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Old 06-10-2013, 11:03 PM   #71
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Some possibilities are going to be more probable than others. But in this case, there might not be enough information to judge probabilities.


,
Your's is a minority claim.
(Jeffrey sure failed here.)

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While a certain degree will never be known, there is a foundation with two facts that have almost a complete consensus.

His baptism by John.
Crucifiction.
And four legs good, two legs bad.

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There is no real debate at all for a Historical Jesus.

Stomp your feet all you want, it wont change unbiased scholarships.
Maybe I could get one of these scholarships.
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Old 06-10-2013, 11:44 PM   #72
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I want to find the complete consensus that there was a 'crucifiction'
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Old 06-10-2013, 11:53 PM   #73
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Toto, the issue I have is the seeming tendency to dismiss the early Christian writings as "fiction" without attempting to make any sense of them. The first problem is that even fictional works bear some relevance to history, often including historical people, places and events. The second problem is that it seems improbable on the face that the gospels are any sort of fictional genre. .
[Edit] I made no claims about genre and really don't care. I merely noted that the mainstream NT belief is the "historical kernel" which sees the stories in the gospels as overwritings of actual historical events or relationships via the OT and other things, and that what Jesus said and did has to be recovered out of that overwriting. That's the position you're adopting in this thread. I explained why it was wrong. If you have no response, just say that.

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Old 06-11-2013, 12:11 AM   #74
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[Edit]
[Edit] I think it's more like a variety of groundhog day. Whenever Abe drives by the day is reset.
Crucifixion

Baptism

Nazareth
(On self ban or exile, while catching up to reality... and back again)
Crucifixion

Baptism

Nazareth
(On self ban or exile, while catching up to reality... and back again)
Crucifixion

Baptism

Nazareth
(On self ban or exile, while catching up to reality... and back again)

This is just another example of hobby horse piloting, but in repeat installments with a thankful rest in between. Eventually, we get the high school historiography after rehearsing a comic version of the Jesus seminar. But I don't see it as trolling.
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Old 06-11-2013, 05:58 AM   #75
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You and Robert Price are postmodernists, and postmodernists tend to think all possibilities are of equal weight.
Abe, Please read at least one postmodern philosopher of history. They most certainly do NOT think all possibilities have equal weight. What they DO think is that present day reconstructions of the past are influenced by a phenomenon called the episteme, into which are poured all the experiences that the inhabitants of the world.

Trajan, in his letter to Pliny the Younger about the Christians, called it the "spirit of this age." So, all that has occurred since the historical event happened influences any modern reconstructions of a past historical event.

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I see it as a matter of the fundamental difference between those who value [sure] knowledge of the truth and those who value something else.
I'd recommend Alun Maslow's, Deconstructing History.

According to Munslow, pretty much all modern secular historians have given up the notion that we can reconstruct THE true history of an event, and acknowledge that the past is always interpreted through a lens in the present. Opinion varies as to how to deal with that realization.
Thanks, DCHindley. The philosophical differences are most relevant and they are worth a full discussion. I am of the modernist camp, deeply suspicious of the postmodernist attacks on the scholarly attempts to estimate the truth. I read the introduction to Deconstructing History and it is as you said. The author believes that any historian's attempt to portray a narrative of the past, even so-called "facts," is riddled with the historian's own personality. My own stated opinion is about the de facto effect of this perspective--all possibilities are treated as equals. A postmodernist historian will not say this explicitly, but neither will she or he rate one possibility as more probable than another, as "reality" is merely subjective.

I may read the full book by Alun Maslow. I most certainly will if you agree to read Tower of Babel: Evidence Against the New Creationism (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Robert T. Pennock. It is about how the Intelligent Design movement has employed postmodernist rhetoric in an attempt to cast another field of history into greater doubt.
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Old 06-11-2013, 08:12 AM   #76
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I read Tower of Babel: Evidence Against the New Creationism (or via: amazon.co.uk) when it first came out. It is a very good book. Searching on Amazon shows that Pennock discusses the Creationist use of postmodernist buzz words at pages 211-212, while making clear that Creationists do not accept a central concept of postmodernism because they do think that there is a source of absolute truth - the Word of God embodied in the Holy Bible. Their use of postmodernist rhetoric appears to be just a political tactic.
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Old 06-11-2013, 08:24 AM   #77
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I read Tower of Babel: Evidence Against the New Creationism (or via: amazon.co.uk) when it first came out. It is a very good book. Searching on Amazon shows that Pennock discusses the Creationist use of postmodernist buzz words at pages 211-212, while making clear that Creationists do not accept a central concept of postmodernism because they do think that there is a source of absolute truth - the Word of God embodied in the Holy Bible. Their use of postmodernist rhetoric appears to be just a political tactic.
I think you are right.
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Old 06-11-2013, 09:21 AM   #78
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The HJ/MJ argument is not about absolute truth and never was. It was always about the evidence from antiquity.

The present available evidence from antiquity stongly support the MJ argument by far.

There is simply no actual evidence for HJ of Nazareth because the sources which mention Jesus of Nazareth are admitted by HJers to be not credible--filled with fiction and implausibities.

Ehrman in "Did Jesus Exist?" page 182 did confirm and argue as absolute truth that "the New Testament accounts of Jesus are filled with discrepancies and contradictions in matters both large and small".

Not only are the miracles products of fiction and implausibility but Ehrman argues that the Triumphal entry and the prisonner exchange of Barabbas are most likely fiction.

Virtually every account of Jesus is not historical or could not have happened.

The HJ argument must rely on logical fallacies or faith.
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