Solo

The writer of Mark rising from the dead and swearing on the Bible that Peter told him about the women running away from the tomb telling him nothing about Jesus rising.

Yeah, that's it, right Chilli ?


Best,
Jiri

Juststeve

Do we have seven different authors placing their story in Gotham? I have no idea what Thendara refers to.

Back to my hypothetical, to which you did not respond, what I am suggesting the that reference to what appears to be the same place in seven fictional accounts by seven authors is some evidence that the place exists. How likely is it that seven authors would independently name a fictional town London?

Steve

steve_bnk

You inbvoked Poopper.

smeat75

"What would falsify Mythicism?"

I am new here and I am sure members of this group have heard what I am going to say many many times. But as you all seem to enjoy discussing this question continuously I will put in my two cents.
Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews refers to "the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" by order of Ananus ben Ananus, a Herodian-era High Priest who died c. 68 AD....Modern scholarship overwhelmingly views the entire passage, including its reference to "the brother of Jesus called Christ", as authentic and has rejected its being the result of later interpolation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephu...other_of_Jesus

Tacitus in the Annals, c 115 CE says " Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."
"Most modern scholars consider the passage to be authentic."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

So Josephus and Tacitus both say that there was such a person as Jesus. That is, to all intents and purposes, proof that there was indeed such a person. Picking those statements apart and trying to disprove them would only be done by someone coming to those texts with a pre-conceived idea that there never was such a person. All unbiased historians of ancient history would accept those statements as evidence, and good evidence, of the bare existence of a person called Jesus who was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate.

Michael Grant, atheist classical historian, vice-chancellor of Queen's College Belfast, did the standard translation of Tacitus' Annals, said :"if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned."
http://www.bede.org.uk/price1.htm

So "mythicists" are arguing with Josephus, Tacitus and Michael Grant and although I do not "know" the regular posters here and have no wish to insult them, arguing with those authorities is extreme fringe theory activity, it's in the realms of Erich von Däniken and space aliens visiting earth and starting ancient civilisations.
What would falsify "mythicism"? asks the thread topic. It IS falsified, it is false, Josephus and Tacitus confirm there was such a person and that's that.
But what really gets me and to be honest makes me angry about it is that it is a distraction and a diversion from the message that the bare bone fact that there was such a person and he was crucified by the Roman authority is that is the ONLY thing about him that is proven.
Why waste time endlessly quibbling about whether there was such a person at all when we live in a world where a major candidate for US President says that there is no such thing as a liberal Christian and you have to accept everything the Bible says: ""To take what is plainly written and say that 'I don't agree with that, therefore I don't have to pay attention to it,' means you're not what you say you are. You're a liberal something, but you're not a Christian."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1291645.html
The Bible is still used for political purposes, to justify discrimination against gay people, for instance, and there are millions of people who believe that the Bible is literally true when it is full of nonsense and a lot of downright lies which I am sure I do not need to detail here.
I have really been quite shocked to discover in my reading over the last few years that Biblical scholars all more or less agree that there never were such people as Moses, Abraham, Joshua, the Exodus never happened, the conquest of Canaan never happened, the United Monarchy of Israel and the Solomonic Empire never existed and not only are those stories untrue they are deliberate concoctions of made up religious propaganda. Lies.
The story (stories actually as there are several and they do not agree) of Jesus' trial is impossible as everyone who has studied it knows.It is false.
There is no evidence for the existence of Paul or Peter or any of the other apostles. Acts of the Apostles is a laughable and ludicrous tale of impossible goings-on. And so on and so on.
But instead of getting across the message to the general public that the Bible is untrustworthy and not an accurate source of historical information we have books, webpages, articles in the Huffington Post, TV and radio interviews, on and on on this quite trivial question of whether the bare bone fact of Jesus' existence can be confirmed.
What a waste of time.

Duvduv

"the brother of Jesus called Christ..."

It's a nice little interpolation. Now consider the context in which it supposedly originally appeared. The Savior of the world who is believed to have been resurrected gets a mere second billing to brother James, a regular human guy like you and me, who gets first billing. Would that make any sense from the perspective of Josephus?!

Didn't anyone in the church even notice that John the Baptist gets higher billing that James and Jesus put together? Pretty weird, isn't it?

Here is the Baptist who the gospels say couldn't even tie the shoe of the one who came after, and he gets more coverage by Josephus than a guy who is said in the same gospels to be the savior.

outhouse

when it comes to conspiracy nutters, no reason or logic or proof will make a difference.

so to answer this

not a thing could, for some.

hjalti

Obviously you compare the DNA in question with the DNA of the blood on the shroud of Turin!

steve_bnk

I could probably find a link, There is an African tribe that claimed to be descended from Jews and sp;ecifically the priest class. DNA seemed to bare it out.

Toto

That would depend on whether the passage looked like an interpolation. I'm assuming that there is some reason to trust this newly found copy of Tacitus, unlike the currently available texts that are all a bit dubious.

You asked what would falsify mythicism, and I gave you an example. It's similar to what Richard Carrier said about what would change his mind on mythicism IIRC.

Note that most claims of interpolation are not made by mythicists. There are usually some indications that the passage is interpolated, and we know that there have been many pro-Christian interpolations in existing documents,

Diogenes the Cynic

Christian interpolators are unlikely to have called their religion a "disease."

The main problem with Tacitus is not any real likelihood of forgery, but that it's not possible to discount the possibility (I'd say probability) that Tacitus was merely reporting what Christians themselves were saying, not consulting any official records. What records would there be? What documents would he have been checking?