I'm an
agnostic on the historicity of Jesus, but I enjoy following the
arguments. Regarding his divinity, I do not believe that he was divine.
Regarding historicity, check out the following people on youtube:
Mythicists (scholars who think Jesus was a myth):
Richard Carrier
Robert M. Price
David Fitzgerald
Earl Doherty
Agnostics (scholars who think there's not enough information to tell either way):
Hector Avalos
Historicists (scholars who think that Jesus was indeed a real man):
Bart Ehrman
Zeba Crook
John Dominick Crossan
Crackpot Mythicists (probably a waste of time):
Joseph Atwill
D. M. Murdock (AKA "Acharya S")
I'm not sure how to classify:
Aaron Adair (this is a good summary video of many of the people above!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai_Sp7SjmrY&list=WL&index=71
Mythicists point to other gods and deities in the Greek world and try to show the similarities with Jesus. Historicists point to the Pauline epistles and the gospels and argue that it's unlikely Jesus was fabricated out of whole cloth. Agnostics like Avalos argue that in reality all we have are four fragments of stories (NT fragments) from the 2nd century, and nothing at all from the 1st, and zero archeological evidence (aside from the monument with Pontius Pilate's name on it). All the dates that other bible scholars assign to the various books are really just estimates based on the text which isn't actually found in its entirety until the centuries later. I think Avalos is also a skeptic of those dates. In terms of hard archeological evidence of the stories themselves, we really only have fragments like P52 to go on.
The earliest Christian artifact we have is fragment P52 from the gospel of John. It's the size of a credit card, only includes a few partial verses, and never actually mentions Jesus. It's dated to about 125 CE +/- 25 years. Again, all it is is a fragment of a story about Jesus. Altogether we have somewhere between 4 and 6 fragments total from the 2nd century (depending on how they are dated), and about 50 fragments total from the 2nd and 3rd centuries combined. It's not until the 3th century that whole books (of the 27 canonical NT books) start showing up, and not until late in the 4th century (367 CE) that all 27 books of thee NT are first mentioned. But again, those are just stories. There's ZERO archeological evidence for the characters described in the stories.
One of the members here on Y/A ("The Turin Shroud is Fake") taught himself to read Koine Greek and has studied some of the early manuscripts. I asked him for a few more details about this and here's what he had to say (rearranging his sentences slightly, and my additions in [square brackets]):
"The papyri we have [possibly from the 2nd century] are P52 (125 AD), P90 (150 AD), P104 (150 AD), P98 (100-200 AD), P75 (175-225 AD), and P4 (175-250 AD)"
"P52 John 18:31-33; 18:37-38, P90 John 18:36-19:1; 19:1-7, P104 Matthew 21:34-37; 21:43,45, P98 Revelation 1, P75 Luke 3-18,22-24; John 1-15, P4 Luke 1-6 and P32 Titus 1:11-15; 2:3-8."
"Apart from P52, I haven't looked at them in depth, I tend to work with complete scripts."
"The oldest complete books come from P46 ( Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians), and Hebrews. It dates from around 200 AD, but as usual the dating is not to[o] precise, so I would allow 50 years either way."
.
.
P52: The earliest known NT fragment from about 125 CE
Mythicists (scholars who think Jesus was a myth):
Richard Carrier
Robert M. Price
David Fitzgerald
Earl Doherty
Agnostics (scholars who think there's not enough information to tell either way):
Hector Avalos
Historicists (scholars who think that Jesus was indeed a real man):
Bart Ehrman
Zeba Crook
John Dominick Crossan
Crackpot Mythicists (probably a waste of time):
Joseph Atwill
D. M. Murdock (AKA "Acharya S")
I'm not sure how to classify:
Aaron Adair (this is a good summary video of many of the people above!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai_Sp7SjmrY&list=WL&index=71
Mythicists point to other gods and deities in the Greek world and try to show the similarities with Jesus. Historicists point to the Pauline epistles and the gospels and argue that it's unlikely Jesus was fabricated out of whole cloth. Agnostics like Avalos argue that in reality all we have are four fragments of stories (NT fragments) from the 2nd century, and nothing at all from the 1st, and zero archeological evidence (aside from the monument with Pontius Pilate's name on it). All the dates that other bible scholars assign to the various books are really just estimates based on the text which isn't actually found in its entirety until the centuries later. I think Avalos is also a skeptic of those dates. In terms of hard archeological evidence of the stories themselves, we really only have fragments like P52 to go on.
The earliest Christian artifact we have is fragment P52 from the gospel of John. It's the size of a credit card, only includes a few partial verses, and never actually mentions Jesus. It's dated to about 125 CE +/- 25 years. Again, all it is is a fragment of a story about Jesus. Altogether we have somewhere between 4 and 6 fragments total from the 2nd century (depending on how they are dated), and about 50 fragments total from the 2nd and 3rd centuries combined. It's not until the 3th century that whole books (of the 27 canonical NT books) start showing up, and not until late in the 4th century (367 CE) that all 27 books of thee NT are first mentioned. But again, those are just stories. There's ZERO archeological evidence for the characters described in the stories.
One of the members here on Y/A ("The Turin Shroud is Fake") taught himself to read Koine Greek and has studied some of the early manuscripts. I asked him for a few more details about this and here's what he had to say (rearranging his sentences slightly, and my additions in [square brackets]):
"The papyri we have [possibly from the 2nd century] are P52 (125 AD), P90 (150 AD), P104 (150 AD), P98 (100-200 AD), P75 (175-225 AD), and P4 (175-250 AD)"
"P52 John 18:31-33; 18:37-38, P90 John 18:36-19:1; 19:1-7, P104 Matthew 21:34-37; 21:43,45, P98 Revelation 1, P75 Luke 3-18,22-24; John 1-15, P4 Luke 1-6 and P32 Titus 1:11-15; 2:3-8."
"Apart from P52, I haven't looked at them in depth, I tend to work with complete scripts."
"The oldest complete books come from P46 ( Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians), and Hebrews. It dates from around 200 AD, but as usual the dating is not to[o] precise, so I would allow 50 years either way."
.
.
P52: The earliest known NT fragment from about 125 CE
 |
| P52: The earliest known NT fragment from about 125 C |
And while it's true that we have about 5500 Greek manuscripts of the NT ("manuscript" includes every little scrap, ,including P52 above), 94% of those were written in the 9th century or later! What we have from those first four crucial centuries is MUCH more spotty, as I describe above. Bart Ehrman says that the differences between all 5500 manuscripts number into the 100s of thousands (nobody knows for sure): well more than there are words in the Bible! Most of those are minor, but a significant number are not. As an example, I have here some significant problems documented form the popular King James Version of the Bible (first published in 1611). Sometimes Christians will obscure matters by claiming the NT is "the most well attested book we have from antiquity" which is technically true given all the copies from the Middle Ages and later, but that obscures the shadowy history of those first few crucial centuries.
Also, from watching Bart Ehrman videos and others and reading Bart's books, I have a little timeline that demonstratess the mainstream consensus opinion about the New Testament (NT) and when it was written and by whom (dates approximate):
30 CE Jesus is crucified
50 CE to 60 CE Paul writes his letters (epistles). Each of these makes up a book in the NT. There are 13 such books (of the 27 books total in the NT), and 7 of them are "undisputed" meaning that scholars think they really came from Paul. 3 of them are disputed, and 3 of them are considered forgeries. So from 3 to 6 of the 13 epistles total are forgeries. Timothy 1 & 2 and Titus are the "for sure" forgeries (although the consensus is the same forger wrote all of them). Also Paul never claims to have met Jesus (he just claims he had a vision of him), nor does he describe much about his life and ministry other than to state that he was crucified and resurrected. This leads some like Richard Carrier to surmise that Paul is talking about a Jesus which was never originally conceived of by the Earliest Christians to be human: instead it's a celestial Jesus, crucified by Satan in the heavens. Carrier is joined in this opinion by Bible scholar and ex-Baptist minister Robert M. Price. Of course this is a controversial opinion, and both Carrier and Price acknowledge that most of the internet arguments for a purely mythical Jesus are garbage. I recommend this debate between Carrier and Crook (also an atheist) on the historicity of Jesus (Crook is arguing that Jesus was a real person).
65 CE to 70 CE the gospel of "Mark" is written. Keep in mind that all four gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) are actually written anonymously in Koine Greek, decades after Jesus died. We have zero information about who actually wrote them other than to say they were highly educated in rhetorical Greek (both reading and writing) and thus represented somebody that neither Jesus nor his disciples would have likely every met. The literacy rate for reading in Rome itself (the city) was under 10%. It was smaller for those who could write and compose as well. The rates in 1st century Palestine are more like 3% for reading literacy, and again much smaller for writing. Jesus and the disciples were NOT educated people and likely spoke Aramaic, NOT Koine Greek or anything else for that matter. Thus the author of Mark was likely writing in a totally different location (perhaps the city of Rome itself) some 35 to 40 years after Jesus died, and he was likely getting his information from an oral tradition that had been passed around for decades. What is true of Mark in this regard is even more so true for the authors of Matthew and Luke (which came later) and John (the last gospel). All are by anonymous authors who never met Jesus or anyone who ever knew Jesus first hand. The names "Mark," "Matthew," "Luke," and "John" are not used until 180 CE by one of the "church fathers" who's writing we still have (this writing not being part of the 27 book canon of the NT).
85 CE the gospels of "Luke" and "Matthew" are written (see above about these being anonymously authored). Mark, Matthew and Luke are what are known as the synoptic gospels because both Luke and Matthew probably used Mark as source material. In fact 97% of Mark is copied verbatim between Matthew and Luke combined. Matthew and Luke may have had another source (now lost) called "Q" (by scholars), but this is unclear. They have overlap outside of what they share with Mark. See the diagram below for the overlap between these three synoptic texts (which I found here).
95 CE the gospel of "John" is written. Like the other three, it was written anonymously, but is significantly different than them, which is why it's not considered to be synoptic.
The gospels differ significantly from one another on many details. For example, what and who went to Jesus' tomb three days later and what they found there. John says Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of the day before the day of passover and Mark says the morning of the day after the day of the passover meal. Only two of the gospels (Luke and Matthew, and then only some versions of Luke) include a nativity and genealogy of Jesus, and both the nativity and genealogy differ significantly from each other. See Bart Ehrman for much more information about these differences.
I'm not sure when the other books of the NT were written, but I think after John. Some are forgeries. All are suspect (though I can't give you details).
367 CE the 1st time the full set of 27 books of the NT is mentioned by a Roman Christian "church father." Not until then can the canon be considered to have been fixed. Over 40 gospels were ultimately rejected along with several other books (e.g. the Revelation of Peter). The Revelation that was included was that of "John" (not clear if it bears any relation to the "John" that wrote the gospel of John or the epistle of John). So basically it wasn't until late in the 4th century that these matters started to become solidified!
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Good answer here:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20141221143920AA5EigE
Question: Do we have any NT manuscripts from the 1st century? From the 2nd? From the 3rd?
Answer by: Michael
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=VH3U5S2PJLDSDWGABUHOUMDKM4&t=g
Nothing is known from the 1st century. Occasionally sensationalistic claims of really early New Testament manuscript discoveries get made, but these 1st century claims are ultimately debunked. For example, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_pa...
A few fragmentary manuscripts date to the 2nd century. Among them is p52, a postage stamp sized scrap of papyrus that came from an early copy of the Gospel of John. It is often erroneously said to date to 125 A.D. In reality, there's no way that one can use paleography (the analysis of handwriting style) to date anything so precisely. But scholars generally agree it comes from sometime in the 2nd century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Lib...
By the third century, there are larger extant copies of various portions of the NT. The earliest complete copies come from the 4th century.
Here's a list of the important early manuscripts and their associated dates:
http://www.kchanson.com/papyri.html
All the extant manuscripts are copies of copies of copies...and so on. No originals survive, and all the "first generation" copies of the originals are gone too. There was no conspiracy to destroy them as some Da Vinci Code fans claim; papyrus and parchment are fragile materials that don't survive well for two thousand years unless they are preserved under exceptional conditions.
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This from "Fox" concerning the OT:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150313015910AAWq4Be
The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of the OT written between 408 BCE and 318 CE. Obviously not 3000 years old. They are so close to the Biblical text because the Biblical text as we know it was actually put in writing around the same time, around the 4th century BCE, drawing on multiple older sources, mostly oral tradition. As you can suppose that's little time for any major discrepancies to come up.
Remember we're talking about the Jewish Bible (OT), closely guarded against changes by Jewish rabbis. These are the very same texts used in our modern "translations".
The NT is a completely different story.
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Why the Jews don't believe in Jesus: (he didn't fulfill the prophecies for one)
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html
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Bart Ehrman describes how bodies were typically left on the cross to be scavenged when Romans crucified people (which is why he thinks this happened to Jesus, rather than him being placed in a tomb):
http://tinyurl.com/l48pt5q
John Dominic Crossan thinks much the same thing:
"John Dominic Crossan, however, suggests that Jesus' body was eaten by dogs as it hung on the cross so that there was nothing left to bury.[21]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_of_Jesus#Historicity
Which suggests that Jesus may have been crucified low to the ground as this painting indicates:
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Structure of New Testament (NT) according to Richard Carrier
Ring Structure = Chiasmus = inclusio = "Markan" sandwich, e.g. A,B,C,C,B,A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MclBbZUFSag#t=1650
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusio
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Question about Carrier's use of "outer space":
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150410115011AAK7u9j
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Also, from watching Bart Ehrman videos and others and reading Bart's books, I have a little timeline that demonstratess the mainstream consensus opinion about the New Testament (NT) and when it was written and by whom (dates approximate):
30 CE Jesus is crucified
50 CE to 60 CE Paul writes his letters (epistles). Each of these makes up a book in the NT. There are 13 such books (of the 27 books total in the NT), and 7 of them are "undisputed" meaning that scholars think they really came from Paul. 3 of them are disputed, and 3 of them are considered forgeries. So from 3 to 6 of the 13 epistles total are forgeries. Timothy 1 & 2 and Titus are the "for sure" forgeries (although the consensus is the same forger wrote all of them). Also Paul never claims to have met Jesus (he just claims he had a vision of him), nor does he describe much about his life and ministry other than to state that he was crucified and resurrected. This leads some like Richard Carrier to surmise that Paul is talking about a Jesus which was never originally conceived of by the Earliest Christians to be human: instead it's a celestial Jesus, crucified by Satan in the heavens. Carrier is joined in this opinion by Bible scholar and ex-Baptist minister Robert M. Price. Of course this is a controversial opinion, and both Carrier and Price acknowledge that most of the internet arguments for a purely mythical Jesus are garbage. I recommend this debate between Carrier and Crook (also an atheist) on the historicity of Jesus (Crook is arguing that Jesus was a real person).
65 CE to 70 CE the gospel of "Mark" is written. Keep in mind that all four gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) are actually written anonymously in Koine Greek, decades after Jesus died. We have zero information about who actually wrote them other than to say they were highly educated in rhetorical Greek (both reading and writing) and thus represented somebody that neither Jesus nor his disciples would have likely every met. The literacy rate for reading in Rome itself (the city) was under 10%. It was smaller for those who could write and compose as well. The rates in 1st century Palestine are more like 3% for reading literacy, and again much smaller for writing. Jesus and the disciples were NOT educated people and likely spoke Aramaic, NOT Koine Greek or anything else for that matter. Thus the author of Mark was likely writing in a totally different location (perhaps the city of Rome itself) some 35 to 40 years after Jesus died, and he was likely getting his information from an oral tradition that had been passed around for decades. What is true of Mark in this regard is even more so true for the authors of Matthew and Luke (which came later) and John (the last gospel). All are by anonymous authors who never met Jesus or anyone who ever knew Jesus first hand. The names "Mark," "Matthew," "Luke," and "John" are not used until 180 CE by one of the "church fathers" who's writing we still have (this writing not being part of the 27 book canon of the NT).
