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

[Aractus]

Okay, now I see where you're coming from. That's an expansion on the historical narrative - almost without any question. Paul did go to Corinth and we know that from his letters which are the primary evidence for his movements and ministry. The author of Acts knows the movements of Paul very well, and this is evident by just how closely they align with Galatians and Paul's other letters. So we know that the macro information regarding Paul in Acts of the Apostles is at least mostly correct. The micro information (the details) is another matter entirely.

What you're saying is that part of Acts can be shown to be incorrect - yes I agree there. Parts of all four gospels can be shown to be incorrect historically as well. But that doesn't mean everything is incorrect. You know very well that the works of all ancient historians of the time contain numerous errors, and the Christian texts are no exception. Errors are a good thing though, at least for sceptics, because they show that the author was making an attempt to represent history.

The other thing they contain besides errors and historical detail, is expansions of the stories. So what is recounted above is almost certainly an historical event, but the details have been expanded upon. This FYI is exactly what good scholars look at, to determine where history ends and mythology or expansion on history begins. Your argument that everything found within the gospels is wholly non-historical is so well outside of general scholarly thought, that it's barely even worth consideration. And the one scholar who puts forward a scholarly argument - Richard Carrier - you don't even agree with. Carrier still accepts that Paul is a historical person, his hypothesis relies on the historicity of Paul. As I already said, if you're going to defend Carrier's position at least put forward his position and not your own one that's not supported by a single scholar anywhere.

And that brings me back to the start of this whole cycle. Carrier's argument is, well, ridiculous. Even other mythicists (such as yourself) cling to their own hypothesis rather than adopt his. The problem with his argument is not that it's impossible - anything is possible. For all we know, Adolf Hitler was a celestial being that came to Earth as a reptilian and tried to bring about an apocalypse so the lizzardpeople could take over the Earth. The problem is it's based on completely different mythologies to Judaism as a starting point.

[robvalue]

I haven't read all this, but just in case it hasn't been stated:

The mythicist position, as I understand it, is that there isn't enough evidence to reliably pin the story onto one specific historical figure. It's not an outright statement that nothing happened at all. In fact, it could have all happened (bar the obvious made up magical stuff) but spread over several different people. Or parts of it happened to more than one person, and they got mashed together. And so on. It's the idea that there is one clear "Jesus" that is the myth, so sayeth the mythicist. Such characters arise in lots of other easy understandable ways, and can still absorb a few real events into their fictional life.

Well, I say it could have all happened, that isn't really true either. Some underlying story could have happened, from which vague contradictory accounts have developed.

It's not even a denial that there was in fact this one dude Jesus. It's just the position that this has not been evidenced, and as such fails to be a likely explanation when we have so many other ways of seeing how such stories can arise. That is how I see it, anyway. There's probably quite a few different takes on mythicism. But the strawman I often see is that the mythicist is saying stupid stuff like "none of it happened".

In my opinion, it's mostly fiction, with a smattering of real events inaccurately folded into it; most likely from several different real people. It's religious propaganda; or perhaps just a story.

[The Grand Nudger]

More directly to the point of contention, the mythicist position is that "jesus" became more and more flesh and blood with the retellings and passage of time.  If the authors and editors and councils and pontiffs drew from actual people in the course of making the myth a man, that's understandable...but that doesn't make those men "the historical jesus".

[Firefighter01]

Yes really. That's Acts. Paul.himself.never.makes.any.claims.that.he.healed.anyone. You are getting really frustrating to talk to. Either you have no idea what you are saying, or you are just deliberately acting like a fucking jerk. Which is it?

So you don't like what it says in Acts? So what if Paul.himself.never.makes.any.claims.that.he.healed.anyone. ? Does that make him more historical? You are getting really frustrating to talk to. Either you have no idea what you are saying, or you are just deliberately acting like a fucking jerk. Which is it? I can play those games too.   

Uh yes we are.  It's what this thread is about and you just finished saying that Pythagoras Mythicisim is in fact very similar to Jesus Mythicisim.  Jesus is a tad different from Pythagorus because of what I just mentioned.

No, we're just talking about the historicity of Jesus - not the divinity of Jesus.

How can a divine spook be historical? I think that you misunderstand my take on Jesus.  I've got no problem believing that a wandering kook named Jesus existed at that time, there were probably a few of them.  I don't believe in the magical Jesus of the Bible.  If you take away all the stories of the miracles, there's fuck all left. Why would anyone follow around a Neville Nobody that didn't do anything special, let alone record what happened to him that wasn't miraculous?  If he didn't draw huge crowds and muttered to himself and a few followers, why would the Romans even bother stringing him up?  

