Steven Carr

Not at all.

Name a work with an albino assassin in it that mainstream Biblical scholars think even worth discussing whether or not it contains any historical value at all.

Name a work with Satan in it, where mainstream Biblical scholars entertain a doubt about the historicity of characters in it, eg Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea , etc etc.

I forgot to mention that works with Satan in them only count as historical evidence if they are in the New Testament.

Otherwise they get treated as if they contained albino assassins.

Sheshbazzar

Someone needs to explain that to Adam, our 'Miracle Free- Version' boring and senseless NT inventor. :Cheeky:

JonA

Name a work with an albino assassin in it that is relevant to Biblical scholarship.

Steven Carr

That's just your anti-albino-assassin prejudice showing.

You dismiss such books out of hand, while mainstream Biblical scholars demand that sceptics never doubt the existence of any character in the Gospel of Mark.

JonA

So what you're telling me, then, is that there are no works with albino assassins in them that are relevant to Biblical scholarship.

Got it.

sotto voce

Or, to put it another way, if a book relates that the manifestation of supernal deity was tempted by his spiritual chief adversary...

Now the task of the historian is not to make value judgments about what is possible, and what is not. Obviously, no historian can accept a claim that rifles were used in the Thirty Years' War, unless there is indeed a claim for the miraculous, the supernatural. But even such a claim would, to be entertained, need to fit into some existing framework, and/or some rationale, that a supernatural entity, real or otherwise, could provide; and unless a framework was supplied, the notion that rifles were used in the Thirty Years' War would have to be ignored as spurious.

In the case of 'Jesus talking to Satan' there is both framework and rationale. The claim of the people among whom Jesus lived, and to whom Jesus spoke, was that the world was created as a conscious and deliberate act of will by a creator. Jesus was claimed to be the creator of the cosmos, who determined the laws of physics by which we knew that water did not turn into wine, or that the dead could not be raised to life. So the supernatural, by which the creator's own laws could be laid aside, was and remains feasible, as far as the historian is concerned. The historian is not competent to judge whether creation is possible or not; though, as the history of the vast majority of humanity shows, that possibility has been thought to be a probability if not a certainty. So the historian must acknowledge that there is a framework for records of Jesus talking to Satan, and cannot dismiss the possibility of this occurrence, as apparently anachronistic rifles can be dismissed.

The question of rationale remains. The stated reason for supernatural events, according to the recording texts, was to actually demonstrate the identity of Jesus as the creator. It made sense to witnesses that the creator would be able to demonstrate who he was by use of the supernatural, not only because big claims demand big evidence, but because the witnesses concerned had been conditioned into expecting the supernatural of the creator.

So the historian cannot without prejudice discount the records known as the gospels, on grounds of the supernatural events recorded in them, at any rate.

Vorkosigan

The gospels may preserve some history, but the supernatural events they described never occurred. Understating that is the basis for separating scholarship from ideology. The "framework" and "rationale" for believing in Magic Sky Daddies are entirely ideological.

sotto voce

The difficulty is that scholars do not possess the means of demonstrating that these supernatural events did not occur. So perhaps they are now to be provided with it? Should we hold our breath?

Huon

Not too long ... Holding one's breath during one day is supernatural :devil1:

sotto voce

I think one day may be optimistic, though.