Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[Belz...]

I know what it means. I asked you specifically what you meant by "certainty" because when I wished to point out to you that more than one poster uses words that indicate that Jesus existed as a certainty, I didn't want you to then claim that's not what you meant by certainty.

Not likely to happen, since I only know one definition for that word.

That was my entire point which would have been concluded quite rapidly had you just answered the questions instead of saying that you knew the drill and then avoid answering them.

As mentioned earlier, I didn't know of another definition, so I had trouble considering that your question was honest.

ETA: I also wish to say that I have nothing against you, Belz.... You and I agree on most everything and I generally like your style.

I also have nothing against myself, and I like my style as well !

 

[Belz...]

You are mistaken. I do not argue that Jesus existed and has not expressed any certainty for an HJ.

Rubbish !

 

[dejudge]

You are mistaken. I do not argue that Jesus existed and has not expressed any certainty for an HJ.

Rubbish !

Rubbish!

HJ was a Ghost.

The Jesus story was a product of illiterates.

Justin's First Apology

For from Jerusalem there went out into the world, men, twelve in number, and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking: but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God

 

[eight bits]

To Craig, with relevance to some concerns of David's

I have looked into the arguments you suggested about the possible interpolation of Paul's "indictment" of Jews for serial propheticide in 1 Thessalonians.

It still seems to me that Paul refers directly to the last chapter of II Chronicles.. Josephus tells us of a situation in Paul's lifetime, where Herod Antipas is thought by Jews to have been defeated because he killed the prophet John the Baptist. We know, then, that the thought pattern depicted in II Chronicles was still fresh in living Jewish skulls at the time Paul wrote.

Perhaps Paul anticipates that God will whoop some major butt for Jesus' killing, as well Paul might believe, since he teaches that the end of days has already begun. This is, however, a prophetic trope in its own right. The usual purpose of prophecy is to comment on the present, and a usual means is to threaten future consequences. One way to articulate the threat is to point to past instances, with the implication that what God has done before, God will do again.

Thus, I am unpersuaded that this passage states untimely knowledge suspicious of later interpolation. I am also unpersuaded that Paul's criticisms for murdering Jewish prophets (including Jesus) are directed at anybody except Jews. That does not rule out Jews having cooperated with Gentiles to accomplish the bad behavior for which God has inflicted, at least once in the past, as total a devastation as can be suffered by a people which must, according to their mythology, always leave a remnant until the end.

Had the destruction of ancient Judah been any more thorough than it was, we simply wouldn't be having this conversation. And, as thorough as the Roman devastation of 70 CE was, Romans were in the field again facing Jewish resistance within two generations (hmm, not so different than the duration of the Babylonian exile). Both were telos, or neither was telos.

I do thank you for the pointers, however.

 

[pakeha]

... 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 swords.
Herod killed one Jewish prophet by sword without any reference to Romans, correct me if I'm wrong.
Would another prophet killed without reference to the Romans count as an HJ?

 

[The Norseman]

I also have nothing against myself, and I like my style as well !

So who says that people cannot ever agree over the internet?

 

[David Mo]

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.

Of course, you do not need to know Spanish and the football rules to understand the text of Paul, but needs what that I had said:

-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.

As this sentence is incomprehensible to me:

Paul makes a clear reference to a Jewish scripture passage.

Can you tell which is the passage of the Old TEstament quoted in 1 Thessalonians 2: 14-15 which includes the murder of Jesus at the hands of the Jews? To my knowledge there is a general reference to abuses the Jews inflicted to their prophets and an extrapolation to the case of Jesus, but not a specific citation.

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.​

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.

I have not seen any sentence of my interpretation based on texts out of reach from Paul and that "boasts of preternatural alignment with the author's mind." "Preternatural alignment"? I do not know what you mean.

Nothing in my interpretation depends on Jesus being crucified or not being crucified.

But in my interpretation it does matter. Throughout his epistles Paul tries by all means to conceal the involvement of the Romans on the death of Jesus, but he necessarily knew that at the time and place only the Romans Romans crucified Jews. Neither more nor less than a Russian who writes about the death penalty in the twentieth century knows that the electric chair is a kind of American execution or at least is not Russian. He would refuse to believe it if someone told you that a man was executed in the electric chair by Putin's order. Do you call this "preternatural alignment with the author's mind"? On the contrary, it seems to me a very common inference.

