Jeffrey Gibson

I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give us a quote or two that backs up this claim and shows "Christian scholars" engaged in the opportunistic "jumping" vis a vis the evidence of the HJ that you say they frequently engage in?

Jeffrey

Newfie

The entire field of Christian apologetics seeks to inject skepticism in the lack of evidence. Take John Paul Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. He uses arguments like why invent embarrassing details like Jesus’ crucifixion what would invite difficulty for the early church? Is this actually evidence, like independent written records, for the historical Jesus? No, but it casts a seed of doubt and distracts readers away from the reality that actual evidence is scarce. See what I mean?

Jeffrey Gibson

No, I don't, especially since you are confusing a criterion for evaluating adduced evidence with evidence adduced.

Have you actually read Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus?

And may I take it that you are an ex-fundie?

Jeffrey

thedistillers

If we read Meier's introduction carefully, he mentions:

- That the historical Jesus is an abstraction, it does not correspond to reality.
- History is not a "hard" science. Whatever Jesus we get after applying modern historical methods to the gospels, it is merely a construction.

So clearly, what he's doing is not Christian apologetics. A Christian apologist would never admin the historical Jesus is an abstract construction.

Meier does provide "evidence" for his historical Jesus: Josephus.

History is not a hard science. I'm not sure what you mean by "scientific scrutiny", and how it applies to historical methods.

If you mean to be Christians, yes, Christian scholars rely on faith. To be a Christian, you need faith. Is it breaking news?

To do their job as historians, they don't rely on faith, if they are doing their job seriously.

Roger Pearse

Actually what we want to see in this forum is DATA. Not opinions, not hearsay, not drivelling rubbish, whoever peddles it.

The low reputation that Acharya S enjoys among those few of the educated who have heard of her is because the material that we have seen from that source is ignorant rubbish.

Such an opinion will not be overturned by attempts to claim bias: any fraudster could do that, and those who meet the objections with that excuse tend to confirm our first opinion. Rather it will be overturned by evidence that the author can renounce the crass mistakes of the past and make some useful contribution.

No Christian can hold such a view, and no bible scholars do.

It is slightly depressing that this is all about a video. Why aren't we looking at a transcript?

That sounds like a caricature of a position, actually, although I've certainly seen unwary Christians state it. I believe that the original form was that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth than that Julius Caesar invaded Britain.

Not sure about whether the latter is true, because I don't know on what the latter rests. Julius' commentaries, certainly; I know of a letter of Cicero. Beyond that, I couldn't say.

The hang up would appear to be your own. If I were you, I would not make this tedious ad hominem again, unless you want to lose all credibility. Nobody *cares* about "Acharya S" here, you know.

Having now listened to a few minutes of the first video, I feel no need to listen to the rest. None of these people would endorse the views which their statements are being used to affirm; that there is an unusual silence concerning Jesus in the historical record. The process of selecting, and arranging material given in another context in order to tell a lie is one with which all of us are familiar these days, and that's what it looks like to me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

What about the boss peddling the new testament?

And the new testament, if we were to remove the scattered pagan wisdom and hebrew/essenic wisdom sayings, would be also regarded as a source of ignorant rubbish. The only thing that your treasured apologetic biblical historians can agree upon is the controversy over the century of christian origins. Was it the first or the second century? Conjecture and not evidence abounds!



Nobody *cares* about "this fiction character Clerk Jesus Kent" either, except the people who will one day be able to demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that the new testament was first conceived and forged in the fourth century by a malevolent despot and military supremacist, who dabbled in lavish literary publications and the censorship of historians and academics.

Up until now "this fiction character Clerk Jesus Kent" has been academic tenure, but now BC&H is becoming a cut-off meander. Evidence has not been forthcoming despite centuries of forgeries. The table of evidence is littered by mountains of known forgeries and not one single unambiguous ancient historical citation before the rise of the boss man bullneck. Why is this? Hello? Why is this the case today?



Best wishes,


Pete

Zaphod

Ahhhh...

I do so love lurking here!

mountainman

At the beginning of the 20th century the field of BC&H loudly proclaimed there was ample evidence for the historical "Clerk Jesus Kent". But the BC&H scholarship of the 21st century finds that there is none. Zero. Null. Odd isn't it? No evidence for this belief at all.

An adequate description of how the new testament was assembled by the Boss and Eusebius in which the process of selecting, and arranging material was given in another context in order to tell a lie. This fraud was reported by Emperor Julian in an historical context within 30 years of Constantine's death - and represents the first independent and objective assessment concerning the history of christian origins:

Best wishes,


Pete

Dave31

LOL, Roger, you should try to follow your own rules - your post in nothing BUT biased opinion. Everybody here knows you're a biased Catholic. And the fact remains, you've never read a book by Acharya S.

"those few of the educated" and "we" - I take that you are including yourself in the "educated few?" Yet, you haven't read her work at all - apparently not the Luxor article or any of the others I've linked here. So, YOU, Roger, are NOT "educated" at all when it comes to the VAST AMOUNT of research that Acharya has brought to light. Acharya quotes numerous authorities from all relevant fields, using the original texts in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc. ALL of that is "ignorant rubbish?" I'm sure that all those scholars and authorities would be very disappointed to hear such pronouncements regarding their hard work.

You start off making pompous claims about data, and then degrade into an unscientific rant about someone's work you don't even know at all. Thus, you are only voicing an OPINION not at all based on DATA, because you have NO data.

That's terribly hypocritical, don't you think?

That's a ridiculous statement. So, these people - John Meyer, F.F. Bruce and J. Dominic Crossan - aren't Christians? And they aren't Bible scholars? Is the criterion for being a Bible scholar to blindly believe that Bible to be true?

So, here you admit that you really aren't interested in Acharya's work - in fact, you make it quite clear that you know little about it, and that what you do know is filtered through your Catholic biases. Yet, you pompously pretend to know so much about Acharya's work that you pronounce it "ignorant rubbish." Isn't that a fraudulent representation? You are clearly NOT interested in any serious scientific data, just what bolsters your blind faith, Roger. Let's be honest here. As a biased believer, your opinions are just that. And without having actually studied the subject, i.e., all of the massive research Acharya's been digging up, you are not qualified to discuss it as one of the "educated few."

Jeffrey Gibson

Interesting. You excoriate Roger for saying something about AS without --so you resume -- first having read AS' "work". But you yourself say things about Meier (not Meyer), Bruce, and Crossan without having read their books.

So who really is the hypocrite here?. Who is the one who actually works from a double standard?

And I ask again, using your own criterion that someone who is not published and is not an Egyptologist is not qualified to judge the claims of AS (who is also not an Egyptologist and, strictly speaking, is not published) about matters Ancient Egyptian, why you think your opinion on the value of AS' "work on matters Ancient Egyptian has amy merit, since you yourself are unpublished and have no academic credentials at all, let alone in Egyptology>

Jeffrey