GakuseiDon

No. It is important to recognise the possibility of bias.
"They are Christian/Christ Mythers, so there is a possibility of bias" is okay. "The reason they don't want to debate me is because they fear they are wrong" starts to border into paranoia.
I'm sorry to hear that. Is your editor pressuring you to remove references to a mythical Jesus? What reason is he/she giving?

Diogenes the Cynic

Acts is fiction.
Well I forgot about Tacitus but I was assuming that mata was spouting the usual apologist canard about apostles "dying for a lie." Any Christians who may or may not have been persecuted by Nero (and the authenticity of that Tacitus passage is not undisputed) it doesn't really make Mata' point for him since none of those victims were witnesses, nor does Tacitus say that they died because of their beliefs per se but only that they were scapegoated by Nero for the burning of Rome. Any religious group can be scapegoated. That isn't very meaningful.

freigeister

I think most scholars are cognizant of the following statement made by you:

You cannot believe that all scholars who believe in a historical Jesus are functioning on the same level as Carotta.


Maybe we should start by talking about the facts that we do agree on.

Julian

Although this has been responded to, it bears repeating.
What does sincerity of belief have to do with anything other than just that fact alone. Does the fact that a number of muslims kill themselves for paradise make you want to convert to Islam?

I thought not...
Well, let me just [Stop that... ed.]
Huh?

Julian

EarlDoherty

A lot of very interesting viewpoints on this thread. I didn't contribute to it because I was working on finishing my rebuttal to Mike Licona's critique of "The God Who Wasn't There."

It's now up on The Jesus Puzzle sites at: http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesLicona.htm
and
http://pages.ca.inter.net/oblio/CritiquesLicona.htm

It opens with a defense against Licona's attack on atheism, then deals with a lot of subject matter regarding the Jesus Myth theory. There is an especially detailed consideration of Hebrews 8:4 (that Jesus had never been on earth) which I consider definitive, and which supplants anything I've written earlier on the subject. I conclude with a discussion of the issue of this thread: whether or not mainstream scholarship has now or ever adequately or honestly dealt with the Jesus Myth theory--or is that a myth too?

If anyone knows how to alert Mike Licona to this rebuttal, please do so. (Not that I expect he will provide a link to it!)

Best wishes,
Earl Doherty

Marxist

Stalin never did this. I suggest you look into the book Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard, and the work of scholars like Mark Tauger for a refutation of the work of men like Conquest and Mace.

In the world of Soviet studies, there are basically two camps. The old anti-Communist Cold Warrior scholars like Robert Conquest, and the new 'revisionist' camp with people like J. Arch Getty. I suggest you look more closely into these issues before you go around agreeing with every religious nutball about the crimes of atheism.

Steven Avery

I got a good laugh out of your careful parsing, yet even for that you still have to exclude Josephus, then hand-wave Acts, and oops omit Tacitus, and barely swing out the few extra years from the Pliny-Trajan acknowledged state executions.

So, hmmm, what a meaningful statement. Apparently every early writer discussing the Christians supports the historicity of peresecution and martyrdom. (any exceptions other than perhaps a couple of epistles ?).

Anyway about James, there is in fact a discussion of the charges against James and some companions...

http://www.uncc.edu/jdtabor/james.html
Ananus ... assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned:

And of course the mythicists must "dispute" the passage, or Luke's two-book-historicity, or the ossuaries, because if they didn't they would basically simply have to close up shop.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

achristianbeliever

I would accept this if it wasn't for the fact that skeptics use it against Christians all the time. I wasn't asking what historians or scholars believe because I'm appealing to the majority I was asking because I just don't see why I should take it seriously if historians don't. And skeptics do this too.

You already brought up Intelligent Design. Critics of ID constantly mention how it hasn't been given credibility by the scientific community. So shouldn't it be allowed for critics of the Jesus myth to do the same thing?

I also continuously hear about, "majority of scholars say Paul did not write the Pastorals", "Matthew did not write Matthew", "Mark was written after 70AD". Shall I go on? If skeptics can use the majority argument as reasons to reject stuff I don't know why believers cannot.

And yet somehow its ok for skeptics to bring this up and Christians cannot.

Johann_Kaspar

There is no xian witness in the 8th century auc, only Jews.

Johann_Kaspar

Yep!
Jakob was a Jew not a xian. So no xian witness.