Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[David Mo]

- where does anyone, ever, credibly write to claim they had met a living human Jesus?

- where is the genuine evidence of a living Jesus?


And since you want brevity, I will stop there and postpone (for now) answering your remaining questions until you and/or anyone else here first provides any satisfactory reply to that central crucial question of showing the claimed genuine evidence of Jesus.

It is not intolerance. And neither I nor any other sceptic here even has to bother claiming that anyone declares themselves a "rationalist".

The facts of the matter here are simple and unavoidable -

- the vital question is - "what is claimed to be reliable and credible evidence of anyone ever meeting a living Jesus?"

[Etc., etc., etc.]

You needn’t to colour your principles. We know them perfectly because you proclaim them in every comment. And we know they are excessive and useless in Ancient History.

They are surely an obsession for you because you repeat them in a comment about the fanaticism that has nothing to do with evidences.


Returning on this subject, yes, you are intolerant when you decide to reject an argument because you a priori consider his author is subjective and biased. A rationalist sceptic has not any a priori. There is another kind of scepticism, the hyper-scepticism of irrationalists and fideists. Or Bishop Berkeley, who in demanding absolute evidence denied the existence of the world. Your exaggerated demands for evidence in Ancient History go in the same way. In front an argument that is hard to refute we move the bar up. It is easy.

PS: Neil Godfrey on the recent Crossan's book:"I said it contained some interesting bits..." No comment.

 

[eight bits]

The Norseman

Is 90% considered certainty?

No, it's not even especially high confidence, and is symptomatic of light evidence.

What is?

Strictly speaking, you can't have certainty except in mathematics or other formal reasoning. But if I forget whether I locked a door, go back and try the door knob, and the knob doesn't turn, then I'll usually go away supremely confident that the door is locked. If pressed, I would acknowledge that it is logically possible that the door remains unlocked, but not that it is seriously possible. (The last phrase was coined by the philosopher Isaac Levi).

What usually happens when my confidence in something reaches the point that it's negation is not (in my view) seriously possible, is that I move on to something else. For example, we could never have a long-lived thread on "What counts as a historical Julius Caesar?" It is not seriously possible that Julius Caesar, more or less as we understand him to have been, didn't exist. (He wasn't a descendant of the goddess Venus, and he doesn't currently reside in the sky, but that's a different problem than whether he once lived as a man on Earth and left his stamp on Rome.)

So, I would say that as a pracitcal matter, and for real-world uncertainties, believing that the contrary isn't seriously possible is as close to certainty as we ever get. We don't bother to get more certain than that, even if we somehow could. Life is short. To keep testing the doorknob is suspicious of OCD, not scepticism.

When someone says, "Jesus existed. Period." does that count as certainty?

I suppose somebody could estimate that it is not seriously possible that Jesus didn't exist, with the same confidence that I have that Julius Caesar existed. Bart Ehrman professed certainty about Jesus' existence in as many words, but later hedged (almost certain).

Of course, I can't tell you what's in somebody else's head, but Ehrman behaves as if his confidence in a real Jesus is similar to my (and his own) confidence in Julius Caesar.

 

[Craig B]

... I don’t remember in what passage Paul blames the Jews to have crucified Jesus.

It's in 1 Thessalonians 2, but it's a bit suspicious.

14 For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews,[f] 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last!

The final sentence at least, which is a clear reference to the destruction of the Temple, seems to be an interpolation.

 

[Craig B]

Where did the NT get its stories from?

Well, Romulus, the myth founder of Rome, was the Son of a God born of a Virgin with a human brother. After Romulus died, his dead body was never found, but he resurrected, appeared to certain persons in Rome and then ascended into heaven.

Plus we have another fable of Perseus, the Son of God and a Virgin.

In any event, the Pauline writers admitted they used Scriptures and Apologetic writers admitted the Pauline writers knew gLuke.

Apologetic writers claim Paul knew Luke. You have more confidence in them than I have. The idea that the prophetic scriptures which inspired Paul comprise the New Testament, which according to you is a complete forgery concocted along with the Pauline Corpus hundreds of years later, is hilarious. The NT in turn was forged by hoaxers on the basis of the stories of Perseus and Romulus (who were carpenters with sisters living in Capernaum?) which is equally bizarre. I think IanS will come down on you like a ton of bricks for this because you have no evidence. I mean Romulus isn't in the Gospels, so you have no evidence that Paul ever met him.

