Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[tsig]

Nonsense. You have to provide evidence for whichever of the myth theories you're speaking of. I for one have explicitly stated that I'm not looking for names. If you provide evidence, moreover, I will read it. Now you're being particularly forgetful, tsig, of post #6550:

So that's what you are asked for, and what you say in your current post is completely false; the diametric opposite of the truth, at least as far as my dealings with you are concerned.

So now, tell me about your Doctrine Committee, tsig. Or if it's some other type of myth theory you're promoting just now, give me comparable evidence for it.

How did the NT become compiled in it's present form? Someone or someones had to decide what was included and what was excluded so who did it and why was one story OK and another not?

Did one lone genius do it a la Joe Smith and the BoM or was it a product of consensus, or dare I say, a committee?

 

[tsig]

No. It’s the very opposite of “nonsensical”. It’s completely sensible. In fact it’s absolutely correct - unless someone is proposing a specific myth theory, then there is zero obligation on them to provide any evidence whatsoever in support of other peoples published myth theories.

A key point of the HJers is to determinedly misstate the opposing point of view. I say I don't know it there was an HJ and am immediately asked to prove a MJ complete with a timeline and story line. I reiterate "I don't know" and get accused of avoiding the issue, Academic lese majeste and denying the Holocaust.

At some point you realize they're just responding with rote talking points and not to the actual content of the posts.


It becomes more like chumming the water than having any kind of discussion.

 

[proudfootz]

Hi … thanks for the kind words, and thanks for taking time to see & hear what Avalos had to say.

Yes, what he has to say is interesting, isn’t it. Not least because he his providing an opinion from within the profession. An opinion which goes to the heart of why it can be a serious mistake to rely upon appeal to authority in this field.

The Hector Avalos presentation was excellent!

I quite agree that the constant appeal to authority gets us nowhere. Especially when the authorities being appealed to don't even study the topic!

Ancient Near East studies is a wide field - should we simply assume, as some apparently have, that in order to pursue their specialty (Suppose it was Egyptology or Assyriology) they need to investigate the alleged historicity of a character in the religious mythology from a foreign culture in another land from a time period hundreds of years later?

The rather comical citation of ANE scholars as 'experts' about Judea as a Roman Province just exposes the rather poor grasp some have - the field is restricted to a period ending a couple of hundred years before the alleged career of Jesus!

I suppose the words 'ancient Near East' sounded cool so they repeat them blissfully ignorant of what the words actually mean.

 

[Craig B]

How did the NT become compiled in it's present form? Someone or someones had to decide what was included and what was excluded so who did it and why was one story OK and another not?

Did one lone genius do it a la Joe Smith and the BoM or was it a product of consensus, or dare I say, a committee?

I see. You consider that these observations are adequate evidence for this?

I read the NT as a series of vignettes each designed to prove a point of doctrine with enough connective narrative to give it a flow.

Each scenario was approved by a church committee as to doctrinal purity and the needs of the church not accordance with reality.

In some cases we're even given the reason for a story, "and this was done that the words of the prophets be fulfilled", clearly showing that the scenario was supposed to prove fulfillment of prophesy and so prove Jesus was the Messiah.

So, the fact that there are canonical texts means to you that each vignette was examined by a committee? The same committee? Pray explain then how the discrepancies in the later Synoptic birth stories were allowed to pass. Or the different lists of persons in the genealogies. Or the different accounts of the Baptism by John, or the fact that Matthew has Jesus give a sermon on a mountain, and Luke the same sermon on a plain and so on.

So tell me about this committee. In what century did it meet? Are all the books fabricated pericope by pericope as you suggest, or were the committee members confronted by pre-existing texts, which you appear to deny. Why the different literary styles, and stores of knowledge, exhibited in the different gospels? Not just Gospels! Your doctrine committee did its work on the entire NT.

Did it forge it, starting with blank sheets; and if not, where did its material come from? .... Ah, a million questions.

 

[proudfootz]

A key point of the HJers is to determinedly misstate the opposing point of view. I say I don't know it there was an HJ and am immediately asked to prove a MJ complete with a timeline and story line. I reiterate "I don't know" and get accused of avoiding the issue, Academic lese majeste and denying the Holocaust.

At some point you realize they're just responding with rote talking points and not to the actual content of the posts.


It becomes more like chumming the water than having any kind of discussion.

Agnosticism gets no respect!

But it is rather odd that instead of trying to persuade some prefer to attack.

 

[proudfootz]

How did the NT become compiled in it's present form? Someone or someones had to decide what was included and what was excluded so who did it and why was one story OK and another not?

Did one lone genius do it a la Joe Smith and the BoM or was it a product of consensus, or dare I say, a committee?

Well, we have at least a couple of options:

a) a conscious decision was taken to create an officially approved canon

b) it was all an accident

It is a puzzler!

 

[Craig B]

A key point of the HJers is to determinedly misstate the opposing point of view. I say I don't know it there was an HJ ...

That's not all you say. You also say

I read the NT as a series of vignettes each designed to prove a point of doctrine with enough connective narrative to give it a flow.

Each scenario was approved by a church committee as to doctrinal purity and the needs of the church not accordance with reality.

In some cases we're even given the reason for a story, "and this was done that the words of the prophets be fulfilled", clearly showing that the scenario was supposed to prove fulfillment of prophesy and so prove Jesus was the Messiah.

 

[Craig B]

Well, we have at least a couple of options:

a) a conscious decision was taken to create an officially approved canon

b) it was all an accident

It is a puzzler!

Come off it!

 

[dejudge]

That is breathtakingly nonsensical. I now await what tsig may have to say about the "names" issue. Come on tsig. Tell us that no evidence is required for this Remember, as I've said, I don't need the names!

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of the God of the Jews?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of Adam and Eve?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of Satan the Devil?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of the Angel Gabriel?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of the Holy Ghost?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of Romulus, the founder of Rome?

What evidence has been presented for the myth theory of the Angel Moroni of the Mormon religion?

It is well known that there is NO corroborative historical evidence for Mythological characters EXCEPT the DESCRIPTION of the myth itself.

1. See Mark 1.13 Satan the Devil, Jesus of Nazareth and Angels were TOGETHER in the wilderness of Galilee in gMark.

2. See Mark 6--Jesus Walked on the sea.

3. See Mark 9--Jesus Transfigured.

4. See Mark 16--Jesus resurrected.

5. See Matthew 1--Jesus is born of a Ghost.

6.See Luke 1--Jesus is born of a Ghost.

7. See John 1--Jesus is God Creator the Logos.

8. See John 21--the Resurrected Jesus had a "beach party" and was the cook.

9. See Acts 1--Jesus ASCENDED in a cloud.

10. See Ignatius Ephesians--Jesus was God born of a Ghost.

11. See Aristides' Apology--Jesus was God from heaven.

12 See Justin's First Apology --Jesus was born of a Ghost.

13. See Irenaeus' Against Heresies--Jesus was born of a Ghost.

14. See Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies--Jesus was God Creator, the Logos.

15. See Clement's Stromata--Jesus was born of a Ghost.

16.See Tertullian's On the Flesh of Christ--Jesus was born of a Ghost.

17. See Origen's Against Celsus--Jesus was born of a Ghost.

18. See Eusebius' Church History--Jesus was God Incarnate.

19. See Contra Faustun---Jesus was NOT born.

20. See 1 Corinthians--Jesus was a Spirit.

We have seen the EVIDENCE for Myth Jesus. The very myth CONCEPTION and birth of the Myth is described in the NT.

Jesus of Nazareth was a figure of Mythology until new evidence surfaces just like Satan the Devil, the Angels, the God of the Jews, Adam and Eve, the Angel Moroni and Romulus.

 

[proudfootz]

Why does anyone have to provide evidence for any particular myth theory?

Afaik nobody here in any of these threads has proposed or endorsed any particular myth theory. Even dejudge, who I think you regard as the most extreme "mythicist" here, has in fact only ever said that the biblical figure of Jesus must be a myth (he is not talking about any so-called "HJ").

If commercial authors such as Earl Doherty or Richard Carrier propose specific myth theories (which Doherty certainly has), then of course they must provide a credible argument in support of their theory. And indeed that argument is precisely what Doherty sets out in his book (ditto Carrier in his books).

But all that has happened in HJ threads here is that sceptics such as myself have merely pointed out why the claimed evidence of Jesus is nowhere near good enough. In fact, most of us don't seem to think it's really evidence of Jesus at all ... it's evidence of peoples various 1st century religious messiah beliefs, but nowhere does it actually contain any evidence at all of anyone knowing Jesus such that they could provide known evidence of him.

As Proudfootz just explained in an earlier post - you cannot actually have evidence of someone that does not even exist … if Jesus did not really exist, then we cannot have evidence of that non-existent being.

You can of course ask for evidence to show that the biblical stories of Jesus were “mythical”, i.e. untrue. And indeed there is a vast mountain of undeniable evidence to show precisely that.

The evidence is that the biblical writing about Jesus, whilst at one time (until relatively quite recently in fact) was universally thought to be absolutely true, is now known as a matter of scientific “fact” to be certainly untrue. That is the actual “evidence” here; evidence showing the stories of Jesus were untrue.

Also of course, there is a similar mountain of quite undeniable evidence to show how and why untrue theist accounts like the biblical stories have always been produced in all religions, inc. old testament Judaism with it’s very detailed stories of figures and events such as Kind David, Abraham, Solomon, Moses, the exile into Babylon etc., all of which are afaik now widely regarded by biblical scholars as probably just mythical fiction.

Even Yahweh himself is also of course an invention (circa 12th century BC) with a vastly detailed story of what he did and where he lives etc.

So there is vast and undeniable evidence to show how religious stories, often highly detailed, are almost always complete fiction, how ancient OT Judaism is filled with such detailed fiction, and how the NT stories of Jesus are quite certainly also fiction.

The evidence which is missing, is evidence of anyone actually ever being able to confirm that that they, or anyone else, had ever known a real Jesus. That’s what is missing.

I think there's confusion over what 'burden of proof' implies. If someone is not persuaded by claims that there was an actual man upon whom the Christ myth was based, they are under no obligation to prove anything. If I don't believe there is a Loch Ness monster I need not come up with a theory complete with names and dates for how such a story got started.

If the evidence for an HJ hypothesis is thin, it is the prerogative of every intelligent person to decide whether that paucity of evidence is persuasive or not.

I have no problem with someone who posits there may have been a man buried under the mountain of myth.

On the other hand, I have no problem with those seeing a mountain myth and admitting the evidence for myth outweighs the evidence for historicity.

Nor do I have a problem with those who conclude there's not enough evidence to declare one way or the other.

 

[IanS]

"Jesus is a myth.""OK, give me evidence for that, because there's lots of myth theories."
"Yes, but I'm not proposing any specific myth; I'm just saying he's a myth. So I don't need to provide evidence." Mmm.

Who said "Jesus is a myth"?

I did not say that. And afaik, nobody here has flatly said that.

The biblical Jesus cannot be true. So anyone might call that description fictional or mythical.

But afaik, you are proposing something called a "HJ", which appears to be an idea invented by biblical scholars, theologians and Christians around 1800.

What various sceptical writers and people here have said about that, is that the evidence for any such HJ existing in the 1st century appears to be non-existent ... nobody ever wrote to credibly claim they had ever met or knew anything about any such non-miraculous "HJ".

What you are saying is, you don't need to provide evidence for tsig's "doctrine committee", and tsig doesn't need to provide evidence for dejudge's hoax forger falsifying fabricators, and neither of you needs to give evidence about the author copyists and none of these people needs to tell us anything about the metaphysical crucifixion perpetrated by the Archontes of Woo in the Sublunary Superterrestrial Cloud Cuckoo Land; and if people in general can't give evidence for other people's theories, and don't give any for their own, then anyone can say anything whatsoever, and no evidence needs to be advanced at all. Great!

I’m not saying anything about “ tsig's "doctrine committee", and tsig doesn't need to provide evidence for dejudge's hoax forger falsifying fabricators,…”. tsig and dejudge can say for themselves whatever they want about any such ideas. I am just explaining to you that there really is NO obligation at all on anyone to do the physically impossible and produce evidence of a mythical Jesus, unless, like Earl Doherty, they write proposing a particular mythical explanation,…. although even then they are still only obliged to show evidence of why their own particular myth explanation is true.

