jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Oct 31, 2017 0:57:35 GMT
Jagella- At this point, I can't tell if you're a troll, truly ineducable, or just obstinate. I'll assume the last, and offer you the perspective of another non-historian on "doing history." I've obviously struck a nerve here with my open skepticism about Jesus. Why is a historical Jesus so important to you that you resort to personal attacks? I do hope you buy a copy. I think I will mention my experience in this forum in the part about "Jesus--a Hoax?" Sorry, but I will discuss history in any way I see fit. Right now I'm researching the issue of Jesus mythicism. I'm reading The Christ Myth Theory and its Problems by Robert Price. Price qualifies as a scholar, but I'm sure you disagree with him. I'm left wondering why I'm so “ineducable” when I disagree with scholars who believe in a historical Jesus, yet people who insist Jesus lived are quite “educable” when they disagree with people like Robert Price. I'm reading the posts on this thread all right. I like the comment about letters proving Jesus. Again, I don't judge truth with a vote. If you have such great evidence for Jesus, then post it and stop wasting our time with an appeal to the majority fallacy. No, all I need to disagree with the “consensus” is to see that the consensus isn't making its case. Jesus historicists are not making a good case for a historical Jesus, in my opinion, and until I see a good case for Jesus, I remain a skeptic. OK, you might be making a valid point here. I'd need to do some research on Joseph Smith to see how he compares to Jesus to address this issue. In any case, you need to understand that in history we assess probabilities, not mere possibilities. It's definitely possible that some guy named Jesus started a religion just like it's obviously possible for a guy like Joseph Smith to start a new Christian cult. However, the key question to ask is how did a Jewish peasant who was apparently not noticed by any contemporary historians end up starting the world's largest religion? More than that, how can a real man live a life so reminiscent of mythological figures who long predated him? How likely is that to be true? Here's what Plato said in his Letters: So do you conceded that mentioning Jesus in a letter no more proves Jesus than a letter proves Zeus? If Plato mentioned that he knew Zeus personally or a brother of Zeus, then you'd believe Zeus existed? The more I study the question of the “historical Jesus,” the more I think there's very inadequate evidence for him. It appears that the public is being mislead by some scholars who insist he existed.
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Post by fortigurn on Oct 31, 2017 1:43:12 GMT
Here's what Plato said in his Letters: Yes. Plato does not say he met Zeus, or that he met the brother of Zeus. So this proves the point that your original argument is flawed. Of course he does, but you have forgotten the fact that no one even made such an argument. It's not the mere mention of Jesus that matters, it's how he is mentioned, as you've been told repeatedly. Jesus is described as a real man, Zeus is described as a god. Which is more likely to exist, a human being or a god? No that is not what he said. Remember, the original argument was yours. You said "Zeus and Osiris were mentioned often by people of that time. Do you think they are real?". People have been explaining why your argument is flawed.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Oct 31, 2017 14:48:12 GMT
Here's what Plato said in his Letters: Yes. Plato does not say he met Zeus, or that he met the brother of Zeus. So this proves the point that your original argument is flawed. Actually, the flaw is your own. You are arbitrarily changing the rules of the game so that your side wins. You add the criteria of the god mentioned in the letter being a person's brother and the letter writer purportedly meeting the god. In this way you alter the criteria of authenticity to allow Jesus as historical but not Zeus. By the way, Zeus, like Jesus, had brothers. They were Poseidon and Hades. Zeus had mortal offspring including AITHLIOS, ALEXANDROS, and HERAKLES. So Zeus had a family some of whom were human—just like Jesus purportedly did! The cult of Zeus must have influenced Christian beliefs. Yes, and these are the stipulations you create to make your case hoping to include Jesus but exclude Zeus. A real man is more likely to exist, of course, and that's exactly what the early Christians may have had in mind when they chose “Jesus” as their god. Rather than posit just another god, they could have historicized Jesus to make him seem more real than the pagan gods. Besides, both Jesus and Zeus were believed to be both gods and men. If you argue that Zeus as a god was not likely to have existed, then the same goes for Jesus. Anyway, let's take a look at that letter about Jesus as “the Lord's brother.” The passage appears in Galatians 1:18-20: Many people mistakenly think Paul referred to James as “the brother of Jesus.” No, James is said to be “the Lord's brother.” Note that Paul is insisting that he wasn't lying, so somebody is questioning his honesty although the passage does not make clear what the issue was that Paul may have been lying about. Did he maybe lie about seeing only James? Or was he lying about James himself? If there was a real James, then his being “the Lord's brother” may have been a title he chose for himself to attain some unique status within the emerging Christian cult. Finally, we need to be wary of any claims made by Paul. He was a propagandist for a new religion. He said what he needed to in order to recruit followers:
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Post by ignorantianescia on Oct 31, 2017 15:47:47 GMT
Now if you knew Ancient Greek, you'd know that there is only one productive grammatical construct for describing that relation (X of Y, Y's X; the relation is called possession) and that is the genitive. Both alternatives would be rendered ho adelphos tou kuriou so projecting a possible distinction in English to the Greek serves no purpose. And the most natural reading in this case would be biological brotherhood, actual kinship, whatever you name it, not some completely unattested new title of a person or group.
