 1) we represent what historians say, and not just what we want to say, and 2) we do not treat Jesus differently from any other figuire (especially religious one) in how history works with them, or 3) we list ONLY the physical evidence, and nothing else, and take out the assumptions about who he was and why there "should be more" or "shouldn't be more". --En attendant Godot 16:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe my "theory" does say that. The point that I make is that where the gospels can be checked they are clearly either invented or wrong. I maintain that that gives us reason to doubt the veracity of the parts we cannot check.

If the parts that could be checked were correct then I would argue that that would argue in favour of the uncheckable bits also being correct. But this is not the case. I really don't see anything too controversial in this.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 18:15, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Imagine that in the near future, a great disaster, such as nuclear war or an asteroid impact, decimates humanity and sets back civilization by thousands of years. After several thousands of years, it finally returns to our present level of technological advancement. However, the vast majority of books, computer records, etc., from today have been lost. Archaeologists however discover an underground facility, containing a large cache of publications issued by the long extinct religion of Scientology. They study them, and find them fulled with inconsistent, incomprehensible and unlikely information. Due to the loss of most historical records, they cannot confirm any of the specific details in these publications for historical accuracy, just broad matters of historical background and setting. If they applied your logic, they would doubt the existence of L. Ron Hubbard. However, as doubtful Hubbard's works may be, or as doubtful may be the overly laudatory presentation of him by Scientology, the correct conclusion is that he was an actual human being who really existed. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:06, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Your hypothetical is "if they started with almost no non-insane information, they might come to an incorrect conclusion!!" And? That does not imply that a large pile of internally-contradictory propaganda therefore is useful to come to the conclusion its believers want to come to - David Gerard (talk) 09:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

You make a mistake in suggesting that I am a believer in "a large pile of internally-contradictory propaganda". I think most of the Gospels are probably false. I think most of the Scientology scriptures are probably false. But in both cases, I accept the claim of the religion that their founder existed, even though many of the fanciful stories they tell about him are unlikely to be true. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 09:40, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

The "founder" (of the strain of Christianity that won) was Paul, and his existence is indeed accepted. The evidence for L. Ron Hubbard in your hypothetical would be similar, i.e. textual consistency showing that one person actually wrote all this stuff. So your original hypothetical doesn't make sense either - David Gerard (talk) 09:43, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the original "end of the world/Scientology idea".. First off I would have thought making what seems to be a slippery slope argument based on what is already a pretty improbable hypothetical to create this argument by analogy would not be the best way to proceed.

But going with it...

If the only evidence we had for the existence of L R Hubbard was the existence of some contradictory writings we would indeed be justified in being sceptical. If we we later found other independent references to him then we would have to evaluate our level of scepticism.