But here, afaik, nobody has proposed any such specific myth theory. Not even anyone posting to say they specifically endorse a published theory such as the one explained by Doherty in The Jesus Puzzle.

By the way - did you find any reliable evidence outside of the unreliable bible yet?

 

[proudfootz]

Come off it!

Really, I'm just pointing out possible alternatives.

Which is more likely - the NT canon was compiled deliberately for purposes of theology...

Or what?

What is your alternative?

 

[eight bits]

Ian

... in fact you did not actually mean what your post says where it says...

That's nature's way of telling you that you aren't paraphrasing me, but rather presenting your own view of the situation.

Why not simply have your say, without pretending that I wrote something other than I did, or would have, if I agreed with you? Write "I disagree with what you said here," hang a pair of quote tags around something I wrote, and then say "Here's what I think."


tsig and proudfootz

The canons seem to have emerged by consensus, fostered by inertia and imitativeness. Anybody can make a canon, after all. If enough people of similar worldview make the same or nearly the same canon, then it's the canon.

Is there some other collection of books that you'd like better? Where are we going with this?

 

[IanS]

Pray explain then how the discrepancies in the later Synoptic birth stories were allowed to pass. Or the different lists of persons in the genealogies. Or the different accounts of the Baptism by John, or the fact that Matthew has Jesus give a sermon on a mountain, and Luke the same sermon on a plain and so on.

Why did the early Christian church (even up until the 18th cent.) feel perfectly content with certain difference in the details of otherwise similar stories told in the various gospels? One possible answer is that they never originally expected that any of their Jesus stories would be seriously questioned by anyone. They never expected people to look critically at the discrepancies and suggest that the stories may have only ever been invented fiction.

In biblical times, or whenever the canon was chosen, it seems that most people were by no means as critical, careful or cautious as they are today in examining religious claims such as those in the NT. Indeed, for much of that time, if you did express any doubts about what the bible said, then you were likely to be tortured and made to confess your sins (or worse).

Afaik, it was really only since the advent of science, and the slow realisation that miracles and the supernatural could not be true after all, that from about the 18th cent onwards a few brave souls began to point out the discrepancies between the various biblical accounts, and started to openly say that perhaps these biblical stories were not actually true. By then of course, it would have been a bit late for the Church to change it's bible without it becoming an obvious fudge, not to say a “fraud”. Though they seem to have tried the second best method of preserving the faith and suggested instead an increasingly non-biblical “HJ”, who today in the eyes of some scholars like Ehrman and Crossan, does almost nothing that is actually said in the bible.

 

[Belz...]

NOw why would you lie again?

Perhaps you should not be so quick to assume that disagreement stems from dishonesty automatically, or at least keep that to yourself. You'll find it makes for much better debates.

The word 'impossible' isn't used in my post.

I never said it was. I'm correcting the implication of your post that people are saying that even suggesting a mythical origin to Christianity is silly on its face. You said:

Well of course there was an historical Yahweh. It's absurd to think there was a religious cult that wasn't based on true events and real people.

No one said it was impossible, or unthinkable, or stupid, or any of the potential synonyms of the actual word you said: absurd. That's not the argument that was made by anyone here, except through the use of strawmen.

My system is to read for understanding. Try it sometime!

Typical. When someone has, according to you, misunderstood your post, you, instead of clarifying, ask them to read it again. I don't suppose it's because you're very much aware that this is indeed the impression your post gave ?

...and you recall how I showed this idea 'there is no evidence for myth' is rather deluded. Everybody knows christian literature is chock full of crazy made up BS.

I think we can agree that "MJ" refers to there being _no_ person behind the legend of Jesus who could possibly be identified with the man in the story. When one asserts this, naturally others will ask them to present why they believe so. Lack of convincing evidence I can understand, but when someone points out that Jesus may have started out as a fully-mythical god who was then humanized, and then deified again, one must point out that this, while technically possible, is not supported by any sort of evidence. We at least have evidence of the deification part, which points to a real person. It's not a case-closed situation, but it's better than nothing. What you just did is instead try to make it appear as if I'm saying that there are no mythical additions to the story, but these additions are in fact part of the evidence.

I have no problem with your asserting 'MJ comes from anti-religious bias', so long as you are no hypocrite and allow others to assert 'HJ comes from pro-religious bias'.

I allow it, but I see no evidence for it from anyone here, nor from most scholars on this topic. What I do see, from experience with my own "path", is a reluctance to give even a historical, very human Jesus any concession, for fear that the divine Jesus will creep in. In fact, that's almost exactly what posters like IanS and Dejudge are saying.

 

[Belz...]

A key point of the HJers is to determinedly misstate the opposing point of view.

Excuse me, there's a beam in your eye, tsig.

 

[IanS]

Ian


That's nature's way of telling you that you aren't paraphrasing me, but rather presenting your own view of the situation.

Why not simply have your say, without pretending that I wrote something other than I did, or would have, if I agreed with you? Write "I disagree with what you said here," hang a pair of quote tags around something I wrote, and then say "Here's what I think."

If you write the following sentence as you just did (it’s a direct quote, given in full below), and you mean the exact opposite of the highlighted words you yourself wrote, then it’s a good idea to tell people when you mean the complete opposite of what you say. Especially as a claim of anyone meeting Jesus is completely crucial to this entire subject -

As much as Paul would like to say that his being commissioned by a ghost to preach.is all that matters, it is a fact (if Paul's own theory is granted) that the James Gang have that commission themselves plus they had been Jesus' students beforehand. Their handshake, then, is worth something to Paul, as is their agreement not to fish in his pond.

And the above are your own words by the way (you are not quoting anyone else in that sentence).

 

[Foster Zygote]

DOC's Evidence Of The Christian God

In his thread about God and Russia, Doc makes the following statement:

There is evidence for the Christian God because there is strong evidence for the historical person known as Christ. In the Christian religion Christ is part of the Godhead known as the Trinity. According to mainline Christianity, Christ is God in the flesh. Therefore if you have strong evidence for Christ, you have some evidence for God in the Christian religion. And there is strong evidence for the historical person known as Jesus Christ if we are to believe Bart Ehrman who said Jesus "certainly existed" on page 173 of his latest book "Did Jesus Exist?".

As the subject is off-topic for the other thread, I've created a new thread to address it.

DOC, there is far greater evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith than for Jeshua ben Joseph. In the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith is a prophet hand-picked by God to deliver his true message. According to mainline Mormonism, Joseph Smith is God's inspired prophet. Therefore if you have strong evidence for Joseph Smith, you have evidence for God in the Mormon religion.

So if your argument held the least bit of water (it doesn't), you would have proved that Mormonism is more likely to be valid than your own religion.

By the way, have you even read Ehrman's book? Have you read any of them? His position is that Jesus was a Jewish religious crank who thought he was going to defeat the Romans and was probably quite shocked when he found himself hanging from a cross. The idea that an historical Jesus existed no more proves the existence of YHWH than the existence of Nicolas of Myra proves the existence of Santa's North Pole toy factory, or the existence of L. Ron Hubbard proves the existence of Xenu.

 

[Craig B]

In his thread about God and Russia, Doc makes the following statement:

As the subject is off-topic for the other thread, I've created a new thread to address it.

DOC, there is far greater evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith than for Jeshua ben Joseph. In the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith is a prophet hand-picked by God to deliver his true message.

DOC is saying something stronger than that. Namely that JC is God. So if you prove the existence of JC you don't merely infer the existence of God, in the way that to the LDS the existence of Joseph Smith implies the existence of the god who inspired him. In the case of Jesus, proof of him is ipso facto proof of God, as much proof as it would be if you found the Holy Ghost in your wardrobe, because Jesus is as much the godhead as the Holy Ghost is. Mysteries of the Trinity and all that.

Hey, here's a way of proving the physical existence of Jesus (thereby proving God). Get a priest to transubstantiate a host. Then you are looking at the literal flesh of Christ. The rest follows. It's great when you have religious doctrines that create physical realities, isn't it?

 

[tsig]

Excuse me, there's a beam in your eye, tsig.

Interdependence opens an abundance of mysteries but freedom is only possible in the flow of self-knowledge.