Here it is.
I couldn't be more pleased. When people think of Michael Paulkovich, they should think of me. Oh, there are so many people to thank, and the orchestra's playing me off already... Thanks, Mom! I love you!
PS: Toward the bottom of Paulkovich's Bollinger-page:
I don't know why he is so desperate for a mythical figure to have actually existed, and all the sources Bollinger used to "prove" Jesus are poor - either known forgeries, or simply moot (too late to be even remotely compelling to prove a historicity).
He took the trouble to dedicate this entire long page to me, and he still hasn't noticed that I'm a mythicist, not sure whether Jesus existed or not.
Showing posts with label historical evidence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical evidence. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2015
Friday, January 2, 2015
Why Am I So Angry At Michael Paulkovich?
That's what some people want to know. I'll keep trying to explain. (Some people have urged me to just let it all go. Hahaha. Haha. Hahahaha. No, I won't be doing that.)
I suppose it can't hurt to keep repeating, near the beginning of each of these rants, what many people seem to keep overlooking: not only am I an atheist, I'm far from certain that Jesus ever existed. I'm not criticizing Paulkovich for saying that Jesus never existed, I'm criticizing him for not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground about ancient Judea and Galilee and the question of Jesus' historicity, while trying to pass himself off as some sort of expert.
Actually, I'm angrier at the people who publish Free Inquiry than I am at Paullkovich. Someone described Paulkovich's article about "the 126 silent historians" as a striking example of sloppy thinking and sloppy research. But I don't think that what Paulkovich did here was research at all. Him posing as a researcher, and Free Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism continuing to stand behind him, is an insult to all actual researchers in ancient Greek and Latin, including the sloppy amateur ones like me. Sloppy research would have been if he had actually studied the writing of some ancient writers, and then drawn some dubious conclusions from that study. Mis-translated a few Greek and Latin words, not understood some obvious issues of context, things like that. In the case of 40-some of his 126, it's obvious that he didn't study their writing because there is no writing left to be studied. If he had actually read the Latin version of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, or another writer's book on architecture, or the Satyricon, the only surviving work of Petronius -- the same Satyricon upon which Fellini based his movie of the same name -- or the half-dozen verses of love poetry which are all that remain of the work of another writer on his list of 126, etc, etc, he would have known that there was no reason to expect to find Jesus mentioned in those works, and furthermore, he would've realized that anyone who was actually familiar with those writers would know that it was ridiculous to look for mentions of Jesus in their work. He would've realized that he'd be exposing himself as a charlatan posing as someone who'd done some research.
If he had taken the trouble to actually do some research into the extent of all the surviving work of ancient Greek and Latin authors, he would've realized that there are barely 126 historians among them, let alone 126 who mentioned Judea or Galilee, let alone 126 who would've mentioned a wandering preacher with all of 12 followers, who was one of the many people Pontius Pilate had crucified. He would've learned that apart from the Bible and some of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus, there's very little surviving ancient writing of any kind from that time and place, and that it's very big news among actual contemporary historians whenever any little scrap of more is found.
I'd really like to know just exactly how Paulkovich came up with that list, and where he got the notion that it was a list of 126 HISTORIANS. I'm picturing him gathering information from sources like jesusneverexisted dot com and the blogs and books of some of the wackier mythicists. There's simply no way he could've come near anything resembling a reliable reference work, or conferred with anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Roman Empire and its literature, and still come up with that list. Perhaps he thinks that most people familiar with ancient Greek or Latin are a part of the Plot. I'm just speculating here. It's actually very difficult for me to imagine just how that list of 126 names came to be, and just exactly how Paulkovich came to believe that historical writing from all 126 of them had survived.
And yes, there is also the little detail that it is extremely well-known, even among mythicists, that 4 of the people on his list, Josphus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, actually do mention Jesus and/or Christians.
And that the first 3 of those 4 actually are historians, quite unlike most of the 126, showing that the rate of "silence" of ancient historians about Jesus is actually rather low.
And yes, there is also the little detail about how Paulkovich bases his assumptions about what would have had to have been written about Jesus if he'd existed, on the Bible's claims about Jesus. That is to say, if Jesus had really healed all of those people and risen from the dead and so forth, more people would've noticed. Either Paulkovich is being inconsistent here in looking for evidence of a supernatural Jesus, or I have been wrong in assuming that Paulkovich is an atheist who doesn't believe in the supernatural. Whatever. At this point of silliness I don't much care anymore. But to some people, this assumed inconsistency apparently is a big deal.
And of course all of this still leaves the question untouched of how those responsible for the publication of Free Inquiry managed to miss all of this.
Well, at least Paulkovich didn't claim that there were newspapers in ancient Jerusalem, and that big stacks of them are still lying around, along with detailed records of every criminal case which came before Pilate -- all very suspiciously free of any mention of Jesus. There actually are some people, aside from the religious believers in Jesus' miracles and resurrection, who are running around making claims about Jesus and the historical record which are even more ridiculous than Paulkovich's. (Unless I'm giving him too much credit, and he actually does make such claims in his book. I haven't read his book.)
There's nothing particularly unusual about Paulkovich. There are very many people talking and writing about the historicity or lack of historicity of Jesus without having more of a clue on the subject than he does. It's mysterious to me that so much energy is expended flapping their gums about it, and such a tiny fraction of that much energy learning about what they're constantly yapping about. It's mysterious, and it makes me angry. And it makes me that much more angry when we're talking about people who claim to value rationality and free inquiry and knowledge and solid research so highly.
I suppose it can't hurt to keep repeating, near the beginning of each of these rants, what many people seem to keep overlooking: not only am I an atheist, I'm far from certain that Jesus ever existed. I'm not criticizing Paulkovich for saying that Jesus never existed, I'm criticizing him for not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground about ancient Judea and Galilee and the question of Jesus' historicity, while trying to pass himself off as some sort of expert.
Actually, I'm angrier at the people who publish Free Inquiry than I am at Paullkovich. Someone described Paulkovich's article about "the 126 silent historians" as a striking example of sloppy thinking and sloppy research. But I don't think that what Paulkovich did here was research at all. Him posing as a researcher, and Free Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism continuing to stand behind him, is an insult to all actual researchers in ancient Greek and Latin, including the sloppy amateur ones like me. Sloppy research would have been if he had actually studied the writing of some ancient writers, and then drawn some dubious conclusions from that study. Mis-translated a few Greek and Latin words, not understood some obvious issues of context, things like that. In the case of 40-some of his 126, it's obvious that he didn't study their writing because there is no writing left to be studied. If he had actually read the Latin version of the story of Jason and the Argonauts, or another writer's book on architecture, or the Satyricon, the only surviving work of Petronius -- the same Satyricon upon which Fellini based his movie of the same name -- or the half-dozen verses of love poetry which are all that remain of the work of another writer on his list of 126, etc, etc, he would have known that there was no reason to expect to find Jesus mentioned in those works, and furthermore, he would've realized that anyone who was actually familiar with those writers would know that it was ridiculous to look for mentions of Jesus in their work. He would've realized that he'd be exposing himself as a charlatan posing as someone who'd done some research.
