Posted: May 01, 2012 5:26 pm
dejuror wrote:Blood wrote:angelo wrote:I think the main problem here are the sources. The only source we have of a HJ are the discredited gospels which are chock of block full of supernatural trivia that no clear thinking person would ever accept unless the person has a hidden agenda. Like funding from a certain organisation for example. This third quest for a HJ will end up as the last two unless new evidence is presented, which I doubt exists.
Yes, this "attestation" idea is a canard of epic proportions. It is not the mere fact of a past figure's textual "attestation" that is a determinate to historicity, it is the nature of the sources of that attestation. Robin Hood is well-attested by textual sources, as is Hermes Trismegistus. But the nature of those sources do not give us much, if any, confidence that they are describing actual historical figures.
An historical Jesus cannot be defended and will NOT be found based on the state of the existing texts.
Listen to Ehrman DESTROY his own sources for an historical Jesus.
See http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2012 ... liability/
Erm, destroy?
We all know Ehrman is to some degree sceptical about our approximation of the original text of the NT and he's definitely more sceptical than conservative scholars, so how's this new?
It would be clever not to overuse such Matthean hyperboles, or we might just mistake it for literal and conclude it's myth.