Doug Shaver

I was never among the early Christians, but when I was a Christian, those of us who believed in the virgin birth assumed it was a miracle. We thought it was accomplished the same way that the creation of the universe ex nihilo was accomplished -- by the omnipotent divine power. God wanted it to happen, he decided it would happen, and that was sufficient to make it happen.

aa5874

I can't EXPLAIN why people write Fiction stories. I CAN'T explain Myth fables.

I ONLY deal with what is written. I ONLY deal with the written EVIDENCE from antiquity.

I ONLY know people write MYTH. Can you EXPLAIN Marcion's PHANTOM, Plutarch's "Romulus" or "Harry Potter" and Superman?

The statements about the conception of Jesus are EXTREMELY CLEAR and UNAMBIGUOUS. Jesus was the Child of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin in gMatthew and gLuke and there is NO NEED to read "between the lines".

ApostateAbe has introduced the Gospels as EVIDENCE that Jesus was just a man but the very Gospels have described Jesus as the Child of a Ghost.

In effect, we have before us what is similar to PERJURY in a court trial where evidence that is claimed to show Jesus was a man when examined (cross-examined) ADMITS Jesus was a Child of a Holy Ghost.

The evidence put forward by ApostateAbe would be THROWN out of the courts as PERJURY and the "witness" may be INCARCERATED.

It is just EXTREMELY disingenuous for ApostateAbe to introduce the Gospels as evidence that Jesus was just a man when the Gospels show that Jesus was just a GHOST and was supposedly witnessed ACTING like a Ghost.

Now, it is the author of gLuke who has EXPLAINED how the HOLY thing was produced. I don't have to explain anything. The authors of the stories EXPLAINED it all.

In gLuke Mary the Virgin ASKED the very same question.

"HOW SHALL THIS BE SEEING I KNOW NOT A MAN?

Luke 1.26-35 The author of gLuke has EXPLAINED how a Holy Ghost can impregnate a Virgin in his MYTH fable and it is PRECISELY for his EXPLANATION why it can be THEORISED that the NT CANON is NOT about actual history but about BELIEF in MYTH.

jakejonesiv

That is the best answer!

jakejonesiv

If the Jesus stories are so easy for you to understand, you would would be able to explain them.

Jake

JoeWallack

JW:
Regarding Criterion of Embarrassment in general, everyone would agree that "Mark's" Jesus is more embarrassed than "Luke's". So would that mean that in general "Mark" is more historical than "Luke"? AA?



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

ApostateAbe

OK, Joseph, cool, I will answer your questions. First, I would like to make the point that a methodology stands or falls based on whether or not it has the tendency to lead one to a set of probable conclusions (or other desirable positions), not on its affinity with Christian apologists. If Christian Bible Scholars use Argument to the Best Explanation (which they generally don't, except with a very loose definition of "plausible"), then I don't think it would make a difference.

Your first question was, "What criteria does AA use from Historical method other than Argument to the Best Explanation (ABE)?"

My answer is that ABE is really the only methodology that I use. If there are other methodologies or criteria that are also legit, then I would take them to be variations or subsets of ABE.

Your second question was, "ABE says there has to be significant difference between competing conclusions for historicity. AA says the conclusion only has to be the best one for historicity. So which is it AA?"

I haven't made a distinction, so I could go with one or the other. Typically, the best explanation really is the explanation that goes well above and beyond all of the competing explanations in terms of the criteria, since there is only one objective reality. There could be a few exceptions to that, so I think it would be better to stick with the latter. I think the "best" explanation, rather than the "excessively best" explanation, should be the relevant point. But, if you really prefer, then we can stick with the formulation by McCullagh and go with the former.

ApostateAbe

I think ABE helps us get into the mindset that it is not necessarily about placing trust in the character of the author or the credo of the account. Instead, it is about finding the most probable hypotheses to explain what he wrote. So, I don't think it would be so relevant to figure out exactly how often Mark writes fiction or passes along mere myth. If you can show that the pattern of Mark was that he wrote material that was otherwise entirely fictional, then that would be a relevant point for a rival explanation that Jesus was merely myth. As it stands, though, it seems that Mark really was integrating at least some historical elements into his account--John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Pharisees, Sadducees, Nazareth, Peter, James, John, and the Passover in Jerusalem. I am not saying that Jesus is necessarily a part of this set of historical elements, but that we need to make judgments of historicity of this or that on a case-by-case basis. Mark integrated a lot of merely-mythical/fictional elements into his account, too.

avi

I cannot understand why others on the forum write such derogatory statements about your posts.

I find them extraordinarily clear, well documented, and explicit. Thank you, aa, job well done, from my perspective.

Doug, perhaps I have misunderstood aa's replies in this thread, and elsewhere, but your comment strikes me as off the mark.

I did not interpret aa's comments to mean that one sifts through the evidence until there is a quantity sufficient to support a particular perspective.

I interpreted his comment as meaning that ALL the evidence, on any topic of inquiry, is a tad difficult to imagine. Can we count ALL the grains of sand at the beach?

I am satisfied to learn that engineers call sand anything between 0.074 and 2 millimeter, or between a U.S. standard #200 sieve and a #10 sieve.

How much evidence does one require to assign a mythical character to a work of fiction? Is Paul Bunyan real or fictional? Do I really require ALL the evidence to assert a fictional nature to Babe the blue ox?

What aa5874 has done, to my satisfaction, is demonstrate from the gospels, the fictional nature of JC. That suffices for my taste. I require no additional information. As soon as I read in the Muslim doctrines, that Mohammed flew off to Heaven on a camel, to meet with God, I tune out.

Maybe the Gospels have some germ of truth within them, just as War and Peace has some genuine historical characters. The novel is still a work of fiction, not fact. The gospels are obviously fictional. People don't walk on water, Doug. End of story. I don't need ALL the evidence to draw that conclusion.

avi

Toto

Correct me if I am wrong, but you have no training in history beyond a few undergraduate courses, no training in historical methodology, and only encountered the idea of "argument to the best explanation" in the course of an internet debate.

Your evolving account of the meaning of ABE keeps wandering away from any consideration of real evidence.

What do you think you are doing? Why should any of us accept your definitions? Does anyone else in the world share them?

That seems too obvious. Mark wrote about supernatural events at every turn. Mark wrote about the cleansing of the Temple, which could not have occurred as described, and a trial that violated every rule that we know about except the rule that dramatic events on stage need to be fit into a single day. :huh:

Atheos

Do you have any reason to believe people really spent much critical thinking on this subject? Nobody actually had any direct dealings with this "Holy Ghost", so nobody really knew what it was capable of doing. People became convinced on nothing more than the say-so of one or more charismatic evangelists. This method of indoctrination still works today in spite of the readily available Internet where urban legends can quickly be researched.

Parallels? Legends of gods impregnating women were around a long time before the fanciful virgin birth narratives found in GMatt and GLuke. I fail to see why one would think there was anything extraordinary here.

Not quoted from same post, but...
What's to explain? God magically impregnates human (virgin) female. It's magic, just like all the magic things Jesus the Magic Jew does. God can do anything. Done. Is this really that difficult? :huh: