But we're not talking about just scholars. The whole topic of the discussion is historians. Can you tell me about them? Or are you saying that there are none? Or none who conclude that Jesus kind-of existed?
We're speaking of a particular subset of Christians. I will remind you that plenty of Christians have gone against the dogma of their time to advance science, so clearly at least a good number of those with a science or professional background can ignore their biases to a degree.
I don't accept your blanket statement, is all. Your suspicion of bias is rational, but you're just taking it too far and generalising without considering other factors.
Re. the first highlight - the fact that throughout the history of the last 400 years, i.e. since the modern concept of science began with people like Galileo (circa 1612), many people who became scientists prior to (say) the twentieth century were also devout Christians, really is not a reason to argue as many religious people do today, that our increasing knowledge from science does not result in less religious belief. Because, clearly, religious belief has declined steadily as more and more people in society become better educated in science.
Now you may say that is not the point you were making. But it is a point that I am making!
Beyond that - many of the people who became well known scientists during that time (1600 to 1900) did so when most people in Europe
were devout believers in Christianity and devout believers in the bible as a source of quite definite truth about Jesus and his miraculous works.
In the early years, say 1600 to 1800, many of those early scientists did not believe, and did not expect, their scientific discoveries to cast any serious doubt on Christian religious beliefs. Even when they did discover things which appeared to contradict the biblical beliefs, they almost always found a form words and a way of speaking which claimed that their discoveries and explanations from science, whilst true, were in no way evidence against God, Jesus, or the inerrancy of the bible.
And just to be clear as to why the above addresses your point - the above explains how those early scientists after Galileo, were able to as you put it "ignore their biases" ... they were able to do that because they could still at that stage argue that none of their discoveries amounted to a really serious blow to religious belief ... they could continue, quite easily, to maintain both a total belief in the bible and Christianity, whilst also explaining why their scientific discoveries were correct.
Really, up until the publication from Darwin in 1859, the only discovery that was thought to be seriously threatening to Christianity, was that initial work of Galileo which appeared to contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church which at that time was insisting that the words of the bible made it certain that the Earth must be at the centre of the universe.
However, when Darwin published "On The Origin of Species" in 1859, that really did put the cat amongst the pigeons. Because although in that first publication Darwin apparently made no mention of the evolution of humans from earlier apes, it was obvious to everyone that the theory of evolution that Darwin had set out inevitably did mean that humans had indeed evolved from apes.
As it happened, Darwin (again like almost everyone at that time) was quite deeply religious. But afaik, it is widely said that his discovery of evolution did seriously reduce his own faith in religious beliefs.
So, just to summarise all of that – Darwin and Galileo were able to overcome their earlier religious bias, and were then able to report findings which they knew were in contradiction with Christian beliefs of the time (those were all biblical beliefs … ie those beliefs all came from a quite literal belief in the inerrancy of the bible). But neither Galileo or Darwin were full time lecturers in Biblical Studies! So they could more easily afford to have increased doubts about the truth of the bible (because those doubts were not at odds with their profession). That is not however the case with Christian Bible Scholars today – firstly, none of them are scientists who understand from their research why today modern science has really become incompatible with religious belief & quotations from the bible as evidence of Jesus, and secondly none of those modern-day Bible Scholars think they are being seriously biased when they rely on the bible as their main source of evidence … they fail to recognise any such religious bias, precisely because they are not educated in subjects like science which would allow them to see very clearly why use of the bible as their main/primary source of evidence is not credible at all.
On your second highlighted sentence – what are the other factors that you think I must consider when I say that where Bible Scholars are known to be practising Christians, that inevitably introduces and unacceptable bias immediately for any belief they express for the existence of Jesus upon claims that the biblical writing is a reliable enough source of evidence?
What I am saying is that to claim a belief in Jesus as someone who was more likely than not to have existed, i.e. to claim that his existence is probable, you need evidence that is entirely independent of the bible.
It is of course true that not just Bible Scholars, but many people here and elsewhere on the net, do claim to have independent evidence of Jesus in writing such as Tacitus and Josephus. But that writing is not credible either, and for numerous reasons. Amongst which (a) it cannot be shown to be independent of the biblical writing and/or independent of what Christians at the time were preaching on the streets … that is – there is no indication at all that either Josephus or Tacitus had any information about Jesus other than what they had got from Christian believers themselves … and by the date when Tacitus and Josephus were writing (i.e. circa 90AD to 120AD) it is inconceivable that any Christians of that time would ever have personal first-hand knowledge of meeting or seeing Jesus. IOW – as far as we can honestly tell, there is no indication that Tacitus or Josephus were reporting anything other than anonymous hearsay from Christians at the time who had certainly never met any such person as Jesus.
But on top of that – we do not have any writing from Tacitus or Josephus actually dating from around 100AD. Instead the earliest writing that actually exists from either of those authors is apparently from a whopping and quite ludicrous 1000 years later in the 11th century! And that is frankly 1000 years too late to be even considered as credible evidence at all of things which the authors themselves never personally knew anyway. And as if that was not enough, we must also add the apparent fact that even Biblical Scholars themselves now admit that Christian copyists of the time were in the not infrequent habit of simply changing what original authors had said, wherever they came to believe that the original writing was wrong or where they decided that it failed to mention enough about their various beliefs.
.......... that's not a bad idea.
