Are the gospels reliable historical documents? // YES

[Subduction Zone]

In fact I see many problems with slavery in the Bible . I just want you to elaborate the argument , otherwise you would accuse others of making strawman fallacies.

No need. The slavery in the Bible is inexcusable for a God that has the traits that Christians claim that he has. Just make sure that you refer properly to biblical slavery.

 

[Subduction Zone]

All scientists are biased and un-independent sources. Because they are scientists.
My.

Like others you need to study the history of the Bible. Other books were rejected. The books all went through the same filter so they can no longer be independent of each other. Books did not match up with the story that the church fathers wanted to tell were rejected.

 

[leroy]

In your opinion they were biased? Perhaps you are using bias in a different sense to the way I am thinking of bias. So perhaps I should ask... In what way were they biased?

They had a goal in mind .... In this sense they are biased

 

[leroy]

Like others you need to study the history of the Bible. Other books were rejected. The books all went through the same filter so they can no longer be independent of each other. Books did not match up with the story that the church fathers wanted to tell were rejected.

they can no longer be independent of each other

So they where independent at some point, but they are no longer independent.... Do you realize how nonsensical this sounds ?

 

[nPeace]

They had a goal in mind .... In this sense they are biased

We all have goals in mind. I'm sure you do. In what way are you biased, and how are the writers similar?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So they where independent at some point, but they are no longer independent.... Do you realize how nonsensical this sounds ?

They never actually were independent. Mark is copied by the other two, very heavily by Matthew and Luke. But yes, once you put a group of items through a filter they are no longer indpendent since they all rely on passing that same filter.

It is amazing that you do not understand this. Once you eliminate the opposition the remaining items are not independent.

 

[nPeace]

They had a goal in mind .... In this sense they are biased

I have a goal to tell the truth - to give an accurate account of events. Am I biased?
Are you saying the writers were biased in that sense?
I don't see that as biased, but maybe I don't understand what bias is.
That certainly would fit the OP though. In that, if you believe the Gospels are reliable and accurate historical accounts, then the goal of the writers was to state with accuracy, and unbiased leanings, what actually occurred. True? Otherwise you would be against your OP, and I don't think you are.

So according to what I understand the term bias to mean, if the writers were biased, the OP can't be correct. Or the OP would be biased.
Do you see what I am saying?

 

[lukethethird]

You need to separate the history from the supernatural.

That's called special pleading, it doesn't work when arguing that Clark Kent is historical for the same reasons, however it is your MO, it's all that you ever do.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I have a goal to tell the truth - to give an accurate account of events. Am I biased?
Are you saying the writers were biased in that sense?
I don't see that as biased, but maybe I don't understand what bias is.
That certainly would fit the OP though. In that, if you believe the Gospels are reliable and accurate historical accounts, then the goal of the writers was to state with accuracy, and unbiased leanings, what actually occurred. True? Otherwise you would be against your OP, and I don't think you are.

So according to what I understand the term bias to mean, if the writers were biased, the OP can't be correct. Or the OP would be biased.
Do you see what I am saying?

The authors of the gospels appeared to have a larger agenda. Though they may have believed the tall tales that they told.

Believing something does not make it right. Some of the claims of the Gospels are demonstrably wrong. The question is do those errors hurt the message?

 

[joelr]

You cling on to your chosen 'scholarship' for dear life.
I'll bet that you disregard that which does not agree.... am I right?.

Not even close. I follow what the consensus of scholarship says. But if there are issues under debate I always listen to both sides.
I also listen to non-scholarship apologetics debate scholars often. If they had any type of convincing evidence that would be great. They do not.

Now I will also bet. That you fully trust scholarship and expect scholarships full effort when you take medicine, fly in a plane, use medical equipment, drive cars, you expect all these are safety checked by the highest educated in safety and all other related procedures. But somehow history and archeology and comparative religion and literature can't get it right? Doubt it.

Oh please! THat's Christian waffle. I study HJ, not HC!
I do not believe for one second that any soldier said any such thing and since Mark tells us (not Paul) that Magdalene, Salome and other women watched from 'afar', who is supposed to have heard these words?
The mistake that you are making all the way through is selecting out Christian additions and using threse to chuck the who deposition out.

I super do not care about a created fantasy world. Provide evidence or this is Qnon conspiracy.

I can see that you cannot understand, and so you write.... but Carrier is clutching at straws in attempt to destroy the whole deposition.

If Paul and Mark both referred to a 'nice-day' you would be clutching to it!

First this is not from Carrier but from the 5 papers sourced on the subject. And just throwing denial around is saying nothing. All I'm seeing is that this bothers you that Mark sourced Paul. The examples are numerous and give excellent evidence and you have not debunked any of them.

Bingo! So Cephas really really was married!
That's how we know about his mum-in-law being ill.

Yes and Mark sees it in Paul and used it in his story as well. More evidence.

You would need to study taxation in Galilee and on the Lake to figure out who controlled taxation directorship and who handled it at lower levels.
You don't actually think that local people were hired to tax local people, do you?

Again,the message in the passage is very similar between Mark and Paul. Associating with the wrong person. This quibble about a taxpayer is so beyond the point?

No...... I am telling you that Mark did not source any incidents from Paul to include in the main body of his gospel, and that's easy to show because Paul never described any of them. Easy.
You are picking out the parts of the gospel that probably were not there originally.

This is where you provide evidence of your theory to show it's not a cranka-thon of crazy.

You must tell me where Paul wrote about incidents such as the Barabbas riot, or the trip through Samaria, or making a night run down to the Gadarenes by boat.... etc. No.... nothing.
.

