Raf

Are you threatening to sue me? Wow. For the record, I insulted your pointless post, not you. But if you'd like to get lawyers involved, I'm listed.

Well, What you said did a very poor job of reflecting your overall intelligence.

Contradiction is not rebuttal. "But I believe it" is not a resoonse to valid points raised. Or invalid points for that matter. I understand that it pisses you off to hold a position that has no supporting evidence, but that's not my fault and it doesn't help your position to call out "yuh huh" when your bulls hit argument is successfully refuted.

To me the most amazing thing about Thomas is how crucial his witness is and, subsequently, how we never hear from him again, not even in Acts of Some of the Apostles, where his name shows up on a list and then he disappears from the narrative. Probably hiding out with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who likewise vanish from the story once they've outlived their usefulness. They probably all hid out in Arimathea, which has a crucial property in common with Narnia, Mordor and Hogwarts. Any wagers? I understand if you are a believer you will take the gospels as, well, gospel. But to a historian, the gospels cannot reasonably treated as evidence. They are the claims for which history seeks evidence. That the story of Thomas is left out of Matthew and Luke should arouse suspicion as to its authenticity. Neither writer had any good reason to leave it out. Same with the raising of Lazarus. Why would anyone recounting the ministry of Jesus leave out that story? And where TF did Lazarus go? Arimathea? The gospel of John is fiction. That the moral of the story is "blessed are those who do not see yet believe" should be a giant red flag. No one in the act of providing evidence, which the gospel of whoever the hell wrote John purports to be, would cap his story off with an admonition against seeking evidence. The ONLY people who speak out against the value of evidence are those who know they have none.

I mean the easiest way to refute this would be to request documentation. The James story is especially of interest because it is recorded in Acts 12, but zero mention is made of him converting a guard who agrees to be beheaded by his side. My guess is that the writer of Acts found that story less credible than a zombie taking flight and disappearing behind a cloud bank, so he left it out.

Looking at Chockfull's excellent post on a new thread, I think it becomes interesting to look at how various agruments are made and presented. We would all like to think our approach is logical, but i submit that no argument is purely ANYTHING. All combine logic, "authority" and emotion to some degree. Some, no doubt, rely more on one than others. I humbly submit (pathos) that the majority of arguments in favor of the historicity of Jesus rely more on the argument from authority (ethos) than on actual evidence (logos). I'll try to shut up and hear you guys out if you'd like to explore the topic without my interference. (Caveat: it's not about ME and I will jump in if the attempt is made [AGAIN] to make it about me).

Boy, why are you so hostile? :)

Angry Men?

Excellent addition to the discussion and the subforum.

Now that we're done derailing the thread... Why doesn't the writer of James call himself the brother of Jesus? And why does he speak of Jesus "coming" instead of "returning"? Why does the writer of Jude call himself the brother of James but not of Jesus? And why does he quote so heavily from a record, the Book of Enoch, which is well known to be bulls hit? Jude calling himself the brother of James is a lot like Janet, LaToya and Jermaine calling themselves the siblings of Tito. Especially if they were speaking at a tribute to the album Thriller.

Let's play "How long can cman stay on topic before making the thread about how much he can't stand being unable to control Raf so he has to resort to phony psychoanalysis and an appeal to divine intervention." Last time he went, what, a post and a half?

Yawn

I totally understood the point. The problem is that the person who wrote the epistle was in no position to make it.

Like I said, "first off." I never said I don't want it in this discussion. All I said was that it was not written by anyone relevant to it. Had the Apostle John left a written record testifying he hung out with Jesus before the crucifixion and after, THAT would be relevant. In fact, that's why you're citing this document. Except when you learn the Apostle John didn't write it, suddenly it's impossible to tell who did and what does it matter anyway? Isn't it funny how we know for a fact who wrote the books of the NT until there's a challenge, and then it's suddenly "well how could anyone really know..."? It matters because forgeries are designed to trick the gullible into thinking they are reading the words of someone they can trust. It's a perversion of "appeal to authority," which is itself an informal logical fallacy. We do know that whoever wrote I John desperately wanted people to know that Christ had come in the flesh, andcto reject those who taught otherwise, an admonition that would have been completely unnecessary UNLESS THERE WERE EARLY CHRISTIANS WHO TAUGHT OTHERWISE. More to come...

Well, first off, "John" didn't write that. At least not any John relevant to this discussion.

Not that I expect anyone to listen to four hours of debate, but I did want to demonstrate that the subject matter warrants more than a dismissive reference to Melville.

Not sure who wins this debate, if anyone. For entertainment purposes only.

Thanks for posting that. Couple of observations: funny how he pretty much summed up the info we've reviewed on this thread, which is not a scholarly site (just a bunch of people pontificating about our thoughts and biases). What does he give us that we didn't already cover? The scholarly consensus and three non-Christian references, one of which [TF] is at LEAST questionable (the only real question is HOW interpolated it is), one we haven't really explored (Josephus' reference to James the Brother of Jesus who was called Christ), and one I covered in a previous post (Tacitus, which is CLEARLY derivative of Christian doctrine and thus not independent of it). Interaction with genuine historical figures does not make a legendary person historical. Robin Hood married Richard the Lionheart's cousin! There was a time most historians agreed Robin Hood really existed. Today that thesis is near-comical, even though King Richard was certainly real. John the Baptist was real. Pontius Pilate was real. The fact that the stories of Jesus have him interacting with them does not make Jesus real. Fictional characters interact with real ones all the time in literature and popular culture. Abraham Lincoln never hunted vampires. So, did Tacitus review Roman execution records from first century Palestine when he wrote that Pilate had Jesus put to death? Maybe. But it's hard to imagine he went to such trouble for an aside about pinning blame for the great fire of Rome on a cult. But if he did, then Jesus clearly existed. I doubt highly that he did. But I'm not the expert. But I would think that if the evidence for a historical Jesus was SO overwhelming that it led to an unbiased and reliable scholarly consensus, they would have found more than we managed to unearth on a message board that doesn't even rise to the level of amateur.

"Doesn't lessen its value at all..." I cannot agree with "at all," but I like the presentation overall. Are you going to post the Jesus video on the other thread?

Can I have everyone's attention please! GSC has a new rule. You can ONLY post a topic and discuss it if you have NOT made up your mind. Since cman has made up his mind about this topic and never took it seriously and insists on making it about me instead, and since he has made upbhis mind about me and won't consider the possiblity he's wrong, cman by his own rule is barred from the rest of the conversation. Unless, of course, that's a stupid rule.

This statement is no longer true. That's kind of the point of this thread. Not long ago Moses would have been treated with the same deference. Today very few scholars believe he existed. In any event, scholarly consensus is a good thing to have, and if I had it, we might not be having this conversation [see my thread on the historicity of Moses. Let me know when you've found it. . . . Exactly.] However, the thing with the scholarly consensus on the historicity of Jesus is... that's it. That's the strongest evidence. Scholars agree he existed. Ask one for his evidence, and he'll cite the consensus. EVERY TIME. Compare that to, say, evolution or climate change. There's a scholarly consensus on both, but neither will usually cite the scholarly consensus as evidence for their position. In fact, your demand for evidence might very well end with you buried under a mountain of peer reviewed scientific studies all reaching the same conclusion, albeit independently. You don't get that with the historicity of Jesus. You get the scholarly consensus, which does not correct for the fact that the field is dominated by practicing Christians who would lose their faith and their livelihoods if they came to any other conclusion. Ask the rest for their evidence and they will invariably cite the same five pieces of evidence, some of which is of questionable value and all of which derives from the very stories whose historicity is being questioned in the first place.

I doubt a resolution is possible. Too many missing variables, documents that have long been destroyed that would settle the issue one way or the other. I do believe "most historians" agree Moses never existed, and there was a time such a position was academic suicide, so maybe someday the historic Jesus will be considered just as unlikely by historians. But that's speculation. Happy to back up the Moses claim if anyone cares. Otherwise, I would just say Google Did Moses Exist and have fun.

I am all but certain Eusebius altered texts for theological reasons. Recall he's the guy Wierwille accused of quoting Matthew 28:19 x number of times without the Trinitarian formula before Nicea and three times with the Trinitarian formula after. Man had a reputation. The title of this thread is taken from an "In Search Of" episode that played in theaters around the same time Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out. I know because I watched the Jesus movie while my brother watched Star Trek. When both movies were over, we found my brother in the front row, sound asleep. I would argue it is not. :)

The "historical record" actually contains surprisingly little, to the point that we're able to narrow it down to a few people who acknowledge decades after his alleged life that there was such a thing as Christianity and what its adherents believed, but close to nothing independent of the religion itself. It's almost like looking for Joseph Smith's gold plates. No independent evidence they exist, but lots of dependent evidence from Smith's followers.