The Historical Jesus vs. the historical...?

[Bunyip]

Legion

It isn't true, and never was. It can be useful.


It fails to describe everything and anything

So what? It doesn't need to describe everything.

I didn't say pi equals 3.141 to any number of decimal places, I sad "equal to". Do you understand what "equal" means?

Yes.

Does pi= 3.141 or not?

Yes pi is 3.141

No. It doesn't. It's an approximation, and it is not correct: pi does not equal 3 or 3.1 or 3.14159265357932384626433832789 (I'm using memory here so that may be off a bit).

It is correct. Pi equals 3.141 is correct to three decimal places.


Back to the OP though, can you identify any members who have relied upon the position you describe in the OP?[/QUOTE]

 

[Bunyip]

Every post you have made has been of this sort. You have indicated so complete a lack of ancient history you couldn't tell the difference between a translators collected works of Tacitus and something Tacitus actually wrote, and you quoted the translator thinking you had quoted Tacitus. You've repeatedly compared evidence that you don't understand and revealed over and over again that you have no clue how evidence is understood by real historians as opposed to those who first claim to be historians, then to have majored in history, than experts in espionage, than to have nothing more than a political science degree (as you have). I'm not interested in your contributions here (or really anywhere) and thus intend to ignore you responses to a thread I want real answers to, not your obvious biases, lies, and so forth. Go continue to complain about moderators whose treatment of your posts are far more decent than deserved.

No Legion, as I have pointed out to you so many times - I have no such certainty and have made no such claims. Which is why you have retreated to personaL attacks yet again - attacks that you have posted dozens and dozens of times before when logic and your memory failed you.

What you seem unable to grasp is that every time you repeat the same silly digs it demonstrates your intellectual limitations, not mine.

 

[Prophet]

Wow! They have to intentionally intellectually stunt themselves intellectually do they? Gosh, that sounds painful.

I mistyped. You, on the other hand, to your discredit repeatedly misspell such difficult words as piDgeon and CEAsar.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

No Legion, as I have pointed out to you so many times - I have no such certainty and have made no such claims..

I'm more concerned with your basic familiarity of introductory logic, basic inference, and really any field of academia. After all, you were the one to make claims about Nero's intelligence agencies, to make your misuse of terms from mathematics, and to make the laughable claim that classical physics (named so only because it is wrong) is correct. Your capacity to analyze historical evidence is little better, as you have claimed Tacitus made statements in a work he never wrote and based upon your quote-mining of a source that so utterly demonstrates you inability to understand historical methods you couldn't distinguish the translator from Tacitus.

 

[redpolk]

The point of this thread is the continuation of the forcible and violent debate equivalent of annihilation that Legion has been waging on the forum's vast supply of denialist imbeciles like Bunyip that has been going on for the better part of of a season over five or so threads. This is a point I unabashedly support.

For the benefit of a newcomer with now idea what the debate is about,could you enlighten me?What are the denialists denying?What is the point you support?

 

[oldbadger]

It shows that every single argument made by Jesus deniers has been made before by all manner of denialist platform. Some are forced into such a corner by their beliefs that they must intentionally intellectually stunt themselves intellectually in order to perpetuate a belief they are much too fond of. This is true of evolution deniers, Holocaust deniers, and historical Jesus deniers.

What a muddled and befuddled idea.
Now, for our enlightenment and further joy, please tell us your opinion about HJ. How much of the HJ story in the synoptic gospels is historically accurate in your opinion? Which parts of the story are not historically true, in your opinion?

 

[oldbadger]

No, that is precisely my point. My comparison is not flawed, putting the stamp of historicity on Jesus with only minimal supporting data (and much of that questionable) is what is flawed. I've said it before, my work was much more difficult, much more uncomfortable, much more dangerous than that of most scientists. My major professor even named a unit of measure after me, it was described as the maximum amount of energy that could be expended by a single human to obtain a single data point. But no one gave me a break, no one said, "oh that's too hard, you only need enough data to make it to 0.85." That didn't happen. What I see with respect to Jesus is basically lowering the bar, because if the bar was kept at its normal height, the field would disappear.
Better to do your research in the real world, IMHO.

Good points imo.

Not enough kindling to get the blase going, no contemporaneous cross references, even what there is from a couple of generations after his alleged is open to question and has authentication issues, etc. Just not enough surviving information that can be stretched to appear to refer to a Jesus figure.
And then there's the asinine statement that I've seen in this forum that Jesus must be an historical figure because there is more data to support that than to deny it!

