RPS

Right here:It's your claim that the experts are wrong and thus your burden. Have at it if you wish.

Johann Sin

Sorry, you have failed to proved where did I said that 'the experts are wrong'. Hell, you can't even provide where I used the word 'expert' alone.

As for analysis, some could be found right here in IIDB. A simple search provides...

Josh McDowell's "Evidence" for Jesus

The Jesus of History

Historicity of Jesus FAQ

Alf

Err..Josephus the forged you mean? It is other people forged his books, as far as I know he did not himself commit forgery. It is possible he did but I don't know that.

Otherwise I agree with your points.

Alf

RAFH

And books wherein the evidence discussed is virtually all the Gospels, which have virtually no basis in fact and are filled with inconsistencies and contradictions not to mention naratives to which noone was an observer or to which those who reportedly wrote the materials could not have been personally privy to such as any portion of the early life of Jesus.

Alf

Well, it is exactly those details that is the area of conflict.

No - this is what many historians can agree to. Anything beyond it is speculation based on little or no evidence.

As best we can tell maybe but we cannot really say much. We do not know what Peter preached. He never wrote anything that we know of.

What were they called again? Those people who listened to the preacher about doom's day coming near and they all met on the hill top to watch the end of the world. When it never came they founded a cult. So, even when given solid proof that they were wrong what did they do? Did they say "Oh, we were wrong, we can just go home now". No, they found support among each other - people who were like minded. They founded a cult. A cult based on lies maybe but they were strong believers! Yes, they could no longer believe that doomsday already happened but they still believed - they just had to move the date of the doomsday to some later date.

No. If you listen to what historians say about Jesus you will notice they do not make any claims about a person performing genuine miracles etc as a historical person. If they did they wouldn't be serious historians as they simply do not have available evidence to support such a claim.

The problem is that the christians then take the historian's statement as support for their virgin birth, genuine miracle worker Jesus. That is where the conflict arise.

Completely wrong. Those who are not christian do not think that the world rotates around christianity. They do not think it important to prove christianity false - nor do they have to. Christianity has never been proven right in the first place so why should anyone waste time and effort trying to prove it wrong?

The cold facts though is that there simply isn't enough evidence for a historical NT Jesus. The historical facts can only suggest that there was this preacher named "Yeshua" who got himself crucified by the romans and even this much is far from certain, it is only suggested by evidence - not proven.

It is not my problem that you do not have enough evidence for your claims.

Wrong. We do not reject a historian who claim that there likely was a guy named Yeshua who roamed Judea preaching and got himself crucified by the romans 2000 years ago. We reject the christian who claim that the historian's claims proves their NT to be historical. It does no such thing.

Care to show me ONE non-christian historian who make claims beyond what I did? Basically the only thing that the majority of historians can agree on is that "Jesus existed" and if he did he may have inspired some people to write gospels etc however, that does not mean the gospels are historical nor does it mean that Jesus life was anything close to the descriptions of the gospels. Also, please note that even the "Jesus existed" is contended and not unproblematic. Partly because different people understand different things from the statement.

Even a christian one may count but be aware that they might have a conflict of interest and so their claims must be taken under high level of scrutiny.

Not really. Inserting or omitting key phrases can seriously alter the meaning of a text. You can reverse meanings, retell a story about one person to make it appear as you are talking about another person etc. The point is that even a small change of words can significantly alter the meaning and implications of a text.

Exactly.

No it doesn't. Even a small change can turn the implications of the text completely. You sijmply cannot draw any such conclusion based on TF.

No they don't. Show me an expert who claim that TF is very solid evidence of the existence of Jesus. I agree that you can find some who claim that it is some evidence but it is on thin ice as I said.

No it's not. If I refer to a guy in modern times I can show pictures of the guy and name and ID and so who he is more or less objectively clear.

It is a completely different matter when discussing someone who lived in the past and whom we only have descriptions of found in gospels etc. In this case who the person is is very much related to what we accept about him as true or not. I.e. he is what he did or what it is claimed he did.