So we know Mark is sourcing Paul and the OT. The Barabbas story is another clear marker of myth writing:
"
There are several elements in this passage alone that suggest it is surely myth, and not historical fact. For one, no Roman magistrate, let alone the infamously ruthless Pontius Pilate, would let a violent and murderous rebel go free, and most importantly, no such Roman ceremony (i.e. letting the mob choose to free a particular prisoner) is attested as ever having taken place, as we simply don’t have any Roman documentation or archeological artifact found thus far to support such a claim. Even more telling though, is the fact that this ceremony quite obviously emulates the Jewish Yom Kippur ritual, namely the scapegoat and atonement, and this apparent allegory takes place in a story that is itself about atonement (Jesus’ fundamental role as portrayed in Mark’s Gospel). Since there is quite a bit of evidence that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus’ death served to merge the sacrifices of the Passover and Yom Kippur, it is surely no coincidence that Mark appears to have done just that, by having Jesus be a Yom Kippur sacrifice during Passover.

Another interesting coincidence is the name Barabbas itself, an unusual name that means ‘Son of the Father’ in Aramaic, and Jesus is often portrayed as the ‘Son of the Father’ as well. So in this story we have two sons of the father; one released into the wild mob carrying the sins of Israel (such as murder and rebellion), effectively serving as an allegorical scapegoat (Barabbas), and the other sacrificed so his blood may atone for the sins of Israel (Jesus) — and we have one bearing the sins literally, and the other bearing the sins figuratively (just as we find in the Yom Kippur ceremony of Leviticus 16 in the Old Testament). We get further confirmation of this belief in the Epistle to the Hebrews (9-10), where we hear Jesus’ death described as the ultimate Yom Kippur atonement sacrifice. Interestingly enough, it is also implied in this part of Hebrews that Jesus’ death and resurrection would have taken place in the heavens, as that was where the most perfect atonement sacrifice would be made and where the most perfect holy temple would be for which to pour the blood of that sacrifice (another element supporting the contention that Jesus was initially believed to be a celestial deity rather than a historical person). So Mark here appears to be telling us through his own parable, to reject the sins of the Jews (notably violence and rebellion) and instead embrace the eternal salvation offered through the atonement sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Additionally, in this story, Mark seems to be pointing out how the Jews are erroneously viewing Jesus as the scapegoat, where Jesus is scorned, beaten, spat upon, crowned and pierced, and dressed in scarlet, and though Barabbas is the actual scapegoat, the Jews mistakenly embrace him instead."

Now if you were telling me that Luke used Paul for small phrases etc I would accept that, but Mark's main gospel has no Paul in it.

I've already given clear examples (like last supper) and can give several more. But you haven't debunked the ones I've given so those stand.

You mention soldiers commenting on the dead Jesus, I am not sure that Jesus died. That's how far apart you and I are on this ...

Right but I already said if you are going to bring some alternate conspiracy theory into this then provide scholarship or I seriously don't care. Abducted by aliens? Don't care.

All the proof is there for you...... just trawl through G-Mark and find a Pauline reference for every (any) of the real accounts.
It's just homework, is all.

The discussion is that the Mark gospel, as it is, is sourced from Paul. You seem to have some idea that only parts of it are true or something you keep hinting at. It's already weird that you won't simply explain this conspiracy? But I do not care about crank ideas. If you provide evidence I will at least look.
To the actual topic you responded to the samples of Mark using Paul are clear and good evidence. Whatever else you are on to I don't care and I have no interest in wading through hoops to flush out some crank theory.

Carrier cannot show that the main body of Mark was influenced by Paul, only thre 'holy' additions.

It isn't Carriers work. He's giving examples from Dykstra's paper:

• Michael Bird & Joel Willitts, Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences (T&T Clark 2011)
• David Oliver Smith, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (Resource 2011)
• Tom Dykstra, Mark: Canonizer of Paul (OCABS 2012)
• Oda Wischmeyer & David Sim, eds., Paul and Mark: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity (de Gruyter 2014)
• Eve-Marie Becker et al., Mark and Paul: For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark (de Gruyter 2014)
• Thomas Nelligan, The Quest for Mark’s Sources: An Exploration of the Case for Mark’s Use of First Corinthians (Pickwick 2015)

His article is here:
Mark's Use of Paul's Epistles • Richard Carrier

more examples:

"
Paul of course equated Jesus with both the Passover and the Yom Kippur sacrifice, both rolled into one (his death atones for all sins like the Yom Kippur, and saves us from death like the Passover lamb), even though they are months apart in the Jewish ritual calendar. And yet Mark also merges the two themes into one: having Jesus die on Passover (indeed at the very same hour as a temple sacrifice) and enact at the same time a Yom Kippur ritual (with Barabbas as the scapegoat; see OHJ, pp. 402-08).

Likewise Mark reifies Paul’s theme of a Torah-free Gospel (by use of metonymy, one feature standing in for all): Mark 7:15 says “nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them,” and in 7:19 that Jesus “declared all foods clean,” just as Paul says “I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean” (Romans 14:14) and “all food is clean” (Romans 14:20). Indeed, Mark 7 has Jesus speak of the clean and unclean, and literal washing, transferring it to a message about internal cleanness replacing literal cleanness, exactly as Paul does in Romans 14. Extending the same reasoning to every other Torah command would then form a major component of Mark’s community’s mission—which was also Paul’s.

 

[joelr]

Ha ha! Of course they agree that the supernatural is supernatural.
You need to separate the history from the supernatural.

No I said the supernatural stories are myth. Like every nation around them and every nation before them. They all had gods and demigods, some were saviors and resurrected so the members could have eternal life. All had laws and stories similar to the Bible.
They are all mythology.

A man who they called Jesus Son of the Father led a demonstration in the Temple and city which turned in to a riot. A person died in the chaos. Jesus was convicted and sentenced to death. But the people loved him so much that they clamoured for his release and the Roman Prefect felt obliged to carry out their
All in the Gospel of Mark, although later editions took out his first name.

