The Historical Jesus III

[Craig B]

Craig B how do you explain away the Ascension of Jesus in a cloud After the Resurrection?

See Acts 1.

See Luke. See Matthew. See John. It happens in different ways in these sources.

See Mark - whoops, it doesn't happen there. That's in order, because as you may have heard, people don't get out of their graves and then zoom up into the sky.

 

[dejudge]

Craig B how do you explain away the Ascension of Jesus in a cloud After the Resurrection?

See Acts 1.

See Luke. See Matthew. See John. It happens in different ways in these sources.

See Mark - whoops, it doesn't happen there. That's in order, because as you may have heard, people don't get out of their graves and then zoom up into the sky.

Now explain away the transfiguration of Nazareth.

See Mark 9.

 

[Craig B]

Now explain away the transfiguration of Nazareth.

See Mark 9.

Nazareth is not mentioned in Mark 9, so I have no need to explain such a thing.

 

[dejudge]

Nazareth is not mentioned in Mark 9, so I have no need to explain such a thing.

Well expain away the transfiguration of Jesus of Nazareth.

See Mark 9.

 

[maximara]

Ehrman : "There is no scholar in any college or university in the Western world who teaches classics, ancient history, new testament, early christianity, any related field, who doubts that Jesus existed"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4q3WlM9rCI

Interesting that Ehrman has NARROWED his statement to only the "Western world" and so excluded India, Russia, China, and Asia. I suspect he knew that with his old more general statement all somebody had to do was produce something out of a Russian or Asian university and he would have looked the fool.

 

[dejudge]

Interesting that Ehrman has NARROWED his statement to only the "Western world" and so excluded India, Russia, China, and Asia. I suspect he knew that with his old more general statement all somebody had to do was produce something out of a Russian or Asian university and he would have looked the fool.

He looks the fool for making such an irrelevant statement which confirms the bankruptcy of the HJ argument.

Ehrman must have forgotten that at one time it was taught that Romulus existed and was the founder of Rome.

By the way, Jesus is not the only myth/fiction character that is taught to have existed. The Jews taught that God, Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel were figures of history.

 

[maximara]

This is abject nonsense. The existence of the reference in the poem is evidence, not unchallengeable, but evidence,in a sense in which early manuscripts of Snow White are not. The date is indeed unproven as your link has suggested, and has not bitten the dust. It is a topic of discussion among commentators on the poem.

Now tell me if this is the same as Snow White. You think so?

WHERE did I mention Snow White?

King Arthur's very existence as a historical person is disputed (Higham, N. J. (2002), King Arthur, Myth-Making and History, London: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-21305-9.) so this poem is NOT evidence because if it was there would be no dispute about King Arthur existing as a historical person, now would there?

Christianity is not a Cargo Cult.

They are very similar from an anthropological standpoint and in historical anthropology that is what you look for NOT exact parallels.

 

[Craig B]

WHERE did I mention Snow White?

I have not said you did. It was the point I was defending.

King Arthur's very existence as a historical person is disputed (Higham, N. J. (2002), King Arthur, Myth-Making and History, London: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-21305-9.) so this poem is NOT evidence because if it was there would be no dispute about King Arthur existing as a historical person, now would there?

Of course it is in dispute. But the poem is evidence. Even if the reference is in the oldest layer of the poem, that doesn't prove the existence of Arthur, does it? What about John Frum? But it is evidence for his existence.

 

[maximara]

False.I guess there is no consensus on climate change? Consensus doesn't mean every single individual on the planet, could be where you've gone wrong here...This is false. The consensus is that there probably was a man named Jesus. This is extremely common knowledge, and no one who thinks otherwise has spent five minutes honestly looking at the situation.

http://www.is-there-a-god.info/blog/belief/is-there-really-consensus-scholars/

The quotes have some issues.

As pointed out on the Christ Myth wikipedia talk page Michael Grant is actually quoting Otto Betz (from 1968) who in turn was parroting Roderic Dunkerley from 1957 and we have NO idea where Dunkerley got his information. We have seen this nonsense with the Bermuda Triangle myth where each new writer just parrots the previous writer.

"This view [that Jesus didn’t exist] is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice..." - Maurice Casey

"In the Far East where the major religions are Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism and Confucianism, Jesus is considered to be just another character in Western religious mythology, on a par with Thor, Zeus and Osiris."

So Buddhists, Shintoists, and Taoists are all atheists... Do I need to go in just how STUPID that is?


"I don’t think there’s any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus" - Bart Ehrman

No True Scotsman fallacy. What about people who put Jesus outside of the normal time frame who were call Christ Mythists?


