• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Historical Jesus

Status
Not open for further replies.
Brainache said:
Try talking to a Historian and leave the bible thumpers alone. You might learn about how Historians research these questions and (spoiler) it doesn't involve accepting "anonymous 2000 year-old written claims of miracles and the supernatural" as reliable evidence.

It has been years, you could have looked it up by now...
Click to expand...


The "experts" that you are referring too, are all employed as "Bible Scholars". They are not employed as "Historians" ... their job title and their profession is "Bible Studies and New Testament Studies".

These individuals are not studying any other subjects in history. They are solely concerned with the Bible!

Lecturers in “History” in university History Dept's do not enter that profession specifically because of and specifically with the precursor of a devout religious Christian faith. They are not lecturing about beliefs from their own pre-existing Christian faith. But bible studies scholars, every last one of them, are doing precisely that – their entire reason for interest in the subject stems their own deep personal Christian faith.
 
All this has been discussed a thousand times here.
Scientific consensus is a criterion of authority when the scientists who form it do not have particular ideological interests. A consensus among Christians does not form authority... outside of Christians.

The survival of Christianity is not due to any miraculous property, but to the ability to trasvestism of their theory by generations of Christians.

Love of enemies is a maxim inspired by similar maxims of the time. It is a little original because it exaggerates so much that it becomes an inapplicable maxim. No one really loves enemies. It is not surprising that the founder of the sect thought that hell would be full to overflowing. It is logical with such maxims.

It would be interesting if the supporters of the Historical Christ to say something new for a change.
 
HansMustermann said:
No. You just keep decreeing that there can't be a better explanation, but that's no more supported than when a completely different gang insists that there is no better explanation than controlled demolition in 9/11 :p
Click to expand...
I'm not decreeing anything. I'm pointing out that Historians from all over the world accept the HJ as a plausible explanation for the origins of Christianity.
HansMustermann said:
No, you could have looked it up by now. Because actually you'd find that there are virtually no real historians actually claiming the HJ. What you have are some THEOLOGIANS pretending to be historians, while applying a "historical method" that's actually several iterations out of date compared to what actual historians use.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? You think the only people who have studied the ancient near east are Theologians?
 
Brainache said:
I'm not decreeing anything. I'm pointing out that Historians from all over the world accept the HJ as a plausible explanation for the origins of Christianity.


Are you serious? You think the only people who have studied the ancient near east are Theologians?
Click to expand...

Where did you get the idea that historians in general agree with the existence of Jesus the Galilee? The subject of the Historical Jesus does not appear in the curricula of the departments of Ancient History. It is a subject that is developed in faculties of theology or religion. The books on Ancient History that I have at home do not speak of the Historical Jesus, but of Christianity as a social and religious movement.
 
Last edited:
IanS said:
The "experts" that you are referring too, are all employed as "Bible Scholars". They are not employed as "Historians" ... their job title and their profession is "Bible Studies and New Testament Studies".

These individuals are not studying any other subjects in history. They are solely concerned with the Bible!

Lecturers in “History” in university History Dept's do not enter that profession specifically because of and specifically with the precursor of a devout religious Christian faith. They are not lecturing about beliefs from their own pre-existing Christian faith. But bible studies scholars, every last one of them, are doing precisely that – their entire reason for interest in the subject stems their own deep personal Christian faith.
Click to expand...

There are many secular Historians. Many of them deal with the ancient near east. The consensus is that Jesus existed.

Here is one of their journals:
https://brill.com/view/serial/CHAN

The reason you don't hear these Historians jumping up and down about the controversial topic of the HJ is that it isn't a controversial topic.

The only people for whom it is even a question are people who haven't studied it, or people like Richard Carrier out to sell sensational paperbacks.
 
David Mo said:
Where did you get the idea that historians in general agree with the existence of Jesus the Galilee? The subject of the Historical Jesus does not appear in the curricula of the departments of Ancient History. It is a subject that is developed in faculties of theology or religion. The books on Ancient History that I have at home do not speak of the Historical Jesus, but of Christianity as a social and religious movement.
Click to expand...

I get that idea because none of them are out there disagreeing with the HJ. If there was a more plausible explanation for the social and religious movement that didn't involve a HJ, then that is what those Historians would be telling us.

History, like any other academic discipline thrives on controversy. Historians are constantly disagreeing with each other over all kinds of trivial points whenever there is even a hint of doubt, it's how they make their reputations.

Right now there is one bloke (that I know of) with a history degree who claims that Jesus never existed - Richard Carrier - and from what I understand, he hasn't managed to overthrow the consensus yet.
 
IanS said:
But out of all the tens of thousands of such Biblical Scholars, how many entered that profession as devout Christian believers? The answer as far as we can honestly tell is … all of them!
Click to expand...

By the same logic, would devout Christians studying physics get their conclusions dismissed as well? Or is it just the ones who say Jesus was a regular dude and not the Messiah?
 
HansMustermann said:
No, you could have looked it up by now. Because actually you'd find that there are virtually no real historians actually claiming the HJ. What you have are some THEOLOGIANS pretending to be historians, while applying a "historical method" that's actually several iterations out of date compared to what actual historians use.
Click to expand...

