Historical Jesus

Stein · **#43341** by **Stein** » Jan 19, 2022 8:05 am

This comes from Nov. of 2020 --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZTiLacoks

Stein

dogsgod · **#43342** by **dogsgod** » Jan 19, 2022 8:23 pm

I would just as soon listen to Donald Trump as Tim O'neil. Birds of a feather.

Leucius Charinus · **#43343** by **Leucius Charinus** » Jan 20, 2022 5:20 am

Tim O'Neill thinks that the Dark Ages never happened and that Christian monks saved civilization by preserving the classics.

dejuror · **#43344** by **dejuror** » Jan 20, 2022 2:21 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote:
dejuror wrote:
Leucius Charinus wrote:
RealityRules wrote:

by crucifying Jesus again ?

According to one of the apocryphal acts Jesus said he was going to be crucified a second time.
Peter who had escaped his jailers in Rome met Jesus at the gates of the city.

"When he wished to go out the city gate, however, he saw Christ coming to meet him.
Worshipping him, he said:

"Lord, where are you going?" (QUO VADIS)

Christ answered him: "I am coming to Rome to be crucified again." [p. 8]

And Peter said to him: "Lord, will you be crucified again?"
And the Lord said to him: "Certainly, I will be crucified again."

But Peter said: "Lord, I will return and follow you."
And after these things were spoken, the Lord ascended into the heavens.

--- The Acts of Pseudo-Linus

This Christian writing implies their Jesus was still on earth [in the city of Rome] in the time of Nero c 54-68 CE.

The Monty Python movie "Life of Brian" is set in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus and is widely regarded as a satire. It was not written by Christians.

Likewise I regard this writing - Pseudo-Linus - to be a lampoon or a satire on the NT Jesus story. I do not assume it was written by the (canonical) Christians rather, in all likelihood, a pagan satirist. It was designed to make the audience laugh IMHO.

I am referring to the Acts of Peter. It is a Christian writing which claims Peter met Jesus in the city of Rome during the reign of Nero c 54-68 CE.

Leucius Charinus · **#43345** by **Leucius Charinus** » Jan 21, 2022 7:50 am

dejuror wrote:
Leucius Charinus wrote:
dejuror wrote:
Leucius Charinus wrote:

According to one of the apocryphal acts Jesus said he was going to be crucified a second time.
Peter who had escaped his jailers in Rome met Jesus at the gates of the city.

"When he wished to go out the city gate, however, he saw Christ coming to meet him.
Worshipping him, he said:

"Lord, where are you going?" (QUO VADIS)

Christ answered him: "I am coming to Rome to be crucified again." [p. 8]

And Peter said to him: "Lord, will you be crucified again?"
And the Lord said to him: "Certainly, I will be crucified again."

But Peter said: "Lord, I will return and follow you."
And after these things were spoken, the Lord ascended into the heavens.

--- The Acts of Pseudo-Linus

This Christian writing implies their Jesus was still on earth [in the city of Rome] in the time of Nero c 54-68 CE.

The Monty Python movie "Life of Brian" is set in Jerusalem in the time of Jesus and is widely regarded as a satire. It was not written by Christians.

Likewise I regard this writing - Pseudo-Linus - to be a lampoon or a satire on the NT Jesus story. I do not assume it was written by the (canonical) Christians rather, in all likelihood, a pagan satirist. It was designed to make the audience laugh IMHO.

I am referring to the Acts of Peter. It is a Christian writing which claims Peter met Jesus in the city of Rome during the reign of Nero c 54-68 CE.

The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions do exactly the same thing. But here Peter has a miracle contest with Simon Magus in the sky above the Roman coliseum in the presence of Nero (and in some versions with the presence of Paul). Modern scholarship sees these texts being authored by an Arian c.330 CE. This authorship date is after the Nicene council and the circulation of the canonical new testament Jesus story book by the emperor Constantine.

I think it is reasonable to see the Clementine literature as a reaction to the Jesus Story Book. Not written by a Christian but by a pagan anti-Christian satirist. Same as the author of the Acts of John where John resurrects a smoked fish.

proudfootz · **#43346** by **proudfootz** » Jan 22, 2022 12:23 am

Stein wrote:This comes from Nov. of 2020 --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkZTiLacoks

Stein

A more in depth look at TON's video...

