Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

And here it is. So it is a real and not a rhetorical question? I'll be interested to read what comments IanS might want to make. Very strange stuff this is indeed. Matthew doesn't say Jesus has a brother James. He asks if Jesus has a brother James. And doesn't bother answering.

You do not understand the difference between a question and an assertion.

Here is the statement of the birth of Jesus in gMatthew.

Matthew 1:18 KJV

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together , she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example , was minded to put her away privily. 20 But while he thought on these things, behold , the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying , Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: 25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

Jesus in gMatthew was NOT the son of a carpenter and was NOT described as a carpenter in any of the Gospels according to Origen.

 

[Elagabalus]

Yes, dejudge

And please tell us again how Tacitus was faked in the 13th century by some one who just happened to nail Silver Age latin ...

 

[dejudge]

Yes, dejudge

And please tell us again how Tacitus was faked in the 13th century by some one who just happened to nail Silver Age latin ...

I don't know how the TF in Antiquities of the Jews was faked.

I don't know how the Gospels were faked.

I don't know how the Pauline Corpus was faked.

I don't know how all forgeries were faked.

We know there is no contemporary copy of Tacitus Annals with Christus and that it was unknown up to at least the 5th century and was not used by Christian writers when the History of the Church was composed.

 

[David Mo]

David - I'm not angry at all.

You don't imagine how I'm glad.

 

[Craig B]

You do not understand the difference between a question and an assertion.

Here is the statement of the birth of Jesus in gMatthew.

Matthew 1:18 KJV

This exegesis is quite absurd. It is gibberish. I have never seen the like. I think you're on your own here. Anyway, let us agree to disagree.

 

[David Mo]

You and I have the same source: black marks on the page. We read them differently? No Shinola, Sherlock. You have some special insight into Paul's brain that transcends what is on the page, so you know you're right? Maybe so, but your claim is undiscussable. Discussion ends.

Understand a text involves a task of interpreting the literal and implied meanings, if any. Except 2 +2 = 4 and similar statements is rare that a text doesn't have different interpretations. Especially when if we deal with ancient texts written in unknown circumstances. The need to interpret a text can come from ambiguities, contradictions and enigmas generated by both the author and the reader.

Do you understand this text?

“Pedro, en posición dudosa, marcó el primer tanto de su hard trick en el minuto 27, tras un rechace defectuoso de Pepe”.

To understand implicit or hidden meanings (even unconscious) we must attend to a series of data:

-who is the author of the text
-in which language it is written (grammar, semantics, particular uses, etc..)
- context (historical and social, especially).
-other texts by the same author
-vocabulary in context (technical, historical, intertextual, etc..)
- the author's intention (take care with irony…)
-etc.

You need to know the Spanish language and be aware of the jargon of football (soccer in U.S.) and its rules in order to understand the simple text that I have proposed above . If we also know who wrote it we could do a series of inferences to catch some non-explicit meaning. For example, the names of the players Pedro and Pepe let suppose with some degree of certainty that this is a football match between Barça and Real Madrid. If we know anything of Spanish football, considering the hard trick of Peter, we can infer with some confidence that this is the final game of the Copa del Rey in 2015, played in Almendralejo, etc.

By de way, you also make interpretations. It would be impossible not to make them in the subject of the life and miracles of Jesus the Galilean. For example:

Paul is one of the best prose stylists ever. Paul is exactly indicting "the Jews" for killing Jesus, and not as an isolated incident, but as part of a centuries-long pattern and practice which continues to inflict violence on Paul himself. Paul does not mean all Jews, since he retains a Jewish identity, and knows about the prophets because of Jewish scripture.

If I adjusted myself to a literal interpretation, as you alleged at first, I would say that the words mean what they mean, that we ought not to give personal interpretations and recognize that Paul when accuses the Jews of Christ's murderers is accusing himself and was an anti-Semite, or worse, a Jew who hated himself. And if you do not believe so, you are giving another interpretation. Why?

Of course I'm not as rigid as that, but I think my interpretation is better than yours. Your interpretation ignores two facts that contradict it: that the crucifixion was a Roman punishment specifically at the time and no other texts of Paul blame the Jews, but the "rulers of this world." You also ignore the opinion of many experts who consider the text an interpolation. But it is clear that we speak of two interpretations. Don't claim you do the only obvious reading and that others are invented. A little humility, caramba.

 

[IanS]

I see. The "we weren't there" argument. Okay, no further questions. Thanks.

