I have no problem with that position -- with one exception.
I still think you are too quick to call all of the extra-biblical information useless. Even with all the known problems -- especially being in the hands of Christian copyists (but we also have Josephus from non-Christian sources) -- I do not think that it is all worthless when it comes to claims about the existence of Jesus. We simply need to be careful in our analysis.
Well there are a number of points in two of your longer posts from the previous page, which are things that I disagree with, inc. some points where you seem to have my views mixed up with what others here have claimed. However, we have actually been through those particular 5 or 6 points here at least 50 times before your arrival, so I'll resist spending even more time going over it all again.
So just re. the above - I guess this comes down to the question of what information anyone (you or I in this case) regards as testimony (i.e. material offered as "evidence") reliable enough to be considered for the purpose of attempting to draw any reliable conclusion about Jesus.
I do not regard either the Gospels or sources like Tacitus and Josephus as even remotely reliable sources of admissible information about a human Jesus. And the reason I think that writing is inadmissible as credible reliable evidence, as I have explained before, is the same reason why that sort of testimony would never be allowed as fit to put before a jury in a court of law.
Now, everyone here on the HJ side has tried to dismiss out of hand that comparison with legal precedent. But that really will not work as a dismissal. Because the comparison is very direct and absolutely clear.
We are not in a court of law, of course. And nobody is saying we are. And nor is anyone (least of all me) saying that the Jesus case has to be shown
“beyond all reasonable doubt”. And that particular wording (“beyond all reasonable doubt”) is in any case the direction only to a jury when making it’s final decision after it has heard all the admissible evidence - the evidence they are allowed to hear does not have to be
“beyond any reasonable doubt” … the evidence which any witness is allowed to present to the jury can be almost anything … but not quite absolutely any claim that a witness wishes to make before a jury … certain very unreliable types of evidence are ruled inadmissible in almost any jury trial on the basis that a century and more of countless legal cases has shown that evidence such as
hearsay cannot normally be allowed, because it is inherently so unreliable that it risks persuading the jury into completely mistaken judgements.
However, in the case of the gospels, we do not merely have only hearsay writing, what we have is hearsay writing from entirely anonymous authors repeating information which they supposedly heard from yet more anonymous witness, who apparently believed that disciples had once known Jesus.
That is a chain of completely anonymous hearsay from untraceable unknown unaccountable authors and supposed witnesses none of who can be traced to confirm a single thing.
And whilst hearsay evidence may in exceptional cases sometimes be allowed before a jury,
anonymous hearsay is absolutely never allowed as fit even to be presented before any jury. Because testimony like that is simply unfit even to be regarded as credible evidence at all.
The jury is not asked to hear such testimony and decide if certain parts of it might be true. The entirety of anonymous hearsay is ruled out completely on the basis that a source like that is too unreliable even to be considered as evidence.
The extra-biblical writing of authors like Tacitus and Josephus is not much better. It is not anonymous, but it is quite certainly hearsay, because there is no credible likelihood that Tacitus or Josephus themselves could possibly have ever witnessed anything ever said or done by Jesus (or for that matter, anything that ever happened to anyone called “James”). On top of which the very late nature of that writing, coming 1000 years after the original authors had died, is also a time lapse which would normally be far beyond anything a court would ever regard as fit to put before any jury.
So that really rules out such extra-biblical material as even remotely reliable in what very little it’s hearsay copying of the 11th century may or may not have ever said about anything to do with Jesus.
That only leaves us with Paul’s letters. Which are at least not openly admitted to be mere hearsay.
But Paul’s letters are hugely compromised too. Because for a start, we again have absolutely nothing that Paul himself ever wrote. Not a single word. All we have are copies made centuries later by unknown copyists. By which time anything may have been added, omitted, or otherwise altered from any original Pauline writing. And it only requires single words to be changed in order to completely transform the apparent meaning which scholars or anyone else now reads into those sentences.
