Reply to McFall on Jesus as a Philosopher (2004)
Richard C. Carrier
Background: Last year (2003) Mark McFall reviewed a book by Douglas Groothius entitled On Jesus,
which among other things explores the question "Was Jesus a
Philosopher?" McFall then asked me to comment on that question, drawing
on my expertise in ancient history. So I obligingly wrote Some Godless Comments on McFall's Review of On Jesus,
which largely answered the question in the negative, though with an
important qualification. McFall then responded to my comments in A Look at Carrier’s Godless Comments in Review,
which seems to have largely misunderstood much of what I said, and
relies on several fallacies or errors of fact. The following essay
responds.
Introduction
On the central point, I will reiterate what I said
originally: that I do believe Jesus counts as a "philosopher" in an
informal sense, but not in the sense that McFall wants. McFall
(following Groothius) believes Jesus is such an important philosopher
that "professors in the humanities" should "rectify the omissions of
Jesus in the canon of philosophers." I disagreed, and stated why. In
response, McFall claims Jesus "qualifies" as a philosopher in this more
formal sense even on my own criteria, which McFall claims are this: that
including Jesus in the "canon" would constitute "familiarizing readers
with philosophical systems and elucidating those connections with known
and influential traditions." But that is not what I said: McFall has
omitted the most crucial words, and thus distorted my actual criteria.
This sort of "misunderstanding" seems to typify McFall's reply.
Likewise, contrary to his past practice with me, McFall has dropped his
gloves and is no longer even-handed in his treatment of the issue. In
his reply he often disparages my competence and accuses me repeatedly of
hypocrisy, so I will at times have to be quite stern in my responses,
and present copious primary evidence against him.
1. What Are My Criteria?
I wrote that "reference works on philosophy are concerned with familiarizing a modern reader with the philosophical systems of systematic thinkers, and elucidating their connection with known and influential traditions in philosophy."
I have put in italics what McFall strangely omitted from his bogus
quotation (or paraphrase, when he first presents it, but he puts
quotation marks around the exact same line in his conclusion, thus
giving the impression that he is repeating my actual words). First, it
should be clear that my criteria include that a candidate must be a
"systematic thinker" and that his thought must relate to "philosophy,"
which I specifically went on to explain means in the formal sense "the
study of the nature of all aspects of being through rigorous logic and
the analysis of language." I will allow the non-rigorous to count, but
we cannot abandon the role of explicit reasoning, logical or linguistic,
and still have philosophy left over. So a system of thought that does not
meet that criteria does not qualify as "philosophy" in the sense that
gets attention in "reference works on philosophy," and a thinker who is
not systematic does not qualify as a "philosopher" in that more formal
sense either. McFall's response completely fails to address how Jesus
satisfies either of these essential criteria, so he has failed to
respond to what I actually said.
2. Why Buddha?
McFall says "one can detect [philosophical]
influences in Jesus just as much as one can detect influences in, say,
Buddha from Hindu philosophy." First, I never disagreed with this
notion. In fact, I actually said "I see nothing wrong with trying to
identify the method of reasoning and the underlying worldview of a
thinker like the Gospel Jesus, as for any influential teacher in
history." And I gave basically the same analogy McFall does, only using
Reverend Moon instead of Buddha. So McFall evidently doesn't get the
point. Buddhism isn't normally taught in philosophy courses either. Nor
is "Hindu Philosophy," despite that being among the top five largest and
most influential religious ideologies in the world today, with hundreds
of millions of adherents. There is a distinct difference between
religion and what we formally define as philosophy. Though they certainly draw upon and influence each other, this does not make them the same thing.
Second, though Buddha and his belief system do get mention in good philosophical reference works, this is because Buddha (unlike Jesus) was a systematic thinker and did expound detailed doctrines on "the nature of all aspects of being" through the Indian tradition of logic and analysis.[1]
Buddha expounded on epistemology and metaphysics, not just ethics, and
organized a relatively complete system or "worldview" (see below). And
though there remain many problems of tracing just what really originated
with him, it is undeniable that he originated a fundamentally distinct
and novel philosophical system, whereas Jesus did not fundamentally
differ from numerous other Jewish thinkers of his day (as is more than
evident from the findings at Qumran and the countless parallels between
things Jesus said and things said by dozens of other rabbis in the
historical record).
On the other hand, Hindu Philosophy is not associated
with any thinker in philosophical reference works, for the very same
reason Jesus is excluded from them: no one knows who actually came up
with what in the Hindu thought system. In contrast, for example, Martin
Luther, Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Augustine do get mention in good philosophical reference works. In fact, they get substantially larger sections in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy than Buddha does. So it cannot be said that Christianity
is disregarded. McFall seems almost to confuse this later religious
system with Jesus. Christianity is not the issue, nor is Christian
theology or philosophy. The question is Jesus. We have to keep
our eye on the ball here. When it comes to my formal criteria, is Jesus
at all comparable to Augustine or Aquinas? Not even remotely. He doesn't
even come within a micrometer of his nearest Jewish contemporary,
Philo—who, incidentally, gets a mere two paragraphs in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, and I doubt Philo is ever even mentioned in standard philosophy courses.
3. Explicit Interaction?
McFall says that "the evidence is mounted against
Carrier in principle" regarding my claim that "Jesus did not explicitly
interact with existing philosophies." Let's look up "explicitly" in a
dictionary: it is the adverbial form of the adjective explicit: 1. fully and clearly expressed or demonstrated; leaving nothing implied. Now: is the evidence "mounted" against me here? Can McFall point to a single instance where Jesus names a philosopher or philosophical school of thought? Or where he is explicit in his engagement with the formal philosophical
debates raging around him? Or where he identifies a concept in the
established philosophical nomenclature or ideology of his time, analyzes
a defense or critique of this concept, and arrives at his own
conclusion through an application of logic or linguistic analysis? I am
pretty sure he can't. He certainly hasn't done so yet. McFall does not
seem to understand what I mean by the difference between a mere religion
or a rabbi, who certainly are influenced by philosophical ideas, and an
actual philosophy or philosopher.
4. Is This a Popularity Contest?
McFall then talks about what "average folk" expect,
not realizing apparently that this is irrelevant to what "professors in
the humanities" do or should expect. I agree with McFall that pop
culture has no interest in "articulated systematic ideas." Yet that is
what philosophy is by definition. That was my entire point, apparently entirely lost on McFall.
Pop culture has little to do with the academic
philosophical community. That is why I qualified my point: I began my
essay by conceding that Jesus was a philosopher in the popular,
"average Joe" sense, just not in the formal, academic sense. McFall
completely fails to grasp this distinction when he argues that
"widespread influence" and "ability to cause people to reflect" on
philosophical issues should be sufficient to qualify someone "on the
same level (per se) as many accepted canonical philosophers." But that
is to replace formal academic philosophy with pop culture. Deepak Chopra
and Mark Twain also have "widespread influence" and the "ability to
cause people to reflect" on philosophical issues, but they don't make
the cut either. Yet, unlike Jesus, at least they actually wrote things!
