It was found, it was presented, discussed and dissected. The HJ remains the most parsimonious plausible scenario.
The MJ remains unsupported by any evidence at all.
Do I look worried?
Does the Academy look worried?
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that show Jesus never existed
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It was found, it was presented, discussed and dissected. The HJ remains the most parsimonious plausible scenario.
The MJ remains unsupported by any evidence at all.
Do I look worried?
Does the Academy look worried?
Well, firstly I notice that you still did not cite the claimed evidence. But secondly, if you are tired of these sceptical observations and requests for credible evidence, then don't bother to reply to such posts.
But contrary to what you say, there is absolutely no obligation at all for anyone sceptical about the biblical HJ stories and the bible-scholars claims that Jesus existed, to propose any specific "myth theory".
It's more than sufficient to point out, as has been done literally hundreds of times now in these threads, that the biblical stories are neither reliable or credible, and that despite repeated requests for whatever it is that pro-HJ posters and their "expert historians" claim to be the convincing evidence, no such evidence is ever produced except to lamely say that the evidence is the bible.
Whether or not you are convinced by what many here point out as the very serious problems with the HJ argument, is not my concern. It's up to you if you wish to continue believing in Jesus without reliable evidence.
Your problem is that you don't have any source of evidence except for a bible which is manifestly unreliable and not credible to say the least.
And lastly - when you say “we are not convinced”, as if the sceptical view on Jesus was a only tiny number of people here, take a look at the poll which tsig started a few days ago, and you will see that so far at least, the majority of people here are far from convinced that there is good evidence to conclude, as your “expert historians" do (the people you are relying upon) that Jesus was indeed definitely a real person. Most people in that poll are far from convinced of that.
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How many of the people who responded to that poll are trained in the study of Ancient History?
I'm guessing zero.
Belz...
Fiend God
No. Why would you put some effort into proposing an alternative when you just need to be, you know, incredulous ?
...or Awesome.
Why do you repeat this assertion when you know it isn't true ? It's been repeated, perhaps literally hundreds of times, that this isn't what's happening, but you continue to trot out this stupid argument as though it's a fact. I cannot believe that you think it's true, so I can only surmise that you are deliberately misrepresenting your opposition in order to support your preconceived notions.
And on the subject of miracles, I'd like to remind everyone that some people genuinely report seeing things that we now know are impossible. They don't need to fabricate these events.
Robert Eiseman have already stated that the question of an HJ is controversial and that no one has solved the question.
It is a known fallacy that historians have conceded that there was an HJ.
You don't understand this subject, so I have to ask, where did you get these stupid ideas?
Where was it found? Name the source for HJ the ITINERANT preacher?
There is NOTHING.
HJers have DENIED their HJ was the Christ.
Your HJ was supposedly an ITINERANT preacher but we know it was an invention--there was NEVER EVER any evidence.
HJ the itinerant preacher is NOT plausible--there is no evidence to support plausibility.
David Mo
Philosopher
Usual arguments against Jesus' existence (it is not the same problem that the "historical Jesus" HJ) are wrongly directed. It is irrelevant to Jesus' existence (JE) if Paul thought he was a pre-existent entity. Paul speaks about Jesus' death in the Earth. This is consistent with a man deified. Nobody claims JE with 'actual evidence'. Neither the Gospels are 'reliable or credible factual writing of history'. We know they are legendary stories. Some arguments against JE are maximalists. If we invalidate the Gospels because the first manuscripts came 150 years later from facts we invalidate almost all the Ancient History. General consensus of experts doesn't justify JE, but it is an indication that also the non-confessional experts are against miticism. The ideological bias is not applicable here. (Incidentally, I doubt very much that Ehrman is an upper member of the contemporary exegesis. He is a renowned expert in the mass media, specifically in Internet. Meier, Vermes, Crossan, Dunn and others are more praised between scholars).
So where is this (reliable & credible) "expert" evidence of Jesus? We are still waiting for any hint of it.
You can wait for we don't pretend to have’expert evidence'. It would be excess on our part. We offer just an indication based on the difficulty/embarrassment argument.
If you have the time and patience to consult the list of dead gods in diverse cultures (I have neither the one nor the other), I bet you won't find one that was dead with a murder reserved to criminals, slaves and the plebs -for the Mediterranean world at least. Here, for example, you can see that gods are killed in combat, eaten, torn to pieces and so on. Never humiliated in a vile punishment.
