Historical Jesus

[HansMustermann]

Not that it would help much anyway, because even the Wikipedia page you seem to get your information from, will tell you that the codex format was used as early as Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC. In fact, many credit him with inventing the codex format.

Funny what you'd learn if you even bothered to read the whole Wikipedia page instead of just skimming the intro.

So yeah, even if you had any actual evidence that they were originally written in codex form -- which you don't -- it still wouldn't mean anything. There WERE codices in the 1st century AD, or again, even the 1st century BC. It was a lot more rare, but not non-existent. So your dating based on that just falls flat on its face.


Also let's get one thing clear: papyrus was always manufactured in pages.

In fact, even pages of a given standardized sizes. You can find that out from, for example, Pliny The Elder.

ALL that the codex format changed was the way to BIND them. In the traditional scroll format, they were connected side to side and then the whole strip was rolled up. In the codex format it was more like a modern book. But that's the whole change, really.

 

[HansMustermann]

That said, go on anyway. So let's say I buy your argument that someone went and invented the whole Xianity in the 2nd century, for the scope of this argument. Then what? How did it spread? From where? How does your hypothesis change anything, other than pushing the timeline a bit forward?

 

[abaddon]

My argument is that all NT writings were fabricated no earlier than the 2nd century.

Who fabricated them?

You have no idea, do you?

 

[The Norseman]

My quotes aren't working for some reason so @Hans:
why are you continually insisting he (or anyone) come up with some alternative hypothesis? I thought it is enough to challenge the one put forward, at least as any scientific-type endeavor. What is it exactly that you're wanting from dejduge or anyone else who takes that position? We know it spread. How, precisely did it? No one knows for sure. The history of the Christian church is quite murky and yet, there is evidence that early Christians burnt books and lied and tried to manipulate and forge texts; so what if we never know who did these things or why?


How is any of that important when there is enough evidence to show that we simply cannot trust these early writings for any kind of authentic historicity?



@abaddon


You don't know either. He doesn't know. No one does. So what? The theories put forth of who wrote them, seem to be incorrect or ahistorical. People like Richard Carrier has done the hard work of putting forth some alternatives. Maybe you should berate him instead of posters here. I mean, seriously. I respect your points here well enough and I think you're a respectful poster, but please stop personalizing this debate. I've tried to quote numerous times in which you've attempted to poison the well at thinking dejudge has some personal vendetta or crazy fixation with Jesus et al being mythical all the while ignoring voluminous posters such as HansMustermann, BrainAche (mostly in many, many earlier threads), and others I can't recall off-hand but all who, by my observations, just happen to be "on your side."



For my part, I have agreed with you with your (as I understand it) anti-religious stance, wherein religions have decidedly harmful impacts on societies at large and so I can understand your motivations, but really. Personal motivations have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not dejudge is right or whether or not Jesus existed. You do you and all, but I'm respectfully pointing it out as it doesn't help you making your points.






I also have read Carrier and many others in the field (quite a few from my dad who is a retired Lutheran pastor and he's recommended some very thoughtful books on the subject so I haven't just atheistically cherry-picked books only to my taste) and have felt that he [Carrier] had the most thorough and historical and scientific works out there (I know one of his books, I think it's "On the Historicity of Jesus" was deliberately sought out to be peer-reviewed and had been before publishing) and he says that, at best, there is about a one-third chance that there might have been some sort of historical Jesus.



I think he's made the most compelling case, in toto; and I think that's also vital, that broader view, when it comes to these threads, as the vast amount of back-and-forthing consists entirely of non-contextual nit-picking which doesn't really solve much (though admittedly can be fun or entertaining for a while).


I also have to say that, regardless of dejudge's posting style, he and Kapyong spring immediately to mind, having made the most compelling arguments against the historicity of Jesus, *here* at JREF/ISkep. They made me really question the actual evidence that I, as had/have many millions of others, simply assumed was correct and accurate. Even when I was a nominal believer in "god" it didn't matter to me one way or another whether or not Jesus existed and it doesn't matter to me now, per se. What does matter is to, at minimum, help others in pushing back these false narratives wherever they happen to be.

 

[HansMustermann]

My quotes aren't working for some reason so @Hans:
why are you continually insisting he (or anyone) come up with some alternative hypothesis? I thought it is enough to challenge the one put forward, at least as any scientific-type endeavor. What is it exactly that you're wanting from dejduge or anyone else who takes that position?