It seems that McFall wants canonical lists of major
philosophers to be nothing more than a popularity contest. But his
reasoning would have to admit Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Pat Robertson,
and, again, Reverend Moon to the canon—they, again, unlike Jesus,
actually wrote things, and things that contain far more on implicit and
often explicit philosophical subjects than what Jesus ever said (even
assuming we can actually figure out with any confidence what Jesus said
in the first place). So, in fact, these men are eminently more qualified than Jesus. But it seems obvious they don't belong on any such list, so a fortiori neither does Jesus.
5. No Metaphysical Commitments?
McFall attempts to promote Jesus by demoting
Socrates, in the process accusing me of professional incompetence, when
he argues that "Carrier seems unaware of the developing philosophizing
skills embedded in Plato’s recordings of his master." Strange. I wrote:
"no expert regards the thought of Socrates as reliably known precisely because
we only have it through the filter of others." Did McFall not read
those words, or the sentence following that one? He attacks me for not
knowing this, yet in fact I declared it explicitly! How's that for a
misunderstanding? But it only gets worse.
In particular, McFall says that "in Plato’s earliest dialog of Socrates (Apology),
the majority of scholars see a very simple philosopher who 'has no
interest' in 'metaphysics, epistemology, or ontology'." Maybe McFall is
being facetious, but did he ever notice that the Apology is not a work of philosophy?[2]
It is a legal speech, delivered at a trial, and is technically a
monologue, not a dialogue (though there is some exchange of discussion
with his accuser Meletus). In fact, this was a trial where it was in the
best interests of the accused (Socrates) to downplay the very
philosophical doctrines that so enraged his accusers.[3]
As one can see from reading both our sources for Socrates' defense
(Plato and Xenophon), his trial strategy was to argue that he was just
an average Joe teaching the same things everyone else does—conformity to
popular religion. Esoteric philosophical doctrine would only have
weakened that case. So it is folly to expect to find it there.
Even so, I had not claimed that Socrates did any more
than "address serious ethical problems and questions in [a] methodical
way." It is commonly agreed that Socrates was a kind of formal skeptic,
and advanced detailed logical arguments against the possibility of
establishing most forms of metaphysical knowledge.[4]
Pyrrhonism and Academicism, the two most prominent Skeptical schools in
antiquity, were both direct descendants of Socratic philosophy, tracing
their tradition to him through his disciples. Thus, though he had
little in the way of an explicit metaphysics, he had an explicit
epistemological reason for rejecting most metaphysics, placing him in
the company of the modern logical positivists, who are no less
philosophers despite rejecting an entire branch of philosophy—in fact,
two of the major three, since the positivists also did not accept ethics
as a philosophical subject either.
I think McFall, therefore, has misunderstood my
point. Was I asserting that a philosopher must expound on all the
branches of philosophy? No. Though a philosopher, to qualify as a
philosopher, must say why he rejects any branch of philosophy, and
should argue this in a systematic and logical way, that is all the
treatment any branch of philosophy needs to qualify as part of a
systematic philosophy. In that regard, Socrates qualifies. Jesus
doesn't.
We must also be careful to get the facts straight.
Though McFall is certainly correct that there is more of Plato in
Plato's Socrates than Socrates himself (though the very same problem
befalls the Gospels), and this may well have increased over time, McFall
seems ignorant of the fact that Plato is not our only source—despite
the fact that in my original essay I was very clear about this. Indeed,
we have one crucial source written in the very lifetime of Socrates
himself: The Clouds of Aristophanes, a play poking fun at
Socrates and his philosophy. We also have excerpts from Socrates' trial
defense from another author: namely, the Apology of Xenophon, who
also gives us his own accounts of Socrates' philosophical discourse,
and more excerpts from his defense, in the Symposium and Memorabilia (his Economics is also a Socratic dialogue, though arguably not a work of philosophy).
So what do we actually learn about Socrates' ideology from all these sources? (Which, again, I must emphasize far outstrip in scale and detail anything we have for the ideology of Jesus)
Even from Plato's Apology, which McFall seems
to think devoid of substantive philosophical positions, we find Socrates
declaring substantive philosophical positions:
Socrates: "Do [you think] I don't even believe that the sun or the moon are gods, as the rest of mankind do?"
Meletus: "No, by God! Look, Judges, he says that the sun is a stone and the moon earth!"
Socrates: "... [yes] the youth learn these doctrines from me, but they can buy books in the market" [that also teach them, and though I think such doctrines are ultimately absurd] "I believe in spiritual beings at any rate, according to your own statement, and you swore to that in your indictment. But if I believe in spiritual beings, it is quite inevitable that I believe also in spirits, right? ... But do we not agree that spirits are gods or children of gods?" (Plato, Apology 26d-e, 27c, cf. 35d).
Socrates: "Is not this the most reprehensible form of ignorance, that of thinking one knows what one does not know? Perhaps, gentlemen, in this matter also I differ from other men in this way, and if I were to say that I am wiser in anything, it would be in this, that not knowing very much about the other world, I do not think I know. But I do know that it is evil and disgraceful to do wrong and to disobey him who is better than I, whether he be god or man." (Plato, Apology 29b).
Socrates: "Perhaps someone might say, 'Socrates, can you not go away from us and live quietly, without talking?' Now this is the hardest thing to make some of you believe. For if I say that such conduct would be disobedience to the god [who speaks to me in my mind] and that therefore I cannot keep quiet, you will think I am jesting and will not believe me; and if again I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you will believe me still less." (Plato, Apology 37e-38a).
But still, Socrates' trial defense was crafted to avoid and downplay his actual teachings. From The Clouds
we see much poking fun at Socrates the nitpicker, but also at Socrates'
interest in natural philosophy, despite his denials at trial. Here is
just an excerpt:
Pupil: I'll tell you, then. But these are holy secrets. This morning Socrates asked Chaerephon how many of its own feet a flea can jump. A flea had bitten Chaerephon on the eyebrow and then jumped off and landed on Socrates' head.
Strepsiades: And how did he measure the jump?
Pupil: Most cleverly. He melted wax, then picking up the flea, he dipped both its little feet into the wax, which, when it cooled, made little Persian slippers. He took these off and was measuring the distance.
Strepsiades: Good God almighty, what subtlety of mind!
Pupil: That's nothing! Just wait till you hear another idea of Socrates'. Wanna?
Strepsiades: What? Please tell me!
Pupil: Our Chaerephon was asking his opinion on whether gnats produce their humming sound by blowing through the mouth or through the rump.
Strepsiades: So what did Socrates say about the gnat?
Pupil: He said the gnat has a very narrow gut, and, since the gut's so tiny, the air comes through quite violently on its way to the little rump; then, being an orifice attached to a narrow tube, the butthole makes a blast from the force of the air.
Strepsiades: So a gnat's butthole turns out to be a bugle! Thrice-blessed man, what enterology!
Pupil: But the other day he lost a great idea because of a lizard.
Strepsiades: Really? Please tell me how.
Pupil: He was studying the tracks of the lunar orbit and its revolutions, and as he gaped skyward, from the roof in darkness a lizard shat on him.
Strepsiades: Ha ha ha ha. A lizard taking a dump on Socrates!
All the above from lines 143-73. The text goes on, up
to line 220, to describe all the things being taught and studied in
Socrates' school, which included botany, astronomy, and geography.
Socrates himself is shown engaging in such studies after line 220. For
example, again comically exaggerated, poking fun at the obscurity and
seeming silliness of Socratic teachings (including metaphysical
doctrines):
Strepsiades: First tell me, pray, just what you're doing up there.
