Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Craig B]

John Chrysostom destroys Ehrman's ridiculous illogical argument.

You quote Chrysostom as an authority, do you? Well then, quote this:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm

 

[dejudge]

You quote Chrysostom as an authority, do you? Well then, quote this:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm

John Chrysystom is an Apologetic source that CONTRADICTS Bart Ehrman's ridiculous illogical arguments.

Based on Chrysostom commentary on Galatians 1.19 James is the son of Cleophas.

Chrysostom's Commentary on Galatians 1.19

But observe how honorably he mentions him, he says not “James” merely, but adds this illustrious title, so free is he from all envy. Had he only wished to point out whom he meant, he might have shown this by another appellation, and called him the son of Cleophas, as the Evangelist does.

It is well established that the HJ argument is void of logic and void of facts.

 

[Craig B]

John Chrysystom is an Apologetic source that CONTRADICTS Bart Ehrman's ridiculous illogical arguments.

Based on Chrysostom commentary on Galatians 1.19 James is the son of Cleophas.

Chrysostom's Commentary on Galatians 1.19

It is well established that the HJ argument is void of logic and void of facts.

And the vilest ancient Antisemites tell us so. Who can argue with these guys?

 

[pakeha]

At all events, no possible significance can be attached to the fact that it doesn't.

I'll disagree with you there, but not because you're wrong.
I'll disagree with you because, as the figures I cited show, we haven't a clue as to what could be found in the scrolls yet to be opened, read and published.
Yes, the library was started by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, but don't you think it plausible it was added to in the near 100 years spanning the gentleman's death to Vesuvius' dramatic re-awakening?

 

[Craig B]

@eight bits
I'm not disputing what you state about the Greek.

But I now note that my linked source does.

Birger Pearson pointed out long ago the the passage uses the aorist tense for say [sic] the wrath “has come” upon the Jews, indicating that the punishment has come upon them “finally, completely, utterly”:
All of these suggestions fail to do justice to the text as it stands. The aorist εφθασεν must be taken as referring to an event that is now past, and the phrase εις τελος [finally, completely, utterly] underscores the finality of the”wrath” that has occurred. It need only be inquired further what event in the first century was of such magnitude as to lend itself to such apocalyptic theologizing. The interpretation suggested by Baur and others is still valid: 1 Thessalonians 2:16c refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. (Pearson, pp. 82-83)

 

[The Norseman]

I guess that's a "no", then.

Oh, I understand now. Took me a bit. It may not occur to you due to your voluminous "argument" with dejudge but I am not he. There is normally an indication of which poster one is addressing and it's to the left of this main text box. Perhaps you could familiarize yourself with it?

At any rate, it's okay to feel somewhat paranoid and treat every question as a "gotcha" especially since you know the drill, but it may do better overall if you give separate posters their own opportunities to state their own questions and conclusions. I have found this to be beneficial rather than assuming every poster has an agenda.

 

[dejudge]

And the vilest ancient Antisemites tell us so. Who can argue with these guys?

Please you should first read the link before you posted it. John Chrysostom argued that Jesus was the Son of God and argued that God is a Spirit.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm

(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who say so? The Son of God say so. For he said: "If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father". Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?

For God has no nostrils but is a bodiless spirit.

Based on Chrysostom Jesus is the Son of a Bodiless Spirit.

The HJ argument is void of logic and facts.

 

[Craig B]

Please you should first read the link before you posted it. John Chrysostom argued that Jesus was the Son of God and argued that God is a Spirit.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm
Based on Chrysostom Jesus is the Son of a Bodiless Spirit.

The HJ argument is void of logic and facts.

And Chrysostom is one of the fathers of Christian antisemitism. Based on Chrysostom

The synagogue is worse than a brothel…it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts…the temple of demons devoted to idolatrous cults…the refuge of brigands and dabauchees, and the cavern of devils. It is a criminal assembly of Jews…a place of meeting for the assassins of Christ… a house worse than a drinking shop…a den of thieves, a house of ill fame, a dwelling of iniquity, the refuge of devils, a gulf and a abyss of perdition."…"I would say the same things about their souls… As for me, I hate the synagogue…I hate the Jews for the same reason.

http://www.yashanet.com/library/fathers.htm From "The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism" by Malcolm Hay. It is easy to see why Chrysostom would rather imagine Jesus to be the Son of a Bodiless Spirit than for him to be a Jewish carpenter whose sisters lived in Capernaum.

 

[dejudge]

And Chrysostom is one of the fathers of Christian antisemitism. Based on Chrysostom http://www.yashanet.com/library/fathers.htm From "The Roots of Christian Anti-Semitism" by Malcolm Hay.

The HJ argument is void of logic and facts.

In gJohn, Jesus the Logos [God Creator] argued the Jews were of their Father, the Devil.

John 8:44 KJV

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do . He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Jesus the Logos, God Creator, was a source of anti-Semitism in the very NT.

 

[Craig B]

The HJ argument is void of logic and facts.

In gJohn, Jesus the Logos [God Creator] argued the Jews were of their Father, the Devil.

John 8:44 KJV

Jesus the Logos, God Creator, was a source of anti-Semitism in the very NT.

Right, and John Chrysostom is in the clear. Jesus done it! What about Jesus the Jewish carpenter with sisters in Capernaum? Is he responsible for antisemitism too?

By the way, you don't really think the Logos of John is the "Historical Jesus" we are discussing, do you? That makes my day!

 

[Belz...]

Oh, I understand now. Took me a bit. It may not occur to you due to your voluminous "argument" with dejudge but I am not he.

Wow, that went over your head, didn't it ?

I asked you if I made my point clear, asking you to define "well-known", as you asked me to define "certain", as an illustration of how useless and frustrating it is to be asked to define obvious terms. But you missed the point entirely, and now somehow think I was addressing someone else.

 

[eight bits]

max

And yet we get the claim that in the case of James Paul meant "brother" literally as demonstrated by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd's 2007 Jesus Legend. This is what the HJers are pushing and one we need to address (and a fact you need to deal with).

I'm not at all persuaded that Paul meant brother literally, for reasons I've already given. I can't rule it out, either. It's just one of those things that I have reconciled myself to live with. I do think that Paul believes that Peter, James and John were associates of a living Jesus, and it is unclear what Paul thinking James was Jesus' brother would add to that for the HJ hypothesis.

Craig

Let me look into that, in light of the arguments back and forth you cited. Generally, though, I do not see the the destruction of the First Temple and exile as anything less than "to the utmost" within a belief system that also requires a Messiah to emerge from history (and so somebody must survive all of that).

Paul was alluding to II Chronicles 36: 15-16. Picking up at verse 17, and on through 20:

Then he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in their own sanctuary, with compassion for neither young men nor young women, neither the old nor the infirm; all of them he delivered into his power.All the utensils of the house of God, large and small, the treasures of the LORD’s house, and the treasures of the king and his princes, all these he brought to Babylon They burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, burnt down all its palaces, and destroyed all its precious objects.Those who escaped the sword he carried captive to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons...

How much worse than this was the destruction of 70 CE? Why would Paul not call that first destruction, as described there, "to the utmost," if the contrary hypothesis insists that he supposedly did call the Roman destruction "to the utmost?"

As I say, to be a Messianic religion, we need recovery, and so verse 20 ends:

... until the Persian kingdom came to power.

and then the book concludes with the decrees of Cyrus, and such.

Although I think this is what Paul is talking about in the specific verse from 1 Thessalonians, there is another complication. Paul throughout his letters teaches that the end of days has already begun, and that it began with Jesus' resurrection. That is finally final, and as far as Paul is concerned, Jesus' death marks the onset of the end of days. (This would be the basis of the "has begun" translation I mentioned earlier, and I don't like it as a translation. Nevertheless, this rationale is based on the text, and is rebuttal to an anachronism-based claim for interpolation, if not a good reason to translate the verb that way).

Finally, I don't scoff at interpolation (a phrase one of your scholars used). It's possible, but I don't see the necessary anachronism that is supposedly there, given that properly past events have the required "telos" quality, IMO.

pakeha

And that's about it for the evidence of a 1st century Christian presence in Rome, as opposed to a Jewish one, then

That, plus apparently whatever you make of the various Suetonius and Tacitus stuff, ... yeah.

 

[IanS]

Do not be angry, please. I did not want to prohibit you to write as you wish, only warn you that you wasn't obliged to colour your writings to make them patent. If you like to write with colours, do so. It does not bother me and I will not complain to anyone.

David - I'm not at all angry about anything here.

The red emphasis of that specific central question of the claimed evidence, is iirc something I used way back in the Piggy thread before any of the last 3 HJ threads even began.

