Resources on the "Historical Jesus"

[Ravens]

I wanted to be careful in choosing a title for this thread. I largely cringe when I hear the term "Historical Jesus" as it almost always denotes a Jesus-of-scholarly-creation that can be opposed to the Biblical record. That being said, I suppose my question has to do with this "issue."

That being said, can anyone recommend any good, solid, in-depth resources on extra-biblical evidence for Christ, and, indeed, historiography in general? I've read, I think, most of the general articles you could find on the web, or at least the most common. And I'm not wanting a general retelling and re-listing of Suetonius, Josephus, Tacitus, the passages in the Talmud, etc.

I suppose I'm looking for a book or article that looks at the available evidence for Christ and compares it to the "evidence" for other historical events, e.g., Caesar's conquest of Gaul, the fires under Nero, Hannibal, etc. I've seen all three of those briefly touched upon when this issue is discussed, but they are rarely treated in-depth.

I'm interacting with someone who is fairly knowledgeable about the sources and resources, but I suspect they are woefully ignorant of historiography in general. Unfortunately, I am as well, but I trust not to the same extent.

My general feeling at the moment is that God has "rigged the game" against sinners, so to speak, in multiple areas of life. If one wants to trash Christ as history, then one is going to end up trashing all of ancient history as well, because the documentation is roughly the same. And if one wants to trash all supernatural events and use them to mitigate against the veracity of a document, then one is going to lose much of Greek history, Viking history, etc.

Similarly, if one rejects " God " because He cannot be "proved" by reason, then one is going to end up either rejecting the existence of other minds, the reality of the outside world, personal continuity over time, etc., or else one is going to be condemned on the day of judgment for arbitrary application of "reason."

That being said, I'm rambling, and I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. Maybe a good 400 page tome on historiography.

I guess I'd just like to have a book that took, for instance, Caesar, or Cato, or Arminius (not the Dutchman; the one that wiped out the Roman legions), Hannibal, Alexander the Great, etc., and actually listed all of the contemporary attestation to those men, and not only that, but the age of the manuscripts which do attest to them, where they were found, etc., what condition the documents were in, etc.

Anyway, ramble off.

Any recommendations?

 

[py3ak]

No, but when you find it let me know.

 

[DMcFadden]

A few names worth reading:

Bock, Darrell L. Pretty much anything he writes on Jesus is worthy of consideration. He is a progressive dispensationalist but don't let that hold you off. Try his Jesus according to the Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels.

Witherington, Ben. A staunch Arminian, but one of the best Jesus scholars our side has. Again, like Bock, he writes a book every other day or so. Get his stuff!

A VERY good book from an evangelical perspective on this topic is Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J.P. Moreland, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.

 

[ChristianTrader]

A Dvd By The Apologetics Group called: The Real Jesus

The Apologetics Group - The Real Jesus: A Defense of the Historicity & Divinity

a preview can be found here: YouTube - jcr4runner's Channel

Basically anything by the Apologetics Group is well done.

 

[Ravens]

I've been doing a good bit of thinking on this topic ever since I first asked this question awhile back. As it stands, I ended up posting on another message board on this issue, since it constantly comes up for debate. I realize that internet theologians and internet apologists have at times been baneful to the church. I don't post on these boards out of a desire to be thought wise. I originally started posting on this particular site because I'm a fan of the college sports team. After a few months of browsing their Politics and Religion board, I started posting on it also, because it pained me to see Christ so viciously and constantly attacked, day after day after day. What's worse, most of the churches in our state (and it is a state board) do not prepare people for intellectual questions, since they are Arminian-Pentecostal in the main. So anyway, I post because I feel like I have to, or that there's nothing better, not because I feel qualified.

If anyone is bored or interested in these issues, feel free to read over this post, and critique it. I know that many on here are educated far beyond what I have to say and would have to stoop down to my intellectual level to read it; but due to the increased traffic on the board and the amount of new folks, I thought some might garner good from it, though they would be better served to read Habermas, Bauckham, Maier, W. L. Craig, Jesus Under Fire, etc.

I delete the person's name, and only retain the "main points", rephrased, of his posts. Critiques are welcome, especially on the last points relative to Thales, et al. I think that a most beneficial essay or booklet along these lines would do immeasurable good to the church, as almost all the works mentioned, even Jesus Under Fire, only makes sweeping generalizations that "Christ is better established than almost all other figures of antiquity (more or less)", only very rarely delving into specifics. If my reasoning is faulty anywhere, let me know, I'm genuinely interested.

