Dogfish

I think you may have a broader definition of "skeptical" than is usually accepted.

Ted Hoffman

Because they cannot be dated securely and have no known authorship or purpose.
Because they contain outright fiction - like virgins giving birth, resurrection of the dead and heavens opening with voices booming from the sky at appropriate times.
Because they at the same time contain myth/prophecy - e.g. a messiah from the alleged seed of David - historicized prophecy.
Because they at the same time conflict with what is known historically (dates and geographical places)
Because they at the same time talk about places that dont exist, like Golgotha and others I dont care to list now.
Because they at the same time contain implausible things like the temple ruckus and successfully riding a colt that has never been rode on.
Because the at the same time have a main character who fits the hero archetype(See Otto Rank or Alan Dundes).
Because they at the same time show evidence of redaction and embellishment (editorial fatigue - anyone?).
Because they at the same time have been shaped by theological agendas.
Because they events narrated in them contain little or no corroborating evidence outside the New Testament (see Van Voorst)
Because the individuals who have studied them in history and who have been regarded as experts in them have been hamstrung by theological commitments.

All the above combined makes the gospels stand apart from other literature.

Archaeology is about known and available evidence, not inexistent evidence. When there is no archaeological evidence for something, archaeologists rely on other sources or conclude that there is no evidence to support belief that it existed in the past but they dont conclude blithely that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
He is the one who implied there are things we can take at face value.
If what you have in mind is Irenaeus and Luke, they are not reliable on this point. I dont remember the arguments but Papias is generally an unreliable source. Irenaeus read Papias. This is worthless.
I do. Why did he have to copy Mark if he was an eyewitness? What about the miracles? Are they history too? And the conflicting dates of the census - that too is history?
Please do tell Roger Pearse.
You can wonder all you want during your free time. When you have an argument, I will be interested in reading it.
You mean you would always start with the primary data? Good for you.

Roger Pearse

Any text that cannot be "dated securely" is to be canned? What about Commodian, to grab an example at random? What percentage of ancient historical literary works have you examined to pass this? Why do you suppose that the gospels have no known authorship or purpose (a very strange idea in both cases)? Do anonymous histories get canned?

I have snipped all the remaining 'criteria' on similar grounds -- they have plainly never been examined for a second.

Actually as I understand it they DO indeed say, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", not least because it is true. But I'm not clear how all this supports your attempt to argue from silence.

What historical source could not be dismissed so easily? But finding excuses to ignore the data, while arguing from, well, no data? This is weird.

None of this is at all convincing, nor does it modify my statement above.

Any reason why you didn't address my point?

Did you have any to offer? If not, any reason why we should listen?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ted Hoffman

Roger,
Nobody talked about anything getting canned. Lets not get ahead of ourselves alright?
I am surprised that you ignored huge tracts of my earlier post without any explanation but now you feel you need to justify your selective attention. You dont like chewing the hard parts do you Roger?
I was not arguing from silence. That is your own strawman. Cite archaeologicts that say "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" or withdraw this irresponsible statement. Without context, it is a worthless and misleading statement. Now provide citations or drop it.
Mark is alleged to have been Peter's secretary. How do we know this? Papias claimed c. 130 CE that he got the information from John the Presbyter (who is not to be confused with John the Apostle).
If you read Mark, he never says he knew Peter or any of the disciples. In fact, Mark is hostile to Peter and portrays him as a sniveling coward with no spine and who is very slow in comprehending things. This same Mark makes several geographical errors and mistakes regarding Palestinian laws and customs in his work and alludes to the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by which time Peter should have died per Christian tradition.

Papias is therefore unreliable as a source. You want to make a case for why we should trust Papias (and Eusebius)? Please proceed.
Your statement is arguing that sensible people would agree with you and would not question the reliability of the texts like I am doing. No true Scotsman fallacy cannot help your case Roger.

Solitary Man

I think Mr. Pearse has excellently followed up on several of your points, I'd like to point out just a couple of things:

Why do you think their character is different? Why would the evangelists do this?

Luke for example, conflates 4BCE and 6CE and this is a reason, among others, that denies us the luxury of just assuming we can place Jesus at that time period and place. Even count Dracula is placed at a time and place.
Examples abound where fictional stories are crafted using real-life people and places. Of course attempts have been made to reconcile these conflicting accounts, with little or no success.[/quote]
Count Dracula is actually a fictional rendering of the real Vlad the III of Wallachia, called the Impaler.

According to spin, it's not what the scholars say, it's the texts themselves. This one I'd very much like to see answered, instead of you avoiding the question.

Do we not have evidence against these things?

Plagiarism needs to be proven. It's also quite anachronistic. Why do large chunks of Polybius appear directly in Livius? Is that plagiarism or literary borrowing? How do you distinguish the two?


Once again, I don't see a problem to be resolved. Luke's census is wrong. Period. Matthew's birth narrative isn't rooted in history. Period. Poof! Problem goes away.

It's easy not being a believer.

Will return at a later date to answer some of your other concerns more thoroughly.

Roger Pearse

I'm afraid that I see no need to read or respond to posts of this kind.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Mr. Pearse acts as though he hadn't read any discussion on this forum.

Are you comparing the methodology of the writer of Luke with that of Bram Stoker??

You, the Latinist, need analogies from the era.

The indication from the problem of the census is that the writer is in no position to understand the history of the period. His error with Lysanias is another indicator from his special material that the writer is dealing with things he is unqualified to write about. These point to the writer writing well outside the time of the events and tends to invalidate him as a witness of the events he claims were from the same period.

Contextualization is of utmost importance.

Where did the scholars get their information about Josephus if not from the text in the historical context? The text yields itself only in a context.

Do we have any evidence against Encolpius's relationship with Giton or any of the other information found in the Satyricon?

Poof go the genealogies, poof goes the birth narratives, poof goes the temptation, poof goes the sermon on the mount, poof goes the transfiguration, poof goes the garden of Gethsemane, poof goes the fictional version of Pilate, along the way poof goes Matthew and poof goes Luke, poof go the miracles, and we are left with a parable tract with minimal narrative glue which is as useful to your cause as a wet paper bag.

Especially when you are so arbitrary. Naturally you can get rid of bits you don't like, but at a cost.

ספין׃ הביןת

וימר׃ לא

(Can't get a medial nun to work, so I used a final nun.)


spin

Solitary Man

Not at all. Luke wasn't the only one writing about Jesus. There are scores of different "gospels" on the fella.

Analogies help to elucidate the argument. If I write a novel about George Bush that has zero grounding in reality, then obviously that doesn't make George Bush ahistorical.

Luke makes scores of other errors as well, especially when he's taking Josephus. That doesn't mean that he's not trying to write history. Suetonius makes mistakes, too. Tacitus is infamous for placing whole speeches in the mouths of Roman enemies.

Josephus itself is one place.

Quite naturally, yes. Starting with its genre as an indication. I'm sure you know well the reasons that Satyricon is classified as Satire, yes, spin?

My cause? What is my cause? I'm very happy where we are left, which is a little more than you indicate.

spin

Lots of people have written about Dracula. Numbers don't help your cause.

Only when the analogy is shown to be relevant in the field it is trying to elucidate.

You're withdrawing from your analogy and its problems. Here you are starting with the notion of a person we both should accept as real. This is not analogous to our situation. You might assume Jesus's existence, but that is what we are trying to establish.

(The Josephus connection is an assumption that has not too much going for it.)

Again you are changing the topic. Speeches in people's mouths was a convention that one can easily identify. It doesn't reflect on the reported events in any way.

We wouldn't put too much credence in Josephus if he didn't cough up the goods. For example, what was considered to have been total rubbish, his description of the Masada siege, in fact has been documented by archaeologists, when they found many of the indications he provided to be true. Yet Masada is only a small example. The material in Josephus has been frequently found to reflect what happened in the past. Not in the trimmings but in the main content. The text can be seen to fit closely to what we know of history. You have to overlook the errors in Luke and you get fewer indications that are historically useful in a text that contains so few to start with.

The Pumkinification is satire as well, [Solitary Man], but that doesn't mean that Claudius didn't exist, nor the historical characters who skulk behind the Satyricon.

But where is that? You are basically trying to make a case for a naive literalist reading of the gospels, weren't you? You know, read them basically at face value. We can doubt Encolpius and Giton, but why doubt Jesus?

What exactly do you have left?


spin

Amaleq13

Is it not also obvious that the novel would do nothing to establish that George was historical? And isn't that the more relevant point?