We had already had scores of pages of posts with no reliable or credible evidence before I used the red emphasis saying "come on, lets get to the crunch here - what is this evidence really supposed to be? A reliable source making credible claims please?". Because we cannot keep going on for ever, hundreds of pages after hundreds of pages, around all the same 20 or so points, without the HJ side ever having to present reliable and credible evidence of anyone ever knowing Jesus. That is the point.

But that's not getting angry. Not even with the absurd posts of several posters who do no more than keep posting content-free vacuous replies with just crude sarcastic personalised abuse in post after post. Even there it's only a matter of losing patience with people who do that whilst failing ever to show any evidence of Jesus (back to Bayern vs Arsenal on TV).

 

[maximara]

May I point out two things.

- Jesus is given siblings by more than one Gospel, including a brother named James. That's another piece of evidence.

No it isn't anymore than Prince Phillip's existence and the claim he is the brother of John Frum means John Frum really existed.

- Even if "brother" means something other than blood sibling here, it bespeaks a close association between Jesus and the person so referred to.

Not it doesn't as the if you check out GreekBible the word "brother" here is also used in a spiritual sense per Galatians 1:2.

The Gospels tell us Jesus had a brother, and another person, a disciple, called James. They tell us of a John, and a Peter, whom Acts refers to in association with Paul, and Paul refers to in his writings. We need to invoke the late forgery theory to dismiss all this as non-evidence.

Considering no Church father so much as quotes a line of the canonal Gospels until the 130s there is nothing to suggest they existed before that date.

 

[maximara]

David - I'm not at all angry about anything here.

The red emphasis of that specific central question of the claimed evidence, is iirc something I used way back in the Piggy thread before any of the last 3 HJ threads even began.

We had already had scores of pages of posts with no reliable or credible evidence before I used the red emphasis saying "come on, lets get to the crunch here - what is this evidence really supposed to be? A reliable source making credible claims please?". Because we cannot keep going on for ever, hundreds of pages after hundreds of pages, around all the same 20 or so points, without the HJ side ever having to present reliable and credible evidence of anyone ever knowing Jesus. That is the point.

But that's not getting angry. Not even with the absurd posts of several posters who do no more than keep posting content-free vacuous replies with just crude sarcastic personalised abuse in post after post. Even there it's only a matter of losing patience with people who do that whilst failing ever to show any evidence of Jesus (back to Bayern vs Arsenal on TV).

I agree and if you look at the "evidence" it is at it core the same that was produced back in the 1790s when the Christ Myth theory first got thrown on the table:

1) Paul ramblings about visions (useless as history)

2) Gospels that we can show existed before 180 CE perhaps 130 CE but no earlier (useless as history)

3) Tampered and-or late documents that at best show what the movement believed. (useless to show Jesus wasn't another John Frumish construct or perhaps a Robin Hood composite shifted in time for social-political reasons)

4) Desperate straw grabs like Mara Bar-Serapion, Lucian, and the ever popular Thallus.

5) Misuse or misapplication of a last resort dating method to push what scraps we have as far back as is possible. (which IMHO shows that at some level the HRer doing this know the evidence is blech)

The only new thing added to the tap dance parade is the DSS which some clam contain NT writings and that seems to be coming from the same place as the pre-130 date because we have not had a single paper by an historian showing how these dates were arrived at produced.

Meanwhile the Christ Mythers have a real life example that a religious founder is not needed to cause a movement or at best the founder was replaced in oral tradition by a totally different (and perhaps totally imaginary) person in the form of the John Frum cult.

 

[The Norseman]

Wow, that went over your head, didn't it ?

I asked you if I made my point clear, asking you to define "well-known", as you asked me to define "certain", as an illustration of how useless and frustrating it is to be asked to define obvious terms. But you missed the point entirely, and now somehow think I was addressing someone else.

Again you miss my point, but I think I'll leave this little derail.

 

[GDon]

I have DJE? on Kindle. What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? I'll see how he addresses it.

OK, well first of all I also have Ehrman's book, and I do think this is the one piece of written evidence (i.e. Paul's letter saying "the lords brother") which just might stand up to scrutiny as evidence of Jesus. And to that extent I think perhaps this one question alone may deserve a thread of it's own.

However, we have discussed all of this many times before. So I don't really want to go over all that same ground again. But ... before we even get to any detail of what Ehrman wrote in DJE, there are three rather serious problems -


1. Although you are following Ehrman in saying that these sources are "independent", in fact they are by no means known to be independent.

2. We do not actually have Paul writing those three words "the Lord brother" anyway. Because we do not actually have anything that Paul wrote. Instead that sentences comes from a Christian copy made around 150 years after Paul had died.

