Raf

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).

10 minutes ago, GeorgeStGeorge said:

Don't be mean.

George

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.

10 hours ago, cman said:

 don't want it in this discussion, yet it is very relevant 

certainly it can't be 'proved' who wrote what, with limited resources 

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.

55 minutes ago, cman said:

“I don’t know any mainstream scholar who doubts the historicity of Jesus,” said Meyers.”The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he’s a historical figure.”

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.

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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.

4 minutes ago, chockfull said:

All would have some distinct bias on this topic that would need to be highlighted to make progress towards any resolution.

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.

8 minutes ago, chockfull said:

It is plausible that there is a scribe or forgery error in Josephus or Eusibius or that one or the other had an agenda.

This thread is turning out like one of those hour long “In Search Of” shows I’ve seen.  Sasquatch, the Bermuda Triangle, etc.  

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.

Quote

I guess the old VP rant on how where the Bible speaks on history it is accurate fundamentalism view isn’t exactly true or accurate?

 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.

Cman, I'm trying to be polite, but you're ... taking us off topic. If you have something to say about the topic, please continue. If you have something to say about me, you're off topic.

Ok, so you got nothing. Thanks for participating. Kindly refrain from psychoanalyzing me in future posts. You are very bad at it.

I appreciate your effort at being patronizing with a condescending tone, but I submit you are not very good at it. Why don't you ask the spirit why it can't actually show you evidence so instead has you making personal attacks? Perhaps it's because you never learned how to study an issue on your own? So all you can do is invoke an imaginary friend whose existence you can't demonstrate in order to try to make me look unbalanced?

How about you demonstrate your evidence instead of talking $#!t and trying to make it about me? Everyone else is managing it. Why do you lack the maturity to do what everyone else is doing even while disagreeing?

I suspected as much.

Not exactly what I meant there, Oldies.

Scripture absolutely exists. And it is the authority ON DOCTRINE. I cannot say the Bible teaches Jesus sinned, for example, because the Bible says he did not sin.

Once you eliminate the Bible AS AN AUTHORITY, you STILL have a Bible that says Jesus never sinned. But you also have every right to view that claim with the tiniest hint of "Yeah right." ESPECIALLY because the Bible's Jesus practically equates temptation with sin and goes on to say he was tempted in all points like as we are.

On topic, the Bible does indeed teach that Paul had that Damascus experience and that he really did receive his Revelation of the gospel from visions of the risen Jesus and not his followers. I'm just calling bs on the notion that Jesus' followers would ever have gone along with it... unless Jesus was never an earthly being in the first place and people like Peter, James and others Paul named had no more credibility than Paul as his followers.

We need the Bible, in other words, to know and understand the claims. But when evaluating the credibility of those claims, the Bible cannot serve as its own authority. That would be circular reasoning: it's true because the Bible says it's true and what the Bible says is true because the Bible says what the Bible says is true.

You would not accept the authority of any other holy book on that logic. All I ask in THIS subforum as that you treat the Bible with the same skepticism that you treat the Quran, the Book of Mormon and the autobiography of Elon Musk.