Diogenes the Cynic

Only if they're uncorroborated, impossible or both.
But they don't. Mark and John don't make this claim. Neither does Paul., This is arguable in the case of John, and not corroborated by Q or Paul. Also, it's impossible, and doesn't meet criteria of dissimilarity met by aspects such as the crucifixion and baptism by John.
No this is only singly attested (it's only in the synoptics, which means it's only attested by Mark). It's referred to by 2 Peter, but that's much too late to be called independent.
The "NT," as such, is not a source, but a collection of sources, some of them with better independent attestation than others, and some of those claims also meet other criteria for being unlikely to be invented (like the crucifixion itself, and the baptism by John.

Obviously, nothing is proof, but it's too facile by half to say that because the books of the NT are not, individually, reliable, that we can't infer a probability of authenticity for claims that meed a certain nexus of criteria.

aa5874

There you go again with your False Dichotomies.

Again, it is a logical fallacy to assert that Jesus was crucified as a man when the very NT sources claimed Jesus was the Child of a Holy Ghost and after an investigation carried out by the author of gLuke.

The author of gLuke published his findings and it appears to corroborate gMatthew when his mother was found with Child of the Holy Ghost.

Why do you assert Jesus crucified as a man? Jesus, since he was some kind of Ghost, could have been sent by SATAN into a pig and sent hurling down into the sea like he did to those demons.

There you go again with your Logical Fallacies.

Once you admit the sources for HJ are unreliable then it is most probable that the history of HJ will be UNRELIABLE unless you want to engage in False Dichotomies.

You have NOT even identified the independent sources that described Jesus as a man in the NT.

And you must know that the Jesus story may not be history--- after all Jesus was independently attested to be a Child of a Ghost. See Matthew 1.18-20 and Luke 1.26-35.

The HJ theory is derived from logical fallacies.

Diogenes the Cynic

And there are a plethora of early Christian literature (including the earliest strata of all) which don't say that. Paul, Mark, Thomas, Q and John don't say it.

aa5874

You are deep in logical fallacies.

You should know that the exclusion of details from one source about a character does NOT impede details about the very same character in another source.

For example, in gMark, there is very little about Pilate. He is not even called Pontius, was not called the Governor nor that he was Governor during the reign of Tiberius but other Gospels have details about Pilate.

Pontius Pilate the Governor of Judea under Tiberius is the same is all writings of antiquity whether in gMark , Josephus or Philo or any other source.

And it is exactly the same with Jesus. His description as the Child of the Ghost and a Virgin the word that was God and the creator is found in the NT and sources of antiquity.

Christian writers such as Origen, Eusebius and Jerome who used Antiquities of the Jews claimed that Josephus corroborates Jesus of the NT.

And again, you cannot show that the NT is reliable therefore you cannot show that any event in the NT did occur.

You cannot RELIABLY show that HJ lived in Nazareth at any time, was baptized by anyone and was crucified at all except by engaging in logical fallacies.

J-D

There's no false dichotomy there.

aa5874

It is already known that some are blind.

The "history" for the Jesus of "history" is UNRELIABLE.

The "historical" Jesus is a False Dichotomy.

There is no known credible history to assert that there was an "historical Jesus".

Diogenes the Cynic

It's not a dichotomy at all, much less a false one. A dichotomy is a division between opposing choices - a "one or the other" choice. A false dichotomy is a fallacy where only tow choices are presented when, in fact, those are not the only two choices (see Pascal's Wager, for instance).

The word "dichotomy," false or otherwise, has no application to a criterion of multiple independent attestation. The false dichotomy is in saying that the Gospels have to be either entirely historical or entirely fictional (or to say that Jesus either had to be exactly as he is portrayed in the Gospels or completely ahistorical).

aa5874

Well, is NOT HJ a "one or the other" choice?

You must know that Jesus was NOT described as human in the NT yet still want me to believe that Jesus was from Nazareth, was baptized by John and was crucified under Pilate when he was described as the Child of a Holy Ghost and a woman. See Matthew 1.18-20 and Luke 1.26-35.

Once you admit that the NT is historically unreliable and that Jesus was not described as human then you are employing false dichotomies to historicise Jesus.

Examine your logical fallacies.

1. HJ was from Nazareth because the Gospels claim Jesus of Nazareth the Child of a Ghost lived in Nazareth.

2. HJ was baptized by John because the Gospels claim Jesus the Child of a Ghost was baptized by John.

2. HJ was crucified because the Gospels claim Jesus the Child of a Ghost was crucified.

J-D

No, it is not.Those are not arguments which have been made here by Diogenes the Cynic (or by anybody else). But if somebody did make those arguments, they would not be examples of the fallacy of false dichotomy, they would be examples of the fallacy of argument from authority.

Diogenes the Cynic

Only if you try to define HJ as identical with the Jesus of the Gospels. There are many gradations of hypothetical historicity for a figure who inspired the myth.
Jesus is certainly described as human in Mark, and Mark is part of the NT.
Once more, you can't reduce the NT to a single monolithic source. It's a compilation of independent sources, and sometimes those sources form a nexus of agreement. Those nexuses are the basis for assumptions of better chances of historicity, not the "NT" as such, which does not even really exist as "a" source.

To draw an analogy, you can look at the internet. The internet is full of factual claims, both valid and crap. Whay you are doing is akin to saying that nothing found on the internet can be true, because the "internet is unreliable."
I've never said Jesus was from Nazareth. I'm agnostic on that question myself (as I am on the HJ question in general), but I lean slightly towards an HJ and slightly towards Capernaum as his hometown.
The argument for the historicity of the baptism by John is not only that it is multiply and independently attested, but that it is also fits the criterion of embarrassment. It's not that "the Gospels claim it," it's that muliple independent sources make a claim for something which they would not be likely to invent or want to brag about.
Here we not only have the synoptics and John, but also Paul. It is (as best as we can tell) the single earliest historical claim made about Jesus in Christian literature, the most universal and the only claim arguably corroborated by non-Christian sources (Tacitus and Josephus). In addition, it also fits multiple criteria of embarrassment and dissimilarity. If anything is true about HJ, it's the crucifixion.