aa5874

"Why not?" is NOT an answer. It is a question.

You ought to know why people forged documents or give the false impression that certain NT characters lived when there is ZERO credible evidence that they did at the time described.

The Pauline writings were COMPILED to DECEIVE.

ALL of the named authors of the NT Canon cannot be corroborated by any credible non-apologetic source of antiquity.

Without Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline writings it would have been rather easy to detect that the Jesus stories were NOT historical accounts.

Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline writings were Fabricated to Historicise the so-called Apostles of Jesus when Jesus had ZERO existence.

As soon as Justin's "First Apology" and "Dialogue with Trypho" are read and understood it will be seen that the writer EXPOSED that Jesus and his disciples HAD ZERO documented history.

Justin Martyr's DEFENSE or EVIDENCE that Jesus did exist was based SOLELY on out-of-context Predictions in Hebrew Scripture or a similar source.

The ONLY persons who knew Jesus were the same characters in the Memoirs of the Apostles.

The persons who PREACHED the Gospel to ALL the world were the SAME characters in the Memoirs of the Apostles.

Justin Martyr EXPOSED a 150 year BLACK-HOLE for the history of Jesus and the Apostles.

Justin's evidence that Jesus was born is Isaiah 7.14. "Dialogue with Trypho" XLIII

Justin's evidence that Jesus was crucified is Isaiah 53. Dialogue with Trypho XIII

Justin Martyr, and neither did Trypho, Present any historical documented evidence for Jesus outside of the very characters in the Memoirs of the Apostles and presented no historical document for the Apostles.

Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline letters were WRITTEN to counter the MASSIVE 150 year old BLACK HOLE of Justin Martyr.

The author of Acts is supposedly a WITNESS of Paul and Paul supposedly is a WITNESS of the Apostles.

The author of Acts supposedly traveled with Paul all over the Roman Empire and the Pauline writer supposedly traveled to Jerusalem to see the Apostles.

Once we REMOVE Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline letters then we have the very "History" that was ALREADY written by Justin Martyr.

The documented history of Jesus and the Apostles is JUST a story by an anonymous author.

Jesus was just a Myth Fable.

Justin Martyr did AGREE.

"First Apology" Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline letters are ALL AFTER the writings of Justin Martyr---AFTER the mid 2nd century.

Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline letters were written to DECEIVE.

LegionOnomaMoi

We're talking about over 2 centuries of a critical approach to these texts. The amount of scholarship on the subject within the last 50 years alone is incredibly vast. So how much of this "pudding" have you "consumed" which leads you to conclude what modern historians (whether their specialty is biblical/NT studies or not) have somehow missed? You're making claims about NT scholarship (and implicitly assigning it an inferior status to other areas of ancient historical study), but to do this you'd have to have read at least a representative sample of NT scholarship (i.e., a fair sampling of peer-reviewed articles, edited volumes from academic series or from conference proceedings, etc). I'm not sure this is even possible if one can't read at least one other of the main languages this secondary scholarship is written in (german would be best), but assuming it is, what survey of which academic texts are you using to support your claim?

maryhelena

And what claim did I make? "The proof of the pudding, so they say, is in the eating of it......The 'pudding' that NT scholarship has produced, using a historical JC cake mix, no longer sustains our modern appetite for logic and evidence." Look around you. Your very participation in this thread has demonstrated my point. There are people on this forum - and elsewhere - who have found the conclusions - not the research of scholarship - to be wanting. Conclusion being - the assumption of a historical gospel JC.

Toto

Don't confuse textual criticism with what passes for history in the NT field. Richard Carrier has just spent the time examining the historical aspects of NT scholarship, and his professional conclusion is that it's appalling. His book on the subject comes out next month.

Agnostic75

Regarding "letters," what about "passages," such as 1st Corinthians 15:3-8? Is it plausible, or probable, that Paul did not write that passage?

I refer you to Dr. Robert Price's article at http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html.

LegionOnomaMoi

I've been following Carrier for several years (and waiting for this book for just as long). I have pre-ordered his book.

Before commenting on the issue of whether or not (and in what way) NT scholarship is "appalling" there are a few things to note about Carrier. Most other historians I know of whose specialties are not biblical/jewish/early christian/NT studies (e.g., Loveday, Cline, Akenson, R. L. Fox, McGinn, Stadter, just to name a few off of the top of my head) but who have dealt with issues such as the historical Jesus, the early "church," gospel genre, etc., either begain to focus on or at least touch on the above subjects after if not extensive research then at least a doctorate in other areas of ancient history. What is unusual about Carrier is not only that most of his publications and papers predate his doctorate, but that the vast majority of his work concerns not ancient history in general (nor topics which closely relate to his doctoral work) but religious topics. Additionally, both his blogs and his publications (e.g., his contributions to The End of Christianity and The Christian Delusion) reflect a very clear take (bent? bias?) on these issues. Of course, everyone has biases, and there are certainly a large number of christian apologists whose work reflects not the sober, critical approach of a historian but of an apologist. The problem is that what I have read of Carrier (both of his publications and from his posts/papers online) resembles rather closely (but in the opposite way) those like Craig: a great deal of popular media exposure, from blogs to debates, relative to academic publications, an "apologetic" type approach, and more work on fields outside of their main area of expertise than in. That said, I haven't read his book yet, it's been long in the making, he is more than qualified in the area of ancient history, historiography, and the philosophies of history and historiography, so I look forward to reading it.

