Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

Status
Not open for further replies.
2) Four of the some 30+ anonymous writings that at best seem to have existed no earlier then 130 CE or about hudred years after the event that when we can check them against known fact are shown to be at best historical fiction when it comes to Jesus himself or event directly related to him.

Then one has to wonder why Bart Ehrman said Paul's Thessalonians is usually dated 49 CE. He says this in his latest book "Did Jesus Exist" on page 118. So about 19 years after the crucifixion, Paul is writing letters to an already established church.

Here is another quote of Bart Ehrman on page 164 of his latest book "Did Jesus exist?":

"And it is important to remember that Jews were saying that Jesus was the crucified messiah in the early 30s. We can date their claims to at least 32 CE, when Paul began persecuting these Jews. In fact, their claims must have originated even earlier. Paul knew Jesus's right-hand man, Peter, and Jesus's brother James. They are evidence that this belief in the crucified messiah goes all the way back to a short time after Jesus's death."


And according to Roman historian Tacitus, Roman Emperor Nero was torturing Christians in Rome in 64 CE.
 
Last edited:
You were doing quite well up to that point. The dates you give for the gospels seem unacceptably late. There is evidence for gJohn around 130, and that was most certainly preceded by the other gospels. The reference to John Frum is entirely gratuitous and is hauled in only because the founder of that cult cannot be traced and probably didn't exist. You are trying to argue that case in respect of Jesus..

If you are referring to the Rylands Library Papyrus P52 Nongbr in the Harvard theological review stated: "What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for P52 must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, P52 cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century." Furthermore this uses paleographic dating which as Nongbr relates is considered last resort dating and at best has a 50 year range

This means at best Rylands Library Papyrus P52 is c150 +- 25 years and from what Nongbr is saying a 125-225 rage is more accurate...which has a c175 mid point date.

So that leaves only secondary reference of which we have one sentence blurbs which could have easily been woven in the Gospels.

Also as I have pointed out before there is the theory that Luke not Mark is the oldest Gospel which would fit Marcion using it c 145 CE. But despite his view that the Jewish god was this evil inferior being Marcion did not use gJohn which is arguably the most antiSemitic of the four canonal Gospels which doesn't make sense...unless Marcion didn't know of gJohn (unlikely) or it didn't exist for him to use.

The Gospels contain few checkable facts. But they are linked to the period in which the events are supposed to have occurred. Pontius Pilate certainly, and John the Baptist probably, were real people. Paul, as we have shown, gives internal chronological evidence, and so does Acts, eg King Aretas and Proconsul Gallio.

That is like saying Rhett Butler, Scarlet Ohare, or Speaker of the House Austin Stoneman existed because Abraham Lincoln was a real person and the Civil War was a real event. Lots of luck on any of those.

When you get to how Pontius Pilate and the Romans in general behaved in the Gospels and Act you get non historian nonsense:

* 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.
* Given Jesus short time on the cross and reports of him being out an about afterword 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

When you get to the details the Gospels come off as no more historical then Gone with the Wind or Birth of a Nation ie historical fiction.
 
Last edited:
What flim flam ? I don't follow.

Sorry to be so unclear, Belz.
I refer to the cultural, emotional and historical superstructure which has as its base the figure of Jesus, historical or not.



What gave you the idea that it's offensive to anyone ? I think the HJ side has been clear here that it's simply the best explanation we have. Read my post from yesterday about evidence and conclusions.

Shall I go back over the thread to cite those posts comparing those who don't think Jesus was an historical figure as trvthers, etc?

Doubting the historicity of Jesus seems to touch a lot of nerves, don't you think?
 
Once again, an "argument by assertion". Why would Oxford professor Thomas Arnold (Author of the 3 volume "History of Rome) basically say he knows of no fact in history (up to that point) that is supported by greater and fuller evidence of every sort than that of the life of Christ?