No it's not a "we were not there" argument at all. What you wanted me to do was to tell you what I objected to in g-Mark wherever g-Mark had talked of any siblings of Jesus, and then you would simply repeat to me as a rebuttal what pages 150-155 said in Ehrman book! You were inviting me into a very specific game where you would simply repeat what Ehrman had said in his book!

I have said to you before that there are multiple problems with that one single sentence from one of Paul letters (it's barely even a "sentence", just 3 words), and I set that out in a detailed list of objections just a few pages before your question to me. You could look again at that list of objections, because those are the quite obvious objections that I have and that most sceptical authors have raised in respect to those three words in one of Paul’s letters.

Do you need me to repeat that list again? I can do that if you really need to me, though we have had that same discussion and all those same points here at least 50 times before in these threads. I also gave links to what several authors like Doherty, Ellegard, Neil Godfrey and others had written on those three words "the lords brother", explaining in much more detail why it's clearly not safe to assume those words ever meant a real family brother. I can link that stuff again, for the tenth time, if you want?

But as I said above - before we even get to any detailed discussion such as any of that, there are several very obvious and immediate problems with those three words in Paul’s letter and/or any such mention in later gospels such as g-Mark. Namely -

1. We have no idea if Paul ever wrote those three words at all.
2. The words may very easily have referred only to a brother in belief
3. Later copies of the gospels are by no means independent sources.

 

[Craig B]

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.

I really don't think the two sets of religious origins are identical, and i think the Frum example is frequently abused. Anyway the Gospel references are evidence. I have stated that to deny them to be evidence one would need to invoke a late origin forgery theory, and I note that you resort exactly to this.

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.

You also point out that

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.

It is not used in that sense in Mk 6 or Matt 13. And whether it is used anywhere in that sense or not, it implies some association between James and "The Lord".

ETA we have a notice from Eusebius regarding the writing, now lost, of Papias, datable to before 120 AD. This is wiki.

Papias provides the earliest extant account of who wrote the Gospels. Eusebius preserves two verbatim excerpts from Papias on the origins of the Gospels, one concerning Mark and then another concerning Matthew.
On Mark, Papias cites John the Elder:
The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai, but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.

The excerpt regarding Matthew says only:
Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.

 

[Belz...]

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

Notice how I said "you missed my point" and went on to explain what that point was, and you said "you missed my point" and left it at that ?

One of us is not communicating very efficiently.

 

[Belz...]

You need to get familiar with punctuation marks.

Do you not see the question mark?

The author of gMark did not claim Jesus was a carpenter. He ASKED a question.

Oh, my. How desperate can you be, Dejudge ?




(See I asked a question. I didn't say you were desperate ! )

 

[IanS]

What's the point? You consider being asked to read such evidence as an untoward imposition, and you refuse even to look at it. You don't just want mere "evidence" anyway, because as you have already stated at #5340 However, it's good to hear that you're not getting angry about all this.

Not at all. And you have had this politely and patiently explained to you at least a dozen times now -

- I would be happy to look at any real evidence of Jesus, if you actually had any. But you do not.

What you are referring to is an argument we had about 30 pages back where you claimed to have very good evidence of Jesus and you linked to something you had written about that, and asked me to read it. I asked you if your evidence was actually the bible, and you said that indeed it was. Whereupon I pointed out that we had already had several hundred pages in these threads discussing why the NT biblical writing could not possibly be reliable or credible evidence that any of those writers ever knew a living Jesus, and that I was not interested in reading yet more arguments taken from the fantastic religious devotional eulogies of the bible.

On that basis you kept claiming that I refused to read your evidence.

Well if it's something you have got from the bible then it will not be reliable or credible as evidence of such late anonymous copyists authors, none of whom ever knew a living Jesus, actually ever knowing Jesus! And we had by that stage, as I say, already discussed the claimed "bible evidence" to death hundreds of times over anyway!

You need something independent of the NT biblical writing. And certainly independent of the late copyist examples of the gospels that we have from the 4th-6th century and later. And if it's evidence from non-Christian writers such as Tacitus and Josephus then that cannot be only from Christian copies made 1000 years after the original authors had died!

 

[Craig B]

<snip> I was not interested in reading yet more arguments taken from the fantastic religious devotional eulogies of the bible.

On that basis you kept claiming that I refused to read your evidence.

That's right. I claimed and still claim that not reading my arguments is not reading evidence. Well done.

 

[IanS]

For me, the curiosity is that he relies on counter-arguments that use the same materials and the same kinds of analysis of materials that mainstream scholarship uses, with the counter-arguments being "obvious and valid objections". If he at least rejected the counter-arguments on the same basis (too long after first written, we don't know what was in the original anyway, counter-arguments are not using "genuine reliable credible evidence", as he puts it), then it would show some consistancy.?

