Steven Carr

I’ve got the hang of how anti-supernatural bias works.

If a work has Jesus talking to Satan, it is purely anti-supernatural bias to question the basic historicity of the story line, and the view of a crank to doubt the existence of any character in it, even if we don’t know who wrote the work or when or where.

If a work has a character talking to an albino assassin, only a gullible fool would think any part of the book was in any way connected to real historical events.

Sheshbazzar

Totally different types of characters. albino assassins are well within the realm of natural possibility in the real world.
And depending on how the material is reported, could very well be connected to real historical events.

A mythological first century CE creature that can 'show all of the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time', or perch on the highest pinnacle of the Jewish Temple are not so rationally acceptable

Steven Carr

I think you'll find it is the other way around.

Mainstream Biblical scholars do not regard it as worth discussing if books with albino assassins in them have any historical value.

But works with Satan in them can be assumed to have a solid historical core.

Sheshbazzar

Says a lot about the intellegence and integrity of 'Mainstream Biblical scholars'.

Huon

People having visions, or talking to Satan, or to the Holy Virgin, or ... this is not super-natural.

sotto voce

Is there a quote to exemplify this approach?

The opposite attitude may be evident: that the supernatural is impossible, so no record of it can be genuine.

Not at all. It's just the sort of thing that real history turns up. Though actually, albinos are much more likely to be the victims of assassins.

Now 'flying spaghetti monsters', that are deliberately concocted to be 'impossible', are compared to the supernatural, that has been thought to be feasible since pre-historic times. That's category error, circularity and anti-supernatural bias.

Iskander

What did those early Christians think?


“A community of Christian believers was formed within the Jewish national community. By its organisation, the close brotherly union of its members, it bore witness to the impression which the Person of Jesus had made on it, and drew from faith in Jesus and hope of his return, the assurance of eternal life, the power of believing in God the Father and of fulfilling the lofty moral and social commands which Jesus had set forth.

They knew themselves to be the true Israel of the Messianic time (see § 1), and for that very reason lived with all their thoughts and feelings in the future. Hence the Apocalyptic hopes which in manifold types were current in the Judaism of the time, and which Jesus had not demolished, continued to a great extent in force (see § 4).

One guarantee for their fulfilment was supposed to be possessed in the various manifestations of the Spirit,75 which were displayed in the members of the new communities at their entrance, with which an act of baptism seems to have been united from the very first,76 and in their gatherings.

They were a guarantee that believers really were the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ, those called to be saints, and, as such, kings and priests unto God77 for whom the world, death and devil are overcome, although they still rule the course of the world. The confession of the God of Israel as the Father of Jesus and of Jesus as Christ and Lord78 was sealed by the testimony of the possession of the Spirit, which as Spirit of God assured every individual of his call to the kingdom, united him personally with God himself and became to him the pledge of future glory.79”

History of Dogma,
Volume one
Adolf Harnack

JonA

Or rather the people caricaturing them.

Sheshbazzar

Horse patootie.

Certainly there were and are 'Messianic' believers within the Jewish national community.
But that accursed word 'Christian' was and still is a foreign appellation within the Jewish national community.

The word or name 'Christian' was first invented in Antioch Greece. Countless thousands of Messianic Jewish (and Gentile) Believers lived, practiced their Jewish faith, and died, never even having heard of any such thing as a 'Christian', much less ever identified themselves by that vile pagan -goyim- Babylonish term.

It is a term reserved (kha'rem), to the teachers of the doctrines and the ways of that Great Whore that sits upon many waters: That old Mother of Whores, that prostituted and sold herself to, and bedded with the kings of the earth in exchange for gold, and silver, and jewels, and for power over the souls of men.
Even that Great Whore who murdered the saints of old, and has corrupted all of the nations with her fornications.

Doug Shaver

I think you're overcomplicating it.

If X is supernatural, and someone says X happened, and you don't regard their say-so as sufficient reason to believe X really happened, then you're exhibiting an anti-supernatural bias.