Tag: Criteria of Authenticity

Old note: Should this category also be moved to a tag? Or a child category of History and Methods or Biblical Scholarship? Would rather not have a child of a child category, however.

2011-01-23

Why is Nazareth in the narrative? Why are women at the tomb?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Still catching up with other questions that have bypassed the comments lists on the blog. I’m sure many readers have responses that will be more cogent and comprehensive than mine, so welcome a collective wisdom. They’re not questions I have thought a huge amount about so only have a few sketchy comments to make.

Here are the next two questions for us (courtesy of Nate).

Nazareth which is a mixed settlement of Muslim...
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1.  All honest historians agree that the Holy Family’s trip to Bethlehem (either to flee from a raging king, or for the sake of a census) is absolute rubbish.  It’s obvious that the Gospel authors need Jesus to be born in Bethlehem for Davidic symbolism and the purposes of prophecy fulfillment.  But if there was no historical Jesus whatsoever, then why deal with a town like Nazareth in the story?  I know archaeology has shown that there wasn’t really much a Nazareth to speak of in the relevant time period, so if we were Gospel writers, why not just have Mary and Joseph situated in their home town of Bethlehem?  Why make up the plot element of them being in Nazareth and having to trek back to Bethlehem, only to come back to Nazareth, a place of utter insignificance, later on?  Why not leave that complication completely out of the story if you’re trying to pass your fictitious character off as historical?

1. Nazareth Continue reading “Why is Nazareth in the narrative? Why are women at the tomb?”

2011-01-04

That Curious Criterion Classically Illustrated

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by Neil Godfrey

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Not long after addressing that “curious criterion” of biblical studies that holds that the less likely something seems to be in the Gospels, the more likely it is to have been historically true, I unpacked a carton of my books that included The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N. T. Wright in Dialogue, and found in there a classic example of that curious criterion in action.

Actually it is a slight oversimplification to describe this criterion the way I did in my opening line. More “strictly”, it is summed up by the incredulous claim: “I can’t see why anyone would make it up.” Surely claiming authenticity for any data on the grounds that one “can’t think of a reason it would have been made up by anyone” is the nadir of intellectual laziness. When taken to its extreme, it can be used to prove the most sensational claims of the miraculous. And that is exactly where Bishop and Scholar N. T. Wright does take it. He is referring to the Gospel of Luke’s account of the resurrected Jesus appearing to his disciples and breaking bread and eating bread and fish with them:

If you have an empty tomb and something’s happened to the body, and then if the apparitions are not just apparitions, such as you have when somebody you love has just died, but actually involve some extraordinary physical things. You know, according to Luke 24, there must be a broken loaf lying on the table somewhere which they didn’t break — somebody did that — and so it’s not just eating broiled fish. There’s a bunch of physical phenomena going on, and this is where the stories are so odd, as well as these kind of paraphysical phenomena — I don’t think anyone could have made up these stories, actually, I think they’re so bizarre — and that’s part of the point. . . . (pp. 37-8, my emphasis)

Historians (not theologians) generally treat bizarreness as an indicator of fiction, and the more bizarre the more likely to be fictitious.

But N. T. Wright is “a leading New Testament scholar” whose work is certainly discussed with all seriousness by other scholars as diverse as (“liberal”) John Dominic Crossan and (“independent”) Maurice Casey. Continue reading “That Curious Criterion Classically Illustrated”

2010-12-25

Embarrassing failure of the criterion of embarrassment

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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Dome depicting the baptism of Jesus by Saint John the Baptist, and a pagan god in the guise of an old man stands to one side holding a leather bag; Arian baptistry, Ravenna, Italy.
Both symbolic (scroll on image to see the text) and embarrassing (don’t double click the image to look at Jesus too closely) baptism scene. Image via Wikipedia

So I hear from commenters that a new foray into demolishing mythicism has been launched by James McGrath with yet one more account of the “criterion of embarrassment”. The curious — yet tedious — thing about this is that while McGrath in particular has faulted mythicists for (supposedly) failing to engage with the scholarship on the historical Jesus, he himself, and some of the other more strident critics of mythicism, have notably failed to engage with the mythicist responses to those scholarly arguments.

James McGrath once wrote:

I have not yet seen . . . . a mythicist who engages a scholar like Sanders point by point and argues the case for drawing a different conclusion.

