youngalexander

This is what I am interested in. What is it that you see, that I do not?
This is where we differ. I do not see that at all. He has noted that Nazareth is mentioned in the Gs & Acts and seeks non-canonical confirmation from other historical sources. It is important to appreciate what confirmation means here. He is attempting to confirm the information re Nazareth found in the Gs & Acts. Alas, he finds none and reports the fact.

He is not saying that the Gs & A have no historical value. He is not expressing an opinion. He is reporting a fact concerning other historical sources.

If you wish to dispute the fact then quote a source 'other' than the Gs & A which mentions Nazareth as existing in the 1st C.

No, he is not.

He has made no such statement.

As toto has already sed, "it would be a useless exercise to accept the gospels as historical confirmation of themselves".

No, it relies upon his assertion that "no other{than Gs & A} source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD". Which you can counter by providing one.

Suppose we consider;
"Pontius Pilate is never mentioned in the Pauline epistles".
That is not a matter of opinion.
That is not a statement of the historical value of the Pauline epistles.
That is a fact because it is indisputably correct.

Similarly, "no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD" is also a fact, unless you can provide evidence to the contrary.

If a writer went on to use these facts in a logical proposition, that is a seperate and distinct matter. If such a proposition should prove to be fallacious, so be it. However, that does not thereby negate the fact upon which it is based.

aa5874

Well, then maybe that's why you continuously commit logical fallacies.

It should be logical that JNE position on the city of Nazareth could be right, even if you are convinced they are wrong, unless of course you are convinced everyone else is illogical.

FathomFFI

When an argument is simply not convincing whatsoever, there is no reason to logically conclude that he could be right. I mean, we have this JNE website actually making a positive claim at the end that Nazareth never existed, and they base that claim totally on an argument from silence.

When they are that wrong, there is no way they could ever be right.

Solitary Man

I cannot seriously believe that people here would so rip out of context JNE.com and try to say that they do not make positive statements. Are you kidding me? Quoted from JNE:

"Every miracle, every pronouncement and every micro-drama of the godman's supposed existence was teased out of Jewish scripture and a handful of supplementary sources. Traditional pagan motifs completed the detail."

http://jesusneverexisted.com/creation.html

"The compendium that resulted – ambiguous, inconsistent, improbable and impossible – though never intended as a "history", none the less masqueraded as such, underpinning the claims of the faith to a unique historical foundation. "

http://jesusneverexisted.com/glory.html

"[Nazareth] is an imaginary city for an imaginary god-man."

http://jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

Apologists for JNE have stooped to new lows to defend their new holy website from critical and rational inquiry.

Antipope Innocent II

I can't believe anyone takes such a cartoonish and crappy website seriously at all. It's a confused mess of hysterical screeds, crazed assertions, misquotations, selective evidence and wild crackpottery of the highest order. It makes an ol' time Creationist website look sober, rational and academic by contrast.

perfectidius

"Wild crackpottery of the highest order."

Oh poor poor man. There are many many higher orders of wild crackpottery than anything you will come across on JNE, which doesn't seem to be such at all, but at worst poor scholarship.

Have you read much on mormonism. Redact your statement in reverence to true "wild crackpottery."

rlogan

I didn't say that. So take your straw man out to dinner.

I am the one who pointed that out to you, captain obvious. So let's not pretend it is your point instead of mine.

Let's zero in now on your twisted "logic":

Could we first just make the plain statement "Why did the writer say something that was not true here"?


Uh, the answer is for the same reason he did not speak the truth about anything else.

Matthew, from front to back is ridiculous superman-on-earth superstition. Matthew sees his primary task as proving Jesus both existed and was the Christ, complete with a phony pedigree all the way down from David.

It isn't a mystery why Matthew claims a false prophecy. He lied about the lineage. He lied about virgin birth and bringing back the dead and so on ad infinitum.

Matthew has boatloads of prophecies. Care to point out any that are actually true or even remotely close to what Judaic thought says they really pertain to instead of this phony Jesus?


Oh no you don't. No circular reasoning allowed here. You can't use gospels to prove gospels. I'll be happy to submit some Mother Goose Fairy tales with the same strategy.


Well it is a false dichotomy there, isn't it, where you bundled your straw man into it.


The town of Nazareth is irrelevant to the existence of Jesus, and it has no bearing on the question as to why Matthew falsely stated there was a prophecy foretelling a life in Nazareth.

The evidence we have is that Matthew said something untrue about Jesus and Nazareth. You cannot then use this lie to take just a portion of the lie and say that part is the truth.

He lied and therefore what he said should be taken with the highest degree of scepticism, particularly because the entire thing is a fairy tale that has been mined from the Hebrew Bible - a point I well understand cannot be conceded.

Antipope Innocent II

So, according to you, did Nazareth exist in the First Century or didn’t it? It would help if your posts were more clearly written.

Did I say you didn’t realise the “prophecy” was non-existent? I was simply re-stating a key point.

Why this particular untruth and why here though? For all the other stuff in the story he’s able to find actual prophecies from the OT or things that he could present as being prophecies. But on this point he’s been forced to come up with something that can’t be found in the OT or any where else. Big difference. So it seems, in this case, he’s had to manufacture the prophecy to fit the fact (that Jesus was from Nazareth), and not the other way around.

Wrong – see above. The rest of the infancy narratives are clearly facts created or changed to fit prophecies. This is clearly the other way around. This makes the idea that he was from Nazareth likely to be a fact.

Really? Gosh! Now who’s being Captain Obvious?

Proving that he was the Christ, sure. But proving that he “existed”? Pardon? Who did he have to prove this to? No-one in ancient times ever doubted the guy existed. It took centuries before anyone came up with that crackpot idea.

You’ve totally missed my point.

You don’t seem to have understood the point I was making at all. It’s not that this prophecy is or isn’t “true” or close to Judaic thought etc that makes it distinctive. It’s the fact that it doesn’t exist in the OT at all. All the others (true, false, misrepresented or whatever) do. So, again, he’s not manufacturing facts to fit an OT “prophecy” – in this case and this case only he’s manufacturing the “prophecy” wholesale. Why? To make it support a known fact about Jesus – that he was from Nazareth.

WTF? We can use gospels to prove what the people who wrote them believed about Jesus – in this case, that they openly acknowledged and described and even detailed that he was a Galilean from Nazareth. Save that “you can't use gospels to prove gospels” stuff for when you’re arguing with a Christian pal – I’m an atheist.

What “false dichotomy”?


The town of Nazareth is highly relevant to the question of whether Jesus existed, because it makes no sense that someone would create a fictional Jesus from a fictional town and then have to tie themselves in knots to explain why this so-called Messiah came from this non-existent town when the Messiah was meant to be from Bethlehem. Why not just make him from Bethlehem in the first place?

Why not? Because he wasn’t fictional and neither was his hometown. And they had to leave Nazareth in because he was known to be from Nazareth. Thus the convoluted Bethlehem stories to explain how a guy from Nazareth could be the Messiah. And thus the creation of a vague “prophecy” to try to wave the Messiah hoodoo over his real hometown.

I’d be happy to “concede” that if it made a lick of sense. I’m an atheist, remember?

aa5874

You keep getting worse. Are these the words of a man or a god?

"When they are wrong, there is no way they could EVER be right."

So, if you say some-one is wrong, it is IMPOSSIBLE for that person to be right?

Again, a highly illogical statement.

FathomFFI

I can live with it, why can't you? :huh: