In reading Richard Lattimore's introduction to his translation of
The Iliad, I came across some passages that I think are relevant to a discussion of the historical Jesus. Specifically, how the event of the Trojan War was transmitted from the original contemporaries on down to Homer. In comparison, we can ask how the event of Jesus was transmitted from the original audience to the oral story tellers and on to the writers/redactors.
On the subject of how the stories written in the gospels relate to the actual historical events, I think it is helpful for us to notice the parallels and differences in how Homer relates to the "legend" of the Trojan War. It is important to mention first that whether the Trojan War was nothing more than a small-scale raid or a protracted multi-nation war, as Homer tells it, is up for debate at this point. It is also important to mention that
The Iliad is not the story of the Trojan War but rather the story of an episode that took place over the span of a few weeks during the Trojan War. Here is Lattimore's description of how the event became
The Iliad:
"...after the event, the tradition begins in prose saga and in verse. Neither kind of record is written down; both kinds are communicated and perpetuated by word of mouth. Imagine this process repeating itself through the generations that string out between the event and Homer, and you have some idea of what his material was. Note that tales change in the telling, so that what reached Homer may have been different from what really happened, through the fault of no particular individual. Note again that among the mixed lot of story-tellers and poets there would probably be some more talented and more influential than the general ruck. This would mean that certain aspects of the story would be emphasized, and prejudices might count. There is opportunity for selection within limits."
The italics around the words
within limits above are mine and I'll quote more of Lattimore to explain why I emphasize them:
"And selection within limits was the privilege of Homer, too, when he set out to compose, within the story of Troy, the story of Achilles. Within limits; the tradition must by now have fixed certain events in the story in all the authority of fact. So Homer could not make Achilles take Troy any more than he could make Troy win the battle and survive. He could not save Achilles, and he could not kill Odysseus. We have, therefore, the presumption of what we may call a basic story, which Homer knew, and which at the same time stimulated and limited his invention. He could emphasize or develop some parts, episodes, characters in the story, barely acknowledge others, omit others entirely. But he could not contradict the legends."
The statement above assumes that Homer was trying to write history rather than legendary fiction. But whether he was trying to write history or not, the example still serves to illustrate a valuable point. What I want to focus in on are these fixed certain events that create limits, because I think that this particular historical method is most relevant to our study of the gospels.
Lattimore's expansion of the concept of limits is when he says in the latter quote, "the tradition must by now have fixed certain events in the story in all the authority of fact." We can apply this to the historical Jesus and in fact we have, presumably at least, much better information regarding him than we do the Trojan War. What Lattimore is trying to get at is that while Homer can embellish the story with details and possibly get minor facts incorrect, the author cannot depart from the main skeleton of the story. The reason is that the story of the Trojan War was, again presumably, well known and he would certainly have been called out in his own time for changing
important, or elemental, elements of the story, such as for example, if he made Achilles a coward or the Trojans victorious.
I think in the same way, however much we'd like to focus on the different details and perspectives of the gospel writers, and what may or may not be wrong, I think it's important for us to try to determine in any given historical setting what kind of information in a given story would be considered fixed events and what kind could be subject to selection. And what is interesting here is that while the members of the Jesus Seminar, for example, tend to claim that while the teachings of Jesus are historically probable and even likely, the miracles of Jesus are historically improbable, and unlikely.
But what's interesting to me is that using a historical method which first establishes fixed events based on which events are most easily subjected to selection, we arrive at the exact opposite result of the Jesus Seminar. In fact, I would argue that the most significant miracle of all, is actually,
by virtue of its significance, the most likely to have historically occurred.
Once again,
The Iliad provides a great illustration of this. We've got to ask ourselves first: How easy would it be for Homer to massage the wording of certain quotes of the characters into the legend and have those accepted by the reading public within a short time after he wrote? Then we've got to ask ourselves a second question: How easy would it be for Homer to throw a massive wrench into the story by having Hector defeat Achilles and have it accepted by the reading public within a short time after he wrote? The answer to the first question is exceedingly easy. The answer to the second question is nearly impossible. The fact of Hector's defeat at the hands of Achilles was presumably an accepted part of the tradition. What each individual character said was presumably the subject of more broad debate.
To use a modern day example, you may be able to write a false history of what president Bush said during the lead up to Iraq War, but your not going to fool anybody by claiming that we invaded Poland at the same time. The resurrection of a dead man in any age is the like the invasion of Poland in terms of significance.
So to say that Jesus didn't rise from the dead because a man rising from the dead has never been observed, and because the claim is unfalsifiable, is perfectly acceptable. But to claim that it is historically
implausible ignores the basic historical method above. In addition, the claim that the sayings of Jesus are more believable from a historical method perspective is something of a misnomer. It is better to say that they are more believable from a scientific method perspective because we have observed plenty of people making statements. We observe it everyday.
To determine whether the event of the resurrection has passed the sniff test of
historical probability, imagine for a second an event, in closely equal significance that occurred and was written about in the same way. We wouldn't doubt it for a second because it is such a large claim, and in fact, is in close enough proximity to the event so as to be falsifiable. In fact, Paul, less than a generation after the resurrection is practically begging for somebody to falsify his claim when he says, "Then he
appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep [I Cor. 1:6]." Now why would he want his claim to be so easily falsifiable. If he was really trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his correspondents, wouldn't he have left out the part about most being still alive and simply say they've all fallen asleep. Instead, he left his outrageous claim open to verification by simply checking with the
most who were still alive. In other words, if I were going to make such a large claim up, I certainly wouldn't tell you that you could check with most of five hundred other people to verify my claim. I would say, "Oh darn, you just missed them. They're all dead, but you can take my word for it."
Lattimore closes with the following regarding Homer's license, or lack thereof, as a writer,
"The Iliad is a story, and the strength of a story, as such, depends to a great extent on its characters. The actions and achievements of the great Homeric characters might have been fixed in tradition, or twisted by tendenz, but within the framework of fact the personality of the hero might remain plastic. Not the 'what', but the 'how' and 'why', gave the poet some option."
It's not the 'what' of the story of Jesus that should be the biggest subject of historical uncertainty but rather the 'how' and the 'why'. In other words, the Jesus seminar has it exactly backwards.
