Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[GDon]

Then perhaps you ought to ask Ehrman why he later asserted "almost" certainty.

Personally I think it is a difference that makes no difference to Ehrman. That is, if you asked him, "Do you think that Jesus almost certainly existed?" he would say "yes". If you then asked him, "Do you think that Jesus certainly existed?" he would also say "yes".

 

[IanS]

But we agreed that papyrus could survive in Egypt, so I don't understand your point. Judaea has a climate probably more like say Greece than like Egypt. On this point of difference, see http://www.flowofhistory.com/units/pre/2/fc11b

Why is that link relevant? That is an article about the general history of Egypt from c.1700BC to 500BC. If there is something relevant in there then perhaps you can just say what it is?

The point is - that I assume you would agree that we should have expected the gospels and epistles to have been written in the area close to Jerusalem, yes? But in fact although we have remnants of such writing from hundreds of such documents, they all appear to have been written in Egypt and not near Jerusalem. Why was the story of Jesus written and told in Egypt?

What we have in the Dead Sea Scrolls is iirc mostly on parchment which is apparently far less robust than papyrus (iirc), which did survive in huge amounts in that very region close to Jerusalem, and from that exact same period of Jesus and Paul. And yet that conspicuously does not mention anyone who could be readily identified as Jesus, Paul, John the Baptist or any disciples etc.

So the writing which we actually do have form that precise region and that precise time, which did quite easily survive, apparently even on the far less robust parchment (afaik) and in quite huge amount, whilst it describes masses of stuff about Jewish religious beliefs throughout all of that time, makes no mention of Jesus. But in contrast to that, it seems that the Jesus story was actually first being written and told not there in Judea (as far as we know?), but instead in Egypt!

That seems to me, just on the face of it, to raise questions as to where the Jesus story originally arouse - was it actually in Galilee and Jerusalem and Nazareth … or was it in fact far away in other lands such as Egypt?

 

[Craig B]

Until then there can be no progress … and it is an actual fact that no genuine reliable credible evidence is ever produced to show that anyone at all ever knew a living Jesus. But sadly, many people just cannot admit that, even to themselves (apparently).

Green ink is best for that kind of discourse. It's the traditional colour. And underlining and caps, or even underlined italicised caps are good too.

First we produced no evidence, according to you, then when we did, you went crackers at the impudence of the notion that anyone should have the presumption to ask you to consider it; then we were summoned by you to produce

genuine reliable credible evidence

But you see, we have different definitions of what that is, and I think your restrictive definitions (let alone the weird ideas produced by dejudge!) are unsound.

 

[zugzwang]

Personally I think it is a difference that makes no difference to Ehrman. That is, if you asked him, "Do you think that Jesus almost certainly existed?" he would say "yes". If you then asked him, "Do you think that Jesus certainly existed?" he would also say "yes".

Is another factor for Ehrman, that he has not seen a plausible alternative? Personally, that would not impel me towards certainty, but maybe for Ehrman, in terms of historical method, HJ is the last man standing.

 

[Craig B]

That seems to me, just on the face of it, to raise questions as to where the Jesus story originally arouse - was it actually in Galilee and Jerusalem and Nazareth … or was it in fact far away in other lands such as Egypt?

I see. Raises questions. Mmmm. Tricky. I thought I had settled a question. Is the Palestine-Syria area similar to Egypt (where papyrus survives: it is native to that land!) in point of rainfall and atmospheric humidity, or is it more similar to say Greece or Italy (where papyrus doesn't survive at all from ancient times, not a single document)?

So I called upon the intrepid soldiers of the mighty Thutmose I, and they told me that in those lands there is a Nile in the Sky. So you refer no more to that, and simply repeat your point about the Egyptian papyri, paying no attention to what you have learned, namely that you are wrong about the climate question. And you will repeat and repeat your point in various colours until the end of time, but never acknowledge anything put to you.

 

[IanS]

If Ehrman believes that Paul indeed met the brother of Jesus, don't you think his conclusion that Jesus "certainly existed" is reasonable, from his perspective? I can't see him rationally coming to any other conclusion.