Well, because whether it's about science or history or just how did an apple end up on my porch, you still need to explain the evidence at least as well as the existing explanation, and preferably with less entities. Which might include showing that the old explanation doesn't actually do the job anyway (e.g., that homeopathy doesn't actually explain more than placebo effect does,) but still, you have to make SOME sense of the data. You can't just make your whole case be some equivalent of "no, GR doesn't exist, you're all making stuff up" a la Pixie Of Key.

In this case the data includes such stuff as that Pliny The Younger's letters to Trajan about persecuting Xians between 111 AD and 113 AD. Including testimonies saying that yeah, they quit being Christians many years before. But also the fact that there seem to be enough of them back then to
A) cause enough of the province's turmoil being based on a lot of people accusing each other of being Xians (the state wasn't seeking out Xians), to the extent needed for it to
B) warrant being singled out by the emperor himself as an organization to forbid, and
C) warrant Pliny's impression that there was a dip in attendance of the state's religion services, and now it's on a rebound, all because of Xians and respectively persecution thereof.

So given that most of those copies of Xian documents dated 2nd century are after Pliny, if those Xian copies are the starting date of Xianity, WTH happened there? Was there a Tardis involved, or what?

And even if we put the date as early in the 2nd century as we can, i.e., say it was all made up in 101AD, how the hell did it grow enough to be even noticed by the empire, much less be singled out as an outlawed organization, in just 10 years? In fact, LESS than 10 years, possibly quite a lot less, to also account for the people who had converted to Xianity and then away from it before Pliny ever got there. And to the extent of needing the emperor to personally dispatch Rome's top legal expert? (Because, yeah, he wasn't just some random dude assigned as governor. He was handpicked as a legal expert to restore order.) All the way to Bithynia And Pontus? WTH happened there?

We're talking about a spread of over 2000 km even in a straight line from Jerusalem. And again, to the extent mentioned before. If you want it all to happen in less than 10 years, you kinda have to explain how that makes more sense than the previous assumption that it happened over 80 years.

But anyway, that's stuff that a new theory has to make some sense of. You can't just claim it never happened.

We know it spread. How, precisely did it? No one knows for sure. The history of the Christian church is quite murky and yet, there is evidence that early Christians burnt books and lied and tried to manipulate and forge texts; so what if we never know who did these things or why?


How is any of that important when there is enough evidence to show that we simply cannot trust these early writings for any kind of authentic historicity?

Just claiming that we might not know for sure is one thing. Claiming to know exactly when it happened, and in what order, and so on, better be a coherent theory that actually fits the evidence.

 

[abaddon]

@abaddon


You don't know either. He doesn't know. No one does. So what?

He claims he DOES know. And he won't say why.

The theories put forth of who wrote them, seem to be incorrect or ahistorical. People like Richard Carrier has done the hard work of putting forth some alternatives. Maybe you should berate him instead of posters here. I mean, seriously.

Carrier is a smart guy, but he claims some things that cannot be known. Same as Ehrman in the opposite direction. Hypotheses. Not theories.

I respect your points here well enough and I think you're a respectful poster, but please stop personalizing this debate.

Not personalising it. Dejudge insists on the certainty of his opinion. It is legitimate to ask for a justification of that opinion.

I've tried to quote numerous times in which you've attempted to poison the well at thinking dejudge has some personal vendetta or crazy fixation with Jesus et al being mythical all the while ignoring voluminous posters such as HansMustermann, BrainAche (mostly in many, many earlier threads), and others I can't recall off-hand but all who, by my observations, just happen to be "on your side."

Sorry, but that is not my question. If, as dejudge claims, jesus, paul and the apostles were entirely fictional, then who wrote the magic books and convinced enough people to go along with with such aplomb that it remains with us 2,000 years later.

Did they just poof magically into existence as written text? I think not. Ergo, they had an author/s. Who might those then be?

For my part, I have agreed with you with your (as I understand it) anti-religious stance, wherein religions have decidedly harmful impacts on societies at large and so I can understand your motivations, but really. Personal motivations have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not dejudge is right or whether or not Jesus existed. You do you and all, but I'm respectfully pointing it out as it doesn't help you making your points.

Respectively, I suspect you miss my point. So I shall make it again.

I am an atheist, I believe in no gods. At all.
I have no issue with any of the following, however.

A. There may have been an actual historical jesus as a wandering zealot rabbi preaching apocalypse. It is not an extraordinary claim, there were hatloads around the Levant at the time.