If he had taken the trouble to actually do some research into the extent of all the surviving work of ancient Greek and Latin authors, he would've realized that there are barely 126 historians among them, let alone 126 who mentioned Judea or Galilee, let alone 126 who would've mentioned a wandering preacher with all of 12 followers, who was one of the many people Pontius Pilate had crucified. He would've learned that apart from the Bible and some of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Josephus, there's very little surviving ancient writing of any kind from that time and place, and that it's very big news among actual contemporary historians whenever any little scrap of more is found.
I'd really like to know just exactly how Paulkovich came up with that list, and where he got the notion that it was a list of 126 HISTORIANS. I'm picturing him gathering information from sources like jesusneverexisted dot com and the blogs and books of some of the wackier mythicists. There's simply no way he could've come near anything resembling a reliable reference work, or conferred with anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Roman Empire and its literature, and still come up with that list. Perhaps he thinks that most people familiar with ancient Greek or Latin are a part of the Plot. I'm just speculating here. It's actually very difficult for me to imagine just how that list of 126 names came to be, and just exactly how Paulkovich came to believe that historical writing from all 126 of them had survived.
And yes, there is also the little detail that it is extremely well-known, even among mythicists, that 4 of the people on his list, Josphus, Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, actually do mention Jesus and/or Christians.
And that the first 3 of those 4 actually are historians, quite unlike most of the 126, showing that the rate of "silence" of ancient historians about Jesus is actually rather low.
And yes, there is also the little detail about how Paulkovich bases his assumptions about what would have had to have been written about Jesus if he'd existed, on the Bible's claims about Jesus. That is to say, if Jesus had really healed all of those people and risen from the dead and so forth, more people would've noticed. Either Paulkovich is being inconsistent here in looking for evidence of a supernatural Jesus, or I have been wrong in assuming that Paulkovich is an atheist who doesn't believe in the supernatural. Whatever. At this point of silliness I don't much care anymore. But to some people, this assumed inconsistency apparently is a big deal.
And of course all of this still leaves the question untouched of how those responsible for the publication of Free Inquiry managed to miss all of this.
Well, at least Paulkovich didn't claim that there were newspapers in ancient Jerusalem, and that big stacks of them are still lying around, along with detailed records of every criminal case which came before Pilate -- all very suspiciously free of any mention of Jesus. There actually are some people, aside from the religious believers in Jesus' miracles and resurrection, who are running around making claims about Jesus and the historical record which are even more ridiculous than Paulkovich's. (Unless I'm giving him too much credit, and he actually does make such claims in his book. I haven't read his book.)
There's nothing particularly unusual about Paulkovich. There are very many people talking and writing about the historicity or lack of historicity of Jesus without having more of a clue on the subject than he does. It's mysterious to me that so much energy is expended flapping their gums about it, and such a tiny fraction of that much energy learning about what they're constantly yapping about. It's mysterious, and it makes me angry. And it makes me that much more angry when we're talking about people who claim to value rationality and free inquiry and knowledge and solid research so highly.
Friday, February 28, 2014
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT JESUS LOOKED LIKE!!
(IF, that is, he ever existed!)
About this "Jesus certainly wasn't white" meme: nothing would please me more than if someday, somehow, if were proven that Jesus had skin so dark it was more black than brown, and a broad flat nose, and a big beautiful afro. (And was never actually crucified, cause, yikes!) The look on the face of a certain uncle of mine -- that alone would be a joy. But the black Jesus theory, or even the certainly-not-white-Jesus theory, is wishful thinking every bit as much as the lillywhite Jesuses we're used to seeing in Western art. There is no "typical Middle Eastern appearance" today, and there wasn't one 2000 years ago. The Jews were not an isolated etnicity before Alexander the Great. Greeks and Jews blended during the Hellinistic period, and then the Romans broadened the gene pool some more.
One of the things which makes me wonder whether Jesus was ever more than a fictional character is that no one in the New Testament says that he was tall or short or fat or thin or strong or weak or pale or dark-skinned or that his hair was black or brown or red or blonde or curly or straight or long or short, or that his beard was long or short or thick or thin, or that he didn't have a beard because he shaved.
If he existed, if Mary really did claim immaculate conception, then she was hiding the identity of Jesus' biological father -- who, between the Jews, Greeks, Romans (the Roman gene pool alone was very broad), Samaritans, Arabs, Persians, Roman soldiers from Gaul, Dacia, Nubia, and elsewhere, and others, could have had any human color of skin and hair and eye.
Over and over I encounter this resistance to saying: "We don't know." Ehrman -- along with, apparently, still, the vast majority of academics in the "relevant" fields -- still says that it's "certain" that Jesus existed. Many people say that Jesus "certainly" wasn't white -- whatever "not white" means. Is Diogo Morgado white? (He plays Jesus in the new movie Son of God and is touching off a new round of the debate over Jesus' ethnicity and appearance.) Is George Zimmerman white? I don't want want to to know where the supposed boundary lines are between white and not-white and black and not-black and so forth. I'm so tired of these boundaries. I want us all just to be people, and to really look at each other, and really see that we're all one species.
People want to be sure about so many things. That line in the liturgy about a "sure and certain hope of the resurrection to come" kind of gives the game away. For one thing, it's a case for the Department of Redundancy Department, because sure is certain and vice-versa, and for another, a hope is never certain. If it's certain it's not a hope anymore, it's knowledge.
"Certain" is a greatly overused term.
About this "Jesus certainly wasn't white" meme: nothing would please me more than if someday, somehow, if were proven that Jesus had skin so dark it was more black than brown, and a broad flat nose, and a big beautiful afro. (And was never actually crucified, cause, yikes!) The look on the face of a certain uncle of mine -- that alone would be a joy. But the black Jesus theory, or even the certainly-not-white-Jesus theory, is wishful thinking every bit as much as the lillywhite Jesuses we're used to seeing in Western art. There is no "typical Middle Eastern appearance" today, and there wasn't one 2000 years ago. The Jews were not an isolated etnicity before Alexander the Great. Greeks and Jews blended during the Hellinistic period, and then the Romans broadened the gene pool some more.
One of the things which makes me wonder whether Jesus was ever more than a fictional character is that no one in the New Testament says that he was tall or short or fat or thin or strong or weak or pale or dark-skinned or that his hair was black or brown or red or blonde or curly or straight or long or short, or that his beard was long or short or thick or thin, or that he didn't have a beard because he shaved.
If he existed, if Mary really did claim immaculate conception, then she was hiding the identity of Jesus' biological father -- who, between the Jews, Greeks, Romans (the Roman gene pool alone was very broad), Samaritans, Arabs, Persians, Roman soldiers from Gaul, Dacia, Nubia, and elsewhere, and others, could have had any human color of skin and hair and eye.
Over and over I encounter this resistance to saying: "We don't know." Ehrman -- along with, apparently, still, the vast majority of academics in the "relevant" fields -- still says that it's "certain" that Jesus existed. Many people say that Jesus "certainly" wasn't white -- whatever "not white" means. Is Diogo Morgado white? (He plays Jesus in the new movie Son of God and is touching off a new round of the debate over Jesus' ethnicity and appearance.) Is George Zimmerman white? I don't want want to to know where the supposed boundary lines are between white and not-white and black and not-black and so forth. I'm so tired of these boundaries. I want us all just to be people, and to really look at each other, and really see that we're all one species.
