It’s getting hilarious now.
N.T. Wright himself, that total hack with no history degrees everyone praises as a great historian (and by “everyone” I mean Christian fundamentalists), has now declared: “Jesus is as well established as a figure of history as is, say, the emperor Caligula, his near-contemporary.” Holy Lords of Kobol.
In a single sentence, Wright proves he is massively incompetent. In the very same comment in which he declares me, with an actual ivy league Ph.D. in ancient history, and Robert Price, with two Ph.D.’s, in Theology and New Testament Studies, to be “not well qualified” to evaluate the historicity of Jesus. So says the guy with no advanced degrees in history or NT studies…apart from a Doctorate of Divinity (which means learning how to be a pastor), his undergraduate work is in Theology and his only Ph.D. is in the UK equivalent of Liberal Arts. (I have demonstrated Wright’s incompetence before, e.g. in chapters 3 and 11 of Not the Impossible Faith; and for more telltale signs, see two separate notes in my Empty Tomb FAQ. As a historian, IMO, he sucks.)
So the guy who is unqualified, declares qualified historians unqualified, and then asserts with total confidence the wildly ridiculous claim that we have as much evidence for Jesus as we have for Caligula. As evidence of how much more qualified he is.
Yep. That’s right. That happened.
Time for some serious schooling people.
Here we go…
The Evidence for Caligula
Eighty years after Caligula’s death in 41 A.D., Suetonius wrote a Life of Caligula. In it, he uses, cites, and quotes eyewitness and contemporary documentation. He shows he was reading the correspondence and memoirs of Caligula’s own family, the books and poems of eyewitnesses who knew him, contemporary inscriptions and government documents. He not only tells us about them, and quotes or cites them, but even discusses their relative reliability. I fully describe this fact and its significance in Not the Impossible Faith (pp. 182-84). It is also discussed by classicist Matthew Ferguson. We have nothing whatsoever like this for Jesus.
I could drop the mic right now. But let’s just grind this Caligulan horse right into the ground, shall we?
All of the following can be confirmed in peer reviewed monographs about Caligula. I’ll cite popular sources simply because you can access them. But trust me, the same data is well confirmed in the real deal, including: Aloys Winterling, Caligula: A Biography (University of California Press, 2015); Sam Wilkinson, Caligula (Routledge, 2003); and Anthony Barrett, Caligula: The Corruption of Power (Yale University Press, 1990).
- We have busts and statues of Caligula carved from life. Indeed, Wikipedia correctly says “Based on scientific reconstructions of his official painted busts, Caligula had brown hair, brown eyes, and fair skin” (source: The Smithsonian). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have a huge number of coins minted by and naming and depicting Caligula as the extant emperor (numerous examples are also depicted and discussed at Wikipedia; here’s another; and another). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have a huge number of papyri, actually written during Caligula’s life, mentioning him as the reigning emperor (e.g. as Gaius Caesar Germanicus Augustus). Because that was how documents were dated (example; example; example). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have a huge number of contemporary inscriptions, erected by Caligula himself and eyewitnesses to his reign. Examples. Examples. Examples. Examples. Examples. Examples. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have excavated several of Caligula’s most peculiar ships. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have actual wine barrels from Caligula’s private vineyard, with his name on them. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We have his mother’s tombstone, declaring him her child. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- Pliny the Elder, an eyewitness to Caligula, supplies us a great deal of information directly from his own observations, and from government records and other eyewitness and contemporary sources. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- Other eyewitnesses and contemporaries who report on Caligula include Philo of Alexandria and Seneca, who both met with him personally, and record several things about him (e.g. Philo’s Flaccus and On [My] Embassy to Gaius [Caligula]; Seneca’s On Consolation to My Mother Helvia and On Rage and On the Constancy of the Wise).
- We have extensive accounts of Caligula in Josephus (a historian born when Caligula reigned, discussing Caligula within only 35 years of his death, and more extensively only 52 years after his death), an account that is exactly in Josephan style and rich with realistic detail (Antiquities of the Jews 18-19, written c. 93 A.D.; and Jewish War 2.184-203, written c. 76 A.D.). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No. Not even the alleged Josephan mentions of Jesus qualify on any relevant point.
