aa5874

Any person who claims an event or entity did not occur or exist, has no evidence of its occurence or existence. It is as simple as that. That is the basis of their conclusion, no evidence, nothing. The person has come up empty-handed, with a blank sheet. There is no credible information, no eyewitnesses, no person of interest, no DNA, no achaelogical evidence, no contemporary evidence.

Now, if I say 'Solo' does not exist, then I have no evidence that 'Solo' exists. Now, if 'Solo' exists, he will prove his existence. There is no such thing as proof of non-existence. All entities that are deemed to be non-existent, it is because there is no proof of their existence, that is, no evidence.

So, if a person claims that Jesus Christ or Saul/Paul were never real, it is because they have no evidence of their realities and no-one has proven that those entities actually lived.

If you believe Jesus Christ or Saul/Paul actually lived based on speculation, then your belief is worthless.

If I believe a missing person is dead and you believe the same missing person is alive, based on speculation, the person is still missing, and nothing has been resolved.

Again, if you claim Jesus Christ or Saul/Paul exist, then I expect you to have evidence or proof. I believe Jesus Christ and Saul/Paul are mythical, I have nothing to demonstrate that they existed, nothing at all. Solo, what do you have, speculation, probabilities, plausibilties....?

Ben C Smith

I have nowhere made a case that a redactor reworked Galatians 4.4 at all.

Nor have I anywhere made the case that my interpretation is necessary, only that it is the most probable.

And the syntax of Revelation 12.2 is και σημειον μεγα ωφθη εν τω ουρανω, which is perfectly compatible with the sign appearing in heaven. That the sign appeared in heaven does not tell us where the contents of that sign take place.

Finally, there is a great difference of genre between Revelation and the epistles of Paul. What one sees in a vision and what one writes in a hortatory epistle can be two very different things.

Ben.

TerryTryon

I merely read all the posts and I found the same arguments used over and over with much erudition and little sense of critical thinking. In particular, your rather pointless and tedious debate with Spin over Tacitus, Pilate, and the etymology of "procurator" was exceptionally outrageous. Do the words, "I was wrong." even occur in your vocabulary? What is this fascination with beating a dead horse?
No. I cannot match your knowledge base. You certainly know a lot more about ancient Latin usage, than I ever will, but, in this case, it was obvious that you were grasping at straws. But your arrogance, also evinced in the snide quote above, is your undoing. If you have to be right all the time, every time, in every particular, where is there any hope of learning from you at all?

No Robots

There is a great deal of scholarly discussion of the oral antecedents of the written Gospels. Just search "gospels+oral" in Googlebooks. I came up with this rather interesting work.

TerryTryon

When two people write posts, such as in this thread, that are so contrary to one another and with such vehement language, one must conclude (from the dispute) that one or the other is wrong, i.e, misinformed and (from the bitterness) not willing to become better informed.
You should know what the art of rhetoric is. And you should also know that ridicule is not effective rhetoric. Ridicule based on a typo is so puerile, it disgusts me.
The reason that Jesus appears in the gospels is to establish his godhood. If not so, then there is no basis for the religion of Christianity at all. A god is among other things a supernatural entity. Now I could spend hours discussing the simple definitions of "supernatural" and "entity." We could waste pages and pages on that. It is clear that the gospels were indeed trying to identify Jesus as a historical character, but only as a spin in establishing his godhood. They are religious tracts, not historical documents.
I hope I am not going farther from what I have read in the posts of this thread. There is good scholarship based on texts and cross referencing and civilized debate. Then there are those who resort to ridicule, pointless minutia and constantly citing their laurels.

ynquirer

I see your point. How would you address the authenticity of Tacitus' Annals 15:44 with, say, a little sense of critical thinking?

jgibson000

Or, unless one wants to engage in the fallacy of bifurcation, that both are wrong. Speaking of not being familiar with rudimentary logic ...

Is it really? Better tell that to some of the Attic Orators. And how could I know what is ineffective rhetoric is unless I was not lacking in the rudiments of rhetoric, as you previously claimed I was.

Nice to know. But all I did was to quote exactly what my interlocutor wrote.


It is? Aren't you confusing establishing Jesus as God's Messiah/definitive emissary (within a context in which there were other competitors and candidates for this claim) with establishing Jesus as God?

This very much depends on what one thinks -- and especially what the early church thought -- "Christianity" was all about. My take is that it was originally all about accepting as true and living according to an alternative vision of how the people of God were to be faithful to the aims and intents of the God of Israel. Yours seems to equate Christianity with Gnosticism.

How about just spending a few minutes?

How is this clear? And what makes you think this is the Gospel's aim?

And even if it was their aim, what purpose did establishing Jesus' "godhood" (an undefined term if there ever was one)t serve -- especially in the context of the intra and extramural debates about what God wants of his people and where the will and character of the God of Israel is most bindingly and decisively known in which the early church and the Gospels arose?

So is the story of Moses or the Maccabees. But that the Gopsels are religious tracts does not mean that the Gospels have the aim you say they had, especially since your implicit claim about what the ends and aims of "religious tracts" (to establish someone's "godhood") is something that first needs to be proven, and not as you seem to be doing, assumed.

Whether or not this is the case, it is clear that you are approaching the debate therein with some pretty question begging theological, literary, and historical apriorii.

Who specifically in this thread has constantly cited their laurel?

JG

Amaleq13

I did not deny the existence of "a great deal of scholarly discussion", I denied the existence of a "scholarly consensus" that is substantiated by evidence or reliable methodology.

I agree that the book appears interesting but I also note that nowhere is it claimed that the author has actually established substantiation for the notion that any specific part of the Gospels can be reliably identified as based on an oral tradition.

jgibson000

Are you saying that the scholars who assert that the Gospels are composed of material that was originally passed on orally have no and/or have never cited any evidence for their claims?

What, in you judgment, is the evidence that is lacking in the scholarly discussions, say, of Bultmann, Dibelius, Schmidt, Jeremias, Dalmann, Brown, Gerhardsson, Taylor, Dunn, Meier, and Crossan, for their claims of oral tradition standing behind much of what is in the Gospels? What is it in the methodology they have employed to establish the existence, as well as the nature and extent or substance, of pre-gospel oral tradition that you find to be "unreliable"? In fact, what do you think -- or know -- that methodology is?

Would you also say that those who assert an oral tradition behind such things as the Mishna or the classical Midrash or even 1 Maccabees or Homer have not substantiated their claims with evidence or used a reliable methodology to come the conclusions about oral tradition in and behind these works that they have come to?

Jeffrey Gibson

Toto

Jesus and Gospel (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Graham N. Stanton is searchable on Amazon.

There is a review here. Interesting but this doesn't seem to indicate that the written gospels were based on the earlier oral gospel.