What Can We Reasonably Infer About The Historical Jesus?

angelo · **#21561** by **angelo** » Feb 05, 2012 11:25 am

Dejuror makes some very good points and knows his bablical history. But perhaps makes a little to much sense for HJ'rs here.

Byron · **#21562** by **Byron** » Feb 05, 2012 2:20 pm

logical bob wrote:I think its obvious that when the corroboration rests on the name [James] alone, the more common the name the weaker the corroboration.

Agreed. The corroboration rests on its uncommon use.

The data-points in common between Galatians, the synoptics and Josephus are:-

James was brother to a man named Jesus
Jesus was titled "Christ"

A further two data-points are common to Galatians and Josephus:-

James was prominent in Jerusalem
James was prominent in a religious movement which elements of the Jewish authorities disapproved of

How do we get James' ties to a religious movement from Josephus? Simple really. The Jewish authorities' issue with James was serious enough to push the high priest, Ananus ben Ananus, into performing an illegal execution via a Sanhedrim (religious court), but they didn't hand James over to the Romans for crucifixion, as they could have for a criminal, or even a rabble-rouser. The issue wasn't secular.

So for this coincidence to stand, we must have two James', brothers to two Jesus', both titled Christ, and both prominent in Jerusalem religious movements that could be construed as violating Jewish law. That's a heckuva lot of biography to duplicate.

While "Christ" didn't always mean "Christ Jesus," when Josephus authored the Antiquities, in the AD 90s, Christianity had already spread through the Roman Empire. So using it here without qualification would be needlessly confusing; using it here as a title doubly so. As for the passage being a fake, beyond the lack of any discernible motive, this fake would have to encompass every copy of Origen's corpus. Origen, writing when Christianity was a barely-tolerated sect, was in no position to systematically edit Josephus.

Thanks for the correction re. the gospels: this just goes to illustrate further why Paul would've felt the need to distinguish James, brother of Jesus, among the apostles. The "brothers of the Lord" are mentioned in 1 Corinthians c.9, in the context of exemplars (the others are the apostles and Peter). If they were a group of Christians, they weren't minor.

Or: Jesus of Nazareth had a brother called James.

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Cito di Pense · **#21566** by **Cito di Pense** » Feb 07, 2012 12:32 pm

Byron wrote:
How do we get James' ties to a religious movement from Josephus? Simple really. The Jewish authorities' issue with James was serious enough to push the high priest, Ananus ben Ananus, into performing an illegal execution via a Sanhedrim (religious court), but they didn't hand James over to the Romans for crucifixion, as they could have for a criminal, or even a rabble-rouser. The issue wasn't secular.

It's always asked (and ignored) how a story about James and Ananus has anything to do with Jesus (Christ) and James that cannot equally be explained if Josephus is merely repeating what xians of the time are saying about the relation between James and Jesus. To lean on it heavily, you have to lean heavily on Galatians verses and interpret them to back up your interpretation about how Josephus comes to mention a 'relationship' between Jesus and James.

This problem has been confronted on numerous occasions, and it always comes back with a bare assertion of the 'connections' which ignores the objections that have been raised. This makes it look like whistling in the dark, because you cannot be unaware of the objections that have been raised to the simplistic scenario you recommend.

For my skepticism, it is not simply that a possibility exists that Josephus is repeating uncritically the doctrine of early xians about a relation between Jesus and James (if, that is, these are actually the words of Josephus), it is that it looks for all the world to be resting on the very interpretation of Galatians you make, which means that you're using your acceptance of Josephus as legitimate history to back up your interpretation of Galatians. This is what I call a 'house of cards'.

I don't doubt that it is enough to support the opinion of the true believer in the historicity of Jesus. But there are lots of other arguments toward skepticism of historicity that have nothing to do with James, Ananus, and Jesus in AJ and Galatians. The fact that this one gets repeated like a mantra is not something in favour of the unbiased nature of historicist 'scholarship'.

spin · **#21567** by **spin** » Feb 07, 2012 12:35 pm

nunnington wrote:to argue that a particular construction is marked, one has to demonstrate first that it stands out against a norm, which is said to be unmarked. Thus, you refer to 'less common syntactic formations'. I am just curious where you get the information about what is less common, and what the baseline or norm is said to be. Have you done your own statistical study, or are you referring to published work?

