(September 10, 2016 at 12:30 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: As for your question, did I mention anyone aside from you? No. I mentioned you and only you, and not to discredit your argument, but to return your insulting demeanor.
Perhaps if you read what was written for content rather than for argument's sake, your discussions would avoid the vitriol they seem to end up in most of the time.
I'm done with this discussion. You can have the last word; make it a good one.
I am mentioning my argument with Min because he has made the same argument as you, however he is also much more informed about ancient history than you appear to be. I've been making exactly the same argument on the historicity of Jesus for two years, and that is that the expert historians in the relevant fields have a consensus view that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person. I have asked you a specific question, the same question I asked of Firefighter - why is it that you have a prejudice against these particular academics (New Testament era historians)? I can actually show you, although it'd be a bit more difficult because I'd have to find my references, but believe me I can show you that not only do NT unanimously scholars say that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person, but so do Roman Empire historians.
If you think we can't use the New Testament as evidence then why can't we use academic publications as evidence? See this is the problem with your argument, as soon as I show you that the evidence all points one way you decide the change the conditions by claiming that you want a different standard of evidence. But it's not up to you to set the standard of evidence, that's up for professional historians to decide. Then you say "if we can't trust the gospels for X then they must be wrong about Y" - again a clearly invalid argument. If that were the case we would ignore everything that Josephus has to say about the ancient world too because he makes a few clear errors too.
Then you lay claim to the gospels laying claim to too many miracles to be taken seriously: and that is not true either. Most of the miracles are healing ceremonies, and that requires a low level of sophistication in the real world that can be, let's say, mildly exaggerated by the time they're written down in the gospels. Besides healings and exorcisms there's only a handful of events: walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead (which is just an extension of healing anyway), the transfiguration, water into wine, and of course cursing the fig tree (which was out of season anyway - so not much of a curse that one). Anyway at this point, we can be as sceptical as we like but it doesn't change the fact that we've established Jesus existed - the epistles of Paul in the absence of the gospels demonstrate that as it is, and they don't lay claim to all the miracles happening.
Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and then after 40 days ascended into heaven and took his body with him. Therefore if Christians knew exactly where he was buried it would disprove their belief. And I might add, it would be very difficult to prove a specific ossuary was his (that's if he was even laid to rest in one), as it would be vey unlikely to name all of his brothers mentioned in the Bible as well as his parents. IIRC most simply name just the father and perhaps one brother, "Jesus son of Joseph brother of [Simeon/Joseph/James/Judas]" could be anyone, as they are all common names. If it said "Jesus son of Joseph and Mary, brother of Simeon, Joseph, James, and Judas" then you might have proof. And if that's what you had it'd be more likely to be a forgery anyway, like the James ossuary. And back to the specific topic of this thread, the type of tomb that Jesus was said to be laid in immediately following his crucifixion, is an intermittent tomb used by the wealthy to let the body decay so it can be later placed within the family tomb in an ossuary, as opposed to putting the body straight into the family tomb and stinking it out while it decays. Furthermore it was located within Jerusalem or nearby, and not owned by one of Jesus's family members, which is all the more reason to think the family might want to move the body quickly to their family tomb. We just don't know - the tomb's owner may have been simply doing the family a favour by laying the body there until the Sabbath had passed so it could be moved to their tomb located in Nazareth (or wherever).