Fortigurn has written on this topic before, whether this construct is also used for fictive kinship. The answer is no.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Oct 31, 2017 16:53:17 GMT
When the subject is ancient history, the weakness of evidence becomes very relative. That's interesting. So weak evidence is good enough if it's all we have. Is that what you're saying? Not quite, what I am saying is that you'd always expect much less evidence for any figure in ancient history than for an equivalent figure in modern history and that the 'amount' of evidence you could reasonably expect for an ancient historical figure varies a lot based on particular circumstances. One wouldn't hold a peasant to the same empirical standard as an emperor, or so to speak a king in 400 BC to the same standard as a king in 300 AD. But there are many, many more considerations of which historians are aware but lay people generally are not. I've often thought that this is an odd argument. If historians accept the existence of some figures like Simeon bar-Kosibah on even weaker evidence than the evidence for Jesus, then we should accept Jesus as well. Is that what you're arguing? No, my intent was to draw attention to how thin ancient evidence can be and how extremely risky it can be to conclude too much from an absence of evidence. If a rebel leader can barely make a dent in the historical record save for his own writings, then that shows how rare surviving mentions can be. So standards for evidence that could have led to the conclusion that Bar-Kosibah didn't exist before the letter cache had been found are obviously too strict. Because wrongly concluding that someone didn't exist is an error after all.
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Post by sandwiches on Oct 31, 2017 18:23:52 GMT
I don't believe Jagella exists. Scholars and experts in Jagella may claim that he does but that is an appeal to authority. Can he prove that he exists? I doubt it.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Oct 31, 2017 21:06:49 GMT
If that is your intention, I would at least follow James's suggestion and start a blog and interact with other Bible bloggers. That will help enormously in shaping your own opinions and getting a feeling for the debates, which should pay off in the ease of writing a book later. I intend to start a website complete with a blog and forum to "test market" my book. Personally, I think it will pack a punch from the very start. If you like, send me a private message, and I can email you the draft of the introduction. Thanks for sharing. That looks like a good example of why knowing the "Greek" might be helpful. I don't think it's fair to read Carrier's mind. We could just as easily speculate why some people insist on a historical Jesus, but that wouldn't be fair to them. (OK, I admit I sometimes do it myself. I will try not to in the future.) An entire thread could be easily devoted to critiquing Did Jesus Exist. Indeed, an entire book has been published to do just that. It's entitled Bart Ehmran and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth, edited by Frank R. Zindler and Robert M. Price. I have read it. It's good. Anyway, before I ever read any critiques of Did Jesus Exist, I think I must have had an objection to almost everything Bart wrote. He starts out with the old we-historicists-are-in-the-majority fallacy. He attacks DM Murdoch libeling her as making up a story about a statue in the Vatican museum which, as it turns out, is really there! He argues that the different stories about Jesus written by Christians are “independent” and evidence for a real Jesus. Doesn't he realize that you don't need a real Jesus to explain that? All you need are commonly-held beliefs among the early Christians that Jesus was historical. Here's a real howler from page 118: Oh? So this is the evidence for a historical Jesus? Paul said so? How naive can you get! The same kind of evidence proves the reality of the angel, Moroni, who delivered the Book of Mormon on gold tablets. Joseph Smith said so, after all. Common sense tells me at least that there are no magical men. Magic is but an illusion and a delusion. Christians or other religious people are not to be trusted because their fanaticism drives them to twist the truth or even lie outright. Since Jesus is clearly described as a magic man by the Christians who wrote the New Testament, he in all probability was their invention.
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Post by peteri on Oct 31, 2017 22:32:08 GMT
Anyway, before I ever read any critiques of Did Jesus Exist, I think I must have had an objection to almost everything Bart wrote. He starts out with the old we-historicists-are-in-the-majority fallacy. He attacks DM Murdoch libeling her as making up a story about a statue in the Vatican museum which, as it turns out, is really there! In fairness I am putting a link to Bart Ehrman's account. ehrmanblog.org/acharya-s-richard-carrier-and-a-cocky-peter-or-a-cock-and-bull-story/Peter.