Therefore, given the Paul's decision to spread Christianity to the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, ie the Romans, his recognition that Jesus died on the cross created a highly embarrassing situation to him. No one voluntarily gets into an embarrassing situation if he can avoid it. Then Paul is forced to postulate the death of Jesus on the cross because he accepts a belief that comes from outside. From where?

You seem to believe that the idea that Christ had died crucified came to Paul by revelation ( metanoia [/ i]). As I said above the processes of religious experience don't produce ideas that are not already in the mind of the subject. One feels something indeterminate, warns some "presence", is reinforced in their beliefs or feels that to be called to accept a previously rejected idea through a revelation . The idea of a crucified God is not a kind of idea that can come from this way. Unless you believe the revelation was authentic and was the Christ God who intervened in the epileptic seizures of Paul in order to establish his Church. I do not think this is your point of view. Not mine, of course.

The idea of the crucifixion comes from the Scriptures either, because nowhere in the Scriptures is mentioned the Messiah crucified. Then the information comes from someone who has told the story of the crucifixion and he has believed. Rightly or wrongly. This is the only way.

Can you say what specific point of my reasoning fails? Specifically, please.

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.

Ephesians? Who is speaking about Ephesians? You mean 1 Corinthians 2:6-8:

…“the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”…

Several interpretations are possible around the contradiction between the two passages: in one of them Jesus' death is attributed to the Jews, in the other to the "princes" of this world. It is clear for me that these passages do not come from the same person. As in other letters Paul never accuses the Jews of Jesus' death, this indicates that we have a clear interpolation with an idea very common in later contexts of Christianity (second century).

I find less likely that he wanted to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus because they handed him over to the Romans. It would be a very imperfect expression.

 

[Brainache]

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.

FWIW It looks to me like Paul is talking about that faction of Jews who persecuted the churches in Judea. Paul appears to be saying that this nasty persecuting faction has met its utter destruction, rather than the whole race of "The Jews".

Is it possible that this letter was written at the start of the revolt, just after the Idumaeans killed all the Priests, but before the Roman response?

Is that just too unlikely?

 

[Craig B]

Is it possible that this letter was written at the start of the revolt, just after the Idumaeans killed all the Priests, but before the Roman response?

Is that just too unlikely?

I think it's unlikely. If the passage is indeed an interpolation, the force of the wording about the final misfortune striking the Jews must refer to the fall of the Temple.

 

[Belz...]

Rubbish!

Nonsense !

 

[IanS]

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?

You just had it explained to you for the 10th time in the post directly above that one. I'll quote that patient polite explanation again below for you so that you, and others here, can see how you and several other HJ people here just continuously try to misrepresent everything that is said to you. And it's very obvious that you and the others do that because you have no actual evidence and no actual argument to support your beliefs.

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!

When, after your next reply I again summarised the above patient post line by line, inc. one line saying to you “you believe the bible”, that is true for the precise reason that I had so carefully and patiently just explained in the post I just quoted above. Namely - you have admitted yourself a dozen times now that your argument comes from the bible. You are using the bible to obtain your belief in Jesus. That is very definitely you “believing the bible” … you believe it as your source of evidence convincing you that Jesus existed.

It’s perfectly obvious to neutral readers here that the reason you create arguments like this, and where others shout “liar” etc., is because you don’t actually have any credible evidence of Jesus. You cannot make a credible case to support your belief in Jesus. And the bible is by no means a reliable source or credible in what it says, for all the reasons carefully, patiently and fully explained here a 100 times or more.

You need something independent of the fanatical religious devotional writing of ancient messiah superstitions in the NT bible.

 

[Brainache]

You just had it explained to you for the 10th time in the post directly above that one. I'll quote that patient polite explanation again below for you so that you, and others here, can see how you and several other HJ people here just continuously try to misrepresent everything that is said to you. And it's very obvious that you and the others do that because you have no actual evidence and no actual argument to support your beliefs.

When are you going to point this out to every Ancient History Professor in the world?

They should know that they have no evidence or arguments for what they teach in University, don't you think?

Has the email campaign begun? How is that working out for you?

