Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

So, tell me about the Christians that Pliny knew of.

If they didn't believe Jesus the Nazarene was the Messiah, what did they believe?

I already told you that Pliny the younger did NOT mention Jesus the Nazarene in the Trajan letter and that after Torture the Christians did not acknowledge a character called Jesus or Jesus the Nazarene.

You have a very bad memory.

Plus, you seem to have forgotten that it is very likely that there were many Messianic claimants so it cannot be assumed that any and all mention of the Christ must refer to Jesus of Nazareth.

Examine gMark in the NT itself.

Mark 13:6 KJV---For many shall come in my name, saying , I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Please tell us who was the Christ in the time of Pliny the younger c 110 CE.

You may have been deceived!!!

Please, get evidence for YOUR HJ of Nazareth because so far all you have are questions which you cannot answer!!

 

[Brainache]

...
Please tell us who was the Christ in the time of Pliny the younger c 110 CE.

...

That's what I'm asking you. I know what the traditional answer is, but you seem positive that they weren't talking about Jesus, so who were they talking to Pliny about?
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/pliny.html

They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

If not Jesus then who is this Christ they are singing about?

And how do you alone in all the world know this?

 

[IanS]

Thank you for citing your sources. None of this is in dispute. I merely noted that Paul also attributes the execution to the princes of the world, and indicated internal evidence suggesting that 1 Thess is clearly not as late as 180 AD. Don't ever forget that.

Below is your own quote which you are referring to when you say there is “indicated internal evidence suggesting that 1 Thess is clearly not as late as 180 AD. Don't ever forget that.”. The bolding in your quote (below) is your own, and I’ve highlighted it so that we know which words you are talking about when you tell people “don’t ever forget that”. But what is it in those bold highlighted words of your quote, that makes you say it can’t have been written after 180AD?

Firstly, the earliest copies we have any letters supposedly written by Paul, were apparently written after c.200AD.

Secondly, those words which you are relying upon ie “we who are still alive and are left” could have been written at any date, couldn’t they? How do you know they were written around say 60AD or whenever you think they were first written?

Are you assuming those were definitely written by Paul around 60AD? If that was your assumption then you are assuming that you are automatically right in the first place and using that to argue that dejudge must be wrong if he says 180AD … ie you are trying to argue that you must be right to say it’s earlier than 180AD because you had already assumed you were right to think it was before 180AD lol.

Don't you forget 1 Thessalonians again either, by the way. This is supposed to be a post 180 AD forgery? Come off it!

4:17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. My bold.

 

[Brainache]

Below is your own quote which you are referring to when you say there is “indicated internal evidence suggesting that 1 Thess is clearly not as late as 180 AD. Don't ever forget that.”. The bolding in your quote (below) is your own, and I’ve highlighted it so that we know which words you are talking about when you tell people “don’t ever forget that”. But what is it in those bold highlighted words of your quote, that makes you say it can’t have been written after 180AD?

Firstly, the earliest copies we have any letters supposedly written by Paul, were apparently written after c.200AD.

Secondly, those words which you are relying upon ie “we who are still alive and are left” could have been written at any date, couldn’t they? How do you know they were written around say 60AD or whenever you think they were first written?

Are you assuming those were definitely written by Paul around 60AD? If that was your assumption then you are assuming that you are automatically right in the first place and using that to argue that dejudge must be wrong if he says 180AD … ie you are trying to argue that you must be right to say it’s earlier than 180AD because you had already assumed you were right to think it was before 180AD lol.

So, what was the evidence that it was written in 180AD? I mean, apart from dejudge's unevidenced assertion.

Why are you defending a person who clearly has no idea of what he is talking about?

 

[Craig B]

... Firstly, the earliest copies we have any letters supposedly written by Paul, were apparently written after c.200AD.

If they had been a hundred years later still, would that change the date at which Paul wrote the Epistles?

Secondly, those words which you are relying upon ie “we who are still alive and are left” could have been written at any date, couldn’t they? How do you know they were written around say 60AD or whenever you think they were first written?

ie you are trying to argue that you must be right to say it’s earlier than 180AD because you had already assumed you were right to think it was before 180AD lol.

1 Thess 4:17 is not likely to have been forged by Baron Munchausen or Severus Archontius after 180 because it makes Paul look like a fool thinking the Second Coming would take place in his own lifetime. Presumably Paul was dead in 180 AD.

 

[Belz...]

Very well, Dejudge. In keeping with your tactic of declaring victory when people go away, I'm going to declare victory over your unwillingness to answer any of my questions or points.

 

[mijopaalmc]

You are exposing your complete lack of knowledge of Jewish, Greek and Roman Mythology.

You seem to have no idea the figures of Mythology are described with human characteristics.

Please, first read Plutarch's Romulus because your post is rather embarrassing.

