Genealogy Of Jesus

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No it doesn't - there are many ways of refuting a claim as false. Sure you might write a piece about how false a claim is - but that is unlikely in 1stC palestine and even if it did occur those texts would need to survive.

But the other way to consider whether the people who were around at the time and place when Jesus was supposed to be performing miracles etc refuted claims is their subsequent behaviour. Had they believed the claims of the gospels then surely they'd have followed Jesus - but by and large they didn't, the people around at the time didn't accept his claims as written in the gospels. They didn't need to refute the claims in writing, their decision not to follow Jesus tells us all we need to know about whether they accepted or did not accept the claims.

Sorry. are you telling us that the Christian account is not history because some people didn't believe bits of it?

[Spud]

Nonsense, Spud: a 'generation' means what exactly?

A lifetime, about 60-80 years.

[Spud]

Nonsense, Spud: a 'generation' means what exactly?

Even then, given that the growth of Christianity was slow a 'generation' after the alleged events in the Jesus story, what was recorded in what later became the NT reflected the outlook of the Jesus fan club at that time, so that chances of them looking to refute their own claims does seem rather slim - and in the decades immediately after the alleged death of Jesus I'm wondering who else would be intent on the refuting the claims of what, at that time, was a fairly small sect.

Anyone who wanted to verify if Jesus was qualified through ancestry to be the long awaited messiah.

As such, the lack of refutation in the first century CE doesn't imply that what the NT claims about the genealogy of Jesus is therefore correct since, it seems to me, the only people interested in the Jesus story at that time were already Jesus fans and bangers of the Jesus drum.

I'm sure even you can appreciate that risks or bias, mistake and lies that, from this distance, can't be discounted since there seems to be no method of investigating the family history of Jesus retrospectively, and independently of the NT claims. Why does it matter anyway, in this day and age?

[ProfessorDavey]

A lifetime, about 60-80 years.

A lifetime and a generation are not the same thing.

[Spud]

No it doesn't - there are many ways of refuting a claim as false. Sure you might write a piece about how false a claim is - but that is unlikely in 1stC palestine and even if it did occur those texts would need to survive.

Fair point

But the other way to consider whether the people who were around at the time and place when Jesus was supposed to be performing miracles etc refuted claims is their subsequent behaviour. Had they believed the claims of the gospels then surely they'd have followed Jesus - but by and large they didn't, the people around at the time didn't accept his claims as written in the gospels. They didn't need to refute the claims in writing, their decision not to follow Jesus tells us all we need to know about whether they accepted or did not accept the claims.

Yet a lot of people did accept them.

[ProfessorDavey]

Sorry. are you telling us that the Christian account is not history because some people didn't believe bits of it?

Spud claimed that because people didn't refute the claims then they must have assumed them to be true. I think that is non-sense.

Whether or not those claims are true or not is a matter for evidence not belief.

[Gordon]

A lifetime, about 60-80 years.

Wrong -  a 'generation' is not the same as a lifetime.

[ProfessorDavey]

Yet a lot of people did accept them.

Not amongst the people who were living at the time and in the place where Jesus lived and died.

[Roses]

Jesus probably existed. It appears he had a personality, which attracted followers, just like many others over the centuries to the present day. It isn't hard to convince the gullible if you tell them what they wish to hear, like that awful man, Trump!

[Gordon]

Anyone who wanted to verify if Jesus was qualified through ancestry to be the long awaited messiah.

So how would they do this verification: check the relevant birth certificates or maybe get a few DNA samples from both Jesus and the corpses of his proposed ancestors?

It isn't verifiable, Spud - you are, of course, free to believe the NT content on a personal basis but you have no basis to claim that the genealogies you set such store by are independently verifiable and, as such, you have no basis to assert they are correct: and since you are supporting the claim of correctness then the burden of proof is yours.

I'm not clear why it matters these days anyway.

 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Prof,

We don't know that at all and indeed the best evidence on the matter suggests your assertion is complete nonsense.

Back in 1stC Palestine I'd imagine a generation would be about 25 years, which would mean the gospels would have had to have been written in the late 50s to be 'within a generation. At best we think the earliest they were originally written was about 70, with some from as late as 110.

And of course the gospels were not written in the place where the purported events occurred, but geographically far away. This means that the gospel writers would have been completely detached in both time and place from the people who might actually have been witnesses to the events.

Add to that the fact that we don't have the original gospels, only many-generation copies from hundreds of years later the the text we have available to us is completely separated from the events they are supposed to describe.

Just to add that, even if none of that was the case and by some process the later records described precisely what previous people really believed to have happened, still all that would document would be the explanatory narrative that happened to make sense to them (and by the way from a time when countless other miracle stories were believed too). "Jesus was alive, then dead for a bit, then alive again" may have been the story, but there's no way to get behind it to eliminate the multiple possible but non-supernatural explanations for the same event.       

[ProfessorDavey]

Prof,

Just to add that, even if none of that was the case and by some process the later records described precisely what previous people really believed to have happened, still all that would document would be the explanatory narrative that happened to make sense to them (and by the way from a time when countless other miracle stories were believed too). "Jesus was alive, then dead for a bit, then alive again" may have been the story, but there's no way to get behind it to eliminate the multiple possible but non-supernatural explanations for the same event.     

True - all this tells us is that some people believed some stuff - it tells us nothing about whether that stuff is actually true.

If if everyone in a community believes  in something it doesn't make it necessarily true - to determine its veracity you need evidence not mere belief.

And in the case of Jesus clearly a lot of people did not believe in the "Jesus was alive, then dead for a bit, then alive again" stuff, because surely you'd become a follower of Jesus if you believed that most remarkable of claims to be true. And we know that by and large the people living in the same place as Jesus and at the same time as Jesus did not become followers of Jesus.

[Spud]

So how would they do this verification: check the relevant birth certificates

Yes. I mean, what is a birth certificate for - partly to tell you who someone's parents are and thus state their identity. Although a genealogy doesn't tell you the date of birth, it identifies a person.

[Gordon]

Yes. I mean, what is a birth certificate for - partly to tell you who someone's parents are and thus state their identity. Although a genealogy doesn't tell you the date of birth, it identifies a person.

Did they have birth certificates back then? They didn't, and even if they had how could you be sure that the identity of the father (if provided) was correct: in most cases it would be, but not necessarily in all cases.

Anyway, in the absence of birth certificates or DNA samples you have no independent verification so I take it you do now recognise the potential of error and/or misinformation if you were naive enough to take the NT contents about to be literally true?

[ProfessorDavey]

Yes. I mean, what is a birth certificate for - partly to tell you who someone's parents are and thus state their identity. Although a genealogy doesn't tell you the date of birth, it identifies a person.

What are you on about Spud - who on earth had formal birth certificates back in the centuries leading up to the 1stC.

The point remains that there is no credible evidence to support the notion that the genealogies are correct. Moreover there is a wealth of evidence to cast doubt on them, ranging from the basic notion that it would be pretty well impossible in those days to take an individual (even more so if that individual is supposed to have been born into a relatively low ranking household rather than a kings etc) and trace back their lineage over dozens of generations. It is pretty well impossible to do that now, with all the records and technology available to us, that you could do it in 1stC Palestine for a person who is purportedly the son of a carpenter is beyond belief.

Add to that the further problem that the genealogies we have do not agree - they cannot both be right, but they can both be wrong.

And of course the final point is that the burden of evidence rests with the person making the claim, or believing the claim. So it is for you Spud to provide evidence that the genealogies are correct - there is no burden on me (nor Gordon etc) to provide evidence that they are wrong, as we are not making a claim of correct genealogy.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What are you on about Spud - who on earth had formal birth certificates back in the centuries leading up to the 1stC.

The point remains that there is no credible evidence to support the notion that the genealogies are correct. Moreover there is a wealth of evidence to cast doubt on them, ranging from the basic notion that it would be pretty well impossible in those days to take an individual (even more so if that individual is supposed to have been born into a relatively low ranking household rather than a kings etc) and trace back their lineage over dozens of generations. It is pretty well impossible to do that now, with all the records and technology available to us, that you could do it in 1stC Palestine for a person who is purportedly the son of a carpenter is beyond belief.

Add to that the further problem that the genealogies we have do not agree - they cannot both be right, but they can both be wrong.

