dog-on

• Assumed.
  
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  The earliest Christians seemed to believe that the Gospels were written around a real person who was crucified under Pilate.

  Assumed
  
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  The earliest Christians all believed in a 'real' Jesus.

  Assumed.
  
  
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  There is no record of any Christianity that didn't believe in a Jesus that walked the earth.

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  Paul seems to indicate that Jesus was a real person who died in Paul's recent past, probably around the time of Pilate.

I do not think that Paul seems to indicate this at all.

It builds a cumulative case based on assumptions, most of which can be reduced to circular arguments.

:wave:

angelo

The whole story of Jesus is a plethora of assumptions. The burden of proof for his exitence is still with the claimants.

Doug Shaver

No, I don't think that.

I believe he thinks he has enough evidence to support his cumulative case. I cannot imagine why he would have bothered to write the book if he had thought otherwise. Furthermore, although I didn't know it earlier, I heard recently that he had to pay for its publication. Writers don't generally do that unless they really sure, rightly or wrongly, that what they've written makes a lot of good sense.

Now, his confidence is either justified or not, i.e. his evidence either is or is not sufficient to justify his conclusion. And that is so, no matter where he publishes his material. Peer review would certainly enhance his prima facie credibility among people who know what peer review is all about, but it would do nothing to change the logical relationship between his premises and his conclusion, and it would do nothing to affect the truth value of his premises.

As for his motivations for not going for peer review, I'd have to read his comments on that subject again, because I don't remember exactly what he said. And I really don't care all that much, either. I think I'm knowledgeable enough to have a defensible opinion as to whether he has proven what he thinks he has proven. What I think he has proven is that it is reasonable to believe there was probably no historical Jesus, and I don't need any PhD referees to tell me it's OK to think so.

Doug Shaver

Irrelevant. A consensus among scholars is not evidence for anything.

Toto

These so called ancient biographies were also written about mythic figures.

This point is totally irrelevant to the issue.

If you follow the standard dating of modern scholarship, the earliest Christians did not have these gospels. They were written several generations after anyone who would have known Jesus lived.

This point is just clearly wrong.

That depends on how you view docetism. Docetists did not believe in a Jesus who was real in modern terms.

These points are debateable.

Paul does not mention Pilate. If Paul believes in a real Jesus, there is no clear indication of when Jesus lived.

This point is based on one interpretation of one phrase - "Brother of the Lord."

If all of the points are valid? But they are not. At least one is clearly wrong.

avi

"Really?", right back at ya....

Don, what are you writing here?????

Holy Cow!!!
1. The Gospels were a form of ancient biography????
Where did you come up with that? Is the Iliad a form of ancient biography, as well?

If you wish to BELIEVE that the Gospels represent ancient biography, FINE. No problem. But, that is not the way you presented it.

Your English indicates a FACT. T We have no idea whether or not JC and his "disciples" even existed.... A biography, presupposes, a FACTUAL JC. We don't have a factual ANYTHING, about JC, in the New Testament.
John the Baptist???? Really? Are you sure? Lazarus? James, brother of JC??? Where's the EVIDENCE of the existence of their lives, Don? Where are the documents, outside the "holy bible", to substantiate the rumors of their existence?

There can no biography of a fictional character.

2. "The earliest Christians seemed to believe..."
Really?
How do you know what the "earliest" Christians believed or doubted? On which documents do you base this opinion? How do you know but what the earliest Christians were simply disillusioned Jews, (who had been thrown out of Jerusalem by the Roman jack boots,) Jews who then sought to exchange some of their enormous wealth, for an opportunity to attain perpetual life, after death, in Heaven? I hope you will not be quoting from "Irenaeus" when discussing "the earliest Christians".

3. "There is no record of any Christianity that didn't believe in a Jesus that walked the earth"

Umm, what about those sects that imagined Jesus was a phantom......
Sabellianism
Docetism

Didn't Valentinus argue that JC never had a bowel movement, why would he, if he is not a human, but a ghost.... Ghosts don't "walk", they pass right through concrete....

4. "Paul seems to indicate that Jesus was a real person..." Paul, as I understand his writings, seems to indicate, contrary to what you have written, that JC was a ghost. Paul, according to me, did not claim that JC was ALIVE when he met him, au contraire, friend, Paul claimed, in my opinion, that JC was a ghost.

Don, do you know the distinction between a student (Gakusei), and a professor?

Neither do I.

avi

show_no_mercy

There's a sleight of hand going on when NT scholars speak of "the gospels" being a form of ancient biography. Certainly Matt, Luke, John, heretical gospels like Marcion's, the Ebionites, Nazarenes, etc. were thought to be about the life and teachings of Jesus. But Mark almost certainly is not a form of ancient biography. It's probably more about why god abandoned the Jews and let them get their asses handed to them by the Romans in 70 CE. About why god now favors non-Jews/Christians. For Mark, Jesus is the means of getting this sentiment expressed.

In the gospel of Mark, it's Mark himself who is the apocalyptic preacher. Not Jesus; Jesus is just a sockpuppet.

GakuseiDon

No, not assumed. See Dunn:

Since the 1970s, however, the question of the Gospels' genre has come under increasingly close scrutiny, and it has become much clearer that the Gospels are in fact very similar in type to ancient biographies.

Really? Which Christians didn't believe that the Gospels were written around a real person?

Really? Which Christians didn't believe in a 'real' Jesus?

What Christianity didn't believe in a Jesus that walked the earth?

So? I'm not saying "dog-on" affirms this.

Start reducing then, using modern scholarship. Start with the first point of Gospels fitting into the category of "ancient biography".

Toto

What Don refers to is that Richard Burridge wrote a book What Are The Gospels?: A Comparison With Graeco-roman Biography (or via: amazon.co.uk) in which he argued that the gospels were closest in form to a literary type known as bios or "life."

The book was received with a sigh of relief from the NT guild who started to repeat that the gospels were bioi. People who were not paying close attention heard this as "the gospels were ancient biographies" - which could well have been the intent.

Bioi were not confined to lives of historical persons - they were also written about gods. And they cannot be considered biographies in the modern sense, where the biographer attempts some sort of historical accuracy.

Neil Godfrey has challenged Burridge here.

Kapyong

Gday,

Yah ...
There is a notable tendency of HJers to use that careful phrase "walked the earth".

Because that can INCLUDE a phantom or illusory Jesus, a phantasm that really truly walked the earth - implying they are HJers - instead of having them classified as MJers.

As if a phantasm was historical.


Kapyong