Attn: harmonizers

[steve7150]

a) We do not have to conclude that the Jewish guy was crucified “unjustly.” All of the sources that you list are Christian, and thus partisan to the Jewish guy (except for bar Serapion, discussed below). Partisans may not be trustworthy to provide a fully accurate portrayal.

Even from the canonical accounts, it would seem that the Jewish guy’s behavior was incendiary. Given the political context of the times, capital punishment may have been appropriate. We hardly have all the facts to the situation, and we do not have a reliable statement of the other side’s perspective (Jewish and/or Roman). Does it seem responsible to “conclude” without having heard both sides to the story?





Hello Emmet,

You do not have to conclude Jesus was crucified unjustly but i think it is a logical conclusion although at times his behavior was apparently incendiary. I consider Isaiah 53 to be a reliable prediction of the righteous suffering servent who would die for the sins of others and then see his offspring which alludes to the resurrection. You state all of the sources are Christian yet Isaiah was'nt and at the time of Jesus ministry his followers did'nt understand the enormity of who he was , so although they were followers of Jesus i would'nt call them Christians until later. They came to believe by experience and observation at first therefore although they later became Christians it was'nt a pre-determined plan on their part and there is no reason not to accept their testimony and witness.
As far as hearing both sides i think Jesus is mentioned in the Talmud as a false prophet who lead many jews astray and who received certain miraculous powers through Satan. So there you do have a choice as to which witnesses you can believe.

[kaufmannphillips]

Hi, Steve,

steve7150 wrote:
You do not have to conclude Jesus was crucified unjustly but i think it is a logical conclusion although at times his behavior was apparently incendiary. I consider Isaiah 53 to be a reliable prediction of the righteous suffering servent who would die for the sins of others and then see his offspring which alludes to the resurrection.

Isaiah 53 is a non-specific prophecy that affords varying interpretations. It antedates the death of Jesus by centuries, and introducing it as a source here is hardly conclusive.

steve7150 wrote:
You state all of the sources are Christian yet Isaiah was'nt and at the time of Jesus ministry his followers did'nt understand the enormity of who he was , so although they were followers of Jesus i would'nt call them Christians until later. They came to believe by experience and observation at first therefore although they later became Christians it was'nt a pre-determined plan on their part and there is no reason not to accept their testimony and witness.

(a) I spoke concerning the sources that Jason had introduced. Isaiah was not one of those sources.

(b) All of those sources (except for one that I explicitly dealt with) were partisans of Jesus at the time of writing their accounts. One may dispute the nomenclature of “Christian” if one wishes. But the basic point stands.

We really know quite little (if anything) about the persons who wrote most of these sources. We certainly don’t know most of them intimately enough to evaluate how they came to hold their ideas. But “experience” and “observation” are very personal things, and they naturally correspond to one’s psychological filter. They are also liable to plasticity under retrospection. A person who is psychologically inclined to believe in Jesus will also quite likely be inclined to view his execution as unjust – regardless of the facts of the matter.

(c) We may note that many persons experienced and observed Jesus without coming to believe in him. So observation and experience of Jesus did not necessarily yield a particular conclusion about him. Just because somebody has a witness and a testimony does not mean that it should be accepted.

steve7150 wrote:
As far as hearing both sides i think Jesus is mentioned in the Talmud as a false prophet who lead many jews astray and who received certain miraculous powers through Satan. So there you do have a choice as to which witnesses you can believe.

The Talmud is a document from centuries after the time of Jesus. It is hardly a satisfactory source for what Jews or Romans who were involved in the execution of Jesus would have said or thought.

[steve7150]

b) All of those sources (except for one that I explicitly dealt with) were partisans of Jesus at the time of writing their accounts. One may dispute the nomenclature of “Christian” if one wishes. But the basic point stands.

We really know quite little (if anything) about the persons who wrote most of these sources. We certainly don’t know most of them intimately enough to evaluate how they came to hold their ideas. But “experience” and “observation” are very personal things, and they naturally correspond to one’s psychological filter. They are also liable to plasticity under retrospection. A person who is psychologically inclined to believe in Jesus will also quite likely be inclined to view his execution as unjust – regardless of the facts of the matter.