Romulus the Myth founder of Rome was described as a flesh and blood human being with a human brother and born of a woman.


http://classics.mit.edu/Plutarch/romulus.html

You seem to have no idea that the authors of NT claimed Jesus, God Creator, was born after his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost, that he walked on the sea, transfigured, resurrected and ascended in a cloud.

Why don't you accept that Jesus as described in the NT is NOT a human being??

Because your ignorance of Classical mythology and the religions of the Ancient Near East is not a substitute for the scholarly literature.

By the way, you ignored my question: if you deny the utility of the Christian apologetic literature to indicate anything about a corporeal Jesus, why does your argument for an incorporeal Jesus depend solely on Christian apologetics?

Why believe anything that the Christian apologists say?

 

[Belz...]

By the way, you ignored my question: if you deny the utility of the Christian apologetic literature to indicate anything about a corporeal Jesus, why does your argument for an incorporeal Jesus depend solely on Christian apologetics?

Good luck with that answer. It's not forthcoming.

You should declare victory right now, instead.

 

[dejudge]

If they had been a hundred years later still, would that change the date at which Paul wrote the Epistles? 1 Thess 4:17 is not likely to have been forged by Baron Munchausen or Severus Archontius after 180 because it makes Paul look like a fool thinking the Second Coming would take place in his own lifetime. Presumably Paul was dead in 180 AD.

Your claim that 1 Thessalonians was written before c 180 CE because the author made claims about the Second Coming is so illogical and laughable.

Christians have been making predictions about the Second Coming in the 21 st century.

Harold Camping claimed the Second Coming would happen May 21 2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Camping

 

[dejudge]

Because your ignorance of Classical mythology and the religions of the Ancient Near East is not a substitute for the scholarly literature.

By the way, you ignored my question: if you deny the utility of the Christian apologetic literature to indicate anything about a corporeal Jesus, why does your argument for an incorporeal Jesus depend solely on Christian apologetics?

Why believe anything that the Christian apologists say?

Your questions are extremely amusing.

If you wanted to find out about Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Zeus, Satan the Devil, the angel Gabriel, the Holy Ghost, God Creator born of a Ghost and a Virgin and the God of Moses where would you look?

You would look in Jewish, Greek and Roman myth fables.

That is precisely what I have done. I have found that Jesus was a figure of mythology just like Romulus and Satan the Devil.

Ignatius preached that Jesus was God and born of a Ghost in a letter to the Ephesians.

Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Aristides, Eusebius, Hippolytus, Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine and many others argued the same thing --Jesus had NO human father.

 

[Brainache]

Your questions are extremely amusing.

If you wanted to find out about Romulus and Remus, Perseus, Zeus, Satan the Devil, the angel Gabriel, the Holy Ghost, God Creator born of a Ghost and a Virgin and the God of Moses where would you look?

You would look in Jewish, Greek and Roman myth fables.

That is precisely what I have done. I have found that Jesus was a figure of mythology just like Romulus and Satan the Devil.

Ignatius preached that Jesus was God and born of a Ghost in a letter to the Ephesians.

Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Aristides, Eusebius, Hippolytus, Lactantius, Jerome, Augustine and many others argued the same thing --Jesus had NO human father.

You still haven't explained how the entire pre-200 AD corpus was faked, nor, who those people Pliny tortured were worshipping.

Until then your argument is as good as ever.

 

[pakeha]

... We have, after all, evidence in Pliny for the well established existence of at least one Christian community in Bithynia, complete with defectors and deaconesses, near the beginning of this period. So whether the apparent consensus on this date is right or wrong stamps none of the participants in it as apologetic tacticians. ...

Is that correspondence of Pliny's generally considered authentic?

Referring to the use of historical method in ancient history - that sources are often much more fragmentary and uncertain than in modern history. Thus, you often can't find contemporaneous stuff; there may not be 'hard' stuff such as archaeology; historians may use indirect material such as hearsay, and so on. Thus you may get just one mention of somebody in a document - see Josephus' mention of various preachers and messianic claimants such as Theudas.

An interesting and more modern example is Jane Austen's mention of baseball in a novel - although it might not be referring to the same game.

In fact, I suppose upon this hinges some of the divisions over HJ, since the critics of historical method seem to argue that such weak evidence as above is not actually evidence.

The documents we're considering are devotional literature, correct me if I'm wrong. What kind of historian uses devotional literature as source material for the historicity of the object of devotion?

 

[zugzwang]

Is that correspondence of Pliny's generally considered authentic?




The documents we're considering are devotional literature, correct me if I'm wrong. What kind of historian uses devotional literature as source material for the historicity of the object of devotion?

If you are curious as to how it works, consult the review of 'Nailed' by Tim O'Neill on his blog, as he seems to go through various aspects of how historical method is applied to HJ.

See for example:

The gospels can indeed have been written by non-eye witnesses, can present wildly varying pictures of Jesus and can be riddled with historical and archaeological errors and a historical Jewish preacher could still have been the origin of the later stories.

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/nailed-ten-christian-myths-that-show.html

 

[TimCallahan]

I already told you that Pliny the younger did NOT mention Jesus the Nazarene in the Trajan letter and that after Torture the Christians did not acknowledge a character called Jesus or Jesus the Nazarene. . . . (snip) . . .

I'm still trying to get an answer from you about your views on how Christianity developed. Let me try with a specific question: Considering the hilited area, you seem to think that at some time Jesus the Nazarene was added to an already existing Christ myth. Further, you seem to think this took place late in the second century. So, my question to you is this. If Christianity was originally a non-Jewish cult, when and why did someone graft a Jewish would-be messiah on to it, and why did the graft take?

 

[Craig B]

Is that correspondence of Pliny's generally considered authentic?

Seems to be. Wiki states that

New Testament critic Hermann Detering has questioned the authenticity of Book 10, a position that has not found acceptance within the mainstream scholarly community.

 

[pakeha]

If you are curious as to how it works, consult the review of 'Nailed' by Tim O'Neill on his blog, as he seems to go through various aspects of how historical method is applied to HJ.

See for example:

The gospels can indeed have been written by non-eye witnesses, can present wildly varying pictures of Jesus and can be riddled with historical and archaeological errors and a historical Jewish preacher could still have been the origin of the later stories.

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/nailed-ten-christian-myths-that-show.html

Thanks, but I was interested in something a bit more serious, not quite so fluffy and "anything's possible" as that example.
Anything from a professional historian?

 

[pakeha]

Is that correspondence of Pliny's generally considered authentic?

Seems to be. Wiki states that

New Testament critic Hermann Detering has questioned the authenticity of Book 10, a position that has not found acceptance within the mainstream scholarly community.

Thanks!
Off to find more about that.

 

[zugzwang]

Thanks, but I was interested in something a bit more serious, not quite so fluffy and "anything's possible" as that example.
Anything from a professional historian?

I don't know, as I am finding out about this stuff myself. As far as I can see, academics do not discuss this stuff, as mythicism is a fringe internet thing.

I am reading some Geza Vermes at the moment, but he does not discuss mythicism nor the HJ arguments.

I am also on the lookout for Maurice Casey's book, 'Jesus of Nazareth', as I've been told that he applies historical method in that book.

 

[pakeha]

Thanks for the pointers to those authors!

 

[JaysonR]

So, tell me about the Christians that Pliny knew of.

If they didn't believe Jesus the Nazarene was the Messiah, what did they believe?

I already told you that Pliny the younger did NOT mention Jesus the Nazarene in the Trajan letter and that after Torture the Christians did not acknowledge a character called Jesus or Jesus the Nazarene.

You have a very bad memory.

Plus, you seem to have forgotten that it is very likely that there were many Messianic claimants so it cannot be assumed that any and all mention of the Christ must refer to Jesus of Nazareth.

Examine gMark in the NT itself.

Mark 13:6 KJV---For many shall come in my name, saying , I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Please tell us who was the Christ in the time of Pliny the younger c 110 CE.

You may have been deceived!!!

Please, get evidence for YOUR HJ of Nazareth because so far all you have are questions which you cannot answer!!

Brainache didn't ask you about Jesus; he asked you to tell him what the Christians of Pliny did believe in.

So has TimCallahan, in at least two posts: 1508 , 1554.

Your answers have been:

Those letters mention nothing about Jesus of Nazareth. That is the problem. You also do not understand that the word "Christian" does not automatically refer to ONLY Christians who believed the Jesus story.

All sorts of cults were called Christians.

Again, you must be specific because I am dealing with the timeline of a cult of Christians who believed the story that the Jews KILLED the Son of God.

There were multiple cults called Christians and some were not at all related to the story of Jesus.

The cult of Christians who believed the story that the Jews KILLED the Son of God called Jesus of Nazareth originated sometime in the 2nd century or after the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the younger or after c 115 CE.

And:

I already told you that Pliny the younger did NOT mention Jesus the Nazarene in the Trajan letter and that after Torture the Christians did not acknowledge a character called Jesus or Jesus the Nazarene.

You have a very bad memory.

Plus, you seem to have forgotten that it is very likely that there were many Messianic claimants so it cannot be assumed that any and all mention of the Christ must refer to Jesus of Nazareth.

Examine gMark in the NT itself.

Mark 13:6 KJV---For many shall come in my name, saying , I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

Please tell us who was the Christ in the time of Pliny the younger c 110 CE.

You may have been deceived!!!

Please, get evidence for YOUR HJ of Nazareth because so far all you have are questions which you cannot answer!!

Since you seem confused.
To alleviate your confusion:

Date: 112 CE
Location: Bithynia et Pontus, Anatolia/Asia Minor
Group: Christians, "Christianos", "Christiani", "Christianis", "Christianus"
Source: Pliny's letter to Trajan

Question:
1. According to you, what do the Christians in Pliny's letter worship and believe?