 

[eight bits]

David Mo

Deuteronomy 21 :18-23 is not speaking about Crucifixion but on a case of stoning.

Perhaps so. The black letter text of 21:23 , however, attaches a curse to the open display of a corpse, period. Paul states his belief that this verse applies to Jesus. It is uninteresting that you would interpret the passage differently than Paul says he did, and uninformative about where Paul got the idea that Jesus' dead body was displayed on a "stake" of some kind.

Please note that traditional Jews were and are fastidious about the prompt and ritually proper disposal of all human remains, not just the remains of condemned persons. Paul's reading of the passage he cites is entirely reasonable, regardless of what he believed caused Jesus' death.

He compares this passage with the Crucifixion ...

No, he just says that the passage applies to Jesus. We know Paul thinks a stake was involved with Jesus' death. Mark tells us, after Paul has probably died, that there was a Roman crucifixion (or staking). Maybe so, but we couldn't confidently infer that from Paul alone. Paul says that Jews killed Jesus, and doesn't say anything about their cooperating with Romans.

Deducing that Paul drew his idea of crucifixion from the passage of Deuteronomy is a daring inference that contradicts the obvious reading of it.

Who here claims deductive force for their opinion about a contingent fact? And simply proclaiming your personal interpretation of the passage as "obvious," when you contradict what Paul wrote about his interpretation, and the black letter of the text in question, is no argument.

But I don’t remember in what passage Paul blames the Jews to have crucified Jesus.

Is there some reason why you so often avoid citing an opponent's argument accurately? Nobody said that Paul wrote that Jews crucified Jesus. Paul comments upon the role of Jews in Jesus' death, from whatever cause, in 1 Thessalonians 2: 14-15

For you, brothers, have become imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you suffer the same things from your compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and persecuted us; they do not please God, and are opposed to everyone.

ETA

Craig B

The final sentence at least, which is a clear reference to the destruction of the Temple, seems to be an interpolation.

No, a clear reference would be "The Temple was destroyed." The typical Christian translation of Paul (not some alteration of the Greek text) is "at last," as you render it (or perhaps the more thoughtful translator will say something nasty "has begun," realizing that Paul was dead before Jerusalem fell.) The actual word, however, is pantote, which is often translated elsewhere as "always." This is followed by a past tense (aorist indicative) verb.

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/1_thessalonians/2.htm

Paul is clearly saying that the killing of Jesus is just one more in a long line of Jewish prophets killed by the Jews, to which God has reliably responded with wrath in the past. What? That's II Chronicles 36:15-16

Early and often the LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place.But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the LORD’s anger against his people blazed up beyond remedy.

Paul is simply citing Jewish scripture, as he so often does, to find a meaning in Jesus' death. Whenever a prophecy is "too good to be true" in a Chrsitian translation, it probably isn't. Before accusing the copyist, however, it often pays to check the translations.

 

[Belz...]

Why not answer my questions? What's so hard about answering them? Didn't think you'd actually avoid them, they seemed pretty simple to me.

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

 

[maximara]

Why is it difficult for you to understand that HJ did not rise from the dead?

If James was Jesus' Brother, there is no need for "visions". What reliable authentic genuine documented evidence do you have that James was not who everyone in Antiquity claimed he was?

These two points are polar opposites of each other. If Paul is banging about how he did NOT get his information through human sources but rather through revelation (ie visions) why mention meeting James the Just at all?

John Frum shows the claim of James being Jesus brother could be simply imagining on Paul and his followers part ala Prince Phillip.

The fact early Christians were stating that James the Just was informed of Peter's death (sometime between 64-67 CE) mean that the James in Josephus can NOT be James the Just because that James died 62 CE! More over the fact is that until the Christ Mythers starting pointing out the temporal issues Christians were claiming James the Just died in 69 CE!

