A Question about the historicity of Jesus

[he_who_is_nobody]

1st Timothy Chapter 6 verse 13.

The letters thought to be pseudepigraphic by about 80% of scholars:

First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus
Ephesians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_epistles#Authenticity

To steal a joke:

:mrgreen:

 

[thenexttodie]

Why is his argument bullshit? So far as I can tell his principle of contamination makes perfect sense. As do all of the analogies he uses. But I guess I have to discount that because you have said it is bullshit.

Why is it bullshit? His analogies specifically don't go that far back into history he talks about people making recent claims about someone who carries out miracles. So the only thing you remotely said that was like a point against it is bullshit.

His analogies only demonstrate the simpleminded epistimology of a typical atheist, endlessly rehashing Occam's Razor. Fred and Sara say a man flapped his arms and flew around their living room like a bird. Should we believe them? No. So we shouldn't believe the Bible either. Yadda Yadda Yadda.

Im not sure why you are so impressed with his "principle of contamination". It doesnt really explain anything about the Bible. He basically just says that real-life or even make believe stories can be contaminated in certain ways for certain reasons. Everybody already knows that.

The simple fact of the matter is where the Gospels say something about history that can be confirmed, they conflict one another. Not true

Can you give an exact date that Jesus was born?

You can hardly get an exact date for the birth of anyone during the classical period. Different cultures used different calanders. Some of them were constantly changing. That's a dumb argument.

No you can't because Matthew and Luke place it during different periods.

No.

The other thing is that the Gospels are so clearly fictional that they cannot be regarded as useful historical documents.

I think you have said that before.

I mentioned previously about events having far too much symbolic significance to possibly be recordings of actual events. Mark can be broken down into quite clear tridactic structure, with events that mirror events in the Old Testament.

So you are arguing that, If God is real, it would have been way to hard for Him to provide us a accurate and timelessly relevant symbolism's of events that would pertain to his son,......like Mark did???

 

[thenexttodie]

The letters thought to be pseudepigraphic by about 80% of scholars:

First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus
Ephesians

I see no reason why I should believe any of these are pseudepigraphic.

 

[SpecialFrog]

The letters thought to be pseudepigraphic by about 80% of scholars:

First Timothy
Second Timothy
Titus
Ephesians

I see no reason why I should believe any of these are pseudepigraphic.

Because you reject the validity of textual analysis for no coherent reason.

 

[thenexttodie]

I guess with you guys it's all about scholarly consensus. What else can I say?

 

[SpecialFrog]

I guess with you guys it's all about scholarly consensus. What else can I say?

You can disagree with scholarly consensus but you have to provide evidence that it is wrong to be taken seriously.

Really, you know this is a dishonest argument because this whole thread is about why various people here disagree with a different scholarly consensus.

 

[thenexttodie]

I guess with you guys it's all about scholarly consensus. What else can I say?

You can disagree with scholarly consensus but you have to provide evidence that it is wrong to be taken seriously.

Really, you know this is a dishonest argument because this whole thread is about why various people here disagree with a different scholarly consensus.

There is no evidence that proves I am in error when I say that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

 

[Laurens]

There is no evidence that proves I am in error when I say that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

You having not looked at the evidence is not the same as their being no evidence.

 

[SpecialFrog]

There is no evidence that proves I am in error when I say that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

There is no evidence that proves that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

However, this is irrelevant because we can't prove anything about the real world. What we actually care about is the probabilities of different hypotheses based on the evidence. It could be possible that no hypothesis about the authorship of 1 Timothy was probable, in which case the reasonable thing would be to say that we don't know whether or not Paul wrote it.

But it turns out that non-Pauline authorship is probable enough that we should believe it.

Do you have any evidence that Paul did write it beyond church tradition?

 

[thenexttodie]

There is no evidence that proves that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

However, this is irrelevant because we can't prove anything about the real world. What we actually care about is the probabilities of different hypotheses based on the evidence. It could be possible that no hypothesis about the authorship of 1 Timothy was probable, in which case the reasonable thing would be to say that we don't know whether or not Paul wrote it.

But it turns out that non-Pauline authorship is probable enough that we should believe it.

I disagree.

 

[Steelmage99]

There is no evidence that proves that Timothy was authored by Paul. Absolutely none.

However, this is irrelevant because we can't prove anything about the real world. What we actually care about is the probabilities of different hypotheses based on the evidence. It could be possible that no hypothesis about the authorship of 1 Timothy was probable, in which case the reasonable thing would be to say that we don't know whether or not Paul wrote it.

But it turns out that non-Pauline authorship is probable enough that we should believe it.

I disagree.

Which part(s) of the post do you disagree with, and almost more importantly why?

 

[SpecialFrog]

I disagree.

That's because you think your opinion matters even if you don't know anything about the subject. You should change your name to "thenexttodude".

 

[Dustnite]

I disagree.

I disagree with your disagreement. I agree to disagree that you disagreeing with the above statements will make me more agreeable if you agree that your disagreement is not agreeable.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I disagree.

That's because you think your opinion matters even if you don't know anything about the subject. You should change your name to "thenexttodude".

