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

[Minimalist]

The other thing they contain besides errors and historical detail, is expansions of the stories. So what is recounted above is almost certainly an historical event, but the details have been expanded upon. This FYI is exactly what good scholars look at, to determine where history ends and mythology or expansion on history begins. Your argument that everything found within the gospels is wholly non-historical is so well outside of general scholarly thought, that it's barely even worth consideration. And the one scholar who puts forward a scholarly argument - Richard Carrier - you don't even agree with. Carrier still accepts that Paul is a historical person, his hypothesis relies on the historicity of Paul. As I already said, if you're going to defend Carrier's position at least put forward his position and not your own one that's not supported by a single scholar anywhere.

Again, I accuse you of cherry-picking.  Which is real and which is expansion and how can you tell the difference?  As above, yes, there was a battle of Alesia and archaeologists have excavated the remains of the Romans siege works.  Experimental archaeologists, using re-enactors, have even demonstrated that Caesar's force could indeed have built those fortifications in the time given.  But there is no fucking way that a force of a quarter of a million Gallic fighting men could have been raised and transported to Alesia in the time alloted.  Nor could such a force have been supplied.  They would have starved on the march.  This is Roman propaganda and it frightened the shit out of Pompey and the Senate.

So what's a true event in your mind?  That a dead jew came back to life because an old book of religious horseshit says so?  You'll need a a whole lot of evidence to sustain that one.  That some Galilean peasant brought a man back from the dead?  "(See prior note above.)  How about changing water into wine.  That's a fairly minor one.  Although Dionysus is credited with similar tricks by the Greeks but of course THOSE are bullshit right?

So tell me.  What's real and which is bullshit in your gospels.

More on this in the next section but Carrier in "On the Historicity of Jesus" does not get into the paul story.  It does not matter to him if it was one guy or 50 who put those letters together.  His mission is the letters themselves BUT he can only deal with the letters which we have now.  Even he can't guess what the originals said.

[Aractus]

No, not quite you don't.  What you refuse to realize is that we do not have anything resembling the original letters of anyone named "paul."  Proto-orthodox writers in the late 2d/early 3d century tell us that Marcion of Sinope issued a canon with 10 epistles of this paul-guy and the gospel of the lord...which turns out to be a good part of gLuke.  Marcion was denounced as a heretic, which must have been amusing since the Roman church in the mid 2d century was not a big deal compared to all the xtian sects in the East but whatever.  As previously noted, Justin writing c 160 AD never heard of "paul" so since Marcion dates to around 144 we can assume that it took over 40 years before the proto-orthodox completed the re-write of "paul" and tacked on the first two chapters of Luke to the gospel of the lord.  Obviously, Marcion's idea was too good to pass up but it sure as fuck was going to say what they wanted it to say.
However, the consensus you seek is illusory.

Right, so you're putting forward another fallacy. We don't know how many strands of Christianity there were by the second century, I postulate there were at least three: the Pauline Christians, the Jewish Christians, and the Gnostic Christians. There could have been more that were more closely associated with other Apostles. I actually thought I'd coined the term "Pauline Christianity" when I used it a few posts back, but it turns out your man-crush scholar Dick C Carrier has used that term himself. Anyway, Paul says that he was personally unknown to the Jerusalem church until the council in 50AD. If he was unknown to them, then others may have been unknown to them too, and we don't have an account of who they were or what their activities were either; so no it is not unexpected to have a second century "church father" that has a Christian lineage that is not pure Pauline to not know who Paul is.

Furthermore please note the Carrier quote I quoted to FF regarding Pauline mythicism.

BTW, Second Corinthians contains this little gem:

In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me.

2 Cor 11:32

Aretas III did capture Damascus, c 84 BC.  Aretas IV is last seen in history fleeing from the Roman army c 37 AD and he sure as shit did not capture Damascus.  Yet, 2 Cor is one of these alleged authentic letters.  Xtians, I have noted, run like scared rabbits from this one.