There's a wealth of evidence specifically in the Antiquities, hundreds and hundreds of exemplars of a figure being introduced through a familial connection. Some years ago I looked at every one of them. There's no problem identifying the familial connection first as marked. In most cases of an introduced figure with familial connection first there has been a transparent reason for the marked syntax, ie the familial connection had just been mentioned and so the marked syntax in such cases is only to be expected. If Jesus had just been mentioned in AJ 20:200, one might expect the current syntax, but this is not the case and we are left with the unexplained marked syntax.

Cito di Pense · **#21568** by **Cito di Pense** » Feb 07, 2012 12:38 pm

spin wrote:
nunnington wrote:to argue that a particular construction is marked, one has to demonstrate first that it stands out against a norm, which is said to be unmarked. Thus, you refer to 'less common syntactic formations'. I am just curious where you get the information about what is less common, and what the baseline or norm is said to be. Have you done your own statistical study, or are you referring to published work?

There's a wealth of evidence specifically in the Antiquities, hundreds and hundreds of exemplars of a figure being introduced through a familial connection. Some years ago I looked at every one of them. There's no problem identifying the familial connection first as marked. In most cases of an introduced figure with familial connection first there has been a transparent reason for the marked syntax, ie the familial connection had just been mentioned and so the marked syntax in such cases is only to be expected. If Jesus had just been mentioned in AJ 20:200, one might expect the current syntax, but this is not the case and we are left with the unexplained marked syntax.

Is that an argument for it's being inserted? If so, then it amplifies my criticism of using the AJ 20:200 at all. I admit that parsimony suffers when trying to suggest that AJ 20:200 is authentically Josephus, simply repeating xian doctrine uncritically, but I think that is another direction that critics go. Somebody will always try to distract attention from an ad hoc historicist argument by shouting that a skeptical argument is also ad hoc. I think the critical 'ad hoc' needs to take a breather for awhile. The contingent that thinks the question is basically undecidable with the texts we have is resting comfortably, as always.

nunnington · **#21569** by **nunnington** » Feb 07, 2012 1:24 pm

spin wrote:
nunnington wrote:to argue that a particular construction is marked, one has to demonstrate first that it stands out against a norm, which is said to be unmarked. Thus, you refer to 'less common syntactic formations'. I am just curious where you get the information about what is less common, and what the baseline or norm is said to be. Have you done your own statistical study, or are you referring to published work?

There's a wealth of evidence specifically in the Antiquities, hundreds and hundreds of exemplars of a figure being introduced through a familial connection. Some years ago I looked at every one of them. There's no problem identifying the familial connection first as marked. In most cases of an introduced figure with familial connection first there has been a transparent reason for the marked syntax, ie the familial connection had just been mentioned and so the marked syntax in such cases is only to be expected. If Jesus had just been mentioned in AJ 20:200, one might expect the current syntax, but this is not the case and we are left with the unexplained marked syntax.

Well, there are various reasons for marked syntax, and you have mentioned one, that it repeats information just mentioned. I think this is part of a general rule, that the distinction between old and new information is often highlighted by syntax and intonation. For example, 'this film showcases Julia Roberts' brother, Eric' sounds OK to me, but 'this film showcases Eric Roberts' sister, Julia', sounds peculiar. In other words, new information is presented via old, and not vice versa, (assuming that most people have heard of Julia but not Eric). But in a biography of Eric, it would be OK, as now Eric is old info.

But this is not marked syntax in any case. That would be something like 'it's Julia Roberts' brother, Eric, who is showcased in this film').

I'm not suggesting that this is the case in the Josephus text, but it is a notoriously complex area of language, and requires a lot of study of contexts, and the general semantics and pragmatics shown in a particular writer.

I think you are suggesting that it was highlighted by Christian interpolators - that's certainly possible. I would think that there are Josephus experts who have studied this?

Cito di Pense · **#21570** by **Cito di Pense** » Feb 07, 2012 1:48 pm

nunnington wrote:
I think you are suggesting that it was highlighted by Christian interpolators - that's certainly possible. I would think that there are Josephus experts who have studied this?