Socrates: I tread the air and contemplate the sun.
Strepsiades: You're spying on the gods from a wicker basket? Why can't you do that, if you must, down here?
Socrates: Never could I make correct celestial discoveries except by thus suspending my mind, and mixing my subtle head with the air it's kindred with. If down below I contemplate what's up, I'd never find aught; for the earth by natural force draws unto itself the quickening moisture of thought. The very same process is observable in lettuce.
The play concludes with an extended satire of the art
of rhetoric, but first goes on from the above into meteorological and
metaphysical discourses on clouds. That wouldn't be funny if it wasn't
the sort of thing Socrates did—not, that is, to claim that clouds are
the only true gods (as the play has him do), which is a parody of
Socratic teachings, but to reason from empirical facts to conclusions
about the nature of man and the world, which is truly Socratic. The
method itself is parodied at length in this play—even the lettuce
analogy above is an example of poking fun at the kind of analogies from
natural science Socrates was known for deploying (and that we see from
Xenophon he did deploy).
And so we get to our best source, Xenophon—best not
because he is unbiased or always reliable, but because he is not biased
in the way either Plato or Aristophanes were. Plato is biased by his
interest in founding and leading his own school of philosophy, and thus
articulating an ever-more-complete and systematized worldview, things
Xenophon had no interest in. Aristophanes, of course, is biased by his
very different aims as a comedian. Xenophon's only interest was in
restoring Socrates' good name. (I go into the reliability of these
sources in Section 8 below.)
From Xenophon it is clear that Socrates debated heavy
philosophical issues ranging across all subjects with the major
thinkers of his own day, not just issues of practical ethics and
lifestyle, and that he engaged in dialectical reasoning and linguistic
analysis to arrive at his conclusions. We can see many things that we
find in the Dialogues of Plato confirmed in Xenophon. But let's see some
examples of what Xenophon tells us Socrates' "metaphysical" or
"theoretical" commitments were, just from the Memorabilia alone:
The problems he discussed were these: What is godly, what is ungodly; what is beautiful, what is ugly; what is just, what is unjust; what is prudence, what is madness; what is courage, what is cowardice; what is a state, what is a statesman; what is government, and what is a governor; —these and others like them, of which the knowledge made a "gentleman," in his estimation, while ignorance should involve the reproach of "slavishness." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.16)
He believed that the gods are heedful of mankind, but ... whereas [other Athenians] do not believe in the omniscience of the gods, Socrates thought that they know all things, our words and deeds and secret purposes; that they are present everywhere, and grant signs to men of all that concerns man. (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.19; Socrates also advanced a detailed Argument from Design for the existence, wisdom, benevolence, and greatness of God: ibid. 1.4)
Socrates: "You think, do you, that good is one thing and beautiful another? Don't you know that all things are both beautiful and good in relation to the same things? In the first place, Virtue is not a good thing in relation to some things and a beautiful thing in relation to others. Men, again, are called 'beautiful and good' in the same respect and in relation to the same things: it is in relation to the same things that men's bodies look beautiful and good and that all other things men use are thought beautiful and good, namely, in relation to those things for which they are useful....For what is good for hunger is often bad for fever, and what is good for fever bad for hunger; what is beautiful for running is often ugly for wrestling, and what is beautiful for wrestling ugly for running. For all things are good and beautiful in relation to those purposes for which they are well adapted, bad and ugly in relation to those for which they are ill adapted " (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.8.5, 7)
When asked again whether Courage could be taught or came by nature, Socrates replied: "I think that just as one man's body is naturally stronger than another's for labour, so one man's soul is naturally braver than another's in danger. For I notice that men brought up under the same laws and customs differ widely in daring. Nevertheless, I think that every man's nature acquires more courage by learning and practice....And similarly in all other points, I find that human beings naturally differ one from another but greatly improve by application. Hence it is clear that all men, whatever their natural gifts, the talented and the dullards alike, must learn and practise what they want to excel in." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.9.1-3)
Between Wisdom and Prudence he drew no distinction....He said that Justice and every other form of Virtue is Wisdom....Madness, again, according to him, was the opposite of Wisdom. Nevertheless he did not identify Ignorance with Madness; but not to know yourself, and to assume and think that you know what you do not, he put next to Madness....Considering the nature of Envy, he found it to be a kind of pain....[and] "Only a fool," he said, "can think it possible to distinguish between things useful and things harmful without learning." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.9.4-8, 4.1.1; I am omitting Xenophon's summaries of his argument or elaboration on each position statement—but even with that, Xenophon only composed a summary of the doctrines Socrates taught and not a detailed record of all his arguments and methods)
When someone asked him what seemed to him the best pursuit for a man, he answered: "Doing well." Questioned further, whether he thought good luck a pursuit, he said: "On the contrary, I think luck and doing are opposite poles. To hit on something right by luck without search I call good luck, to do something well after study and practice I call doing well; and those who pursue this seem to me to do well." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.9.14)
"[I]nstead of waiting for the gods to appear to you in bodily presence, [we] are content to praise and worship them because [we] see their works. Notice that the gods themselves give the reason for doing so; for when they bestow on us their good gifts, not one of them ever appears before us gift in hand; and especially he who coordinates and holds together the universe, wherein all things are fair and good, and presents them ever unimpaired and sound and ageless for our use, and quicker than thought to serve us unerringly, is manifest in his supreme works, and yet is unseen by us in the ordering of them. Notice that even the sun, who seems to reveal himself to all, permits not man to behold him closely, but if any attempts to gaze recklessly upon him, blinds their eyes. And the gods' ministers too you will find to be invisible. That the thunderbolt is hurled from heaven, and that he overwhelms all on whom he falls, is evident, but he is seen neither coming nor striking nor going. And the winds are themselves invisible, yet their deeds are manifest to us, and we perceive their approach. Moreover, the soul of man, which more than all else that is human partakes of the divine, reigns manifestly within us, and yet is itself unseen. For these reasons it behoves us not to despise the things that are unseen, but, realising their power in their manifestations, to honour the godhead." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.3.13-14)
For another example of Socratic reasoning on
metaphysical questions, compare the following quote from Socrates—the
kind of thinking it represents, both its mode and its subject—with the
sorts of discussions we hear from Jesus:
"For that sage, in declaring the sun to be fire, ignored the facts that men can look at fire without inconvenience, but cannot gaze steadily at the sun; that their skin is blackened by the sun's rays, but not by fire. Further, he ignored the fact that sunlight is essential to the health of all vegetation, whereas if anything is heated by fire it withers. Again, when he pronounced the sun to be a red-hot stone, he ignored the fact that a stone in fire neither glows nor can resist it long, whereas the sun shines with unequalled brilliance for ever." (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.7.7)
That sure sounds like a philosopher—in exactly those
respects that Jesus does not. Jesus shows no interest in these kinds of
questions (what the sun is made of, etc.) or this kind of logical
argument (inferring from a list of empirical facts that one object is
probably not made of the same material as another). Likewise, consider
the sort of epistemological humility, explicit metaphysical content, and
philosophical reasoning characterized in the following passage from
Plato, which is again uncommon to Jesus:
For the state of death is one of two things: either it is virtually nothingness, so that the dead has no consciousness of anything, or it is, as people say, a change and migration of the soul from this to another place. And if it is unconsciousness, like a sleep in which the sleeper does not even dream, death would be a wonderful gain. So if such is the nature of death, I count it a gain; for in that case, all time seems to be no longer than one night. But on the other hand, if death is, as it were, a change of habitation from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be, Judges? For if a man when he reaches the other world, after leaving behind these who only claim to be judges, shall find those who really are judges ... would the change of habitation be undesirable? Or again, what would any of you give to meet with [the great men of the past]? I am willing to die many times over, if these things are true; for I personally should find the life there wonderful ... And the greatest pleasure would be to pass my time in examining and investigating the people there, as I do those here, to find out who among them is wise and who thinks he is when he is not. ... To converse and associate with them and examine them would be immeasurable happiness. At any rate, the folk there do not kill people for it; since, if what we are told is true, they are immortal for all future time, besides being happier in other respects than men are here. (Plato, Apology 40c-41b)
Does any of this sound like someone who "has no
metaphysical (perhaps even theoretical) commitments" as McFall
credulously claims? I think that assertion is soundly refuted by the actual evidence.
