I’ve kind of addressed this before in videos, but I wanted to do so again today. So see you below the fold.
First, of course, here’s the video in question. He spends more time addressing Jesus than Paul, but if you want to take a look, I’ll still be here when you get back.
As I’ve said before, we know that there was someone who wrote the epistles of Paul, at least the legitimate ones, which account for just over half the traditionally accepted Pauline letters. Obviously there was a person who wrote those. That’s not in question. However, the existence of the person doesn’t prove that person was Paul. Or, it doesn’t prove that the person who wrote them fits all of the stories told about Paul. That’s where you need the independent evidence supporting the stories.
Saying “there was this guy named Paul who used to be Saul, who persecuted early Christians”, that’s not justified. That’s just a story. Where can we see evidence for Saul then? Where can we see independent, eyewitness corroboration for that part of the tale? We can’t. It doesn’t exist. For all we know, that part of it could have been made up. I’m not saying it was or it wasn’t, only that the evidence that we’d need to confirm it isn’t there.
The same thing goes for Jesus. We have stories about Jesus, told by non-eyewitnesses after a decades-long game of telephone. We know that. Actual eyewitnesses don’t need to copy extensively from other sources. Actual disciples wouldn’t be writing in Greek, they’d be writing in Hebrew or Aramaic, which none of the Gospels were. Therefore, that suggests, at least to me, that we don’t actually know as much as a lot of people would like to think. That’s why consensus means nothing, because none of the people who have reached that consensus have any evidence either. Agreeing for the sake of agreeing so that it looks like you know more than you actually do, that doesn’t mean anything. The “experts” are just as prone to ego and wishful thinking as anyone else.
Ultimately, can’t we point to Harry Potter as being just as supportable by his criteria as anything else? You have multiple accounts, written within a very short period of time after the supposed events. The character of Harry Potter was born in 1980, according to J.K. Rowling, and the first book hit shelves in 1997. That’s a hell of a lot closer than anything you’ve got for a historical Jesus. Plus, if you add in fan fiction, you’ve got tons of stories written by many different authors, presumably with the same basic facts in agreement. I don’t know, I don’t read fanfic, but it seems likely to me. So, in 2000 years, if someone digs up an archive of Harry Potter stories, are those going to be seen as historical in nature, assuming the future person or aliens or whatever is using the same criteria?
Why or why not? The fact that there’s magic involved doesn’t seem to matter, does it? I’m looking for something better than that and sadly, there isn’t anything better. There’s probably fanfic out there that says that the author actually met Harry Potter and probably did some… interesting things with him. Does that count as an eyewitness account? Because that’s a damn sight better than anything you have for a real, historical Jesus.
Sadly, for a lot of people, experts included, “it’s the best we can do” means more to them than “this is actually defensible with evidence”. “We don’t know” is the best that we can do and in the absence of corroboratory evidence, we shouldn’t try to go farther. It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter what sounds good to you. It doesn’t matter if your professional credentials and credibility are on the line. It matters only what we can actually prove and at the moment, we can’t prove anything.
So we just don’t know and neither do you. Stop pretending you do.