AthenaAwakened

I doubt that.

As you won't even find that kind of lock step thinking at various seminaries.

And no one is saying there are no experts in the field of theology, just as their are experts on Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Doesn't make the characters actually exist tho.

And the thing is, Jesus doesn't have to have existed in order for those sayings attributed to him to have meaning or relevance, any more then talking animals are necessary to walk the earth for Aesop's Fables to hold moral lessons.

The only need for a Historical Jesus is if you are pushing a belief or morality that can't stand on its own.

Juststeve

Grog:

It might be better to say Paul claimed to have received his "Gospel" by revelation from Jesus but he also says that after three years he spent 15 days with Peter and James. Unless he is lying about the Peter and James bit he would certainly have learned about Jesus then.

Steve

No Robots

Paul was also an opponent of the sect prior to his vision.

Juststeve

Athena:

For your analogy between Jesus Scholars and Harry Potter Scholars to have weight you would need to show that Harry Potter Scholars believe that Harry Potter actually existed. I don't think you can but I'd love to see you try.

The point Abe is making, and quite well I might say is that there are no Jesus scholars at accredited universities who are also mythers. It is a measure of how fringe a belief system is when you need to say all recognized scholars are wrong about this.

Steve

Toto

But he doesn't even hint at any information he got from them. He doesn't show them the respect you would expect for people who knew Jesus in the flesh.

This common claim, that Paul learned about Jesus from his disciple and supposed brother, is just a historicist ad hoc attempt to add something to the evidence that isn't there.

Juststeve

Toto:

Paul tells us a good deal about the earthly Jesus in his seven letters. If you read Ehrman's recent book they are set out there. The myther position seems to flow from "Paul knows nothing of an earthly Jesus, to Paul doesn't know as much as he should about the earthly Jesus. This all assumes of course that Paul has written in the surviving letters everything he knows which is unlikely. In any even it is clear that what Paul does tell us is consistent with Jesus having an earthly existence, and Paul never says Jesus didn't exist on earth.

Steve

ApostateAbe

OK, that's cool. The point is that the mythicists really are on the scholarly fringe, and every seasoned member of the debate on either side knows that. Sometimes, correct ideas really are on the fringe, so I would recommend the argument from authority only for those who don't want to take the trouble to examine the evidence. If you don't have either the time, energy or confidence in your intellect to make a sound decision, then the consensus of the state-recognized expert authority is your best option, regardless of whether we are talking about Jesus Christ, Harry Potter or quantum physics. If you think maybe you can reason better than those people, then independent reasoning remains an option. Many of us have done that. To express Bayes' Theorem in words, the winning explanation must be most expected from the evidence, and conversely the evidence must be most expected from the explanation and the background knowledge. The ancient New Testament manuscripts represent evidence--not evidence directly of Jesus the human being, but evidence of what ancient people believed. In my opinion, a historical human Jesus as the founder of the doomsday cult of Christianity is by far and away the most probable explanation for those ancient beliefs. No mythicist explanation comes close.

To give a brief example of an argument for why that is, every known existing doomsday cult respects a reputed human founder in their beliefs who at one time actually lived as a human being. The mythicist position demands that this otherwise-universal pattern be broken.

Maybe Harry Potter was only a passing brush-off on your part, but I think the best chance that mythicists have is to somehow make the case that the gospels were NOT the products of ancient beliefs but are instead somehow the false fictional attestation to ancient beliefs, as in neither Jesus nor Christianity existed at the time of the composition of the gospels, much like neither Harry Potter nor Hogwarts existed at the time of the composition of the first Harry Potter novel.

spin

And yet Paul never indicates what the theology of that prior sect was. But he does contrast his personally revealed christ crucified religion with all and sundry. While Cephas can be made follow torah praxis by Jerusalem agents, ie be brought into line, Paul contrasts that religion with christ crucified. It would seem that christ crucified did not belong to that prior sect. Did they know of Jesus prior to Paul or were they messianists of the JtB ilk?

Jedi Mind Trick

I'm not sure that atheist follow consensus, do they? atheists just don't believe in god. nothing more.

aa5874

Even if Jesus did exist and had died the Pauline claim is least likely to be true. Paul could NOT have received any credible data from a 'resurrected' Jesus.

If Paul DREAMED up his gospel he should have said so and NOT claim it came from a 'resurrected' Jesus.

The Pauline writer is NOT credible.

Jesus did NOT have to exist for PAUL to DREAM or Hallucinate.

People all over the world DREAM about Gods, Devils, Angel, Demons and Holy Spirits.

Once Paul claimed he received any historical DATA from a resurrected Jesus he was a LIAR.

It is unheard of that the dead is the source of historical events.

Give me a break.

The Pauline writings contain too many lies to have been propagated within a few years of the death of Jesus if he did live.

The Pauline lies are the LAST in the Canon.