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Author | Topic: Reconstructing the Historical Jesus | |||||||||||||||||||
Jon Inactive Member |
After all, none of those men wound up being the central focus of a major world religion. That's a bit more extraordinary than just "getting killed by Romans" and it creates a greater burden of evidence. But nothing about Christianity becoming a major world religion has anything to do with the historical Jesus. So why should the fact that he is the focus of a major world religion have any bearing on the evidence required to conclude his existence? Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
You are doing exactly the same as a someone claiming that if a physicist doesn't believe in god then he must be able to explain how the universe began - else god is trve and the physicist is wrong. Physics isn't history. And there are realms of difference between proposing 'god' as an explanation and proposing 'human being' as an explanation. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
He has to explain why his explanation assumes fewer people than a historical Jesus - and he hasn't done that. And not just people, but premises in general. Edited by Jon, : clarity Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Just a relevant heads up; Bart Ehrman's book addressing the matter of the historical Jesus has been planned for this November.
Did Jesus Exist? It's only planned as an eBook; but should be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the topic. Jon Love your enemies! |
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Jon Inactive Member |
Real, historical people far outnumber mythical ones. The only ones we really have with mythical founders are the truly ancient ones, and it's possible these we only consider mythical since so much time has passed that the stories that have grown up around them have less connection to reality. One question: In how many of these belief systems is the recognized founder the same person as the one most chiefly venerated by the believers? Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
So you are saying a person who rose from the dead, preformed miracles... would not peak the interest of any scholar? These qualities have NOTHING to do with the historical Jesus. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
You can't possibly conclude that anything was copied "exactly" from the Q source unless you have the Q source text there with you to compare. What an absurdity - "clearly, it's an exact copy of something I've never seen!" I believe PaulK was referring to the wording between Matthew and Luke for the material in question. They are exact enough to conclude that at least one of them is based on a written source. This, of course, gives us three possible scenarios:
For (2) we have this:
quote: The only problem that faces (3), of course, is the fact that the document utilized does not exist. But this should not be reason for rejecting (3): it explains the current texts better than (1) or (2); it contains none of the faults of (1) or (2); it's likelihood is supported by the existence of other 'sayings' gospels (e.g., the gospel of Thomas). Hypothesis (3) is the better hypothesis. Jon__________ Stein, R. (1987) The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction. Michigan: Baker Books. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Itinerant bards. Thirsty guys at the tavern saying "hey, buy me a drink and I'll tell you the news from Judea, and you won't believe it!" You have no evidence for this.
Creative types surrounded by a mob of children dying for the latest and greatest "Jesus, King of the Jews" story. You have no evidence for this.
If the first Christians were people who, as children, had been raised on Jesus stories, You have no evidence for this.
And the story of Jesus does look entirely fabricated to me You have no evidence for this.
The fabricated Jesus, being a failed martyr who opposed the Romans, may have rung true for first century audience You have no evidence for this. Fact is: Your 'explanation' so far involves at least five times the amount of supposition as the historical Jesus explanation. Your hypothesis reeks of 'may have's and 'seems so to me's. And through all this wild assuming, you've yet to adequately deal with any of the objections lodged by your opponents. Perhaps if you even bothered once, Crash, to debate honestly, you wouldn't find yourself reduced to shouting 'fuck you' at any opponent who dares to question your reasonability. But who am I kidding? Paul's right: You just another Buz. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
So you have an utterly unintelligible claim (seriously, "triple tradition"?) with unspecified relevance to the point of contention. Huh? The only thing unintelligible is this sentence of yours.
In fact, doesn't it outright contradict the notion that Matthew and Luke are based on a third "Q" source to point out that Matthew has stuff that Luke doesn't? This, of course, is only one of the arguments against Luke knowing Matthew. There are others. Another, for example:
quote: I could give more; or, you could investigate the matter through some Googling. On top of this, there are peculiarities in all of the synoptic gospels. If peculiarities alone were enough to argue against the notion of any of them knowing of the other(s), then we would have to conclude that all of the writers wrote independently.
If Matthew and Luke both plagarized Q, which it is implied is where the "extra" stuff Matthew has came from, then why wouldn't Luke have plagarized it, too? That's not an accurate understanding of the hypothesized Q document. The Q material is the material in common between Matthew and Luke that isn't in Mark; the Q document is one of the things hypothesized to explain these agreements against Mark in Matthew and Luke (see my previous post for the other two hypotheses). By definition, the only thing we can propose to have been in Q is the stuff that Matthew and Luke have in common against Mark.
I just don't see how Q can possibly be put forward as an independent source of information about Jesus when the problem is that Q doesn't exist and therefore can't be put forward at all. It doesn't matter the nature of the sources; their number will still be the same. There is Mark; there is the source of Q (whatever that may be); there is the source of Matthew-specific information; and there is the source of the Luke-specific information. Which, if any, of these sources goes back to Jesus is a debatable matter; but these multiple sources do exist.
Lost books can't substantiate anything simply as a result of being themselves insubstantial. It depends on what you're trying to substantiate. Jon Edited by Jon, : No reason given. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Out of the cherry-picked five you presented, two-and-a-half were based on fictional characters. Caffeine also presented a list. And if you're not happy with those lists, present one of your own.
Similarly, it's an extraordinary claim to claim that a madman is right about something. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but the fact that we're talking about a person (or, in the case of religion, a system of knowledge) that is best characterized as being completely decoupled from reality means that any particular success of the knowledge system at arriving at something true is, at best, utter coincidence. Imagine that I showed you a computer program that produced sentences by assembling random words. It would truly be an extraordinary claim to claim that any particular sentence produced by this system also happened to be a real fact about the world, and it would require substantially more evidence than "hey, it could be, we don't know for sure" to conclude that the claim was correct. Is this even at all related to the arguments in Mod's posts? Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
Pana has only a superficial knowledge of the arguments of Freke and Gandy (and never mentioned their names). And Freke and Gandy are about as ignorant as grass under a rock. Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
I'm not required to do your homework or argue with Google. What you've presented isn't a compelling case to exclude Luke plagarism of Matthew. "Artistically inferior"? Maybe Luke was an inferior artist. And, still - WTF is the "triple tradition"? These are staple concepts in the debate on the synoptic problem. I cannot define every term unfamiliar to you; consider this a friendly exception:
quote: So then you've torpedoed the notion that Matthew, Luke, and the Q source are all independent sources of information about Jesus that corroborate each other. Actually, I never argued that they were all independent; nor did I argue that they are sources of information about Jesus; nor did I argue that they all corroborate each other.
In other words PaulK was substantially misrepresenting the content and scope of the Q source. In what way?
No, it doesn't. Only substance can substantiate! Huh? The Q material is of substance; just pick up your Bible, thumb through Luke and Matthew. That's Q material you're touching, sir. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
PaulK, where does Earl Doherty present evidence for the existence of Jesus? Please be specific. He doesn't. He's an ahistoricist. Which you'd know if you ever bothered investigating anything before flapping your mouth about it.
Unlike you, PaulK, I actually am disappointed. I had reason to believe that you were an honest sort who had given real consideration to this issue. The fact that PaulK understands the arguments of the synoptic problem, is familiar with the prominent proponents of ahistoricism, recognizes the difference between the Biblical Jesus and historical Jesusall things you've failed miserably attells me that he has given more real consideration to the issue than you have given, or are likely even capable of giving.
But immediately you entered the debate with a major chip on your shoulder, already incensed that people could exist who did not accept the "expert consensus" that anybody who questioned the actual existence of Jesus was some kind of dullard. That's simply not typical of your general high level of civility and the high quality of your argumentation. Similar to Mod, Paul's actually been limiting himself mostly to pointing out the errors in your arguments; he's made very few arguments relating his own position on the matter of an historical Jesus. How you get from that to 'major chip on your shoulder' is beyond me. But I assume it has something to do with your tendency to belittle, mock, and misrepresent anyone who dare disagree with your or claim you've made a reasoning error.
I know I'm not going to read any of your posts the same way from now on. So you're going to consider everything written from now on by PaulK on personal grounds? What a mature mindset to take away from the debate. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
So you assume. But where can I read the Q source itself? There's a difference between Q material and Q source.
I just meant to indicate that your explanation of the Q source has removed its relevance from the debate altogether. Depends on whose debate you're talking about.
I get that you're kind of doing your "own thing" when it comes to defending the Historical Jesus, so I recognize that I can't necessarily hold you to a defense of the arguments of the other people on your side. Regardless, I'm certainly going to point out when you put forward a claim that demolishes a claim I'm defending against. Please don't feel like you have to take that as my assertion that you've demolished one of your own claims. I don't think anything I've said 'demolishes' any claims made, other than the ones you've made based on your ignorance of relevant scholarship.
In the way that he offered it as an independent source that corroborates the claims of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. It depends on how much corroboration you're talking about. If the minimal corroboration is just the existence of an historical Jesus, then multiple sources with an historical Jesus as one of their common premises certainly meets the criteria of being corroboratory. Jon Love your enemies!
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Jon Inactive Member |
What is the response to this interpretation? Where specifically does Paul claim that Jesus was a real man who really lived? This argument is rather common in the ahistorical circles. It fails, though, to take into account the nature of Paul, his work, and his theology. Everything we have from Paul is in the form of letters, written to people who are already followers of the Jesus movement. This makes it difficult to expect much discussion of matters early Christians would have considered undisputedone such matter could well have been the historicity of Jesus. Paul admittedly doesn't care much about the life of Jesus:
quote: So right here we have to question any arguments made based on Paul's silence about the life of Jesus. But if this isn't enough, we actually have good reason to believe that Paul thought Jesus an actual historical figure. That is, we don't actually have a full silence. Dead things don't get killed; only living things do:
quote: More here:
quote: And here, where Paul indicates that Jesus' resurrection appearances were witnessed by people then still alive (strongly suggesting that Paul considered Jesus a recent figure):
quote: This is pat of an the argument in 1 Cor 15, in which Paul uses the resurrection of Jesus to convince his audience that they too will be resurrected. This argument only makes sense if Paul is working from the premise that Jesus, like his audience, had at one time been a living creature walking the Earth. This should serve as a good starting base; perhaps if you can present some of the specific arguments from Flemming, more can be added to the discussion. Jon Love your enemies!
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