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 1, 2017 4:47:04 GMT
You are arbitrarily changing the rules of the game so that your side wins. You add the criteria of the god mentioned in the letter being a person's brother and the letter writer purportedly meeting the god. In this way you alter the criteria of authenticity to allow Jesus as historical but not Zeus. Firstly I am not changing anything. As I already pointed out, the criterion of someone saying they met a god's brother was literally the original criterion. You seem to have forgotten what was written to you just a couple of days ago. Here is what Tim wrote to you. Show me a letter that mentions in passing how the writer met Zeus' brother just a few years earlier. Show me a reference to Osiris as a human being, mentioning when, where and how he died, written within a century of that death. If you can't produce that kind of evidence for Zeus and Osiris you have the beginnings of an answer to your question about why we treat the references to Jesus differently to those to Zeus and Osiris. You really don't seem to have thought this stuff through. Emphasis mine. There has been no change in these criteria. These were the criteria all along. Not only have you failed to meet them, you have failed to even remember them. This is a complete mess. 1. Zeus had brothers who were gods. Jesus had no brothers who were gods, which is unusual to say the least, if he's supposed to be a god. 2. Zeus had offspring which were demigods; Aithlios, Alexandros, and Herakles. This is why they had supernatural powers, and when they died they went to the paradise of the gods rather than the afterlife of humans, and why sacrifices were made to Herakles as a god. Jesus had no brothers who were described as the demigod offspring of gods. 3. Claiming that "The cult of Zeus must have influenced Christian beliefs" on the basis that Zeus had brothers who were gods and Jesus had brothers who were human, is a complete non sequitur. There's no actual commonality here. The problem for this is that it's just your imagination. You're not presenting any actual evidence. To date your method has been to make claims based on your "feelings" and your "imagination". This is not how legitimate historical work is carried out. Zeus was not believed to be both god and man, and Jesus was not believed to be both god and man until well into the second century at earliest. I argue that Zeus as a god is not likely to have existed, and Jesus as a god is not likely to have existed. But Jesus as a man did exist. Once again all we have here is your unsubstantiated "feelings" and "imagination". As ignorantianescia has already pointed out, you don't understand this passage because you don't understand the Greek. James is being referred to as the brother of Jesus in the normal way for referring to a physical brother in Greek. Where is the evidence that "the Lord's brother" is a title? Please list all the usages in contemporary Greek literature. Where is the evidence that James sought "some unique status within the emerging Christian cult"? You're just making things up. That is not what he says in that quotation, and there are independent lines of evidence for the existence of James the brother of Jesus, including Josephus. At this point I am leaning towards the idea that you are a troll. It is difficult to believe that anyone could say this stuff and actually mean it, unless you're the kind of person who also believes in a flat earth and lizard people.
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kj
Clerk
Posts: 9
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Post by kj on Nov 1, 2017 8:30:37 GMT
It's not a nerve, nor is it related to the historical Jesus. People respond to you because they assume you're sincere and want to be taken seriously.
This response indicates you are not sincere, but grandstanding. You have no interest in understanding the methods and approaches of those in the field because "common sense" has told you they must be wrong. You seem to me to be history's version of the faster-than-light, free-energy "advocates" that plague the sciences. Rather than spend time understanding what the evidence really is, and what weight the evidence is given by practitioners in the field, you know the answer, so they must be motivated by religion.
Unlikely. I have a decent collection of science-related books with similar quality reasoning. They entertain me, and I occasionally have a student who gets confused by such a book (who wouldn't like free energy, anti-gravity shields, and faster-than-light travel?) I have no such motive to purchase a poorly investigated book on the historical existence of Jesus.
I think we have different understandings of "researching." What you seem to mean is "reading books with which I agree, and praising their authors as 'scholars,' while discarding the others as 'religiously motivated.'"
There was no appeal to the majority. There was a factual observation- more of those who have studied the evidence thoroughly have concluded that Jesus was a historical person than not. You seem to have the same understanding of "consensus" as many of those who want to argue climate change. It's not as though a vote was taken to determine the answer. Rather, it's that the majority of practitioners in the field, evaluating the evidence independently, come to a common conclusion. There's probably a reason for that. They may be wrong- I know of a number of cases where it has happened in the sciences- but if you're going to claim they're wrong and want to be taken seriously, you'd better demonstrate an understanding of why they reached that conclusion, and have some indication of why it's wrong.