I took time out last night to follow up a comment left on Vridar and listen to Derek Lambert’s MythVision interview with Tim O’Neill, author of the blog History for Atheists. If one sets aside the revealing psychological portrait that emerges from the incidental comments O’Neill lets drop about himself throughout the interview and focuses on his message one finds an unfortunate mix of contradictions, logical fallacies and factual errors presented with a confidence that evidently many readers find persuasive. I will attempt to deal with just one or two points per post to illustrate why readers and viewers need to put on their critical hats and examine carefully some of O’Neill’s claims...

https://vridar.org/2020/11/13/bad-histo ... s-existed/

This is the first in a series exploring the video. :thumbup:

Owdhat · **#43347** by **Owdhat** » Jan 22, 2022 6:34 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote:Tim O'Neill thinks that the Dark Ages never happened and that Christian monks saved civilization by preserving the classics.

So who did preserve the classics?

Leucius Charinus · **#43348** by **Leucius Charinus** » Jan 22, 2022 9:44 pm

Owdhat wrote:
Leucius Charinus wrote:Tim O'Neill thinks that the Dark Ages never happened and that Christian monks saved civilization by preserving the classics.

So who did preserve the classics?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmiss ... k_Classics

Leucius Charinus · **#43349** by **Leucius Charinus** » Jan 22, 2022 9:47 pm

How Jesus Historicists and Mythicists Can Work Together (or, How to do History)

https://vridar.org/2022/01/22/how-jesus ... o-history/

BASIC SUMMARY using copy/paste:

1) All the appeals to authority do is point us to the fact that most references to Jesus in historical works (even in works addressing specifically the “quest for the historical Jesus”) “accept an historical Jesus as a premise” (Pattenden). Such references can be nothing more than "evidence only of a scholarly consensus in favour of not questioning the premise." (Pattenden)

2) institutional bias: Christian faith — which, except very eccentrically, must surely include a belief that Jesus was a real person — has often been a motivating factor in individuals’ decisions to pursue a career in the sorts of academic fields under scrutiny here. In other words, belief in Jesus’s historicity has come a priori of many scholars’ historical study of him, and the argument that their acceptance of the ability to study him historically proves his historicity is mere circularity.

3) the existence of a critical mass of scholars who do believe in Jesus’s historicity will almost certainly have shaped the way that all other scholars write about the subject. Unless they are strongly motivated to argue that Jesus was not real, they will not arbitrarily provoke colleagues who do believe in his historicity by denying it casually. After all, as academics, we ought to want to advance arguments that persuade our colleagues — and getting them offside by needlessly challenging a point not directly in contention will not help with that.

4) But the historical Thakur may be as well attested by categories (if not quantity) of contemporary evidence as the historical Jesus is. So do we not risk charges of hypocrisy, even cultural double standards, if we accept different standards of proof for the existence of the one from that for the other? SEE: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful ... hic3.12360

5) SOURCES: Adopt a humble, polite, sceptical, and open‐minded attitude towards the sources. The historian works with sources. Sources make claims and those claims are tested against other sources. Claims made within sources are never taken at face value but are always — if the historian is doing their job — assessed in the context of where and when and by whom and for what purpose the source was created.

6) When it comes to the gospels, scholars advance various hypotheses to answer those questions but they can rarely go beyond those hypotheses. It is necessary to acknowledge the extent to which our beliefs about our sources are really hypotheses that by definition are open to question and that our long-held beliefs about them are not necessarily facts.

7) As long as a discussion is kept at the level of sources and avoids jumping the rails by asserting that information found in the sources has some untestable independent reality then progress, I think, can be made.

Worth a read.

RealityRules · **#43350** by **RealityRules** » Jan 24, 2022 10:16 am

Offener Anfang: Die Entstehung des Christentums im 2. Jahrhundert

aka 'Open Beginnings: The emergence of Christianity in the 2nd century'

https://www.herder.de/theologie-pastora ... 7/p-16594/

The summary translated into English:

Based on the thesis that no one in early Christianity was interested in a historical account of the beginnings of Christianity, Vincent arrives at fundamental insights that question centuries-old ideas about the early days of Christianity.

The oldest witnesses who are called upon to convey to us the beginnings of Christianity are neither the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles, nor the epistles of Paul. They are often apocryphal testimonies, alleged epistles from Jesus or Paul, lives of apostles, or Jewish scriptures.

