A Major Conflict in Jesus Historicity

[Jagella]

Some of you may be familiar with the argument from silence advanced by many mythicists in which it is claimed that the historians of the early first century never mentioned Jesus. If he really lived, then how could they have missed him? One person in particular who might be expected to have mentioned Jesus is Philo of Alexandria. Richard Carrier writes:

Philo made pilgrimages to Jerusalem and knew about Palestinian affairs and wrote about the Herods and Pontius Pilate. And Christians must have begun evangelizing the Jewish community in Alexandria almost immediately: it was the single largest population center, with a large and diverse Jewish Community, almost directly adjacent to Judea, along a well-established trade route well traveled by Jewish pilgrims. So it's not as if Philo would not have heard of their claims even if he had never left Egypt; and yet we know he did, having traveled to Judea and Rome. Moreover, Philo just happens to be one Jew of the period whose work Christians bothered to preserve. He would not have been alone. (1)

To counter this argument, historicists have come up with an ad hoc explanation: Jesus was a small-time preacher who would not have been noticed by historians like Philo. Although this argument might seem superficially convincing, it argues against another historicist claim: Jesus inspired the New Testament writers to make a god out of him decades after he died.

So will the real Jesus please stand up? Was Jesus so small-time that nobody bothered to write about him while he yet lived, or was he such a powerful, big-time figure that many years after his death he was deified?

(1) Carrier, Richard, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014, Page 294

[Danmark]

[Replying to post 41 by rikuoamero]

Quote:
I doubt he even heard about it. It is near 80 miles from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem.

Ah...so communication is a problem then? So what does this point, raised by yourself, do to Christian claims of Jesus being well known far and wide? Of people seeking his counsel and healing?

Indeed, what does this distance do to the problem of the 500 witnesses talked about by Paul in Corinthians, with the standard Christian apologetic being something along the lines of "If Paul was just making it up, someone could or would have simply checked"?

What an odd attempt...

We were talking about official Roman knowledge and interest. Are you assuming that because the public heard and were interested, the government heard and were interested? How strange of an historical assessment.

Your professed incredulity suggests a lack of understanding of government. Governments are paranoid. They are in constant fear of revolt, particularly when occupying a foreign country. Of COURSE the Roman government was interested in groups like the one that formed around Jesus. Tho' I find it ridiculous to accept the account of the unnamed 500, or that absurd number, I have no reason to doubt that even a group of 12 dedicated zealots would be sufficient to make those in power nervous, both the Romans and their Jewish lackeys.

At any rate, there is every reason to think "because the public heard and were interested, the government heard and was interested." That is how governments work. They need to be able to spot small threats before they become armies.

[Tiberius47]

[Replying to post 26 by Tiberius47]

Thousands of people come to me.

At least it says so in the line above.

Is it true, yes or no?

If all I have to go on is your claim, I would doubt it.

If I heard from some of those thousands of people that they went to you, and each told me there were thousands there, then I'd be more inclined to believe it.

[Tiberius47]

[Replying to post 26 by Tiberius47]

Matthew 14:13-21.

14:14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.
14:15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.
14:16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.
14:17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.
14:18 He said, Bring them hither to me.
14:19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
14:20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.
14:21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

Matthew 15:30

15:30 And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them:

Yeah, this sure sounds like a small time preacher to me...

Anyone who thinks 5,000 men gathered in a Palestinian wilderness in the 1st c. is impressive lacks historical perspective. He is seeing the ancient world through the lens of the modern, with all its immediate information. If there were five thousand men gathered in some remote place only 70 miles from me, and only word of mouth could relay this news to me, it is by no means implausible I should never hear about it; the surprise would be if I did hear about it.

If the place was really remote, why would there be 5000 people there? Obviously they must have heard of Jesus and heard that he was going to be in such a place, and that doesn't sound "small time" to me.

Besides, after the event, those five thousand people are going to head home. If you are in your home, then it's probably in a village, and several of these travellers may pass through and talk. Even if they don't, they have to pass through somewhere, and the whole trade thing means you'll hear rumours at least sooner or later. Even if they go through the nearest large city, you'll probably go there at some point to trade.

