jgibson000

No. What has been questioned is what that "sense" actually is.

Yes. Two.

First, why have you misread what I asked of you?

I did not ask you to produce your evidence for anyone, let alone for Jesus. I asked you

(1) to state explicitly both what you consider to be the kinds of things that would, could, or do demonstrate anyone's existence, as well as what you consider to be the minimum amount of these things that we'd have to have to to do so, and

(2) to give us a comparison of all of this with what professional historians state is such "evidence" and the amount of it required to establish the historicity of an ancient figure.

Second, will you now please do what I asked you to do?

If you don't, you confirm my claim that the responsibility for the lack of any progress being made here lies with you.

JG

spamandham

If I understand you, you reject even the mere possibility, since no-one has provided you evidence to support the idea?

It's not a straw man at all. The entire argument regarding the passage "born of a woman" is that Paul meant it literally. How could Paul not believe in a HJ if he meant this phrase literally? To argue that Paul meant this phrase literally is to necessarily argue that Paul believed in a historical Jesus. Is there reason to believe that beyond this isolated phrase, such that a case is made that is stronger than the case that Paul's Christ was nonhuman?

spamandham

Paul wrote much eariler than the Gospels (according to the usually accepted dates), and so there is no reason to suspect his position was based on them. It might be fair to look at other evidence right around the time of Paul (or a bit earlier) to try to fill in the gaps about him, but it isn't fair to look at evidence that came later and attempt to do that.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

Revelation Chapter 12
The Woman and the Dragon
1A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

Well, this is as pertinent as anything you have searched outside the scriptures. The scene is set in heaven.
Here we have a woman, allegorical to be sure, but never-the-less described as a heavenly woman. She is pregnant, about to give birth to a male child. And in v. 5 she is indeed said to give birth to a son.

This is devastating to your case that the redactor's comment of the Son of God born of a woman in Gal 4:4 necessarily means a historical woman and a historical child.

Jake Jones IV

spamandham

Here is the argument that seems to be being made:

- the phrase "born of a woman" is found in several other Greek writings around the same time period, and in those writings, it always refers to an actual birth. These writings are ordinary nonmystical writings. Therefor, since we find this phrase being used nonmystically in nonmystical writings, thus it is always meant to have a nonmystical meaning no matter where we might find it.

I seriously hope this is not an accurate assesment and that I've just missed something, but repeated attempts to clarify the argument being made have not resulted in anything more flattering.

I concede out of shear weariness. I think I already have my answer to the OP.

aa5874

There is overwhelming evidence for Jesus, there were lots of them, Josephus did mention a few of them. However, it is the Jesus Christ, the one in the Christian Bible for which evidence is sought, the one whom Josephus claims did ten thousand wonderful things.

Now, if Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, did not do any miracles, was not ressurected nor ascended, where and when did He do those ten thousand wonderful things and who saw Him?

Epistles are not strong evidence of historicity. Even today, some of the epistles are being questioned as to their authorship. It is incredible that refering to a person in a book signifies authenticity. It is claimed that forgeries and interpolations were rampant, the Christian Bible itself is extremely contradictory and not credible. It cannot be ascertained whether Matthew copied from Mark or Luke from Mark or who John called Jesus Christ.

Ten thousand wonderful things, according to Josephus.

No Robots

What about the scholarly consensus that the Gospels are written versions of information originally transmitted orally?

No Robots

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?-- Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four.

spamandham

The problem is, we have no idea what oral traditions might have consisted of at the time of Paul, nor do we have any reason to think the branch that led to the Gospels is the same branch Paul was involved in. Paul's letters prove there were competeing Christian churches from the earliest records, each with different teachings.

We don't know that the Gospels came from Paul's branch, and it certainly seems unlikely. But even if we knew that, it would still be invalid to extrapolate backward from the Gospels to Paul, since there is no reason to expect oral tradition to remain constant over time, particularly considering that the various creeds designed to promote uniformity had not yet been invented.

Amaleq13

You do misunderstand me and I have to assume that is because you didn't finish reading my post since I clearly accept the existence of the possibility. I also pointed out that establishing a mere possibility is ultimately useless in helping one reach a conclusion and that one needs to provide support that it is something more than just a possibility.

Since, as far as I can see, it bears no resemblance to anyone's position in this discussion, it is a straw man by definition. To establish that I am incorrect, you need to identify who here holds that Paul believed in an historical Jesus "based on this one phrase to the exclusion of everything else Paul says about Jesus existing at the beginning of time, etc". It certainly doesn't describe my position since I view Paul as believing Jesus to have been the incarnation of the pre-existing Son.

No, that is the conclusion based on the prima facie meaning of the phrase and the absence of any good reason to think otherwise.

I do not understand what you are trying to say here.