Duvduv

A good reason to assume the gospel story involving Nazareth emerged only when a town with that name was known, i.e. the 4th century....

spin

Ooo, look, outhouse asserting rubbish once again with his usual appeal to authority. Why is it, as outhouse asserts, "false"? He doesn't actually say. Hé does say that it's a minor hypothesis, as though that were some sort of justification for his assertion.

outhouse, I wish you would stop this clueless aggression. Few here care what apologists say and you seem to be an apologist for apologists. Assertions such as "false" or "wrong" need evidence to back them up here in this forum. Have the decency to do your job. Give specific evidence to back up your assertions. If you can't supply specific evidence--and appeals to authority are not a substitute--have the decency to shut up and stop shitting on other people's statements. You are expected to try to be rationalist here.

Good rule: contradict people with evidence or don't contradict them at all.

Toto

Vansina is a scholar of Africa, not to my knowledge invoved at all in the Quest for the historical Jesus. He is cited for his studies of oral legends. I don't know what he is doing in your list.

They all have their biases, which most of them will admit to. That doesn't mean that their opinions are worthless, it just means that this needs to be taken into account.

THe more important point is that most or all of the scholars involved with the various quests assumed that there was a historical Jesus and did not make an independent evaluation of the evidence (which you would know if you had read Ehrman's latest book.)

You claimed that But this is patently false. The historicity of Jesus has not been studied in depth. The people who have studied the subject are primarily theologians, not historians, and the study has been fairly superficial. And their biases are clear and open.

spin

If they cannot substantially question their initial assumptions then they are biased. In the case of analyzing the historicity of Jesus, one has to actively consider the notion of whether he existed or not first. The nearest substitute is a discussion of the beliefs of writers' attitudes to his existence. If you can show a "scholar" in the field of Jesus historicity who substantially deals with the evidence for how Jesus can be considered to have existed, then not all scholars in the field are biased.

outhouse

if you two want to make your own rules to bible criticism thats fine.

Ill stick with traditional methods that are not biased.




from a position of following the MJ's for a a while and now HJ, only HJ is plausible following K.I.S.S.

spin

The rule of evidence is not made up. Everyone should be using it, including you.

Appeals to authority are certainly a traditional method, though not of scholarship. But you certainly stick to your appeals to authority, though you are in no position to say anything meaningful about bias.

Flipflopping doesn't suggest KISS. You don't need to take a side. In fact, insufficient evidence recommends no conclusion. Your flipflop indicates your consternation over the evidence, doesn't it.

Logical

What changed your mind?

Logical

Mythicists:

Why did the early Christians artificially historicize Jesus?

Mandelbrot

Not to sure of that Earl, Micah 5:2 says

where Ephratah refers to a clan whenever it is used and not a geographic location and the text itself makes that plain when it actually uses the word clan.Where is this supposed prophecy that he will be a Nazorean? Isaiah 11:1 says branch and that word has the same root as Nazareth which appears to be where the gospel confusion lies.

Logical

So several historians lived through and documented the ancient Palestine region in the first half of the first century. Not one of them seems to have noticed Jesus and reliably wrote anything about him.

Can you guys give me examples of established historical figures that suffer from the same problem or is this unique to Jesus?