So, it would seem that atheists have taken a leap into unfamiliar territory, from claiming God didn't exist to claiming that the historical Jesus did not exist. Kind of like when Richard Dawkins makes the leap from claiming evolution is a fact (a good argument) to his really outrageous arguments about religion and religious people.
The problem with this claim is scholars generally find that there's enough evidence to conclude that a man named Jesus existed during the time alleged in the New Testament.
Graham Stanton notes, "Today, nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which as to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher."
Michael Grant writes in his book, "If we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because some pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms. To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars." And, "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
Will Durant notes, "Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man."
Robert Van Voorst adds, "Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely. The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."
Richard A. Burridge also adds, "There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."
Bart Ehrman concludes, "He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."
Even G.A. Wells, the most prolific of 20th century mythers, has abandoned the theory (and I struggle to call it that.) (You may consider reading Robert E. Van Voorst's "Jesus Outside The New Testament" for some additional insight into the history of mythicism. Mythicism started in the 1790s. The book is fantastic on this entire subject though and I absolutely recommend reading it.)
It's been so discredited by academia that folks like Werner G. Kummel's history of the New Tesment, as well as Neill and Wright's work don't even mention mythicism.
This is often scoffed at as not being a valid consensus because the majority of scholars are Christians (David Fitzgerald argues as much in his book, "Nailed".) But that argument is ridiculous for a few reasons. The first being that I actually quoted a few secular scholars (some of whom are very hostile to Christianity); the pool of scholars who study this and propose a historical Jesus are mixed (Tim O'Neill's review of Nailed actually lists a few secular scholars offhand; "Ehrman, Fredriksen, Vermes, Sanders, Allison, Casey, Ludemann.") I also have to question what exactly a response like that means. Do Christians have less academic integrity? We're to believe that every bible history scholar goes into their studies with rigid, unshakable faith that they inject into their work, yet all biologists who study evolution go into it with an open, impartial mind and the fact that the majority reject creationism means studying biology is what makes them reject creationism? Is there really no overlap? And we're to believe that, in the case of every single scholar, their scholasticism hasn't contributed to their Christian identity rather than supplement it? And we're to believe that guys like Richard Carrier are bastions of intellectual honesty and impartiality?
Of course, this consensus by itself doesn't make it so, but it's certainly worth noting. A friend of mine who I argued about this with responded to me pointing this out by claiming that it was argumentum ad populum. Maybe, but I'm not simply saying "experts agree" and leaving it at that and interestingly enough, when we were discussing a subject where the majority of experts disagreed with my thesis, his argument was "A majority of experts disagree with you. What do they know that you don't?" On that subject, however, there were far more experts who agreed with me than there are experts who believe Jesus didn't exist. More often than not, in my experience, people who purport the mythic Christ myth are not scholars in the respected field and tend to have a grudge against Christianity for some reason or another.
But I'm not going to sit here and pigeonhole every single person who believes a particular thing. That's not fair and I don't want my rhetoric here to supersede my actual content. I'd rather address the subject for its claims than spend this article with ad hominem. I just felt it was important to establish what exactly we're dealing with here.
Now, whether or not he was the Messiah or the Son of God or any of that is a separate subject entirely. The focus of this article is going to be establishing that a man named Yeshua ben Yosef existed in the First Century. See: Historical Jesus. To the non-Christians out there, who may feel a bit threatened by this article: Herodotus, the father of history, had argued that myths tended to be distorted accounts of real, historical events. Euhemerus suggested that all myths had some basis in historical fact. Believing in a historical Jesus and believing he was not remarkable are two very compatible viewpoints.
In the interest of fairness, I'm going to present an article to you written by two friends of mine who believe that Jesus did not exist. After reading both, you can decide who's right. I'm also going to use their article as a base to address some of the common objections. My responses to them are not intended to be taken as an admonition of them as individuals because they happen to be very good friends of mine and as such, I ask that those of you who agree with me on this subject not come down on them too hard. They actually happen to be very intelligent individuals; simply wrong on this issue. You can read their article here.
This is kind of an expansive subject, so apologies that this is probably going to be fairly long. On the bright side, this article will not be tackling the parallelomania of some mythers (article for a later date, though you can read a myriad of material already on the subject here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. There's a lot more, but that should provide a very basic primer.) or the batshit crazy sputterings of folks like Kenneth Humphreys and Joseph Atwill (you can read other mythers tear him apart here, here, here, here, and here. It says a lot when that many other mythers tear you apart, but I give them all respect for not being so dogmatic to defend him on principle.)
Overview
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
My friends attempted to qualify this quote by stating: "How can evidence of absence be evidence of absence? The answer is simple - evidence of absence is evidence of absence when we reasonably expect there to be evidence that exists."
Now, that's a fair objection to that old adage. The problem with their objection in this context is twofold:
1. In a historical context, this is known as an argument from silence and is considered a weak form of argumentation in academic circles. See: M. G. Duncan "The Curious Silence of the Dog and Paul of Tarsus; Revisiting The Argument from Silence". My friends don't make a very compelling case for why we should reasonably expect there to be more evidence than there is. (More on that in just a moment.)
2. We have reasonable evidence to support the notion that Jesus existed. (More on that later.) However, I'll treat their arguments as if we don't have reasonable evidence.
Side note: I think my friends also miss the point of that quote. The point of that quote is to demonstrate that evidence evolves. How much of history do you think the body of our archaeological finds and ancient manuscripts can account for? How much information has been lost to us in events like the burnings of the Library of Alexandria? How much of history has actually been preserved? How much have we recovered of that amount? This is similar to creationists who argue in favor of the God of the Gaps, wherein any gap in knowledge is not simply a gap, but an indicator of absence in knowledge. For example: We don't understand dark matter. Does that mean that dark matter is God?
My friends posit that because Jesus was such a monumental figure that there should be more information at our disposal. The problem here is that that wasn't the case at the time. Yeshua ben Yosef was born in a backwater village and was the son of a carpenter; he was at the lowest possible caste in society. Even as he grew a ministry, it was still a very vast minority of individuals -- the majority of which were illiterate. According to the Biblical Archaeology Society (via Free Republic), "A common view is that of W.H. Kelber, who claims that, in first-century A.D. Palestine, 'writing was in the hands of an élite of trained specialists, and reading required an advanced education available only to a few.'" Moreover, Meir Bar-Ilan elaborates, "Comparative data show that under Roman rule the Jewish literacy rate improved in the Land of Israel. However, rabbinic sources support evidence that the literacy rate was less than 3%. This literacy rate, a small fraction of the society, though low by modern standards, was not low at all if one takes into account the needs of a traditional society in the past." He also notes that rural areas like Galilee, where Jesus grew up, often had 0% literacy. I encourage you to read the rest of that paper.
The majority of people of the time would either have only a passing mention of Jesus (certainly not enough to write about) to go on and much of it was probably openly hostile to him.
Need I remind you that the Pharisees and the Roman Empire had him executed? He wasn't exactly beloved to the entire nation. The relevance of Jesus is not his popularity; indeed, the Bible doesn't have very much good to say about popularity. No, what's important is what he did. And being that he was executed, anyone who would know of him likely would have seen his ministry as over and not worth writing about.
But I stress that literacy rates were dismal at the time. Scholars often wrote about things of particular significance.
E.P. Sanders actually notes that "If Jesus disagreed with other interpreters over details, the disputes were no more substantial than were disputes between the Jewish parties and even within each party."
And prior to the development of Carolingian minuscule, the transcription of texts for posterity was not as common as it was it later generations. So, on top of all of that, we would have to assume that the works would have been preserved and copied.
Interestingly enough, there's a counter-motive toward finding data to support the historicity of Jesus. He was a criminal and the Roman Empire had a vested interest in seeing Christianity die. Is it unreasonable to presume that the Roman Empire might destroy certain contemporary data that mentioned him? Is it unreasonable to presume that the Roman Empire would seek to diminish news of him?
To compound on that counter-motive, much of what was written about him likely wasn't transcribed by later Christian scribes for posterity due to them being critical of Jesus. For hundreds of years after Constantine, Christianity was the dominant religion, which gave a lot of opportunity to allow critical works of Jesus to fall to the dustbin of history.
To boot, this is a period in history in which a large portion of contemporary historians have not made it to the modern day. You may consider reading T.E. Goud's "Latin Imperial Historiography Between Livy and Tacitus" (dissertation, University of Toronto, 1996) for more on this. Van Voorst briefly touches on this in his book and then also notes:
"Second, a time lag typical of the ancient world explains why other classical writers who are roughly contemporary with Jesus also do not mention him. Historical interpretation of events was not the 'instant analysis' we have become accustomed to, for better or worse, in modern times."
He finally goes on to note that Roman writers only wrote about subjects pertinent to Rome at the time. Despite us knowing of several messianic movements occurring in the first century, Roman historians don't talk about any of them.
Moreover, why is it that we can't find any evidence to support the Roman Empire claiming that they did not execute Yeshua ben Yosef? We're to believe that the Roman Empire wanted Christianity gone (they classified Christianity as an enemy of the state because Christianity refusal to participate in the required sacrifices that were regularly made to the Emperor and the Roman state, their assertion that Christianity was an exclusive path to salvation and the claims of some that they were a unique religion dating back to antiquity when they were more regarded as an offshoot of Judaism), did not execute Jesus, that Jesus didn't even exist and there were people accusing the Roman Empire of executing the messiah? That sounds fishy to me. I should think if a religion was springing up based on me having someone executed, I would be pretty keen on pointing out that that never happened.
Interestingly enough, the argument from silence goes both ways. Despite early century scholars often being pretty hostile to Christianity, we have no one claiming that he didn't exist. It didn't even enter their mind that this fellow never actually existed?
Celsus is a very good example of anti-Christian sentiment in the years following Jesus's death, when Christianity's popularity rose. Unfortunately, we don't have existing copies of his literary work, The True Word. However, Origen chronicled various passages in his retaliatory work, Contra Celsum. You can read excerpts of the archived dialogue here. Despite his evident scorn for Jesus, nowhere does Celsus claim that he was invented or a fictional character. In fact, he went on to speak of him as though he were an actual historical person.
Celsus posits that only the poor gravitate toward Christianity because they are uneducated. We, thus, have a standard for the individuals most likely to write about him being unable to do so. Which, considering Jesus's disciples tended to be fishermen and other such blue collar workers, they certainly wouldn't have the ability to scribe something, but were most certainly contemporaries of Jesus who attested to his existence. And we know from the works of Paul of Tarsus, who was a contemporary of those who knew Jesus, that he engaged in dialectics with Simon Peter on the subject. Which raises an important question: Is the testimony of a contemporary only valid if in written form? If so, why? If not, then we can establish the apostles' testimony as evidence of Jesus's existence.
Critics like to make arguments like "Oh, Celsus wasn't a contemporary writer, so this isn't evidence", but that's not true. He wasn't a contemporary of Jesus, sure, but that's not the metric by which we judge historical evidence. The True Word would have been written sometime in the second century, which is not very far removed from the time of Jesus. And more importantly, he was an anti-Christian Greek philosopher, who believed Christianity was a danger to the Roman Empire. Surely, he'd be learned enough to at least question Jesus's existence if he never existed, if not have direct notation from the Roman Empire that said so. Celsus was a very learned man, who tended to study Christianity for its own sake and often based his writings, not on hearsay and rumors, but his own studies and observations. If it were such a tenable theory at the time, surely he'd have posited it.
It's likely that Celsus derived at least some of his information from Jewish sources, as he describes Jesus as the son of Pandera. This claim is reiterated repeatedly in the Jewish Talmud, but is something you'd never find in Christian literature. Interestingly enough, these references to Jesus are pretty damning for mythers as well, considering this is another large group of people, who have a vested interest in seeing Christianity fail and yet they only seem to acknowledge that he existed and never once posit that he didn't. At minimum, should the Jewish record at least try to claim that the Pharisees didn't see to Jesus's execution. They contend that he was the illegitimate son of a soldier named Pandera. But where do they garner this information? What sounds more likely?:
1. That a woman named Mariami bore a child named Yeshua and either conceived of him illegitimately with this Pandera fellow or bore a child named Yeshua and knew this Pandera fellow that people conflated with her pregnancy.
2. They made up this Pandera fellow for shits and giggles.
I'm aware that folks like Bart Ehrman claim that the word Pandera is used tongue-in-cheek to mock the notion that Jesus was born of a virgin. Unfortunately, this explanation ignores the fact that folks like Celsus treated the idea that Pandera was a flesh-and-blood person as self-evident. If we're to believe Celsus was simply mistaken (which seems unlikely, given that he was a Greek scholar and a pun would not have been lost on him), where did Celsus extrapolate the information about this Pandera fellow? For example, how would he have known that Pandera was a soldier? This claim seems to rely on the notion that Pandera and parthenos are the same word, which I can find no linguistic or historical support for. James Tabor takes this claim to task.
Though we can't be certain, it's likely that there existed a fellow named Pandera and the claims of a virgin birth was conflated with being about him.
Celsus also notes things about Jesus with surprising vividness; going on about the appearance of Jesus and the fact that he kept all Jewish customs. There's quite a lot of interesting subject matter that can be gleaned from what remains of Celsus' works, including him making excuses for the Resurrection.
Sanhedrin 43 a-b actually chronicles the execution. Why chronicle it if it didn't happen? What would there be to gain? And why would they have been convinced enough of this execution to write about it? Would they really base chronicling of their own actions based on the teachings of Christians?
My friends even engage in a strawman by claiming that the notion that there is little to no historical evidence for other folks throughout history is invalid because there wouldn't be data on "butchers" and "metalworkers". But the problem is that that's not the argument posited at all. The argument posited is that historically relevant people would disappear from history based on the standard of AFS (Argument From Silence.) Not people currently unknown to history, but people known to history.
For example, one of my friends who wrote this article happens to be a practicing, devout, conservative Jew. By his own standard for historical evidence, the vast majority of biblical figures disappear from history. Nevermind secular figures like Anaximander, Pythagoras and Heraclitus who would disappear from history. Not to mention the Sitones.
This attempt to stack the deck against Jesus's historicity with non-academically derived methods of determining veracity is a pre-emptive form of moving the goalpost. Moreover, it's kind of absurd. As if even second-hand contemporary writing is even concrete, irrefutable, 100% undeniable proof of something existing. If contemporary evidence were staring mythers in the face, they'd claim that the evidence had to be first-hand contemporary. If they had that staring them in the face, they'd demand Jesus's preserved body.
Realistically, short of archaeological finds, most forms of historical data are not 100% concrete. What's important is that we have enough data to support a conclusion. There's really no gold standard in history. If you applied this same one-dimensional, Maslow hammer standard for evidence and dismissed as much evidence as there is for Jesus across history, you'll likely find yourself in the wacky Anti-Stratfordian camp as well (see the preface of James Patrick Holding's "Shattering the Christ Myth".)
Oddly enough, my friends seem to backpeddle and claim that they don't absolutely claim that something with an absence of evidence means it doesn't exist, even though they're normally pretty hot-headed about claiming that Jesus didn't exist. We can attribute that to simply being incendiary rhetoric, but if that's the case, it invalidates the entire Mythic Christ argument. At most, their argument is reduced to a subjective "Well, I don't believe he existed", which is very different from the objective "He didn't exist." And Ockham's Razor suggests that he did.
Beyond that, it doesn't even make sense. Why make up Jesus? First of all, all it brought to its practitioners was persecution up until Constantine. And second of all, it doesn't even fit the mold of the aspects we traditionally recognize in a made up story. The central tenet of Christian doctrine is the humiliation, beating, mockery and death of their God/messiah. At what point did whoever made up Jesus (Peter? Paul? Miscellaneous unknown person?) decide, "And, and, and, you know what would be awesome? If Pontius Pilate totally just crucifies our hero."
Seriously? What genius would make up a story like that for... comfort? Power? Boredom? Moreover, what of the early followers? Did they seriously endure persecution for a humiliated, dead preacher they never met and had no proof ever existed?
That said, there are particular arguments like the one for Mara Bar-Serapion that I agree with my myther friends on and will not attempt to rebut in this article.
Who Didn't Notice Jesus?
A popular form of criticism mythers use comes from David Fitzgerald's book, "Nailed". The basic argument is that there were a number of people living at the time who should have mentioned Jesus, but didn't. The list is typically cited as "Epictetus, Pomponius Mela, Martial, Juvenal, Seneca the Younger, Gallio, Seneca the Elder, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Justus of Tiberias, Philo of Alexandria, Nicolaus of Damascus."
Now, this is an easy argument to dispatch by pointing out that it's an argument from silence (not to mention the various other arguments in this article that address why an argument like this is weak on its face) and quoting from various peer-reviewed papers on why arguments from silence are not valid criticisms*...
* "In a general historical context, arguments from silence rely on a judgements about the level of interest an author would have had in the subject, the intended breadth of the author's coverage within the document in question, and how that information may have been relevant to the item excluded" See:1.) John Lange, The Argument from Silence, History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1966), pp. 288-301
2.) From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods by Martha C. Howell and Walter Prevenier (Apr 26, 2001) ISBN 0801485606 Cornell University Press page 74
3.) The Routledge Companion to Epistemology by Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard (Dec 2, 2010) ISBN 0415962196 Routledge pages 64-65
...However, it's worth looking at this list as more than just a list of names. These are actual people that Fitzgerald uses to crux his argument up. People like Justus of Tiberias, whose works have been lost to history and we actually don't know what he said beyond fragments from quotes that other authors managed to preserve. Think of how disingenuous one has to be to include Justus of Tiberias on their list of people who should have mentioned Jesus.
The Sources
Josephus
No historical Jesus article would be complete without starting with Titus Flavius Josephus. Being a contemporary historian to the First Century puts Josephus in a very important role in dispelling the myther arguments. Since myther arguments hinge on the absence of contemporary evidence, establishing that Josephus wrote about Jesus, while not make or break, is pivotal to our establishment that the Mythic Christ conspiracy theory is a myth.
