Gamaliel Never Existed

[Nimzo]

You do need to read the whole section there, Nimz. That's the bit about a prophet getting no honor in his hometown. Besides, "Mark" let's him do a few healings anyway just to show he hasn't lost his touch.

I still think that the "Criterion of Embarrassment" would apply - remember that "Mark" is writing a fictional story to show that "Jesus" is a Jewish version of a dying and rising sun-god. Having him fail to do miracles would appear to be, prima facie, embarrassing material. But this just shows that the Criterion of Embarrassment is not a helpful historical tool. It is obvious that "Mark" is setting up "Jesus'" hometown as a foil for his "real home" in heaven. Hence, his hometown don't trust him (cf. Mark 10:20 where Jesus commends those who have "left home") - but in Jerusalem he gets a flippin' parade!

Besides, there are bigger problems with "Mark" than that....like there being no resurrection at the original ending!

Textually that seems unlikely - obviously Mark 16:9-20 is a later addition, but it seems pretty unlikely (grammatically) that "Mark's" original story would end at verse 8. Remember that "Mark" has "Jesus" prophecy his own resurrection, and the whole point of the gospel is that Jesus is a dying and rising figure. Think about it - if there's no resurrection story in "Mark", then "Mark" must be setting "Jesus" up as something else. But we know that "Mark's" "Jesus" is a sun-god - so the original must have had some kind of Resurrection story, fulfilling the "prophecies".

Then there is his new book....

From the reviews it sounds like Ehrman thinks "Paul" wrote Romans! I mean, how pathetic can you get!

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I refer to the apparent progression of Jewish theology.

Reffering to appearances is very slippery. Creationists appeal to the "appearance of design" all the time. The fact is that there is no such progression in the manuscripts we actually have - they are all 2nd century, and there is no evidence that they ever existed before that.

Using the principle of ECREE

This is another principle I find hard to understand - there is nothing remarkable about "Gamaliel" either, but he obviously didn't exist. ECREE assumes that unremarkable characters would not be created by Christian forgers - an assumption which is plainly false.

What rewrite was even needed? Other than to gloss over the variance of Christianities (dismissing them as schismatics and heretics) and insist that mythology is a historical account of a real person, what else needed to be rewritten?

There are no contemporaneous accounts that "Josephus" actually existed. All we know about "Josephus" comes from writings said to be written by him! We already know that Christian forgers were extremely skilled, able to create characters out of whole cloth and impose them on the naive. Do you think it is a coincidence that we find John the Baptist and Ananias and Caiaphas in his writings? And what about Pontius Pilate, another figure who only appears in sources known to be tampered with by Christians? The whole thing smells of rotten fish.

Sometimes people can have strange beliefs in one field but have a lot to offer in another. Sir Issac Newton had truly wacky beliefs about alchemy, numerology and his own brand of Christianity. None of that takes away from his authority in physics. Be careful about "poisoning the well".

The obvious difference is the Ehrman is a scholar and writer about the "Historical Jesus" - he has a whole book on the thing! It's not like he spends most of his time studying cosmology, and only does Christian Origins study in his spare time! You'd think that a scholar of any worth whose job was to study the existence of "Jesus" would realise that "Jesus" never existed at all! What a waste of space.