Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Some time back AtheistNexus (http://www.atheistnexus.org/), a very active social network for atheists, hosted a forum question on the existence of a historical Jesus. The posting offered possibilities from ‘actually existed’ including all miracle claims to ‘purely fictional’. As you can imagine, pure fiction was a popular choice amongst the atheists. Moreover one contributor said, quite definitively, that she “[did] a lot of research many years ago and found nothing to support the existence of such a person.” Doesn’t get much clearer than that.

The whole notion of the historical Jesus, in fact of any historical person or event, raises such questions as “what is history and historical research?” and “how does it find truth, if at all?” A common and, perhaps, naive view is that historical research is ‘archeological’, an objective process of uncovering immutable facts of the past. History is an unchanging or static story of events and people, revealed through objective research independent of social and personal prejudices. Getting to the single “historical truth” is a clear aim of such a research. In this paradigm Jesus would clearly have existed or not existed. This similar view is often held of the natural sciences.

Most practising historians would reject doing history is simply uncovering static facts from the past. A popular term of ‘dialogue’ acknowledges the dependency between the researcher’s personal social context and attitudes and the subject of the research. So a twenty-first century U.S. researcher may view first century Palestine differently to that of a nineteenth century European, even if the source data were unchanged. So we should not be surprised to see different analyses from historians from different time periods and cultural backgrounds without one being obviously right. On the other hand, all interpretations should not be treated as equal. Historians expect to find explicit reasoning from publically verifiable evidence that can be analysed and criticised. Like the sciences this is treated as open process of academic discourse.

Here are some points for us laypeople to consider with thinking about history and historical research.

1. Knowing when(the time) and where(the place) are fundamental to knowing history. 100CE Jerusalem is different to 100CE Rome and to 2010 New York City. I’m not suggesting revisiting school days of memorising historical dates for their own sake – how we hated that! Still it is important to know the overall sequence of events and where they happened.
2. Though often framed as narratives, modern research emphasises causes and effects, the “whys” of past situations. Remember that earlier histories, prior to 1800s, often sought to teach lessons as well as tell historical narratives.
3. Historical events are invariably complex with multiple causes and effects. It is not surprising that different historians arrive at different plausible explanations for any event. As H. L. Mencken once said “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
4. Historians rely on physical records – artifacts and writings, although oral histories are included as well. Artifacts can be unearthed pottery, ruins, wall paintings, and even toys. Written documents can be administrative records – taxation, births, deaths, marriages, and business transactions – and personal letters and earlier histories. Remember that written records were invariably maintained by the elite of societies especially in those of very low literacy and so presented a narrow view of society.
5. Historical interpretations are under constant review and scrutiny. Therefore we need to think in terms of probabilities and likelihoods.
6. Historical records can be separated into ‘primary’ (writings by people of themselves or contemporaries), ‘secondary’ (writings later than the events), and even tertiary (compilation of secondary sources with some primary). There are no known ‘primary’ sources for the historical Jesus.
7. Historians are very conscious of their time, economic, and social circumstances compared to subjects under study. Twenty-first century, middle-class, well-educated professors are a far cry from first century rural Gallilee of a Jewish Jesus.
8. Most historians consider miracle claims outside of scope of historical research. One argument centres around assessing the likelihood of past events. Miracles are by definition highly improbable or impossible and therefore as such are beyond the capability of histories to assign any sort of realistic possibility. Furthermore historical research should be understandable to all people regardless of religious faith and religious non-belief, for that matter.
9. Be wary of coincidences as an explanation of cause and effect. More evidence is needed to draw conclusions of any relationships.

These pointers are starter only to help put historical research into perspective.

Alex McCullie

Some links to ponder over

http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/munslow6.html

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1998historydebate.html

http://www.open2.net/historyandthearts/history/natureofhistory/index.html

http://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1332-the-nature-of-history

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/history.htm

http://www.historyguide.org/history.html

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/hst451w1.htm

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/hst451w2.htm

http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/gwschlabach/10commnd.htm

http://writing2.richmond.edu/training/project/history/fpbody.html

http://personal2.stthomas.edu/gwschlabach/docs/core_qs.htm

http://personal2.stthomas.edu/gwschlabach/sources.htm#HHGen