ApostateAbe

Quoted for truth.

show_no_mercy

If you're going to correct someone on the definition of "proof" in scientific discourse, then you should probably try to be accurate. As the saying goes, proof is only for mathematics and alcohol. Literature and pyramids are both considered evidence [for "something"].

Chaucer

Which means that stray references in Galatians and/or Josephus -- which are both literature -- are also evidence, even though you first said that Galatians isn't evidence -- OOPS. Shouldn't you be consistent? Or have you invented some new definition for "literature"? .............

Fact: Galatians isn't proof. Fact: Galatians is evidence.

Chaucer

aa5874

How in the world can you be certain about such a conclusion?

Now, you must prove what you say is true.

But, in any event, the abundance of information from antiquity can show that it is more probable that Jesus Christ of the NT was not a figure of history, that is, Jesus was considered a God, the Creator and was known or believed to be a God before he was born of the Holy Ghost of God and a Virgin.

All the fundamental information to consider Jesus as a mythological figure can be found in the NT, Church and Apocryphal writings.

1. Jesus was described as a God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

2. Jesus was described as equal to God.

3. Jesus believers did not worship men as Gods.

4. Jews did not worship men as Gods.

5. There is no credible historical accounts of a man called Jesus who was deified by Jews and his believers while vehemently opposing the deification of other men.

6. Virtually all the events surrounding Jesus are implausible, fictitious or questionable.

7. The so-called teachings of Jesus was lifted from Hebrew Scripture.

8. Jesus did not have to exist for people to have expected that there would be an apocalypse.

9. The Jesus story only make sense if Jesus was a God or believed to be a God.

10. The Gospel of salvation for mankind could have only been acheived if Jesus was Divine.

11. No supposed contemporary of Jesus wrote that they personally interacted with Jesus, but a Pauline writer interacted with Jesus after he was raised friom the dead.

12. There are at least three distinct Jesus characters in the NT:- The Synoptic Jesus, the Johanine Jesus and the Pauline Jesus, yet all of these Jesus characters should have been about the same Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost.


Now, Divine entities are considered mythological and Jesus was considered Divine.

It is therefore more probable that Jesus was not an historical entity but mythological, fabricated from the Septuagint or Isaiah 7.14 and many other mis-interpreted Hebrew Scriptures.

ApostateAbe

You are right about that. "Proof" is a word often used in lay discussions of science, but it is appropriate only for mathematical theorems. "Proof" is a word sometimes used in Biblical scholarship, in the context of "proof text," which means to provide evidence for a proposition using quotes from scripture, but I think that is more closely tied to apologetics than to critical scholarship.

aa5874

But, your statement is erroneous.

"Proof" is not only used in mathematical theorems at all.

Documents are used universally as "proof".

A simple marriage certificate can be used as "proof" of marriage.

A simple certificate from a college can be used as "proof" of certification.

Documents can certainly be used as proof.

Now the documents of antiquitythat have survived cannot prove or show that Jesus was just a man, they show the opposite, that Jesus was known or believed to be a God, equal to God, the Creator and born of the Holy Ghost of God and a Virgin who walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

And I have PROOF .

The Documents are readily available.

Please see the NT, the Church and Apocryphal writings for the "PROOF".

You can start with Matthew 1.18 as PROOF that Jesus was described as the offspring of the Holy Ghost and a Virgin.

Chaucer

There is a clear description of what history is all about from Bart Ehrman in an MP3 at

http://media.libsyn.com/media/infide...art_ehrman.mp3

Since this is a full hour, you'll want to slap this into a Winamp ap, or some other ap that can read out minutes and seconds of a 60-minute MP3.

The start to stop points for Ehrman's description of the nature of historical research are

46:00

to

49:15.

Check it out!

Chaucer

No Robots

I don’t understand why literary criticism is not considered a science here. Spinoza established the principle of scientific literary criticism with specific regard to the Bible:

Spinoza showed that the methods of the natural sciences could be fruitfully extended to the scientific study not only of the Bible, but of historical texts generally. Spinoza is the founder of scientific hermeneutics.--"Spinoza: scientist and theorist of scientific method" / David Savan. In Spinoza and the sciences / Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Debra Nails, p. 97.

No Robots

Here is how Spinoza summarizes the science of hermeneutics:

I may sum up the matter by saying that the method of interpreting Scripture does not widely differ from the method of interpreting nature - in fact, it is almost the same. For as the interpretation of nature consists in the examination of the history of nature, and therefrom deducing definitions of natural phenomena on certain fixed axioms, so Scriptural interpretation proceeds by the examination of Scripture, and inferring the intention of its authors as a legitimate conclusion from its fundamental principles. By working in this manner everyone will always advance without danger of error - that is, if they admit no principles for interpreting Scripture, and discussing its contents save such as they find in Scripture itself - and will be able with equal security to discuss what surpasses our understanding, and what is known by the natural light of reason.

Rick Sumner

Because more recent criticisms establish scientific literary criticism as a fantasy. Interpretation exists in the eye of the beholder.