Yes! I expect that is what Ehrman probably thinks. He probably does think that Jesus existed as a matter of certainty (or as "certain" as anything in ancient history can ever be).

Dominic Crossan also thinks it's a certainty, e.g. iirc quoting him from memory, Crossan says that the crucifixion is also "just about the most certain fact in all of history", or words very similar to that.

But the point of all that is - you really do have to wonder what can possibly be in the heads of these bible scholars to think that the written biblical material, which is all devotional religious writing, actually provides such conclusive evidence of either James being "the lords brother" or of any crucifixion of a messiah that none of them ever knew.

As has been pointed out here numerous times, there is a great long list of quite obvious and valid objections to that simple one-off statement in one of Paul’s letters, actually it's in a Christian copy from about 150 years after Paul had died, where it says "James the lords brother". To think those words are definitive to mean a real family member and hence proof of Jesus is really just clutching at straws.

 

[maximara]

max


Indeed, and so we are unsurpised to find that Paul didn't say that he got none of his information through human sources, and didn't say that he got his information only from revelation.

While, of course, John Frum is the perfect example of everything in Bible-based Christianity (to which, after all, Frummery was a reaction), we might instead make the simpler observation that Paul uses the term "brother" about a dozen times in Galatians, once without explanation in connection with James, and the rest of the uses are plainly figurative

And yet we get the claim that in the case of James Paul meant "brother" literally as demonstrated by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd's 2007 Jesus Legend. This is what the HJers are pushing and one we need to address (and a fact you need to deal with).

 

[Craig B]

And yet we get the claim that in the case of James Paul meant "brother" literally as demonstrated by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd's 2007 Jesus Legend. This is what the HJers are pushing and one we need to address (and a fact you need to deal with).

May I point out two things.

- Jesus is given siblings by more than one Gospel, including a brother named James. That's another piece of evidence.
- Even if "brother" means something other than blood sibling here, it bespeaks a close association between Jesus and the person so referred to. So even if there were proof that literal brother is not meant (and there is no such proof), that association would remain implicit in the use of the word as a title.

The Gospels tell us Jesus had a brother, and another person, a disciple, called James. They tell us of a John, and a Peter, whom Acts refers to in association with Paul, and Paul refers to in his writings. We need to invoke the late forgery theory to dismiss all this as non-evidence.

 

[GDon]

Yes! I expect that is what Ehrman probably thinks. He probably does think that Jesus existed as a matter of certainty (or as "certain" as anything in ancient history can ever be).

Yes, based on information that Ehrman considers credible evidence. Don't forget that part! But more below.

As has been pointed out here numerous times, there is a great long list of quite obvious and valid objections to that simple one-off statement in one of Paul’s letters, actually it's in a Christian copy from about 150 years after Paul had died, where it says "James the lords brother". To think those words are definitive to mean a real family member and hence proof of Jesus is really just clutching at straws.

Ehrman writes much on James in "Did Jesus Exist?", including going through various mythicist arguments on the topic. He isn't basing his conclusion on a simple one-off statement in one of Paul's letters. He concludes:

The independent sources of Mark, John, Paul and Josephus all say that he had brothers, and in all but John, one of those brothers is named James. The stories in which Jesus's brothers appear are not tendentious, promoting any particular Christian agenda. So the tradition that Jesus had brothers passes dissimilarity as well as multiple attestation. Conclusion: Jesus probably had brothers, one of whom was named Jesus.​

I have DJE? on Kindle. What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? I'll see how he addresses it.

 

[IanS]

So I called upon the intrepid soldiers of the mighty Thutmose I, and they told me that in those lands there is a Nile in the Sky. So you refer no more to that, and simply repeat your point about the Egyptian papyri, paying no attention to what you have learned, namely that you are wrong about the climate question. And you will repeat and repeat your point in various colours until the end of time, but never acknowledge anything put to you.

This seems to be talking in some sort of obscurantist riddles?

The point remains that the DSS, mostly on parchment iirc, did survive in that precise region. But any supposed NT writing in the area around Jerusalem, apparently did not survive(??) whether it was on parchment or papyrus or anything else. But instead what we have as the NT writing about Jesus appears to have been a story written and told in Egypt. Why is that?

 

[Craig B]

This seems to be talking in some sort of obscurantist riddles?

The point remains that the DSS, mostly on parchment iirc, did survive in that precise region. But any supposed NT writing in the area around Jerusalem, apparently did not survive(??) whether it was on parchment or papyrus or anything else. But instead what we have as the NT writing about Jesus appears to have been a story written and told in Egypt. Why is that?

Because it was written and told in various places on a medium that survives best in Egypt, and in normal circumstances doesn't survive very well. Egypt is in the Sahara desert. Its water comes from the ground, not the air. You said the following, and I've shown it to be wrong, so you simply ignore me, and will keep, banging on about documents from Egypt. No, address my point please which was that the climate in the Syria-Palestine area is not as you describe it here.

If papyrus could survive since 2500BC in Egypt, you might think that it could survive in some state at least from the time of the gospels in Judea. In which respect, notice that your other Wiki quote talking about surviving little more than 200 years, is specifically talking about European conditions. But Judea is not in Europe, and afaik the conditions there are much hotter and drier.

But as in Europe there is water in the sky. There is an annual rainy season, as in Greece and Southern Italy. Non-irrigated agriculture and pastoral farming are practicable, unlike in Egypt away from the Nile waters.

ETA Annual rainfall: Jerusalem 22 in: Cairo 1 in. (Weather averages, Google.)

ETA 2 Average rainfall Athens. 14 inches. No papyri survive from ancient Athens, yet we know that writing was practiced there. Many later copies of Athenian works attest to that--unless they were all forged. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, entirely demolished and rebuilt, and then destroyed again during the First Crusade, to name but two occasions. It was sacked by the Persians twice in the early seventh century. Jerusalem has considerably more rainfall than Athens, too. So it is not "drier" than the area in which we agreed that papyrus doesn't survive, but wetter than at least part of that area. Rome, however, is indeed wetter. 33 inches.

 

[eight bits]

David

I don’t interpret the Deuteronomy passage in a different way that Paul, I interpret Paul’s passage in a different way you do. Make no mistake.

You and I have the same source: black marks on the page. We read them differently? No Shinola, Sherlock. You have some special insight into Paul's brain that transcends what is on the page, so you know you're right? Maybe so, but your claim is undiscussable. Discussion ends.

I wonder what you have against this interpretation.

Because it isn't what Paul wrote, and it isn't in what Paul said he read. I don't have that pipeline to Paul's brain that you do. So shoot me, I'll just stick with what he wrote and said he read.

You are right: this passage doesn’t speak of crucifixion. I asked you on what text Paul spoke on crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews. The correct answer is: none.

That's fine. However, if Paul says Jesus was crucified, then Paul tells that Jews crucified Jesus wherever he tells that Jews killed Jesus. That, too, is an answer to the question you asked. English usage would not commit the speaker to these Jews having stained their hands; causing somebody else to do the wetwork suffices.

Craig B

That is slightly misleading, in that it must be the worst translated passage in the NT. I can't find a single translation that isn't (as you put it) "tricked up" in that way. I wasn't selecting a rogue translation. They, all that I can find, and I checked it against several, say the same thing.

I don't mislead, not even slightly. Many of your chosen versions comport with my translation (see below), I gave my source for the Greek in an earlier post,

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9888388&postcount=5285

The source was

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_thessalonians/2.htm

Its word-for-word interlinear English follows. After verse 14 mentions "Jews" as the reference of third person plural pronouns, 15 and 16 say (modern punctuation carried down from the Greek transcription, solidus "|" indicating the modern verse break):

who both the Lord having killed, Jesus, and their own prophets; and us having driven out; and God not pleasing; and all men (who are) set against, | forbidding us to the Gentiles to speak, that they might be saved, towards to fill up their sins always, has come moreover upon them the wrath to the utmost.