And a dude named Bilbo went to Mt Doom to throw the one ring in lava. This is also a story I could use to claim he is real. In both cases these are just fictional stories. Sourcing them does not show they really happened.

In the second possibility Pilate agreed to take down Jesus alive and get him away. Pilate hated the Sanhedrin and all about it. I reckon he was not unpleased with the trouble in the Temple caused by Jesus. So the guards broke the other convicts' legs (a quick death) and got Jesus down..... and away..

The crank continues without evidence or even a crank source? Really?

Both accounts are in G-Mark....... if you need me to teach you about these and show you chapter and verse, then please just ask.

Wow so centuries of Christian scholarship is wrong about what Mark is trying to say and you are correct? Good luck with that.

Redirection....... straying off subject to disprove subject is not academic.

You already rejected academia and now you think you can call for academic protocol?
But it wasn't redirection. You suggested I had to prove Jesus wasn't real. I demonstrated this is a ridiculous statement because then everyone can pick fictional characters and say you have to prove they didn't exist. You already know we don't have to prove to someone who thinks Hercules existed that he didn't exist.

Supernatural Jesus?
I believe in an Historical; Jesus.

You're still mixing up history with holiness and chucking the lot out. That isn't any kind of academic quality at all.

Except we used Mark and demonstrated he didn't write a historical event but pieced together a story from other fiction. So there is no historical Jesus to be found. And I am using scholarship which you have discarded putting you in the crank group. You are using the word "history" but then ignoring what actual PhD historians have to say? which means you have no interest what is actually true but rather are invested in some crank thesis that I do not care about.

 

[joelr]

Not at all...... I simply showed that Paul didn't lead Mark all the way as you pretend.
In fact Paul led Mark hardly at all, only in a few places and I expect that these 'places' were later 'fiddlings' from clerics.....

No you walked right into it. You were busy denying Mark used other sources and focusing on Paul when you gave a quote from one of Marks other known sources. Bam.
More evidence that Mark was writing a fictional story.

 

[joelr]

This was all sent to Leroy....

We've already put the last supper to one side. Anything that Paul wrote about you can put to one side.
There is a homework for you, maybe.??
All you have to do is to trawl through G-Mark and remove any sentence that was originally written by Paul. You can also remove all OT prophecy stuff...... and what you will end up with is a real account. Obviously you have to chuck your agenda to one side and be objective.

Mark also sources OT and other fiction. He also structures the entire gospel in a ring structure and has sevral other triadic cycles.Even the miracles form a crafted sequential structure. Another literary construct that Mark employs involves the way he structured the entire Gospel, basically into four different parts: The Discipling Narrative (Chapters 1-3), The Sea Narrative (as described before, chapters 4.1-8.26), The Road Narrative (Chapters 8.27-10), and The Passover Narrative (Chapters 11-16). While there is already a brilliant internal several-layer triadic ring structure in the Sea Narrative, there is yet another chiastic ring structure surrounding it, where the Discipling Narrative and Road Narrative mirror each other around the central Sea Narrative.
It's clear that this is mythology. Events do not happen in these ways.

But Paul never did describe anything that Jesus did before the last supper........ he didn't care about anything before the last supper.

So?

Pick three incidents (previous to the last supper) that you think are total myth and I'll discuss them with you.

It's all myth. Even the crucifixion narrative is taken from the OT:

Only a few verses later, we read about the rest of the crucifixion narrative and find a link (a literary source) with the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament (OT):

Mark 15.24: “They part his garments among them, casting lots upon them.”

Psalm 22:18: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon them.”

Mark 15.29-31: “And those who passed by blasphemed him, shaking their heads and saying, ‘…Save yourself…’ and mocked him, saying ‘He who saved others cannot save himself!’ ”

Psalm 22.7-8: “All those who see me mock me and give me lip, shaking their head, saying ‘He expected the lord to protect him, so let the lord save him if he likes.’ ”

Mark 15.34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Psalm 22.1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus is in the Temple handling the Priests' interrogation of him. The account is brilliant and involves coinage. How much do you (or Michael Turton) know about the Temple coinage?
The earlier story that Jesus uses he could have learned anywhere. I don't worry about that.

Oh my gosh. This has nothing to do with temple coinage? It's excellent evidence Mark was taking stories from Paul and creating a structure?
Go here:
Mark's Use of Paul's Epistles • Richard Carrier
scroll down until you see the graph which illustrates the chiasmus. The events are statistically impossible that they are real events. This is myth writing.

Stop you (and Michael) right there! Paul telling Christians to keep within the laws of lands where they live, and Jesus stuffing Priesthood hypocrisy down its own throat are miles apart.
I certainly believe that the real reasons for the account of the coin has been lost. Jesus was really enjoying himself there and at the priesthood's expense. How much do you know about Temple coinage? I don't think that coin was a silver denarius @ 19.5 grams.... I think it was a Tyrian shekel at 20 grams.... hardly any difference to a bystander.
I would debate your Michael Tyrton about this particular incident any time. He clearly is lost on this one.

Temple coinage? Is something wrong with you? This isn't at all about that? It's about taking matching narratives and creating a structure and is how fiction is written?

Not accounts about Jesus or his followers actually did. Just religious stuff.

Rubbish.... A clear manipulation.
Mark {12:30} And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first
commandment. {12:31} And the second [is] like, [namely] this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Nothing to do with the point that Mark is sourcing Paul. And he obviously is.

Jesus just amplified the most important of 507 laws. (He had redacted the sacrificial laws..... do I need to show you?)

Matthew certainly got the real mission statement exactly right.... here:-
Matthew {5:17} Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. {5:18} For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be
fulfilled. {5:19} Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach [them,] the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew has 97% of the original Greek taken from Mark. Christian scholars acknowledge this and realize Matthew sourced Mark.
I'm going to stop answering these completely off topic answers that meander into you just preaching what you think is real with zero evidence.