As for the "appalling" status of NT scholarship, although I wouldn't use that word I would tend to agree that on certain subjects (such as the historical Jesus or accounts of early christian history) the field is a mess. The question, though, is why and in what way. As I believe I've said earlier, neither my degrees nor my current research concerns NT studies. Along with Indo-European linguistics, philosophy, physics, abstract algebra, cosmology, climate science, and a few other topic I try to keep current on history is now just a hobby for me, and even my undergraduate exposure to classical history was the result of a degree in ancient Greek and Latin, not classical studies.

However, I did (and continue to) spend a lot of time reading classical and near-eastern scholarship. The reason that the status of, say, historical Jesus scholarship differs from any given other topic of ancient history has little to do with some christian bias or a bunch of unqualified theologians trying to write history. As I noted earlier (referencing Tucker), modern critical historiography owes quite a bit to biblical studies, where many of the techniques and methods used in ancient historical study were developed and then borrowed by classicists and comparative linguists. The inquiry into the historicity of the gospels and the historical person of Jesus have received more attention from such a wide variety of specialists from different background over such a long time that no other topic of ancient historical study can compare.

For example, I wrote a lengthy paper (lengthy at least compared to what was required) on the historical socrates. Here is another figure from ancient history who has been the subject of much study for a long period of time. Although the amount of scholarship devoted to the historical socrates is doesn't really compare to that on the historical Jesus, there are interesting parallels. Going back to Garnier's 1768 paper "Caractére de la Philosophie de Socrate" which was perhaps the first modern attempt to deal with the so-called "socratic problem" (or perhaps a precurser to it), we can see a general trend. Garnier states that it is not in Plato but in Xenophon one finds "le grand principes de la morale Socratique." Shortly after we have Stapfer's De Philosophia Socratis which points out problems not only with using Xenophon but with our sources in general. What follows is a long period of time in which various scholars would point to X source as the best one, while noting all of the reasons the other sources are too problematic, until finally historians like Gigon or Dupréel looked around and saw nothing but a sea of arguments against using all sources and despaired: Socrates no doubt existed, but we can know next to nothing about him. This was almost exactly what Schweitzer determined in his survery of historical Jesus studies since Reimarus, and as a result turned elsewhere.

However, luckily, neither work on the historical Socrates nor historical Jesus ended there. Those interested in the historical Jesus began to adopt techniques and incorporate research from sociology, anthropology, information/communications theory, etc. Historical Socrates scholars (esp. Montuori) began to reject their previous methods and look at the source much more holistically and (as in historical Jesus studies) within a wider context.

Yet what is the state of historical Socrates research? Take, for example, the papers in the Blackwell companion to Socrates. Nails' paper simply ignores all the previous work and uses the sources uncritically. Dorion's paper takes the other eay way out by echoing Dupréel (and ignoring the a considerable amount of 20th and 21st century scholarship).

So while the recent decades have seen decent amount of balanced, critical, and penetrating historical inquiries into the person of Socrates, one can still find papers which go to opposite extremes (like Nails' and Dorion's papers).

The same thing is true in historical Jesus studies, except the sheer amount of work on the subject is VASTLY greater than that on Socrates (or any other figure).

In other words, take any event, person, institution, etc., from ancient history, and put enough ancient historians to work for a long enough period of time, and you'll get an "appalling" state of research. This does not mean that there are not a vast number excellent studies on the NT, the historical Jesus, the early church, etc., even if one confines one's search to studies by biblical/NT specialists.

LegionOnomaMoi

I responded to your post earlier:

Walker, whose main focus is on textual criticism and textual analysis (and in particular with respect to Paul's letters), and who is known for being among the most skeptical/critical among such specialists (i.e., he will tend to conclude interpolation far more frequently than others in the field), doesn't just disagree with Price. He goes even further. For Walker, the verses Price concludes are interpolated fit so well within the overall narrative of the letter that we can use them to conclude vv.29-34 are interpolations.

outhouse

yes they do

famous people, or people of power.

Not a traveling jew/roman teacher nobody like paul

outhouse

And I agree it is. I have been hammering it out with a few of this type.

The bias is obvious.


But there is still enough evidence to show a glimpse of a historical charactor at the core. And Carrier follows this as well.


A backwoods poor Galilean traveling teacher that spoke to small crowds, that had amazing parables still in use today

we all know the romans hellenized a jewish teacher that had no intention of ever being hellenized, and this shows all through the text.

Sheshbazzar

Some people tend to confuse volume with value. That there exists a whole lot of this 'pudding' does not entail that this pudding was manufactured with of wholesome ingredients, or follows a healthy recipe.
That it is unpalatable and causes indigestion and so much gas is an indication that there is something bad wrong with the tainted 'pudding' that these 'scholars' have been cooking up and serving to us all.