And of course the final point is that the burden of evidence rests with the person making the claim, or believing the claim. So it is for you Spud to provide evidence that the genealogies are correct - there is no burden on me (nor Gordon etc) to provide evidence that they are wrong, as we are not making a claim of correct genealogy.

If you are saying something is or probably is wrong, you have a burden.

[Gordon]

If you are saying something is or probably is wrong, you have a burden.

Nope - it is critique of the claim being made (by Spud), and this critique says nothing about the claim being shown to be "wrong", which would be a positive claim, but simply points out that the claimant has failed to establish a robust verification for their claim, which implies that they haven't successfully demonstrated that their claim is factually correct: possibly because, as pointed out, there seems to be no basis for the independent verification of the ancient genealogies that are the subject of this particular claim.

Therefore that this claim might be incorrect remains a risk - and it is for the claimant (Spud) to address this risk, and if he can't then he'd surely have to concede that if the precise details are now unknowable, from this distance in time, then the account he has to hand cannot be substantiated, hence the risk that his claim may be incorrect. He can, of course, choose to believe it on a personal basis but he has no grounds to claim that what he believes is factually correct.

You've always struggled to understand what the burden of proof entails. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

If you are saying something is or probably is wrong, you have a burden.

No, you’re misrepresenting him. What he actually said was that, “…there is a wealth of evidence to cast doubt on them…"

This is manifestly true – a data capture environment that wasn’t nearly as granular as it is now, accounts written long after the events they documented and taken only from oral traditions, the problem of distinguishing belief from fact, the risks of translation error and author bias, and so on. The only “burden” is to show that such rickety systems are inherently unreliable – something no-one questions. That’s why such stories fail the basic tests of historicity.

As for whether the Biblical Jesus story as we now have it (or them) is wrong, that’s unknowable – despite the paucity of credible evidence it/they still could be, but that’s not a good reason to think that they are.   

[Roses]

If you are saying something is or probably is wrong, you have a burden.

It is you who has the burden of not providing evidence for your statements.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - it is critique of the claim being made (by Spud), and this critique says nothing about the claim being shown to be "wrong", which would be a positive claim, but simply points out that the claimant has failed to establish a robust verification for their claim, which implies that they haven't successfully demonstrated that their claim is factually correct: possibly because, as pointed out, there seems to be no basis for the independent verification of the ancient genealogies that are the subject of this particular claim.

Therefore that this claim might be incorrect remains a risk - and it is for the claimant (Spud) to address this risk, and if he can't then he'd surely have to concede that if the precise details are now unknowable, from this distance in time, then the account he has to hand cannot be substantiated, hence the risk that his claim may be incorrect. He can, of course, choose to believe it on a personal basis but he has no grounds to claim that what he believes is factually correct.

You've always struggled to understand what the burden of proof entails.

No if you positively assert with an IS, you have a burden of proof.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It is you who has the burden of not providing evidence for your statements.

Several thousands hundreds dozens a handful the one or two individuals who actually read this forum are laughing at your post because of who wrote it.

[Gordon]

No if you positively assert with an IS, you have a burden of proof.

Not really - to say there are grounds that cast doubt on a claim is perfectly reasonable when the claimant mentions verification but offers none in support of their claim, where the absence of said verification by the claimant justifies that the critique that there are, therefore, reasonable doubts regarding the veracity of the claim (which is what Prof D said).

A critique of a claim on the basis that the claim is unsound as doesn't automatically, by default, become a separate claim - it is fair comment on a badly argued claim and the person doing the critiquing need do no more that just show a basis for disposing of the claim (such as by citing the absence of independent verification, as in this case, or show that the claim is fallacious).

You seem to have an aptitude for painting yourself into the nearest corner, Vlad.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not really - to say there are grounds that cast doubt on a claim is perfectly reasonable.

Only if there actually are grounds.

[ProfessorDavey]

Only if there actually are grounds.

Which in this case there are.

[Gordon]

Only if there actually are grounds.

There are: the obvious one being that Spud mentioned that these genealogies can be verified but he can't provide a robust and independent method for doing so - that is sufficient ground in itself to doubt his claim, without going anywhere near issues such as provenance.