People want to be sure about so many things. That line in the liturgy about a "sure and certain hope of the resurrection to come" kind of gives the game away. For one thing, it's a case for the Department of Redundancy Department, because sure is certain and vice-versa, and for another, a hope is never certain. If it's certain it's not a hope anymore, it's knowledge.
"Certain" is a greatly overused term.
Friday, February 14, 2014
So, Did St Valentine Exist?
First of all, keep in mind that, as with the name Jesus, many people have had the name Valentine. The oldest source I have found so far for a St Valentine is the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, a list of martyrs. Google Books has a fully-readable online version of it right here. Its name suggests that St Jerome compiled the list, but that is no longer generally believed. The Martyrologium Hieronymianum was probably originally written in the 5th or 6th century, but in all likelyhood it was re-written over the next few centuries to conform to the popular legends of saints. So. As far as I know, this 5th, or 6th, or 9th century list of saints is the oldest source of information about a St Valentine. And all the Martyrologium Hieronymianum says about him is that he was from Rome and that his feast day is February 14th. Nothing at all about Claudius II or marriages. The earliest account I've found of interaction between Valentine and Claudius II is the 13th-century Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine. You can read that on Google Books also. I'm not claiming to be the best researcher in the world. (Although I'm certainly not the worst either.) If someone has more info on the early sources of Valentine than I do, that'd be great.
Monday, February 10, 2014
If St Paul Killed Christians --
-- that is to say, if Saul of Tarsus, before his conversion to Christianity, when he renamed himself Paul, killed Christians --
* Why do we know the name of only one of his victims: Stephen, traditionally the first Christian martyr? Well, actually, in one New Testament passage Paul says only that he stood by and watched with approval as Stephen was killed, and in another he says that he imprisoned some other Christians, both men and women -- whose names are never mentioned. And neither are any of the names of any of the people who stoned Stephen, nor of any of the Sanhedrin who condemned him to death. There are no names whatsoever associated with Saul famous horrible persecution of Christians except for his own name and Stephen's.
* Why do we hear neither of Saul's co-persecutors attempting to kill or imprison him after his conversion, nor of any Christians objecting to his conversion because of his persecuting past, nor attempting to take revenge for that persecution -- nor, for that, matter, attempts at revenge by non-Christian relatives or friends of Saul's victims?
It could be that we learn none of these details in the New Testament or other early Christian writings simply because Paul and the author of Acts, Luke, most likely, had other things on their minds as they wrote. Or it could be that Paul invented Stephen -- and all other Christians before him, and Jesus, and St Peter and a few other things too -- without it ever occurring to him that 2000 thousand years later, the absence of certain details in his stories might seem odd to some weirdo who posts on the Internet and calls himself a monkey.
* How many un-life-like details like these have to be noticed and commented upon before the experts -- the supposed experts, the academic Biblical scholars and theologians -- acknowledge that it seems possible that the entire story of the origins of Christianity, including all the earliest accounts of Jesus, may be fictional, mythical?
As I've said again and again, I'm not claiming to have proven a damn thing here about the origins of Christianity. All that I, if not many if not most if not all of the people referred to as mythicists, am saying, is that it doesn't seem completely certain to me that Jesus existed, and that I would like to see the question discussed by the aforementioned supposed experts. And as I've said repeatedly, since that's all we're saying, it seems misleading to refer to us as mythicists. People with open minds, would seem to me to be a more accurate designation.
* Why do we know the name of only one of his victims: Stephen, traditionally the first Christian martyr? Well, actually, in one New Testament passage Paul says only that he stood by and watched with approval as Stephen was killed, and in another he says that he imprisoned some other Christians, both men and women -- whose names are never mentioned. And neither are any of the names of any of the people who stoned Stephen, nor of any of the Sanhedrin who condemned him to death. There are no names whatsoever associated with Saul famous horrible persecution of Christians except for his own name and Stephen's.
* Why do we hear neither of Saul's co-persecutors attempting to kill or imprison him after his conversion, nor of any Christians objecting to his conversion because of his persecuting past, nor attempting to take revenge for that persecution -- nor, for that, matter, attempts at revenge by non-Christian relatives or friends of Saul's victims?
It could be that we learn none of these details in the New Testament or other early Christian writings simply because Paul and the author of Acts, Luke, most likely, had other things on their minds as they wrote. Or it could be that Paul invented Stephen -- and all other Christians before him, and Jesus, and St Peter and a few other things too -- without it ever occurring to him that 2000 thousand years later, the absence of certain details in his stories might seem odd to some weirdo who posts on the Internet and calls himself a monkey.
* How many un-life-like details like these have to be noticed and commented upon before the experts -- the supposed experts, the academic Biblical scholars and theologians -- acknowledge that it seems possible that the entire story of the origins of Christianity, including all the earliest accounts of Jesus, may be fictional, mythical?
As I've said again and again, I'm not claiming to have proven a damn thing here about the origins of Christianity. All that I, if not many if not most if not all of the people referred to as mythicists, am saying, is that it doesn't seem completely certain to me that Jesus existed, and that I would like to see the question discussed by the aforementioned supposed experts. And as I've said repeatedly, since that's all we're saying, it seems misleading to refer to us as mythicists. People with open minds, would seem to me to be a more accurate designation.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Saying "There Is No Evidence That Jesus Existed" Is A Misuse Of The Term "Evidence"
I'm not convinced that Jesus ever existed.
Now, some people say that, and what they mean is: sure, there was a Jesus who inspired the stories in the New Testament, but I'm not sure that all of those miracles actually happened. That's not what I mean. I don't believe any of the miracles described in the New Testament happened, and I don't feel that that is worth debating, any more than it would make sense to debate the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. What I mean is, I'm not convinced that there even was a completely non-supernatural person named Jesus, or even with another name, who preached in Galilee and Judea and was crucified on Pilate's orders, or even wasn't actually crucified, and inspired the stories in the New Testament. So much of the New Testament was invented, the descent of Jesus from David, the virgin birth, the star of Bethlehem, the slaughter of the innocents, walking on water, water into wine, rising from the dead, etc, etc, etc, that it seems quite reasonable to me to wonder whether Jesus' non-supernatural existence isn't just one more fictive detail.
It also seems to me that many Biblical scholars, including seemingly most of the most prominent ones in the US, react quite unreasonably to any doubts about Jesus' existence. Perhaps the most notable example in the past few years is the normally quite reasonable Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? -- a more accurate title for which would've been the last three words in the book, Jesus Certainly Existed, with a couple of rude insults to all who are not certain in the subtitle.
Rude but unfortunately not untypical. Refusing to acknowledge that reasonable people -- lots of them -- have doubts about Jesus' existence does not encourage those reasonable people to study the scholarship of the professionals has driven many of them into the arms of amateur self-appointed experts. (I, of course, am completely different from all the other amateurs. Harrummph. All of them. Yeah, that's the ticket!) With the predictable result that the level of discourse about the historicity of Jesus is pretty abysmal. I (harrummph) am doing what I can to help.
