actually, joseph smith fabricating the book of mormon is a pretty good example that the bible/gospels could/would be simply made up in a similar fashion
Well, EXCUUUUUSE ME! :smack: If you’d read my other posts you’d have read that I said that the details of Jesus’ life were basically founded on three main sources, the Old Testament, current literature like the Odyssey in which the gospels writers, particularly Mark, drew heavily on tales of Odysseus, and mythology peculiar to the times or earlier about dying/rising gods.
Read “The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark” by Dennis R. MacDonald
For example, one among dozens of plagiarisms by Mark of Homer:
1 the mythical twins, Castor and Polydeuces, were referred to as the sons of Zeus who was a god of thunder. In Mark the sons of Zebedee are referred to as the Sons of Thunder. Coincidence? Why of course! :rolleyes:
-
Circe’s dialogue with Odysseus is nearly identical to the dialogue between Jesus and the demons in the city of Gadarene. Coincidence? Why of course! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
-
Two spots in the first ten chapters of the Odyssey where gods walk on water. Jesus walking on water in the Sea of Galilee where a raging storm gathers–Auolus’ bag of winds unleashing a storm in the Mediterranean (Sea of Galilee) Coincidence? Why of course! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Dozens of other “coincidences” in the way Mark is deliberately rewriting the Odyssey but very cleverly as if to disguise the similarities yet show them in plain sight.
But Smith was, by all indications, a real person.
No one is arguing the inerrancy of the Bible. Some are claiming that the central figure himself was fabricated, which is not a strongly defensible position.
do you understand the difference between what is probably true and what is actually true? do you think that difference is substantial or inconsequential?
And this is from ambushed in 2009:
We’ve discussed Doherty’s hypothesis before. Can we all agree that it is, at best, a minority opinion? That’s not to dismiss it. Indeed, I’ve come to concede that the Christian mythicist hypothesis is not crackpottery and it is not grounded in ignorance about historical methods and ancient sourcing. Or at least Doherty’s version isn’t.
One could argue with regard to ancient history it is largely inconsequential.
It really makes absolutely no difference whether Jesus was a historical figure or not. But the logic of historical factualism does not lend itself to the suggestion that Jesus was an ahistorical figure. That Joseph Smith fabricated the Book of Mormon does not provide any insight into whether Jesus was real or not.
Hold on a second. Previously you referred me to three books, which were supposed to justify your claims about the Gospels being copies of Pagan myths. Unfortunately for you, we here on this board are familiar with those books, and know that they don’t say what you claim they say. That, of course, is on top of many other claims that you have made and haven’t supported. Now don’t you feel some obligation to own up to the fact that everything you’ve said here has turned out to be false? Do you really expect to have much credibility after everything untrue that you’ve said?
Now regarding MacDonald’ s book, I’ve already read it. It does not say what you claim it says. (Are you seeing a pattern here? Do you notice how citing books that you’ve not actually read keeps backfiring on you? Might you perhaps consider that you should read sources before referencing them?) I’ll list your mistakes in a moment. First I’ll point out that while MacDonald is a real scholar, unlike those other guys you named, his work is far outside the mainstream. The great majority of scholars don’t take any part of the book as correct. You name his book and treat its conclusions like established facts. Shouldn’t you at least mention its many well-known flaws and the many scholarly refutations of it? Don’t you feel an obligation to present an accurate picture of scholarly opinion?
Now on to your mistakes:
Your first mistake is to claim that MacDonald says that Mark “plagiarizes” and “deliberately rewrites” Homer. Actually MacDonald goes to considerable length to establish that he isn’t making that argument. MacDonald claimed that Mark used the literary technique of mimesis, which was common in historical writing at that time. Even if everything MacDonald claimed was true, it would not give us any reason to doubt that Mark was a historical non-fiction work. If you had read MacDonald’s book before telling me to read it, you would know that.
And how is this supposed to prove that Mark copied anything from Homer? Castor and Polydeuces don’t appear anywhere in Homer.
Having read both dialogues, I can’t say that I see them as “nearly identical” or even very similar. Here, for instance, is a quote from Circe: “Son of Laertes, sprung from Zeus, Odysseus of many devices, go now to thy swift ship and to the shore of the sea. First of all do ye draw the ship up on the land, and store your goods and all the tackling in caves. Then come back thyself, and bring thy trusty comrades.” Perhaps you could help me out by telling me which verse in Mark is nearly identical to this.
As I said earlier, if there was a passage in the Odyssey where someone walked on water, you should be able to give the book number and line number where it occurs. You haven’t been able to do so. Why not?
I have no idea what point you think you are making with these drive-by posts, but they come across as threadshitting.
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
The first item could only be understood with the original title of one of the merged threads. The second pointed out that what I was being criticized for, was something I had been on the receiving end of, time and time again. I hope a double standard isn’t being followed here.
Can you quote a single scholar who says that the Book of Acts was written “a few centuries after the events”? According to this source, the range of dates offered by scholars for Acts is 80-130 AD, with general leaning towards the early part of that range. The earliest partial manuscript of Acts (called p45) dates from the early second century, and multiple church fathers in the second century quoted and referenced Acts as well as Luke. Most obviously, Acts is a first-person narrative so it must have been written while Luke was still alive.
