The Historical Christ vs. The Christ of Faith

[Jagella]

Question for Debate: Is the apologetic for the "historical Christ" a meaningful defense of Christian faith?

I've noticed that many Christians fall over each other as they grasp for what modern scholars might refer to as "the historical Jesus." They love to point to this historical person as some darned good evidence for Jesus. After all, all those scholars cannot be wrong if they don't doubt that "Jesus" was a real man, can they?

Now, rather than dispute those claims of a historical Christ, I've decided to take a different direction in this discussion. Let's assume the scholars are correct, and a Jesus--the scholar's version of Jesus--really lived as a real guy. How much does this "scholarship" advance Christian faith?

Unfortunately for Christians, I think the belief scholars maintain in a historical Jesus does Christianity more harm than good. The Christ many scholars have arrived at is not the Jesus of Christian hope. He had no magical powers, was not a divine or semi-divine being, and he had no power at all to grant anybody eternal life in a heavenly paradise. He was just a deluded "apocalyptic preacher" who got himself executed by the Romans.

So apologists cannot have it both ways. If they want to shout out that scholars have the historical evidence for Jesus, then they must take that Jesus as nothing more than a man. The historical Jesus is not the Jesus Christians want, and they misrepresent the evidence if they say he is.

[Jagella]

The supposedly historical Jesus character presented in the Christian-Jewish propaganda is presented as a particularly nasty, narcissistic character.

Yes. This "nasty Christ" was the Christ of choice throughout much of the history of Christendom. Christianity was involved in wars and political conflicts as it sought power. A "Christ of war" was just the ticket for these power plays.

That is why it is necessary for Christians to polish him up and present him as how they would LIKE him to be

As time goes by Christ and God need to be changed by Christians to appeal to a more civilized society.

As I pointed out in the OP, these popular images of Christ do not match what scholars are settling upon these days. Yes, most scholars insist on a historical Christ, but that Christ does not match what many Christians believe about Christ. I'd recommend that whenever an apologist falls back on the scholars' historical Jesus as evidence he existed, then point out that that Christ won't get anybody to heaven. The apologist will need to look elsewhere for his savior!

[Difflugia]

Which is why the decision on the part of some Internet atheists to embrace the marginal, discredited theory that Jesus didn't exist, while personally attacking scholars who conclude he did, was always a poor decision tactically.

Aside from the bit about "personally attacking scholars" (which is a poor decision in itself), I don't think that the existence of Jesus is quite the slam dunk that you seem to be presenting.

I've spent a lot of effort trying to put together a case one way or another and have yet to fully convince myself either way. Of course, that may simply be commentary on my own scholarship skills, but it's what I have to work with.

Using Bart Ehrman's case as an example, I think there are a few key points of his arguments that are less certain than he appears to believe or would have us believe. In a nutshell, I think he places (and other scholars place) too much stock in the notion that James, John, and Cephas of the Pauline epistles (Galatians in particular) shared the experiences attributed to them in the Gospels. If Mark (or the set of traditions behind it) is based on Pauline traditions, then the argument becomes a bit circular. Of course, if Mark or its source traditions are independent of Paul, then the reasons for accepting a historical Jesus are much more compelling, but Mark's dependence on Paul isn't a settled question.

The problem for me is in how to assign probabilities to conjecture. There are certainly practical reasons for limiting speculation and conjecture in scholarship, but I think the other side of the same coin is a kind of misplaced confidence that conclusions, though absolutely reasonable, are necessarily, or in some cases even probably true. As an example, I'm not alone in thinking that the Pauline epistles (and the rest of the New Testament, for that matter) contain some amount of interpolated material despite a lack of direct textual evidence. Part of Bart Ehrman's argument as presented in Did Jesus Exist? places weight on Romans 1:3 and its assertion that Jesus was a descendant of David "according to the flesh." I see reasons for thinking that Romans 1:3 is an interpolation, but the arguments turn on whether or not here "feels" to me like the way Paul elsewhere uses the phrase. It would be unreasonable (or at least unsportsmanlike, perhaps) to base a debate argument on that kind of conjecture, but on the other hand, I haven't seen any objective standards for determining which portions of a text are likely not interpolations.