You will often hear the assertion that there is no evidence that Jesus existed. This involves a drastic misunderstanding of the term "evidence." Evidence is not the same as conclusive proof. Evidence can be strong or weak, conclusive or inconclusive, strong or absurd. The New Testament is the primary evidence of the existence of Jesus. If the New Testament by itself doesn't convince me that Jesus existed, that's fine with me, it hasn't convinced me either. But if you discuss Jesus' existence without considering what the New Testament has to say, you're ignoring most of the pertinent information having to do with what you're (allegedly) talking about. Knock it off. If you want to take part in this discussion, study the New Testament in depth. If you don't you're a silly person and you should go away.
While I'm here: in these discussions, you'll often hear the assertion that apart from the New Testament, no 1st-century writers mention Jesus at all. That's almost correct: Josephus mentions Jesus, but just barely, in a passage which is mostly about James, known as the brother of Jesus. (The other passage, in which Josephus praises Jesus at length, is a fake.) The thing is, though, other than the New Testament authors, Josephus and Philo, no one whose work we now possess says anything about Gelilee or Judea during Jesus' alleged lifetime at all. So, no, we do not have reams and reams of descriptions of the time and place in which all mention of Jesus is suspiciously absent.
Now, some people say that, and what they mean is: sure, there was a Jesus who inspired the stories in the New Testament, but I'm not sure that all of those miracles actually happened. That's not what I mean. I don't believe any of the miracles described in the New Testament happened, and I don't feel that that is worth debating, any more than it would make sense to debate the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. What I mean is, I'm not convinced that there even was a completely non-supernatural person named Jesus, or even with another name, who preached in Galilee and Judea and was crucified on Pilate's orders, or even wasn't actually crucified, and inspired the stories in the New Testament. So much of the New Testament was invented, the descent of Jesus from David, the virgin birth, the star of Bethlehem, the slaughter of the innocents, walking on water, water into wine, rising from the dead, etc, etc, etc, that it seems quite reasonable to me to wonder whether Jesus' non-supernatural existence isn't just one more fictive detail.
It also seems to me that many Biblical scholars, including seemingly most of the most prominent ones in the US, react quite unreasonably to any doubts about Jesus' existence. Perhaps the most notable example in the past few years is the normally quite reasonable Bart Ehrman's book Did Jesus Exist? -- a more accurate title for which would've been the last three words in the book, Jesus Certainly Existed, with a couple of rude insults to all who are not certain in the subtitle.
Rude but unfortunately not untypical. Refusing to acknowledge that reasonable people -- lots of them -- have doubts about Jesus' existence does not encourage those reasonable people to study the scholarship of the professionals has driven many of them into the arms of amateur self-appointed experts. (I, of course, am completely different from all the other amateurs. Harrummph. All of them. Yeah, that's the ticket!) With the predictable result that the level of discourse about the historicity of Jesus is pretty abysmal. I (harrummph) am doing what I can to help.
You will often hear the assertion that there is no evidence that Jesus existed. This involves a drastic misunderstanding of the term "evidence." Evidence is not the same as conclusive proof. Evidence can be strong or weak, conclusive or inconclusive, strong or absurd. The New Testament is the primary evidence of the existence of Jesus. If the New Testament by itself doesn't convince me that Jesus existed, that's fine with me, it hasn't convinced me either. But if you discuss Jesus' existence without considering what the New Testament has to say, you're ignoring most of the pertinent information having to do with what you're (allegedly) talking about. Knock it off. If you want to take part in this discussion, study the New Testament in depth. If you don't you're a silly person and you should go away.
While I'm here: in these discussions, you'll often hear the assertion that apart from the New Testament, no 1st-century writers mention Jesus at all. That's almost correct: Josephus mentions Jesus, but just barely, in a passage which is mostly about James, known as the brother of Jesus. (The other passage, in which Josephus praises Jesus at length, is a fake.) The thing is, though, other than the New Testament authors, Josephus and Philo, no one whose work we now possess says anything about Gelilee or Judea during Jesus' alleged lifetime at all. So, no, we do not have reams and reams of descriptions of the time and place in which all mention of Jesus is suspiciously absent.
Friday, October 5, 2012
"We Possess the Works of Over Fifty Historians Who Were in Jerulsalem During Jesus' Supposed Lifetime, And None of Them Mention Him!"
Well, no, we don't possess the works of fifty such writers, of course we don't. I put it in quotes because it's someone else's assertion, not mine, and I put it in the headline because it's so breathtakingly wrong. That's right, kiddies, it's Stupid Atheists Time again here at The Wrong Monkey!
The thing is, a meme is abroad in the land of those who feel qualified to pontificate upon the nonexistence of Jesus without first taking something like a good World History 101 course, to the effect that it is downright suspicious that there are no contemporary mentions of Jesus. I'm not the world's leading authority on the evidence for Jesus' existence, but clearly, I'm way ahead of some people. I could be wrong, but I believe that the number of historians whose works are extant who spent so much as a day in Jerusalem between 10 BC and AD 40 -- that's right, we don't know when Jesus lived if he did but if he did it was very likely somewhere in that time frame -- is not fifty, but zero.
I expressed this opinion to the person who holds the position immortalized in the headline of this blog post, and challenged him to name those fifty writers and more. He produced the following forty names: Apollonius, Persius, Appian, Petronius, Arrian, Phaedrus, Aulus Gellius, Philo, Columella, Phlegon, Damis, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Epictetus, Pomponius Mela, Favorinus, Ptolemy, Florus, Lucius, Quintilian, Hermogenes, Quintius Curtius, Josephus, Seneca, Justus of Tiberius, Silius Italicus, Juvenal, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius, Lucian, Tacitus, Lysias, Theon of Smyran, Martial, Valerius Flaccus, Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, and Pausanias.
I pointed out that many of these writers were not historians, that many of them did not live during Jesus' supposed lifetime, and that to my knowledge just one of them, Josephus,
had ever spent any time in Jerusalem. Even if they were just passing through. Upon closer inspection of the list, I see one other person who may well have spent some time in Jerusalem: Joseph of Tiberias. And he was an historian, too. But none of his works have survived. We know his name only because Josephus and, centuries later, Photius
mentioned him. And Justus was a contemporary of Josephus, who was not a contemporary of Jesus. It may be that a couple more from the list at least for a moment stood in Jerusalem or rode through it; still, we're woefully short of possessing the works of fifty historians contemporary with Jesus who were in Jerusalem. And, much more to the point, still many clowns short of a rodeo inasmuch as this guy is nowhere near ready to realize that his image of the extent of ancient writing we possess about Jerusalem is drastically mistaken, and perhaps even more to the point, nowhere near ceasing to assume that anyone such as your humble correspondent who attempts to direct him to broader knowledge and away from error is a Christian.
By the way, when this turnip gave me this list he chided me for not doing my own research. I let it go at the time, and mention it now to give you more of the flavor the whole experience. Also, another person mentioned to him that we possess no contemporary non-Roman evidence of Julius Caesar, to which he startlingly replied that there was an abundance of such evidence in Britain, that Julius Caesar had spent time in Britain after its conquest by the Romans had begun under his predecessor Claudius. I pointed out that Caesar was Claudius' predecessor and that he had been killed in 44 BC. Judging from my experience with him so far, that attempt at correction will not leave much of a dent.