If it was written a few centuries after the events, that would be at earliest in the third century. How do you reconcile your claim about the date of Acts with these facts? How could the book have been written long after the manuscripts of it existed? That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
And if it’s “riddled with historical inaccuracies”, could you tell us what they are? I mean actually tell us, rather than merely listing another book that you haven’t read?
We mathematicians do lots of proofs. Historians generally don’t. The enormous majority of historical writing, in my experience, makes no mention of proof.
Generally when there’s a reference to an individual in ancient historical writing, historians will proceed under the assumption that the person existed, unless there’s a very strong argument to the contrary. For example, Spartacus is known from just two historical sources, both written more than a century after the event. I have never seen anyone doubt his existence. Many pre-Socratic philosophers are known from just a few sentences, written several centuries after their death. I have never seen anyone doubt their existence either.
With Jesus we have an extremely large body of writing, written remarkably soon after the event, and of relativity high quality. (The gospels are unusually detailed and precise, when contrasted with other biographies from ancient times.) Hence there’s virtually unanimous agreement that Jesus existed.
Well, we’re not happy, really. You just make do with what you’ve got, don’t you ?
I mean, I know I’d be a lot happier with a recorded speech or two, maybe an official hagiography… hell, I’d take* 50 Shades of Gordian : a knotty Twilight fanfic by Megas Alexandros*.
ITR, I will be frank. I think you are asking me to write long dissertations to waste my time which you have no intention of reading or considering, other than to just write more challenges to make me write even more to make me try to prove this or that which you can then challenge all over again, and on and on. It’s clear we’re never going to arrive at a consensus. I don’t feel compelled to follow the path you’ve choosen to lay for the direction of this conversation. I will say I never write anything without having sourced it in some way or read it somewhere. Some things I cannot source without hours of research, and then just so you can again call it fraud or inaccurate. You’re perfectly free to call me on things I state but you’ll have to do the legwork to prove me wrong.
My general thesis still stands: Jesus was possibly a real man, but he was an ordinary man who never resurrected. There is no hard historical evidence for a resurrection; there is little enough hard evidence for a crucifixion as it is. Everything Christians use to support the resurrection i.e. “the empty tomb” is just Christian conjecture which must be taken on faith and most of us around here deal in facts. Where is the empty tomb; show it to me and I will believe. Show me the blood off the slab in that tomb that oozed from Jesus’ body that has been tested that should contain only one set of human chromosomes (Mary’s) and I will believe. Until you can, I and most others will assume that most likely, Jesus was a myth cobbled together from a variety of outside sources such as other gods, legends, literature, stories being passed around hundreds of years after the legends first sprung up. As for the claim the apostles dying horrible deaths is proof enough that they believed in Jesus so he must have resurrection—well, for God’s sake how do Christians make those claims when there’s absolutely nothing in the historic records they even existed, much less went out into all the world to preach the gospel and died horrible martyrdom??? :eek: That is so naïve as to be utterly pathetic. Sorry :smack:
Ahh, but I never said you were happy about not having first hand accounts. I said you were happy to accept the fact that you *do *have second hand accounts.
In contrast, Robert163 claims that second hand accounts are not historical records at all, and therefore we have no historical records of Jesus or Alexander.
Which is of course absolute bollocks.
Well, SeekerofTruth, details matter. What else are you here to debate? Your thesis needs to be defended. When people attack it you will need to come with arguments that defeat those thrown against it.
What about physical artefacts, such as coinage minted at the time of his reign and bearing his name? Or the actual, undisputed tomb of his father (not some likely forgery with ambiguous, regionally-common names)
Where are the physical artefacts of Jesus’ existence?
You mean like the “actual, undisputed tomb of his father”? Good luck with that one. 
Once again - Jesus isn’t Smith in this scenario, he’s the Angel Moroni.
I don’t mind defending, but Champion refutes every single source I raise. I’m not drawing this stuff off crazed bloggers; I’m drawing it off reputable scholars which Champion then goes on to say are not reputable scholars, no matter who I source. At that point it’s not authority, it’s opinion. Carrier and Price are just as respected in the circle of scholars as are Champions, but I imagine Champion draws a tight little network of unknown scholars around him who agree with most of what he and his idols teach. Anything outside that tight little network is rubbish.
Or maybe a I capsulize an argument the author made and then Champion retorts, “Have you read the book?” Well, no I haven’t read the book. Am I suppose to read the entire library before I make a commentary? I’m not a scholar but I try to get as close to reliable source as I can and if it’s a source like Richard Carrier, Champion comes in and says, “Well, on page 93 sentence 35, words 3 through 13 he says Osirus might have been sliced into three sections not four and his penis was not cut off as the legend goes so that proves Osirus could not have been the source for Jesus supposedly riding into Jerusalem on two donkeys” or some other intellectual gibberish. I mean it’s like he’s trying either to prove he’s some great scholar who reads 200 books a week on this stuff or he argues just for the sake of trying to win a point.
My arguments are not scholarly. I don’t pretend to be a scholar and if being a scholar as well-read as Champion were a criteria for commenting on this board there’d be nobody here but Champion. That’s how it lays. I’m sorry.