The latter part being just what II Chronicles said. The construction is past tense. This text punctuates the "always" together with the sins; I judge that it belongs with the "has come," parallel to the repeated past action of the Old Testament verse. Either way, God's wrath has come to the Jews in the past, which accords to Paul's II Chronicles allusion.

There is no difficulty with the authenticity of the passage.

Your list

The aorist inidcative is a past tense with few commitments. Translated as "has come" is fine, and not "tricked up," since it is the reference to II Chronicles, and not the verb tense beyond being past action, that tells us that Paul means completed action by God in the distant past. If it refers to the destruction of a temple, then that would be Solomon's temple, not the Second Temple. KJV and D-R are old enough that "is come" may also be a fair rendering of the aorist (as in today's French, our living "has come" is literally "is come.") I take Websters and ERV to be following KJV or D-R. Young's "did come" is fine, too.

I count 18 translations in your list. Of those, at least eight and likely twelve have a reasonable rendering of an aorist indicative. One somehow manages an unarguably present tense. Only five suggest recent past action with any force, and all of them do that the same way your source did in your post: to translate telos as "at last." The Greek telos, +/- "to the end," does not typically mean "at last!" in the sense of "we've been waiting for this!"

There is no difficulty with the authenticity of the passage, at least not in Greek.

 

[Craig B]

@eight bits

I'm not disputing what you state about the Greek. And I don't accuse you of intending to mislead. You no more intentionally mislead than I intentionally

rel on a well-spun English translation to gin up an almost sort-of (murky is the new clear) reference to a future-therefore-must-have-been-added-later event that simply isn't mentioned at all in Paul's Greek text.

No doubt it is as you state, but I say again that the English translations impress the reader with the idea that some special event of great finality has occurred, not only that the normal punishment for such offences has been meted out. In the translations--leave aside the tense of the verb for the moment--we have special-looking words like "utmost", "uttermost", "severest", "to the end", as well as "at last". Moreover in addition to the previous iniquities Paul attributes to the Jews, he adduces a new one

by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved

to which the punishment referred to in the passage under discussion might be taken to refer.

All this considered, it is not unreasonable to question the credentials of such a passage. Moreover you will well know that the authenticity of these verses has been repeatedly challenged, as referred to here and elsewhere http://vridar.org/2012/03/30/ehrman-suppresses-the-facts-while-falsely-accusing-doherty-part-2/ (extracts)

Ehrman begins his case against interpolation by singling out the last words of verse 16:
It is this last sentence [i.e. "wrath has come upon them to the uttermost"] that has caused interpreters problems. What could Paul mean that the wrath of God has finally come upon the Jews (or Judeans)? That would seem to make sense if Paul were writing in the years after the destruction of the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, that is, after 70 CE. But it seems to make less sense when this letter was actually written, around 49 CE. For that reason a number of scholars have argued that this entire passage has been inserted into 1 Thessalonians and that Paul therefore did not write it. In this view some Christian scribe, copying the letter after the destruction of Jerusalem, added it.

But Ehrman is sweeping the scholarly discussion under the carpet when he indicates to his readers that it is only “this last sentence” that has “caused interpreters problems”. That is, again to use Ehrman’s own words, “simply not true.” ...

Doherty named modern scholars who believe the verses are an interpolation. But their arguments in one form or another go right back to the early nineteenth century and Ferdinand Christian Baur. Other nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars concurred: Albrecht Ritschl, Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel, James Moffat, John Bailey, H. J. Holtzmann, S. G. F. Brandon.

In the early twentieth century many scholars began to scoff at theories of interpolation in Paul’s letters and insisted that interpolation should only be considered as a last resort ... but as we saw in the previous post, a significant number of scholars today have returned to the belief that this passage is problematic enough to justify treating it as un-Pauline. To that list William O. Walker (Interpolations in the Pauline Letters) would add Robert Jewett, John C. Hurd and Hendrikus Boers. We can also add our beloved Richard Carrier to this list: see his blog post, Pauline Interpolations.

