Joe Banks

[QUOTE=Dogfish;5062272]Tacitus and Josephus confirmed the info from Deep Throat? Wow they really were good.

mens_sana

"All," really? Strange, after I cut out a lot of nonsense like stars, virgin births, magi, walking on water, theological claims by later True Believers, etc., I still have a decent probability for the existence of a lower class, rural Galilean, Jewish teacher, who thought YHWH's kingdom (in some form or another) was imminent, and who ended up on a Roman cross just prior to a jam-packed Jerusalem Passover. And I even expect that if Honi the Circle Drawer could evoke rain in a manner thought miraculous, so could an otherwise ordinary Galilean Jew come up with healings in the same category.

aa5874

You seem not to understand the difference between probability and history. There is no known extant non-apologetic historical record of Jesus of the NT, except for forgeries in Josephus.

Now, whether you believe his probability of existence is 100% or 1%, you will do so without any historical support. It seems to me that whatever you think is probable is history, that is a grave error.

Doug Shaver

I don't see why history should be singled out for such radical skepticism. If a belief must be infallible to constitute knowledge, then nobody can know anything at all.

I don't plan to derail this thread with a discourse on epistemology. I think there is much about the past that we can reasonably believe. Whether we're justified in saying we know any of it is not, I think, very important to the present discussion.

I have no idea which aspects of science or rationalism you're unfamiliar with, but their application to history goes something like this.

There are certain facts to be accounted for, and the simplest accounting presumes that they are evidence of past events. Among those facts are the existence of certain documents, apparently (in the instant case) copies of earlier documents. The purpose of historical inquiry is to explain, as parsimoniously as possible, how those documents came to exist in their present form. The explanation will include a hypothesis that certain events occurred, involving certain identifiable individuals who did certain things, about which they or certain other people wrote certain documents containing narratives or commentaries on those events. The hypothesis must be consistent with all known relevant facts, and it must be revised as needed to accommodate any new facts as they are discovered.


And I answered you. If you think my answer was wrong, just say it was wrong.

I've told you what I mean by fiction. If you think it would be better defined otherwise, then offer an alternative.

Solitary Man

Quite right. However, you haven't been careful to keep the quotes around "know". I'm using the word in a very specific circumstance. There are different levels of knowledge, am I not right? I don't need to have 100% certainty to live my life.

This illustrates my point perfectly. No historian is perfect. Can you draw the rest of the lines?

It was very pertinent to the topic on hand. You raised the point that the gospels are not reliable as history. If you ask the question, "How does the car work?", do you want as an answer how to turn the ignition or what's going on under the hood? Your call. If you want to just know how to turn the key in the ignition, I'll drop the subject, but if you're interested in the mechanics, let me know.

That's partially right, yes.

But that's not what I asked. :huh:

Are you aware of the genre historical fiction? It presents history in a modern novel narrative. Take for example Colleen McCullough's series on ancient Rome, such as First Man in Rome. In it, she has Marius and Sulla going down to fight Jugurtha. Much of the setting, narrative, and plot was actually created by Colleen McCullough and was not meant to be taken as that it actually happened as she depicted it. In fact, it's mostly meant to entertain. But just because the book itself is fiction doesn't mean that Marius and Sulla never really went to Africa.

aa5874

The evidence against an historical Jesus is overwhelming. Virtually all the information of this Jesus is derived from the NT and the Church fathers, yet this information appears to be riddled with fiction, contradictions and inconsistencies.

I have discussed the star of Bethlehem, and have stated that because of the physical size of the planet earth, a star would appear to be over every house ,simultaneously, within an area of 15,000 square miles, not over a single house as depicted by the author of Matthew. The birth of Jesus is therefore associated with fiction.

I will show that either the genealogy of Jesus is fiction or Joseph's and Mary's account of their sexual contact is fiction, as reported by gMatthew.

I will, for now, discard the incredible appearances of the angel to Joseph, and start at Matthew 1.25, "...but she remained a virgin until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus."

So with this verse, the author tries to establish that Jesus is not the son of Joseph, therefore Jesus is the son of another man, I don't think the Holy Ghost was the father.

We have a dilemma on our hands, the author of Matthew gave the genealogy for the wrong man. The birth of Jesus is associated with fiction once more.

Virtually all the events surrounding Jesus appear fundamentally to be fictitious. If we compare gMatthew's nativity scene to Luke's, there are major contradictions.
In gMatthew, the writer would like the reader to think that only 5 persons knew where Jesus was born, and that Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt because they were afraid of Herod, however gLuke presents a totally different anecdote, Mary and Joseph were not afriad, and according to Luke, the shepherds visited them more than once and even told others in the region about Jesus.

gMatthew says Jesus' birth is filled with fear and secrecy, gLuke say openness and celebration.

The historical Jesus is diminshed again, almost every aspect of the Life of Jesus is questionable and without history.

mens_sana

Oh my! last time I looked, history — especially ancient history — was probability. After all it is not as if CNN was running around with cameras rolling, with all the data eventually ending up in Wikipedia.

Apologetic literature contains facts. Most of Josephus' Antiquities is apology, as is Against Apion. And all of them made stuff up. Around 400 BCE, Thucydides tells us that he has "put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments appropriate for the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general purport of what was actually said." (History, 1.20.1)

Now if that doesn't turn ancient history into "probability," my reading comprehension has surely gone south. And if I follow your historiography, I can no longer cite Josephus the Histor, uh Apologist.

mens_sana

I hope you realize that this has all been done before. I know I've read it over and over in forum after forum. This is stuff out of Kinsey, the kind of argument designed to slay the Fundie dragon and stump the KJVOnlyist. How about something on a level that recognizes the intelligence resident in this forum? :huh:

aa5874

If Jesus of Nazareth was a figure of history, produce the historical records, now, and stop wasting time.

There were no CNN cameras for Alexander the great, Julius Caesar, Herod the Great, Tiberius, the fall of the Temple , Nero, Augustus or Claudius, yet we have historical records for these figures and event.



Why do we need CNN cameras to provide a historical record for the so-called son of the God of Moses , The Messiah, King of the Jews, and Saviour Jesus?

You know that the historical record of Jesus are all considered forgeries, and it can be shown on CNN, now.

Toto

The colorful but off topic exchange between spin and SM has been split off here.