For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Minimalist]

Any day now.......any day now.

[Confused Ape]

Any day now.......any day now.

I've been waiting for 63 years.

Our species in general seems to have evolved to believe in something even if it's different somethings depending on the religion. Maybe it's the only thing that kept our ancestors going. For some, the promise is the end of rebirth so we don't have to go through any more lives.

[Minimalist]

Picking up on some of Ehrman's observations about how the various gospels portray different stories to different audiences Moss makes this observation about the character of "jesus" in mark and luke.

In mark... jesus is a wuss.

"In Mark's version Jesus is desperate and in need of comfort. He asks the disciples to stay awake with him, because he is grieving. He is described as distressed and agitated and begs God, as his son, using the familial childlike term "Abba." In Luke Jesus feels no distress at all. He instructs the discples to pray for themselves and, although he still asks God to remove the cup, the whole scene has an almost businesslike feel to it."

In Moss' opinion Luke has re-written the story into a more acceptable "noble death" scenario....like Socrates which would appeal to the Greco-Roman concept of honor... whereas "mark" is just a story about some whining little jew who suddenly realizes he is in over his head and the jig is about up!

[Confused Ape]

"In Mark's version Jesus is desperate and in need of comfort. He asks the disciples to stay awake with him, because he is grieving. He is described as distressed and agitated and begs God, as his son, using the familial childlike term "Abba."

That's probably more realistic if you know you're going to be crucified.

[ThomM]

I'm not suggesting that you wade back through the whole thread but, yeah. We've already been there.

There had to be hundreds of schleppers named "jesus." So what? There is not only no evidence that any of them came back from the dead but no one in the first century seems to have even heard the tale.

Actually - NO ONE named Jesus lived at that supposed time
No Alphabet included the letter "J" at that time

[Minimalist]

Now don't be picky.

[Cyberman]

"In Mark's version Jesus is desperate and in need of comfort. He asks the disciples to stay awake with him, because he is grieving. He is described as distressed and agitated and begs God, as his son, using the familial childlike term "Abba."

Does he say "Mamma Mia" as well?

[Minimalist]

By page 92 Moss has recounted the activities of the Bollandists who were 17th century scholars who waded through centuries of church bullshit about various saints and martyrs and dismissed the vast majority of them as BULLSHIT. "Once scholars had stripped away the pious frauds, entertaining forgeries and well-intentioned legends, they were left with only a small handful of martyrdom stories from before 250 that they judged to be historically reliable." Moss reports that they identified only 6
such stories as passing even a 17th century smell-test. These are:

1- Martyrdom of Polycarp
2- Acts of Ptolemy and Lucius
3- Acts of Justin and Companions
4- Martyrs of Lyons
5, Acts of Scillitan Martyrs
6. Passion of Perpetua and Felicity

It now appears that she will proceed to demolish even these 6 cherished xtian horror stories.


More to come.

[jstrodel]

Historical Biblical Criticism is one of the least rigorous academic disciplines. It combines the best of presuppositions against the supernatural with historical guesswork. There are so many disagreements among scholars about different issues. Marcus Borg and John Domminick Crossan and the Jesus Seminar once got together and actually had a vote, imagine that, a vote, how surprising, to see what would elements of the New Testament would make it in.

HBC has been going on for hundreds of years since Spinoza and the German school of theology. They haven't really produced any real evidence other than sensational stories and various methods of historical guesswork. Much of what they wrote has been overturned. For instance, some "Bible scholars" insisted that the Gospel of John was not written until hundreds of years until after the first century, obviously it would not have been written by John, but then people found a parchment dating it much earlier, around the start of the 2nd century.

There are hundreds or thousands of books written to refute what the historical casino produces, but people will still cling to ideas not even held by scholars (such as Bart Ehrman) that Jesus never existed. Biblical scholarship has a special place in the hearts of Christians who seek to avoid the duties of scripture, and as such, as always enjoyed a large market and probably always will by those eager to sell to the public a vision of freedom combined with speculation about everything imaginable about the history of the Bible.

History will vindicate scripture, as it already has, the most studied book that still has many, many adherents who are scholars at the very to of the academic Biblical Studies world. The honest interpreter will consider the other side (see FF Bruce, Bruce Metzger, NT Wright, etc).

[Minimalist]

Let's see.... we have world class scholars on one side and a complete jack off like you on the other.

Guess who wins?