B. The jesus figure could be an amalgam of several of such itinerant rabbis munged into a single figurehead rabbi. In that case there need not be a singular jesus.

C. There could have been no jesus at all and it is an entire work of fiction.

Between A, B and C I cannot say as there is insufficient evidence in any case. And I don't really much care anyway because I believe none of it.

My only concern is those who seek to claim it is all real and force it down everyone else's throat. That affects me and my daily life as it is lived and that of my kids and likely their kids if any.

Now, dejudge claims to KNOW that C. is the case. The simple fact is that he cannot. Yet he continues to attempt to bully all and sundry to concede to his wishes. And I have little tolerance for bullying. Not online and not IRL.

 

[smartcooky]

Yeah, but is that really "Jesus"? Certainly not Jesus of the bible. Jesus of the bible had massive crowds and performed miracles, and was certainly not a "peripatetic preacher who acquired a few followers."

Or maybe it was Jesus of the bible, but the stories about features such as the sizes of the crowds and the things he was supposed to have done, were exaggerated to make Jesus seem more important and more all-encompassing than he really was at the time. After all, if they are merging the various itinerant preachers into one semi-fictional character for their narrative (which in my personal opinion what he are seeing here) then what better way than to embiggen everything about him?

 

[HansMustermann]

Or maybe it was Jesus of the bible, but the stories about features such as the sizes of the crowds and the things he was supposed to have done, were exaggerated to make Jesus seem more important and more all-encompassing than he really was at the time. After all, if they are merging the various itinerant preachers into one semi-fictional character for their narrative (which in my personal opinion what he are seeing here) then what better way than to embiggen everything about him?

Yes, but the point is that if you chuck out any and every identifying attribute of person X, and replace them with the totally different identifying attributes of fictive person Y, are we still talking about the same person at all?

I mean, if I were to tell you about a wondrous creature called Mr Ducksworth Of Bath that has feathers, has webbed feet, swims, and quacks, would you accept that the historical one is my cat? If I replace all attributes of my cat with something else, am I really still talking about my cat?

But I will grant that if that's enough for you to call my cat the Historical Ducksworth, then there might have been such a match for Jesus too. Several, probably.

 

[smartcooky]

I mean, seriously. I respect your points here well enough and I think you're a respectful poster, but please stop personalizing this debate. I've tried to quote numerous times in which you've attempted to poison the well at thinking dejudge has some personal vendetta or crazy fixation with Jesus et al being mythical.

I think perhaps you might need to read back through the thread a bit.

dejudge appears to think his beliefs are absolute truths. He posts his opinions as if they were fact, and does so in a very rude, abrupt and disrespectful manner. He acts as if he is some master authority, talking down to everyone as though they are his intellectual inferiors. As I said earlier, he acts very much in the manner of a 1920's era Public School Master, a schoolteacher, berating his class and rapping them over the knuckles with his cane when they disagree with him.

This is no way to participate in a debate. I will talk about him, but I will not talk to him until I see him starting to treat other forum members respectfully.

 

[abaddon]

For my part, I have agreed with you with your (as I understand it) anti-religious stance, wherein religions have decidedly harmful impacts on societies at large and so I can understand your motivations, but really. Personal motivations have no bearing whatsoever on whether or not dejudge is right or whether or not Jesus existed. You do you and all, but I'm respectfully pointing it out as it doesn't help you making your points.

That is not the problem. Merely by dint of disagreeing one gets accused of being a secret jesus believer and a closet theist. I am not the only recipient of such behaviour. It is not an endearing trait.

I also have read Carrier and many others in the field (quite a few from my dad who is a retired Lutheran pastor and he's recommended some very thoughtful books on the subject so I haven't just atheistically cherry-picked books only to my taste) and have felt that he [Carrier] had the most thorough and historical and scientific works out there (I know one of his books, I think it's "On the Historicity of Jesus" was deliberately sought out to be peer-reviewed and had been before publishing) and he says that, at best, there is about a one-third chance that there might have been some sort of historical Jesus.

And there is the rub. Carrier concedes that there might possibly have been some bloke who was a wandering apocalyptic preacher in a land rife with the same. That is not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is insisting that there could not possibly have been no way no how. That is what our protagonist asserts. It's unreasonable by any measure. There very well could have been some psycho wandering Galilee. We know for a fact that there were quite a few of them at the time. If such a wandering psycho were proven real, would I convert to christianity? Nope. It would just be another psycho among a gaggle of psychos. Big deal.

