(January 22, 2019 at 7:47 pm)PRJA93 Wrote: -It's entirely possible that the "historical" writings about Jesus were produced to promote the pro-Christianity narrative, which would've been very strong during the time in which these writings were created.
What does that even mean? That there was a plot where by some Romans or earlier followers of Jesus, who wanted to bolster the appearance that he was a historical figure, so they interpolated passages into Josephus, perhaps even convinced him of this fraud, by having him write of his supposed brothers death? Perhaps the same conspirators even influences Paul, or perhaps Paul was a part of them, telling him to write of meeting his brother and disciples, to bolster the appearance of historicity even more?
I mean I thought they had some balls selling some jew that died an embarrassing defeat at the hands of romans as the messiah, but he also didn’t exist apparently, and this detail was so embarrassing and not the other details that they had to fabricate an appearance of historicity to make it viable?
I think I heard less specious explanations coming out of Pizzagate, but please continue on, this is fun.
Quote:Sorry, that's not a very compelling argument. Once again, is it POSSIBLE? Sure. Probable? Not at all. Until further evidence is produced, I remain unconvinced.
If the evidence isn’t that compelling, than you should have no problem creating ahistorical explanations for the same pieces. The strength of evidence is only as good as its explanatory power, so please let see you expand on your alternative ahistorical argument, so we can test whether we shouldn’t be confident about the historical position.
If you can’t manage that, and still thinks we can’t hold confidently that Jesus existed, than you’re idiot.
If all the alternative explanations starts to sounds as ridiculous as the worst conspiracy theories, your claims that we shouldn’t be confident about historicity is false.