I think a very good source of perspective is the essay "The Historicity of Jesus: How do we Know that Jesus Existed?" by Samuel Byrskog in the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus. While the author himself comes to a pretty dogmatic conclusion ("In that hermeneutical process of investigational dialogue, Jesus emerges as a person whose historicity and existence cannot be in doubt."), this follows twenty-five pages of reflection on limitations on the uses of the source material to determine historicity that at times sound downright pessimistic (writing of Pauline details, "It is however impossible to verify these characteristics as historical information. They might simply be part of Pauls own interpretation of Jesus death."). Again, I don't think it's unreasonable to accept historicity, but considering the paucity of information we have about the histories of the texts themselves, it takes surprisingly mild conjecture with surprisingly little impact on facts that we do actually know to arrive at a conclusion that a living Jesus was at least superfluous to the final state of the texts as we have them. The first time I read that essay, I was a bit taken aback at how adamant the author was about that particular conclusion given the rest of the essay.

Atheists lose precisely nothing in accepting that Jesus of Nazareth was an historical figure. But hand Christian apologists an easy win when they attempt to challenge it.

In a debate that is strictly about modern-day Christian dogma as challenged by what we have come to know through scholarship, I agree with you. I do, however, think that if the goal is to understand early Christianity and the origin of the New Testament independently of Christian dogma, then disregarding the possibility that Jesus wasn't real also disregards a number of interesting historical possibilities with a non-negligible shot at having happened.

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 12 by Difflugia]

Arguing for a historical Jesus is simply smoke and mirrors. We do not know if he existed, or at least I'm honest enough to admit that I don't know if he existed. I've read at least three books that make a case for his existence, and all three I found to be unconvincing. Real-Jesus apologists bluster a lot claiming how sure they are that Jesus is historical, but the evidence they offer is weak, and their reasoning is fallacious. For example, in Did Jesus Exist Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus must have existed because he had a brother! That's a text-book case of begging the question. Ehrman is way too smart to make such an idiotic fallacy, and I think he says it because he's desperate to make Jesus out to be real.

What's so ironic about all this fuss over the "real" Jesus is that if scholars like Ehrman are right, and their version of Jesus existed, then Christians are out of luck. The "historical" Jesus was just a deluded man with no power to save anybody from death. Yet many Christians cite this scholarship in their apologetics! They're shooting themselves in the foot without realizing it.

[historia]

I don't think that the existence of Jesus is quite the slam dunk that you seem to be presenting.

There are few questions about the ancient world that I would consider "slam dunks" -- if by that you mean we are completely certain in our answer -- and the historicity of Jesus would not be among them.

Relatively few ancient sources have survived to the present. And, while it is trivially easy to cast doubt on the extant sources, it is another matter altogether to mount a positive case for the hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist.

The attempts made so far -- both in the early 20th century and now again in recent years -- have simply not gained traction among scholars. I personally don't find them convincing either: given our background knowledge of Second Temple Judaism, the theory is rather implausible on its face, and the arguments put forward in its favor invariably rest on ad hoc suppositions, strained readings of the texts, and doubtful appeals to interpolations.

That is ultimately why in the academy it remains a marginal, discredited theory.

disregarding the possibility that Jesus wasn't real also disregards a number of interesting historical possibilities with a non-negligible shot at having happened.

I don't think I've ever disregarded the possibility that Jesus didn't exist. I've read the relevant literature, and simply found that the hypothesis raises more questions than it answers. Ultimately, it can't explain the evidence nearly as well as the hypothesis that Jesus did exist.

[historia]

in Did Jesus Exist Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus must have existed because he had a brother! That's a text-book case of begging the question.

Whatever we make of this argument from Ehrman, it is clearly not begging the question. People who have brothers definitely exist.

[Jagella]

in Did Jesus Exist Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus must have existed because he had a brother! That's a text-book case of begging the question.

Whatever we make of this argument from Ehrman, it is clearly not begging the question. People who have brothers definitely exist.