It's all just breathtakingly stupid. Not just ignorant, but ignorant and bitterly determined to stay that way, determined not to learn. And I'm telling you all this because this individual is far from unique. There is a whole huge wave of stupid atheism rising, accurately diagnosed here by the very intelligent atheist and historian of early Christianty R Joseph Hoffmann, who is so intelligent that he's often mistaken for a religious believer by those among the atheists who cannot comprehend writing written in breaths longer than sound bites. This wave didn't rise spontaneously. It has leaders, and the leaders' conceptions of ancient history are crunked up. Just as the "moderate" Christians and Muslims energetically shirk responsibility for the extremists they breed, so do Dawkins, Hitch & co overlook their role in the spread of beliefs such as, "We possess the works of more than fifty historians who lived in Jerusalem during Jesus' supposed lifetime, and none of them mention him!" That's right, I'm finally coming right out in public and dissing New Atheism. It gets a C- or worse in Ancient History. I've been somewhat unclear about that for too long, but I finally decided to grow a pair.
Btw, Dawkins' work on biology
remains brilliant. Hoffmann seems to think so too.
The thing is, a meme is abroad in the land of those who feel qualified to pontificate upon the nonexistence of Jesus without first taking something like a good World History 101 course, to the effect that it is downright suspicious that there are no contemporary mentions of Jesus. I'm not the world's leading authority on the evidence for Jesus' existence, but clearly, I'm way ahead of some people. I could be wrong, but I believe that the number of historians whose works are extant who spent so much as a day in Jerusalem between 10 BC and AD 40 -- that's right, we don't know when Jesus lived if he did but if he did it was very likely somewhere in that time frame -- is not fifty, but zero.
I expressed this opinion to the person who holds the position immortalized in the headline of this blog post, and challenged him to name those fifty writers and more. He produced the following forty names: Apollonius, Persius, Appian, Petronius, Arrian, Phaedrus, Aulus Gellius, Philo, Columella, Phlegon, Damis, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Epictetus, Pomponius Mela, Favorinus, Ptolemy, Florus, Lucius, Quintilian, Hermogenes, Quintius Curtius, Josephus, Seneca, Justus of Tiberius, Silius Italicus, Juvenal, Statius, Lucan, Suetonius, Lucian, Tacitus, Lysias, Theon of Smyran, Martial, Valerius Flaccus, Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, and Pausanias.
I pointed out that many of these writers were not historians, that many of them did not live during Jesus' supposed lifetime, and that to my knowledge just one of them, Josephus,
had ever spent any time in Jerusalem. Even if they were just passing through. Upon closer inspection of the list, I see one other person who may well have spent some time in Jerusalem: Joseph of Tiberias. And he was an historian, too. But none of his works have survived. We know his name only because Josephus and, centuries later, Photiusmentioned him. And Justus was a contemporary of Josephus, who was not a contemporary of Jesus. It may be that a couple more from the list at least for a moment stood in Jerusalem or rode through it; still, we're woefully short of possessing the works of fifty historians contemporary with Jesus who were in Jerusalem. And, much more to the point, still many clowns short of a rodeo inasmuch as this guy is nowhere near ready to realize that his image of the extent of ancient writing we possess about Jerusalem is drastically mistaken, and perhaps even more to the point, nowhere near ceasing to assume that anyone such as your humble correspondent who attempts to direct him to broader knowledge and away from error is a Christian.By the way, when this turnip gave me this list he chided me for not doing my own research. I let it go at the time, and mention it now to give you more of the flavor the whole experience. Also, another person mentioned to him that we possess no contemporary non-Roman evidence of Julius Caesar, to which he startlingly replied that there was an abundance of such evidence in Britain, that Julius Caesar had spent time in Britain after its conquest by the Romans had begun under his predecessor Claudius. I pointed out that Caesar was Claudius' predecessor and that he had been killed in 44 BC. Judging from my experience with him so far, that attempt at correction will not leave much of a dent.
It's all just breathtakingly stupid. Not just ignorant, but ignorant and bitterly determined to stay that way, determined not to learn. And I'm telling you all this because this individual is far from unique. There is a whole huge wave of stupid atheism rising, accurately diagnosed here by the very intelligent atheist and historian of early Christianty R Joseph Hoffmann, who is so intelligent that he's often mistaken for a religious believer by those among the atheists who cannot comprehend writing written in breaths longer than sound bites. This wave didn't rise spontaneously. It has leaders, and the leaders' conceptions of ancient history are crunked up. Just as the "moderate" Christians and Muslims energetically shirk responsibility for the extremists they breed, so do Dawkins, Hitch & co overlook their role in the spread of beliefs such as, "We possess the works of more than fifty historians who lived in Jerusalem during Jesus' supposed lifetime, and none of them mention him!" That's right, I'm finally coming right out in public and dissing New Atheism. It gets a C- or worse in Ancient History. I've been somewhat unclear about that for too long, but I finally decided to grow a pair.
Btw, Dawkins' work on biology
remains brilliant. Hoffmann seems to think so too.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
De-Meming
I'm an atheist. I'm not sure whether Jesus existed. And I'm not even one of those atheists who believes that there is a lot of merit in Jesus' teachings, whoever actually came up with them, if you leave out the supernatural stuff, as was Thomas Jefferson, as you can see in the Jefferson Bible. I think that when you leave out the supernatural stuff you're left with a lot of thoroughly unrealistic stuff. I can't claim to have achieved this insight by myself. Friedrich Nietzsche pointed it out to me in his book Der Antichrist. (That title sure looks like The Antichrist, doesn't it? And that's how it's usually translated in English translations of the book. But it's actually not quite that simple. This is a very good example of how sometimes exact translation is impossible. The thing is, the German word for Christ is Christus. And Christ is the German word for Christian. And so in addition to the good fun of referring to the scary beast with the mark of 666, apart from any silly belief in the supernatural, the title of Nietzsche's book also definitely means anti-Christian, the opposite of a Christian, in one's outlook on life here on Earth as it is actually lived by people.) He also provided a very neat metaphor for the reason obvious things sometimes need to be pointed out to people: see Die Froehliche Wissenschaft, aphorism 108.
Having said all that: as regular readers of this blog know, I'm often at odds with other atheists in discussions about Christianity. I find those who insist that Jesus never existed as unconvincing as those who insist that He did, and for very similar reasons. No, that doesn't go far enough: it bothers me MORE when atheists make sloppy historical mistakes, because they claim to be the more rational ones, who have freed themselves from grave mental errors. If you're going to claim that sort of thing, then I say, live up to it, and do your homework before you try to tell anyone what's what concerning this or that historical topic.
They say, these ignorant atheists, that it's very strange that there are no official records of Jesus' execution. It's not strange at all, for several reasons. One: however many official records of legal proceedings the Romans kept -- and I don't know how many -- very few have survived to our day. Most of the written records we have are not of an official nature, but are either letters, or books written for a popular audience. Most of the writing of an official nature which has come down to us is not in the form of parchment or papyrus manuscripts, but inscriptions in stone and now and then a word or two stamped onto coins. And then there are a few surviving manuscripts, very few, containing laws, with now and then a reference to a legal proceeding.