Just that.
Your maximalism in the requests is a boomerang. When it fails its target it attacks the thrower. So, many people dismiss the well founded criticism against the use of Gospels as historical documents. I think the excessive wishes of break up the legend reinforce it. To admit the existence of the so-called Jesus instead of get entangled in a mess of irrelevant arguments against his existence, allow us to focus the problem on the main thing: the mechanics of the myths in the Gospels.
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Your post is highly illogical. People of Rome BELIEVED their Myth Gods existed without a shred of evidence.
Romulus was on earth, had a human mother and brother but was a Myth.
You seem to have no idea that there are MUNDANE Myth characters.
Adam and Eve are MUNDANE MYTHS.
Jesus of the NT has no known history.
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I will NOT STOP exposing the logical fallacies of the HJ argument. It is evident that you have nothing to support your unknown dead itinerant preacher.
What could be more mundane than having a chat with a snake? I do it all the time. They're good listeners.
What could be more mundane than having a chat with a snake? I do it all the time. They're good listeners.
That is very easy to answer---Paul chatting with the Resurrected Jesus? Have you ever done that at any time?
Is that what you are doing?
OK then, keep it up. You are doing a marvelous job of making the MJ arguments look really really stupid.
I'm surprised people on your side haven't tried to help you improve your game.
Oh well. Carry on then...
That is very easy to answer. No, never. And now I will make you a promise: if it ever does happen, I will not describe the experience as "mundane".
Belz...
Fiend God
Yeah, that's not what you're exposing.
David - you know very well, that the fact the earliest relatively complete & readable copies of the gospels date from 4th-6th century and later (which is 300-500 years after Jesus, by the way), is NOT the only reason for “invalidating them”. You know very well there are all manner of problems with the anonymous authorship, the impossible claims themselves, the obvious OT origins of the stories, the known practice of alterations etc etc. You know very well that there are multiple problems with all that gospel writing. So what was the point of writing the highlighted sentence above as if the only reason to “invalidate” those gospels was because they are the work of Christian copyists writing centuries later?
I don’t know who “Meier and Dunn” are, but below is the wikipedia detail on the religious background of JD Crossan and Geza Vermes. From which it is crystal clear that these people are positively drowning in religious studies, and like all the others we have discussed (eg Ehrman & the rest) with an early background in highly devout religious belief.
And as I already pointed out, you can even find quotes from Crossan saying (from memory) “the crucifixion of Jesus is just about the most certain fact in all of ancient history”.
The people you are relying on are not by any means normal mainstream university “historians” of the sort who typically study all sorts of non-religious areas of history. These are almost always (if not literally always) people who can very easily be shown to be totally immersed in Judeo-Christian religious studies, Jesus, and the bible. And before anyone produces the name of a real historian who agrees with these bible-studies scholars, theologians and ex-priests etc., I have made clear before that out all the tens of thousands of people writing to say they believe in Jesus, it would be truly astonishing if you could not find at least a few hundred who’s qualifications and background were not in bible studies, theology and the priesthood etc … eg in the USA alone, it is clear from many surveys that a majority of US academics across all subjects are Christians who do believe in God and Jesus … such that it’s only when the survey turns to the views of scientists, and especially the top scientists in the US Academy of Sciences, that the number of believers in God drops dramatically to just a few percent (from memory, around 93% non-belief in the Academy of sciences).
IOW - this “consensus of experts” that you are talking about, are bible-scholars like Ehrman and Crossan, theologians, and Judeo-Christian writers in general, many, as I say, even with a background as priests and theology students and lecturers. These people are not normal typical university secular historians. Eg, see the highlights below -
Géza Vermes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Géza Vermes or Vermès (Hungarian: [ˈɡeːzɒ ˈvɛrmɛʃ], 22 June 1924 – 8 May 2013) was a British scholar of Jewish Hungarian origin—one who also served as a Catholic priest in his youth—and writer on religious history, particularly Jewish and Christian. He was a noted authority on the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient works in Aramaic such as the Targums, and on the life and religion of Jesus. He was one of the most important voices in contemporary Jesus research,[1] and he has been described as the greatest Jesus scholar of his time.[2] Vermes' written work on Jesus focuses principally on Jesus the Jew, as seen in the broader context of the narrative scope of Jewish history and theology, while questioning the basis of some Christian teachings on Jesus.[3]
Biography
Vermes was born in Makó, Hungary, in 1924 to parents of Jewish descent, schoolteacher Terezia (Riesz) and liberal journalist Emo Vermes,[4][5] (His family, however, had not practiced Judaism since the early 19th century.[4]) All three were baptised as Roman Catholics when he was seven. His mother and father died in the Holocaust.