It's not something that can be decided definitely. It's only something mitigating confidence in using a passage from Josephus in contemplating whether or not Jesus is historical. If you include it despite that criticism, you're in for an argument delaying acceptance of your decision to include it. All the text supporting the hypothesis is subject to this problem. Therefore, it stops being about considering a hypothesis, but about the reasons that people accept or decline arguments toward hypotheses. Do you even think the disputes amongst linguists regarding the concept of 'marked texts' are decidable? I guess that if you're a linguist, part of you may believe that. That kind of linguistics is not a science, either. Layer upon layer of supposition. Accepting the hypothesis in a positivist sense has to be at some point about terminating the inquiry, folding the tent, and going home. Or else it is about the fun of wibbling.

proudfootz · **#21571** by **proudfootz** » Feb 07, 2012 1:56 pm

Cito di Pense wrote:
Byron wrote:
How do we get James' ties to a religious movement from Josephus? Simple really. The Jewish authorities' issue with James was serious enough to push the high priest, Ananus ben Ananus, into performing an illegal execution via a Sanhedrim (religious court), but they didn't hand James over to the Romans for crucifixion, as they could have for a criminal, or even a rabble-rouser. The issue wasn't secular.

It's always asked (and ignored) how a story about James and Ananus has anything to do with Jesus (Christ) and James that cannot equally be explained if Josephus is merely repeating what xians of the time are saying about the relation between James and Jesus. To lean on it heavily, you have to lean heavily on Galatians verses and interpret them to back up your interpretation about how Josephus comes to mention a 'relationship' between Jesus and James.

Yes, it is difficult to do much with this passage as it seems that at best (i.e. Josephus genuinely wrote it) it is most likely merely a repetition of christian belief. In that sense it cannot be considered an 'independent' source, unless one further postulates that Josephus knew something about the Jesus family despite the fact of Jesus's obscurity and hailing from some even more obscure settlement tucked in among the tombs of Nazareth. More parsimonious to take the passage as it appears to be - a reiteration of christian belief at the time the phrase was written (by whomever).

A further consideration is - supposing this is an authentic passage from the pen of Josephus - is whether Josephus might have heard the phrase "James, Brother of the Lord" and mistook a title for a blood kinship.

This problem has been confronted on numerous occasions, and it always comes back with a bare assertion of the 'connections' which ignores the objections that have been raised. This makes it look like whistling in the dark, because you cannot be unaware of the objections that have been raised to the simplistic scenario you recommend.

It's as if the critiques of this interpretation have never been made. I know it's difficult to always insert all the necessary caveats into an informal discussion, but this is exactly the sort of bald declaration that gets MJ proponents assailed for their alleged 'dogmatism'.

For my skepticism, it is not simply that a possibility exists that Josephus is repeating uncritically the doctrine of early xians about a relation between Jesus and James (if, that is, these are actually the words of Josephus), it is that it looks for all the world to be resting on the very interpretation of Galatians you make, which means that you're using your acceptance of Josephus as legitimate history to back up your interpretation of Galatians. This is what I call a 'house of cards'.

I don't doubt that it is enough to support the opinion of the true believer in the historicity of Jesus. But there are lots of other arguments toward skepticism of historicity that have nothing to do with James, Ananus, and Jesus in AJ and Galatians. The fact that this one gets repeated like a mantra is not something in favour of the unbiased nature of historicist 'scholarship'.

It certainly seems that certain memes perpetuated by bible scholars and their fans are immune from rational doubt.

nunnington · **#21572** by **nunnington** » Feb 07, 2012 2:06 pm

Cito di Pense wrote:
nunnington wrote:
I think you are suggesting that it was highlighted by Christian interpolators - that's certainly possible. I would think that there are Josephus experts who have studied this?

It's not something that can be decided definitely. It's only something mitigating confidence in using a passage from Josephus in contemplating whether or not Jesus is historical. If you include it despite that criticism, you're in for an argument delaying acceptance of your decision to include it. All the text supporting the hypothesis is subject to this problem. Therefore, it stops being about considering a hypothesis, but about the reasons that people accept or decline arguments toward hypotheses. Do you even think the disputes amongst linguists regarding the concept of 'marked texts' are decidable? I guess that if you're a linguist, part of you may believe that. That kind of linguistics is not a science, either. Layer upon layer of supposition. Accepting the hypothesis in a positivist sense has to be at some point about terminating the inquiry, folding the tent, and going home. Or else it is about the fun of wibbling.

Certainly, linguistics is very odd, since it has to consult people's intuition about whether something is ungrammatical, unacceptable, and so on. However, there is no way round this. After all, this is how we acquire (and learn) languages. If a Frenchman can't tell me when a sentence is grammatical in French, then I am truly fucked, if I want to learn French, and the child is presumably fucked in acquiring it, since any string of words might be OK.

