Doug Shaver

By whom?

Is that anything like a conspiracy?

Doug Shaver

What I think you should do, if you're really not sure how the pyramids got built, is find out what evidence the Egyptologists base their conclusions on and then find out what evidence the dissenters base their conclusions on.

I don't reject the alien connection just because the experts reject it. I reject it because I know exactly why the experts reject it.

I have also tried to find out why the experts reject Jesus' historicity. In that effort, I have failed, despite over a decade of searching through the experts' own writings. I must tentatively suppose that that is because they don't have a good reason.

Now, I don't claim to have read every last document that any scholar has written on the subject. Far from it. But what I have read has been sufficient to establish that if there actually existed a cogent argument for Jesus' historicity, it would have been at least cited, or mentioned, or somehow alluded to, or otherwise referred to in at least one of the documents that I have read. I have found no such reference. Therefore, a cogent argument almost certainly does not exist, at least not yet.

Juststeve

Isn't it possible sometimes to predict the future without supernatural powers? Were I to predict that Israel will conduct an air strike against Iran, and it came to pass, would that be evidence of supernatural powers? Could the same not be the case with regard to Jesus' prediction of the destruction of the Temple? Its only believers in the magic Jesus who would want to attribute special powers where none are needed.

Steve

show_no_mercy

It seems you don't understand the concept of "reductio ad absurdum".

You've said elsehwere that you don't think that Jesus rose from the dead. Yet, contrary to this you're appealing to the scholarly opinions of people who believe that Jesus rose from the dead. These people use their scholarly opinions to conclude that Jesus rose from the dead. Therefore, by the nature of your appeal to authority, you must also believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

Unless you concede that you're doing what everyone else here is doing (i.e. not basing conclusions on the findings of scholars in biblical studies) you're being inconsistent.

Maybe I should have written "religious consistency".

stephan huller

I am not suggesting a conspiracy. I am just saying that Mark may have been using Daniel to point to himself (through Jesus). The rabbinic tradition's interpretation of Daniel 9:24 - 27 bears a striking resemblance to the early Christian (and specifically Alexandrian) exegesis of the same material. It ends up identifying someone named Mark as the referenced messiah (9:26). My suspicion is that the parallels with the rabbinic tradition in Mark's gospel extend to Daniel's alleged identification of Mark as the messiah. Are we to identify this shared framing of the events of the Jewish war as the context of Daniel 9:24 - 27 as having occurred independently of one another. How would this be possible?

Not a conspiracy just an recognized literary context. There's a difference.

Perhaps the better way to frame the question is whether the rabbinic and early Christian parallels in interpreting Daniel 9:24 - 27 could be argued to have occurred independent of one another. I don't think it is possible. I would go so far as to say that this was the 'authoritative' explanation of Daniel's prophesy in the period (i.e. 70 - 135 CE). So the question becomes how far did the parallels go - i.e. did they extend to the point of identifying 'Mark' as the messiah. If so, then we have have the clearest proof that the context of Mark's use of Daniel is rooted in the first rather than the second centuries.

Juststeve

Mercy:

On this thread I have appealed to the scholarly consensus with respect to the dating of the Gospel of Mark, not whether Jesus rose from the dead. They are entirely separate issues so there is no inconsistency in my accepting one opinion and not the other. The dating is plausible, the resurrection is scientifically impossible.

As to the basis of you point, which of the scholars to whom I have referred believe that Jesus rose from the dead, or more importantly which thinks that the resurrection can be shown to be an historical event? The only scholar I mentioned in this thread is Crossan who has specifically rejected a physical resurrection, although he says that he accepts a spiritual resurrection as a matter of faith. I have read writing from some of his Jesus Seminar Colleges and none have undertaken to show that the resurrection was an historical event. Perhaps since you agree with them that the resurrection was not a historical event you agree with everything else they say as well. No, that would be a stupid analysis.

Steve

spamandham

If the prediction were simply "the temple will be destroyed", then sure, you might chalk that up to guessing right. It wasn't that uncommon for temples to be destroyed. But there are many more details, and they came to pass:

- "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."; this came to pass under Hadrian when the ruins of the temple were razed. The temple was not simply destroyed, but ended up completely razed...this is either an uncanny prediction, or it's recording an event from the past

- "Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many." ; are we really to believe these are the words of Jesus? No, the author is recording something that was going on in his time period. So who was running around claiming to be the return of Jesus in 60-70CE? No-one as far as we know. But someone was doing that in the mid 2nd century - Montanus

- "You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues." ; a truly remarkable bit of guesswork for 60-70 CE! Either that, or it was written sometime after 130 CE when this was actually happening

- "When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation'standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand" This one is the clencher really. How can the author expect the reader to understand that which has not yet happened!? Clearly, the abomination had already been placed where it does not belong or it would be impossible for the reader to understand. So what is this referring to in the 60-70CE timeframe? Consult your scholarly consensus and report back with the findings, since this was surely a historically identifiable marker that they used to arive at the 60-70 CE dating

show_no_mercy

So you only appeal to scholars when it is something plausible? It looks like you are already using your own judgement on an issue without consulting scholars, so why not continue to use your own judgement and find out why scholars have the conclusions that they have in the first place?

For this to even be remotely considered a snarky comment, I would have had to have appealed to popular biblical scholar's opinions somewhere. So I don't know why you even wrote it.

spin

All you need to do is show that your silly analogy is appropriate.

You should do law. You'd find that witnesses often contradict each other.

Suetonius gets classsified as Lord of the Rings by this. He's a great one for divine signs.

Scientologists paint L. Ron as a greater-than-human when the reality is different from the hype.

So when Tacitus writes speeches which had no chance of ever having been recorded we should dismiss his witness.

Many ancient texts do. So what?

Real world data can be hard to process. Get used to it.

Yeah, but don't simply rely on your own untinged opinions.

That would be good.

Yup, that's what agnosticism is about.

You are still wasting your own time misunderstanding what you are shooting at. You are going beyond available knowledge to make claims about people not existing, when in fact you seem to fundamentally agree with what you are arguing against. You said it yourself: "I am saying that one should not make assertions without evidence". The onus is always on the one who asserts, be it that Jesus existed or that Jesus did not exist. Instead of worrying about undemonstrable assertions such as that Jesus didn't exist, let the people with the burden that he did exist attempt to demonstrate it rather than simply assert it.


spin

gurugeorge

So you're just basing it on your opinion after all - of course you don't trust these "experts" if and when they talk about Jesus' resurrection, but you trust them when they talk about a date that seems plausible to you based on your prior assumption of historicism, which you hold to because it just seems plausible to you that the Christian religion must have been started by a guy called Jesus.

Which means, your position isn't based on "trust in the experts" at all, you're just rationalizing your own position and picking whatever rags and gewgaws you find lying around to dress it up in a specious respectability.