The major objection to Josephus that mythers have is that there were later interpolations by Christians, thereby invalidating the whole thing. The problem is that they assume the interpolations were to establish the existence of Jesus. This is so historically questionable that it's bordering on an anachronistic fallacy. There was little to no question of the existence of Jesus by the time of the interpolation, which means the motives for it would not have been to establish the existence of Jesus. So, strictly on a logical basis, it's far more likely and requires far less leaps of faith to conclude that the people who edited the text found records that recorded Jesus and, being overzealous, edited it to be more praising of Jesus. We'll see why this is not only logical, but supported by the evidence in just a moment.
Josephus' "Antiquities Of The Jews" contains two known references to Jesus, so we're going to address each individually.
Book 18, Chapter 3, Section 3
"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
This passage is also known as Testimonium Flavianum (the testimony of Flavius Josephus). Now, it should be noted that the major scholarly consensus is that this quote is not 100% accurate and was subject to changes by Christian interpolators. However, there is also a major scholarly consensus that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus that talked about Pontius Pilate executing Jesus.
Eusebius and Origen
My friends' article starts off by noting that Eusebius of Caesarea noticed that the verses allegedly "didn’t appear in historical records until the 4th century." In reality, the fourth century is simply the earliest unambiguous usage of Testimonium Flavianum that we have available to us, via Eusebius' "Historia Ecclestiastica". We do not actually have the original manuscripts of Josephus and the only reason they survived is because they were scribed by Christian monks (the Jews didn't preserve his works as they saw him as a traitor.) In all actuality, we have no extant manuscripts of Antiquities contemporary to Josephus (or even Eusebius.) So, to claim that it "didn't appear in the historical records until the fourth century" is accurate, but it paints an inaccurate picture. We don't have manuscripts of Antiquities that show a different picture up until the Fourth Century; we simply don't have the original manuscripts. But this leads my friends to believe that Euseibus' quoting it is when the verse first appeared and that it was Eusebius who edited the passage, but we have no evidence to support that. In fact, Book 1, Chapter 47 of Origen's "Contra Celsum" establishes that Origen, in as early as 248 Anno Domini, knew of the passage:
"I would like to say to Celsus, who represents the Jew as accepting somehow John as a Baptist, who baptized Jesus, that the existence of John the Baptist, baptizing for the remission of sins, is related by one who lived no great length of time after John and Jesus. For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless—being, although against his will, not far from the truth—that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),—the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice. Paul, a genuine disciple of Jesus, says that he regarded this James as a brother of the Lord, not so much on account of their relationship by blood, or of their being brought up together, as because of his virtue and doctrine. If, then, he says that it was on account of James that the desolation of Jerusalem was made to overtake the Jews, how should it not be more in accordance with reason to say that it happened on account (of the death) of Jesus Christ, of whose divinity so many Churches are witnesses, composed of those who have been convened from a flood of sins, and who have joined themselves to the Creator, and who refer all their actions to His good pleasure."
Now, call me crazy, but if the entire passage is an interpolation, why is Origen noting that Josephus writes about Jesus if Josephus never wrote about Jesus and it wasn't until Eusebius that the passage appeared?
Louis Feldman has pointed out that it would make absolutely no sense for Origen to express astonishment that Josephus didn't acknowledge Jesus as the messiah if he hadn't of actually mentioned Jesus in Testimonium Flavianum.
It's assumed that because this verse isn't widely quoted by the early Christian apologists that it didn't exist. But this would only stand to reason if there was something to be gained from using this passage. As I said earlier, there was little doubt in anyone's mind that Jesus existed. And considering it's likely that things like "He was the Christ" was added later on, it wouldn't serve as apologetic testimony either. It'd just be Josephus saying Jesus existed, which would have been a "duh" for most people. Interestingly enough, even after Eusebius' usage of the extant quote, I don't believe we see very much usage of the quote even then. And there certainly wasn't much usage of Antiquities at all by the early founders of Christianity, as Roger Pearse demonstrates here. Louis Feldman and Gōhei Hata agree that the evidence supports that the early Christian founders were not historically learned enough to give Josephus much thought.
It would seem my friends take an all or nothing approach to the Josephus verse. Either it's all a fraud or it's all the original text, but this is a marginal view on the subject. They use Book 2, Chapter 33 of Contra Celsum to denote the idea that Origen believed there was no other source besides the gospels that testify to Jesus (which, I already established with the above that Origen did not believe that was the case.) The problem is that the verse never states that. It reads:
"But, continues Celsus, what great deeds did Jesus perform as being a God? Did he put his enemies to shame, or bring to a ridiculous conclusion what was designed against him? Now to this question, although we are able to show the striking and miraculous character of the events which befell Him, yet from what other source can we furnish an answer than from the Gospel narratives, which state that there was an earthquake, and that the rocks were split asunder, and the tombs opened, and the veil of the temple rent in two from top to bottom, and that darkness prevailed in the day-time, the sun failing to give light? But if Celsus believe the Gospel accounts when he thinks that he can find in them matter of charge against the Christians, and refuse to believe them when they establish the divinity of Jesus, our answer to him is: Sir, either disbelieve all the Gospel narratives, and then no longer imagine that you can found charges upon them; or, in yielding your belief to their statements, look in admiration on the Logos of God, who became incarnate, and who desired to confer benefits upon the whole human race. And this feature evinces the nobility of the work of Jesus, that, down to the present time, those whom God wills are healed by His name. And with regard to the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Cæsar, in whose reign Jesus appears to have been crucified, and the great earthquakes which then took place, Phlegon too, I think, has written in the thirteenth or fourteenth book of his Chronicles."
The verse is referring to the merit of Jesus' miracles; not the historicity of Jesus. And Origen does not claim that there are no other testimonies; rather that the answers to these miracles are best explained by the Bible and not by Celsus' claims of Jesus using cheap parlor tricks. Read the whole book yourself to glean the context of this passage. Origen actually responds to Celsus' claims that Jesus' miracles were nothing more than the tricks of jugglers (Book 1, Chapter 68.)
My friends go on to point out that Book 1, Chapter 47 illustrate that Origen allegedly affirms that Josephus didn't mention Jesus. The interesting part about this, if you scroll up, is that you'll see that it's the very verse that I used to demonstrate that Origen most certainly believed Josephus wrote about Jesus. My friends conflate the notion that Origen believed Josephus should have expounded on the notion that the "conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ", but they fail to take notice of the key portion of that passage: "says nevertheless".
Oh, and by the way. As James Patrick Holding points out, "Some, such as popular Internet commentator Ken Olson, suggest that Eusebius himself interpolated the passage. A significant problem with Olson's theory is that there existed at least one or two Greek manuscripts of Antiquities which contained the TF but were independent of Eusebius' manuscripts. The existence of such manuscripts effectively eliminates the possibility that Eusebius invented the TF from nothing."
So, to rephrase the ultimatum presented by my friends: What makes more sense? The quote is an outright forgery and Josephus never mentioned Jesus despite no evidence to support that and Origen attesting that the quote existed. Or the quote was actually there.
A Partial Interpolation
Alright, so how much of it is real and how much of it as a forgery then?
Well, Josephus was a devout Pharisee Jew; he was not a Christian and would not have professed Jesus to be the Christ (the messiah or savior.) And Josephus' platform was that Vespasian was the messiah (War of the Jews 6.5.4.) With this in mind, the references to the resurrection and "if it be lawful to call him a man" are also obviously considered interpolations.
And based on Origen's puzzlement of Josephus not accepting Jesus as the messiah, we can be reasonably sure that that was an interpolation. By and large, scholars are of the mind that the original passage would have read something like the following (see: "A Marginal Jew" by John P. Meier):
"Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and many of Greek origin. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day."
It's also been proposed that the original text may be better interpretted as "he was called the Christ". The reason being, that the Greek Koine word "legomenos" in the passage holds such a connotation. Some mythers argue that this is wrong and that "legomenos" would be a perfectly valid word used by a Christian interpolator because Matthew 16:16 refers to Christ in the same manner. The problem with that is elucidated by James Patrick Holding, "When Matthew later uses the phrase 'called Christ', he puts it in the mouth of the pagan Pilate. (Matt. 27:17; 22 Obviously, the pagan executioner of Christ is not an example most Christians would emulate." In any case, whether it's so-called or not is kind of unimportant.
I'm not sure why the notion that the passage was only partially edited seems surprising. Emendation has been a pretty common practice for scribes throughout history for various reasons. It's been proposed that the original text may have been a tad more offensive to Jesus, which is what resulted in the interpolation. Robert Eisler proposes the following, though it has less academic support:
"Now about this time arose an occasion for new disturbances, a certain Jesus, a wizard of a man, if indeed he may be called a man, who was the most monstrous of men, whom his disciples call a son of God, as having done wonders such as no man has ever done.... He was in fact a teacher of astonishing tricks to such men as accept the abnormal with delight.... And he seduced many Jews and many also of the Greek nation, and was regarded by them as the Messiah.... And when, on the indictment of the principal men among us, Pilate had sentenced him to the cross, still those who before had admired him did not cease to rave. For it seemed to them that having been dead for three days, he had appeared to them alive again, as the divinely-inspired prophets had foretold -- these and ten thousand other wonderful things -- concerning him. And even now the race of those who are called 'Messianists' after him is not extinct."
This is less likely though, as Origen likely would have commented more about Josephus if the tone was less acceptable. Louis Feldman has pointed out that the passage likely contained historical data in a neutral form. The motive for the interpolation is irrelevant; the interpolation is not acceptable. But it's literally ancient history now. The verse is actually constructed by traits we know to fit Josephus' writing style. Secular scholar, Graham Stanton, notes, "Once the obviously Christian additions are removed, the remaining comments are consistent with Josephus’s vocabulary and style."
Robert Van Voorst has pointed out, for example, that the Greek word for "pleasure" was typically avoided by Christians at the time, due to a perceived association with hedonism and Epicureanism.
Henry St. John Thackeray notes, "The evidence of language, which, on the one hand, bears marks of the author's style, and on the other is not as a Christian would have used, appears to me decisive."
Meier has also pointed out that the text does not exaggerate the role the Jews played in the crucifixion. If the text were a full interpolation, we should expect a much more scathing quote. Now, you might say, "But Josephus was a Jew! Why would they make him write something bad about his own group?!" Remember, these are the same geniuses (that was sarcasm) that made him say "He was the Christ." Craig A. Evans notes, "If the passage were a later interpolation, say from the fourth century, then it would be hard to understand why it does not reflect the antipathy that many Christians felt toward the Jewish people."
See here for a phrase by phrase breakdown from Evidence For Christianity. This article will actually shed a lot of light on each individual sentence in the passage and is absolutely indispensable in understanding the subject. In particular, check this out:
"The digression and introductory phrase are typical of Josephus. As noted by
Steve Mason, "[t]he opening phrase ‘about this time’ is characteristic of his
language in this part of Antiquities, where he is weaving together distinct
episodes into a coherent narrative (cf. Ant. 17.19; 18.39, 65, 80; 19.278)."
(Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, page 171). Additionally, the use of the simple name "Jesus" favours Josephan authorship.""
Read James Patrick Holding's book "Shattering the Christ Myth", for another phrase-by-phrase breakdown of why the text is distinctly Josephan.
Earl Doherty objects: "But if a Christian copyist were seeking to create a convincing interpolation, he would likely try to employ Josephan fingerprints to make it appear authentic; and if he were introducing terms or ideas similar to those expressed elsewhere in Josephus he would have precedents to draw on. If he were someone who worked with the manuscripts of Josephus on a regular basis, such imitation might well become second nature to him."
Yet, the geniuses couldn't figure out that Josephus would never call Jesus the messiah? Even if we pretend that someone like Eusebius would have been scholastically advanced enough to make such a convincing copy of Josephus' writing (and I find that far fetched, considering we're able to determine authenticity of the writings of modern writers), why would he make such an obvious blunder? Doherty's objection seems to be more grounded in a desperate attempt to delegitimize the passage, rather than the preponderance of evidence. And going based on such an absurd statement, we may as well throw away the entire practice of historical criticism.
Interruption
This segways into another criticism by my friends; that the passage interrupts the flow of the narrative. There is actually a clear segway via "about this time" and there's a clear history of Josephus being a bit A.D.D. in his writing. If you don't believe me, read the full text of Chapter 3, where the verse is found, and you'll find he does this quite a few times in the very same chapter. The chapter is all related and all flows just fine; I don't see an abnormal interruption that does not fit Josephus' writing style. The very next paragraph actually contains a rather lengthy unrelated subject to Jewish calamities -- about Paulina.
Earl Doherty has contended that this diversion contains a qualifier, explaining that there's going to be a diversion though. Well, first of all, based on the context, we can glean that Testimonium Flavianum was a segway from the basic overview of Pilate being a jerk. Second of all, it's a much shorter segment than the narrative about Paulina. So, the Testimonium Flavianum is both more relevant to the preceding verse and less significant a passage to make note of.
Second of all, I'm not quite sure that Josephus is even announcing a diversion:
"About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the temple of Isis that was at Rome. I will now first take notice of the wicked attempt about the temple of Isis, and will then give an account of the Jewish affairs."
What we see is Josephus introduce the events of what happened at the Isis temple and then note that he's going to explain the matter of Paulina (a sub-topic to Isis) before going into how it related to the Jews. This directly parallels his treatment of Jesus as a sub-topic to Pilate. Of course, Jesus came after all of the other events pertaining to Pilate and was listed in queue with Pilate's other actions, so there would be no need to announce Testimonium Flavianum.
This might be a valid point if the chapter followed a pattern where one topic was the focus and Testimonium Flavianum just appeared in the middle of it. But instead, what we see is Josephus telling of a multitude of matters that occurred within that time period without there always being a clear connection between the preceding and succeeding verses. It would seem, more than anything, that the first three paragraphs are simply Josephus chronicling the fact that Pilate was an asshole and then he goes into the Isis temple.
My friends posit a connection between calamity for the Jews, but it's not clear that this was a point Josephus was trying to make. Historically, just about everything that happened during that time was a calamity for the Jews, so probability states that there are going to be a number of historical notes about these calamities. The Romans were jerks. The notion that because some of the subject matter was calamities for the Jews that all of it was is fallacy of composition. And a bad one at that. If calamities of the Jews were, indeed, the theme of the chapter, why include Paulina -- qualifier or not -- into it? More likely, the theme was simply the goings on of the time, much like the theme usually is for all of Josephus' writing.
At Free Thought Nation, they argue that, "Claiming Christians interpolated the TF in whole is not much different than contending they tinkered with it in part. If they are capable of partial interpolation for informational or propaganda purposes, they are capable of whole interpolation for the same."
This is a fallacy of composition. The evidence supports a partial interpolation; we have no evidence to support a full interpolation. And quite a bit to support that there was something there about Jesus. This argument would be like me saying "If you're capable of being a myther, you are capable of being a holocaust denier too." Michael R. Licona did something similar to this, "Doherty & Associates are baffled that all but a few naïve onlookers pass them by quickly, wagging their heads and rolling their eyes. They never see that they have a fellow picketer less than a hundred yards away, a distinguished looking man from Iran. He too is frustrated and carries a sign that says “The Holocaust Never Happened!"
Decide if you think that's a fair assessment before you try to advance that fallacy of composition again.
Book 20, Chapter 9, 1
"Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned"
There's a lot less to say about this one. There is no evidence of interpolation, there's a major consensus among scholars and the verse is corroborated as early as Origen.
Jesus ben Damneus
I'm a little confused by the section dealing with this in my friends' article because they seem to take another section of the chapter that mentions another Jesus and say, "Look, he was talking about another Jesus!" They, strangely, do not quote the right verse, which I've provided above. Even if they had and still ran with the "he mentions another Jesus" elsewhere, it doesn't stand. Josephus would not have felt the need to denote the identity of Jesus (son of Damneus) if he were, in fact, the same Jesus (who was called Christ) he just referred to. Josephus' works deal with at least twenty different people named Jesus.
We don't make the argument that there is only one Ananus being discussed in this same chapter because Josephus clearly identifies two of them. He does the same thing with the two men named Jesus by separating them between "son of Damneus" and "who was called the Christ".
Even beyond that, if the Jesus being discussed were the same person, what sense would it make to stone a man's brother and then make him a priest? Is the answer really as simple as, "Well, Hanan was a dick and was made to step down and who better to give the position to than the accused's brother?" Was Jesus ben Damneus just coincidentally a priest? Why did he not intervene on his brother's behalf before he was stoned?
It also seems ridiculous to suggest that he was just giving another name to Jesus ben Damneus, when he actually goes on to talk about yet another Jesus (ben Gamaliel) shortly after. If Josephus was not trying to differentiate Jesus, brother of James, from the other two, Josephus is a terrible writer and his works are overambiguous. When two men named Jesus are already being discussed in the confines of one chapter, giving one a second name would only serve to confuse things. Far more likely is the fact that Josephus was differentiating Christ, ben Gamaliel and ben Damneus by calling them... well, Christ, ben Gamaliel and ben Damneus.
Moreover, do we have any historical evidence of any other Jesus, brother of James, being called the Christ that this could be? When you skip all the mental gymnastics, the logical answer is that the passage is referring to Jesus Christ and James the Just.
James' Death
My friends posit the following: "Finally, and most importantly the James of Josephus died in 64 CE by just stoning while Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Early Christian tradition all had James the Just dying in 70 CE by being thrown from a battlement, stoned, and finally clubbed to death by passing laundrymen."
The original sources here seem to be Clement of Alexandria and Hegesippus, whose testimonies reach us by way of Eusebius (who, if you recall, is quite familiar with the passage referring to James and Jesus.) Lets review the actual text:
Clement narrates, "The Lord after his resurrection imparted knowledge to James the Just and to John and Peter, and they imparted it to the rest of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles to the seventy, of whom Barnabas was one. But there were two Jameses: one called the Just, who was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and was beaten to death with a club by a fuller, and another who was beheaded."
