Toto

I think he was disagreeing with you as to the value of a consensus. :huh:

skepticdude

I was primarily talking about the failure to quote Jesus to resolve theological problems, such as reported in Acts 15 and Galatians.

But either way, this "Letter of Peter to Philip" is dated earliest circa 170 a.d., which is 140 years or so after the generally accepted date of Jesus' death. I am not aware of any corroborative accounts for this saying of Jesus, so it fails the critieria of independent attestation. Having failed, all we have is an absurdly late saying of Jesus, coming from the time when even fundamentalists agree that the inventions of speeches and false sayings gained sway.

I'm having a hard time understanding why you would quote something like this as if it were representative of the conservative apologists which my OP attacks. They would love to find places where apostles quoted Jesus, but they wouldn't touch this member of the Nag Hammadi library with a 2 inch crucifix.:huh:

skepticdude

Sure, but I was talking about quoting him to resolve theological tensions, which is why I brought up Acts 15 and Galatians.

Furthermore, you have only assumed that Paul was quoting Jesus. It could just as easily be that the gospel saying here derives from Paul's earlier invention of it.

aa5874

There is no extant evidence available to show that it could have been that the gospel saying was derived from Paul's earlier invention.

The extant evidence of Saul/Paul from Acts of the Apostles show that he was converted by Jesus through a bright light long after the Last Supper.

And further, the letter writer claimed the events of the Last Supper was reaveled to him by Jesus and this was after Jesus ascended through the clouds.

aa5874

So, what evidence was produced for the historical Jesus to arrive at the concensus?

You need to tell us about this concensus that you are familiar with.

You claimed you read 20+ books, what evidence for the historical Jesus did you find? Can you name one single piece of evidence at all?

Petergdi

Jesus doesn't say anything in the gospels which directly addresses those controversies. He didn't say anything about whether or not Gentile belivers should become Jews, or if it were permissible for a Jew to live like a Gentile when visiting Gentiles, or what rules Gentile believers should follow.

Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them. He doesn't say anything about whether or not they should also be circumsised. To many Jews it would be a natural assumption that they should be. Jesus is critical of the way in which some Pharisees make proselytes (he says that they make them twice as much sons of Gehenna than they are themselves) but this could not be reasonably be taken as a statement against proselytisation as such.

Jesus does say that it is what comes out of a man's mouth that defiles him and not what goes into his mouth, but a Jew would not normally understand this as saying that eating pigs that have been sacrificed to idols is perfectly fine. Telling his disciples to eat whatever food is set before them also says nothing on the issue if the context is that they are to be visiting Jewish towns.

Peter.

ercatli

Hang on, weren't you talking about Josephus? You didn't answer my question about whether you disputed that the consensus of scholars accepted most of it as genuine. Any comment?

Your final question can hardly be serious, so I will answer it only briefly. The written sources are the evidence, same as for all history, plus a small amount of archaeology.

ercatli

Just a brief comment because you are still, despite my corrections, imputing views to me that I do not hold.

[QUOTE=Toto;5763440]Doesn't make sense. Despite a lot of critical scholarship based on naturalistic assumptions, nothing much has changed over 200 years, only details. If the conclusions change drastically, I'll reconsider, but I won't hold my breath. But what will you do if yet another quest to disprove Jesus is judged by the "guild" of historians to have failed???

I keep saying, I don't criticise those who do new analysis, but I will criticise them if their assumptions are likely to determine their outcome - a common observation of such "scholarship". And I will suggest to those, apparently including you, who ignore the established work of neutral scholars in favour of the possible, even hoped for, conclusions of a bunch of sceptics who know what conclusion they are looking for. I don't know if that was the case for the Jesus Project, but it certainly proved to be the main undoing of the Jesus Seminar.

Not so, read it for yourself. He used the same methods he used for all other historical research, and presented his reasons for everything.

I want to challenge you on this because I believe, from my reading, that this is a mistake, more like wishful thinking. What is your basis for saying this?

Thanks, bit I'll be around a few more hours and I'm interested to see your answer to my last question.

patcleaver

ercatli, welcome to the forum, but let me be frank about what you have been saying.

Anyone who intentionally holds a position without evidence in a field of study is not a scholar - they are simply a crackpot. Most of the people you quote are not authorities, but are just insane quacks because they claim to know things for which they have no reasonable evidence. Nobody is an authority unless they have demonstrated that we can trust them to have valid evidence for their claims.

Bible scholarship is a discredited field because the consensus of the field is not based on evidence and methodologies accepted in the fiield are irrational.

If somebody intentionally makes up bullshit without evidence, and then presents it as though it were true, then they are lying. If someone repeats such stories, when they know (or reasonably should have known) that there is no evidence for them, then they are lying.

Argument from authority is simply a logical fallacy. You have to prove that any authority that you cite is reliable. If you want anyone to believe what you say, then support it with evidence. We are ready to believe all your great wisdom as long as you prove it with evidence. If you can not prove your statements with evidence then they are just unsupported speculations.

ercatli

Thanks mate, but let me be equally frank.

Are you going to tell us the secret of which of the ones I quote are authorities as opposed to the rest of the insane quacks?

Well it is good you have cleared that up then. We can all, with clear conscience and very good evidence, now disregard all those historians and scholars from Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, etc, and historians like Michael Grant who died a few years ago a highly respected historian and author of over 50 books. In fact we can just close this thread now because all of us were assuming we could say something sensible about history.

Yep. So can you justify why we shouldn't apply that to your comments rather than the eminent professors?

Why is argument from authority a logical fallacy, can you explain that?

Remember that no-one in the fields of science, law, history, etc is expert in everything, which is why papers and books reference the work of others. The explanations are in the books, and it is simply easier to quote the experts than re-hash the arguments. But if you don't think we should do that, let's not bother discussing eh?

Thanks for your interest, I'm sorry I can't find any merit in what you say, but them's the breaks, aren't they? No hard feelings?

Best wishes.