Stein wrote:

Corky wrote:Once a [claim] that has been used by [MJ]ers has been debunked it should stay debunked but it doesn't. Instead, just like fundamentalist Christians, they later on drag out the same debunked [claim] again - over and over and over... Those [claims] that [MJ]ers use for [a fictional human] have been debunked so many times in this thread that it [might] be a good idea for the [HJ]ers to just [drop] it - but, then the [MJ]ers, just like the fundies do, would declare victory and take their already debunked, bogus [claims] and go to another forum and present them all over again to somebody else.

Fixed that for you. This is, in fact, an exact description of what MJers are now doing in this very thread. But instead of going to another forum after they were thoroughly owned by one "generation" of HJers in the first 800 pages, they just trot out their same bogus claims right here all over again, figuring that a new generation of HJers is here who will now have to reinvent the wheel as if the first 800 pages of whipping the MJers' collective ass never happened. But NEWS FLASH: IT DID. WE WHIPPED YOUR ASS.

You know, of course, there is a known term for posters who continue to propagandize and incite in blatantly provocative disregard of a whole thread...................

Stein

Yeah, there is a term for that but I didn't want to call you any names - which is probably against the rules here.

Stein wrote:

Corky wrote:Once a [claim] that has been used by [MJ]ers has been debunked it should stay debunked but it doesn't. Instead, just like fundamentalist Christians, they later on drag out the same debunked [claim] again - over and over and over... Those [claims] that [MJ]ers use for [a fictional human] have been debunked so many times in this thread that it [might] be a good idea for the [HJ]ers to just [drop] it - but, then the [MJ]ers, just like the fundies do, would declare victory and take their already debunked, bogus [claims] and go to another forum and present them all over again to somebody else.

Fixed that for you. This is, in fact, an exact description of what MJers are now doing in this very thread. But instead of going to another forum after they were thoroughly owned by one "generation" of HJers in the first 800 pages, they just trot out their same bogus claims right here all over again, figuring that a new generation of HJers is here who will now have to reinvent the wheel as if the first 800 pages of whipping the MJers' collective ass never happened. But NEWS FLASH: IT DID. WE WHIPPED YOUR ASS.

You know, of course, there is a known term for posters who continue to propagandize and incite in blatantly provocative disregard of a whole thread...................

Stein

HJ posters have no more proven the existence of a Jesus of Nazareth than has Bart Ehrman! Now who's been provocative!

angelo wrote:

Stein wrote:

Corky wrote:Once a [claim] that has been used by [MJ]ers has been debunked it should stay debunked but it doesn't. Instead, just like fundamentalist Christians, they later on drag out the same debunked [claim] again - over and over and over... Those [claims] that [MJ]ers use for [a fictional human] have been debunked so many times in this thread that it [might] be a good idea for the [HJ]ers to just [drop] it - but, then the [MJ]ers, just like the fundies do, would declare victory and take their already debunked, bogus [claims] and go to another forum and present them all over again to somebody else.

Fixed that for you. This is, in fact, an exact description of what MJers are now doing in this very thread. But instead of going to another forum after they were thoroughly owned by one "generation" of HJers in the first 800 pages, they just trot out their same bogus claims right here all over again, figuring that a new generation of HJers is here who will now have to reinvent the wheel as if the first 800 pages of whipping the MJers' collective ass never happened. But NEWS FLASH: IT DID. WE WHIPPED YOUR ASS.

You know, of course, there is a known term for posters who continue to propagandize and incite in blatantly provocative disregard of a whole thread...................

Stein

HJ posters have no more proven the existence of a Jesus of Nazareth than has Bart Ehrman!

If these 1600 pages have taught you anything, it's that ancient history is not about proof, it's about greater and lesser probabilities. No myther on the web has yet demonstrated that any MJ argument has the same parsimony as HJ.

Stein

Just read that Jesus invented an upgraded version of hell - comments?

Occam's Razor shaved away all the improbables such as miracles, magic and resurrections and left nothing but a forlorn hope that among the shavings there may be a flea.

History would not deal with stuff like miracles in any case, since it is fundamentally naturalistic. You can cite hearsay as evidence sometimes in history, but not a vision.

nunnington wrote:History would not deal with stuff like miracles in any case, since it is fundamentally naturalistic. You can cite hearsay as evidence sometimes in history, but not a vision.

Something noted by Diarmaid MacCulloch in his enjoyable slab on the history of Christianity -- which is what makes N.T. Wright's furious efforts to prove miracles so absurd, and the attempts to refute him so misguided. Historiography isn't equipped for this stuff. You'd have more luck arguing that Life of Brian was right about E.T. visiting Judea: at least a pitstop by the greys is naturalistic.

(Continuing an argument over from the Ehrman thread)
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/chris ... 4-200.html

Willhud posted this description from Wikipedia regarding MDivs in the Ehrman DJE thread:

Christian MDiv programs generally include studies in Christian ministry and theology. Coursework usually includes studies in New Testament Greek, theology, philosophy, church history, pastoral theology, Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), and New Testament studies.

That's an awful lot of ground to cover.

I don't see any space reserved for training in the historical method and practical methods of historicity, and more importantly some work outside the Biblical Corpus with more than a brief touch on historical subjects more broadly, and those not relevant to religion directly. If all your training is directed towards one subfield of a discipline, with little exposure to anything outside that realm, how can you check your results and methodology?

Is biology, anatomy, etc. - not to mention a broad background in medicine generally - not required of the surgeon, GP, or the podiatrist equally? Do podiatrists do nothing but study toes and feet from their undergrad days to their MD issuance?

The Theologian may have even gone on the odd dig here and there - one likely sponsored by a religious institute or religious based fund (as in Palestine) and only occasionally overseen by a trained archaeologist with an actual degree in the field. More on this later.

How many History Degrees require sermonizing, church financial organization, etc. as requirements for degrees? Also, where is the requirement for historiography, stratigraphy, GIS, landscape studies, or anything else dealing with the practical collection of knowledge for the study of history? While I'm sure epigraphy is offered (but probably neither required nor taken by most theologians) that's just one part of the historical method. Is the epigraphy taught in relation to the study of other classic works (and NON-classical works), or is it primarily taught in relation to earlier scholarly works on the Biblical corpus?

Many programs also contain courses in church growth, ecclesiology, evangelism, systematic theology, Christian education, liturgical studies, Latin, Hebrew, canon law, and patristics. The degree may or may not include a thesis. ~This is from Wiki

So, with all this subject matter ranging from pastoral theology, to church management to canon law, when one considers that most degrees require a similar number of credit hours, how can the theologian get enough history in period? Regardless of the breadth of his history training, his coursework seems awfully diverse.

Do you even need History at all to be a theologian? Can you get an Divinity degree simply by pursuing an interest in Christian Existentialism or Modern Evangelism or Kalam Cosmological Argumentation or whatever? Do you ever need to touch a dead language?

I know nobody on this board has these varieties of theologians in mind when thinking about the opinions of theologians like Ehrman or Crossan, but a theology degree involves much more than just history.

Even if there are minimal requirements as to what is studied, and students have near total free choice in all coursework, if one wants to do history, why not get a history degree? Why go to divinity school?

Does the tall skinny guy choose Track and Field to get faster, and the nerd choose Chess Club to get smarter, or do they gravitate to what they are already good at and likely interested in? Isn't the theologian interested in religion first and foremost?

Finally, the modern historical method requires the assumption of naturalism and universality, a big stumbling block amongst many holders of divinity degrees - and not a few people who run them and teach at them. Is naturalism and universality constantly emphasized and drilled into the minds of students at any D-School, whether at Wesleyan or Liberty?

It's definitely possible for theologians to do historical work, and to have a great deal of knowledge in history. BTW, I'm not saying that a Christian can't ever do "history", even biblical history. But a theology degree, all things being equal, is not involve the same training and background as a degree in Ancient History, Classics, Archaeology, or History.

(edited for grammar, layout, and emphasis)

As I asked over in the Ehrman thread: in which area do you believe that biblical scholars are insufficiently skeptical?

I think most biblical scholars take it as a given that the gospels are a biography of Jesus. It's their default position.

All areas. Biblical scholars are true believers, that's why they became biblical scholars, with few exceptions.

Historical biblical scholars can see that the "non-historical" 99% of the gospels are made up by proof texts from the Septuagint but they can't see or won't see that the "historical" 1% is also proof texts from the Septuagint? Somebody is either blind or lying.

Byron wrote:As I asked over in the Ehrman thread: in which area do you believe that biblical scholars are insufficiently skeptical?

......... waiting for Epicure's reply ...........

Stein

Byron wrote:As I asked over in the Ehrman thread: in which area do you believe that biblical scholars are insufficiently skeptical?

A specific area? There is no one area. It's a problem stemming from background and tradition regarding the conclusions made with evidence available. Hence my screed about the training of Bible Scholars.

A major symptom of "HJ Certainty" is confusing multiple attestations with strong evidence. "Because there are so many attestations about the deeds of an X, there MUST have been an X". Another symptom is "The consensus among Bible Scholars (already a narrow group) is that X is historical, and this has stayed true over time." That is a worthless appeal to authority and popularity, unless it is presented alongside a plethora of good evidence, not just a plethora of claims made by many.

There was a great deal of resistance in tossing out Abraham and Moses as historical figures, so it's not surprising we see the same with Jesus. The main difference with Jesus is that he is extrapolated by Gospel Writers into the fairly recent past, rather than a more distant past, as opposed to Hercules, Moses, and Abraham, among others. Even so, it took a long fairly long while for Moses and Abraham, but NOT Hercules, to get tossed out as historical figures because Western Academia was not rooted in Paganism in the past 1600+ years but it was rooted in Judeo-Christian belief during that time.

There is also an angle coming from the counter-apologetic tactic of "Does it apply to other religions?" Do we apply similar standards to Lao-Tsu or Confucius or Buddha? No, we don't. Nobody says "There are multiple attestations of Lao-Tsu doing and saying this or that in the centuries following his alleged existence, therefore he MUST have existed". Most scholars who study Taoism believe Lao Tsu is simply a mythological figure that represents a certain school of thought, as a device for explaining the philosophy of Taoism and trying to give Taoism equal weight to Confucius by making "Lao Tsu" a contemporary of him (and therefore equally old, and thus worthy of similar status).

That isn't far removed from what some mythicists say about Jesus, that he is a vehicle for the Logos idea or Cynicism or other Hellenistic philosophies of the period, using Jewish Scriptures in support.

Over at Debunking Christianity, a post by Dr. Hector Avlos, talks about the resistance to Alexander being "revised":

As with Jesus studies, an orthodox view of Alexander developed by the middle of the twentieth century, and that was represented by Tarn’s heroic, wise, and virtuous Alexander.
That hagiographic view began to change, particularly with the work of Harvard historian Ernst Badian (1925-2010). When commenting on that romantic view of Alexander, Badian noted the degree to which it had become orthodox in comparison to his own revisionism:
“...many of us remember a time when it was impossible to get an article questioning that interpretation into a professional journal in this country” (“The Alexander Romance, New York Review of Books 21, no. 4 (September 9, 1971), p. 9.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.c ... david.html

The HJ certainty mountain is a tougher climb than that for establishing that of a well known dictator, tyrant, general, or statesman from the ancient world. Therefore, instead of comparing Jesus to Alexander, maybe Jesus should be compared to non-Western Religious Figures of the past that have comparable features in time and attestation.

Furthermore, the multitude of opinions about who Jesus was shows the paucity of good evidence about his existence and are a sign of bias. Jesus is represented as everything from a "Wisdom Sage" to an "Apocalyptic Preacher" to an "Agent of Social Change", even a "Failed Revolutionary". If we had better evidence, there would be less debate about who Jesus was. Nobody debates that Alexander or Caesar weren't Generals and Rulers, but rather Philosophers, Prophets, etc. There aren't multiple explanations of "The Old Master", Lao Tsu, trying to time him down as an "anti-Authoritarian Revolutionary" or a "Wisdom Sage". He is simply accepted as a mythological construct to root a belief system at a single point.

Just to clarify, I am agnostic about HJ vs. MJ. These positions are poles, with the extremes believing in the certainty of their position - and I do not think the evidence that I have heard so far allows such certainty.

I don't think that Jesus is a Horus Filet breaded with Astrotheology crumbs, sauteed in the oil of countless Sun Gods, and served with a side of Mithraic Aioli, being 100% Historicity Free.

I think it's entirely possible that John the Baptist or Hillel the Elder, or some wandering ascetic, or some combination of many historical figures were mixed in with Hellenic philosophical ideas and became the Jesus of the Bible. However, no conclusions can be made.

There are also tantalizing indications of myth making, from the matching of Jesus' life deeds to OT (and Roman and Greek and Egyptian) mythological events, a Paul who knows nothing of the major deeds of the Gospel Jesus (or many of his sayings), etc. But again, nothing solid. Probably never will be. We will never find a document that says,

"Hey Gospel Writers in the near future, don't forget to compare our Jesus to Isis-Horus by adding a miraculous birth narrative into your story. Best regards, your fellow Christian, Paul of Tarsus"

But what gets my goat is when an HJ is asserted as something we certainly or almost certainly know to be the Truth - and that arguing against an HJ is a sign of being a crank due to the quantity AND quality of the evidence backed by a strong consensus for HJ.

