Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

I don't want to chuck it out, since I believe that analysis of the texts can produce certain probable outcomes, and these can be used as premises to build a case, either for historicity or ahistoricity. The fact that these premises are not certain or "for sure!" doesn't particularly worry me, as long as they are stated. (The problem with the HJ case is that the premises are not explained adequately. Ehrman's book was a disappointment in that regard.

Your admittance the Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" was a disappointment only confirms that the HJ argument is really worthless.

Ehrman should have made an extremely strong argument with supporting evidence.

The opposite happened.

Ehrman produced probably the worst argument for an HJ.

Please, don't try to blame MJers for Ehrman's failure of logic and facts

But the problem is that you DO rely on some kind of validity to Paul, at least whenever there are counter-arguments. But as soon as any HJ argument appears, you throw Paul out. If you want to argue against points made by Paul by HJers by assuming purely for the sake of argument that Paul is reliable, that would be fine. But you don't seem to do it that way. It's your consistency that I question.

You seem to forget that Ehrman's has the same problem that you accuse others of.

You forget that Ehrman admitted that the Pauline Corpus contains forgeries or falsely attributed writings but still BELIEVE Paul WITHOUT a shred of corroborative evidence.

You forget that Ehrman admitted that the NT is riddled with historical problems, discrepancies and events that most likely did not happen.

Paul claimed he was a WITNESS that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Why does Ehrman BELIEVE Paul when he was NOT credible?

See Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" page 120.

Ehrman is NOT consistent.

 

[Craig B]

That is because you cannot produce any evidence except for what you believe to be true in the bible!

You are, as I said, and as you have admitted, taking your evidence from the bible.

Which proves the impossibility of engaging you on the topic. You simply won't contemplate the evidence and instead spout the same nonsense about believing the Bible. In this post you've said it twice! Naughty boy.

 

[dejudge]

Which proves the impossibility of engaging you on the topic. You simply won't contemplate the evidence and instead spout the same nonsense about believing the Bible. In this post you've said it twice! Naughty boy.

Your statement is void of logic.

Your belief that the Pauline Corpus is evidence is really worthless.

You have no actual pre 70 CE corroborative evidence for the Pauline Corpus.

Your argument is like claiming the book of Genesis is evidence for God and Creation.

 

[Belz...]

Your statement is not logical.

Your statement is void of logic.

Your admittance the Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" was a disappointment only confirms that the HJ argument is really worthless.

Rubbish!

Your exegesis is quite illogical .

Rubbish.

What a monstrous fable.

Technically you are wrong.

Why do you begin each one of your posts with a juvenile jab ?

 

[IanS]

Which proves the impossibility of engaging you on the topic. You simply won't contemplate the evidence and instead spout the same nonsense about believing the Bible. In this post you've said it twice! Naughty boy.

You believe what you think is evidence from the bible. You have said so here numerous times - you admitted directly and repeatedly that what you are calling your evidence of Jesus comes from the bible. That's what you wanted me to read.

If you have something which is genuinely independent of the bible then I will read it.

But if it's from the bible then we have been over that literally thousands of times here and it is not a reliable source of information and it's not remotely credible in what it says about Jesus.

The same really now applies to external sources like Tacitus and Josephus. They too are not credible evidence of Jesus for all the reasons already explained here literally hundreds of times. They are uncorroborated hearsay for one thing. And also known only from copies written by Christians 1000 years after the original authors had died!


The problem remains, as always in these HJ threads, that you simply do not have any evidence. You need something credible and reliable which is really independent of the religious writing, and which provides credible details of anyone ever meeting a human Jesus.

 

[Craig B]

You believe what you think is evidence from the bible. You have said so here numerous times - you admitted directly and repeatedly that what you are calling your evidence of Jesus comes from the bible. That's what you wanted me to read.

That's right. That means you won't engage on the topic, so you have no right to tell me how patiently you have explained things to me so many times. OK?

 

[IanS]

That's right. That means you won't engage on the topic, so you have no right to tell me how patiently you have explained things to me so many times. OK?

Yes, as you just admitted, it certainly is "right". It certainly is right that what you wanted me to read was stuff that we had already had hundreds of times before from the Bible ...

... well that is not reliable as a source of any of it's unknown authors ever knowing Jesus. And it is also about as far from credible as anything possibly could be in what it doses actually claim about Jesus.

Your problem remains a complete lack of evidence.

