Contemporary Reports

This weekend I got a tweet from a PyroManiacs reader who was worried about some “historical Jesus” polemics going on via Twitter under the hashtag "#atheist". Which, in my book, is like saying there was some basketball being played in the Boston (TD Banknorth) Garden – I mean: what did we expect? They’re atheists.

Anyway, I allowed myself to get roped into the “discussion”, and of course it got into the dating of the New Testament. One fellow has even found a “Christian-friendly” source that dates the Gospels to 120-170 AD. However “friendly” that source might be, I directed him to Wikipedia on the topic:

The earliest works which came to be part of the New Testament are the letters of the Apostle Paul. Most scholars generally agree on the dating of many books in the New Testament, except for those some believe to be pseudepigraphical (i.e., those thought not to be written by their traditional authors). The Gospel of Mark is dated from as early as the 50s, although most scholars date between the range of 65 and 72.[21] Most scholars believe that Matthew and Luke were written after the composition of Mark as they make use of Mark's content. Therefore they are generally dated later than Mark although the extent is debated. Matthew is dated between 70 and 85. Luke is usually placed within 80 to 95. However a select few scholars disagree with this as Luke indicates in the book of Acts that he has already written the Gospel of Luke prior to writing the introduction to Acts. The earliest of the books of the New Testament was First Thessalonians, an epistle of Paul, written probably in A.D. 51, or possibly Galatians in 49 according to one of two theories of its writing. Of the pseudepigraphical epistles, scholars tend to place them somewhere between 70 and 150, with Second Peter usually being the latest.

In the 1830s German scholars of the Tübingen school dated the books as late as the third century, but the discovery of some New Testament manuscripts and fragments from the second and third centuries, one of which dates as early as A.D. 125 (Papyrus 52), disproves a third century date of composition for any book now in the New Testament. Additionally, a letter to the church at Corinth in the name of Clement of Rome in 95 quotes from 10 of the 27 books of the New Testament, and a letter to the church at Philippi in the name of Polycarp in 120 quotes from 16 books. Therefore, some of the books of the New Testament were at least in a first-draft stage, though there is negligible evidence in these quotes or among biblical manuscripts for the existence of different early drafts. Other books were probably not completed until later, if we assume they must have been quoted by Clement or Polycarp. There are, however, many discrepancies between manuscripts, though the majority of the errors are clearly errors of transcription or minor in scope.

On the other extreme is the dating proposed by John A. T. Robinson. He claimed that, since he believed none of the writings in the New Testament showed clear evidence of a knowledge of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (in A.D. 70), which Robinson thought should certainly have appeared considering the importance of that event for Jews and Christians of that time, that every book which would come to form the New Testament was therefore written before A.D. 70.[22] Given Robinson's appeal to the absence of evidence, his view is widely rejected by New Testament scholars.

Now, notice 3 thinks about this publicly-edited summary of the dating of the NT:

[1] It lists three distinct theories about the dating of the books of the NT, and discredits the one most favorable to the Christian case. This speaks to the degree to which there has been some amendments to the article over time as it diminishes the overzealous statements of the advocating side regarding the validity of Robinson’s theory. I like Robinson’s theory, but it’s right to say that it’s an argument from silence.

[2] It also discredits the worst case for the NT as attempted by 19th century German scholarship. What’s interesting about this section is that the Germans are discredited by the use of the NT by Polycarp (who lived 65AD – 155 AD), and Clement of Rome (died 99 AD), and by the archeological evidence in manuscript form. The case against the late-date of the NT has what the atheist is allegedly looking for: hard archeological evidence.

[3] The “majority” opinion, then, phrased by Wikipedia, is that the Gospels were written no later than 72 AD – a completely-conservative (in terms of “conservative estimate” not “conservative theology”) estimate.

After having pointed this out to the Twe-atheists, I was called a liar (which, of course, thanks for that – of course I wrote the Wikipedia entry), and then told, “we agree then: there are no contemporary reports of Jesus.” (or words to that effect)

Well, if one is looking for newspaper clipping, of course not. But let’s consider something:

This is a chart which shows when stuff happened historically, and when someone thought it was about time someone wrote something down about it. It speaks to a short list of concerns:

[A] It speaks to the preservation of the manuscripts we are talking about. The amount of skepticism we should have toward the Gospels regarding their reliability based on how well they are preserved has to be minimal – unless we want to start elevating our skepticism toward Plutarch and Pliny as well.

[B] It speaks to the proximity of the Gospels to the events they report. That is, the Gospels were – even in the most conservative estimate – written down only 30 years after the events. That’s entirely consistent with the practices of other historians in the ancient world.

[C] It speaks to the perception of Jesus at the time of the composition. Let’s face it: the ancient world was not like our world in about a million different ways, but the two most striking differences for this examination are that they did not have mass media, and they didn’t spend a lot of time doing things which didn’t directly relate to staying alive – they didn’t have a lot of free time due to the lack of, well, stuff. So for not one but four stories about the life of Jesus to be circulated and then copied and propagated with a high degree of concern for accuracy speaks to the perception that the earliest writers about Jesus had toward the telling of his story.

Does this prove the tales of the miraculous? Of course not. Does this demand that atheism is utterly false? Not hardly. But what it does do is speak directly to the claim that these tweeting atheists have made that Jesus was not even a person. It speaks to the kind of evidence they are and are not willing to accept to even begin to frame their own arguments – and whether they are consistent in their demand for the “scientific” and the “rational”. The dating of the books speak to their origin and autheticity -- which is to say, their overall reliability.

If you want to disbelieve God, I leave it to you to do so. But you ought to first be sure you’re not disbelieving God a priori and then demanding the evidence fit your own requirements – because that is, in fact, dishonest.

I don't believe in you

I've never heard of you. And logically I can't make sense of you.

And I mean you personally -- I have plied my logic to the question of you, and I don't see the logical necessity of "you", so-called.

Am I therefore justified to disbelieve in you and be an agnostic or atheist about you personally?

Discuss.

A Clever Young Man

Can anyone find the place where the wheels come off his reasonableness?

complaints

Before you click any links in this post, be warned that this is seriously adult material -- no joking, stuff you probably don't want your kids reading through above and beyond the normal level of affrontery that I publish here -- and you don't want your kids clicking through in spite of the fact that the links are to a PDF at my host site and the original at Yahoo! Financial news.

Here's the Yahoo! Finance link and the PDF version hosted for when the Yahoo! story goes away.

Here's all I'm going to say about that: read the Larry Flint quote in that article, and then ask yourself what sort of mad self-deception it takes to say something like that. As if condoms were the problem.

You will regret it

Read the whole thing. Don't complain to me if you suddenly realize that your religion isn't all it's cracked up to be -- but I think I can overcome your new-found concerns with the Gospel.

It's religion that's crazy, dude

Seriously -- I just read this article, and plainly it's religion that thinks up imaginary worlds where all kinds of things that don't have any evidence of ever happening have happened, are happening and will happen.

Religion. Not science. Science is for people how believe in things they can prove and demonstrate. In this universe anyway -- maybe it's different in another universe.

Think about this:

I just read that physicists just predicted the end of cosmology because the universe will change over the next 250 billion years in such a radical way that most of it will be unobserveable.

That is: the assumptions of scientists at that time who have to start from scratch will be much different than the ones the guys and ladies practicing today will have. They won't have as much to work with based on what they will be able to observe.

Here's why I bring it up: what these people are saying is not that the laws of physics will have changed: they are saying that science will not be able to observe much of what would be necessary to predict or understand them. The underlying assumption is that this hasn't happened at least once already. Somehow people in the future could be victims of their own limited position and instruments but not us.

Seriously.

Briefly

Between evangelism and working to figure out how many units really go into a standard hour, I found a site which links to my little blog who is very proud of himself -- I'll bet he's got a college education, too. Very smart.

And all the links to his blog? They are also his other blogs.

Look here so I don't have to link to his blog. He's a charmer I tell ya.