"The historical evidence for Jesus himself is extraordinarily good." - NT Wright

Snicker, giggle, BAHAHAHA. You're NOT kidding?


"some judgments are so probable as to be certain; for example, Jesus really existed, and he really was crucified, just as Julius Caesar really existed and was assassinated" - Marcus Borg

I have already demonstrated the insanity of that position.


M A Powell give us the old Holocaust comparison and I have gone on how intellectually bankrupt that position is.


Jeffery Jay Lowder's quote is missing these leading sentences: "There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. (Just because Jesus existed does not mean that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, etc.)"

Heck, Carrier says that the passover part of Mark's story is based on a "man named Jesus": Jesus ben Ananias.


"An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomonon of Jesus as an historical one. " - Emeritus Professor Edwin Judge

And they also had no problem seeing Zeus, Heracles, and Osiris as being once real living people either.

James Charlesworth is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature; a degree in Linguistics would not necessarily make him an expert in history, archeology, or anthropology.

 

[maximara]

See Luke. See Matthew. See John. It happens in different ways in these sources.

See Mark - whoops, it doesn't happen there. That's in order, because as you may have heard, people don't get out of their graves and then zoom up into the sky.

As I said MANY times before we canNOT use the Triumphalist Jesus to argue against a possible Reductive Jesus.

As I have said before we need only look to Apollonius of Tyana to see a person we have reasonable evidence existed turned into a miracle producing demi-god.

The issue is when we go to the non supernatural elements the Gospels spew buckets of either ad hoc or non historical material.

Then in the 4th century we told tales like Philo knew the apostles and talked to Peter when in Rome and yet either Philo wrote no word of this meeting or no Christian had enough wits to preserve it if he did.

 

[dejudge]

I have not said you did. It was the point I was defending. Of course it is in dispute. But the poem is evidence. Even if the reference is in the oldest layer of the poem, that doesn't prove the existence of Arthur, does it? What about John Frum? But it is evidence for his existence.

What absurdity, Craig B!! A poem can be evidence of mythology/fiction

Your claim "the poem is evidence" has no real significance.

 

[dejudge]

The HJ argument is a farce.

A theory or argument for historicity can only be properly develop with existing credible historical data.

The HJ argument was initiated by known fiction/myth sources, the books of the NT Canon.

There is no credible historical data for Satan in the NT--Satan is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Angel Gabriel--the Angel Gabriel is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Holy Ghost--the Holy Ghost is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Adam in Genesis --Adam is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Jesus of Nazareth-----Jesus is magically a FIGURE of history

The Jesus story is EXPLAINED AWAY in order to make Jesus a figure of history.

The "historicisers" of Jesus of Nazareth have not yet attempted to EXPLAIN AWAY the myth/fiction fables of Satan, the Holy Ghost, the Angel Gabriel or Adam.

Jesus must have lived so to hell with Satan.

Jesus and Satan were together in Jerusalem at the Jewish Temple unless the story is fiction.

 

[Joey McGee]

Joey McGee appeals to authority and appeals to tradition.

Appeal to tradition is just stupid, I'm not appealing to authority at all, I'm just pointing out what the consensus is in the relevant fields of academia. I really don't care whether he did or not, but I notice that there are people who really, really need to believe that he did not at all, and I find it funny.

Projection, it doesn't just happen in the theater.


All HJers eventually resort to ridicule, guess that's all they got.

No they have plenty more, I really don't care, look at it this way. I'm not ridiculing others to make myself feel better, I'm doing them a favor, by showing them how ridiculous their posturing looks.

I must congratulate you on such a clever ruse of REVERSING THE FACTS... clever indeed.

The pecuniary and egotistical and occupational and psychological and emotional and religious and societal investments are with the ones who prefer to believe fairy tales and mythical fables despite not a single shred of evidence that is not a badly made copy of a title deed that was fraudulently fabricated in the first place by mountebanks and charlatans no different from any that we have had throughout the ages and still have today popping up everywhere there are enough fools stupid enough to DRINK THE KOOL-AID.

The process of fabricating Christianity was no different from that of the worship of John Frum started by primitive people and carried on by hucksters and brigands.

If it were not for the fact that the ancestors of the current generations of Christians were forced at the tip of a sword to swallow the Buybull claptrap as reality and that those pathetic defeated ancestors along with their vanquishing overlords kept on forcing the myths by hook or by crook down into the brains and psyches of their descendants and the descendants of even more conquered and pillaged peoples, no one today would have considered even for a second that the Buybull is any different from say The 1001 Arabian Nights or that Jesus and his sky daddy were any different from the thousands of gods and demigods who were the products of hyperactive imaginations of countless cultures during the infancy of humanity when they used to shiver and quake in benighted fear and ignorance of reality.

If only people could shed the pall of societal indoctrination and inculcation off of their brains and evaluate Christianity with the very same skepticism they utilize to scrutinize other fairy tales and myths and shams and Pyramid Schemes and Multilevel Marketing Scams then maybe they might realize the extent of the fraud.

Unfortunately it is not a simple matter of just peeking through from under the heavy dark pall to see the light.

Having been for so long living in a benighted darkness their eyes are no longer capable of withstanding the brightness of reality.

Thus even if they do manage to gather the courage to glance for a moment they close their eyes again and shield them with their hands because of the pain the brightness of reason and rationality caused their long atrophied retinas.

They then duck back under their pall and start cursing and maligning the people encouraging them to come out from the darkness and join them in basking under the healthy curative bright sunshine of science and rationality and logic and reason and humanitarianism.

Did Jesus Exist? The Trouble with Certainty in Historical Jesus Scholarship — Thomas S. Verenna

This is like a combination of a street preacher, a conspiracy theorist blogger and an old school skeptic. Just weird and over the top.

Should the academy limit a critical position by intimidating and ridiculing those few scholars who do not believe Jesus existed historically into submitting to the consensus of the majority? Or, as Ehrman implies, should scholars who doubt the certainty of historicity be fired from academic posts or just denied work in academia?

I didn't see him implying this. Should a young earth creationist be denied teaching positions in biology? Probably yeah. I don't think this reaches that level of certainty and importance though.

Have we here, in our modern world so many decades removed from the papal encyclical Divino afflante spiritu, the only unchallengeable subject in the whole of the vagaries of historical inquiry?

Don't start babbling about how persecuted the minority is in the academy, it looks bad.

You claim is false or you don't know what you are talking about.

You have confirmed that you have no idea what consensus means.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consensus

Consensus ---a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group

This is so willfully ignorant and ridiculous I really can't bring myself to give it a serious response.

Ehrman forgot to tell us that most Scholars who teach that Jesus existed also believe God exist.

Since it applies to all of the atheist, agnostic, non-Christian scholars as well, this isn't as much of a problem as you make it out to me. Don't forget, most people in the world believe that God existed...

There is NO Scholar in any college or University in the Western World that can present any actual evidence of an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Ehrman failed to do so in "Did Jesus Exist?".

We already know this is your opinion, thanks.

The true consensus among Scholars, Christian or not, is that there is little or NO historical evidence of an HJ.

[/QUOTE]Babble. The clear consensus is that he probably existed.

You are constantly mis-representing Scholarship with your propaganda. You are fundamentally a manufacturer of falsehood.

Fundamentally a manufacturer of falsehoods, I hope someone vandalizes my tombstone with that.

 

[Joey McGee]

I noticed that Joey totally ignored my post and preferred to snark rather than talk.

I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by not personally addressing you, and by sharing my opinion that I think the discussion attracts people who are a little unhinged. Religion ***** people up, and the narrative that it was invented whole cloth by some con artists gives them a lot of of outrage to get off on, it's a nasty situation, and I feel sorry for them.

 

[Joey McGee]

"This view [that Jesus didn’t exist] is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice..." - Maurice Casey

"In the Far East where the major religions are Buddhism, Shinto, Taoism and Confucianism, Jesus is considered to be just another character in Western religious mythology, on a par with Thor, Zeus and Osiris."

So Buddhists, Shintoists, and Taoists are all atheists... Do I need to go in just how STUPID that is?

I haven't the foggiest idea of what you are talking about. On the other points, I really can't be bothered.

For me, whether or not he existed has absolutely no bearing on my life, or how I think about the religion, or the rest of the planet. For some people, they don't just have a lot invested in it emotionally, it's central to their worldview. I didn't know this was such a big deal and so many people were off the rails about it. This thread has shown me things. I am going to do my best to forget about it now.

 

[Joey McGee]

The HJ argument is a farce.

A theory or argument for historicity can only be properly develop with existing credible historical data.

The HJ argument was initiated by known fiction/myth sources, the books of the NT Canon.

There is no credible historical data for Satan in the NT--Satan is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Angel Gabriel--the Angel Gabriel is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Holy Ghost--the Holy Ghost is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Adam in Genesis --Adam is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Jesus of Nazareth-----Jesus is magically a FIGURE of history

The Jesus story is EXPLAINED AWAY in order to make Jesus a figure of history.

The "historicisers" of Jesus of Nazareth have not yet attempted to EXPLAIN AWAY the myth/fiction fables of Satan, the Holy Ghost, the Angel Gabriel or Adam.

