Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Brainache]

...
Why are you looking outside the Bible and apologetics? You won't find Jesus of Nazareth, the disciples and Paul.

How do you know, if you haven't looked?

 

[dejudge]

Why are you looking outside the Bible and apologetics? You won't find Jesus of Nazareth, the disciples and Paul.

How do you know, if you haven't looked?

This is most fascinating. You cannot present any evidence for Jesus the Zealot outside the Bible and Apologetics yet want to give the impression that you can find.

Again, you won't find Jesus of Nazareth, the disciples and Paul outside the Bible and Apologetics.

You wont find them in Philo, Pliny the elder, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, Lucian of Samosata, and Cassius Dio.

Your HJ argument is really nothing but fallacies and rhetoric.

Jesus the Zealot is a modern myth based on the Bible or the Shroud of Turin.

 

[Brainache]

This is most fascinating. You cannot present any evidence for Jesus the Zealot outside the Bible and Apologetics yet want to give the impression that you can find.

Again, you won't find Jesus of Nazareth, the disciples and Paul outside the Bible and Apologetics.

You wont find them in Philo, Pliny the elder, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny the younger, Lucian of Samosata, and Cassius Dio.

Well then, you are looking in the wrong place.

Your HJ argument is really nothing but fallacies and rhetoric.

I was going to post one of those clever and hilarious "irony meter" smilies, but I think you broke them all.

Oh well.

 

[dejudge]

Jesus the Zealot is a modern myth based on the Bible or the Shroud of Turin.

Well then, you are looking in the wrong place.

What fallacy you post. You have nowhere to look for your Zealot. Your Jesus the Zealot is not in or out the Bible.

I have thousands of evidence for Myth Jesus born after his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost.

I was going to post one of those clever and hilarious "irony meter" smilies, but I think you broke them all.

Oh well.

Oh, Oh. More fallacies. You broke them before you posted.

Do you remember you broke them all when you said people do not look in the Bible for HJ?

Do you remember you broke them when you claimed 99% of Historians have established there was an historical Jesus when perhaps less than 1% of historians have an opinion on an historical Jesus?

 

[Brainache]

What fallacy you post. You have nowhere to look for your Zealot. Your Jesus the Zealot is not in or out the Bible.

I have thousands of evidence for Myth Jesus born after his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost.



Oh, Oh. More fallacies. You broke them before you posted.

Do you remember you broke them all when you said people do not look in the Bible for HJ?

Do you remember you broke them when you claimed 99% of Historians have established there was an historical Jesus when perhaps less than 1% of historians have an opinion on an historical Jesus?

I really have to wonder who you think you are impressing by posting endless screeds of ignorant bile...

It won't win you any fans here.

Good luck.

 

[IanS]

I did leave it out on purpose because I was addressing your comments I highlighted. What you said was, "What's written in those gospels and Paul's letters is, as you very well know by now, only evidence of peoples religious beliefs. There is no evidence there of Jesus."

That makes me think you view the Bible as religious beliefs only.

Well you should not have omitted it from your highlight, should you? Because the part which you omitted, makes it crystal clear that you are completely wrong, and that I was definitely referring to evidence of Jesus (and not evidence of other things such as named people and places).

But even worse for you than that - I just noticed that directly before your above post with your highlighted complaint, I had already just replied to you making absolutely certain that you knew that I was specifically talking about what Paul’s letters say about Jesus and whether any of that is evidence of Jesus or whether it’s just evidence of Paul’s belief - I’m going to quote that for you in full below just so that you cannot continue to try misleading people here about what was said -

Paul in his first letter to Corinth says that Peter and the brothers of Jesus travel with their 'adelphen gunaika' or sister-wives/believing wives and perhaps actual wives. This is not an outright religious statement and it is in the Bible.

That's not evidence of Jesus as a living person though is it? We are talking about what Paul says about knowing Jesus, and whether what he says is his religious belief, or whether it's actually evidence that Jesus was a living human person.

