From: Mark Preece <mark@cambridge.apple.com>
Subject: Re: ACLU/AJC Menorah Police?
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d7
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 22:55:13 GMT
X-Xxdate: Mon, 28 Dec 92 17:57:11 GMT
Organization: Apple ATG

In article <1992Dec23.174706.12492@netcom.com> David Sternlight,
strnlght@netcom.com writes:

[...]

>As for Colton's comment that "to Christian thinking the Crucifixion
>is more of a historical fact than Chanukah" he misreads my argument.
>My argument is based on historians who are not using religious
>thinking to cloud their scholarship, or as I further explained,
>people relying on archaeological evidence. There is none for
>the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth as far as I know, and there
>is a lot of physical evidence for the Maccabee struggle against the
>Greeks. I mean no disrespect for Christianity and its beliefs, but
>I'm speaking of hard evidence not colored by belief.
>
>Putting it another way, there aren't any contemporaneous accounts of
>the "divine" Jesus by other than believers. There are contemporaneous
>accounts of the Maccabee struggle by the contemporaneous Greeks, who
>would not be disposed to cooperate in a Jewish "belief." Antiochus is
>a historical figure based on documented hard evidence. Jesus is a
>religious figure based on belief and the later testimony of believers,
>embellished by the Church fathers. I know many Christians believe
>deeply, and respect their right to so believe, but believing deeply,
>or accepting on faith isn't the same as historical scholarship. Jesus
>seems not just real, but super-real to believers, and this can make
>them lose sight of the difference between hard evidence and belief.

I think you're confusing belief in the crucifixion with belief in the
resurrection. You don't have to believe accounts of "the *divine* Jesus"
to believe he was crucified (lots of people were crucified, after all).
If archaeological evidence of Jesus' crucifixion is the only evidence
you'll accept, then you're right: there is none. But there are certainly
non-Christian historians who would say that, on balance, the crucifixion
of Jesus is pretty well attested, as ancient-world attestation goes.
(Indeed, there's evidence that early Christians were somewhat embarrassed
by this means of death, and would not have had much incentive to make it
up.) Non-Christian historians would be very unlikely to believe in the
resurrection of Jesus, on the other hand. 

This leaves the cross and the menorah in pretty similar positions,
actually. Both refer to probably historical events (and yes, the
Maccabean revolt is more clearly historical than the crucifixion of
Jesus), but most people for whom they are important would say that they
are important because of miraculous events associated with them (events
that no non-believing historian would likely accept). I know your
argument is that the miraculous aspect of Chanukah is secondary, but
surely the choice of the menorah as the symbol of the "Maccabee struggle"
suggests that the miraculous aspect of the story is a large part of
what's traditionally being celebrated.

In any case, I'm not sure that having a court decide whether there's a
consensus among non-believing historians would turn out to be a very
satisfactory way of deciding things like this. As any reader of scj knows
only too well, there are crazies out there calling themselves
"historians" who claim to doubt things that happened only 50 years ago,
and for which there is plenty of physical ("archaeological") evidence.

-Mark Preece.