There’s actually still a raging debate over the finer details of the Pirahã language, for the reason that there’s only about 400 Pirahã, they’re almost completely monolingual (a few of them do trade with neighboring tribes for stuff like canoes and matches and speak a pidgin of a language several nearby tribes share), and they’ve only been studied in depth by 2 or 3 people. Although if anyone is an authority on the Pirahã it’s Dan Everett, since he lived with them and spoke their language for 20 years doing linguistic and anthropological work. I’m willing to trust him when he says that the language is grammatically primitive and simple compared with more commonly spoken languages.
It’s an interesting analysis I’ll have to read further. In anycase, my personal metric for linguistic or grammatical complexity revolves around what can be expressed by a language in a way that’s natural for a native speaker.
If you can’t use your language to count, talk about stuff that happened a hundred years ago, differentiate between ideas like above or below, or even have words for shapes, it’s probably a very simple language. The Pirahã language doesn’t even have words or grammar to express what will happen next year as in seasonal stuff.
On the other hand, it serves the Pirahã just fine. They’re exquisitely well adapted as a culture to the world they live in, teach these skills to their children using language, and they thrive and are happy. They don’t often come across geometric shapes like regular polygons, they live in the Amazon and have, generally 2 seasons that amount to “river is high” and “river is low”, and base their culture on skepticism, first-hand accounts, and chilling with their friends. They don’t need a language for art, because they mostly don’t do art, and absolutely don’t do drawing or sculpting or basket weaving, or textile art, so it’s just not necessary for them.
Saying that their language doesn’t offer a lot of expressive power to an American English speaker isn’t really the interesting thing. It’s the fact that the language is so massively different from any other language we’ve ever come across.
Seriously though, and I really mean this,
Everything I’ve read and heard about the Pirahã has made me admire them more and more. They seem like very psychologically healthy people. They base what they believe on evidence and the first-hand accounts of their trusted friends. They live lives of leisure. According to Dan Everett, they only “worked” about 18 hours a week, and got on fine. They never plan ahead because they never need to plan ahead. They’ve figured out a lifestyle that makes them happy. Even if they tend to only live into their 40s or so. When Dan Everett was still living with them they considered him “extremely old”.
It would be remarkable that anyone would note an itinerant rabbi with a small band of followers who created a minor stir and was executed in an unfashionable province of Rome. At the time, this wasn’t some kind of unusual or notable event, life was brutal in that province, rabble-rousers were common, as was crucifixion. The only people who would have cared were the illiterate fans of the dead rabbi who according to the general account, retold their tales orally (lending to their inevitable mangling).
Let’s say you found a person’s dead body in a field with an entry wound in their chest, and an exit wound in their back that looked like a bullet wound, but you searched and couldn’t find any witness, nor could you find the bullet or a gun. While you couldn’t say with absolute certainty that the person was shot, you’d have very good reasons to, despite a lack of first-hand accounts or evidence besides the wound.
In the Jesus story we have a body, but no bullet. The cult that surrounded Jesus has its own paper trail (with some of those documents dating very close to the period of his death). The first Pauline epistles date to c. 50 CE, so you have maybe a 15 year gap to plug in your alternate account of where it all came from. If you want to claim Paul was also a fiction you’ve got a much, much more complicated conspiracy to invent to explain where those documents came from and who made them. You also have Josephus writing around the 70s CE about the later execution of Jesus’ brother by Ananus in a quickly formed sanhedrin creating a political scandal and crisis that Josephus was loosely involved with, and shortly thereafter Tacitus (who scholars believe knew Josephus) writing not much later about Jesus (Tacitus was one of the more cautious Roman historians who was careful to trace sources and vet reliability). How would whoever invented this alternate cause of the Jesus cult have managed to not only inject themselves in that brief period between 35-50 to invent a fictional biography, persuade Paul/invent Paul and persuade a bunch of others in the early Church, and also manage to dupe Josephus and Tacitus who were scholars, one of whom was a Jew who watched and reported on the aftermath of Jesus’ brother’s execution? There’s a simple explanation - there was some guy about which we don’t have a lot of reliable information who was some kind of itinerant rabbi who was executed by the Romans, and later his brother and some of his friends were also executed by a Jewish priest (creating further crises for a crisis-laden Judaea that Josephus, a former Jewish general, scholar, and historian wrote about in great detail). Then there’s a complex explanation involving a bit of hand waving, a conspiracy, and the insertion of an extra-Roman religion into the mix in some way yet to be explained with any specific details or evidence. Occam’s razor, man.