So when I proceeded to engage E. P. Sanders himself “point by point’ — and one of those points was Sanders’ argument for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus — I was disappointed that there was no response from McGrath. But he can no longer say that he has not yet seen a mythicist who engages a scholar like Sanders point by point and argues the case for drawing a different conclusion. I still await an opponent of mythicism to engage with the argument for the non-historicity of the narrative of the baptism of Jesus that I made in the following posts:

Engaging Sanders Point by Point: John the Baptist

Baptism of Jesus is . . . entirely creative literature

There are many possible reasons why McGrath did not respond to these. But what is not clear is why he would still use the criterion of embarrassment, with the baptism of Jesus as a principle case-study, as if no mythicist argument had ever been mounted against it. Why simply repeat the same argument that mythicists have long since responded to and found wanting? Continue reading “Embarrassing failure of the criterion of embarrassment”

2010-12-04

Nazareth fictions, Aramaic blindspots and scholarly bias: Filling some gaps in Sheffield’s review of Casey’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth’

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Archaeology, Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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view of Nazareth
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I know I said I would not touch Casey’s book (Jesus of Nazareth) again for a while, but Mike Kok’s review of chapter 3 (Historical Method) on the Sheffield Biblical Studies blog does call out for some response.

No archaeological evidence for Nazareth in early first century

I ignored Casey’s critique of Zindler’s and Salm’s arguments over the evidence for the presence of Nazareth and Capernaum in the supposed time of Jesus largely because I thought anyone reading Casey’s book would clearly see that Casey gives no evidence at all in his rebuttal of their claims, and the claims of “trained scholars” whom they each cite. (I like the word “trained” as a descriptor of biblical scholars as it is used by both Kok and Casey. Training has connotations of Pavlov’s dog-like behaviourist conditioning to say the right things in order to be accepted by the academic guild.) But Kok failed to notice what I took to be obvious, so presumably others will overlook the weakness of Casey’s argument, too:

He also critiques the extreme view that Nazareth did not existed (Zindler, Salm) based on a problematic handling of archaeological and textual evidence (128-32). Continue reading “Nazareth fictions, Aramaic blindspots and scholarly bias: Filling some gaps in Sheffield’s review of Casey’s ‘Jesus of Nazareth’”

2010-11-28

Nothing the Early Church Would Want to Make Up?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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In his newly published Jesus of Nazareth, one of Emeritus Professor Maurice Casey’s criteria for deciding if a Gospel detail is truly historical is that the passage “contains nothing that the early church would want to make up”.

Though I have read very many works of history, I never heard of this as a rationale for establishing anything as a historical fact till I picked up books by biblical scholars writing about Jesus.

Casey does not exclusively rely on this criterion to declare something in the gospels as historically factual. Another test must also be passed. The event must also have a “perfect setting in the life of Jesus.” I leave aside the obvious circularity of this latter point in this post, and discuss a just one particular critical shortcoming in his use of the first criterion — what is essentially a “can’t see why not” argument from credulity.

Avoiding the literary fact 1: Luke 13:31-33

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”

He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

Casey writes of this passage that it contains two or three reasons we should accept it as a genuinely historical exchange between Herod and Jesus.

Once again, a Gospel passage has clear signs of translation from an Aramaic source [he is referring here to the use of the words for “jackal” and “reach my goal” (which is sometimes more literally translated as “be perfected”)] just at the point where the traditions in it must be authentic because they have a perfect setting in the life of Jesus, and contain nothing that the early church would want to make up. (p. 324, my emphasis)

But this latter rationale is invalid for a number of reasons. Continue reading “Nothing the Early Church Would Want to Make Up?”

2010-10-23

Jesus Not Being Good Is No Embarrassment

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies
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Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me
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Matthew was embarrassed by Mark’s Gospel that had Jesus effectively saying that he was not good. Only God is good
‭

And . . . . a person ran up to [him], and kneeling to him asked him, Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

But Jesus said to him, Why callest thou me good? no one is good but one, [that is] God. (Mark 10:17-18)

Matthew deftly shuffles the word order to have them come out of Jesus’ mouth with a sleightly different meaning.

