Toto

You have just shifted the burden of proof, without any justification.

Mythicists and others do not need to prove that the documents are false. You need to show some evidence that they contain some history. That is what you have failed to do so far.


No one has said that. You are arguing with a straw man.

Shifting the burden again. There are a lot of things we can't be certain of, that are still so improbable that we don't believe them.

NO IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE GIVE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.



Nice attempt at verbal judo, but no cigar. Fiction can be written as if it were historical fact, and still be false. But when something is written as if it were fictional, you need something more that the benefit of the doubt to pretend that it is historical.

Adam

The Passion Narrative is written as if it were fictional? The Johannine discourses are written as if they were fictional? Q was written as if it were fictional? L was written as if it were fictional? You have to prove that to be able to dismiss them, as they are all largely free of the supernatural.

Toto

Trying to shift the burden of proof again? No, I don't have to prove anything. You need to prove your case.

Is there any realistic element in the trial of Jesus? Holding court at night? Crucifying someone on the Passover? It is dramatic and not at all realistic.

The gospels are storytelling. Everyone realizes this. Historical Jesus scholars make a big deal of the effort they need to put into extracting history from the obviously unhistorical documents.

Atheos

Just because portions of a narrative are plausible does not mean they are historical, nor does it mean one must give the benefit of the doubt to their being historical.

There was a civil war; there was (and is) a Charlotte, South Carolina and an Atlanta, Georgia. There were plantations, carpetbaggers, etc., but that doesn't mean one must automatically assume Rhett Butler was a wealthy rapscallion who after being expelled from West Point became a blockade runner during the civil war, reasonable though those assumptions would be.

We're dealing with a narrative that has clearly been pieced together from many different sources and which contains elements that rational people know were unlikely in the extreme (turning water to wine, walking on water, healing blindness, resurrecting dead people, etc).

It's certainly possible that someone who formed the historical kernel of these story elements was crucified. It's possible that a few hours before things came to a head he and his disciples went to a garden where he bemoaned his impending arrest.

But it's also possible that Hercules killed a lion or that Odysseus encountered some hookers.

Adam, you exhibit a profound unwillingness to accept the very plausible possibility that the entire Jesus story is the product of fiction. Just like Mtichell's "Gone With the Wind."

Reasonable and plausible elements in the story could have taken place. But they equally as well could have been woven into the story to tie the mythical elements together.

Good scholarship doesn't start by making assumptions based on opinions (even majority opinions) and piecing together sophisticated hypotheticals based on those assumptions.

Good scholarship first admits the weak basis of those assumptions, then if so desired it may go on after making such an admission to say "But if these assumptions are true we can infer that ...."

You have done no such thing. Your entire case is predicated on assumptions for which you have (or have presented) absolutely no evidence.

steve_bnk

Objctively everything that exists is part of natural reality. You can begin philisipohical handwaving, but it changes nothing. People insist they experience what they feel is telepathy, yet over many decades of lab tests it has never been demonstrated. We can not say it does not exist, we can say there is no demonstatabale evidence to support the claim.


If a ghost exists and is seen visually, then there is a caiusal link between the ghost and visual senses. Ghosts would then be a real natural phenomena. Not suopernatural.

Are there phenomena we may not detect but affect us? Absolutly possible. One can therefore speculate as one will about ET abductions, Bigfoot, spirits, deities, and all the rest.

You can provide objective evidence for your assertions or you can not. A disjointed set of ancient Jewsih textof unknown origins is not proof of a deity.


Discovering a Batman comic book 2000 yerars from now does not make Batman a real person.

Anytyhing that exists by defintion is part of the totality. If the Abramic god exists, then god plus all he/she/it creates is part of reality.

Supernatural is a generic historical tag for claims noit objectively supportable. Past posters of the paranormal persuasion have made the same sort of arguments the theists make.

There are only natuural phenomena. There can be no other.

sotto voce

Reasonable that a deliberately created fictional character was not?

Where is there the least evidence that the NT is of similar provenance?

What does 'pieced together' mean? To make sense of a narrative? A lot of HJers would agree emphatically.

It's that very cosmic factor, in combination with a message of cosmic significance, that compels the attention of humanity, now as ever.

But many thousands of people were crucified. That is an immaterial fact without the context, which compels attention.

Bemoaned? Is this an objective interpretation? Who waits to be arrested in a public garden under the noses of the arresting authorities?

spin

If you want to approach the problem rationally, you cannot make any assumptions about the text as to its ostensible veracity. It may or may not contain information based on reality. In the case of Rhett Butler, despite there being quite reasonable information connected to his story, it cannot change the fact that it is a work of fiction. When we examine the early christian traditions, we have no way to decide whether the reasonable information regarding the central characters contained in those traditions is based on reality. We can see that there are a lot of non-real encrustations. We cannot simply remove the bits we don't like and assume what's left is kosher. All that you end up with are the bits you like, which tell us nothing about their veracity.

The mythicist is happy to point out the crud and say there's no reason to think the rest is any different, while the historicist points out the reasonable and say there's no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. They're using the same sources and they are both fucking up for those sources are unhelpful in connecting to, or disconnecting from, reality.

You know very well what it means. And yes, they would agree. It doesn't change the basic problem which centers around the fact that the narrative "contains elements that rational people know were unlikely in the extreme (turning water to wine, walking on water, healing blindness, resurrecting dead people, etc)" and simply removing this sort of material will not miraculously sanitize the rump text. We are left not knowing the value of the remaining material for not all non-real material needs to look unreasonable. Fiction is full of reasonable narrative. Our job is to know how to get information that directly relates to reality rather than just reasonable information.

This may be your belief, but the need for walking on water and the like is for impression rather than reflecting reality. If you want to try to sell water into wine you can't just talk about it. Otherwise it's only words.

We discount the miraculous until it is not miraculous to accept it as reasonable.

Atheos is pointing at some of the reasonable information in the narrative....

I doubt that you would want to claim that it is not possible.

You haven't actually touched on the problem presently under discussion. (And you will note that I have tried to explain the problem above. A summary: both historicists and mythicists have ontologies with no epistemology to back them up.)

James The Least

No. We do not know that a trial came about.

James The Least

They didn't see it as fictional (a completely modern category). They saw it as hidden prophecy uncovered.

aa5874

Your claim is UTTERLY erroneous. The claim that Jesus was Myth is ACTUALLY supported by Matthew 1.18-20, Luke 1.26-35, Mark 6.48-49, Mark 9.2, John 1, Acts 1, Galatians 1, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 15.

You CANNOT continue to ignore the DATED evidence and Scholarship and make mis-leading statements.

Right now, there is an ON-GOING Quest for an historical Jesus by Scholars because it is recognised that the Jesus of the Existing Codices is NON-HISTORICAL.

Please get familiar with the Quest for an historical Jesus.

The Existing Codices SUPPORT a Non-historical Jesus.