Ah, DOC.
Here are some of your posts here at JREF with the same claim:
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=3758990&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post3758990
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=4222565&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post4222565
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=4438104&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post4438104
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=4438742&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post4438742
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=4920769&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post4920769
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5210358&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5210358
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5240892&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5240892
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5304944&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5304944
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5314195&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5314195
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5637613&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5637613
http://www.internationalskeptics.co...p=5637710&highlight=Thomas+Arnold#post5637710

Colour me skeptical, but I doubt you ever got closer to Thomas Arnold's works that the article "The Resurrection of Jesus: Fact or Fiction" by Dr. Terry Watkins.

Anyway, those posts of yours are from three years back.
Have you not had access to anything written recently on the subject?
 
Last edited:
Then one has to wonder why Bart Ehrman said Paul's Thessalonians is usually dated 49 CE. He says this in his latest book "Did Jesus Exist" on page 118. So about 19 years after the crucifixion, Paul is writing letters to an already established church.

Here is another quote of Bart Ehrman on page 164 of his latest book "Did Jesus exist?":

"And it is important to remember that Jews were saying that Jesus was the crucified messiah in the early 30s. We can date their claims to at least 32 CE, when Paul began persecuting these Jews. In fact, their claims must have originated even earlier. Paul knew Jesus's right-hand man, Peter, and Jesus's brother James. They are evidence that this belief in the crucified messiah goes all the way back to a short time after Jesus's death."

You forgot to mention that the same Bart Ehrman admitted the Gospels are forgeries and they are not eyewitness accounts.

You forgot to mention that Bart Ehrman admitted the NT accounts of Jesus are riddled with historical problems, discrepancies and events that could not have happened.

It is unheard of at any level of an investigation that discredited sources of fiction and implausibility are used to corroborate their own veracity.


DOC said:
And according to Roman historian Tacitus, Roman Emperor Nero was torturing Christians in Rome in 64 CE.

According to Plutarch writing c 75 CE, Romulus was the founder of Rome.

You forgot that Tacitus did not mention Jesus and never claimed Christus was crucified.
 
DOC

Why would Oxford professor Thomas Arnold (Author of the 3 volume "History of Rome) basically say he knows of no fact in history (up to that point) that is supported by greater and fuller evidence of every sort than that of the life of Christ?
Well, maybe because he was a Victorian-era Christian preacher and apologist who was unable or unwilling to separate his scholarship from his religion. Perhaps it is best to let Profeesor Arnold speak for himself:

"I take the works of St. John and St. Paul as our foundation, because, in the first place, we find in them the historical basis of Christianity; that is to say, we find the facts of our Lord's miracles, and especially of his resurrection, and the miraculous powers afterwards continued to the church, established by the highest possible evidence. However pure and truly divine the principles taught in the gospel may be, yet we crave to know not only that we were in need of redemption, but that a Redeemer has actually appeared; not only that a resurrection to eternal life is probable, but that such a resurrection has actually taken place. This basis of historical fact, which is one of the great peculiarities of Christianity, is strictly within the cognizance of the understanding; and in the writings of St. John and St. Paul we have that full and perfect evidence of it which the strictest laws of the understanding require"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13151/13151-h/13151-h.htm

Can't beat full and perfect evidence. It's even better than genuine, reliable and credible evidence, and miles ahead of Chinese whispers.
 
Shall I go back over the thread to cite those posts comparing those who don't think Jesus was an historical figure as trvthers, etc?

That's quite alright. Doing so would not support your claim.

Doubting the historicity of Jesus seems to touch a lot of nerves, don't you think?

Aside from Stone's nerves ? No, I don't see that.

In fact, IanS and Dejudge seem as touchy as any concerning their conclusions.
 
Aside from Stone's nerves ? No, I don't see that.

In fact, IanS and Dejudge seem as touchy as any concerning their conclusions.

I would say that I'm touchier than those two, although those two, and Maximara, are clearly the touchiest of those on the MJ side. I just see this myther woo as the canary in the mine signaling the collapse of the kind of general education that flowered in the wake of the Enlightenment. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the growing expansion of access to education for everyone. It put genuine social equality within closer grasp, at least, although not yet attained. In addition, the nature of all scientific and historic and medical research that was the source of the educational curriculum of those two centuries became more rigorous alongside the expansion of education itself. Now, the know-nothings, like the myther quacks, that are emerging as the result of higher education being put further and further out of reach financially in recent decades signal the first symptom of this serious two-pronged decline.

It's a fatal circle: Financially, higher education gets more and more out of reach resulting in more and more youngsters growing up without the tools for higher-paying positions. Families attached to these know-nothings are then drawn down in this financial devolution to less and less access to higher education. The increasingly less access to higher education there is, the more whole families' access to higher education and higher paying jobs is devolved even further, until finally we're right back to Mediaeval times with only an elite of an elite being able to read and write. I see the process accelerating today rather than staying in place.

Mytherism is one alarming symptom of this regression, and it is spreading rapidly thanks to the web. Eventually, even more important things than Jesus the rabbi, crucial things like the Holocaust and global climate change, will be "questioned" for much more sinister and underhanded motives than anything behind mytherism, driven by an accurate perception that the web demographic is now made up of easy suckers for quackery, having been "field-tested" with more benign but still noxious nostrums like Jesus mytherism, moon hoaxism and trvtherism.

Stone
 
I would say that I'm touchier than those two, although those two, and Maximara, are clearly the touchiest of those on the MJ side. I just see this myther woo as the canary in the mine signaling the collapse of the kind of general education that flowered in the wake of the Enlightenment. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the growing expansion of access to education for everyone. It put genuine social equality within closer grasp, at least, although not yet attained. In addition, the nature of all scientific and historic and medical research that was the source of the educational curriculum of those two centuries became more rigorous alongside the expansion of education itself. Now, the know-nothings, like the myther quacks, that are emerging as the result of higher education being put further and further out of reach financially in recent decades signal the first symptom of this serious two-pronged decline.

It's a fatal circle: Financially, higher education gets more and more out of reach resulting in more and more youngsters growing up without the tools for higher-paying positions. Families attached to these know-nothings are then drawn down in this financial devolution to less and less access to higher education. The increasingly less access to higher education there is, the more whole families' access to higher education and higher paying jobs is devolved even further, until finally we're right back to Mediaeval times with only an elite of an elite being able to read and write. I see the process accelerating today rather than staying in place.

Mytherism is one alarming symptom of this regression, and it is spreading rapidly thanks to the web. Eventually, even more important things than Jesus the rabbi, crucial things like the Holocaust and global climate change, will be "questioned" for much more sinister and underhanded motives than anything behind mytherism, driven by an accurate perception that the web demographic is now made up of easy suckers for quackery, having been "field-tested" with more benign but still noxious nostrums like Jesus mytherism, moon hoaxism and trvtherism.

Stone

Accept an HJ or civilization will collapse?
 
Accept an HJ or civilization will collapse?

No. Accept an MJ, and civilization will eventually collapse, because the woo-think behind MJ will make matters ripe for the further acceptance of those more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial, etc. Education itself is being dumped on with such nostrums, and once education itself is scoffed at as elitist and sissy and unnecessary by the 99% who are socially engineered to be militantly ignorant and macho, the 1% with a decent education who are deliberately devolving your level of education with malicious intent will laugh at you under their sleeves all the way to the bank, as the 99% become more and more suggestible and more and more cretinous and zombie-like, which is the 1%'s game plan. Who knows? Mytherism may be their field test to raise the suggestibility of the increasingly ignorant for even more important lies like climate denial.

Clearer now? But of course, such advanced indoctrination in the macho and the proudly ignorant does not permit one to wake up and smell the coffee.