Never know until you try.
Perhaps they were just #stonerSloths
My knowledge of biblical history is woeful and I may be utterly wrong, but it always seemed to me that Saul was dispatched to destroy Christianity and by founding the church he did just that.
Don’t you need to find a virgin or something? Do they still exist?
You posted:
“It would be remarkable that anyone would note an itinerant rabbi with a small band of followers who created a minor stir and was executed in an unfashionable province of Rome”
An itinerant rabbi with a small band of followers who created a minor stir?
What small band of followers who created a minor stir?
You can not be referencing the myth of Jesus. You may want to reconsider using that line of defense when excusing the fact that no historians who lived during the time of Jesus, wrote anything about him. It is not substantiated in the New Testament of the Bible…
The myth of Jesus in the Bible has him speaking to multitudes of followers. His crucifixion was accompanied by three hours of darkness, a earthquake and dead bodies (zombies) rising up and walking into a holy city (probably Jerusalem), where many people saw them…
Had this been an actual historical event that occurred instead of an uncorroborated and unsubstantiated myth written in the Bible–the three hours of darkness with accompanying earthquake and dead bodies rising up and walking into a city, would have been the most terrifying event (and written about event) in the history of the world, had it happened. See: Matthew 27:45-54 below.
You posted:
“who created a minor stir and was executed in an unfashionable province of Rome.”
The place of Jesus’s alleged crucifixion took place at Golgotha (also called Calvary), located outside the city of Jerusalem–a province or colony of Rome, yes, but certainly not some unfashionable province.
The large multitude of followers who stood and watched Jesus speak and perform miracles would have surely been written about by historians, public officials and citizens who lived during that time, had it happened…
Matthew 4:23-25
23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
24 And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
25 And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.
Matthew 14:15-21
15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.
16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.
17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.
18 He said, Bring them hither to me.
19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.
21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.
Luke 14-25-26
25 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,
26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 12-1
1 In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Matthew 27:45-54
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
47 Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias.
48 And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.
49 The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him.
50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.
51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.
54 Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God…
Stonersloths!
Well the first miracle performed in the myth of Jesus was turning water into wine at a wedding. You may be right–the wine made them lazy 
and drunk, 
to drunk and hung over 
to write about what had happened.:
John 2:1-11
1 And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
2 And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.
3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.
5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.
6 And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.
7 Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.
8 And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it.
9 When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
10 And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.
11 This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.
Correct. I don’t consider the synoptics reliable histories. From what we can tell from the history of the time and place in the context of what we know about the culture it’s much more likely that there was some rabbi who was mythologized and his role massively and obviously falsely exaggerated in the NT than that there was some rabbi who was invented in an inexplicably complex and intricate conspiracy.
Since it’s more reasonable to assume there was someone than not to, while we can only speculate to fill in many details, the most reasonable assumption is to grant attributes that would fit the milieu and fit with how the more impartial Roman historians closest to him described him based on their research. One can see echoes of this in the synoptics, but I wasn’t a student of the details of work on attempting to id what can most reliably be attributed to the historical Jesus. I mostly focused on Athens and the Hellenistic era, but read bits of the NT, Josephus, and the Septuagint in Greek since the history of Judaea came up in seminars (and I liked reading the synoptics since the Greek was so simple compared to Attic).
If you study the history of the period you’ll find that Judaea was among the least fashionable of all the provinces, and was regarded with general suspicion and contempt by Rome, hence the military occupation, general brutality the populace was treated with, and eventual sacking.
Yes, virgins 
do exist today–however the Virgin Mary 
never existed.
Modus penens?
To determine whether Jesus existed or not by using the gospels in the bible is foolish enough. Those were written by parties who had an extreme interest in him being a person who actually existed.
You shouldn’t consider The Fountainhead as an authority on whether capitalism is the best economic system.
From which even trusted historical sources may have drawn information.
Having had my interest piqued by the formulation of arguments made here (and admittedly not by the strength of the arguments themselves) I’ve made a cursory examination of the historicity argument and it’s just shit.
No primary sources. Sources that are otherwise respected having drawn from second hand information and usually the source from which they are drawing said second hand information is the gaggle of believers who have come to later formulate a belief structure from god-knows-what information passed down to them via word of mouth or perhaps some writing…
The majority of historians who do hold the proposition of historicity are overwhelmingly religious or referring to religious sources or referring to historians who themselves referred to religious or potentially religiously altered sources.
We are just so very nearly awaking from a centuries, nay, millennia long sleep and the truly independent, non-theologically motivated or poisoned historians are very thin on the ground.
Camps are for sure developing around what can even really be expected to be drawn from the available sources and yet the bold proclamations of historicity shine through.
It’s a train wreck but the accident investigators feel they need to come up with an answer for what seems to amount to weight-of-culture motivations.
I admit it’s a mire but that still conclusions can probably be drawn, but I still think any rational person cannot even make an argument that the a-priori assumption of individuality should be assumed.
The secondary sources are always stories from within the nascent religion. Always. Tacitus may have belonged to a society which catalogued up and coming religions but where on earth was he getting his information?
That anyone feels they can make concrete assertions beyond what can rationally be assumed to have taken place (Jewish mystics, born in specific places, operating near specific places, drawing ire of establishment etc) is baffling to me.
But, it’s been interesting and an education on the historicity of history, if nothing else.
While the week-long symbolic force-feeding, rape and brutal murder of an innocent victim by each community in celebration of the “Lord of Misrule” might be unpalatable to many modern celebrants, we can still remember Saturn devouring his children by eating delicious human-shaped cookies - yum!
That’s true, though also not unexpected given what those sources who did refer to a historical Jesus describe. I’ve rambled a lot about that elsewhere in this thread. Of the sources we have, Josephus was alive during the trial and execution of Jesus’ brother (and his friends) and describes the trial and its outcome. Josephus was a Jew with no interest in the nascent Jesus cult and his account is fully independent of that. Many scholars have examined that passage due to its significance and the overwhelming consensus is that there is one minor textual corruption that doesn’t alter the meaning. There is a minority that question it, but all are marginal writers, and all are Jesus Mythers who have ulterior motives and aren’t professionally trained historians.
You should learn more about Tacitus and his methods before lazily dismissing him.
Your cursory examination was so incredibly cursory that you missed a lot of important evidence and wound up just summarizing some shallow atheist conspiracy-theory propaganda.
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The most commonly developed historicist position is actually devastating to Christianity. The typical account is that there was some figure named Jesus who existed, who was a minor rabbi, who was executed, and about whom a cult was invented (largely by Saul/Paul) both undermines every core premise of modern Christianity and is the most consistent account that can be developed from the evidence.
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I’m certainly not a Christian and have no skin in the game, but did do an MA in Classics and work on a PhD. So I read a lot on the period, learned the languages, read many primary sources, and maintained some interest. Having met and worked with ancient historians, while there are some who are religious, there are many who aren’t. The historians I knew were the least likely to be the religious ones given how devastating history is to every religion, though I knew of some who were. The religious outlook of academic historians has no bearing on whether they’re historicists or mythers because they have a job - applying the modern historiographic approach to the sources which precludes being a religious apologist. The Jesus Mythers are a fringe minority and the vast majority aren’t professional historians. There are a handful of Mythers working in the field, though most who espouse the position aren’t ancient historians, but work in other fields. This is because anyone with proper training, who spends the time learning the sources, learning their relative reliability, learns modern approaches to historiography, and learns the history of the era will recognize that the Myther position is incredibly difficult to justify, requires massive mental contortions, and involves creating conspiracies and inventions to explain the evidence and events we have that we also have no primary sources or evidence for to develop into a history. A historian can’t just say, “Jesus didn’t exist because there are no contemporary sources,” they have to give a full account of a history that describes and explains how this position can be upheld in context balanced against the assumption that he did.
The historicist position is that given what evidence we have it is more likely that there was some figure who existed named Jesus than not. It’s an argument from probability based on building the most parsimonious account from what evidence is available. That’s all.
There is a field that tries to sort out what attributes can be described, the safest set are that he was a rabbi, he caused some kind of stir in Judaea, he was executed, and that he had a brother James who also caused a stir and was executed. Past that it’s all hideously complex but generally involves assuming the synoptics were oral transmissions of legends about which probabilities of events are assigned based on historical research and a bunch of criteria, and you needn’t ascribe to any of it to make a judgment on the question of historicity.
My daughter: “Did you know Christmas is to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus?”
Me: “Some people think that. I’m pretty sure it’s a celebration of the winter solstice.”