LOL! You just demonstrated that you don't know what it means to "beg the question." Begging the question means to assume what you're trying to prove. Ehrman is assuming that Jesus existed when he says that Jesus had a brother. That assumption cannot prove that Jesus existed. It's circular reasoning. You cannot demonstrate truth by basing it on an assumption.

Anyway, this kind of sloppy reasoning on the part of real-Jesus apologists is what keeps mythicism alive.

[Difflugia]

Relatively few ancient sources have survived to the present. And, while it is trivially easy to cast doubt on the extant sources, it is another matter altogether to mount a positive case for the hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist.

All of this is certainly true. The problem for me is that the positive case for a real Jesus is also weak. It essentially lies in the observation that, though most are, not all of the details in the Gospels are too fanciful to be plausible. If a real Jesus is treated as the null hypothesis, then there's not enough to disprove it. There's nothing inherently unreasonable about that, particularly since much scholarship is already built on that and it would certainly a hard sell to convince scholars to reverse the fundament of their research without positively demonstrating that it's wrong. I don't, however, think anyone has ever convincingly demonstrated that it was right.

On the days that I'm a mythicist, my main foundations are the convictions that Paul was real, wrote some of the epistles (at least Romans, Galatians, and 1 Corinthians; most probably several others), and was attempting to write a straight, nonfictional narration of both events and his christology. The few details of Paul's epistles that have parallels to the Gospels seem to contradict the Gospels. Rather than a companion of the once-living Jesus, Peter is portrayed as a similar kind of itinerant preacher (and in the same breath) as Paul and Apollos. He was torn between Paul's "gospel" and that of John and James until the "men from James" convinced him. There's no specific mention that John and James knew the real Jesus, but even if they did, Peter is much more independent of John and James than he is portrayed in the Gospels and that I would expect if he had spent three years in their company with Jesus.

I've mentioned before that I think Mark was written as allegorical fiction. I'm not going to bother expanding on that right now, though I will later if you want to examine it. Whether fiction or not, though, I accept that Mark drew on some ideas about Jesus from somewhere, so the question for me is where they originated. In short, there is a well-reasoned position (I'll leave it to you to decide if you find it compelling) that the details in Mark's gospel are almost entirely based on Paul's epistles. While I have some problems with this (why I perceive Mark's christology to be so different from Paul's, for example), it would explain why the other Gospel writers felt so free to alter important details of the life of Jesus as presented by Mark. If this view is accurate (or reasonably so), then we're in the position of effectively knowing nothing of the christology of the Jerusalem church. Matthew's Gospel is perhaps even more allegorical than Mark's, with such narratives as the slaughter of the innocents and raising of the saints in Jerusalem appearing to me to be almost certainly intended to be read that way. Luke's Gospel is presented as history, but it's contribution seems to be to tone down the allegorical narratives to be plausibly historical without adding new evidence that they are actually historical.

Even if we set aside an entirely Pauline source for Mark, I still have a hard time picking anything out of Mark that is clearly (or even probably) not allegorical. I find the same problem picking a real Jesus out of Mark that I do finding a real Moses, David, or Krishna. There are particular details that for one reason or another add an authentic feel to the stories, but never quite enough to fully overcome the obvious mythic elements. There's also the very real possibility that there was a real Jesus behind the Jerusalem church, but all details of that Jesus are lost to history. That's technically different than mythicism, I suppose, but not in a way that's meaningful to me.

The attempts made so far -- both in the early 20th century and now again in recent years -- have simply not gained traction among scholars.

Before the 1930s or so, even academic work still presupposed the divinity of Jesus and presented textual harmonizations as scholarship. I do recognize that many scholars certainly have data that I don't that inform their conclusions and I've spent a great deal of time and effort trying to identify those. It's been my observation, however, that while the evidence is too thin to convince scholars to overturn the idea of a real Jesus, that position was set by tradition rather than evidence in the first place. I'm not going to start prattling on about "presuppositions" or some such and don't think that the traditional position lacks good arguments, but I do think that what I see as fictional Gospels and the many possible interpretations of Paul's gospel don't actually need a real Jesus to reasonably explain them.

