Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[mordant]

It's based on content of whatever manuscripts there are.

What manuscripts are those?

The entire corpus of extant manuscripts. Westcott and Hort plus everything that has turned up since. Again, the dating or condition of the earliest ones is beside the point of textual criticism in general and the date of authorship specifically.

[Free]

Form and textual criticism is precisely my expertise.

LOL. We've never seen any evidence of it. Ever.

Actually you did, and you admitted you were very impressed with it. It was on the old forum, and it was my translation and interpretation of John 10:30 - 36. I had used the Koine Greek and Latin text, and compared it to current translations to demonstrate that Jesus was speaking about polytheism as opposed to calling himself "God." 

I had argued that the Koine Greek and Latin texts did not say "We are not stoning you for a good work, but because you being a man have made yourself to be God."

My criticism revealed that it actually read as "We are not stoning you for any good works, but because you, being but a mere man, have presented yourself as a god."

I showed you why it was to be understood that way, which was found in the next verse when Jesus responded with, "Is it not written in your Law, 'You shall be gods?'" Which was a reference to Psalm 82.6 which in it's totality says, "I have said you are gods, and all of you sons of the most high."

I demonstrated that when Jesus said, "I and the Father are one,' he was not saying that he and God are the same person, as Christians assert. He was saying that he was a son of god. The Jews were going to stone him for blasphemy because to claim to be a son of anyone, in Jewish idiomology, literally means you are of the same substance. Therefore, the Jews were going to stone him because he claimed to be a god, not the God.

And I also explained that when you read down to John 10:36, you see how it all comes together when Jesus said," If He called them 'gods,' to those whom the word of God came upon, and you cannot change that scripture, then why do you say to me, who was called cleansed and sent out into the word 'Your blasphemy' just because I also said i was a son of God?'

That's just one example. Textual criticism isn't just restricted to the oldest texts, but also to the translations that are currently being published. But both the Latin and Greek agree with my criticism of modern translations. 


As far as form is concerned, you also agreed with me that John is borderline gnostic, as opposed to Philo. It is actually more like a form directly between Philo and Gnostic. I also concluded that the likely author was Philip the Evangelist (who may very well have been the person nicknamed Lazarus), and not anyone named John.

That's only a slightly valid argument. Even a child could easily see it. Richard Carrier didn't expose something that wasn't already obvious.

Nope. Wrong again. No other scholar ever talks about the format, and YOU never mentioned it. 

We don't mention it because we don't find any need to state the glaringly obvious. You are acting as though this was some big secret. Do you seriously think that anyone in their right mind doesn't see how the gospels are constructed from a mythical mindset?

Seriously? I'm a fucking atheist, dude. The first thing I said when I read the gospels as a kid was, "Superman was better than Jesus."

Of course the gospels are chalk full of mythical scenarios. To suggest that nobody else sees it is astounding, and laughable.

However since we know that the mythical format of the Gospels falls directly in line with the mythical format of numerous other documents and religions in respect to historical persons, and the fact that all 4 Gospels, Acts, letters of Paul, Tacitus, Josephus etc all have the common theme that Jesus was crucified/crucified by Pilate, it destroys any argument that the Gospel records are entirely mythical.

Great. Provide 5 examples and specifically say how and where they were formatted the same. Explain the literary format in each ...

I will give you 3, as that is sufficient, and start with Jesus so the other 3 can be compared.

Miracles of Jesus:

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

Miracles of Muhammad

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

Miracles of Vespasian: 

Tacitus:

"So Vespasian, believing that his good fortune was capable of anything and that nothing was any longer incredible, with a smiling countenance, and amid intense excitement on the part of the bystanders, did as he was asked to do. The hand was instantly restored to use, and the day again shone for the blind man. Both facts are told by eye-witnesses even now when falsehood brings no reward."

Miracles of Apollonius of Tyana

https://www.publicchristianity.org/was-j...rk-unique/

And many more. You can read about more at the last link above.

Each of the ones I have listed were classified as miracle workers. We can reasonably conclude they existed. They are all from the same approximate area and shared cultures. Even Muhammad was greatly influenced by Christianity, Gnosticism and Judaism in Arabia, as Arabia was overrun with Christians and Jews before he created Islam.

Muhammad used typical Arabian style poetry to write the Quran. Tacitus used a combination of wry humor, typical Roman arrogance,  and melodramatics. In the writings concerning Appolloius, trained oratory prowess was the method used for the written delivery based upon the sophist Philostratus. 

... and say where this was discussed elsewhere.

What do you mean by 'elsewhere?'

The argument of similarity is hysterical. A myth that repeats another myth is evidence of nothing. How pathetic.

Except that is not what has been presented. My examples above don't repeat each other at all, therefore my examples are 100% valid.

Josephus wrote his book to attempt to show Vespasian was the messiah ... the idea he would say that Jesus was the Christ, and rose from the dead, is utterly preposterous.  So then, ... what exactly is your standard for cherry-picking. Most of them talk about miracles and resurrection, but you have made the capricious decision that part is not true. How is that ? What is your standard ?

You're hilarious. Josephus wrote Antiquities of the Jews for the purpose of educating the Roman audience about what Josephus believed to be Jewish history. No reasonable scholar could possibly conclude that the purpose of Josephus' entire tome was to show that Vespasian was the messiah. For fuck sakes, Vespasian was long dead 12 years before Josephus wrote his book, so why the fuck would he be writing it to impress a dead man?

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

And don't forget, no where does Josephus explicitly states that Vespasian was any Messiah. 

However since we know that the mythical format of the Gospels falls directly in line with the mythical format of numerous other documents and religions in respect to historical persons, and the fact that all 4 Gospels, Acts, letters of Paul, Tacitus, Josephus etc all have the common theme that Jesus was crucified/crucified by Pilate, it destroys any argument that the Gospel records are entirely mythical. 

And that's a more extensive use of textual criticism and form, Bucky boy. But Carrier fails/refuses to acknowledge it. Instead, he cherry picks to suit his pet theory, and purposely neglects to consider the totality as a whole.

Actually it's worthless crap and is not textual criticism as you have no specifics. Just your usual hand-waving bullshit.

Since your failed to quote me accurately, I have placed the missing parts back into the quote above so people can see your dishonesty.

My quote details numerous documents that have a common theme that Jesus was crucified/crucified by Pilate.  Now, so people here who read this can understand, I will quote the definition of historical textual criticism below:

"Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in dates from the earliest writing in cuneiform, impressed on clay, for example, to multiple unpublished versions of a 21st century author's work.

For example, if a story was spread by oral tradition, and then later written down by different people in different locations, the versions can vary greatly."

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

1. I have listed numerous textual variants from various authors and time periods regarding the crucifixion of Jesus.
2. I have stated that the common variant  between them all is explicitly the crucifixion of Jesus.

I have solidly met the requirements for textual criticism. Obviously you don't even understand what textual criticism is, let alone understand how in depth it actually is. It is not just about, for example, such things as the Synoptics which have numerous things in common. 

It can also be about numerous versions of a specific story such as the crucifixion of Jesus.

You just got a free education, Bucky boy.

It's not an argument for anything else either. There is no evidence other than style, and the style of Philo and John are not unique to the period as we see semblance of it with Paul and early Gnostics, which indicates common usage. This is just another cherry-picking argument that omits the wider evidence.

Thanks for yet again proving you are nothing but hot air, and never even actually read either John or Philo. The fact is Philo uses (before John) the Gnostic "word" hymn that John's gospel starts out with. The similarity has NOTHING to do with style. The fact is you have no clue what is similar.

Here's a little more education on the usage of 'word,' which is 'logos.'

"Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean discourse. Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse" or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric, and considered it one of the three modes of persuasion alongside ethos and pathos. Pyrrhonist philosophers used the term to refer to dogmatic accounts of non-evident matters. The Stoics spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe) which foreshadows related concepts in Neoplatonism.

Within Hellenistic Judaism, Philo (c.  20 BC – c.  50 AD) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. Philo distinguished between logos prophorikos ("the uttered word") and the logos endiathetos ("the word remaining within").

The Gospel of John identifies the Christian Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and further identifies Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos. Early translators of the Greek New Testament such as Jerome (in the 4th century AD) were frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the meaning of the word logos as used to describe Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principio erat verbum was thus constrained to use the (perhaps inadequate) noun verbum for "word", but later Romance language translations had the advantage of nouns such as le mot in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitwort (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as felt by Jerome and Augustine. The term is also used in Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.

Despite the conventional translation as "word", it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις, léxis) was used. However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb légō (λέγω), meaning "(I) count, tell, say, speak.

Philo (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term logos to mean an intermediary divine being or demiurge."

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

Now, Bucky boy, can YOU see the difference between how Philo understood logos and how John understood it? Philo did not apply it as being fully divine, but more so to be applied to an intermediary divine being, and not God directly. 

But John did apply it directly to "the" God with "And the Word was God."

Philo did not even use it in the same way the Gnostics used it, as the Gnostics used it exactly like John did. Both John and the Gnostics viewed Jesus as being the embodiment of God.

Again you can thank me for another free educational session. However, if it continues I will require your credit card details. Sorry, we do not accept checks.

The fact that the content of the preaching reflects the late 1st Century, not the early 1st Century Judaism is not an argument from silence.

Specifics please.

AFTER the temple destruction and diaspora was under-way, the Jewish Rabbis were concerned about how the law would be kept ... funny thing ... what they came up late in the 1st Century : "Love your neighbor as yourself". IF you actually knew anything about the history of the First Century and the relevant culture, you would know that.

Oh, I see, you are trying to say that the golden rule wasn't invented until late 1st century?

I will await you response before I educate you further.

And yet the best and most widely agreed upon argument is that the Gospels reflect the religious beliefs of the early Christians and Jews in regards to a historical man named Jesus, who was crucified by Pilate. And that argument is based upon the totality of the evidence, as opposed to cherry picking this or that individually and saying, "See this?! Gotcha!"

Bullshit. No named scholars, no polls, no evidence of who is "the best". Just the same old same old ad homs from you.

We've had this argument numerous times on this thread and various others on this forum, with hundreds of scholars named. No scholar who accepts the likelihood of the existence of Jesus basis his/her opinion upon a simple single sample of text. Only fools do that, and only fools intentionally fail to to examine the evidence collectively and instead cherry pick each sample and try to pass off their opinion on that single sample as being valid.

Dude it's fucking common sense.

And of course you have evidence that Tacitus got his info from the "believing community," which incidentally are the Christians, and not from the historical records/materials he kept using and referring to, right?

LOL. The ONLY reason he had any information AT ALL was because a community was formed at some point and it was perceived as a political threat. Did Tacitus (or anyone else) have lists of thousands of nobodies who were crucified in the provinces ? LMAO. No. What records are you even talking about ? No one would have even said ANYTHING about a Jesus unless there were a community of believers. If you accept that the gospels are "historical" then you must accept the bullshit about the resurrection. LOL

Okay, so you DON'T have evidence that Tacitus got his info from the 'believing community?

Got ya! 

