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Questioning the Historicity of Jesus
Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse
Series: - Value Inquiry Book Series Online, Volume: 336
- Value Inquiry Book Series, Volume: 336
- Philosophy and Religion, Volume: 336
Author:
This volume moves beyond the mainstream scholarly scepticism over the Christ of Faith and considers if there is sufficient evidence to establish the existence of the more mundane Historical Jesus. Using the logical tools of the analytic philosopher, Lataster finds that the relevant sources are unreliable as historical documents, and that the key method of those purporting that the Historical Jesus existed is to appeal to sources that do not exist. Considering an ancient hypothesis suggesting that Jesus began as a celestial messiah that certain Second Temple Jews already believed in, and was later allegorised in the Gospels, Lataster discovers that it is more reasonable to at least be agnostic over Jesus’ historicity.
Raphael Lataster, Ph.D. (2017), University of Sydney, is an associate lecturer at that university. He has published monographs and articles on God’s existence and Jesus’ existence, including The Case Against Theism (Springer, 2018).
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1Which Jesus?
2A Debate among Atheists
3The Problem
4The Philosopher’s Probabilistic Approach
1Ehrman’s Dual Approach towards the Gospels
1A (Mostly) Wonderful Start
2The Gospels and the Folly of the Hypothetical Source
2Beyond the Gospels
1The Problem of Paul
3Casey’s Superfluous ‘Scholarship’
1Poisoning the Well
2‘Method’
3Why the Gospels Ought to Be Trusted, but Only When We Feel like It
4After the Case
5Even Worse than Ehrman: Offensive and Facetious
6Crossan’s Brief Attempt
4Inadequate Methods
1History Concerns What Probably Happened
2Criteria for Authenticity
3Faith and Inconsistency
4A Bayesian Alternative
5The Criteria vs. Bayes
5Inadequate Sources
1The Silence of the Primary Sources
2‘Other’ Christian Sources
3(Non-Christian) Extrabiblical Sources
4Josephus
5Tacitus
6Thallus (and Phlegon)
7Pliny, Suetonius, and Mara Bar Serapion
8The Talmud
9The Less Interesting Books of the New Testament
10The Canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John
11Mark’s Burden
12The Genre of the Gospels
13Burridge’s Take on the Gospels’ Genre
14Mark’s Failure
6The Problem of Paul
1The Docetic/Marcionite Jesus
2The Earliest Witness’ Sources
3Paul’s Minimal, Unquotable Jesus
4Paul’s Cosmic Christ
5Philo’s Pre-Christian and Pre-Pauline ‘Celestial Jesus’
6The Evolution of Jesus
7Fictitious Founders
8The Revelation of/from Paul
9Agnosticism is Rational
7Prior Probabilities
1The Problem
2The Hypothesis of Historicity
3The Hypothesis of Myth
4Background Knowledge (Christianity)
4.1Elements of Christian Origin
4.2Elements of Christian Religion
5Background Knowledge (Context)
5.1Elements of Political Context
5.2Elements of Religious and Philosophical Context
5.3Elements of Literary Context
6The Prior Probability
8Consequent Probabilities
1Primary Sources
2Extrabiblical Evidence
3The Evidence of Acts
4The Evidence of the Gospels
5The Evidence of the Epistles
9Calculations
1Carrier’s Calculations
2Alternative Calculations
3Devil’s Advocate
Conclusions
1The Glory of Agnosticism
2Mainstream Scholars Already Agree with Us
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1Which Jesus?
2A Debate among Atheists
3The Problem
4The Philosopher’s Probabilistic Approach
Part 1: The Case for Historicity
1Ehrman’s Dual Approach towards the Gospels
1A (Mostly) Wonderful Start
2The Gospels and the Folly of the Hypothetical Source
2Beyond the Gospels
1The Problem of Paul
3Casey’s Superfluous ‘Scholarship’
1Poisoning the Well
2‘Method’
3Why the Gospels Ought to Be Trusted, but Only When We Feel like It
4After the Case
5Even Worse than Ehrman: Offensive and Facetious
6Crossan’s Brief Attempt
Part 2: The Case for Agnosticism
4Inadequate Methods
1History Concerns What Probably Happened
2Criteria for Authenticity
3Faith and Inconsistency
4A Bayesian Alternative
5The Criteria vs. Bayes
5Inadequate Sources
1The Silence of the Primary Sources
2‘Other’ Christian Sources
3(Non-Christian) Extrabiblical Sources
4Josephus
5Tacitus
6Thallus (and Phlegon)
7Pliny, Suetonius, and Mara Bar Serapion
8The Talmud
9The Less Interesting Books of the New Testament
10The Canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John
11Mark’s Burden
12The Genre of the Gospels
13Burridge’s Take on the Gospels’ Genre
14Mark’s Failure
6The Problem of Paul
1The Docetic/Marcionite Jesus
2The Earliest Witness’ Sources
3Paul’s Minimal, Unquotable Jesus
4Paul’s Cosmic Christ
5Philo’s Pre-Christian and Pre-Pauline ‘Celestial Jesus’
6The Evolution of Jesus
7Fictitious Founders
8The Revelation of/from Paul
9Agnosticism is Rational
Part 3: The Case for Mythicism
7Prior Probabilities
1The Problem
2The Hypothesis of Historicity
3The Hypothesis of Myth
4Background Knowledge (Christianity)
4.1Elements of Christian Origin
4.2Elements of Christian Religion
5Background Knowledge (Context)
5.1Elements of Political Context
5.2Elements of Religious and Philosophical Context
5.3Elements of Literary Context
6The Prior Probability
8Consequent Probabilities
1Primary Sources
2Extrabiblical Evidence
3The Evidence of Acts
4The Evidence of the Gospels
5The Evidence of the Epistles
9Calculations
1Carrier’s Calculations
2Alternative Calculations
3Devil’s Advocate
Conclusions
1The Glory of Agnosticism
2Mainstream Scholars Already Agree with Us
Bibliography
Index
Those dissatisfied with the crypto-theological conclusions of parochial New Testament scholars and are ready for a ‘fresh’ approach, the sort of minimalism now widely accepted in Old Testament research.