teamonger

Yep, I'll have a good argument to use at the Pearly Gates. "But Jesus, I argued for your historicity! I believed in you!" Perhaps He will favor me with a little smirk before tossing me into the pit with all the rest of you. :devil1:

t

spin

This is the all-Japanese-look-alike-to-me syndrome.

What do you see in the raw data, that I don't? I have asked this sort of question time and again, and the historicist-at-all-costs crowd always comes up empty-handed.

Conceding so much -- too much -- ground allows for looney-toons thinking to interfere with any rational exchange. You're already just a step away from why-don't-you-let-Jesus-into-you-heart burden delivery. Instead of being there, you need to present the first issue -- how one can know god exists -- umm, first. If a person cannot know god exists then all else falls away. Crap about illogicality of the resurrection is then pointless. Anything we know about the real world is demonstrable through objective means. If it's not then we cannot know it. If you cannot show god through a repeatable means for a person to perceive god sensorily, then the knowledge based on god is ultimately indistinguishable from a schizoid delusion. The only people one in that state can talk to is a sharer in the same set of unfathomed presuppositions.

All you need to know is how to deal with mediaeval proofs of god.

Theories about Jesus are the stuff to sell books to believers on.

Historical Jesusism is at its basis a means of modern christian scholars to rationalize their faith to themselves. You don't need to enable them.


spin

spamandham

But if you subtract the absurdities, what's left is *NOT* prima facie evidence. To call it "prima facie" you must take it as is, warts and all. The prima facie evidence is for a miraculous godman, not an ordinary charismatic leader.

Yours is a derived position. May I ask how you derived it?

Toto

"Prima facie" is a legal term used to shift the burden of proof. But you do not have any admissible evidence from a legal standpoint.

Michael Grant has no methodology - he just accepts the gospels as evidence, without examining them. Even Christian NT specialists can't justify that. Sanders' methodology, and that most other historicists, is to assume a historical Jesus of some sort and try to figure out who he was.

I don't know if Lowder is a mythicist by now or not. I only know that he was talking about debate strategy and the complexity of the JM hypothesis, not about the apparent nuttiness of the theory.

Do you really think that religionists have become less dogmatic because secularists accept that they had a historical founder? I think it has more to do with the inherent implausibility of thier dogma.

They don't stand on firm ground. They just assert that all historians agree that Jesus existed, and then go on with "what if he was the son of god incarnate who will throw you into hell if you don't believe - what do you have to lose just accept jesus as your savior - blah blah blah."

And they don't argue against the myth position. They just keep repeating that it is a lunatic fringe position. Why encourage them in this?

Ben C Smith

That is the popular term for someone who thinks Jesus was probably a myth; but it can hardly be the popular term for someone who is not sure. If you call spin a mythicist just because he is not an historicist, what is to prevent mythicists from calling him an historicist just because he is not a mythicist? In such a case spin would be both a mythicist and an historicist at the same time, and they are supposed to be mutually exclusive positions.

I believe you are committing what is known as the excluded middle fallacy.

Ben.

teamonger

I've gone over the criteria from Sanders already. You can say that leaves me empty-handed, or you can brand Sanders an apologist, but I simply disagree.

t

teamonger

Like Thomas Jefferson, I don't need to keep legendary warts. I have scissored off most of the miraculous godman part, because I know how quickly legends develop around even secular historical figures (think Davy Crockett).

Yes, a derived position... which is a tricky process, of course. We don't know how much "miracle" was intentionally promulgated and/or believed in by Jesus himself. Scissoring will always be an inexact science.
t

Ben C Smith

Sanders is no apologist.

Ben.

teamonger

I suppose JNHer could replace JMer in discussion, but I think the various definitions of "myth" may be broad enough to keep the latter term, at least for my purposes. Anyway, Spin does look awfully Japanese to me ;-)
t

spin

Whichever way, you're still going to say f-all because you aren't working with evidence, but pushing names across the screen. I find myself all too frequently trying to pry some honest facts out of people who seem totally incapable of coughing up anything coherent, people who believe in the historical Jesus assumption. Disagree, if you like, but you are still babbling in the backroom, when you claim to want to talk in the front room with the grown-ups.

I go to the earliest known christian texts, those of Paul, and point out that he didn't need a real Jesus to spread christianity, citing his claims of revelation in Gal 1:12f, and you don't deal with that. The gospels, you'll admit were written long after Paul. This allows a lot of time for christian tradition to grow on speculations on Paul's savior. If you don't want to deal with this issue, just say that you don't want to, but don't just ignore it, while maintaining communications.


spin