Dave31

Okay, fair enough. My first comment was in response to someone else on the topic of Jesus being famed far and wide though so, I thought it was on topic and relevant. Just because Acharya is mentioned doesn't mean it's off-topic, especially in a thread on mythicism.

I don't think there is a 'main stream mythicist' right now but, of all the mythicists being discussed Acharya certainly is one of them.

mountainman

Give it a break ApostateAbe. You have never come to terms with any of the relevant arguments. Why dont you put Toto on ignore?

Steven Carr

Wait a minute.

I thought we had just been told that these Gospels were not regarded as authoritative by the earliest Christians.

And now we are told that everybody believed them.

Doug Shaver

And that would be because . . . people tend not to believe stories unless the stories are true?

Or because . . . people tend not to believe stories unless the stories, even if false, are about real people?

ApostateAbe

No. Because Luke 1:1-4 very explicitly says so, the other three gospels are very proximate in content and style and closely affiliated with Luke, that has been the predominant early Christian belief according to all other evidence, and we have no good reason to believe anything else.

Solo

Oh pray tell, ApostateAbe, what does Luke 1:1-4 say so very explicitly ?

Jiri

ApostateAbe

The author claims that he sourced his information from a handing on from original eyewitnesses, that he investigated it carefully, and that he was interested in his audience knowing the truth of the instruction.

Toto

Nothing here inspires confidence that there was any investigation or fact checking.

Atheos

That has to be the single most unimpressive argument imaginable. Chair-persons of bible study departments at universities brush the mythicist position aside with a wave of the hand as "absurd". So what? That is evidence of nothing more than that they personally don't like to consider that somewhat personally unpalatable possibility.

Comparing the mythicist position with phrenology is ridiculous. Historical analysis is by definition a matter of interpretation of available evidence. There is no compelling evidence in favor of the historicist position that doesn't work just as well in support for the mythicist position. That is a fact, and it's one of the few that actually can be established. It doesn't matter if everyone believes one way or the other. The mythicist position is every bit as valid as the historicist position until such evidence comes along that tilts things in favor of one way or the other. No such evidence is to be found anywhere. The criterion of embarrassment is not evidence, neither is argument to the best explanation. Drawing a conclusion for drawing a conclusion's sake is not good scholarship.

ApostateAbe

That may be, but what I said wasn't intended as an argument from authority. It was intended as a response to Dave31's claim (now in a different thread) that "Of course, academia avoid mythicism like the plague because it turns their world upside down. The fact is that New Testament scholars are not required to study the case for mythicism in order to receive their Ph.D."

It is a fact used as an argument that academics are scared of mythicism, and, yeah, I gave my own explanation for why academics avoid mythicism. It is not because it would turn their world upside-down, but, if you accept their own plausible explanations, then they reject it because it very much seems to be an improbable explanation that has almost nothing to do with the evidence. I used an analogy to phrenology, but, actually, the analogies from the academics are far more insulting. James McGrath continually compares mythicism to creationism. Bart Ehrman, perhaps the most respected figure in the field, at one time compared mythicism to DENYING THE HOLOCAUST.

I am not asking you to believe that mythicism really is comparable to phrenology or creationism or holocaust denial. But, I think we need to get a realistic handle of how academics really think. They see mythicism to be as threatening to their own theories as a paper cut, not the plague, though of course it is a different story in terms of the headway that mythicism is making among the lay public.