Seems to be the aim of the exercise. It's one giant attempt at well-poisoning.
The whole premise rests on ignorance of the historical method.
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Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus
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Seems to be the aim of the exercise. It's one giant attempt at well-poisoning.
The whole premise rests on ignorance of the historical method.
Well, it's a kind of deliberate ignorance, isn't it? It's not that difficult to look up various accounts of historical methods - I think the link in the OP discusses it also.
It seems to be a kind of dissimulation - 'I'll pretend that historical method does not exist, and is not being applied to HJ, so I will use terms that are not used in history, and then maybe nobody will notice that I have in effect, pulled a curtain across the whole scene'.
Yeah, but you left a corpse in full view!
They will also tell you that if you believe there was an Historical Jesus, that that makes you a Theist. Eight Bits just did it a few minutes ago.
It's like saying that if I agree that Obama is President, it means I voted for him, or something.
You have confirmed again that you have no idea that Bart Ehrman used the Bible in his argument for his "historical Jesus of Nazareth".
You have no idea that Bart Ehrman used Galatians 1.19 when he argued that Jesus of Nazareth must have existed because Paul met his brother the Apostle James.
In fact, Ehrman relied on the Gospels and argued that Jesus of Nazareth was baptized by John and crucified under Pilate.
Non-apologetic writers wrote nothing of Nazareth or Jesus of Nazareth so ONLY the Bible and apologetics can be used.
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Brainache
It means that you know that Obama is a socialist Muslim Kenyan.
Tim has often been accused of being a theist. Weird confusion between the object of study, and the subject, as if all honest students of religion are religious. Eh?
It means that you know that Obama is a socialist Muslim Kenyan.
Tim has often been accused of being a theist. Weird confusion between the object of study, and the subject, as if all honest students of religion are religious. Eh?
You know Bart Ehrman isn't the only Scholar in the world, don't you?
I'm surprised you keep at this here. It isn't working.
Ah yes, I forgot that. Lucky I didn't vote for him!
Yes. I wonder if they think everybody who studies the history of China is Chinese?
You really don't know what you are talking about. Bart Ehrman did just that. He simply crossed out the supernatural and miraculous and ASSUMED that the rest is history.
For example, in the baptism scence, where it is claimed Jesus was baptized by John it is also stated a Holy Ghost bird descended on Jesus and a Voice from heaven declared that Jesus was his Son.
Bart Ehrman simply crossed out the Holy Ghost bird and the voice from heaven and assumed that the baptism was an historical event because it was embarrassing.
Well, the baptism was not embarrssing at all. It was most pleasing to God.
Ehrman even crossed out evidence against him.
Mark 1:11 NIV
Belz...
Fiend God
From what I understand, no. I certainly wouldn't do it that way.
I am merely exposing your fallacy that "no one is looking for the HJ in the bible".
Please, tell us where it is found that Jesus of Nazareth was baptized by John and crucified under Pilate?
Other Scholars use the Bible to argue for an historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Where are you getting the idea everyone was dead etc by 70 CE or old people's memories can't be trusted assuming I got the drift of your post correct? While memory can shift over time it doesn't have to and there are things I remember from childhood etc that are like they happened yesterday. There is plenty of literature but popular, anecdotal and medical etc about the reliability of most peoples memories speaking in general. Most people don't forget their family and close friends etc unless they have some organic brain syndrome. You can't dismiss all memories because some are plastic. I certainly wouldn't forget a person if they had a life like Jesus. I still remember my babysitter when I was 4 or so. Big fat lady I disliked.
There is plenty of Pauline authorship before then and Paul didn't write in a vacuum. There was conflict in the early church including between Paul and Peter. There would be evidence of problems with the Pauline literature way before 70 CE if Paul had been talking about a Jesus who Peter et al didn't know. The church in Jerusalem would have recalled Paul and stopped him by any means. Further Paul himself warned of people speaking a doctrine outside that of the Apostles.
John was alive roughly 30 years after 70 CE and he wrote about Jesus. There is way too much detail from too many authors both Biblical and extra-Biblical to dismiss it all.
Belz...
Fiend God
I'm sorry, which John ? The author of the gospel ? You know he wasn't a witness, right ? Or which other John are we talking about ?
