aa5874

You have committed a logical fallacy.

Your post is illogical.

If there were no believers in Jesus in the first century, the gospels would be false and a distortion of reality.

FathomFFI

That depends on whether the gospel writers actually believed what they were writing.

As far as they would be concerned, it was all the truth. You will notice that I did not say intentionally embellished. You will also noticed the big "IF" at the beginning of my statement; presenting an analogy.

FathomFFI

What some of you people are failing to consider is that my objective was to discredit the literary resources and the method in which they are used on jesusneverexisted list to support their argument from silence.

That has indeed been accomplished.

Amaleq13

For example?

Antipope Innocent II

Josephus wrote that there were over 240 towns and villages in Galilee:

Whence I wrote thus to them: "If you are very desirous that I should come to you, you know there are two hundred and forty cities and villages in Galilee ...
(Josephus, Life, 45)

But if you total up all the names of Galilean settlements that he mentions, you don't even get half that number. Therefore there were a hell of a lot of Galilean towns and villages that Josephus didn't mention.

I'm struggling to find any other way to interpret this statement:

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

Or this one:

The evidence for a 1st century town of Nazareth does not exist – not literary, not archaeological, and not historical. It is an imaginary city for an imaginary god-man.

Given the amount of effort the author then goes to to discredit any evidence that Nazareth did exist, what exactly would you say was the purpose of this part of his site, other than to argue that Nazareth was (in his words) "the town theology built"?

Solitary Man

Oh look topical humor from someone who already lost all credibility and now is digging himself deeper into the whole of backtracking! :wave:

Seriously, a prologue to what argument? What are you trying to say the list does, Toto?? All you've done is deny they do such a thing, even though they've been quoted for the opposite - (Edited)

aa5874

You did NOT write "IF", you wrote "EVEN IF".

This is the excerpt of your post:

Your statement is illogical.

If the depiction of Jesus is false in the gospels, then, a disclaimer is invaluable with the following, or words to this effect:

Amaleq13

Thanks but I was wondering if there were specific examples.

mens_sana

I'm really surprised that no one has addressed the main point in Antipope Innocent's post. Belittling tone aside, is anyone here able to present any archaeologist who denies the existence of a 1st century Nazareth? Is there no Finkelstein to tell us that Nazareth is a 4th century invention?

And why has no one, no one at all, addressed the double standard presented in the Antipope's second paragraph? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Toto

Why is it such a struggle?

The fact that there is no extra-Biblical literary source that confirms the existence of Nazareth may be one piece of evidence, but there is no statement that the lack of a literary reference is sufficient by itself to prove that Nazareth did not exist.

How many times do I need to repeat this?

Perhaps you came into this thread in the middle and missed the point.

Let me be clear - I am not taking a position on whether Nazareth existed or not. But FathomFFI has claimed that JesusNeverExisted committed a logical error by even mentioning the lack of literary evidence. F-FFI seems to have read the first paragraph of that website and decided that was the entire argument.

Notice that Kenneth Humphreys of JesusNE does not rest his case on the lack of any mention of Nazareth. He lists literary, historical, and archeological considerations. But F-FFI has continued to type as if Humphreys had made a simplistic argument that the mere fact that Josephus omitted any mention of Nazareth is sufficient to disprove its existence.

The real question, as everyone should realize, revolves around the archeology. But we haven't gotten there yet.