But going back to my argument I have never argued that Christ did not exist. I have only argued that the multiple errors in the gospels which we can check justify our being sceptical in respect of the information we cannot check.Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 10:09, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I think, where the Gospels say things that are plausible, I am inclined to believe them. When they say things that are implausible, I am inclined to disbelieve them in the absence of further evidence. Resurrections, miracles, killing of infants, flights to Egypt, three wise men, etc., these all seem to me to be implausible, so I will disbelieve them unless and until I get more evidence for them. There was a religious teacher called Jesus, who was killed by the authorities for causing trouble? Seems completely plausible to me, so I'll believe that. (As I said, it seems to me more likely that Jesus was real than mythical, given the existence of the New Testament and Christianity.) As I asked elsewhere on the page, did the Buddha exist or was he mythical? His story also includes many miracles. In the Buddha's case, the gap between his life and the first written accounts is much longer. And the chronology for the Buddha is much less clear (estimates of his birth/death vary by >100 years, while for Jesus the variance is less than a decade.) So, if Jesus was a myth, surely the Buddha must be too? Or, likewise, Zoroaster? Comparing Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Zoroaster, while I believe all three were real people, Jesus is the least likely to be mythical of all of them, because of the shorter duration between his life and the first written accounts, and the fact that the chronology of his life can be fixed with much greater (albeit not perfect) accuracy. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 22:59, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Is this in response to my post Maratrean? If so could you tell me what point you are disagreeing with ... if any?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 10:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes. You said the multiple errors in the gospels which we can check justify our being sceptical in respect of the information we cannot check. I don't agree with that approach. I think, where the Bible records plausible, non-miraculous material, which doesn't seem dramatized or legendary, we should accept it as having a fair chance of being true. Probably, it still contains some errors, but I think it likely there is a substantial body of truth behind it. Non-fiction works can contain errors, but it is very rare they would be entirely wrong. A Scientology biography of L. Ron Hubbard likely contains many errors and distortions, but despite that it is certain it also contains a fair amount of truth. I also don't see how you can make that statement, and immediately before say I have never argued that Christ did not exist. Since Christ's existence is one of the pieces of information we cannot check, your logic would imply being sceptical about his existence. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Let us imagine that we have two works which contain ten statements each - or two men in a pub who make ten statements, it works the same. Five of the statements in each case can be easily checked and five cannot. In one case we find that the five statements that we can check are false and in the other case the five we can check are true.

Would we not be justified in being skeptical (or more skeptical) of the uncheckable statements in the case where the checkable statements turned out to be false? Or should our attitude to the five sets of uncrackable statements be the same?

I would also point out that being skeptical of X is not the same as saying "X is false". I tend to be skeptical of all things which are not supported by evidence but I do not maintain that they are false. --Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 09:05, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree, the proportion of confirmed true vs. confirmed false, statements in a group of statements is relevant, to the likelihood of the overall set of statements being false. At the same time, the likelihood that all statements are false is inherently low, if we are dealing with enough statements. Human beings create distortions, but usually there is some factual basis behind them. Of course, that is not to say that pure fiction never happens, but I don't think the Gospels were likely to have been conscious works of fiction - they were more likely what their authors honestly thought was primarily factual, even if in actuality there is a lot of myth or legend or distortion thrown in.

Actually, it is not true that all the claims of the Gospels we can check are false. For example, we can check the claim by the Gospel's that Pilate was governor of Judea in the early 1st century against Roman sources, and find that indeed he was. There are a number of matters of historical and geographical background, where the Gospels do match the other records (Roman, Rabbinic, archaeological, etc) we have. (There are of course other cases where the Gospels and other records don't agree.) So it is not true to say that all confirmable statements in the Gospels are false. So of those we can confirm, some are true, others appear to be false, and many others of course we can't confirm. So the situation is a bit more complex than you suggest. (((Zack Martin)))^™ 10:51, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

OK - so you accept that at least some some of the statements in the gospels are false. And you seem to accept that false statements in a text would tend to suggest that we should be skeptical about the balance of the text. You further seem to accept that the greater the number of false statements the more skeptical we should be. Fantastic, consensus threatens us! :-)

Taking into account the contradictions, the obviously invented miracles, the rather improbable direct quotes from Christ, and the cases where the gospels obviously contradict the historical record - what percentage of the gospels would you maintain is obviously false, what percentage obviously true and what percentage unknown?

Frankly I don't know - my only position is that there is sufficient error to justify our being quite skeptical about the unverifiable statements - but I'd be interested in your opinion about the quantity of demonstrable error.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 11:56, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

As I said, I think it is more likely than not there was a real guy called Jesus, who was a religious teacher, who got executed for causing some degree of trouble. The teachings the Gospels ascribe to him probably originally derive from his actual teachings, although they've probably been changed somewhat in the retelling. He probably came from Galilee, probably started out as a follower of John the Baptist but went his own way, probably had some questionable parentage (seems to me the most likely explanation for the "virgin birth" story... who got Mary pregnant? Oh, an angel did it, she tells us all... Alrighty then...) He gathered some followers to himself, some of whom claimed to have seen apparitions of him after his death (probably by whatever process produces Lourdes and Fatima and so on...) By whatever twists or turns, his following evolved into Christianity. And that is about all I think we can know with any degree of certainty. As to the specific details the Gospels recount of his life, some of them probably are true, many others not, but we can't really tell which is which. (And I am only talking about the plausible details here, not the miraculous or legendary.) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:08, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

