Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 04-15-2007, 12:30 PM

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Originally Posted by jgibson000

Why does the passage have to be from a first century historian to qualify as evidence?

More importantly, what are your criteria for judging historical evidence as "credible"? Are your criteria themselves credible? Would they be judged so by professional historians?

And why do you rule out, as you apparently do, Josephus' statement about Jesus' execution as not only 1st century evidence, but as "credible" 1st century evidence?

JG

This all I have to say right now.

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Originally Posted by jgibson000

Great riposte. Wat. Are you five years old

jgibson000 · 04-15-2007, 01:05 PM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

This all I have to say right now.

Thus demonstrating the paucity of your case. Thanks for showing the strength of your argument. It is extremely interesting, and more importantly, extremely revealing vis a vis how confident you are in your claims, to see how you yourself are not willing to give (or, as is more likely, how you are incapable of giving) what you demand from others.

JG

aa5874 · 04-15-2007, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

Thus demonstrating the paucity of your case. Thanks for showing the strength of your argument. It is extremely interesting, and more importantly, extremely revealing vis a vis how confident you are in your claims, to see how you yourself are not willing to give (or, as is more likely, how you are incapable of giving) what you demand from others.

JG

Your statements are frivolous and unnnecesary. Let's deal with the issues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

How can Jesus be, according to the NT?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

According to Mark--who knows neither Matthew not Luke--it is through sexual union of Mary and Joseph. According to Matthew, through a man other than Joseph. According to Paul through human generation.

What!!

jgibson000 · 04-15-2007, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Your statements are frivolous and unnnecesary. Let's deal with the issues.

Gee, and here I thought I was dealing with them.

So are you saying that determining the criteria by which you judge evidence to be "credible", and that the question of whether your criteria themselves are "credible", is frivolous? That it has no bearing on whether any of your judgments about evidence should be taken seriously?

JG

aa5874 · 04-15-2007, 03:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

Gee, and here I thought I was dealing with them.

So are you saying that determining the criteria by which you judge evidence to be "credible", and that the question of whether your criteria themselves are "credible", is frivolous? That it has no bearing on whether any of your judgments about evidence should be taken seriously?

JG

Do you have any information, that you consider credible, of a character called Jesus, whose birth cannot be confirmed, whose genealogy cannot be confirmed, whose death cannot be confirmed and whose body went missing, lived in the 1st century?

That is all I have to say right now.

jgibson000 · 04-15-2007, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Do you have any information, that you consider credible, of a character called Jesus, whose birth cannot be confirmed, whose genealogy cannot be confirmed, whose death cannot be confirmed and whose body went missing, lived in the 1st century?

I think so. But the question right now -- which you are quite clearly dodging [again] is not whether I have any evidence, credible or not in my opinion -- but what your criterion is for judging evidence not credible and whether your criteria are themselves "credible" when measured against those used by professional historians in evaluating the worth of evidence.

There is also the question of why you think that evidence from second century historians is not credible and why you do not accept the testimony of Jospehus to the death of Jesus as both first century and credible.

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That is all I have to say right now.

But you haven't said anything, at least with respect to the topics you've been asked to speak about.

And why is that, according to you, questions I ask you about your criteria for judging something "credible" are "frivolous and unnecessary" and not worthy of an answer, but that you think that the ones about the same thing that you ask me are not frivolous and unnecessary and do deserve to be answered?

JG

Amaleq13 · 04-15-2007, 04:39 PM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

Let me simply state the undeniably truth, again.

Repeating your mantra only serves to emphasize that you have entirely missed the point.

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My freind, Complexity is the sum of simplicity

You do not appear to understand the difference between "simplicity" and "simplistic".

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I am of the view that the historicity of Jesus is baseless, that is not a complaint.

I'm starting to suspect that your English fluency is insufficient for the discussion. You dogmatically repeat your mantra while complaining that no one can meet your illogical requirements to defeat it.

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Jesus is linked to the mythological or fictional, not the historical.

False, Jesus is linked to Pontius Pilate.

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There are no rumors, anecdotes, mythological or credible historical references to Jesus by any 1st century historian, not even a bad omen.

I've already responded to this argument from silence:

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Why should there be? The evidence indicates his death was initially significant only to a few.

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And, the NT does not appear to be credible, we even have suspected cases of tampering with historical writings to place Jesus in the 1st century.

Are you referring to Josephus? How do you know that the tampering was done "to place Jesus in the 1st century"?

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Your belief is unsubstantiated, you have not shown that a character, whose time of birth is years apart, with 2 grandfathers on the father's side, whose body cannot be accounted, actually lived.

As you've already been told, the discrepant birth years and geneologies and missing body are irrelevant to the fact that a significant death implies a life. They are also irrelevant to the fact that you have not shown yourself capable of determining whether this life was physical or mythological.

You simply assert it is mythological.

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You have not even substantianted the name of his parents, since in the NT, it may not be Joseph, and by extension Mary, as there is total confusion in the genealogies.

How is any of this relelvant to his significant death?

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Originally Posted by Amaleq13

All you need to do now is figure out a way to determine whether the movement based on the significant death originally began with a real man subsequently mythologized or with a myth from the beginning.