I don't think that the hearsay of J's mission, passed down over, say, 35-40 years to G-Mark has to be totally rubbish. So I still value G-Mark, whilst accepting the massive % of hyperbole and evangelistic exaggeration that most certainly exists within it.

Since the translations available to the Lay are clearly accepted by the academics, I don't really want the academics to tell me what I must make of it all..... the story is so faint, as you have already shown, that it comes down to personal opinion, and for Christians it comes down to their faith, I guess.

Where some Christians will rant heatedly in favour of 'all true', I do suspect some others who, for some motive or other, rant heatedly in favour of 'all ruibbish'. I don't want to be influenced by either, really.

 

[allfoak]

Here is the best part of this whole argument..
The historicity of Jesus is irrelevant to the message of the Gospels.

 

[oldbadger]

For the benefit of a newcomer with now idea what the debate is about,could you enlighten me?What are the denialists denying?What is the point you support?

Hi redpolk...... Most of the others are scholars of one degree or other. Please let me, a layman, give you my view of HJ debates.
Outside of religion, faith, atheism, agonosticism etc...... in a purely secular way, we are debating the historicity of Jesus, meaning that we are mostly arguing fiercely about how much of the Jesus story can be shown as 'true'. On average, the scholarly consensus of opinion is that Jesus was definitely baptised by John the Baptist, involved in a Temple dispute, arrested, and executed.

My own opinion is that more than that is probable, but that his execution is in doubt.

If you read this and previous HJ debnates you will see just how furious they can become.

 

[oldbadger]

Here is the best part of this whole argument..
The historicity of Jesus is irrelevant to the message of the Gospels.

Oh.... absolutely true.
Jesus real life is irrelevant to the message of the Gospels. Saul/Paul was quite disinterested in J's life and mission, and you could write his mentionings of J's activities on half of an envelope.

 

[Prophet]

For the benefit of a newcomer with now idea what the debate is about,could you enlighten me?What are the denialists denying?What is the point you support?

I apologize if our squabble is getting in the way. Legion and I are both making points that accuse the Jesus mythers/deniers of making their arguments sound reasonable through rhetoric which erodes at the foundations of history and science with selective radical skepticism. Rather than attempting to submit any kind of theory which explains the evidence we are left with, what they typically submit are denials. In the case of Jesus deniers, rather than dealing with the evidence, they deny its legitimacy on whatever technicality they can muster. Let's rule out Pauline testimony, because he wasn't contemporary by some insane definition of contemporary (a distinction that is a red herring, EVEN if it were true). Let's rule out Tacitus, a Roman historian hostile to Christians (which increases value in source criticism), because one of our esteemed members is an expert on ancient spycraft and he's got something to say that you must accept on his invented authority.

But more so than this:

If Jesus didn't exist, we'd have to explain the origins of the Jesus movement without the most important component of such movements: a founder. We'd also have to explain how a Jewish movement persecuted by other Jews was hated and persecuted by the non-Jewish populous and who espoused a belief that was scandalous and heretical to other Jews and atheism for gentiles somehow sprang into existence as worshipping messianic figure who wasn't messianic nor an historical figure, only to then have several authors write biographical texts situating the founder of the non-Jewish, non-Gentile, & non-Christian Jesus movement and decided to invent historical fiction only to have this genre immediately understood as a biographical depiction of a real person (whose brother Josephus mentions and whose brother Paul knew). Basically, we'd have to explain why a Jewish sect arose around a mythical. messianic figure despite the fact that the messiah was supposed to restore Israel (and not be some pagan-like being), and then suddenly changed to the worship of a person who was said to have lived and died while people reading the synoptics (and probably John) were still alive. We have contradictions in both directions (the appearance of the movement without a founder and the switch from a belief in a non-Jewish pagan-like deity fulfilling a fundamentally Jewish role into suddenly not just an historical figure but one who had just recently been crucified).

 

[redpolk]

Hi redpolk...... Most of the others are scholars of one degree or other. Please let me, a layman, give you my view of HJ debates.
Outside of religion, faith, atheism, agonosticism etc...... in a purely secular way, we are debating the historicity of Jesus, meaning that we are mostly arguing fiercely about how much of the Jesus story can be shown as 'true'. On average, the scholarly consensus of opinion is that Jesus was definitely baptised by John the Baptist, involved in a Temple dispute, arrested, and executed.

My own opinion is that more than that is probable, but that his execution is in doubt.

If you read this and previous HJ debnates you will see just how furious they can become.