Right, again I'm not convinced by your argument. 2 Corinthians as you rightly point out is an amalgamation of Pauline epistles to the Corinthians. But even without it we know that he wrote to them because of 1 Corinthians. Given that Acts says Paul was a tentmaker and Corinth was a young town at the time, it makes perfect sense that Paul would have spent quite a bit of time in Corinth and therefore care about the town quite a bit and write several letters. Now with that said, I don't know the state of scholarly criticism on the letter - but I do know that at least one verse (or part thereof) is thought to be a later addition, and I presume that's what you're talking about. It doesn't alter the fact that the majority of the content is authentic Pauline, even if some of it is not.

[Minimalist]

And that brings me back to the start of this whole cycle. Carrier's argument is, well, ridiculous. Even other mythicists (such as yourself) cling to their own hypothesis rather than adopt his. The problem with his argument is not that it's impossible - anything is possible. For all we know, Adolf Hitler was a celestial being that came to Earth as a reptilian and tried to bring about an apocalypse so the lizzardpeople could take over the Earth. The problem is it's based on completely different mythologies to Judaism as a starting point.

And what argument do you think that is?  Carrier's argument is that "jesus" is a euhemerization of myths which someone - not "paul" decided had really lived.  At the end of the book he challenges scholars to come up with a better answer.  We're all still waiting.

What I get from Carrier is not what you want.  I have been demanding that jesus freaks produce the evidence for their fairy tales.  All I ever see if "the gospels this and the gospels that."
Carrier goes through every single bit of evidence from antiquity and at the end of the day comes up with nothing of value to support the absurd claims of xtians.  He demolishes epistles, gospels, Tacitus, Suetonius and Josephus quite effectively.  Maybe you should read the book instead of listening to what theologians have to say?

I do have a problem with Carrier's use of Bayes Theorem because the values ascribed are arbitrary and he always seems to be bending over backwards to give the jesus freaks the benefit of the doubt.  At the end of the book it doesn't matter.  No evidence = no evidence and no amount of mathematical gyrations can change that.

[Aractus]

Ok I'll keep this brief. Carrier's argument assumes that Paul is talking about a non-existent celestial being that he has visions of. It doesn't explain the creed found in 1 Cor 15, nor the fact that Paul knows about the 'Last Supper' meal. And I'd further point out that in his version of the Last Supper, Paul does make reference to Jesus being betrayed. OK he doesn't mention Judas, but he also does not introduce anything whatsoever that is inconsistent with the later gospel accounts.

Now that makes perfect sense with the gospel accounts from our atheist POV. That is, after Jesus died his followers went their separate ways, but continued his teachings in their beliefs that he was the messiah. Put yourself into the shoes of one of the disciples - if the others have gone their own way and you are still testifying about your fallen messiah you are hardly likely to talk about the other disciples. In fact, you'd probably never bother mentioning them at all.

[Firefighter01]

How can a divine spook be historical? I think that you misunderstand my take on Jesus.  I've got no problem believing that a wandering kook named Jesus existed at that time, there were probably a few of them.  I don't believe in the magical Jesus of the Bible.  If you take away all the stories of the miracles, there's fuck all left. Why would anyone follow around a Neville Nobody that didn't do anything special, let alone record what happened to him that wasn't miraculous?  If he didn't draw huge crowds and muttered to himself and a few followers, why would the Romans even bother stringing him up?

I have already specifically addressed this point. Most of the activities that Jesus engages in are in delivering teachings/sermons/parables, and giving faith-healings and exorcisms. He instigated the last supper as well - something Paul knows about and quotes in 1 Corinthians 11. He delivered the sermon on the mount, the parable of the good Samaritan, the parable of the prodigal son, he shows genuine compassion to those in need, he told people don't judge others lest you be judged and to love thy enemy as thyself. He argued with the Pharisees, the Scribes,  other Temple Authorities, and even wealthy Jews as well. He preached a message of repentance, of obedience to the law, and of the coming kingdom of God. There's nothing miraculous or supernatural about that, I've already pointed that out to you - so your premise is completely wrong. There is plenty left without any miracles.