Again I'm confused. Is this an answer to my post?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 12:27, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

You asked me "what percentage of the gospels would you maintain is obviously false, what percentage obviously true and what percentage unknown?" I gave you my opinion. I don't feel confident putting it in quantitative terms (this is the percentage I think is likely true), but I stated it qualitatively (this is the bits I think are likely true). (((Zack Martin)))^™ 12:04, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that under obviously untrue we'd have to include the miraculous and legendary bits (which you concede) then there are the contradictions, the rather improbable direct quotes from Christ, and the cases where the gospels obviously contradict the historical record. Taking these into account would you accept that at least 50% of the total is obviously untrue?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 14:05, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

A fair chunk of it is not true, sure. Whether that chunk amounts to 50%, I don't know if that is the right figure, I don't know how one could know if it is the right figure. 50% is not an unreasonable guess, but I am not confident it is right.

One problem with judging the truth of the Gospels, is one would have to determine the intentions of the authors. It was common practice for ancient historians to dramatize things a bit in their retelling, e.g. if they did not know the exact words of a speech, they would write a speech which they believed was true in gist, but not in every word. So, how much of the words and events of the Gospels are meant to be precise literal reports, or just representative dramatizations? i.e. did Jesus say these exact words? Or maybe he said many similar things, and these words are a fair representation of those things he said, even if he maybe never said them exactly that way? Are the healings, for example, meant to be read as Jesus healed this exact person on this exact day, or that Jesus did a lot of healing, and this is meant to be a representative example, maybe a merger of recollections of several different events, standing in place of all those events, without exactly corresponding to any of them? If the authors were trying to do this, and they did it, it was not untruthful; whereas, if they thought they were recording literally accurate words and events, but weren't, then they were being untruthful. So, how truthful the Gospels are depends in part on what their authors intended, but since we can't know what they intended, to a significant degree we can't know how truthful it is. (And there is of course the separate issue - many claims, which while their truth is plausible, so is their falsehood, so lacking independent verification, we cannot guess at their truthfulness.) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 07:30, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Buddha

Did the Buddha really exist, or is he mythical?

I think, in both cases, the most likely assumption is, if a religious movement claims a founder, the founder probably existed. Yes, we have some John Frum style exceptions, but I think they are exceptions rather than the rule, and so we should judge them unlikely in the absence of specific evidence that they are occurring. And, the fact that a religious leader fit into some pre-existing cultural idea of what a religious leader or prophet or messiah or guru or whatnot should be like is no evidence against the reality of the leader, because most cultures have such pre-existing expectations, and most successful founder figures meet them to some degree.

Obviously, in the case of both Jesus and the Buddha, there are obviously miraculous elements to their stories, which it would be rational to assume did not happen unless we have very strong evidence that they did. And there are other elements, which while not miraculous, very much have the air of legend (e.g. Herod killing the infants, the three wise men, etc), or appear obviously dramatized. On the other hand, we also have entirely plausible elements, e.g. a religious leader travelling around teaching some somewhat new ideas, gathering followers/disciples, in Jesus' case being executed for causing trouble. All those non-miraculous non-legendary non-dramatized elements are likely, simply because there is nothing unique about them in history, they've happened time and time before and will happen time and time again. Of course, we lack evidence for the correctness of the specific details, but the broad outline seems likely, and also that many (but not all) of those specific details are true (albeit, we can't know which ones.) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 11:02, 14 July 2011 (UTC)