Hegesippus narrates, "James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the church in conjunction with the apostles. He has been called the just by all from the times of Christ to the present day, for there were many that bore the name of James. He was holy from the womb of his mother. He drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not use the bath. He alone was permitted to enter into the holy place; for he wore not woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and he was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel in consequence of his constantly bending them in his worship of God and asking forgiveness for the people. Because of his exceeding great justice he was called the just, and oblias, which signifies a bulwark of the people, and justice, in accordance with what the prophets declare concerning him. Now some of the seven sects, which existed among the people and which have been mentioned by me in the memoirs, asked him: What is the gate of Jesus? And he replied that it was the savior. On account of these words some believed that Jesus is the Christ. But the sects mentioned above did not believe either in a resurrection or in the coming of one to give to every man according to his works. But as many as believed did so on account of James. Therefore, when many even of the rulers believed, there was a commotion among the Jews and Pharisees and scribes, who said that there was danger that the whole people would be looking for Jesus as the Christ. Coming therefore in a body to James they said: We entreat you, restrain the people, for they have gone astray in regard to Jesus, as if he were the Christ. We entreat you to persuade all that have come to the feast of the Passover concerning Jesus; for we all have confidence in you. For we bear you witness, as do all the people, that you are just and you do not respect persons. Persuade, therefore, the multitude not to be led astray concerning Jesus. For the whole people, and all of us also, have confidence in you. Stand therefore upon the pinnacle of the temple, that you might be in a high position, and that your words may be readily heard by all the people. For all the tribes, with the gentiles also, have come together on account of the Passover. The aforesaid scribes and Pharisees therefore placed James upon the pinnacle of the temple and cried out to him and said: Just one, in whom we ought all to have confidence, forasmuch as the people are led astray after Jesus, the crucified one, declare to us what the gate of Jesus is. And he answered with a loud voice: Why do you ask me concerning Jesus, the son of man? He himself sits in heaven at the right hand of the great power, and is about to come upon the clouds of heaven! And, when many were fully convinced and gloried in the testimony of James, and said: Hosanna to the son of David, these same scribes and Pharisees said again to one another: We have done badly in supplying such testimony to Jesus. But let us go up and throw him down, in order that they may be afraid to believe him. And they cried out, saying: Oh, oh, the just man is also in error! And they fulfilled the scripture written in Isaiah: Let us take away the just man because he is troublesome to us; therefore they shall eat the fruit of their works. So they went up and threw down the just man, they began to stone him, for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned and knelt down and said: I entreat you, Lord God our father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And while they were thus stoning him one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, the son of the Rechabites, who are mentioned by Jeremiah, cried out, saying: Cease! What are you doing? The just one is praying for you! And one of them, one of the fullers, took the club with which he beat out clothes and struck the just man on the head. And thus he suffered martyrdom. And they buried him on the spot, by the temple, and his monument still remains by the temple. He became a true witness, both to Jews and Greeks, that Jesus is the Christ. And immediately Vespasian besieged them."
A basic overview:
Clement suggesting James was thrown from atop the temple and then beaten with a club.
Josephus suggesting James was stoned to death.
Hegesippus suggesting James was thrown from atop the temple, stoned and beaten with a club.
If Hegesippus' account doesn't solve the disparity (and for sake of argument, we'll assume it doesn't), we can at least conclude that the very overdramatic narrative combined with the above details suggests that Hegesippus' account is more of a dramatized narrative of what he believed happened based on melding the accounts of Josephus and Clement together. In other words, his primary sources would be the two sources seemingly at odds here.
There's still not necessarily a contradiction though. Just because all Josephus chronicled was the stoning does not mean that that's all that happened. It's quite possible that Clement had information not available to Josephus or it's quite possible that Clement embellished the story to dramatize it. It's even quite possible that the story grew (much the way it did from Clement to Hegesippus) like the game Telephone and by the time it got to Clement, it was what he chronicled. Either way, the general story is solid enough and there seems no reason to believe that Clement and Hegesippus' testimonies means that Josephus was not referring to the same James.
It should be noted that if we had to pick between the two accounts, Josephus' account is more reliable as it's both more contemporary (Clement and Hegesippus lived in the second century, long after James was already dead) and more exact. Not to mention it could be argued to contain less bias.
The Chronology
My friends also seem to get the chronology wrong on the subject of James. First of all, Antiquities of the Jews suggests James died in 61-62 Anno Domini; not 64 Anno Domini. And the date allegedly given by Hegesippus (Clement does not suggest a date and neither does Eusebius, who simply quotes the other two) was 67-69 Anno Domini; not 70 Anno Domini.
Philip Schaff notes, "There is no reason for doubting this date which is given with such exactness by Josephus and it is further confirmed by Eusebius in his Chron., who puts James' martyrdom in the seven year of Nero, i.e. 61 A.D., while Jerome puts it in the eighth year of Nero."
And that disparity is actually non-existent by way of the fact that Hegesippus doesn't actually suggest that date as the date James was killed. Philip Schaff explains, "Hegesippus has been cited over and over again by historians as assigning the date of the martyrdom to 69 A.D., and as thus being in direct conflict with Josephus; as a consequence some follow his supposed date, others that of Josephus. But I can find no reason for asserting that Hegesippus assigns the martyrdom to 69. Certainly his words in this chapter, which are referred to, by no means necessitate such an assumption. He concludes his account with the words και ευθυς Ουεσπασιανος πολιορκει αυτους. The πολιορκει αυτους is certainly to be referred to the commencement of the war (not to the siege of the city of Jerusalem, which was undertaken by Titus, not by Vespasian), i.e. to the year 67 A.D., and in such an account as this, in which the overthrow of the Jews is designedly presented in connection with the death of James, it is hyper-criticism to insist that the word ευθυς must indicate a space of time of only a few months' duration. It is a very indefinite word, and the most we can draw from Hegesippus' account is that not long before Vespasian's invasion of Judea, James was slain."
Paul of Tarsus
A very important piece to the historical Jesus puzzle is Paul of Tarsus, who I have a feeling much more of you are familiar with. Rational Wiki (the entire article itself is as shoddy as you'd expect of Rational Wiki, but they wrote this part eloquently enough) explains why in a satisfying manner:
"Using the Bible as partial biographical evidence of Jesus is not as completely insane or wall-bangingly circular as it may first seem. Although the gospels are generally published in one compendium known as The Bible, they are separate documents and almost certainly were written by separate authors. There are also non-canonical gospels (such as the gnostic gospels) that also attest to Jesus' existence. Though the early Church excluded these texts when the Bible was being compiled, historians see them as fully relevant to the question."
I should note that there are non-Pauline Christians (myself included), who see Paul's works as valuable historical documents, but not divinely inspired. So, Paul would be no different to Origen in that regard. He'd just be an earlier source.
Speaking of which, Paul happened to be a contemporary of those who knew Jesus, which makes him especially valuable to us. This was a man who began his life persecuting Christians and later went on to preach it and interacted with family members and followers of Jesus. He personally interacted with those who knew Jesus best. As I said earlier, is the testimony of a contemporary only valid if in written form? If so, why? If not, then we can establish the apostles' (through the medium of Paul) testimony as evidence of Jesus's existence. Fact of the matter is that most historians didn't necessarily have to witness the events they wrote about; they spoke with those who were there and chronicled it after cross-examining it. In this instance, Paul's testimony of Jesus is no different.
The excuse here that mythers like Tom Harpur, and Earl Doherty use is that Paul doesn't refer to Jesus as a flesh and blood historical figure. See: Docetism. Now, lets set aside the intuitive eyebrow raises at such a statement and look at the facts.
Kyle Butt of Apologetics Press writes, "Paul used the name 'Jesus' 218 times in his writings (Strong, 2001, p. 453), not counting other names for Jesus like Christ or Lord. For Harpur to say Paul 'occasionally' mentioned Jesus is outright dishonesty. Paul used the name Jesus five times in the first eight verses of Romans, seven times in the single-chapter book of Philemon, and 22 times in the brief, four-chapter book of Philippians. An honest account of Paul’s writings shows that they are replete with Jesus’ name, containing it an average of two and a half times per chapter."
Kyle Butt goes on to reference 1 Timothy 2:5, Romans 1:3, 1 Timothy 6:13 and Philippians 2:5, unequivocally demonstrating that Paul saw Jesus as having come in the form of man. And realistically, why wouldn't he? You have to do some really fancy mental gymnastics to explain why Paul would be such an adamant Christian while not believing that Jesus came in the form of man. It's also likely that Paul was non-trinitarian and did not view Jesus as God the Son, but did view him as the Son of God (which is why he never identifies Jesus as God and instead refers to finding salvation with God through Jesus.)
In addition, I posit the following: Romans 5:15, Romans 8:11, Romans 15:8, 1 Corinthians 2:2, 1 Corinthians 11:23, 1 Thessalonians 2:15, and 1 Thessalonians 4:14.
One of the issues that folks like Tom Harpur like to harp on is that Paul doesn't chronicle the events in the Gospels. Depending on your view on Lukan authorship, Harpur ignores the fact that Luke the Evangelist did in the Gospel of Luke. Traditionally, Luke is attributed to be a disciple of Paul's. But even if we reject that Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles, this is a really cheesy attempt to move the goal post by Tom Harpur. How Paul chose to chronicle the life of Jesus is irrelevant to the question of whether or not he believed there to be a historical Jesus. We're debating whether or not Paul addresses Jesus as a flesh and blood person; not whether the Gospel of Paul exists.
In closing, I have a quote from my outline that I apparently didn't write the source to and I can't find it (so, if anyone can point it out for me, I will credit you here), but it rather eloquently explains the pertinence of Paul:
In the context of Christian sources, even if all other texts are ignored, the Pauline epistles can provide some information regarding Jesus, just on their own.[30][211] This information does not include a narrative of the life of Jesus, but refers to his existence as a person, and a few specific items such as his death by crucifixion.[212] This information comes from those letters of Paul whose authenticity is not disputed.[211]
Of the thirteen letters that bear Paul's name, seven are considered authentic by almost all scholars, and the others are generally considered pseudepigraphic.[213][214][215][216] The 7 undisputed letters (and their approximate dates) are: 1 Thessalonians (c. 51 AD), Philippians (c. 52-54 AD), Philemon (c. 52-54 AD), 1 Corinthians (c. 53-54 AD), Galatians (c. 55 AD), 2 Corinthians (c. 55-56 AD) and Romans (c. 55-58 AD).[213][215][216] The authenticity of these letters is accepted by almost all scholars, and they have been referenced and interpreted by early authors such as Origen and Eusebius.[217][214]
Given that the Pauline epistles are generally dated to AD 50 to AD 60, they are the earliest surviving Christian texts that include information about Jesus.[216] These letters were written approximately twenty to thirty years after the generally accepted time period for the death of Jesus, around AD 30-36.[216] The letters were written during a time when Paul recorded encounters with the disciples of Jesus, e.g. Galatians 1:18 states that several years after his conversion Paul went to Jerusalem and stayed with Apostle Peter for fifteen days.[216]
The Pauline letters were not intended to provide a narrative of the life of Jesus, but were written as expositions of Christian teachings.[216][218] In Paul's view, the earthly life of Jesus was of a lower importance than the theology of his death and resurrection,a theme that permeates Pauline writings.[219] However, the Pauline letters clearly indicate that for Paul Jesus was a real person (born of a woman as in Gal 4.4) who had disciples (1 Corinthians 15.5), who was crucified (as in 1 Corinthians 2.2 and Galatians 3.1) and who resurrected from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.20, Romans 1.4 and 6.5, Philippians 3:10-11).[30][211][216][219] And the letters reflect the general concept within the early Christian Church that Jesus existed, was crucified and was raised from the dead.[30][216]
The references by Paul to Jesus do not in themselves prove the existence of Jesus, but they do establish that the existence of Jesus was the accepted norm within the early Christians (including the Christian community in Jerusalem, given the references to collections there) twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus, at a time when those who could have been acquainted with him could still be alive.[220] [221]
And:
The Pauline letters sometimes refer to creeds, or confessions of faith, that predate their writings.[236][237][238] For instance 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 reads: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."[236] Romans 1:3-4 refers to Romans 1:2 just before it which mentions an existing gospel, and in effect may be treating it as an earlier creed.[236][237] One of the keys to identifying a pre-Pauline tradition is given in 1 Corinthians 15:11[238]
Whether then [it be] I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.
Here Paul refers to others before him who preached the creed.[238]
James Dunn states that 1 Corinthians 15:3 indicates that in the 30s Paul was taught about the death of Jesus a few years earlier.[239]
The Pauline letters thus contain Christian creed elements of pre-Pauline origin.[240] The antiquity of the creed has been located by many Biblical scholars to less than a decade after Jesus' death, originating from the Jerusalem apostolic community.[241] Concerning this creed, Campenhausen wrote, "This account meets all the demands of historical reliability that could possibly be made of such a text,"[242] whilst A. M. Hunter said, "The passage therefore preserves uniquely early and verifiable testimony. It meets every reasonable demand of historical reliability."[243]
These creeds date to within a few years of Jesus' death, and developed within the Christian community in Jerusalem.[244] Although embedded within the texts of the New Testament, these creeds are a distinct source for Early Christianity.[237] This indicates that existence and death of Jesus was part of Christian belief a few years after his death and over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.[244]
Pliny the Younger
"I asked them directly if they were Christians...those who persisted, I ordered away... Those who denied they were or ever had been
Christians...worshiped both your image and the images of the gods and cursed Christ. They used to gather on a stated day before dawn and
sing to Christ as if he were a god... All the more I believed it necessary to find out what was the truth from two servant maids, which were
called deaconesses, by means of torture. Nothing more did I find than a disgusting, fanatical superstition. Therefore I stopped the examination,
and hastened to consult you...on account of the number of people endangered. For many of all ages, all classes, and both sexes already are
brought into danger..."
Here, Pliny the Younger is describing to the Emperor that he tortured Christians in order to force them to reject Jesus.
Now, I don't personally believe this is a testimony to the existence of Jesus by Pliny. At most, this tells us that the early Christians truly believed Jesus was a flesh and blood person. What he does chronicle would be valuable if the question came up as to the extent in which Christians believed in Jesus.
However, that can tell us some things. It's a factor that lends considerable credence to a historical Jesus, in that it's unlikely so many believers would undergo such torture for someone there was no evidence of ever existing. Not many people are willing to get tortured for such an abstract idea of a person being their savior/deity. It's very likely that enough evidence was available to early Christians for them to, first, convert to Christianity to begin with -- and then get martyred on top of it.
Moreover, there's a very important question that must be raised from this passage. Why is it that Pliny didn't demand the Christians deny Jesus ever existed? Could it be that it was a ludicrous idea that would enjoy no support and would only reinforce the beliefs of these martyrs?
Some mythers object on the basis that, "Hey! Some Christians rejected Jesus too!" Tektonics has an article that addresses this objection pretty well:
"But ultimately, this objection misses the point. Even though some people left Christianity, there were also many who did not, and died because of it - and if there was any hint that Jesus was a mythical figure (and such arguments would certainly have been passed on by the Jewish and pagan enemies of Christianity) it is extremely unlikely that anyone at all would have suffered persecution or martyrdom for His sake."
That some did deny Jesus is quite irrelevant, as is the movement between religious associations common in that time: As Wilken explains, those who found that Christianity did not meet their needs or expectations simply lost interest and left - such is the fickle side of human nature. And as Momigliano indicates [Momig.PagJC, 164], in that time period, "to know to what religious group you belong to is not identical with knowing what you believe." In the syncretistic world of the Roman Empire, a "buffet table" approach to religion was not uncommon.
There were undoubtedly those who, as happens today, walked into a church, liked the company, ate the delicious food, and settled in - until the going got rough; then the untough got going. But when a Christian professed Christ and would not recant, even in the face of persecution and execution, that indicated that a final choice had been made."
So, this passage is an interesting subject. It doesn't do what some proponents of the historical Jesus purport, but it does raise questions that lend more favor to his historicity.
Tacitus
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
This passage is found in Gaius/Publius Cornelius Tacitus' "Annals", Book XV, Section 44. From this, we can glean that Jesus existed, founded Christianity, and was put to death by Pontius Pilate.
We are reasonably confident that this is not an interpolation. From Tektonics, "The passage is in perfect Tacitean style; it appears in every known copy of the Annals (although there are very few copies of it, and none dates earlier than the 11th century), and the anti-Christian tone is so strong that it is extremely unlikely that a Christian could have written it."
Reliability of Tacitus
The first objection my friends raise is that Tacitus "gives no source" for his claims. The problem with that is that Tacitus is the source. No, he does not specify where he obtained this information, but is that so unusual given the time (chronological snobbery) and nature of his work?
The process of citing sources was used sporadically over the last few hundred years, but the formalization of the academic subject began with Leopold von Ranke in the 19th century. And Tacitus is a historian chronicling what he sees around him, so he is the primary source.
They go on to explain that Tacitus apparently had no first hand knowledge of Christianity and is merely chronicling common ideas of the time? First of all, it should be noted that we aren't aware of how much familiarity Tacitus had with Christianity. But it's reasonable that an educated man like him would be likely to question the events relating to Jesus alleged by the Christians and if there wasn't a sufficient amount of evidence to conclude that it had happened, he wouldn't have chronicled that it did. But lets assume that he is just chronicling common ideas. The next question we have to ask is: Why was a flesh and blood historical Jesus so commonly believed? Are we to believe that throughout the entire Roman Empire, no one questioned a rather falsifiable allegation by a band of misfit troublemakers who undermined the very culture of Rome?
At Devine Evidence, they point out, "Tacitus distinguishes between confirmed and hearsay accounts almost 70 times in his History. If he felt this account of Jesus was only a rumor or folklore, he would have issued his usual disclaimer that this account was unverified."
Tektonics writes on his reliability on Tacitus' reliability.