Jesus must have lived so to hell with Satan.

Jesus and Satan were together in Jerusalem at the Jewish Temple unless the story is fiction.

This kind of elementary logic is not how scholars of history approach their profession. Why do I get the feeling in this thread like I'm being preached to? So many posts are like a performance, with careful bolding, highlighting and emphasis.

 

[dejudge]

You claim is false or you don't know what you are talking about.

You have confirmed that you have no idea what consensus means.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consensus

Consensus ---"a general agreement about something : an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group"

This is so willfully ignorant and ridiculous I really can't bring myself to give it a serious response.

Now, you even consider the dictionary as ignorance.

I am merely exposing that you have no historical evidence for the HJ argument and put forward the well known fallacy that there is a consensus.

Scholars have NEVER EVER conceded at any time in the history of the Quest for an HJ that Jesus did exist as a mere man with a human father.

In fact, Christian cults and the Roman Government of antiquity have conceded that Jesus was God of God and born of a Ghost AT the Council of NICEA and also in 381 at Constantianople.

You have been writing so much ignorance and fiction that you don't realise that people here know the history of the QUEST for an HJ.

The historical Jesus was a known lie since at least the 2nd century.

 

[Craig B]

As I said MANY times before we canNOT use the Triumphalist Jesus to argue against a possible Reductive Jesus.

As I have said before we need only look to Apollonius of Tyana to see a person we have reasonable evidence existed turned into a miracle producing demi-god.

The issue is when we go to the non supernatural elements the Gospels spew buckets of either ad hoc or non historical material.

Then in the 4th century we told tales like Philo knew the apostles and talked to Peter when in Rome and yet either Philo wrote no word of this meeting or no Christian had enough wits to preserve it if he did.

I'm not sure I understand. If Apollonius could be deified, so could Jesus. By the 4th century a deified Jesus had been manufactured, and myths like Peter's residence in Rome had been constructed.

Of course Philo didn't write about this because it never happened. Peter was recruited into these tales to indicate that there were no differences between Paul and the surviving companions of Jesus, which we know is not true.

If Paul went to Rome, then to Rome Peter must also be sent by the mythographers of Christianity.

 

[dejudge]

The HJ argument is a farce.

A theory or argument for historicity can only be properly develop with existing credible historical data.

The HJ argument was initiated by known fiction/myth sources, the books of the NT Canon.

There is no credible historical data for Satan in the NT--Satan is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Angel Gabriel--the Angel Gabriel is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for the Holy Ghost--the Holy Ghost is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Adam in Genesis --Adam is considered a myth/fiction character.

There is no credible historical data for Jesus of Nazareth-----Jesus is magically a FIGURE of history

The Jesus story is EXPLAINED AWAY in order to make Jesus a figure of history.

The "historicisers" of Jesus of Nazareth have not yet attempted to EXPLAIN AWAY the myth/fiction fables of Satan, the Holy Ghost, the Angel Gabriel or Adam.

Jesus must have lived so to hell with Satan.

Jesus and Satan were together in Jerusalem at the Jewish Temple unless the story is fiction.

This kind of elementary logic is not how scholars of history approach their profession. Why do I get the feeling in this thread like I'm being preached to? So many posts are like a performance, with careful bolding, highlighting and emphasis.

You have only confirmed the HJ argument is a farce.

Instead of presenting historical evidence for HJ you put out the well established propaganda that there was a consensus for an HJ.

We know the real consensus of Scholars [Christian or not, for or against HJ].

The consensus among Scholars is that there is little or NO historical evidence for an HJ and the NT is riddled with discrepancies, contradictions, historical problems, forgeries, false attribution and events which most likely did not happen.

Based on the consensus and the evidence from antiquity Jesus was most likely a myth/fiction character who NEVER had any real existence.

 

[dejudge]

I'm not sure I understand. If Apollonius could be deified, so could Jesus.

You are merely speculating. Speculation is useless.

By the 4th century a deified Jesus had been manufactured, and myths like Peter's residence in Rome had been constructed.

Your claim is imaginative fiction. You have ZERO evidence to support your imagination.

Of course Philo didn't write about this because it never happened.

Of course, Philo did not write what you imagined because your imaginative modern invention NEVER happened.

Peter was recruited into these tales to indicate that there were no differences between Paul and the surviving companions of Jesus, which we know is not true.

Your story is not true. You made it up in an attempt to historicise your imagined Jesus and companions.

If Paul went to Rome, then to Rome Peter must also be sent by the mythographers of Christianity.

You invent baseless fictional stories of Peter.

You have nothing to contribute to the HJ argument.