That's strike one for the thesis that it's just awful darn strange that we don't have any Roman records of Jesus. Strike two: until the mid-20th century the only known near-contemporary mentions of Pontius Pilate, the governor of the entire province of Judea, said to have been the man who condemned Jesus to death, were in the New Testament, Philo, Josephus, and then just a passing mention in Tacitus, which embarrassingly for the mythicists, only occurs in a passage about Christians in Rome were tortured and killed by Nero. In the 20th century an inscription bearing his name was unearthed, presumed to have been made on his own orders, bringing us to a grand total of exactly one known contemporary Roman record of the governor of the entire province -- and it's somehow strange that we don't have an official record of a wandering preaching with all of twelve count 'em twelve followers, said to have been condemned to crucifixion by that governor?
Strike three is that crucifixion, reserved by the Romans for those people they considered to be of the lowest classes, was intended to obliterate a person, both in his body, which was left on the cross to rot away -- if Jesus' body really was taken off of the cross nearly-intact and entombed, it would have meant that someone had gotten permission for an extraordinary exception to the rule -- and in his memory, which they also meant to obliterate. Let's compare the case of Spartacus, who led an army of thousands. Official records of his existence? That's right -- none. Contemporary accounts? Other than one mention in a letter by Cicero, bupkus. More than a century passes after his death before Roman historians see fit to include an account of his life and death in their works. And he terrorized a third of the Italian peninsula for two years.
So no, the volume and dates of non-Christian ancient Roman mentions of Jesus are not suspiciously small and late. Not at all. What is suspicious is the volume of clearly fictional material in the main sources for Jesus, the Gospels, which are close enough to 100% fiction that it's reasonable to ask whether they are not actually 100% fiction. But it's unreasonable to state flatly that it's certain that there never was a Jesus who said unrealistic things like turn the other cheek and give everything you have to the poor, who became annoying to the Sanhedrin and Pilate. What's unreasonable is to state that at this point the evidence is conclusive, either for or against Jesus' historical existence. It's unreasonable because it tends to shut down further inquiry into the question. As the great German historian Golo Mann pointed out, it is the duty of the historian often to point out: Here, we don't know what happened. Coulda been this, coulda been that, coulda been sumpin' else. We don't know. (Thomas Mann's son, Golo Mann was. An extraordinary prose stylist like his dad. Yes, Golo is an unusual name. Actually it's a childhood nickname. Golo Mann's given name was actually Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann. Yeah. And for the 90 years of his life, for the majority of which he was a PhD and a professor, an extremely serious man who made students and colleagues tremble with the force of his acumen, everyone continued to call him Golo, the nickname his doting family called him by when he was a toddler who couldn't say "Angelus Gottfried Thomas." That's really something. I think it's really something anyway.)
Having said all that: as regular readers of this blog know, I'm often at odds with other atheists in discussions about Christianity. I find those who insist that Jesus never existed as unconvincing as those who insist that He did, and for very similar reasons. No, that doesn't go far enough: it bothers me MORE when atheists make sloppy historical mistakes, because they claim to be the more rational ones, who have freed themselves from grave mental errors. If you're going to claim that sort of thing, then I say, live up to it, and do your homework before you try to tell anyone what's what concerning this or that historical topic.
They say, these ignorant atheists, that it's very strange that there are no official records of Jesus' execution. It's not strange at all, for several reasons. One: however many official records of legal proceedings the Romans kept -- and I don't know how many -- very few have survived to our day. Most of the written records we have are not of an official nature, but are either letters, or books written for a popular audience. Most of the writing of an official nature which has come down to us is not in the form of parchment or papyrus manuscripts, but inscriptions in stone and now and then a word or two stamped onto coins. And then there are a few surviving manuscripts, very few, containing laws, with now and then a reference to a legal proceeding.
That's strike one for the thesis that it's just awful darn strange that we don't have any Roman records of Jesus. Strike two: until the mid-20th century the only known near-contemporary mentions of Pontius Pilate, the governor of the entire province of Judea, said to have been the man who condemned Jesus to death, were in the New Testament, Philo, Josephus, and then just a passing mention in Tacitus, which embarrassingly for the mythicists, only occurs in a passage about Christians in Rome were tortured and killed by Nero. In the 20th century an inscription bearing his name was unearthed, presumed to have been made on his own orders, bringing us to a grand total of exactly one known contemporary Roman record of the governor of the entire province -- and it's somehow strange that we don't have an official record of a wandering preaching with all of twelve count 'em twelve followers, said to have been condemned to crucifixion by that governor?
Strike three is that crucifixion, reserved by the Romans for those people they considered to be of the lowest classes, was intended to obliterate a person, both in his body, which was left on the cross to rot away -- if Jesus' body really was taken off of the cross nearly-intact and entombed, it would have meant that someone had gotten permission for an extraordinary exception to the rule -- and in his memory, which they also meant to obliterate. Let's compare the case of Spartacus, who led an army of thousands. Official records of his existence? That's right -- none. Contemporary accounts? Other than one mention in a letter by Cicero, bupkus. More than a century passes after his death before Roman historians see fit to include an account of his life and death in their works. And he terrorized a third of the Italian peninsula for two years.
So no, the volume and dates of non-Christian ancient Roman mentions of Jesus are not suspiciously small and late. Not at all. What is suspicious is the volume of clearly fictional material in the main sources for Jesus, the Gospels, which are close enough to 100% fiction that it's reasonable to ask whether they are not actually 100% fiction. But it's unreasonable to state flatly that it's certain that there never was a Jesus who said unrealistic things like turn the other cheek and give everything you have to the poor, who became annoying to the Sanhedrin and Pilate. What's unreasonable is to state that at this point the evidence is conclusive, either for or against Jesus' historical existence. It's unreasonable because it tends to shut down further inquiry into the question. As the great German historian Golo Mann pointed out, it is the duty of the historian often to point out: Here, we don't know what happened. Coulda been this, coulda been that, coulda been sumpin' else. We don't know. (Thomas Mann's son, Golo Mann was. An extraordinary prose stylist like his dad. Yes, Golo is an unusual name. Actually it's a childhood nickname. Golo Mann's given name was actually Angelus Gottfried Thomas Mann. Yeah. And for the 90 years of his life, for the majority of which he was a PhD and a professor, an extremely serious man who made students and colleagues tremble with the force of his acumen, everyone continued to call him Golo, the nickname his doting family called him by when he was a toddler who couldn't say "Angelus Gottfried Thomas." That's really something. I think it's really something anyway.)
Monday, February 6, 2012
Debating Whether the Exodus Happened
A: The story of Moses and Pharaoh is fictional. You might as well debate the historicity of The Lord of the Rings.
ME: Talking to a religious believer lately, you correctly pointed out that the burden of proof lies upon him who makes a positive statement. And yet here you yourself make a positive statement for which evidence is lacking. We don't know how much of the story of Exodus might be true.
Concerning the numbers of Israelites described in the OT as comprising the Exodus, since so many point to that as evidence that the story is fictional: 600,000 men, plus women, children, non-Israelites and livestock. It amazes me that people get so hung up on this number. It would seem that that many people wandering in the desert for 40 years probably would've left some evidence which archaeologists or other scholars, searching for so long, would've come across by now. But often people of other cultures in other eras had nothing resembling our accuracy when counting large numbers of people or other objects. (Cf Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol I, pp 336-341, for a good discussion of how Medieval Europeans tended to use large numbers.) Combine an inexactness in counting to begin with, with the centuries of oral transmission which may have occurred before the story of the Exodus took fixed form, (now THIS would be an example of a game of Elephant) and it's easy to imagine that a migration of 60,000 families, or 6,000, or much fewer still, could've provided the basis for the OT stories.
B: How about six families? Would that be enought to save the story? Maybe God killed every firstborn Egyptian kids and drowned all those soldiesr for the sake of six families.
ME: You can have that argument with someone who believes in God. For me, all theological discussions were over a long time ago. They don't interest me. The same way that what I was talking about, how the story of Exodus actually came to be, doesn't seem to interest you. It's an historical interest for me. In the same way, I'm curious about where the story of the Iliad came from. Both stories come from that era of upheaval in the second half of the second millenium BC which started with a sharp decline of old empires around the eastern Mediterranean, and ended with the emergence of some newly-literate cultures such as those of the Greeks and the Jews. I would reject the flat statement: "the Iliad is fictional," for the same reason I rejected A's statement above.
B: How about the whole damn story is just so much BS made up hundreds of years after the fact by a group of people that had begun to solidify around one religion and needed a myth of where they came from?
ME: Again: I'm not saying the Exodus story is historical. I'm not saying it's fictional. I'm disagreeing with anyone who claims to know, one way or another, how the story arose.
B: Just because a story may have some element of truth in it does not mean that, on a whole, it is not fictional.
ME: Again, I'm interested in finding out which elements might have an historical basis.
A: What's lacking is any evidence it is true. However, we do know the Israelites were not slaves in Egypt. Since there were no people to free there was no need for someone to free them. The Moses depicted in Exodus did not exist.
ME: We don't know that none of them were. That is to say: we don't whether there actually were a people that long ago which could properly be called Israelites -- although the Merneptah stele makes it seem likely that there were -- and if there were we don't know whether some of them were enslaved in Egypt. As to Moses, if you mean that either every detail in Exodus about Moses is true, or Moses didn't exist, well, that's absurd.
A: If anything, the Exodus story is possibly a garbled account of the Hyksos being expelled from Egypt by Ahmose at the beginning of the New Kingdom.
ME: Is the Hyksos-Exodus hypothosis actually supported by any prominent people other than Simcha Jacobovici -- who, of course, is prominent for things like not actually being an archaeologist but pretending to be one on TV, and preferring the Jerusalem antiquities market to legitimate archaeological digs, and denouncing archaeologists en masse -- and vice versa, such as when he claimed that a bunch of archaeologists and epigraphers supported his views on what he -- and very few scholars -- call the Jesus family tomb, prompting them to take the extraordinary step of signing an open letter saying that they all disagreed with him?
C: There is no evidence of a significant number of Israelites being held in bondage in Egypt. There is no evidence of any of the event described in Exodus. Therefore, we have no option but to reject any claim that it's a historical account and it can be safely assumed that it's fiction.
ME: That's a perfect example of a premature "therefore." We have other options. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the entire Sinai peninsula actually hasn't been gone over with a fine-toothed archaeological comb just yet. There's no reason to conclude that there never was an Exodus. It's simply premature. Let me underscore once again, in case it wasn't already obvious from my previous remarks, that I think that if there was an Exodus it would have been much smaller than 600,000 families, and also that it may have consisted of some of the ancestors of the Israelites at a time before there actually were Israelites, and that if it did happen it probably constituted a minority of the Israelites -- or of their ancestors, as the case may be -- and that the majority probably were from the less powerful classes in Canaan.
D: Archaeologists have been looking for evidence of the Exodus for decades, nigh on a hundred years. Nothing's been found. In fact the evidence for the early Israelites points to a local origin.
ME: I know. Mostly likely, many or most Israelites were originally lower-class Canaanites or slaves of Canaanites who, when the Canaanite elite went into decline, took over the region which would eventually form the core of Israel. However, it seems possible to me that in addition to that indigenous core there was another group, maybe Canaanite, maybe not, which was part of the founding of Israel, who had been slaves in Egypt. That story came from somewhere.
D: Origin myths are tricky things. If you look at the "Historia Britonum" for example, it claims that the Brits were descended from Trojans (via Italy) fleeing the fall of that city. When you look at Irish myth in "The Book of Invasions" Greece, Spain, even Egypt etc get a mention. yet apart from Spain there seems no real link of the Irish to any of these places, and even that seems more a coincidence than a remembered truth. The point is that it need not necessarily be true that an origin myth is a reflection of a one time literal truth, not only do stories change over time but real places can become metaphors for something and somewhere else and stories merge together to create something completely new with the actual historical truths "edited out" (or not) over time. It gets even more messy when differing oral versions are frozen into a written form by people with their own biases. Not saying it can't be true, just that after all that archaeology I'd have thought something would have turned up by now if it were. Unless Zawi's sitting on the evidence that is.
ME: A lot of people claim to be descended from the Trojans. Check out whether the stories of Trojan ancestry can be traced back farther in time than the people's first contact with the works of Homer or one of the myriad neo-Homeric authors. Of course Exodus need not necessarily be true. Who's saying that it definitely has an historical core? All I've been saying here is that I think it's premature to rule out any historical basis. The lack of archaeological attestation of the Exodus would indeed be suspicious if it consisted of 600,000 families wandering for 40 years. If 3,000 families crossed the desert in 3 months, and it FELT like 40 years because it was so uncomfortable, and several centuries of oral tradition inflated the numbers before the story took a fixed written form, then it's an entirely different matter, and it's unreasonable to assume that some archaeological trace of the crossing MUST have turned up by now. I'm not claiming that Exodus is as accurate in all its numbers and little details as, say, Robert A Caro.
I'm very skeptical -- to put mildly -- of British claims of descent from the Trojans, as you seem to be, and like me, you probably wouldn't put much stock in the legends which have some of the 12 Apostles journeying all the way the British Isles, which if true would make the British church about as old as that of Rome or Jerusalem. But let's look at some other myths, the Nibelungenlied and the chanson de Roland. In the case of the former it's quite likely that several of the characters originated as actual leaders of Germanic tribespeople and Huns, and in the case of the latter there's no doubt at all that there was a Charlemagne. The historical interest of the chanson de Roland is greatly mitigated by the amount of historical accounts of Charlemagne written in and soon after his reign. Much less historical writing from late-Classical and Dark Age Europe has survived, and the historical interest of the Nibelungenlied is correspondingly greater. Now imagine that, other than those two poems, there were NO known written accounts of Attila and Charlemagne, just as currently the Pentateuch is the only known account of Moses. How much sense would it make to just say "they're fictional" and dismiss them as having no historical worth?
ME: Talking to a religious believer lately, you correctly pointed out that the burden of proof lies upon him who makes a positive statement. And yet here you yourself make a positive statement for which evidence is lacking. We don't know how much of the story of Exodus might be true.
