Mary's Ten Year Pregnancy

[Minimalist]

And "Matty" was written for a predominantly jewish audience whereas "Luke" was written for a Greco-Roman audience.  Neither author gave a second thought to the idea that they had to conform to each other.  These were separate communities which didn't give a flying fuck about other gospels.  It was centuries before they were codified into some silly "bible."

[T0 Th3 M4X]

And "Matty" was written for a predominantly jewish audience whereas "Luke" was written for a Greco-Roman audience.  Neither author gave a second thought to the idea that they had to conform to each other.  These were separate communities which didn't give a flying fuck about other gospels.  It was centuries before they were codified into some silly "bible."

Hey bud, can you tell me where I can find that in the "Atheist's Bible" and which one?  There is the Atheist Bible for $9.99 and a hardcover Atheist Bible with Illustrations for $12.04.

[Paleophyte]

The math doesn't work out because the tale about the census was a post hoc addition so that Jesus of Nazareth could be born in Bethlehem in order to fulfil certain prophecies. The Romans didn't conduct censuses by uprooting the population. That makes no sense whatsoever. The whole point of a census is to figure out how many people are living where, not wherever they were born.

Agreed but my point was the Gospels of Luke and Matthew are on two different timelines and can't be reconciled with each other.

Agreed, and they're on different timelines because different authors added different fictional elements in different places to make the story fit various agendas. It's the same reason that Jesus has two different genealogies. Really piss-poor editing if you ask me.

[DeistPaladin]

Agreed, and they're on different timelines because different authors added different fictional elements in different places to make the story fit various agendas. It's the same reason that Jesus has two different genealogies. Really piss-poor editing if you ask me.

Apparently, they never expected the Bible to be widely read by the general public.

[Minimalist]

And "Matty" was written for a predominantly jewish audience whereas "Luke" was written for a Greco-Roman audience.  Neither author gave a second thought to the idea that they had to conform to each other.  These were separate communities which didn't give a flying fuck about other gospels.  It was centuries before they were codified into some silly "bible."

Hey bud, can you tell me where I can find that in the "Atheist's Bible" and which one?  There is the Atheist Bible for $9.99 and a hardcover Atheist Bible with Illustrations for $12.04.

No.  You strike me as the type who has to learn everything the hard way.... or, more likely, not learn anything at all.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

Hey bud, can you tell me where I can find that in the "Atheist's Bible" and which one?  There is the Atheist Bible for $9.99 and a hardcover Atheist Bible with Illustrations for $12.04.

No.  You strike me as the type who has to learn everything the hard way.... or, more likely, not learn anything at all.

If I learn something the hard way, then it's good enough, because I learned.  Difficulty doesn't bother me.  Sometimes people climb a mountain because they have to, others climb it because they want to.  I'm good with either.

But hey, you are the "minimalist", so I'll try to get simple for you.  The one for $9.99 is A, and the one with pictures for $12.04 is B.

There you go.  You can "educate" me on which one to pick with a single letter.

[Minimalist]

And sometimes people climb a mountain because they are too stupid to use the tunnel.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

And sometimes people climb a mountain because they are too stupid to use the tunnel.

And sometimes people are too stupid to realize there are rats in the tunnel.  You take your chances with rabies and I'll risk it with the mountain goats.

[Huggy Bear]

As far as Richard Carrier goes, you'd be naive to believe that a guy who was basically begging for money on his blog, and asking for patreon donations would be completely objective when being funded by special interest groups, when you cannot find an example of that anywhere else, be it Politics or Religion.

You have the same problem Drich has in that you assume that having a motive to do something necessarily undermines a person's arguments and view of the facts and evidence.  It does not.  That's why appeal to motive is a fallacy.  If I paid someone to say that it is 8 o'clock repeatedly for 24 hours, at some point during that 24 hours, their statement would be correct.  It matters not that he was motivated to say it by my payment, nor that at any other time in that 24 hours he might be wrong.  Right is right, and your complaint about Carrier and my naivety means dick and simply shows that you don't logic so well.

Instead of pointing out how your analogy fails, I'll play along and maybe it will become apparent.

Carrier is taking the opposite position of everyone else, so in your analogy it would be more like paying someone to say 8 o'clock never existed repeatedly for 24 hours, which would not be hard to do, you would do it too Jor, given the right amount of money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carrier

Carrier was initially not interested in the question of the historicity of Jesus. Like many others his first thought was that it was a fringe conspiracy topic not worthy of academic inquiry; however a number of different people requested that he investigate the subject and raised money for him to do so. Since then he has become a leading expert on the Jesus ahistoricity theory.

So even Carrier himself at one point thought the topic of a nonexistent Jesus to be fringe conspiracy theory... I wonder what changed his mind?  

As to your other point, no, Min disagreeing with Ehrman on one thing doesn't forbid him agreeing with him on something else.  Ehrman may be expert on one but not the other.  Or Min might have independent reasons for disagreeing with Ehrman on the one, but accept his conclusions on the other.  This notion that because Min supports Ehrman's conclusions in one thing that he must support his conclusions in all things because Min is appealing to Ehrman as an authority doesn't hold because Ehrman isn't equally an authority on both things.  The subjects in question require different competencies, and even if they didn't, you would simply be assuming that Min's reasons for doubting Ehrman regarding the historicity of Jesus apply equally to Ehrman regarding the reliability of transmission and such, and they plainly don't.

I thought we already established that "Virtually all New Testament scholars and Near East historians"  "find that the historicity of Jesus is effectively certain"...

Are you going to apply your above argument to all fringe conspiracy theorists?

What about flat earthers or Holocaust deniers?

[Fake Messiah]

So even Carrier himself at one point thought the topic of a nonexistent Jesus to be fringe conspiracy theory... I wonder what changed his mind?

That there is no evidence that Jesus existed. The truth is, the arguments of the mythicist camp have never been rebutted – they’ve rarely even been debated.

Here is for instance what Even Philip R. Davies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield wrote few years ago:

I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist, or even possibly didn’t exist, but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability. In the first place, what does it mean to affirm that ‘Jesus existed’, anyway, when so many different Jesuses are displayed for us by the ancient sources and modern NT scholars? Logically, some of these Jesuses cannot have existed. So in asserting historicity, it is necessary to define which ones (rabbi, prophet, sage, shaman, revolutionary leader, etc.) are being affirmed—and thus which ones deemed unhistorical.

http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/dav368029.shtml

And don't forget one important thing: so far when it comes to Bible mythicists always turned to be right and I'm talking about Old Testament.