spin

I think you need to read the linked blog in the o.p.

outhouse

sorry you dont appriciate my limited view of the historicty of jesus

ive done a little homework

GakuseiDon

Hi Rick, interesting comments, and I can appreciate where you are coming from. I've always thought that there is so little verifiable evidence for Jesus that he may as well not existed. It's like trying to build a 3D image built on a stick figure: any reconstruction is almost certainly wrong. So I've never been far away from Jesus agnosticism myself.

But I've always differentiated between the existence of a historical Jesus and knowing anything about what he did and said.

Paul arguably referred to a man crucified in Paul's recent past. That to me is enough to say, "Yes, there was a historical Jesus", even if it is an (almost!) empty statement. Does your new position involve a change in how you view and understand Paul?

stephan huller

Paul is the weakest argument possible for the historical Jesus as the Marcionites were the first authorities on the letters and they knew Jesus to have been wholly divine.

spin

I don't appreciate untinged assertions generally.

The question is about epistemology: how do you know whatever it is you claim to know? Assertions like yours are non-starters.

GakuseiDon

I think this is where Bayes Theorem will be useful, since it will spell out the premises that inform a decision.

In fact, I think a good exercise would be to do something along those lines. There might be a lot more common ground between historicists, mythicists and agnostics than we think.

For example:

IF [a certain subset of Paul's writings] is genuine to a Paul writing around 50 CE, THEN it is enough to establish there was a historical Jesus.

So your comment above would feed into that, and, while you and I would disagree, then at least we know what we disagree over ("genuine to Paul"), even while we both may agree with the truth of the conditional statement.

outhouse

a years worth of constant reading, vid's on historicity, TV, and even wiki despite its lack of accuracy in some cases. I follow Carrier more then most, but dont stand behind any one scholar


historical jesus is fascinating, there is so little historicity it snot hard to pick up on the basics quickly.

And since most scholars disagree with one another, a personal opinion is just that.

Im even worse with the history of israel

spin

Paul never met a Jesus. The best one can get is an apologetic reading of Gal 1:19 that translates τον αδελφον του κυριου to mean "biological brother of Jesus", when that requires deciding that αδελφον must be biological despite Paul's usual usage and that κυριου must mean "Jesus" when Paul is happy to cite from the LXX when κυριος clearly means god. The "brother of the lord" may mean "community leader" or some such position of status.

Paul gives no indication that the people in Jerusalem knew anything about Jesus before he told them and they certainly didn't act as though they had better knowledge of Jesus than Paul, given their adherence to the practice of the law.

What people later did with what Paul said is irrelevant to understanding Paul. They could easily be eisegeting on Paul. You can get no evidence about a Jesus in the real world from Paul. He gives no knowledge of having any.

spin

Other people's opinions are still only opinions. You need to be able to provide evidence for your claims.

outhouse

do you personaly feel the mythers have a leg to stand on?