I think he's made the most compelling case, in toto; and I think that's also vital, that broader view, when it comes to these threads, as the vast amount of back-and-forthing consists entirely of non-contextual nit-picking which doesn't really solve much (though admittedly can be fun or entertaining for a while).

He has flat out accused me and others of being jesus apologists for having the mere temerity to disagree.

I also have to say that, regardless of dejudge's posting style, he and Kapyong spring immediately to mind, having made the most compelling arguments against the historicity of Jesus, *here* at JREF/ISkep. They made me really question the actual evidence that I, as had/have many millions of others, simply assumed was correct and accurate. Even when I was a nominal believer in "god" it didn't matter to me one way or another whether or not Jesus existed and it doesn't matter to me now, per se. What does matter is to, at minimum, help others in pushing back these false narratives wherever they happen to be.

The bullying style is the problem. "Agree with me or else you are a jesus whore" is the bottom line. I really have no reason to firmly conclude if there was or was not a HJ. And I am quite happy to sit on that fence unless and until evidence rocks up either way. So far, the evidence our protagonist has presented is weak at best.

But here is the thing dejudge fails to understand. Let us suppose that a HJ was demonstrated and proven. That would be a mere hill. One would then have to climb the mountain of proving that the evidenced jesus was, in fact, divine. And that would be a far higher evidential Everest to climb.

Maybe a HJ really existed. That gets one no closer to any sort of "god".

 

[abaddon]

Or maybe it was Jesus of the bible, but the stories about features such as the sizes of the crowds and the things he was supposed to have done, were exaggerated to make Jesus seem more important and more all-encompassing than he really was at the time. After all, if they are merging the various itinerant preachers into one semi-fictional character for their narrative (which in my personal opinion what he are seeing here) then what better way than to embiggen everything about him?

Sure. Mary was supposed to call her child Immanuel according to prophecy. She didn't.

This is known as a retcon.

 

[smartcooky]

Sure. Mary was supposed to call her child Immanuel according to prophecy. She didn't.

This is known as a retcon.

Indeed, IMO, the whole Jesus narrative is a series of retcons.

ETA: I am a regular reader of a blog by Greta Christina's (Greta is a an outspoken atheist blogger and speaker). Her writings are humorous and entertaining to read.

She has observed that Religion looks a lot like fan fiction...

"It reads exactly like fan-written blueprints for the Enterprise in "Star Trek." Or fan-written explanations for discrepancies in star dates, or why the Enterprise has completely reliable lie detectors that they only use in three episodes."

She goes on to make this interesting observation....

"Given the rough outline of a narrative, human beings are unbelievably good at filling in the gaps, fleshing out the characters. And if the basic outline of a narrative has flaws and inconsistencies, we are unbelievably good at creating explanations and rationalizations and apologetics. We are unbelievably good at making the inconsistent consistent, making the indefensible defensible. And that's exactly what religion looks like to an outside observer. It doesn't look like an internally consistent, evidence-based description of a consistent, reasonably predictable world. It looks like an unbelievably complex -- brilliant, even -- attempt to make sense of a story. And while the stories it's trying to make sense of are often fascinating and compelling, they're still stories: made up by people, with the inherent inconsistencies and gaps, cultural blind spots and flat-out mistakes, that any story made up by people is going to have."

You can read the full article here

https://the-orbit.net/greta/2007/10/08/why-religion-is/

(Beware: Religion is not the only thing Greta blogs about. Some of the other content on this blog is NFSW - she pulls no punches.)

 

[dejudge]

Not that it would help much anyway, because even the Wikipedia page you seem to get your information from, will tell you that the codex format was used as early as Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC. In fact, many credit him with inventing the codex format.

The Wikipedia page does not state that Julius Caesar used the codex format in the 1st century BCE.

It states Julius Caesar wanted to establish a library in Rome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books

Libraries were private or created at the behest of an individual. Julius Caesar, for example, wanted to establish one in Rome, proving that libraries were signs of political prestige.

Funny what you'd learn if you even bothered to read the whole Wikipedia page instead of just skimming the intro.

You don't even seem to know that a scroll is a regarded as a book.

Isidore de Seville Etymologies
.

A scroll (volumen) is a book so called from rolling (volvere), as we speak of the scrolls of the Law and the scrolls of the Prophets among the Hebrews.

So yeah, even if you had any actual evidence that they were originally written in codex form -- which you don't -- it still wouldn't mean anything. There WERE codices in the 1st century AD, or again, even the 1st century BC. It was a lot more rare, but not non-existent. So your dating based on that just falls flat on its face.

