Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[jobberone]

Usually, by asking the person making a claim for the evidence supporting that claim.

I gave the reasonable person a place to look rather than just espouse an opinion. I've admitted a reasonable person can question most of it although the volume of evidence makes the overwhelming majority of scholars in this area as certain as is humanly possible Jesus was an actual real live person.

If you expect people on a forum to spoon feed you a bibliography then that is not only unreasonable but merely a form of dismissal. If you think someone is spouting nonsense then it is on YOU to provide evidence its not true. Your post is just an old trick for people to attack other posters rather than counter with points or counterpoints. And I would point out the omission of a fact does not make it untrue.

If you can respond with an actual argument then we can debate each other. Someone above did make comments about Origen and Tertullian along with Pope Clement and they are worth responding to [after the football games ].

 

[Belz...]

If you expect people on a forum to spoon feed you a bibliography then that is not only unreasonable but merely a form of dismissal.

My point is that you can scarcely expect everybody to do your research all over again. It saves a lot of time to provide references to the people you are trying to convince.

Hopefully this answers your question.

 

[jobberone]

My point is that you can scarcely expect everybody to do your research all over again. It saves a lot of time to provide references to the people you are trying to convince.

Hopefully this answers your question.

I've provided enough information in this thread for people to look up a very complicated topic and begin to read. There are thousands of books out there and tons of info on the web some of actually good. Detailed explanations are not necessary esp for those familiar and well read about this topic. If you question what I say then YOU owe yourself the benefit of exploring.

There is no reason to ask me for that type of information unless you believe I have unpublished work or have anecdotal or personal communication info.

 

[dejudge]

I gave the reasonable person a place to look rather than just espouse an opinion. I've admitted a reasonable person can question most of it although the volume of evidence makes the overwhelming majority of scholars in this area as certain as is humanly possible Jesus was an actual real live person.

It is a complete fallacy and mis-representation to imply there is a volume of evidence to support an argument for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

There is none.

No non-apologetic writer of antiquity mentioned Nazareth or Jesus of Nazareth who wrote about events in the time of Augustus or Tiberius.

There is a massive amount of manuscripts and Codices, hundreds of them, which clearly state that Jesus was born of a Ghost or God Creator.

No poster in this thread can identify or name any non-apologetic author who was a witness to Jesus of Nazareth.

 

[jobberone]

Brainache


And your evidence for that is what?

My evidence for denial is that I accepted without complaint two dozen words to cover three of the four things I asked for. Since the alleged cause of Peter's death was public execution, a few additional words about the charges would have sufficed, if the charges had something to do with his beliefs about Jesus.


No. I asked for his or her sources. I already know that plenty of stories about the Apostles can be found in many ancient and not-so ancient sources. However,

- there is no place to "look up" whether any of those people existed,

- if they did exist, then there is no place to "look up" who all of them were (different sources agree on some names, but not all, and different reconciliations of the various lists are proposed) - So, which "all of the Apostles except one" are we discussing? That's not in any book.

- the only one of them whose death is in the canon (for whatever that's worth) is James (as in brother of John, son of Zebedee).

James, execution by sword, Acts 12:1-3, no reason given, but killing him was popular.

Killing a criminal can be popular for many reasons, for example, perhaps he committed a nasty crime. Anyway, an associate of the Apostles is also killed earlier in the same book,

Stephen, execution by stoning, Acts 6:8 through 7 (entire), charged with blasphemy against Moses and God (6: 11), unrelated to belief in Jesus.

(Note that that's two deaths, answered in the style requested, done in fewer than 50 words.)

- apart from James, there is no place to "look up" how any of the others died, including Peter, because this information is unknown. (I can of course consult Acts of Peter, and right after the part where he defeats the other Simon in a magicians' contest held in and over the Roman forum, Peter runs away, gets a tongue lashing from the formerly dead Jesus, the famous "Quo vadis?" encounter, and then ends up crucified, and I do mean ends up.)

The early estimated date on that little gem of historical information is 150.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/actspeter.html

So, you'll excuse me is I find this "information" discussable. But we can't have that discussion until we get the sources on the table, and we can't have the discussion with J1 unless J1 tells us his or her own sources. You'll notice Acts of Peter wasn't listed as one of J1's sources. Good thing I asked instead of guessing, eh?