Now, these scholars must have considered the linguistic evidence that convinces you of the authenticity of the passage. You may wish to comment on their reasoning or their scholarship. I am unqualified to do so, and I would appreciate your views, if you wish to give them.

 

[IanS]

Yes, based on information that Ehrman considers credible evidence. Don't forget that part! But more below.


Ehrman writes much on James in "Did Jesus Exist?", including going through various mythicist arguments on the topic. He isn't basing his conclusion on a simple one-off statement in one of Paul's letters. He concludes:

The independent sources of Mark, John, Paul and Josephus all say that he had brothers, and in all but John, one of those brothers is named James. The stories in which Jesus's brothers appear are not tendentious, promoting any particular Christian agenda. So the tradition that Jesus had brothers passes dissimilarity as well as multiple attestation. Conclusion: Jesus probably had brothers, one of whom was named Jesus.​

I have DJE? on Kindle. What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? I'll see how he addresses it.

OK, well first of all I also have Ehrman's book, and I do think this is the one piece of written evidence (i.e. Paul's letter saying "the lords brother") which just might stand up to scrutiny as evidence of Jesus. And to that extent I think perhaps this one question alone may deserve a thread of it's own.

However, we have discussed all of this many times before. So I don't really want to go over all that same ground again. But ... before we even get to any detail of what Ehrman wrote in DJE, there are three rather serious problems -


1. Although you are following Ehrman in saying that these sources are "independent", in fact they are by no means known to be independent.

2. We do not actually have Paul writing those three words "the Lord brother" anyway. Because we do not actually have anything that Paul wrote. Instead that sentences comes from a Christian copy made around 150 years after Paul had died.

3. It is by no means clear what the word "brother" meant in the context of someone who Paul also described as a fellow "apostle" in belief.

 

[dejudge]

If Ehrman believes that Paul indeed met the brother of Jesus, don't you think his conclusion that Jesus "certainly existed" is reasonable, from his perspective? I can't see him rationally coming to any other conclusion.

Belief of existence is NOT evidence of existence.

It was horribly illogical for Bart Ehrman to argue that Jesus of Nazareth certainly existed because he believe so.

The HJ argument is indeed void of logic and void of facts.

 

[pakeha]

Again with the "Tacitus didn't know what he was talking about" argument?

That trick never works...

It's not a trick as it has been presented that Josephus and Pliny the Elder do NOT mention Christians in Rome c64 CE suggesting Tacitus was at best repeating an urban myth. ...

If not precisely an urban myth, than repeating what his friend and fellow governor, Pliny the Younger, told him.

...
It was interesting to read your results.I thank you for taking the challenge seriously. ...
Paul's Romans 1:7, dated to the 50's, maybe 60. He thinks he's writing to somebody, and if chapter 16 is original (a matter of some doubt), then he seems to have gotten his belief from human sources and not visions or Jewish scriptures.

Beyond that, we're left with Acts, and its own possible dating of late First or early Second Century. Clement of Rome, whose letter to the Corinthians appears roughly contemporary with Acts, has the impression that his church is "ancient' (see part 44), which in context would seem to mean from apostolic times (that is, as ancient as Corinth: Paul's time).

Direct evidence? No. There's no reason to think that there were many Christians anywhere at any time during the First Century, or that their presence in Rome would be especially numerous. ...

Not at all, it was amusing to see just how far the analogy went. Of course I pruned back the parallels back to the stock, including what was to my mind the most striking resemblance of all: the 19th century revisionism both Jesus and Robin underwent. I considered that to be well beyond the scope of the thread, though an intersting subject in its own right.

Ah, yes. Paul's letter to the Romans. I must reread that.
Clement of Rome and Acts are both 90-110? And reread them as well.
And that's about it for the evidence of a 1st century Christian presence in Rome, as opposed to a Jewish one, then.

But if both IanS and dejudge have decided that there is no credible evidence for HJ, and nobody has ever advanced a decent argument, apparently in years and years of these discussions, why do they persist in taking part in them? Is it to keep pointing out that there is no evidence? OK. It's like the hangman, somebody has to do it.

A charming analogy, indeed.
The thing is, zugzwang, its not a question of advancing a decent argument when the evidence is so very thin on the ground. It's a question of saying "We don't know and can't know til a lucky archeological finding brings something more to light." It's a question of not confusing hagiography with history, though, granted, the two areas overlap on occasion.

Lying about the HJ position in exactly this way is the stock in trade of a whopping majority of the mythers I've encountered in every on-line discussion of this issue. It gives mythers an easy rhetorical advantage to deliberately pretend that the HJ position is synonymous with "belief". The fact that it blatantly isn't synonymous at all, that that's a bare-faced deception, doesn't mean it isn't eminently useful. So for that, they adopt this deception promiscuously. You can't expect the leopard to change his spots.

Stone

By an odd coincidence, yesterday I was wondering where you'd gotten to, Stone. Anything new and interesting you've come across lately?

The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, containing the library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar's father-in-law

ETA indeed contained no documents mentioning Paul. That's right.

There's no reason why it shouldn't, after all.
"At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the valuable library was packed in cases ready to be moved to safety when it was overtaken by pyroclastic flow; the eruption eventually deposited some 20–25 m of volcanic ash over the site, charring the scrolls but preserving them— the only surviving library of Antiquity— as the ash hardened to form tuff.[1]"

We simply don't know what was added to this library from Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus's time til Vesuvius erupted.
" The official list amounts to 1,814 rolls and fragments , of which 1,756 had been discovered by 1855.[2] According to David Diringer more than 340 are almost complete, about 970 are partly decayed and partly decipherable, and more than 500 are merely charred fragments.[3]

Attempts at unrolling were made by H. Davy in 1818, and by Friedrich Carl Ludwig Sickler in 1817–1819. From 1802 to 1806 the Rev. John Hayter unrolled and partly deciphered some 200 papyri.[4]

In the middle of the 20th century only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, and 209 unrolled in part. Of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered. [3]"

Only Wiki, but it gives an idea of the extent of the rolls to be deciphered in this library.


Speaking of Vesuvius, what we do have from Pompeii is some evidence of a 1st century Christian presence, if this blog is to be taken seriously:

"First, let me warn you: this video was presented by an anonymous amateur Christian apologist who does NOT know that James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici are, well, the flim-flam artists of the archaeological world. (yes, those two, of the Fishy Amphora Jar fame.)

Still, that should not necessarily detract from the findings."
http://ifpeakoilwerenoobject.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/christianity-in-pompeii.html

Has anyone else run across information about this find in the Baker's House?

 

[dejudge]

Is another factor for Ehrman, that he has not seen a plausible alternative? Personally, that would not impel me towards certainty, but maybe for Ehrman, in terms of historical method, HJ is the last man standing.

An implausible alternative is NOT evidence for an HJ.

In Apologetic writings a human Jesus with an earthly father was implausible.

HJ was an invented falsehood in antiquity.

Origen's Against Celsus 1

It was to be expected, indeed, that those who would not believe the miraculous birth of Jesus would invent some falsehood.

According to Origen, HJ was an EXPECTED big Lie.

Origen's against Celsus 1

let us see whether those who have blindly concocted these fables about the adultery of the Virgin with Panthera, and her rejection by the carpenter, did not invent these stories to overturn His miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost...

HJ was concocted to overturn the miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost based on Origen.

There was NEVER any established evidence for a human Jesus as is evident.

No manuscript or Codex, archaeological finding, or artifact have ever been recovered and dated pre 70 CE which shows or states Jesus of Nazareth had a human father.

HJ is a blind concoction--without evidence--without witness.

 

[Craig B]

There's no reason why

the library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar's father-in-law

shouldn't, after all [contain documents referring to Jesus and Paul].

At all events, no possible significance can be attached to the fact that it doesn't.

 

[IanS]

Because it was written and told in various places on a medium that survives best in Egypt, and in normal circumstances doesn't survive very well. Egypt is in the Sahara desert. Its water comes from the ground, not the air. You said the following, and I've shown it to be wrong, so you simply ignore me, and will keep, banging on about documents from Egypt. No, address my point please which was that the climate in the Syria-Palestine area is not as you describe it here. But as in Europe there is water in the sky. There is an annual rainy season, as in Greece and Southern Italy. Non-irrigated agriculture and pastoral farming are practicable, unlike in Egypt away from the Nile waters.

ETA Annual rainfall: Jerusalem 22 in: Cairo 1 in. (Weather averages, Google.)

ETA 2 Average rainfall Athens. 14 inches. No papyri survive from ancient Athens, yet we know that writing was practiced there. Many later copies of Athenian works attest to that--unless they were all forged. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, entirely demolished and rebuilt, and then destroyed again during the First Crusade, to name but two occasions. It was sacked by the Persians twice in the early seventh century. Jerusalem has considerably more rainfall than Athens, too. So it is not "drier" than the area in which we agreed that papyrus doesn't survive, but wetter than at least part of that area. Rome, however, is indeed wetter. 33 inches.

Yes, I understand that. And of course it is possible that the atmospheric conditions meant that fragile papyrus texts survived much better in Egypt than in Judea. But the fact that some of the Dead Sea scrolls were apparently written on papyrus (see links and brief quote below) suggests that you are making too much of the climatic differences between parts of Egypt along the river Nile where the various NT fragments and mss were discovered vs. the climatic conditions in Judea where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

If papyrus writing could survive on the DSS, from a time which was probably up to several centuries older than most of the NT fragments discovered in parts of Egypt, then it’s obvious that the climate in Judea did not automatically rule out the survival of any NT papyrus manuscripts surviving there in Judea.

So I am just pointing out that on the face of things we seem to have a record of the Jesus story being told and written in Egypt, but not in Judea where we would obviously have expected the story to originate (at least “not in Judea” as far as the manuscript remains are concerned, and assuming it’s true that there are no such early mss remains from around Judea??).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7Q5

http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/learn-about-the-scrolls/introduction?locale=en_US

Scroll dates range from the third century bce (mid–Second Temple period) to the first century of the Common Era, before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 ce. While Hebrew is the most frequently used language in the Scrolls, about 15% were written in Aramaic and several in Greek. The Scrolls’ materials are made up mainly of parchment, although some are papyrus, and the text of one Scroll is engraved on copper.

 

[dejudge]

Yes, based on information that Ehrman considers credible evidence. Don't forget that part! But more below.


Ehrman writes much on James in "Did Jesus Exist?", including going through various mythicist arguments on the topic. He isn't basing his conclusion on a simple one-off statement in one of Paul's letters. He concludes:

The independent sources of Mark, John, Paul and Josephus all say that he had brothers, and in all but John, one of those brothers is named James. The stories in which Jesus's brothers appear are not tendentious, promoting any particular Christian agenda. So the tradition that Jesus had brothers passes dissimilarity as well as multiple attestation. Conclusion: Jesus probably had brothers, one of whom was named Jesus.​

I have DJE? on Kindle. What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? I'll see how he addresses it.

Bart Ehrman's conclusion that Jesus certainly existed is regarded as ridiculous by his peers and even amateur posters.

Bart Ehrman himself in "Did Jesus Exist?" admitted the Gospels are forgeries or false attribution riddled with discrepancies, historical problems and events that did almost certainly did not happen.

We cannot be going over the same fallacious arguments when Apologetic writers admitted that James in Galatians 1.19 was NOT the brother of Jesus and stated that Jesus was Born of a Ghost.

John Chrysostom destroys Ehrman's ridiculous illogical argument.

Chrysostom's Commentary on Galatians 1.19

But as he considered that he had a share in the august titles of the Apostles, he exalts himself by honoring James; and this he does by calling him “the Lord's brother,” although he was not by birth His brother, but only so reputed.

It is confirmed that the HJ argument is void of logic and void of facts.