While I certainly appreciate as much information as I can get, I think Bede did a much more thorough job of addressing the sources than Lance did. Wouldn't you agree?

I think that Bede has done a good job of tracking down all those would-be chroniclers of Jesus Christ. Most of them were either too far away in space, too far away in time, or both.

However, Michael Turton's reports on some of these gentlemen agree on their not liking the Jews very much -- I wonder what they tended to think. I can guess as to possible objections: denying the Gods, believing themselves to be the Chosen People, mutilating their members of maleness, refusing to eat pork, ...

Lance

Notice how the "too far away in time" argument somehow doesn't seem to apply to Christianity. Here we're dealing with original source material, not copies of "lost manuscripts" and some date about the same range.

Christian manuscripts should be held to the same standard, but don't expect Bede to. And thank you Michael for providing a little more flushing to that list. Bede excels casually forgetting to put significant information in, seen it before, expect it now.

Gee Lance, I find your attack on Bede for "forgetting to put significant information in" quite surprising since you failed to put any significant information in.

Are you sure we have original manuscripts for all of the above authors? Please provide a source for that.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[This message has been edited by Layman (edited May 07, 2001).]

Lance

Layman: You apparently mis-understood my intent just a bit. Bede has a tendenancy to attempt to discredit spuriously anything that might relate to Christianity. I won't call him a flaming apologist, but close. Lets call it "deception by ommission". Like I said, seen it before, expect it now.

The original intent before Bede jumped in was just to show there were significant ancient sources that could have had something to say. Most certainly the naturalists should have been all over the earth-shaking (literally) events in Palestine. Yet they weren't.

In terms of the Clintonista regime, Bede spins with the best of them.

No. I don't understand. Why? Because you make no sense.

You chided Bede for allegedly withholding information about the 42 references you raised. However, you provided absolutely no biographical information about those very same scholars.

Oh, excuse me. Thought this was the room
for questions to Mr. Doherty. Didn't mean
to stumble into another Lance/Layman/Nomad
et al pissing match!

"Abuse is down the hall!" - Monty Python

Guilty as charged. But leave Nomad out of this one. He hasn't even posted on this thread Kosh.

Getting back on topic
On the Jesus Puzzle debate: I concur with Ish. In fact I go even further - are paragraphs 2-4 a joke? And then I read at the end:
Well there we go: ED is wrong already. I disagree with his opinion and generalisations and I am not a fundamentalist.
Also I certainly take offense at "totally uncritical".

It is of course up to Nomad as to whether he is prepared to accept such an opinion as a basis for the debate, but I know I wouldn't.

Toto

Excuse me, but would there be any point to the debate if you and Nomad didn't disagree with him?

The first two paragraphs simply recount the well-known problems with documentation of Christianity. The language may be a bit rough for your delicate sensibilities, but do you disagree that there are no well-preserved documents from before the 2nd century? There are various ways to deal with that, but it does remain a problem.

And there are people who are totally uncritical fundamentalists, and a debate with them would be futile. You've just said that you are not a fundamentalist, so what is your problem?



[This message has been edited by Toto (edited May 08, 2001).]