Why the hostile and dismissive tone? This is a discussion about evidence. What is there that so exercises the MJ side about the question of the evidential value of the gospels? It really is strange. Can you explain that?
It is not a hostile dismissive tone at all. Firstly in that respect - you may not have noticed, but I'm pretty sure everyone on the sceptic side here has not only noticed long ago, but become utterly sick of all the constant personalised abusive insults that almost all of the HJ side has been guilty of here, with frequent replies saying such things as
" idiot, ignorant, uncomprehending, moron lying liar " etc. And yet you entirely ignore all that, and complain instead just because I am putting you on the spot, perfectly respectfully and without any hint of that sort of abuse, over your quite clearly (and quoted as saying, several times) that I had said what you claimed was a very silly argument of me saying that the reason I thought Jesus did not exist was because I wanted to denigrate Christianity in general ... even though you knew from way back and from every post I have ever made, that I never said, implied or otherwise indicated any such thing in any sense whatsoever.
You cannot keep saying untrue things like that about other people without them eventually getting cheesed off with it. OK?
OK, enough of that then. And on to your question above -
- you ask
"What is there that so exercises the MJ side about the question of the evidential value of the gospels? It really is strange. Can you explain that?"
Well, firstly - it is not an
“MJ” side here. As has repeatedly been explained to you, the vast majority of sceptics here are not proposing any specific myth theory of Jesus (and nor do they need to), but simply noting how vanishingly weak the claimed evidence is.
Secondly - it most certainly
is a matter of evidence. And it has been repeatedly demonstrated here beyond all doubt, that neither you nor anyone else has come even close to producing the most microscopic spec of any reliable credible evidence of Jesus.
And thirdly - the sceptics here are not
“greatly exercised” about the claimed evidential value of the gospels. What has happened is that after hundreds of pages of people claiming there is sufficient evidence from bible historians to believe that Jesus was indeed real, and many hundreds of requests for any such evidence, the only thing that has been offered is belief in the holy bible. And that’s a bible only known to us as fanatical religious preaching of constant untrue claims, from an age of appalling superstitious ignorance, and written by a chain of completely anonymous people, none of whom ever met Jesus, and all of whom were quite definitely getting their Jesus stories from the OT.
The idea that such biblical writing as that, could ever be reliable in any way at all, is so absurd as to be laughable. And if anyone doubts that, then they should read Bart Ehrman’s 2013 book, and see just how absurd are his examples of evidence sufficient for him to repeatedly claim
"it is certain Jesus existed”. That is frankly delusional on the part Ehrman. And before anyone else says they rely on some other
“scholars” rather than Ehrman, note that so far nobody in any of these threads, inc. the threads on RationalSkepticism and before that on the old RDF, has ever been able to quote any of those other scholars producing anything remotely like credible reliable evidence of Jesus. And that’s apart from the fact that Ehrman says of his
“evidence” and these others scholars
“every properly trained scholar on the planet agrees with him” … so he is talking about all other typical academic bible-studies scholars, and saying they agree with his examples of the evidence and his conclusion of certainty in Jesus.
I suspect most sceptics here have long since arrived at the conclusion that pro-HJ posters in all these threads and on all these forums are really obtaining their belief as a mater of incredulity. Meaning they just cannot (or will not) understand how Christianity could have arisen without a real messianic figure being behind it all, and although they do not know and can never cite any credible evidence from their so-called
“expert historians”, they nevertheless take the same approach of incredulity towards those
“scholars” too, and take it on trust that such people could never claim there was overwhelming evidence unless there really is overwhelming evidence (even though none of them can ever produce any such evidence at all).
