Dave31

She doesn't omit any internal evidence, "The "Historical" Jesus?" link is just a brief excerpt. She discusses Hadrian in all of her books.

Agreed

You might enjoy these mentions of Hadrian

Late Dating of the Gospels

Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius: No Proof of Jesus

Of course, there's more details in the books.

avi

Dave, thanks for the links, above, much appreciated.

I read Acharya/Murdoch's comments re: Pliny/Tacitus/Suetonius. I feel comfortable with her conclusions, but I think they are based on opinion, rather than evidence.
My opinion is not different from her conclusion.

I was not satisfied, however, with her one word reference to the correspondence between Paul and Seneca. If legitimate, i.e not forgeries themselves, as I have suggested earlier today on this forum in a different thread, then, Paul is placed, preaching about Jesus, in Rome, during the reign of Nero.

I would welcome any comment you or she may wish to offer...

To me, the sine qua non for any mythicist position is evidence. Maybe 100% of our evidence is forged? Then what? If our conclusions are based upon "interpolation", how is our conduct different from those who believe in supernatural nonsense?

I find it very difficult to sort out fact from forgery, especially when one invokes the "patristic" evidence, i.e. copies of documents citing other documents, to validate the non-existent originals.

Thanks,
avi

mountainman

What I think needs to be done is simply ask the question, if the new testament and its history and the christian history of Eusebius and the christian martyrs of Eusebius and all later embellishments are simply fourth century political forgeries, then what evidence should we expect to find emanating out from the crime scene? What are the implications that Constantine presented a known fabrication to the Roman Empire?

Utter controversy!
See Arius. Julian

Authoritarian censorship.
See Eusebius, Cyril.

The evidence is speaking to us from the ground of the 4th century.
And I think that the "Mythicists Position" needs to ask who were the Gnostics,
and what do the Gnostic Gospels and Acts tell us about Jesus? They suggest
a Jesus of myth, but they also strongly suggest a Jesus of Fable and Fiction.

The Interpretation of Knowledge: NHC 11.1

This text makes some interesting statements. The first presented is that many people fled in advance of the implementation of Christianity because of reproaches and humiliations, to the extent they fled without having heard that the Christ had been crucified

They came to believe by means of signs and wonders and fabrications. The likeness that came to be through them followed him, but through reproaches and humiliations before they received the apprehension of a vision they fled without having heard that the Christ had been crucified. But our generation is fleeing since it does not yet even believe that the Christ is alive.

The final bolded statement is intriguing because it essentially summarizes the refuge condition of the editors of the NHC. From this it may be strongly argued, if not concluded, that the author (and editors) did not believe in Jesus whatsoever.

This argument is strengthened by a following entirely docetic statement in this text, which concludes with the satirical observation that Jesus was nailed by the Church as an internal asset.

And he was crucified and he died - not his own death, for he did not at all deserve to die because of the church of mortals. And he was nailed so that they might keep him in the Church.

Loomis

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Kapyong

Gday,

And DOC has over 1500 posts here :
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=124603

And just as convincing.


K.

Dave31

Kapyong, I don't see any real point with your post. Even Christian NT scholars can't agree on evidence. And I didn't see any scholars in that thread. Here are a few quotes from NT scholars:

Dave31

A 6-part video series titled, "Mythosphere"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN1vCESALds

Toto

Starts with an excerpt from

Elizabeth Vandiver
Classical Mythology: Part 1 - Lecture 1 Introduction
(The Teaching Company/The Great Courses)

And other excerpts from other copyrighted videos follow.

I really dislike arguments on youtube. If you are presenting music or art, I can see the value of a video, but I would prefer to see a logical argument laid out in text form.

mountainman

I can find no mention of the Nag Hammadi texts. What does the author theorise concerning the authorship of the texts bound within the 12-13 volume set of the NH codices? I am assuming you are in at least partial contact with the author. If you dont know could you please ask her. I would be interested to hear what she has to say on this matter. Many thanks.

Dave31

Fair enough, the guy who made the video is not a scholar, nor are the videos meant to serve as a scholarly documentary. It's just a private project that I thought was good enough to mention here since it was on topic ... no need to start a new thread for that video.

Yes, she mentions the Nag Hammadi in nearly every book she has written to date. No, I'm not in any contact with her, I have just actually read and own her books. She mentions the Nag Hammadi in Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who Was Jesus? and Christ in Egypt.