Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[maximara]

Plenty here have already assembled the data known to every frigging professional historian which shows the LIKELIHOOD -- not the certainty -- that there was an historical human Jesus, who was a rabbi and got nailed by the Romans. I have submitted this data here --

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117203&page=12

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9603160&postcount=443

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9604546&postcount=452

-- others here have -- and have never once had each and every datum point addressed honestly by any MJ-er here -- ever.

Not true. I have addressed all these point in one post or another as your links consist of many of the same points repeated that have been knocked in the head several times:

1) Paul's writings...which Paul expressly states are visions and did not come from any human source. Useless as history.

2) Next are the Gospel which at best can't be show to be any earlier then 130 CE as no Church Father provides anything regarding their contents and and we don't get more then one sentence blurbs until c180 CE.

3) Next comes Josephus: Antiquities, 20 ie the James passage which has James dying at c62 CE when nearly everybody else puts it c69 CE. More over Origen states at least twice that Josephus connects the death of James with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Nothing of the sort occurs near this passage...or as far as been stated anywhere else in Josephus as we have have him.

Carrier has written a peer reviewed article stating this passage is the result of a gloss being woven into the main text and therefore nonevidence. (“Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 
(vol. 20, no. 4, Winter 2012), 
pp. 489-514. 10.1353/earl.2012.0029 )

Finally in The Preface to the Recognitions it is states "The epistle in which the same Clement, writing to James the Lord's brother, informs him of the death of Peter, and that he had left him his successor in his chair..."

The earliest date for Peter's death is 64 or two years after the James in Josephus was dead! Again this shows something is way wrong with the passage as it currently stands.


4) Then you have Tacitus: Annals, 15:4 who in our oldest copy was actually talking about Chrestians and some later scribe changed the e to an i. The only other person to say Christians were in Rome in Nero's time is contemporary to Tacitus, Suetonius. Yet Josephus and Pliny the Elder who as adults were in Rome in 64 CE make no mention of Christians. This suggests the repeating of an Urban myth that existed in the early 2nd century rather then an actual historical event. Paul who according to legend died in Rome near the end of Nero's reign (c67 CE) doesn't use the word Christian once in his seven letters. Even if it is history it at best show the movement in Rome c 64 CE and as John Frum shows that doesn't mean the movement had a founder or what was being said about that founder was actual history.

That is what shows that posters like Craig B and myself are just beating our heads against a brick wall -- or against programmed bots. Too many MJ-ers in general act like programmed zombies whose yob it is to prevaricate and not address anything. Otherwise, they'd apparently lose their standing in whatever "lodge" they've crawled out from.

When you put out questionable stuff like the above what do you expect?

Paul is given us vision quest information not history... he himself says as much.

The Gospels as mythologized historical documents is on shaky ground as it is. What we can check against known history either can't be confirmed (Herod's killing of children) or is conflict with facts or basic logic:

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy as what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life Of Flavius Josephus

* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about afterword certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describes how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

* Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians.


The James passage in Josephus has numerous problems when compared to other sources as the James brother of the Lord had to be alive a minimum of two years after the James in Josephus was dead and gone to be informed of Peter's death (no earlier then 64 CE).

Tacitus and Suetonius seem to be simply repeating a popular urban myth regarding Christians and Nero as neither Josephus and Pliny the Elder mention the cult despite being in Rome as adults in 64 CE.

 

[IanS]

Plenty here have already assembled the data known to every frigging professional historian which shows the LIKELIHOOD -- not the certainty -- that there was an historical human Jesus, who was a rabbi and got nailed by the Romans. I have submitted this data here --

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117203&page=12

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9603160&postcount=443

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9604546&postcount=452

-- others here have -- and have never once had each and every datum point addressed honestly by any MJ-er here -- ever. That is what shows that posters like Craig B and myself are just beating our heads against a brick wall -- or against programmed bots. Too many MJ-ers in general act like programmed zombies whose yob it is to prevaricate and not address anything. Otherwise, they'd apparently lose their standing in whatever "lodge" they've crawled out from.

Stone

I think you have given all those links before? I think they are all to your own earlier posts? Iirc what you are calling the evidence all comes from the biblical writing and from such things as Tacitus and Josephus.

But it has been explained here ad nauseam why none of those authors could possibly write with any evidence of Jesus. namely, because none of them themselves actually ever met Jesus and therefore could not themselves have any personally known "evidence" of Jesus.