You cannot provide any source from antiquity to show manuscripts in the form of a codex in the 1st century before c 79 CE.

Also let's get one thing clear: papyrus was always manufactured in pages.

In fact, even pages of a given standardized sizes. You can find that out from, for example, Pliny The Elder.

ALL that the codex format changed was the way to BIND them. In the traditional scroll format, they were connected side to side and then the whole strip was rolled up. In the codex format it was more like a modern book. But that's the whole change, really.

You appear to be confused. You really don't know the difference between a scroll and a codex or what a book is.

 

[HansMustermann]

Sure. Mary was supposed to call her child Immanuel according to prophecy. She didn't.

This is known as a retcon.

SORTA. It's one of those sandwiches that were the dominant literary structure at the time. Basically like nowadays you'd have to force your story into the Monomyth mold for it to have any chance, back then they did it with structures like the inclusio and chiasm.

As the most simplified way to explain it, stories were sandwiched inside other stories, inside other stories, with the payload being the middle bit. The meat of the sandwich, if you will.

So for example the well known ridiculous story of Jesus cursing the fig tree is the bread of the sandwich, so to speak, around the story of him driving out the merchants out of the temple. There's the episode of him cursing the tree for being out of season, then he goes and clears the temple, then he comes back and the tree has withered and is no more. The beginning and end are the tree story, the bit in the middle of him condemning what the temple had become are the payload.

Note that the two slices of bread in that sandwich, so to speak, are not usually IDENTICAL. (Though sometimes they ARE just repeats of the same story.) They just match together. Like, it's not just twice cursing a tree. It's the beginning and end of the tree story. This will be important in a bit.

Anyway, ALL 4 gospels use this structure, some more skilfully than others, but all do it. So it's important to have it in mind.

So, now let's look at that "God is with us" name in the beginning of Matthew. Now look at Matt 28:20: "And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

So yeah, sure enough it's one of those sandwiches.

So, tldr version, yeah, it's not a historical statement, but it's not really a retrofit either. It's a literary device.

 

[HansMustermann]

@dejudge
Mate, even the wikipedia page on the codex mentions these bits about it:

"First described by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Martial, who praised its convenient use"

Or its precursor:
"At the turn of the 1st century AD, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin became commonly used for writing in the Roman Empire."

And a few other bits that you didn't seem to get as far as reading.

So at the very least you're pretty much denying Martial in order to have your "facts" pulled out of the ass that it didn't exist in the 1st century. So, yeah, that assertion falls flat on its face right there.

Not that it would matter anyway, since you have presented no evidence that the gospels were first written as codices. All you had for that one is an argument from ignorance, which is a textbook fallacy.

You don't even seem to know that a scroll is a regarded as a book.

Ah, right, now you're up to just inventing stuff out of the ass about what someone secretly doesn't know, if they disagree with your other baseless assertions. And not even based on anything you can actually quote, but just dumb ego wank to make yourself feel better

You cannot provide any source from antiquity to show manuscripts in the form of a codex in the 1st century before c 79 CE.

But that's not what you claimed before, is it? Before your claim was that they flat out didn't exist before the 2nd century, so anything you first find as a COPY in a codex must have been verily not even been written before the 2nd century.

If you push the date back to 79CE, that doesn't support that postulate any more, does it?

 

[HansMustermann]

@smartcooky
You might want to look into Midrash. That was a long tradition of LITERALLY writing some fanfic to explain stuff from the Tanakh (OT.)

Plus, we already know that some "prophecies" were written just to explain some earlier failed "prophecies". E.g., Daniel is known even by theologian scholars to be pretty much just that.

So pretty much it's not just LIKE fiction to explain away why the transporter works at warp speeds in one episode, and then never again, and it doesn't make ships obsolete. It's literally the same kind of thing. In the case of Midrash it's not even just writing explanations after the fact, but can (and usually does) get into the realm of full on fanfic, inventing its own extra devices and events that the original story never had, and frankly nobody else had heard of before. And in the case of inventing prophets to explain why earlier prophets weren't failed, but just misunderstood, it is its own fanfic episode from the start.

 

[dejudge]

@dejudge
Mate, even the wikipedia page on the codex mentions these bits about it:

"First described by the 1st-century AD Roman poet Martial, who praised its convenient use"

Or its precursor:
"At the turn of the 1st century AD, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin became commonly used for writing in the Roman Empire."