[Tiberius47]

[Replying to post 26 by Tiberius47]

To help put things in perspective, Here is a quote from Josephus

There was an Egyptian false prophet that did the Jews more mischief than the former; for he was a cheat, and pretended to be a prophet also, and got together thirty thousand men that were deluded by him; these he led round about from the wilderness to the mount which was called the Mount of Olives. He was ready to break into Jerusalem by force from that place; and if he could but once conquer the Roman garrison and the people, he intended to rule them by the assistance of those guards of his that were to break into the city with him.note

That is thirty thousand men gathered. Is this event mentioned anywhere else (apart from Acts)?

No idea. Is it?

[Tiberius47]

[Replying to post 31 by rikuoamero]

Josephus stated that "there are two hundred and forty cities and villages in Galilee" and elsewhere that "the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants." That implied estimate of over 3 million inhabitants may be somewhat exaggerated, but as I mentioned earlier estimates of Judea's population range up to 2 million and though smaller Galilee was undoubtedly more fertile. Perhaps instead the average town size was a mere five thousand or so?

Assuming an area ten times the Sea of Galilee's 166km^2, those 240 cities and villages would average one per 7km^2 (presumably less in the hilly regions and more in the plains). That would suggest that it would not be unreasonable to suppose that within a 4km radius of a given location - one or two hour's walk - there could easily have been six to eight villages with upwards of 30,000 people between them.

In other words, even the biggest crowds described in the gospels could plausibly have gathered simply from a quarter of the folk from some local villages going for an afternoon stroll.

I don't think there's any particular reason to suppose that the Roman authorities would be specifically informed every time that happened.



Edit: It's also worth noting that since the canonical gospels were all written in Greek and mostly for gentile audiences, to greater or lesser extents they all want to avoid 'blaming' the Romans for Jesus' death. The earliest gospel Mark does not say anything one way or the other about whether Pilate was ignorant about Jesus: But in those later gospel/s which do suggest that, assuming it to be a legitimate historical detail is questionable enough to begin with, let alone then trying to build an argument from silence/ignorance on that basis!

Yes, a quarter of an entire village went for a stroll at the exact same time, and they all went to the exact same place.

And they never mentioned anything about it later on.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 41 by rikuoamero]

Quote:
I doubt he even heard about it. It is near 80 miles from the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem.

Ah...so communication is a problem then? So what does this point, raised by yourself, do to Christian claims of Jesus being well known far and wide? Of people seeking his counsel and healing?

Indeed, what does this distance do to the problem of the 500 witnesses talked about by Paul in Corinthians, with the standard Christian apologetic being something along the lines of "If Paul was just making it up, someone could or would have simply checked"?

What an odd attempt...

We were talking about official Roman knowledge and interest. Are you assuming that because the public heard and were interested, the government heard and were interested? How strange of an historical assessment.

Your professed incredulity suggests a lack of understanding of government. Governments are paranoid. They are in constant fear of revolt, particularly when occupying a foreign country. Of COURSE the Roman government was interested in groups like the one that formed around Jesus. Tho' I find it ridiculous to accept the account of the unnamed 500, or that absurd number, I have no reason to doubt that even a group of 12 dedicated zealots would be sufficient to make those in power nervous, both the Romans and their Jewish lackeys.

At any rate, there is every reason to think "because the public heard and were interested, the government heard and was interested." That is how governments work. They need to be able to spot small threats before they become armies.

"Governments"? Good grief. There is no such thing as "Governments". There is this government, and that government, of this time, and that. That you speak of "Government" in the abstract suggests your lack of historical imagination (youre a lawyer, right?). We are talking about the 1st c. Palestinian government; or rather, governments...as there were jurisdictions.

Jesus was heard of once by the government , and so he retired into regions where he would not be heard of; traveling by boat, by foot; east, west; even north; but never far south. This is not the behavior of a resurrectionist: constantly moving, dispersing large crowds; never in militant formation; never seeking (as the Sicarri did) weapon strongholds; never setting towards a major city in a large group.

No, no Roman soldier or governor would have been interested in his movements had they even heard of them. As most scholars note, including non-Christian ones, he purposefully avoided attention.

No, the entire argument of this thread lacks historical imagination and a close reading of the data.

[Tiberius47]

Some of you may be familiar with the argument from silence advanced by many mythicists in which it is claimed that the historians of the early first century never mentioned Jesus. If he really lived, then how could they have missed him? ...