I'm not making the claims about their historicity, YOU are. I'm just not convinced because of the lack of evidence and the evidence that is presented is just so piss poor. As I've said previously, historians whose livelihoods and careers are dependent upon Jesus being a historical person are tainted and therefore biased. Jesus & Paul being exposed as myths means nothing to me, but that knowledge is kryptonite to Christians.  There's no secular evidence of either and the best possible witness would have been Philo of Alexandria, but he like Paul, only knew of Jesus as a spirit. I don't think that he even mentions Paul, even though he would have been a contemporary. Capping it all off is the presence of all the mystery cults of the same area and time with their own savior gods. 

I can't say with certitude that either the Jesus of the Bible nor the Apostle Paul ever existed and neither can you, sport.

And I can't say that the earth wasn't created by Jehovah in 6 days roughly 6000 years ago, and neither can you.

Ah, but there is this thing called science, which includes proofs and evidence.  That's enough to sway to believe what is more probable. You are quite happy to believe with confidence that Jesus is historical, mainly because the majority of indoctrinated scholars are swayed by the great truths of the Babble.   

See above. You still believe hook, line and sinker what has been presented to you as the Christian truth probably since you were a little boy. If they didn't exist then the majority opinion is wrong.  You don't need a majority to make it the truth.  After all, the vast majority of the world imagines that gods and ghosts exist.

Again, I put it to you that you have no idea what you are talking about.

I think I make more sense than you and am a whole lot less gullible than you and your Christian dogma. You are still very much stuck in your beliefs, dude.

[Firefighter01]

I haven't read all this, but just in case it hasn't been stated:

The mythicist position, as I understand it, is that there isn't enough evidence to reliably pin the story onto one specific historical figure. It's not an outright statement that nothing happened at all. In fact, it could have all happened (bar the obvious made up magical stuff) but spread over several different people. Or parts of it happened to more than one person, and they got mashed together. And so on. It's the idea that there is one clear "Jesus" that is the myth, so sayeth the mythicist. Such characters arise in lots of other easy understandable ways, and can still absorb a few real events into their fictional life.

Well, I say it could have all happened, that isn't really true either. Some underlying story could have happened, from which vague contradictory accounts have developed.

It's not even a denial that there was in fact this one dude Jesus. It's just the position that this has not been evidenced, and as such fails to be a likely explanation when we have so many other ways of seeing how such stories can arise. That is how I see it, anyway. There's probably quite a few different takes on mythicism. But the strawman I often see is that the mythicist is saying stupid stuff like "none of it happened".

In my opinion, it's mostly fiction, with a smattering of real events inaccurately folded into it; most likely from several different real people. It's religious propaganda; or perhaps just a story.

Well said, Rob, that's pretty much what I believe too.  The small amount of historical correctness was placed there to add credence to otherwise fantastic stories.

[Firefighter01]

Okay, now I see where you're coming from. That's an expansion on the historical narrative - almost without any question. Paul did go to Corinth and we know that from his letters which are the primary evidence for his movements and ministry. The author of Acts knows the movements of Paul very well, and this is evident by just how closely they align with Galatians and Paul's other letters. So we know that the macro information regarding Paul in Acts of the Apostles is at least mostly correct. The micro information (the details) is another matter entirely.

What you're saying is that part of Acts can be shown to be incorrect - yes I agree there. Parts of all four gospels can be shown to be incorrect historically as well. But that doesn't mean everything is incorrect. You know very well that the works of all ancient historians of the time contain numerous errors, and the Christian texts are no exception. Errors are a good thing though, at least for sceptics, because they show that the author was making an attempt to represent history.

I agree mostly here except for the part about Paul going to Corinth.  You KNOW that because of the letters? Someone wrote those letters, that's all we can know for certain.  Who is to say that is part of the waffling story? I think that it is a big stretch to think that a penniless preacher has an epiphany of Jesus that blinds him for 3 days, then set out convincing all these people in various cities that their long held convictions are false.  NONE of the churches that he supposedly founded mentions him at all as the founder. A very well known and noted philosopher was Philo of Alexandria (c. 30 BCE – c. 50 CE). He was a leading writer of the Jewish community in Egypt and came from a very well traveled, educated and wealthy family.  He doesn't mention a historical Jesus or Paul to the best of my knowledge and should have if they were causing all the ruckus. recorded in the Bible. 

The other thing they contain besides errors and historical detail, is expansions of the stories. So what is recounted above is almost certainly an historical event, but the details have been expanded upon. This FYI is exactly what good scholars look at, to determine where history ends and mythology or expansion on history begins.