‭‭And lo, one coming up said to him, Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have life eternal? ‭

And he said to him, What askest thou me concerning goodness? one is good. (Matthew 19:16-17)

Modern theological scholars are also said to be embarrassed by Mark’s Jesus, and no doubt it remains a puzzling point for many other Christians, too: Continue reading “Jesus Not Being Good Is No Embarrassment”

2010-08-30

Brodie (almost) versus McGrath on historical methodology in NT studies

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Missed it by that much
Missed it by that much

Thomas L. Brodie has a chapter (“Towards Tracing the Gospels’ Literary Indebtedness to the Epistles” in Mimesis and Intertextuality) discussing the possibility of the Gospel authors using the NT epistles among their sources, but what I found of most interest was his discussion on methodology and criteria. The difference between Brodie’s discussion of historical methodology and that espoused by James McGrath comes close to being starkly different as day is from night. But it is not clear that Brodie is fully aware of what I think are the implications of what he writes. Continue reading “Brodie (almost) versus McGrath on historical methodology in NT studies”

2010-08-10

Baptism of Jesus is not bedrock fact. It is entirely creative literature.

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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The baptism of Jesus by John the baptist, as i...
This is how Mark did NOT portray Jesus’ baptism. Image via Wikipedia

The baptism of Jesus by John in the Gospel of Mark

  • is stitched together with images from Old Testament passages, and
  • serves the particular theological agenda of Mark that was challenged by later evangelists

So,

  1. if a passage in the Gospels can be shown to serve a theological agenda of an evangelist, then according to widely accepted standards of biblical historiography, we have reason to question its historical authenticity; and
  2. if a passage can be shown to be a pastiche of other texts certainly known to the author and his audience, and if once we strip away those textual borrowings and are left with nothing that stands alone, or in other words, if once we remove the sheepskin and find nothing left underneath, then we have further support in our doubts as to the historical originality of the event; and
  3. if the only external testimony to John the Baptist contradicts or fails to support our narrative at significant points, then we will need more than three bags full of special pleading to justify holding to any shred of historicity in our little narrative.

To repeat what I won’t repeat here

I have discussed the evidence for the John the Baptist of Mark’s gospel being cut from OT passages, and how this cut-out shape stands opposed to the apparently historical account in Josephus’ Antiquities, and how the episode of the baptism of Jesus in Mark’s gospel is disqualified from being historical even on the grounds of one of mainstream biblical scholarly criteria for historicity. (The criterion of embarrassment only applies to those later evangelists, Matthew, Luke and John, who demonstrate embarrassment with Mark’s story, not with any historical event per se.) These demonstrations are in Engaging Sanders point by point: JB, and JB, strangest of prophets, so I won’t repeat those arguments here. Nor will I address the possibility that the baptism reflects an adoptionist or separationist Christology. Nor even the arguments advanced to suggest John the Baptist himself was a mythical creation.

But why would anyone make it up? Continue reading “Baptism of Jesus is not bedrock fact. It is entirely creative literature.”

2010-08-09

Historical methods postcript: Where criteriology leaves us

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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Just to add here what I left assumed in my previous post . . . .

Enough has been written on the contradictory and inconsistent issues arising from the attempts to establish “bedrock evidence” for the life of Jesus from “criteriology”. (I am not addressing the use of criteria in other historical studies where it has a different function.)

Criteriology leaves the debate open whether Jesus was a political revolutionary, an apocalyptic prophet, a rabbi, a mystic, a teacher, a healer, a magician, a timberman (see #4 by Lemche at http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/sack357908.shtml).

In other words, criteriology leaves us not knowing where to even start a definitive exploration of who this Jesus was.

But in addition to failing to establish who or what Jesus was historically, it leads to the greater sin of avoiding the historical question of Christian origins. Christianity was a faith movement, and its origin and spread needs to be explained as such. The Christ that was spread through the Mediterranean and Middle East was a Christ of faith, after all. A mythical construct, in other words.

Historical method worth its salt will work with the evidence as it exists, as faith literature, and through analysis of both it and its relationships with other ideas of the time, seek to understand its origin and appeal.

Historical methods: how historical Jesus studies fall over before they start

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography
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Although a certain professor of religion regularly insists that his historical methods are the same as those of other historians who deal in nonbiblical subjects, he has failed to demonstrate the similarity. Rather, his attempt to establish this particular point is a classic in obfuscation, misrepresentation of the issues and avoidance of the challenges of mythicist arguments.

