The problem of assumptions and pressupositions on the Historical Jesus research

Everybody have assumptions, bias and preconceptions. We're all influenced by culture, philosophical assumptions, emotional drivens and so forth. Psychology has shown that beyond any doubt, and common sense supports it too.

The function of "assumptions" is to provide a framework to understand and interpret the evidence (and sometimes, what counts as evidence or not is even determined by the assumptions).

Now the question to comment in this post is not the existence of assumptions, but rather how certain accumptions block our searching for the truth, blocking the acceptance of evidence, or begging the question regarding the topic under investigation.

For example, in psychic research, the materialistic assumption that psi and ESP cannot happen (or are extremely improbable) works as a blocking and question-begging assumption, namely, it interfers with the proper assesment and objective recognition of such phenomena, in the sense that the evidence for it will be interpreted in a way consistent with the assumption, or even worst, not recognized as evidence in the first place.

Present evidence for telepathy, the skeptic will say that the evidence is flawed (even if the flaw cannot account for the overwall results, or even if the flaw is purely imaginary).

Present evidence for remote viewing, the skeptic will say the same and imply that the researchers are biased due to their sympathies to the paranormal.

Present evidence in which not flaw has been detected by the skeptic, he will say that "it is not impossible" that in the future some flaw will appear...

Present evidence which would convince any scientist of any other area of science, and the skeptic will say that the evidence in this case is insufficient because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

In these cases, what is operating is a set of assumptions which override the evidence,  or explain it away. The assumptions imply setting the evidential standards so high, that no reasonable or realistic evidence could be ever produced to their satisfaction.

I've discoveried exactly the same regarding the historical Jesus studies. In fact, in this field, the assumptions and prejudices tend to be more obvious and more egregious. Not even in parapsychology I've seen such amazing working of blocking and question-begging assumptions like in the historical Jesus studies.

Let's to comment in a couple of them:

Assumption 1: The Gospels were written by deceivers and people who constantly were inventing fictional stories about Jesus (stories which nothing, or just a little bit, have to do with him)

This assumption derives, mainly (but not exclusively) from atheism. Wishful thinking also plays a role here.

Contemporary liberal scholarship is, as a rule, philosophically driven by a form of atheism known as metaphysical naturalism.  The liberal Jesus Seminar makes this assumption explicit and straighforward:

the Christ of creed and dogma . . . can no longer command the assent of those who have seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope. The old deities and demons were swept from the skies by that remarkable glass. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo have dismantled the mythological abodes of the gods and Satan, and bequeathed us secular heavens (preface of The Five Gospels, p. ix-x, xiii. Emphasis in blue added).

The assumption here is that science makes theism (the existence of God) false and hence the belief in God cannot be accepted. This is straighforwadly an atheistic assumption.

Atheism implies that miracles (understood as special divine interventions) cannot  happen. Since the Gospels are full of miracles, it follows that such stories are fictional. Hence, the Gospels are historically unreliable because they were written by writers who constantly were mading up and writing down false, supernaturalistic fantasies in them.

Note that the conlusion "the Gospels are historically unreliable" derives, in the above argument, directly from the atheistic assumptions applied methodologically on the miracles and other stories in the Gospels.

Drop such assumption, and the whole question-begging result is unwarranted, and you will be free to investigate with Gospels' evidence with a open-critical mind, without any blocking assumption which begs the question in one direction or another.

Note, by the way, that assuming the truth of theism doesn't beg the question regarding the historical Jesus and Gospels, because theism only guarantees the possibility of miracles, but it doesn't imply that any miracle claim is factual (let alone that the Gospels miracles actually happened). 

The advantage of the theist is that he's open to follow the evidence wherever it leads: If it leads to the actual occurence of a given miracle, the theist will accept it, since his worldview allows for such event. If the evidence doesn't support the miracle claim, the theist should reject such specific miracle claim (rejection which doesn't conflict with theism either, since theism doesn't imply that every miracle claim is true).

There is a widespread misconception according to which, if one is a theist, then one is obligated to accept every miracle claim. This is false. The theist is not obligated to accept any miracle claim in the same way which a parapsychologist who accepts the paranormal is not obligated to accept any psychic claim, or that a phycisian who accepts that viruses produce diseases is not obligated to accept the claim that all new diseases are viral.

Atheism, on the other hand, precludes in advance the possibility of any miracle being actual, and only allows as true and valid the evidence contrary to the occurence of miracles. This is why atheistic assumptions (like the Jesus Seminar's) egregiously begs the question against miracles, tend to exaggerate the possible problems of the Gospels as historical sources (problems which are common to any ancient historical document) and hence tends to create unwarranted skepticism about the possibility of the Historical Jesus being actually like portrayed in the Gospels.

Common reply:

I've been shocked with the answers provided by people sympathetic to the Jesus Seminar, when confronted with the above argument.

As a rule, their response is purely emotional and defensive. For example,  they will tell you that "conservative" also have faith commitments or assumptions.

If they were intellectually serious people, they would realize that the faith commitments and assumptions of "conservatives" do NOTHING to justify the assumptions and prejudices of "liberals" nor to refute the argument that such liberal assumptions beg the question. How exactly the faith commitments of a priest justifies the Jesus Seminar's naturalistic (and hence question-begging) approach to the historical Jesus?

Suppose that I write a post in which I expose the question-begging assumptions of a materilistic skeptic (like that I've done here). Does it make sense to reply "Well, but you say nothing about the assumptions or prejudices of Chris Carter or Dean Radin, who are biased in favor of the paranormal"?

No intellectually serious person would argue like that. If a person argues like this, you would suspect that he's an intellectually dishonest person, or simply someone absolutely blinded by his emotions and prejudices and who's reacting on a purely emotional level.

If my argument about the skeptic's prejudices (and how they seriously affect the assesment of the evidence) is correct, it is absolutely irrelevant that other people (let's say, Dean Radin or Chris Carter) have bias and pressupositions too, because the latter doesn't justify the former, and the my critique of skeptics don't rest on the lack of bias or assumptions by parapsychologists.

It's like defending oneself from the charge of murder, saying in the judicial process "Well, Mr.Judge, you're biased too, the guy in front of my home is also a murder and you do nothing about it!".

Even if you were right, and the guy in front of your home is a criminal, and the Judge is biased, this doesn't NOTHING to refute the charges against you.

With such stupid "defense", you probably would end in jail.

I'm extremely dissapointed of people like that. Shame of them.

Assumption 2: The assumption 1 overrides over the criteria of authenticity when they support Christology

Another way of formulating this assumption is like this: The criteria of authenticity ONLY can be accepted when they support non-Christological traditions.

For example:

The criterion of multiple attestation is accepted when it supports non-Christological traditions (e.g. Jesus' historical existence which is attested in several, independent sources). But the same criterion will be rejected by liberals when it supports Christological traditions (e.g. that Jesus was born in Bethelhem, which supports that he was the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament).

Also, the example of the empty tomb. The empty tomb is not itself Christological, but since the resurrection claim implies the empty tomb (it is therefore part of the evidence for the resurrection), some scholars have tried to attack it in order to deny the resurrection.

Although accepted by most scholars ((including by many atheist and other anti-Christian scholars) due to the strengh of the historical evidence for the empty tomb, a few of them (mainly liberals) reject it as an invention by Mark, despite of passing the criterion of multiple attestation (in addition to other criteria like embarassment).

So, many liberal scholars don't apply the criteria consistently, but inconsistently in order to reach anti-Christian conclusions.

The key and secret to understand liberal scholarship in general is to understand exactly its philosophical and ideological rejection of Christology. The criteria of authenticity are then misused (in particular ways, depending on the scholar) to fit this agenda.

Common reply:

A common answer for the above objection is that, even if a tradition passes the criteria of multiple attestation, it "could" be invented by the Church by different, independent persons who share the same beliefs about Jesus.  (Alternatively, it is formulated like this: "It was very easy for the chruch to create that").

The fallacy of this answer is obvious: The "could" and "it is very easy" responses are NOT historical evidence. They're NOT criteria of historicity. They're sheer speculations. Then, how the hell such mere speculations may be overriding force over the historical criteria, like the criterion of multiple attestation?

Even if the same tradition "could" be invented by persons who shared faith in Jesus, it doesn't imply that such invention actually happened. Simply believing in something doesn't make you a deceiver or cheater.

Historians don't work with mere speculations or  sheer possibilities, but with concrete evidence which makes a given possibility more likely than not.

But the underlaying motive for the skeptic is to block or avoid all the evidence which supports the distinctive Christian view of Jesus (Christology). This is pure wishful thinking and intellectually dishonest ideology. That's all. (Compare with the skeptics Martin Gardner or James Randi's creative scenarios of how a psychic "could" cheat the experimenters, or how it was "easy" for a magician to fool the investigators or how the psychic investigators are unreliable because they are believers in psi... even if not such evidence for fraud or deception or technical flaws exists in the specific experiments!)

Certainly, that a magician "could" cheat under certain experimental conditions don't make any particular psychic (in the same conditions) to be a fraud. This is not evidence at all for the claim that given psychic is a fraud. (In the same way, that a given tradition about Jesus "could" be invented doesn't make it an actual, proven invention).

Mere possibility is not evidence, and many liberals use such gambit as a question-begging criterion on non-historicity.

The real problem here is the contemporary ideology of naturalistic atheism. I'm sorry to be so blatant, but I do believe this: When atheistic ideologues put their dirty hands on a given topic (specially on a topic which is in tension with atheism and naturalism) we tend to see pure disaster (recent example: the atheists "take" on Sheldrake in Wikipedia)

Atheists work fine in areas in which atheism is not in question (e.g. computer science, law, medicine, etc). But don't put them in positions in which they must "assess" topics in which atheism is challenged, otherwise...

If Shaldrake is constantly mistreated and misrepresented by atheists in what is supposed to be an innocent online "encyclopedia", you can imagine that atheists would do with the Historical Jesus... the number one, public historical enemy of atheism around the world.