Solitary Man

As you yourself noted, the comparison is not bad. There is an historical core to the Historia Augusta, and there is an historical core to the Evangelia.

patcleaver

1) First argument

There are tens of thousands of entities that some people believe exist, for which there is no evidence, and that either contradict each other or that are logical impossibilities. Any particular one of them almost certainly doesn't exist.

2) second argument

P1 There are an infinite number of entities that you can imagine and believed in without any evidence
P2 There are only a few entities that some people have ever believed in, without evidence, that later evidence actually verified to exist.
C1 The probability that a particular entity, that can be believe in without evidence, actually exists is infinity divided by some small number - which is zero.

If someone believes that an entity exists, but there is no evidence that the entity exists, then almost certainly, it does not exist.

3) question

Which do you think is more persuasive the first argument or the second argument?

Ben C Smith

Cling to?

Would you characterize this choice of wording as an accurate, unbiased assessment that both sides of the debate could probably agree upon? Or is it a tad slanted?

Ben.

patcleaver

If there were even a few hundred Christians who regularly assembled somewhere, then there should be some evidence of them besides acts.

You claim that there were the rules for gentiles that allowed them to visit the temple
Please provide a reliable reference showing that gentiles could visit the temple.

You claim that there were "god fearers" in the temple.
Could you please provide a reliable reference showing what was a "god fearer" and that they could visit the temple.

I do not have to show that Genesis is reliable before showing that Geneses contradicts astronomy.
I do not have to show that Acts is reliable before showing that acts contradicts archeology.

Toto

There is no requirement here to use colorless language that obliterates all partisanship in an effort to reflect a bland consensus.

But what word would you suggest? Solitary Man continues to assert that there is a historical core, based on his abusive language directed against anyone who doubts him and a few allusions to journal articles that never seem to back him up.

I think we might have to wait for Richard Carrier's book, or the Jesus Project, or perhaps the Second Coming before we have any evidence.

Adonael

first, i don't see a properly formed argument in either case. Second, whether or not one "argument" is more persuasive than the other does not indicate an "absolute proof" of any argument.

patcleaver

1. There are tens of thousands of deities and no evidence that any deity was a person who was later mythologized, unless there was evidence that the person was already an historically famous person before he was mythologized. Of all the mythologized people, please give me a few examples of historically unknown people who were mythologized into gods.

2. The earliest description of Jesus of Nazareth is Mark, and there is evidence that Mark is fiction. The evidence that Mark is fiction is pretty good evidence that Jesus is just a fictional character. It is very unusual for a fictional character to be based on a real person who is not already famous in history. I doubt that even one in a thousand fictional characters are based on the story of an otherwise unknown person.

Solitary Man

Farnell in his lists of Greek heroes names hundreds of deities who were worshiped for whom we have plenty of evidence for their actual existence. He even shows the connexion between divine hero worship and deity worship, and how they're mixed often. For a Roman precedent, Antinous fits the bill.

Paul and Q both antedate Mark.

But not wholly fiction.

So, because Colleen McCullough wrote fiction about Julius Caesar, does that mean that's pretty good evidence that Julius Caesar is a fictional character?

Have you done surveys based on this? How do you know?

Fictional from what time period? Ancient or modern? Why would you create a standard for ancient fiction from modern methods?

andrewcriddle

Fake documentation in the narrow sense does not seem characteristic of early Christian literature. Documents with bogus claims of authorship are certainly found, but it is unusual in early Christianity for author A to claim to be citing source B which author A has in fact invented.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

The stories about Heliogabalus are so entertaining that modern works on the period by writers who really know better still make use of them. For example The Syrian Princesses by Godfrey Turton.

Andrew Criddle