Moreover, does anything above so much as resemble the sort of discourse
we get from Jesus? Obviously not. They are worlds apart in content and
method. And lest McFall misunderstand me again, my point is not that
anyone who has "metaphysical commitments" is a philosopher—that is very
definitely what I am not saying. Rather, a philosopher is someone
who systematically argues for or against those commitments, through
logic and analysis—the professional discourse of philosophy—and not
merely through popular parables and common sense persuasion, for in the
latter category fall thousands and thousands of people throughout
history, famous and unknown, who only count as "philosophers" in the
popular, not formal sense (again, a distinction that was the entire
point of my essay).
In the end, McFall's own argument here would at best
entail cutting Socrates from the list, not adding Jesus. But to get to
even that farcical conclusion, McFall wants us to think that the Apology
of Plato contains the extent of Socrates' system of philosophy, and
everything else is just Plato making stuff up (which, if such reasoning
is sound, condemns everything we know about Jesus just as surely). But
the Apology is not a work of philosophy, and by nature entailed
avoiding the very philosophical discussions McFall expects to find
there. Yet we have so much more than that, not just from Plato, but
Aristophanes and Xenophon as well, not to mention other sources (like
Aristotle), exactly as I already explained in my original essay. And,
unlike for Jesus, we have all that from well-known and confirmed
first-hand witnesses. As I have shown, even excluding Plato altogether,
it is beyond any doubt that Socrates discussed every branch of
philosophy and deployed philosophical reasoning, using logic and
analysis, and engaged the major philosophers of his day explicitly.[5] All very much unlike Jesus. So there is no double standard here.
Hence my point in my original essay: while Jesus did
what rabbis do, and just pronounced positions, occasionally also giving
reasons, Socrates did what philosophers do and asked what the nature
of things was—a question that never seems to have troubled Jesus, at
least not explicitly and certainly never centrally, yet this is by
definition the central concern of a real philosopher. For example,
Xenophon tells us that "Socrates held that those who know what any given
thing is can also expound it to others" but "those who do not know are
misled themselves and mislead others" and "for this reason Socrates
never gave up considering with his companions what any given thing is"
(Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.6.1). In fact, Socrates often discussed
"names and the actions to which they are properly applied" and once
asked, for example, "Can we say, my friends, what is the nature of the
action for which a man is called greedy?" (ibid. 3.14.2) We definitely
have a philosopher here. In contrast, Jesus rarely engaged in this kind
of discussion, as far as we can tell, and he certainly never made it a
central aspect of his way of seeking and teaching wisdom. He thus was
not a philosopher in the formal sense, even if he was in some popular
sense.
6. Buddha's Epistemology?
McFall quotes me when I say that Jesus "says very little on the subject of what knowledge is or how one discerns true knowledge from false," which is the defining feature of epistemology
as a fundamental branch of philosophy, but he then declares that
"Buddha is far worse off" because he "rejected any knowledge that wasn’t
associated with his paths of salvation." McFall doesn't seem to
understand that his evidence actually works against his own point: it is
precisely because Buddha had a lot to say on the nature and limits of
knowledge that he gets classed with philosophers. My point was exactly
that: Jesus had apparently almost nothing to say on this subject (indeed I am being generous: I am not actually aware of him saying anything on this subject, at least not explicitly, but I could perhaps have overlooked some obscure passage).
McFall is apparently confusing a genuine
epistemological position that entails a variety of formal skepticism,
and not having an articulated epistemology of any sort. These are very
different situations—and the difference is exactly what distinguishes
philosophers from other popular ideologues.
McFall is fond of quoting the brief remarks of
scholars. But that won't do. As we have done already, to understand, you
have to go and look at the primary sources. So I have excerpted here a
long section from one of the foundational texts of Buddhism (the Potthapada Sutta).
Contrast the detail with which philosophical questions are raised and
discussed here, with how this sort of discussion never happens in the
Gospels. We have no passage there even remotely comparable to this one.
There is no Jesus comparable to this Buddha in the official record, and
yet this is what real philosophy looks like:
Potthapada: "Now, lord, does perception arise first, and knowledge after; or does knowledge arise first, and perception after; or do perception and knowledge arise simultaneously?"
Buddha: "Potthapada, perception arises first, and knowledge after. And the arising of knowledge comes from the arising of perception. One discerns, 'It's in dependence on this that my knowledge has arisen'. Through this line of reasoning one can realize how perception arises first, and knowledge after, and how the arising of knowledge comes from the arising of perception."
Potthapada: "Now, lord, is perception a person's self, or is perception one thing and self another?"
Buddha: "What self do you posit, Potthapada?"
Potthapada: "I posit a gross self, possessed of form, made up of the four great existents [earth, water, fire, and wind], feeding on physical food."
Buddha: "Then, Potthapada, your self would be gross, possessed of form, made up of the four great existents, feeding on physical food. That being the case, then for you perception would be one thing and self another. And it's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another: even as there remains this gross self—possessed of form, made up of the four great existents, and feeding on food—one perception arises for that person as another perception passes away. It's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another."
Potthapada: "Then, lord, I posit a mind-made self complete in all its parts, not inferior in its faculties."
Buddha: "Then, Potthapada, your self would be mind-made, complete in all its parts, not inferior in its faculties. That being the case, then for you perception would be one thing and self another. And it's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another: even as there remains this mind-made self—complete in all its parts, not inferior in its faculties—one perception arises for that person as another perception passes away. It's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another."
Potthapada: "Then, lord, I posit a formless self made of perception."
Buddha: "Then, Potthapada, your self would be formless and made of perception. That being the case, then for you perception would be one thing and self another. And it's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another: even as there remains this formless self made of perception, one perception arises for that person as another perception passes away. It's through this line of reasoning that one can realize how perception will be one thing and self another."
Potthapada: "Is it possible for me to know, lord, whether perception is a person's self or if perception is one thing and self another?"
Buddha: "Potthapada—having other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers—it's hard for you to know whether perception is a person's self or if perception is one thing and self another."
Potthapada: "Well then, lord, if—having other views, other practices, other satisfactions, other aims, other teachers—it's hard for me to know whether perception is a person's self or if perception is one thing and self another, then is it the case that the cosmos is eternal, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless?"