The great theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, from Irenaeus to Tertullian to Origen, refer to apostolic traditions (which are difficult to determine), the rule of faith, and to holy scriptures, yet not as an appeal to the "historical", but to use them as a 'norm' as anti-heretical weapons. They were never concerned with historically ascertaining the person of Jesus of Nazareth or the beginnings of Christianity.

Both were constructed under completely different historical auspices—with an anti-heretic objective—only in the 4th century via Eusebius of Caesarea, and with lasting success. To this day, this also shapes the current depictions of the history of early Christianity—supplemented with all the testimonies that the early church left behind as apologetic, homiletic and didactic—but not as actual historical records.

Hermit · **#43351** by **Hermit** » Jan 24, 2022 11:30 am

RealityRules wrote:Offener Anfang: Die Entstehung des Christentums im 2. Jahrhundert

aka 'Open Beginnings: The emergence of Christianity in the 2nd century'

https://www.herder.de/theologie-pastoral-shop/offener-anfang-ebook-(pdf)/c-37/p-17423/

The summary translated into English:

Based on the thesis that no one in early Christianity was interested in a historical account of the beginnings of Christianity, Vincent arrives at fundamental insights that question centuries-old ideas about the early days of Christianity.

The oldest witnesses who are called upon to convey to us the beginnings of Christianity are neither the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles, nor the epistles of Paul. They are often apocryphal testimonies, alleged epistles from Jesus or Paul, lives of apostles, or Jewish scriptures.

The great theologians of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, from Irenaeus to Tertullian to Origen, refer to apostolic traditions (which are difficult to determine), the rule of faith, and to holy scriptures, yet not as an appeal to the "historical", but to use them as a 'norm' as anti-heretical weapons. They were never concerned with historically ascertaining the person of Jesus of Nazareth or the beginnings of Christianity.

Both were constructed under completely different historical auspices—with an anti-heretic objective—only in the 4th century via Eusebius of Caesarea, and with lasting success. To this day, this also shapes the current depictions of the history of early Christianity—supplemented with all the testimonies that the early church left behind as apologetic, homiletic and didactic—but not as actual historical records.

40,00 €

The author, Markus Vinzent, is professor of theological history at the Department for Theology and Religious Studies. King's College, London

Fixed your link, by the way.

RealityRules · **#43352** by **RealityRules** » Jan 24, 2022 10:51 pm

Hermit wrote:The author, Markus Vinzent, is professor of theological history at the Department for Theology and Religious Studies. King's College, London

Yep. He's said this book will be published in English (his wife died recently and had been sick for over a year)

Hermit wrote:
Fixed your link, by the way.

Thnx. I changed it to the link to the hard copy/book webpage.

proudfootz · **#43353** by **proudfootz** » Jan 28, 2022 8:58 pm

Well, the news isn't all bad! :cheers:

Looks like a healthy number of people know Jesus is merely a literary character.

https://vridar.org/2022/01/18/bearing-f ... for-jesus/

Leucius Charinus · **#43354** by **Leucius Charinus** » Jan 29, 2022 1:12 am

proudfootz wrote:Well, the news isn't all bad!

Looks like a healthy number of people know Jesus is merely a literary character.

https://vridar.org/2022/01/18/bearing-f ... for-jesus/

Isn't it lucky for the church orthodoxy that people in Australia could not possibly believe this because, says the church, it is a myth that people actual live in the antipodes:

St. Augustine (City of God XVI.9):

As to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth

there is no reason for believing it

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01581a.htm

proudfootz · **#43355** by **proudfootz** » Jan 29, 2022 5:44 pm

Is it ironic many Australians believe in Jesus but christian thought leader doesn't believe in Australians?

Stein · **#43356** by **Stein** » Mar 27, 2022 2:19 am

From this past Friday:

https://historyforatheists.com/2022/03/ ... -miracles/

Stein

Stein · **#43357** by **Stein** » Mar 27, 2022 2:35 am

Stein wrote:From this past Friday:

https://historyforatheists.com/2022/03/ ... -miracles/

Stein

"Indeed I’m curious which percentage of JMs are ex-christians. Because I often sense a desire to take revenge on a faith that “betrayed” them. It’s not their black or white approach that bugs me most though. It’s their insistence that they are rational vs. their refusal to apply their black and white approach to other sources from Antiquity. About all authors mixed fiction with fact. Separating the two is an obsession developed last couple of centuries. The task of historians of Antiquity is exactly to develop reliable methods to do that. But JMs don’t care. I find that appalling.