Firefighter01
Faith healings and exorsisms would not not get him converts if they didn't work. If they did work, they would be called miracles. The last supper, the Lord's supper or sacred meal was well known and copied from Greek and Egyptian religions including Mithraism.  Paul, if he existed may have got the idea when he was in Tarsus. New Testament scholar Dr. Jonathan A. Draper wrote:

"The first mention we have of the Mithraic cult in the Roman Orient is in Tarsus (Cilicia), the home of a number of Stoic philosophers and of the worshiping of Herakles Sandan, the bull-killer, and also the place where Saul of Tarsus started his strange path. (Draper, Orality, Literacy and Colonialism in Antiquity, Brill, 2004, p. 104)"

The Sermon on The Mount was way too complex and lengthy to be recited to a crowd of multitudes, let alone recorded by anyone, was composed originally in Greek and speaks of the death of the temple cult.  So Jesus could not have given it and most NT scholars agree on this. To love thy enemy as thyself and to turn the other cheek is just stupid advice and wasn't shown to the Canaanites by God. 

As for his compassion to those in need; 

The Cost of Following Jesus
57As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
62Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

[Minimalist]

Danny, I don't know how I can get this through to you.  You are the one doing the assuming.  You assume that what we now have as so-called authentic pauline epistles are actually representative of the original writings.  Even xtians know this isn't true.

https://www.amazon.com/Interpolations-Pa...1841271985

Interpolations in the Pauline Letters (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement)

In this fundamental and at times provocative study, Walker demonstrates that Paul's letters contain later, non-Pauline additions or interpolations and that such interpolations can sometimes be identified with relative confidence

And before you start with your customary "he can't be a real scholar" line of shit I suggest you take a look here.

http://www.trinity.edu/wwalker/

WILLIAM O. WALKER, JR., PH.D.
JENNIE FARRIS RAILEY KING PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF RELIGION
TRINITY UNIVERSITY
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

I submit his credentials are superior to yours.


Now this xtian scholar admits that the pauline letters AS WE KNOW THEM contain interpolations intended to push church dogmas which did not exist in the first or second centuries.  But this completely ignores the question of what did the originals say?  The first time we hear of a body of pauline writings it is in the work of Marcion in the mid 2d century.

Robert M. Price, a New Testament scholar at Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, considers the Pauline canon problem:[26] how, when, and who collected Paul's epistles to the various churches as a single collection of epistles. The evidence that the early church fathers, such as Clement, knew of the Pauline epistles is unclear. Price investigates several historical scenarios and comes to the conclusion and identifies Marcion as the first person known in recorded history to collect Paul's writings to various churches together as a canon, the Pauline epistles. Robert Price summarizes,

"But the first collector of the Pauline Epistles had been Marcion. No one else we know of would be a good candidate, certainly not the essentially fictive Luke, Timothy, and Onesimus. And Marcion, as Burkitt and Bauer show, fills the bill perfectly.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism#cite_note-27][/url]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism...cholarship

For the umpteenth time, Marcion thought yhwh was a scumbag - an inferior god who had nothing to do with jesus.  There is no way in hell he would have had "paul" talking about OT bullshit in a positive manner.

If Price is right then you have no clue what the original pauline letters had to say.... and there is no evidence that Price is wrong.  Notice the insertion of the word "evidence" there. The pious bleating of jesus freaks does not consitute "evidence."

[Aractus]

Faith healings and exorsisms would not not get him converts if they didn't work.

How do you know? They only had to be perceived to work in the first place, and even then only some of them needed to be perceived to work.

The last supper, the Lord's supper or sacred meal was well known and copied from Greek and Egyptian religions including Mithraism.  Paul, if he existed may have got the idea when he was in Tarsus. New Testament scholar Dr. Jonathan A. Draper wrote:

"The first mention we have of the Mithraic cult in the Roman Orient is in Tarsus (Cilicia), the home of a number of Stoic philosophers and of the worshiping of Herakles Sandan, the bull-killer, and also the place where Saul of Tarsus started his strange path. (Draper, Orality, Literacy and Colonialism in Antiquity, Brill, 2004, p. 104)"

Right, again that's just a minority view. A very minority view. Why would Christians borrow from the Mithraic cult? How exactly did Paul borrow from beliefs of theirs that were not even in existence until after he died?

The Sermon on The Mount was way too complex and lengthy to be recited to a crowd of multitudes, let alone recorded by anyone, was composed originally in Greek and speaks of the death of the temple cult.  So Jesus could not have given it and most NT scholars agree on this.

No they don't. And as to whether it was spoken in Greek or Aramaic, Hebrew, or some other ancient Canaanite language no one knows the answer to that.

[Aractus]

Danny, I don't know how I can get this through to you.  You are the one doing the assuming.  You assume that what we now have as so-called authentic pauline epistles are actually representative of the original writings.  Even xtians know this isn't true.

Because there is a structure, style, vocabulary, and subject matter that are Pauline. There's some corruption in the epistles? Yes. But not so much that the original messages in his letters have been substantially compromised.

Again Min, this is you cherry-picking. Textual criticism is the discipline in scholarship which aims to reconstruct the authentic wording of the original autographs, identify the authors, identify the parts that have been altered, and decide upon what it originally said. You then incorrectly assert that because of this we can't know anything about the autographs because it could all be errors and interpolations and tampering done by asshole church fathers in the second century. Thomas Brodie declares all of the Pauline Epistles to be forgeries as well Min, without offering any real evidence to make his case (and yes I'm citing Carrier here).

[Firefighter01]

[quote pid='1406021' dateline='1475312860']
The Sermon on The Mount was way too complex and lengthy to be recited to a crowd of multitudes, let alone recorded by anyone, was composed originally in Greek and speaks of the death of the temple cult.  So Jesus could not have given it and most NT scholars agree on this.

No they don't. And as to whether it was spoken in Greek or Aramaic, Hebrew, or some other ancient Canaanite language no one knows the answer to that.
[/quote]

They agree because it had to be written in Greek.  That's because it was dependent on the Septuagint for its development of it’s arguments and vocabulary. It assumes that temple cult doesn't exist.  That was the whole reason for the deliverance of the sermon IMO. Jesus would be saying stuff like don’t go to the temple, the temple cult won’t save you, but he doesn’t. 

He doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the temple cult.  

The whole structure of the Sermon is in 3 levels,
1.      How to Obey the Torah
2.      How to Pay cult to God
3.      How to Deal With Society

Those were the 3 structures the rabbis developed after the destruction of the temple to help their religion survive.  Why would Jesus be giving instructions on how to pay cult to God after the destruction of the temple if the temple was still in existence?  Besides, the length and intricate structure indicates that it would have been put together in writing, probably by more than one person.  Who could have recorded something like that if it were delivered orally in front of multitudes. It reminds me of this;

"What did he say?
I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers? 
Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products. "

[Aractus]

They agree because it had to be written in Greek.  That's because it was dependent on the Septuagint for its development of it’s arguments and vocabulary.

You can't read anything into the vocabulary. Jesus spoke it in ~30AD, and it wasn't written down until 40-50 years later by the author of Matthew. The author of the gospel might have used a proto-lxx, but there's no indication at all that Jesus did - in fact quite the opposite. Jesus cites the scriptures as being made up of the Law, Psalms & the Prophets (Matt 5:17, 7:12, 22:40; Luke 16:16, 22:44; John 1:45), and also containing jots and tittles (Matt 5:18). That was a very quick search, but there are at least those seven direct references to the Hebrew version of the scriptures, and none whatsoever to the Greek (which is has the structure Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets).