Ben C Smith

I agree.

I disagree. This is a non sequitur. M and L could very well have been written after Mark and yet be independent of Mark.

Nevertheless, I myself tend to invest little stock in the M and L traditions; I was pointing out that some researchers do (hopefully carefully) use parts of M and L in their reconstructions.

Ben.

John W. Loftus

I have read Shermer's book. I see a connection, that's all. Sorry if it offended anyone.

John W. Loftus

All I'm doing is pointing out that with such an extreme skepticism you could deny most anything in history. Now you deny that Socrates existed? Okay. But I do not believe this is being fair with the available evidence, nor is it being fair to Christians. There are double standards at work here or you might as well claim history is all in the mind, like Plato's Socrates. Some are that skeptical, you know. They argue that history is all in the mind. I just don't think extreme skepticism with regard to the paucity of evidence for any historical claim is justified. I don't think you understand my point and I don't have the time to argue for it here.

Midrash. Now we're talking. Yes there is a lot of it in the NT, no doubt. But why do you throw the baby out with the bathwater? That I don't understand. Nor do you understand me. Nor can I convince you. Nor can you convince me.

We'll just have to leave it at that.

John W. Loftus

Please tell me you read all of my arguments, okay? The common theme and yet embarrassing for the early church is that in the NT Jesus predicted the eschaton. He was part of an era that looked for it. It fits within Jewish Messianism. The fact that later NT writers had to try to explain it away, and water his predictions down, and reinterpret them, means that they did not just make this stuff up. If they made it up they never would've included such stuff.

John W. Loftus

Now wait just a minute. Are you serious? We have all of this textual evidence. It makes a distinction between Jesus and John. What you know about John is told to you in the same texts that tell you about Jesus. Yet you think you can deny what the texts say and assert something different with no evidence for it?

Come on now. If we skeptics don't want laughed at by Christians let's not be heard saying such things. It shows them we really are not interested in knowing the truth. I am. By your answer you either are messing with me (more likely) or you are not.

John W. Loftus

That Jesus is best described as an eschatological prophet has been the dominant one since Albert Schweitzer and is to this very day, by far. The evidence is very convincing. Have you read Dale Allison's book, Jesus of Nazareth (or via: amazon.co.uk)? There you will be convinced if you can be convinced at all.

This is a non-sequitur, It doesn't follow that if I'm wrong about whether the methods are the same that I don't know a thing about historical methods. I just may misunderstand your position, that's all.

I've been arguing the same way that Shermer did. No single piece of evidence can bear the whole weight of showing Jesus existed, since each single piece can be doubted. I say, as he did, that it's the convergence of evidence that leads us to this conclusion. No single piece of evidence when looked at with extreme skepticism can show Jesus existed because no single piece of evidence ever bore the whole weight of showing that he did. THAT is right out of Shermer's book when arguing against Holocaust deniers. You can spell out the differences if you want to. I could be wrong.

This is where extreme skepticism lands us in, doesn't it? It's easy to be a skeptic, isn't it? We skeptics like having it easy, don't we? But try being a historian, okay? Try writing a history of, say, ancient Rome. See how skeptical you can be of that history? With extreme skepticism your book will probably have nothing but blank pages in it. But you must write something.

spamandham

I am unaware of any qualified researchers who have tackled the question of whether or not Jesus was a historical figure, and utilized Matthew, Luke, and John as part of that analysis, although I believe Carrier is currently working the issue. If you know of some, I'd be interested.

I certainly didn't mean to imply they have no value in any context, merely in the context of determining whether or not there was a historical Jesus.

bacht

But don't we also know that
- Christian texts were edited or created for polemical purposes in the 2nd C?
- the successors to John the Baptist were associated with Gnosticism eg. Dositheus & Simon Magus?

The value of the extreme skeptic position is to mark the opposite pole from orthodoxy. Why shouldn't the existence and description of all the NT characters be challenged? We've had fifteen centuries of the traditional readings.

spin

The existence of Mark sets a yardstick. It represents a complex collection of christian traditions already in circulation. You'd like to imagine that it has no effect on either directly or indirectly on all speculation?


spin

John W. Loftus

Yes, which makes this issue problematic, I agree.

I don't think we "know" this at all.

There is no value in error at all.