I can acept that there was a guy named "Yeshua" who roamed Judea and preached and performed tricks that gullible people believed was miracles and then he got himself crucified and died on a cross.

However, this is still not "NT Jesus". The Jesus described in the gospels performed genuine miracles - we have no evidence of that and all evidence we have is that he performed tricks, he was born by a virgin. We have no evidence of that either - indeed what evidence we do have is that he was born by a natural birth as everyone else if he actually lived as a historical person. That he appeared alive again after dying on the cross? Again, we don't have any evidence - only claims that he did - claims that are unreliable from people who had an interest in the claims being true.

No serious historian can agree to such claims and if he does he goes far beyond what the available evidence allows him to go.

No. The point is that by the label "Jesus" we may mean a guy named "Yeshua" who roamed Judea 2000 years ago, performed some tricks and got himself crucified. The point that who he is is very intimately conntected with what he did. If you don't accept the gospel stories about him performing genuine miracles etc he is suddenly a completely different person. He is no longer God but he is an ordinary fellow with nothing special.

I have yet to meet a christian who will accept that Jesus was just an ordinary fellow.

Thus, if he exist or not is closely connected with what he said and did. We might accept that this ordinary fellow Jesus existed but that is not what the christians claim. They claim a Son of God and God himself all rolled into one who was born of a virgin and performed genuine miracles and got himself resurrected and ascended to heaven exists. That we can not accept unless you provide real solid evidence - evidence you cannot provide.

and this lack of evidence does not allow you to make the claims you want them to make. That is why no serious historian will make those claims.

It is not moving the goalposts I think. We do not have picture of Jesus or ID card or fingerprints. So who he was is identified with what he did and what happened to him. You cannot separate the two issues.

True. However, the problem is that there is no significant difference between wholly fake and partically accurate but interpolated with respect to extracting specific pieces of information from the passage. For all practical purposes those two classifications are identifcal for such usage. So, it might not be wholly fake but it could just as well have been, it wouldn't have made a tad of difference for the use you are trying to extract from it.

Completely irrelevant. Those christian biologists who support evolution see no conflict between evolution and their religion. It is irrelevant for them what other christians - even fringe cults mostly concentrated in the US thinks.

Again irrelevant. It is a strong influence among most christians and that is what is relevant here.

What Fredriksen claims is that "Jesus existed" - Jesus who? Jesus of the gospels? If that is her claims then she is on very thin ice and probably alone in the academic community in claiming that - and why isn't she christian if this is what she believed? No, I suspect that she does NOT adhere to the Jesus of the gospels. Then we are back to the Jesus guy who roamed Judea preaching and got himself crucified. This is an ordinary fellow who we do not require much evidence to accept existed. IOW she accept it is true because it is not a very controversial claim - not because she has tons of evidence to support it.

You fail to realize the marked difference between natural sciences - which for several years had a conflict with the traditional ptolemaic world view before they broke off and with the theological "sciences" which is dominated by the church and faithful followers.

Why would he know it was false? It is quite possible that Peter himself believed it was true, that does not mean it is true however. He might have never met Jesus in person after the supposed resurrection but he could still believe he was resurrected for example. He could then go on and preach a resurrected Jesus even if it never actually happened.

There are too many possibilities here to narrow it down like you do.

People back in those days saw miracles everywhere. If you were to believe all those "observations" we will have to all worship vespasian by now and a host of others who people have claimed healed them.

I agree that it is unlikely that many people would preach something they knew was a lie. However, some people can but not many. However, it is very likely that those people themselves believed it was true but that still doesn't make it true.

No. The NT is a faith document written by zealous fanatics who had a heavily vested interest in "proving" that their faith was true and at least as good as and actually in their mind superior to any other faith they were competing with at the time.

