Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Aractus]

Aractus, you either did not see, or have chosen to ignore, this post of mine, so I'll emphasize it a little:

I'm sorry, your sources for those claims didn't post. Try again, this time linking data that I may review for myself.

To be clear, I want to see polling data demonstrating these claims. Otherwise, you're simply talking out your ass ... something that should only be done in a men's room, not the pages of the forum.

There is plenty of evidence from within academia (i.e. other scholars). Everyone else in this thread seems to be taking Min's lead and ignoring the academics. Bart Ehrman (an atheist NT scholar) says that there is hard evidence for the existence of Jesus and that no serious scholars doubt that, and Larry Hurtado (a highly respected scholar) says much the same. So we've established that there are almost no scholars within the discipline that think Jesus was a myth. Jon Burke (yet another NT scholar) has gone to the trouble of categorising all the Jesus-mythicists in a 2014 essay, noting that most do not have the academic credentials to be considered experts, with the sole exception of Carrier. I've explained the broad flaws in Carrier's arguments (that is that he's borrowing from other religions and cultures that have nothing to do with first century Judaism), and I've explained that his arguments have been refuted by his peers.

You can look at the same list I looked at and draw your own conclusion about how many NT scholars there are that doubt the existence of Jesus - but it's very low. In Scientology alone there are hundreds of historians with a Denialist point of view. Just like Mythicists they are generally not experts, but there's way more of them.


Now I want to point out that I have explained in the past what I mean by an academic expert, and others have other definitions. An expert in any field, whether history, medicine, or physics, is someone who is actively involved in research and who publishes evidence. Evidence is something academic - an edited book chapter, an academic book that can be used as a textbook, peer review, and even good quality grey literature counts as well (government publications, and academic publications by respected organisations such as World Health Organisation or Dietitians Association, etc). Michael Marmot, for example, is an expert. I don't agree with his views that we should do away with globalisation and capitalism in the pursuit of creating a more equitable society (which he vocally made on QandA a couple of weeks back), but I absolutely agree with the research and evidence that he and Wilkinson and others have published showing that equality equals better health for individuals in society. If I want to disagree with that I have to find evidence published by other experts that refutes his (and believe me there isn't any!)

Now I have quoted one distinguished expert in particular (Hurtado). Everything he has had published is academic, whereas Ehrman publishes non-academic books. This is not to say that Ehrman is a bad scholar, but his books such as Misquoting Jesus are not suitable to be used as evidence. He of course has peer review articles published too and that is evidence. But in addition to that he has a number of views that are not held in high esteem by his colleagues as well. That's why you can't use non-academic book published by someone who is otherwise an expert.

My point was never to say that Holocaust Denial is more sensible. Just that there are more people who claim to be historians who hold that view when compared with Mythicism. There are more Flat-Earther's than there are Mythicists. There are more Creationists than there are Mythicists. My point is that everyone in this thread needs to learn to stop quoting from fringe theories with very little, if any, true academic support and look to the body of evidence.