Okay, you're a skeptic. What level of evidence would you consider adequate to establish the existence of a historical Jesus? Is that level of evidence reasonable, given what we know of other historical persons of the era? That was the whole point of ignorantianescia's example of Simeon bar-Kosibah: less evidence overall survives from that era than from more modern eras. That's what Tim explained in one of his pieces on the subject. The evidence must be evaluated relative to what detail survives- you won't find a birth certificate. And the direct evidence for a historical Jesus is comparable to, or better than, the direct evidence for other people we are sure existed. You seem to be conflating the two issues- whether there was a historical Jesus and whether he was the Messiah- and arguing that since the latter is false, the former must also be. It's entirely possible (Joseph Smith did something very similar, as did Swedenborg) that there was a historical preacher/religious reformer/general troublemaker who attracted a cult-like following to himself, and ultimately ran afoul of the authorities. As I understand it, that's basically what Josephus tells us. Any dancing with angels, or direct visits from God, or communing with the spirits of the dead, could be either part of the cult preaching or added later- it need not be part of the true biography of Jesus of Nazareth. There are people (one ran for Mayor of Minneapolis a few years ago) who believe that the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder are, essentially, Scripture- the handed-down works of God. If they embellish Wilder's biography to include angelic liaisons and performing miracles, does that make her not have existed? Is the history of Jonestown less real because Jones was delusional?
I do not believe that Joseph Smith was handed gold plates by the angel Moroni. I do not believe that David Koresh was the returning Christ. I do not believe that Laura Ingalls Wilder's books are the inspired word of the Lord. But I lived in Texas when the Koresh raid occurred, I lived in Utah and walked across Temple Square routinely, and I taught in South Dakota not far from DeSmet, so I am convinced that all three of those people lived.
I'll skip the discussion of Zeus. Fortigurn has already made all the points I would have made, and more eloquently.
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 1, 2017 12:25:01 GMT
TBH, this is an excellent summary of this whole thread...
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 1, 2017 12:33:17 GMT
Christians or other religious people are not to be trusted because their fanaticism drives them to twist the truth or even lie outright. Since Jesus is clearly described as a magic man by the Christians who wrote the New Testament, he in all probability was their invention.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 1, 2017 14:36:32 GMT
Anyway, before I ever read any critiques of Did Jesus Exist, I think I must have had an objection to almost everything Bart wrote. He starts out with the old we-historicists-are-in-the-majority fallacy. He attacks DM Murdoch libeling her as making up a story about a statue in the Vatican museum which, as it turns out, is really there! In fairness I am putting a link to Bart Ehrman's account. ehrmanblog.org/acharya-s-richard-carrier-and-a-cocky-peter-or-a-cock-and-bull-story/Peter. Here's what Bart has to say on page 24 of Did Jesus Exist about DM Murdock and her claim about the “cock” statue: Who is making things up? DM Murdock has exposed Ehrman's lible. These kinds of tactics on the part of Bart Ehrman should say something to us all about the credibility of the position that Jesus was historical.
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 1, 2017 15:12:14 GMT
Murdock was. That statue is not of "the Cock, symbol of St. Peter". In the very article to which you link, Murdock acknowledges it is not a statue of of Peter, and then goes on to claim that she didn't really mean it was of Peter. An embarrassing retreat.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 1, 2017 15:19:21 GMT
People respond to you because they assume you're sincere and want to be taken seriously. I do seem to be getting a lot of responses. What you're saying does not logically follow from what I said. I said I will discuss history in any way I see fit. My saying that in no way indicates that I'm insincere or grandstanding. I'd recommend you take care not to post such logical fallacies. That's strange. You've never read my book which isn't even half finished, and you've already convinced yourself that it's poorly investigated? Also, if you're so skeptical about "free energy," then why do you think the god of the Christian religion was a real man? I suppose we all choose our own hokum to believe in while we laugh at the other person's hokum. You're wrong again. I'm reading books that are written by people on both sides of the Jesus-myth issue. For instance, I've already posted that I've read Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman. I try to make a habit of reading books first, then I judge them. Sorry, but I am seeing a lot of fallacies on the part of the historicist position. I think it stretches credibility to say that all this talk of the “consensus” is not an attempt to convince people that Jesus did exist. In addition to this fallacy, I see appeal to authority, non sequiturs, straw-men, ad hominems, and special pleading not to mention numerous other fallacies. In addition, the historical-Jesus position is based on the claims of a fanatical religious cult from 2,000 years ago! And you wonder why I'm skeptical. This is much better. A sensible question! I'd like to see some solid evidence for Jesus like an actual tomb that can be dated to about 30 AD. Also, documents that can be dated to that time that mention Jesus and that can be shown to be untainted by Christian bias, interpolations or forgeries would be very helpful. How did you arrive at that conclusion? I never said anything about Jesus being the Messiah! Is this your idea of research and scholarship?
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