Antipope Innocent II

[QUOTE=Toto;4797467]That he's a trained historian I realise. My idea of a professional historian is someone who holds a research and/or teaching position at an accredited university.

It doesn't get us very far. We don't know for certain, for example, why Alaric decided to sack Rome in 410 when he'd backed away from doing so at least once before. We can guess, but we don't know. So does this mean we simply say we don't know or can we explore what may have been his motives and present a case for which possible motives seem (to us) to be most likely?

Naturally, historians do the latter and do it all the time. Can these questions ever be settled for certain? Of course not. But to say "We can't know for certain so we can't adopt any position at all" is ridiculous.

I thought it was because Bultmann decreed that the question couldn't be considered and everyone obeyed.

I'm interpreting it as "unable to be defended". A great many other positions other than agnosticism on the question can be defended.

Ones I'm sure you'd decide were invalid.

See?

Usually as a last resort.

I read his paper in S.E. Porter's The Pauline Canon a while back.

Political action to stop them trying to impose their ideas on the wider society. What they do to themselves is their business. I find trying to convince them everything they believe and hold dear is usually futile. I learned this from experience during my own adolescent atheist phase.

Toto

This is a different question. We know that Alaric sacked Rome with reasonable certainty, and we can speculate about motives.

But do we know if Socrates existed or was a literary character? We don't, but people don't worry about it. We don't have enough real information to even speculate.

See how you are avoiding the question? There are no well grounded historicist works that examine the question. I've looked for them. There are a lot of historicist works that assume that Jesus existed, or that rebut particular mythicist propositions, or examine the question of what sort of person Jesus was, given that he existed. So why is it so reasonable to assume that Jesus existed?

A good lawyer can defend anyone who can pay his or her fee. I am talking about a seriously respectable defense.

Avoiding the question again. You might as well concede that you can't answer the question.

So the issue becomes why are you so wrought up about this? You came to this board with a chip on your shoulder, and your first posts were just insults to mythicists. But you can't even articulate a defense for the historicist position.

Antipope Innocent II

Plenty of people have a position on the subject and are prepared to defend it. Ditto for Alaric's motives. Ditto for the existence of Apollonius of Tyana. And for the existence of Jesus. To pretend that agnosticism is the only defensible position on all these questions just because we can't get a definitive answer is rather absurd.

See how I added a smiley? Sorry, but I was finishing a long day at work and didn't have time for more than a quick joke.

There aren't many recent peer-reviewed books on the merits or otherwise of the "swoon theory" either.

Because it's a reasonable assumption to make, given the lack of a good , scholarly reason to assume otherwise.


I must have missed the peer reviewed works that do that, given that these mythicist positions have been off the academic radar for many decades.

Because of the lack of any good reason to think he didn't. Take the fact that the opponents of Christianity never claimed Jesus didn't exist. They said he was a heretic, a fool, a charlatan etc. But never that he didn't exist. Didn't they notice that the original form of Christianity worshipped a purely mythic/non-earthly Jesus? Or did they forget? If we had a Celsus or Trypho poking Christians in the eye with reminders of how they had turned a mythic Jesus into an historical one or pointing out the mythic Jesus "heretics" in their midst, we'd have an excellent reason to reject the assumption that he existed.

"Respectable" by what criteria? I don't agree with Apologists on the miracles of Jesus or the Resurrection, but I can see that many of them can make a valid defence of their position.

I'll concede that I wanted to get out of the office and get home. And answering that massive question would take weeks if not months to do, as you well knew when you asked it. Scholars devote years of their lives to trying to frame an answer to that question, yet you ask it of me at the end of a post and then crow when I don't give you a detailed response?

Beware psycho-analysis via modem. I would have thought my posts on this subject have been quite light hearted. Hardly "wrought up". Sure you aren't projecting here old son?

See above. *Raises hand* Please sir - may I now go and eat my dinner or will that be weirdly (mis)interpreted as cravenly fleeing from your excoriating interrogation of the heretic?

cajela

OK, I read you as saying that calling him "Yeshua" assumes that he spoke Aramaic; and further that we don't actually know that he spoke Aramaic. If he didn't exist, then the Greek is the original. (Do we know that the gospel writers originally wrote it in Greek?) So, to presume that he was called Yeshua is equivalent to presuming that he existed? Have I understood you?

cajela

Antipope, a question for you. I've seen it claimed here that getting peer reviewed publications in biblical scholarship is tricky because the field is dominated by practicing Christians. Seminary scholars dominate, and so on. Do you believe this is true? What's your specialty as a historian?

I've skimmed some of the Doherty material, and it seems plausible to argue that a mystery religion doesn't need a real person behind it. I've also read some threads here, and found that the Christian claims of overwhelming evidence are rubbish. I was a bit surprised to find how little there is. As I understand it, there's pretty much nothing outside the Bible itself that is indisputable. Evidence of the existence of Christians, yes, sure - I also read my Tacitus & Pliny in high school Latin & Ancient History. But evidence of the actual Jesus character, nothing.

To be honest, I've probably formed most of my opinions from Monty Python's Life of Brian. I imagine there probably was a historical Jesus/Yeshua in among all the other ranting prophets. Blessed are the cheesemakers.

spin

If he existed, he may have been called Ihsous, Yeshu, or Ye(ho)shua, given that all three languages were used in Judea and these forms are attested in literature. However, all we have are texts which use only Ihsous and no hints to get beyond them to connect the content of the texts to any person or events once in the real world.

If you decide, for example, to call him Yeshu, you're tacitly adding another layer of opacity to any research you might do.

If anyone knows how we can get beyond the text to a reality, no-one has come forward on the matter yet. It's all only assumption.

If anyone wants answers not based on evidence, I'm not the one to ask.


spin

Toto

Cite just one.

One advantage of a message board, as opposed to a live debate, is that you can refrain from posting until you have something to say. You throw out charges with a lot of braggadicio but you can't back them up. May I suggest that you have no obligation to give me an instant answer? That I don't regard you as a heretic, but as someone who has taken an overly dogmatic position with insufficient thought or research? And that returning quips does nothing to disabuse me of that opinion?

aa5874

According to Irenaeus in 'Against Heresies', there were Christians who believed Jesus was a phantom, that is, Jesus was not a real person, was never born, but descended from heaven as some god or sprit ,only appearing to be human.

As early as the 2nd century Valentinus, a Christian, taught that Christ was entirely of some type of spiritual material and had no earthly parents whatsoever.

Also, there was Marcion, in the 2nd century, a Christian and founder of the Marcionites, who claimed that the Gospels were almost entirely corrupted, except for some parts of gLuke. He, too, claimed Jesus was never born, in effect, all the events surrounding the childhood of Jesus in the NT are false. Jesus was some kind of spirit or god that appeared to be a human.

The historicity of Jesus was denied by many Christians as early as the 2nd century according to Irenaeus, see book 1 of Against Heresies for the non-human versions of Jesus by Christians.

Minimalist

There is never a good reason to assume facts that are not in evidence.

Try to start without preconceived notions.

andrewcriddle

Just to clarify: by fictional I don't mean that Apollonius did not exist (He did). I mean that most of what Philostratus says about him was made up by Philostratus.

We don't know for certain that the life is fictional (although some of the really weird incidents seem very very unlikely to be entirely historically accurate).

However Philostratus uses otherwise unknown alleged sources for the life of Apollonius to write an improbable story substantially different from what seems to have been the earliest traditions about him.

See this discussion by the Apollonius scholar Maria Dzielska http://www.history.snn.gr/apollonius.html

Andrew Criddle