- We know eyewitnesses and contemporaries of Caligula wrote works about him that are lost but that are discussed and used by later writers. These include Seneca’s own friend Fabius Rusticus; Cluvius Rufus, a senator actually involved in the assassination of Caligula (very likely these were the sources employed by Josephus, who even mentions and quotes Cluvius); the memoirs of Claudius (Caligula’s successor); the published correspondence of Augustus; and various poets (e.g. Gaetulicus). Even Caligula’s sister, Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger, wrote up her own memoirs that were cited and used as a source for Caligula by several later historians. Do we have anything like any of this for Jesus? No.
- We have several later critical historians writing about Caligula who name, cite and quote eyewitness, documentary, and contemporary sources for Caligula: e.g. besides Suetonius (whose example of this I already discussed), also Tacitus, Life of Agricola 10 (written c. 98 A.D.), and Annals 13.20 (written c. 116 A.D.), and even Dio Cassius (not even two hundred years after the fact). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We even have government documents that do this: for example, we have unearthed a bronze tablet copy (dating c. 168 A.D.) of a letter personally written by Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Journal of Roman Studies 1973.63) that mentions him consulting the extant register of those granted citizenship by Caligula (in a list of such registers from other emperors as well). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- Oh…and we have Caligula him-fracking-self! An inscription recording his own letter, in his own words, to the Achaean League, dated 19 August 37 A.D. (Inscriptiones Graecae 7.2711, ll. 21-43). Do we have anything like that for Jesus? No.
- We also have declarations of alliance and celebration from many localities at the accession to power of Caligula. For example, the Oath declared by the Aritensians, inscribed on stone shortly after 11 May 37 A.D., elaborately asserting they shall ally with Caligula and declare his enemies their enemies; similarly the Cyzicans as well; and the Oath and Decree of Celebration of the Assians of the same year, which says they are sending an embassy “to seek an audience with and congratulate him, and beg him to remember” their city “as he personally promised when together with his father Germanicus he first set foot in our city’s province” (see Lewis & Reinhold, Vol. 2, § 3 and 9). So here we have the eyewitness, original autograph testimony, of an entire city of people. Caligula was with his father at the age of six when he visited their region (so they are trucking rather hard on the utterance of a toddler). But you don’t say this of, or send embassies to, a guy who doesn’t exist. Do we have anything like that for Jesus? Hell to the no.
Okay.
Let’s Stop This Nonsense. Please? Can We?
All these jokers want to come up with some person we are sure existed, that my standards would unbelievably force us to doubt. I’ve recently analyzed why they will never come up with a usable example of that, in my discussion of Hannibal. Any person we definitely agree existed, has way more evidence for them than we have for Jesus (that’s why we definitely agree they existed—imagine that!); and any person we have evidence for similar to Jesus, is genuinely doubtable.
There is a middle category of mundane people, mid-level functionaries, minor generals, random folks at a dinner party, people who get maybe a single mention somewhere, who just aren’t the sort of people anyone makes up. But even they—those mundane, once-mentioned people—often are better attested (we have a stated contemporary or eyewitness source, or even have that contemporary or eyewitness source); and they are too mundane to be analogous to Jesus (who falls instead into the category of worshiped supermen, who are far more typically mythical rather than historical); and on top of all that, we actually don’t hold all that much certainty in their existence, when we have any reason to doubt it or suspect they’ve been contrived for a narrative purpose. As for example the “old man” Justin Martyr claims he had an hours long conversation with that converted him to Christianity, or indeed even Trypho the Jew, whom Justin records a book-length debate with that we can reasonably suspect never really happened outside Justin’s mind.
So the argument never works.
This attempt to find someone, anyone, whom we’d have to regrettably doubt the existence of if we applied the same standard to them as I do to Jesus, never turns up a single example. We either already doubt them without regret; or they actually satisfy the standard I apply to Jesus. Ooops.
Even grown up professors are making fantastically stupid claims about the evidence for Jesus like this. That it’s better than we have even for Alexander the Great? Holy balls…that boner comes from E.P. Sanders. Or Julius Caesar or Socrates, Hannibal or Spartacus? Nope and nope, nope and nope. I provide links debunking all these in the first paragraph of my debunking of the claim for Spartacus.
All that this shows is how incompetent and irrational defenders of historicity are. Incompetent, because a real historian would know these claims weren’t true, or know they’d better check first (and thus would discover they aren’t true, before saying they are). And irrational, because they have no grasp of how evidence works or that they should check, yet feel the desperate need to hyperbolically assert total confidence in completely ridiculous things. Like that Jesus is as well attested as Caligula. Which leaves us in no confidence of their judgment in the matter. If you think Jesus is as well attested as Caligula…or Spartacus or Socrates or Alexander the Great…you are not qualified to have an opinion on the historicity of Jesus. And if that’s you, you had better go and get qualified. Or give up the game.
Gosh, when will these absurd comparisons end? It’s been almost 6 years since I debunked the 10/42 apologetic about Tiberius, and now they are going after his successor.
I even listed Wright as one of the authors to make this exaggerated comparison of the evidence for Jesus vs. Roman emperors. He actually made a more absurd comparison there:
So, apparently Wright has believed before that there is even more evidence for Jesus than the Roman emperors. He should take a look at the evidence:
https://celsus.blog/2012/10/14/ten-reasons-to-reject-the-apologetic-1042-source-slogan/
Bad history, bad hyperbole. And I say that as someone who, unlike yourself, is a Jesus historicist.
(waggles head in sadness at the world.)
So….. Rick, what do you really think?
Seriously, it is very aggravating, but none of them will listen. Still, I am glad you have provided the evidence.
N.T. should have read your post about Hannibal so he wouldn’t get embarrassed but it seems people have decided to just ignore and ridicule anyone who suggests their favorite hobo Jew might not have really walked around Palestine 2,000 years ago.
Your post on Hannibal was great. It amazes me the characters that people try to argue are equally as historical as Jesus. N.T. Wright using Caligula is far from the worst I’ve heard. Garry Habermas used freaking George Washington!
Well anyway good job Richard Carrier I think that you have thoroughly dismantled the best pro historicity argument available to the point where anyone trotting it out looks pathetically naive.
All that is left are to end the appeals to consensus by somehow shifting that consensus. Is there anything to take from how that happened with Moses? It seems like it’s just a matter of time until the same thing happens with Jesus but the sooner it does the better off the world is.
I think we have to realize that some people not only don’t care about facts, they also don’t care about getting ’embarassed’. They calculate, or intuit, that their core followers will never check their claims and will be convinced not on the well considered strength of the argument, but by their immediate feeling at the moment they hear it, which is the only time they will concern themselves with it. It is not possible to have a useful discourse with such people.
True. And a common tactic they use for maintaining that pose is tone trolling, the “How dare you insult me! Look they have no arguments, just insults!” (Never mind that it wasn’t an ad hominem but a valid criticism and in fact the very one they themselves just attempted on us, yet failed on its factual basis.)
When reached for a comment concerning what he thought of Carrier calling him a hack, Wright responded, “Who?”
The notion that prestige substitutes for competence and qualifications, is precisely the fallacy he embarrassingly illustrates. As did you just now.
I prefer actual competence and qualifications. Not prestige. Which counts for nothing. As his work demonstrates in spades.
Why don’t they try Zoroaster or Laozi instead? Oh wait, these are legendary founders of religions whose historicity is considered highly uncertain.
Seriously though, I think that group is where Jesus belongs, and where useful comparisons can be made.
IMO, the closest case is that of Confucius. There’s apparently contemporary no historical record and all those sorts of similar items. Yet also the traditional first source (the Analects) is basically supernatural free, and there are things like later grave sites in addition to the stories and works of historians. There’s also no anti-evidence like the equivalent of Hebrews 8.
I’m no Sinologist but I think there’s a better case for C. than Jesus because of the comparative lack of ridiculousness, etc.
Indeed. I discuss that case in my article on Hannibal. But as I’m not a Sinologist either (I don’t have the languages and don’t know the source situation well enough), I have no definite opinion on that. The evidence appears compatible with a “mock tradition,” though, i.e. a collection of sayings of Masters over many generations, maybe even of the same family line, all just being attributed to a fictional progenitor (much as probably happened in the case of Aesop and Homer). I haven’t seen any evidence capable of ruling that out. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. An expert would have to weigh in.
I have an off-topic question, hope that’s OK.
My question:
Early Christian figures, like Clement, are said to have studied directly under the Apostles – in Clement’s case, he is said to have been a disciple of John the Apostle.