 

[dejudge]

Why do you begin each one of your posts with a juvenile jab ?

Because according to you "Everyone has agreed the evidence for an HJ is terrible and that you NEVER claimed to have had evidence for an HJ"

The HJ argument is Terrible-void of logic, facts, and pre 70 CE evidence.

The HJ argument can be rubbished.

No wonder you did not vote for an HJ in the recent poll.

Based on the existing dated fables, Jesus was just a Glorified Ghost or the Son of a Spirit.

 

[Brainache]

Yes, as you just admitted, it certainly is "right". It certainly is right that what you wanted me to read was stuff that we had already had hundreds of times before from the Bible ...

... well that is not reliable as a source of any of it's unknown authors ever knowing Jesus. And it is also about as far from credible as anything possibly could be in what it doses actually claim about Jesus.

Your problem remains a complete lack of evidence.

Your problem remains a complete ignorance of the way Historians work.

"Belief" has nothing to do with textual analysis, but you don't know that, apparently.

Or, you do know that (you should, it has been pointed out enough times), in which case you are lying.

So, which is it? Incompetence or dishonesty? Take your pick.

 

[maximara]

That's right. That means you won't engage on the topic, so you have no right to tell me how patiently you have explained things to me so many times. OK?

The problem is when you dismiss the supernatural stuff as exaggeration or mythization you are still left with the fact that when the Gospels get to something we can actual cross check they fail miserable either in terms of social political reality as we know it to be or have people so out of character is is hard to believe it.

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open so there is no need for the whole Judus betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy as what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy why Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus crime has been sedition then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life Of Flavius Josephus (75)

* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out and about afterwards certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked yet there is nothing in the reports of the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describe how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

* Jesus is depicted as hugely popular in the gospels. Yet he is unrecorded by non-Biblical historians

The Gospels are clearly propaganda and given how poorly even the mundane events fit with actual history it is safe to say they are more on the level of the Protocols of Zion then Prelude to War

Even the mundane suggests the Gosples are less history and

 

[Craig B]

The Gospels are clearly propaganda and given how poorly even the mundane events fit with actual history it is safe to say they are more on the level of the Protocols of Zion then Prelude to War

I think that's quite simply nonsense. I have said why, and have no more to say.

 

[IanS]

I think that's quite simply nonsense. I have said why, and have no more to say.

Nor should you have anything more to say on that point. Because it is simply not arguable that the bible is in any way a reliable historical account of what it's unknown authors believed as legendary religious stories about a messiah none of them had ever known. And it is also just about as far from being credible as it's possible to get in what it does actually say about it's believed but unknown messiah.

So you would finally be doing the sensible thing if at last you really had decided there was nothing you could say from biblical writing like that (except for stating the blindingly obvious fact of how hopelessly unreliable and non-credible its devotional religious eulogies are).

If you, anyone here, Bart Ehrman or any of his fellow bible scholars actually had some proper independent reliable evidence from some known individuals who had actually met Jesus, then there would be no sceptics here disputing his existence. But the problem is that none of you has anything remotely like that. When it comes to you being asked for any truly objective evidence which can be independently corroborated, you have absolutely zero to show. Nothing at all. Zilch. That’s the problem with the otherwise totally incredible and certainly untrue religious writing of 1st century messiah beliefs.

 

[GDon]

No. Absolutely not!

I am not relying on Paul’s letters at all as evidence that Jesus did not exist (I don’t even say that I know or believe that he did or did not exist).

Then how on earth can you believe that an examination of Paul's letters can be used to build "obvious and valid" counter-arguments??? That's the question I keep asking. It doesn't appear consistent to me.

Lets chuck out Paul’s letters entirely. If you, Craig or anyone on the HJ side, inc. Bart Ehrman, does not quote Paul or the gospels, then neither I nor any sceptic will have any need to point out that those documents do not reliably or credibly claim what you say they do. We won’t have to mention them ever again … unless you make claims from them!

I don't need to chuck out Paul's letters. As I've said repeatedly, I believe that analysis of their contents and other early literature can be used as data to build reasonable conclusions, with certain provisos noting their providence. That's why I also believe counter-arguments built on the same sources need to be addresssed -- we are coming from the same place. If I can use those sources for historicity, then it is valid that mythicists can use those sources against historicity.

But I don't understand how you believe that Paul's letters can be chucked out entirely when it comes for arguments for historicity, but can be used when it comes for arguments against historicity. Isn't that the implication of your belief that "obvious and valid" arguments can be built from Paul's letters? It's inconsistent.

