aa5874

But, these people who believe Obama is a Muslim, was not born in America and may be the Anti-Christ must or most likely think their views are plausible.

So, are you implying that only people who go through a multitude of educational processes can discern whether what you claim is fiction or non-fiction?

What about the Pope? What educational processes did he go through? He believes the fiction that Jesus was an actual son of God on earth.

Even the illiterate OR a small child can tell when they make stuff-up.

Many people are FORCED not to be able to distinguish fiction from non-fiction when they are threatened with eternal damnation and isolation from their God their Lord and Saviour Jesus if they tell the truth.

Once most scholars are Jesus worshipers then those scholars may NOT be able to distinguish what is fiction and non-fiction about their Lord and Saviour.

The question of the historicity of Jesus appears to be in the hands of JESUS worshipers. Some of them do not even recognise that Matthew 1.18 and Luke 1.35 is fiction although they have been through a multitude of educational processes.

Toto

I finally listened to the video, which was apparently posted by a Muslim apologist. Ehrman says that the gospels are not the sort of sources that historians would prefer, but he also makes claims about the disciples being Aramaic speaking illiterate fishermen that can only be derived from accepting the gospels as a historical source, however far from the ideal.

I have read Ehrman's Apocalyptic Prophet (or via: amazon.co.uk), and he does not in fact justify using the gospels as history. He assumes that someone like the gospel Jesus existed, and accepts most of the conclusions that others have derived using the flawed methodology of HJ studies. He does not justify this approach, and was unwilling to join the Jesus Project to examine historical methodology.

There is nothing new here.

stephan huller

Back to the original point by Ehrman. The Bible isn't history. So what? I've never understood why this matters to the overall question of whether or not there is truth in the Bible.

I don't mean to pull a Bill Clinton but it really does come down to the question of what 'is' means. Seriously. Having a video camera at the Exodus or the Passion would only represent the most banal expression of truthfulness.

Religious truth is always about a truthfulness that is beyond measure.

The religious truth of the Exodus is wholly separate with whether or not the events happened exactly as described or whether the seemingly endless stories of Moses going up and then going down the mountain all 'add up' (they don't).

It's like watching a really good film or looking at a really amazing work of art. Yes, it's an expression of creativity but they can on occasion represent something more than that. What the Coen brothers A Serious Man. They really get the whole 'Jewish truth' thing right. You can learn more in that film than you can a whole year in university.

Was there some historical basis to the ancient Israelites crossing the sea and arriving in the Promises Land. Of course there was. Did it happen exactly as described in the Hebrew scriptures. Of course not. But Ezra or whoever else established the truth of the scriptures is trying to go beyond the literal minute by minute 'facts' of the event.

What kind of mental case would venerate a verbatim recording of anything? Is there a Jew or Samaritan alive anywhere in the world that thinks that things are EXACTLY as described in the Torah? Don't confuse these people with American evangelicals. But the text is still holy because the truth it expresses is more sublime than a recording of the events could ever be.

Christians should learn to approach the gospel as a (lost) interpretation of a historical event originally laid down by Mark, the prophet like Moses who was ultimately superior to Moses.

Religion is the most sublime expression of the artistic impulse. That doesn't make it less true than a photograph or a digital recording. A photograph after all is an expression of something dead, the capturing of a moment that no longer exists.

Religion is the expression of eternal truths and as such it could never be defined as JUST SOMETHING which literally took place in the physical world.

The whole 'the Bible isn't true' argument is so misguided it isn't even worth discussing. Mona Lisa isn't in the painting hanging in the Louvre either. She's dead. I guess there's no truth there either.

ApostateAbe

Thank you, I think that is a pretty good analysis. The gist of the video seemed to be that the gospels are not sources that we would prefer. What he didn't say in the video but he does say elsewhere is that they are the best sources that we have, we are stuck with them, and we are best to make the most of them. His opponent quoted him a couple of times stating such an opinion.

Toto

But Ehrman never explains why we should try to do any historical analysis with such inadequate sources. He posits oral transmission of stories about Jesus, but there is no evidence of these stories.

I think he wants to accept the standard story of Jesus, maybe just to have some common ground with his fellow NT scholars. He knows that it is a weak case, but probably figures there's no harm in accepting this Jesus as a start for the discussion.

It's a very cautious, politically prudent position, but that's the best I can say.

ApostateAbe

He does have his methodology summarized on pages 85-96, which I think would be a good beginning for understanding why Ehrman believes that we can find historical information in the gospels, but, yeah, he never directly addresses the mythicist or the superskeptical positions, and he certainly leaves out many of the issues that are important to such people, such as how he knows that Mark was sourced from oral traditions instead of just being made up on the spot or whatever. Regardless, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it is all about politics. He wrote a book on why the Bible fails to answer the problem of evil. He wrote another book on the contradictions in the New Testament. Are those political moves to appease the orthodoxy? Seems unlikely to me, but maybe you think he is playing to both camps or something? I don't know.

Toto

In other words, he leaves out any issue important for the question of whether Jesus actually existed.

Precisely. Those are the issues he cares about, not whether there was a historical Jesus.

Once you have decided that Jesus was not the Savior-Messiah-son of God-Redeemer of the World, it doesn't matter so much whether you can find a real historical person who inspired the myth.

I am using political in a broader sense. He's not going to appease the orthodoxy. But other NT scholars might not talk to him if he went too far out.

ApostateAbe

So, he takes his position to appease other New Testament scholars such as himself? That's more plausible, though I don't know why you wouldn't just settle on the position that he has made an error arising from his ignorance of the superskeptical arguments. It is as though you trust his knowledge and his power of reason much more than his honesty. As you may imagine, it isn't a problem for someone like me who sees the superskeptical arguments as relatively weak or foreign to the normalities of critical thinking. If the authorities, even the ones who display bias against the interest of the Christian religion, dismiss the arguments, then I am not drawn to find any hidden motivations. I just take them at their word.

dog-on

Name one that's not imagination.

ApostateAbe

They are all inventions of the imagination, and that is why the philosophy seems to work. If miracles were real, then the philosophy would not necessarily work, though the philosophy has the pretense of being independent of whether or not supernatural agents exist. If we were living in the Harry Potter world of Hogwart's, with everyone casting magic spells according to rules, then the philosophy of ignoring supernatural explanations a priori would seem downright silly, nor would it necessarily be true that "miracles" are unlikely by definition. I define "miracle" as an observable act of a god, and unlikelihood is not part of the definition. The philosophy is "methodological naturalism," a philosophy commonly accepted in science, and it seems to fail the thought experiments, but it is valuable politically. It gives the superstitious people an excuse for ignoring their explanations without telling them that they are idiots.