If that is the case, shouldn’t that have led to “indirect eyewitness accounts”? Ie John tells Clement, his student, about stuff he witnessed personally, and Clement would of course be eager to write this down.
My example above is just an example – what I’m really trying to say is given claimed historical continuity between Jesus’ disciples and historical figures like eg Clement, shouldn’t there be more “story leakage” – ie eyewitness accounts trickling down from disciple to disciple, from the original source? Seems to me that that should have been a thing, as those stories would be highly attractive to relay.
Now, I haven’t read all of Clement’s epistles, nor all the other early people who are said to be in direct continuity with the Apostles, but I have never heard of something like that being the case.
Do you have a comment on this line of inquiry? It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, and haven’t found a good answer for this narrative gap.
Sorry for the somewhat vague question, and I trust you might have a good answer for me.
Those are all legendary fabrications. None can be verified as true.
Clement (of Rome; the Alexandrian wasn’t even born until the late second century) never says he studied under John the Apostle. And only one Epistle of Clement is authentic, 1 Clement (all the others are forgeries). Which never even mentions John. I think you may have confused Clement with Papias (see below). I am not aware of any tradition linking Clement with John. Only confusion linking Papias to John; and later legends linking Polycarp and Ignatius to John.
Clement does mention Peter, in a manner that suggests he may have known him personally (he doesn’t clearly say that, but it’s a plausible conjecture). But 1 Clement never mentions Jesus ever being on earth, and knows none of the stories in the Gospels, and only claims the teachings of Jesus are known through scriptures and revelations (e.g. like Paul, Clement never mentions anyone being a “Disciple,” not even Peter). See my discussion in Ch. 8.5 of OHJ. Notably, 1 Peter likewise says the same (and which, contrary to most scholars, I suspect is authentic: see OHJ, scripture index). So if anything, connecting Clement to Peter becomes a stronger argument against historicity, not for it.
But that’s it.
Ignatius and Papias and Polycarp never say they studied under or ever even met any Apostles (that claim is nowhere in any of their writings).
Papias is sometimes misunderstood as claiming to have heard John the Apostle, but he actually doesn’t say that—he says he searched around for oral lore about what people claimed had been said by John the Apostle.
Our only relevant quote from Papias, writing between 115 and 150, says:
That later became “telephone gamed” by apologists decades later into Papias claiming he had heard those apostles himself, but clearly that is not what he actually said.
Papias thus ends up recording tons of ridiculous things. Including the claim (which Papias attributed to a tradition from John) that Mark was orally dictated by Peter and in no particular order (when in fact Mark is an anti-Petrine Gospel, and is literarily structured in elegant order from beginning to end). Papias was such a gullible man, even Eusebius denounces him as stupid. Eusebius likewise points out that Papias earlier distinguished John the Disciple from John the Presbyter in his Preface, and yet later confused the two men repeatedly. Thus further eliminating Papias as a reliable source here.
(Many sources confuses those Johns; the Presbyter is either/also John of Patmos, putative author of Revelation, who makes clear in the preface of Rev. 1 is not a Disciple; or/also the putative author of the Johanine Epistles. The author of 2 and 3 John claims to be a John Presbyter but conspicuously never says he is a Disciple. 1 John doesn’t say its author is the Presbyter. And all those Epistles are probably forgeries anyway. I should also add that 1 John does not actually say in vv. 1:1-4 that what he saw and handled was Jesus; he appears to be referring to the life of missionaries throughout history, i.e. Christian miracles in general that have been witnessed, empowered by the spirit of Jesus.)
As for Polycarp and Ignatius, they would certainly themselves have reported their pedigree had they actually studied under any Disciple. That they didn’t, is well enough proof later claims were urban legend. The Ignatius legend was likely begun by the letters forged in the name of Ignatius to John (no actual letter of Ignatius is ever addressed to John; or any Disciple). The original Martyrdom of Polycarp has no knowledge of Polycarp studying under John either (only later redactions inserted such a connection). Irenaeus, a few decades after Polycarp died, started the legend of Polycarp’s connection to the Disciples (implausibly, as Polycarp couldn’t have been born before 70 AD and there is no evidence any Disciple was alive after then). Irenaeus claims to have heard Polycarp “relate how he conversed with John and many others who had seen Jesus Christ, the words he had heard from their mouths,” which is such a ridiculous thing to claim, we can rightly doubt it. That Polycarp himself, and his original Martyrdom, never mention that, only confirms the suspicion (although both men are so dubious in their honesty, either could have fabricated the assertion by then—since the historicist creed was already then being sold in defiance of opposing sects, inventing tradition is exactly what we expect of them at that point, in alignment with the huge production of forged stories and letters by and about the Disciples in this same period).