What all those writers were doing, whether it was the gospel writers or Tacitus or Josephus or any of the others (Paul is a very slight exception, for which see below), was only to repeat the stories they had heard from other unknown anonymous people who themselves were never claimed to have personally ever met Jesus either!

So at best, all that any of those authors could do was, not to present anything that any of them actually knew themselves as evidence of Jesus, but instead they were merely repeating hearsay stories of what other earlier unknown believers were thought to have said about even earlier stories of yet other people who believed that Jesus had disciples who saw him performing all sorts of fictional and impossible feats.

None of that is evidence of Jesus. All of that is at best, only evidence of religious beliefs in the case of the gospel writers, and the reported beliefs of Christians themselves from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus.

Paul's letters are a slightly different case because the named author does claim to be the writer of 13 letters. Although it is now accepted even by bible scholars and theologians, that around half of those are actually fakes and written by different unknown individuals. However, even the 6 or 7 still attributed to "Paul" presumably are not by any means known to be written by Paul, because we do not have any original writing by Paul with which to compare any such letters. So afaik the best anyone case say is that those 6 or 7 letters appear to be written in the same style as if from one single writer.

But Paul very clearly doesn’t not claim ever to have known Jesus either! So again it is impossible for him to give any personal evidence for the existence of someone he never knew.

What Paul offered as the so-called "evidence", is that he told a story of how he believed God had blessed him with the power of revealing the true hidden meaning of the OT messiah prophecies, from which Paul seems to have decided that the prophecies meant that a messiah foretold by Moses under the name Yehoshua ("Jesus") would become the saviour of the faithful, but where according to OT prophecy (as Paul interpreted it), that messiah would suffer ultimate rejection by his own Jewish people, and be crucified in a symbolic act which would prove to the faithful that Yahweh would indeed raise them all from the dead just as he has done with Jesus, providing they keep to the faith which Paul preaches.

But none of that is evidence of Paul ever knowing anything about Jesus. That again is only evidence of Paul’s religious beliefs about a messiah who he understands from what he believes was revealed to him in the OT scriptures.

So it’s no earthly good at all quoting the gospels, Paul’s letters, Tacitus or Josephus as actual evidence that any of those authors could give as their own knowledge of Jesus. Because none of them ever knew Jesus in any human living way at all.

At best, all those authors could ever do is provide evidence of what they and others had come to believe about a Jesus of past legend, from stories that other unknown anonymous religious fanatics were once supposed to have told.

It’s not evidence of Jesus. It’s only evidence of peoples un-evidenced uncorroborated religious beliefs in a 1st century filed with superstitious religious ignorance and total faith in Yahweh and the OT.

 

[Foster Zygote]

You seem to imply that Bart Ehrman was a fundie.

I'm not sure how you inferred that, although Ehrman is quite open about the fact that he considered himself a born again Christian as a young man, and that he gradually lost his belief the more he learned about what is actually written in the Bible. What we were actually talking about was people like yourself, who reject their religious faith after becoming disillusioned with it, yet still retain the same absolutist manner of thinking and obdurate defense of an arbitrary dogma.

Why are you opposed to fundies when they are on your side--the HJ side--the dead end argument?

Your insistence that Christian fundamentalists are on the same side as people who argue that Jesus was no more than a deluded apocalyptic crank who was promptly put to death perfectly illustrates the sort of ridiculous mental gymnastics you are forced to go to in order to maintain your own dogma.

So, why are you so opposed to Christian fundamentalists that you attempt this awkward guilt by association tactic? What caused you to not only lose your faith, but hate it so much?

You must know that there are Scholars who may be fundies and argue that Jesus did exist.

Can you name any?

You may be surprised that the supposed "vast majority" of Scholars are either active fundies or Christians.

Is this where you attempt to conflate secular scholars who study the Bible academically with divinity school apologists? Is that your next tactic for trying to overcome the fact that you are up against a lot of very educated people who all disagree with you?

Have you been able to get any data or statistics on the quantity of fundies and Christian Scholars who argue that Jesus did exist?

Well, I would imagine that right around 100% of Christian fundamentalists and divinity school graduates argue that Jesus really existed. And, as has been attested by many secular scholars, the vast majority of their peers think that Jesus really existed. But, of course, you know as well as anyone else that there is a huge difference between thinking that Jesus was most likely a deluded crank and believing on faith that he was God incarnate come to redeem the world from its sins so that they might have everlasting life in Heaven.