 

[oldbadger]

That's called special pleading, it doesn't work when arguing that Clark Kent is historical for the same reasons, however it is your MO, it's all that you ever do.

No Luke..... you call it special pleading.
Your redirection towards Clarke Kent or anywhere else ...away from the subject matter cannot help you.

Separation of history from supernatural is no different from separating truth from fiction in a deposition or statement. The fact that the story of yogi bear (or whatever) ios a complete fiction cannot make any difference to a totally separate case.

And of course you are right when you say that's what I do my best to do.... agreed.

Now...... did you want to say something about the thread title? Or do you want to talk about, say, batman?

 

[joelr]

From material that Paul never wrote about? No.

Mark took what was in Paul's letters and made it into a last supper.
That is the point and the topic. Whatever you are on about try to focus and say something relevant.

Jresus never knew Paul.
Do you want to rethink the above?

Yes it's all fiction. The point is I am showing it's been demonstrated that Mark used Paul when writing his fiction.

I'm talking about the history behind the gospels.
I know that all you want to do is copy/paste your chosen scholars to the pages, but if you would just study the subject-matter for yourself then you might do better.

Here is a tip. Reading what historians in the NT field say IS STUDYING THE SUBJECT. I'm referencing clips to back up my statements and give you a chance for further research to make your own decision. Since you have some non-sourced crank theory and seem fine with that, and even attempt to put down others for actually attempting to become educated on the subject, I don't find you a credible or worthwhile person to engage with.

Picking scholars that suit your purpose is not academy...... really

Whoopsy, is someone upset scholars don't support your beliefs?
I follow the field. In each lecture Carrier and Ehrman give many other peers who are doing work in the field who I also follow. If someone can produce counter arguments then I'll follow that.
Christians are often hard pressed to believe that actually ALL peer-reviewed historicity work does not support the religion and always assume I must be picking and choosing. Sorry, nope.

From Thomas Thompsons work Moses and the Patriarchs in the 1970's it's all believed to be myth.

I'm not interested in Paul...... or his total lack of interest in what happened during Jesus and the Baptist's missions. I am interested in the missions of the Baptist and Jesus both..... real men, who really did exist.

Except the people saying Jesus existed are actually sourcing everything except real life. So sorry, no Jesus. Those stories are fiction.

You're still stuck on this, can see. Of course historians do not view the supernatural as natural. But the vast majority of historians agree that Jesus and the Baptist were real men who both had real missions.

You are out of sync with 'scholarship' there.

That is changing rapidly. However what historians believe is sus was a man who was mythicized. That means Mark made up fictional stories about Jesus. One line of evidence - he used Paul and other fiction as a source and wrote in only a mythic style creating a character that scores almost 100% on the Rank Ragalin mythotype scale. He is as fictional as Luke Skywalker or King Arthur.

I accept you apology, but I also have to tell you that Paul NEVER WROTE ANYTHING about the men, the mission, or the incidents.

Not an apology, it was pity. Topic is Mark is using Paul to create fiction. It's been demonstrated. Why you are all over the map with unrelated statements, I do not know?

I feel very confident in believing that you are what I call a myther..... desperate to trash every part of the gospels. But you cannot..... You cannot trash the Baptist's story, nor that of Jesus who picked up and carried the mission after the Baptist's arrest.

But you are also confident in theories without evidence and thinks it's wrong to follow scholarship.
Again you make assumptions to try to rescue your beliefs.
I don't care about mythicism. Just evidence. It doesn't matter if a historian is a mythicist or historist, they BOTH BELIEVE THE DEMIGOD STORIES ARE FICTION.
All stories about Jesus are myth. I have been demonstrating that Mark is using Paul and other sources to construct fiction. (you don;t need sources to tell real history) and he's writing in mythic language.
I have shown this.
You saying "you cannot" after I've given a mountain of evidence which you couldn't even debunk a little is typical. After being faced with excellent evidence you just go into denial mode.
Ok, whatever?
Anyways, Mark is one big myth.

The fact that a few of Paul's sentences (and lots of OT prophecies) somehow got knitted in to the Jesus story does not kill the basic story.

You just need to become your own investigator.

What kills the basic story is that they come from Mark which is fiction.
The Hellenistic dying/rising savior comes from older mythologies and the original OT is also re-using old myths. This is all made up stories with parables and lessons on life.
So I'm the one sourcing Richard Carrier, Ehrman, Thmpson, Mark Goodacre, multiple papers on the subject all by different scholars and you think I need to be my own investigator?
I also mentioned listening to every debate by historians vs apologists and other scholars.....meanwhile you produced ZERO sources for your ideas and you suggest I investigate?????

See this is the cognitive dissonance that happens with religion. You literally cannot see what's going on around you if it doesn't support your beliefs.

 

[joelr]

Richard Carrier by Wiki:-

He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works.[2] Carrier's methodology and conclusions in this field have proven controversial and unconvincing to specialists,[3][4][5] and he and his theories are often identified as "fringe".

Ah....... so that's what a 'peer reviewed' scholar looks like.

Oopsy, you didn't look into your quote? What you were responding to was Marks use of Paul and Carrier was using works by other scholars:

• Michael Bird & Joel Willitts, Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts and Convergences (T&T Clark 2011)
• David Oliver Smith, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul: The Influence of the Epistles on the Synoptic Gospels (Resource 2011)
• Tom Dykstra, Mark: Canonizer of Paul (OCABS 2012)
• Oda Wischmeyer & David Sim, eds., Paul and Mark: Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity (de Gruyter 2014)
• Eve-Marie Becker et al., Mark and Paul: For and Against Pauline Influence on Mark (de Gruyter 2014)
• Thomas Nelligan, The Quest for Mark’s Sources: An Exploration of the Case for Mark’s Use of First Corinthians (Pickwick 2015)

But since that Wiki page was written (it's old) many Historians are agreeing with Carriers work on mythicism. Now, it still doesn't matter because the quote made by Daniel Gullotta was about mythicism. Cullotta is another historian who believes the bible is a myth. He just thinks Jesus was a man and that is what he was talking about in the quote.
An Atheist in God’s Country - Proof he is atheist

But he believes Jesus was a man which is why he made that quote about Carrier's book. So this doesn't help you but does show you are quick to copy-paste without really understanding what you are doing.
You did accuse me of something similar but this really shows you value truth very little and are just working with an agenda.

Now since a historian had a complaint I wanted to know why and carefully read Carrier's response because I want to know what is true.
Here Carrier writes an essay about the review and deals with each point. I find Carrier made his case.
This is called "investigation" and you might try it out sometime.

Carrier's reply:
On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review • Richard Carrier


"Gullotta is at least honest. Unlike most critics of OHJ, he actually did read at least some of OHJ as he claimed (though he clearly skipped parts, which resulted in some humorous errors in his review), and he didn’t resort to outright lies about what the book says or any of the pertinent facts. Indeed, apart from some errors in reading my arguments—where he didn’t read the book, or gets my arguments wrong, or forgets what they were (and thus does mildly deceive some readers)—his only failing, top to bottom, is in being phenomenally illogical. Every argument he makes, makes no logical sense. He never explains why anything he says should increase the probability of historicity. He does not even seem to know how one increases the probability of a historical claim at all. We are left with no idea why anything he says should alter my conclusion that the odds Jesus existed are at best 1 in 3."

 

[oldbadger]

Not even close. I follow what the consensus of scholarship says. But if there are issues under debate I always listen to both sides.

Both sides? In the HJ debate there are several sides. clearly you were not attending.

I also listen to non-scholarship apologetics debate scholars often. If they had any type of convincing evidence that would be great. They do not.

That is a very odd mindset. Why don't you just look at what evidence is offered, rather than needing to lean on Ad-Hominem deliveries.
You clearly don't understand what Ad-Hominem delivery is...... it is all about 'I am right because of who am!'

No.... joelr...... Good evidence counts wherever and however it arrives.

Now I will also bet. That you fully trust scholarship and expect scholarships full effort when you take medicine, fly in a plane, use medical equipment, drive cars, you expect all these are safety checked by the highest educated in safety and all other related procedures. But somehow history and archeology and comparative religion and literature can't get it right? Doubt it.

That is your totally prejudiced mind working there.
Whatever you just bet you lost, through typical presumption.
Medicine fed my (late) wife pregnant wife an epileptic drug that deformed her third child, and then covered up the horror from 1977 until 2017... too late for my wife to learn that it was nothing wrong with her.
My uncle died in a fighter aircraft accident after failure.
My renal stent has failed and needs to be removed.
My Sunbeam Rapier windscreen exploded twice because of the vehicle's design failures.

You see? Every time you try to apply your very strange certainties yiou fall flat on your face.

Your evidence for a mythical Jesus (and Baptist?) is as weak as your peripheral arguments.
You have tried to show that because a few lines from Paul's letter align with a few verses from Mark's Gospel that the whole book is a myth, which is surely the result of poor study on your part. Don't blame fringe scholars for your errors, Joelr.... your inability to show that the Baptist, or Jesus, or much of what they both did is myth is because you have failed.... no good pointing at a couple of scholar and screaming about how 'peer reviewed' they are. That key doesn't work for you.

I super do not care about a created fantasy world. Provide evidence or this is Qnon conspiracy.

Because you do not care you have never bothered to get down and do some work on all of this.
Individual Investigation beats Institutional Indoctrination every time.
Do some research for yourself, I suggrest.

First this is not from Carrier but from the 5 papers sourced on the subject. And just throwing denial around is saying nothing. All I'm seeing is that this bothers you that Mark sourced Paul. The examples are numerous and give excellent evidence and you have not debunked any of them.

Yes and Mark sees it in Paul and used it in his story as well. More evidence.

All you have relied upon is Carrier.... like a lifebelt, and your list of other researchers featured an Anglican Christian amongst them...... that destroyed your idea that 'all is myth' straight away.

Again,the message in the passage is very similar between Mark and Paul. Associating with the wrong person. This quibble about a taxpayer is so beyond the point?

You don't know anything about the point, joelr, you never studied any of the points.
What you don't .... cannot know is that the Temple coin was a total insult to the whole Jewish people, featuring a hated heathen God, graven images and the inscription of Caesar all over it..... and the priesthood had been ripping off the working people for decades with their corrupt coin exchange system, their condemning of people's own sacrifices, the rip offs (for bed and board) all around the city and the priesthood's following heathen Gods, disinterest in the poor laws and sucking up to the Roman controllers. Why did you think that the Baptist was offering cleansing and redemption thru ducking in the Jordan 'for nothing'?

You have not studied any of this....... your cherry-picked scholars cannot help you.

This is where you provide evidence of your theory to show it's not a cranka-thon of crazy.

Stop you right there.
You haven't offered any evidence to show that Mark's Gospel is all myth. You've offered a few ideas about the resurrection, or what some soldier said at the cross, etc..... all evangelical edits imo..... and then insist that the whole lot is myth.

And now you call my work a 'crankathon of crazy'. As your argument has failed, so do your insults increase.

You need to review your whole approach to the history of early 1st century Palestine and esp Galilee....... I don't think that you know anything. Honestly.