Thanks.I'm inclined to accept the scholarly consensus but I'm also open to rethinking things.Why do you accept the life story but reject the execution?How do you think Jesus died?

 

[allfoak]

There may be some evidence that Jesus was a member of the Essenes.
There is mention of Jesus in the writings of Josephus, although there is controversy over the authenticity.
Also, A. Powell Davies mentioned in his book on the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Essenes were likely the place that Christianity had it's beginnings.
Sorry no references at this time.

All of this is surrounded by a great deal of controversy of course.
It does not support the current Christian thinking.
In fact it would bring down the whole structure of Christianity if it were proven true.

 

[oldbadger]

Thanks.I'm inclined to accept the scholarly consensus but I'm also open to rethinking things.Why do you accept the life story but reject the execution?How do you think Jesus died?

Well....... thanks to info from Ingledsva, an RF member, it becomes obvious (to my mind) that there were two Jesus's, both reported in the NT story, who caused disturbances in or around Jerusalem during the same Passover feast, both being convicted and sentenced to death. One was called Jesus Son of the Father by his followers, the other Jesus Son of Man (or Mesiah) by his followers. Pilate is reported to have come under pressure from his wife to having nothing to do with the case of one of them, and from the people to pardon the other. Pilate pardoned one of them, or so the story goes. So.... I don't know which one was executed. The report that a Jesus rolled up in Galilee at some point after the Passover week and then disappeared (exiled to Kashmir, maybe?) leaves me to think endlessly about the possibilities. Most of the scholars are a bit more 'down to Earth' with their debates.

If that lot were all seated in a 30meter circle and issued with small shotguns and bean-bag ammo the debate would be even more exiting!

 

[Desert Snake]

There may be some evidence that Jesus was a member of the Essenes.
There is mention of Jesus in the writings of Josephus, although there is controversy over the authenticity.
Also, A. Powell Davies mentioned in his book on the Dead Sea Scrolls that the Essenes were likely the place that Christianity had it's beginnings.
Sorry no references at this time.

All of this is surrounded by a great deal of controversy of course.
It does not support the current Christian thinking.
In fact it would bring down the whole structure of Christianity if it were proven true.

why? I already think of Jeshua as more similar to the Essenes than the other groups in the area. The fact that Jesus was a Nazarene seems to be indicative of an Essenic link as well.
Aside from that, many of the early Xian 'converts' were Essenes.

 

[Desert Snake]

Bonus question

Jesus actually looks like an 'Essene' in many portrayals/depictions anyways.

 

[Sapiens]

I apologize if our squabble is getting in the way. Legion and I are both making points that accuse the Jesus mythers/deniers of making their arguments sound reasonable through rhetoric which erodes at the foundations of history and science with selective radical skepticism. Rather than attempting to submit any kind of theory which explains the evidence we are left with, what they typically submit are denials. In the case of Jesus deniers, rather than dealing with the evidence, they deny its legitimacy on whatever technicality they can muster. Let's rule out Pauline testimony, because he wasn't contemporary by some insane definition of contemporary (a distinction that is a red herring, EVEN if it were true). Let's rule out Tacitus, a Roman historian hostile to Christians (which increases value in source criticism), because one of our esteemed members is an expert on ancient spycraft and he's got something to say that you must accept on his invented authority.

And you are left with an argument from ignorance: "we have a movement: it must have had a founder; now we have a founder: must have been the 'object' of the movement. Thin, thin ice, logically unacceptable.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

And you are left with an argument from ignorance: "we have a movement: it must have had a founder; now we have a founder: must have been the 'object' of the movement. Thin, thin ice, logically unacceptable.

No, you are left with inference to best explanation on the one hand versus implicit ad hominem and conspiracy theories on the other.

 

[Sapiens]

No, you are left with inference to best explanation on the one hand versus implicit ad hominem and conspiracy theories on the other.

Definition of Inference:

In logic, the process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. Verb: infer.

An inference is said to be valid if it's based upon sound evidence and the conclusion follows logically from the premise.

1) Your premises are not know, they are assumed.

2) You have no sound evidence, your conclusions follow only from logical fallacies, e.g., argument from ignorance. In fact, two consecutive jumps from ignorance are required. Is that additive or multiplicative?

 

[Quagmire]

That's 'cause there is no industry for separating the public from its cash based on the existence of Alexander.

Which is also the reason it's almost impossible to have an intelligent discussion about this topic in here.

Too many people with an axe to grind against Christianity/religion in general.

To those people, anyone one who's advocating any sort of authenticity regarding basically anything having to do with Christianity has just identified themselves as the enemy.