The Three-Headed "Jesus" Problem

[Aractus]

You've just gone and proven yourself wrong on both counts there. No other posters have discredited the academic publication's I've brought forward (otherwise point me to them). And as for you assertion that the NT books were not written until "centuries later" I'd point you to the evidence I already provided - in fact the evidence is insurmountable.

[Aractus]

Right then. No citation. I'd get an equally intelligent discussion from people if I went over to a 911 truther's forum, or a holocaust revisionism forum. "You don't have any real evidence" they would say. I just hope you realise that's the company you're in.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

You've just gone and proven yourself wrong on both counts there. No other posters have discredited the academic publication's I've brought forward (otherwise point me to them). And as for you assertion that the NT books were not written until "centuries later" I'd point you to the evidence I already provided - in fact the evidence is insurmountable.

So you really think that scraps such as this is insurmountable.  

http://dbcfaa79b34c8f5dfffa-7d3a62c63519...agment.jpg

I hope you don't have a job that requires intellectual abilities.

[Randy Carson]

You've just gone and proven yourself wrong on both counts there. No other posters have discredited the academic publication's I've brought forward (otherwise point me to them). And as for you assertion that the NT books were not written until "centuries later" I'd point you to the evidence I already provided - in fact the evidence is insurmountable.

So you really think that scraps such as this is insurmountable.  

http://dbcfaa79b34c8f5dfffa-7d3a62c63519...agment.jpg

I hope you don't have a job that requires intellectual abilities.

Do you have a translation of that fragment?

[Brakeman]

You've thrown a lot of crap at the wall but do you have any hard evidence?  Please produce links to your 1st & 2nd Century sources so that we can evaluate them.

I already covered this in the last goddamned thread. Yes there is hard evidence . You already have a list of 1st and 2nd century works here.

Since you vest Sooo much value in the opinion of so called "scholars" that miraculously keep out their employer's bias from their studies, perhaps you can explain just what is soo complex and difficult about evaluating direct evidence for the truthfulness of the claim of jebus' existence so much so that you would be need "scholars" to digest it for you.

In physics, we would need "scholars" to predigest questions of, say, a quark's existence because the math and the relied upon concepts, constants, and nomenclature would be too daughnting for someone who had not completed the prerequisite coursework.

For the existence of jebus problem though, none of this is true. The language translations that presupposes a jesus are not being contested, so the skills of ancient hebrew reading is not needed. The dating of the scrolls is performed by radiometric dating and the bible scholars are easily as laymen on that skill as your everyday mailman.
Claims of dating texts by style and so on by "bible scholars" would not be accurate enough to withstand claims of serious statistical certainty. Certainty is completely out the window, only a balance of opinion exists.

Bart Ehrman has seriouly tarnished his reputation as an honest and competent scholar by his historic jesus writings because he couldn't stick to the facts.

Books and several blogs have torn his "scholarship" to shreds.

Here's a good blog to read that discuses his poor attempt to defend the historocity,

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026

Having completed and fully annotated Ehrman’s new book (Harper 2012), I can officially say it is filled with factual errors, logical fallacies, and badly worded arguments. Moreover, it completely fails at its one explicit task: to effectively critique the arguments for Jesus being a mythical person. Lousy with errors and failing even at the one useful thing it could have done, this is not a book I can recommend.

The Pliny Confusion: Ehrman almost made me fall out of my chair when he discusses the letters of Pliny the Younger. He made two astonishing errors here that are indicative of his incompetence with ancient source materials. First, he doesn’t correctly cite or describe his source (yet in this particular case that should have been impossible); and second, he fails to understand the difference between a fact and a hypothesis. Ehrman says that Pliny discusses Christians in his correspondence with emperor Trajan in “letter number 10,” and that “in his letter 10 to the emperor Pliny discusses” the problem of the imperial decree against firefighting societies in that province, “and in that context he mentions another group that was illegally gathering,” the Christians (pp. 51-52). This is all incorrect, and demonstrates that Ehrman never actually read Pliny’s letter, and doesn’t even know how to cite it correctly, and has no idea that the connection between Pliny’s prosecution of Christians and the decree against illegal assembly affecting the firefighters in Bithynia is a modern scholarly inference and not actually anything Pliny says in his letters.

In fact, Pliny never once discusses the decree against fire brigades in his letter about Christians, nor connects the two cases in any way. Moreover, neither subject is discussed in “letter number 10.” Ehrman evidently doesn’t know that all of Pliny’s correspondence to Trajan is collected in book 10 of Pliny’s letters. His letter on the fire brigades is, in that book, letter 33; and his letter on Christians is letter 96 (and therefore nowhere near each other in time or topic).