So we know Mark is sourcing Paul and the OT. The Barabbas story is another clear marker of myth writing:
"
There are several elements in this passage alone that suggest it is surely myth, and not historical fact. For one, no Roman magistrate, let alone the infamously ruthless Pontius Pilate, would let a violent and murderous rebel go free, and most importantly, no such Roman ceremony (i.e. letting the mob choose to free a particular prisoner) is attested as ever having taken place, as we simply don’t have any Roman documentation or archeological artifact found thus far to support such a claim. Even more telling though, is the fact that this ceremony quite obviously emulates the Jewish Yom Kippur ritual, namely the scapegoat and atonement, and this apparent allegory takes place in a story that is itself about atonement (Jesus’ fundamental role as portrayed in Mark’s Gospel). Since there is quite a bit of evidence that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus’ death served to merge the sacrifices of the Passover and Yom Kippur, it is surely no coincidence that Mark appears to have done just that, by having Jesus be a Yom Kippur sacrifice during Passover.

Stop you there...... who wrote that?
Pilate held the Prefect's seat for many years until recalled.
I can certainly see why he would have released a convict on a Pardon at a major feast if a huge mass of people were clamouring for his release.
Obviously you don't realise just how many visitors attended a major feast. And even the most horrid Prefect would wanmt to keep the crowd on side.

Pilate really disliked the Sanhedrin and Temple ..all. And embarrassing episodes for the priesthood probably entertained him somewhat.
You keep trying to marry previous incidents with gospel incidents to show that they are made up........ No. History can often repeat itself.

The name Barabbas is even more amazing than you pretend, because that man's first name was Jesus. Jesus Son of the Father. Maybe the real Jesus fits that account better than the convicted executed one? I have often wondered.

A Jesus Son of the Father, who was aggressively against Temple corruption (true), who declared 'mercy before sacrifice!' (true) who encourage his men to arm themselves before Jerusalem (true) who went in to the Temple and created so much mayhem (true) that someone died (claimed) who was convicted, sentenced (true) but who was so loved by the people, scorres and scores opf thousanmds of people (claimed) that Pilate decided that it would be a very good idea to publicly pardon him (claimed). And why did Christians (like Cephas who Paul often quarreled with) insist on keeping this account in the bible, and account which DID NOT HELP the desired ending? Because they felt that they had to.

But the name Jesus was then removed from later bibles and the name written in Eastern Aramaic (which Romans would not have known).

Wake up to the possibilities, joelr...... but you ideas are like your hero scholar..... fringe ideas.


All weak stuff...,.,., too easy to debunk.

 

[joelr]

Arainus was born 400+ after the Alexander the Grate was supposedly born. But obviously Arrianus was making up a story (science fiction type stories) about an awesome man with grate military skills and he just invented his battles and his victories against various other nations.

His book Campaigns of Alexander if fool of “fights because the Gods where angy” “oracles” “references to Homer” “references for other legends” references to Socrates etc. exactly what we would expect from a mythical character.

For example



A clear reference to Socrates and his quote know that I know nothing

If you look at the article there is massive evidence that he was a real person both from historians and archeology.
But any larger than life actions are examples of him being mytholocized.

"Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mould of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures."
"Alexander's legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism."

Even granting a historical Jesus we have clear cases also of cutural diffusion, religious syncretism and even euhemerization.
This point about Alexander actually backs that up even better and makes what most historians believe even more likely - that Jesus was mythicized into a demigod through religious syncretism, cultural diffusion and probably euhemerization.

Alexander had a straightforward life. We have records of his childhood, schooling then he went to war.

Jesus is a Rank Ragalin hero mythotype of which none have ever actually existed.
Here is the Rank-Raglan hero class to demonstrate the point:

1. The hero’s mother is a virgin.
2. His father is a king or the heir of a king.
3. The circumstances of his conception are unusual.
4. He is reputed to be the son of a god.
5. An attempt is made to kill him when he is a baby.
6. To escape which he is spirited away from those trying to kill him.
7. He is reared in a foreign country by one or more foster parents.
8. We are told nothing of his childhood.
9. On reaching manhood, he returns to his future kingdom.
10. He is crowned, hailed, or becomes king.
11. He reigns uneventfully (i.e. without wars or national catastrophes.
12. He prescribes laws.
13. He then loses favor with the gods or his subjects.
14. He is driven from the throne or city.
15. He meets with a mysterious death.
16. He dies atop a hill or high place.
17. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
18. His body turns up missing.
19. Yet he still has one or more holy sepulchers (in fact or fiction)
20. Before taking a throne or a wife, he battles and defeats a great adversary (such as a king, giant, dragon, or wild beast).
21. His parents are related to each other.
22. He marries a queen or princess related to his predecessor.
    
    

The fifteen people who scored more than half of these twenty-two features (in decreasing order) were:

1. Oedipus (21 features)
2. Moses (20 features)
3. Jesus (20 features)
4. Theseus (19 features)
5. Dionysus (19 features)
6. Romulus (18 features)
7. Perseus (17 features)
8. Hercules (17 features)
9. Zeus (15 features)
10. Bellerophon (14 features)
11. Jason (14 features)
12. Osiris (14 features)
13. Pelops (13 features)
14. Asclepius (12 features)
15. Joseph [i.e. the son of Jacob] (12 feaures)

Every single one was euhemerized - had a fictional story set on Earth written about them. None were real.

 

[joelr]

That is a very odd mindset. Why don't you just look at what evidence is offered, rather than needing to lean on Ad-Hominem deliveries.
You clearly don't understand what Ad-Hominem delivery is...... it is all about 'I am right because of who am!'

My recent study was the debates between Carrier and Mike Licona.

\Licona's apologetics were illogical. "Well I disagree so let;s move on".
Carrier provided evidence Licona offered faith and opinion. HE lost to actual evidence. I am interested in what is true.

No.... joelr...... Good evidence counts wherever and however it arrives.

I have been providing evidence, you have not. All you have been offering is opinion. You failed to debunk the examples (there are many more) and continue to only offer opinion.

That is your totally prejudiced mind working there.
Whatever you just bet you lost, through typical presumption.
Medicine fed my (late) wife pregnant wife an epileptic drug that deformed her third child, and then covered up the horror from 1977 until 2017... too late for my wife to learn that it was nothing wrong with her.
My uncle died in a fighter aircraft accident after failure.
My renal stent has failed and needs to be removed.
My Sunbeam Rapier windscreen exploded twice because of the vehicle's design failures.

You see? Every time you try to apply your very strange certainties yiou fall flat on your face.

Nope, I didn't fall flat at all. Actually you have proven my point.
So you do trust the medical field and professionals in each field.
Yes medical issues still happen, vehicles still crash. But does that mean that we should take medicine from amateur unschooled amateurs or fly in planes built by amateurs? No. There would be far more harmful incidents. I'm sure you and yours have also used the medical field and vehicles MANY MANY times and were successful and safe. Try going back to the middle ages for medical treatment.
Pointing out accidents does not negate the fact that we still look to scholarship as our best bet for knowledge. In fact I bet you still use modern medicine and still use modern technology created by the best academia in the fields. I have had harm from scripts. Big time. Prescription meds are still better than going to a hobbyist chemist and asking them to put together a new untested med for some disorder based on his best speculation.
Or surgery from a guy who reads medical books.
I never said it was certain, you put the words in my mouth. I said it's out best approximation at truth.
Do I have to school you every single time?

Your evidence for a mythical Jesus (and Baptist?) is as weak as your peripheral arguments.
You have tried to show that because a few lines from Paul's letter align with a few verses from Mark's Gospel that the whole book is a myth, which is surely the result of poor study on your part. Don't blame fringe scholars for your errors, Joelr.... your inability to show that the Baptist, or Jesus, or much of what they both did is myth is because you have failed.... no good pointing at a couple of scholar and screaming about how 'peer reviewed' they are. That key doesn't work for you.

I started with a small amount of evidence. You debunked zero of it.
The papers on Mark using Paul are not fringe scholars. They are however full of endless examples of Mark sourcing and using mythic devices. The few we covered you didn't come close to explaining.
Even the crucifixion narrative using Psalm you didn't even mention.

Now you make another error by saying I said because a few lines in Paul match Mark all Mark is myth. Wrong. There are way more than few, there are dozens. Then dozens of others not yet given. So we can see a large number of literary sources that Mark merely re-wrote for his fiction, a large number of parallels with other sources, many strange coincidences and other implausibilities, and most impressively several intricately crafted literary structures (some interwoven into others and/or several layers in complexity) and other literary devices that obviously served some overall literary purpose that Mark was trying to accomplish.

Again, you continue to deny with no evidence?

Also it isn't a "small amount of scholars" the entire field believes that the supernatural gospel Jesus is a myth. They are correct.

Because you do not care you have never bothered to get down and do some work on all of this.
Individual Investigation beats Institutional Indoctrination every time.
Do some research for yourself, I suggrest.

I though hinting at it would do but you seem to enjoy being schooled.
I am the one reading book after book and listening to debate after debate while you sit around with opinions and assumptions without researching. You clearly have no evidence to back your claims yet feel free to suggest others do research.
I'm sourcing all sorts of scholarship while you just give opinion yet keep whining for me to investigate. Yet that's exactly what I'm doing and you are not.Even worse is you are making claims I've never even heard Christains make yet you haven't sourced your ideas once? Crank.

All you have relied upon is Carrier.... like a lifebelt, and your list of other researchers featured an Anglican Christian amongst them...... that destroyed your idea that 'all is myth' straight away.

Are you dizzy? Have I not sourced Bart Ehrman, 5 different scholars on the Mark/Paul issue and mentioned debates with Mike Licona and others. Now you are telling lies.

You don't know anything about the point, joelr, you never studied any of the points.
What you don't .... cannot know is that the Temple coin was a total insult to the whole Jewish people, featuring a hated heathen God, graven images and the inscription of Caesar all over it..... and the priesthood had been ripping off the working people for decades with their corrupt coin exchange system, their condemning of people's own sacrifices, the rip offs (for bed and board) all around the city and the priesthood's following heathen Gods, disinterest in the poor laws and sucking up to the Roman controllers. Why did you think that the Baptist was offering cleansing and redemption thru ducking in the Jordan 'for nothing'?

You have not studied any of this....... your cherry-picked scholars cannot help you.

First you haven't explained how this means Mark wasn't using Paul?
Second you failed to give a source.

Stop you right there.
You haven't offered any evidence to show that Mark's Gospel is all myth. You've offered a few ideas about the resurrection, or what some soldier said at the cross, etc..... all evangelical edits imo..... and then insist that the whole lot is myth.

No you just haven't looked at the evidence. The examples I gave all stand. There are many many more. Then there is the literary structure which is all mythic. Then there is the main character scoring almost 100 on the Rank Ragalin mythotype scale. Then there are the parables and events which never happen in life but always happen in fiction. Then there are the Pagan dying /rising demigods who were saviors of the world and pre-date Jesus.
I see you will just stay in denial mode because there is one thing you do not do - investigate.

And now you call my work a 'crankathon of crazy'. As your argument has failed, so do your insults increase.

Like I showed, you were unable to debunk the examples I gave. Shall we see more?
Your ideas you presented about some alternate Christianity, yes that sounds like crank. So what you do is present scholarship to show it's not. I'm waiting? Instead of complaining, demonstrate it's not crank. Go.

You need to review your whole approach to the history of early 1st century Palestine and esp Galilee....... I don't think that you know anything. Honestly.