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That's your job, you have the 'thoughtful scissors'.

No, that is your job if you wish to be taken seriously instead of the mythicist version of a dogmatic fundamentalist.

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Originally Posted by Amaleq13

But the point is and always has been that you lack any such way and show no inclination or ability to obtain one but prefer to delude yourself into thinking you can reach your conclusion anyway.

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This is totally unnecessary.

You are probably correct since so many have attempted to point it out to you so many times before that it is unlikely anyone continues to be unaware.

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If I say the same about you, nothing will be achieved.

You would be lying.

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I prefer if you deal with the issues, show me evidence, show me a passage of scripture, show me a passage from a 1st century historian that supports your fundamental assumption of death.

It is simply impossible that you could be genuinely ignorant of the plentiful references to the death of Jesus in the Christian Bible.

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I will no longer respond to frivolity.

You've demonstrated no ability to recognize the difference.

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I don't even know which Jimmy Hoffa you are talking about.

Is your google broken?

Jimmy Hoffa

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I consider the entire episode to be nonsense, apparently you do not.

Yes but that is only because, unlike yourself, I avoid the fallacy of composition.

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What information do you have to support such an episode, or the fundamental assumption of death?

Willful obtusity does not become you. Please stop pretending to be so ignorant.

J-D · 04-15-2007, 05:00 PM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

I was hoping that you would have stated your position exactly, anyhow, seeing that you have stated that my observation of your view is close, I will proceed to my next point.

Although from a theoretical or logical standpoint, your postion may be correct, would you agree that it is not practical or not standard practice to investigate all possibilities of a matter to come to a conclusion?

For example, if a person is found dead in the USA and deemed to be strangled, and we estimate that there are 150 million adults, then from logics, we can say that there are 150 million possible adult suspects. And if we estimate devoting 10 hours to investigate each possibility, then we have 1.5 billion hours of investigation, not a very practical proposition.

Why would we assume that only adults could be suspects? And why would we assume that every adult in the USA is a possible suspect? And why would we assume that nobody from outside the USA could be a suspect? Exactly how stupid are we? Why would we estimate ten hours for each possibility when we know perfectly well ...

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Originally Posted by aa5874

It is far more practical, and less time consuming, to develop a profile by examining the crime scene and analysing the evidence collected, in that way, millions of the initial logical possibilities are eliminated.

... that a little investigation of the crime season will eliminate millions of possibilities at once?

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Originally Posted by aa5874

Now, in my investigation of the historicity of Jesus, after examining the NT, I find that Jesus fits a mythological, or should I say a fictional profile. His pre-existence, birth, life on earth, ressurection and ascension all fit this mythological/fictional model.

My hypothesis regarding the mythological/ fictional model is this: If Jesus is a myth or fictional, then no 1st century historian would have written anything historical about him. This appears to be true, in fact, there are no anecdotal, mythological, or historical episodes of Jesus from any extra-biblical 1st century source, not even a rumor. And besides this, we have reason to believe that certain writings were tampered with to make Jesus appear to have lived in the 1st century.

This finding, no rumors, no anecdotes, no mythical and no historical episodes, also apply to his followers and his teachings in the 1st century.

Jesus fits the fictional model perfectly. My investigation is practicall over.

But it does not support your conclusion, because you have committed the logical fallacy known technically as affirming the consequent (a point which I can explain in detail if you like).

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Originally Posted by aa5874

Now, if you use your logical possibilty approach, you may or may not come to my conclusion, but without even knowning the population of the Jewish region and surrounding area, in the 1st century, you have many many possibilities to deal with.

I don't see any way in which the population figure would be relevant to any sort of investigation that I would think worth conducting.

J-D · 04-15-2007, 05:26 PM

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Originally Posted by jgibson000

Actual resurrection scenes?? Does Price cite the exact places within the novels he adduces where empty tomb stories and resurrection scenes occur?

And again, what is the date of writing of these novels?

Jeffrey Gibson

I quoted text from the site Toto linked to. I'm not endorsing it. I do not know the answers to your questions.

J-D · 04-15-2007, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

I am having problems with this sentence... The scholars and historians who set out to discover the Historical Jesus generally started with the New Testament, but removed all of the supernatural aspects.

How does one remove all of the supernatural events from the NT, without destroying the credibilty of the cannon?

Anybody who rejects the supernatural would not accept the notion of canonical authority. But just because a document does not have canonical authority, it does not necessarily follow that it can have no evidential value whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by aa5874

Supernatural events are the fundamental core and purpose of Jesus on earth.

That's the orthodox believers' view, but why would you assert it, or expect that we would?

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Originally Posted by aa5874

Removing all supernatural events from the NT pose many serious chronological and logistical problems.

No it doesn't. It leaves many points open for further investigation and debate. This is neither a chronological problem nor a logistical one.

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Originally Posted by aa5874

If they removed Matthew 1:18, Luke 1:35 and John1:14 and all the supernatural miracles, the resurrection and ascension, how did they determine what is credible?

In exactly the same way that you decided that the supernatural is not credible.

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