I remember the old advert for the police, 'Dull it isn't', which most linguists assumed was an example of marked syntax, the unmarked being 'it isn't dull'. Of course, you could argue that this is mere whimsy, or whatever.

Cito di Pense · **#21573** by **Cito di Pense** » Feb 07, 2012 2:19 pm

nunnington wrote:
I remember the old advert for the police, 'Dull it isn't', which most linguists assumed was an example of marked syntax, the unmarked being 'it isn't dull'. Of course, you could argue that this is mere whimsy, or whatever.

That's a good example, but the context takes care of it. Both orderings are full of whimsy. The kind of reversal you regard as marked is what I would consider a more 'literate' syntax. Perhaps that's what's being marked.

Reminds me of that line in the French 80's new wave flick, "Diva", at the end where the police woman says something like, "And people say police work is dull". As a recruitment pitch, the unreversed one seems to me to tickle the appropriate audience.

So that this does not become a derail, let's try to imagine the target audience for Josephus. I seriously don't know where that will lead, and against my better judgement, I make the suggestion knowing it's been made before. I may be fucked.

spin · **#21574** by **spin** » Feb 07, 2012 2:43 pm

nunnington wrote:
spin wrote:
nunnington wrote:to argue that a particular construction is marked, one has to demonstrate first that it stands out against a norm, which is said to be unmarked. Thus, you refer to 'less common syntactic formations'. I am just curious where you get the information about what is less common, and what the baseline or norm is said to be. Have you done your own statistical study, or are you referring to published work?

There's a wealth of evidence specifically in the Antiquities, hundreds and hundreds of exemplars of a figure being introduced through a familial connection. Some years ago I looked at every one of them. There's no problem identifying the familial connection first as marked. In most cases of an introduced figure with familial connection first there has been a transparent reason for the marked syntax, ie the familial connection had just been mentioned and so the marked syntax in such cases is only to be expected. If Jesus had just been mentioned in AJ 20:200, one might expect the current syntax, but this is not the case and we are left with the unexplained marked syntax.

Well, there are various reasons for marked syntax, and you have mentioned one, that it repeats information just mentioned. I think this is part of a general rule, that the distinction between old and new information is often highlighted by syntax and intonation. For example, 'this film showcases Julia Roberts' brother, Eric' sounds OK to me, but 'this film showcases Eric Roberts' sister, Julia', sounds peculiar. In other words, new information is presented via old, and not vice versa, (assuming that most people have heard of Julia but not Eric). But in a biography of Eric, it would be OK, as now Eric is old info.

I agree with all this. In fact in the post that I most recently put forward the markedness notion I gave this parenthesis:

Note that for some unaccountable reason "the brother of Jesus called christ" appears before mention of James here. This is only to be expected when this Jesus had just been mentioned, which isn't the case, or that this Jesus was so famous to the reading audience to warrant the syntax change, also not the case. (Here)

It is this second option that reflects your reference to Julia Roberts.

nunnington wrote:But this is not marked syntax in any case. That would be something like 'it's Julia Roberts' brother, Eric, who is showcased in this film').

The choice we have before us is the equivalent of:

(Ananas brought before the sanhedrin...)
a. the brother of Jesus called christ James by name and some others
b. James the brother of Jesus called christ and some others

Origen shows no knowledge of the marked syntax currently found in AJ 20:200, always putting James first--another reason for thinking that Origen never saw that form of phrase.

nunnington wrote:I'm not suggesting that this is the case in the Josephus text, but it is a notoriously complex area of language, and requires a lot of study of contexts, and the general semantics and pragmatics shown in a particular writer.

I think you are suggesting that it was highlighted by Christian interpolators - that's certainly possible.

At the moment I think it is the best explanation for the evidence.

nunnington wrote:I would think that there are Josephus experts who have studied this?

I don't think you should think that. Sadly, linguistics is slow to enter the field of philology. It has and some rather important analyses have been made (for example, in trying to understand the functionality of ancient Hebrew verb forms), but the fact that linguistics is a coherent foundation for all philological endeavour hasn't been widely grasped.

Tero · **#21575** by **Tero** » Feb 07, 2012 3:20 pm

This is a lot of material to digest.

