thief of fire

Nice review. Reject Ehrman, reject Mythicism and reject Christianity.

Adam

You're new, Ken, so let me introduce you to my minority position on FRDB, that a "Gospel According to the Atheists" can be identified of HJ sources from the 30's and 40's, basically Proto-Luke plus the Passion Narrative, see my Post #113 in Abe reviews Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?": Ehrman is saying there are seven sources, without ever committing to my thesis that there are seven eyewitnesses. He even says three may be from the 30's. My thesis on my Gospel Eyewitnesses supports that. See my summary in Post #526 in the first five paragraphs:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=313271&page=5
And follow my link there to my thread, Gospel Eyewitnesses.


The bigger issue is that our conversation here has revealed that the three earliest proposed eyewitness sources have little or no supernatural activity tied to them. One would suppose that if anyone here at FRDB had been following my thesis closely that he (or she, henceforth assumed) have pointed out that this part of my thesis would be acceptable here (at least to the HJ school). So let me point out how that would work here, for those who reject any consideration of the gospels in drawing up a picture of Jesus.

stephan huller

Raving. I dont demonize my opponents. I'm not on a 'side.' I have an interested in figuring out what makes people tick. I may not agree with ehrman but the motivation to write the book came from somewhere. It wasn't owing to the power and influence of the mythicists. So where did he come into contact with these people? At Chapel Hill? No. At some serious Textual Criticism group? No.

It's not that crazy to suggest that Ehrman comes to boards like this and reads what's going on. But he's a serious scholar. How could he wade through pages of mountainman? He's got to be close enough to the action that it disgusted him. I even bet it started as a recommendation from his publicist. It's not that far fetched.

Why did he just sign up here a couple of weeks ago to tell Steve Carr off? So for the first time in his life he happened to come here to see if people were talking about his book?

And since when did this become a 'mythicist board'? I thought that bald headed ugly British 'philosopher' and his partner over at the Jesus Mysteries were the official 'mythicist self-help group.'

stephan huller

And I've always been nice to you because I happen to think you have a nice web website. I think you've taken the time to get very familiar with the Gospel of Mark. But let's get real. I'm beginning to suspect that you think that you're more of an authority on Mark than Clement of Alexandria. I'm sorry for pointing out the obvious but you're not the equal to Clement's authority. That's absurd. Clement had the advantage of being at the epicenter of Markan culture a hundred or so years from the composition of the original gospel. I can't believe that you'd suggest that you make a better mythicist argument than Clement. I'm sorry to have to got in the way of you staring in the pool, Narcissus, but the authority of Clement is unrivaled.

Vorkosigan

Have you read the book? He quite clearly indicates where he came into contact with the idea and it isn't a discussion board. He's more likely to come into contact with the idea from blogs, which laudably, NT studies are full of. Further, if you read it closely, it is painfully obvious that when he speaks on Mythicism he is talking about a topic he doesn't understand very well and hasn't studied deeply.

I have no idea how they met, but Steve's blog is good, he is open and friendly, and he would probably be quite happy to answer that question.

It's not farfetched by Ehrman offers an alternative and believable explanation in the introduction and I see no reason to disbelieve. After reading the book I am not at all surprised he had never heard of it.

Was that him, or a poster named him?

Nobody said it was a mythicist board. I merely noted that it seems to be upsetting you to run into so many mythicists. Why?

JM is a not officially a mythicist group either.

Vorkosigan

stephan huller

No, what's upsetting is that when I say 'hey Clement of Alexandria is a witness for Jesus not being a human being' I get 'why should we listen to Clement?' Who's Clement? Oh he's religious so we can't like him and all this nonsense. What does it matter if Clement believes in God? What kind of idiotic objection is that?

That's what's upsetting.

It's like if I was part of a project to figure out what to do with the world running out of oil and I said 'hey I've figured out a way to make cars run on water' and everyone said 'we're not interested in water, we're trying to conserve oil.'

stephan huller

It's all about ego and I find that annoying. I try to introduce as little of 'me' in my research. If I am going to read a religious author like Clement I am not going to understand what he has to say if the whole time I'm reading the Stromata I'm going 'what a fucking idiot, he believes in God, what a fucking idiot, there is no God, what a fool.' Is this what you guys do?

If you are going to study religious literature like the gospel, like the epistles of Paul or the writings of the Church Fathers you have to give in a little and say - what is making this guy/these people tick?

That doesn't make me 'part of their program.' I'm trying to figure out this thing called Christianity without making it about me.

Vorkosigan

That response wasn't from a mythicist.

Vorkosigan

stephan huller

I'm just like - the discovery of Clement saying these things is the torpedo that sinks the Ehrman ship. Sure I know that if we gave you a platform or Doherty you'd perform admirably. But Clement is the atomic bomb. Ehrman can't pretend that Clement doesn't matter. He can't make that testimony go away.

But enough about this. Let's out some of the participants in this forum ...

Vorkosigan

Where does C of A say that again?

Vorkosigan