I can see where this is going a mile off. But trying to discredit secular opinion that Jesus was just another deluded preacher by implying that this is the same as belief that he is God, is about as childishly silly as saying that someone who believes that a raccoon most likely tore into the trash cans over night is no different from someone who is certain that it was Bigfoot, simply because they both believe that an animal did it.

 

[dejudge]

I'm not sure how you inferred that, although Ehrman is quite open about the fact that he considered himself a born again Christian as a young man, and that he gradually lost his belief the more he learned about what is actually written in the Bible. What we were actually talking about was people like yourself, who reject their religious faith after becoming disillusioned with it, yet still retain the same absolutist manner of thinking and obdurate defense of an arbitrary dogma.

You've got to be joking.

It is people who were once Fundies or Christians and still maintain faith and belief in the NT as a source of history who retain the same absolutist manner of thinking---either there was an HJ or nobody else existed--not even Alexander the Great.

It is most bizarre when supposed atheists, a minority , claim the "vast majority" of Scholars support the argument for HJ and do so without any supporting data.

HJers who now claim to be Ex-fundies and Ex-Christians and still use the Bible as a source of history for their multiple versions of a crucified criminal Jesus appear to have weak faith.

Your insistence that Christian fundamentalists are on the same side as people who argue that Jesus was no more than a deluded apocalyptic crank who was promptly put to death perfectly illustrates the sort of ridiculous mental gymnastics you are forced to go to in order to maintain your own dogma.

Why have you isolated yourself from the fundies who helped to propagate the "good news" that Jesus did exist?

After all Fundie and Christian Scholars are a part of the supposed "vast majority".

Do you have the data about Fundies and Christian Scholars?

Are the vast majority of HJers Fundies and Christians?

It is expected that Christian and Fundi Scholars support the HJ dogma.

So, why are you so opposed to Christian fundamentalists that you attempt this awkward guilt by association tactic? What caused you to not only lose your faith, but hate it so much?

You are the one who argues that the Jesus story is an embellishment but accept parts of it.

Yet you are disassociating yourself from the fundamentalists even though they fully agree with the parts you accept.

 

[Craig B]

You are the one who argues that the Jesus story is an embellishment but accept parts of it.

That's what one does with an embellishment. See Dictionary.com

verb (used with object)
1. to beautify by or as if by ornamentation; ornament; adorn.
2. to enhance (a statement or narrative) with fictitious additions.

Fictitious additions. OK? So to argue (rightly or not) that something is "embellished" is the same thing as to argue that parts of it are acceptable.

 

[Belz...]

You've got to be joking.

It is people who were once Fundies or Christians and still maintain faith and belief in the NT as a source of history who retain the same absolutist manner of thinking

Are you saying that it's better to dogmatically reject any possibility of historical truth, while retaining the same absolutist manner of thinking ?

 

[Belz...]

That's what one does with an embellishment. See Dictionary.com Fictitious additions. OK? So to argue (rightly or not) that something is "embellished" is the same thing as to argue that parts of it are acceptable.

I feel that the MJ crowd here seems to be forgetting something.

Even in science, and with good amounts of evidence, your theory/conclusion is an interpretation: a judgment call on what's the most likely explanation for that evidence. It's in no way certain. Once you have the evidence, you draw a conclusion. No one asks you for more evidence after that.

So here we have admittedly low amounts of evidence, mainly the existence of Christianity itself, from which many people, historians included, conclude that the most likely explanation is that there probably is a kernel of truth to the Jesus narrative. So why, in this case, are they asked for further evidence ?

 

[dejudge]

I feel that the MJ crowd here seems to be forgetting something.

Even in science, and with good amounts of evidence, your theory/conclusion is an interpretation: a judgment call on what's the most likely explanation for that evidence. It's in no way certain. Once you have the evidence, you draw a conclusion. No one asks you for more evidence after that.

You are forgetting something.

You have already declared in a most contradictory manner that everyone agrees the evidence for HJ is TERRIBLE but screamed out that you never claimed to have had evidence for an HJ.

No-one can ask you for evidence of HJ after that.

Where will you find Terrible unknown evidence?

It is true the HJ argument has reached a Dead End.

 

[dejudge]

That's what one does with an embellishment. See Dictionary.com Fictitious additions. OK? So to argue (rightly or not) that something is "embellished" is the same thing as to argue that parts of it are acceptable.

You are putting forward an absurd notion that additional fiction is the evidence for an historical account or that only historical accounts can be embellished.

You seem to be implying that Plutarch's Romulus and the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis are historical accounts because there are known added fiction.

