Minimalist

Might have been at Atheist Forums.com. I'll see if I can do a search and find it.



Oops - I was wrong. Its right in here.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....70#post6685370

In Abe's second paragraph.

mountainman

Thanks Minimalist (and Abe) !

Abe seems to put a slant on the report.
But anyway, here it is ...


So Erhman votes for the HJ hobby horse.



If true, this comment does not relect well on Ehrman.



Such comments reflect badly - both on the apologists and Erhman.




This is like Momiglioano's the INSIDERS and the OUTSIDERS.
The INSIDERS are the critical scholars who are riding the HJ hobby horses.
The OUTSIDERS are questioning that horse.


And of course, these often cited "critical scholars" who tend to think differently about the HJ "postulate", are , according to Momigliano, the INSIDERS. And common sense teaches us that outsiders must not tell insiders what they should do.



Is this true?

I still can't believe Ehrman would say something like that.
Did he mention the term "historicity" at all in this interview?

Thanks again Minimalist for digging this out.


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

Ehrman backtracked on that a bit, but he did say it.

mountainman

I think the question will be whether he continues to rely on that answer again and again to the same question in the future, without explaining himself. Caesar has a great measure of historicity. Jesus has an relatively small amount of historicity. I cant see Erhman avoiding this question for too long in the future. He is running with a postulate after all.

Toto

I was thinking of some other notable scholar backtracking on a similar statement.

The entire Ehrman interview is here, with comments.

Minimalist

Ehrman also professed belief in the watered-down variant of the Testimoniam Flavianum....which is another dent in his armor.

mountainman

Thanks Toto.

The comments were all very interesting. I think Steven Carr has said it all in his contributions there (nice one), although the conclusion of the first comment in that list basically summarises it too.

mountainman

Ah yes. Apologetic defence attorney stuff:

The TF may not be an apple (genuine),
but the TF is certainly not a lemon (fraudulent),
therefore the TF is an orange (partial fraud).

Its a fruitsalad for the "critical scholars".
They are the insiders.
They defend it from the inside out.

Frank

Caesar never claimed to defy the laws of nature, not to mention there are numerous sources on Caesar (and many of them are far from flattering). Whether or not he may have embellished the events in Gaul isn't a very important fact. We know he conquered Gaul, we know he ruled Rome, we have fragments of manuscripts, a number of works from famous authors such as Cicero, etc. Some manuscripts were found (ironically) in the Vatican library (such as works by Cicero, which were written over by monks strangely enough).

So we have plenty on Caesar, and plenty on the Romans (not to mention plenty of sources detailing their plunder from their former provinces), whereas we don't even have a single original fragment for any New Testament manuscript. Nonetheless, a myth theory (as in Jesus never existed) is certainly speculative. Even though everything we have on this man dates to the second century and beyond, we probably have enough to say there was likely a Christian church in the first century (at least late first century). Once we get about 40 or 50 years past these claimed events, the sources become more numerous (and this is what we'd expect from movement that had such humble beginnings, in that era, when information dissemination was much slower than it is today). So it's hard to imagine there isn't a kernel of truth (i.e. someone named Jesus, or someone like Jesus, who was likely a Palestinian sage of some sort, could have very well existed ... it's just unlikely he was the son of the god of the universe, or maybe the multiverse, and walked on water, and all the other myths that became associated with him).

However, as guys like Ehrman point out, any number of alternative theories are far more likely than the events as claimed (including an outright Jesus myth theory, albeit speculative).

Roger Pearse

Never did an augury? He was pontifex maximus, you know.

I don't think we have any "original fragments" -- I presume you mean portions of the autograph? -- from any ancient literary work, tho. The manuscripts of Caesar are far later and fewer than those of the NT; indeed the same goes for every source we might use here.

Here are some notes that I made on the manuscripts of Caesar's (few) surviving works. Aulus Gellius often refers to other works, which have not come down to us.

Not that this indicates that the *text* is particularly unreliable; merely that we don't want to make that kind of argument in a discussion about reliability of *content*.

During the Dark Ages parchment from ancient books was reused. This was particularly the case at some Italian monasteries, that had no use for treatises on Republican government by long dead people like Cicero, but did need a new copy of the letters of a saint. The process has preserved for us a considerable amount of material that would otherwise have been lost. The remains of the De republica of Cicero and the Letters of Fronto spring to mind. These palimpsests were discovered in the early 19th century by Angelo Mai, who was first the librarian at the Ambrosian library in Milan, and then at the Vatican library.

All the best,

Roger Pearse