spin

Wonderful analogy.

How long has it taken evolutionary biologists to seriously review the work of Lynn Margulis, the staunch advocate of endo-symbiotic causes for the structure of eukaryotic cells?? Mainstream scholars simply ignored it for decades. You have garishly high hopes for academia.

Academic circles have as much responsibility to test the seriousness of ideas as journalists do of testing the veracity of politicians, especially Murdoch journalists.

When you abnegate your responsibility to analyze things for yourself and rely on others, as you have, you have no hope of an independent stance to judge what you're talking about.

Yes, we love rose-colored glass perspectives. It makes things seem so nice.

This translates out as you are not able to muster a reasonable defense of historicity, so you blurt propaganda.

Why don't you make a presentation showing that these issues are analogous to questioning the historicity of Jesus.

Scholars in universities often spend time on what the academic community think they should. That is not necessarily a reflection on what these scholars actually should.

This is merely your assertion. What is interesting to me is that whereas various fields undergo great questioning of their fundamental tenets, think of new chronologies for Egyptian history, or Black Athena. The field that you refer is generally incapable of questioning its basic tenets. It is not, per se, a scholarly field at all.

Now you can get back to espousing your beliefs about the historicity of Jesus by relying on biblical scholarship and false analogies.

No Robots

Whatever progress mythicism is making in academe is dwarfed by the work being done on the contextualization of the New Testament into Judaism. See, for example, the three-day symposium on "Jesus in the Context of Judaism and the Challenge to the Church," hosted by the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies that took place at Case on May 24-26, 2009. The papers from this conference are available here (in pdf).

Steven Carr

In other words, Ehrman is wasting his time,according to you.

Meanwhile, it continues to be the case that Paul is blissfully unaware that the Romans crucified Jesus, and writes that Jews could hardly be expected to believe in Jesus, as they had never heard of him, but luckily Christians have been sent to preach about him.

And it remains the case that a century of Quests for the Historical Jesus have crashed and burned.

Steven Carr

Nothing to see there that was worth anybody's time. All it claimed was that early Christians venerated Jesus, and ignored the fact that they would have been stoned to death as blasphemers, if they really had been worshipping a crucified criminal.

Could you actually find these alleged Gospel characters - Judas, Thomas,Lazarus, Nicodemus?

They are as well attested as Bluto,Olive Oyl, Sweepea'.

hjalti

Wait, "few more excavations"? Looking for what? Jesus' sandals? The empty tomb?

aa5874

What a BIG LOAD of Crap.

You KNOW that there is NO HJ theory developed by Biblical Scholars who support HJ.

No BIBLICAL Scholar has PRODUCED a SINGLE PIECE of CREDIBLE DATA of Antiquity to support a theory known as "HJ".

YOU KNOW that "HJ" been ONLY ASSUMED.

You KNOW your are wasting OUR time with your MIS-LEADING ASSERTIONS.

YOU KNOW BIBLICAL SCHOLARS HAVE NOT DEVELOPED ANY THEORY for HJ.

There are THEORIES for the possible WORDS and DEEDS of HJ but NO CREDIBLE DATA of Antiquity has BEEN PRESENTED by BIBLICAL SCHOLARS for an HJ theory.

BIBLICAL SCHOLARS who support HJ are NOT INTERESTED in providing any Credible Data to DEVELOP an HJ theory, for the moment they appear to have AGREED to ASSUME without EVIDENCE that there was an HJ.

STOP YOUR CRAP.

HJ is an ASSUMPTION of some Biblical Scholars.

Chaucer

Do you think that serious evolutionary biologists waste their time when they challenge creationism?

Chaucer

Toto

I seem to have assumed that you knew more about the Templeton Foundation. Quite apart from the Templeton Prize, the foundation has supported academic research that attempts to show some medical benefit from prayer, including distance, intercessory prayer. The efforts failed. But they did get a lot of academic scientists working on the issue.

If you read the history of the mythicist hypothesis, you will come across this quote:

From Jesus and the Word (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Bultmann's status was enough to squash the subject of mythicism, although he was only one step away from mythicism himself - he felt that only a minimal glimpse of the historical Jesus could be discovered through historical research.

When I first discovered this issue about a decade ago, this forum was infested with Christian apologists whose sole argument against mythicism was that no academic expert would give the mythicist hypothesis the time of day. As I read more, it became clear that this was not a reasoned consensus supported by evidence after a debate among opposing sides, but a sort of group think without any sound basis in history or logic.

Those Christian apologists have gone their way, but now we have a posters like you who claim to be skeptics, but can only repeat the empty slogan that the Jesus Myth hypothesis is a fringe theory that is not worth examining. Why? If you are interested enough to post on the issue, and if you consider yourself a skeptic, why not read some of the basics so you can at least develop a more nuanced stance? It's not rocket science.

Toto

Creationism is a live issue in the US with a powerful political constituency. Evolutionary biologists at one time tried to treat it as a fringe theory and ignore it, but learned that they had to take on creationists.

They did this by patiently explaining the facts behind the theory of evolution and the methods of science, and why those methods work.

Historicists have not been able to do this. There are no clear facts, and the methods that they use do not work consistently. Any person with a university education and a background in history can see how insubstantial the case for a historical Jesus is.

Try it for yourself.

aa5874

HJ is an ASSUMPTION or an AGREEMENT by some Biblical Scholars among THEMSELVES.

It is COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS that there is an HJ theory DEVELOPED by Biblical Scholars using Credible data of Antiquity.

NO CREDIBLE DATA of ANTIQUITY has BEEN presented for the HJ ASSUMPTION just like NO DATA could have been supplied for the ASSUMPTION that the EARTH was FLAT.