Toto

Please stop appealing to the authority of "scholars" until you name them, cite their books or articles, with page numbers, and describe their methodology for deciding that the gospels are a historical source.

If you had actually read these scholars, you would not be so confident in your claims.

outhouse

Are you appealing to ignorance again?

MrMacSon

Do you know what "Argumentum ad Ignorantiam" is??

See http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html

pls. answer the question. what means what is not evidence?

MrMacSon

The Historical Method -

As far as sources go, "primary sources" are key ie. sources produced (written or made) during the time under study)

Toto

The only ignorance I see is your ignorance as to the actual state of the scholarly consensus or lack thereof.

J-D

So if you agree with Busha and Harter that the first step is 'the recognition of a historical problem or the identification of a need for certain historical knowledge', how would you define the problem or need for the purposes of this discussion?

outhouse

The state of scholarly consensus states two facts about Jesus.

His crucifixion, and his baptism by John.


The movement started with belief of a martyred Galilean named Jesus who died for their sins. That's a fact based on the evidence we are left with.

Question their belief all you want, but the books are pretty clear on their stance.

Toto

You originally stated

How do you come up with 95% when you have no real knowledge of historical methods, and discount most all scholars who have 95% more education then you on this very topic?

But now you have just grabbed two factoids which constitute much less than 5% of the gospels. You have not given us any gstatements on the use of the gospels or their value as history. These two factoids could be derived without the use of the gospels by someone who rejected the gospels in their entirety as history, and relied only on Tacitus.

If you really knew much about the conclusions of scholars, you would know that even the most confirmed historicists discount most or all of the gospels as reliable.

You need to name the scholars, and their books, and explain their methodology before you mention consensus again.

outhouse

Sorry should it have been 100%?

Sheshbazzar

While it may be how the movement started, the existence of a belief is no evidence that the believed events or situations ever actually transpired.
The highly fictionalized and supernatural elements integral to, and requisite to the Gospel naratives discredit the veracity of the whole.
Whatever writers were responsible for the composition of the Gospel(s) were either highly imaginative story tellers ....or they were inveterate liars.
Either way, these highly fictionalized Gospels are not any valid or credible evidence for any literal existence of the NTs cult figure.
The fact is that we only have creative and highly fictional religious stories. NO evidence of the existence of any flesh and blood human at the base of these OT Scripture derived religious tales.