jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
Say what?
Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus
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Say what?
dejudge said:
All the characters in the NT that were in Galilee or Jerusalem were Jews?
Satan the Devil was a Jew?
The Angel Gabriel was a Jew?
Pilate was a Jew?
jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
What have those got to do with the statement I quoted, which was, in case you've forgotten,
Jesus Christ (meant as an interjection), can't you admit you were wrong on anything?
That is a perfectly valid answer, but if after studying the subject for years, one keeps repeating nonsense that should normally be dispelled in the first weeks of study, then the question of intellectual honesty begins to raise its ugly cliched head.
What has your statment got to with the questions I asked?
I gave you a chance to admit your error.
Please, read Matthew 1, Luke 1, and John 1.
Please read the genealogies in Matthew and Luke and you will see Jesus is excluded.
Jesus in the NT was the Son of God, born of a Holy Ghost, and God Creator who was from the beginning.
Will you now admit that Jesus in the NT was not a Jew?
jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
If Jesus wasn't a Jew, why did people call him "Rabbi"? Why did he speak and teach in the Jewish temple? Why did Pilate put "King of the Jews" on the cross? Why did the Pharisees try to trick him by asking him questions about the Jewish laws?
dejudge denies that Jesus is represented as human in the NT. Can humans walk on water? Then Jesus was not human. Jews are human. Therefore Jesus was not a Jew. Simple really. If there had been an HJ, that would have been a Jew, but there was no HJ. So no Jew. Really very simple.
This notion has a problem, created by the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, which purport to assign Jesus to the House of David. Although they're of course fictitious, they represent Jesus as a human Jew. So dejudge simply denies that they exist as genealogies of Jesus. Indeed he volunteers denials that they exist as such, even when not asked. When it is pointed out that Matthew 1 begins
(That looks like a Jewish background to me!) dejudge simply falls silent, an otherwise rare occurrence.
Foster Zygote
Dental Floss Tycoon
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How does one even begin to debate someone who thinks that the above is a rational argument?
I can't help but think of Wolfgang Pauli. "Es ist nicht einmal falsch!"
Belz...
Fiend God
Darat, I've already answered this so I have trouble believing that you are unaware of it: he didn't say "I don't know". Go back and read it.
Belz...
Fiend God
You might want to try honest arguments, Dejudge, if you want to be taken seriously.
tsig
a carbon based life-form
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Because the people writing the stories needed him to do those things in order to make their doctrinal points.
If Jesus was not born of a Holy Ghost why did the authors of gMatthew and gLuke say so?
If Jesus was not God Creator why did the author of gJohn say so?
If Jesus was a human being why did the author of gMark say he walked on the sea, transfigured and resurrected?
If Jesus was a Jew why was he excluded from both genealogies in gMatthew and gLuke?
Why do you take the Jesus story at face value when they are not even eyewitness accounts?
It is completely illogical to assume the stories about Jesus in the NT are historical accounts without a shred of corroboration.
The Jesus stories are obvious myth fables like the mythology of the Jews, Greeks and Romans.
By the way, HJ was not a King of the Jew or an High Priest so he was not the Anointed [Christ] in or out the NT.
Why do you believe the stories of NT Jesus without corroborative evidence.
Do you believe the story of Satan the Devil or the angel Gabriel??
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You seem to be incapable of repeating my position. You appear to be prone to produce fallacies.
My position is that Jesus of the NT is ALL MAGIC and NO History just like the God of the Jews, Satan the Devil, and the Angel Gabriel.
Craig B said:
Again, you express open blatant fallacies.
The Jesus stories with genealogies are the very same Gospels which specicifically claimed Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost.
It is extremely frightening how you present mis-leading information when people here can read the stories.
Matthew 1.18 Matthew 1:18 CEB
The parents of Jesus in gMatthew and gLuke are the Holy Ghost and a Virgin.
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
De Judge, for someone who utterly denies the bible and its stories, you seem to pull out biblical literalism at odd times.
So we're sure that there was no Jesus but we're sure Jesus wasn't a Jew. Well, yeah, he wasn't anything if he wasn't anything. If you reject the story, reject the story.