(c) We may note that many persons experienced and observed Jesus without coming to believe in him. So observation and experience of Jesus did not necessarily yield a particular conclusion about him. Just because somebody has a witness and a testimony does not mean that it should be accepted.







Emmet, Re the Talmud , the religious jews who study it daily certainly find it reliable and trustworthy therefore it probably is an accurate assessment of how they view Jesus , they hated him even calling him Yeshu and claiming he is now in boiling feces. They certainly knew who he was.
Interestingly you call the folks who wrote about Jesus "partisans" yet you go on to say that quite little is known about these authors but despite this you take the liberty to call them partisan which means in your view they were biased. What is your evidence to arrive at this conclusion?
There are non Christian sources re Jesus like Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Josephus but what skeptics do is claim that Christian "partisans" forged documents or inserted words into documents so even when non Christian documentation appear it is dismissed anyway.
As i mentioned before the folks who believed in Jesus were not Christians, they were jews who later became Christians because they witnessed miraculous things and knew it could only come from God.

[kaufmannphillips]

steve7150wrote:
Re the Talmud , the religious jews who study it daily certainly find it reliable and trustworthy therefore it probably is an accurate assessment of how they view Jesus , they hated him even calling him Yeshu and claiming he is now in boiling feces. They certainly knew who he was.

As I indicated, Steve, the Talmud is a document from centuries after the time of Jesus. Using it to characterize the views of first century Jews would be like articulating the views of the apostolic church based on fourth- and fifth-century church councils. With such a clodhopping methodology, one could argue from present-day literature that Martin Luther condoned non-celibate homosexual clergy, or that Henry VIII endorsed ordination of women to the priesthood.

steve7150
Interestingly you call the folks who wrote about Jesus "partisans" yet you go on to say that quite little is known about these authors but despite this you take the liberty to call them partisan which means in your view they were biased. What is your evidence to arrive at this conclusion?

These authors are partisans because they have chosen to take Jesus’ part in the arena of religious thought. It does not appear from any of these documents that their writers held a non-committal stance toward Jesus. There is no cautious language about the figure of Jesus, no equivocation about his character or judgment or reliability, no intimation that he might not be everything he claims to be. Jesus is never subjected to the slightest criticism by the writers of these documents. It seems quite unlikely that a writer would produce an extensive and universally glowing treatment of Jesus without also taking his part.

Now, partisans are not by definition biased, but persons who take sides and devote their allegiance are quite naturally prone to bias.

steve7150 wrote:
There are non Christian sources re Jesus like Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Josephus but what skeptics do is claim that Christian "partisans" forged documents or inserted words into documents so even when non Christian documentation appear it is dismissed anyway.

Skeptics do not challenge Tacitus and Pliny. Josephus is the classic example of suspected redaction. But even if his brief passage were considered to be free from tampering, it would make little difference in terms of evidence. Josephus was no credible eyewitness to Jesus of Nazareth; he was born in 37 CE.

kaufmannphillips wrote:
As i mentioned before the folks who believed in Jesus were not Christians, they were jews who later became Christians because they witnessed miraculous things and knew it could only come from God.

The persons who wrote the sources at hand were partisans of Jesus at the time when they wrote their documents. They may have become partisans of Jesus as a result of things that they observed or experienced, but observation and experience are fallible and subject to influence by bias – not only at the time of their occurrence, but also thereafter, due to the plasticity of remembrance.

[steve7150]

These authors are partisans because they have chosen to take Jesus’ part in the arena of religious thought. It does not appear from any of these documents that their writers held a non-committal stance toward Jesus. There is no cautious language about the figure of Jesus, no equivocation about his character or judgment or reliability, no intimation that he might not be everything he claims to be. Jesus is never subjected to the slightest criticism by the writers of these documents. It seems quite unlikely that a writer would produce an extensive and universally glowing treatment of Jesus without also taking his part.

Now, partisans are not by definition biased, but persons who take sides and devote their allegiance are quite naturally prone to bias.


steve7150 wrote:
There are non Christian sources re Jesus like Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Josephus but what skeptics do is claim that Christian "partisans" forged documents or inserted words into documents so even when non Christian documentation appear it is dismissed anyway.