Concerning the numbers of Israelites described in the OT as comprising the Exodus, since so many point to that as evidence that the story is fictional: 600,000 men, plus women, children, non-Israelites and livestock. It amazes me that people get so hung up on this number. It would seem that that many people wandering in the desert for 40 years probably would've left some evidence which archaeologists or other scholars, searching for so long, would've come across by now. But often people of other cultures in other eras had nothing resembling our accuracy when counting large numbers of people or other objects. (Cf Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol I, pp 336-341, for a good discussion of how Medieval Europeans tended to use large numbers.) Combine an inexactness in counting to begin with, with the centuries of oral transmission which may have occurred before the story of the Exodus took fixed form, (now THIS would be an example of a game of Elephant) and it's easy to imagine that a migration of 60,000 families, or 6,000, or much fewer still, could've provided the basis for the OT stories.
B: How about six families? Would that be enought to save the story? Maybe God killed every firstborn Egyptian kids and drowned all those soldiesr for the sake of six families.
ME: You can have that argument with someone who believes in God. For me, all theological discussions were over a long time ago. They don't interest me. The same way that what I was talking about, how the story of Exodus actually came to be, doesn't seem to interest you. It's an historical interest for me. In the same way, I'm curious about where the story of the Iliad came from. Both stories come from that era of upheaval in the second half of the second millenium BC which started with a sharp decline of old empires around the eastern Mediterranean, and ended with the emergence of some newly-literate cultures such as those of the Greeks and the Jews. I would reject the flat statement: "the Iliad is fictional," for the same reason I rejected A's statement above.
B: How about the whole damn story is just so much BS made up hundreds of years after the fact by a group of people that had begun to solidify around one religion and needed a myth of where they came from?
ME: Again: I'm not saying the Exodus story is historical. I'm not saying it's fictional. I'm disagreeing with anyone who claims to know, one way or another, how the story arose.
B: Just because a story may have some element of truth in it does not mean that, on a whole, it is not fictional.
ME: Again, I'm interested in finding out which elements might have an historical basis.
A: What's lacking is any evidence it is true. However, we do know the Israelites were not slaves in Egypt. Since there were no people to free there was no need for someone to free them. The Moses depicted in Exodus did not exist.
ME: We don't know that none of them were. That is to say: we don't whether there actually were a people that long ago which could properly be called Israelites -- although the Merneptah stele makes it seem likely that there were -- and if there were we don't know whether some of them were enslaved in Egypt. As to Moses, if you mean that either every detail in Exodus about Moses is true, or Moses didn't exist, well, that's absurd.
A: If anything, the Exodus story is possibly a garbled account of the Hyksos being expelled from Egypt by Ahmose at the beginning of the New Kingdom.
ME: Is the Hyksos-Exodus hypothosis actually supported by any prominent people other than Simcha Jacobovici -- who, of course, is prominent for things like not actually being an archaeologist but pretending to be one on TV, and preferring the Jerusalem antiquities market to legitimate archaeological digs, and denouncing archaeologists en masse -- and vice versa, such as when he claimed that a bunch of archaeologists and epigraphers supported his views on what he -- and very few scholars -- call the Jesus family tomb, prompting them to take the extraordinary step of signing an open letter saying that they all disagreed with him?
C: There is no evidence of a significant number of Israelites being held in bondage in Egypt. There is no evidence of any of the event described in Exodus. Therefore, we have no option but to reject any claim that it's a historical account and it can be safely assumed that it's fiction.
ME: That's a perfect example of a premature "therefore." We have other options. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the entire Sinai peninsula actually hasn't been gone over with a fine-toothed archaeological comb just yet. There's no reason to conclude that there never was an Exodus. It's simply premature. Let me underscore once again, in case it wasn't already obvious from my previous remarks, that I think that if there was an Exodus it would have been much smaller than 600,000 families, and also that it may have consisted of some of the ancestors of the Israelites at a time before there actually were Israelites, and that if it did happen it probably constituted a minority of the Israelites -- or of their ancestors, as the case may be -- and that the majority probably were from the less powerful classes in Canaan.
D: Archaeologists have been looking for evidence of the Exodus for decades, nigh on a hundred years. Nothing's been found. In fact the evidence for the early Israelites points to a local origin.
ME: I know. Mostly likely, many or most Israelites were originally lower-class Canaanites or slaves of Canaanites who, when the Canaanite elite went into decline, took over the region which would eventually form the core of Israel. However, it seems possible to me that in addition to that indigenous core there was another group, maybe Canaanite, maybe not, which was part of the founding of Israel, who had been slaves in Egypt. That story came from somewhere.
D: Origin myths are tricky things. If you look at the "Historia Britonum" for example, it claims that the Brits were descended from Trojans (via Italy) fleeing the fall of that city. When you look at Irish myth in "The Book of Invasions" Greece, Spain, even Egypt etc get a mention. yet apart from Spain there seems no real link of the Irish to any of these places, and even that seems more a coincidence than a remembered truth. The point is that it need not necessarily be true that an origin myth is a reflection of a one time literal truth, not only do stories change over time but real places can become metaphors for something and somewhere else and stories merge together to create something completely new with the actual historical truths "edited out" (or not) over time. It gets even more messy when differing oral versions are frozen into a written form by people with their own biases. Not saying it can't be true, just that after all that archaeology I'd have thought something would have turned up by now if it were. Unless Zawi's sitting on the evidence that is.
ME: A lot of people claim to be descended from the Trojans. Check out whether the stories of Trojan ancestry can be traced back farther in time than the people's first contact with the works of Homer or one of the myriad neo-Homeric authors. Of course Exodus need not necessarily be true. Who's saying that it definitely has an historical core? All I've been saying here is that I think it's premature to rule out any historical basis. The lack of archaeological attestation of the Exodus would indeed be suspicious if it consisted of 600,000 families wandering for 40 years. If 3,000 families crossed the desert in 3 months, and it FELT like 40 years because it was so uncomfortable, and several centuries of oral tradition inflated the numbers before the story took a fixed written form, then it's an entirely different matter, and it's unreasonable to assume that some archaeological trace of the crossing MUST have turned up by now. I'm not claiming that Exodus is as accurate in all its numbers and little details as, say, Robert A Caro.
I'm very skeptical -- to put mildly -- of British claims of descent from the Trojans, as you seem to be, and like me, you probably wouldn't put much stock in the legends which have some of the 12 Apostles journeying all the way the British Isles, which if true would make the British church about as old as that of Rome or Jerusalem. But let's look at some other myths, the Nibelungenlied and the chanson de Roland. In the case of the former it's quite likely that several of the characters originated as actual leaders of Germanic tribespeople and Huns, and in the case of the latter there's no doubt at all that there was a Charlemagne. The historical interest of the chanson de Roland is greatly mitigated by the amount of historical accounts of Charlemagne written in and soon after his reign. Much less historical writing from late-Classical and Dark Age Europe has survived, and the historical interest of the Nibelungenlied is correspondingly greater. Now imagine that, other than those two poems, there were NO known written accounts of Attila and Charlemagne, just as currently the Pentateuch is the only known account of Moses. How much sense would it make to just say "they're fictional" and dismiss them as having no historical worth?
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