The fact that in one of these threads we had the utterly insane idea that Herod the Great died in 1 BCE rather then 4 BCE in an utterly insane effort to make Luke's about 30 mean exactly 30 demonstrates that some of the HJ people don't have a clue.

Paul gives us no real details to fix the Jesus he is writing about in a particular time or even place and IMHO the Gospels seem to be a reaction to the 130s revolt rather then the 70 CE one. That Marcion was claiming that his Gospel (Luke by detractors) also came from Paul (ie it was a vision as well) is a little bit of a head scratcher if Christians were trying to show Jesus wasn't the product of their own minds. More over gJohn would seem to right up Marcion's idea of the Christian god trying to save us from an evil minor god who had the Jews under his sway...so he does not use it?

 

[IanS]

You needn’t to colour your principles. We know them perfectly because you proclaim them in every comment. And we know they are excessive and useless in Ancient History.

They are surely an obsession for you because you repeat them in a comment about the fanaticism that has nothing to do with evidences.


Returning on this subject, yes, you are intolerant when you decide to reject an argument because you a priori consider his author is subjective and biased. A rationalist sceptic has not any a priori. There is another kind of scepticism, the hyper-scepticism of irrationalists and fideists. Or Bishop Berkeley, who in demanding absolute evidence denied the existence of the world. Your exaggerated demands for evidence in Ancient History go in the same way. In front an argument that is hard to refute we move the bar up. It is easy.

PS: Neil Godfrey on the recent Crossan's book:"I said it contained some interesting bits..." No comment.

The colour options are there to be used. If you don't think this website should provide the use of colour, then complain to the moderators.

Better still, instead of moaning about things like coloured text emphasis and all sorts of totally extraneous irrelevant things, just answer the question-

- why after what must now be in total 1000+ pages in all these HJ threads, has nobody ever been able to produce any reliable credible evidence at all of anyone ever meeting Jesus?

If people want to discuss all sort of other ideas about whether St Peter spoke to anyone or what James the Lesser said to James the Just or where Mary was when Jesus was in his tomb and what the Angel did etc. etc., then please do that AFTER we have decided this question of why after all these thousands of posts still the HJ believers here cannot produce even the slightest piece of evidence to support their belief in Jesus as a real person.

This is not a bible studies class where we are all gathered to have fun debating passages from the bible and guessing about who might heave meant what if he ever said X, Y & Z. The entire point here is to decide that single question of what genuine evidence really exists to show that Jesus was a real living person. And by “evidence” we necessarily mean it must be from a reliable writer who is credible in what he says, and preferably that means independent non-religious writing contemporary with Jesus and using a reliable eye-witness, or else presenting some sort of genuine physical remains (not the litany of fake remains and artefacts produced so far). So that is the question here. Forget all the other time-wasting evasive prevaricating waffle ; THAT is the question, the EVIDENCE, where is it?

 

[Brainache]

The colour options are there to be used. If you don't think this website should provide the use of colour, then complain to the moderators.

Better still, instead of moaning about things like coloured text emphasis and all sorts of totally extraneous irrelevant things, just answer the question-

- why after what must now be in total 1000+ pages in all these HJ threads, has nobody ever been able to produce any reliable credible evidence at all of anyone ever meeting Jesus?

If people want to discuss all sort of other ideas about whether St Peter spoke to anyone or what James the Lesser said to James the Just or where Mary was when Jesus was in his tomb and what the Angel did etc. etc., then please do that AFTER we have decided this question of why after all these thousands of posts still the HJ believers here cannot produce even the slightest piece of evidence to support their belief in Jesus as a real person.

This is not a bible studies class where we are all gathered to have fun debating passages from the bible and guessing about who might heave meant what if he ever said X, Y & Z. The entire point here is to decide that single question of what genuine evidence really exists to show that Jesus was a real living person. And by “evidence” we necessarily mean it must be from a reliable writer who is credible in what he says, and preferably that means independent non-religious writing contemporary with Jesus and using a reliable eye-witness, or else presenting some sort of genuine physical remains (not the litany of fake remains and artefacts produced so far). So that is the question here. Forget all the other time-wasting evasive prevaricating waffle ; THAT is the question, the EVIDENCE, where is it?

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

Whatever can you do?

Accept the word of every History Professor in the world?

Learn History?

Or continue banging on in this ignorant fashion about "Genuine, Reliable (whatever)" evidence.

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.

If you think about it, what you are saying is: "I'm smarter than all of those Historians, and I don't even have to study History to know more about their Profession than they do!"

Do you think this makes a good impression on anyone?

 

[eight bits]

max

If Paul is banging about how he did NOT get his information through human sources but rather through revelation (ie visions) why mention meeting James the Just at all?

Indeed, and so we are unsurpised to find that Paul didn't say that he got none of his information through human sources, and didn't say that he got his information only from revelation.

While, of course, John Frum is the perfect example of everything in Bible-based Christianity (to which, after all, Frummery was a reaction), we might instead make the simpler observation that Paul uses the term "brother" about a dozen times in Galatians, once without explanation in connection with James, and the rest of the uses are plainly figurative.

Paul gives us no real details to fix the Jesus he is writing about in a particular time or even place and IMHO the Gospels seem to be a reaction to the 130s revolt rather then the 70 CE one.

Lucky thing, then, that there's nothing in Paul or Mark that displays knowledge of either revolt.

 

[GDon]

Not sure if this has already been posted, but recently on Youtube was posted "Bart Ehrman Reads 'Did Jesus Exist?' at Bulls Head Bookshop"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRDqTh4y46c

FWIW, about 4 mins in he says that Jesus "certainly existed".

 

[eight bits]

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.

 

[Craig B]

If people want to discuss all sort of other ideas about whether St Peter spoke to anyone or what James the Lesser said to James the Just or where Mary was when Jesus was in his tomb and what the Angel did etc. etc., then please do that AFTER we have decided this question of why after all these thousands of posts still the HJ believers here cannot produce even the slightest piece of evidence to support their belief in Jesus as a real person.

"AFTER"?? We'll do it whenever we like, if you don't mind.

And by “evidence” we necessarily mean it must be from a reliable writer who is credible in what he says, and preferably that means independent non-religious writing contemporary with Jesus and using a reliable eye-witness ...

That may necessarily be what you mean, but others need not necessarily agree; and may use the word more broadly. But since you go bananas when asked to consider this, it's pointless to engage with you in the matter. By the way I don't mind the coloured fonts; it's just that I think they are a sign of excess emotion. But do use them if you wish.

 

[Basilides]

A middle ground between history and myth

Hypothesis:

What we have in the NT are two different Jesus sects. One of which (Paul's sect) worshiped an immaterial Christ who certainly did not rise in the flesh. The other sect was founded by a terrestrial Jesus. After Jesus death, "God was pleased to reveal his Son in" (Galatians 1:16) the disciples.

What did the disciples witness?

Spiritual visions of their spiritually resurrected leader. Just like Paul.

So is there any evidence that Paul opposed the idea of a terrestrial Jesus? Recall that Paul's opponents in Galatians are the "men from James". IOW, the entire Jerusalem church.

No Other Gospel

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! (Galatians 1)

But why doesn't Paul ever come right out and say that the people who claim Christ ever walked the earth and was raised in the flesh are in error? Maybe he did. But Catholic editors excised the text from Galatians.

"The result gained by Van Manen in his study was startling: contrary to the opinion of the Fathers of the Church and contrary to the consensus of theologians still today, he upheld the greater originality of the Marcionite recension of the Epistle to the Galatians. After a careful review of the textual findings, it became evident to Van Manen that neither Marcion nor the Marcionites had shortened the Epistle, but that Catholic editors had added or changed passages in the text. Marcion's edition of the Epistle was in any case older and more original than the canonical version. What lies here before us is a Catholic revision of the Marcionite text."

- Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles

depts dot drew dot edu frontslash jhc frontslash detering dot html

(pardon the bizarre formatting but for some reason the this forum does not allow posting links until one has made 15 posts.)

Next question:

Why doesn't Marcion or his followers ever come right out and say that the people who claim Christ ever walked the earth and was raised in the flesh are in error?

The Marcionites definitely argued that Jesus was not raised in the flesh. They also argued that Jesus only appeared to be in the flesh before his crucifixion.

Which could be interpreted to mean that all Jesus sightings (post and pre-resurrection) were spiritual visions.