Please. These arguments display to one and all that you know virtually nothing about this subject.
It is useless discussing this with you.
You must have forgotten that you have already admitted you have not read any books from Ehrman. You know virtually nothing about Ehrman's argument for the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
Please do not get upset because I expose your fallacies and your lack of knowledge on the subject of the thread.
You have no idea that Jesus of Nazareth can only be found in the Bible and apologetics.
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You have no idea that Bart Ehrman claimed that John did not write the Gospel according to John and that the author of gJohn was not an eyewitness.
Do you not understand that the Gospels and indeed the NT are a compilation of forgeries?
The NT is the flagship of forgeries of the ancient world.
Yep, agreed.
If as you say there is "just enough to show that there seems to be an actual person (Robin Hood, King Arthur) at the core but that is about it.", then that is the vital difference compared to Jesus.
If there was some genuine evidence to show that Jesus was a real person, then it would be possible to make a credible case for his existence. But one thing that these HJ threads have now clearly shown, is that in fact there is no such evidence of Jesus as a real person. Zero. Absolutely none at all (apparently). That's the problem with the Jesus story.
He might have existed. That's not impossible. But the gospel stories and the stories of Paul’s letters are impossible, because they are supernatural. And there is zero evidence of Jesus outside the bible. That's the problem.
You say John "WAS alive roughly 30 years after 70CE". You are stating that as if you know it as an absolute fact with no room for any doubt at all. How do you know when John was alive? How do you know what he ever wrote?
What do you think is the date of the earliest extant readable & relatively complete copy of g-John? Ie not just a few small fragments of some writing. But any copy which has survived in enough extent that it can be read to show the majority of what are now reproduced as the stories and accounts of Jesus in g-John?
What is the earliest date of any actual copy of g-John?
See here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript
The date is given as circa 350AD for the earliest extant relatively complete copy of g-John.
As an anthropologist I know you are just repeating what the apologists claim but as a quick google search shows the reality is quite different:
Unreliable Memory
Eyewitness Memory is Unreliable
The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony
Claudia Hammond: 'Your memories are made to be reliably unreliable'
Bailey, William G. (1995) The Encyclopedia of Police Science - Page 269
I could go on but I think you get the point.
As for the age that is something Carrier pointed out in one of his papers:
"In the ancient world, the average life expectancy (for anyone who survived to age 15) was 46 years, while fewer than 1 in 20 would live to 70, and fewer than 1 in 200 would live to 85. Any witness, who survived the war and was at least fifteen years old by 35 A.D. (and thus could recall events of previous years with any kind of reliability), would probably be dead before 75 A.D. (having only a 34% chance of survival, even without an intervening war and persecution), and would almost certainly be dead by 100 A.D. (with only a 1.5% chance of survival, and that’s again without an intervening war and persecution, which would have reduced the probability of survival a great deal more). […] Likewise, Josephus himself says 20 years is enough time for witnesses to no longer be available to rebut a story (Life 360; cf. Jewish War 1.15 & Against Apion 1.55) - (Carrier (2006) Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False?)
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eight bits
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Brainache at post 1103
dejudge
We might go further and look at the whole incident as it appears in Mark, 1: 9-11:
You are free to interpret the passage as reporting that a voice really spoke, but no erasure is required to read it differently than you do. Ironically, you erased the part about the man seeing the dove-like thing to make a supernatural event of a possibly natural one, that a man saw something that wasn't there.
authorship of John
The Fourth Gospel doesn't say who wrote it. Later tradition ascribed it to John the Apostle, presumably based upoon reading expansively the remark at the end of the Gospel that the author knew of some writing by the "Beloved Disiciple." The point of the remark, however, seems to be that the writing supports the events told in chapter 21. (The Fourth Evangelist also cites an unnamed witness at the crucifxion, apparently for the blood and water detail.)
Regardless of whether it was John or not, somebody was the last reputed close associate of Jesus to die. Based on chapter 21, that may have been the "Beloved Disciple." The survival time (after some specified event) of the last person to die in some group whose members do not all die simultaneously is greater than the average survival time for the whole group. Perhaps now that Carrier is interested in probability theory, he'll ask an actuary to help him calculate how long the last man standing might plausibly have lived.
I said no such thing.
dejudge
I think there are criticisms to be made about the "criterion of embarrassment," including our rare agreement, yours and mine, that the baptism isn't embarrassing. However, John presiding while Jesus was dunked is a naturalistic claim, and either it happened or else it did not. Whether it did or not is well within the scope of historical inquiry.
We might go further and look at the whole incident as it appears in Mark, 1: 9-11:
The passage is poorly drafted, and I am unsure whether it was John or Jesus whose subjective experience is being described (Mark is notorious for the looseness of its pronoun usage). There is no naturalistic objection to a report that a man saw something, and I read the passage as reporting the voice to be of the same kind, what one man heard.
You are free to interpret the passage as reporting that a voice really spoke, but no erasure is required to read it differently than you do. Ironically, you erased the part about the man seeing the dove-like thing to make a supernatural event of a possibly natural one, that a man saw something that wasn't there.
authorship of John
The Fourth Gospel doesn't say who wrote it. Later tradition ascribed it to John the Apostle, presumably based upoon reading expansively the remark at the end of the Gospel that the author knew of some writing by the "Beloved Disiciple." The point of the remark, however, seems to be that the writing supports the events told in chapter 21. (The Fourth Evangelist also cites an unnamed witness at the crucifxion, apparently for the blood and water detail.)
Regardless of whether it was John or not, somebody was the last reputed close associate of Jesus to die. Based on chapter 21, that may have been the "Beloved Disciple." The survival time (after some specified event) of the last person to die in some group whose members do not all die simultaneously is greater than the average survival time for the whole group. Perhaps now that Carrier is interested in probability theory, he'll ask an actuary to help him calculate how long the last man standing might plausibly have lived.
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eight bits
Interesting point there about someone seeing the heavens torn open, which, as you say, dejudge elides into something supernatural, i.e. 'the heavens were torn open', which is not the original text.
Presumably, the baptism is supposed to infringe the criterion of dissimilarity (Ehrman doesn't use the word 'embarrassment', I don't think), because it puts Jesus in an inferior position to John, and it assumes he must repent of his sins. This contradicts the view of Jesus as a perfect divine being.
But this view does have to assume rather a lot about contemporary baptism - for example, was the baptized person really in an inferior position?
Ehrman also cites multiple attestation, I think.
I think there are also arguments that this baptism is 'softened' in other gospels, and removed in John, possibly indicating that Mark's account was seen as awkward. I don't think Ehrman makes this argument.
But then Mark does have John declare Jesus to be the more powerful preacher, who will baptize others with the Spirit. So maybe the writer/editor of Mark realized the problem, and tried to rectify it.
But it would be interesting to see a mythicist account of this baptism - I can't quite see the point of bringing in John the Bapist, if Jesus is not human, but no doubt, there could be some ingenious explanation. Does it all take place in the sub-lunar realm?
I suppose you could argue that John the Baptist is brought in, to add credibility. But in an overtly mythicist account, would credibility be aided by citing a figure such as John, who has some historicity of his own? Dunno.
Interesting point there about someone seeing the heavens torn open, which, as you say, dejudge elides into something supernatural, i.e. 'the heavens were torn open', which is not the original text.
Presumably, the baptism is supposed to infringe the criterion of dissimilarity (Ehrman doesn't use the word 'embarrassment', I don't think), because it puts Jesus in an inferior position to John, and it assumes he must repent of his sins. This contradicts the view of Jesus as a perfect divine being.
But this view does have to assume rather a lot about contemporary baptism - for example, was the baptized person really in an inferior position?
Ehrman also cites multiple attestation, I think.
I think there are also arguments that this baptism is 'softened' in other gospels, and removed in John, possibly indicating that Mark's account was seen as awkward. I don't think Ehrman makes this argument.
But then Mark does have John declare Jesus to be the more powerful preacher, who will baptize others with the Spirit. So maybe the writer/editor of Mark realized the problem, and tried to rectify it.
But it would be interesting to see a mythicist account of this baptism - I can't quite see the point of bringing in John the Bapist, if Jesus is not human, but no doubt, there could be some ingenious explanation. Does it all take place in the sub-lunar realm?
I suppose you could argue that John the Baptist is brought in, to add credibility. But in an overtly mythicist account, would credibility be aided by citing a figure such as John, who has some historicity of his own? Dunno.
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