aa5874

It is the written evidence from antiquity that matters. Appealing to authority is NOT evidence.

Experts can disagree about any matter but you have NO written external corroborative evidence to support your argumant that Jesus was from the CITY of Nazareth or that there was a first century city called Nazareth BEFORE the Fall of the Temple.

The unknown author of gMatthew did NOT claim anywhere that he wrote history and virtually everything about Jesus in gMatthew is fiction.

In gMatthew Jesus did nothing in the city of Nazareth and no prophets in Hebrew Scripture mentioned that Jesus would live in a city called Nazareth contrary to the author's written statement.

spamandham

Learned Greeks generally understood that their gods were myths rather than actual historical beings. Yet we have bio's for some of these written by authors who surely did not believe they were historically real.

The genre of ancient biography is very broad and includes works that in modern terminology really are fiction, as well as works that we would categorize in modern terms as real biographies. I don't think we are doing ourselves any favors when we slap a 'bio' label on the gospels and as a result of that label start making assumption about the intents of the authors.

That is the argument of HJists, yes. I am not convinced of that at all. The Gospels include obvious literary devices; verbal, dramatic, and situational irony, symbolism and foreshadowing, as well as subtle humor. Someone thought them through very carefully and constructed them. Their intent goes well beyond defining a hero.

spamandham

Your argument keeps coming back to an argument from authority. You trust that which you think is the consensus of the subset of scholars you consider mainstream, even though it isn't clear that you even know who they are or what it is that they say. That's fantastic for you.

But can't you see that such an argument from authority is not going to be persuasive to those who are calling into question that consensus of those scholars? I'm not sure if you realize that history is not science, it's a liberal art. What you are doing is similar to placing faith in architectural consensus, blindly oblivious to fact that this consensus changes over time.

Ferryman to the Dead

Intent of poor mythology is more like it.

Key word here "thought" to be about some one that actually lived. Lets we not forget, christianity as had about 2000 years to tweak this fable and for the most part they have covered their bases well only problem is they could not burn or destroy all the evidence that existed.

-Alan Albert Snow (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

-C. Dennis McKinsey, Bible critic (The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy)

Juststeve

Spam:

You shouldn't confuse arguments from authority with arguments from expertise. When I cite noted scholars from first class universities I am making an argument from expertise, not one from authority

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Steve

GakuseiDon

Show me that "learned Greeks generally understood that their gods were myths rather than actual historical beings", and then we can continue. They treated their myths as allegories, and questioned the words of the poets. But no-one questioned that, say, Hercules lived around the time of the Trojan war, as far as I know.

But we're not just making assumptions, we have the very real fact that people understood them to be about someone historical. As I said, one way to determine authorial intent is by how the works were treated. Does this PROVE they were not intended as fiction? No. But that's the evidence we have.


And so what? You keep saying we shouldn't bring modern assumptions into this, so what is the significance of listing those literary devices? Are any of them incompatible with ancient biographies?

If the answer is no, then we are still left with how they were treated by their audience: as being about someone who was thought to have existed.

Ferryman to the Dead

Well if its one thing the world wide web did its brought to light the fables and tales from bad mythological writing that the church has been hiding from the sheeples for centuries. The pulpit pimps are slowly being exposed for what they are self centered, money grubbing, egotistical idiots.....

aa5874

That is BS.

"Authority" signifies "experts". And again NOT all experts from "first class universities" AGREE on all matters.

You need to supply the evidence from antiquity that shows Jesus did actually exist and was likely to be from a CITY called Nazareth.

That is the same piece of BS.

HJers reject the written evidence from antiquity about Jesus and imagine their own history.

What sources external of the NT Canon and Church writings do your EXPERTS use to show that Jesus was just a man who possibly lived in Nazareth?

What kind of arguments are these?

<edit>.

Your analogies are baseless and cannot substitute for written evidence from antiquity to show that Jesus did actually exist and possibly lived in Nazareth.

All we NEED is evidence.

Biologists MUST have provided the evidence and data to support evolution and those who claim there was a holocast MUST have given sworn statements and evidence to support the holocast.

Now, where is the credible external evidence from antiquity, where are the written statements of antiquity from YOUR experts?

You have NO external evidence, no external corroborative sources from antiquity to show Jesus did exist and was from Nazareth.

<edit>

spin

I get pissed by people coming here who don't seem to have the slightest idea how to put together a historical analysis. We see the same half-assed logic without any interaction with the sources: if Jesus didn't exist, then who started christianity? if Jesus was made up, why did they choose such an obscure place as Nazareth? or why did he have a brother that Paul talks about? how can we totally reject the gospels? And so on ad nauseum.

History just doesn't work this way. One starts with what one knows and tries to show what happened using historical evidence. When you use historical evidence, it needs to be vetted material. How do we know that the information reflects the period? How do we know the context in which it is written?

Given the fact that christianity had control of the means of textual survival, how do we know what is original to a text? When, at the end of a list of public order actions under Nero, Suetonius seems to mention the excution of christians, is it original or is it a pious scribal intervention based on a marginal note based on the belief of a Neronian persecution? When Tacitus, out of place, makes a comment about naughty Nero making christians go crispy-crackly to light the night, is this a fact that Suetonius, along with early christian apologists, missed or is it another instance of later addition? When Josephus mentions that Jesus was the christ, we can usually smell a skunk, but when we learn that the brother of Jesus called christ James by name was executed, enough people are complacent enough to think that ok, despite its problems.

The gospels themselves are secondary literature, written after the time of Paul, the earliest speaker for the emerging religion. They show a vast amount of scribal activity both before they took the shape the now have and, given the manuscript record, afterwards. Paul's work of course has also gone through the same scribal mill with several letters being added to his corpus that he didn't write. The question must be asked as to how much correction of the work he did write.

Who wrote the gospel material and when? Why were they written? How can we test their veracity? We somehow have to be able to test it. Reliability is an essential criterion of the material we want to use as historical sources. Is there any reason to believe any central gospel material need be representative of reality? History doesn't work by assuming a source is innocent until proven guilty.

If you want to argue historicity, you have to argue historically.

Why are you so hung up about MJers and who are they exactly? Are they the people who argue against your views or is there something specific that makes someone a MJer in your mind?

I will happily debate you on these matters. I don't think there is a scrape of historical evidence for Jesus. He seems to be about as historical as Robin Hood or King Arthur, names that disappear in the past the further back you go towards their reputed eras.

Sorry, you've got it ass up. If you want to introduce evidence you have to show its relevance. Good luck there,... but you know you can't. That's why you are trying to shift the burden so others can do your work for you:
You're too busy shooting at people, those you presume to be MJers (whatever you mean by that), and are emptyhanded when it comes to evidence. You need to show after you peel off the shell layers (like a matryoshka doll) that there is actually something inside that's left. We don't have to help you. You see I doubt that you can. If you want to get serious about any of the material you want to get past assuming, just present it with argumentation and see how far you can get. Instead of assuming what you believe to be true, go the distance and do the work. I doubt that your beliefs will pan out.

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spin

mountainman

The Christian bible and its cast of literary characters (ie: Jesus et al) were ridiculed enmasse by the people at the time.

“… the sacred matters of inspired teaching
were exposed to the most shameful ridicule
in the very theaters of the unbelievers.”

[Eusebius, “Life of Constantine”, Ch. LXI,
How Controversies originated at Alexandria through Matters relating to Arius.]