Post One:

XXXXXXXXXXX,

I realize that I can be cantankerous at times. Forgive me, and feel free to point out where I am using loaded language or disrespect. That being said, I disagree with you, or at least disagree with what you appear to be saying, so I'll give a response; feel free to disengage if you have no desire for dialogue in this area. I will print your comments in bold:

"Religious scholars", "Religious Practitioners", etc., are incapable of doing religious history due to their biases

First off, can you prove that religious scholars routinely manipulate the evidence to support their own agendas? That may seem rather pedantic, but it is precisely these types of presuppositions and broad-sweeping generalizations that often go unchallenged, and tend to unjustifiably color the discussion. How would you even go about proving that if you could? Furthermore, if you could prove that some religious scholars twisted the evidence, then what chain of logic leads you to your assertion that all religious scholars tend to twist the evidence? To continue: What do you mean by "religious scholars"? At first I thought you were only referring to theologians, church officers, etc., but now, in this post, you define a "religious scholar" as anyone researching something they tend to practice.

Can you prove that all people who practice a certain religion routinely manipulate evidence to support that position? Have you ever considered that some people, if faced with concrete historical evidence that cut against their position, might very well abandon it? Furthermore, how far to you apply this thinking? Do you reject Plato's and Xenophon's accounts of Socrates, since they were both metaphysical philosophers, commenting on a metaphysical philosopher whom they admired? Do you reject Roman pagan accounts of other Roman pagans? Or does this only apply to Christians?

Lastly, this touches on another sweeping debate in modern historiography. Namely, you seem to refer to "real academics" as opposed to "theologians" in your posts; and yet many of these "real academics" and "real historians" would contend that you, as a white male, are deeply and terribly biased from the get-go in your attempt to "do history." Those who are more far-sighted would say that "real history" and "objective history" is untouchable and unattainable, and that all of us are so hampered by preunderstandings, presuppositions, biases, etc., that we are prevented from touching upon history "as it is". Essentially, the same thing that happened to literary studies and interpreting literature with Derrida, et al., happened in historiography.

To boil it down, I think it is safe to say that modern thought used to see both texts and history as something concrete and wholly objective, to be ascertained by empirical observation and rational thought, whereas postmodern (and non-Christian [!!!]) "real academic" thought has talked up biases so much that proper history is seen as almost unattainable.

It seems as if the best approach is to realize that the past is objective, that some form of history can be accomplished, and that individual biases do not completely hamper the task, especially when are up-front about them. That being said, my point is, you seem to arbitrarily select "religion" as a key "bias", whereas more competent, "real academic" historians rightly see culture, history, learning, ethnicity, language, etc., as a complex of many biases. So either we are all prevented from doing history, or none of us are.

I hope that you are not becoming overly frustrated. I do not mean to disrespect you, nor do I mean to be sophistic. I would hope that the rest of this post avoids any hint of obfuscation or muddying-the-waters. That being said, these issues are vitally important. On these message boards, casual statements about real historians and historiography are thrown around, and rarely ever taken beyond the "because I said so" level of proof; and, just like quantum mechanics, theology, dentistry, classical Latin satire, etc., the real meat of it can never be presented in a message board format, and to make sweeping statements about "religion" rendering a person incapable of objective "history" is both empircally unprovable and naive even by secular, "real academic" standards.

For a good introduction and a few case studies on this issue (historiography in general; I don't think the book touches on Christ [to my knowledge]) see Keith Windschuttle's The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists are Murdering Our Past. The book touches on modern historiography, postmodern historiography, and responses to postmodern historiography.

That being said: One still has to deal with historiography in general. "History" is both a loaded and a vauge word. In one sense, we need to understand that the "hard data" and "hard history" with which we deal is composed of actual documents that we possess, actual inscriptions, actual archaeology, etc. Before we are tempted to be too lauding of that approach, let us remind ourselves that there is not one shred of "hard evidence" for Q.

People reach different conclusions because at times the "hard evidence" is simply lacking. Oral cultures leave us very little "hard evidence." In a fallen world such as our's, people (even historians) lie, not to mention the innocent inaccuracies that are spread. Furthermore, most of this hard evidence, especially documentary, is only a copy of something that existed centuries prior (indeed, virtually all of it is less well-attested than the New Testament, to the chagrin of some). So everyone has different standards. Some authors get weightier considerations than others, some value different criteria more than others. Everyone makes a list of "rules" with the best of their ability and then approaches the "hard data" of history. Different rules lead to different results. Yet we must remember that there is no "Official Rulebook" available. No "Official Rules of History" fell out of the sky, no transcendental copy is available, for us to turn to. So historiography consists of a very careful attempt to come up with a set of guidelines in approaching hard history.

Yet, some of these "guidelines" are very much arbitrary, especially when dealing with what could loosely be called the "supernatural". This is a terribly important point. Some of the most careful history in the world, some of the most learned and erudite, even by Christian standards (!!!) can be built on Kindergarten Philosophy. And if one's philosophical axioms are wrong, then one will reach wrong conclusions. To say that materialistic empiricism is correct, and that any tale of the supernatural is incorrect, is merely to make an unproveable and unwarranted assumption. This is similar to what Notre Dame professor of philosophy Alvin Plantinga said regarding Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (or it may have been The Blind Watchmaker): Namely, while granting Dawkins' erudition in the field of science, he commented that the book was full of very sophomoric philosophy.

So for someone to say that the resurrection isn't "historical" simply because it is "supernatural", is not a historical claim resting on a historical basis at all! It is a claim about history resting on a philosophical basis. Thus, there is a codependance or at least a mutual interaction between the disciplines. The same thing applies to science, ironically enough.

My point being, things are not as simple and cut-and-dried as you have portrayed them to be.

The Jesus Story is very poorly documented, with only a hypothetical Q and an oral tradition culminating in Mark for the first 30 years, and no Roman sources mentioning Christ at all from A.D. 1 - 35

"Q" has been a bit of a scholarly fad for awhile now, but, despite it's prominence in popular level works, it is not a locked-in idea. According to my view of inspiration, and many other Christians, the existence of a Quelle in and of itself would do no harm to the Bible whatsoever, seeing as Luke plainly said that he derived some of his information from eyewitnesses and accounts that had been written before. That being said, it is important to stress that there is no Q document. We do not have even a fragment of "Q". Many leading scholars who are unChristian or barely Christian, such as E.P. Sanders, have expressed doubts as to traditional Q-theories. Furthermore, the "need" for a Q is completely removed (let me repeat: completely removed) if one assumes that Luke used the Gospels of Mark and Matthew in constructing his own, which could very well be the case based on Luke 1:1-4:

In as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.

Furthermore, even though I myself am open to Markan priority, it is itself by no means unchallenged. There are cases that can be made for Matthean priority as well.

That being said, you also unjustly denigrate "oral tradition." If "oral tradition" is to be discarded as sources of written history, then you are going to wipe much of history right off the face of the earth, including Herodotus. That's why I said that "special rules" must be inaugurated in order to slight the historical basis for Christ.

Lastly, to respond to a perceived objection, the late dating of the gospels was based almost entirely on a philosophical, not a historical, presupposition: Namely, that predictive prophecy is impossible. The Gospels record Christ promising the utter desolation of Jerusalem. The utter desolation of Jerusalem took place. Philosophically, prophecy is impossible. Ergo, the Gospels were all written post-70 A.D., after Titus levelled the city.

Nevertheless, there is an impasse. If the predictive prophecy were not an issue, then internal data alone would seem to indicate an earlier date. Mark has a number of interal cues, such as not mentioning the high priest by name (due to the power of Caiaphas' family), referring to events surrounding Barabbas as common knowledge, distinguishing between the James', etc. More convincing (please tell me how this could be avoided) is the Book of Acts, which functioned as a second treatise following Luke's Gospel.

I realize these arguments have probably been heard before, but they are nonetheless weighty. The author of Acts is keenly interested in martyrdom and persecution. We think of Stephen, the apostle James, and the persecutions of Paul. Also, events around Jerusalem were a central theme in the gospel of Acts. Yet, for all this, the narrative ends with Jerusalem standing, and Paul living. That simply can not be avoided. Were it not for the philosophical bias against supernatural possibilities, then we would assume that the narrative was written prior to Paul's death, and prior to the fall of Jerusalem. If Luke's writing (as is maintained by conservatives and most liberal scholars) was the last of the Synoptics, then that pushes the dates for Matthew and Mark even earlier, making the difference between the the crucifixion/resurrection and the historical accounts almost irrelevant.

I might also add that the oral tradition mentioned 300 years later by Eusebeius and Epiphanius that Christians flew to Pella prior to Jerusalem's destruction actually serves to highlight the fact that Christ's oracle regarding Jerusalem's destruction was well-known among the Jerusalem church. As Christ said, "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled (Luke 21:20-22)."

If we remove the bias against the supernatural, the pre-70 a.d. date for the Gospels seems much more likely. Not only due to the internal evidence already mentioned, but also due to the fact that the cultural memory of the church, as written down by Eusebius and Epiphanius, records a flight from Jerusalem after the withdrawal of Cestius Gallus circa 66 A.D. The fact that Josephus, to my knowledge, mentions no deaths of Christians, nor any strife between Jews and Christians as the city was under siege, lends credence to the fact that, by and large, the Christians had left the city. It is instructive that internal evidence points to an early dating of the Gospels, that the Gospels record Christ telling his followers to flee when armies surround Jerusalem, as her day has come, and that we have evidence (both positive and corroborative (Josephus)) that his followers did in fact leave Jerusalem 3-4 years prior to its utter desolation. This would rather seem to point towards the validity of the predictive prophecy.

Which is why Sir Frederick Kenyon, a man of no mean credentials, could state: "The interval between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant (still existing) manuscripts becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established. (Sir F. Kenyon, The Bible and Archaeology, pg. 288)."

Say that you reject all of that? Fair enough. At the very least you have a Matthew, Mark, or (in your opinion), "Q" tradition (or some combination of the three). However, you left out the crucial evidence from Paul. Paul is an absolutely convincing historical witness, and to my knowledge, not one atheistic scholar of any prominence or weight (indeed, I've never even heard of one, but I couch my language because I'm sure there is someone, somewhere, who doubts Paul existed) questions Paul's existence. Furthermore, though liberal scholarship does not accept all of our current epistles as Pauline (for irrational reasons, but that's another thread), even they (remember, these are "real academics") talk about the "undisputed letters of Paul." And these "undisputed letters of Paul" provide alternative, independant historical attestation to the Gospel narratives in stunning fashion, to the point that "the Twelve", James the Just, the fact that James, the brother of the Lord, was highly prominent in the Jerusalem church, and that all of these men claimed to meet the resurrected Christ.

So, by standard historiography, and according to most historians, the existence of a group of disciples, including Peter, James, John, etc., the existence of James the Just, the brother of the Lord, his mother, the fact that he had brothers and sisters, the fact that many people claimed to have witnessed him rising from the dead, etc., can be regarded as established. Now, you might say that they hallucinated, or that they lied; but the fact that they existed, and claimed to have met Christ after He had triumphed over death, is beyond dispute according to basically accepted historiography.

I wish everyone on the board would think about the fact that the Synoptic tradition (indeed, all the Synoptics, but perhaps a skeptic would boil down that witness to "1"), the book of Acts, and the Pauline epistles all make mention of James, a "brother of the Lord" (or a cousin of the Lord if you are Roman Catholic). Further, Josephus mentions the fact that Jesus had a brother named James who was stoned to death circa A.D. 62, and that is in a separate, largely undisputed part of the work, not in the Testimonium Flavianum.

That is 3.5 - 4 (depending on how one counts Josephus, date-wise) contemporary written witnesses to someone who was well-established and publically known as "the brother of the Lord". And, of course, many people still think he is the author of the epistle which bears the name of James. Also, just taken the bare minimum of "scholarly acceptable" texts into consideration, we still have the historical certainty of at least twelve disciples who were public oral witnesses to the event, as well as accounts of his mother, brothers, sisters, the 500, etc.

Those are more contemporary sources than we have for many figures of classical antiquity. Notwithstanding that fact, we have copies of letters written by Peter, James (already referred to) and John. If we count those (and I realize you might disagree on all, or some; we could have an argument about each), those are at least 1 - 3 more contemporary written witnesses of the events.

