show_no_mercy

Let's see:

How many Hindu biologists are there?
How many Hindu climate scientists are there?
How many Hindu New Testament scholars are there?

How many Muslim biologists are there?
How many Muslim climate scientists are there?
How many Muslim New Testament scholars are there?

Already we have a bias in the field, which damages the strength and objectivity of the consensus. This doesn't mean that we can reject the consensus out of hand, but it does make it a bit more suspect than other fields.

Then there's also this:

There doesn't seem to be any low hanging fruit in historical Jesus research, and it's hard to not point out that many areas of Christian scholarship are decidedly run by venal interests (i.e. signing faith statements as a requisite for employment and research at certain Bible colleges).

aa5874

The same verse says Jesus was God's Son.

God's Son has NO human father. You keep forgetting we are dealing with Myth Fables.

GOD put his Son in the Woman's 'belly'.

Galatians 4:4 KJV Please, we are dealing with Myth Fables about Spirits, Gods, Devils and Angels. The Pauline writings are NOT history--the Bible is NOT a history book.

Please, just go get a history book for your Jesus if he was NOT the Son of a Ghost.

You can't find any????

Grog

He says that they added nothing to his gospel.

Obviously, (if we acept Paul is genuine, etc), Paul knew something about Jesus-beliefs. We don't know what he heard before his alleged conversion and we don't know what he might have learned from Peter, James, and John. We only know what Paul tells us about his beliefs. We can assume that IF there was a historical Jesus that Paul would have learned about those events. If that was the case, we would expect Paul to mention facts and details in his letters. If the Gospel story were even a little related to what actually happened to Jesus under Pilate, Paul would have already heard that story, it would be the story uniting the community that Paul claims to have persecuted. Exactly what we would expect is what we don't find in Paul's writing. The amazing story so powerful that it quickly spread throughout the mediterranean is barely referenced in the writings of the apostle who is most credited with spreading that very Jesus-belief.

James The Least

Indeed, the main reason why Galileo got a job as a mathematics professor was so that he could teach student doctors how to cast horoscopes.

James The Least

Then you haven't been reading either the NT or Mythicism very closely.

Yes, that is a necessity for existing, modern doomsday cults. But for ancient ones also? Besides, Christianity wasn't quite a doomsday cult. It was a lot of different things to different people. The doomsday aspect being only one of many.

The reason why Mark's gospel ends with the women telling no one about the empty tomb? To explain why nobody could remember hearing about it.

Logical

Same applies to many fields of science. Didn't stop us from correcting the course. Sometimes though the course was correct to begin with. The ancients weren't wrong about EVERYTHING.

I've seen enough dissecting and analysis of the Bible and a range of expert opinions starting with the German schools of Biblical criticism to feel otherwise. This has been going on longer than we've had Evolution in biology.

It's unreasonable, rather ridiculous, to expect or demand scientific evidence in the field of history.

ApostateAbe

I don't know any sound reason why the sociological patterns concerning doomsday cults of ancient times should be considerably different from modern times, but the proposition can nevertheless be made, as many aspects of society really did change going from ancient to modern.

My argument can be expressed in terms of a more-general sociological pattern: "personality cult," which in this case I define as a group of people who try their best to adhere to the perceived will of a human founder. To be more generous, the "human founder" can be merely a reputed founder who was reputedly human. Again, in all cases that we know about, the reputedly-human founder was an actual human being, and this includes historical personality cults of the distant past and around the world. In other words, there are no reputed-human founders of personality cults who are mere myths.

One way or the other, it is nearly impossible to make sense of human social behavior of the ancient past except in terms of the knowledge of human behavior we have in the present and recent past. Historical arguments concerning ancient human behavior must either fit known widespread patterns of human behavior or supply a very strong argument to make up for the lack of plausibility.

Edit, one more thing: modern doomsday cults are likewise many things in addition to a doomsday cult. A pretty good profile of a modern doomsday cult is the documentary End of the World Cult on YouTube.



That is Part 1, and the remaining parts are also online.

Grog

You are referring to a "myther position" that doesn't exist. The only position that "mythers" agree on is that Jesus didn't exist. My position is fairly limited to skepticism about a man crucified by Pilate as the founder or inspiration for Christianity.

Many of your assumptions about the "myther" position in regards to what Paul says, I think, upon consideration, you will find unfounded. For example:

--I do believe that there was a belief that Jesus became man and that he was "of the seed of David."

--I do not believe this event happened in history, but I do believe Paul thought so. He had no historical memory of that event. He had heard no historical recounting of that event. But because Jesus was the Savior, he was, by Paul's definition "of the seed of David." Because atonement had to be by human sacrifice (for some reason this particular God expected that), Jesus was "born of woman." That's all Paul knows. We don't know and can't say that Paul knew more because he doesn't say more. (This is from Galatians, by the way, and I am not arguing for interpolation.)

--I accept the reading of "brother of the Lord" that has been amply demonstrated on this site. To tell you the truth, until Ehrman's book came up, this was a key sticking point for me. It really was the one bit of evidence that I had a hard time with and could only shrug and say, yeah, but the weight of everything else goes against that one phrase.

--I believe that 1 Cor 2:8 refers to Jesus crucified by elemental powers, not by the Romans. As evidence that I don't think Paul knows of a crucifixion by Rome, I hold up Romans 13:1-7 which is admitted in the scholarly literature to be difficult to understand. You can read on some of that here in Neil Elliott's book, Arrogance of Nations.

--It is my position that we can understand Romans 13:1-7 better from a mythicist point of view than we can from a historicist POV. (For a discussion on "elemental powers" see Lee, Interpreting the Demonic Powers in Pauline Thought, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 12, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1970), pp. 54-69Published)

A mythicist POV explains:

--Why Paul makes no specific mention of details of the life and teachings of Jesus.

--Why Paul extols the virtues of the civil authorities as being "from God" and holding "no terror for those who do good."

--Why Paul appeals only to scripture and revelation as his sources for understanding Jesus.

IF we accept Paul as writing in the 50's and one degree of separation from actual events, being in a position and having occasion to mention the life and teachings of Jesus, the we EXPECT him to mention them. If we don't find what we expect, we have to find an different explanation. For me, mythicism is that explanation.

Think of higgs boson: if we (collective humanity 'we') expect to find higgs boson somewhere and don't, we have to rethink our assumptions (to put it lightly).

The same is true here: EXACTLY the evidence one expects to find in Paul, we don't find in Paul. I'm not expecting Paul to write everything he knows. I do expect him to write what would be relevant to his ministry. He doesn't do that. To argue that the life and teachings of Jesus would not be relevant to early Christians, some of whom were unruly and might need correcting, is untenable. Unprecedented in the history of religions, I believe where the founder-leader is continually appealed to for authority.

James The Least

There are huge differences.

Ever heard of Ned Ludd? Not quite a personality cult, true, but a fairly modern example of a mythic figurehead of a labor movement who became historicized.

Well, some basic differences are:
99% illiteracy
99% superstition
99% belief in prophets, oracles, seers, magicians

The utter inability of the average person to independently investigate the historic claims of religious cults.

The absolute freedom religious cults had in inventing anything they wanted without fear of a "60 Minutes" type of expose.

And so on.

aa5874

Your statement appears to erroneous. Ehrman proved that you are wrong. 'Did Jesus Exist?' by Bart Ehrman is a compilation of logical fallacies which could
NOT have gone through any rigorous "dissecting and analysis".

When Bart Ehrman claimed his Jesus was a Scarcely Known Preacher but used a source with the story of a WELL KNOWN MIRACLE WORKER and MESSIAH called Jesus the Son of God then we know Bart Ehrman has NO idea who his HJ really was. No idea.

You are joking, right??? You did NOT mean to write those things, right??? Say, yes, please, so that you won't appear to be illogical.

You seem to have no idea that Science plays a major role in re-constructing the past.

It was SCIENCE that allowed us to understand the HISTORY of our UNIVERSE.

In fact it may be RIDICULOUS to attempt to re-construct the past without Science.

With Science we can test the SHROUD of Turin.

We can test the Pauline writings.

None of them are from the 1st century and before c 70 CE.

With Science we can re-construct the past and CLEARLY see that there are NO stories of Jesus and NO Pauline letters from before c 70 CE.

Science has uncovered the biggest fraud in history--the Jesus story.

Three Cheers to Science!!! Hip, Hip, Hip, Hooray!!!