 

[pakeha]

... If numbers of people say they saw a person who did this and that and write a book on it then how is that different from a biography written today?

Are you saying the NT was written by eye witnesses?

...I can't read your mind and won't attempt but it appears you and others dismiss much of the Bible's testimony.

Well, there are very, very good reasons for that dismissal, after all.
We could start with the genealogies and end with the resurrection, don't you think?

 

[Belz...]

You think Jesus the Zealot is the founder of Christianity?

First things first: do you think that would be a reasonable expectation ?

 

[Belz...]

Again, you post fallacies.

 

[Belz...]

What fallacy you post.

Do you think posting this over and over makes you look smart ? Does your idea of skepticism stem only from reading the word "fallacy" somewhere on a forum and thinking "oh, that's what being a skeptic is all about: saying that stuff you disagree with is a fallacy !" ? Because so far that's about all you've been doing, and it isn't you being a skeptic. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

[dejudge]

Do you think posting this over and over makes you look smart ? Does your idea of skepticism stem only from reading the word "fallacy" somewhere on a forum and thinking "oh, that's what being a skeptic is all about: saying that stuff you disagree with is a fallacy !" ? Because so far that's about all you've been doing, and it isn't you being a skeptic. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Your repeated nonsense is really worthless.

You have already admitted that everyone has agreed that the evidence for an historical Jesus is terrible and that it is very weak.

You have also admitted that the arguments for an historical Jesus are not convincing.

Your posts do not help the argument for HJ. In fact, you are not arguing for an historical Jesus.

 

[dejudge]

I really have to wonder who you think you are impressing by posting endless screeds of ignorant bile...

It won't win you any fans here.

Good luck.

That is what I expected you to say. You have no evidence for your HJ so employ a vast amount of fallacies [Ad Hominem].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Your HJ is a modern myth ---a character without historical evidence.

 

[Belz...]

Your repeated nonsense is really worthless.

I see you have no intention of being polite or reasonable. Perhaps you don't know, but no one will give you points you can exchange for cash just because you won't budge from your claims.

You have already admitted that everyone has agreed that the evidence for an historical Jesus is terrible and that it is very weak.

Yes, so ?

You have also admitted that the arguments for an historical Jesus are not convincing.

Yes, so ?

Your posts do not help the argument for HJ. In fact, you are not arguing for an historical Jesus.

That's right, I'm not. So ?

 

[TimCallahan]

. . . (mega snip) . . .

You just destroyed your own HJ argument. An HJ was not needed for a Jesus cult to develop.

Based on your own admission, the Gospels are fictional and the Pauline Corpus is a product of hallucinations.

An historical Jesus was of no use for the Jesus cult.

You missed the main point I made, which was that the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark was not all that divine and that Jesus evolves into a more fully divine being in the other gospels. Hence, he didn't start out as that mythical. At earliest, Mark would have been written a bit after CE 70, which would indicate that, at that time, Jesus was still seen as basically mortal.

I still also think that the gyrations Matthew and Luke have to go through to get Jesus born in Bethlehem, while coming from Galilee, points to them being stuck with a guy who came from the boonies, when he should have come from Bethlehem. If you're making someone up out of whole cloth, why throw in the difficulty of having come from a place where shouldn't have come from to fulfill the messianic prophecy in Micah 5:2? If your mythical person was supposed to come from Bethlehem, you simply have him come from Bethlehem.

Ultimately, however, the question of the historicity of Jesus is minor, as I've said in many posts on this thread, because the mythic Jesus, superimposed on the historic core, is the Jesus of the Christian belief. Should definite evidence surface making any HJ argument untenable, it wouldn't much disturb my views on the subject. Likewise, some definite proof of his existence would also not change my views greatly.

 

[Brainache]

That is what I expected you to say. You have no evidence for your HJ so employ a vast amount of fallacies [Ad Hominem].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Your HJ is a modern myth ---a character without historical evidence.

That wasn't ad hom.

Ad hom would be if I said: You are wrong because you spew hateful ignorant bile.

What I said was: The bile you spew is hateful, ignorant and stupid.

Can you see the difference?

 

[dejudge]

You missed the main point I made, which was that the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark was not all that divine and that Jesus evolves into a more fully divine being in the other gospels. Hence, he didn't start out as that mythical. At earliest, Mark would have been written a bit after CE 70, which would indicate that, at that time, Jesus was still seen as basically mortal.

Your statement lacks logic and shows that you have no idea of ancient Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.

You cannot assume a character called the Son of God, that walked on the sea, transfigured and resurrected was not divine when you have NO evidence of his historicity.

You don't understand that gMark's Jesus was God's Son--ABSOLUTE divinity-- and does NOT require a birth narrative. You will never find a birth narrative for God and his Sons in Jewish mythology.

You will not find a birth narrative for Satan in Jewish mythology.

Divine beings in Jewish mythology can ROAM the Earth.

Job 1

6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them.

7 The LORD said to Satan, "From where do you come ?" Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it."

You also seem to have NO idea that Marcion's Phantom Son of God had no birth, no human parents but came down from heaven to Capernaum in the time of Tiberius.

Tertullian's Against Marcion 4.7

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (for such is Marcion's proposition) he “came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum,” of course meaning from the heaven of the Creator, to which he had previously descended from his own.

Please, get familiar with Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.


Why do you assume Jesus the Son of God in gMark must be born by human human parents in on order to be on earth?

There is no birth narrative for God Creator in Genesis.

gMark's Jesus the Son of God is no different to Marcion's Son of God which was WITHOUT a birth narrative.

 

[Belz...]

That wasn't ad hom.

Ad hom would be if I said: You are wrong because you spew hateful ignorant bile.

What I said was: The bile you spew is hateful, ignorant and stupid.

Can you see the difference?

A lot of people who post here can't.

 

[Brainache]

Your statement lacks logic and shows that you have no idea of ancient Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.
...

You don't understand that gMark's Jesus was God's Son--ABSOLUTE divinity-- and does NOT require a birth narrative. You will never find a birth narrative for God and his Sons in Jewish mythology.
...

You also seem to have NO idea that Marcion's Phantom Son of God had no birth, no human parents but came down from heaven to Capernaum in the time of Tiberius.

Please, get familiar with Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology.


...

I hope Mr Callahan doesn't mind, but I thought I might spare him the embarrassment of appearing to boast, so:

Just in case anyone is unfamiliar with dejudge's interlocutor here, I present this. Read it and guffaw:
http://www.timcallahan.info/

Tim Callahan has written numerous articles on religion and mythic themes in popular belief, as well as book reviews, for Skeptic Magazine.

He has also had articles published in the Humanist. For many years he has studied the myths of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Canaanites and Greeks as well as those of the Celtic, Teutonic and Slavic peoples.

PS: Tim, there is a typo on your page. "Mesopotamians" is missing an "a".

 

[dejudge]

Tim Callahan's supposition that Jesus in gMark was mortal because of no birth narrative only reflects a lack of understanding of gMark and ancient mythology.

In gMark, immediately after the baptism, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

Based on Tim Callahan's flawed logic then Satan was mortal because there is no birth narrative for Satan. Also, the angels were mortal because they were with Jesus during the temptation and have no birth narratives.

Mark 1:13 KJV-----And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.

 

[Brainache]

Tim Callahan's supposition that Jesus in gMark was mortal because of no birth narrative only reflects a lack of understanding of gMark and ancient mythology.

In gMark, immediately after the baptism, Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

Based on Tim Callahan's flawed logic then Satan was mortal because there is no birth narrative for Satan. Also, the angels were mortal because they were with Jesus during the temptation and have no birth narratives.

Mark 1:13 KJV-----And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.

Looks like you've got him on the ropes, dejudge!

I can't wait to see how Tim tries to wriggle out of this one...