When, after your next reply I again summarised the above patient post line by line, inc. one line saying to you “you believe the bible”, that is true for the precise reason that I had so carefully and patiently just explained in the post I just quoted above. Namely - you have admitted yourself a dozen times now that your argument comes from the bible. You are using the bible to obtain your belief in Jesus. That is very definitely you “believing the bible” … you believe it as your source of evidence convincing you that Jesus existed.

It’s perfectly obvious to neutral readers here that the reason you create arguments like this, and where others shout “liar” etc., is because you don’t actually have any credible evidence of Jesus. You cannot make a credible case to support your belief in Jesus. And the bible is by no means a reliable source or credible in what it says, for all the reasons carefully, patiently and fully explained here a 100 times or more.

You need something independent of the fanatical religious devotional writing of ancient messiah superstitions in the NT bible.

Please stop lying about other posters and what they "believe". It is very rude.

 

[Craig B]

You just had it explained to you for the 10th time in the post directly above that one. I'll quote that patient polite explanation again <snip> When, after your next reply I again summarised the above patient post line by line, inc. one line saying to you “you believe the bible”, that is true for the precise reason that I had so carefully and patiently just explained in the post I just quoted above.

Patient and meticulous exposition don't make false propositions true, even if they are repeated a thousand times.

And when I apply patient pedagogical methods, you refuse even to read what I write. You're "patient" only with regard to your own ideas.

You need something independent of the fanatical religious devotional writing of ancient messiah superstitions in the NT bible.

That is a gross characterisation of the NT. It will remain so even after you have stated it a further thousand times. Anyway you refuse to read it, or any analysis of it. Are you patient about that? I think not! You go nuts at the very notion.

 

[GDon]

I have no idea if anything in Paul’s letters ever really happened. I don’t even know if Paul was a real person or if he wrote anything. So I am not relying on interpreting anything from those letters as “fact”. I am just pointing out why you cannot take what is said in those letters as a reliable account in respect of what it says about a Jesus figure that it’s author never knew.

So, do you think it is possible to create "obvious and valid" (to use your words) arguments based on the letters of Paul?

If you want to chuck out Paul entirely from all consideration by either of us, then that’s absolutely fine by me, because I have no reliance upon it at all.

I don't want to chuck it out, since I believe that analysis of the texts can produce certain probable outcomes, and these can be used as premises to build a case, either for historicity or ahistoricity. The fact that these premises are not certain or "for sure!" doesn't particularly worry me, as long as they are stated. (The problem with the HJ case is that the premises are not explained adequately. Ehrman's book was a disappointment in that regard. I'm hoping that the MJ challenge provided by Carrier will force scholars like Ehrman to verify the premises that they use.)

But the problem is that you DO rely on some kind of validity to Paul, at least whenever there are counter-arguments. But as soon as any HJ argument appears, you throw Paul out. If you want to argue against points made by Paul by HJers by assuming purely for the sake of argument that Paul is reliable, that would be fine. But you don't seem to do it that way. It's your consistency that I question.

 

[IanS]

Patient and meticulous exposition don't make false propositions true, even if they are repeated a thousand times.

And when I apply patient pedagogical methods, you refuse even to read what I write. You're "patient" only with regard to your own ideas. That is a gross characterisation of the NT. It will remain so even after you have stated it a further thousand times. Anyway you refuse to read it, or any analysis of it. Are you patient about that? I think not! You go nuts at the very notion.

You are willing to place you trust in what the NT authors wrote about particular beliefs in Jesus. I am not willing to do that, because I think their undeniably and very extensive unreliability, inc. their insistent claims of numerous things which have since proved to be untrue and physically impossible, makes them unreliable as a source of anything they say about a messiah that they never even knew but whom they believed as matter of religious legendsoif the supernatural. That is not reliable or trustworthy as a factual source.

You would not I hope, and certainly you should not, put your trust in sources like that for anything else in your life, not if you were being careful and objective about it, and certainly not if anything important hung upon it. You would not, for example, even be normally afforded the chance to hear claimed evidence as discredited and flawed as that in a court of law, because a witness who try’s to tell the jury about all sorts of untrue miracles etc. and then has to admit that he had actually witnessed none of it himself and did not know anyone else he could name as having witnessed any such thing either, would be dismissed as unfit to present any valid evidence at all.