Stone
 
No. Accept an MJ, and civilization will eventually collapse, because the woo-think behind MJ will make matters ripe for the further acceptance of those more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial, etc. Education itself is being dumped on with such nostrums, and once education itself is scoffed at as elitist and sissy and unnecessary by the 99% who are socially engineered to be militantly ignorant and macho, the 1% with a decent education who are deliberately devolving your level of education with malicious intent will laugh at you under their sleeves all the way to the bank, as the 99% become more and more suggestible and more and more cretinous and zombie-like, which is the 1%'s game plan. Who knows? Mytherism may be their field test to raise the suggestibility of the increasingly ignorant for even more important lies like climate denial.

Clearer now? But of course, such advanced indoctrination in the macho and the proudly ignorant does not permit one to wake up and smell the coffee.

Stone

Well...er....I"ll get back to you.
 
I would say that I'm touchier than those two, although those two, and Maximara, are clearly the touchiest of those on the MJ side. I just see this myther woo as the canary in the mine signaling the collapse of the kind of general education that flowered in the wake of the Enlightenment. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the growing expansion of access to education for everyone....

Your post does not address the HJ argument at all and is really worthless propaganda.

The Quest for an HJ argument was initiated because of the Jesus of Faith in the NT. MJers had nothing whatsoever to do with the SEARCH by HJers.

HJers wanted to prove or demonstrate that Jesus of the NT was not a figure of Faith but a human being.

Every attempt has failed so far because of lack of evidence.

You have forgotten that it is already known that this is the THIRD attempt to find an HJ AFTER hundreds of years of searching without success.

Please, just go and do some research on the history of the Quest for HJ.

It has always come to a Dead End.

The Third Quest has come to another dead end after Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?"


It is just blatant propaganda to give the impression that an HJ have been found when all previous SEARCH for an HJ produced nothing.

Over 100 years ago, it was declared that Jesus had no real existence after the Quest for an Historical Jesus by Albert Schweitzer.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/schweitzer/chapter20.html

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.


The mistake was to suppose that Jesus could come to mean more to our time by entering into it as a man like ourselves. That is not possible. First because such a Jesus never existed.


He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic conception.
 
No. Accept an MJ, and civilization will eventually collapse, because the woo-think behind MJ will make matters ripe for the further acceptance of those more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial, etc.

I have already posted why comparison of the MJ to Holocaust denial is perhaps the most dishonest morally bankrupt position a HJer can present but it is well worth showing it again:

"Holocaust comparison or how to scrape the bottom of a barrel in the stupidest way possible

Comparison with the Holocaust is really bad, as there were 3,000 tons of truly contemporary (i.e. between 1938-1945) records presented at the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials. (Combating Holocaust Denial: Evidence of the Holocaust presented at Nuremberg United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) The 1958 finding aids (eventually the index to the Holocaust evidence) was 62 volumes--just 4 books shy of the number of books (66) traditionally in the entire Bible! Then between 1958 and 2000 they added another 30 volumes, bringing the total to 92. (Combating Holocaust Denial: Evidence of the Holocaust presented at Nuremberg United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

To put this in perspective, comparing the existence of Jesus to the Holocaust is essentially claiming:

1) there would have to be 3,000 tons of written records dating from 6 BCE to 36 CE showing Jesus existed
2) the most powerful government of the world (i.e. Rome) collected said evidence no later then 36 CE
3) the evidence was presented no later then 37 CE; AND
4) there was a 62 volume index of this evidence dating no later than 44 CE and a 92 volume index of this evidence dating from no later then 92 CE.

The total insanity of such a position shows just how desperate apologists are." (Evidence for the historical existence of Jesus Christ)


Education itself is being dumped on with such nostrums, and once education itself is scoffed at as elitist and sissy and unnecessary by the 99% who are socially engineered to be militantly ignorant and macho, the 1% with a decent education who are deliberately devolving your level of education with malicious intent will laugh at you under their sleeves all the way to the bank, as the 99% become more and more suggestible and more and more cretinous and zombie-like, which is the 1%'s game plan. Who knows? Mytherism may be their field test to raise the suggestibility of the increasingly ignorant for even more important lies like climate denial.

