Solitary Man

But that's just it - the Bible does describe him. Not very accurately, but they're the same person.

spamandham

If you're aware of any solid scholarly work that directly addresses the historicity of Jesus, that would go a long way toward showing that HJ deniers are cranks.

However, if it's just an unchallenged assumption that scholars universally start from, then amateurs are as qualified as anyone else to question it.

Solitary Man

The problem is that the "solid scholarly works" are dismissed by amateurs because they often don't get it. They'll handwave it away when in reality the same tools for discerning whether Jesus existed are used for all other ancient figures. Rick Sumner has a nice list of books somewhere, Eddy and Boyd have a good book out...I've never seen these books dealt with by any amateur at IIDB. The only thing I've seen is outright dismissal. Shocking coming from forum which values "freethinking". A little less on the dogmatic MJ, a little more on the freethinking.

Doug Shaver

Do those scholarly works present any evidence that historicists in this forum have not presented in at least one of the countless threads there have been on this topic?

Solitary Man

See, this is my point exactly. Mere dismissal by amateurs unfamiliar with historical methodologies dismissing literature outright and then pouting when
"new" evidence isn't presented. All the evidence in the world hasn't convinced some creationists, why should any evidence convince their brothers in spirit, the mythicists?

thedistillers

I'm not taking any position on the issue, but one could say the problem is actually with historical methodologies.

I see a parallel myself between creationists and MJ, however the evidence against creationism is much more stronger than the evidence against a MJ. But we're not talking at all about the same kind of evidence, or arguments.

Solitary Man

That's fine, but no one here has done any work on historical methodologies. Many here, like mrunicyclist and Toto have expressed disdain with actually doing comparisons with other figures/historical bits themselves. I mention Athronges and mruni shrugs his shoulder. I mention developing his own methodology and Toto complains about the lack of time. What is different between that and creationists who complain about reconstructing the evolutionary process but actually do any work that doesn't already conform to their bias?

Well, it's actually not a perfect parallel. Rather, reconstructing the HJ is like reconstructing an hypothetical ancestor using modern evolutionary principles. It's essentially the same - few fossil fragments, but they have to be explained away. Do we have any living dinosaurs? Of course not, but the literary record is like the fossil record in that respect.

Toto

There is a thread here on Eddy and Boyd. There is nothing there that indicates that there is a secular case for a historical Jesus.

There is a thread on RT France's slim volume.

Please do your own homework before you accuse anyone else of just handwaving or not getting it.

Solitary Man

A secular case for you means that you like the evidence, not anything to do with faith.

Toto

You feel free to throw these accusations around. Where is your evidence? I have never denied that there are many atheists and secularists who think that there is a historical Jesus. It just happens that when you look into the basis for their conclusion, there is nothing very solid. It's either that a wandering religious nut named Jesus is not extraordinary, so we don't really need a lot of evidence, or Christianity must have had a founder, or some other assumption that gets them past the problem of no real evidence and allows them to ignore the alternative scenario.

But Eddy and Boyd are not even like that. They start out by trying to justify the supernatural in history. Thread on The Jesus Legend.