Buddha: "Potthapada, I haven't expounded that the cosmos is eternal, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless."
Potthapada: "Then is it the case that the cosmos is not eternal, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless?"
Buddha: "Potthapada, I haven't expounded that the cosmos is not eternal, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless."
Potthapada: "Then is it the case that the cosmos is finite... [or that] the cosmos is infinite... [that] the soul and the body are the same... [or that] the soul is one thing and the body another... [that] after death a Tathagata exists... [or that] after death a Tathagata does not exist... [or that] after death a Tathagata both exists and does not exist... [or that] after death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless?"
Buddha: "Potthapada, I haven't expounded that after death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist, that only this is true and anything otherwise is worthless."
Potthapada: "But why hasn't the Blessed One expounded these things?"
Buddha: "Because they are not conducive to the goal, are not conducive to the Dhamma, are not basic to the holy life. They don't lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. That's why I haven't expounded them."
Potthapada: "And what has the Blessed One expounded?"
Buddha: "I have expounded that, 'This is stress'... 'This is the origination of stress'... 'This is the cessation of stress'... 'This is the path of practice leading to the cessation of stress.'
Potthapada: "And why has the Blessed One expounded these things?"
Buddha: "Because they are conducive to the goal, conducive to the Dhamma, and basic to the holy life. They lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to direct knowledge, to self-awakening, to Unbinding. That's why I have expounded them."
Pay close attention to what is philosophical
about the Buddha's discourse here: first, he declares a position on
several metaphysical questions (that it is a position of radical
skepticism does not change the fact, the only relevant fact here, that a
position is declared, articulated, and defended); second, he expounds
several points about the ethics and nature of perception, knowledge, and
belief-formation, and explicitly ties his epistemological-metaphysical
position (which is essentially a form of what is today called radical
constructivism) to his underlying soteriology. In contrast, Jesus has
nothing substantial to say about these things, nor does his discourse
ever procede like this—that is, following a train of thought with an
interlocutor over several steps of reasoning, involving known and
heavily-debated philosophical problems of that day, to arrive at the
exposition and elucidation of a philosophical concept.
7. Equivalent Consensus?
I agree with McFall's argument that for Socrates "as
with Gospel-reports [of Jesus], there are scholarly consensuses
regarding what is authentic, what is not, and what is debatable" in
respect to the ideology they taught. I think McFall was wise to use the
plural: consensuses. For there is no single consensus. However, Socratic
studies is on much better footing than the study of Jesus. Though every
scholar would probably disagree regarding the totality of what Socrates
thought and taught, all would agree upon a certain core set of
philosophical doctrines and methods. For Jesus, this is not so. Though
there is perhaps agreement on a very small set of things Jesus probably
said or taught, the sayings in that set are themselves very ambiguous,
open to multiple (even sometimes contradictory) interpretations, and
contain nothing that qualifies as "philosophy" in the formal sense, any
more than the exact same kinds of things found in countless authors from
Aulus Gellius to Mark Twain, none of whom make any formal list of
philosophers either.
8. Are the Sources Discredited?
On McFall's tendentious attempt to dismiss the
sources for Socratic thought, we have already seen from the sources
themselves that he is overplaying his hand. First, no scholar that I am
aware of believes that the dialogues of Plato after the Apology are devoid
of genuine facts about the ideology of Socrates. McFall wants to
pretend that we can discard everything Plato says. That is not so.
Despite Plato's reworking, there is far more of Socrates in the Platonic
corpus than of Jesus in the Gospels, certainly far more with regard to
formal philosophical discourse. Any argument that discredits Plato as a
source operates a fortiori against the Gospels, and thus one must concede that we still know much less about the philosophy of Jesus than about that of Socrates, for exactly the same reasons.
Second, McFall seems to miss the point of comedy: it is precisely because
Aristophanes is poking fun at Socratic teachings that his work is so
valuable, as well as the fact that it was written and performed in
Socrates' presence and thus is far more reliable a source than anything
we have for Jesus. If we had a comic satirizing Jesus in his own
lifetime, we would know far more about his teachings than we do now.
Sure, we must read it as tongue-in-cheek, and as comic exaggeration, and
so forth, but the jokes have to be funny, and jokes are only funny when
they connect with some fundamental—and peculiar—truth about their
subject.
As for Aristotle, McFall says: "what I find amusing
is Carrier’s uncritical willingness to bend in the direction of
'first-hand' information here," i.e. in my mention of Aristotle as a
source, "when he so adamantly opposes the idea of similar circumstances
embedded in Gospel-reports." He doesn't seem to get my point. First,
what I actually wrote is (italics now added): "...(to a lesser extent) Aristotle. We know ... these men ... all knew Socrates (except Aristotle, who arrived in Athens a few years after his death, but he engaged with his disciples
on a first-hand basis)." Thus, neither was my mention of Aristotle
uncritical, nor do I "adamantly oppose" second-hand evidence. In fact, I
explicitly accept certain kinds of the latter in the very next
sentence: "We also know for a fact that several other eye-witness
accounts were written (such as by Ion the Comic and Aeschines the
Socratic) which were cited by later philosophers and biographers, and
thus second-hand sources on Socrates are more trustworthy than any we
have on Jesus."
McFall seems to think I discard all second-hand
witness in history. That is never what I said or meant, and in fact, as
you can see above, I explicitly denied it. If Paul, for example, had
recorded any definite philosophical discourse of Jesus, I would regard
that as far more reliable than most of what we find in the Gospels—all
the more so if Paul told us his source of information for any given
quotation, and that source was an eye-witness (like Peter). But Paul
never really gives us any such data. The few examples that might be
quotations are ambiguous at best, both to actual origin and source, and
have no formal philosophical content anyway. Indeed, Paul has much of
his knowledge of Jesus from divine revelation (as he explicitly admits
at several points in 1 Corinthians, for example), which is far more
dubious than anything we can claim for Aristotle's knowledge of
Socrates.
Aristotle was a renowned and careful scholar, who actually originated
the method of documentary history (he collected constitutions from city
states all over the Greek world and published them in an anthology—now
lost). We also know who he was and when and where he wrote, and we know
he not only had access to the eye-witnesses but endeavored to interact
with them directly. And we have no reason to believe he had any great
ideological agenda to distort what Socrates said. Can any of this be
said of the Gospel authors? No. Thus, a fortiori, what we have of
Socrates in Aristotle is more reliable than what we have of Jesus in
the Gospels. Aristotle has at least six marks in his favor as a witness,
all of which are lacking (or diminished) in the case of the Gospels.
Finally, I am not sure where McFall gets the idea
that Xenophon only wrote his Socratic works after his (unofficial) exile
(what—was there no ink in Sparta?), or why this would discredit him as a
source even if we actually knew it to be true (which we don't). As I
noted above, he did not possess the ideological agenda of Plato, but a
very different one: to restore the good name of a great man he personally knew. And I am not aware of any evidence that he "borrowed" from Plato in any way, as McFall alleges.[6]
Nor am I aware of any evidence that he wrote "thirty years" after the
death of Socrates, or even ten years after, or even two. We don't know
the precise dates of either Plato's or Xenophon's writings on Socrates.