Can someone summarize the theist view of Jesus and parents/guardians and siblings and cousins. You can quote Bible.

spin · **#21576** by **spin** » Feb 07, 2012 3:27 pm

nunnington wrote:I remember the old advert for the police, 'Dull it isn't', which most linguists assumed was an example of marked syntax, the unmarked being 'it isn't dull'. Of course, you could argue that this is mere whimsy, or whatever.

I gotta ask, how does describing something as whimsy stop it from being marked syntax? English syntax, at least in the case of the affirmative, is inherently subject-verb based. The particular example is using marked syntax to say something more than what the unmarked statement can say. Markedness is a common tool in advertising. It's underlining the fact that the subject is anything but dull, just as in the case of the humour of the Carry On comedies being described with "subtle it isn't" and the syntax suggests you wouldn't expect it to be.

spin · **#21577** by **spin** » Feb 07, 2012 3:37 pm

Tero wrote:This is a lot of material to digest.

Can someone summarize the theist view of Jesus and parents/guardians and siblings and cousins. You can quote Bible.

To my knowledge no-one has specifically espoused a theist view in this thread. The three basic views I've seen are

Jesus was historical--in the sense that the available evidence tends to show that there was a real Jesus behind some of the gospel literature.
Jesus was mythical--there was no single real entity to be found behind the gospel literature. Some variants include Jesus being part of a salvation myth.
There is not enough evidence to conclude one way or another about the existence on Jesus. There is no default position in that Jesus may or may not have been real, so one cannot claim because one argues that the mythical (or the historical) case is bogus that the other must be correct. The onus is on the claimant to demonstrate the claim.

All of the relevant primary source literature has been examined and no advantage can be forced from it.

logical bob · **#21578** by **logical bob** » Feb 07, 2012 3:39 pm

Byron wrote:How do we get James' ties to a religious movement from Josephus? Simple really. The Jewish authorities' issue with James was serious enough to push the high priest, Ananus ben Ananus, into performing an illegal execution via a Sanhedrim (religious court), but they didn't hand James over to the Romans for crucifixion, as they could have for a criminal, or even a rabble-rouser. The issue wasn't secular.

Yes, I understand that. Aside from Cito's caveat that what this gives us is a man people called the brother of Jesus it raises further problems. Paul tells us about his intense persecution of and attempt to destroy the early Christian movement, perhaps as early as the 40s. Yet on this account we have as major a figure as Jesus' brother safe in Jerusalem until about 66, when he can only be disposed of in a power vacuum between procurators, and then in a manner which meets with general disapproval. This persecution sounds less than intense. Of course this might mean Paul was stretching the truth a bit about his own past, like a guy at an AA meeting exaggerating his past drinking, but that would only undermine the credibility of the key passage from the same chapter.

While "Christ" didn't always mean "Christ Jesus," when Josephus authored the Antiquities, in the AD 90s, Christianity had already spread through the Roman Empire. So using it here without qualification would be needlessly confusing; using it here as a title doubly so.

Yet the reason for the reference to Jesus in Tacitus is because, writing even later, he felt the need to explain who Christians were from scratch.

As for the passage being a fake, beyond the lack of any discernible motive...

Doesn't have to be a deliberate fake. It doesn't stretch credibility too far to consider a marginal note identifying the executed James as the brother of Jesus being incorporated into the body of the text by a later copyist.

Thanks for the correction re. the gospels: this just goes to illustrate further why Paul would've felt the need to distinguish James, brother of Jesus, among the apostles. The "brothers of the Lord" are mentioned in 1 Corinthians c.9, in the context of exemplars (the others are the apostles and Peter). If they were a group of Christians, they weren't minor.

I ask again where you'd expect to see such a group recorded other than in the only primary source we have. But that already assumes that it does refer to a group. What we have is two uses of a phrase joining two words loaded with religious symbolism by someone whose head was, by our standards, in a very strange place. Our confidence in the whole theory is as good as our confidence that he can only mean one thing.

Or: Jesus of Nazareth had a brother called James.

I don't deny that you can find the Jesus of Christian tradition in these sources. You can also not find him. In the absence of an agreed metric what's being measured is not the evidence but our desire to find.

I'm reminded of the process of naming constellations, in which a detailed and already known picture is superimposed on a few sparse dots. Those who don't buy into this are entitled to say that the dots look like a capital W and nothing like a maiden chained to a rock.