By the way, who here can tell me what reading the Bible "literally" means? Chris (the guy at that blog) seems to think that nobody ever does it anyway, but I'll bet he's wrong.

out of this zone

from Doug Wilson's blog:

If we assume some sort of neutral zone in which we do not know whether God exists or not, and then we set ourselves the task of reasoning our way out of this zone into some kind of conclusion, for or against, we have already conceded something that no consistent Christian should grant. We have conceded that it is theoretically possible for us to be here and God not to be here. This is not just false; it is incoherent.

As they say in secular blogs, read the whole thing.

The way to win

WELCOME AOMIN.ORG READERS!
James: broken links have been fixed. Thx!

As many of you know, Brian Flemming declared himself the winner at the DebateBlog, and that’s fine – everyone needs to pad their resume, and if that helps him he’s welcome to it. I didn’t know that there was supposed to be a "winner" – I would have listed a point system in the rules if that was how I was looking at it.

Anyway, as the winner, Brian has recently posted a new set of rules for anyone who wants to debate him, and I thought it would be interesting to read them and see what they say. His blog entry looks like this:

So you would like to challenge me about the claims I make in The God Who Wasn't There?

No problem. But please understand that I get a lot of these requests, and I can't waste my time arguing with people who are not open to changing their minds or who haven't developed enough familiarity with the material.

So just download and sign this "Statement of Belief" PDF, have it notarized, then mail it to Beyond Belief Media. Then we can talk.

If you are unable to sign the Statement, we cannot talk any further, for one or both of the following reasons:

1) You are not familiar enough with the facts to be ready for a meaningful discussion at this time.

2) Your capacity to understand the facts is so compromised by your religious ideology that a conversation with you would be pointless.

Honestly, who wants to debate somebody who is not in the game, so to speak? It seems superficially reasonable that Brian is simply eliminating people who don’t have enough information to make a case for their own side.

I think that’s a great idea – and given that I have a Master of Arts in Literature in English, I think that Brian is making a fair demand that people who want to talk about the Bible as literature ought to know something about literature. For example: we should exclude people who do not have advanced degrees in literature, or any complete formal academic training.

Yes, Certainly. James White and William Lane Craig have the same kinds of rules. I agree. Well, that is until I read the PDF:

STATEMENT OF BELIEF

I believe it is possible that Jesus did not exist.

I believe there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ that dates to the time of his alleged life.

I believe there are no written eyewitness accounts of the existence of Jesus Christ.

I believe the names of the Gospels were added well after their composition, and there is no good reason to believe that these names correspond to the original writers.

I believe there is no good reason to believe that any of the Gospels were written by disciples of Jesus Christ, or that any eyewitnesses to Jesus were involved in their composition.

I believe the Bible is not infallible. I believe it is common for religious cults to make things up.

I believe it is common for religions to influence each other, and for young religions to be derived from older religions.

I believe that any claim can be part of Christian tradition and also be false.

I believe that no figures such as "God" or "The Holy Spirit" or "Satan" performed any supernatural actions that had any significant effect upon the formation of early Christianity.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the foregoing is true and correct.

Now, re-read the bits I highlighted there. Go on.

Do they sound familiar in some way? Ah yes! They do! They are actually all the premises of Brian’s argument! So it turns out that Brian doesn’t want to debate anybody that actually disagrees with him about his argument.

Dude: maybe we should check the definition of a "debate" before we provide this document to the world. This is more like a mutual admiration society. It is exactly like me saying, "In order to play at DebateBlog, you have to first sign off (with witnesses) the T4G affirmations and denials. After that, we can argue all day long."

It’s an easy way to stay undefeated, I am sure. You can say without any question, "after every debate I have ever had, the person I debated agreed with me."

Well, except for that self-deluded fundie centuri0n – but he’s a liar who’s not familiar with the facts.

ADDITIONAL secret technorati tags:atheism debate Brian Flemming

HT: BUGGY (nice work, man)

ON A SIMILAR NOTE: I'm looking for a community of like-minded people to synthesize a Wikipedia entry for me -- for me personally. If Brian Flemming can have a Wikipedia entry and not feel any pangs of self-indulgence, so can I.

