(January 1, 2013 at 5:19 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: I was hoping minimalist as you have read more of ehrmans material than me you may have had more information about what was the state of play with his religious belief or non belief.
Sorry, I cannot help you there.
Ehrman has spent his entire career pointing out the errors, omissions, edits and politicizing of the NT writings over time. Put another way, he has trashed the only documents which tell the alleged story of the alleged godboy and he has done so very effectively.
Now he has always felt that there was some recognizable personage as jesus but, much like Thomas Jefferson, discounted all the miracles and magic tricks and concentrated on the teachings. My point is this, without the magic tricks what is jesus? Xtianity without the resurrection is not very compelling. Basically it is "we had a teacher and he got himself killed." Big deal. Could be talking about David Koresh.
Was there a jesus son of joseph? In first century Judah there had to be a 100 of them as the names were very common. Was there a jesus of nazareth? Probably not. Nazareth cannot be shown to exist in the first century. That is probably a later misunderstanding or mistranslation by Greco-Roman writers. But a jesus bar joseph who does not do miracles and come back from the dead is missing from history. No one knows that better than Ehrman. So why he insists on dumbing down his own stories is beyond me.
