ApostateAbe

I am far more interested in examining my so-called evidence. I have no interest in insulting anyone.
OK, so you do value both Ehrman's intellect and his honesty? I am sorry that I misunderstood.
I have taken two college courses on history, and I have read many books on historical subjects, but maybe that doesn't count, because I haven't focused on the subject in academia, and I haven't studied it as much as you. I could certainly be wrong. My suspicion arises from a normalskeptic's failure to explain exactly what the critical scholars are doing that conflict with normal historical practice, except that they believe that NT scholars are drawing conclusions on insufficient evidence. A normal historian does not leave all weird propositions on the table when evidence is present and relatively abundant (as the collection of early Christian documents) but somehow "insufficient." The main problem seems to be the normalskeptic's perceptions that are just not true.
OK, I have already stopped trying to insult people. It will be tough to stop posting claims beyond my area of knowledge. Should I put the phrase, "in my insufficiently educated opinion," after every claim? I certainly can, though I think that would just get annoying. There was another moderator who said that anyone is welcome to participate in the discussions regardless of credentials, and I am not sure exactly what you think I should do. Maybe you are best to give me an example.

Steven Carr

Yes, Ehrman spends the first couple of minutes of the lecture explaining how real historians do real history.

Curiously, when he explains how real historians do real history, he never refers to all those criteria that Biblical historians use to do Biblical history.

Strange that.....

ApostateAbe

Yeah, I don't think he draws much of a distinction between the two fields.

Toto

Of course. People can be very smart and totally honest, and still be wrong.

The main problem is that you don't know what you are talking about, and you don't even realize what you do not know. You had two courses in history, but did they involve historiography? Philosophy of history?

I think I have recommended Neil Godfrey's blog - but you could start with this post Historical Facts and the very UNfactual Jesus: contrasting nonbiblical history with ‘historical Jesus’ sham methodology. But I hesitate to recommend anything to you because you seem to have set up blinders against absorbing any new perspective.

NT scholars do much more than draw conclusions based on insufficient evidence. They invent facts that they claim are certain (such as "Jesus was crucified") based on their need for those "facts."

You mean you have stopped insuting people as of that sentence? Your invented phrase normalskeptic was intended as a group insult. Will you just drop it?

There are a lot of people, not just on this forum, who reject the historicity of the gospels. You don't seem to want to understand the reasons. You just want to argue that all these people, most of whom know more than you, are somehow deluded. You need to invent a term with the word skeptic in it so you can put them in a box and ignore them.

Toto

Ehrman will refer to historical standards to defend himself against fundamentalists, but will not use them in discussing mythicism.

ApostateAbe

Cool, thanks, I didn't mean to twist your words. It didn't occur to me that someone may play politics while being totally honest, but I have a habit of cynicism about political games.
Thanks for letting me know. You have condemned me for not knowing my historiography in the past, and you are right. I have asked you for reading material so that I can acquaint myself with historiography, but I have received no recommendations from you yet. Is it because you missed the requests, or is it because of my blinders? I don't see how my blinders would motivate you against recommending anything for me to read. It wouldn't directly imply a loss for you except for a few seconds of your time. Maybe you are actually afraid that I will misunderstand what I am reading and go on to unfairly criticize it and defame it in the minds of people who may not know better? Is that what you are afraid of? If so, then I understand. I plan on making Neil Godfrey's blog post my next target of criticism--or acceptance, as the case may be, but, yeah, it is probably going to be criticism. Would that cause you to regret recommending Neil Godfrey's blog?
Well, actually, I didn't say that I would stop insulting people. I said that I stopped trying to insult people, because some people out there are insulted by almost anything. My "superskeptic" and "normalskeptic" terms were invented because I needed some word to denote the way of thinking of people who refuse to form conclusions about the beginnings of Christianity based on insufficient evidence. You would prefer no word at all, and you are insulted by any such word, which would mean either insulting you or letting your general way of thinking go completely unacknowledged and your claim that your way of thinking is normal and reasonable go unchallenged. I don't want to insult you. It is a trade between insulting you and letting you have a rhetorical immunity. I don't think that is fair.
Ignore them? If I needed to ignore them, I wouldn't need a word. I needed to invent a term so that I can combat them. I do indeed need to understand their reasons. That is the whole point.

Toto

That's what I am afraid of - you have already decided what you think, and will make a superficial attack on ideas you don't understand, and you will waste everyone's time.

I don't have a good source on historiography at the tip of my fingers. I think some good books have been recommended here. There is a rather intemperate thread here

So you want to label these people before you understand what they are saying.

Then please explain why you believe things without sufficient evidence, and why other people should.

But you don't understand the reasons. You started out here with the assumption that you needed to "combat" people, and you invented reasons that would allow you to continue your crusade without really understanding what is going on. You still haven't gotten over the idea that this debate has some connection to the Evolution-Creationism debate, with your position being analogous to evolution (which is part of your confusion.)

ApostateAbe

OK, thanks, I was trying to figure that one out, but now I get it.
Thanks. I have avoided that thread in the past, because it seems to contain long strings of irrelevant bickering. Did anyone actually come up with an acceptable start for a theory of historiography in that thread? If so, who? Again, thanks.
Not really, but I still don't see anything wrong with that. Is it a bad thing to label a group of people before I understand what they are saying? That may mean I should never use the word, "German," to describe people from Germany, or any other word for that matter. I can't understand a word of those people speak. I think maybe you mean something else.
Sure. To me, it is very rare to have so little evidence that it is unjustified to find a conclusion that is most probable, that beats out other explanations in terms of likelihood. I believe the things that best explain the evidence, regardless of the amount of evidence. If we truly have little evidence, then the best conclusion is only tentative, but it is still the conclusion we accept. If the evidence really is zero, then it may be OK to refuse to form conclusions. You accused me of having "no evidence," so maybe that is how you justify your position. But, in the case of the beginnings of Christianity, we really do have an abundance of evidence, and we really can form conclusions that surpass competing conclusions in terms of relative probability. You should not accuse me of having zero evidence. You may instead say that my explanations are not the best explanations to explain the evidence. I take that as the standard operating procedure, not just of history, but of all fields of decision making about beliefs (except for religion, of course). When you suggest such a thing, you then suggest an alternative explanation to account for the evidence. And, then, you are no longer a normalskeptic or a superskeptic or whatever deranged term I apply on you. You are an advocate of the tentative competing hypothesis. For the normalskeptics, there seems to be some ambiguous tipping point between OK to make conclusions and not OK to make conclusions.

That is not the way it works in historical studies. Paleontology can be thought of as a field of history, and I see the same set of objections for how they practice. If you think I am insulting normalskepticism again with analogies like this, then I don't really give a fuck. There was a fossil of a mouse found in New Zealand in 2006. From that, they conclude that mice were once indigenous to New Zealand, which is a breakthrough, because there are no native rodents in New Zealand and only one native mammal--the possum. Some have suggested that this evidence is insufficient. They make the conclusion that there were indigenous mice based on just a single fossil? That mouse may have been the only mouse on the island, and it happened to be fossilized. Maybe it got there because a bird delivered its dead body, or it got on some driftwood and was buried. Maybe you would even agree with those objections, and you would claim that the evidence just isn't enough to make a conclusion of any sort. But, almost every paleontologist would favor the conclusion that best fits our expectations, that has the advantages of ABE--that the mouse was native. It is highly implausible and ad hoc that a single foreign mouse would be fossilized, but it fits normal expectations that a fossil mouse is representative of a common native species.

Toto

Please continue to avoid that thread.

Yes it is.

:banghead:

We do not in fact have an abundance of evidence. We have texts that have been forged, edited, interpolated, and we don't know who wrote most of them or why.

OK...


This is bizarre.

How would you know?

Except that it deals with actual physical evidence.

If Christian origins had anything comparable to a fossil of a mouse, it would revolutionize the field - so much so that some Christians have trouble not falling for the latest archaeological scam, such as the James Ossuary.

The HJ advocates are in the position of claiming that there were mice in New Zealand without any fossils, or mouse droppings - based only on second hand reports in ancient legends that there were golden mice who descended from heaven.

ApostateAbe

Toto, can you please not reprimand me again for not knowing my historiography? I don't think you know so much about it, either. Thanks.

I am not asking you to believe that a fossil mouse is the same value of evidence as the New Testament canonical texts. The point of my analogy was to show you that we should be making the best explanations for the evidence, even if those explanations are not completely certain, even if there are genuinely possible alternative explanations. The New Testament texts are evidences for something, one way or the other. The issue is which explanation or set of explanations best accounts for them and their contents. Some explanations make far more sense (are far more probable) than other explanations.

Neither is it so relevant that a fossil mouse is "actual physical evidence" and the New Testament texts are... some other kind of evidence? They each have a set of explanations, some relatively probable, others relatively improbable. We are best to choose the best explanations, not to just throw up our hands.

I think the best way to change my mind in your favor of the idea that NT scholarship doesn't follow the rules, if you are interested, is to find a study or commentary in any non-Biblical field of history where a reputable historian refuses to draw conclusions because of all of the potential alternative explanations for the evidence.