cognac

yeah, my position on anyone I haven't personally met, is not just that they don't exist, but that they possibly could not. And I'm not even sure about some I have met. I'm pretty damn suspicious they don't exist either. But I could be wrong. I could be wrong about a lot things, especially since I'm not a cook.

Solo

But dear Whoever in Antigua, I did not provide any explanation for my opinions. I simply declared myself in sympathy within a certain view on the origins of Christianity, saying it a "far better" way to explain things "on the whole". There would be a lot of documents that we would have to go through, to make that stick. Be it as it may, trust that I am innocent if you feel frustrated when forcing yourself to decide on complex subject matter without sufficient grounding in the subject.

I wish I could help you, but the attitude that you have taken makes me strongly suspect that you have already made up your mind on whatever unsatisfactory service you have received in the matter of Jesus to date. In case you are wondering, my suspicion was aroused when you concluded that Jesus is fictitious, because all evidence, for and against, that you have seen in the case is untrustworthy.

Also, I don't know how you guys in Antigua, but here in Canada, it's not done among buffs or scholars to "bake" evidence, or otherwise fiddle with it. .

Jiri

aa5874

You are the one who introduced the term 'half-baked theories', now you have flip-flopped. I need more of your 'baking theories'.

jjramsey

Actually, the phrase I used was "the pros and cons of its evidentiary value," not the "standard explanations," and Rick Sumner already quoted the paragraph that deals with the main difficulty of its evidentiary value. Even if Mara bar Serapion is referring to Jesus, at best he is a witness to the "word on the street," as Pahl put it. Indeed, what Sumner quoted was the main point of Pahl blog post.

Steven Carr

So I was right that we would not learn anything from somebody who claims that Mara ber Serapion really was talking about Jesus.

I like the way JJ put in an 'even if', almost as though Pahls had said it.

jjramsey

Oh, please. The "as Pahl put it" was in reference to the phrase "word on the street."

Now let's get down to brass tacks. You implied that Pahl treated the quote from Mara bar Serapion as good evidence for Jesus, even though he pointed out,

You also failed to noticed that Pahl referred to the usual interpretation of Mara bar Serapion as the "standard explanation." The phrase "standard explanation" is not nearly as implicitly pejorative as "conventional wisdom" (which is almost always used to refer to a commonplace but wrong belief) but still implies some distancing on his part; he avoids saying whether or not he agrees with the standard explanation.

Neither of those things that you didn't notice were all that subtle. If you were actually interested in reading and understanding what Pahl was trying to say, rather than trying to find a cutesy "gotcha," you would not have missed them.

aa5874

I have not met a person whose father is the Holy Ghost, so I am pretty damn suspicious of persons who want me to believe that that such a person actually lived.

Solo

Right, change that to 'goyiim'

Of course it's a stretch. It was Paul who came to James twice with this idea and he sent him packing. Go preach your Jesus to the Gentiles, and send us the money.

Besides, and I am now referring to Eusebius and Hegesippus, if the Nazarenes began by worshipping Jesus as 'an angel' how come they ended up as heretics, saying that he was a prophet but an ordinary human who was not born of a virgin and was not resurrected quite the way the Roman church taught? In other words, how did he get demoted ? And where on earth came the title of Jesus in Heb 3:1 from ? Any ideas ?

No agenda here. I'll leave that to Mr.Doherty. It is he who believes that religion is the root of all evil, and his Age of Reason will dawn as soon as the final battle against it has been won. I don't have messianic illusions, of one sort or another.

Jiri