Josephus and other contemporaries on Jesus

[I_am_not_mafia]

And here is my detailed reply to that weak hit job by Carrier:

"Richard Carrier is Displeased"

I don't know shit about the historicity of Jesus but one thing is for sure, you seem like an unpleasant person and you don't seem to have experience of academia.

It seems I’ve done something to upset Richard Carrier. Or rather, I’ve done something to get him to turn his nasal snark on me on behalf of his latest fawning minion.  For those who aren’t aware of him, Richard Carrier is a New Atheist blogger who has a post-graduate degree in history from Columbia and who, once upon a time, had a decent chance at an academic career.  Unfortunately he blew it by wasting his time being a dilettante who self-published New Atheist anti-Christian polemic and dabbled in fields well outside his own; which meant he never built up the kind of publishing record essential for securing a recent doctorate graduate a university job.  Now that even he recognises that his academic career crashed and burned before it got off the ground, he styles himself as an “independent scholar”, probably because that sounds a lot better than “perpetually unemployed blogger”.

You do realise that there are far more PhD students than there are post-doctoral positions don't you? This means that most people training to be academics don't actually get a career in academia that they wish for (only about 10% actually make it). There are certainly far fewer positions with tenure. A successful career in academia actually requires a lot of luck as well as the willingness to move around the world for a series of short term poorly paid post-doctoral positions. This means putting your life on hold. Not easy if you already have family or a husband or wife who wants a career themselves. And of course moving every year is very expensive. In my first post-doc I earned the same wage as a bus driver, but bus drivers don't have to move every year so I was much poorer. I remember back in 2007 sometimes having to call in sick because I couldn't afford to drive into work. It was either that or not eat. But that's not what killed my academic career. There just weren't enough opportunities available at the time.

And I'm a computer scientist not a historian. It is far harder to make an economic case for funding research into history compared to research into advanced technologies that can lead to the development of new companies.

I myself am an independent researcher. I continue to do my research in my spare time and I get my research peer reviewed and published. This actually takes a lot of time, effort and dedication without the resources available to my employed peers so it pisses me off when I see people slag off others for doing the same thing.

So basically fuck you cunt.

[Jehanne]

Read the article; it is very balanced, which is why I chose it.  In particular,



That is the scholarly consensus, among believers as well as non-believers, namely:


As you can see, the author himself is a believer, but even as such, he still rejects the fundamentalist, literalist mentality that you have.

I still don’t understand what methodolgies or principles that you are saying I’m being inconsistent on?  Are you making assumptions, or is this on something or her than the context of the discussion?

You seemed to imply that the Gospel of Matthew had a pre-70 date based upon (your words, emphasis mine):

I don’t think that there is any reason to doubt the attributes Gospel authors, other than a late dating. And it seems the best reason for late dating is the prediction of the Temple. However, I find the reasons for early dating to be more robust, and to point to the time and evidence, rather than an a priori bias. If you have a reason to believe this though that you feel is good, then feel free to share.

Very few (and, indeed, no mainstream) scholars hold to a pre-70 date for the composition of Matthew.

[brewer]

Help me out here guys. If jesus was not a god (son of god) then why does it really matter if there was a poser(s) or not?

This feels like a bunch of mental masturbation.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Help me out here guys. If jesus was not a god (son of god) then why does it really matter if there was a poser(s) or not?

This feels like a bunch of mental masturbation.

I'm inclined to agree. I actually want to buy Richard Carrier's book for the next time I debate my brother. But I can't justify it because if Jesus did exist he certainly didn't have any divine power because there are no gods and no supernatural. I do find it interesting though if he didn't exist, because then how did the myth actually start? But I'm not that interested. When I read about history I want to know about repeating patterns that can inform me about today and where we are going. I want to know about how the world works, not about one off events that happened in the past.

Saying that, I do appreciate that other people are doing the research instead.

[Jehanne]

Help me out here guys. If jesus was not a god (son of god) then why does it really matter if there was a poser(s) or not?

This feels like a bunch of mental masturbation.