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my off-topic question in such depth. Much obliged.
You’re right, I’m mixing up Polycarp and Clement.
Thanks for also filling in some data on other Apostolic Fathers for whom continuity with eye-witnesses has been claimed.
My argument was kind of “given a class of people with continuity, why was there not a written relaying of eyewitness accounts via those same people, when that would have made sense for them to mention in their writings?”
I’ve never heard this argument before, then again I am far from a scholar, and for all I know it’s a very common one.
Your argument seems to be “it’s a moot point since there is no continuity to begin with, it’s all misinterpretation, likely post facto confabulation or cannot be proven” – am I right here?
Again, thanks for the lengthy response!
Pretty much. Yep.
Side note: did some googling around, and it seems the term for what I was asking is “agrapha”, or non-canonical sayings of Jesus. Or, rather I was asking about the lack of a subset of agrapha coming from people with claimed historical continuity to Jesus, to be more specific. Turns out my perception was invalid, as such a subset does exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrapha
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/tmcdonald/what-are-the-agrapha-of-jesus
The latter page mentions concrete agrapha examples from Papias, Justin Martyr, Barnabas, and Clement (of Alexandria). Although these are more like 4th-hand transmissions, rather than the Jesus -> disciple -> actual historical figure type of chain that would make them really interesting.
So, it seems people with claimed continuity – like Papias and others – did actually provide a few non-canonical sayings of Jesus, making my initial question founded on a wrong premise (although the reliability of said people, and the veracity of the purported continuity, are of course separate matters).
Simply adding this here in the interest of dialectical truth-seeking – not for the sake of debate. I am also not concern-trolling or anything like that (which might be inferred otherwise).
PS. On a separate tangent, I’d like to aware you (as they say on the Internet) about something called argument mapping. I personally am having trouble holding the entirety of the “landscape” (including all of your arguments) on the topic of the historicity of Jesus in my head at the same time. That’s not a criticism – just a feature of complex arguments in general (and perhaps a feature of my IQ as well…)
Perhaps something like argument mapping could be a good pedagogical tool:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_map
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Debate_tools
Yes. Indeed. There were accumulating legends about Jesus of all kinds. Likewise the Disciples. The agrapha tend to be quite ridiculous (the best example being the collection in the so-called Gospel of Thomas; the funniest example, Papias’s reported lore about the fate of Judas). And they may even come from texts (e.g. the weird grapes story that Papias tells might actually have originated in a redaction of the Gospel of John). But they could just as easily be things preachers kept making up, and claiming Jesus said them, to lend them authority (exactly on the model of the accumulated made-up sayings of Mohammed in the Hadith). The Mishnah, Talmud and Midrashim similarly accumulate lore about what this or that Rabbi supposedly said, which scholars are not wholly confident actually goes back to the putative Rabbi in question (though some could; we just usually can’t tell). Indeed, the Mishnah is entirely an accumulated collection of made-up sayings of Moses allegedly preserved orally (it wasn’t written down until the second century AD). But obviously just made up by Rabbis over time, and attributed to Moses for authority.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thanks for that pearl Dr Carrier ! I needed a little laugh and truly that one made me laugh for a while !
Hello, Dr. Carrier.
I’m not a patron; I just thought I’d let you know that the amateur historian Tim O’Neill has a series of blog posts rebutting mythicism (and specifically your views on Josephus, along with, it appers, your character here: https://historyforatheists.com/2016/07/richard-carrier-is-displeased/):
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/05/did-jesus-exist-the-jesus-myth-theory-again/
https://historyforatheists.com/2017/09/jesus-mythicism-1-the-tacitus-reference-to-jesus/
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/jesus-mythicism-2-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/05/jesus-mythicism-3-no-contemporary-references-to-jesus/
As a layman on the subject, I can’t really say how well argued his case is, and based on your single indirect reply to him a couple years ago, you don’t seem to hold him in very high redard, but in my estimation he’s at least as worth your time as the apologist your responding to here.
O’Neill is a crank with no qualifications who is frequently dishonest about the facts and arguments. I wouldn’t trust a word he says. He has never honestly responded to any peer reviewed work in this matter. For example.
All you need do is compare any argument he makes, to what is actually in the peer reviewed literature (for example On the Historicity of Jesus and Proving History, and my peer reviewed articles reproduced in Hitler Homer Bible Christ). He is already refuted there, without even having to be mentioned.
Had a quick look at those links since I’m subscribed to this thread and received an email about it.
Here’s a quick, opportunistic question.
From: https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/jesus-mythicism-2-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/
And quoting 1 Cor 1-16:
“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defence to those who sit in judgement on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living?”
The question is to whom “brothers of the Lord” is referring – Christians in general as Richard thinks or specifically siblings of Jesus as Tim O’Neill thinks.
The context of the whole paragraph does seem to suggest (to me) a meaning where the norm is not to be privileged, and the local sentence is then enumerating examples of people who do have the privilege in question.
Ie the “is it only” bit is not contrasting Paul and Barnabas to everyone reading the letter but rather to the set of privileged people that he mentions. He’s essentially saying “if they [privileged set of people] can have food and drink, why can’t I and Barnabas have the same?”
It could be argued that the the “we” in “[d]on’t we have the right” is an inclusive we, which includes the audience of the epistle / believers in general, but that would only confirm O’Neill’s interpretation about what “brothers” refers to, since it would have to refer to something more specific in that case.
Thoughts, Richard? I am just beginning to try to wrap my head around historicity vs mythicism, and so I’m likely to miss a lot of greater context.
Interesting Bayesian take on this passage: https://vridar.org/2012/04/22/putting-james-the-brother-of-the-lord-to-a-bayesian-test/
As a side note, this is the same argument I made earlier in the thread:
“Paul in Galatians expresses no interest in learning about Jesus things that only a brother could know. He even scoffs at the idea that James might have anything to teach him.”
If I lived in the first century and encountered someone who had known Jesus personally, I would be very motivated to ask them a bunch of questions and write down any anecdotes / stories / data / added information that they would have. There seems to be less of that sort of thing then there should be.
I wonder if there is a general name for that argument btw? Conspicuous lack of second-degree attestation by proxy?
On the first point, read what I actually argued. You’ll notice O’Neill doesn’t engage with it at all and avoids even addressing it: OHJ, pp. 582-92.
This is why reading him is a waste of time. Or if you do anyway, and want to know what the rebuttal is, just read the actual thing he claims to be rebutting. Because he won’t have told you the truth about what it said. And he does that for a reason. Because what it actually said, already refutes anything he has to say about it. And he doesn’t want you to know that.
On the second point, it depends on interpretation. IMO, Paul does not scoff at the James in Galatians 1. He only scoffs at the James in Galatians 2, who is an apostle (in fact in the top three, “the pillars” Peter, James and John; this is therefore James the brother of John, not James the brother of Jesus). But your point still carries of course. As Paul says even these guys had nothing to teach him, yet they were (supposedly) Jesus’s right hand men (according to the Gospels, they are the three who get to go with him everywhere and see all the special amazing things).
But if one wanted to insist they were the same James (there’s no particular evidence of that), they could say that the brother of Jesus, based on fundamentalist presumption (and not any actual evidence), was not in the ministry of Jesus but converted later and so he isn’t an expert on the gospel and so that’s why he would have nothing to teach Paul that Paul didn’t already know. They’d have the supporting argument that the grammar in Galatians 1 establishes the James there referred to was not an apostle (ibid.). He therefore can’t have been deemed an expert. Or even an authority. (Yes, if Jesus existed and this guy was really his biological brother he’d know personal things about Jesus the man; but that’s not what Paul is talking about, which is the preaching and gospel: what Jesus was teaching.)
But Paul says even Peter and John had nothing to teach him. So that rebuttal I just imagined wouldn’t carry much weight against your point.
Thanks. I’m looking into your book now.
“But Paul says even Peter and John had nothing to teach him.”
Really? That strikes me as odd (that he would say that, I mean).
Perhaps it would be interesting to draw up a kind of “six degrees” chart (so Clement would be an imputed second degree witness – via John the Apostle – for instance). Then we could tag each node in the graph with exactly what unique information they added to the discourse – the idea being that historical persons should have a type of “rings on water” type of effect via multiple degrees of attestation (although IANAH and so I don’t know if that holds true as a general principle).