Skeptics do not challenge Tacitus and Pliny. Josephus is the classic example of suspected redaction. But even if his brief passage were considered to be free from tampering, it would make little difference in terms of evidence. Josephus was no credible eyewitness to Jesus of Nazareth; he was born in 37 CE.








Emmet, According to dictionary.com "bias" is one of the definitions of "partisan" therefore i think you are reading motives into Jesus supporters that can not actually be discerned. If Jesus did in fact get resurrected then it's understandable why his supporters would describe him the way they do.
As far as Josephus goes it is most likely he interviewed people much closer to Jesus then himself and the time gap in the scheme of things is pretty immaterial.
I must disagree with you re the Talmud as there was a strong oral tradition about Jesus and the fact it was penned around 250AD or so does not mean the knowledge about Jesus originated at that time. The hatred they had toward him suggests a strong personal interaction and familiarity with him.

[kaufmannphillips]

steve7150 write:
Emmet, According to dictionary.com "bias" is one of the definitions of "partisan" therefore i think you are reading motives into Jesus supporters that can not actually be discerned.

Well, I actually checked dictionary.com before submitting my last post. I am not above checking my own vocabulary.

The page for “partisan” is available here. One can see that bias is not a necessary connotation of the word.

steve7150 wrote:
If Jesus did in fact get resurrected then it's understandable why his supporters would describe him the way they do.

But that is not the only explanation for why they might do so. And it is not even the most probable explanation.

steve7150 wrote:
As far as Josephus goes it is most likely he interviewed people much closer to Jesus then himself and the time gap in the scheme of things is pretty immaterial.

(a) I mentioned Josephus’ birthdate simply as evidence that he himself could not have been a credible eyewitness to Jesus. The time gap in the case of Josephus is not otherwise a major issue for me.


(b) We can hardly demonstrate the extent of Josephus’ research into Jesus. His mention of Jesus is limited to roughly a paragraph in the midst of a very extensive work; this does not telegraph a consuming fascination on the part of the writer. But given his life-story, Josephus may have encountered persons who had seen Jesus during his period of ministry.

If the text in Josephus’ Antiquities has not been redacted, then there are some intriguing extrapolations that one can make from it. But one is certainly not beholden to accept his account as factual. If the text were pure from redaction, it might be indicative of what some persons at the time of Josephus believed. But it would not demonstrate that they were correct in believing such things.

steve7150 wrote:
I must disagree with you re the Talmud as there was a strong oral tradition about Jesus and the fact it was penned around 250AD or so does not mean the knowledge about Jesus originated at that time. The hatred they had toward him suggests a strong personal interaction and familiarity with him.

(a) The development of the Talmud went on for centuries. To pass off the document as penned in the mid-third century is absurd.


(b) The prevailing issue is not that treatment of Jesus in the Talmud might reflect what certain first century Jews thought about Jesus. The prevailing issue is that we cannot demonstrate whether it does or not.

To return to my examples, some elements in present-day Lutheran literature will fairly reflect the stance of Martin Luther, and likewise for Anglicans and Henry VIII. But other elements will not derive from these early parties, and will in fact stand in direct contradiction to their outlooks.


(c) The Talmud does not devote much space to discussing Jesus. Only one text in the entire gargantuan work deals with the execution of Jesus. No source is mentioned for it, so we have not even the slender reed of attribution to suggest that the account derives from persons who were party to the execution itself.

And for what it is worth, a 2007 article articulates the outlook of Peter Schaefer, a Christian scholar who wrote the recent Jesus in the Talmud, as such: “[Schaefer] emphasizes that the rabbis' stories about Jesus were never intended as an attempt at historically accurate narrative. Rather, in the classic Talmudic style, they encode legal and theological argumentation in the form of sometimes-imaginative storytelling.”

[steve7150]

steve7150 write:
Emmet, According to dictionary.com "bias" is one of the definitions of "partisan" therefore i think you are reading motives into Jesus supporters that can not actually be discerned.

Well, I actually checked dictionary.com before submitting my last post. I am not above checking my own vocabulary.

The page for “partisan” is available here. One can see that bias is not a necessary connotation of the word.

steve7150 wrote:
If Jesus did in fact get resurrected then it's understandable why his supporters would describe him the way they do.