I disagree. ThenexttoTrump seems more apt.

 

[Laurens]

I disagree.

REBUTTAL OF THE YEAR

 

[thenexttodie]

That's because you think your opinion matters even if you don't know anything about the subject. You should change your name to "thenexttodude".

If God exists, do you think that he could prevent forgery?

 

[SpecialFrog]

That's because you think your opinion matters even if you don't know anything about the subject. You should change your name to "thenexttodude".

If God exists, do you think that he could prevent forgery?

If camels fly, do you think that they can prevent forest fires?

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

If God exists, do you think that he could prevent forgery?

If camels fly, do you think that they can prevent forest fires?

Do theist actually think this is a valid argument? Counter factuals are not helpful, plus in this case, they are appealing to magick. If the laws of physics can be changed at a whim, than anything is possible. However, since the theist has never shown that this happens (let alone is possible), what is the point of appealing to it?

It is mind blowing how often I have seen this fallacy employed recently.

 

[Engelbert]

Without appealing to scholarly consensus, what do you find the most convincing evidence, or argument for the historicity of Jesus?

Thought I'd leave a short thought or two on your question.

Well, the scholarly consensus does rather influence my thinking here. Experts are there to be referred to, so it's not unwise to evaluate and to value what conclusions they draw. Consensus isn't always a reason to be certain, but it's reasonable to consider it worthy of respect.

I'm not sure what the most convincing piece of evidence for the existence of Jesus would be. As with many things, I think that it's a compilation of different arguments accumulating to be very persuasive, rather than something in isolation. Personally, I'm a strong believer in the existence of Jesus.

There are perhaps some arguments that support his historicity more strongly than others. One that comes to mind is that there seems to be no historical objection by Jews to his existence. If he didn't exist, since this story caused various problems for the Jews, then surely there would have been a recorded response. There seems to be no response, to my knowledge, from the Jews to the proposal that Jesus existed. In fact, in contrast to such a response, any references by ancient Jews to Jesus actually affirmed his existence and instead argued against aspects of the narrative in places like the Talmud, rather than being arguments for his non-existence. I might have that wrong, but I think that's right and if so, it makes you wonder why a significant group of Jesus' detractors didn't make arguments about his non-existence. The prevailing religion in the region after Jesus' death was Judaism with perhaps some embryonic forms of Christianity. Had Jesus not existed, surely a stronger response from Jews who disliked or disagreed with Christians would have been to expose Jesus' non-existence. Jews at the time and in fact, most Jews today would take a similar line of argument. They believe that Jesus existed, but do not accept that he was the Messiah.

There are loads of other reasons to believe that Jesus existed, but that's one that comes to mind today...

 

[Laurens]

Without appealing to scholarly consensus, what do you find the most convincing evidence, or argument for the historicity of Jesus?

Thought I'd leave a short thought or two on your question.

Well, the scholarly consensus does rather influence my thinking here. Experts are there to be referred to, so it's not unwise to evaluate and to value what conclusions they draw. Consensus isn't always a reason to be certain, but it's reasonable to consider it worthy of respect.

I'm not sure what the most convincing piece of evidence for the existence of Jesus would be. As with many things, I think that it's a compilation of different arguments accumulating to be very persuasive, rather than something in isolation. Personally, I'm a strong believer in the existence of Jesus.

There are perhaps some arguments that support his historicity more strongly than others. One that comes to mind is that there seems to be no historical objection by Jews to his existence. If he didn't exist, since this story caused various problems for the Jews, then surely there would have been a recorded response. There seems to be no response, to my knowledge, from the Jews to the proposal that Jesus existed. In fact, in contrast to such a response, any references by ancient Jews to Jesus actually affirmed his existence and instead argued against aspects of the narrative in places like the Talmud, rather than being arguments for his non-existence. I might have that wrong, but I think that's right and if so, it makes you wonder why a significant group of Jesus' detractors didn't make arguments about his non-existence. The prevailing religion in the region after Jesus' death was Judaism with perhaps some embryonic forms of Christianity. Had Jesus not existed, surely a stronger response from Jews who disliked or disagreed with Christians would have been to expose Jesus' non-existence. Jews at the time and in fact, most Jews today would take a similar line of argument. They believe that Jesus existed, but do not accept that he was the Messiah.

There are loads of other reasons to believe that Jesus existed, but that's one that comes to mind today...

2 Peter 1:16 states:

For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty

This seems like a reference to critics saying that Christianity is a 'cleverly devised myth'. Whether these were Jews or not is anyone's guess, but it seems that someone was making this argument.

We should also bear in mind that the Talmud is dated 200 - 500 CE later even than the Gospels. So references to Jesus could simply be about Gospel traditions of him rather than historical facts. Also with Yeshua being a very common name the supposed references in the Talmud might not have been about him at all.

Why wouldn't they have exposed Jesus as a myth? Maybe they weren't that bothered with Christianity. Maybe they assumed that what Christians were saying was accurate. It's plausible that they never arrived at the argument because there was no argument to be made. However I don't think that this discounts the evidence in favour of mythicism.