 

[maximara]

Who do you see doing that ? No one here has ever claimed that the census happened, to my knowledge. In fact it's generally thought to be a fabrication.

IIRC came up in the insanely long What counts as a historical Jesus? thread and the whole must have a census in Herod's time pops up a lot in apologist writings.

 

[Craig B]

You are putting forward an absurd notion that additional fiction is the evidence for an historical account or that only historical accounts can be embellished.

You seem to be implying that Plutarch's Romulus and the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis are historical accounts because there are known added fiction.

At least that means that your statement

You are the one who argues that the Jesus story is an embellishment but accept parts of it.

is ridiculous because by your own admission an embellished account may well have a historical core.

 

[pakeha]

Plenty here have already assembled the data known to every frigging professional historian which shows the LIKELIHOOD -- not the certainty -- that there was an historical human Jesus, who was a rabbi and got nailed by the Romans.

I have submitted this data here --

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117203&page=12

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9603160&postcount=443

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9604546&postcount=452

-- others here have -- and have never once had each and every datum point addressed honestly by any MJ-er here -- ever.

That is what shows that posters like Craig B and myself are just beating our heads against a brick wall -- or against programmed bots. Too many MJ-ers in general act like programmed zombies whose yob it is to prevaricate and not address anything. Otherwise, they'd apparently lose their standing in whatever "lodge" they've crawled out from.

Stone

Which datum do you feel hasn't been addressed, Stone?

Not true. I have addressed all these point in one post or another as your links consist of many of the same points repeated that have been knocked in the head several times:

1) Paul's writings...which Paul expressly states are visions and did not come from any human source. Useless as history.

2) Next are the Gospel which at best can't be show to be any earlier then 130 CE as no Church Father provides anything regarding their contents and and we don't get more then one sentence blurbs until c180 CE.

3) Next comes Josephus: Antiquities, 20 ie the James passage which has James dying at c62 CE when nearly everybody else puts it c69 CE. More over Origen states at least twice that Josephus connects the death of James with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Nothing of the sort occurs near this passage...or as far as been stated anywhere else in Josephus as we have have him.

Carrier has written a peer reviewed article stating this passage is the result of a gloss being woven into the main text and therefore nonevidence. (“Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies 
(vol. 20, no. 4, Winter 2012), 
pp. 489-514. 10.1353/earl.2012.0029 )

Finally in The Preface to the Recognitions it is states "The epistle in which the same Clement, writing to James the Lord's brother, informs him of the death of Peter, and that he had left him his successor in his chair..."

The earliest date for Peter's death is 64 or two years after the James in Josephus was dead! Again this shows something is way wrong with the passage as it currently stands.

4) Then you have Tacitus: Annals, 15:4 who in our oldest copy was actually talking about Chrestians and some later scribe changed the e to an i. The only other person to say Christians were in Rome in Nero's time is contemporary to Tacitus, Suetonius. Yet Josephus and Pliny the Elder who as adults were in Rome in 64 CE make no mention of Christians. This suggests the repeating of an Urban myth that existed in the early 2nd century rather then an actual historical event. Paul who according to legend died in Rome near the end of Nero's reign (c67 CE) doesn't use the word Christian once in his seven letters. Even if it is history it at best show the movement in Rome c 64 CE and as John Frum shows that doesn't mean the movement had a founder or what was being said about that founder was actual history.

When you put out questionable stuff like the above what do you expect?

Paul is given us vision quest information not history... he himself says as much.

The Gospels as mythologized historical documents is on shaky ground as it is. What we can check against known history either can't be confirmed (Herod's killing of children) or is conflict with facts or basic logic:

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy as what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life Of Flavius Josephus

* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about afterword certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describes how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

* Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians.


The James passage in Josephus has numerous problems when compared to other sources as the James brother of the Lord had to be alive a minimum of two years after the James in Josephus was dead and gone to be informed of Peter's death (no earlier then 64 CE).

Tacitus and Suetonius seem to be simply repeating a popular urban myth regarding Christians and Nero as neither Josephus and Pliny the Elder mention the cult despite being in Rome as adults in 64 CE.

That silence of Josephus IS most interesting.

I feel that the MJ crowd here seems to be forgetting something.

Even in science, and with good amounts of evidence, your theory/conclusion is an interpretation: a judgment call on what's the most likely explanation for that evidence. It's in no way certain. Once you have the evidence, you draw a conclusion. No one asks you for more evidence after that.

So here we have admittedly low amounts of evidence, mainly the existence of Christianity itself , from which many people, historians included, conclude that the most likely explanation is that there probably is a kernel of truth to the Jesus narrative. So why, in this case, are they asked for further evidence ?

