aa5874

You have introduce your 'itinerate preacher', without any rock solid evidence, and immediately claim no-one can disprove him. Your assumption is fallacious, and appears to be an attempt to divert others from the fact that no evidence has been found to support the Jesus Christ of the NT.

You seem not to understand the word 'credibilty'. If any statement made that is purported to be true and is found to be erroneous, then anything contained in that statement can be rejected. Only corroborated evidence can reverse the errors.

The NT is not credible, to claim one part is credible, without evidence is futile. If part of a fictitious story is true, who decides which part is true, without evidence?.

If the authors of Mathew, Mark, Luke, John and the Epistles copied fiction from one another, then their writings should be rejected until evidence can show otherwise.

'Mainstream and 'most scholars' need to put evidence forward to support their views.

driver8

This reference http://freethought.mbdojo.com/josephus.html was provided as the basis for this post: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=186189 titled Evidence for the existence of Jesus?.

If you read far enough in the IIDB thread there is discussion regarding the merits of the arguments given.

Malachi151

What "authentic core"? Again this is just like taking Little Red Riding Hood and removing the talking wolf and claiming that the rest is "authentic".

There is NO evidence for an "authentic core", there are just proposals by people seeking to rescue the reference.

All we have are about 15 writers prior to the 3rd century that reference the work but never quote that passage, and then people after that time that quote the passage in full. There is no indication of a partial passage.

Furthermore, when you read the whole ting in context, it looks very clearly inserted. The paragraph above flows into the paragraph below. The TF itself is an interruption in the discussion that doesn't relate to the topic at hand.

rlogan

heh. Thought you could get away with making absolutely false statements like this?

The gospels depict him as walking on water, raising the dead, coming back to life, being born of a virgin - on and on...

And thas is most clearly not what "historicists" believe. That is what fundamentalist Christians believe.

You've also got it wrong on the crucifixion according to the gospels. Pilate specifically found no fault in him, and it is supposedly the crowd clamoring for his execution - and has pilate absurdly freeing a seditious murderer in "recognition" of a "tradition" that does not exist - releasing a condemned man at passover.

Come back when you have your facts straight. What you propose is inconsistent with the gospels, and radically so.

You are doing exactly as I said: substituting some idea about a "historical Jesus" that is completely contrary to any 1st or second century concept and pretending that

This dating of anonymous texts, full of mythical garbage, is wishful thinking. Forty years? Show me the dating methodology.

Authentic "core"? So I see you admit that Christians meddled in the text. How you can pretend there is a "core" to a passage admitted to be fraud in the first place is beyond me.

Josephus writes at length on sects of the Jews. Nothing on Christianity, allegedly an offshoot of Judaism. He also outlines the various positions of groups in Jewish Wars. Nothing there.

Heh - no need to respond to me with such paucity of command over the facts then, is there.

rlogan

Look GDon - you do not believe the gospel accounts.

So being coy and pretending we can believe them is just completely unproductive and as I see it is an attempt to muddy the waters as much as possible.

All he did in the gosple account was turn over tables. So now you are saying he did not even do that much and the Romans executed him?

gstafleu

And when that preacher got angry he was irant, right ? Sorry, just couldn't resist. "Itinerate" is the verb, "itinerant" the adjective.

Gerard

spamandham

I've made no assumption, nor am I diverting anyone from anything. There are possibilities that lay between "It's all truth" and "It's all fiction". That's all. You don't seem to appreciate that.

I disagree of course, and I suspect most professional historians would as well. For example, the story in Acts about Paul's Damascus road experience is probably fictional, since it does not match Paul's own description of his vision.

But, we can still use it to establish the existence of the Damascus road itself at the time Acts was written. Would you argue that since the description of Paul's vision in Acts is BS, therefor the Damscus road didn't exist?

I agree that the burdon of proof is on those who claim Jesus was historical to back it up, but it isn't sufficient to point out BS in the gospels to disprove his existence.

rob117

This statement is only valid if you take the entire passage to be an interpolation, which is not the mainstream view. Read the literature.

rlogan

First, you need to know two data points: all of what was written (unknown) and all that is extant (I don't know personally).

But what this drive-by superficial and quite phony (insofar as legitimacy) question attempts to conceal is this:

Whatever is written of in the 1st century that is of high import to the next generation has exceedingly important motivation for preservation.

You want to pretend that all pieces of script are equally important such that we would expect to see a shopping list and Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews equally likely to be preserved.

it demonstrates the lack of intellectual honesty in the question, and this is buttressed by the fact I was careful to include later commentary on what was written. Many authors refer to works no longer extant that were resources for them - and in this case we do not even have vague general references to things being written.

I respect you Roger, and expect better than this.

Cheers.

GakuseiDon

"Pretending"? This is how the conversion seems to be going:

rlogan: Assuming the Gospels are true, those scribes should have written about Jesus!
GDon: Assuming the Gospels are true, we probably shouldn't expect records from those scribes
rlogan: Hey! You're just assuming the Gospels are true! Stop muddying the waters!

I think you are confusing two issues:
1. Are the accounts accurate/true?
2. Could the accounts be accurate/true?

It is possible that ALL the parables and sayings in the Gospels really do go back to Jesus. From reading Sander's Historical Jesus book though, I don't think that is the case, so in that situation I don't believe that the Gospel accounts are true (vis a vis Jesus saying all the words attributed to him)

Similarly, Jesus's conflicts with the scribes and the Pharisees were created to show Jesus triumphing over them. I'd be surprised if the Gospel accounts were supposed to be transcripts of actual events. But on the other hand, even if it happened the way the Gospels described, we still shouldn't be surprised that there are no extant records from these conflicts. The reasons for this I've given earlier.

Sure. Why not?