I don't know what your complaint is supposed to be above. I am pointing out that when using the gospels as evidence, you are using anonymously written later copies, produced several centuries after whatever was originally written, where even the original was anonymous anyway, and where not even the anonymous original author claimed ever to know any of the evidence himself, but instead described it as legend that had come to him from yet other anonymous people who also did not know any of that evidence themselves, but who believed that there had been still earlier people who had once told of being the disciples of Jesus ... but where none of those disciples or their later anonymous informants were ever available to confirm that they had ever known or said any such thing.

If you think gospels like that are reliable evidence, then you have a huge problem with understanding what reliable evidence is. And that is before we get to the fact that the "evidence" actually written in those gospels is manifestly untrue fiction and repeatedly so on every page.

(Editted to add: a thought experiment!) Ian S: Can you provide any counter-argument to Paul's use of "James brother of the Lord" not meaning James "brother of the Lord" that uses genuine reliable credible evidence?

Again I am not sure what you are asking for. But first of all - it's sufficient to point out why that particular example of just 3 words added at the end on one sentence in just one of Paul's letters, and apparently never again repeated, and not claimed to be true in the supposed epistle of the same "James" himself, is not remotely reliable.

But if you are asking for direct evidence in Paul's writing of why that may not mean a family member as "brother" - according to Ellegard (I expect we can check), Paul uses the terms "brother", "brothers", "brethren", "sister", "sisters" etc. far more often to mean brothers and sisters in belief rather than to mean family members. And as mentioned above, in the so-called epistle of James (whoever "James" was, and whoever wrote that), the author does not make any such claim that this "James" was the actual brother of Jesus.

Paul also refers to "James" as an "apostle", i.e. someone called by God to preach the faith to convert people, which seems rather a redundant description if James was the actual brother of Jesus. Also, in Galatians 2:6 where Paul makes his 2nd trip to Jerusalem to see James and Cephas as the “Pillars” of the Church, he is openly dismissive of their supposed authority in comparison to his own and says that it meant nothing to him that such individuals were regarded there as the “pillars” of that church … which would be a rather strange dismissal if Paul really thought that James was the actual family brother of Jesus Christ himself!

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+2&version=ESV

 

[GDon]

I don't know what your complaint is supposed to be above. I am pointing out that when using the gospels as evidence, you are using anonymously written later copies, produced several centuries after whatever was originally written, where even the original was anonymous anyway, and where not even the anonymous original author claimed ever to know any of the evidence himself, but instead described it as legend that had come to him from yet other anonymous people who also did not know any of that evidence themselves, but who believed that there had been still earlier people who had once told of being the disciples of Jesus ... but where none of those disciples or their later anonymous informants were ever available to confirm that they had ever known or said any such thing.

That's correct. In fact it's the same issue that we face with all NT literature, which is why I wondered how you think any counter-arguments based on the same material can be valid.

Now, I personally don't see a problem with using such sources as data that can be analysed and evaluated. But from my perspective, it seems you don't think we can analyse and evaluate those sources for historicity, but you do seem to think we can analyse and evaluate those sources for counter-arguments to historicity. Am I correct in that?

Again I am not sure what you are asking for. But first of all - it's sufficient to point out why that particular example of just 3 words added at the end on one sentence in just one of Paul's letters, and apparently never again repeated, and not claimed to be true in the supposed epistle of the same "James" himself, is not remotely reliable.

But if you are asking for direct evidence in Paul's writing of why that may not mean a family member as "brother" - according to Ellegard (I expect we can check), Paul uses the terms "brother", "brothers", "brethren", "sister", "sisters" etc. far more often to mean brothers and sisters in belief rather than to mean family members. And as mentioned above, in the so-called epistle of James (whoever "James" was, and whoever wrote that), the author does not make any such claim that this "James" was the actual brother of Jesus.

But didn't you make the point just above that we are using "written later copies, produced several centuries after whatever was originally written", etc, and you had a problem with that? How can you produce any analysis based on letters by Paul, and consider it reliable? Given the criteria you stated above, why are you using the so-called epistle of James, when you don't know who "James" was? In what way is the epistle of James reliable, such that you can use it for analysis? That is the crux of the point that I was making earlier.

 

[Craig B]

You need something independent of the NT biblical writing. And certainly independent of the late copyist examples of the gospels that we have from the 4th-6th century and later. And if it's evidence from non-Christian writers such as Tacitus and Josephus then that cannot be only from Christian copies made 1000 years after the original authors had died !

Then we can't say anything at all, and dejudge can stop citing his beloved Apologists, which would be a blessed relief!

 

[IanS]

That's right. I claimed and still claim that not reading my arguments is not reading evidence. Well done.

You are publicly condemning yourself from your own mouth.

You are openly admitting that your evidence is the bible!

You believe the bible.

Who wrote the gospels? Have you any idea at all?

How reliable were those people known to be? You don't even have any idea who they were!

Who was it that wrote the copy of Paul's letters as P46 c.200AD?

Who was that writer of P46?

You have absolutely no idea of who wrote any of those gospels and letters. You have no idea how reliable or accurate any of them were. You have none the actual people themselves such as Jesus, Mark, Mathew, John the Baptist, or even if it comes to that Paul, ever writing anything as far as anyone actually knows. And yet you want me to accept that writing of messiah's risen from the dead, all sorts of others raised from dead, walking on water, feeding 5000 people with no food at all and then having a mountain of the same non-existent food left over ... you seriously want to insist that people must read yet more of that nonsense, after having many hundreds of pages of it already, because you say that is your evidence of a messiah that nobody ever knew.

That's not "evidence". That's religious devotional claims of the impossible from anonymous writers of the incredible.

If you have something outside the bible, some genuinely independent evidence from a reliable writer of the time showing how he, or any quoted known others, had actually witnessed Jesus, then I will read it immediately.

Do you have any such genuine independent evidence of anyone credibly claiming to have known & witnessed Jesus in life?

 

[eight bits]

David Mo

You need to know the Spanish language and be aware of the jargon of football (soccer in U.S.) and its rules in order to understand the simple text that I have proposed

But not to understand Paul. In the case that divides us, Paul makes a clear reference to a Jewish scripture passage. I may indeed be mistaken about Paul's meaning, or the meaning he found in scripture, but my estimate is grounded in his actual text and the text he refers us to.

I have never objected to interpretation. I have criticized interpretations that gratuitously conflict with the text being interpreted, that rely on knowledge of texts which were unavailable to the author, and for which the interpreter boasts of preternatural alignment with the author's mind.

And if you do not believe so, you are giving another interpretation. Why?

Putting aside that the self-loathing Jew is a modern cliche, Paul freely acknowledged having persecuted the Way earlier in his career. Redemption by metanoia is the point of the religion, however, so he fits in nicely. For a self-loather, Paul often manages to convey that God couldn't run the place without him.

Of course I'm not as rigid as that, but I think my interpretation is better than yours.

I don't doubt that you do, nor do I begrudge you your estimate. I do wonder why you expect me to share in it.

that the crucifixion was a Roman punishment specifically at the time

Nothing in my interpretation depends on Jesus being crucified or not being crucified. If Paul is talking about a Roman crucifixion, then my interpretation works fine. The canonical Gospels offer several ways that Jews could have helped. If Paul is talking about a gibbeting after (or as the final act) of some other episode of mortal violence, then my interpretation works fine that way, too. John depicts a Jesus who lives one step ahead of enraged Jews with stones or lances. As other posters have suggested, Johnnie just may be on to something.

and no other texts of Paul blame the Jews, but the "rulers of this world."

We have only the seven business letters, and Paul has other bones to pick with his fellow Jews.

Ephesians is not in the secure corpus, 6:2's RoW's are not flesh and blood, and the verse does not blame the RoW's for any past bad act. If you mean something else, then chapter and verse are welcome.

You also ignore the opinion of many experts who consider the text an interpolation.

Ignore? I have acknowledged the possibility of interpolation, and am following the suggestion of another poster to re-examine some arguments of experts he has cited. I have also commented upon some of those experts' arguments already. I have ignored nothing, and your slipshod misrepresenting of my posts does your case no good. It suggests you have trouble interpreting textual material.

A little humility, caramba.

You give away such great advice; you really should take some of it. Charity begins at home.

 

[Craig B]

You are publicly condemning yourself from your own mouth.

You are openly admitting that your evidence is the bible!

You believe the bible.

Who wrote the gospels? Have you any idea at all?

How reliable were those people known to be? You don't even have any idea who they were!

Hey, dejudge, how did you manage to reprogram poor IanS? More seriously, I have commented on all these points, but you won't read what is said, so what's the point of going over it all again? Anyway, I like the dejudge-style single-line proclamations. Good show. Funny.

 

[Belz...]

You believe the bible.

Discussion with you is impossible if you just keep lying.

 

[Craig B]

Discussion with you is impossible if you just keep lying.

Not only do I "believe the Bible" (sayonara Higher Criticism), I even condemn myself from my own mouth by openly admitting it! What sort of internal state of mind generates such forms of words?