Originally Posted by MCalavera

Um, no. That's not assumed. That's concluded. Big difference.

Originally Posted by dog-on

The obvious assumption required by HJ is that the texts are based on the life of an actual person. Once this assumption is made, then the texts are filtered of their obvious mythical content, to find "historical kernals" in order to support the initial assumption. Do you disagree.

Originally Posted by archibald

Of course I disagree. I am having a migraine thinking about how many times this obvious fact has been explained, and yet you STILL wibble on about it being an assumption.

It's not.

How hard is that to take on board?

Originally Posted by dog-on

Without assuming an historical individual at the core, I would like to see you build a case for an historical individual at the core.

Where and how would you begin?

Originally Posted by MCalavera

I began with the Nazareth bit (which I'm guessing you already read) and can go on with other tidbits of the Bible, but that would take a bloody number pages, and I'm not about to write a book on this. Wait for Bart Ehrman's book.

Originally Posted by dog-on

Filtering kernals, or as Spin says, picking fly specks off of your butter-bread.

Originally Posted by MCalavera

Good, now you agree we don't assume the historical Jesus.

Welcome to the world of studying and analyzing historical texts.

Originally Posted by dog-on

?

I fail to see how you got that from what I posted.

Originally Posted by archibald

This is such a giant, often repeated strawman.

Look, I don't know about mcalvera and won't speak for him, but historians are well used (I don't know how many times I have to post this blindingly obvious point) to sifting through religious texts for information which can be deemed likely (not assumed by any means at all) to be historical (or more often, in the case of religious documents, to have been believed to have been historical by the writers of the text). It doesn't mean that historians and their methodologies are correct, but they come to conclusions based on their methodologies, and their conclusions are of course only what they consider to be the better explanation. Even an ancient historian will not use the word 'proof' very often. And furthermore, a heck of a lot of writings from ancient history are heavily tainted by religious considerations, a heck of a lot of the texts are religious, and if ancient historians (or we) were to rule out using them we would have to eliminate a horde of other characters also. If anyone does that, then yes, that is being consistent, so the point becomes one of consistency, rather than conclusive evidence. How many characters from the NT would you like to consider eliminating?

Now, it is plain that most mythicist positions have to make more unevidenced assumptions, usually in order to chip away at the actual evidence rather than presenting much of their own, other than speculations and ambiguities. I do not see the value in trying to suggest otherwize, unless one is so taken by one side of the argument that one can't think objectively about it.

Originally Posted by MCalavera

Let those who have eyes see and those who have ears hear and those who have a tongue ...