One thing cannot be reasonably denied. Mainstream historical Jesus scholarship . . . uses the same methods as mainstream historical study. Those who study early Christianity, those who study Jewish history, those who study Hellenistic and Roman history, those who study any of these overlapping areas or some subset thereof, all interact regularly at conferences, in scholarly volumes and publications, and in numerous other ways. While scholars certainly disagree regularly with one another’s conclusions, if we did not share some common scholarly methodological ground rules, such fruitful interaction would not be possible.

Reflecting on this, it struck me that mythicism is very much like intelligent design in at least one important regard. It wishes to redefine the methods of a scholarly discipline in order to accomplish an ideological agenda.

(Mythicism, Intelligent Design, Courts and Sports)

Of course there are many grounds for fruitful interaction among scholars of “early Christianity”, “Jewish history” and those who study “Hellenistic and Roman history” — and more — I would add especially with those who study ancient classical literature. Of course these scholars do indeed “share some common scholarly methodological ground rules”.

But the author uses this statement of the bleeding obvious as a cover to hide the fact he is sweeping under the carpet the key points made about historical Jesus studies in particular. I will explain below.

The mythical claims of a NT historian Continue reading “Historical methods: how historical Jesus studies fall over before they start”

2010-07-07

Historical Jesus arguments as ad hoc rationalizations

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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In my previous post I listed the grab bag of arguments for the historical existence of Jesus.

One point worth noting, however, is that the existence of Jesus was presumed long before there were scholars who thought to investigate his real historical nature. When scholars and other point to a passage that they say proves Paul knew somebody who knew Jesus, they are demonstrating that it is their assumptions that prevent them from reading the very text they are pointing to. None of their texts says anyone “knew Jesus”. To think that the texts say this is to read Gospel assumptions back into Paul, and to interpret Paul’s passage in the context of the gospels and against his comparable usages of an expression elsewhere. That this assumption has been inbred subconsciously into us is evident when those same people so often react viscerally when it is pointed out to them that they are reading the Gospels into Paul.

In my earlier posts on E. P. Sanders, for example, I showed how the existence of Jesus is not argued, but assumed.

By way of reminder, here are a few pertinent quotations that alert us to the ad hoc nature of the arguments for the historicity of Jesus:

[A]ll the reports about [Jesus] go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even be raised so high as positive probability. (Schweitzer, Quest, p.402)

Twentieth-century scholarship, with its faith in history, assumed a historical Jesus as its starting point. It shared Schweitzer’s personal dilemma: a choice between a Jesus who fits modern visions of Christianity and Mark’s failed prophet. But they always assumed there was a historical Jesus to describe. (p. 7, The Messiah Myth (2005) by Thomas L. Thompson)

So far, historical research by biblical scholars has taken a … circular route …. The assumption that the literary construct is an historical one is made to confirm itself. Historical criticism (so-called) of the inferred sources and traditions seeks to locate these in that literary-cum-historical construct. (Philip R. Davies, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’, pp.35-37 — in other words, scholars have just assumed that the narrative originated in historical events)

Laziness is common among historians. When they find a continuous account of events for a certain period in an ‘ancient’ source, one that is not necessarily contemporaneous with the events , they readily adopt it. They limit their work to paraphrasing the source, or, if needed, to rationalisation. — Liverani, Myth and politics in ancient Near Eastern historiography, p.28.

Arguments for the Historical Existence of Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

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The following are the arguments for the historicity of Jesus. I have taken them from Dr James McGrath’s various comments to posts on this blog, and they are essentially direct quotations of his words. I want to be clear that none of my engagements with the methodology of historical Jesus scholars misrepresents any of the following arguments.

It should also be understood that simply critiquing each of the following does not establish a case for mythicism. My critiques of the methodology of NT historians do not do that. Whenever I have addressed this point I have always insisted that the critiques mean that additional evidence needs to be introduced to decide either way for the historicity or nonhistoricity of Jesus.

Each of the following has been responded to, in many cases more than once. And McGrath is quite right when he says that merely picking weaknesses in an argument does not prove an alternative case.

My own arguments recently have not been mythicist arguments. They have not been critiques of any of the following. (As I said, each of the following has been addressed amply elsewhere.)

What my arguments have been are a critique of the assumptions and methods of NT historians. They are most comprehensively outlined here.

My view is that an historical enquiry into Christian origins must first address methodology. I have exposed the current methods of NT historians as fallacious and inconsistent with standard historical methods in nonbiblical subjects. I suspect that once this is recognized, it is but a small step to seeing existing sources in new perspectives, and the whole historical/mythical Jesus discussion takes a very different turn from the way it has gone in mainstream biblical scholarly circles till now.

Unlikelihood of inventing a crucified Messiah

The unlikelihood that any Jews would invent a crucified Messiah and seek to persuade other to believe in him remains an important piece of evidence.

And so long as a “historicist” paradigm makes sense of most or all of the available data, admittedly with many puzzles and uncertainties, it is unclear why anyone should even consider mythicism seriously, which has the early Christians inventing a crucified Messiah and then trying to persuade their fellow Jews why that isn’t an oxymoron. Continue reading “Arguments for the Historical Existence of Jesus”

2010-06-21

“It is highly unlikely . . . “

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by Neil Godfrey

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"'My regard for Hartfield is most warm--'. He stopped again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed." - Emma misinterprets Frank Churchill. Austen, Jane. Emma. London: George Allen, 1898.
Embarrassment and misinterpretation. Image via Wikipedia

Following on from the 17+ mantras of biblical scholarship —-

It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment. [i.e. the account of the baptism of Jesus]

Once again, it is highly unlikely that the Church would have taken pains to invent a saying that emphasized the ignorance of its risen Lord, only to turn around and seek to suppress it.

Both of these sentences appear on page 169 of A Marginal Jew, volume 1, by John P. Meier (1991).

And both demonstrate how a biblical scholar is subject to the tyranny of the Gospel narrative when framing questions about the narrative’s historicity.

Meier here has fallen into the trap of assuming that there was a single church entity that started out recording certain events on account of their historical nature, but over time came to see some of these as PR liabilities, and accordingly set about re-spinning them.

But his scenario actually raises more questions than it answers, and there are simpler explanations for the existing evidence that it overlooks.

I have discussed the fallacies at the heart of this criterion a number of times from different perspectives. The whole idea of using “criteria” to “discover bedrock evidence” is itself fallacious; this particular criterion stands in conflict with other criteria; and what the evidence points to is the embarrassment was over rival theologies or christologies among different communities, not over what we would call historical facts themselves. All of this has been discussed in previous posts that I have archived here.

But since John P. Meier lists this criterion as # 1 of “primary criteria”, I am adding to those posts a response from a slightly different perspective this time.

Why did “the church” continue to use what it supposedly replaced? Continue reading ““It is highly unlikely . . . “”

2010-06-18

17+ Mantras of biblical scholarship

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by Neil Godfrey

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242px-Aum.svgThis post is being regularly updated with links to responses to each of the mantras.

Here are some lines that seem to me to have acquired the “power” of mantras in biblical scholarship. I call them mantras because I have seen each of them so often in the books, papers, theses and articles I have read by biblical scholars, and they appear to be used as statements whose words carry unassailable potency in an argument. Like Motherhood Statements or the Apostle’s Creed they do not require justification. They are their own justification. And their presence in an argument is clearly intended to have the power to ward off all that is contrary. They may read like formulaic debating lines, but I see them as substitutes for rigorous argument. They are, for the most part, dogmatic and circular assertions that really ought to be made to justify themselves. (Some that may not be circular are simply false; or if not false, vacuous.)

If you can apply them to any particular argument you can say you have won without even having to do a surveillance of whatever might exalt itself against “fair-mindedness and reason”.

Of course, if some do toss in one of these mantras as a cherry on top of a major serious argument, that is fine (I think). But one so often encounters them as complete “arguments” in themselves.

The points that follow were all most conveniently found in a single four-page article. Hence their convenience for isolating and repeating here. (Now I don’t mean to put down their author. Many biblical scholars use these, many of whose works I learn much and highly value. And the particular scholar whose article I took them from is one I have particularly found to be insightful and informative reading in other respects.)

I substitute ZZZZ of COCO etc for the name of a text or person. They represent blanks to be filled in with just about whatever text or name you like. Continue reading “17+ Mantras of biblical scholarship”