But that is not the only explanation for why they might do so. And it is not even the most probable explanation.







Emmet, It's good you checked dictionary.com because one of the definitions of "partisan" is "a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance". Nowadays when we speak of partisan politics i think it's generally understood to include "bias". Therefore i think it implies a different mindset among the followers or supporters of Jesus then can actually be discerned from the writings about him.
The resurrection is the most likely explanation for the actions of Jesus supporters and i find it not implausable that the God who created the universe could and would resurrect a person.
Of course it is possible that Jesus followers could have been mistaken or con men who conspired to fool many other jews but i doubt that scenerio would have sustained the growth of the initial Christian community.

[kaufmannphillips]

steve7150 wrote:
It's good you checked dictionary.com because one of the definitions of "partisan" is "a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance". Nowadays when we speak of partisan politics i think it's generally understood to include "bias". Therefore i think it implies a different mindset among the followers or supporters of Jesus then can actually be discerned from the writings about him.

Bias is a possible connotation of “partisan,” but not a necessary one. The reason that bias has become a possible connotation is because persons who adhere to a certain party are commonly liable to bias in favor of that party.

This makes “partisan” an adroit word for describing the writers in question. If they have taken Jesus’ part in the arena of religious thought - if they have given him their allegiance and become part of the body of Christ - then the basic definition of the word is appropriate. And though this does not in and of itself determine bias on their part, one would commonly expect for them – as partisans of Jesus – to be liable to bias. The basic definition of “partisan” fits a basic understanding of these people; and the common-though-not-necessary connotation of “partisan” fits what one would commonly-but-not-necessarily expect of such people.

steve7150 wrote:
The resurrection is the most likely explanation for the actions of Jesus supporters and i find it not implausable that the God who created the universe could and would resurrect a person.

I suppose G-d "could" resurrect a person. Whether he "would" or not is another question. Out of the billions of persons who lived on this planet, we have terrifically few or none who have been resurrected from the dead by G-d. So this sort of activity does not seem to be regular for him.

Accordingly, what is the "most likely" possibility concerning Jesus' resurrection? Do people get resurrected more often, or do people perpetrate frauds or become deluded or get caught up in fantasies more often?

steve7150 wrote:
Of course it is possible that Jesus followers could have been mistaken or con men who conspired to fool many other jews but i doubt that scenerio would have sustained the growth of the initial Christian community.

There is great power in belief - even when a belief is misfounded. People who firmly believed that Jesus was alive and that his claims were true could have acted in much the same way whether or not their belief was accurate.

As for the possibility of con artistry - well, even charlatans can "sustain the growth" of new communities and traditions, and this even in the face of serious persecution and hardship. One likely example in the American milieu would be Joseph Smith.

[steve]

Accordingly, what is the "most likely" possibility concerning Jesus' resurrection? Do people get resurrected more often, or do people perpetrate frauds or become deluded or get caught up in fantasies more often?

Emmet,

You made this point on another occasion, and I thought it to be less incisive than most of your arguments. I believe you have made two errors here:

1. One cannot estimate the likelihood of any historical event having occurred by appeal to the question of how many times such a thing has or has not happened. How many times did Alexander conquer the Persians? How often does Rome fall? How many parallels are there in history to the bombing of Hiroshima? Yet we know that all these things happened, because people with first-or-second-hand knowledge have reported them. Frequency of occurrence has nothing to do with the likelihood of some historical event having taken place. The likelihood of a report being true hangs more heavily on the credibility of the sources.

2. In comparing, on the one hand, the frequency with which men rise from the dead with the frequency with which men lie and perpetrate frauds, you propose a false comparison, because you compare the likelihood of God doing something (raising the dead) with that of men doing something (perpetrating fraud).

Yet no one can say how "likely" it is that God would do a certain thing that is not inconsistent with His character—even if the thing would be an event unique in history. Thus, He may raise a man from the dead, heal a leper, give sight to the blind, etc., at will, and no one could (without first establishing that God's will would be contrary to such actions) give any estimation at all as to how likely it would be for Him to do so.

It may be extremely likely or extremely unlikely that God would raise a particular dead man. It would depend upon what God wants to do—and that would be determined by the question of what may be consistent with His purposes.

Of course, an inquiry into God's actions does not correlate with any data about the behavior—fraudulent or otherwise—of human agents.

When we turn to the consideration of the likelihood of men perpetrating fraud, we are certainly not on solid ground in saying that any given set of men are more likely to be con artists than to be honest men. There are many con artists, and there are also honest men. In deciding whether a given school of thought is the fruit of fraud or of honest reporting, one must know something about the character of those who are the sources of the foundational claims.

We might think it likely that the majority of people who attend the Fed Ex employees Christmas party will get drunk there—and we may feel confident of having our predictions materialize. However, if we want to establish the likelihood that Fred Jones, a Fed Ex employee, will get drunk at the party, we would have to consider factors about the man himself. Is he a drinker? Is he habitually moderate? Is he a teetotaler? The prediction of one man's behavior cannot be made upon the basis of statistical analysis of mankind in general.

I realize that your whole argument on this thread has been to undermine the credibility of the Christian sources, but the particular argument you made above strayed from that line of inquiry into illogic.

As for your seemingly gratuitous persistence in skepticism about the integrity of the gospel stories as they have come down to us, I have also addressed that in a previous post. I think the most you have been able to propose is that Christians do not have adequate evidence (in your estimation) to trust the records. I would counter that no one has sufficient evidence that the gospels misrepresent the essential story of Jesus, so as to allow anyone comfortably to reject their witness.

What I find perplexing about you, in particular, is that you used to identify yourself as a Christian, and even pastored a Christian congregation. Something obviously influenced you subsequently to apostasize, but nothing you have posted provides sufficient explanation for your actions.

You obviously delight the study of source materials, but when it comes to the gospels, your belief that they are untrustworthy is a mere intuition. They may seem sketchy to you, but no grounds exist for certainty that anything in them is false. I am trying to understand the psychology of a man who once believed in Christ, and then defected from him on such a subjective basis.

After all the evidences have been weighed, it is true that we are left to choose one belief or the other. There is the belief that the gospels give us a substantially historical picture of the life and teachings of Jesus—a belief for which there is considerable evidence of exactly the same kind as we have for many other historical accounts. Then there is the belief that the gospels are mere legends, lacking any very close connection to actual historical events—a belief for which a case can be made only by subjecting them to a more rigorous degree of criticism than scholars are accustomed to applying to other historical claims. Both beliefs can find some justification, but neither can prove its case beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Therefore, the decision lies in the individual. What I don't understand is how someone who had previously made a decision in favor of Christ (if that's what you did when you were younger) could, upon so scant evidence against the gospels, choose to become an opponent of Christ (after all, you have suggested, without providing any evidence whatsoever, that Jesus might have deserved capital punishment). I cannot discern what psychological kit guides a man in this direction. I can imagine certain controlling motives to be present, but I will not suggest any, since none of them are flattering. My guess is that you see your motives in the matter very differently than I am able to imagine them. Therefore, I would be interested in hear from you what happened to you and how you perceive your own psychological journey.

[steve7150]

Bias is a possible connotation of “partisan,” but not a necessary one. The reason that bias has become a possible connotation is because persons who adhere to a certain party are commonly liable to bias in favor of that party.

This makes “partisan” an adroit word for describing the writers in question. If they have taken Jesus’ part in the arena of religious thought - if they have given him their allegiance and become part of the body of Christ - then the basic definition of the word is appropriate. And though this does not in and of itself determine bias on their part, one would commonly expect for them – as partisans of Jesus – to be liable to bias. The basic definition of “partisan” fits a basic understanding of these people; and the common-though-not-necessary connotation of “partisan” fits what one would commonly-but-not-necessarily expect of such people.





Emmet, I respect your knowledge but i certainly disagree on your logic in using the word "partisan" although it is an adroit word for you to use in the sense of "clever."
Why would "bias" be commonly expected from followers of Jesus when everything they would have been taught would be contradictory of who Jesus was and is. They even could not comprehend what his real mission was after spending years with him, thinking he was setting up an earthly kingdom because that was what they expected from their Messiah. Their is nothing in the NT that makes Jesus followers sound like partisans in fact they often sound confused with shifting loyalties as can be seen by who was not at the cross.