Vermes attended a Catholic seminary. When he was eligible for college, in 1942, Jews were not accepted into Hungarian universities.[6]
After the Second World War, he became a Roman Catholic priest, but was not admitted into the Jesuit or Dominican orders because of his Jewish ancestry. Vermes was accepted into the Order of the Fathers of Notre-Dame de Sion,[4] a French/Belgian order founded by Jewish converts[7] which prayed for Jews.[8]
He studied first in Budapest and then at the College St Albert and the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, where he read Oriental history and languages. In 1953 obtained a doctorate in theology with the first dissertation written on the Dead Sea Scrolls and its historical framework.[4]
After researching the scrolls in Paris for a few years, he left the Catholic Church in 1957, and reasserting his Jewish identity, came to Britain and took up a teaching post at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He married Pamela Hobson Curle, a scholar and poet who was already married.[4][9] in 1958. In 1965 he joined the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University, rising to become the first professor of Jewish Studies before his retirement in 1991. In 1970 he became a member of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue of London,[10] "but insisted he had not converted, just “grew out of” Christianity".[7] After the death of his first wife in 1993, he married Margaret Unarska in 1996 and adopted her son, Ian Vermes.
Vermes died on 8 May 2013 after a recurrence of cancer.[11]
John Dominic Crossan
Born February 17, 1934 (age 79)
Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland
Nationality Irish
Occupation Theologian, scholar, former priest
John Dominic Crossan (born February 17, 1934[1]) is an Irish-American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, and former Catholic priest who has produced both scholarly and popular works. His research has focused on the historical Jesus, on the anthropology of the Ancient Mediterranean and New Testament worlds and on the application of postmodern hermeneutical approaches to the Bible
Life
Crossan was born in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland.Though his father was a banker, Crossan was steeped in the rural Irish life, which he experienced through frequent visits to the home of his paternal grandparents. On graduation from Saint Eunan's College, a boarding high school, in 1950, Crossan joined the Servites, a Catholic religious order, and moved to the United States. He was trained at Stonebridge Seminary, Lake Bluff, Illinois, then ordained a priest in 1957. Crossan returned to Ireland, where he earned his Doctor of Divinity in 1959 at St. Patrick's College Maynooth, the Irish national seminary. He then completed two more years of study in biblical languages at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. In 1965 Crossan began two additional years of study (in archaeology) at the Ecole Biblique in Jordanian East Jerusalem. During this time, he travelled through several countries in the region, escaping just days before the outbreak of the Six Day War of 1967.[2]
After a year at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois, and a year at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Crossan chose to resign his priesthood. In the fall of 1969 he joined the faculty of DePaul University, where he taught undergraduates Comparative Religion for twenty-five years until retiring in 1995. In 1985, Crossan and Robert Funk founded the Jesus Seminar, a group of academics studying the historical Jesus, and Crossan served as co-chair for its first decade. Crossan also served as president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research in 1978-1979, and as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2012.
Crossan married Margaret Dagenais, a professor at Loyola University Chicago in the summer of 1969. She died in 1983 due to a heart attack. In 1986, Crossan married Sarah Sexton, a social worker with two grown children. Since his retirement from academia, Crossan has lived in the Orlando, Florida, area, remaining active in research, writing, and teaching seminars.[citation needed]
OK, I have not read the rest of your post, because frankly we have been all over all these claims literally hundreds of times now, and apart from showing that these “historians” almost have a background such as the above and are therefore bible-studies teachers, theologians and ex-priests etc, it is clear that the HJ proponents here (which, astonishingly even now seems to include you!?) have absolutely no evidence of Jesus at all except to say we should believe the holy bible.
dejudge said:
What are you exposing when you have admitted?:
1. Everyone has agreed the evidence for an HJ is TERRIBLE.
2. The evidence for an HJ is very weak.
3. You are NOT convinced there was an HJ.
4. You NEVER claimed to have evidence for HJ.
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