I'm inclined to agree. I actually want to buy Richard Carrier's book for the next time I debate my brother. But I can't justify it because if Jesus did exist he certainly didn't have any divine power because there are no gods and no supernatural. I do find it interesting though if he didn't exist, because then how did the myth actually start? But I'm not that interested. When I read about history I want to know about repeating patterns that can inform me about today and where we are going. I want to know about how the world works, not about one off events that happened in the past.

Saying that, I do appreciate that other people are doing the research instead.

There were a lot of "Jesuses" on the scene in 1st century Palestine, hundreds in fact.

[Angrboda]

Gosh. So, despite being an atheist, I'm a "Jesus freak shithead"? How exactly does that work?

Interesting. I thought it was only the religionists who used the term "New atheist" so they can implicitly suggest that it's a religious movement.

Maybe you can explain to me what the term actually means because I have no idea how atheism can be considered new.

There was something of a wave of renewal in atheism in the past century, led by critical works published by figures such as Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris (aka "The Four Horsemen" of the New Atheism). Those authors, their works, and that movement are generally described as the New Atheists. Wikipedia suggests that, "This modern-day atheism is advanced by a group of thinkers and writers who advocate the view that superstition, religion and irrationalism should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever their influence arises in government, education, and politics." I don't know how much that is true, but in general, New Atheism is epitomized by the thinking of that wave of new, critical atheist authors, and those who follow them.

[Anomalocaris]

Help me out here guys. If jesus was not a god (son of god) then why does it really matter if there was a poser(s) or not?

This feels like a bunch of mental masturbation.

Because there is a school of thought that implies he existed and was such a singular exceptional dude compared to the rest of humanity that the human society is better off worshipping him as a god.

[RoadRunner79]

I still don’t understand what methodolgies or principles that you are saying I’m being inconsistent on?  Are you making assumptions, or is this on something or her than the context of the discussion?

You seemed to imply that the Gospel of Matthew had a pre-70 date based upon (your words, emphasis mine):

I don’t think that there is any reason to doubt the attributes Gospel authors, other than a late dating. And it seems the best reason for late dating is the prediction of the Temple. However, I find the reasons for early dating to be more robust, and to point to the time and evidence, rather than an a priori bias. If you have a reason to believe this though that you feel is good, then feel free to share.

Very few (and, indeed, no mainstream) scholars hold to a pre-70 date for the composition of Matthew.

Oh that again... I thought you where referring to something in the conversation now. I think that you should looked up what scholars say about the argument from popularity and the argument from authority. This isn’t an inconsistency in my method or principles. I think that it is reasonable to ask even the scholars why?

[Minimalist]

Help me out here guys. If jesus was not a god (son of god) then why does it really matter if there was a poser(s) or not?

This feels like a bunch of mental masturbation.

Actually, it doesn't.  It is merely an academic argument where on the one hand you have people pointing out that there is no direct contemporary evidence for the allegedly wondrous things the poser did and others who swear their bullshit is true.

Most of those scholars they are so quick to embrace utterly reject the miracle nonsense which brings us to what H. L. Mencken noted.

Either Jesus arose from the dead or He didn't. If he did, then Christianity becomes plausible; if He did not, then it is sheer nonsense.

Mark me down as a vote for "sheer nonsense."

[The Grand Nudger]

Ultimately, anyone who isn;t a literal biblical inerrantist accepts some or most of the mythicist position.  The last refuge of defense against the mythicist position usually revolves around the notion that there was "some guy" or "some guys" that these stories were based on.  This fails as a defense because the mythicist position doesn;t assert otherwise.  It may be true, but it;s irrelevantly true if so to say that the jesus myth (and it is a myth, period) is based on some guy or guys.  

It;s equally true to say that paul bunyan is based on some french logger(s).  

In all likelihood, equally true to say that the people who came up with stories about hercules had Some Guy™ in mind.  I think Kevin Sorbo, personally.

People commonly base characters in stories on people they know or have heard of..or, even more frequently, composite characters. That doesn;t make the narrative any less mythical. The jesus that mythicists are referring to is the jesus of scripture. There was never any such person. There may have been people that the authors took as inspriation, but there needn;t be any...and whomever the authors may have taken as inspiration has as much relation to the jesus of scripture as a french logger has to paul bunyan, or kevin sorbo to hercules.