The “No Records” Debacle: Ehrman declares (again with that same suicidally hyperbolic certitude) that “we simply don’t have birth notices, trial records, death certificates—or other kinds of records that one has today” (p. 29). Although his conclusion is correct (we should not expect to have any such records for Jesus or early Christianity), his premise is false. In fact, I cannot believe he said this. How can he not know that we have thousands of these kinds of records? Yes, predominantly from the sands of Egypt, but even in some cases beyond. I have literally held some of these documents in my very hands. More importantly, we also have such documents quoted or cited in books whose texts have survived. For instance, Suetonius references birth records for Caligula, and in fact his discussion of the sources on this subject is an example I have used of precisely the kind of historical research that is conspicuously lacking in any Christian literature before the third century (see , pp. 182-87).
From Ehrman’s list, “birth notices” would mean census receipts declaring a newborn, tax receipts establishing birth year (as capitation taxes often began when a child reached a certain age), or records establishing citizenship, and we have many examples of all three; as for “trial records” we have all kinds (including rulings and witness affidavits); we have “death certificates,” too (we know there were even coroner’s reports from doctors in cases of suspicious death); and quite a lot else (such as tax receipts establishing family property, home town, and family connections; business accounts; personal letters; financial matters for charities and religious organizations). As one papyrologist put it, “a wealth of papyrus documents from the Graeco-Roman era have come to light on the daily lives of ancient people in Egypt, including their love letters and marriage contracts, tax and bank accounts, commodity lists, birth records, divorce cases, temple offerings, and most other conceivable types of memoranda, whether personal, financial, or religious” (see Greco-Roman Papyrus Documents from Egypt).
That Ehrman would not know this is shocking and suggests he has very little experience in ancient history as a field and virtually none in papyrology (beyond its application to biblical manuscripts). Worse, he didn’t even think to check whether we had any of these kinds of documents, before confidently declaring we didn’t. Instead, Ehrman only demonstrates how little we can trust his knowledge or research when he says such silly things like, “If Romans kept such records, where are they? We certainly don’t have any” (p. 44). He really seems to think, or is misleading any lay reader to think, that (a) we don’t have any such records (when in fact we have many) and that (b) our not having them means Romans never kept them (when if fact it only means those records have been lost, because no one troubled to preserve them; which leads us to ask why no one in Jesus’ family, or among his disciples or subsequent churches, ever troubled to preserve any of these records, or any records whatever, whether legal documents, receipts, contracts, or letters).

The Tacitus Question: Ehrman says “I don’t know of any trained classicists or scholars of ancient Rome who think” the passage about Christians in Tacitus is a forgery (p. 55). Now, I agree with Ehrman that it’s “highly unlikely” this passage wasn’t what Tacitus wrote [I have since changed my mind about that–ed.]; but the fact that he doesn’t know of the many classical scholars who have questioned it suggests he didn’t check. See Herbert W. Benario, “Recent Work on Tacitus (1964–68),” The Classical World 63.8 (April 1970), pp. 253-66 [and in 80.2 (Nov.–Dec. 1986)], who identifies no less than six classical scholars who have questioned its authenticity, three arguing it’s an outright interpolation and three arguing it has been altered or tampered with [correction: he names five scholars, one of them arguing in part for both–ed.]. This is important, because part of Ehrman’s argument is that mythicists are defying all established scholarship in suggesting this is an interpolation, so the fact that there is a lot of established scholarship supporting them undermines Ehrman’s argument and makes him look irresponsible.

Serious "Scholars" with a reputation to uphold don't write such piff unless they are doing it to satisfy one's employers..

[Randy Carson]

Since you vest Sooo much value in the opinion of so called "scholars" that miraculously keep out their employer's bias from their studies, perhaps you can explain just what is soo complex and difficult about evaluating direct evidence for the truthfulness of the claim of jebus' existence so much so that you would be need "scholars" to digest it for you.

What bias does the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have regarding the New Testament?

Speaking for myself, I have no need for scholars to digest it for me, but I benefit from the fact that professionals who are fluent in multiple languages and trained to evaluate the evidence carefully and objectively have spent the better part of their adult lives with their noses in dusty books and their eyes upon fragments of parchment that I could never hope to understand or access. And, of course, it is sooooo sweet that even scholars who share your non-beliefs about God can honestly admit that there is far more supporting the historical Jesus than you are willing to concede.

Bart Ehrman has seriouly tarnished his reputation as an honest and competent scholar by his historic jesus writings because he couldn't stick to the facts.

Books and several blogs have torn his "scholarship" to shreds.

Here's a good blog to read that discuses his poor attempt to defend the historocity,

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/1026

Have you bothered to read Ehrman's scathing response to Carrier?

http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/

Ehrman addressed the very passages you quoted at length, and you should have known that a response to Carrier would have been available. But no, you thought you had a winning lottery ticket and raced to the liquor store to cash in only to learn that you misread the number. Sorry. Better luck next time.

Seriously, why don't you read more before you post such tripe?

[Minimalist]

You are not entitled to your own facts. Josephus for one (he also mentions James and John) - and before you start spouting your BS: HISTORIANS AGREE THAT ANT., 20.9 AND ANT. 18.5 ARE GENUINE as I have explained to you countless times.

Listen you dumb fuck, Josephus XVIII is a major fraud and Josephus XX is a minor fraud.  I know that you can trot out all sorts of dumb shit xtians and their ass-kissers who have invented a "watered down" version of it but what you cannot produce is the watered down version itself in any text.  Neither can they.  It does not exist. 

The idea that a pharisee like Josephus would have anything good to say about fucking jesus is simply fit only for an asshole who is dead set on believing fairy tales.
That's you.  Dipshit.

Now, this is a scholarly work and as such contains lots of big words which will doubtless be hard for you.  Frankly, I don't give a fuck if you read it or not as you are plainly so far off the deep end that there is no hope for you.  But there are others here with intelligence.  For them, if not you,

https://www.academia.edu/10463098/Joseph...ry_In_Toto

In the end, it can be argued convincingly that the Testimonium Flavianum as a whole is a forgery and therefore does not provide evidence for a historical Jesus of Nazareth crucified during the reign of Pontius Pilate

Eat shit, Randy.

[Aractus]

So you really think that scraps such as this is insurmountable.  

http://dbcfaa79b34c8f5dfffa-7d3a62c63519...agment.jpg

I hope you don't have a job that requires intellectual abilities.

Where in my evidence list did I include anything written in Hebrew?

And where did I say that scraps of writing constituted "insurmountable" evidence in and of themselves?

Don't put words in my mouth and construct straw man arguments. Just answer the question put to you.

Since you vest Sooo much value in the opinion of so called "scholars" that miraculously keep out their employer's bias from their studies, perhaps you can explain just what is soo complex and difficult about evaluating direct evidence for the truthfulness of the claim of jebus' existence so much so that you would be need "scholars" to digest it for you.

Because they're qualified to assess the evidence and give a meaningful discussion on its reliance. They're also aware of all the evidence, they're aware of the predominant opinions in the field, they're aware of what is and isn't considered good enough to constitute evidence when it comes to ancient texts and artefacts, and they are the ones who work in the field and publish evidence.

You should listen to your argument, it's no different to a Holocaust denier saying "I can just interpret the evidence myself I don't need to listen to WWII historians".

In physics, we would need "scholars" to predigest questions of, say, a quark's existence because the math and the relied upon concepts, constants, and nomenclature would be too daughnting for someone who had not completed the prerequisite coursework.

Don't make straw man arguments, asshole. You're talking about a completely different field to ancient history.

For the existence of jebus problem though, none of this is true. The language translations that presupposes a jesus are not being contested, so the skills of ancient hebrew reading is not needed. The dating of the scrolls is performed by radiometric dating and the bible scholars are easily as laymen on that skill as your everyday mailman.
Claims of dating texts by style and so on by "bible scholars" would not be accurate enough to withstand claims of serious statistical certainty. Certainty is completely out the window, only a balance of opinion exists.

Once again you don't know what you're talking about, almost all Christian manuscripts are codices and not scrolls. I never said that NT scholars need to be able to read Hebrew - I said they need to be able to read Greek.

[Randy Carson]

You are not entitled to your own facts. Josephus for one (he also mentions James and John) - and before you start spouting your BS: HISTORIANS AGREE THAT ANT., 20.9 AND ANT. 18.5 ARE GENUINE as I have explained to you countless times.

Listen you dumb fuck, Josephus XVIII is a major fraud and Josephus XX is a minor fraud.  I know that you can trot out all sorts of dumb shit xtians and their ass-kissers who have invented a "watered down" version of it but what you cannot produce is the watered down version itself in any text.  Neither can they.  It does not exist. 

The idea that a pharisee like Josephus would have anything good to say about fucking jesus is simply fit only for an asshole who is dead set on believing fairy tales.
That's you.  Dipshit.

Now, this is a scholarly work and as such contains lots of big words which will doubtless be hard for you.  Frankly, I don't give a fuck if you read it or not as you are plainly so far off the deep end that there is no hope for you.  But there are others here with intelligence.  For them, if not you,

https://www.academia.edu/10463098/Joseph...ry_In_Toto

In the end, it can be argued convincingly that the Testimonium Flavianum as a whole is a forgery and therefore does not provide evidence for a historical Jesus of Nazareth crucified during the reign of Pontius Pilate

Eat shit, Randy.

Let me get this straight...do you seriously believe that the writings of Acharya S will persuade real NT scholars that Jesus was a myth and that the Testimonium Flavium is a forgery in toto? How many have bought into her theory so far? That would pretty much be none, wouldn't it?

Drink up, Min...someone is always willing to pour you another glass and sell you another book.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

So you really think that scraps such as this is insurmountable.  

http://dbcfaa79b34c8f5dfffa-7d3a62c63519...agment.jpg

I hope you don't have a job that requires intellectual abilities.

Do you have a translation of that fragment?

Yeah, some dumbass wrote the entire Bible off of it.