Is the story of the crucifixion actual history?

[Jagella]

Many people insist that Jesus was a historical person. They are sometimes referred to as "historicists." Historicists, including Bart Ehrman, an atheist, argue that Jesus was probably historical because the early Christians would not have made up an embarrassing story like the crucifixion. A crucified messiah is just too hard for people to believe!

It's not hard to counter this argument. It assumes that the early Christians were embarrassed by their savior being crucified. Do we know this assumption to be true? Yes, some of us today might see such an event as embarrassing, but we project our own feelings onto first-century Jews living in a culture much different from our own. We are remiss to assume that an unorthodox sect of Jews would feel like we do today.

Another difficulty for the embarrassment theory is that the Romans crucified many Jews and were hated for it. The early Christians may have made up the crucifixion story to create sympathy for Jesus among the Jews and even gentiles who may have lost loved ones to the horror of crucifixion. Christians could claim then as they do today that "Jesus died for you" as they might say to a potential convert. Laying guilt trips on people can be a powerful motivation to unbelievers to join a religious group.

Yet another rationale for fabricating the crucifixion story is that it sets up the resurrection of Jesus. Without a crucified Christ his followers could not have claimed Jesus' rose from the dead, perhaps the greatest miracle of the New Testament.

Finally, if we are smart enough to assume that a presumably embarrassing story like the resurrection is unlikely to be made up and hence is likely to be true, then perhaps the early Christians thought the same way. They may have fabricated the crucifixion to lead unbelievers to conclude that Jesus was real because nobody would make up an embarrassing story! If so, then their trick is having its intended effect on modern historicists.

In any event, it is not difficult to come up with reasons for fabricating the crucifixion story. There are probably many you can think of. I should point out that the crucifixion story hasn't hurt Christianity much; Catholic churches proudly display paintings of the crucified Christ and place crucifixes in all their churches. Few if any will leave the church over this belief.

So does this "criterion of embarrassment" lend authenticity to the story of Jesus making him more likely to be historical?

[alwayson]

Or put differently, in order for Jesus to not exist, every single one of those must be false.

Yeah they are false.

Paul says the Last Supper is a dream he had.

The dream's themes are straight out of the Old Testament and similar to the Ascension of Isaiah.

[tfvespasianus]

And why would he lie?

For purposes of discussion, Josephus would not necessarily have to lie, rather his work could suffer from interpolation. As to why someone would interpolate something into Josephus, the reasons are similar to why someone would write a pseudonymous text or interpolate or redact a given religious work.

In short, Josephus lying is off the table, but how strong are the arguments that Christians did not place interpolations into texts?

Take care,
TFV

[alwayson]

the demonstrable embarrassment of early Christians over Jesus' baptism

You don't understand the timeline of Christianity.

The Mark baptism story was created because early Christians were already baptizing people.

Clement is unaware of the Mark baptism story.

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 50 by Mithrae]

The 90-95% figure I offered is not 'certainty' by any stretch of the imagination

True. Only if you pulled 100% out of your hat, would you then have certainty.

But it's useful to have a number to work with.

Pick a number.

The thing is, it would confirm Jesus' existence if
- Paul wrote truly of his meeting James; and James spoke truly that he was Jesus' brother (backed up by Cephas, John etc.)
OR if
- Josephus and/or his sources wrote accurately of James' death; and common knowledge/the Jerusalem church spoke truly that he was Jesus' brother
OR if
- Paul's belief in a real human Jesus (there's no question of deceit as it was integral to his theology) was confirmed by others he knew in Jerusalem, or he'd even seen Jesus himself when he was alive
OR if...

Allow me to demonstrate how your probability analysis is misleading. Say we wish to assess the probability that Bigfoot exists. We can find a lot of people who will say or write something that if true, would confirm Bigfoot's existence. If we did so, then we can make probable Bigfoot's existence like this:

Witness A really saw Bigfoot!
OR if
Witness B really saw Bigfoot!
OR if
Witness C really saw Bigfoot!
OR if...

Any one of these distinct lines of evidence would confirm Bigfoot's' existence. Or put differently, in order for Bigfoot to not exist, every single one of those must be false.

Uh--not really! There's the old saying: "There are lies--there are damned lies--and then there's statistics." Your analysis is not valid because you can arbitrarily find enough evidence to claim anything is probable even if that evidence is of low quality. Just like it all eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot could easily be lies or mistakes, the same could be the case for Jesus.

And why would he lie?

One possibility is that Josephus wanted something sensational to say to make a name for himself. That said, I don't think Josephus lied about Jesus. It looks to me that the Testimonium Flavianum is an interpolation. If Josephus did write the Testimonium Flavianum, then we still don't know if what he said is based on sound information.

And then let's go with some even wilder speculation, and pretend that by the time we get down to #7 or 8 on my list, there's an 80% chance that each particular line of evidence is false. Even in that far-fetched scenario, the likelihood of all of those lines of evidence being false would still be only about 3% (0.6^7). Perhaps my 90-95% confidence in Jesus' existence was too low

You can get any probability out that you wish. All you need to do is input the numbers favorable to the result you desire and presto! You have your historical Jesus. In other words:

GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out

[Mithrae]

And why would he lie?

For purposes of discussion, Josephus would not necessarily have to lie, rather his work could suffer from interpolation. As to why someone would interpolate something into Josephus, the reasons are similar to why someone would write a pseudonymous text or interpolate or redact a given religious work.

In short, Josephus lying is off the table, but how strong are the arguments that Christians did not place interpolations into texts?