My friends try to cast doubt on the reliability of Tacitus based on the fact that his original manuscripts were not preserved, except through the later works of others. The problem with this is that's generally how most history is preserved. Consider how little we have of Thales, Anaximides, and Socrates. Patrik Hammar, a friend of mine who studies history for a living, explained to me, "Mostly we have copies written later. That's the best we can do. The copies are usually quite good, though - it was a point of honor to make sure the copy matched the original. The problem is that paper, papyrus and parchment deteriorates unless kept in a climate controlled environent." (I should note that this friend does not take a definitive stance on the issue one way or another.)
James Patrick Holding goes more into the reliability of Tacitus in his book, "Shattering The Christ Myth", including why Tacitus would be very familiar with Christianity.
Various Bits And Bobs That Allegedly Don't Add Up
My friends argue (and I'm thinking that this is their source) that the reliability of Tacitus should be called into question because no other source acknowledges Emperor Nero's persecution of Christians. But I don't quite understand how Tacitus' own testimony is invalid. We've already established that Tacitus had no love for Christianity and is known to be a very thorough historian for his time. I can find no reason why we should dismiss Tacitus' testimony here. This seems to me to be a form of moving the goal post from providing a source to demanding more evidence than is needed to substantiate a given topic. The argument from silence is getting a little ridiculous now.
Considering only three historians even chronicled the Great Fire of Rome, we have a rather small pool of writers from which to work with to begin with. Given Pliny's testimony, how hard is it to believe that Christians were frequently persecuted against at this time?
Side note: Only three historians chronicled an enormous fire that had immense political repercussions. Yet, we're led to believe that the omission of the figurehead of what was then considered an obscure cult is proof that that figurehead didn't exist?
They go on to claim that Tacitus is unreliable because he describes a "great crowd" and there weren't that many Christians around at that time. Well, first of all, I can't find where in the text Tacitus describes a "great crowd"; I assume they're referring to this, "Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."
So, assuming they're referring to that: I still don't see why that invalidates Tacitus' testimony. A "great crowd" and an "immense multitude" (ingēns multitudo) are relative. It would seem that my friends are basing the notion that Christians made up a small percentage of the population, that their numbers were so meager that Tactitus' testimony is impossible.
But let me pose this question to you: Would you like 1% of a dead whale in your living room? I pose this question because percentages are relative to actual numbers and the Roman Empire's population numbered in the millions. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Biblical Perspectives states:
"According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (1982), it is estimated that by A.D. 100 there were 1 million Christians in the Roman Empire out of a population of 181 million. This means that by the end of the first century less than 1 percent of the population (0.6% to be exact) was Christian."
So, yeah. Christians were a distinct minority. But would being a minority in the U.S. mean that an immense amount of Japanese couldn't be round up in interment camps?
And the next apparent problem is that Tacitus refers to them as Christians, even though the term wasn't around at the time. First of all: Well, evidently, it was. Second of all, the New Testament itself uses the title 3 times. Acts 11:26 and 26:28, as well as 1 Peter 4:16. Both 1 Peter and Acts were written before Annals. The word was coined in Antioch in the First Century and as you will see below, was pretty commonly used. Particularly in the way Tacitus uses it.
It's kind of funny that my friends use modern scholars' disagreement with Suetonius (whom I'll make a quick note that there won't be a section on him here because, while I believe he is referring to Jesus in his writing,and Cassius Dio's assessment that Nero was responsible. Considering that it's Tacitus with whom they agree with that Nero wasn't responsible. Tacitus never claims Nero was responsible. The consensus is that Nero blamed Christians in order to diffuse blame.
Richard Carrier posited the following, "...we are enormously lucky to have Tacitus--only two unrelated Christian monasteries had any interest in preserving his Annals, for example, and neither of them preserved the whole thing, but each less than half of it, and by shear luck alone, they each preserved a different half. And yet we still have large gaps in it. One of those gaps is the removal of the years 29, 30, and 31 (precisely, the latter part of 29, all of 30, and the earlier part of 31), which is probably the deliberate excision of Christian scribes who were embarrassed by the lack of any mention of Jesus or Gospel events in those years (the years Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection were widely believed at the time to have occurred). There is otherwise no known explanation for why those three years were removed. The other large gap is the material between the two halves that neither institution preserved. And yet another is the end of the second half, which scribes also chose not to preserve (or lost through negligent care of the manuscript, etc.)."
The problem is that silence on Jesus would likely not prompt exclusion of those years. In fact, verbosity (of a negative sort) would be far more likely to prompt Christian scribes to exclude it. However, Carrier makes it appear that the only reason they would exclude preservation of it is silence of Jesus. The problem with this argument is that folks like Carrier regularly tout a list of historians who should have written about Jesus, but don't. Why are their works preserved?
Severus
We already addressed why we don't have the original manuscript and why the early Christians likely didn't quote Tacitus. But my friends also raise issue with the parallels between Sulpicius Severus and Tacitus' wording on the subject. The implication being that Severus wrote the passage about Jesus and not Tacitus.
Well, ignoring that that seems counter-intuitive to the fact that we can specifically find the text in Tacitus' work and he was specifically credited with it, this argument doesn't even make sense. On its face, the first thing we'd have to ask is: Why would Severus, a Christian, use the harsh words Tacitus did about Christians? And if Severus is the original penman, then how did the quote turn into the harsh text it reads now? Why would Christians take the work of one of their own, sully it with words that insult Christianity and then ascribe it to Tacitus? It makes no sense.
Moreover, why would Severus feel the need to introduce the concept of Christianity in a book that talks about Christianity ad nauseum? If he didn't, then the notion of Jesus being noted in Annals being a copy of Chronica loses its teeth because that's specifically the verse in question.
But the problem is that the verse doesn't even read that way in Severus' "Chronica". The alleged culprit is in Book II, Chapter 30. But... I can't find anything that is "word-for-word" taken from Tacitus in Chronica. See if you can. This reminds me of a particular instance where the same friends I'm having this discussion with ridiculed David Barton for using the word "verbatim" to describe how the Bible borrowed from the Constitution, when in fact, the quotes weren't even close, let alone verbatim.
I'm assuming this claim comes from Gordon Stein (via Rational Responders), where their argument is taken almost word-for-word from Stein. Oddly enough, without quotes or credit, which is odd given that myther Richard Carrier in his discussion with Eric Laupot (see here, here and here) cruxes his argument on Severus not using quotations. (This is not a slam. Just a point on the rigid Nirvana fallacies some commit in discussing this subject.) Which, considering the words aren't entirely Tacitus', this isn't surprising.
The only thing that we can glean here is that some scholars have noted Tacitean themes to the culprit portion of Severus' work. It seems to be an article of faith that mythers rely on that the work is originally Severus' and not Tactitus', when we have no evidence to support such a conclusion. Considering that Tacitus' writing came before Severus', the passages are not verbatim and the similarities are Tacitean (as opposed to them being distinctly Severus' style of writing, which would be the case if it were an interpolation of Severus' words into Tacitus'.) It reeks of the mental gymnastics conspiracy theorists rely on for their arguments to suggest Severus wrote the passage.
More than likely, Tacitus was Severus' primary source. I, myself, when writing about something from a primary source, may use language that's more thematic of the source than myself. For example, there have been a few instances in this very article where I've written things as they flowed from my head, but because I read the information from elsewhere, I was more inclined to use words they did to describe it. My use of the word "sporadically" in reference to citing sources before von Ranke was a shine-through from my source, Patrik Hammar. This is known as redaction.
Interestingly enough, Carrier and Laupot both start their rebuttal articles by noting that the other screws up "from the beginning". Would Laupot have used this term if he wasn't bouncing off of Carrier? It can't be certain, but it's interesting to note.
Carrier laments that if Tacitus were Severus' source, he'd cite him as such. But as I established earlier, citing sources was sporadic up until Leopold von Ranke. And what tradition of Severus citing sources are we even using to establish that?
Question: If Severus is the source of Tacitus' testimony, how did the interpolator manage to get the passage so linguistically Tacitean that modern scholars are generally in agreement that it's legitimate?
And Carrier seems to want his cake and eat it too. He points out the fact that non-Tacitean vocabulary insists that Severus is speaking in his own voice and not Tacitus'. But he still wants the Tacitean verse with all of the Tacitean vocabulary (which still differs substantially, mind you) to be Severus'. Either the verse is his or it's not. Lets stop dodging and weaving out of the line of logic and realize that the most probable scenario for the Tacitean vocabulary is what I outlined above.
E Before I, Except After C
The next objection to Tacitus is that the "I" in "Christus" was allegedly originally an "E".
First of all: Wait a minute. I thought Severus wrote the verse? Now, you're telling me that it meant something else and got edited?
Well, the obvious problem off the bat is that even if this were the case, the context of the passage clearly refers to the "Chrestianos", whose name is derived from Christus, who was persecuted by Pontius Pilate.
It is true that we know from ultra-violet examinations of the extant manuscripts that "χρηστιανος" (Chrestianos) had been changed to "χριστιανος" (Christianos), wherein the eta (η or e for us) is altered to an iota (ι or i for us.) My friends posit that that would render this "a Latinized Greek word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful', rather than strictly a follower of 'Christ'."
This is true. χρηστός can mean useful, gentle, pleasant, kind. Or good as my friends put it. There's a very obvious problem with this though: The passage clearly states where their name is derived.
One problem is if it's rendered "useful ones" or any other English translation besides Christians, we are left with Tacitus talking about the useful ones who derived their names from Christ and in the same passage remarks how these people are hated for their abominations. This makes no sense at all.
Thus, it seems that my friends are reaching here in claiming "Well, it could mean something else" when context clearly demonstrates what it means. We're assuming that the scribe themselves didn't make a transcription error and fixed it themselves. But lets cover all of our bases. Lets establish whether Chrestianos can mean Christians.
Interestingly, as is noted by Mountain Man elucidates, the early centuries are dominated by use of Chrestianos rather than Christianos by non-Christians:
"The evidence tabulated below strongly implies that the earliest form of the term 'Christian' does not occur until Codex Alexandrinus, at least the 5th century, and may in fact not enter the chronological record [C14!?!] until substantially later. In place of the term 'Christian' in the evidence is instead, and quite invariably, is found the term 'Chrestian'. Some background may be required here. In a separate article the sources of Chrestos and Christos in antiquity are outlined and examined. It must be noted at this point that the term 'Christ' in all the Greek manuscript sources is invariably encrypted, or encoded, along with a series of important theological terms, according to a system of abbreviations known as the nomina sacra(Latin; 'sacred names')."
Robert Van Voorst has also demonstrated via a myriad of sources including funerary stone inscriptions the commonplace usage of Chrestianos. So, not only was it possible that Chrestianos would be used instead of Christians, but it is far more likely. And, in fact, even in the uncorrected Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament, the word is rendered Chrestianoi. And the frequent rendering of the iota as an eta is directly addressed by Justin the Martyr, Tertullian and Lactantius in (respectively) 1 Apology 4, 1 Apology 12 and Divine Institutes IV, 7.
Van Voorst elaborates in his book: "'Christus' was often confused with 'Chrestus' by non-Christians, and sometimes even by Christians. This confusion arose from two sources of, of meaning and sound. The Greek 'Chrisos' and its Latin equivalent 'Christus' would have suggested a strange meaning to most ancients, especially those unfamiliar with its Jewish background. Its primary Greek meaning in everyday life suggests the medical term 'anointer' or the construction term 'plasterer'. These meanings would not have the religious content that Christ would have to someone on the inside of Christianity. These unusual meanings could have prompted this shift to a more recognizable, meaningful name.
Due to a widespread phonetic feature of Greek, 'Christus' and 'Chrestus' were even closer in pronunciation than they appear to be today. Hellenistic Greek featured an almost complete overlapping of the sounds iota (ι), eta (η)
and epsilon-iota (the diphthong ει). They were pronounced so similarly that they were often confused by the uneducated and educated alike, in speech and in writing. Francis Gignac has fully documented this phenomenon and concluded, 'This interchange ι with η and ει reflects the phonological development of Greek Koine, in which the sound originally represented by generally η merged with /i/ by the second century A.D.'"
So, ironically, the fact that it originally said Chrestianos rather than Christianos makes it less likely rather than more likely that it was an interpolation.
Rank of Pontius Pilate
My friends don't mention this one in their article, but it's a popular myther objection to Tacitus. The basic argument goes: "Pilate's rank while he was governor of Iudaea province appeared in a Latin inscription on the Pilate Stone which called him a prefect, while this Tacitean passage calls him a procurator."
Despite not believing in the historical Jesus himself, Richard Carrier actually addresses this argument quite nicely here. Though, various other theories have been put forth by others such as Jerry Vardaman, Warren Carter, Baruch Lifshitz, L.A. Yelnitsky, S.G.F. Brandon, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Van Voorst, Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans. That said, going into all of that is beyond the scope of the article. The fact that the kingpin of the myther community rejects this argument is enough to dismiss it.
Sanhedrin 43a-b
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!"
The first thing that's important for us to establish here is that this could even be about Jesus. My friends claim it can't be because it was written a few decades after Jesus's death. As we established earlier, this isn't very surprising.
One thing we can know for certain is that the events wouldn't have taken place 40 years after the death of Jesus. Scholars generally agree that Jesus died between 30-36 Anno Domini. And Sanhedrin 41a abolished the death penalty in c. 30 Anno Domini (we don't know the exact year it happened in, but it was 40 years prior to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, which was around 70 Anno Domini.) Anyone executed later than Jesus wouldn't fit the historical record.
So, that objection is nullified. Lets look at whether the tractate can even fit Jesus.
1. Killed on the eve of Passover. ✓
2. His crime was sorcery (see: miracles and how those who attempted to discredit him early on accused him of sorcery.) ✓
3. His other crime was enticing Israel to apostasy (preaching a new covenant. Just read how my Jewish friend who wrote the article I'm responding to treats the idea of Jesus to see the relevance.) ✓
4. He was hanged (see: The Bible itself refers to Jesus being hanged. Now, whether you see this as a Hebrew-Aramaic approximation for crucifixion or that Jesus was really hanged instead of crucified, it fits.) ✓
It's also worth noting that the tractate states: "With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government."
You could say that it's rather unlikely that it's referring to someone else besides our historical Jesus. This is just the framework though. It becomes even more clear who this is referring to when you consider that the Munich Talmud refers to "Yeshu Notzeri" (Jesus of Nazareth) and the self-censorship of the Talmud to avoid latter Christian persecution. The fact that an effort was made to censor Sanhedrin 43a-b means that something must have pushed a need for such a censorship.
Thallus
Unfortunately, we do not have the extant manuscripts of Thallus that's central to this discussion, but his testimony is preserved in Chronography XVIII by Christian traveler and historian, Sextus Julius Africanus. While Chronography was also lost to the dustbin of time, the relevant bit reaches us by way of a reference by George Syncellus.
"This event followed each of his deeds, and healings of body and soul, and knowledge of hidden things, and his resurrection from the dead, all sufficiently proven to the disciples before us and to his apostles: after the most dreadful darkness fell over the whole world, the rocks were torn apart by an earthquake and much of Judaea and the rest of the land was torn down. Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun in the third book of his Histories, which seems to me to be wrong. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day, reckoning by the lunar calendar, and the events concerning the savior all occurred before the first day of the passover. But an eclipse of the sun happens when the moon creeps under the sun, and this is impossible at any other time but between the first day of the moon's waxing and the day before that, when the new moon begins. So how are we to believe that an eclipse happened when the moon was diametrically opposite the sun? In fact, let it be so. Let the idea that this happened seize and carry away the multitude, and let the cosmic prodigy be counted as an eclipse of the sun according to its appearance. Phlegon reports that in the time of Tiberius Caesar, during the full moon, a full eclipse of the sun happened, from the sixth hour until the ninth. Clearly this is our eclipse! What is common about an earthquake, an eclipse, rocks torn apart, a rising of the dead, and such a huge cosmic movement? At the very least, over a long period, no conjunction this great is remembered. But it was a godsent darkness, because the Lord happened to suffer, and the Bible, in Daniel, supports that seventy spans of seven years would come together up to this time."
Note: There are various versions of this, where the wording is modified based on various translations.
Third Hand Account
So, off the bat, one of the strongest criticisms of this is that it's a third hand account of what Thallus said. This almost seems like a fair concern until you consider that most written documents that we have today reach us by way of being passed down and preserved by way of being rewritten over and over again. And the notion that a Christian scholar would cite an argument from a well known historian to make an argument against them, contemporary to that person requires an extreme leap of faith and an active desire to deny all sources pertinent to the historical Christ.
Another Darkness?
According to Robert Van Voorst, "Thallos could have mentioned the eclipse with no reference to Jesus. But it is more likely that Julius, who had access to the context of this quotation in Thallos and who (to judge from other fragments) was generally a careful user of his sources, was correct in reading it as a hostile reference to Jesus' death. The context in Julius shows that he is refuting Thallos' argument that the darkness is not religiously significant."
My friends try to muddy the waters by claiming that Thallus could have been speaking of another incident. This is a particular method of attack of Earl Doherty. The notion that Thallus could have been speaking of another darkness on passover seems patently absurd. Do we have any examples of Africanus being carelessly enough to overlook a claim by a historian and try to refute an innocuous claim? No, but we have an example of him chastising Origen for using spurious sources.
Doherty rejects Van Voorst's assessment that the context suggests, "I can see no justification for that statement. “Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun” does not entail that Thallus referred to the eclipse in connection with Jesus; it is Africanus who is making that connection and identifying the two. He obviously believed that Thallus’ eclipse was a reference to the Gospel darkness, but there is no reason to think that Thallus was refuting such an equation."
It's kind of amusing to me to ascribe incompetence (bear in mind that we have some evidence that Africanus is a rather trustworthy source) to the guy who had access to the original context when we're the ones feeling around in the dark. But the burden of proof seems to be on mythers who want to ascribe incompetence to Africanus. That said, I concur with Van Voorst's assessment that the context suggests Thallus was addressing Jesus. Africanus comes across as fairly confident in his assessment that Thallus was referring to a darkness that occurred on passover (as he outlines) and that Thallus was wrong (ᾀλoγώς) about it.
