I am not following this, and don't intend to spend time on it, but I'm not concerned about what you think about great fires, particularly if what I said to you was unconnected to that subject.
The Historical Jesus III
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I was not saying it was incomprehensible to others. But just that I could not be confident of what your sentence construction was saying.
Sure we can consider hypothetical situations. Though before reading any further down your post (and I really have not read any further down at all, yet), a hypothetical argument will of course fail if it goes along the lines of saying “for the sake of argument lets assume HJ existed” ... then comes some tortuous convoluted linguistics intended to show that he probably did exist or likely could have existed ... ending with the conclusion that he probably did exist, but where that conclusion was actually based on the initial assumption that he did exist (and where the confusion was being hidden in the complexity of words between the initial assumption and the final conclusion).
But ... yeah, sure we can at least start with that hypothetical of saying lets assume for the sake of argument that did exist, so .....
OK, wait, stop there - how did this real HJ fool his followers? The only source that we have that even mentions any Jesus at all such that you can suggest a hypothetical about him, tells us what things he did to fool those followers - he raised the truly dead, he walked on the sea in full close view of everyone (he actually got into the same small boat with them!), he rose from the truly dead, etc etc.
So according to the only source that even allows you ever to think there was anyone called Jesus to have any hypothetical about, the things that were fooling his followers into thinking that a person who was in your hypothetical a real normal man were; walking on the sea right next to people, rising from the dead to reveal himself in the skies, and raising people who had been dead & rotting in the ground for three days ... so what were these disciples actually witnessing there, how did an ordinary man in the 1st century, physically display all of that to loads of people within close arms length?
What is the most likely explanation here? Is it more likely that such events actually happened and that the onlookers were simply fooled by such gigantic close-up miracles, or is it more likely that the unknown biblical writers and/or their unknown informants were inventing such entirely untrue superstitious miracles stories.
What is most likely - that the events actually happened, but that they were an illusion of some kind? Or that that such tales are exactly the same as the millions of other supernatural god-claims that abound in every religion, from a thousand years before Jesus right up until and including today in August 2015 (where every day religious fanatics around the world still claim witnessing all sorts of totally untrue amazing miracles).
So lets just stop there and see if you can justify the above premise this far. Because as presented, I don't think the premise is remotely feasible thus far.
And just to be clear - I am treating you and your posts as entirely honest and friendly constructive discussion between us to see if we can get to the bottom of this issue (which is wholly and entirely different to the behaviour of most HJ posters here).
The Big Dog
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To clear this up, we were discussing Tacitus Annals 15:44, which concerned Nero's actions and scapegoating the Christians following the Great Fire in Rome under Nero's rule.
Ian asserted, and I quote "And what is now found in 11th century and later Christian copies of Tacitus, cannot possibly be anything Tacitus himself could ever have personally known, because he was not even born at the time!"
I pointed out that was wrong because in fact Tacitus was alive during the very period under discussion, i.e. during the Great Fire and its aftermath.
Ian claims he never said anything about the Great Fire
Rubbish!!
All it shows is that you are trying to imply things in other people's statements to disingenuously build a straw man.
The statement only means stuff about Tacitus' statements regarding the supposed reports about the killing of Jesus and knowing of Pilot and what happened at that time during which Tacitus was not even born yet to know of it... and thus he either got it from Roman records (which he did not) or he got it from words of people who heard of it and believed it and he was only repeating hearsay.
The discussion about fire is YOUR words... you are deliberately making rubbish up.... but don't let logic stop you from fabricating stuff as per normal.
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It strikes me as remarkable that anyone would think that a Roman historian could be informed only about things he personally witnessed, although I know that IanS attaches importance to that source of knowledge.
But copious and accurate records were kept by Roman chroniclers and scribes, and Tacitus could easily have consulted such records by visiting an official archive or a library.
Historians don't require, at least in a literate society, as Rome was, to have personal experience of the topics they address in their works.