Just what is accepted in the PhD biblical historicity field from Carrier, Ehrman, Mark Goodacre, R Purvoe, Thoman Thompson, Elaine Pagels, JD Crossman, Price, comparative mythology professor Joseph Campbell and others
Or do you mean I should go to church, listen to amateurs give revisionist history then I'll know the truth? Or is it a crank conspiracy theory that you hint at? Is that the one that makes one "know something"?

Stop you there...... who wrote that?
Pilate held the Prefect's seat for many years until recalled.

more opinion vs the fact
"as we simply don’t have any Roman documentation or archeological artifact found thus far to support such a claim."

nope looks more like myth

The name Barabbas is even more amazing than you pretend, because that man's first name was Jesus. Jesus Son of the Father.

Yes a coincidence taht looks like a fictional narrative.

But the name Jesus was then removed from later bibles and the name written in Eastern Aramaic (which Romans would not have known).

Wake up to the possibilities, joelr...... but you ideas are like your hero scholar..... fringe ideas.

Provide evidence for your claims or I'm just not responding to crank. I'm tired of smashing you.

All weak stuff...,.,., too easy to debunk.

Feel free. So far you've just put forth unsourced fringe crank theories and complete opinion. Mark wrote fiction. As usual you cannot debunk this except with denial and self applause. Your basis for believing in mythology is denial of actual facts. Ok, whatever works for you?

 

[joelr]

But he makes a living out of denying the historicity of Jesus, which means that he is a highly biased source, I personally don’t think is a big of deal…..but if you reject the bible because “the authors are biased” you should apply the same standard with all biased sources.

NO, he was paid to use his PhD to do a proper Jesus historicity study. His findings after 7 years simply are what they are. He actively debates other scholars and has been bugging Ehrman for years to do a debate because he wants to know the historical truth. Carrier is bias to truth.

His lectures mostly just feature other PhD works and he references them as he goes. The standards in the field are Christainity is a myth.
Carrier wants someone to debunk his ideas.

He had a great debate with scholar Dennis McDonald about historicity and McDonald has some interesting ideas

But none of them believe in the myths. You are making assumptions about a scholar that are wildly inaccurate and seem to be based in some strange ideas that Carrier is some fringe scholar?
Almost all of his work is based on previous scholarship.

I have seen his debates, and to me he is using rhetoric and making very wild interpretations.

I find this extremely hard to believe. Give me an example. I find Carrier to be the most scientific and level-headed and not bound by University politics. Give me one example. He has the Bible memorized as well as all other relevent stories and documents from the time and always backs up his claims with solid scholarship and facts.

If Jesus didn’t existed, then why is it that we don’t have any early source describing early Christians as a sect that worship a man that never existed?..........early Christians are mentioned in dozens of ancient documents, why is it that nobody mentioned the religion is based on a man that never existed?

All religions with a euhemerized God/demigod feature gods that lived on Earth for a time. There are many examples. None were real.
But even by the time of Paul the myth was he already ascended to heaven.
40 years after there were rumblings about a Jewish savior being around an actual highly educated writer tried his hand at fiction. He used Paul's letters, OT and other narratives to create an excellent story with expert level myth writing.
It was the Bronze Age. Like all other religions, people start hearing stories about a savior, eternal life, forgiveness of sins, they start going to group meetings. There they learn about Jesus from Mark or one of the 40 gospels eventually written by the early 2nd century.
Jesus ascended before Paul and Mark wasn't for 40 years later. So everyone had to go on these stories. Just like people do now?

We then have dozens of groups (like you would expect if it was made up) with radically different stories:

Some of the major movements were:

• Gnosticism – second to fourth centuries – reliance on revealed knowledge from an unknowable God, a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world. The Gnostics claimed to have received secret teachings (gnosis) from Jesus via other apostles which were not publicly known, or in the case of Valentinius from Paul the Apostle. Gnosticism is predicated on the existence of such hidden knowledge, but brief references to private teachings of Jesus have also survived in the canonic scripture (Mark 4:11) as did warning by the Christ that there would be false prophets or false teachers. Irenaeus' opponents also claimed that the wellsprings of divine inspiration were not dried up, which is the doctrine of continuing revelation.[citation needed]
• Marcionism – second century – the God of Jesus was a different God from the God of the Old Testament.
• Montanism – second century – a pentecostal movement initiated by Montanus and his female disciples, featuring prophetic continuing revelations from the Holy Spirit.
• Adoptionism – second century – Jesus was not born the Son of God, but was adopted at his baptism, resurrection or ascension.
• Docetism – second to third century – Jesus was pure spirit and his physical form an illusion.
• Sabellianism – third century – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of the one God and not the three separate persons of the Trinity.
• Arianism – third to fourth century – Jesus, while not merely mortal, was not eternally divine and was of some lesser status than God the Father.[note 1]

In the middle of the second century, the Christian communities of Rome, for example, were divided between followers of Marcion, Montanism, and the gnostic teachings of Valentinus.



That is some serious confusion. One group even said he was just a spirit. Some said he was different from Yahweh. Each new gospel written gathered a new group of people who obviously had never seen Jesus, no one had because he already ascended to heaven when Paul heard of him! It was always just taken on faith.
There were dissenters. The period after Paul is a complete blackout historically. This is a known thing in history circles. Anyone who documented that there probably never was a Jesus, once the church came into power 3 centuries later anything negative was destroyed and punishable by death. We have a suspicious lack of any material that questions any of this.

But Krishna never existed? There are Hindu women today who claim they love Lord Krishna and he loves them and they wish they could marry him. For real.
Thomas Thompson's PhD work in the 1970's definitvely demonstrated Moses and the Patriarchs were myth. No one in the OT is claiming Moses didn't exist. People are given stories and they believe and follow them as history.