But we do know they both knew the man personally, and that they had very
different agendas. Compare this with the Gospels: Do we have a Xenophon
for Jesus? A man who knew him personally and composed his own record of
his teachings? No. Yet for Socrates we have not one, but two
such men. So McFall's attempt to pretend that Jesus and Socrates are on
the same footing as far as sources go is simply absurd on its face.
9. What Eye-Witnesses?
McFall says "let’s not forget" that the anonymous
Gospels "contain embedded eyewitness material"—but do they? Which
witnesses? Can McFall name any? Worse, can he really present any
evidence that any saying of Jesus came from any particular witness, whom
we know existed and whom we know the author knew and spoke with? We can
answer all these questions for the sources of what Socrates said. We
can answer none of them for Jesus. So who is being specious and
credulous in his reasoning here?
Likewise, McFall says "still living witnesses could
have declared inaccuracies publicly, but apparently did not," and he
rightly points out that I endorse this reasoning. But the reasoning
requires the premise to be true. Is it? Were any eye-witnesses alive
when the Gospels were written? Who? Can McFall name anyone? Can he
present any evidence that they were still alive then? In contrast, we can answer both
for the writings on Socrates. Indeed, we can do even better:
Aristophanes' comedy was performed in the very presence of Socrates
himself. So no one can deny the source situation is better for Socrates.
McFall concedes that the Gospels were probably
written between forty and sixty years after Jesus died. Assuming
eye-witnesses were at least ten years old at his death, that means they
would have to be at least 50 to 70 years old when the Gospels were
written. But the average life expectancy of a ten-year-old in antiquity
was 44 years. We have reason to believe that only 4% of the population
at any given time was over 50 years old; over age 70, less than 2%.[7] And that is under normal circumstances. But the Gospels were written after two very devastating abnormal
events: the Jewish War and the Neronian Persecution, both of which
would have, combined, greatly reduced the life expectancy of exactly
those people who were eye-witnesses to the teachings of Jesus. And it
just so happens that these sorts of people are curiously missing from
the historical record precisely when the Gospels began to be circulated:
not a single eye-witness is on record endorsing any of the Gospels, or
correcting any of the evident contradictions between them (such as when
Jesus was born or whether angels struck down guards at the tomb or
whether Jesus was killed on Passover or the day before, and so on). The
latter is especially a problem for McFall: if it were true that
falsehoods would be denounced by witnesses in the extant record, since
there are many apparent falsehoods in the Gospels, discrepancies that
cannot be easily reconciled, we should expect eye-witness testimony in
the record either correcting or reconciling these discrepancies. But
there is none. Why? Most probably because there were no witnesses still
living.
How, then, can McFall claim Jesus and Socrates stand
on the same footing as far as sources go? Such a claim is utterly
unsustainable.
10. What about the Oxyrhynchus Historian?
McFall then raises the issue of the famous
"Oxyrhynchus Historian" (OH). Several wild claims of his need serious
correction. First, there is an enormous and fundamentally important distinction between a text written by someone who consciously refused
to state their name or name their sources, and a fragment that is
anonymous only because the section with the author's name has been torn
away. McFall seems oblivious to this distinction or its significance to
the present issue. I have never even claimed that, in McFall's words, "just because the Gospel-reports themselves are anonymous" (italics mine) "they should be viewed with contempt." Deliberate anonymity is
a strike against them, yes, but only one among many, and it is the fact
that there are many that is the problem. In contrast, deliberate
anonymity is not a strike against OH, since his anonymity is not
deliberate, and he has many points in his favor that do not hold true
for the Gospels (see below).
Second, the claim that the Oxyrhynchus Historian is
held by scholars to be "far superior to Xenophon’s research on the same
historical events in the Greek world (from 411 to 362 BC)" is a
misleading exaggeration. For one thing, the two surviving fragments of
OH each discuss only one single year: (397/396 and 407/406 B.C.).
Secondly, Xenophon and OH actually confirm each other on general
points more often than not. Thirdly, the major difference is simply that
the OH is much more detailed than Xenophon, and not so much that it
proves Xenophon "wrong" (which it rarely does, as we shall see).
Fourthly, the actual discrepancies that do exist are mostly either those which cannot be resolved (we do not know which author is correct) or for which we already
had evidence challenging Xenophon (for example, major sections of the
OH's work had already long been known, from having been used as a source
by Diodorus), or in which the conclusion has been the reverse (i.e. Xenophon's account is sometimes preferred to that of OH).[8]
Finally, there is a big difference between an author doing "superior...research"
and reliably reporting what one knows—a difference that destroys
McFall's conclusion, which is that Xenophon is so full of "inaccuracies"
and "fictions" that he must be regarded as unreliable, a claim that is
in fact not supported by OH, nor indeed any actual evidence.
There are inaccuracies and fictions in all ancient histories, and
Xenophon is not substantially worse on that score than, say, Herodotus,
Josephus or Tacitus (or OH for that matter). Even the most ardent critic
(G. L. Cawkwell) admits that the OH was writing history, but Xenophon
was writing a memoir, and thus the two works differ fundamentally in
genre and method; and that, as a result, the most appreciable difference
between them in merit as historical sources is simply that OH gives far
more detail, not that Xenophon gets everything wrong (or is full
of "inaccuracies" or "fictions"), since the evidence does not sustain
the latter conclusion.
Thus, it is not the case that historians simply regard an "unknown" author to be inherently
superior to a known one, yet that is what McFall is trying to argue.
Instead, the very reasons that historians trust OH over Xenophon, when
they do (and it is true they often do, and rightly so), are reasons not
applicable to the Gospel reports of the sayings of Jesus. So not only
has McFall committed a fallacy of hyperbole, but of false analogy as
well. This latter point is particularly important here: the OH is
preferred to Xenophon only for reasons that do not hold for the
Gospels, and therefore no analogy whatsoever can be drawn between the
reception of OH and reception of the Gospels as historical sources.
Those reasons are: (1) extraordinary detail regarding names and dates
and places and exactly who was where and when; (2) very reliable and
precise knowledge of the relevant geography; and (3) tells stories in
such detail that the events involved make a great deal of sense (i.e. we
understand clearly the motives and reasons for the actors involved,
showing a great concern for identifying the causes of historical events,
both on the surface and in the background, and in regard to both the
immediate and the long-term). In contrast, the Gospels are notorious for
being relatively vague and ambiguous—even Luke, the only author to
really include what we mean by historical details.
Xenophon's Hellenica falls inbetween the
Gospels and the OH on these three criteria: his account is brief and
generalized, as are many of his geographical and chronological
references (though he only rarely makes an explicit mistake), and he
leaves enough details out of his account that we often don't completely
understand why certain events happened. However, this is readily
explained: Xenophon wrote a short book (thus we should not expect
anywhere near the detail included in the monumental multi-volume tome we
know the OH to have written) and only wrote what he knew or could find
out from eye-witnesses (and therefore most of the details he omits are
omitted simply because he didn't know them). To this we must add that
Xenophon was obviously partial to making the Spartans, and his good
friend king Agesilaus in particular, look good (this we have always
known about Xenophon), and some of his informants had similar biases
(for example, his Persian information often comes from Persian officials
who made sure their accounts made their own actions and those of
their family members look good—again, something we have always known).
