IMO the obvious fabrications by Matthew and Luke are the strongest evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person.
If he wasn’t, they would have no need to make up stories to explain why the Messiah came from Nazareth, rather than Bethlehem.
I acknowledged that same point upthread.
Ask a professional historian what they think of the traditional view of Jesus, since they adhere to a strict philosophy of naturalism and see what kind of answer you get. What does tradition have to do with sound historical principles?
Getting back to the OP, since so few answered, let’s try it in a multiple choice format. Jesus would have been more likely than not to have been:
A. Crucified under Pilate.
B. A teacher.
C. A teacher and a genuine miracle worker.
D. A teacher, but the only miracles he might have worked were similar to the placebo effect, and others embellishing the stories.
E. Loosely based on another historical figure probably from another time and area.
F. Still something other. If so, describe.
I suppose to a traditionalist, they tend to still accept all of these. But for a professional historian though, he would immediately rule out the latter part of C.
John Allegro felt like the DSS (Dead Sea Scrolls) all but proved a historical Jesus of the gospels didn’t exist during that time, and that it was based on a teacher a century earlier.
DSS scholar Robert Eisenman felt like it was actually James the Just who was believed to be the brother of Jesus who was in fact the actual Teacher of Righteousness mentioned in the scrolls.
Joseph McCabe felt like the probability was that a historical Jesus existed, but that he was based on an Essene teacher.
Very few traditionalists venture outside of their comfort zone. If they ever did, they would find there are actually a wide number of opinions from historians, philosophers, and many other biblical scholars on what they think a historical Jesus figure might be. Donald Akenson who is a professor of history and got his doctorate at Harvard thinks theologians have not followed sound historical principles in their search for Jesus.
What qualifies for a historical Jesus to you: A, B, C, D, E, F? Anyone?
Your very premise is incorrect. Atheist historians may be beholden to strict naturalism, but theistic historians (whether Jewish, Christian, or Moslem) need not be – not unless they were suffering from some serious cognitive dissonance.
Moreover, even if your objection were valid, it would be irrelevant to the question of whether Jesus existed or not. One could reject the traditional notion of Jesus, but this would do nothing to defend the claim mentioned in the OP – namely, that Jesus did not exist. If anything, it would be a tacit admission that he did exist!
Kinda my point.
All scientific methodology requires an adherence to “naturalist” assumptions. You can’t do science any other way.
I’ve learned that it’s pointless to try to debate Diogenes on a point-by-point basis, for reasons that many others have lamented over the past few years – the habit of making unsubstantiated assertions, grossly exaggerating the strength of his own claims, taking extreme claims and presenting them as though they were incontestible scholarly proofs, and so forth. We’ve already pointed out that historians overwhelmingly reject Carrier’s theory, which makes it all the more lamentable that the “scholarly” Diogenes takes Carrier seriously.
I do think that it’s worth citing yet another example of what I mean, though. Diogenes says,
Again, a gross exaggeration of the actual state of scholarship. Some scholars do believe in a late date for the Petrine Epistles, but there is a broad range of opinions on that matter (cite and cite). Nor can it be conclusively proven that they were authored by two different people, though DtC claims this as incontrovertible fact.
Now of course, Diogenes will continue to insist that this is so, and will claim that anyone who disagrees is not thinking in a scholarly fashion. In other words, he will continue to put on his self-appointed “expert” hat – the one which allows him to claim that the overwhelming bulk of scholarly opinion is in his favor, while simultaneously avoiding the fact that historians overwhelmingly reject Carrier’s view. It’s a hat of incongruity, among many other things.
Heh. Wikipedia. Here are some better links. Educate yourself.
The critical consensus is overwhelming on this.
I know little about Peter Kirby, other than the fact he is also a avowed atheist and contributor to Internet Infidels.
http://unfacts.org/archive/religion/PeterKirby.htm
Thus his cite seems unreliable to me.
If you don’t wish to debate the question, you have the option of not participating in the thread.