 

[pakeha]

...
OK, but it is not enough to say there is an analogy, you have to spell out what the analogy is. What is the historical Jesus' relevance (just from historical considerations)?

Jesus is "sandwiched" between two apparently historical (or at least datable) figures, John the Baptist and Paul of Tarsus, all three of whose lives would have overlapped. Jesus and his survivng disciples are the "bridge" between the two directly attested figures.

Those two are not just people mentioned in Jesus' story, like Herod Antipas or Pontius Pilate. There is behavioral influence on the later figure, suspicious of unacknowledged contamination by the ideas and behavior of the earlier one. Paul reluctantly performs baptism and preaches a theory of religious redemption by the Jewish God based on personal change of consciousness and without Temple involvement. Paul mentions only Jesus and his "merry men," not Dunker John, as antecedent teachers.

So, in your proposed analogy, who is Robin Hood's John the Baptist, and who is Robin Hood's Paul of Tarsus? That is, who are two relatively secure loosely contemporary historical figures, where the ideas and deeds of the earlier show up in the behavior of the later, mediated through Robin Hood stories? The historical relevance of Robin (and his merry men) would then clearly parallel the historical relevance of Jesus (and his), that is, linking two real-life change-agents.

The thread has moved well along since you asked me for an explanation of a Robin Hood/ Jesus analogy from an historical viewpoint.
RL, coupled very thin pickings have delayed my answer. As I Googled industriously on the subject I couldn't help seeing you've taken the analogy into a most intriguing terrain, seeking a comparison of the two characters of Jesus and Robin Hood via the relation DJ-Jesus- PoT.

So, in your proposed analogy, who is Robin Hood's John the Baptist, and who is Robin Hood's Paul of Tarsus?


Who is Robin Hood's John the Baptist?
Well, John the Baptist initiates Jesus into the path of an Apocalyptic preacher, AFAIK, just as being declared an outlaw initiates Robin Hood into his legendary career. Depending on the version of Robin Hood's story you read or listen to, who performs this initiation would be the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Who is Robin Hood's Paul of Tarsus?
A good question. If Robin Hood had existed, you might consider John I's judicial reforms, which Wiki tells us "had a lasting impact on the English common law system" as a result of Robin Hood's influence, thus making Isabelle de Angoulême's husband a type of "Paul of Tarsus". Why not?


Of course neither identification is satisfactory on any level whatsoever, but I don't think my analogy of Jesus/Robin Hood stands or falls on the relation of two historical figures such as DJ and Paul of Tarsus to Jesus and their parallels in the mid-12th century England. It seems to me the analogy rests rather on the insinuation of these two idealised social heroes or saviours into historical contexts.

Jesus's story has been transmitted via the hagiographers whose work is enshrined in the NT literature as well as the works of the early church fathers. Robin survives by way of ballads and is immortalised as a literary figure from the 14th century onward. Both are larger-than-life characters and beloved of film makers and the tourist/pilgrim trade.

I think taking the analogy much farther than that would be useless, other than to note that as we peel off those infamous onion layers of legend in both cases we're reduced to discussing likelihoods and the plausibility of likelihoods.


I did manage to find an involuntarily amusing take on why a modern approach to the redistribution of wealth is better based on Jesus' voluntary approach to charity than Robin Hood's "Rob the rich to help the poor" here
http://www.examiner.com/article/jesus-vs-robin-hood
The summary:
"Finally, when the government assumes the role of charity, it takes away support from real charities. Both Christian and secular charities have much less overhead than the government and can be very effective because they can target their support to people who really need it. Nevertheless, when government takes and increased share of incomes for its redistribution schemes, it takes away from the resources available to these groups. If people take home less money, they have less to give to charity."




And as a footnote, even when taking into account that the BE considers Robin Hood to have been a product of the 14th century, back dated to the 12th, Jesus still scores higher in the Raglan Hero Scale than does Robin Hood.
Jesus' 19 to Robin's13, respectively speaking.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/general-faith/lord-raglan-on-mythic-heroes-t2089.html#p37239

 

[pakeha]

maximara... assuming that this anecdote was informative about contagion-spread of religious ideas in general, then we would expect to see a prompt spread of Christianity throughout the trade network that linked Jerusalem to the rest of the ecumen. For example, we would expect to find some Christian presence in Rome by the 60's. ...

