gurugeorge

I don't doubt that they are indirectly evidence, maybe even good indirect evidence, of something. Their very existence is some kind of evidence of beliefs of some kind - of the motivations of their author(s), of some reasons for their composition, maybe of bits of history, geography, culture, etc. - and yes, maybe of the existence of some obscure guy living in Palestine 2,000 years ago who got blown up into a God-man.

What I'm asking is why, failing their being evidence in the sense they were meant as a collection (i.e., failing their being a genuine "testament" to the existence of a miracle-working God-man walking this earth 2,000 years ago), the automatic recourse of NT scholars has been that they're still genuinely (although in small percentage) a "testament" of some obscure guy living in Palestine 2,000 years ago.

Because so far as I can see, as soon as the NT lost its claim to be a genuine collection of eyewitness testimony to the existence of a God-man, it lost any prima facie claim to be considered eyewitness testimony at all.

i.e. once its claim to be a genuine testament fails, it's all up for grabs, and you have to go back to square one. From that point on, it could be any number of things - we simply don't know what it is, until we look at the texts with fresh eyes, uncontaminated by the idea of their being testimony.

Sure, we might find that they do after all contain bits of eyewitness accounts of some obscure guy living in Palestine 2,000 years ago, but that has to be established, it has to be argued for, and not circularly, on the basis that, "oh, it's called a "testament", so it must have some eyewitness stuff in it, and although it was about a God-man called Jesus, and there can't be any such thing as a God-man, yet still and all, because it's called a "testament" it must still contain eyewitness testimony of some ordinary guy called Jesus".

OTOH, the NT might be a pack of lies put together for political gain, but that has to be established, it has to be argued for.

Or the texts might be myth, or literary constructions, or initiatory texts, or any number of things, or some combination of all the above, and more - but each position has to be established, and it has to be argued for.

I missed the part where Plato, or subsequent publishers or redactors of Plato, claimed that the sole raison d'etre of his works was that they were special, eyewitness testimony of the existence of certain extremely special and unlikely person-like entities?

Jeffrey Gibson

I'm sorry, George, but I will no longer continue this exchange. It is pointless and a waste of time to engage with someone who, to make his case that a position he opposes is wrong, stoops to the tactic of attributing to the advocates of that position arguments they never used to defend it and then chastises them for doing what they did not do.

And it's not only in the above that you do this. It's here.

You missed it because that's not what was said.

JG

Jeffrey Gibson

[QUOTE=Toto;4935040]These are not equivalent statements.

I disagree. But even if they are not, so what? The issue isn't whether my statement (the later further clarification and explication of which you failed to quote) is an equivalent (what ever that means) to "spin's. It's whether I adequately and accurately summarized what "spin" was claiming.

Does not help what?

And why do besmirch with your charge of smarminess on my part my genuine expression of concern that I have not set up a straw man?

Jeffrey

gurugeorge

Of course no NT scholar uses that argument, because it is totally ridiculous, and I'm glad you see how ridiculous it is. (Jeffrey, meet irony, irony meet Jeffrey.) But if that's not the justification for continuing to treat the NT as testimony, what is?

I hope I've managed to get across to you how odd it looks when someone continues to treat a piece of writing as eyewitness testimony, without any justification whatsoever as to why it should still be considered any kind of testimony, when they've accepted that the entity that writing was supposed to be eyewitness testimony of cannot possibly have existed.

But it's (roughly) what would have to be the case for your request to be relevant.

David

He was ignoring that post, until it became preferable to responding to your post at the top of the page. So I'll take the liberty of posting that question again.


Spin asked
The nt writings "are most definitely evidence", of what exactly??

Jeffrey Gibson

Sorry, but I don't feel I have any obligation to answer snotty questions posed by people who believe they have paranormal powers and from a distance can read my mind or know with certainty my motives for doing or not doing things.

JG

David

....ahhh but Jeffrey, it was spin's question not mine. It was asked sincerely and in good faith in response to a claim you made. It deserves an answer. Unless of course you are just here to throw tomatoes

Jeffrey Gibson

Again, how you know what attitude Spin's question was asked in is beyond me. But his question seems to me to be as snotty and as undeserving of an answer as your reiteration of it was, since the context from which he took the words of mine he quotes shows that I had already stated what I thought the writings were prima facie evidence of.

Perhaps you'd like to give your mind reading and your bifurcation a bit of a rest?

And FYI, I am also disinclined to answer unsigned posts. I feel even less of an obligation to respond to people who hide behind anonymity while they post pot shots at others deserve even less respect than I do to those who claim mind reading powers.

JG

David

You already answered the question? I'll leave just leave that alone and let others draw their own conclusions. I would like to add though, that one does not need mind reading powers (particularly after this thread) to see that you are indeed just here to throw tomatoes Jeffrey Gibson.

spin

No, Jeffrey Gibson. With a sizable corpus to work from you can learn a lot about the culture that produced it. To do history with the corpus you need to be able to relate it to an existing historical framework. You can compare what you find in the texts with archaeological and epigraphic indications from the period in order to ascertain any historical content.

What better means have you got to analyse content of ancient texts than from the ancient texts themselves?

Opinions of your experts are based on just that.

I never claimed that you were anyone other than you. You shouldn't waste your efforts projecting onto me.

I'm not going to wade through the waffle that you've generated with this:

Who do you think you were trying to represent with this? From what you have said in your first post to your experts, what makes you think that you understand the position you are trying to represent? And why should you have to refer to the "Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group" in matters of historiography? If you didn't understand my position (which seems to be apparent), why didn't you ask more meaningful questions to get what you wanted to know instead of going off half-cocked to some bunch of people whose opinions you seem to respect with a whacky interpretation of someone else's views?

The only thing I can think of looking back over our dialogue is that you simply misunderstood the following exchange:

Now you go back to your panel of experts and ask them how they can extract significance from idiomatic phrases they have never seen before from an ancient text and let us know their conclusions.

Perhaps you might save yourself the bother and admit that you misunderstood what you were dealing with and we can get back to a dialogue.


spin