spin

You've been taking Gamera lessons, have you?

You haven't shown what you claim, o there is no use to go through you vagueries again. Try to do a serious job for a change.

Oh, you're serious, though not about evidence.

You were just throwing around equivocation as an accusation. Now you retract it. It's strange that you want me to have all the answers, when I just gave you a few dozen questions which I've indicated history can't answer. You are being incoherent here.

That's the game you'd like me to play.

If you can admit that you don't have all the answers, then you should cut the equivocation crap.

Wow. Deep response there, Chris. Bet you were saving that one up.

You didn't start a new thread when you crapped on with aa.

Paul never met a Jesus.

When were they written?

It's strange isn't it that Josephus who didn't believe in messianism (read his comments on the notion, when he talks about the prophecy for Vespasian) finds his text containing two references to the "christ".

This is another thrillingly probable passage, Chris. Tacitus is busy ripping into Nero, suddenly loses the thread and gives his readers a dose of crypto-christian witnessing.

Real helpful there, Chris. Pliny tells us about christians and not much else. That's supposed to be historical evidence for a Jesus? Do you need some help?

When were they written and what do they say about a real live human source for their musings?

When you can show that the gospels are of a genre which bears historical information then you might start by dating them. The simple problem you have to face is that the gospels are unprovenanced, undated works of unknown authors. Now you might complain about Tacitus or Polybius for various reasons, but you know when they were writing, where they were writing, who they were and what opportunities they had for getting the information they wrote about. You even have a lot of corroboration from other contemporary writers and from epigraphy. Yet you still have to deal with each datum extracted from these sources. When you come to the gospels you have no hope.

I've never considered mythicism as serious, Chris.

Everyone can change opinions.

Crap, Chris.

I didn't know that following fashion was a necessity when dealing with evidence.

You need to do a bit better than a sunday school defense of your latest position and a well-used retort.

As I said:

I'd think that if you were to go where the evidence took you on this subject, you wouldn't move.

And your response is evidence of your progress.

:wave:


spin

squiz

Reading the above description, the pope seems to be fighting against his main opponents, which are those pushing such images of Jesus as the cynic sage, or an ethical teacher as opposed to emphasising his divinity. I doubt that he sees Mythical Jesus theories as a threat at all and probably hardly mentions them. I would like to find out, but would probably find it too annoying to read through his book. I read his lecture about the muslims (the one that upset the Muslim world) and was decidedly unimpressed.

It often bugs me, the constant references to how intellectual the pope is. To me, being a true intellectual is a lot more than being able to quote lots of passages and people. True intellectualism implies also being willing to question the basis of your beliefs and approach the truth with an open mind. To me the intellectualism of such theologians as the pope is an edifice built on shifting sands (to paraphrase Jesus). Maybe I will have to read his book after all, to see if this really is the case.

Listening to academic theologians like the pope strengthens my belief that the study of who Jesus was or might have been belongs more in the history departments than in the theology departments of Universities. I am no insider, but I have a strong suspicion that truly open inquiry is not encouraged in many such institutions.

Clivedurdle

Do you mind expanding on this?

Am i making a logical error - minimal or no evidence of an hj, what I see as lots of evidence of mythical ideas, therefore myth becomes a logical explanation.

enoch007

But when are we going to search for the historic Pope Benedict, or should we examine the periods before or after he joined the Hitler Youth?

Chris Weimer

spin, do you have anything useful to say? Otherwise you've become a mirror of aa on this issue.

Toto

MOD ADVISORY

The comments here are getting close to being editable. You all might want to take a breath and calm down a bit.

Toto

spin

Yes, Chris. Don't go beyond the evidence into belief and hold firmly to what the evidence indicates.

I can't see how you got that idea, but I can see how you are the mirror to aa. He believes that Jesus was not real, while you believe he was. I merely say you have both gone beyond the evidence. You're willing to see this with regard to aa, but not regarding yourself.

People here have only been looking at the dichotomy between MJer and HJer, but this adversarial position hides the range of possibilities. While I may be agnostic on the issue of Jesus's existence, I have no problem seeing the possibility that Jesus came into existence in a similar manner to Ebion, who Tertullian, Hippolytus and Epiphanius all believed was real. If I were to believe this position, I would be neither MJer nor HJer.


spin

Chris Weimer

Evidence itself is nothing without a supporting framework, spin. Every historian knows that.

Rubbish criteria, for one?

I don't "believe" he was real in the sense that aa was doing. That's pure garbage. I've evaluated the evidence and taken the stance that it's more probable that he existed. To state that that's belief is an abuse of the English language.

I've placed the evidence in a supporting framework, and it fits. You haven't. You just take what's there and sit on it.

Possibilities are possibilities, spin. Ever heard of cargo cults? Are you familiar with the Petronian Question?

Gamera

You mean reading current research in historiography as opposed to naive early 20th century fluff? Why, thank you spin for noticing.

Gamera

"In the 448-page tome, Benedict takes on half a century of revisionist scholars who he believes threaten the Roman Catholic faith by distorting the true nature of Christ as both man and God. He calls on readers to reacquaint themselves with "the real Jesus," the Jesus presented in the Gospels.

None of this postmodern nonsense, he writes, that regards Jesus as something less than divine. Introducing doubts undercuts the essence of Christianity, the pope says. "

It's funny how extremes meet.

Like most critics of postmodernism, the Pope apparently hasn't read much (if any) postmodern thought. There is no contradiction between postmodernism, which is a tool for deconstructing, i.e., understanding, texts, particularly historical texts, and faith in the gospels. I can't think of a bigger non sequitur. It's like getting upset about numismatics for analyzing a 1st century coin.