LegionOnomaMoi

"What I know" or "how" I know it is irrelevant. You are the one making claims about how one can and can't treat EVIDENCE. Yet you apply this inconsistently. According to you:


Yet that's exactly what you do: We don't have these records, and we are "ONLY allowed to present the WRITTEN statements of antiquity." Yet you infer the existence of these "ROMAN RECORDS" because:
Apparently you are "IMPOSING" your "imagination" here. You don't have any "WRITTEN" evidence of what you are inferring from Josephus' discussion of Pilate. You are using inference. Yet according to you one cannot do that.


Why do you keep using the plural?


I'm not telling you about Pilate. You are are making statements about him and violating your own "historiographical" methods.

Solo

I would not agree with that. I consider Ehrman a serious scholar and generally like his books a lot. Up until now, I have not had a beef with his scholarship. I was shocked by his views on mythicism last summer on the Infidel Guy radio show. I wrote to him asking him to explain his view on Paul on the JesusMysteries forum (Marc Goodacre, his former student, visited there, shortly before). He not only refused but took a pompous tone with me. I thought, obviously there is something else that drives him than scholarly research.

Carrier is right and I would go even further and say that there is little evidence in Paul's letters that the Jesus movements had a common theology. Mark's scathing ridicule of the historical witness of Jesus is a big piece of evidence in this. People don't realize just how small these movements were. In an estimate based on archeological data, Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk)) thinks the total number of Christians at the end of 1st century was about six thousand.

Well, yes, Richard Carrier is known to have a short fuse, and is seen in some quarters as insufferably pompous. But this is not about personalities. This is about homework one does about topics in which one claims expertise. In the final analysis 'Did Jesus Exist ?' disappoints because of lack of Ehrman's intellectual interest in the matter. I would recommend people read a book under the same by G.A.Wells (or via: amazon.co.uk) first published in 1975. It has engages the subject on a level that Ehrman never reaches.

Best,
Jiri

Solo

True enough.

Well, the book is just as bad ! You quoted from page 45, in which he makes the type of "unguarded" statement about factual matters for which he rightly chides Doherty.

How is this for in-depth analysis?

Well great ! But the problem with that confession is that somebody named Bart D.Ehrman's already dismissed mind games that seek to pre-empt suspicion. He speaks of the famous 'warning' of the writer of 2 Thess 2:2, against 'letter purported be from us' :

As a pseudo-Paul swears he is not lying also in 1 Ti 2:7, Ehrman strikes me a tad disingenuous in his unquestioned acceptance of Gal 1:18-20. It may be he is not even aware about the textual issues in Gal 1 as he shows no awareness of the 19th century Dutch radicals, the mythicists who first pointed to them.

Some depth, let me tell you !


Best,
Jiri

aa5874

Again, you EXPOSE that you do NOT understand logics and how logical deductions are applied

It is PERFECTLY reasonable to INFER that there were ROMAN RECORDS of PILATE based on the Fact Josephus did write about PILATE as a Governor of Judea under Tiberius the Emperor of Rome in "Antiquities of the Jews" 18.3

It is WHOLLY ridiculous to even contemplate that Pilate was undocumented an Governor of Judea and that in HIS DAY Pilate's governorship was NOT ever recorded.

Bernard Muller

to Gakuseidon,
First , I do not think Ehrman included Josephus and Philo as Roman sources. Not in his article anyway. Furthermore, even if Josephus and Philo were very much connected to the Roman establishment, there is no evidence they had Roman citizenship. Even if they did, they were very much Jew, being, writing and thinking as Jews.

to aa,
But Ehrman was obviously referring 'to available to us now'.
Not necessarily from Roman records. They could have been Jewish. Do you think Josephus got his succession of high priests from Roman records? More likely from Jewish ones.

LegionOnomaMoi

Of course it is. Unless one is using your methodology: According to you, first we look at a written source to see if it has
If we find it (and using your standards we do in Josephus and Philo), then we must reject this as evidence, and having done so conclude:
Unless one applies your "logics" and methods. We find elements in Philo and Josephus which are clearly . So we have to reject these as evidence, and we cannot make inferences or interpretations. At least, that's the approach you use when it comes to the NT or other christian texts. All of a sudden, however, when we're concerned with the historical existence of someone else, the rules change.

GakuseiDon

What is the "unguarded" statement? I don't see it myself. This is what I quoted from page 45:

[Does that mean that Pilate didn't exist?] No, he is mentioned in several passages in Josephus and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo and in the Gospels. He certainly existed even though, like Jesus, we have no records from his day or writings from his hand. And what is striking is that we have far more information about Pilate than about any other governor of Judea in Roman times. And so it is a modern "myth" to say that we have extensive Roman records from antiquity... (Page 45)

Ehrman may well be wrong elsewhere in the book. My posts here is on Carrier's comments in his blog.

tanya

This is the crux of the complaint against Ehrman's article, wherein he describes the paucity of Roman records on both Pilate and Jesus (as if, by linking them, Jesus too becomes an historical figure):

Exactly right. Hitting the nail on the head.

GakuseiDon

I have no doubt that Ehrman meant "Roman records" in the Huff Post. I think Carrier is correct to question what Ehrman meant, but had he termed his response to a "Nitpick" and reserved doubts until he had read Ehrman's book, that would have been fine.

But instead, he went on what was basically a long rant, questioning Ehrman's competency as a scholar and pseudo mind-reading with comments like "emotion seems to have seized his brain". In other words, he behaved like a typical mythicist poster on FRDB.

I said long ago, when Ehrman announced his intention to write a book against mythicism, that his competency as a scholar would come under attack, even before his book published. That's simply how one would expect fringe thinkers behave.

I am simply shocked though that Carrier himself has done this; especially since Acharya S has recently launched a similar attack on Carrier over the Luxor inscription.

aa5874

How illogical can you be!!! Josephus more likely got his succession of High Priests from Jewish records but got ALL his information about a ROMAN governor from Jewish sources when Josephus was IN ROME as a Captured Prisoner and WROTE "Antiquities of the Jews" AFTER the Jewish War c 93 CE and LIVED outside Palestine.

Please tell what records did Josephus have in possession when he was Captured???

It MUST be LOGICAL and completely reasonable that the ROMANS had documented records of ROMAN GOVERNORS just like it is expected that Jews had documented records of Jewish Priests.

And further, the very ROMANS MUST have had some records of Jewish High Priests because some were INSTALLED by the Romans.