3. It is by no means clear what the word "brother" meant in the context of someone who Paul also described as a fellow "apostle" in belief.

Actually, my question was: What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? If the sources are not independent, do you think the gospel of Mark author used Paul? (Not meant as a "gotcha" question, but you can see where I am going with that). And if they are independent, why does Mark have actual brothers for Jesus, in your opinion?

 

[IanS]

Actually, my question was: What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? If the sources are not independent, is the gospel of Mark author using Paul? (Not meant as a "gotcha" question, but you can see where I am going with that). And if they are independent, why does Mark have actual brothers for Jesus, in your opinion?

Yes, I know what you asked. But I don’t feel inclined to re-read g-Mark and get drawn off into an endless discussion about what the original writer of g-Mark may have meant or where he obtained his info from. Especially since we do not have an original copy of g-Mark dating from anywhere near 75AD.

If we are relying on the earliest extant relatively complete and readable copies of any of those canonical gospels, then afaik those probably date from at least the 4th-6th century and later. By which date any amount of additional details, alterations, deletions and changes had probably been introduced.

In which respect, if we take the usual dates given by bible scholars for the writing of Paul’s Epistles as c.55-65AD, then that is probably some 10 to 30 years or so before the gospels. In which case it’s obvious that the gospel writers and/or their eventual copyists whose work we do actually have, may have been getting their Jesus ideas from what Paul had written both as his beliefs about Jesus and what Paul had clearly written as his source of beliefs in the OT. That is; g-Mark is clearly using the same idea that Paul was using, and looking in the OT for passages that the author believed he could attribute to a messiah.

So I don’t think any of that writing is “independent”. Even if for example Paul was the first of those writers, Paul was as he says himself (repeatedly) quite obviously using the ancient scripture for his messiah beliefs. So Paul was dependent on the OT.

g-Mark was also undeniably even more obviously dependent on the OT.

g-Mathew was clearly dependent on g-Mark.

What planet the writers of Luke and John were on, is anyone's guess.

 

[dejudge]

Right, and John Chrysostom is in the clear. Jesus done it! What about Jesus the Jewish carpenter with sisters in Capernaum? Is he responsible for antisemitism too?

By the way, you don't really think the Logos of John is the "Historical Jesus" we are discussing, do you? That makes my day!

Please get familiar with Apologetic writings. Origen CONTRADICTS you. The Gospels appear to have been manipulated.

In NONE of the Gospels was it stated that Jesus was ever a carpenter.

Origen's Against Celsus 6.36

... in none of the Gospels current in the Churches is Jesus Himself ever described as being a carpenter.

The HJ argument is void of logic and facts.

Please, get familiar with mythological fables of the Jews, Greeks and Romans.

Romulus the myth founder of Rome had a human brother [Remus] and was the Son of a God and a Virgin just like Jesus of Nazareth born of a Ghost of God and a Virgin.

You know that Jupiter had multiple sons in Roman myth just like the God of the Jews had multiple sons in Jewish mythology.

The HJ argument is derived from glorified ghost stories found in admitted sources of fiction, forgeries, false attribution, historical problems, discrepancies in manuscripts dated no earlier than the 2nd century or later.

 

[dejudge]

Actually, my question was: What do you regard as the most obvious and valid objection to the reference of James as brother of Jesus in, say, Mark? If the sources are not independent, do you think the gospel of Mark author used Paul? (Not meant as a "gotcha" question, but you can see where I am going with that). And if they are independent, why does Mark have actual brothers for Jesus, in your opinion?

Again, may I remind you that James the Apostles in Galatians 1.19 is NOT the brother of Jesus according to Apologetic writings.

Again, I remind you that it is NOT stated in gMark that Jesus the son of God had brothers and sisters.

Please, read gMark.

It was a QUESTION that was NEVER answered in gMark.

Please, stop the propaganda and read the Gospels.


Mark 6:3 KJV

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary , the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?

Jesus was NOT ever described as a carpenter up to the time of Origen.


Origen's Against Celsus 6.36

... in none of the Gospels current in the Churches is Jesus Himself ever described as being a carpenter.

James was NOT a brother of Jesus according to John Chrysostom.


Chrysostom's Commentary on Galatians 1.19

But as he considered that he had a share in the august titles of the Apostles, he exalts himself by honoring James; and this he does by calling him “the Lord's brother,” although he was not by birth His brother, but only so reputed..

The HJ argument is void of logic and void of facts.