TimONeill wrote:Monkey's Nephew wrote:TimONeill wrote:Understood. But the so-called "importance" of an ancient figure to someone today makes no difference to whether or not there is sufficient reason to accept they exist. There is sufficient evidence for historians to accept that Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet and several others exist.
You assert that historians accept these characters exist
ed; I have no idea whether this is actually true.
Okay, then let me help you - it is. If an ancient source talks about how such and such a person existed and did such and such a thing, we accept that they did
unless we have really good EVIDENCE that the source in question is lying or mistaken. We have no such evidence for Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet etc. Or for Jesus. If you want to present such evidence for any of them, now would be good. But it makes zero sense to assume that any of them didn't exist when we have attestation they did. Quite the opposite, actually.
Look - I'm not a historian, just a guy who knows a poor argument and poor evidence when he sees it. Accepting for the sake of argument your assertion that historians follow this convention of accepting hearsay until evidence appears that it's false, that doesn't make it any less hearsay. I mean, I can see why it's done, and I can sympathize somewhat - I mean, working with scant data is never easy, and it's useful to have a working hypothesis. However, when you start taking your working hypothesis and asserting it as
fact - well, that's where we part ways, I'm afraid. It's still just a hypothesis, based upon nothing but (very, very old) hearsay, and it's simply not enough for me, as a scientist, to accept that these characters actually existed.
Obviously, that's not to say that I assert they
didn't exist - that would be just as un-evidenced a claim. All it means is that I need more solid data before coming to a conclusion.
I don't much care, either. If the evidence for their existence is as scant as the evidence for Jesus, then personally I'm pretty happy to take the same stance with them as I am for Jesus, YHWH, or any other figure for whom evidence is, shall we say, sub-optimal.
That was nicely tricksey. See what you did there - you slipped in "YHWH" as though some ancient historian was saying he was a human figure in the same way they say Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet or Jesus was. Crafty, but bullshit. Yes, anyone making that claim about a god's existence would be suspect. But we are talking about people mentioning Jewish prophets, preachers and Messianic claimants. People like Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet and Jesus. Nice try, but there is no comparison between the mention of these unremarkable people and some god. Why is the evidence for Theudas, the Egyptian, the Samaritan Prophet and Jesus "sub-optimal"? Explain please. And be more careful this time.
Because it's hearsay. Nothing but writings dated way after their supposed existence.
Put it this way: say society collapses catastrophically tomorrow. Two thousand years from now, archaeologists uncover a large cache of (heavily degraded and fragmentary) Jane Austen novels. Without any further information, would they be justified in accepting the historicity of Mr Darcy?
Given that there is even better evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus existed, they accept the existence of him as well.
As far as I'm aware, some do and some don't. You seem to have a habit of asserting absolutes where none exist - I'd get that checked, if I were you.
I've been "checking" this stuff for 20+ years thanks. "Some do and some don't"? Really? And which professional scholars "don't" according to you? Check carefully before answering.
Well,
Wikipedia lists a few... doesn't bother me much one way or another.
Let's start with Theudas.
Let's not.
Why not?
Because as I said above, I'm not a historian. I wouldn't have the foggiest clue who Theudas was supposed to be.