I personally don't find them convincing either: given our background knowledge of Second Temple Judaism, the theory is rather implausible on its face...

What specifically about Second Temple Judaism do you think makes a historical Jesus more likely?

Incidentally, on the days that I'm not a mythicist, I find Jesus's relationship with John the Baptist to be too full of weird details to simply be coincidence. The defection of John's disciples to Jesus after John's execution has the ring of truth to it. The bulk of Jesus's disciples were his flesh-and-blood brothers, though, and the post-crucifixion Jerusalem church was led by Jesus's brother, James. A number of the listed disciples were later additions, while James the Less and James the Just were an expansion of the original James into two independent characters.

[Goose]

On the days that I'm a mythicist, my main foundations are the convictions that Paul was real, wrote some of the epistles (at least Romans, Galatians, and 1 Corinthians; most probably several others), and was attempting to write a straight, nonfictional narration of both events and his christology.

I dont know if this is one of your mythicist days or not but assuming it is, walk me through your methodology here.

Outline the historical methodology you are employing here that allows you hold the conviction that Paul was real.

[Mithrae]

Unfortunately for Christians, I think the belief scholars maintain in a historical Jesus does Christianity more harm than good. The Christ many scholars have arrived at is not the Jesus of Christian hope. He had no magical powers, was not a divine or semi-divine being, and he had no power at all to grant anybody eternal life in a heavenly paradise. He was just a deluded "apocalyptic preacher" who got himself executed by the Romans.

So apologists cannot have it both ways. If they want to shout out that scholars have the historical evidence for Jesus, then they must take that Jesus as nothing more than a man. The historical Jesus is not the Jesus Christians want, and they misrepresent the evidence if they say he is.

As I've suggested in your other thread, this seems to misunderstand (or misrepresent) the situation: There is a positive 'consensus' of expert opinion that Jesus exist; that is something which we can confidently conclude. Similarly (to a marginally lesser extent) we can confidently conclude that he was crucified, and that he had a brother named James. There are also other things which we can't confidently conclude; we can't have much confidence how many (if any) 'apostles' Jesus appointed, or whether he was anointed by a sinful woman, or what happened to his body after he died. There is no positive consensus of expert opinion that his body was stolen by zealous followers, for example. To be fair there are negative assumptions - methodological criteria for historical scholarship - that 'supernatural' stuff never occurred, but even that most likely doesn't enjoy the same level of expert consensus as Jesus' existence or crucifixion.

You're trying to equivocate between the things of which we can be relatively confident, for which some measure of expert consensus exists, and the things we can't - asserting that if the former conclusions are used as a premise for argument, the latter points of inference or speculation must be accepted wholesale also.

[Difflugia]

Outline the historical methodology you are employing here that allows you hold the conviction that Paul was real.

In retrospect, my wording was misleading. I should have said that I'm treating as axiomatic that Paul existed and wrote the three specific epistles I mentioned.

If I'm going to conclude that Paul existed, there's not much to go on. We have no evidence of Paul's existence outside of the New Testament, only a fraction of the Pauline epistles appear to have been written by the same person, and his portrayal in Acts is such that it very reasonably could be a novelization of data gleaned from the extant epistles. Paul's existence is almost tautological; he is the guy that wrote the Pauline epistles. The epistles as we have them, though, are the product of the conflict with Marcionite Christianity in which both sides claimed that the other corrupted the originals. Since we have almost no evidence that predates this conflict, we generally assume that what we have closely matches its original state. Add that to the claim by several scholars that they've detected a "patchwork" pattern to even the epistles commonly accepted as genuine, we may actually be in the position where a real Paul existed, but all of his actual writings are lost.

I accept Paul's existence because I can't think of a good reason for someone to have falsely attributed letters to someone that didn't exist.

I accept that he wrote at least some of the epistles because there's a consistent style to them that is coupled with a theology that seems to predate certain aspects of orthodoxy that, again, I can't think of a good reason for someone to manufacture at a later date.

Consider, then, that my main arguments for Paul's existence boil down to personal incredulity. I am very interested in any argument you might have with a better foundation than that.