<a190's summary: David Hogan quotes an Internet Infidels web page examining
the historicity (or lack thereof) of William Tell and its implications
regarding the historicity of Jesus.>
>Well, my web search has finally turned up something...
>
>http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_m_mangasarian/
>truth_about_jesus.html
<snip to the quoted tie-in to Jesus>
>cannot be found. Yet all these arguments are not half so damaging to
>the William Tell story, as the silence of Josephus is to the Jesus
>story. Jesus was supposed to have worked greater wonders and to have
>created a wider sensation than Tell; therefore, it is more difficult
>to explain the silence of historians like Josephus, Pliny and
>Quintilian; or of philosophers like Philo, Seneca and Epictetus,
>concerning Jesus, than to explain the silence of the Swiss chroniclers
>concerning Tell.
This, to me, seems to be one of those "more heat than light" arguments.
I can't speak for other Christians when they argue for the historicity of
Jesus but, for me, the issue comes down to one simple question: did the
traditions (oral or written) that the writers of the NT used as sources
originate with an actual individual in early 1st century Judea?
If it did, than that is all the historicity I require. I do not need to
claim the historicity of the miracles nor do I need claim the authenticity
of the teachings. Once we can establish the existence of a historical
individual who was the inspiration of the writings, we can begin the
difficult task of determining which - if any - material in the New
Testament can be established historically.
If one claims that there was no such person, that a group of imaginative
folk sat at the bar one night over a couple of cold ones and concocted the
whole thing, then there IS no historical core to the NT save the history of
the church.
To believe this, I would need a theory that explains - in detail - the
existence of the New Testament in light of 150 years of
historical-criticism regarding its sources.
I'm no expert on historical Jesus arguments, but such a theory would need
to explain - along with a great many other things - the evidence from
Galatians.
Galatians is generally held to be an authentic Pauline epistle. In
Gal. 1:18, Paul talks about what he did some three years after he received
"a revelation of Jesus Christ" (1:12b). Note that in the following quote,
he is attempting to distance himself from the other apostles and establish
that his own apostleship is established by God not other people:
18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and
remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles
except James the Lord's brother.
Now I remember reading in Martin's _The Case Against Christianity_ a
counter-argument (either by Michael Martin or Wells) explaining why this
verse cannot be used to defend the historicity of Jesus. I don't remember
the argument, but I do remember that it was mighty unconvincing to me.
It seems that here we have a person who met with Cephas (whom, evidence to
the contrary, I would assume is the "Peter" of the gospels and who probably
was the first to make the resurrection claim) as well as James, identified
as "the Lord's brother".
This incident was almost certainly less than 10 years after Jesus'
crucifixion. To gainsay this evidence, one must (IMHO) state that Cephas
and James never knew Jesus "in the flesh".
Bill
a190@lehigh.edu (Bill Bekkenhuis) Myers-Briggs (INFX)
http://www.lehigh.edu/~a190/a190.html (Updated 6/17/97)
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