So we have all of the written and oral witnesses already mentioned. We have the Testimonium Flavianum. I know there have been many debates on here regarding this, but most scholars (to my knowledge) hold to a middle-of-the-road approach, namely, that Josephus did actually mention Jesus of Nazareth, but that the passage has a few Christian interpolations. I can defend this if you are interested in the subject.

Nevertheless, we have a possible reference in Suetonius (which I myself view as only having 50/50 odds of referring to Christ), a definite and extensive passage in a celebrated and weighty historian, Tacitus, circa 115 a.d., and a reference by Pliny the Younger. There is also the lesser known corroborating evidence of Thallus (from Julius Africanus concerning the darkness during the crucifixion), and less influential, but worth mentioning snippets from Lucian and the letter of Mara Bar Serapion. Lastly, Justin Martyr (which, historically, even if you are an atheist, was written to the Emperor himself, and would not have contained blatant lies (!!!!!!!)) referred to documents of the trial of Jesus. Also, Tertullian (who was formerly a lawyer, wrote excellent Latin, and was by all accounts a powerful mind) wrote circa 200 of a commonly known dispatch from Pilate to Tiberius.

Lastly, there is the consistent testimony of the Jewish tradition. In Matthew we see that the earliest Jewish polemic presupposed the empty tomb, in that they based the emptiness on the fact that the disciples allegedly stole the body, as improbably as that is. We have already touched upon Josephus. Furthermore, Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, the historical existence of Jesus is maintained by the Jewish proponent, depsite ironic claims to the contrary by some. Lastly, the tradition preserved in the Babylonian Talmud mentions Jesus as a historical personage, and, indeed, gives "hostile witness" evidence even to his miracles (!), though it attributes it to sorcery (which is, ironically, what Matthew 12:24 records them as doing...). So the consistent witness of the Jewish tradition, from antiquity until now, presupposed the existence of Christ, and, ironically enough, the empty tomb and miracles as well.

That is why A.N. Sherwin-White, once again, a most incredibly learned man even by secular standards, could say, "So, it is astonishing [emphasis mine] that while Graeco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth-century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn in the development of form-criticism that the more advanced exponents of it apparently maintain that the historical Christ is unknowable and the history of his mission cannot be written" (Roman Society and Roman Life in the New Testament, 187).

Or, as Joseph Klausner, a Jewish scholar (!) said in From Jesus to Paul, "If we had ancient sources like those in the Gospels for the history of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar for example, we should not cast any doubt upon them whatsoever" (pg. 260).

Anyhow, I have typed much more than I anticipated, but I hope to show in my next post (tonight, tomorrow, or Sunday), that the evidence for Jesus is just as good (and more often than not, better) evidence than the evidence for Leonidas, Thermopylae, the vast majority of non-Western cultures, Thales, Socrates, Hannibal, etc., many of whom we just "take for granted" as being "unquestionably established."

That's what I referred to (and what these historians are referring to) when I speak of "misunderstanding historiography as it applies to classical antiquity."

Post 2:

I was going to wait longer to do this and make it more extensive, but as it stands, I think that I will hone it down, make it shorter, and simply give food for thought. I would implore that serious minded people who have questioned the "evidence" for Jesus, especially as it relates to other classical figures, would read this post, and at least consider the issues.

Many people have a very false understanding of historiography, as I discussed in my longer post. That being said, many people have an even shallower understanding of the primary sources available to historians, especially concerning classical antiquity. People grow up hearing about Thales, Leonidas and Thermopylae, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, et al., and see them as solid figures, larger than live figures, carved into the annals of history, able to be looked upon in 3-D living color. By contrast, in threads like these, Christ is depicted as a shady figure, half-drawn, transparent, notwithstanding his handful of written contemporary accounts (which witness to a multitude of living, contemporary eyewitnesses), substantial, solid historians in close proximity to him (Josephus, Tacitus), and various other references (including a hostile Jewish tradition nonetheless attesting to his existence).

Is this the case? I think one of the most effective methods of demonstrating exactly how classical historiography works is to look at the primary sources for other "unquestioned" figures of antiquity.

Thales: Anyone who has ever taken an introduction to philosophy has heard of Thales of Miletus, one of the "Seven Sages" of ancient Greece. Have you ever seen a television show titled, "Did Thales Exist?" Are papers ever published that talk about the paucity of evidence for Thales? Thales is generally thought of to have lived from 624 - 546 B.C.