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

 

[IanS]

"AFTER"?? We'll do it whenever we like, if you don't mind. That may necessarily be what you mean, but others need not necessarily agree; and may use the word more broadly. But since you go bananas when asked to consider this, it's pointless to engage with you in the matter. By the way I don't mind the coloured fonts; it's just that I think they are a sign of excess emotion. But do use them if you wish.

Well that very clearly is the central crucial question here. Because if Jesus was not real then there is really no point in anyone trying guess what a fictional person was said to have done with any of these "apostles" and "disciples".

And constantly complaining (not just you but David and others here) that you object to a particular font or colour, or that you think anyone is less than calm, or that anyone is intolerant, or that you feel offended or that people are not paying you enough respect etc. etc., is just a complete smokescreen of irrelevant personalisations constantly attempting to divert the conversation away from you ever having to come to the point of why you cant ever provide any evidence of Jesus.

This thread has gone exactly the same way as all these HJ threads. They start with a bold and widespread insistence that the evidence for Jesus is so obvious & unarguable that nobody should ever doubt it or doubt that the expert religious scholars must be right, and after hundreds upon hundreds of pages of all manner of assumptions and suggestions, nobody ever supports their beliefs with any evidence of a living Jesus.

The exact same thing happened in the Piggy thread. And the exact same thing happened again in the thread now in its 4th year on RatSkep, and 5 years ago it also happened in two enormous long equally acrimonious threads on RDF where the usual suspects (one in particular) ruined almost all reasonable discussion with the sort of constant personalised abuse which has also been produced here by the HJ side with repeated accusations of "liar, lying, uneducated, idiot, idiotic, moron...etc." And yet, throughout all of that, all of those years of thousands of pages of HJ posting, and page upon page of abuse and derision, not one of those HJ people ever produced even the most minimal spec of genuine evidence from any reliable writer making any credible claim whatsoever to have personally known any living Jesus ... none at all ... absolutely nothing.

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.

 

[Brainache]

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

Again with the "Tacitus didn't know what he was talking about" argument?

That trick never works...

 

[IanS]

Not sure if this has already been posted, but recently on Youtube was posted "Bart Ehrman Reads 'Did Jesus Exist?' at Bulls Head Bookshop"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRDqTh4y46c

FWIW, about 4 mins in he says that Jesus "certainly existed".

I've posted it before (as far back as the Piggy thread iirc). From which I pointed out (dozens of times here) that Ehrman has indeed repeatedly insisted that Jesus “certainly” existed (the same certainty is also declared in print in his book).

But also iirc, towards the end of that film when he finally gets to mentioning his evidence he says just two things (i)that one piece of his evidence is too complicated to tell people about, and (ii) that Paul said that he met James “the Lords brother”, and he presents that as utterly conclusive because he says (quoting him from memory) “you would think that James would know if his own brother never existed” ... hmm, how very amusing.

Frankly, if that is the level of expert scholarship we are dealing with in this subject (and that does indeed appear to be the level of expertise being relied upon here by the constant appeal to such “authority”), then the HJ case is thin to non-existent (to put it kindly).

 

[dejudge]

Apologetic writers claim Paul knew Luke. You have more confidence in them than I have. The idea that the prophetic scriptures which inspired Paul comprise the New Testament, which according to you is a complete forgery concocted along with the Pauline Corpus hundreds of years later, is hilarious. The NT in turn was forged by hoaxers on the basis of the stories of Perseus and Romulus (who were carpenters with sisters living in Capernaum?) which is equally bizarre.

Your statement is void of logic and facts.

You use the Pauline writings as history using 2nd century or later copies while admitting that they show signs of interpolation. Christian Scholars use all the letters of the Pauline Corpus as history even though it is deduced the Pauline Corpus is riddled with forgeries, or false attribution and fiction.


Your HJ argument is worthless, without contemporary evidence, and based on admitted interpolated sources.

The Jesus character is just a Glorified Ghost in 2nd century or later writings.