It is agreed that OH has such biases as well (for example, OH's accounts
are notoriously biased toward the wealthy, and toward recording—perhaps
even to the point of inventing—clever stratagems). But again, this is a
fact even more true of the Gospels. After all, Xenophon was not using
his speeches of Agesilaus (much less Socrates) to support a
later-evolved religious dogma against several other sects who claimed he
supported different views, or attempting to preach salvation, or
encourage martyrdom, or distance him from his own countrymen, and so on.
And unlike OH's account of Greek history, Xenophon's record of Socratic
teachings is taken first-hand.
I suspect McFall is getting his disdain of Xenophon
either directly or indirectly from G. L. Cawkwell's bitter introduction
to Rex Warner's translation of the Hellenica (A History of My Times, 1966). At any rate, Cawkwell's Introduction
is available online. But consider the sorts of things Cawkwell
unreasonably regards as "destroying" the reliability of Xenophon. What
Cawkwell calls the "major" proof is the simple fact that Xenophon
doesn't record a particular battle—one that embarassed his friend
Agesilaus. But exactly that sort of friendly omission can probably be
found in every historical text of antiquity.[9]
Thus, by Cawkwell's reasoning, all ancient histories are as unreliable
as Xenophon's, which must necessarily include the Gospels—whose mutual
omissions of vital episodes and sayings is legendary, and far more
troublesome than Xenophon's. I would not be surprised if Xenophon
"omitted" embarrassing details about Socrates, too—and probably improved
the picture as well (as historians have long known he did for
Agesilaus). But that has no bearing on the fundamental point that,
despite all this (which I acknowledged even from the start), we still
know much more, and that more securely, about the thought of Socrates
than we do of Jesus.
Indeed, the main and pervasive gripe Cawkwell has
against Xenophon was his reliance on his own eye-witness recollections
and personal contacts with eye-witnesses, rather than written sources.[10]
Strangely, McFall would have to take exactly the opposite position to
Cawkwell's, since McFall believes solely eye-witness reports are
inherently superior to those which rely on other writings,
whereas Cawkwell believes very strongly in the reverse. Since Cawkwell's
belief that Xenophon is unreliable is based on a fact that Mcfall
regards as improving the reliability of a source, it is very
strange that McFall would discredit Xenophon for doing the very thing he
praises the Gospels for!
But Cawkwell also believes that the last part of the Hellenica
was probably not an eye-witness recollection but "experienced by
hearsay," for example Xenophon's "intimacy with Agesilaus enabled him to
meet Agesilaus' friends" (p. 24) and thus use them as sources. Okay.
Relying on the eye-witness and personal first-hand reports of a king of
the very nation Xenophon is writing about, and his ranking friends (who
included major generals and ministers). That sounds like a pretty
reliable source pool, don't you think? Yes, there will be propaganda and
other distortions, but this is so for all histories of the time
(including the Gospels). So Cawkwell goes beyond reason when he
concludes that Xenophon is a lousy historian because he trusted
eye-witnesses clearly in positions to know, over written records by
other historians. Now, Cawkwell's polemic is excessive and not very
credible, but even if he is correct in his reasoning, that very same
reasoning destroys the Gospels a fortiori. So either McFall must
concede that his own attack on Xenophon is excessive and largely
groundless, or that the very same attack is equally fatal to the
testimony he most wants to defend: that of the Gospels. He can't have
his cake and eat it, too.
The same goes for Cawkwell's third objection to
Xenophon: the belief that some of what Xenophon didn't see himself he
took from popular rumor and conversation. First, this objection can
carry no weight regarding Xenophon's testimony to the teachings of
Socrates, which is primarily based on his eye-witness, and not hearsay.
Second, this objection is no less damning to the Gospels than to
Xenophon, since Cawkwell merely conjectures that hearsay is Xenophon's
source because he names no other (though in actual fact he does imply in
Hellenica 7.2.1 that he read other written histories—and thus
what Cawkwell takes as sloppy reliance on hearsay could just as easily
be sloppy reliance on the very written records Cawkwell holds in such
esteem, which are almost all completely lost). But the exact same
reasoning would also lead just as securely (or unsecurely) to the
conclusion that the Gospels, by naming no source, also rely on hearsay,
and thus are as bad and unreliable as Cawkwell's Xenophon. Again, by
maintaining his destruction of Xenophon as a source, McFall burns the
Gospels along with it. That does not help his case one bit.
Ultimately, I never claimed that Xenophon (or anyone)
was some sort of flawless source, only that he has been and still is
"notably reliable" (i.e. relative to his ancient peers). McFall, like
apparently many believers, seems uncomfortable with ambiguity.
Everything must be absolutely black and white for him. Either we toss
everything out, or trust everything. Though he makes many explicit
qualifications that apparently deny such an approach, in actual practice
many of his arguments assume it. For example, he claims that we can
only trust the Apology of Plato because everything else is
(supposedly) hopelessly tainted. There is no grey area in his reasoning
here. Why? And why does this radical skepticism suddenly disappear when
he approaches the Gospels? Why are they any different?
Likewise, McFall's black-and-white mind leads him to
the equally absurd conclusions that Xenophon is to be tossed out as an
unreliable liar and mere "story teller" simply because he gets some
facts wrong (as every historian of antiquity did, including OH),
while the Gospels "embed" eyewitness testimony and despite all their
discrepancies, deliberate anonymity, bias, rhetorical and dogmatic
agendas, lack of critical procedure, and silence as to actual sources or
date or place of composition, are to be trusted in essentials.[11] Thus he turns one source (the Gospels) that is obviously worse than another (Xenophon's Hellenica) into a better
one, by playing a double standard: everything bad about a bad history
is good for the Gospels but not for Xenophon, and everything that is
typical for all historical texts is bad for Xenophon, but not the
Gospels. Up is down, and sideways is straight ahead.
Never mind that this has nothing to do with the issue: the Hellenica
does not mention the teachings of Socrates. Thus, even if it were
something we should toss out, that has absolutely no bearing on whether Xenophon's proven eye-witness testimony to the teachings of Socrates is to be disgarded. The fact remains: Xenophon is a much more secure source for Socrates, than the Gospels are for Jesus.
11. What Does "Privy" Mean?
I pointed out, as only one among many problems
with the Gospels as a historical source, that they "mention events no
one could ever have been privy to." I merely gave as one example
that "the end of Matthew in particular relates secret meetings no
Christian sympathizer would have been present to hear." McFall seems to
think I was objecting to hearsay or second-hand witness (as evidently he
wrongly thought above, too). That wasn't my point at all, though I see
now the example I gave was misleading. There is nothing fatally wrong
with reporting second-hand testimony—its reliability is diminished in
relation to first-hand testimony, but not destroyed. My point was not
that the Christians had some stories several sources removed, but that
they record details they could not possibly know about at all (or at least, such knowledge is extraordinarily improbable).
Even so, that alone would not be fatal (except to
those stories), if we had several positive characteristics that offset
the effect of the negative. But the Gospels have few if any of the
positive characteristics of a source like Xenophon. This was, after all,
the original point of my comparison: however much you might quibble
over details or degrees, it remains incontrovertible that Xenophon comes
off, in relative terms, much more trustworthy than the Gospels. That
point remains unchallenged by any evidence McFall presents.
For example, McFall reports that Xenophon also
reported events he wasn't present at. I can't believe McFall ever
thought I was claiming otherwise. Rather, Xenophon was still privy to those events through witnesses who were
there—witnesses whose names we know, because Xenophon names them
(unlike the case in the Gospels, where we do not know the names of any
witnesses used for any particular thing Jesus is claimed to have said or
taught). And Xenophon could further verify these things from his own
eye-witness experience of Socrates and what he taught and how he taught,
and what sorts of things he taught (whereas none of the Gospels were
written by any confirmed witness with comparable inside knowledge).
So when McFall claims that "scholars don't judge a
work's overall reliability based on deficiencies of this particular
nature" he is committing a double mistake. First, I never "judged" any
work's "overall reliability" on any one criterion—to the contrary, my
conclusion comes only after a cumulative assessment of all relevant
predictors of reliability. Rarely can any single criterion damn a
source. But several together can. And even then the damnation is only by
relative degree, not an absolute: hence Xenophon is better, not perfect; and the Gospels are worse, not useless.
Second, scholars do judge "a work's overall
reliability" on the very same criteria I do, including the criterion of
reporting things an author could not have known, which is certainly a
predictor of unreliability, since this proves the author willing to
invent facts and pass them off as history. An unreliable author is more
likely to do this (and the more unreliable, the more likely), whereas a
reliable author is not likely to do this (and the more reliable, the
less likely). Obviously, this rarely means one can rule up or down on
this one criterion (there's McFall thinking in black-and-white again),
since it is merely an indicator, not a guarantee—it reflects a tendency.
So it is only when severel indicators converge for the same work that
the scale starts to fall enough to really worry. And as far as the
Gospels go, we should really worry. In contrast, though the scale drops
for Xenophon, too, it does not drop nearly as far—certainly not for his
record of Socrates. Consequently, with him our worry is not as great.
12. What Does "Uncritically" Mean?
McFall says "Carrier is wrong when he asserts Matthew
and Luke 'uncritically' copied from Mark and Q" because "Scholars
clearly see" that they "used critical thinking in formulating their
work." I do wonder which scholars McFall has in mind. He doesn't cite
anyone or give any examples of just what they argue. But since even I
would agree that Matthew and Luke used some amount of "critical
thinking" in deciding what to copy and how to change it (they weren't
robots), I won't object to claiming others say the same. But is this
what I meant? That Matthew and Luke just copied stuff like dolts without
any thought or plan? Certainly not.
When historians distinguish "critical" and
"uncritical" writers, we mean writers who use an objective and
transparent methodology, vs. those who don't. For example, when
Suetonius critically examines the evidence for and against two
conflicting claims regarding the birth and childhood of Caligula (Caligula
8), he reveals to us his evidence and reasoning—the question is made
transparent, and the means of its solution is made transparent. Even if
Suetonius still comes to the wrong conclusion, we still know he arrived
at his conclusion critically. In contrast, Matthew and Luke not
only seem oblivious to their contradictory accounts of the birth and
childhood of Jesus, but they do not engage in any critical analysis of
the conflicting claims. Unlike Suetonius, they do not arrive at a
conclusion based on a transparent analysis and inference from the
evidence they had at hand, and they certainly never present to the
reader any conflicts or original data or the reasoning by which they
chose or changed things. In no case ever do the Gospels do such a
thing, least of all when it came to deciding what Jesus actually
taught. Yet Suetonius was a notorious gossip, and already not high on
any list of reliable historians in antiquity (though, I would say, still
on the list). The Gospels, being so much less critical than Suetonius are thus a fortiori much less reliable.
Now, I will certainly concede that Xenophon is no hot
ticket when it comes to critical analysis either—no better than
Suetonius at least—but: (a) a total assessment of all indicators still
favors Xenophon well over the Gospels, even if they both share marks
against them (hence my judgment was based on a total assessment and not
any one criterion); and (b) though Xenophon may not be the most critical
of historians, he instead relied heavily on his own eye-witness and
various eye-witnesses whom he knew personally and names—both in his
accounts of Socrates and in the Hellenica (and, I should add, the Anabasis and Agesilaus,
two other historical works he is renowned for, the former trusted more
than the latter)—a mark in his favor the Gospels cannot claim, making
their lack of critical historical writing all the more serious, for that
is all they have left. Unlike Xenophon, "I saw it" or "Agesilaus told
me" is not something they can fall back on.
13. Have You Heard of Propaganda?
McFall bizarrely claims that it "shouldn’t count as a
negative" that the Gospels were manifestly used to promote one sect's
dogma against another's. I can't believe he really endorses such a view.
It is obvious to any reasonable observer that if you have two
texts, one written with the deliberate purpose in mind of depicting a
revered leader promoting a particular doctrine, and another without such
a motive, that the latter text is inherently more trustworthy than the
former. Thus, this feature of a text obviously counts as a negative. And we have copious evidence that doctoring of the Gospels for ideological ends was rampant,[12]
whereas we have no such evidence for Xenophon's account of Socrates.
In contrast, even McFall concedes that we have such evidence for Plato's
account—yet he rejects Plato's Socrates and accepts the Gospels' Jesus.
And he accuses me of applying a double standard? My original remarks on this issue stand.
14. What Does "Match" Mean?
I wrote that the Egerton Gospel "does not match any
extant Gospel" and McFall "find[s] it odd" that I "would make an
error-ridden assertion of this magnitude." Rather, I find it odd that
McFall would make an error of this magnitude in reading English. What I
meant was that it is a Gospel different from any extant Gospel. Nothing
more. McFall seems to have inexplicably taken the words "not match" as
if they meant totally unlike. That seems a rather strange gaffe
for a native speaker of English. But I'll shrug this marvel off and
concede that I could have made my meaning clearer. At the very website McFall cites
Wieland Willker says Egerton "seems to be almost independent of the
synoptics and it represents a johannine tradition independent of the
canonical John." That's just what I meant when I said it didn't match
the extant Gospels, and I would be happy to replace my words with his.
However, I did assume Egerton was suppressed because
it was ideologically unfavored. I made this assumption on its high prior
probability: since this was the case for every other noncanonical
Gospel we know, and any Gospel in wide enough circulation to actually
still have a papyrus fragment surviving could not have disappeared by
"accident." Rather, Christian scribes must have made a conscious choice
not to continue copying it after the 2nd century. But many other
examples could be adduced besides Egerton, so McFall is engaging in some
fancy handwaving by nitpicking on this one—for example, my point is
just as well confirmed by the Gospel of Peter, which was specifically
declared heretical and we have it on record that it was actively
suppressed by Serapion.
Now, McFall asserts that the fragment "lacks
doctrinal tones" but then goes on to list at least two doctrinal
elements in it (credentials and questioners).[13] However, I think he meant that it lacked "heretical" doctrinal elements. But I did not presume that the surviving fragment
contained the doctrinal elements that led to the Gospel's suppression,
so any focus on the fragment's content is rather besides the point. I
merely chose it because it is an otherwise totally unknown Gospel and
could well be the oldest attested papyrus of any Gospel whatever,
canonical or otherwise. That is certainly significant—since it removes
the commonplace objection that all the rejected Gospels came much later
than the canonical ones. Hence the reason I chose Egerton as my example.
I could have chosen any of several dozen others.
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