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

[Aractus]

There.is.no.such.thing.as.scholarly.consensus.on.anything.

I'm sorry; what?

(snip)

So, is there scholarly consensus or isn't there?

Yes I know. I was using the term to mean something it doesn't: I retract my previous statements where I said "scholarly consensus". What I really meant, and what I should have said, is that there is broad agreement (i.e. nearly universal) amongst historians who study this area of history - whether Bible Scholars, Classicists, Egyptologists, or Archaeologists, etc, that Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus were historical people. They of course have different ways to categorise them, their belief-set, their motivations, etc. But on the question of whether these people were real or mythical the overwhelming majority view amongst active qualified historians is "yes". So, I used the term "consensus" when I should have used the term "majority view". The word consensus invokes the impression that all the experts have the same opinion about these people, but as I've pointed out plenty of times their opinions vary greatly. I don't know if most hold the opinion that Jesus was a "criminal" in the way that we understand the word, for example.

What I'm asking you is why do you act as though the Bible is reliable?

You don't get to invent your own facts FF01. We're only talking about part of the bible that is conditionally reliable on specific matters. For example, the majority view is the Gospel of John is especially not historically reliable.

Only if you pre-suppose that he existed.

Right, and that same argument is made by those with no understanding of how to interpret historical data about Pythagoras, and about Shakespeare. Pythagoras Mythicisim is in fact very similar to Jesus Mythicisim, so why not look it up. Most Classicists believe that Pythagoras was a historical person, but we know less reliably about him than we do about Jesus, for example. They also do not know if he came up with the Pythagorean theorem, or learned it from others before him (partly because the Egyptians have been shown to have made use of the knowledge this theorem provides well before his time).

As for the rest of your reply - you're not even bothering to put forward Carrier's case which is really the only one that even resembles something worth debating. You're using your own criticism of history - you don't understand the primary evidence, nor have you studied it. Therefore you can only put forward the facts that are discussed by those who have done so. You aren't entitled to simply invent your own facts in the same way that Holocaust Deniers do.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with supposition. We know that the Pauline Epistles are a reliable testament to the beliefs, communication, and movements of Paul - and the reason why we know this is because they have been extensively studied by historians and that is their strongly held majority view. You need to stup pulling your ideas out of your ass, and learn what critical scholars have to say on the matter.