The context is Africanus saying "Thallus called this (τοῦτο) darkness an eclipse". Which means that Thallus wasn't just saying an eclipse happened. He was ascribing cause to the darkness.
Maurice Goguel notes in 'Life Of Jesus', "If Thallus had been writing simply as a chronographer who mentions an eclipse which occurred in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, Julius Africanus would not have said he was mistaken, but he would have used his evidence to confirm the Christian tradition."
The burden of proof is on mythers to even provide another darkness it could have been. And then prove that Africanus was incompetent enough to conflate the two. The closest I've seen mythers come to this is a longshot theory by Richard Carrier that Eusebius was directly quoting Thallus when he said, "The sun was eclipsed; Bithynia was struck by an earthquake; and
in the city of Nicaea many buildings fell." This, however, has no evidence other than "Well, Eusebius cited Thallus as a source and said this, so obviously it's a quote."
Incompetence of Thallus
We've already addressed the common criticism that Africanus might have been incompetent. But how do we know Thallus wasn't simply incompetent? Well, Africanus himself tells us in two other fragments that deal with Thallus:
"And after 70 years of captivity, Cyrus became king of the Persians at the time of the 55th Olympiad, as may be ascertained from the Bibliothecae of Diodorus and the histories of Thallus and Castor, and also from Polybius and Phlegon, and others besides these, who have made the Olympiads a subject of study."
"For these things are also recorded by the Athenian historians Hellanicus and Philochorus, who record Attic affairs; and by Castor and Thallus, who record Syrian affairs; and by Diodorus, who writes a universal history in his Bibliothecae; and by Alexander Polyhistr, and by some of our own time, yet more carefully."
So, we can safely conclude that Thallus was a juggernaut of a historian. Glenn Miller expounds here.
An Argument From Silence Inside An Argument From Silence
You know mythers really love arguments from silence when they make one inside of the other. The premise of this objection is basically, "Such an impossible event would not fail to be recorded in the works of Seneca, Pliny, Josephus or other historians, yet it is not mentioned anywhere else outside of Christian rhetoric, so we can entirely dismiss the idea of this being a real event."
This particular objection is handled very well by James Patrick Holding here.
Dating
The next method of attack on the testimony of Thallus is that its dating is allegedly later than the posited 52 Anno Domini. Lets assume this is true for a moment. It's still problematic that a historian such as Thallus attested to the darkness that occurred despite not being a Christian. Not to mention, arguably, Phlegon of Thalles (see relevant section in Randall Hardman's article on Thallus.) Were they assuming this was the case based on Christian tradition? If so, why? Why do we have no Romans claiming that this darkness did not occur? If there was, why was the claim not popular enough for Thallus to claim it did happen? Why, over and over again, do we have Romans regarding Christian lore as fact?
On to the dating itself. Richard Carrier's piece on this is the most popular offense on this topic.
A little bit of background is provided by Van Voorst:
"The dating of Thallos and his works are also somewhat uncertain. Eusebius's Chronicle, which survives only in Armenian fragments states that Thallos wrote about the period from the fall of Troy only to the 167th Olympiad (112-109 B.C.E.) However, other fragments of Thallos's history preserved in several sources indicate that he wrote about events at least until the time of the death of Jesus. One possible solution is to argue that Thallos did indeed write until 109 B.C.E., and Eusebius knows this first edition, but it was later extended by someone else in an edition that Julius Africanus used in 221 C.E. Another solution is to argue that the report we have in the Armenian fragments of Eusebius' Chronicle is wrong. C. Müller, followed by R. Eisler, emends the likely reading of the lost Greek original from ρεζ (167th Olympiad, 112-109 B.C.E.) to σζ (207th Olympiad, 49-52 C.E.). This seems to be accepted by most scholars, but it is impossible to know whether this change occurred in the transmission of the Greek text, in its translation from Greek to Armenian, or in the transmission of the Armenian. Overall, the second solution is more likely, placing Thallos around the year 50."
In this outline, Van Voorst and Carrier don't differ too much. Their conclusions, however, seem to be at odds. Carrier suggests that if the issue is that the dating got lost in translation, then the 217th Olympiad is more likely. Why it's more likely, Carrier doesn't say in this particular article, but I believe he derives it from Felix Jacoby and Carolus Müller, which we'll address in a bit. But Carrier's conclusion in the article is that the reference is to a different work entirely* anyway.
A lot of Carrier's arguments seem to be based on suppositions where he stacks the deck for himself. For example, "But the opposite reasoning applies: since we do not know that Thallus wrote in the 1st century, but know that he could have written in the 2nd, and since no other sources attest to any gospel tradition earlier than the 2nd century, it follows that Thallus most likely wrote in the 2nd century"
The way this reads to me: "He could have written in the first century or the second century. So, he wrote in the second century."
For reference, here is Eusebius' reference to Thallus.
* It should be noted that he refers to the 1999 article as outdated and in his more recent, peer-reviewed article, he posits the implausibility of two works because, "since if Thallus had written other books on chronology or history the reference in Eusebius would have been more specific (that he just says ‘the three volumes of Thallus’ means he was certain no one would be confused as to which treatise was meant."
This argument does not work. First of all, we don't know if it was considered evident by Africanus due to the quantity of volumes or by the subject matter. The other references to Thallus by Africanus seem to imply him to be a prolific writer on matters related to Syria. We also do not know if Africanus or Eusebius were familiar with all of Thallus' work. It is entirely possible that Eusebius' source citing doesn't reference every book Thallus wrote, but rather those specific to the subject he was writing about. With Porphyrius, he doesn't even reference which books he's talking about or how many; he just references the subject matter. And with Phlegon, Eusebius only notes 14 books in which he drew information from, despite us knowing about 16 in the compendium.
The notion that Africanus would state exactly where he found the statement is unfounded and based purely on conjecture. Africanus frequently cites other historians whilst not naming the book in which they wrote. So, no, we still can't rule out the possibility of two works by Thallus.
Emendation
The way he justifies his position that there was no emendation is, "there is nothing physically wrong with the text, nor any other reason to suspect an error (although Mosshammer claims otherwise, his reasoning is hard to justify)."
Carrier makes no effort to rebut Alden Mosshammer's work on the subject and doesn't substantiate why it's hard to justify (when I spoke to him, he said it's explained here.) In fact, he doesn't even address this in the latter, more streamlined, peer-reviewed version of this article. Neither does he address Eisler either and his treatment of Müller, while the translation is appreciated, came across as inconclusive to me. Let alone Goguel and Schurer.
Corrupt numerals and whatnot are remarkably not very rare in Eusebius' work. And the words "brief compendium" do not appear in it, so I don't know why Carrier put that in quotations.
Randall Hardman makes a few points on this:
"(1) Mistakes in numerals, especially during the first century, were common. The earliest Armenian text of Eusebius is from the 12th century and claims that Thallus’ Historie was finished in the 167th Olympiad. Eusebius would have recognized a problem with the conflicting dates of the 167th Olympiad and the A.D. 29 reference. Since ancient numbers have often been corrupted or mistranslated by copyists, our reasonable assumption in dealing with this contradiction is that the number was mistranslated and was actually referring to either the 207th or the 217th Olympiad originally. These are the only two prominent scholarly proposals to date. The former is the date more under agreement from scholars. Scholar Carolous Müller states, “For my part, I think sigma-zeta became rho-xi-zeta, on the idea that xi-zeta arose from a duplication of the same letter. So the chronicle would have covered the period up to the 207th Olympiad (49 A.D.).”[xv] It was easy when translating texts for a number to get corrupted either on accident or on purpose. Even Jerome, when translating Eusebius’ text into Latin mistranslated several numbers. The mistranslation of numbers was quite easy. Petermann and Karst, Eusebius translators and scholars, find that the mistranslation from 167th Olympiad to the 217th Olympiad is all but one character in Armenian—not an impossible task at all and a possiblity which certaintly lines up with the rest of the data. The biggest problem in determining the original number is not knowing under which language, Greek or Armenian, the number was mistranslated. What we can know though is that the original numbe was not 167. It was either 207 or 217.
(2) Eusebius was a brilliant scholar who presumably was not afraid to question early Christian or Jewish writings as reliable. He even questioned or down right rejected the traditional authorship of 2nd Peter, Jude, and Revelation. To argue that Eusebius knew that Thallus finished writing with the 167th Olympiad and still argued for Thallus’ account of the darkness of the crucifixion is of great disrespect to his scholarship.
(3) As Glen Miller notes, the phrase “this darkness” indicates that Africanus knew exactly which darkness Thallus was referring to. In fact, he supports this by noting that this is the same darkness referred to by Phlegon.
(4) Very few documents from the first three centuries have survived. In fact, as I already stated, only fragments and quotes of Thallus’ histories survive today. Thus, the very fact that so little of his writings and those quoting his writings still survive (8 in all), is not a firm basis for assuming that he wrote so late.
(5) Carrier argues that Thallus was most likely referring to the gospel tradition that had been circulating in second century Palestine and not as an eyewitness of the event. This is probably false because the darkness at the crucifixion doesn’t appear—even in modern historiography—to have been a major discussion point. The focus of that day was not the darkness but the death of the Son of God. Furthermore, it’s evident that Thallus is attempting to provide an explanation for the event as it actually happened rather than arguing that it is only Christian legend. It would otherwise seem that Thallus, a pagan, would have argued that the eclipse was merely Christian myth much like the resurrection if he would have even argued it at all. In other words, Thallus would not have felt a need to provide an explanation for the darkness if he was not convinced that it had happened. Lastly, one of Carrier’s arguments is that Thallus may have not even mentioned Jesus. The problem is that this is inconsistent with his claim that he was relying on the gospel tradition of the darkness already circulating in Palestine. In other words, Carrier argues that Thallus was not referencing a historical darkness but the one referred to in the gospel narratives and yet he probably did not mention Jesus Christ or the crucifixion. This is inconsistent. In fact, reason tells us that if the rumor of the darkness in Palestine was so extensive and popular that Thallus felt he needed to refer and provide a naturalistic explanation of it, he would have mentioned Jesus Christ. The darkness and the crucifixion were bonded events. It’s like writing about the attacks on 9/11 and not mentioning Muslim terrorists.
(6) It is mere dogmatism with which Carrier argues that it is “most likely” that Thallus wrote in the second century. From all that has survived from ancient Palestine, the fact that we have a source quoting him from A.D. 180 is remarkable. In addition, Carrier argues that Thallus probably wrote in the second century but stopped his histories at A.D. 52 (much like Eusebius did with one of his chronicles). While this is a good point, I think this is where Ockham’s Razor[xvi] needs to be employed. In this case, when comparing the arguments for and against Thallus being an eyewitness to the event, the historian may become somewhat indifferent. However, because most ancient histories ended within the generation (even within a few years) of the author’s lifetime, and with the knowledge of how few first and second century manuscripts we currently have, it seems the most reasonable assumption that Thallus ended his history within the generation of which he wrote and with the end of the 207th or 217th Olympiad."
The main objection Carrier has to the 52 Anno Domini dating in which he claims that other dates are more likely is: "The correct logic would hold that Thallus most likely wrote in the second century, since pagan notice of the Gospels is unattested before that century, and any given author is more likely to be typical than wholly exceptional."
This arguments seems to beg its own question. Carrier enters into the discussion under the assumption that the darkness did not happen for Thallus to be responding to and that Gospels had no oral tradition by which Thallus could have been responding to. We are already dealing with a case of an extraordinary passage, so the notion that the verse has to be typical is disingenuous. Carrier's argument essentially boils down to: "There's no contemporary writings of Jesus and that one can't possibly be a contemporary writing of Jesus because there are no other contemporary writings of Jesus. This isn't legit because you don't have more evidence." It's circular reasoning that assumes its own premise before making its argument.
Carrier follows this up by noting that the 217th Olympiad would require less errors than the 207th Olympiad. As Roger Viklund notes, that is untrue:
"But as I have shown in this Swedish blog post: https://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/thallos-och-flegon-som-jesusvittnen-del-3-%E2%80%93-den-167e-207e-eller-217e-olympiaden/, such a mistake could not easily be explained. In short, the mistake must either have been made in the original Greek or in the translation into Armenian. In Armenian the 167th Olympiad would be Ճերորդ Կերորդ Էերորդ (hundredth, sixtieth, seventh), i.e the initials ՃԿԷ = 100 + 60 + 7. The 207th is then Մերորդ Էերորդ, i.e. the initials ՄԷ = 200 + 7 and the 217th is Մերորդ Ժերորդ Էերորդ, i.e the initials ՄԺԷ = 200 + 10 + 7, and so on. In either case you must suppose two mistakes. If the mistake was made in Greek, 167 would be ρξζ, 207 would be σζ and 217 σιζ. Here as well we would have to suppose two mistakes."
Carrier seems to suggest that σιζ would have a better chance of becoming ρξζ than σζ, but they don't differ significantly enough to make such an assessment and we have no way of knowing how the error arose. The proposed method for how 207th would have become 167th is a duplication error rendering σζ as σζζ and then misinterpreting zeta for xi to become σξζ and then finally mistaking sigma for rho to become ρξζ.
Conversely, Gutschmid's theory that the Olympiad is 217th (the theory favored by Carrier) says that the sigma in σιζ got mistaken for a rho and then the iota in ριζ became xi to end up as ρξζ. If we go by this as the only possibilities of reaching these two changes, then yes, Gutschmid's theory requires "fewer errors". But it also requires a much more egregious error in iota becoming xi.
Now, Carrier claims that, "In particular, a sigma with a seraph or blot at the top can be easily mistaken as a rho in the Byzantine minuscule script used in the 9th and 10th centuries. Although iota and xi are unlikely to be confused in this script, they can be confused very easily in the majuscule script used in prior centuries, with which Eusebius himself would have written."
Carrier does not present these majuscule scripts or any evidence that they could easily be confused. When I told him I was looking to track down these scripts, he told me, "Track what down? Resources on the different scripts used in Greek? You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_minuscule"
I had a hard time reconciling any of the versions of the iota on the Wikipedia page. According to Carrier, uncial is the most common majuscule in ancient manuscripts. However, the iota doesn't differ at all and certainly doesn't seem to differ enough to be confused for a xi.
As an example, Carrier sent me this and elaborated on how he thinks the uncial script would have lent toward an iota becoming a xi:
"In the middle of which a line starts TOCE[xi]IÏH
There you have a xi next to a iota. This is a very clean hand. But a poorer hand could wobble a iota so that a scribe can't tell if it's a wonky xi or a wonky iota."
It's technically possible that someone could have made three bends in a straight line. It's also technically possible someone could make a dash that appears as an M. It's unlikely, but lets presume it is the case for a moment. If this is the case, Carrier undermines his entire argument because such would require an additional error. There would be the obvious sigma to rho, an iota so sloppy as to not even look close to an iota anymore and then the mistaking of that iota for a xi.
The scenario seems less likely, but even if we presume that this is the case, Carrier is left with the same amount of errors it would take to produce the 207th Olympiad. And the 207th Olympiad requires less egregious errors.
This is especially problematic because if we can't establish how that iota became a xi, then we are left with having to consider that the same duplication error produced the xi from zeta and then the iota was removed. Which means the 217th Olympiad would be four errors.
If there was an emendation (which, aside from two separate works, is the only plausible scenario due to the date disparity between Eusebius and Africanus otherwise) then the most likely possibility seems to be the 207th Olympiad as mainstream academia states.
Whether it was an emendation or not seems to be something we cannot prove indefinitely, but it's also not a possibility that should be dismissed. I have no qualm with the notion that Thallus penned more than one work. That said, I accept that much of Carrier's work is not founded on definitive claims, but what "might have happened" (as he notes in one of his rebuttals to Glenn Miller.)
Josephus
Supposedly, Josephus made a reference to our Thallus. This is briefly noted by Glenn Miller in the article I cited above (the incompetence of Thallus section.) And it should be noted that James Patrick Holding, over at Tektonics, assessed both the work of Carrier and Miller side by side. So, lets take a look at the supposed reference by Josephus:
"Now there was one Thallus, a freedman of Caesar's of whom he borrowed a million of dracmae, and thence repaid Antonia the debt he owed her; and by spending the overplus in paying his court to Caius, became a person of great authority with him."
Carrier summarizes the objection to this thusly: "The passage in question (Antiquities of the Jews 18.167) does not have the word THALLOS in any extant manuscript or translation, but ALLOS. The addition of the letter theta was conjectured by Hudson in 1720, on the argument that ALLOS didn't make sense, and that Thallus was the attested name of an imperial freedman of Tiberius in inscriptions ("I put 'Thallos' in place of 'allos' by conjecture, as he is attested to have been among the freedmen of Tiberius, going by the inscriptions of Gruter," p. 810, translated from Hudson's Latin). But there is no good basis for this conjecture. First, the Greek actually does makes sense without the added letter (it means "another"), and all extant early tranlsations confirm this reading, and second, an epitome of this passage does not give a name but instead the generic "someone" and this suggests that no name was mentioned in the epitomizer's copy. But finally, the most likely name, if one were needed here at all, would be HALLOS, requiring no added letters, since an imperial freedman by this name is also known in the time of Tiberius from inscriptions. For a full discussion of these facts and many other details, see Horace Rigg, "Thallus: The Samaritan?" Harvard Theological Review, vol. 34 (1941), pp. 111-9."
Van Voorst specifies why allos (another) doesn't make sense in the context, "because Josephus has not mentioned a Samaritan in the context." So, claiming another did something without an initial person is strange. At least in the regard that it made sense, Carrier is mistaken. It's rather interesting because he makes the argument that Eusebius wrote θαλλου (Thallos) instead of αλλοις (allos) in his peer-reviewed article and, in fact, states the exact same argument for why.
