You know what’s ludicrous? Your posts! You’re a self-blinded, dogmatic apologist whose arguments clearly demonstrate a near-total lack of critical thinking skills. When the facts are so totally against you – as in the present thread – like all dogmatic apologists you dismiss all the countless arguments you’ve already lost or cannot defend with strong reason and then you start throwing out random potshots in an effort to evade and deflect the fact that you’ve already lost the debate.
Perhaps, but only to those whose reading comprehension skills are far better than yours and are not inhibited by dogmatic apologetics.
Hilarious!! You actually think there’s a peer review system in place for theology??
Kindly tell us exactly the name, identity, and details of the “peer review system” that “peer reviewed” Mack’s book! It is to laugh!
More infantile rhetoric. I never said Mack “refused” to do any such thing! I said he made his point with elegance, wit, and subtlety – something that’s so extremely alien to you that you have not eyes to see.
Especially since there is no such life to study!
You just can’t help yourself, can you? Then why don’t you admit you’re just another dogmatic historicist apologist who is incapable of critical thinking?
I can think of a few completely fictional stories that demonstrates just that: That “Jesus” character in Mark 15, and that other fictional character described in John 18:15 for just two examples!
And you, my dear denialist, never responded to my careful explication as to why Eusubius (or whomever) invented the so-called Testimonium Flavianum entire long after Josephus died!
It looks as if you’ve got a lot of personal insults to lob at me, and nothing else.
Yes I did, in post #258. You are flatly wrong in saying that I never responded to your “careful explication”. I challenged you to provide cites and explain what you were talking about. You never did so.
Here are some other things that you have not even tried responding to:
[ul]
[li]In post #223, you brought up Porphyry, and said “Porphyry utterly refuted to the notion that Jesus ever lived.” Then you linked to a Wikipedia page which proves that you’re wrong about what Porphyry said. In post #234 I pointed out that the Wikipedia page you linked to contradicted what you had said, and provided a better source which also refuted what you claim about Porphyry. You never mentioned Porphyry again.[/li][li]Also in post #223, you claimed that “the Jews … totally rejected the entire notion of a historical found of Christianity”. I pointed out the well known evidence from the Talmud, among others, that proves this to be untrue, and challenged you to defend what you said. So did other posters. You never even attempted to defend what you wrote.[/li][li]I linked to an excellent article by Christopher Price about the Testimonium. You responded by calling it a “ludicrously desperate collection of reguritated drivel”, but failed to offer any factual reply to anything that Price says.[/li][li]And so forth. Suffice it to say, you have completely failed to provide any argument with any basis in logic or facts on any topic, and whenever you’ve been challenged to do so, you’ve only responded with a torrent of insults.[/li][/ul]
Well, for one thing, “conversion” is a loaded, emotion-laden term. I would use the term “evolved”, which isn’t nearly as dramatic as a “conversion” and hence would be considerably less noteworthy. No disrespect intended, but perhaps you are unaware just how extremely skeptical Mack has always been about the so-called “quest” for a historical Jesus?
You (and the dogmatic Champion) for some inexplicable reason expected Mack to make a bold, explicit announcement that he has changed his position, but I dare either of you to point to an equally bold and explicit assertion on Mack’s part that he was an unequivocal historicist!
Oh, he did far, FAR worse than that! I could not more strongly recommend his “Did Jesus Exist?” to all Philosophy 101 professors as a casebook in the most gratuitous use of flagrant logical fallacies in existence! I mean, Deepak Chopra and Jenny McCarthy and the like have no edge on Erhman in that regard!
Take just one example of Ehrman’s “logic”: He just baldly asserts that only those in the historicist “Guild” of which he considers himself a member is qualified to evaluate the question of the historicity of Jesus, and since Doherty and the rest are not members of that Guild, nothing they say has any value!
I urge you to get a copy of Doherty’s trenchant logical analysis of Erhman’s book: The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest and marvel at Erhman’s blatant intellectual dishonesty!
I am unfamiliar with this Kirby person but from what little he’s written I contend that he’s seriously misinterpreting Mack’s work as well as Mack’s evolution as a thinker.
I admit I have to work from memory here, since my copy of his The Lost Gospel is in my remote storage facility (I have way too many books to store in my home!), but if this expands into it’s own debate I’ll buy another copy (far easier than finding it in storage), but here’s what I recall…
The Lost Gospel examines the entirety of the alleged source “Q” – a notion that has lost quite a few adherents in recent years (i.e., more and more critical scholars are rejecting the idea that “Q” even existed, let alone that it holds any legitimate information regarding a historical Jesus). So what I recall Mack arguing is that the alleged Jesus of the alleged “Q1” fits the tradition of a wandering Cynic philosopher, not that Jesus was a Cynic-like sage! In other words, Mack simply pointed out – like quite a few other “Q” scholars – that the first layer of “Q” presents a list of sayings (with nothing at all about Jesus’ alleged life or family or anything else even remotely historical) that sound exactly as if they were the collected sayings of a whole school of itinerant Cynic wanderers. Nothing more! I would be truly astonished if you could cite where Mack explicitly states that Jesus was a Cynic-like sage, let alone that Jesus was an actual historical figure. To the best of my recollection, Mack NEVER claims that Jesus was a historical person.
I once again apologize if this is exactly what you were saying (i.e., we’re in agreement), as seems to probably be the case…
Oops, it seems we are already in general agreement on these questions. Well, a lot of the time I write for the gallery as well as to the specific poster, so I hope you’ll forgive me.
I understand your reluctance to wade into all this more deeply, but I cannot more strongly recommend both of Doherty’s most recent books: Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus, which although a massive scholarly tome is remarkably easy to read (Doherty’s style is quite accessible and even compelling, much more so than, say, Carrier), and The End of an Illusion: How Bart Ehrman’s “Did Jesus Exist?” Has Laid the Case for an Historical Jesus to Rest, a much shorter book (with no small element of scholarly humor along the way) that I read with great pleasure in a single night (I can’t pull that off too often anymore!)
I never said anything about peer-reviewed theology, so that would be an obvious straw man argument from you. (But for the record, there are many peer-reviewed theology journals; The American Journal of Biblical Theology, The Journal of Theological Studies, Scottish Journal of Theology, and Harvard Theological Review would be just a few of the many. Thus when you implied that there’s no peer review system for theology, you were totally wrong. Again.)
I didn’t say that anybody peer reviewed any book by Mack, so that’s another straw man argument on your part.
Hey, you worship this Price person, not me! You cite him because he is as extremely gullible and dogmatic as you, not because he has any claim to being a respected scholarly authority, let alone a critical thinker!
He’s merely another hopeless dupe – just like you – in the “Me, too!” school of pedantic apologetic credulists who will do or say anything to protect his gullible Christian belief system.
What a hoot!! You continue to make of your “arguments” naught but a gullible sloppy joke, Champion. Your “argument” is nothing more than that Price’s “objective scholarship” results from tallying votes!! It is to laugh our loud!
If anyone as spectacularly gullible as you and Price counted up every scholarly citation regarding the efficacy of acupuncture – to take just one example I’ve dealt with this last hour – you would be forced to the conclusion that the majority hold that acupuncture is an extremely successful treatment option that’s been been so for millennia, which is in fact entirely false.
I bet you accept meta-analysis results at face value too, you’re so gullible! But most meta-analyses of the published literature demonstrate that psychic powers are an undeniable fact.
You’re clearly far too gullible to even be aware that most published scientific studies – particularly in the area of scientific medicine – are false! See, for example, John P. A. Ioannidis’s article in Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
And yet you DARE to ultra-gullibly just assume that truth is to be found by counting votes – in theology of all things!
How credulous can one person get?
You are an utterly unworthy opponent and you are unworthy of my time. Why don’t you go witness elsewhere and leave the intellectual debate to the rest of us?
That would be incorrect. I do not “worship” Christopher Price; I have cited a couple of articles by him. Most people are capable of telling the difference between those two things.
It is true that Christopher Price is not a professional scholar. I’ve never said that he is. His articles are written at a professional level, with proper citations to scholarly sources.
Considering how often you’ve cited Earl Doherty, you look rather silly accusing anyone else of not being a respected scholarly authority. Doherty’s books and articles are as far away from respected scholarly work as you can get.
You say that both Christopher Price and I believe that “truth is to be found by counting votes”. Let me ask you a simple question: can you quote any instance in which either I or Price says that? If you can’t, then this will be yet another straw-man argument from you; your third in a 12-hour span.
Christopher Price wrote this outstanding article about the Testimonium Flavianum. He presents six arguments for authenticity, and ably rebuts Earl Doherty’s arguments against authenticity. He does mention the well-known, long-established fact that a huge majority of scholars believe that Josephus wrote the original Testimonium, but none of his arguments in any way rely on that well-known, long-established fact. You are therefore both deliberately misrepresenting what Price says and failing to even acknowledge the arguments that he does make. A double helping of shame on you.
Well, a lot of the time I write for the gallery as well as to the specific poster, so I hope you’ll forgive me.