How do you determine if someone's a real historian or not?
 
Brainache said:
There are many secular Historians. Many of them deal with the ancient near east. The consensus is that Jesus existed.

Here is one of their journals:
https://brill.com/view/serial/CHAN

The reason you don't hear these Historians jumping up and down about the controversial topic of the HJ is that it isn't a controversial topic.

The only people for whom it is even a question are people who haven't studied it, or people like Richard Carrier out to sell sensational paperbacks.
Click to expand...



You are not talking about "secular historians". You are talking about people like Bart Ehrman, who is employed with the title of “New Testament Scholar” in the “Department of Religious Studies” at “The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill”, see here -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

You can look up the history, qualifications, job title etc. for all such academics who have written books about the “historicity of Jesus” saying that they are quite sure Jesus existed, and you will find that every single one of them has a background, qualifications, and job title etc. just like that of Bart Ehrman … these people are not neutral unbiased “historians”, they are very specifically Biblical Studies lecturers almost all of whom have a lifelong history of being personally immersed in the Christian faith.
 
The only thing completely proven is that some people living in the first century believed there had been someone called Jesus who taught religious ideas. Whether there actually was such a person, or several different people who got confused with each other, is probably impossible to know at this point because of lack of documented evidence. Everything we have is hearsay. Barring either the discovery of a hitherto unknown set of reliable documentation, the development of time travel past viewing technology, or direct testimony from an actually real deity Jesus I think we can't be certain of anything beyond that.
 
HansMustermann said:
a....ny analysis will also show that it's structured like an ancient novel, with structures like the chiasm and inclusio that tend not to happen like that in any given person's life. So whatever information the gospel writers had about Jesus, has been severely edited to fit that structure. At the VERY LEAST its chronology was rearranged.

The even bigger problem is: you can do the same for the myth of Cthulhu, as I've actually shown in another thread, a long time ago, in a galaxy far away. Or for Superman, Luke Skywalker, or count Pierre Bezukhov, or indeed Count Dracula, or your favourite Game Of Thrones character. If your only criterion is what the book says and what is compatible enough to be possible to have been said by the same person, then almost any character ever qualifies.

And I mean, 30% self-compatible is actually piss poor even for known fiction characters. Any author worth his salt will have his characters have consistent world views, until events in the novel warrant changing them, and then he/she actually shows that happening. If you wrote a character that is all over the place like Jesus in a modern novel, unless the whole POINT is that he's a big lying hypocrite, you wouldn't get it past any publisher.
Click to expand...

In fact you can apply all those tests to a number of mytho-historical characters such as King Arthur, Robin Hood, Dr Syn (The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh), and William Tell... and they all come up with results that show them and their stories to be as real as the HJ stories.
 
Belz... said:
By the same logic, would devout Christians studying physics get their conclusions dismissed as well? Or is it just the ones who say Jesus was a regular dude and not the Messiah?
Click to expand...


It's not "the same logic" at all - Christians who become physicists, are not claiming to explain physics by using the bible as their source of evidence.

On the contrary, Christians who become physicists have to leave all their faith beliefs entirely outside of everything they do as scientists.

However, devout evangelical Christian preachers who become academic Bible Scholars most definitely do persist with all that same religious baggage in their role as lecturers in Biblical Studies.
 
IanS said:
It's not "the same logic" at all - Christians who become physicists, are not claiming to explain physics by using the bible as their source of evidence.

On the contrary, Christians who become physicists have to leave all their faith beliefs entirely outside of everything they do as scientists.

However, devout evangelical Christian preachers who become academic Bible Scholars most definitely do persist with all that same religious baggage in their role as lecturers in Biblical Studies.
Click to expand...

That's a claim, but do you have evidence that they can't or don't leave their faith at the door? Other than the fact that they disagree with you on the existence of a Jesus, that is.
 
Ricardo: Why must you hit the spacebar and then the exclamation point so damned often?

I mean, Jesus Historical Christ, it gets tiresome.

And makes you look ignorant, quite aside from what else you type.
 
Brainache said:
But not equal numbers. The Academic consensus is that there was a historical Jesus (HJ).
Click to expand...

The academic consensus is also that all the miracle stuff is ********.

So I have to ask, if he wasn't the Son of God, perform miracles and raise from the dead, is he really Jesus from the Bible?

There was a girl named Dorothy who lived in Kansas and had an Aunt Em, and, in fact, inspired the character in the Wizard of Oz (she was Frank Baum's niece). But if she wasn't whisked away to the land of Oz by a tornado, can we really say that Dorothy from Wizard of Oz existed?
 
pgwenthold said:
The academic consensus is also that all the miracle stuff is ********.

So I have to ask, if he wasn't the Son of God, perform miracles and raise from the dead, is he really Jesus from the Bible?
Click to expand...

No, and that's why they call him the historical Jesus.

It's like if you found out that King Arthur had a real-life inspiration who was a Roman soldier and never had a sword called Excalibur or a friend called Lancelot. He's still the inspiration for the stories.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom