aa5874

We now have the supposed history of the people called Jesus Christ written by so-called followers and freinds of Jesus Christ.

There is Jesus according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul.
We have Jesus according to Irenaeus, Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius and other freinds.

Do these so-called freinds and followers have any 'burden of proof' or was it their 'faith' that compelled them to write their history of Jesus?

Where is Jesus according to the critics, have they been burnt and destroyed by those who did not have any proof and could not handle the 'burden of proof.'

Where shall be the truth?

It is my observation that those who have presented these characters called Jesus Christ have come up woefully short of presenting any credibile proof of their Gods and rely only on believabilty and faith. 'The burden of proof' still rest squarely on their shoulders, there is nothing else left to burn.

jakejonesiv

I think that the proto-orthodox did attempt to present historical support for their version of Christianity by means of apostolic succession, starting originally with the legendary St. Peter. Much of it is suspect IMO, but they did seem cognizant of the need. Broadly speaking, the heretics also did the same thing, looking to the hoary St. Paul as their founder.

But yes, I agree that the winners rewrote history to give preeminence to their views. This is apparent in Acts, where Paul is shorn of his epistles, his words are put into Peter's mouth, and he is presented as working hand in glove with the Jerusalem apostles.

Jake Jones IV

John Kesler

In general two basic principles, both of them socially constructed, serve as a good starting point for discussion:

1) He who asserts must prove (basis of Greek logic).
2) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The latter is often credited to Carl Sagan, but there are bases for using it as a principle in Aristotle & David Hume. What is regarded as an ordinary claim is given presumptive weight (Aristotle's discussion of "endoxon"), and what flies in the face of an ordinary belief is presumed unlikely, yet neither presumption for nor against a claim based on conventional belief can ever count as more than provisional (i.e. open to future refutation or disproof). The conventional wisdom before Copernicus was that the earth was stationary. The extraordinary Copernican claim therefore required a great deal of compelling evidence to supplant the millenia-old belief in the earth's stability, and rightly so. This approach might seem to commit the logical fallacy of appeal to belief, but that would only be the case if the presumption were taken as definitive--not open to reasonable challenge. The minute reasonable challenge is offered or advanced, the proponents on endoxa must offer evidence (burden of proof shifts).

Solo

Certainly not ! In science, "better explanations" of physical phenomena are accepted if they are demonstrated. They do not "disprove" anything. Newton's concept of "fixed space" was challenged by Einstein and demonstrated as inaccurate during the 1919 solar eclipse. Newton's theory (and math) could not account for the apparent "curved space" around the sun, Einstein's could. As Karl Polanyi beautifully explained it, the opposite of a simple truth is falsehood, the opposite of a complex truth is...again truth.


In terms of propositional logic it does not matter whether statement is asserted as formally positive or negative. The "ten rules of inference" apply to them equally.

First, logically ~Y cannot be inferred from X. One cannot say that John did not depend on the synoptics for reference because John was written without reference to synoptics. Whether it is true hinges on the semantics of depend in the Y/~Y construct. If the construct did not depend on S. means simply did not use S. as source then we have an inference by means of tautology. Both statements say the same thing in the obverse. On the other hand, if did not depend connotes knew of, but did not use we cannot pronounce ourselves on the validity of the proposition until the meaning is clarified.

Even more evidently, ~X is not bound by Y. Whether John depended on Synoptics for reference, is a moot point to the assertion that John's gospel was written with such reference.

Jiri