GakuseiDon

Chaucer, I don't think it flies either. We also have the Ebionites of whom some didn't appear to believe in Christ as God; if the Tacitus quote is a forgery, the forger felt it okay to have Tacitus' crucified Christ as a man. I'm happy to get the mythicist cumulative case down so it can be examined side-by-side the historicist one. To his credit, Kapyong at least isn't afraid to present a positive case for mythicism, rather than the usual sniping against the historicist case that goes on here.

spin

Which extra-biblical sources? Suetonius is irrelevant as is Pliny Y. Josephus's TF is terminally compromised and the James reference, if it were veracious, has insufficient data to be helpful. This leaves just one, the Tacitus Annals reference, which, if it were not a forgery, would still be hearsay, no matter how you struggle against the obvious. We get the apparently spurious claim that the populace at the time of Nero referred to believers of christ as christians which is contrary to the early evidence we have that they were called Nazoreans and is incredible because it asks the populace at the time to know what christians were in distinction from Jews.

So, exactly which extra-biblical sources are you claiming to refer to?

And what exactly do you mean by "god-man", the christian notion of Jesus being both human and god? some divinity in the form of a man?

aa5874

You have already put "FOOT in MOUTH" when you ASSERTED that "all we have left is the Myth".

But, in any event, Justin Martyr has DESTROYED your absurdity. Belief has NO value as evidence. Belief does NOT have any ACCUMULATIVE effect on actual events or figures of history.

Justin Martyr wrote that PEOPLE of Antiquity BELIEVED MARCION'S PHANTOM
existed though they had NO PROOF.

"First Apology" It is CLEAR that in Antiquity that people BELIEVED MARCION'S PHANTOM did exist. The HJ argument is so horrible. It is just filled with AD-HOC-ON THE-FLY absurdities.

Chaucer

Says you. And however much one may wish to lodge a cogent argument against the integrity of one source or even two, it just gets silly to contort oneself into knots lodging separate arguments against source Three and Four and Five and...........

Where's the single parsimonious argument against these extrabiblical sources, as a group, that does not stub a hopelessly coincidental and multiply hypothetical toe against the principle of Occam's Razor?

Insufficient data?! That's a relative measurement if ever there was one. Ancient figures of all stripes have just as much "insufficient data" behind them. What meaningless jargon! Let's throw out 80% of the rest of ancient history while we're about it. At least, that would be more logical.

This is arguing in a circle. You argue on the basis of early evidence, and yet you throw more than half of it out!!

And BTW, you left out the Mishnah.

You'll have to ask Kapyong about that. It was his term:Cheeky:

Chaucer

Toto

What are you accumulating? You still haven't made any connection between people believing that someone is historical and whether that person is in fact historical.

You can string together points that don't have any value and it won't get you anywhere, even if you call it a cumulative case. (Perhaps that is how a lot of Christian apologetics is done. I think that is how the criterion of embarrassment works, embarrassingly.)

Here's an analogy for you: if you buy a California lottery ticket, and then buy another one, you might think that you have doubled your chances of winning. In fact, you haven't in any meaningful sense, because your chances of winning remain statistically indistinguishable from 0.

You can buy 10 lottery tickets or 100, and you still don't have a cumulative case for winning the lottery.

Some silly people have actually made this mistake - they have taken $10,000 and invested it in thousands of lottery tickets. They have lost, as predicted.

I see your cumulative case as no better than 5 lottery tickets.

Kapyong

Gday Don,

We agree on that. It's cumulative.
But my comments above were rather too absolutist :-)

As to "God-man" - I meant that in the sense of someone who is believed or claimed to be part "divine". A fairly broad term admittedly.


Kapyong

Kapyong

Gday,

Because history is always exactly one or the other, right?
Black and white; either / or; never the twain shall meet, right?

In fact it's not that simple at all.

Of course they were not gullible enough to believe this preacher really WAS the son-of-god, but that wouldn't stop them accepting him as a preacher.

When a writer heard about this religious leader who was claimed to be divine, they would easily accept him as a religous preacher, but reject the claim he was divine.

Because religious leaders who had CLAIMS made about them by fervent followers are a dime a dozen - even though the claims of divinity or special powers are not so real.

Simple.


Kapyong

Kapyong

Gday,

The explanation is simple - they are all irrelevent, or late hearsay, or interpolations.

Occam's Razor says the historical Jesus is an un-necessary entity. Occam's razor supports the MJ.


Kapyong

spin

I guess you'll just have to make your case that Jesus was presented in the way you have in mind. I don't think you can get much out of those, but do go ahead and make a coherent case rather than making assertions.

I think you have to face the fact that they were preserved by tendentious people for very many centuries, people with a track record of changing texts, both consciously and unconsciously. Josephus has been bowdlerized as have the works of Julian. Gospels and religious letters have been augmented. Ehrman wrote a book about Orthodox corruption of scripture. Then we need to consider the simple forgeries, extra letters of Paul, the letters of Paul and Seneca, the letters between Abgar and jesus. False gospels. Infancy gospels. Along with the vast amount of "extra" christian literature and corruptions we have a few testimonies in classical literature preserved by the same people. (Only one to my knowledge shows no sign in itself of having been the work of a christian.) Occam's razor is well on the side of the corruption.

You say nothing meaningful here other than that you didn't like my expression. If you want to use the bogus James passage to say something substantive about Jesus, then make a case.

Rubbish. I gave an indication of some of problems with the passage. I have given many others elsewhere that you are well aware of. Our interest here in this particular discussion is what we can get out of the texts. And you've made no effort to indicate anything: you've just made assertions.

Perhaps you have something specific in mind. But then having had a good look recently, I know you haven't.

I've already poured shit on your presumptive usage of these materials. I'll wait for you to get off your rump and make some more text based analyses so that you commit yourself to some substance. As is you are just making unsubstantiated claims of no worth.

mountainman

GDon,

The Gospel of "John" refutes this claim. "John" clearly states that there were people around, in his day even, who refused to confess that Jesus had "appeared in the flesh" - in any other words that Jesus had appeared in history. John calls these people "deceivers". It really does not matter what name or description he gives to these people since the fact remains that these people refused to confess that Jesus had appeared in the flesh and therefore it follows that not everyone treated the Gospels as being about a historical person.


Best wishes,


Pete