Evan Allen · **#21579** by **Evan Allen** » Feb 07, 2012 6:03 pm

The name of this forum is "Rational Skepticism" and someone is a skeptic when they doubt claims put forward by unreliable sources. Christianity has made many claims that are unique over the course of its history. As far as I know, any unique claims that Christianity has made that are testable have been proven false. The earth was not the center of the universe, demons didn't cause disease, nobody could levitate up into the sky without suffocating to death, the earth didn't begin by fiat creation et cetera.

A boxer who has lost almost every match would be a poor bet to win the next one.

A skeptic awaits positive evidence for the existence of something before she accepts that its assertion is warranted. The arguments here for Jesus mimic almost exactly the arguments for God.

We have evidence of God, but it's weak and contradictory, but lots of scholars and people believe in him, so he must be real ...

We have evidence of Jesus, but it's weak and contradictory, but lots of scholars and people accept his existence, so he must be real ...

We can't prove that God doesn't exist, so it must be warranted to believe that he does ...

We can't prove that Jesus didn't exist, so it must be warranted to believe that he does ...

These arguments are ones that should fail on this board. The assertion of a fact should stand on bedrock, not on opinion.

Scholars make mistakes all the time. In his book, Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us and How to Know When Not to Trust Them David H. Freedman writes:

The problems with collaborative and community thinking have been highlighted by a stream of studies, starting with the Yale psychology researcher Irving Janis’s classic examination of ‘groupthink’ back in 1972, which showed how groups could reach terrible decisions that none of the individuals in the group ever would have made on his own. As Janis and many other have shown — and as most of us know all too well — groups are frequently dominated not by people most likely to be right, but by people who are belligerent, persuasive, persistent, manipulative or forceful. Those who are even mildly adept at getting people to go along with them can quickly form small alliances of viewpoint that may in turn convince others to join in, eventually swaying even those with doubts — most of us don’t want to be the odd man out. (Some of us may recall the old Candid Camera segment in which an unsuspecting victim steps onto an elevator filled with several in-on-the-joke riders who turn to face the back of the elevator, leading the victim, clearly against her better judgment, to do the same.) As Colin Camerer, a decision-science researcher at the California Institute of Technology told me, ‘Groups distribute responsibility for being wrong, so that individuals drop their guard against errors and bad judgment. Researchers have noted that the larger the number of people who contribute to a research project, the greater the chances that at least one of them will fabricate, misanalyze or otherwise distort data, and the harder it will be to track down the culprit.

Once a wrong decision has been formed, even highly competent, confident people will be reluctant to voice opinions that go against it, thanks to the notion, drilled into our heads from elementary school up through the workplace, that forging cooperation and agreement is critical. ‘There’s a cultural norm of how we behave as professionals, and part of it is that we’re overly trained in consensus,’ says Daniel Eisenstadt, the director of the Philadelphia-based private-equity firm CMS. Eienstadt, a Harvard Business School graduate, points out that students at graduate schools are expected to quickly adapt themselves to a culture that favors building on others’ opinions rather than challenging them while also absorbing the opinions of their instructors wholesale. …

Academic, financial and clinical researchers submit themselves to a pack mentality at least as easily as most sorts of groups or communities. ‘They go off on the wrong direction, following one another like any collection of humans,’ says Peter Sheridan Dodds, a University of Vermont mathematician who also does work in sociology and biology, among other fields.

(emphases are all mine)

The expert consensus keeps getting appealed to on this thread and this is a fallacy. Once a claim has been put against the consensus, the validity of the evidence for the consensus then becomes the issue, and this must be the focus of further discussion, the evidence alone can defend a consensus.

The guild of bible scholars willingly admits members who believe in demonic possession.

NT Wright, who wrote a major book about the reliability of the gospel accounts of the resurrection in which he argued that a reasonable historian would conclude that Jesus actually was the son of God and actually did rise from the dead ... this man was the chair of the historical Jesus section for the Society of Biblical Literature from 1998 to 2001. The current chair is a professor of Theology at Notre Dame.

With standards like this, we rational skeptics really need hear no more about any supposed consensus of biblical scholars, please.

GakuseiDon · **#21580** by **GakuseiDon** » Feb 07, 2012 7:02 pm

Evan Allen wrote:NT Wright, who wrote a major book about the reliability of the gospel accounts of the resurrection in which he argued that a reasonable historian would conclude that Jesus actually was the son of God and actually did rise from the dead

Which book was that?

What Can We Reasonably Infer About The Historical Jesus?

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The agnostic view

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