It should be noted that Carrier does not cite his source for this Hallos fellow and I can find nothing that corroborates the claim, but if it is indeed true, that is certainly a major issue for the emendation being Thallos because it could suggest emendation of not content, but of aspirate markings. If that cannot be provided, then that argument must be discarded. However, it should be noted that we know from Africanus that Thallus was extremely prolific, so citing him nonchalantly would make more sense than this Hallos fellow.
I was, however, curious enough to speak with Richard Carrier personally and ask him about this other fellow named Hallos and evidence of his existence. The response I got from Carrier was essentially that there was no evidence: "The Hallos in Josephus or Thallos the chronographer? On the former, there is nothing (just the passage in Jopsehus)."
Carrier cites Horace Rigg, "Thallus: The Samaritan?" Harvard Theological Review, vol. 34 (1941), pp. 111-9 on the topic of Hallos as a name in general. Which I found kind of weird because those pages really had nothing to do with Hallos. There was one reference (and it was the only reference in the entire paper) in the footnotes of page 115:
"In the notes (of Graevius) there is the suggestion that, since not only Thallus but Hallus is found, this latter might be connected with Josephus, Antiq. lud., XVIII, 8 "ubi tantum scribendum cum aspiratione &XXov.""
Unfortunately, the reference doesn't state where in Johann Georg Graevius's writings that we can find such a suggestion to analyze it and the paper is from 1941, so I have no way of even getting in contact with Rigg. We're not even told which work it's referenced in and I can't find anything that corroborates such a claim. And when I asked Carrier about it, he ignored the question. If anyone knows of this reference, please let me know.
Carrier went on to point out an excerpt from Ephraim Chambers' encyclopedia that suffers from some serious circular reasoning. Id est: The stone should be Hallos because of the mention by Josephus and the mention of Josephus should be Hallos because of the stone. When I asked Carrier about it, he said, "I'm pretty sure he is saying the stone was written, and correctly meant, Hallos."
So much for that line of evidence.
That said, I don't find the evidence for emendation very compelling to begin with here. We have no way of knowing that Josephus was referencing Thallus; let alone the same Thallus. It's certainly possible and I don't dismiss the possibility, but it's not definitive evidence. But I will say that this argument rests on the popularity of the name Thallus (see below.) If it was an unusual name, as Van Voorst contends, then the inscription of that time lends credence -- regardless of whether we emend Josephus' work or not (though, certainly, it lends credence to emendation too) -- that we've found our Thallus.
Two Works
Lets suppose for a moment that the emendation theory is bunk. Does this mean that Africanus made up the reference to Thallus or was incompetent enough to take a work published before Jesus was born and use it to address something after the death of Jesus? Hardly. So, no matter if you believe there were two works or an emendation, Thallus' testimony stands. The most you can get away with here is that Thallus' testimony was a little later than 52 Anno Domini (and the evidence for this is extremely poor as we've shown.)
Now, interestingly, Van Voorst posits that Thallus was an uncommon name, while Richard Carrier states that it wasn't. I couldn't corroborate either way, but if we assume that it was a common name, that ultimately undermines every argument used against the Thallus testimony. We can entertain a hypothetical that Josephus was not referring to our Thallus and that Eusebius' Thallus was another and there'd still be the possibility of another Thallus with whom Africanus could have been responding too.
On the flipside, if the name is uncommon as Van Voorst states, then mythers have to contend with the fact that, as Carrier admits, "we still have an inscription recording a man named Thallus as an imperial freedman." (And we certainly have enough evidence of Thallus including two inscriptions by way of Jan Gruter to support this claim.) And disputing the evidence for the emendations becomes much more difficult. Mythers are, thus, in a double bind.
At the end of the day, no amount of wringling has changed the fact that a prominent Greek historian named Thallus has attested to the darkness in the first century and Africanus responded to it. If this is the case, James Patrick Holding's observation is especially poignant:
"Of course, one observation that stands out immediately is why Thallus would try to explain the event away as a naturalistic phenomenon in the first place if he had reason to believe that it was not a historical event. It would be much easier to cast doubt on the event itself rather than explain it as an eclipse."
I can see why atheists and non-Christians would be particularly unwilling to accept this particular testimony, so I'm willing to forsake this one in the subject of the historical Jesus. But I think it's worth considering on the topic of the theological Jesus. This issue more answers another question of Christianity than the historical Jesus in my humble opinion, so I specifically avoided a lot of arguments that would deviate the course there. Maybe I'll write another article for that specifically.The Pauline letters sometimes refer to creeds, or confessions of faith, that predate their writings.
To close this off, I have two quotes in my outline that I apparently didn't put the source for, but they are fairly eloquent in explaining the pertinence of Paul here. So, if anyone knows where it is from, I will kindly credit the original writer:
In the context of Christian sources, even if all other texts are ignored, the Pauline epistles can provide some information regarding Jesus, just on their own.[30][211] This information does not include a narrative of the life of Jesus, but refers to his existence as a person, and a few specific items such as his death by crucifixion.[212] This information comes from those letters of Paul whose authenticity is not disputed.[211]
Of the thirteen letters that bear Paul's name, seven are considered authentic by almost all scholars, and the others are generally considered pseudepigraphic.[213][214][215][216] The 7 undisputed letters (and their approximate dates) are: 1 Thessalonians (c. 51 AD), Philippians (c. 52-54 AD), Philemon (c. 52-54 AD), 1 Corinthians (c. 53-54 AD), Galatians (c. 55 AD), 2 Corinthians (c. 55-56 AD) and Romans (c. 55-58 AD).[213][215][216] The authenticity of these letters is accepted by almost all scholars, and they have been referenced and interpreted by early authors such as Origen and Eusebius.[217][214]
Given that the Pauline epistles are generally dated to AD 50 to AD 60, they are the earliest surviving Christian texts that include information about Jesus.[216] These letters were written approximately twenty to thirty years after the generally accepted time period for the death of Jesus, around AD 30-36.[216] The letters were written during a time when Paul recorded encounters with the disciples of Jesus, e.g. Galatians 1:18 states that several years after his conversion Paul went to Jerusalem and stayed with Apostle Peter for fifteen days.[216]
The Pauline letters were not intended to provide a narrative of the life of Jesus, but were written as expositions of Christian teachings.[216][218] In Paul's view, the earthly life of Jesus was of a lower importance than the theology of his death and resurrection,a theme that permeates Pauline writings.[219] However, the Pauline letters clearly indicate that for Paul Jesus was a real person (born of a woman as in Gal 4.4) who had disciples (1 Corinthians 15.5), who was crucified (as in 1 Corinthians 2.2 and Galatians 3.1) and who resurrected from the dead (1 Corinthians 15.20, Romans 1.4 and 6.5, Philippians 3:10-11).[30][211][216][219] And the letters reflect the general concept within the early Christian Church that Jesus existed, was crucified and was raised from the dead.[30][216]
The references by Paul to Jesus do not in themselves prove the existence of Jesus, but they do establish that the existence of Jesus was the accepted norm within the early Christians (including the Christian community in Jerusalem, given the references to collections there) twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus, at a time when those who could have been acquainted with him could still be alive.[220] [221]
And:
The Pauline letters sometimes refer to creeds, or confessions of faith, that predate their writings.[236][237][238] For instance 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 reads: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures."[236] Romans 1:3-4 refers to Romans 1:2 just before it which mentions an existing gospel, and in effect may be treating it as an earlier creed.[236][237]
One of the keys to identifying a pre-Pauline tradition is given in 1 Corinthians 15:11[238]
Whether then [it be] I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.
Here Paul refers to others before him who preached the creed.[238]
James Dunn states that 1 Corinthians 15:3 indicates that in the 30s Paul was taught about the death of Jesus a few years earlier.[239]
The Pauline letters thus contain Christian creed elements of pre-Pauline origin.[240] The antiquity of the creed has been located by many Biblical scholars to less than a decade after Jesus' death, originating from the Jerusalem apostolic community.[241] Concerning this creed, Campenhausen wrote, "This account meets all the demands of historical reliability that could possibly be made of such a text,"[242] whilst A. M. Hunter said, "The passage therefore preserves uniquely early and verifiable testimony. It meets every reasonable demand of historical reliability."[243]
These creeds date to within a few years of Jesus' death, and developed within the Christian community in Jerusalem.[244] Although embedded within the texts of the New Testament, these creeds are a distinct source for Early Christianity.[237] This indicates that existence and death of Jesus was part of Christian belief a few years after his death and over a decade before the writing of the Pauline epistles.[244]
Pliny the Younger
"I asked them directly if they were Christians...those who persisted, I ordered away... Those who denied they were or ever had been
Christians...worshiped both your image and the images of the gods and cursed Christ. They used to gather on a stated day before dawn and
sing to Christ as if he were a god... All the more I believed it necessary to find out what was the truth from two servant maids, which were
called deaconesses, by means of torture. Nothing more did I find than a disgusting, fanatical superstition. Therefore I stopped the examination,
and hastened to consult you...on account of the number of people endangered. For many of all ages, all classes, and both sexes already are
brought into danger..."
Here, Pliny the Younger is describing to the Emperor that he tortured Christians in order to force them to reject Jesus.
Now, I don't personally believe this is a testimony to the existence of Jesus by Pliny. At most, this tells us that the early Christians truly believed Jesus was a flesh and blood person. What he does chronicle would be valuable if the question came up as to the extent in which Christians believed in Jesus.
However, that can tell us some things. It's a factor that lends considerable credence to a historical Jesus, in that it's unlikely so many believers would undergo such torture for someone there was no evidence of ever existing. Not many people are willing to get tortured for such an abstract idea of a person being their savior/deity. It's very likely that enough evidence was available to early Christians for them to, first, convert to Christianity to begin with -- and then get martyred on top of it.
Moreover, there's a very important question that must be raised from this passage. Why is it that Pliny didn't demand the Christians deny Jesus ever existed? Could it be that it was a ludicrous idea that would enjoy no support and would only reinforce the beliefs of these martyrs?
Some mythers object on the basis that, "Hey! Some Christians rejected Jesus too!" Tektonics has an article that addresses this objection pretty well:
"But ultimately, this objection misses the point. Even though some people left Christianity, there were also many who did not, and died because of it - and if there was any hint that Jesus was a mythical figure (and such arguments would certainly have been passed on by the Jewish and pagan enemies of Christianity) it is extremely unlikely that anyone at all would have suffered persecution or martyrdom for His sake."
That some did deny Jesus is quite irrelevant, as is the movement between religious associations common in that time: As Wilken explains, those who found that Christianity did not meet their needs or expectations simply lost interest and left - such is the fickle side of human nature. And as Momigliano indicates [Momig.PagJC, 164], in that time period, "to know to what religious group you belong to is not identical with knowing what you believe." In the syncretistic world of the Roman Empire, a "buffet table" approach to religion was not uncommon.
There were undoubtedly those who, as happens today, walked into a church, liked the company, ate the delicious food, and settled in - until the going got rough; then the untough got going. But when a Christian professed Christ and would not recant, even in the face of persecution and execution, that indicated that a final choice had been made."
So, this passage is an interesting subject. It doesn't do what some proponents of the historical Jesus purport, but it does raise questions that lend more favor to his historicity.
Tacitus
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular."
This passage is found in Gaius/Publius Cornelius Tacitus' "Annals", Book XV, Section 44. From this, we can glean that Jesus existed, founded Christianity, and was put to death by Pontius Pilate.
We are reasonably confident that this is not an interpolation. From Tektonics, "The passage is in perfect Tacitean style; it appears in every known copy of the Annals (although there are very few copies of it, and none dates earlier than the 11th century), and the anti-Christian tone is so strong that it is extremely unlikely that a Christian could have written it."
Reliability of Tacitus
The first objection my friends raise is that Tacitus "gives no source" for his claims. The problem with that is that Tacitus is the source. No, he does not specify where he obtained this information, but is that so unusual given the time (chronological snobbery) and nature of his work?
The process of citing sources was used sporadically over the last few hundred years, but the formalization of the academic subject began with Leopold von Ranke in the 19th century. And Tacitus is a historian chronicling what he sees around him, so he is the primary source.
They go on to explain that Tacitus apparently had no first hand knowledge of Christianity and is merely chronicling common ideas of the time? First of all, it should be noted that we aren't aware of how much familiarity Tacitus had with Christianity. But it's reasonable that an educated man like him would be likely to question the events relating to Jesus alleged by the Christians and if there wasn't a sufficient amount of evidence to conclude that it had happened, he wouldn't have chronicled that it did. But lets assume that he is just chronicling common ideas. The next question we have to ask is: Why was a flesh and blood historical Jesus so commonly believed? Are we to believe that throughout the entire Roman Empire, no one questioned a rather falsifiable allegation by a band of misfit troublemakers who undermined the very culture of Rome?
At Devine Evidence, they point out, "Tacitus distinguishes between confirmed and hearsay accounts almost 70 times in his History. If he felt this account of Jesus was only a rumor or folklore, he would have issued his usual disclaimer that this account was unverified."
Tektonics writes on his reliability on Tacitus' reliability.
My friends try to cast doubt on the reliability of Tacitus based on the fact that his original manuscripts were not preserved, except through the later works of others. The problem with this is that's generally how most history is preserved. Consider how little we have of Thales, Anaximides, and Socrates. Patrik Hammar, a friend of mine who studies history for a living, explained to me, "Mostly we have copies written later. That's the best we can do. The copies are usually quite good, though - it was a point of honor to make sure the copy matched the original. The problem is that paper, papyrus and parchment deteriorates unless kept in a climate controlled environent." (I should note that this friend does not take a definitive stance on the issue one way or another.)
James Patrick Holding goes more into the reliability of Tacitus in his book, "Shattering The Christ Myth", including why Tacitus would be very familiar with Christianity.
Various Bits And Bobs That Allegedly Don't Add Up
My friends argue (and I'm thinking that this is their source) that the reliability of Tacitus should be called into question because no other source acknowledges Emperor Nero's persecution of Christians. But I don't quite understand how Tacitus' own testimony is invalid. We've already established that Tacitus had no love for Christianity and is known to be a very thorough historian for his time. I can find no reason why we should dismiss Tacitus' testimony here. This seems to me to be a form of moving the goal post from providing a source to demanding more evidence than is needed to substantiate a given topic. The argument from silence is getting a little ridiculous now.
Considering only three historians even chronicled the Great Fire of Rome, we have a rather small pool of writers from which to work with to begin with. Given Pliny's testimony, how hard is it to believe that Christians were frequently persecuted against at this time?
Side note: Only three historians chronicled an enormous fire that had immense political repercussions. Yet, we're led to believe that the omission of the figurehead of what was then considered an obscure cult is proof that that figurehead didn't exist?
They go on to claim that Tacitus is unreliable because he describes a "great crowd" and there weren't that many Christians around at that time. Well, first of all, I can't find where in the text Tacitus describes a "great crowd"; I assume they're referring to this, "Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind."
So, assuming they're referring to that: I still don't see why that invalidates Tacitus' testimony. A "great crowd" and an "immense multitude" (ingēns multitudo) are relative. It would seem that my friends are basing the notion that Christians made up a small percentage of the population, that their numbers were so meager that Tactitus' testimony is impossible.
But let me pose this question to you: Would you like 1% of a dead whale in your living room? I pose this question because percentages are relative to actual numbers and the Roman Empire's population numbered in the millions. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but Biblical Perspectives states:
"According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (1982), it is estimated that by A.D. 100 there were 1 million Christians in the Roman Empire out of a population of 181 million. This means that by the end of the first century less than 1 percent of the population (0.6% to be exact) was Christian."
So, yeah. Christians were a distinct minority. But would being a minority in the U.S. mean that an immense amount of Japanese couldn't be round up in interment camps?
And the next apparent problem is that Tacitus refers to them as Christians, even though the term wasn't around at the time. First of all: Well, evidently, it was. Second of all, the New Testament itself uses the title 3 times. Acts 11:26 and 26:28, as well as 1 Peter 4:16. Both 1 Peter and Acts were written before Annals. The word was coined in Antioch in the First Century and as you will see below, was pretty commonly used. Particularly in the way Tacitus uses it.
It's kind of funny that my friends use modern scholars' disagreement with Suetonius (whom I'll make a quick note that there won't be a section on him here because, while I believe he is referring to Jesus in his writing,and Cassius Dio's assessment that Nero was responsible. Considering that it's Tacitus with whom they agree with that Nero wasn't responsible. Tacitus never claims Nero was responsible. The consensus is that Nero blamed Christians in order to diffuse blame.
Richard Carrier posited the following, "...we are enormously lucky to have Tacitus--only two unrelated Christian monasteries had any interest in preserving his Annals, for example, and neither of them preserved the whole thing, but each less than half of it, and by shear luck alone, they each preserved a different half. And yet we still have large gaps in it. One of those gaps is the removal of the years 29, 30, and 31 (precisely, the latter part of 29, all of 30, and the earlier part of 31), which is probably the deliberate excision of Christian scribes who were embarrassed by the lack of any mention of Jesus or Gospel events in those years (the years Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection were widely believed at the time to have occurred). There is otherwise no known explanation for why those three years were removed. The other large gap is the material between the two halves that neither institution preserved. And yet another is the end of the second half, which scribes also chose not to preserve (or lost through negligent care of the manuscript, etc.)."
The problem is that silence on Jesus would likely not prompt exclusion of those years. In fact, verbosity (of a negative sort) would be far more likely to prompt Christian scribes to exclude it. However, Carrier makes it appear that the only reason they would exclude preservation of it is silence of Jesus. The problem with this argument is that folks like Carrier regularly tout a list of historians who should have written about Jesus, but don't (in fact, I responded to it earlier in this article.) Why are their works preserved?
Severus
We already addressed why we don't have the original manuscript and why the early Christians likely didn't quote Tacitus. But my friends also raise issue with the parallels between Sulpicius Severus and Tacitus' wording on the subject. The implication being that Severus wrote the passage about Jesus and not Tacitus.