It might be that it's hard to believe Christianity has pulled off such a flim-flam on such a weak premise.
The resurrection itself is already cringe-worthy, why is the idea the entire story could have been made up entirely so offensive?

 

[eight bits]

Craig B

... an embellished account may well have a historical core.

Perhaps, but I think we need to be more careful here when talking about "embellishment." That's one way for a historical Jesus to result in somebody writing Mark, but not the only way.

Matthew is plainly Mark plus embellishments. There is no reason to assume, however, that Mark is an embellisment (or plain recital) of historical events, even if a historical Jesus is assumed.

Most of us are confident that the antecedents of Mark are letters of Paul. There may also have been other sources of Jesus lore besides Paul. Thus, there are possible worlds in which the purpose of Mark is to imagine a specific Jesus about whom Paul and Company could be talking. In these possible worlds, Mark is a pure invention, not an embellishment of any factual narrative.

(ETA - I suspect that there would be a market for such inventions soon after Paul, just as there was a market only a little bit later for inventions about chatty Baby Jesus or Peter, the anti-aircraft Apostle, or Thecla, the virgin who's always losing her clothes.)

Mark, in these worlds, wouldn't even be an embellishment of Paul. On the contrary, as far as we can see, Mark omits the money shot in Paul, the first sighting of Jesus' ghost. That's disembellishment, if anything.

As with any collection of inferences, some of the Marcan inventions may describe actual events with passable accuracy, but in these composition scenarios that wouldn't be because Mark had any personal knowledge of Jesus' career. They would simply be consequences of Paul's letters being somewhat accurate (in those worlds) and Mark being a shrewd guesser.

Arbitary censorship of possible worlds in which the observed evidence occurs can only degrade estimation of probabilities that there was or was not a Jesus who counts. My guess is that the net effect of censored estimation in this case would be underestimation. Possible worlds in which all Gospels are invented in the absence of a Jesus are counted. Omission of worlds where the same scripture is invented in the aftermath of Jesus would lead to underestimation.

 

[maximara]

I feel that the MJ crowd here seems to be forgetting something.

Even in science, and with good amounts of evidence, your theory/conclusion is an interpretation: a judgment call on what's the most likely explanation for that evidence. It's in no way certain. Once you have the evidence, you draw a conclusion. No one asks you for more evidence after that.

So here we have admittedly low amounts of evidence, mainly the existence of Christianity itself, from which many people, historians included, conclude that the most likely explanation is that there probably is a kernel of truth to the Jesus narrative. So why, in this case, are they asked for further evidence ?

The problem is as James Burke showed in his Day the Universe Changed (1985) series is you have to have a model or structure before you even start asking questions and that very structure determined what you consider is valid evidence. And Burke was simply using what Horace Miner had observed and satirized in his 1956 work "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" where he showed how the preconception that primitive cultures were these ignorant people that believed in magic while our culture is so much better had created this feedback loop where the structure drove the data collection to a preconceived conclusion that the anthropologists as a conscious level was unaware of.

Carl Sagan noted the same thing regarding Percival Lowell's' Martian canals that while there was no doubt they were of intelligent origin the was major doubt on which end of the telescope the intelligence that created them was.

With the idea of a historical Jesus it is not just that there is little evidence or that its quality is poor but that it is the same evidence used to counter the first known appearance of the idea Jesus may have not existed as flesh and blood person in the 1790s.

The core "evidence" presented for a HJ has not changed in over 200 years despite how much the social sciences have changed in that time. It doesn't help that much of the time the HJ evidence is presented as if there never was a Joseph Campbell, a Horace Miner, a Dunnel, a Binford, or any of the others that have changed the way we look at the present and past.

Historical anthropology, the field best suited to looking at the HJ question because it tries to recreated how the a people viewed the world and reevaluate documents they wrote in that context, is absence from the HJ side with the majority preferring to view the Romans as having 20th century skeptic skills.

By modern standards the "evidence" of a HJ is a bad joke as we are repeatedly presented:

1) Paul is rambling on about the Jesus in his head and expressly states all his knowledge about this Jesus come from visions.

2) Four of the some 30+ anonymous writings that at best seem to have existed no earlier then 130 CE or about hudred years after the event that when we can check them against known fact are shown to be at best historical fiction when it comes to Jesus himself or event directly related to him.