Yes I agree

Your argument that everything found within the gospels is wholly non-historical is so well outside of general scholarly thought, that it's barely even worth consideration. And the one scholar who puts forward a scholarly argument - Richard Carrier - you don't even agree with. Carrier still accepts that Paul is a historical person, his hypothesis relies on the historicity of Paul. As I already said, if you're going to defend Carrier's position at least put forward his position and not your own one that's not supported by a single scholar anywhere.

You are telling a porky here, I never said that "everything found within the gospels is wholly non-historical".  I do agree with most of what Carrier puts forward, but I disagree about Paul being a historical person.  You are stretching things again with your last assertion, you should really give it a rest!

[Aractus]

The mythicist position, as I understand it, is that there isn't enough evidence to reliably pin the story onto one specific historical figure. It's not an outright statement that nothing happened at all.

No it isn't, and that's where I think a lot of atheists get it wrong. Jesus Mythicism has less support from actual historians than Holocaust Denial. Holocaust deniers use the exact same tactics as mythicists - that is they claim the evidence is insufficient to conclude X, Y, and Z.

Here Ehrman addresses mythicism directly:

https://youtu.be/8bnL-QZWNdg?t=1311


Carrier himself says that himself included there are only 7 bible scholars in the world that doubt the historicity of Jesus.

The mythicist position is that Jesus cannot be shown to be a historical person to the same standard as that applied to other historical people. And that is nonsense - as Ehrman and many other scholars have said, there is in fact more evidence for the historicity of Jesus than there is for almost anyone else from his time period.

[Aractus]

So you don't like what it says in Acts? So what if Paul.himself.never.makes.any.claims.that.he.healed.anyone. ? Does that make him more historical? You are getting really frustrating to talk to. Either you have no idea what you are saying, or you are just deliberately acting like a fucking jerk. Which is it? I can play those games too.

I'm going to quote Richard Carrier to you:

Meanwhile, the false premise has to do with his treatment of the Pauline epistles. Really the only evidence for historicity there is is a scant few obscure passages in the Pauline epistles (e.g. references to “brothers of the Lord”), so they are really the most important evidence to deal with, and he deals with them almost not at all. In fact, his answer to them is to declare them all forgeries, and Paul himself a fiction. Brodie makes no clear case for this conclusion, and what arguments he does have are fallacious (e.g. the letters have certain features that forged letters sometimes share–except, so do authentic letters), and the position as a whole is too radical to be useful. Not that it hasn’t had serious defenders before this. But it constitutes a whole additional fringe thesis one must defend successfully first, before one can use it as a premise in an argument for the ahistoricity of Jesus. And I am skeptical that that can really be done (see my comments here and here). Certainly none of his arguments in Beyond are convincing on this subject.

[Firefighter01]

So you don't like what it says in Acts? So what if Paul.himself.never.makes.any.claims.that.he.healed.anyone. ? Does that make him more historical? You are getting really frustrating to talk to. Either you have no idea what you are saying, or you are just deliberately acting like a fucking jerk. Which is it? I can play those games too.

I'm going to quote Richard Carrier to you:

Meanwhile, the false premise has to do with his treatment of the Pauline epistles. Really the only evidence for historicity there is is a scant few obscure passages in the Pauline epistles (e.g. references to “brothers of the Lord”), so they are really the most important evidence to deal with, and he deals with them almost not at all. In fact, his answer to them is to declare them all forgeries, and Paul himself a fiction. Brodie makes no clear case for this conclusion, and what arguments he does have are fallacious (e.g. the letters have certain features that forged letters sometimes share–except, so do authentic letters), and the position as a whole is too radical to be useful. Not that it hasn’t had serious defenders before this. But it constitutes a whole additional fringe thesis one must defend successfully first, before one can use it as a premise in an argument for the ahistoricity of Jesus. And I am skeptical that that can really be done (see my comments here and here). Certainly none of his arguments in Beyond are convincing on this subject.

(see my comments here and here) Which is you? You aren't telling me anything new about Carrier and Ehrman, I seen most of their stuff online and read most of their their books.  I really enjoyed Forged by Ehrman, what did you think of it? It should be really interesting when Price goes head to head with Ehrman next month.  I reckon Price will be all over him.  On a side note have you seen Philo citing Paul or vica versa? I can't find anything and I find that really strange if they didn't as both were important men (if you say that Paul existed) and never made an impression on each other, even though they had very good connections, and were in the same era/regions.

[The Grand Nudger]

Strange isn't it?  Trotting around the ANE...selling a quickly rising new religion, people asking him questions..him sending out dictates to the churches everywhere.....fomenting treasonous ideas left right and center, and nobody notices. Not even the jesus freaks can find a mention of him anywhere but in the gospels or in relation -to- the gospels....and they can find shit whether it's there or not!