Vorkosigan

Do the JMers here also deny the historicity of the Teacher of Righteousness? Why or why not? Can a clearly articulated scholarly methodology be applied to both the ToR and Jesus?

Apikorus: what do you mean by historicity? Do you mean that someone inspired the story? That the main lines are true? That each and every event is true? That there is a true kernel down there? That it is a composite of several historical figures? You'll have to be a little clearer....

Vorkosigan

Apikorus

Vorkosigan, I think it would be interesting to contrast historical method as applied to the ToR and to Jesus. Does application of a uniform methodology lead one to conclude that e.g. the ToR was "more historical" than Jesus? "More historical" is admittedly vague, but for starters we could compare an itemized list of details from the original sources which our methodology leads us to conclude are historical. E.g. "Jesus preached about the kingdom of heaven," or "the ToR led his community into the wilderness". Which figure has the longer list?

The answer to this question may well be methodology-dependent. But it might also be that historicity may be robust with respect to moderate variations in methodology.

Vinnie

:boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo:



Vinnie

Metacrock

Meta => Most scholars keep in their core the ideas that Jesus claimed to be Messiah and was cruficied by the Romans. Since we can extend the Pn back to AD50 that's quite likely. There is also the other Joe passage that no one thinks is tampared with

The last bit about its all been tampared with so its no more credible than the Greek and Roman Gods, so why defend it?


That's one of the silliest thins I've heard you guys say yet. First, becasue I haven't begun defending christiainity. Secondly, becasue shows the depth of ignorance about either religious belief or christian belief.


Yes, Damn it, the Bible is the Word of God!

Metacrock

Meta => O yea, it's open and shut! The vast majority of shcolars int he field agree that Joe really does attemst to Jesus, and that Jesus was an historical figure. your view is 19th century, it's washed up, and you have no credentails which makes your arrogance even more amusing, becasue ignroance is never a good basis for arrogance!

yea its shut!



And he claims he is an unbiased historian?


Meta => NO historian in this day and age pretends to be unbaised. Now we understand that that was nothing more than a modernist pretense. In academic circles its considered far more important to up front about one's biases than to pretend to be above humanity and not have them. But I am up front about mine, I'm a christian. You on the other hand, are not upfront. It's so important to you that Jesus didn't exist, why? because then you don't have to take all spiritual conviction seriously?

Like you aren't baised???? Pull the otherone


Meta => Not according to the consensus among scholars in the field! They accept both as basically historical!


Meta => You can't find a major scholar who things that passage has problems. And guess what?

YOu are not that scholar, and you are not any kidn of scholar! .


Metacrock asked:

1st century circa 50. Any skeptics - if any.

Kirby had stated earlier:


PS : Meta, you really ought to work on the UBB code/VB code and I find the blue rather distracting - but thats just me. [/B][/QUOTE]


Meta => Me too, why I'm toning it down.


Is the Bible the Word of God?

Metacrock

Meta, can you give us this list of basic assumptions mythers ignore? And the ones they have invented as well?

Vorkosigan [/B][/QUOTE]


Meta => I did give you a list. I don't see what's wrong with it. Let's just isolate a couple:

1) I don't believe Myther's are hip to the probabalistic nature of history..


one guy on the other thread seemed to say that if my argument for Jesus wasn't absolute than it's just no good. They don't understand that nothing in history is empirical and no historian expects it to be.


2) The bais against polemics and religious documents.

Myther's seem to base a great deal of their case on that assumption; that anything polemical and religious is automatically void of any historical content. Historians are wearly of polemics and of religious propaganda, and propaganda of all kinds, of course. But they do not assume that such ducuments must be totally void of any historicity.

3) Anachronistic expectations.


The guy in this thread who said Joe was not a journalist. Expecting historians of the ancient world to be modern day historians, and when they are not, they rule them out as having anything valid to say.

4) Don't know the value of multiple astestations.

They are so busy ruling out sources for the above reasons (which are all fallacious) they just don't even bother to realize how many sources do attest to historical Jesus! They just nix them their minds so they have no cumulative effect.


5) They are not hip to the concept of diffusion..



They also don't think about the wide spread nature of such sources, so it doesn't dawn on them that the Jesus story spread all over the known world in a very short period of time and never proliforated the way calssical mythology did do, so that indicates that the 'facts' were known to the public from a very early period and the news about those facts spread all over the world and were know to be facts.





Bible = Word of God

Metacrock

Meta => NO I didn't say it was! You are the one (or Iron Monkey who is on your side) the one who said that it's open and shut. But, you seem to have no realization of the fact that; your position flys in the face of most of the scholars in the field


I may have over stated my case in response to your vabratto. But you still have to come to terms with the fact that, given two passages, no one really questions the Jame's passage, and the consensus in the field, and lack of mulitple versions, the early stable diffusion, there is no real reason to assume that it's total, much less to state it as though it's just obvoius.


Meta => The presence of Christian parlance and phraseology more than anything. Some would add the positive seeming nature of the passage. But then that's a matter of interpretation. F.F. Bruse thought that statmetns like "if it be lawful to call him a man" were tounge in cheek.


another principle used is consistancy with Joe's known style. But Joe could be farily tounge in cheek at times.

Goliath

Vinnie,

You are again incorrect. Jesus' existence is not evident to me. It is therefore not self-evident, whence you are demonstrably wrong.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Peter Kirby

Goliath is correct. A statement is "self-evident" if and only if its truth is realized as soon as one understands the statement. Perhaps Vinnie means "obvious" or something else.

best,
Peter Kirby

Goliath

Peter Kirby,

In that case, he would still be incorrect, since the existence of Jesus is far from obvious.

Sincerely,

Goliath