According to the story, people wanted to kill Jesus and didn’t want that he becomes more influential. If that is true, it is obvious that they would have made everything to destroy all mentions about Jesus. In that story, it would be illogical to find easily any information about Jesus, from that era.

But it's not very plausible. Bill Clinton couldn't keep the Lewinsky thing secret, and he had far more resources than anyone living back in the days of Jesus. And the Lewinsky thing was just one person. If they couldn't keep one person quiet, how could you expect anyone living 2000 odd years ago to keep 5000 people quiet?

[liamconnor]

Some of you may be familiar with the argument from silence advanced by many mythicists in which it is claimed that the historians of the early first century never mentioned Jesus. If he really lived, then how could they have missed him? ...

According to the story, people wanted to kill Jesus and didn’t want that he becomes more influential. If that is true, it is obvious that they would have made everything to destroy all mentions about Jesus. In that story, it would be illogical to find easily any information about Jesus, from that era.

But it's not very plausible. Bill Clinton couldn't keep the Lewinsky thing secret, and he had far more resources than anyone living back in the days of Jesus. And the Lewinsky thing was just one person. If they couldn't keep one person quiet, how could you expect anyone living 2000 odd years ago to keep 5000 people quiet?

I have not followed this inner thread. But the argument on technology works both ways: 5,000 people did not have the same means of making themselves known. If you think that 5,000 people walked arm in arm throughout the region signing songs, you have both misread the text and lack historical imagination.

The crowds of Jesus dispersed shortly after their visit with him. They did not go off on a carol together. The congregation in the wilderness was short lived. Even if the government heard about it (which is unlikely) by the time they heard, it was days, if not weeks, since disbanded. No Roman official would have said, "Well, that was four days past, find all of them, no matter what it takes". That is ridiculous.

Jesus was never on "F.B.I's" most wanted list. He appeared once as a blip on the radar screen of Herod Antipas, and then vanished from the government. And no wonder! He never stayed in one place; he never kept crowds for long; he discouraged news about him; he never visited large cities; he traveled several times on water (try tracking that in the 1st c.!).

Here is the irony: one of his chief goals was to avoid official notice; 2,000 years later we doubt his existence, because he succeeded in doing so!

[For_The_Kingdom]

Some of you may be familiar with the argument from silence advanced by many mythicists in which it is claimed that the historians of the early first century never mentioned Jesus. If he really lived, then how could they have missed him? One person in particular who might be expected to have mentioned Jesus is Philo of Alexandria. Richard Carrier writes:

Philo made pilgrimages to Jerusalem and knew about Palestinian affairs and wrote about the Herods and Pontius Pilate. And Christians must have begun evangelizing the Jewish community in Alexandria almost immediately: it was the single largest population center, with a large and diverse Jewish Community, almost directly adjacent to Judea, along a well-established trade route well traveled by Jewish pilgrims. So it's not as if Philo would not have heard of their claims even if he had never left Egypt; and yet we know he did, having traveled to Judea and Rome. Moreover, Philo just happens to be one Jew of the period whose work Christians bothered to preserve. He would not have been alone. (1)

To counter this argument, historicists have come up with an ad hoc explanation: Jesus was a small-time preacher who would not have been noticed by historians like Philo. Although this argument might seem superficially convincing, it argues against another historicist claim: Jesus inspired the New Testament writers to make a god out of him decades after he died.

So will the real Jesus please stand up? Was Jesus so small-time that nobody bothered to write about him while he yet lived, or was he such a powerful, big-time figure that many years after his death he was deified?

(1) Carrier, Richard, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, Sheffield, Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014, Page 294

Wow. For a guy that was "never mentioned by Historians in the First Century", Jesus sure as hell was popular. That is equivalent to being a music artist and your album sales are multi-platinum.. despite no radio play, no music videos, and no world tours.

In other words, Jesus Christ did not need Philo or anyone else to solidify who he was and his impact on the world, which is even to this day far more beyond anything that Philo or Carrier can/will ever accomplish.

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 59 by For_The_Kingdom]

Wow. For a guy that was "never mentioned by Historians in the First Century", Jesus sure as hell was popular. That is equivalent to being a music artist and your album sales are multi-platinum.. despite no radio play, no music videos, and no world tours.

Real-Jesus apologists really need to employ a lot of epistemological contortions to save their real Jesus. Mythicism generally is much more direct and relies on fewer assumptions.