It is not fit testimony. It is hopelessly unreliable, and completely non-credible in what it says about what are actually just statements of legendary religious beliefs drawn from the ancient “bible” of the OT.

 

[Craig B]

You are willing to place you trust in what the NT authors wrote about particular beliefs in Jesus ... It is not fit testimony. It is hopelessly unreliable, and completely non-credible in what it says about what are actually just statements of legendary religious beliefs drawn from the ancient “bible” of the OT.

It is not a question of trust, or of evidence as in a court of law, and I don't think it's all drawn from the OT, but since you won't attend to what is said about it, there's no point in engaging with you on the issue.

 

[eight bits]

pakeha

... and swords.

And swords. I like the lance, though. It has a built-in stake. If perchance Jesus was lanced and the lance planted while his dead or dying body was abused, then we would have our killing and our "staking," without Roman invovlement. Again, I am not endorsing this hypothesis, but acknowledging what is possible when the Gospels aren't taken as gospel, and one is concerned only with Paul.

David Mo

So, once again, after a patronizing lecture about how I need to do what everybody does whenever they read anything written by another person, you take something I've written, and then pretend that I wrote something else. What I wrote, and you quoted, was:

Paul makes a clear reference to a Jewish scripture passage.

And then you launch into a song and dance premised on my having written that Paul quoted the passage. However, as I have stated repeatedly, most recently at post # 5444, just a few items above your rewrite of my posting:

It still seems to me that Paul refers directly to the last chapter of II Chronicles.

One difference between quote and direct reference is that the specific passage does not recite the consequences of the Jewish maltreatment on the prophets themselves. However, it is the last chapter of the book in whose Chapter 24, Zechariah is stoned to death. His last words (24:22) are "May the LORD see this and call you to account." The chapters just before this last one tell of Jeremiah, who was sentenced to a slow death, but rescued when the Babylonians invaded (Jeremiah, of course, has his own book, see chapter 38). Paul's amplification of a specific passage in light of the entire book of which it is the capstone was reasonable for him to do.

Throughout his epistles Paul tries by all means to conceal the involvement of the Romans on the death of Jesus,

I see no evidence that Paul tries to do anything of the kind. We do not have his teachings, rather we have some of his business correspondence. Whatever the Roman role was, if any, in Jesus' death (and it almost ceratinly wasn't what was depicted in the Gospels written after Paul), it was apparently irrelevant to Paul's purpose in writing any of the letters which we have in hand.

I do not see the relevance of electric chairs to our discussion. Paul writes only of a stake. If I read that a Russian died of electrocution at Putin's order, I err if I reason that Putin doesn't use electric chairs, so therefore Putin cannot have played a causal role in the Russian's death. Duh.

You seem to believe that the idea that Christ had died crucified came to Paul by revelation

You obviously have confused me with another poster. Paul believes that Jesus' death included gibbeting, and I think he came to that belief by contact with natural people who survived Jesus. However,

The idea of the crucifixion comes from the Scriptures either, because nowhere in the Scriptures is mentioned the Messiah crucified.

exceeds the text. Gibbeting most certainly is in the scriptures. Just get over it, David. We do not know why Paul thinks Jesus was gibbeted, he doesn't say. I think it is most likely that that was the word on the street, and there is no great mystery why Paul believes this. However, it cannot be excluded from what Paul wrote that he inferred it. The other poster's belief about that specific possibility is defensible (although I do not share in it).

You mean 1 Corinthians 2:6-8:

Do I? I mean whatever you were on about in the earlier post. You didn't give a book, chapter or verse. That's my fault?

...the contradiction between the two passages: in one of them Jesus' death is attributed to the Jews, in the other to the "princes" of this world....

What you self-servingly translate as rulers or even princes is archonton.Who are archonton? Anybody who displays leadership, including Jews. Look it up. Both Luke and John refer to the Pharisees as having archonton. Pharisees are Jews, David. The word doesn't distinguish among kinds of leaders or dominant members nor of what group.

There is no contradiction between the two passages, except one you gin up using heavy handed translational spin.

 

[IanS]

So, do you think it is possible to create "obvious and valid" (to use your words) arguments based on the letters of Paul?


I don't want to chuck it out, since I believe that analysis of the texts can produce certain probable outcomes, and these can be used as premises to build a case, either for historicity or ahistoricity. The fact that these premises are not certain or "for sure!" doesn't particularly worry me, as long as they are stated. (The problem with the HJ case is that the premises are not explained adequately. Ehrman's book was a disappointment in that regard. I'm hoping that the MJ challenge provided by Carrier will force scholars like Ehrman to verify the premises that they use.)

But the problem is that you DO rely on some kind of validity to Paul, at least whenever there are counter-arguments. But as soon as any HJ argument appears, you throw Paul out. If you want to argue against points made by Paul by HJers by assuming purely for the sake of argument that Paul is reliable, that would be fine. But you don't seem to do it that way. It's your consistency that I question.

No. Absolutely not!

I am not relying on Paul’s letters at all as evidence that Jesus did not exist (I don’t even say that I know or believe that he did or did not exist).

Let’s be clear about what is going here - you are posting in defence of Craig who say's that Paul must have learned what he knew about Jesus because people in Jerusalem had told Paul that. And Craig is taking that belief, and he quotes it, from what is said in Paul’s letters. He (Craig) is getting that from Paul’s letters where it says Paul made trips to Jerusalem and met Cephas, James and John. Whereby Craig says those people must have known or believed in Jesus before Paul did, and must therefore have been the source of what he imagines they told Paul about their various Jesus beliefs.

So that is the first stage - i.e., Craig (not me!) is citing Paul’s letters to claim they are evidence that people in Jerusalem knew of Jesus before Paul did and they were the people who gave Paul his information about Jesus.

What I did was to say that, if Craig or anyone else is quoting Paul’s letters as evidence of anyone telling Paul about Jesus, then they are in error because those letters they are relying upon actually say the very opposite of Paul being told any such thing in Jerusalem!

I am only referring to Craig's use of those letters (and/or the gospels) to point out to Craig that when he uses those letters as evidence of Jesus, they do not in fact say what he is claiming of them (in fact they very clearly say the exact opposite).

If you or Craig or anyone here prefers not to quote Paul’s letters as your source of claiming “evidence”, then I won’t need to point out that the letters that YOU are using as YOUR source, do not in fact say what you claim (they actually claim the exact opposite!).

Lets chuck out Paul’s letters entirely. If you, Craig or anyone on the HJ side, inc. Bart Ehrman, does not quote Paul or the gospels, then neither I nor any sceptic will have any need to point out that those documents do not reliably or credibly claim what you say they do. We won’t have to mention them ever again … unless you make claims from them!

 

[IanS]

It is not a question of trust, or of evidence as in a court of law, and I don't think it's all drawn from the OT, but since you won't attend to what is said about it, there's no point in engaging with you on the issue.

That is because you cannot produce any evidence except for what you believe to be true in the bible!

You are, as I said, and as you have admitted, taking your evidence from the bible.

 

[dejudge]

....The idea of the crucifixion comes from the Scriptures either, because nowhere in the Scriptures is mentioned the Messiah crucified. Then the information comes from someone who has told the story of the crucifixion and he has believed. Rightly or wrongly. This is the only way.

Your statement is not logical. You are merely assuming that the Pauline Corpus could not have been written after NT Scriptures.

1. Apologetic writers have claimed the Pauline writers knew of gLuke

2. Letters in the Pauline Corpus were composed After the Fall of the Temple.

It is not true at all that Paul must have gotten the crucifixion story of Jesus from someone when there is no evidence at all that anyone knew of Jesus or knew of the crucifixion.

Who knew of the actual crucifixion of Jesus c27-37 CE?

What source of antiquity mentioned the people who knew of an actual human Jesus and that he was crucified?

1. The 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians is actual evidence that the Pauline Corpus was composed AFTER the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

2. The 1st Epistle to the Corinthians is actual evidence that the Pauline writers knew NT Scriptures especially gLuke.

3. The Epistle to the Galatians is actual evidence that the Pauline writers knew NT Scriptures especially Acts of the Apostles.

4. The Epistle to the Romans is actual evidence that the Pauline Corpus was composed AFTER the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

5. The Epistle to the Philippians is actual evidence that the Pauline writers knew NT Scriptures.