3: Then we have the questionable non Christian sources which have either been tampered with or seem to be simply reporting hearsay rumor rather then history as demonstrated by the John Frum cargo cult.

And you wonder why more evidence is being asked for by even the Remsburg style MJers?!

 

[Craig B]

2) Four of the some 30+ anonymous writings that at best seem to have existed no earlier then 130 CE or about hudred years after the event that when we can check them against known fact are shown to be at best historical fiction when it comes to Jesus himself or event directly related to him.

3: Then we have the questionable non Christian sources which have either been tampered with or seem to be simply reporting hearsay rumor rather then history as demonstrated by the John Frum cargo cult.

You were doing quite well up to that point. The dates you give for the gospels seem unacceptably late. There is evidence for gJohn around 130, and that was most certainly preceded by the other gospels. The reference to John Frum is entirely gratuitous and is hauled in only because the founder of that cult cannot be traced and probably didn't exist. You are trying to argue that case in respect of Jesus.

The Gospels contain few checkable facts. But they are linked to the period in which the events are supposed to have occurred. Pontius Pilate certainly, and John the Baptist probably, were real people. Paul, as we have shown, gives internal chronological evidence, and so does Acts, eg King Aretas and Proconsul Gallio.

The differences and development in the gospels show a consistent pattern, that indicate a development of increasingly supernatural features, although the earliest sources already contain some of these features.

In short, I simply don't accept your dismissal, your dating and some of your other statements, and I will not accept them even if you repeat them a thousand more times.

 

[Belz...]

You are forgetting something.

Seems to happen to everyone but you.

You have already declared in a most contradictory manner that everyone agrees the evidence for HJ is TERRIBLE but screamed out that you never claimed to have had evidence for an HJ.

I find it interesting that you missed this post by me, from YESTERDAY:

Dejudge also purposefully "misunderstands" my earlier point that I don't personally have any evidence to present: I'm enjoying the show and trying to determine which hypothesis has the best probability based on the presented evidence or reasoning.

You onlyl think it's a contradiction because you have an agenda.

 

[Belz...]

IIRC came up in the insanely long What counts as a historical Jesus? thread and the whole must have a census in Herod's time pops up a lot in apologist writings.

No one here is an apologist.

 

[Belz...]

It might be that it's hard to believe Christianity has pulled off such a flim-flam on such a weak premise.

What flim flam ? I don't follow.

The resurrection itself is already cringe-worthy, why is the idea the entire story could have been made up entirely so offensive?

What gave you the idea that it's offensive to anyone ? I think the HJ side has been clear here that it's simply the best explanation we have. Read my post from yesterday about evidence and conclusions.

 

[Belz...]

The problem is as James Burke showed in his Day the Universe Changed (1985) series is you have to have a model or structure before you even start asking questions and that very structure determined what you consider is valid evidence.

Please show anyone on this thread doing this.

With the idea of a historical Jesus it is not just that there is little evidence or that its quality is poor but that it is the same evidence used to counter the first known appearance of the idea Jesus may have not existed as flesh and blood person in the 1790s.

Yeah, I'm confused, too. I have no idea what you're talking about, here.

The core "evidence" presented for a HJ has not changed in over 200 years despite how much the social sciences have changed in that time.

Explain.

1) Paul is rambling on about the Jesus in his head and expressly states all his knowledge about this Jesus come from visions.

And yet he speaks of meeting people who knew him and disagreed with Paul on his teachings. That part isn't a hallucination, is it ?

2) Four of the some 30+ anonymous writings that at best seem to have existed no earlier then 130 CE or about hudred years after the event that when we can check them against known fact are shown to be at best historical fiction when it comes to Jesus himself or event directly related to him.

Indeed. What's your explanation for that ? I ask because this fact doesn't sound very useful to either side.

And you wonder why more evidence is being asked for by even the Remsburg style MJers?!

You misunderstood my post completely. It's not that they say the evidence is insufficient, it's that they are asking for another layer of evidence, basically dismissing the evidence itself, in its entirety, and asking for evidence for why the conclusion was arrived at. No other field attracts such criticism. I'd expect people to ask how historians arrived at this conclusion based on the little evidence we have, not evidence for probability, which makes no sense.

 

[DOC]

Do you understand what "dead end" means?

Up to the 1st half of the 20th century there was NO established evidence for an HJ...

Once again, an "argument by assertion". Why would Oxford professor Thomas Arnold (Author of the 3 volume "History of Rome) basically say he knows of no fact in history (up to that point) that is supported by greater and fuller evidence of every sort than that of the life of Christ?