Scotsguy44

Are you asserting here that ALL of the academia in NT studies are pseudo-scholars using pseudo- historical methods that have no historical methodology at all?

What historical method did Richard Carrier use to examine the question of whether Jesus existed and what are his professional qualifications in that area that qualifies him as an authority on that subject and does so to a greater extent to professionally qualified scholars on the NT?

No Robots

So, then, you still have to explain how the binitarian entity came to be associated with this mamzer ben niddah (bastard son of a menstruating woman). I mean, if he doesn't even qualify as the Messiah....

No Robots

Actually, he concludes that there is sufficient evidence to show that Jesus the man did not exist.

spin

I warned you to stop trolling.

stephan huller

The early christian view (earliest christian view) wisdom created all things without the assistance of the father. "the creation" including the powers is a bastard in the earliest stage of this myth. Mamzer just means corrupt or spoilt like the creation

spin

It's plain to anyone not committed who have read the source materials. Christians are committed and commonly don't know the difference between the messiah and a savior. And it's an easy way to separate the false messiah from the genuine article using the knowledge that a dead messiah is no messiah at all.

The 'they' here is proto-orthodoxy during the 2nd century. It was used to exclude sources from people such as Marcion and Valentinus.

sotto voce

The biblical view is this. Fatherhood was created by the Son. 'Son' does not mean 'offspring' as many suppose. Had the Son not taken punishment for the sins of the world, there could be no fatherhood, because there could be no adoption based on justification. There are no persons of God, but the first 'role' ontologically is the Son, and fatherhood arguably the last.

Fatherhood is not just for Jews, according to the Bible. It was not Judah, Jacob (Israel) or even Abraham who was thrown out of Eden. Adam, the figurative original ancestor of all mankind, was thrown out of Eden, signifying a bad conscience for all, irrespective of race or religion. That could be remedied only by the destruction of the Accuser (the snake or Satan) by the Seed of Eve, seen in the Bible, in Isaiah and elsewhere, as the Messiah for all.

sotto voce

Orthodoxy being brute force, ignorance and enough bits of the cross to build a small galleon.

No Robots

Mamzer did not mean 'bastard' in the sense of that Bruce Chilton for instance gives it (i.e. born out of wedlock) but specifically to the child born of an adulterous or incestuous union, as defined by the laws of Leviticus 18 and 20. It is only in Yiddish that mamzer takes on the familiar meaning of 'bastard.'—Stephan Huller

It seems you like to toggle freely between the allegorical and literal. How convenient for you!

spin

No comment has been made about "ALL of the academia in NT studies", only those engaged in the pseudo-historical pursuit of the historical Jesus.

The only early sources available regarding Jesus are the christian literary traditions, which certainly contain non-real information. Removing such material (most of it) leaves us with material that is plausible, though plausibility is not a sufficient criterion for reality. Much literature that is plausible in content is fictional, some is derived through error, some other is conjecture, some may be related directly to a past reality. The problem is: how can one know? Unfortunately there are no meaningful criteria available to help. Remember those multiple choice exams that you didn't study sufficiently for? You can usually eliminate one or two possible answers because they're right out there, but then you're left with a few and you find, not knowing that you have to guess. It's that hit or miss. All you've got in the rump of the christian tradition (after removing the dross) is plausible information.

The problem in the field of Jesus historicism is that there is a pre-existent acceptance for the reality of Jesus. It was there for many centuries before the enlightenment forced christian scholars to look at Jesus more rigorously, but 1500 years or more of habit doesn't make way for consistent application of better methodology. Any believer will have notion problems putting aside their faith in the reality of Jesus long enough to ask if we have evidence for him. The existence of Jesus was just an accepted fact in our society even though attempts to muster the historical evidence had not happened until less than 200 years ago. It's easy to understand christian scholars assuming the existence of Jesus and using their tradition processed and packaged as history. It's not history of course, for if there is any historical reality it's been incorporated in a tradition that gives you no way to distinguish it. Imagine two children playing marbles and they'd each won a lot before this confrontation. Another kid tips out their marble bags onto the ground so they intermingle. How can you tell which marbles belong to whom? Perhaps though only one bag was tipped out and the contents of the other was pocketed.

The tendency is to preserve the status quo, which says that Jesus was real. Jesus is thus "real" by default, by cultural inheritance. Those scholars doing religious studies mainly gain their qualifications driven by their beliefs, while the few others go through the same training process. We can only expect scholars who work at Jesus historicism to be caught in this situation.