Let me also say something about the entry: I would love it if guys like Armstrong and Johnson and even Tim Enloe created their own sections of this entry to express their concerns about me. It would be fantastic to get both the loyal fans and the loyal opposition to all make a wikipedia stew for my wiki-bio.

If it works out good, we can get Phil and the rest of TeamPyro wikipedia entries. Any all the sidekicks, too.

Brian's closer

Listen: I was about to respond to a couple of things at his personal slumdance blog, but after this closer, I don't need to.

Brian, if you're reading this, here's all I ask: You have obviously interviewed Richard Carrier. If you have not read his written work on this subject (particularly, his essay in The Empty Tomb), read it, and then read the sources in translation he says influenced the NT. While your point may be that "similarity" between Jesus and Romulus, or Jesus and Mithra, or Jesus and Attis is just enough to cause "suspicion", that is not Carrier's position.

However, to think honestly about what Carrier has proposed requires comparing the source texts. If the earlier source represents what Carrier says it does to the later source, the connection should be transparent -- because where that connection truly does exist in other cases (for example, Mark to Luke; Exodus to Matthew; Exodus to Hebrews; Daniel to Revelation; Homer to Dryden; etc.) you can place the texts side by side, read them together and the light bulb goes off.

After that, you can blame me all you want. If your testing reveals the kind of relationship Carrier asserts, publish it and put an end to the lie of Christian faith in the Bible, and blame Frank Turk for putting you on this job. If it doesn't, be equally brave and publish it, and admit that this piece of "probabilistic" evidence is nothing of the sort -- and without it, the myth of the myth of Jesus cannot stand.

Fear and clothing

OK: before I bore you all to tears with addenda to the last exchange on DBlog, I have one last thing I want to talk about and then we can get back to more important stuff – like making fun of other Christians and antagonizing bloggers with more traffic than this site.

Brian Flemming said this:

I should mention that the above essay merely skims some conclusions that I have reached in my own research. This essay is by no means a comprehensive representation of the mythicist case, nor is The God Who Wasn't There, which is merely an introduction to the case. Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, Richard Carrier and others (none of whom I speak for here) have made the case and various facets of it more comprehensively and far better than I can. I would encourage readers of the DebateBlog to experience these works directly, especially if you fear them.

The underlined part there is what grabs my attention.

See: when a Christian expresses the Gospel, there is no doubt that part of the message is about something scary. After all, we’re talking about a savior, right? And a savior is not someone who saves us from ice cream or from endearing friendship, is it? No: if we are talking about a savior, he must be saving us from something bad. The definition of “savior” is “one that saves from danger or destruction”; if we want a savior, or need a savior, or are talking about a savior, we are talking about something else dangerous that, frankly, we should have some kind of apprehension over.

In order to deliver the Gospel, we have to deliver the bad news, the danger that all men are facing without Christ. And part of that news is that Christ himself is coming back as the judge of all men. So the choice we are offering is that there is danger, that Christ can deliver you from the danger, but that if you reject His help He will be the judge who makes sure that you do not escape the danger – the punishment of your sin.

So in one way, we are saying, “You should fear this person Jesus – let me tell you about him.”

But in what way should I fear Doherty, Price, Carrier, or any of Flemming’s experts? Let me admit that I think Earl Doherty is a scary guy, but not in a way that makes me want to give him a bigger slot in my PDA’s calendar. In the best possible case for Flemming and his war on Easter, these fellows offer a truth which is a hollow victory for rationalism.

What do I mean by that? I mean that even if their case is not like trying to carry a pound of boiled angel hair pasta on a KFC spork, and that in fact they can prove that there’s no Jesus, they offer nothing to compete with the positive implications in faith in Christ.

For example, Brian was obliging enough to offer this in his last answer to me at the DebateBlog:

Growing up Christian and attending Christian schools, I heard about Jesus a lot. No doubt some of the values I hold I first learned from Jesus, if only by default.