It is therefore highly biased. Yes, the NT CAN be used as evidence. But this is when you look at the style, choice of words etc. The statements in the bible itself is not evidence. However, the style etc gives some indication as to who wrote what in the bible. Thus, we today know that the gospel of Mark was written by some guy who had never set foot in Judea, that the gospel of Luke was written after Josephus etc. We still do not know that there was a guy named Jesus who was born by a virgin etc. In these matters the NT is worthless as evidence.

Alf

Alf

You perhaps misunderstand what the MJ position is.

Nobody will deny that there was a guy named "Yeshua" living in Judea around 2000 years ago. It was a common name and there was many people with that name in that region.

Nobody will deny that there were preachers around that region 2000 years ago. There was lots of preachers. People were gullible and looking for something to believe in. The romans had just recently captured their nation and they wondered what was God doing about it. God had promised them the land and now they lost it to romans. Religious preachers was swarming the place! That one or more of these preachers had the name "Yeshua" is also not unlikely.

Nobody will deny that some of these preachers got themselves crucified. They could cause troubles and arise disturbances and if there was something the romans didn't tolerate it was disturbances!

No, the MJ position is that the Jesus as portrayed in the gospels - the virgin birth guy etc - is myth and is based on partly pagan myths - this is unquestionable. There are clear parallells between the gospels and pagan myths. The MJ position is then that christians draw upon those pagan myths and attributed much of this on their Jesus figure and that makes him mythical and not historical.

I consider myself to be an MJer but I do not deny that there was a Jesus roaming Judea 2000 years ago preaching and performing tricks and got himself crucified. I do think it is not proven that this guy was Son of God or God and born by a virgin and resurrected and ascended into heaven.

Alf

Edited: "deny" is too strong word to use for what I think of the matter. I simply do not consider it proven - the lack of evidence is overwhelming.

DMC

I will try to answer this to the best of my ability. I think you are asking for rebuttals to the assertion that no one who doesn't truly believe in a concept would die for that concept. Regardless whether or not anyone actually died for this Jesus concept who was an actual disciple of the same Jesus, many people have the ability (as unfortunate as it may be) to cause themselves to believe something that isn't obviously true.


Now, if we take your hypothetical "they all died for believing in him" and go from there, we are presented with a problem. We cannot possibly die because of our belief. We can only die as a result of our actions or our words. These may be related to our beliefs, but our beliefs do not cause us to be killed. But you asked "would they?" not "could they?" They certainly could, but no one here can tell you if they would. You have already set a condition that they existed, that Jesus existed, that their stories were true (otherwise they would be lying already) and that they died as a result of their belief. That doesn't leave much room for speculation. The premise(s) seem to be using circular reasoning.

1. Jesus lived
2. Disciples lived
3. Disciples recorded both of these
4. Disciples died as a result of their belief

How do you know Jesus lived? Because the disciples say so. How do you know they lived? Because they say so. Therefore you have already made them honest and now you ask if they could have died for what they knew was a lie. See the problem here?

RPS

Weasel away all you like. Here's the exchange to which I referred:
Since we've already established that, at a minimum, the consensus of experts finds the evidence of the historical Jesus convincing (with lots of argument over what He did and said), you're opposing the experts directly.

There is lots of argument over the details but you go further than that and much further than the experts.

There's lots of evidence, just no consensus on how much of it should be interpreted.

One thing that's clear to me is that something profound happened to those people who had followed Jesus to turn them from ordinary folks into world-changers.

That "problem" cuts both ways.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time on this board can see that this statement is laughably false.

The nature of historical analysis doesn't offer proof.

You keep on insisting, incorrectly, that the only options are two extremes. The experts agree that an historical Jesus existed. That Jesus is more than a random preacher whose story generally matched the basics of the NT story. The existence of the historical Jesus means that the NT is predicated upon a specific Jesus whose story is told there. However, there can be (and is) lots of disagreement about all that this specific Jesus did and said.

I've already listed three.

Read Fredriksen.

Even a cursory look at the Jesus Seminar shows that you're wrong here.

Sarpedon

This thread is locked pending a split

Sarpedon

The discussion of evolution and the spontaneous combustion of life has been moved here