 

[dejudge]

The Gospels are clearly propaganda and given how poorly even the mundane events fit with actual history it is safe to say they are more on the level of the Protocols of Zion then Prelude to War

I think that's quite simply nonsense. I have said why, and have no more to say.

You are contradicting yourself.

You reject virtually all of the accounts of Jesus as embellishments in order to argue for an HJ.

 

[Brainache]

You are contradicting yourself.

You reject virtually all of the accounts of Jesus as embellishments in order to argue for an HJ.

Why bother typing idiotic **** like this?

No one else here is stupid enough to think this is a good argument.

You should know this by now.

 

[Belz...]

Because according to you "Everyone has agreed the evidence for an HJ is terrible and that you NEVER claimed to have had evidence for an HJ"

Let me get this straight. You are insulting and demeaning to other posters because of something I said that you misunderstood ? Isn't that a tad vindictive ?

 

[dejudge]

I see no evidence that Paul tries to do anything of the kind. We do not have his teachings, rather we have some of his business correspondence. Whatever the Roman role was, if any, in Jesus' death (and it almost ceratinly wasn't what was depicted in the Gospels written after Paul), it was apparently irrelevant to Paul's purpose in writing any of the letters which we have in hand.

We don't see any evidence at all that any letter of the Pauline Corpus was composed before Acts of the Apostles.

We see you making unevidence claims. You have no idea when Paul really lived, when he died, what he really wrote and when he actually wrote any letter if he did.

The Pauline writers were aware of gLuke according to Apologetic writers and multiple Apologetic sources in the 2nd century or later do not acknowledge the Pauline writers, the Pauline Gospel, the Pauline revelations or the Pauline Churches.

We only know that there were multiple writers who used the name Paul.

The earliest version of Jesus story in the Canon, gMark, shows no awareness of the Pauline revelations of the resurrected Jesus.

 

[Brainache]

We don't see any evidence at all that any letter of the Pauline Corpus was composed before Acts of the Apostles.

We see you making unevidence claims. You have no idea when Paul really lived, when he died, what he really wrote and when he actually wrote any letter if he did.

The Pauline writers were aware of gLuke according to Apologetic writers and multiple Apologetic sources in the 2nd century or later do not acknowledge the Pauline writers, the Pauline Gospel, the Pauline revelations or the Pauline Churches.

We only know that there were multiple writers who used the name Paul.

The earliest version of Jesus story in the Canon, gMark, shows no awareness of the Pauline revelations of the resurrected Jesus.

So, are you now saying that gMark is about an Earthly Jesus who had a Mother, Brothers and Sisters?

What happened to your ghost story?

 

[dejudge]

We don't see any evidence at all that any letter of the Pauline Corpus was composed before Acts of the Apostles.

We see you making unevidence claims. You have no idea when Paul really lived, when he died, what he really wrote and when he actually wrote any letter if he did.

The Pauline writers were aware of gLuke according to Apologetic writers and multiple Apologetic sources in the 2nd century or later do not acknowledge the Pauline writers, the Pauline Gospel, the Pauline revelations or the Pauline Churches.

We only know that there were multiple writers who used the name Paul.

The earliest version of Jesus story in the Canon, gMark, shows no awareness of the Pauline revelations of the resurrected Jesus.

So, are you now saying that gMark is about an Earthly Jesus who had a Mother, Brothers and Sisters?

What happened to your ghost story?

The Ghost story of Jesus is still in gMark the last time I looked.


Mark 6:48-49 KJV

And he saw them toiling in rowing ; for the wind was contrary unto them: and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them.

But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out..

There are more ghost stories of Jesus in gMark.

Check out the transfiguration and the resurrection. See Mark 9.2 and 16.6

Jesus was either a real Ghost or a fake man in gMark.

 

[Brainache]

The Ghost story of Jesus is still in gMark the last time I looked.


Mark 6:48-49 KJV

There are more ghost stories of Jesus in gMark.

Check out the transfiguration and the resurrection. See Mark 9.2 and 16.6

Jesus was either a real Ghost or a fake man in gMark.

Unfortunately for your argument, nobody is stupid enough to fall for it.

What are you going to do?

Your best argument is hopelessly idiotic, you don't understand how History is studied and not one single person in the whole world agrees with you.

It might be time to re-assess your position...