I don’t know what you mean by connecting Clement to anyone named John. Neither ever mentions the other.
But the model you imagine, simply can’t be built. All the information we would need to construct it, is lost. All destroyed.
But to the comment about Paul, Paul’s entire argument in Galatians 1 is that he never learned anything of the gospel from any human being (he struggles mightily to insist on this; we can doubt he’s telling the truth, but it had to be plausible at least, in order for his plea to be convincing). That he was preaching it for years before he even met an apostle. And that nothing changed after he did (he did not start teaching a new or different or modified gospel; thus his meeting them, added nothing).
He gets explicit about this in Galatians 2, when he says even after almost two decades, when he met the apostles again, Paul says, “they…imparted nothing to me…but…gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship…[adding] only…that we should remember the poor; which very thing I was also zealous to do.” So the only thing they ever taught him, was to focus more on aiding the poor, which he says he was already keen to do. Everything else they ever said, he says, “added nothing” to his gospel or mission. (And he names specifically the “pillars” Cephas (Peter), James, and John, which would mean the brothers James and John, later depicted as the two right hand men to Jesus in the Gospels, second only to Peter.)
I was referring to Clement of Rome, who was said to have known John personally. My idea was to map out all such connections that we know of, whether legendary or not, to create a kind of “telephone graph”.
Thanks for your replies. I’m trying to cram all this into my head, and make sense of it all.
Where is it said that Clement of Rome knew John?
(I am curious where that legend comes from.)
You know, I’m probably mixing him up with Polycarp – can’t find anything that links him to John. My bad!
Long time reader earning minimum wage 🙁
O’Neill recently said he did respond to that post in 9500 words at his blog. I declined to give him traffic.
Yep. He is long on assertion, short on honesty. One need merely compare his hackneyed wordwalls, to my peer reviewed research, to know the truth in any matter. No further comment needed.
An interesting concluding paragraph from: http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/evolution/probability.php
“In a larger context, one has to question whether highly technical issues such as calculations of probabilities have any place in a discussion of religion. Why attempt to “prove” God with probability, particularly when there are very serious questions as to whether such reasoning is valid? One is reminded of a passage in the New Testament: “For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?” [1 Cor. 14:8]. It makes far more sense to leave such matters to peer-reviewed scientific research. ”
To which I reply, Why attempt to “disprove” God with probability?
Kevin McMillen
Because everything is probability. You can’t say “God does not exist” without that actually asserting the probability he exists is very low. Because those literally mean the same thing. Since all statements about the facts are actually statements about probability, the only way to say God doesn’t exist is to demonstrate that his existence is improbable (on present evidence; as all knowledge is constrained by present evidence).
The fact is that you can’t say “God does not exist” nor can one say “God does exist”. It’s impossible for us to know.
While sitting in church (yes I’m Christian) one Sabbath a couple weeks ago, the guy up front speaking made the claim that “answered prayer proves God’s existence” to which I passed a note to my father which stated, “then unanswered prayer must prove God doesn’t exist”. Pure silliness!
Both statements are ludicrous for a human to make. We don’t know nor can we know without physical proof. Belief in God is 100% faith and anyone who says otherwise is simply lying to themselves.
Actually his existence is no more improbable than our existence, the only difference is that we can prove our existence. “I think therefore I am.”
If it’s possible for us to evolve over billions of years then who’s to say that somewhere a trillion years ago other beings evolved and is now so advanced that they’re seeding the universe with humans?
I’m not saying this is the case, I’m merely saying that scenario is just as probable as our evolution. As of right now we have no way of knowing.
So, your faith that God probably doesn’t exist, is no more based upon factual evidence than mine that God probably does exist.
For atheists and believers to spend so much time arguing over something that absolutely can’t be proven physically is a waste of time.
Kevin McMillen
That’s not true. It’s not true empirically nor even analytically. We have a ton of evidence bearing on the point, that render all gods anyone actually believes in extremely improbable. And even if we hypothesize gods who are perfect Cartesian Demons, which are gods no one worships or believes in and thus not even relevant here anyway, we still know their existence is improbable.