I find arguments from the number of “professionals” who supposedly hold one view or the other pointless. Science is not a popularity contest, it’s a question of finding the truth. When Darwin published The Origin of Species, the vast majority of professional scientists held other views. Yet they were wrong, and he was right. Arguments must stand on their own merits.
And if I had said that I was uninterested in debating the question, your criticism would have merit. What said, however, is that I’ve learned that it’s pointless to debate a certain poster due to his style and the tactics that he uses.
As I explicitly acknowledged earlier, being in the minority does not automatically make someone wrong, nor does having the lack of necessary credentials. In fact, if you had been following this discussion, you would have noticed that I’ve been emphasizing that the majority view with regard to Biblical authorship is not necessary is not necessarily correct. If you want to find someone who says that the majority must be right, then you’re going to have to look somewhere else.
Fair enough, I actually didn’t realize that we were talking about historians. My mind kind of melts the two categories together with regard to ancient religious claims. I concede your statements here.
Yes, there are problems with applying Bayesian to this event, however until his book is out there and properly evaluated, I’m going to withhold judgment on whether it hits its mark or not. I simply do not know.
While it might be true that his application of the theorem is heavily biased, I’m not willing to discount it because it might be biased. My point in raising this was not that Carrier has definitively proven Jesus didn’t exist. My point is that he’s trying to get it on the table of legitimate scholarly discussion - which at this point the contention is not.
In other words, he’s doing what he’s supposed to do with regard to theories outside of the mainstream (I’m thinking in contrast to creationists and how they approach getting their ideas approved).
Please demonstrate that he’s taking the quotes out of context or otherwise misrepresenting things.
Simply saying ‘he’s an atheist, therefore we can ignore what he writes’ is not compelling, which is essentially what you seem to be doing in this post.
He actually goes back and forth between being an atheist and being a Christian, but all he does on that cite is quote from scholars (and does so pretty even handedly).
Then they shouldn’t call themselves or be referred to as “professional historians.” Theologian would be the more appropriate term to call a theistic historian that thinks miracles actually happen. And if theistic historians want to allow supernatural stories, they shouldn’t stop there, but consider supernatural miracles in other stories too. No “professional historian” who knows the very basics of physics: laws of conservations, laws of permissible and denial, etc, would ever seriously entertain such notions as actually happening. It does cause some serious cognitive dissonance among traditionalists who only wish the miracle stories had some scientific backing. Philosophically, it’s very weak too, simply applying Hume’s scale to the weight of miracles is sufficient.
Will you at least try to put things in perspective though, concerning the supernatural and “professional historians”? How could a historian be considered professional if he were taking these miracle stories seriously and not consider that vast embodiment of knowledge we refer to science as not being significant? It’s about as slam dunk as one can get here with this aspect.
Let’s consider Paul for a moment. Why is he so silent about Jesus’ miracle workings or for that matter the teachings that the gospels spend so much time on? Seems odd, that Paul being the earlier writer, doesn’t seem to have a clue to any of it. He does spend quite a bit of time through the Epistles commenting on him being resurrected though. But we have many of those mythical figures in antiquity to go on.
Actually he really doesn’t address the historical aspects of Jesus in any known work that I’m aware of. This includes his Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth of which I have. He doesn’t even devote a single chapter to it. He states that is not necessary or possible to say much on the historical Jesus, thus his book addressed many other things, and that early followers of Jesus weren’t interested in preserving accurate memories of a historical Jesus. They were concerned with making him some kind of a founder-teacher of some form of thought, and they drew upon many sources for a final compilation of what eventually ends up as what we know are the gospels today, but not after many, many re-writes. And the dates he puts on the gospels are very late according to him. Luke is second century. At the very earliest Matthew is late first century. Mark could be not much earlier than about 70 due to the details of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. But again, he says, as does McCabe, we really don’t know much of what were in these early gospels even with the dates that scholars assign them today. Personally, I think more scholars should be more honest and upfront with the dating and that very little was really known of what was in them at this time.