And a few other bits that you didn't seem to get as far as reading.

So at the very least you're pretty much denying Martial in order to have your "facts" pulled out of the ass that it didn't exist in the 1st century. So, yeah, that assertion falls flat on its face right there.

I simply exposed your bogus claim that the codex format was used as early as Julius Caesar in the 1st century BC.

You forget to mention that Martial publish his poems in Codices sometime between the end of the 1st century and early 2nd century C86-103 CE]

Not that it would matter anyway, since you have presented no evidence that the gospels were first written as codices. All you had for that one is an argument from ignorance, which is a textbook fallacy.

All existing NT manuscripts are Codices. There is no evidence anywhere that NT writings were made in the 1st century.

The Codex was introduced in the 2nd-4th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books

By the end of antiquity, between the 2nd and 4th centuries, the scroll was replaced by the codex.

Ah, right, now you're up to just inventing stuff out of the ass about what someone secretly doesn't know, if they disagree with your other baseless assertions. And not even based on anything you can actually quote, but just dumb ego wank to make yourself feel better

You still don't know the difference between a scroll, a codex and don't know what a book is.

But that's not what you claimed before, is it? Before your claim was that they flat out didn't exist before the 2nd century, so anything you first find as a COPY in a codex must have been verily not even been written before the 2nd century.

If you push the date back to 79CE, that doesn't support that postulate any more, does it?

What you say is really irrelevant. If NT writings were really written no earlier than c 79 CE it would still mean that the Gospels and Epistles are still fraudulent historically worthless writings.

 

[HansMustermann]

You forget to mention that Martial publish his poems in Codices sometime between the end of the 1st century and early 2nd century C86-103 CE

All existing NT manuscripts are Codices. There is no evidence anywhere that NT writings were made in the 1st century.

The Codex was introduced in the 2nd-4th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books

You still don't get how stupid it is to claim both of those in the same message, do you? As in, that the former directly contradicts the highlighted part in the latter?

Not to mention that the logic in the latter is trivially false. For example, the earliest surviving manuscript copy of Josephus is a Latin translation from the 5'th century, and even the earliest quote from Josephus in other works is 4'th century. The earliest copies in the original Greek are from the tenth and eleventh centuries. And those copies are most definitely in codex form. That doesn't mean it was composed in the 5'th century, nor that it necessarily was in that format from the start.

You still don't know the difference between a scroll, a codex and don't know what a book is.

Playing "Paul" again, are you? Whatever delusion popped into your head out of nowhere, verily must be true?

What you say is really irrelevant.

Information directly contradicting your argument is irrelevant? Really?

If NT writings were really written no earlier than c 79 CE it would still mean that the Gospels and Epistles are still fraudulent historically worthless writings.

Maybe, but for completely different reasons, then. It still doesn't mean that bad logic and misinformation get a free pass.

 

[David Mo]

I don't think you'll find many historical references before or after that, which feel a need to specify if their material is on a codex or on a scroll either way. Not just for the Xians, but generally, nobody did that. (...)

So basically what you have there is a textbook argument from ignorance. They don't SAY it was copied from a scroll, so you know it was a codex. It really is that stupid.

I suggest changing the last word. Perhaps... Well, I can't find the right word to say that someone is trying to teach lessons about something he doesn't really know.
As for the rest of your comment, I agree.

 

[Tassman]

Yeah, but is that really "Jesus"? Certainly not Jesus of the bible. Jesus of the bible had massive crowds and performed miracles, and was certainly not a "peripatetic preacher who acquired a few followers."

Yes. As I said previously “Philo, who wrote an account of the Jews, made no mention of Jesus. At all! And he lived in and around Jerusalem the entire time that Jesus existed”. So, Jesus obviously wasn't the big deal as depicted in the NT. But I’m arguing in the context of some in this discussion claiming that Jesus, Paul and the whole cast of characters in the Jesus story were totally fabricated. Stories don't evolve in a vacuum. So, it’s reasonable to believe that there was a man, Jesus, who had sufficient followers to tell stories about him. And in a gullible era of myths and magic it’s not surprising that they were miraculous and grew in the telling.

"Yes, Jesus was based on a real person but none of the things described in the gospels actually happened to him."

We need to be able to say that some of the things described in the gospels happened to him otherwise there would be no story to tell. I would suggest an execution or something sufficiently dramatic for his little band of shocked followers to want to tell ever-embellished tales about him.

Where is the line? It's all very fuzzy to me.

Certainly, but reality-based fuzziness.