Even if a proposition were truly unknown, we would be saying we know the probability of that proposition being true is 50%. So we always have epistemic knowledge. For example, whether a coin will flip heads or tails is unknown. It is therefore 50%. So we still know something about even the unknown. And the existence of Cartesian Demons is known to be vastly less likely than coins turning up heads. Whether a card drawn from a fresh, shuffled poker deck will be a king is between 7 and 8%. So even when we don’t know what card will be drawn, we know it’s unlikely to be a king. And yet kings in poker decks are known with near 100% certainty to exist. The probability we will draw a “snake suited” card from a standard poker deck is known to be near zero. And yet the existence of Cartesian Demons is known to be vastly less likely than a snake suited card appearing in a poker deck.
Everything has an epistemic probability. Everything. And even when we don’t know anything about the physical probability of some fact or event, that logically entails we know the epistemic probability of that thing or event is 50%. If it’s not, then we must know something about its physical probability. And lo, we usually do. For nearly everything proposed. Including every god ever conceived.
“Because everything is probability.”
What was the probability by first century understanding that quarks existed?
I’m not saying that this proves God, what I’m saying is that probability is moot.
It’s like finding ancient texts from 600 bce proving that Mithra was worshipped but nothing showing how, and then finding texts from 200 ce showing that Mithra was believed to have been conceived miraculously with a virgin mother, and later crucified and resurrected, and concluding that 600 bce Mithra was conceived the same way. That is dishonest.
Like finding writings from the 1930’s about the Gay 90’s and concluding that homosexuality was the norm in the 1890’s. Total dishonesty.
Kevin McMillen
The epistemic probability that quarks existed in 1 A.D. is as near to 100% as makes all odds. Because we have extensive eyewitness records showing the world behaved the same back then as now. And we have physical evidence that it did (from geology, astrophysics, paleontology, and beyond). And it is extremely improbable that it would do so without quarks, when we know it only does so now because of quarks. Any attempt to explain away that coincidence with alternative theories requires introducing inherently improbable presuppositions on no evidence. Which ensures the epistemic probability of those alternative theories is near zero. Which is why the epistemic probability of the quarks-since-the-Big-Bang theory is near one. See my discussion of the unavoidable logic of this in Proving History, index “gerrymandering.”
Richard, per my 2:10 pm comment you did not prove my comment which you quoted untrue, yet you state unequivocally that it was untrue.
You stated the fact that there is a 50% chance that God exists or a 50% chance that God doesn’t exist, no one has denied that.
That fact has nothing to do with my quoted comment that it’s impossible to know for sure one way or the other.
So what, there’s a 50% probability either way, that proves nothing.
Your response to my 3:02 pm comment again didn’t answer my original question, “What was the probability by first century understanding that quarks existed?” I didn’t ask what was the probability that quarks existed in the first century, we know they did because we’ve proven their existence.
I asked, what was the probability based upon their understanding? Just because they didn’t know about quarks, nor were able to prove their existence, doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.
So, just because we can’t prove that God exists doesn’t mean that he doesn’t. Again 50/50 chance to which I wholeheartedly agree.
So for anyone to claim that they are atheist is intellectually dishonest, they are really agnostic, for there is no way to know for sure.
But of course we are all free to lie to ourselves and or redefine words.
Kevin McMillen
You just ignored practically everything I said. Why?
Wow, just wow!!!!!!
I am listening to one of your debates:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJwPaIxqNQ
In it you compare stories about Romulus and Jesus, yet you don’t clarify that the extant copies of the Aeneid by Virgil date to 400ce. Hmmm
Sorry Richard but there’s no comparison.
I don’t expect you to believe in Jesus nor the Gospel writers claims, but as a Historian you must acknowledge that the ancient writings exist and whether believable or not are older than any of the extant manuscripts revealing virgin born, dying and rising gods.
Your job is to verify the historicity of the writings, not determine whether they are true or not. Bart Ehrman seems to understand that.
You seem to be more intelligent and honest than Robert Price or the late Dorothy Murdock so own up to the fact that the oldest extant manuscripts, other than supposed gods who died and arose with the seasons, are the ones purporting the existence of Jesus.
That is the job of an Historian isn’t it?
Kevin McMillen
Aeneid? Dude. Romulus isn’t in the Aeneid.
And conspiracy theories about the fabrication of thousands of textual traditions by hundreds of authors are trionfoil hat unworthy of reply.