I promised something about archaeology, here are some bits from an article I read recently from The Atlantic.

It is titled "The Biblical Pseudo-Archeologists Pillaging the West Bank":

For Randall Price, a mid-50's, sun-reddened pastor from Texas with a neat side part and a booming voice, archaeology is both a scientific and a devotional endeavor. "This was the area where great men of God were tested," he said. "When you're excavating there it puts you in touch, physically, with the reality of those events." Price has spent the last ten years searching for remains of an ascetic Jewish priesthood whom he believes settled in the desert wilderness of Qumran to await the coming of the Messiah and the End of Days. These remains, he said, could provide unprecedented evidence of a biblical text.

At first blush, Price seems like an unlikely candidate to head excavations amid one of the bitterest land disputes in the modern world. Though he never actually received a degree in archaeology, he built a global network around his brand of Near East biblical scholarship with an apocalyptic bent. He has written extensively for the website RaptureReady.com, given lectures suggesting that Iran is fulfilling the role of Antichrist, and has openly called for the United States to declare war on Islam.

Just a brief aside, here are Price's credentials according to Wikipedia:

He is a Th.M. graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary in Old Testament and Semitic Languages and holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is Distinguished Research Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty works with young Earth creationist organizations including Answers in Genesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Randall_Price

Back to the article:

Archaeology in the West Bank--specifically, who has the right to dig, interpret, and store artifacts--is a wedge issue that ties into broader struggles over resource control in the occupied territory. "Are we trying to be nationalist?" Price said. "In this conflict of religious ideas that affect the political situation, you have to take a side somewhere."

...

A young woman asked God to curse the "evil men" who wished to stop Price's work. The sound of devotional singing filled the air as Price led the group in a round of "Great is Thy Faithfulness," timed with the rising of the morning sun. "All right, to your tents, oh Israel, and let's get to work!" he said, followed promptly by the scraping of shovels, the warbling thunder of wheelbarrows, the thud of picks against hard earth.

For some, the mood of discovery was feverish. David, a squat, graying man with a walking stick and thick glasses, knelt on the ground in front of Price. He laid down a piece of sandstone and cracked it open with a hammer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... nk/273488/

Epicure wrote:I promised something about archaeology, here are some bits from an article I read recently from The Atlantic.

It is titled "The Biblical Pseudo-Archeologists Pillaging the West Bank":

For Randall Price, a mid-50's, sun-reddened pastor from Texas with a neat side part and a booming voice, archaeology is both a scientific and a devotional endeavor. "This was the area where great men of God were tested," he said. "When you're excavating there it puts you in touch, physically, with the reality of those events." Price has spent the last ten years searching for remains of an ascetic Jewish priesthood whom he believes settled in the desert wilderness of Qumran to await the coming of the Messiah and the End of Days. These remains, he said, could provide unprecedented evidence of a biblical text.

At first blush, Price seems like an unlikely candidate to head excavations amid one of the bitterest land disputes in the modern world. Though he never actually received a degree in archaeology, he built a global network around his brand of Near East biblical scholarship with an apocalyptic bent. He has written extensively for the website RaptureReady.com, given lectures suggesting that Iran is fulfilling the role of Antichrist, and has openly called for the United States to declare war on Islam.

Just a brief aside, here are Price's credentials according to Wikipedia:

He is a Th.M. graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary in Old Testament and Semitic Languages and holds a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has also studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is Distinguished Research Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Judaic Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty works with young Earth creationist organizations including Answers in Genesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Randall_Price

Back to the article:

Archaeology in the West Bank--specifically, who has the right to dig, interpret, and store artifacts--is a wedge issue that ties into broader struggles over resource control in the occupied territory. "Are we trying to be nationalist?" Price said. "In this conflict of religious ideas that affect the political situation, you have to take a side somewhere."

...

A young woman asked God to curse the "evil men" who wished to stop Price's work. The sound of devotional singing filled the air as Price led the group in a round of "Great is Thy Faithfulness," timed with the rising of the morning sun. "All right, to your tents, oh Israel, and let's get to work!" he said, followed promptly by the scraping of shovels, the warbling thunder of wheelbarrows, the thud of picks against hard earth.

For some, the mood of discovery was feverish. David, a squat, graying man with a walking stick and thick glasses, knelt on the ground in front of Price. He laid down a piece of sandstone and cracked it open with a hammer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internationa ... nk/273488/

Ah yes ... another peer-reviewed Bible scholar at work! He's got degrees in the relevant fields, so his historical objectivity cannot be questioned.

Stein wrote:

Byron wrote:As I asked over in the Ehrman thread: in which area do you believe that biblical scholars are insufficiently skeptical?

......... waiting for Epicure's reply ...........

Stein

LOL, you need to get a life. People have things to do between posting, you could wait a long time.

Epicure wrote:

Byron wrote:As I asked over in the Ehrman thread: in which area do you believe that biblical scholars are insufficiently skeptical?

A specific area? There is no one area. It's a problem stemming from background and tradition regarding the conclusions made with evidence available. Hence my screed about the training of Bible Scholars.

A major symptom of "HJ Certainty" is confusing multiple attestations with strong evidence.

Exactly.

Epicure wrote: "Because there are so many attestations about the deeds of an X, there MUST have been an X". Another symptom is "The consensus among Bible Scholars (already a narrow group) is that X is historical, and this has stayed true over time." That is a worthless appeal to authority and [appeal to] popularity[/i ... a plethora of claims made by many.

Yep!!

... The main difference with Jesus is that he is extrapolated by Gospel Writers into the fairly recent past, rather than a more distant past, as opposed to Hercules, Moses, and Abraham, among others. Even so, it took a long fairly long while for Moses and Abraham, but NOT Hercules, to get tossed out as historical figures because Western Academia ... was rooted in Judeo-Christian belief during [the past 1600+ years].

Furthermore, the multitude of opinions about who Jesus was shows the paucity of good evidence about his existence and are [i]a sign of bias. Jesus is represented as everything from a "Wisdom Sage" to an "Apocalyptic Preacher" to an "Agent of Social Change", even a "Failed Revolutionary". If we had better evidence, there would be less debate about who Jesus was.

Good points.

If we had better evidence, there would be less debate about who Jesus was.

It's the reason this lack "better evidence" is why we have this immortal thread.

There's another historicity question that I think is worth mentioning. Which parts of each of the Gospels is historical?

There is an obvious fault line here between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and John. Isaac Asimov in his Asimov's Guide to the Bible (the New Testament, John, p. 952), stated some common views on the historicity of John. I mention this because he had likely stated the conventional wisdom at the time he wrote, the mid 1960's.

One of them is that all the canonical Gospels are historical, though that requires some retconning and the presumption that the Gospels' writers had left out major details of Jesus Christ's life and career. The Synoptic ones had left out much of what JC had done in Jerusalem, and John had left out most of what JC had done in Galilee.

Another one is that John is didactic fiction for expounding some theology and for criticizing rival theologies, thus making Jesus Christ much like Socrates in Plato's Dialogues, a literary sockpuppet.

Retconning? Retcon is short for retroactive continuity, and retconning is a literary technique often used by fans of serial fictional works, and sometimes by their creators. It takes several forms:

• Addition of details that fill in gaps.
• Modification: addition of details that show that some previous works' details are not what they seem. Thus, someone dying may be explained as only seeming to have died, something common enough in some genres that it's been named a "comic book death".
• Subtraction of parts of a canon.

Various theological apologetics are plausibly interpreted as retcons, like:

• The notion that the second Genesis creation story is what happened when God created humanity in the first Genesis story.
• The Jewish belief that the Talmud contains some additional revelation from God to Moses, revelation that got passed down orally for over a millennium before getting written down in the Talmud.
• The Muslim belief that Mohammed had had many predecessor prophets, like Abraham, Moses, Alexander the Great, and Jesus Christ.
• What I'd mentioned earlier about the Synoptics vs. John, that the Synoptics talked mostly about JC in Galilee, and John about JC in Jerusalem.
• JC's ancestry in Matthew and Luke. This is either explained as omissions by both authors, or else as one of the genealogies being of Mary instead of Joseph.
• Turning the birth stories in Matthew and Luke into one story.
• Reconciling the four Gospels' resurrection stories.
• Explaining Paul's not discussing most of the Gospels' content as not repeating those details for readers who already know them.

I'll close with asking about whether JC's death in the Gospels is a comic-book death, since he got resurrected not long afterwards. Not in the strict sense of one book describing him as dead and the next one describing how he got resurrected, of course. But it may have much the same emotional effect.