Fun fact: the Dutch word for Gospel is Evangelie, taken directly from the Greek word. It hasn’t stopped Dutch JMs from making the silliest claims about their mythical Jesus you can think of.

Besides Appolonius of Tyana there is also St. Nicholas of Myra, the guy that lives on as Sinterklaas in The Netherlands and Santa Claus in several English speaking countries.

“Given he is a philosopher” Law seems way too little interested in developing reliable methods.

“what he feels is a good analogy”
There it is. Analogies are loved by christian apologists. In science they are only used to illustrate, not as evidence or proof. But even as an analogy the Ted, Sarah and Bert story doesn’t work. Law doesn’t ask the crucial questions: are we justified to believe that Bert is a product of their fantasy, given that the neighbours saw him leaving? Doesn’t the analogy rather prove that we should doubt the assumption that Law’s couple are mentally sane and generally trustworthy? Shouldn’t we conclude that the couple, like the authors of the Gospels, enjoy mixing fiction with fact? A philosopher worth that name above all should apply his scepticism to himself. Law failed.
That’s bad if an amateur like me can see right through his arguments." [a comment left at the foot of the above piece by "FrankB"]

Stein

proudfootz · **#43358** by **proudfootz** » Mar 27, 2022 6:03 pm

Stein wrote:From this past Friday:

https://historyforatheists.com/2022/03/ ... -miracles/

Stein

The author opens with this salvo:

There is a particular type of person who accepts Jesus Mythicism...

Lest we forget this is personal.

Mythicism has the appeal of an all-encompassing explanation for how Christianity started...

As if the simplest explanation for all the evidence were something shameful. This might be called the Occam's Advantage.

But the bulk of the blog post concerns how historians handle miracles. This is occasioned by a paper Stephen Law published in a philosophy journal on the topic of whether reliance on the fantastic in a given narrative should give us pause about the reliability of mundane material that lies alongside it.

Stephen Law summarizes his argument thus:

Let me stress at the outset that I don’t endorse the following argument. I present it, not because I’m convinced it is cogent, but because I believe it has some prima facie plausibility, and because it is an argument any historian who believes the available evidence places Jesus’ existence beyond reasonable doubt needs to refute

1. (P1) Where a claim’s justification derives solely from evidence, extraordinary claims (e.g. concerning supernatural miracles) require extraordinary evidence. In the absence of extraordinary evidence there is good reason to be sceptical about those claims.

2. There is no extraordinary evidence for any of the extraordinary claims concerning supernatural miracles made in the New Testament documents.

3. Therefore (from 1 and 2), there's good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims.

4. (P2) Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.

5. The New Testament documents weave together a narrative about Jesus that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims.

6. There is no good independent evidence for even the mundane claims about Jesus (such as that he existed)

7. Therefore (from 3, 4, 5, and 6), there's good reason to be sceptical about whether Jesus existed.

Law then goes on to discuss several criteria used by Biblical scholars in their quest to establish historical facts from Scripture. He concludes:

...the three criteria of multiple attestation, embarrassment and discontinuity, criteria widely used to justify the claim that the New Testament documents alone suffice to establish firmly the truth of various Biblical claims, such as that Jesus existed. On closer examination, these three criteria do not appear (either singly or jointly), to establish, by themselves, a core of material within the New Testament testimony that we can justifiably consider “assured” (Perrin), an “unassailable nucleus” (C. Leslie Milton) or “unlikely to be inventions of early evangelists” (Grant).

All in all I find Law's argument to be very reasonable.

Leucius Charinus · **#43359** by **Leucius Charinus** » Mar 29, 2022 6:28 am

proudfootz wrote:
Stein wrote:From this past Friday:

https://historyforatheists.com/2022/03/ ... -miracles/

Stein

The author opens with this salvo:

There is a particular type of person who accepts Jesus Mythicism...

Lest we forget this is personal.

And that the conclusion is going to be assumed.

I wonder if it is possible that there is also a particular type of person who accepts Jesus Historicism?

Leucius Charinus · **#43360** by **Leucius Charinus** » Mar 29, 2022 7:37 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes

Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Re: Historical Jesus

Who is online