So, what in Christianity has been "beneficial or worthwhile" to me? I guess it would be those things that I grabbed from between the nasty bits and made part of my own value system.

Now: that is a huge concession by any atheist. I’ll go on-record to say that I have never heard any atheist make that kind of concession while in a debate over the existence of God or Jesus.

But it is large enough that it leaves the door wide open to asking: so how will atheism fill that gap after the abolition of Jesus?

If atheism offers nothing to those who cannot self-actualize, it also offers nothing regarding a sustaining moral direction -- not because atheists today are bad people who have vicious ideas of right and wrong, but because the way they learned about right and wrong is the very thing they are attacking.

The source of western values is Christian philosophy; the way those values have been taught for millennia has been Christ and the Bible. If we count those things as the great evil lie which Eusebius and his ilk fabricated out of the hodge-podge of legends started by disgruntled Jews who wanted to be more like the pagans around them, the methods of instilling moral behavior in the next generation are gone.

Unless Brian knows something that no other atheist has been able to explain in the last 150 years. You see: you can’t throw out the Jesus but keep his wardrobe and expect to wear it as if it has always been yours. It doesn’t fit you, and everyone can spot a kid in hand-me-downs from a mile away. And nobody I know is afraid of a kid who’s wearing second-hand shoes.

more secret technorati tags:atheism atheist history church debate

Obviously Mark

Yes, I know this is a lot of text and no comic book pictures. Sorry to interrupt your day.

I have two texts that I’d like the readers of this blog to compare, just for their own peace of mind. The first comes from a fellow names Livy, who wrote this around 10 AD:

After these immortal achievements, Romulus held a review of his army at the `Caprae Palus' in the Campus Martius. A violent thunder storm suddenly arose and enveloped the king in so dense a cloud that he was quite invisible to the assembly. From that hour Romulus was no longer seen on earth. When the fears of the Roman youth were allayed by the return of bright, calm sun-shine after such fearful weather, they saw that the royal seat was vacant. Whilst they fully believed the assertion of the Senators, who had been standing close to him, that he had been snatched away to heaven by a whirlwind, still, like men suddenly bereaved, fear and grief kept them for some time speechless. At length, after a few had taken the initiative, the whole of those present hailed Romulus as ` a god, the son of a god, the King and Father of the City of Rome.' They put up supplications for his grace and favour, and prayed that he would be propitious to his children and save and protect them.

I believe, however, that even then there were some who secretly hinted that he had been torn limb from limb by the senators-a tradition to this effect, though certainly a very dim one, has filtered down to us. The other, which I follow, has been the prevailing one, due, no doubt, to the admiration felt for the man and the apprehensions excited by his disappearance. This generally accepted belief was strengthened by one man's clever device. The tradition runs that Proculus Julius, a man whose authority had weight in matters of even the gravest importance, seeing how deeply the community felt the loss of the king, and how incensed they were against the senators, came forward into the assembly and said: `Quirites! at break of dawn, to-day, the Father of this City suddenly descended from heaven and appeared to me. Whilst, thrilled with awe, I stood rapt before him in deepest reverence, praying that I might be pardoned for gazing upon him, `Go,' said he, `tell the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome should be the head of all the world. Let them henceforth cultivate the arts of war, and let them know assuredly, and hand down the knowledge to posterity, that no human might can withstand the arms of Rome.'' It is marvellous what credit was given to this man's story, and how the grief of the people and the army was soothed by the belief which had been created in the immortality of Romulus.

You can read the entire text of Livy’s work here.

Now, in contrast to that story, here’s another by a fellow about 60 years later, give or take a few years. The writer is called “Mark” by history, and his composition looks like this:

[Mark 15] And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole Council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" And he answered him, "You have said so." And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, "Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you." But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.

Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" And they cried out again, "Crucify him." And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?" But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him." So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews." And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!" So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Elijah." And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.

[Mark 16] When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, "Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The reason I provide this comparison is that it is the assertion of Richard Carrier – one of Brian Flemming’s panel of experts – that:

At the end of his life, amidst rumors he [Romulus] was murdered…and dismembered, just like the resurrected deities Osiris and Bacchus), a darkness covered the earth, thunder and wind struck, and Romulus vanished, leaving no part of his body or clothes behind; the people wanted to search for him but the Senate told them not to, “for he had been taken up to the gods”; most people then went away happy…but “some doubted”; later, Proculus…reported that he met him “on the road,” and asked him “Why have you abandoned us?” to which Romulus replied that he had been a god all along, but had come down to earth to establish a great kingdom and now had to return to his home in heaven…a scene so obviously a parallel to Mark’s ending of his Gospel that nearly anyone would have noticed —and gotten the point. Indeed, Livy’s account, just like Mark’s emphasizes that “fear and bereavement” kept the people “silent for a long time,” and only later did they proclaim Romulus “God, Son of God, King,and Father.”

Already, the Romulan celebration looks astonishingly like a skeletal model of the passion narrative…It certainly looks like the Christian passion narrative is a deliberate transvaluation of the Roman Empire’s ceremony of their founding savior’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. (Empty Tomb, 181)

I think it is interesting how this particular assertion fares when you compare the texts for yourself. Not only does Carrier’s description of, for example, Livy’s narrative leave something to be desired, the claim that the account of Romulus’ end and the “end” of Christ are “astonishingly alike” needs some fleshing out.

By anyone. Anyone who can make the generalization stick after viewing the two works side by side ought to do so here. These works are only alike in that they are literature at all.

more secret technorati tags:atheism atheist history church debate

Eusebius

I was reading another blog yesterday, and someone over there made a reference to Eusebius saying this:

We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity.

This person, who is Brian Flemming btw (no reason to talk about him as if it were a secret), makes that citation in this context:

Even on the off chance that back then evidence arose to question the veracity of the gospels, we can have relative confidence that church leaders would suppress or destroy it.

Historical accuracy was most certainly not the first priority for the early church. Church father Eusebius probably puts it best in his own words: "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity."

If the legend was false, how was it maintained as dogma? Just ask Eusebius. It was useful. It didn't matter whether it was true or false. That's pretty obvious.

We can be grateful, btw, that Brian has the circumspection to include his source for that quote, which is Wikipedia. You have to admire a guy who is honest about where he gets his information.

The problem, however, for Brian's point is at least three-fold.

FOLD #1: What was Wikipedia's purpose in expressing Eusebius' words here?

The passage in Wikipedia goes like this:

The limitations of Eusebius could be said to flow from his position as the first court appointed Christian theologian in the service of the Constantine Roman Empire. Notwithstanding the great influence of his works on others, Eusebius was not himself a great historian. His treatment of heresy, for example, is inadequate, and he knew very little about the Western church. His historical works are really apologetics. In his Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 8, chapter 2, he points out, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity."

In his Praeparatio evangelica (xii, 31), Eusebius has a section on the use of fictions (pseudos) as a "medicine", which may be "lawful and fitting" to use [3]. With that in mind, it is still difficult to assess Eusebius' conclusions and veracity by confronting him with his predecessors and contemporaries, for texts of previous chroniclers, notably Papias, whom he denigrated, and Hegesippus, on whom he relied, have disappeared; they survive largely in the form of the quotes of their work that Eusebius selected and thus they are to be seen only through the lens of Eusebius.

These and other issues have invited controversy. For example, Jacob Burckhardt has dismissed Eusebius as "the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity". Burckhardt is not alone in holding such a view. However, Professor Michael J. Hollerich thinks such criticisms go too far. Writing in "Church History" (Vol. 59, 1990), he says that ever since Burckhardt, "Eusebius has been an inviting target for students of the Constantinian era. At one time or another they have characterized him as a political propagandist, a good courtier, the shrewd and worldly adviser of the Emperor Constantine, the great publicist of the first Christian emperor, the first in a long succession of ecclesiastical politicians, the herald of Byzantinism, a political theologian, a political metaphysician, and a caesaropapist. It is obvious that these are not, in the main, neutral descriptions. Much traditional scholarship, sometimes with barely suppressed disdain, has regarded Eusebius as one who risked his orthodoxy and perhaps his character because of his zeal for the Constantinian establishment." He concludes that "the standard assessment has exaggerated the importance of political themes and political motives in Eusebius's life and writings and has failed to do justice to him as a churchman and a scholar".

While many have shared Burckhartdt's assessment, others, while not pretending to extol his merits, have acknowledged the irreplaceable value of his works. {Emph added}

Let's be clear that this entry doesn't paint an overly-rosy picture of Eusebius, but in demonstrating Eusebius' shortcomings, it says something else about ancient historians in general. Particularly, the Eusebius does not represent a class of dishonest church historians but that he stands alone as a kind of ancient historian, and that very few (if any) other historians did what he confessed to doing.

Wikipedia's citation here is meant to inform us of the uniqueness of Eusebius' position, not to denigrate a class of historians or to denigrate church history as a practice.

FOLD #2: When was Eusebius writing?

In the discussion at DBlog on the topic of Jesus, Brian has made a very big deal about the lack of contemporaniousness of the Gospels to the period in which Jesus was supposed to have lived. You can read for yourself what kind of big deal it is in his view. My point here is that the Gospels were written -- even in Brian's view -- only about 30-40 years after the events they claim to be describing, and that brings them into suspicion of being fiction.

Eusebius was born in the late third century. In the best case, that means that Eusebius was writing about 250 years after the composition of the first Gospel.

Well, so what? If the Gospels, because of their dating, cannot be trusted to report the events they describe -- or rather, to stay inside the bounds of Brian's arguments, ought to be viewed with adequate suspicion -- after only 30 years of disconnection, in what way can Eusebius be employed to speak in any way reliably about the intentions of writers nearly 3 centuries prior to himself? Even if Eusebius is openly hostile to truth, and is confessedly a manipulator of facts, the grounds for rejecting the Gospels as an account of the life of Jesus must be applied equally to Eusebius as an account of hat the writers before him did.

FOLD #3: What was Eusebius' purpose and function in writing the statement Brian cited?

Let's let Eusebius speak for himself:

[The Events which preceded the Persecution in our Times, cf. VIII, 1] were fulfilled in us, when we saw with our own eyes the houses of prayer thrown down to the very foundations, and the Divine and Sacred Scriptures committed to the flames in the midst of the market-places, and the shepherds of the churches basely hidden here and there, and some of them captured ignominiously, and mocked by their enemies. When also, according to another prophetic word, “Contempt was poured out upon rulers, and he caused them to wander in an untrodden and pathless way.”

But it is not our place to describe the sad misfortunes which finally came upon them, as we do not think it proper, moreover, to record their divisions and unnatural conduct to each other before the persecution. Wherefore we have decided to relate nothing concerning them except the things in which we can vindicate the Divine judgment.

Hence we shall not mention those who were shaken by the persecution, nor those who in everything pertaining to salvation were shipwrecked, and by their own will were sunk in the depths of the flood. But we shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity. Let us therefore proceed to describe briefly the sacred conflicts of the witnesses of the Divine Word.
{Emph added}

Now, think on this: what Eusebius is here confessing is not that he is a liar or a fabricator. This passage is Eusebius' confession that he's not writing an encyclopedic or exhaustive history of these times, but instead is writing a history which is about the faithful people only and not about those who, after being persecuted, departed from the church.

That's hardly a crime, and it's hardly dishonesty in the sense that Brian would like to promulgate. Thus, even if Wikipedia had intended to use Eusebius to indict all Christian history in the first 3 centuries of its existence, and even if Eusebius could be used to gage the intentions or opinions of the writers of the Gospels and the rest of the NT, there is still the fact that Eusebius is here not confessing to historical revisionism but is simply stating his intention not to write a history of the whole of Roman civilization but only that of the faithful who survived persecution.

See: that's why this work is called Church History.

Sorry to be so unreliable in terms of daily blogging, btw. As you can imagine, I have been busy.

more secret technorati tags:atheism atheist history church debate