But if there was a Jesus and if he was born of Mary, according to at least some interpretations of Jewish lineage, he would be a Jew as her son. A little casual digging suggests that the exact date at which the establishment of matrilineal descent became accepted is a bit hazy, but it seems pretty sure to have been before the Christian era. And of course according to Matthew and Luke he is credited with lineage from David, even though the manner in which it's done is cockeyed, and even though it's obviously inconsistent, but since when is the Bible consistent, and by what standards does a person who denies the whole thing judge which of its contradictory accounts to state as truth?
So we're sure that there was no Jesus but we're sure Jesus wasn't a Jew. Well, yeah, he wasn't anything if he wasn't anything. If you reject the story, reject the story.
But if there was a Jesus and if he was born of Mary, according to at least some interpretations of Jewish lineage, he would be a Jew as her son. A little casual digging suggests that the exact date at which the establishment of matrilineal descent became accepted is a bit hazy, but it seems pretty sure to have been before the Christian era. And of course according to Matthew and Luke he is credited with lineage from David, even though the manner in which it's done is cockeyed, and even though it's obviously inconsistent, but since when is the Bible consistent, and by what standards does a person who denies the whole thing judge which of its contradictory accounts to state as truth?
GDon
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Unfortunately my arguments with Doherty (consisting of many 100s of posts) have disappeared with the deletion of the old BCH forum on FRDB. But it is as you say: there is nothing in Middle Platonism that suggests that the ancients believed in Doherty's "fleshly sublunar realm".
I think Doherty himself has tended to move away from a Middle Platonic view in his theories. It is rarely mentioned in his new book "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man". His view there is that the mystery cults, under the influence of Middle Platonism (not the Middle Platonists themselves, note!) developed ideas that by great coincidence supports his "fleshly sublunar realm" concept. But even there, as he states in J:NGNM, there is virtually no information at all about mystery cults. Doherty writes in his book:
This is the reason why we are groping in the dark to try to understand how the savior god myths were conceived within the cults. We have virtually no writings of the period on the subject to reflect those conceptions. Plutarch (end of the 1st century) is almost our only source from the turn of the era, and we must work through his personal disposition to render it all allegorical. (Page 146)
In my review of Doherty's book, I wrote the following:
As one Doherty sympathiser named Doug wrote in a post on FRDB:
Dr Jeffrey Gibson (New Testament scholar and non-theist) responded to Doug's remark in this way (emphasis in his original post):
And that is exactly so. Even GA Wells, probably the leading mythicist before Doherty, finds issues with Doherty's Platonic reading of early Christianity. Wells writes:
Doherty's is the only plausible hypothesis I've seen, but for the average person its plausibility depends on a knowledge of ancient philosophy, specifically Middle Platonism, that almost nobody has except for a handful of academic specialists.
Dr Jeffrey Gibson (New Testament scholar and non-theist) responded to Doug's remark in this way (emphasis in his original post):
I'm compelled to say that it's just the opposite of what Doug asserts -- i.e., that the plausibility of D's hypothesis depends on not having good knowledge of ancient philosophy, specifically Middle Platonism. Indeed, it becomes less and less plausible the more one knows of ancient philosophy and, especially, Middle Platonism.
And that is exactly so. Even GA Wells, probably the leading mythicist before Doherty, finds issues with Doherty's Platonic reading of early Christianity. Wells writes:
Doherty likewise holds that Paul speaks of Jesus 'in exclusively mythological terms'. I have never -- in spite of what some of my critics have alleged -- subscribed to such a view: for Paul does, after all, call Jesus a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), born of a woman under the (Jewish) law (Gal.4:4), who lived as a servant to the circumcision (Rom. 15:8) and was crucified on a tree (Gal.3:13) and buried (I Cor. 15:4). Doherty interprets these passages from the Platonic premiss (sic) that things on Earth have their 'counterparts' in the heavens. Thus 'within the spirit realm' Christ could be of David's stock, etc. But, if the 'spiritual' reality was believed to correspond in some way to a material equivalent on Earth, then the existence of the latter is conceded.