He’s also been a Christian at some part of his life, one time not so recently as has been pointed out. Many scholars started out as Christians. If their learning starts to cause them serious doubt, they should be dismissed if they become atheists? Not sure what else to make from this concise post of yours, and with you not elaborating on anything else. If this is the case, how much more narrow-minded could a person be? Substitute Christians in place of atheists using this as an argument.
“I know little about Mr. Theist (any name) other than the fact he is also an avowed Christian and contributor to ‘give me that ole time religion’ cite. Thus his cite seems unreliable to me.”
Way to knock yourself out there. Let me sleep on this one some more, this is really deep.
Well, in order to accept his site as such a high level source of scholarship, as DtC would have it, we’d have to know if he has any qualifications, academic degrees, and so forth. I see nothing of that sort. Next we’d have to show that he’s unbiased, but I have shown he is biased.
There is a message board sort of site which claims Kirby turned to Christianity, but one of his friends posted that that was a hoax, and a poster claiming to be Kirby agreed it was a hoax.
Yes, mostly what he does is quote. But you can easily make your site as biased as you want by choosing the quotes that match what you want to promulgate.
But indeed, if all he does is quote, then his site is worthless anyway, as then it should be no problem to link to the original researcher. Whereupon, we can check out in what context they said that, their academic qualifications, and their bias.
You ignore a big middle ground here. I (and others) suspect Jesus was an extremely charismatic healer, probably using some method of hypnosis. (Read about Dr. Albert Abraham Mason’s famous cure of ichthyosis for an example of how astounding hypnotic cures can be.) In those days (though in keeping with the tradition of this thread I’ll provide no cite for this 
) people were, in general, more easily hypnotized, and psychosomatic illnesses were not uncommon.
The apparent changing of water to wine can also be explained via hypnosis. (Of course, some of the alleged miracles admit of no simple hypnosis-based explanation.)
I would have it as no such thing. Kirby attempts little or no scholarship of his own, he just provides links and resources and quotes from a spectrum of scholars.
This is not accurate. Peter himself posted on his own blog (as well as on a board that I moderate) that he had returned to Catholicism of a sort, but a few months later said he had returned to being secular.
He quotes from every side.
That is what he does. He provides links to everything. Early Christian Writings is a primarily an index of links to source texts, but also includes a variety of links to scholarly articles and analyses of those texts (including from conservatives), and a selection of quotes from said articles about a given text.
Have you even looked at the site at all? It sounds like you haven’t. It isn’t about Peter Kirby giving his opinions. It isn’t a blog. It’s an index of links to source texts, which brief overviews and representative examples of scholarly commentary for each text.
I don’t get your poin of view - do I need an academic degree to cite an academic?
As to Kirby’s religion, I don’t know anything about this “hoax” you are referring to. Let’s say it’s true - does this mean he’s falsifying his citations?
Show that he’s taking the quotes out of context - if you want to dismiss the credible people he quotes. I’d accept that.
Right now you appear to be hand waving. Do you have credentials in this field? If not, then doesn’t your criticisms of him and his site fall on the same sword you are using?
Interesting cite on the skin condition. My dad once grew up with a young girl who once had a similar skin condition. Kids used to tease her, calling her alligator girl and other cruel names. They didn’t tease her around my dad, he seen to that. As she grew older, her skin condition eventually went away. Don’t know the circumstances of why or what her condition was.
No need for getting a cite for that other part, I think most would agree with you that there are many people dealing with psychosomatic conditions, and others maybe treating some of them with a placebo effect, hypnosis, etc. I still love this Benny Hinn clip, even though he’s a full-blown con man. Some people want to be deceived.
It’s debatable on whether or not people are in some kind of altered state with hypnosis or that it even exists. It certainly is a very powerful form of suggestion that works on some people on certain things. An amputee would get my attention. A good magician could turn the water into wine too. Not sure what realm the feeding of the 5,000 would fall under, but good story telling would cover it. When writers can put in whatever their heart desires, and given enough time, legends grow.