What are the primary sources for Thales? Herodotus is said to mention the ancient Greek philosophers, but he lived from c. 484 - 425 B.C. [wiki dates]. Aristotle? 384 - 322 B.C.? Diogenes Laertius? Now we are in the "Anno Domini" range.

The first written evidence for the existence of a man who we unquestionably accept was around 100 years after he passed away. The testimony to the existence of Christ far outweighs this.

Leonidas and Thermopylae: The famous battle at Thermopylae occurred circa 480 B.C. We have two roughly contemporary accounts, Herodotus and Ctesias of Cnidus, both of which wrote at least 40 to 80 years after the events themselves happened, and who were either unborn or small children when the Battle occurred. Period. This is roughly the amount of time elapsed between Christ and Josephus/Tacitus, and that is skipping over all of the contemporary witnesses to Christ that we possess in Paul, the Twelve, James the Just, etc.

Alexander the Great: As I understand it, and I might be wrong, there is only one truly contemporary source for the existence of Alexander the Great and those are the "Astronomical Diaries" of Babylon. That is, references to the attacking king Alexander.

Granted, you already know that Alexander was a real historical figure, and reading that, you might think, "A ha! Good, a contemporary source. That settles it!" Keep in mind, we have the astronomical diaries. Then? The next surviving Greek source is Diodorus Siculus, who wrote roughly three hundred years later. Scratch your head and think about that, for a minute. Three hundred years.

Of course, he did have a professional historian, Callisthenes. By the standards of some on this board, Callisthenes would be stricken off of the lists for two reasons: 1) Bias. He travelled with Alexander the Great, and surely there is always pressure when under the watchful eye of so great a magnate, 2) He recorded supernatural events, such as the sea receding and doing obedience to Alexander to let him pass. So we have both bias, and an account of the supernatural, in the earliest historian of Alexander. Of course that is irrelevant, since no copies of his work survive. Other contemporary accounts, such as Ptolemy and Aristobulus, are almost completely known how they are relayed by Arrian and others 400 years later, and in that respect, don't really exist.

So three - four centuries pass between the life of Alexander the Great and the historians who wrote about Alexander the Great. And if you accept that Ptolemy, et al., as quoted by later sources are reliable, then you have no historical reason to doubt the Roman records mentioned by Justin Martyr and Tertullian. And once again, let us keep in mind that the earliest writer, Callisthenes, on whom they are all dependant, was both biased, and recorded that the ocean expressed it's obedience to Alexander.

Hannibal: A man named James Hannam has already written a very enlightening piece in this regard, i.e., showing how the same uber-skeptical method could tear apart our understanding of almost any historical figure. I would ask that people on here read this with an open mind, and consider whether or not they utilize a double-standard when they assault the evidence for Christ. I'll quote him, instead of trying to out-do him, because he did an admirable job:

Did Hannibal really Exist?

I want to wrap up by showing how easy it is to produce a scenario where we can deny the historicity of a major public figure. When I published this spoof on the Secular Web's discussion board it was taken seriously even though with hindsight it seems ridiculous. The comments in italics are annotations to bring out points of similarity with the various Jesus Myth ideas in currency.

I would invite any Jesus Mythologist to explain to me the substantial differences between their theory and the spurious one below.

To ask whether or not the great Carthaginian general Hannibal every actually existed might seem rather pointless. An exercise for a student learning about the nature of historical evidence perhaps but not something any serious scholar would waste time on. But maybe we should not be too hasty in acquiescing with the opinion of establishment historians (in other words, there's a plot by academics stifling debate).

In fact, although there is plenty of writing about Hannibal, none of it is contemporary and there is no archaeological evidence for him at all (not surprising given the Romans razed the city from whence he came). Furthermore he is not mentioned in any Carthaginian sources - incredible given he was supposed to be their greatest leader (there are no Carthaginian sources as the Romans burnt their city down)! We find when we actually try to pin him down he tends to recede further into the mists of time. His exploits, such as leading elephants over the Alps, are clearly legendary (the sceptic pretends to be incredulous but seems happy to buy his own amazing theory) and it is not hard to find a motive for the creation of this colourful character by Roman writers (as long we can invent a motive for fabrication we can assume that fabrication exists).

Rome and Carthage were great trading rivals in the Western Mediterranean and it did not take them long to come to blows. Rome signed a peace treaty but, under the leadership of the elder Cato desperately wanted to rid itself permanently of the competition. (this is actually true and so helps to hide when we slip into fantasy) They needed an excuse and the idea they came up with was brilliant. Like all ancient civilisations, the Romans rewrote history as it suited them to demonstrate their own prowess. (a useful and exaggerated generalisation) Consequently we should not be surprised to find that they invented a great enemy from Carthage to demonstrate the threat still existed and justify a further war to wipe them out.

The author of the fiction was Cato himself (we need someone to point the finger at and note how there is no distinction made between the background material above and theorising here) who we know wrote the earliest Roman History (true as well, actually). But it was intended simply as a justification for a further war with Carthage. It contained the details of Hannibal's alleged campaigns against the Romans including victories on Italian soil (it might well do but Cato's history has conveniently not survived). Cato brilliantly combined the truth with his own anti-Carthaginian propaganda with the intention of goading Rome into another wholly unjustified war with the old enemy (give the fabricator lots of credit for his invention). Once the war was over and Carthage razed to the ground, the Romans were able to ensure that only their version of history survived (this is important as it enables all other sources to be declared forgeries).

Therefore the myth of the great Carthaginian war leader became fact and later Roman historians like the notoriously unreliable Livy (we have to denigrate counter sources) simply assumed Cato's fabrications were true (because the ancients were stupid and simply could not do any research themselves).

Conclusion

In history there is little that is certain but there is also a level of scepticism that makes the task of the historian impossible. Furthermore, the thesis that Jesus never existed requires selective scepticism about which sources are reliable and how others are interpreted. In the end, if Jesus did not exist, it makes Christianity a much more incredible phenomena than if he did.

I would exhort everyone on here to try this method out for yourself. When you think about Paul, Mark's Gospel, the Twelve, James the Just, and all of the other things that atheist historians see as historically credible, when you read about Josephus and Tacitus commenting on Christ within 100 years of his death, and when you realize that even the "hostile tradition" of the Jews has an existing Christ, an empty tomb, and miracles, before you write all of that off, compare it to the evidence of something you see as more historically reliable. And in almost each and every case, you will find that, as long as we are keeping classical antiquity in mind, there is, more often than not, just as much or more evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth than for any other person.

This is why I said, in the previous post, that to attack the historical records of Christ is really to exercise a double-standard of historiography. Eventually one will have to scrap most of classical antiquity altogether. This is also why I said that most people are ignorant of classical antiquity and historiography. Read about how many accounts we have of Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. Think about how biased it is (!). Read about the contradictions in the histories of Alexander. Read about the clashes in the account of the Roman fires. When you think about Anaximander and Parmenides and all of these other unquestioned figures, do some research and find out exactly how many contemporary, primary sources are available.

More often than not you will be surprised.

I've already touched on the anti-supernatural bias in the previous post, only to make the point that to rule out the supernatural from history is not a historical claim; rather, it is a philosophical claim. However, consider also that if you are to be consistent, and you are going to invalidate all historical texts that record supernatural events, that you are not only going to eradicate the gospels. You are going to eradicate Herodotus, Viking sagas, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and other texts that are absolutely fundamental in our understanding of world history. And yet I wager that none of those anti-supernaturalists (in the case of Jesus) would apply their methodology consistently and across the board.

Lastly, manuscript tradition is key. And more often than not, when you actually investigate the Herodotus and Thucydides that we do have, or any other figure of antiquity, you'll realize that there is better manuscript attestation for the New Testament than well nigh all of them! And if you're going to use the poor Christian transcribers' excuse, keep in mind that the vast majority of classical antiquity was preserved by the very same Christians who preserved the Scriptures, be they Irish monks in Iona or learned Byzantines in Constantinople.

Cordially,

Joshua

*I'm still doing research on many of these figures (Thales, Leonidas, etc.), because I've only recently considered how beneficial it might be for people to see actual examples of primary sources and attestation as applied to unassailable figures of antiquity. If I missed a source or misrepresented something, it is entirely due to the fact that this particular aspect of my defense for the historicity of Christ is in the gestation phase at the moment. Attribute it to ignorance, rather than malice. I think it would be a wonderful idea for a mini-booklet, probably by someone who is more competent than I am. Nevertheless I am rather certain, in the main, of what I have written.