Well, ignoring that that seems counter-intuitive to the fact that we can specifically find the text in Tacitus' work and he was specifically credited with it, this argument doesn't even make sense. On its face, the first thing we'd have to ask is: Why would Severus, a Christian, use the harsh words Tacitus did about Christians? And if Severus is the original penman, then how did the quote turn into the harsh text it reads now? Why would Christians take the work of one of their own, sully it with words that insult Christianity and then ascribe it to Tacitus? It makes no sense.
Moreover, why would Severus feel the need to introduce the concept of Christianity in a book that talks about Christianity ad nauseum? If he didn't, then the notion of Jesus being noted in Annals being a copy of Chronica loses its teeth because that's specifically the verse in question.
But the problem is that the verse doesn't even read that way in Severus' "Chronica". The alleged culprit is in Book II, Chapter 30. But... I can't find anything that is "word-for-word" taken from Tacitus in Chronica. See if you can. This reminds me of a particular instance where the same friends I'm having this discussion with ridiculed David Barton for using the word "verbatim" to describe how the Bible borrowed from the Constitution, when in fact, the quotes weren't even close, let alone verbatim.
I'm assuming this claim comes from Gordon Stein (via Rational Responders), where their argument is taken almost word-for-word from Stein. Oddly enough, without quotes or credit, which is odd given that myther Richard Carrier in his discussion with Eric Laupot (see here, here and here) cruxes his argument on Severus not using quotations. (This is not a slam. Just a point on the rigid Nirvana fallacies some commit in discussing this subject.) Which, considering the words aren't entirely Tacitus', this isn't surprising.
The only thing that we can glean here is that some scholars have noted Tacitean themes to the culprit portion of Severus' work. It seems to be an article of faith that mythers rely on that the work is originally Severus' and not Tactitus', when we have no evidence to support such a conclusion. Considering that Tacitus' writing came before Severus', the passages are not verbatim and the similarities are Tacitean (as opposed to them being distinctly Severus' style of writing, which would be the case if it were an interpolation of Severus' words into Tacitus'.) It reeks of the mental gymnastics conspiracy theorists rely on for their arguments to suggest Severus wrote the passage.
More than likely, Tacitus was Severus' primary source. I, myself, when writing about something from a primary source, may use language that's more thematic of the source than myself. For example, there have been a few instances in this very article where I've written things as they flowed from my head, but because I read the information from elsewhere, I was more inclined to use words they did to describe it. My use of the word "sporadically" in reference to citing sources before von Ranke was a shine-through from my source, Patrik Hammar. This is known as redaction.
Interestingly enough, Carrier and Laupot both start their rebuttal articles by noting that the other screws up "from the beginning". Would Laupot have used this term if he wasn't bouncing off of Carrier? It can't be certain, but it's interesting to note.
Carrier laments that if Tacitus were Severus' source, he'd cite him as such. But as I established earlier, citing sources was sporadic up until Leopold von Ranke. And what tradition of Severus citing sources are we even using to establish that?
Question: If Severus is the source of Tacitus' testimony, how did the interpolator manage to get the passage so linguistically Tacitean that modern scholars are generally in agreement that it's legitimate?
And Carrier seems to want his cake and eat it too. He points out the fact that non-Tacitean vocabulary insists that Severus is speaking in his own voice and not Tacitus'. But he still wants the Tacitean verse with all of the Tacitean vocabulary (which still differs substantially, mind you) to be Severus'. Either the verse is his or it's not. Lets stop dodging and weaving out of the line of logic and realize that the most probable scenario for the Tacitean vocabulary is what I outlined above.
E Before I, Except After C
The next objection to Tacitus is that the "I" in "Christus" was allegedly originally an "E".
First of all: Wait a minute. I thought Severus wrote the verse? Now, you're telling me that it meant something else and got edited?
Well, the obvious problem off the bat is that even if this were the case, the context of the passage clearly refers to the "Chrestianos", whose name is derived from Christus, who was persecuted by Pontius Pilate.
It is true that we know from ultra-violet examinations of the extant manuscripts that "χρηστιανος" (Chrestianos) had been changed to "χριστιανος" (Christianos), wherein the eta (η or e for us) is altered to an iota (ι or i for us.) My friends posit that that would render this "a Latinized Greek word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful', rather than strictly a follower of 'Christ'."
This is true. χρηστός can mean useful, gentle, pleasant, kind. Or good as my friends put it. There's a very obvious problem with this though: The passage clearly states where their name is derived.
One problem is if it's rendered "useful ones" or any other English translation besides Christians, we are left with Tacitus talking about the useful ones who derived their names from Christ and in the same passage remarks how these people are hated for their abominations. This makes no sense at all.
Thus, it seems that my friends are reaching here in claiming "Well, it could mean something else" when context clearly demonstrates what it means. We're assuming that the scribe themselves didn't make a transcription error and fixed it themselves. But lets cover all of our bases. Lets establish whether Chrestianos can mean Christians.
Interestingly, as is noted by Mountain Man elucidates, the early centuries are dominated by use of Chrestianos rather than Christianos by non-Christians:
"The evidence tabulated below strongly implies that the earliest form of the term 'Christian' does not occur until Codex Alexandrinus, at least the 5th century, and may in fact not enter the chronological record [C14!?!] until substantially later. In place of the term 'Christian' in the evidence is instead, and quite invariably, is found the term 'Chrestian'. Some background may be required here. In a separate article the sources of Chrestos and Christos in antiquity are outlined and examined. It must be noted at this point that the term 'Christ' in all the Greek manuscript sources is invariably encrypted, or encoded, along with a series of important theological terms, according to a system of abbreviations known as the nomina sacra(Latin; 'sacred names')."
Robert Van Voorst has also demonstrated via a myriad of sources including funerary stone inscriptions the commonplace usage of Chrestianos. So, not only was it possible that Chrestianos would be used instead of Christians, but it is far more likely. And, in fact, even in the uncorrected Codex Sinaiticus of the New Testament, the word is rendered Chrestianoi. And the frequent rendering of the iota as an eta is directly addressed by Justin the Martyr, Tertullian and Lactantius in (respectively) 1 Apology 4, 1 Apology 12 and Divine Institutes IV, 7.
Van Voorst elaborates in his book: "'Christus' was often confused with 'Chrestus' by non-Christians, and sometimes even by Christians. This confusion arose from two sources of, of meaning and sound. The Greek 'Chrisos' and its Latin equivalent 'Christus' would have suggested a strange meaning to most ancients, especially those unfamiliar with its Jewish background. Its primary Greek meaning in everyday life suggests the medical term 'anointer' or the construction term 'plasterer'. These meanings would not have the religious content that Christ would have to someone on the inside of Christianity. These unusual meanings could have prompted this shift to a more recognizable, meaningful name.
Due to a widespread phonetic feature of Greek, 'Christus' and 'Chrestus' were even closer in pronunciation than they appear to be today. Hellenistic Greek featured an almost complete overlapping of the sounds iota (ι), eta (η)
and epsilon-iota (the diphthong ει). They were pronounced so similarly that they were often confused by the uneducated and educated alike, in speech and in writing. Francis Gignac has fully documented this phenomenon and concluded, 'This interchange ι with η and ει reflects the phonological development of Greek Koine, in which the sound originally represented by generally η merged with /i/ by the second century A.D.'"
So, ironically, the fact that it originally said Chrestianos rather than Christianos makes it less likely rather than more likely that it was an interpolation.
Rank of Pontius Pilate
My friends don't mention this one in their article, but it's a popular myther objection to Tacitus. The basic argument goes: "Pilate's rank while he was governor of Iudaea province appeared in a Latin inscription on the Pilate Stone which called him a prefect, while this Tacitean passage calls him a procurator."
Despite not believing in the historical Jesus himself, Richard Carrier actually addresses this argument quite nicely here. Though, various other theories have been put forth by others such as Jerry Vardaman, Warren Carter, Baruch Lifshitz, L.A. Yelnitsky, S.G.F. Brandon, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Van Voorst, Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans. That said, going into all of that is beyond the scope of the article. The fact that the kingpin of the myther community rejects this argument is enough to dismiss it.
Sanhedrin 43a-b
"On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, 'He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.' But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover!"
The first thing that's important for us to establish here is that this could even be about Jesus. My friends claim it can't be because it was written a few decades after Jesus's death. As we established earlier, this isn't very surprising.
One thing we can know for certain is that the events wouldn't have taken place 40 years after the death of Jesus. Scholars generally agree that Jesus died between 30-36 Anno Domini. And Sanhedrin 41a abolished the death penalty in c. 30 Anno Domini (we don't know the exact year it happened in, but it was 40 years prior to the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, which was around 70 Anno Domini.) Anyone executed later than Jesus wouldn't fit the historical record.
So, that objection is nullified. Lets look at whether the tractate can even fit Jesus.
1. Killed on the eve of Passover. ✓
2. His crime was sorcery (see: miracles and how those who attempted to discredit him early on accused him of sorcery.) ✓
3. His other crime was enticing Israel to apostasy (preaching a new covenant. Just read how my Jewish friend who wrote the article I'm responding to treats the idea of Jesus to see the relevance.) ✓
4. He was hanged (see: The Bible itself refers to Jesus being hanged. Now, whether you see this as a Hebrew-Aramaic approximation for crucifixion or that Jesus was really hanged instead of crucified, it fits.) ✓
It's also worth noting that the tractate states: "With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government."
You could say that it's rather unlikely that it's referring to someone else besides our historical Jesus. This is just the framework though. It becomes even more clear who this is referring to when you consider that the Munich Talmud refers to "Yeshu Notzeri" (Jesus of Nazareth) and the self-censorship of the Talmud to avoid latter Christian persecution. The fact that an effort was made to censor Sanhedrin 43a-b means that something must have pushed a need for such a censorship.
Thallus
Unfortunately, we do not have the extant manuscripts of Thallus that's central to this discussion, but his testimony is preserved in Chronography XVIII by Christian traveler and historian, Sextus Julius Africanus. While Chronography was also lost to the dustbin of time, the relevant bit reaches us by way of a reference by George Syncellus.
"This event followed each of his deeds, and healings of body and soul, and knowledge of hidden things, and his resurrection from the dead, all sufficiently proven to the disciples before us and to his apostles: after the most dreadful darkness fell over the whole world, the rocks were torn apart by an earthquake and much of Judaea and the rest of the land was torn down. Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun in the third book of his Histories, which seems to me to be wrong. For the Hebrews celebrate the passover on the 14th day, reckoning by the lunar calendar, and the events concerning the savior all occurred before the first day of the passover. But an eclipse of the sun happens when the moon creeps under the sun, and this is impossible at any other time but between the first day of the moon's waxing and the day before that, when the new moon begins. So how are we to believe that an eclipse happened when the moon was diametrically opposite the sun? In fact, let it be so. Let the idea that this happened seize and carry away the multitude, and let the cosmic prodigy be counted as an eclipse of the sun according to its appearance. Phlegon reports that in the time of Tiberius Caesar, during the full moon, a full eclipse of the sun happened, from the sixth hour until the ninth. Clearly this is our eclipse! What is common about an earthquake, an eclipse, rocks torn apart, a rising of the dead, and such a huge cosmic movement? At the very least, over a long period, no conjunction this great is remembered. But it was a godsent darkness, because the Lord happened to suffer, and the Bible, in Daniel, supports that seventy spans of seven years would come together up to this time."
Note: There are various versions of this, where the wording is modified based on various translations.
Third Hand Account
So, off the bat, one of the strongest criticisms of this is that it's a third hand account of what Thallus said. This almost seems like a fair concern until you consider that most written documents that we have today reach us by way of being passed down and preserved by way of being rewritten over and over again. And the notion that a Christian scholar would cite an argument from a well known historian to make an argument against them, contemporary to that person requires an extreme leap of faith and an active desire to deny all sources pertinent to the historical Christ.
Another Darkness?
According to Robert Van Voorst, "Thallos could have mentioned the eclipse with no reference to Jesus. But it is more likely that Julius, who had access to the context of this quotation in Thallos and who (to judge from other fragments) was generally a careful user of his sources, was correct in reading it as a hostile reference to Jesus' death. The context in Julius shows that he is refuting Thallos' argument that the darkness is not religiously significant."
My friends try to muddy the waters by claiming that Thallus could have been speaking of another incident. This is a particular method of attack of Earl Doherty. The notion that Thallus could have been speaking of another darkness on passover seems patently absurd. Do we have any examples of Africanus being carelessly enough to overlook a claim by a historian and try to refute an innocuous claim? No, but we have an example of him chastising Origen for using spurious sources.
Doherty rejects Van Voorst's assessment that the context suggests, "I can see no justification for that statement. “Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun” does not entail that Thallus referred to the eclipse in connection with Jesus; it is Africanus who is making that connection and identifying the two. He obviously believed that Thallus’ eclipse was a reference to the Gospel darkness, but there is no reason to think that Thallus was refuting such an equation."
It's kind of amusing to me to ascribe incompetence (bear in mind that we have some evidence that Africanus is a rather trustworthy source) to the guy who had access to the original context when we're the ones feeling around in the dark. But the burden of proof seems to be on mythers who want to ascribe incompetence to Africanus. That said, I concur with Van Voorst's assessment that the context suggests Thallus was addressing Jesus. Africanus comes across as fairly confident in his assessment that Thallus was referring to a darkness that occurred on passover (as he outlines) and that Thallus was wrong (ᾀλoγώς) about it.
The context is Africanus saying "Thallus called this (τοῦτο) darkness an eclipse". Which means that Thallus wasn't just saying an eclipse happened. He was ascribing cause to the darkness.
Maurice Goguel notes in 'Life Of Jesus', "If Thallus had been writing simply as a chronographer who mentions an eclipse which occurred in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, Julius Africanus would not have said he was mistaken, but he would have used his evidence to confirm the Christian tradition."
The burden of proof is on mythers to even provide another darkness it could have been. And then prove that Africanus was incompetent enough to conflate the two. The closest I've seen mythers come to this is a longshot theory by Richard Carrier that Eusebius was directly quoting Thallus when he said, "The sun was eclipsed; Bithynia was struck by an earthquake; and in the city of Nicaea many buildings fell." This, however, has no evidence other than "Well, Eusebius cited Thallus as a source and said this, so obviously it's a quote."
Incompetence of Thallus
We've already addressed the common criticism that Africanus might have been incompetent. But how do we know Thallus wasn't simply incompetent? Well, Africanus himself tells us in two other fragments that deal with Thallus:
"And after 70 years of captivity, Cyrus became king of the Persians at the time of the 55th Olympiad, as may be ascertained from the Bibliothecae of Diodorus and the histories of Thallus and Castor, and also from Polybius and Phlegon, and others besides these, who have made the Olympiads a subject of study."
"For these things are also recorded by the Athenian historians Hellanicus and Philochorus, who record Attic affairs; and by Castor and Thallus, who record Syrian affairs; and by Diodorus, who writes a universal history in his Bibliothecae; and by Alexander Polyhistr, and by some of our own time, yet more carefully."
So, we can safely conclude that Thallus was a juggernaut of a historian. Glenn Miller expounds here.
An Argument From Silence Inside An Argument From Silence
You know mythers really love arguments from silence when they make one inside of the other. The premise of this objection is basically, "Such an impossible event would not fail to be recorded in the works of Seneca, Pliny, Josephus or other historians, yet it is not mentioned anywhere else outside of Christian rhetoric, so we can entirely dismiss the idea of this being a real event."
This particular objection is handled very well by James Patrick Holding here.
Dating
The next method of attack on the testimony of Thallus is that its dating is allegedly later than the posited 52 Anno Domini. Lets assume this is true for a moment. It's still problematic that a historian such as Thallus attested to the darkness that occurred despite not being a Christian. Not to mention, arguably, Phlegon of Thalles (see relevant section in Randall Hardman's article on Thallus.) Were they assuming this was the case based on Christian tradition? If so, why? Why do we have no Romans claiming that this darkness did not occur? If there was, why was the claim not popular enough for Thallus to claim it did happen? Why, over and over again, do we have Romans regarding Christian lore as fact?
On to the dating itself. Richard Carrier's piece on this is the most popular offense on this topic.
A little bit of background is provided by Van Voorst:
"The dating of Thallos and his works are also somewhat uncertain. Eusebius's Chronicle, which survives only in Armenian fragments states that Thallos wrote about the period from the fall of Troy only to the 167th Olympiad (112-109 B.C.E.) However, other fragments of Thallos's history preserved in several sources indicate that he wrote about events at least until the time of the death of Jesus. One possible solution is to argue that Thallos did indeed write until 109 B.C.E., and Eusebius knows this first edition, but it was later extended by someone else in an edition that Julius Africanus used in 221 C.E. Another solution is to argue that the report we have in the Armenian fragments of Eusebius' Chronicle is wrong. C. Müller, followed by R. Eisler, emends the likely reading of the lost Greek original from ρεζ (167th Olympiad, 112-109 B.C.E.) to σζ (207th Olympiad, 49-52 C.E.). This seems to be accepted by most scholars, but it is impossible to know whether this change occurred in the transmission of the Greek text, in its translation from Greek to Armenian, or in the transmission of the Armenian. Overall, the second solution is more likely, placing Thallos around the year 50."
In this outline, Van Voorst and Carrier don't differ too much. Their conclusions, however, seem to be at odds. Carrier suggests that if the issue is that the dating got lost in translation, then the 217th Olympiad is more likely. Why it's more likely, Carrier doesn't say in this particular article, but I believe he derives it from Felix Jacoby and Carolus Müller, which we'll address in a bit. But Carrier's conclusion in the article is that the reference is to a different work entirely* anyway.
A lot of Carrier's arguments seem to be based on suppositions where he stacks the deck for himself. For example, "But the opposite reasoning applies: since we do not know that Thallus wrote in the 1st century, but know that he could have written in the 2nd, and since no other sources attest to any gospel tradition earlier than the 2nd century, it follows that Thallus most likely wrote in the 2nd century"
The way this reads to me: "He could have written in the first century or the second century. So, he wrote in the second century."