85 CE the gospels of "Luke" and "Matthew" are written (see above about these being anonymously authored). Mark, Matthew and Luke are what are known as the synoptic gospels because both Luke and Matthew probably used Mark as source material. In fact 97% of Mark is copied verbatim between Matthew and Luke combined. Matthew and Luke may have had another source (now lost) called "Q" (by scholars), but this is unclear. They have overlap outside of what they share with Mark. See the diagram below for the overlap between these three synoptic texts (which I found here).
95 CE the gospel of "John" is written. Like the other three, it was written anonymously, but is significantly different than them, which is why it's not considered to be synoptic.
The gospels differ significantly from one another on many details. For example, what and who went to Jesus' tomb three days later and what they found there. John says Jesus was crucified on the afternoon of the day before the day of passover and Mark says the morning of the day after the day of the passover meal. Only two of the gospels (Luke and Matthew, and then only some versions of Luke) include a nativity and genealogy of Jesus, and both the nativity and genealogy differ significantly from each other. See Bart Ehrman for much more information about these differences.
I'm not sure when the other books of the NT were written, but I think after John. Some are forgeries. All are suspect (though I can't give you details).
367 CE the 1st time the full set of 27 books of the NT is mentioned by a Roman Christian "church father." Not until then can the canon be considered to have been fixed. Over 40 gospels were ultimately rejected along with several other books (e.g. the Revelation of Peter). The Revelation that was included was that of "John" (not clear if it bears any relation to the "John" that wrote the gospel of John or the epistle of John). So basically it wasn't until late in the 4th century that these matters started to become solidified!
Good answer here:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20141221143920AA5EigE
Question: Do we have any NT manuscripts from the 1st century? From the 2nd? From the 3rd?
Answer by: Michael
https://answers.yahoo.com/activity/questions?show=VH3U5S2PJLDSDWGABUHOUMDKM4&t=g
Nothing is known from the 1st century. Occasionally sensationalistic claims of really early New Testament manuscript discoveries get made, but these 1st century claims are ultimately debunked. For example, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_pa...
A few fragmentary manuscripts date to the 2nd century. Among them is p52, a postage stamp sized scrap of papyrus that came from an early copy of the Gospel of John. It is often erroneously said to date to 125 A.D. In reality, there's no way that one can use paleography (the analysis of handwriting style) to date anything so precisely. But scholars generally agree it comes from sometime in the 2nd century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Lib...
By the third century, there are larger extant copies of various portions of the NT. The earliest complete copies come from the 4th century.
Here's a list of the important early manuscripts and their associated dates:
http://www.kchanson.com/papyri.html
All the extant manuscripts are copies of copies of copies...and so on. No originals survive, and all the "first generation" copies of the originals are gone too. There was no conspiracy to destroy them as some Da Vinci Code fans claim; papyrus and parchment are fragile materials that don't survive well for two thousand years unless they are preserved under exceptional conditions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This from "Fox" concerning the OT:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150313015910AAWq4Be
The Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments of the OT written between 408 BCE and 318 CE. Obviously not 3000 years old. They are so close to the Biblical text because the Biblical text as we know it was actually put in writing around the same time, around the 4th century BCE, drawing on multiple older sources, mostly oral tradition. As you can suppose that's little time for any major discrepancies to come up.
Remember we're talking about the Jewish Bible (OT), closely guarded against changes by Jewish rabbis. These are the very same texts used in our modern "translations".
The NT is a completely different story.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why the Jews don't believe in Jesus: (he didn't fulfill the prophecies for one)
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/48892792.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bart Ehrman describes how bodies were typically left on the cross to be scavenged when Romans crucified people (which is why he thinks this happened to Jesus, rather than him being placed in a tomb):
http://tinyurl.com/l48pt5q
John Dominic Crossan thinks much the same thing:
"John Dominic Crossan, however, suggests that Jesus' body was eaten by dogs as it hung on the cross so that there was nothing left to bury.[21]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_of_Jesus#Historicity
Which suggests that Jesus may have been crucified low to the ground as this painting indicates:
Structure of New Testament (NT) according to Richard Carrier
Ring Structure = Chiasmus = inclusio = "Markan" sandwich, e.g. A,B,C,C,B,A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MclBbZUFSag#t=1650
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiasmus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusio
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Question about Carrier's use of "outer space":
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150410115011AAK7u9j
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