Take care,
TFV

We have a clear example of a Christian interpolation into Josephus; the Testimonium Flavianum. His comments on James' death have none of the characteristics of the TF. Not only is there zero evidence that the passage is inauthentic, but there are very compelling reasons why it must be genuine:
> Firstly, one of the reasons why we know that the TF is fake is because Origen had no knowledge of it - meaning that it had to be introduced sometime after his day - while Origen did quote the James passage. The easy assumption that "Josephus was tampered with" therefore doesn't hold, because whoever introduced the TF cannot have introduced the James passage. Earlier interpolations, when Christians (and therefore Christian scribes) were less numerous become increasingly improbable.

> Secondly and perhaps more importantly, there doesn't seem to be any coherent 'reconstruction' of the passage if it did not refer to James the Just. The most common view I've seen is that it 'originally' referred to the brother of Jesus ben Damneus - who became the next high priest - but this assumption fails because if priests were killing other priests Josephus most certainly would have explained what brought that about; or at least, everything in his style suggests that he would have. The lack of elaboration about this James fellow only makes sense if Josephus a) expected that his readers needed little introduction of him (and by the 90s CE, many in Rome would be aware of that 'Christ' sect) and/or b) was for some other reason reluctant to elaborate further (which also fits with the Christian James).

Interpolation is not impossible of course, but without a shred of evidence and some pretty compelling reasons against it, I would guess that it's perhaps a 1 or 2% possibility

[Mithrae]

The thing is, it would confirm Jesus' existence if
- Paul wrote truly of his meeting James; and James spoke truly that he was Jesus' brother (backed up by Cephas, John etc.)
OR if
- Josephus and/or his sources wrote accurately of James' death; and common knowledge/the Jerusalem church spoke truly that he was Jesus' brother
OR if
- Paul's belief in a real human Jesus (there's no question of deceit as it was integral to his theology) was confirmed by others he knew in Jerusalem, or he'd even seen Jesus himself when he was alive
OR if...

Allow me to demonstrate how your probability analysis is misleading. Say we wish to assess the probability that Bigfoot exists. We can find a lot of people who will say or write something that if true, would confirm Bigfoot's existence. If we did so, then we can make probable Bigfoot's existence like this:

Witness A really saw Bigfoot!
OR if
Witness B really saw Bigfoot!
OR if
Witness C really saw Bigfoot!
OR if...

Any one of these distinct lines of evidence would confirm Bigfoot's' existence. Or put differently, in order for Bigfoot to not exist, every single one of those must be false.

Uh--not really! There's the old saying: "There are lies--there are damned lies--and then there's statistics." Your analysis is not valid because you can arbitrarily find enough evidence to claim anything is probable even if that evidence is of low quality. Just like it all eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot could easily be lies or mistakes, the same could be the case for Jesus.

Mistaken identity is a very real and very high probability in the case of most if not all Bigfoot 'sightings' that I've heard of. It is not a high probability when James told Paul (confirmed by Cephas, John and so on) that he was the brother of that Jesus dude. What you are doing is blindly assuming an equivalency between evidence A and evidence B without providing even the slightest reason to suppose that they actually are equivalent! And you think I'm the one using invalid reasoning?

What I have provided is quite literally the only valid reasoning to use in the case of any empirical knowledge beyond our own personal experience, at least as far as I have discovered: Asking how many things must be false in order for the 'knowledge' to be false, and how probable it is for that to be the case. I've never been to Kansas, and as far as I know I've never personally known anyone who has either; but I've seen enough references to it as a real place that I am confident they can't all be lying or mistaken. How else would I know that it's real? As I commented in another thread a few weeks ago:

• I don't trust scientific conclusions because I have personally replicated all experimental results, and certainly not from a belief that scientists are immune from error or especially trustworthy. Do you?
  
  I trust scientific conclusions because there are thousands of scientists replicating and testing and refining and confirming each others' work. Any single scientist may well be subject to misperception, experimental design flaws, bias or even outright deceit in pursuit of funding. There is a chance that's the case, wouldn't you agree? But the probability that two scientists are wrong or deceptive is smaller than the probability that one is, and the probability that thousands of scientists are all misleading or wildly mistaken beyond known uncertainties becomes exceptionally small. [As a point of interest, that is exactly how I explain things to climate change contrarians on my other forum, when they try to equate scientific consensus with 'truth by popular vote.']
  
  Precisely the same reasoning applies in the case of media reports, or anything else for that matter:
  - Observation is the primary means by which we know about reality
  - Anything I can't personally observe, I must rely on others' observations
  - Any individual's reported observation has some probability of being false
  - Many people's observations collectively have a lower probability of being false
  
  If you have some other method of gaining reliable information beyond your personal experience I'd be delighted to hear of it. But otherwise, that is also precisely the same reasoning I use in the case of unusual or paranormal reports. Anything else would be special pleading on philosophical grounds.

[alwayson]

It is not a high probability when James told Paul (confirmed by Cephas, John and so on) that he was the brother of that Jesus dude.

Quote the texts.

Because I have no idea what you are talking about.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 57 by alwayson]

Galatians 1:18-19 and 2:1-10.

[alwayson]

[Replying to post 57 by alwayson]

Galatians 1:18-19 and 2:1-10.

Multiple experts already debunked this:
http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11516


Even if you disagree with the debunking, do you have anything else regarding James?

[tfvespasianus]

> Firstly, one of the reasons why we know that the TF is fake is because Origen had no knowledge of it - meaning that it had to be introduced sometime after his day - while Origen did quote the James passage.

Origens citation is different than extant MSS of Josephus. In fact, if properly reported it would seem there was another case of interpolation. So, what we have rests on a stylistic argument which posits that Josephus would not have given the judicial murder of one man such short shrift, correct? The James material itself is fairly terse.

Take care,
TFV