Also of course, of 13 letters which were once (afaik) all said to be actually written by Paul himself, we now know, according to Bible scholars, that around half of them were probably written later by somebody else. However, afaik even the 6 or 7 letters which are still said to be genuinely by Paul, are not of course known to be written by Paul. Afaik, nobody can make any such attribution. Because we have no original writing by Paul with which to compare the style and content of those later extant copies. So at best, all that can be said about the “genuine” Pauline letters is that they all appear to be written in similar style as if by one and the same person … although whoever that person was, we presumably actually have no idea!
However even apart from all those very serious problems with Paul’s letters as evidence, the fact of the matter is that in none of the letters does Paul ever claim to have known Jesus. In fact he specifically says the precise opposite. He says he did not ever know Jesus, and instead he simply believed that Jesus had died at some unknown unspecified time in the past.
In fact, as many sceptical writers have pointed out, Paul’s letters actually tell us almost nothing about any earthly life of Jesus. And as Ellegard has pointed out - in fact everything that Paul says about Jesus is theological in nature, and not a description of a real living person. According to Ellegard, although in two or three places Paul appears to be talking about Jesus as a human being, in fact those references to Jesus are all said by Paul to be “according to scripture” or by "revelation" etc.
Now you could I am sure, argue about the sentence construction, punctuation and grammar of those particular sentences (or any sentences in Paul), and try to claim that Paul’s words “according to scripture” were not meant to refer to all things he ever said about Jesus. But I think that sceptics such as Ellegard and Wells are probably right when they point out that Paul so often reminds his readers that what he is saying is “according to scripture” and that it is true because “it is written” and because Paul says he “received it of the Lord” (where he either means the already dead Jesus or else Yahweh himself, neither of which actually existed!), that we really must in all care and due caution read that as Paul’s’ declaration that everything he says about a Jesus figure who was certainly unknown to him, was in his belief , “according to the scriptures”.
That is to say - Paul is insistent, and repeatedly so, that everything he knows and says about Jesus (and that is actually very little), comes to him from “what I received of the Lord” and “according to scripture”. Added to which, Paul of course is absolutely insistent that he knew this about Jesus “from no man” and where “I consulted no man” and “nor was I told it by any Man” etc., but always according to Paul as “received of the Lord …. according to scripture”.
That is as clear as it could possibly ever be, that whoever wrote the “genuine” letters of Paul, was never claiming to have known a living human Jesus, nor ever claiming that anyone else had ever told him of knowing a living Jesus, and nor does Paul ever say that anyone he met had ever claimed to know a living Jesus. Not a single word of that sort is ever said anywhere in any of Paul’s “genuine” letters.
Now what is the point of all the above? Well the point is that if you and others here wish to accept 2000 year old religious (or extra-biblical) writing like that as credible and reliable testimony known to any of its authors in respect of Jesus, then that is your choice. But what is undeniable about all that writing, is that it would not be acceptable as fit even to be heard as testimony in any properly democratic court of law, and nor is it remotely anywhere near the standard acceptable as credible testimony in any properly objective study such as science.
Bible scholars may say it is all they have to work with and may say it’s good enough for them to believe. And people here may say that is the way ancient history works. But that does not mean we have to accept such appallingly low standards here when judging whether material like that is fit to be treated as reliable evidence of things that not a single one of its writers themselves ever knew or witnessed in any way at all.
What we should be deciding is not what is fit for ancient historians and what they wish to accept, but what is actually likely to be true on the basis of genuinely reliable testimony from witnesses who at least made a credible claim to having witnessed things themselves, and where their claims could at least be checked and independently confirmed to some degree.
But of course the problem is that there is absolutely no such genuine eye witness claims. None at all. And no independent corroboration of a single thing in any part of the Jesus story. All that exists is anonymously written evidence of people 2000 year old religious beliefs. And by no means could that ever be honestly said to amount to credible reliable “evidence” that anyone ever in any way knew any living messiah named “Jesus”.
