Toto

You are misrepresenting my position, as usual. I think that you are misrepresenting the field of historical studies if you think that historians have the degree of certainty that you claim.

It is never possible to know what happened in the past with absolute certainty, but some things are relatively certain, some unknowable. We can be relatively certain about Alexander the Great, the son of Philip of Macedon, who has a city in Afghanistan named after him and whose troops left their genetic material in Central Asia. We can think that it is probable that John the Baptist existed, because he is described in Josephus in a section that does not appear to a forgery; similarly with James the Just. We can't be 100% sure, because Josephus was not a completely reliable or unbiased source, contradicts himself, and was not reliably transmitted.

(I am reserving judgment on the existence of Paul until I read more of the Dutch Radicals.)

With the existence of a historical Jesus who started Christianity, the probability drops to the point of uncertainty.

Your problem is that you are trying to base your religious beliefs on a claimed historical event 0f 2000 or so years ago, which is something like basing them on quicksand. You are unwilling to admit to the uncertainties of history, so you have to keep bringing up this alleged consensus of historians, which dissolves before your eyes if you look at it too closely.

And I don't think you have read Doherty's book, since you don't seem to understand his thesis. But maybe you can't afford to understand it.

Vinnie

Another methodology:

Fredriksen, like Sanders, appeals to "solid bedrock facts about Jesus" and goes from there.

The idea that Jesus was crucified by Rome and that his followers were not. Also that he was called Messiah early. The reconstruction in Jesus of Nazareth centers largely around these.

Vinnie

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Toto

Doherty's thesis, to be more precise, is that the available evidence is best explained by the thesis that there was no historical Jesus at the beginning of Christianity.

Vinnie

I can't speak for Layman but:

"Only if Christians and Christian communities illustrate lives transformed according to the pattern of faithful obedience and loving service found in Jesus does their claim to live by the spirit of Jesus have any validity. The claims of the gospel cannot be demonstrated logically. They cannot be proved historically. They can be validated only existentially by the witness of authentic Christian discipleship." L. T. Johnson, The Real Jesus

Vinnie

Toto

I would agree with Luke Timothy Johnson there. And when I look at the mess Christianity had made through history, I don't see any net advantage to authentic Christian discipleship.

Layman

So now you believe in historical methodlogy and its ability to ascertain -- with reasonable certainty -- events in the past.

Just say yes or no, please. It will save bandwidth.

And it sounds like you are claiming that there is more evidence for John the Baptist than there is for th existence of Jesus. Is that correct?

I have not read his book. I've read much of his website. He claims that Jesus did not exist. How is that inaccurate or a misunderstanding of his thesis? His argument rests -- basically -- on arguing that there is silence about the human Jesus in the earliest Christian literature and that therefore (or, perhaps, considered with) the earliest Christians were speaking of Jesus in Platonic terms which envision everything occurring in the "heavenly realm" rather than on the earth.

Layman

Well, then I guess we can be relatively certain that Abraham existed because he left behind an entire nation and plenty of his genetic material in the Middle-East.

Toto

Layman - we seem to have cross posted and I think my earlier post answers your questions, in particular that I think you can be reasonably certain (but not absolutely) about some things in history, that the evidence for John the Baptist is more reliable in Josephus than the evidence for Jesus. (I know you want to argue that both John and Jesus are mentioned in Josephus, but the passage describing Jesus has clearly been tampered with, and you cannot have any degree of confidence in any reconstruction of it, even if it is not a complete forgery. The other is a mere mention and could have been forged.)

There is, of course, a lot more, and more recent evidence for Alexander than for Abraham. The tomb of his father, Philip, has been excavated, and a model of Philip has been reconstructed based on the skeleton in it.

You're getting silly, and I'm out of time.

Layman

As usual. Bye Bye Toto.