jgibson000

Well, then, by your own logic, all of the information about Augustus reported by Suetonius has to be false as well, since it also comes after the description of biologically impossible conception of Augustus by (the "ghost") Apollo.

JG

Febble

You asked me:

Toto clarified:

and you confirmed:

which is fine, but doesn't enable me to address your question, as presumably it would depend which particular HJer you had in mind, and seems a pointless question (or at any rate, I fail to see your point).

You are claiming (as I understand you) that Jesus must have been an entirely mythical figure, because parts of the gospel accounts, including the accounts of his birth, cannot have been correct.

I don't accept this as adequate reason to reject the hypothesis that Jesus was a real historical figure, i.e. a person who actually lived in the first century and preached to a substantial group of followers, and was crucified by Pontius Pilate. I am not an "HJer" as such because I don't "believe" such a historical figure existed - I say frankly that I don't know whether such a historical figure existed. But I fail to see how establishing where some post-enlightenment thinkers got their idea of a historical Jesus from will tell us whether or not there was one. That seems a bit meta to me.

No Robots

1. No.
2. No.
3. No.

Is that bad? What did I miss? I doubt there is much of interest that Brunner didn't deal with.

jgibson000

Yes. Incredibly so. It means you have no ability to judge the validity of Brunner's claims and no points of comparison to see if they are at all warranted, let alone true, and that you have no right to claim they are.

Spoken by someone who has no grounds to say so.

JG

No Robots

Brunner's words have for me the ring of truth. Where I have sought to test and verify his theses, they have been borne out. Are you aware of anything in the works that you mention that contradict Brunner's analysis?

aa5874

Even if all the supernatural elements are removed from the New Testament, how does one decide that Mary or Joseph are real persons? It may well be that the entire episode is false, i.e. Mary, Joseph, the angel Gabriel and the son of god.

If you assume that Mary and Joseph had a son name Jesus, then you have automatically historicised Jesus by your assumption, and there is no need to do any investigation. Jesus would be assumed to be whatever you think is plausible, and there would be many possibilities.

My view is that assuming what is true in the NT is baseless, there is no supporting information to corroborate the existence of Mary or Joseph, even the NT cannot figure out who actually is Joseph and by extension Mary.




The Jesus of faith and revelation is the only Jesus in the NT.

However, no historical documents of this period contains any event about Jesus, not even anecdotal. There is nothing on him, his followers or his teachings.

I don't understand, you have responded to my post on several occasions, you have just responded and now you want me to stop. I think you are bit confused, if you don't agree with my view, then you do not have to respond to me.

Explain 'tone'. There are some who claim my logics are excellent, do I believe them or you?

I don't believe there are any real HJers, because with my so-called bad logics, they would have been able to answer my simple question: Is eveything that is plausible in the NT, about Jesus, true?

No Robots

That's me, just a plain ol' am haaretz. And that's why Christ is my boy: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

Toto

Yes, it may be. And that is where the historical analysis gets more complicated. If you want to talk to HJers on their own terms, you have to deal with the criteria of embarrasment, of dissimilarity, etc. And you may come out deciding that there was no Historical Jesus, but the argument will be more complex than angels do not exist therefore there was no Jesus.

That's why you would not start with those assumptions.

There you are back to being a broken record again.

That is one point of view, but you have to do a lot of work to establish it.

So you have just solved your problem by assuming that the NT is not historical. Once again, you may reach this conclusion, but not so easily.

I have responded, and you do not seem to have understood a word that I have typed.

I am a moderator here, and I try to keep discussions on point. If there is no content to this thread, I can close it or move it to another forum. The only reason I haven't is that some of the people responding have made some points.

By tone, I mean that you aggressively assert that Jesus could not have existed. When people try to get you to see that the question is more complex, you just keep repeating this. You seem to make no effort to understand the logic behind the other person's position.

Who has said that your "logics are excellent?"

Is English your first language? What is your academic background? Is this how you learned about Christianity - by people repeating the same thing until you got too tired to resist?

Why do you think that this is a simple question? It asks about "everything" in the NT that is plausible, which is a lot of material. And why do you think that the answer would be significant? If you asked "Is ANYTHING" that is plausible (non-supernatural) in the NT about Jesus true?" an answer of YES would indicate that there was a historical Jesus. Not everything claimed about him has to be true.

spin

This response, though understandable, may be part of the confusion in this thread.

A historical person is one who can be "demonstrated" to have existed. The vast majority of human beings who existed cannot be shown to have existed. What can one say about Nero's barber? or Herod Antipas's executioner? or Tacitus's wife? Etc.

There are three categories:

1. historical
2. non-existent
3. those who can be placed in neither of the above

Most of those who came before us fit into category #3 because they didn't raise their heads up high enough to come into historical radar.

An HJer is someone convinced that Jesus belongs in #1, usually through, though not necessarily through, religious belief.

An MJer is someone convinced that Jesus belongs in #2 in the belief that the original believers didn't see Jesus as a real person.

A skeptic is someone not convinced by such pigeonholing.


spin

J-D

Let's personify the debate as three people arguing. Simplicio says that we can know that Jesus really existed historically. Salviati says that we can know that Jesus did not really exist historically. Sagredo says that we cannot know whether Jesus really existed historically or not.

Now you come in and say that Salviati must be right because Simplicio must be wrong. Sagredo pipes up and says: 'What about me? Even if Simplicio is wrong, I could be right, and then Salviati (and you) would be wrong.'

Now you say that you have no response to Sagredo. But if Sagredo's position is right, then your position is wrong. If you are sure your position is right, then you must be sure that Sagredo's position is wrong. What makes you sure?

If you want a reason why somebody might hold Sagredo's position, then I think 'I don't have enough information' is a good reason. Can you discuss that on its merit? Note that the information you have already presented on this thread is not enough to show that Sagredo's position is wrong, as already explained repeatedly at length. Note also that showing Simplicio's position to be wrong is not enough to show that Sagredo's position is also wrong, and also that it is not reasonable to respond to Sagredo's position by challenging people to defend Simplicio's position.