If a mythicist like Doherty has both an actual (and atheist) scholar in the field as well as another mythicist disagreeing with him, then I think that would raise a red flag for most people. Or at least a need to investigate further.
Still, I think that Doherty's theory is largely irrelevant now. Richard Carrier called Doherty's J:NGNM as "90% speculative digression", and Carrier's book on the ahistoricity of Christ, due in Feb 2014 -- next month! -- will apparently extract the "good things" from Doherty's theory and leave out all the speculative nonsense. It will be interesting to see how much on Middle Platonism is included in Carrier's book. I suspect it will be very little, simply because it does not support ahistoricity. But time will tell.
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It is Christians and HJers who take stories in the Bible literally.
Christians and HJers claim their Jesus was baptized by John, caused havoc in the Temple, preached in Galilee and Jerusalem, and was crucified under Pilate in the time of Tiberius.
I argue based on the existing evidence that the Jesus story in the NT is a compilation of forgeries, mythology, fiction and implausible accounts which were fabricated sometime after Suetonius "Life of the Twelve Caesars" and before the War with Simon Barcocheba or sometime around c 115-130 CE.
bruto said:
You need to tell that to HJers. They reject all the mythological accounts of Jesus and accept whatever they believe is plausible.
The birth narrative of Jesus is fictional but HJers simply reject the parts they don't like and accept the rest without supporting evidence.
The baptism account as described is fiction yet HJers simply reject the parts they don't like and accept the rest without supporting evidence .
The crucifixion episode is fictional but again HJers simply reject the parts they don't like and accept the rest without supporting evidence.
Why don't HJers reject the fictional birth narrative, baptism and the crucifixion episodes?
bruto said:
You are doing the very same as HJers. You reject what you don't like and accept the rest without supporting evidence.
You openly admitted stories of Jesus are cockeyed and inconsistent but will not reject them .
You are either a Christian or an HJer.
I reject all the stories of Jesus because they are cockeyed, inconsistent, not eyewitness accounts and without external corroboration.
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I am extremely happy that you take Richard Carrier's review of Doherty very seriously.
Now this thread is about Bart Ehrman's historical Jesus argument.
Would you be kind enough to tell us what Richard Carrier said about Bart Ehrman's Did Jesus Exist?" the historical argument for Jesus of Nazareth?
Richard Carrier claimed "Did Jesus Exist?" is a failure of facts and logic and that he would not recommend the book.
Essentially, Richard Carrier gave Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" the very worse review.
Now, tell us about the Middle Platonism in Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist"?
Bart Ehrman is irrelevant now. Even on a thread which bears his name HJers hardly refer to his book or arguments. It is as if the author and the book does not exist.
jhunter1163
beer-swilling semiliterate
Dejudge, the proper answers to my questions are not more questions. I'll ask again:
I'd appreciate actual, factual answers, and not more questions or handwaving.
For those interested check out Category Archive: Bart Ehrman regarding Richard Carrier's comments on Bart Ehrman's book.
The Ehrman on Historicity Recap provides a nice one stop collection of links and shows it isn't just Carrier that dumps on the book.
While Carrier is still looking for a book that provides the best case for Jesus historicity he recommends, as flawed as they are, Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament and Theissen & Merz’s The Historical Jesus over Ehrman's book.
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As I have stated before there are many scenarios ( see post 3519 for one such example) where you could have a HJ and he not be at the source of Christianity.
Also earlier we had this from you:
Show me one major HJer who suggests the Jesus story is an elaboration on one of these guys:
Simon of Peraea (d 4 BCE)
Matthias, son of Margalothus (during time of Herod the Great) - thought by some to be the "Theudas" referenced in Acts 5.
Athronges (c 3 CE)
Judas of Galilee (6 CE)
Theudas the magician (between 44 and 46 CE)
Egyptian Jew Messiah (between 52 and 58 CE)
Menahem ben Judah (sometime between 66-73 CE)
John of Giscala (d c70 CE)
See, I can play your little word game too. Face it, this argument isn't going anywhere.
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