For reference, here is Eusebius' reference to Thallus.
* It should be noted that he refers to the 1999 article as outdated and in his more recent, peer-reviewed article, he posits the implausibility of two works because, "since if Thallus had written other books on chronology or history the reference in Eusebius would have been more specific (that he just says ‘the three volumes of Thallus’ means he was certain no one would be confused as to which treatise was meant."
This argument does not work. First of all, we don't know if it was considered evident by Africanus due to the quantity of volumes or by the subject matter. The other references to Thallus by Africanus seem to imply him to be a prolific writer on matters related to Syria. We also do not know if Africanus or Eusebius were familiar with all of Thallus' work. It is entirely possible that Eusebius' source citing doesn't reference every book Thallus wrote, but rather those specific to the subject he was writing about. With Porphyrius, he doesn't even reference which books he's talking about or how many; he just references the subject matter. And with Phlegon, Eusebius only notes 14 books in which he drew information from, despite us knowing about 16 in the compendium.
The notion that Africanus would state exactly where he found the statement is unfounded and based purely on conjecture. Africanus frequently cites other historians whilst not naming the book in which they wrote. So, no, we still can't rule out the possibility of two works by Thallus.
Emendation
The way he justifies his position that there was no emendation is, "there is nothing physically wrong with the text, nor any other reason to suspect an error (although Mosshammer claims otherwise, his reasoning is hard to justify)."
Carrier makes no effort to rebut Alden Mosshammer's work on the subject and doesn't substantiate why it's hard to justify (when I spoke to him, he said it's explained here.) In fact, he doesn't even address this in the latter, more streamlined, peer-reviewed version of this article. Neither does he address Eisler either and his treatment of Müller, while the translation is appreciated, came across as inconclusive to me. Let alone Goguel and Schurer.
Corrupt numerals and whatnot are remarkably not very rare in Eusebius' work. And the words "brief compendium" do not appear in it, so I don't know why Carrier put that in quotations.
Randall Hardman makes a few points on this:
"(1) Mistakes in numerals, especially during the first century, were common. The earliest Armenian text of Eusebius is from the 12th century and claims that Thallus’ Historie was finished in the 167th Olympiad. Eusebius would have recognized a problem with the conflicting dates of the 167th Olympiad and the A.D. 29 reference. Since ancient numbers have often been corrupted or mistranslated by copyists, our reasonable assumption in dealing with this contradiction is that the number was mistranslated and was actually referring to either the 207th or the 217th Olympiad originally. These are the only two prominent scholarly proposals to date. The former is the date more under agreement from scholars. Scholar Carolous Müller states, “For my part, I think sigma-zeta became rho-xi-zeta, on the idea that xi-zeta arose from a duplication of the same letter. So the chronicle would have covered the period up to the 207th Olympiad (49 A.D.).”[xv] It was easy when translating texts for a number to get corrupted either on accident or on purpose. Even Jerome, when translating Eusebius’ text into Latin mistranslated several numbers. The mistranslation of numbers was quite easy. Petermann and Karst, Eusebius translators and scholars, find that the mistranslation from 167th Olympiad to the 217th Olympiad is all but one character in Armenian—not an impossible task at all and a possiblity which certaintly lines up with the rest of the data. The biggest problem in determining the original number is not knowing under which language, Greek or Armenian, the number was mistranslated. What we can know though is that the original numbe was not 167. It was either 207 or 217.
(2) Eusebius was a brilliant scholar who presumably was not afraid to question early Christian or Jewish writings as reliable. He even questioned or down right rejected the traditional authorship of 2nd Peter, Jude, and Revelation. To argue that Eusebius knew that Thallus finished writing with the 167th Olympiad and still argued for Thallus’ account of the darkness of the crucifixion is of great disrespect to his scholarship.
(3) As Glen Miller notes, the phrase “this darkness” indicates that Africanus knew exactly which darkness Thallus was referring to. In fact, he supports this by noting that this is the same darkness referred to by Phlegon.
(4) Very few documents from the first three centuries have survived. In fact, as I already stated, only fragments and quotes of Thallus’ histories survive today. Thus, the very fact that so little of his writings and those quoting his writings still survive (8 in all), is not a firm basis for assuming that he wrote so late.
(5) Carrier argues that Thallus was most likely referring to the gospel tradition that had been circulating in second century Palestine and not as an eyewitness of the event. This is probably false because the darkness at the crucifixion doesn’t appear—even in modern historiography—to have been a major discussion point. The focus of that day was not the darkness but the death of the Son of God. Furthermore, it’s evident that Thallus is attempting to provide an explanation for the event as it actually happened rather than arguing that it is only Christian legend. It would otherwise seem that Thallus, a pagan, would have argued that the eclipse was merely Christian myth much like the resurrection if he would have even argued it at all. In other words, Thallus would not have felt a need to provide an explanation for the darkness if he was not convinced that it had happened. Lastly, one of Carrier’s arguments is that Thallus may have not even mentioned Jesus. The problem is that this is inconsistent with his claim that he was relying on the gospel tradition of the darkness already circulating in Palestine. In other words, Carrier argues that Thallus was not referencing a historical darkness but the one referred to in the gospel narratives and yet he probably did not mention Jesus Christ or the crucifixion. This is inconsistent. In fact, reason tells us that if the rumor of the darkness in Palestine was so extensive and popular that Thallus felt he needed to refer and provide a naturalistic explanation of it, he would have mentioned Jesus Christ. The darkness and the crucifixion were bonded events. It’s like writing about the attacks on 9/11 and not mentioning Muslim terrorists.
(6) It is mere dogmatism with which Carrier argues that it is “most likely” that Thallus wrote in the second century. From all that has survived from ancient Palestine, the fact that we have a source quoting him from A.D. 180 is remarkable. In addition, Carrier argues that Thallus probably wrote in the second century but stopped his histories at A.D. 52 (much like Eusebius did with one of his chronicles). While this is a good point, I think this is where Ockham’s Razor[xvi] needs to be employed. In this case, when comparing the arguments for and against Thallus being an eyewitness to the event, the historian may become somewhat indifferent. However, because most ancient histories ended within the generation (even within a few years) of the author’s lifetime, and with the knowledge of how few first and second century manuscripts we currently have, it seems the most reasonable assumption that Thallus ended his history within the generation of which he wrote and with the end of the 207th or 217th Olympiad."
The main objection Carrier has to the 52 Anno Domini dating in which he claims that other dates are more likely is: "The correct logic would hold that Thallus most likely wrote in the second century, since pagan notice of the Gospels is unattested before that century, and any given author is more likely to be typical than wholly exceptional."
This arguments seems to beg its own question. Carrier enters into the discussion under the assumption that the darkness did not happen for Thallus to be responding to and that Gospels had no oral tradition by which Thallus could have been responding to. We are already dealing with a case of an extraordinary passage, so the notion that the verse has to be typical is disingenuous. Carrier's argument essentially boils down to: "There's no contemporary writings of Jesus and that one can't possibly be a contemporary writing of Jesus because there are no other contemporary writings of Jesus. This isn't legit because you don't have more evidence." It's circular reasoning that assumes its own premise before making its argument.
Carrier follows this up by noting that the 217th Olympiad would require less errors than the 207th Olympiad. As Roger Viklund notes, that is untrue:
"But as I have shown in this Swedish blog post: https://rogerviklund.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/thallos-och-flegon-som-jesusvittnen-del-3-%E2%80%93-den-167e-207e-eller-217e-olympiaden/, such a mistake could not easily be explained. In short, the mistake must either have been made in the original Greek or in the translation into Armenian. In Armenian the 167th Olympiad would be Ճերորդ Կերորդ Էերորդ (hundredth, sixtieth, seventh), i.e the initials ՃԿԷ = 100 + 60 + 7. The 207th is then Մերորդ Էերորդ, i.e. the initials ՄԷ = 200 + 7 and the 217th is Մերորդ Ժերորդ Էերորդ, i.e the initials ՄԺԷ = 200 + 10 + 7, and so on. In either case you must suppose two mistakes. If the mistake was made in Greek, 167 would be ρξζ, 207 would be σζ and 217 σιζ. Here as well we would have to suppose two mistakes."
Carrier seems to suggest that σιζ would have a better chance of becoming ρξζ than σζ, but they don't differ significantly enough to make such an assessment and we have no way of knowing how the error arose. The proposed method for how 207th would have become 167th is a duplication error rendering σζ as σζζ and then misinterpreting zeta for xi to become σξζ and then finally mistaking sigma for rho to become ρξζ.
Conversely, Gutschmid's theory that the Olympiad is 217th (the theory favored by Carrier) says that the sigma in σιζ got mistaken for a rho and then the iota in ριζ became xi to end up as ρξζ. If we go by this as the only possibilities of reaching these two changes, then yes, Gutschmid's theory requires "fewer errors". But it also requires a much more egregious error in iota becoming xi.
Now, Carrier claims that, "In particular, a sigma with a seraph or blot at the top can be easily mistaken as a rho in the Byzantine minuscule script used in the 9th and 10th centuries. Although iota and xi are unlikely to be confused in this script, they can be confused very easily in the majuscule script used in prior centuries, with which Eusebius himself would have written."
Carrier does not present these majuscule scripts or any evidence that they could easily be confused. When I told him I was looking to track down these scripts, he told me, "Track what down? Resources on the different scripts used in Greek? You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_minuscule"
I had a hard time reconciling any of the versions of the iota on the Wikipedia page. According to Carrier, uncial is the most common majuscule in ancient manuscripts. However, the iota doesn't differ at all and certainly doesn't seem to differ enough to be confused for a xi.
As an example, Carrier sent me this and elaborated on how he thinks the uncial script would have lent toward an iota becoming a xi:
"In the middle of which a line starts TOCE[xi]IÏH
There you have a xi next to a iota. This is a very clean hand. But a poorer hand could wobble a iota so that a scribe can't tell if it's a wonky xi or a wonky iota."
It's technically possible that someone could have made three bends in a straight line. It's also technically possible someone could make a dash that appears as an M. It's unlikely, but lets presume it is the case for a moment. If this is the case, Carrier undermines his entire argument because such would require an additional error. There would be the obvious sigma to rho, an iota so sloppy as to not even look close to an iota anymore and then the mistaking of that iota for a xi.
The scenario seems less likely, but even if we presume that this is the case, Carrier is left with the same amount of errors it would take to produce the 207th Olympiad. And the 207th Olympiad requires less egregious errors.
This is especially problematic because if we can't establish how that iota became a xi, then we are left with having to consider that the same duplication error produced the xi from zeta and then the iota was removed. Which means the 217th Olympiad would be four errors.
If there was an emendation (which, aside from two separate works, is the only plausible scenario due to the date disparity between Eusebius and Africanus otherwise) then the most likely possibility seems to be the 207th Olympiad as mainstream academia states.
Whether it was an emendation or not seems to be something we cannot prove indefinitely, but it's also not a possibility that should be dismissed. I have no qualm with the notion that Thallus penned more than one work. That said, I accept that much of Carrier's work is not founded on definitive claims, but what "might have happened" (as he notes in one of his rebuttals to Glenn Miller.)
Josephus
Supposedly, Josephus made a reference to our Thallus. This is briefly noted by Glenn Miller in the article I cited above (the incompetence of Thallus section.) And it should be noted that James Patrick Holding, over at Tektonics, assessed both the work of Carrier and Miller side by side. So, lets take a look at the supposed reference by Josephus:
"Now there was one Thallus, a freedman of Caesar's of whom he borrowed a million of dracmae, and thence repaid Antonia the debt he owed her; and by spending the overplus in paying his court to Caius, became a person of great authority with him."
Carrier summarizes the objection to this thusly: "The passage in question (Antiquities of the Jews 18.167) does not have the word THALLOS in any extant manuscript or translation, but ALLOS. The addition of the letter theta was conjectured by Hudson in 1720, on the argument that ALLOS didn't make sense, and that Thallus was the attested name of an imperial freedman of Tiberius in inscriptions ("I put 'Thallos' in place of 'allos' by conjecture, as he is attested to have been among the freedmen of Tiberius, going by the inscriptions of Gruter," p. 810, translated from Hudson's Latin). But there is no good basis for this conjecture. First, the Greek actually does makes sense without the added letter (it means "another"), and all extant early tranlsations confirm this reading, and second, an epitome of this passage does not give a name but instead the generic "someone" and this suggests that no name was mentioned in the epitomizer's copy. But finally, the most likely name, if one were needed here at all, would be HALLOS, requiring no added letters, since an imperial freedman by this name is also known in the time of Tiberius from inscriptions. For a full discussion of these facts and many other details, see Horace Rigg, "Thallus: The Samaritan?" Harvard Theological Review, vol. 34 (1941), pp. 111-9."
Van Voorst specifies why allos (another) doesn't make sense in the context, "because Josephus has not mentioned a Samaritan in the context." So, claiming another did something without an initial person is strange. At least in the regard that it made sense, Carrier is mistaken. It's rather interesting because he makes the argument that Eusebius wrote θαλλου (Thallos) instead of αλλοις (allos) in his peer-reviewed article and, in fact, states the exact same argument for why.
It should be noted that Carrier does not cite his source for this Hallos fellow and I can find nothing that corroborates the claim, but if it is indeed true, that is certainly a major issue for the emendation being Thallos because it could suggest emendation of not content, but of aspirate markings. If that cannot be provided, then that argument must be discarded. However, it should be noted that we know from Africanus that Thallus was extremely prolific, so citing him nonchalantly would make more sense than this Hallos fellow.
I was, however, curious enough to speak with Richard Carrier personally and ask him about this other fellow named Hallos and evidence of his existence. The response I got from Carrier was essentially that there was no evidence: "The Hallos in Josephus or Thallos the chronographer? On the former, there is nothing (just the passage in Jopsehus)."
Carrier cites Horace Rigg, "Thallus: The Samaritan?" Harvard Theological Review, vol. 34 (1941), pp. 111-9 on the topic of Hallos as a name in general. Which I found kind of weird because those pages really had nothing to do with Hallos. There was one reference (and it was the only reference in the entire paper) in the footnotes of page 115:
"In the notes (of Graevius) there is the suggestion that, since not only Thallus but Hallus is found, this latter might be connected with Josephus, Antiq. lud., XVIII, 8 "ubi tantum scribendum cum aspiratione &XXov.""
Unfortunately, the reference doesn't state where in Johann Georg Graevius's writings that we can find such a suggestion to analyze it and the paper is from 1941, so I have no way of even getting in contact with Rigg. We're not even told which work it's referenced in and I can't find anything that corroborates such a claim. And when I asked Carrier about it, he ignored the question. If anyone knows of this reference, please let me know.
Carrier went on to point out an excerpt from Ephraim Chambers' encyclopedia that suffers from some serious circular reasoning. Id est: The stone should be Hallos because of the mention by Josephus and the mention of Josephus should be Hallos because of the stone. When I asked Carrier about it, he said, "I'm pretty sure he is saying the stone was written, and correctly meant, Hallos."
So much for that line of evidence.
That said, I don't find the evidence for emendation very compelling to begin with here. We have no way of knowing that Josephus was referencing Thallus; let alone the same Thallus. It's certainly possible and I don't dismiss the possibility, but it's not definitive evidence. But I will say that this argument rests on the popularity of the name Thallus (see below.) If it was an unusual name, as Van Voorst contends, then the inscription of that time lends credence -- regardless of whether we emend Josephus' work or not (though, certainly, it lends credence to emendation too) -- that we've found our Thallus.
Two Works
Lets suppose for a moment that the emendation theory is bunk. Does this mean that Africanus made up the reference to Thallus or was incompetent enough to take a work published before Jesus was born and use it to address something after the death of Jesus? Hardly. So, no matter if you believe there were two works or an emendation, Thallus' testimony stands. The most you can get away with here is that Thallus' testimony was a little later than 52 Anno Domini (and the evidence for this is extremely poor as we've shown.)
Now, interestingly, Van Voorst posits that Thallus was an uncommon name, while Richard Carrier states that it wasn't. I couldn't corroborate either way, but if we assume that it was a common name, that ultimately undermines every argument used against the Thallus testimony. We can entertain a hypothetical that Josephus was not referring to our Thallus and that Eusebius' Thallus was another and there'd still be the possibility of another Thallus with whom Africanus could have been responding too.
On the flipside, if the name is uncommon as Van Voorst states, then mythers have to contend with the fact that, as Carrier admits, "we still have an inscription recording a man named Thallus as an imperial freedman." (And we certainly have enough evidence of Thallus including two inscriptions by way of Jan Gruter to support this claim.) And disputing the evidence for the emendations becomes much more difficult. Mythers are, thus, in a double bind.
At the end of the day, no amount of wringling has changed the fact that a prominent Greek historian named Thallus has attested to the darkness in the first century and Africanus responded to it. If this is the case, James Patrick Holding's observation is especially poignant:
"Of course, one observation that stands out immediately is why Thallus would try to explain the event away as a naturalistic phenomenon in the first place if he had reason to believe that it was not a historical event. It would be much easier to cast doubt on the event itself rather than explain it as an eclipse."
I can see why atheists and non-Christians would be particularly unwilling to accept this particular testimony, so I'm willing to forsake this one in the subject of the historical Jesus. But I think it's worth considering on the topic of the theological Jesus. This issue more answers another question of Christianity than the historical Jesus in my humble opinion, so I specifically avoided a lot of arguments that would deviate the course there. Maybe I'll write another article for that specifically.
Closing
I was going to write more and do some editing and close this off with a brief summary of each section. But Weebly is a piece of shit and I've literally had to reformat this article in its entirety about 10 times now because Weebly can't take basic instructions like pasting something without undoing all of the formatting of my article. I have a lot more to say on this, but I guess this will do for now until I can get a better host or something.