Once again, you have failed to deal with the number of basic errors you have made on the bottom of
this page, nor have you demonstrated that anything I said concerning our interactions in this thread (three posts ago, I believe) were false.
This is the crap I have to put up with.
You put up with it because it is all you have given.
I challenged you to quote me because the notion that I said the gospels weren't used until the fourth century is a complete fabrication on your part.
I can retreive Einstein's general theory of relativity and by all accounts you would discount it for coming from a website.
There is a fatal flaw in your analogy. Einstein was a genius, an expert in his field and the originator of the theory of relativity. If we were discussing that theory, and you used a website which quoted or referenced Einstein, we would have a good place to start a discussion from.
Your websites do not deal with the mass of scholarship or the scholars who argue for the historical Jesus. They do not cite experts nor do they reference their works. So your analogy doesn't work at all.
Your repeated fallacious logic of shooting the messanger is nausiating and exposes your lack of ability to address what is stated. You're consistently preoccupied with the method of transmitting information, in this case by way of websites as if anything found on the internet is somehow tainted.
Not everything. However, your website citations are hardly a representative sample of websites on Jesus.
My issue with your use of websites is the following:
1. You have consistently demonstrated through your errors that you can't tell the good websites from the bad
2. I have demonstrated that their are serious issues in the websites you cite (for example, the one that argues Mark relied wholly on the OT argues dependence based on next to nothing, and in another site you reference the guy can't recognize basic greek syntactical structure).
3. As I said above, your websites fail to address arguments put forth by scholarship.
4. You haven't actually even researched this topic through the internet. If you had shown that you have read a variety of websites from different points of view (especially ones that cite scholarship, demonstrate familiarity with the topic, and aren't full of errors) you would at least be in a better position.
5. Any one can put up websites, but academic publishers are very selective about what they will publish (i.e. if it contains numerous errors, like your websites do it won't be published), so if you can't point to any scholarship in agreement your points your arguments are weak
You are misrepresenting what I said here (although, in all fairness, I did exaggerate), and conflating two seperate critiques of your analysis of the evolution of gospel acceptance and dissemination. The less important one has to do with the 4th century:
the Jesus of the gospels was a late first century developement that didn't gain prominence until the 2nd century, and total dominance until the 4th.
The four gospels were prominent from the first, and your comment about total dominance is wrong because the 4 gospels were NEVER accepted as
totally dominant (ask the mormons) but they were dominant long BEFORE the 4th century.
However, the more important part of my critique of your analysis is this comment:
Still waiting for evidence that anyone actually read the gospels in the first century. We hear all about how fast Christianity grew yet this evidence draws a blank.
The gospels were widely read as soon as they were written, as I demonstrated not only by discussing textual criticism but also numerous quotations of people or texts which date to the 1st century.
And this crap about me not knowing Acts was written by the same author as Luke, where does that come from?
That is easily answered:
.Acts is a work of second century myth making which conflicts with Paul's writings in an attempt to smooth over the conflicts between Paul and other apostles of his day.
Luke/Acts formed to volumes of the same work, and Luke's gospel is dated to the 80s. Yet you claim Acts was written in the second century. So either you didn't know they were written by the same author, or (even worse) you are arguing Luke wrote the second volume 30-40 years later when he was almost certainly dead (Luke was probably not present during Jesus' mission, but he was present decades before he wrote acts).
Also the nonsense that you repeatedly harp on about me quoting Crossan to prove Jesus was not historical which is as stupid as it gets on your part. I quoted Crossan to point out the references to Hebrew scripture that the gospel writers made use of. You can't even follow the discussion.
No, you can't follow my points. I never said you misquoted Crossan; you misrepresented him. I asked you to provide citations from scholars who argue that Mark relied ENTIRELY (or almost entirely) on the gospels, and you quoted Crossan and Mack in support of your argument, neither of whom agree with it (again, ALL scholars argue that the gospels referenced the OT and used it, NONE argue that Mark entirely based his gospel on it).
I further pointed out that the only two scholars you have managed to cite argue that Jesus was historical and that we can know quite a bit about him. This was not to refute your specific point above (I already did) just to point out that you have still failed to cite any scholarship from experts who argue Jesus wasn't historical.
How can you be taken seriously?
Because I (unlike you) have read enormous amounts of primary and secondary material on the subject.
I will make use of websites for what is specifically stated, and I would expect anyone with half a brain to address what is stated rather than criticize the page because it's electronically sourced. _
I did address them. And all of the above points I made about your website selection apply to this remark too.