Consider Polybius, for example. He lived from c. 200 – c. 118 BC, and is noted for his work, The Histories, which coveres the period of 264–146 BC in detail. He was able to relate in detail things that happened several decades before his birth, as well as the events of his own lifetime. How did he achieve this? According to wiki, he "resided in Rome, completing his historical work while occasionally undertaking long journeys through the Mediterranean countries in the furtherance of his history, in particular with the aim of obtaining firsthand knowledge of historical sites. He apparently interviewed veterans to clarify details of the events he was recording and was similarly given access to archival material."
There is no reason to imagine that sources of that kind were not available to Tacitus.
The Greater Fool
Illuminator
Arg, the quote thing isn't working... again.
IanS, thanks again for the thoughtful reply.
Unfortunately, you got hung up on the hypothetical, and didn't address the actual point I was questioning. The hypothetical was only an attempt to illustrate why dismissing scripture in the search for HJ is flawed.
The point is that in the search (or anti-search) for a HJ, scripture is dismissed because it talks about a Mythical Jesus. I'm suggesting that dismissing scripture for this reason seems flawed.
HJ could have been a fakir, a charlatan, a 2000+ year old man (See: The Man from Earth), an alien, or the writers of scripture could have exaggerated, or could have made it up from whole cloth. Which is why historians looking for an HJ are not looking for a miracle working demigod, they are looking for a standard issue human. Accounts of miracles are not used as evidence (or shouldn't be), but there are other aspects that speak to the possibility of a standard issue human as the seed of the myth.
But, saying someone worked with the fleshy brother of Jesus specifically makes no claim about a Mythical James or Mythical Jesus. Why would this be dismissed because MJ couldn't exist? It seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Again, my claim is that dismissing all scripture because MJ could not exist is flawed. There are other, better reasons to dismiss scripture, not the least of which is they were not written when Jesus or James would have been alive.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm trying to address the dismissal of a source of evidence for a poor reason. I don't know nor really care if there is a historical seed for MJ. It seems pointless. But I do care about good or rational argument.
IanS, thanks again for the thoughtful reply.
Unfortunately, you got hung up on the hypothetical, and didn't address the actual point I was questioning. The hypothetical was only an attempt to illustrate why dismissing scripture in the search for HJ is flawed.
The point is that in the search (or anti-search) for a HJ, scripture is dismissed because it talks about a Mythical Jesus. I'm suggesting that dismissing scripture for this reason seems flawed.
HJ could have been a fakir, a charlatan, a 2000+ year old man (See: The Man from Earth), an alien, or the writers of scripture could have exaggerated, or could have made it up from whole cloth. Which is why historians looking for an HJ are not looking for a miracle working demigod, they are looking for a standard issue human. Accounts of miracles are not used as evidence (or shouldn't be), but there are other aspects that speak to the possibility of a standard issue human as the seed of the myth.
But, saying someone worked with the fleshy brother of Jesus specifically makes no claim about a Mythical James or Mythical Jesus. Why would this be dismissed because MJ couldn't exist? It seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Again, my claim is that dismissing all scripture because MJ could not exist is flawed. There are other, better reasons to dismiss scripture, not the least of which is they were not written when Jesus or James would have been alive.
I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm trying to address the dismissal of a source of evidence for a poor reason. I don't know nor really care if there is a historical seed for MJ. It seems pointless. But I do care about good or rational argument.
The Big Dog
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Lol, OK.
Tacitus Born: 56 CE
Great Fire: July 64 CE
Verdict? Tacitus WAS born at the time under discussion.
Thus endeth the lesson.
You were trying to mention 16.5's post saying that I had "erred", and you used that as an intro. to some entirely different complaint that you wanted to make
I am asking you what 16.5's entirely untrue claims about anyone “erring“, had to do with you trying to make some entirely differ complaint to me... why did you want to repeat an untrue personal accusation that 16.5 had made.
It sounds to me like you wanted to write a complaint of something entirely different about me, but you could not resist prefacing it by drawing attention to the fact that 16.5 had made an accusation about me ... you just wanted get someone else’s spurious untrue accusation into your complaining posts as well.
Instead of all the constant complaints and untrue personalised accusations, why don’t posters like you on the HJ side just post any actual evidence of anyone ever showing how they had met Jesus ... any evidence of that? No? Any physical evidence of Jesus? No? How about any independent Roman records, do you have any evidence from anything like that?
It’s been many years now, and tens of thousands of posts, and I’m just waiting to know why you can’t ever produce any evidence of a human Jesus. Because these three HJ threads are after all, specifically requesting the claimed evidence of Jesus.
The Big Dog
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The discussion is about Tacitus' statement about Jesus' purported execution under Pilate... allegedly ca. 33 CE.
Tacitus born 56 CE.
Pretend that the discussion is about the fire in Rome even though the thread is about Jesus and the current discussion is about Tacitus' statements about said Jesus being alleged as proof for the wished upon existence of this downgraded ill begotten son of an imagined sky daddy.
With this pretense proceed to build a straw man.
Knock down this disingenuously fabricated straw man.
Self-gratify oneself on the thrashing of said straw man.
Thus ends a lesson in utter sophistry and disingenuous fabrication and obfuscation and self-gratification.
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That's bizarre.
Aha, now I understand! But hey, that's only a single example of the "personal meeting with Jesus" thing. I just know you can do better than that.
Elagabalus
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OK ... now, you're just messin' with us.
The Big Dog
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Yeah at this point IAN is blatantly lying when he accuses me of making a "spurious untrue accusation."
Fair enough. I think I can only provide an inductive argument rather than a deductive one. I'll give a thumb-nail sketch here - though one problem is how we finished up with the NT canon is still not clear. Another problem is the destruction of many documents that would help elucidate the period of the development of the NT-canon and the records of the other religions also prominent in the Roman Empire that period - the Libraries at Alexandria, Ephesus, and other places - were destroyed in the 4th and 5th centuries.
The cult of Serapis, and other so-called mystery religions were growing in the 1st-3rd centuries and it provides better primary archaeological sources, at least, for those centuries, than Christianity. Many places of worship of Serapis ie. the serapea (plural; singluar = serapeum) were taken over as the first Christian churches (eg. at least 2 of the seven churches of Revelations).
There were also coins produced, depicting Serapis, up to the end of the the 3rd century (and possibly into the 4th century); and these are still available (images are on the 'net).
The cult of Serapis provided precedents - recent precedents, at least - as one of the first anthropomorphic gods, if not the first. It was also a sacrifice and salvation religion. It had a focus on baptism - pools were a feature of most, if not all, serapea.
There are other points: similar geography to where many of the Christian writings developed or referred to: Asia Minor, Corinth, Alexandria, etc.
I'll come back to this.
eta: Serapis also provides a family - Osiris, Isis, and Horus; and there has been commentary that images of Isis and her son Horus are similar to imagery of Jesus and Mary. Serapis looks like Jesus, too. I've edited above, too.
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lol. He was 8 yrs of age. Where Tacitus was born and where he was in 64 CE is not really known.
Hardly any other historian mentions the so-called Great Fire of Rome of 64AD -
There is a view it is exaggerated as part of an exaggeration of 'Christian persecution'
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The Big Dog
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You have no evidence of an historical Jesus and Paul.
The myths and legends you use for the "biological" Jesus state Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin in Bethlehem, that Jesus and Satan were together in Jerusalem and that he walked on the Sea of Galilee and transfigured on a high mountain.
There was NEVER EVER any historical Jesus and Paul.
You will NEVER EVER find a manuscript with stories of Jesus and Paul dated to the 1st century before the Fall of the Jewish Temple.
NEVER EVER.
You use gMatthew's Ghost story for Biology, genealogy and history of your HJ.
tsig
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Not throwing out the event; but the persecution story is likely not true or way over-stated -
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