It's not my problem that a big claim can be made in a few words, and more words are needed to back it up than to talk it up. However, I gave a focused template for a possible answer, and in the three cases where it's been used, it has required only 25-50 words per case.

So, you were about to explain why a book would be needed ...

(This post is about 575 words - just about the same estimated length as would have been required to answer. So, between us, we've consumed more bandwidth discussing the length of an answer than an answer would have taken. And would I be surprised if you aren't yet finished complaining about it?)

No it would take much more to explain it to you as either you don't know or don't want to know.

Why was Stephen killed and blasphemy is not a complete answer? What is your source for the evidence he was killed?

 

[jobberone]

It is a complete fallacy and mis-representation to imply there is a volume of evidence to support an argument for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

There is none.

No non-apologetic writer of antiquity mentioned Nazareth or Jesus of Nazareth who wrote about events in the time of Augustus or Tiberius.

There is a massive amount of manuscripts and Codices, hundreds of them, which clearly state that Jesus was born of a Ghost or God Creator.

No poster in this thread can identify or name any non-apologetic author who was a witness to Jesus of Nazareth.

While there is quite a bit of scholarly dissent about whether Jesus was a prophet, philosopher, messianic, healer, etc, there isn't a lot of scholars who continue to espouse that Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. Why don't we just agree to disagree about this.

 

[dejudge]

While there is quite a bit of scholarly dissent about whether Jesus was a prophet, philosopher, messianic, healer, etc, there isn't a lot of scholars who continue to espouse that Jesus of Nazareth is a myth. Why don't we just agree to disagree about this.

You seem not to understand the purpose of these forums. I am afraid we are not really dealing with quantity or body count.

We are discussing the quality of the evidence.

The very fact that scholars cannot determine who Jesus was in an indication that there is no evidence or terribly weak evidence for Jesus as a prophet, philosopher, messianic, healer, zealot, apocalyptic preacher, etc

In any event, the quality of evidence for a mythological Jesus is far superior and cannot be contradicted.

The birth of Jesus is documented.

Jesus of Nazareth was born of a Ghost and was God Creator. See the NT.

There is no-good evidence for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

 

[pakeha]

... There is ZERO corroboration for Jesus of Nazareth in non-apologetic contemporary writings.

Well, you'd be wrong. Did you look at the names I mentioned such as Philo, Maimonides and Josephus? The Talmud? You can dismiss each fact singularly but to dismiss all the non-Biblical sources of the existence of Jesus is stretching probability to the breaking point. BTW, I'm citing examples and you are citing your opinion. ...

Since when is Maimonides a 1st century writer?

 

[jobberone]

You seem not to understand the purpose of these forums. I am afraid we are not really dealing with quantity or body count.

We are discussing the quality of the evidence.

The very fact that scholars cannot determine who Jesus was in an indication that there is no evidence or terribly weak evidence for Jesus as a prophet, philosopher, messianic, healer, zealot, apocalyptic preacher, etc

In any event, the quality of evidence for a mythological Jesus is far superior and cannot be contradicted.

The birth of Jesus is documented.

Jesus of Nazareth was born of a Ghost and was God Creator. See the NT.

There is no-good evidence for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

I don't have a constructive response to this. You say he was born then there is no evidence for him. And I'm very familiar to what the NT says. You're leaving off that Jesus was considered human and God. I'm not getting into the religious aspect of this as its OT and out of bounds for me. I'm only interested in the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

The definition of insanity is repeating something over an over and expecting a different result (although I admit the possibility of there being 1 result in a very large number as well as the screwiness of quantum mechanics from an everyday secular view).

Have a great nite or day wherever you may be at the present.

 

[maximara]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if that were true.

In fact, even if the HJ people are correct and there was a Jesus who preached in the first century and became the template for the gospels and epistles, he still is a far cry from being anything we'd call the historical Jesus, unless he said and did quite a number of things attributed to the man, and THAT I find very unlikely.

Which brings us back to the Christ Myth theory of John Robertson in 1900 as summed up by Archibald Robertson in 1946:

"(John) Robertson is prepared to concede the possibility of an historical Jesus, perhaps more than one, having contributed something to the Gospel story. "A teacher or teachers named Jesus, or several differently named teachers called Messiahs " (of whom many are on record) may have uttered some of the sayings in the Gospels.

1 The Jesus of the Talmud, who was stoned and hanged over a century before the traditional date of the crucifixion, may really have existed and have contributed something to the tradition.

2 An historical Jesus may have "preached a political doctrine subversive of the Roman rule, and . . . thereby met his death"; and Christian writers concerned to conciliate the Romans may have suppressed the facts.

3 Or a Galilean faith-healer with a local reputation may have been slain as a human sacrifice at some time of social tumult; and his story may have got mixed up with the myth.

4 The myth theory is not concerned to deny such a possibility. What the myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded"


Point 2 is very plausible and at least according to Eddy-Boyd is where mainstream research seems to be going ie Jesus existed but he was very different from what the Gospels give us.

If you look at it point 2 would explain why Jesus was crucified rather then stoned and it would fit with making the fledgling religion more palatable to those outside the Jews community. But it also raises the question is anything in the Gospels truly historical...other then Jesus existing.

This is why looking at Christ Myth theories c1900 is so important...some of them were more to the point then their modern counterparts at times seem wander around for what seems forever before getting to the point and even when they get there they don't believe in summing it up.

 

[maximara]

I don't have a constructive response to this. You say he was born then there is no evidence for him. And I'm very familiar to what the NT says. You're leaving off that Jesus was considered human and God. I'm not getting into the religious aspect of this as its OT and out of bounds for me. I'm only interested in the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

The definition of insanity is repeating something over an over and expecting a different result (although I admit the possibility of there being 1 result in a very large number as well as the screwiness of quantum mechanics from an everyday secular view).

Have a great nite or day wherever you may be at the present.

Three comments from Price come to mind:

"What one Jesus reconstruction leaves aside, the next one takes up and makes its cornerstone. Jesus simply wears too many hats in the Gospels – exorcist, healer, king, prophet, sage, rabbi, demigod, and so on. The Jesus Christ of the New Testament is a composite figure (...) The historical Jesus (if there was one) might well have been a messianic king, or a progressive Pharisee, or a Galilean shaman, or a magus, or a Hellenistic sage. But he cannot very well have been all of them at the same time." (Price, Robert (2000) Deconstructing Jesus, pp. 15-16)

"The "historical Jesus" reconstructed by New Testament scholars is always a reflection of the individual scholars who reconstruct him. Albert Schweitzer was perhaps the single exception, and he made it painfully clear that previous questers for the historical Jesus had merely drawn self-portraits. All unconsciously used the historical Jesus as a ventriloquist dummy. Jesus must have taught the truth, and their own beliefs must have been true, so Jesus must have taught those beliefs." (Price, Robert (1997) Christ a Fiction)


"My point here is simply that, even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less a fiction." (Price, Robert (1997) Christ a Fiction)

 

[pakeha]

I've mentioned some of them. I would suggest you read all the variants of the Testimonium and the scholarly debate surrounding them. I would pay particular attention to the Agapius version.

There is a letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan, Tacitus, Talmudic references, Galen, Lucian and others. One can argue each element singularly of course but I find it difficult to dismiss them all including the historical aspects of the Canon. ...

Did you know there's good reason to think that Pliny/Trajan correspondence is fraudulent?

 

[jobberone]

Since when is Maimonides a 1st century writer?

He isn't. He's a medieval Jewish Torah scholar as well as philosopher, physician and astronomer. I quoted him because he understood the Torah and one of the preeminent scholars ever of the oral tradition. You don't see the majority of the Jewish community disputing Jesus is a myth but rather or not he is the mashiach. He affirms the existence of Jesus. If anyone knew the oral tradition it would be him. I don't know of a large Jewish segment who believes Jesus is myth which says reams.

Clement is a first century author who knew the apostles including Peter. I don't have time right now to get into Clement being a source for the authenticity of Jesus but I'll try and address it later tonight or tomorrow.

 

[dejudge]

I don't have a constructive response to this. You say he was born then there is no evidence for him. And I'm very familiar to what the NT says. You're leaving off that Jesus was considered human and God. I'm not getting into the religious aspect of this as its OT and out of bounds for me. I'm only interested in the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

You have no understanding of mythology. The myth founder of Rome, Romulus, was born. Perseus, the son of the myth God Zeus, was born. Achilles was born. Sons and daughters of Gods were born.

You do not understand that Jesus of Nazareth was constructed from the OT.

There is no human Jesus that is precisely why it was claimed Jesus was born after his mother was made pregnant.

Where do you expect to find the human Jesus?

The definition of insanity is repeating something over an over and expecting a different result (although I admit the possibility of there being 1 result in a very large number as well as the screwiness of quantum mechanics from an everyday secular view).

Have a great nite or day wherever you may be at the present.

How many times have you repeated that Jesus was a figure of history without ever presenting any evidence expecting people to believe?

The HJ argument has run its course. Bart Ehrman has finally exposed that the argument for an historical Jesus of Nazareth is extremely terrible.

 

[Craig B]

... Clement is a first century author who knew the apostles including Peter. I don't have time right now to get into Clement being a source for the authenticity of Jesus but I'll try and address it later tonight or tomorrow.

I look forward to that. Meanwhile, sleep well.

 

[dejudge]

Clement is a first century author who knew the apostles including Peter. I don't have time right now to get into Clement being a source for the authenticity of Jesus but I'll try and address it later tonight or tomorrow.

1st Clement is a forgery or false attribution. Multiple Apologetic writers claimed Clement of Rome was bishop around the time of Nero not c 95 CE when there was a supposed great dissension of the Church of Corinth.

1st Clement was composed no earlier than the start of 5th century or after Augustine of Hippo.

 

[Belz...]

It is a complete fallacy and mis-representation to imply there is a volume of evidence to support an argument for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

There is none.

You can't make an argument by simply declaring something. You, yourself, have used some of that evidence in your posts.

No non-apologetic writer of antiquity mentioned Nazareth or Jesus of Nazareth who wrote about events in the time of Augustus or Tiberius.

Why would you exclude the apologetic works entirely, I wonder ?

There is a massive amount of manuscripts and Codices, hundreds of them, which clearly state that Jesus was born of a Ghost or God Creator.

Ah, so that evidence is OK when it suits your purposes.

You are still ignoring everything that people are telling you. You are not addressing anyone's counter-arguments or actual arguments. The only thing you've done is repeat your personal conclusion over and over, as if that somehow counts for something.

You seem not to understand the purpose of these forums.

Jesus of Nazareth was born of a Ghost and was God Creator. See the NT.

There is no-good evidence for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.

And here you are, AGAIN conflating two things in your weak attempt to disprove one by disproving the other. You are completely ignoring everybody in this debate, which is why at some point everybody will ignor you.

 

[pakeha]

He isn't. He's a medieval Jewish Torah scholar as well as philosopher, physician and astronomer. I quoted him because he understood the Torah and one of the preeminent scholars ever of the oral tradition. You don't see the majority of the Jewish community disputing Jesus is a myth but rather or not he is the mashiach. He affirms the existence of Jesus. If anyone knew the oral tradition it would be him. I don't know of a large Jewish segment who believes Jesus is myth which says reams.

Clement is a first century author who knew the apostles including Peter. I don't have time right now to get into Clement being a source for the authenticity of Jesus but I'll try and address it later tonight or tomorrow.

Jobberone, why even bring up the opinion of a medieval Jewish scholar?
Especially if you identify him as a first century source?

ETA
Clement knew the apostles?

 

[Belz...]

How many times have you repeated that Jesus was a figure of history without ever presenting any evidence expecting people to believe?

How many times have you repeated that Jesus was a figure of myth without ever presenting any evidence expecting people to believe?

 

[dejudge]

How many times have you repeated that Jesus was a figure of myth without ever presenting any evidence expecting people to believe?

You are not credible. How many times have I referred to the Gospels where the birth of Jesus is documented as the son of a Ghost?