Jaggers

I find what you wrote in this post very interesting. But doesn't Carrier say that Matthew corrects many of the mistakes from Mark in terms of knowledge of Judaism and exhibits a much more thorough understanding of Jewish law? Also, do you agree that Matthew plagiarized Mark? If so that means Mark is earlier than Matthew. I think Carrier uses Mark's lack of knowledge of Judaism as proof that Mark was not written by a Judaizer and that he was removed from the scene when it was written, I think he said probably in Rome. If that's true, then doesn't that seriously undermine your theory that the earliest Christians were Judaizers? If not, can you explain why not?

I'm obviously new and still trying to get a handle on everything here. So if what I wrote totally lacks sense, please bear with me.

Chris Weimer

Welcome to IIDB, Jaggers. I can address your concerns here.

This does not necessarily equate to being Jewish, though. Then again, this is not the thread for discussing whether Matthew is Jewish. I am willing to defend that statement. Actually, there's another thread where Yuri Kuchinsky brought up the discussion at XTalk about the very topic, lambasting it without any real argument, as usual. As soon as someone raises a valid concern over it, I'd be happy to discuss it with them.

Yes, and yes.

Yes, yes, and most likely yes again.

No. Mark is decades after Paul, who was decades after the earliest Christians, if we can reasonably date Jesus to John the Baptist. That much of a stretch is certainly possible, if not plausible. It's not anywhere a fact, but it could work. But either way, Paul talked about James the Judaizer, who was certainly far earlier than Mark. So while Mark may not be a Judaizer, and is probably against them, in fact, that still isn't near what the earliest Christians had thought.

No, it makes sense, and I can understand your concern. Hopefully, that explains it for you.

best regards,

Chris Weimer

Philadelphia Lawyer

Still at it, I see. You keep saying I am attacking a "strawman" version of your Jesus/Grandpa argument. But you won't let that very version of it go. In your response to Spenser, you reiterate the pseudo "parallel" once again. As you say, we know that your grandpa existed by the use of simple deductive logic. But, for Jesus, we have nothing even remotely similar to rely on. There is no logical reason why Jesus had to have existed, unlike your grandpa. There is simply no "parallel" between the two. You are going to have prove the existence of Jesus in some other way than that in which you prove the existence of your grandpa. I should think that this would be painfully obvious to you by now.

Moreover, the method you use to "prove" the existence of Jesus can't even be said to use evidence that, while clearly of a different kind than that used to establish the existence of your grandpa, might be similar in reliability. You admit that you don't know the first thing about the life of a person whose existence you claim is "probable." Don't you find this a litlle odd? It's not that the criteria of actually knowing something about the person who you claim existed "don't work," it's that you don't have any reliable evidence at all.

Let's review:

Chris Weimer's grandpa: We know he existed because Chris Weimer exists. (Biology and logic)

Jesus: We know he existed because there is an "odd occurence" in the genealogies presented in books which you admit are fictional.

Chris Weimer

Philadelphia Lawyer - This is the very last time I'm going to explain this to you. I'm not deducing that Jesus exists because my grandfather exists. That's incorrect. I've told you that before, but obviously you can't grasp that simple statement. The whole fucking point was that you cannot expect someone to know the what's and about's of anyone before you accept their historicity. I've shown evidence for Jesus' existence by historical means. That too you seem unable to grasp. Or perhaps you just refuse it because you've dug yourself a ditch <edit>.

I'm through.

Chris Weimer

Oh yes, historical criticism is not your strong point, is it?

Philadelphia Lawyer

I grasped what you were saying right from the beginning.

Spenser posted this:

You quoted the second paragraph of his post and responded as follows:

That was your response in its entirety. I quoted it (and Spenser's second paragraph) in full when I responded to your post. No "strawman." No taking your response "out of context." You were asked by Spenser to provide the evidence for an HJ and you responded with the sentence about your grandfather, and only with that sentence. There is no need for any "line-by-line" exegesis, because you only wrote the one line.

Since then, you have alternated between dismissing your own post as a "parody" and attempting to defend it as positing a valid "parallel" between Jesus and your grandfather. If it was intended as a "parody," it was neither humorous nor incisive; if it was intended as a viable comparison, it completely misses the mark (as has been pointed out to you by myself and other posters numerous times now).

Why don't you just admit that you made a bad argument and be done with it, instead of pretending that I don't understand what you said or took it out of context or am attacking a strawman?

This, I admit, I don't understand at all. When did I accuse you of misleading anyone?

Philadelphia Lawyer

The very point that we are trying to establish is historicity. Evidence on the "what's" and "about's" of Jesus' life would help establish his historicity. But you have no such evidence. When it comes to your grandfather, we don't need the "what's" and "about's" because we know he existed as a matter of logic and biology. But we don't have that option for Jesus.

The "historical means" that you claim to have presented would include the "what's" and "about's" of Jesus' life. That's how we go about establishing the existence of someone who historicity is in dispute. No "what's" and "about's," then no historical evidence. Your supposed "historical means" is nothing more than a complicated exegesis of books that you admit are fictional. You can't prove the existence of Achilles by parsing the Illiad, and, likewise, you can't prove the existence of Jesus by parsing the genealogies in the gospels.

Spenser

I appreciate everything you have presented and will chew on it a bit, I do wish to clarify ^this^ however. Jesus was obviously significant, hence 1/3rd the world today is Xian. You are narrowing it down to his supposed time frame of existence. OK. Well, he had to be rather significant to his followers, of which there were enough for Xianity to spring up from. I mean they thought he was God for Christ's sake (pun intended). Yet no writings till Paul and only the simplest of stories that become more and more embellished the farther after his time they were written. You don't find it a bit strange that no one prior to Paul took the time to document the life of their God?

Further, what of the apostles? To me, and this is just my opinion, an actual human Jesus would probably not attract the well educated of society. Likely his most devout followers would be uneducated and poor rabble. Is this the way the apostles are portrayed? What evidence of their actual existence?

As for whether he was divine or human according to Paul, I leave that to you and Ted...

mens_sana

I don't think it's a BigMac argument when the N people are qualified NT scholars.

Spenser

Depends on how many of those Ns are devout Christians who accept a priori the existence of a human Jesus...