Sorry Stone, but this rambling makes Jack Chick's off the wall paranoid nonsense look sane by comparison.

Holocaust denial, evolution denial, and moon landing hoax all require fundamental denial of mammoth amounts of actually contemporary evidence (See 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution regarding this for Evolution).

What do we have for Jesus?

1) A guy writing down the talks he has with a vision. There is even a term for this: Spectral evidence. The Salem Witch Trials show how well that works.

2) A selection of four of the 30+ Gospels known to have existed which there is no proof of before 130 CE as not a single Churchman so much as quotes from them. All attempts to push the date back further then that requires paleographic dating which is a last resort method...which based on what Brent Nongbr says regarding the variables of might as well involve Tarot decks, Ouija boards, and Rorschach inkblots. In other words paleographic dating for practical purposes comes off as modern day Phrenology for dating documents ie a pseudoscience. While some of people used are known historical figures the events described can be shown to be total fiction using other records.

3) Then we have questionable documents that have either been tampered with, seem to be only repeating the 2nd century equivalent of an urban myth, or just that Christianity itself (rather then its supposed founder) existed. John Frum shows that as little as 17 years is all is needed for oral tradition to eradicate any real founder and replace him with a composite person that in all likelihood never existed. It also shows you don't need a flesh and blood founder to kick off a movement..just the idea and based on what Josephus tells us the Messiah will liberate us from the Romans idea was producing would be liberators from Simon of Peraea c4 BC all the way to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

Let's be truthful here. The evidence for a historical Jesus is poor to laughable bad; one could argue it is on par with the evidence presented by Bermuda Triangle supporters who when they aren't distorting events aren't above making up disappearances out of whole cloth (Kusche, Lawrence David (1975) The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved)
 
Last edited:
Let's be truthful here. The evidence for a historical Jesus is poor to laughable bad; one could argue it is on par with the evidence presented by Bermuda Triangle supporters who when they aren't distorting events aren't above making up disappearances out of whole cloth (Kusche, Lawrence David (1975) The Bermuda Triangle Mystery: Solved)
Arrant nonsense. Whether there was a historical Jesus or not, that is quite absurd. Most scholars believe in the existence of such a person, and to suggest that they do so because they have made up the evidence places your arguments squarely in the Loony Tunes area of Conspiracy Theory.
 
I have already posted why comparison of the MJ to Holocaust denial

And thus Maximara pays no attention to my explicitly saying --

"more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial"

-- and --

"even more important lies like climate denial"

Anything for a strawman, eh Maximara?

Stone
 
And thus Maximara pays no attention to my explicitly saying --

"more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial"

-- and --

"even more important lies like climate denial"

Anything for a strawman, eh Maximara?

You are still comparing the HJ evidence to the quality of evidence being presented for the Holocaust, evolution, and climate change. That comparison is nonsense.
 
No. Accept an MJ, and civilization will eventually collapse, because the woo-think behind MJ will make matters ripe for the further acceptance of those more crucial and destructive nostrums like Holocaust denial, evolution denial, etc. Education itself is being dumped on with such nostrums, and once education itself is scoffed at as elitist and sissy and unnecessary by the 99% who are socially engineered to be militantly ignorant and macho, the 1% with a decent education who are deliberately devolving your level of education with malicious intent will laugh at you under their sleeves all the way to the bank, as the 99% become more and more suggestible and more and more cretinous and zombie-like, which is the 1%'s game plan. Who knows? Mytherism may be their field test to raise the suggestibility of the increasingly ignorant for even more important lies like climate denial.

Clearer now? But of course, such advanced indoctrination in the macho and the proudly ignorant does not permit one to wake up and smell the coffee.

Stone



Brilliant!

It really is simply dreadful that that sceptics here are (apparently, according to you) not as academically well educated as you.

Best of luck with your nostrums (you may be able to get some ointment for them). :D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom