spin

I don't know what you mean by "New Testament history" yet. Do you mean something about the contents of the new testament? If so, what exactly?

ApostateAbe

I am just asking you what you would find to be an acceptable "observation statement" in an arbitrary argument that relates to New Testament history. I am just trying to understand your meaning. I am not challenging you.

spin

To answer you, I need to know what you mean by the opaque term "New Testament history". I don't know what you mean by it. Please explain it, then I can respond to your request for 'an example of what you think would count as an "observation statement" in the topic of New Testament history.'

ApostateAbe

OK. "New Testament history" is the field of study that attempts to explain historical data relating to the canonical Christian writings. You can use your own definition, too, if you like. I really don't give a damn.

spin

Then "New Testament history" is not history at all, right? It is an analysis of the new testament ("the canonical Christian writings") attempting to individuate what may or may not be historically reliable information from those writings, or an attempt to find some history in the texts, right? If I understand what you mean by "New Testament history", then there are no "observation statements". If I don't understand, perhaps you could clarify more.

ApostateAbe

Forget I asked.

spin

No. You crap on about explanatory power without actually following through. You cannot provide the prerequisite for your analyses, the "observation statements", ie already accepted historical facts. Instead you supply rationalizations of text based not on knowledge of the period, but your own experience and imagination.

Doug Shaver

What does "people invent myths using nothing but their imagination" not explain about how Christianity got started?

dog-on

It ignores the presupposition of an historical kernel?

Kapyong

Gday,

I agree with your sentiments there,
but
I'd also like to point out a sometimes overlooked issue -

As well as their 'imagination', they used others 'imagination' as well - in the sense of prior myths and legends and themes from earlier writings.

In the case of Jesus, a great deal of his story was lifted from the Tanakh - from different episodes and characters therein.

And this can serve to constrain the authors in what they write, even though it's 'just' a myth.

I say this because I often encounter the anti-MJ argument that:
if Jesus was myth, the authors could have written anything, but as we see they had to incorporate awkward elements such as having Jesus from Bethlehem AND Nazareth, they must have been constrained to use the awkward element because of history (and in this case Bethlehem came from the Messiah myth, but Nazareth came from history.)

But in fact an author can be stuck with some story element APART from history of course.

All Hercules stories have his Mum as Alcmene, right? But that's not because of history.

Anyway - when it comes to Jesus we see Matthew specifically say "he shall be called a Nazarene" - that's a prophecy, not history - but we don't have any records of it now.

Jesus may have been made up - but a lot of ingredients from different ages went into the recipe.


K.