How Historical Were Early Christian Belief And Literature?

I'm going to be writing more posts about issues raised in my recent discussion with Richard. The posts will be partly a response to him and partly intended to address some larger issues. Before I start with those posts, I want to make some introductory comments. I don't want to have to explain this context in each post, so I'd prefer to do it in one introductory post like this one. And some of Richard's posts have disappeared, so I want to quote him now, in case more will disappear later. I know he deleted some of his comments earlier, and he may have deleted other posts after that. Or it may be a problem with Blogger. I don't know.

Here's some of what he said in our discussion:

Early Christian mythography (in the form of "gospels", "acti apostolorum", or sayings collections) all registered within a specific modality vis-a-vis the broad array of other Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac literary works. The generic and modal signals within the New Testament gospels inform and orient the ancient reader toward a mythographic aretology aimed at such outcomes as ethical and political gravitas, entertainment, and socio-religious propaganda (particularly in the wake of the 70 C.E. Jerusalem crisis). One finds a developmental trajectory from the earliest strata of Q, to the rhetorically potent, mythological embellishments of Mark, to their fusion and further embellishment in the compilations Matthew and Luke, concluding with a third creative work, i.e. John. We really do not have any surviving historiography or biography from earliest Christian prose (from the first 3 centuries of the common era). They are all mythographies. Jesus and the apostles are used as literary vehicles propped up in various compiled episodes, composed for their rhetorical performance articulating the socio-political and philosophical distinctions and contestations of these early subaltern movements and communities. For instance, to embroider Q with a mythic birth and then a postmortem raised ascension was to decorate the tale with the standard honorific embellishments granted to others said to have been demigods. Here one thinks of the virgin birth of such towering individuals in the Greek orient as Alexander the Great (Plutarch et al) and the road appearances of Romulus, Aristeas, Proteus, et al. I have an article appearing in JBL in the fourth quarter that more fully documents the primary accounts. Since the gospel authors continued this mode and genre into the subsequent centuries (Luke-Acts, btw, was not known by Papias and does not turn up until the mid second century, the actual time of its composition), it is unacceptable for the modern historian to assign the Gospels any serious value as accurate renditions of Jesus or his earliest movement....

The earliest Christians enter this arena, staking out their own philosophical position through the use of mythography or storytelling. Jesus thus became the literary vehicle articulating the various responses of disparate early Christian communities. Have you yet noticed, Jason, the shocking lack of interest in supporting or defending the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection in the first 2 centuries? Instead the discussion runs almost immediately toward the aforesaid philosophical fray (e.g. Justin, de Resurrectione; the Coptic Treatise on the Resurrection). The Johannine School and the Thomas School were quite evidently in fierce polemic over these matters (cf. Riley again, Resurrection Reconsidered). Not only is there a gaping lack of support (only conspicuous vis-à-vis the historical claims of modern Christianity, mind you) provided for the historicity of the resurrection—indeed which martyr makes any mention of such a conviction in her or his dying testimony in early Christian prose?—but the topic receives such negligence as to be rendered irrelevant. The earliest writers make no visible effort to distinguish their tales from analogous stories and motifs recurring in the broader classical literary domain, except perhaps in terms of quality or degree of significance, never in terms of veracity or generics.

He also made a lot of other claims. And I've responded to him there. I won't be repeating everything I said.

Notice that he used a lot of broad language and claimed to be addressing a lengthy period of time. He said that we "do not have any surviving historiography or biography", and he mentioned the first three centuries. When I cited the example of Ignatius' comments about how Jesus truly was born of a virgin, truly was crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly rose from the dead, etc., he claimed that Ignatius was saying that those things truly occurred within a fictional story, not that they were historical events.

Those are some significant and broad claims Richard is making. They're also massively false claims. And they're claims that are widely contradicted by modern scholarship, including non-Evangelical scholarship.

I'll be addressing some of these issues in the coming days. I'm not just doing this to reply to Richard, but also because I think it will be beneficial for readers to have the historical nature of the early Christian claims reinforced in their minds. What I'll be posting will be representative examples. Much more could be said. The evidence against Richard's position is abundant. The vast majority of people, including scholars, don't hold a position even close to Richard's. But many people do hold views that are somewhat similar, so there's also a broader application in that sense.