Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[The Norseman]

Don't play games with me. I generally avoid posts that ask me to define every word used. I know the drill.

Yup, because I'm well-known on JREF to play games, spout irrelevancies, try to fool people and post dishonestly so much so that answering my questions is to be immediately dismissed and rudely commented upon. I'm so grateful you know the drill.

 

[IanS]

Indeed.
When are we going to find evidence of that presence?

To point out something which I already drew attention to about a dozen pages back, and which dejudge originally pointed out before me -

- all the extant early NT fragments and the more complete manuscripts of the gospels and letters etc., seem to have been discovered not in Judea where Jesus was supposed to have been doing all these things, but in fact in Egypt!

And in fact, in contrast to that, what has been found in that precise region where Jesus and Paul and John the Baptist were all supposed to have been doing all these things, was not any of that NT biblical writing, but instead the Dead Sea Scrolls which cover an absolutely vast writing of Jewish religious belief throughout that entire period from c.170BC all through to c.70AD, and citing all sorts of books of the OT, but where neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor John the Baptist or any disciples etc, are ever mentioned.

So we appear to have the rather strange situation where, people in Egypt were writing about this famous religious messiah belief and writing the NT bible, but where in the actual precise region and time of Jesus himself, the only genuine accurate early writing we have, never mentions Jesus or any of these NT figures at all.

 

[dejudge]

It has long since been established in this and other threads that Ehrman's book contains the ridiculous statement, and that he repeated the statement while promoting the book. Your video is from March 12, 2012. In an article dated April 24, 2012, Ehrman is quoted using a hedge "almost."

http://www.religiondispatches.org/b...nventing_jesus__an_interview_with_bart_ehrman

It is fine to beat the dead horse that somebody repeatedly said something stupid, but it is somewhat unsporting, however, never to disclose that he also eventually corrected himself.

Why did Bart Ehrman make the ridiculous statement that Jesus of Nazareth certainly existed MULTIPLE times in "Did Jesus Exist?" when he knew in advance that there was no actual contemporary evidence for Jesus of Nazareth?

Richard Carrier is right--Bart Ehrman's " Did Jesus Exist?" is a failure of logic and facts.

It is evident the HJ argument itself is ridiculous--a failure of logic and facts.

The same posters here who voted in a recent poll that there was an HJ are now admitting publicly that they are NOT certain and NEVER was.

They never had any actual contemporary evidence and knew that from the very start yet voted "Yes, Jesus was an itinerant Jewish Rabbi whose tale grew in the telling".

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=62779

When are they going to correct themselves and admit they " don't have enough data to determine the case."?

 

[maximara]

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.

To use a modern example do you believe President Ronald Reagan's statements that he personally photographed the Nazi death camps near the end of WWII? Even though it can be shown beyond all doubt he never left the US during WWII?

 

[dejudge]

If you knew how History is studied, your questions would already be answered.

Robert Eisenman, an historian, has publicly admitted no-one has solved the HJ question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayU8uKFtxgU

The evidence is the written material we have, yes mostly the bible, plus all of the Apocrypha, The Jewish writings from the time, and Josephus.

Your statement is void of facts.

1. The Bible is NOT a contemporary source for Jesus of Nazareth.

2. All of Apocrypha that mentions Jesus are not contemporary sources.

3. Josephus writings do not mention Jesus of Nazareth and NO contemporary copies have survived.

4. All contemporary Jewish writings, like the DSS, do not mention Jesus of Nazareth.

 

[Belz...]

Yup, because I'm well-known on JREF to play games, spout irrelevancies, try to fool people and post dishonestly so much so that answering my questions is to be immediately dismissed and rudely commented upon.

Define "well-known".



(Do I make my point clear, here ?)

 

[dejudge]

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.

To use a modern example do you believe President Ronald Reagan's statements that he personally photographed the Nazi death camps near the end of WWII? Even though it can be shown beyond all doubt he never left the US during WWII?

We cannot be going over the same fallacious argument by Brainache.

1. The copy of Tacitus Annals is NOT a contemporary source--it is written about 1000 YEARS after the supposed event and show signs of manipulation.

2. There is NO evidence that the name Christian refers ONLY to people who believe the Jesus story.

3. No Christian writer used Tacitus Annals for the Biography of Jesus when the history of the Jesus cult were composed.

4. There were multiple Messianic pretenders in the 1st century.

5. In the NT itself, there was at least TWO characters under the name of Christ.

Tacitus Annals is completely worthless as supporting evidence for Jesus of Nazareth.

 

[Craig B]

You have no credible evidence of Jesus. That is the entire problem.

You and others here must have been asked for such evidence many hundreds of times in this thread alone. And you are completely incapable of producing any genuine evidence of Jesus at all.

Where is the evidence? You never produce it. And neither does anyone else, not even bible scholars who write books with titles claiming to show all the evidence.

You'll just have to let us talk among ourselves then.

 

[eight bits]

pakeha

Good to hear back from you.

It was interesting to read your results.I thank you for taking the challenge seriously.

Something like the Raglan hypothesis (or a more modern analysis, like Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces) is a cautionary tale. If we attribute to a figure everything that anybody has ever said about him or her, then the older a figure and the wider the geographic base of people telling the story, then the more similar different heroes' score sheets will predictably become. That's nice to know, but all it recommends is what we'd do anyway: try to find historical material close to the events, and discount material produced by people who read the earlier stuff and added their own spin.

Matthew contributes nothing to the historicity of Jesus, in the same way that Mel Brooks contributed nothing to the historicity of Robin.

But bravely done. And thanks again.

When are we going to find evidence of that presence?

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.

dejudge

As it happens, I didn't vote in the poll you cited. If you have a question about why somebody voted differently than you would have, then you need to address your question to somebody who did that.

 

[zugzwang]

You'll just have to let us talk among ourselves 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.

 

[dejudge]

dejudge

As it happens, I didn't vote in the poll you cited. If you have a question about why somebody voted differently than you would have, then you need to address your question to somebody who did that.

I was shocked to find out that you never voted in the poll and amended my post.

The posters here who give the impression that there was an HJ now are admitting either that they did not vote in the poll, did not vote for an HJ or have no contemporary evidence and are not certain there was an HJ.

The HJ argument has collapsed into rubble.

The people who argue for an HJ knew that there was never any contemporary evidence from the start and knew that the multiple Quests for an HJ have been established disasters with many failures after hundreds of years.

The HJ argument is a well established Failure of Logic and Facts.

 

[IanS]

You have no credible evidence of Jesus. That is the entire problem.

You and others here must have been asked for such evidence many hundreds of times in this thread alone. And you are completely incapable of producing any genuine evidence of Jesus at all.

Where is the evidence? You never produce it. And neither does anyone else, not even bible scholars who write books with titles claiming to show all the evidence.

You'll just have to let us talk among ourselves then.

All your posts, every single one of them, are a clear admission that you cannot post any evidence of Jesus.

Where is the evidence of anyone ever knowing a living Jesus?

It was certainly not in the exposed fallacy of your attempts to claim that Paul could only have known about Jesus because people in Jerusalem must have met Jesus and told Paul about it.

 

[IanS]

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.

Well is there any such evidence or not? That means, evidence from a reliable source who is credible in what they wrote to say that someone had met a living Jesus.

If so, where is it please?

 

[Stone]

The evidence is the written material we have, yes mostly the bible, plus all of the Apocrypha, The Jewish writings from the time, and Josephus.

The logic behind the analysis of these texts has been explained to you, but you insist on characterising it as "belief". Please stop lying about the HJ position, it is very annoying.

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

 

[Stone]

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.

It's for continual propaganda purposes: They must keep the myther meme alive at any cost, ad infinitum, regardless of how much blatant and deliberate distortion of both HJ-ers' positions and the whole discipline of professional ancient historiography that may entail.

Stone

 

[IanS]

You have no credible evidence of Jesus. That is the entire problem.

You and others here must have been asked for such evidence many hundreds of times in this thread alone. And you are completely incapable of producing any genuine evidence of Jesus at all.

Where is the evidence? You never produce it. And neither does anyone else, not even bible scholars who write books with titles claiming to show all the evidence.

You'll just have to let us talk among ourselves then.

Oh, and by the way (re. the highlighted above), the title of this thread is “Bart Ehrman on The Historical Jesus” … so if you don’t think this thread is all about the claimed evidence of a so-called “historical Jesus”, they you are posting in the wrong thread.

 

[Craig B]

- all the extant early NT fragments and the more complete manuscripts of the gospels and letters etc., seem to have been discovered not in Judea where Jesus was supposed to have been doing all these things, but in fact in Egypt!

Where the climate is very dry, and papyrus doesn't crumble away in a few decades. We've been through this before. The preservation of papyrus is vastly better in Egypt than in Palestine. You know this. You're having a laugh, aren't you?

People who study Roman bank statements find most of their material in Egypt. The ones in Rome have all rotted away. That doesn't mean that most of the banks in the Roman Empire were located in Egypt.

 

[tsig]

Yup, because I'm well-known on JREF to play games, spout irrelevancies, try to fool people and post dishonestly so much so that answering my questions is to be immediately dismissed and rudely commented upon. I'm so grateful you know the drill.

One drill is to constantly rely on the appeal to authority and the other is to misinterpret your post then make a snarky reply to the misinterpretation.

 

[The Norseman]

Define "well-known".

(Do I make my point clear, here ?)

Did I make my point clear?

 

[IanS]

Where the climate is very dry, and papyrus doesn't crumble away in a few decades. We've been through this before. The preservation of papyrus is vastly better in Egypt than in Palestine. You know this. You're having a laugh, aren't you?
People who study Roman bank statements find most of their material in Egypt. The ones in Rome have all rotted away. That doesn't mean that most of the banks in the Roman Empire were located in Egypt.

The Dead Sea Scrolls (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/deadseascrolls.html) , which were found in that exact small region near Jerusalem, consist of remnants of 800-900 manuscripts all written on either parchment or papyrus (plus one famous copper scroll), and those are typically several centuries older than the extant copies of gospels, so they did not all “crumble away in a few decades”.