Fucking juvenile. Tell Drich you need more lessons.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/

"The Logos has an origin, but as God's thought it also has eternal generation. It exists as such before everything else all of which are secondary products of God's thought and therefore it is called the "first-born." The Logos is thus more than a quality, power, or characteristic of God; it is an entity eternally generated as an extension, to which Philo ascribes many names and functions. The Logos is the first-begotten Son of the Uncreated Father: "For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he [Moses] calls the first-born; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns" (Conf. 63). This picture is somewhat confusing because we learn that in the final analysis the Creative Power is also identified with the Logos. The Creative Power is logically prior to the Regent Power since it is conceptually older. Though the powers are of equal age, the creative is prior because one is king not of the nonexistent but of what has already come into being (QE 2.62).  These two powers thus delimit the bounds of heaven and the world. The Creative Power is concerned that things that come into being through it should not be dissolved, and the Regent Power that nothing either exceeds or is robbed of its due, all being arbitrated by the laws of equality through which things continue eternally (QE 2.64). The positive properties of God may be subdivided into these two polar forces; therefore, the expression of the One is the Logos that constitutes the manifestation of God's thinking, acting (Prov. 1.7; Sacr. 65; Mos. 1.283). According to Philo these powers of the Logos can be grasped at various levels. Those who are at the summit level grasp them as constituting an indivisible unity. At the two lower levels, respectively, are those who know the Logos as the Creative Power and beneath them those who know it as the Regent Power (Fug. 94-95; Abr. 124-125). The next level down represents those limited to the sensible world, unable to perceive the intelligible realities (Gig. 20). At each successively lower level of divine knowledge the image of God's essence is increasingly more obscured. These two powers will appear again in Plotinus. Here Undefined or Unlimited Intelligible Matter proceeds from the One and then turns back to its source (Enneads 2.4.5; 5.4.2; 6.7.17)

Author: Marian Hillar. Marian Hillar is an American philosopher, theologian, linguist, and scientist.

Impressive, but did you notice the very first line? "The Logos has an origin." But John said "The Word was God."

Did God have an origin, Bucky boy? Philo, again, viewed the Logos, not as the Supreme Being as John did, but as a lessor god.

Now how closely did you read what he's actually saying, Bucky boy? I mean like ... he makes it clear in the first 5 fucking words, and you missed it entirely!

[Free]

If you don't mind I'm going to keep trying for now.

Free, the biggest problem with textual criticism is that we need texts to criticize.  We have little in the way of texts from the period that Ehrman insists the originals "must have" dated from.  [ I am really getting to hate that phrase "must have."]



Now Ehrman's hypothesis repeated in all of his books is that since we only have copies of copies of copies and all of these copies include mistakes made by copyists and add new ones of their own that the earliest copies are the ones which are closest to the originals.  That sounds logical.  But as lawyers say, he is introducing facts which are not in evidence.  Suppose Ehrman is wrong.  Suppose the fragments we have from the second century ( there are 4 of them ) are the remains of the original writings?  He is making an assertion that there were first century originals but the Homeric tales existed for centuries as epic poetry in oral form before they were finally written down under the name of "Homer."  Did he exist?  Who knows.

In Ehrman's book "Jesus Before the Gospels" he actually starts to go there before scaring himself away from it as if he had stepped into a minefield and had to tip-toe out of it.  Relying on human memory is not scientifically reliable.  But Irenaeus and Tertullian claim that Marcion was the first to create a canon.  After all, these were largely pre-literate societies and the other mystery cults in existence at the time relied on direct instruction of master to apprentice rather than writing things out.   Maybe Irenaeus and Tertullian were right and Ehrman is wrong?

As I mentioned in my previous response to Bucky, textual criticism isn't reserved to just the originals, and even to copies of originals. It can extend from the earliest manuscript and on up to even modern translations. It can also be applied to even a single line of text, or even just a paragraph. 

Textual criticism is really a comparison of various texts that allude to the same theme or story. You can have even an original manuscript, and also have another manuscript a century later that quotes some previous oral transmission, and use them both for textual criticism.

It's far more involved and in depth than what is being misunderstood here on this forum.

[Free]

If you don't mind I'm going to keep trying for now.

Free, the biggest problem with textual criticism is that we need texts to criticize.  We have little in the way of texts from the period that Ehrman insists the originals "must have" dated from.  [ I am really getting to hate that phrase "must have."]



Now Ehrman's hypothesis repeated in all of his books is that since we only have copies of copies of copies and all of these copies include mistakes made by copyists and add new ones of their own that the earliest copies are the ones which are closest to the originals.  That sounds logical.  But as lawyers say, he is introducing facts which are not in evidence.  Suppose Ehrman is wrong.  Suppose the fragments we have from the second century ( there are 4 of them ) are the remains of the original writings?  He is making an assertion that there were first century originals but the Homeric tales existed for centuries as epic poetry in oral form before they were finally written down under the name of "Homer."  Did he exist?  Who knows.

In Ehrman's book "Jesus Before the Gospels" he actually starts to go there before scaring himself away from it as if he had stepped into a minefield and had to tip-toe out of it.  Relying on human memory is not scientifically reliable.  But Irenaeus and Tertullian claim that Marcion was the first to create a canon.  After all, these were largely pre-literate societies and the other mystery cults in existence at the time relied on direct instruction of master to apprentice rather than writing things out.   Maybe Irenaeus and Tertullian were right and Ehrman is wrong?

As I mentioned in my previous response to Bucky, textual criticism isn't reserved to just the originals, and even to copies of originals. It can extend from the earliest manuscript and on up to even modern translations. It can also be applied to even a single line of text, or even just a paragraph. 

Textual criticism is really a comparison of various texts that allude to the same theme or story. You can have even an original manuscript, and also have another manuscript a century later that quotes some previous oral transmission, and use them both for textual criticism.

It's far more involved and in depth than what is being misunderstood here on this forum.

One more thing.

The bottom line about textual criticism is to try and determine what was originally said. Even if you have what you believe to be  the original manuscript, it still doesn't mean that it is guaranteed to represent what was originally said. It only represents what the author wrote, not what the actual truth really was, particularly in regards to actual history.

Therefore, when we use all the different variants of the theme regarding the crucifixion of Jesus, we use all available information to conclude that what was most likely originally said was something to the effect of "Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate." Since we don't believe we even have any original manuscripts, then the best we can do is take all the variants and propose a theory. And even if we had what we believe to be the original manuscript, if all the variants said something similar to each other, but all contradicted what was said in the supposed original manuscript, then we need to decide who the fuck was telling the truth. For example, even if I was presented with a text regarding the crucifixion of Jesus that was dated 35 CE, I still would not make any positive claim that it is in any way the original text.

And that's why that even if we had a proposed original manuscript it doesn't mean it represents the truth.

But the problem with ancient history is that we do not know, and cannot know, if the oldest text is actually the original. We can't make any positive claims whatsoever on what was originally written or said if we can't be certain that we have the original text. Any historian worth his credentials would never say that the Gospels in any way represent any original manuscripts. That kind of positive claim is reserved for the Christian wingnuts. Therefore, we use all variants to draw upon a conclusion of what best approximates the truth.

That's how this works. Far from perfect, and not conclusive by any stretch. But, that's how it's done, and it's the best we can do. And with ancient history, the textual criticism method that works best is known as Eclecticism, which is the method primarily used with the New Testament. 

"Eclecticism allows inferences to be drawn regarding the original text, based on the evidence of contrasts between witnesses."

And that's the difference between what Bucky Ball understands, and what the truth actually is in regards to textual criticism. 

[Minimalist]

Let me cut to the chase as the saying goes.

In Jesus Before the Gospels, Ehrman says this right at the beginning:

When it comes to Jesus, all we have are memories. There are no lifelike portraits from his day, no stenographic notes recorded on the spot, no accounts of his activities written at the time. Only memories of his life, of what he said and did. Memories written after the fact. Long after the fact. Memories written by people who were not actually there to observe him.

Critical scholars have long argued that the surviving records of Jesus—the Gospels—are not memories recorded by those who were eyewitnesses.1 They are memories of later authors who had heard about Jesus from others, who were telling what they had heard from others, who were telling what they had heard from yet others. They are memories of memories of memories. To understand what the Gospels are, and to know anything about the man Jesus himself, we have to know about memory.

He then makes this admission:

One of the historical difficulties posed by our Gospels is that they were not written during Jesus’s lifetime or within a few weeks, months, or even years after his death. Critical scholars for centuries have realized that the Gospels were written decades later. Since at least the early twentieth century, scholars have recognized that these earliest written accounts of Jesus’s words and deeds were based on stories about him that were being circulated by word of mouth in the forty to sixty-five years after his death.

This raises a number of very big questions that many people have never thought about: Who was telling the stories? Was it only the twelve disciples and other eyewitnesses? Or would it have been other people as well? That is, did people who heard stories from eyewitnesses also tell the stories? Is it possible that stories were told by people who knew people who knew people who knew people who claimed that they heard stories from people who knew people who knew eyewitnesses? What happens when stories are circulated orally, from one person to the next, not just day after day, but year after year, and decade after decade, among such people, before being written down?

Finally, the third and last excerpt, I circle back to what Ehrman wrote in the introduction to hammer home the point above:

This book, in short, is about the historical Jesus, memory, and distorted memory. I have been interested in the historical Jesus since, well, since I first started studying the New Testament from an academic perspective in the late 1970s. At that time, I heard views from some of my teachers that many people continue to hear today: the Gospels are based on eyewitness reports; they can therefore be accepted as historically reliable; people in oral cultures (such as in the ancient Roman world) had better memories than we do today; and such people always preserved their traditions about the past accurately, since they were not literate and so could not learn about the past from writing.

Are these views correct?

It was just a few years ago that I came to realize that the study of memory, as pursued by scholars who did not work on the New Testament, could provide some valuable and keen insights into such matters. These other scholars work in a number of disciplines well represented in the academy, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Their insights may be especially relevant to understanding how the earliest Christians told and retold the stories about Jesus after his death but before the Gospels were written. This was a mysterious period of oral transmission, when stories were circulating, both among eyewitnesses and, even more, among those who knew someone whose cousin had a neighbor who had once talked with a business associate whose mother had, just fifteen years earlier, spoken with an eyewitness who told her some things about Jesus.

Thus, while I have no issue with your discussion of textual criticism I do not think it is applicable to oral transmission of such tales.  Periodically when reading through a Snopes discussion of some urban legend one finds that the gist of the tale was first noted as part of someone's comedy routine.  IOW, it was a joke that some asshole decided they could use to their own advantage.  Ehrman is taking the standard apologetic argument that Mark was written in 70 but there is nothing sacred about that date.  The conditions in Jerusalem ( a burned out ruin) existed for 60 years after Titus' attack and then, oddly enough, what "Mark" wrote actually happened thanks to Hadrian's urban development project in 130.

King James Bible

And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

The Romans flattened the site and built Aelia Capitolina on top of it.  Israeli archaeologists today are 30 feet down digging through the first century levels of the tel and probably laughing their asses off at the stupid xtians above them who are crawling along the Via Dolorosa thinking that's where fucking jesus walked!

So, to summarize,

1.  Even if there was a written document which predates the fragments we do have it would, at best, represent the memories of the initial author.

2.  It is far more likely that what was cobbled together was from an assortment of yarns which were being told around campfires thus the original author was more of an editor.

3.  People believe lots of stupid shit.



Who knows?  In 1,000 years Ancient Aliens may be as lucrative a bullshit story as jesus has been.

[Kim]

Sooooo .... the latest, according to Pope Francis: the Jesus guy was a human, not a god.

Checkmate, theists!

[Minimalist]

The pope's a heretic?

Question: "What is adoptionism?"

Answer: Adoptionism is a heretical theology that claims Jesus was God’s adopted Son. Adoptionism teaches that, because of Jesus’ sinless life, God chose Him and adopted Him. Adoptionism also goes by the name dynamic monarchianism; it was declared a heresy by the church in the second century.

Where is the fucking Inquisition when you need it?

[Free]

Let me cut to the chase as the saying goes.

In Jesus Before the Gospels, Ehrman says this right at the beginning:

When it comes to Jesus, all we have are memories. There are no lifelike portraits from his day, no stenographic notes recorded on the spot, no accounts of his activities written at the time. Only memories of his life, of what he said and did. Memories written after the fact. Long after the fact. Memories written by people who were not actually there to observe him.

Critical scholars have long argued that the surviving records of Jesus—the Gospels—are not memories recorded by those who were eyewitnesses.1 They are memories of later authors who had heard about Jesus from others, who were telling what they had heard from others, who were telling what they had heard from yet others. They are memories of memories of memories. To understand what the Gospels are, and to know anything about the man Jesus himself, we have to know about memory.

He then makes this admission:

One of the historical difficulties posed by our Gospels is that they were not written during Jesus’s lifetime or within a few weeks, months, or even years after his death. Critical scholars for centuries have realized that the Gospels were written decades later. Since at least the early twentieth century, scholars have recognized that these earliest written accounts of Jesus’s words and deeds were based on stories about him that were being circulated by word of mouth in the forty to sixty-five years after his death.

This raises a number of very big questions that many people have never thought about: Who was telling the stories? Was it only the twelve disciples and other eyewitnesses? Or would it have been other people as well? That is, did people who heard stories from eyewitnesses also tell the stories? Is it possible that stories were told by people who knew people who knew people who knew people who claimed that they heard stories from people who knew people who knew eyewitnesses? What happens when stories are circulated orally, from one person to the next, not just day after day, but year after year, and decade after decade, among such people, before being written down?

Finally, the third and last excerpt, I circle back to what Ehrman wrote in the introduction to hammer home the point above:

This book, in short, is about the historical Jesus, memory, and distorted memory. I have been interested in the historical Jesus since, well, since I first started studying the New Testament from an academic perspective in the late 1970s. At that time, I heard views from some of my teachers that many people continue to hear today: the Gospels are based on eyewitness reports; they can therefore be accepted as historically reliable; people in oral cultures (such as in the ancient Roman world) had better memories than we do today; and such people always preserved their traditions about the past accurately, since they were not literate and so could not learn about the past from writing.

Are these views correct?

It was just a few years ago that I came to realize that the study of memory, as pursued by scholars who did not work on the New Testament, could provide some valuable and keen insights into such matters. These other scholars work in a number of disciplines well represented in the academy, such as psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Their insights may be especially relevant to understanding how the earliest Christians told and retold the stories about Jesus after his death but before the Gospels were written. This was a mysterious period of oral transmission, when stories were circulating, both among eyewitnesses and, even more, among those who knew someone whose cousin had a neighbor who had once talked with a business associate whose mother had, just fifteen years earlier, spoken with an eyewitness who told her some things about Jesus.

Thus, while I have no issue with your discussion of textual criticism I do not think it is applicable to oral transmission of such tales.  Periodically when reading through a Snopes discussion of some urban legend one finds that the gist of the tale was first noted as part of someone's comedy routine.  IOW, it was a joke that some asshole decided they could use to their own advantage.  Ehrman is taking the standard apologetic argument that Mark was written in 70 but there is nothing sacred about that date.  The conditions in Jerusalem ( a burned out ruin) existed for 60 years after Titus' attack and then, oddly enough, what "Mark" wrote actually happened thanks to Hadrian's urban development project in 130.

I am not saying Erhman is wrong, nor am I saying he is correct. All I can say is that his point of view is quite reasonable.  

However, in regards to textual criticism's relationship to oral transmission, we need to understand that oral transmission is the precise original source. Somebody opened their mouth and sometime later somebody else wrote down what he believed was said. As atheists, however, we have an intellectual obligation to call bullshit on anything that defies physics are far as these old stories are concerned. But that doesn't mean that we should throw the whole baby out with the bathwater either. It's quite possible that we at least can pull off one of the baby's arms or legs and feast on that.

Yes the old, "you tell 2 people, and I tell 2 people" scenario needs to be considered. We all know how distorted a story can get as it's retold, or even when it's written down. We see that progress of the story of Jesus when we compare the Synoptics.

Now, if there was nothing but those gospel records- no Paul, no Tacitus, no Josephus, no other letters at all, we could just use the gospels pages for toilet paper and be done with it.  But then we have a curious problem. Let me explain. 

Let's say the Gospels were never written, and we have no NT at all, and we don't even have Christianity. Now let's read what Tacitus says, what Josephus says, and what a few other ancient writers said about Jesus.

What are we to think? Would we even doubt he existed? You see, neither Tacitus nor Josephus ever refers to a Gospel record of any kind, so why would we doubt that Jesus existed? I mean, even if we take the suspected altered text in Josephus, we could write that off as Josephus merely relating some beliefs concerning this Jesus who got his ass handed to him by Pilate.  I think we'd all just say, "Meh ... some Jesus dude got himself crucified by somebody name Pilate." We would accept that as historical in the exact same way we accept that when Tacitus talks about other people as being historical. We wouldn't even be bothered thinking about it.

The thing is, yes Gospels are ridiculous. But we all know exactly what they are. They are a bunch of tall-tales of someone identified as Jesus, and they called that guy a Christ. Yes, they are full of bullshit and we all know it. Yet the only real consistent thing we find in the gospels and everywhere else is that Jesus, who was called Christ, was crucified by Pontius Pilate. 

And to me, that's the best explanation of why we have Christianity today. Somebody named Jesus, who was considered to be a Christ of some sort, ended up getting nailed to a couple of sticks. After that, his loyal followers made up some stupid resurrection story and from there more supposed miracles were piled on just to sweeten up the pot for the Greco-Romans, who were already predisposed to believe in numerous gods. The Christians just had to make their fucking god better then the Roman gods is all. I mean seriously, in those days if a bunch of people came to you and they all said, "He walked on the water! He stuck ears on people heads! He resurrected from the dead, and then flew up into the sky to heaven! If you don't believe us you will go to Hades!" You can bet it would be impressive on the minds of a people who were already zealous with religious beliefs.

"You think your gods are good? Let me tell you a story, friend ..."

And there's your oral transmission, which we eventually find as Gospels in all their ridiculous and laughable glory. A few zealous nuts sitting around a campfire with one guy spinning a yarn, while his buddy often interjects with something like, "Oh, but you forgot to tell them he walked on the water!" And the story teller says, "Oh yeah, that's right! One day, Jesus and the apostles got in a boat ..."

And if we today, with our advanced education, were sitting at that campfire, we would say, "Oh for fuck sakes, dude! Everybody knows Pilate ran his ass up a cross! The fucker's dead! Leave him be!"

Therefore, let the dumbass Christians believe whatever the fuck they want. I absolutely love pointing at Tacitus and saying, "See this? This is a Roman historical record, and it shows that the only truth about your fucking God is that the Romans crucified him for being the common criminal that he was. So fuck you!"

And that's the way I roll with this shit.

King James Bible

And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

The Romans flattened the site and built Aelia Capitolina on top of it.  Israeli archaeologists today are 30 feet down digging through the first century levels of the tel and probably laughing their asses off at the stupid xtians above them who are crawling along the Via Dolorosa thinking that's where fucking jesus walked!

Whoever thinks that is a prophecy of Jesus is an idiot. That's the problem with many scholars. They look at that and say, "Oh, so now we can date the gospels records to after the Roman-Jewish war." But guess what? That's not a prophesy of Jesus at all. It's actually Jesus relating a prophecy of Daniel. Let me show you how you can know, which you will see at Mar 13: 14 below:


Mar 13:1-13  

And as He went out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, Master, see! What stones and what buildings! And answering Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There shall not be one stone left on another that shall not be thrown down." 
And as He sat on the Mount of Olives, across from the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately, "Tell us, When shall all these things be? And what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?" 

And Jesus answering them began to say, "Beware that no one deceive you. For many shall come in My name, saying, I AM, and shall deceive many. And when you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled. For it must happen, but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there shall be earthquakes in different places, and there shall be famines and troubles. These things are the beginnings of sorrows. But take heed to yourselves. For they shall deliver you up to sanhedrins, and in the synagogues you shall be beaten. And you shall be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations. But whenever they lead you away and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what you should speak or think. But speak whatever shall be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speaks, but the Holy Spirit. And a brother will betray a brother to death, and a father his son. And children will rise up against their parents and will cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name's sake, but he enduring to the end, that one will be kept safe. "

Mar 13:14  But when you see the abomination of desolation, that spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not (let him who reads understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

You begin to understand that when Jesus said that the buildings would be destroyed he wasn't making any kind of a prophecy at all. All he was doing was re-telling what he understood to be a prophecy made by Daniel, commonly known as the Abomination of Desolation, which talks about the destruction of the holy place; the temple.

This is where many scholars completely fuck up. Even the best scholars will cherry pick that one line of text and conclude, based upon that, that the Gospels were written at a later date, because just like the dumbass Christians, they see it as a prophecy of Jesus.

But it's not a fucking prophecy of Jesus at all. It's from the book of Daniel and Jesus is just re-telling what was already in Jewish literature.

Therefore, both the Christians and the scholars who think this is some kind of a fucking prophecy of Jesus can go fuck themselves. It's not. I mean seriously, people just need to pay attention and read what is actually there, and what is actually there is Jesus telling us what Daniel had said.

Yep ... people just need to read it, without going, "OMG! A prophecy of Jesus!"

Crazy fuckers.

So, to summarize,

1.  Even if there was a written document which predates the fragments we do have it would, at best, represent the memories of the initial author.

2.  It is far more likely that what was cobbled together was from an assortment of yarns which were being told around campfires thus the original author was more of an editor.

3.  People believe lots of stupid shit.

Yep, I have no fucking problem with this.

Who knows?  In 1,000 years Ancient Aliens may be as lucrative a bullshit story as jesus has been.

It already is.

[Minimalist]

I have to mull that one over for a bit.  A few things jump out at me.

[Minimalist]

Okay.  I have put your comments in blue.  Anything which you wrote that does not appear you may assume to not be in dispute.

However, in regards to textual criticism's relationship to oral transmission, we need to understand that oral transmission is the precise original source. Somebody opened their mouth and sometime later somebody else wrote down what he believed was said. As atheists, however, we have an intellectual obligation to call bullshit on anything that defies physics are far as these old stories are concerned. But that doesn't mean that we should throw the whole baby out with the bathwater either. It's quite possible that we at least can pull off one of the baby's arms or legs and feast on that.

 
Let’s start here.  It’s not the “precise original source.”  It is the last yarn that the earliest writer heard before he started writing it down.  By definition we cannot know what came out of someone’s mouth the first time... unless it is Trump and he issues a transcript!  So we do not know if the original tale went through one variation or 100.  
 
But that’s not even the biggest problem.  I completely agree that as atheists we are required to say “dead jews don’t come back to life and fly up to heaven,” or “the moon was not split in two” or “Apollo did not stride off of Mt. Olympus shooting arrows at the Greeks in front of Troy.” The problem is that it puts us in the position of having to make excuses ( dare I say “apologies”) for the assholes. You can apply that same “baby and the bathwater” idea to Goldilocks.  “Clearly the idea of three talking bears living in a house is silly but the basis of the story that no one should break into a house and mess with things that don’t belong to them is clearly based on a real burglary.”  Um, no.  It is not necessary.
 
Whoever invented this tale and however many iterations it went through before someone wrote it down (and let’s follow the convention and call him Mark) the story is not simply that some asshole got crucified it is that he got crucified and 3 days later rose from the dead. Mark 16:6 says

“6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him."
 
What you are doing is saying that “well crucifixion was common enough so that part could be true but the rest of it is horseshit.”But you conflate “could be” into “must be” and there we part company. You end up parsing the story to make excuses for nonsense instead of simply saying that “Goldilocks did not break into a house occupied by 3 talking bears.” I prefer to let the xtians make their own excuses.
 
 

Now, if there was nothing but those gospel records- no Paul, no Tacitus, no Josephus, no other letters at all, we could just use the gospels pages for toilet paper and be done with it.  But then we have a curious problem. Let me explain. 


Let's say the Gospels were never written, and we have no NT at all, and we don't even have Christianity. Now let's read what Tacitus says, what Josephus says, and what a few other ancient writers said about Jesus.

But you know that I am dubious that Tacitus and Josephus said anything at all about him.  Joseph Wheless, in his Forgery in Christianity, published in 1930 has not surprisingly never heard of the watered down variant of the TF which exists today.  That's not unusual as Wheless was writing at the same time as Eisler ( who wrote in German) and 30 odd years before Meier invented the modern version to address the Goldilocks issues noted above. I don’t want to re-litigate the whole TF argument.  Wheless condemns it as a pious fraud and barring some convincing evidence to the contrary I agree with him.  The whining of apologists does not rise to the level of “convincing argument.”
 
Tacitus I consider a simple and fairly late interpolation for reasons already expressed.  If you want me to rehash them, I will.
 
Then there is “paul.”  I was annoyed with Carrier for accepting Paul at face value for the most part because except for a few later xtian interpolations paul reinforces his view that jesus began as a mythical figure living in outer space and only later was Euhemerized into a real man - Pinocchio-like!  I’m still working on the paul stuff and Marcion’s role in it.  Clearly he pre-dates the gospel jesus as he does not know the story.  But Hebrews - and who knows who wrote that - pre-dates the destruction of the temple as it indicates that sacrifices are still going on so before September, 70. But, like Justin 90 years later, Hebrews knows nothing of any “paul.”  This question remains open.
 
My gut feeling is that Marcion found or created those epistles in the Apostolikon and issued them either unnamed or with an original name.  I highly doubt that he would have used the well-known Roman cognomen Paulus as the author of these “letters.”  Subsequently they were edited by the proto-orthodox contingent who were fine with the Roman name Paulus.This was accomplished after Justin wrote - who knew of Marcion but not Paul - and with the dating of the fairly extensive P-46 being between 175 - 225 it just might be the “original text.”  I don’t know.
 
 

Whoever thinks that is a prophecy of Jesus is an idiot.

 
Um, the churches are full of idiots.  (This is an observation - not a dispute!)

[Bucky Ball]

Now how closely did you read what he's actually saying, Bucky boy? I mean like ... he makes it clear in the first 5 fucking words, and you missed it entirely!

bla bla bla

Actually John said "In the beginning was the word and the word WAS WITH God, and the word was God.  
If it "was with" something, it's not "the thing". Your point is dismissed. Nice try though. 

As usual you toss out a myriad of irrelevant crap to cover for the fact that you missed the forest for the trees. 
Regardless of the "with" or "was' the fact is Philo basically wrote the intro to John before they stole it and put it in John. 

The Gnosticism evident in Philo is ABSENT in the synoptics. They put it in, because it had become popular ... it had nothing to do with early 1st Century thought. .... forest for the trees .... do try to keep that in mind. 

Nice try there sport with all that .... methinks you doth protest too much. 

You, of course are delusional. I never took part in that stupid "stoning" discussion, and I never complimented you about it. 
You clearly are quite impressed with yourself about it, though.

And yet the best and most widely agreed upon argument is that the Gospels reflect the religious beliefs of the early Christians and Jews in regards to a historical man named Jesus, who was crucified by Pilate. And that argument is based upon the totality of the evidence, as opposed to cherry picking this or that individually and saying, "See this?! Gotcha!"

Sorry gramps ... you can't have it both ways. First you say the above, then you say you're an atheist and know it's myth. Which is it ?
YOU never said one word about the literary formatting Carrier talks about in the video.
Christian BELIEFS which we know developed all throughout the 1st Century are not in any way useful for anything. They are evidence of nothing, except that they believed all sorts of wild shit ... INCLUDING the resurrection. You are a cherry-picker. The point was (remember gramps ... forest for the trees) the ONLY reason Tacitus heard about (if he even did) a Jesus, was because believing communities had arisen .... NOT because of anything Jesus did, or anything that happened to him. You're basing your entire argument on the crazy beliefs of nuts who never even met him. It doesn't matter what they believed. Beliefs do not confirm anything .. at all. Oh well, Gramps. You lose again.

[Free]

Okay.  I have put your comments in blue.  Anything which you wrote that does not appear you may assume to not be in dispute.

However, in regards to textual criticism's relationship to oral transmission, we need to understand that oral transmission is the precise original source. Somebody opened their mouth and sometime later somebody else wrote down what he believed was said. As atheists, however, we have an intellectual obligation to call bullshit on anything that defies physics are far as these old stories are concerned. But that doesn't mean that we should throw the whole baby out with the bathwater either. It's quite possible that we at least can pull off one of the baby's arms or legs and feast on that.

 
Let’s start here.  It’s not the “precise original source.”  It is the last yarn that the earliest writer heard before he started writing it down.  By definition we cannot know what came out of someone’s mouth the first time... unless it is Trump and he issues a transcript!  So we do not know if the original tale went through one variation or 100.

Fair point.  
 

But that’s not even the biggest problem.  I completely agree that as atheists we are required to say “dead jews don’t come back to life and fly up to heaven,” or “the moon was not split in two” or “Apollo did not stride off of Mt. Olympus shooting arrows at the Greeks in front of Troy.” The problem is that it puts us in the position of having to make excuses ( dare I say “apologies”) for the assholes. You can apply that same “baby and the bathwater” idea to Goldilocks.  “Clearly the idea of three talking bears living in a house is silly but the basis of the story that no one should break into a house and mess with things that don’t belong to them is clearly based on a real burglary.”  Um, no.  It is not necessary.

But does that story of Goldilocks have numerous variant attestations? Does it have a historian(s) mentioning any part of it and listing it as an actual event in their history such as what Tacitus and Josephus did?

Do you think it's a fair comparison? 
 

Whoever invented this tale and however many iterations it went through before someone wrote it down (and let’s follow the convention and call him Mark) the story is not simply that some asshole got crucified it is that he got crucified and 3 days later rose from the dead. Mark 16:6 says

“6 “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him."
 
What you are doing is saying that “well crucifixion was common enough so that part could be true but the rest of it is horseshit.”But you conflate “could be” into “must be” and there we part company. You end up parsing the story to make excuses for nonsense instead of simply saying that “Goldilocks did not break into a house occupied by 3 talking bears.” I prefer to let the xtians make their own excuses.

I am not saying what "must be," but rather what is more probable than anything else. And again, Goldilocks is not a fair comparison. The fairest comparison to this is Muhammad.

1. He was religious leader just like Jesus.
2. It was claimed that he created miracles, and those are written down in the aHadith. 
3. He was killed by a Jew, and Jesus was betrayed by Jews.


Was Muhammad a myth? His grace has been a guarded shrine since he died.

That's a fair comparison. Not Goldilocks.
 
 

Now, if there was nothing but those gospel records- no Paul, no Tacitus, no Josephus, no other letters at all, we could just use the gospels pages for toilet paper and be done with it.  But then we have a curious problem. Let me explain. 


Let's say the Gospels were never written, and we have no NT at all, and we don't even have Christianity. Now let's read what Tacitus says, what Josephus says, and what a few other ancient writers said about Jesus.

But you know that I am dubious that Tacitus and Josephus said anything at all about him.  Joseph Wheless, in his Forgery in Christianity, published in 1930 has not surprisingly never heard of the watered down variant of the TF which exists today.  That's not unusual as Wheless was writing at the same time as Eisler ( who wrote in German) and 30 odd years before Meier invented the modern version to address the Goldilocks issues noted above. I don’t want to re-litigate the whole TF argument.  Wheless condemns it as a pious fraud and barring some convincing evidence to the contrary I agree with him.  The whining of apologists does not rise to the level of “convincing argument.”
 
Tacitus I consider a simple and fairly late interpolation for reasons already expressed.  If you want me to rehash them, I will.

Would it be fair to say that the reason you are dubious now is because of the Bible? My scenario proposes no Bible. Therefore, why would you have any reason to be dubious?
 

Then there is “paul.”  I was annoyed with Carrier for accepting Paul at face value for the most part because except for a few later xtian interpolations paul reinforces his view that jesus began as a mythical figure living in outer space and only later was Euhemerized into a real man - Pinocchio-like!  I’m still working on the paul stuff and Marcion’s role in it.  Clearly he pre-dates the gospel jesus as he does not know the story.  But Hebrews - and who knows who wrote that - pre-dates the destruction of the temple as it indicates that sacrifices are still going on so before September, 70. But, like Justin 90 years later, Hebrews knows nothing of any “paul.”  This question remains open.

I really have no idea why Carrier even goes there. Why bother inventing another fucking story about some dude who got his ass handed to him? It makes no fucking sense to me. As far as I'm concerned, piling on more ridiculous fiction to the Jesus story is like taking a completely burnt cake out of the oven, then turning the oven on max and shoving the fucking cake back in there again.

Insane.
 

My gut feeling is that Marcion found or created those epistles in the Apostolikon and issued them either unnamed or with an original name.  I highly doubt that he would have used the well-known Roman cognomen Paulus as the author of these “letters.”  Subsequently they were edited by the proto-orthodox contingent who were fine with the Roman name Paulus.This was accomplished after Justin wrote - who knew of Marcion but not Paul - and with the dating of the fairly extensive P-46 being between 175 - 225 it just might be the “original text.”  I don’t know.

But then you have 1 Clement, written either just before or just after Justin, talking about the works of Paul including detailing what was in those works, and quoting what we see in them today. And you also have Irenaeus who lived during the time of Marcion, who mentions the works of Paul as belonging to Paul, and never attributes them to Marcion, and he hated on Marcion with a passion.

That's pretty solid evidence.

Glad to see you didn't dispute my position on the Abomination of Desolation. I think it's a solid position to hold, considering the actual internal evidence to support it. The fucking scholars got it all wrong, likely due to Christian influences. 

I have no Christian influences. I see things as an objective observer, and don't give a shit what anyone believes. You just can't read this stuff and expect to understand it from any position of bias whatsoever.

You just need to read it with complete indifference.

[Free]

Now how closely did you read what he's actually saying, Bucky boy? I mean like ... he makes it clear in the first 5 fucking words, and you missed it entirely!

bla bla bla

Actually John said "In the beginning was the word and the word WAS WITH God, and the word was God.  
If it "was with" something, it's not "the thing". Your point is dismissed. Nice try though. 

As usual you toss out a myriad of irrelevant crap to cover for the fact that you missed the forest for the trees. 
Regardless of the "with" or "was' the fact is Philo basically wrote the intro to John before they stole it and put it in John. 

The Gnosticism evident in Philo is ABSENT in the synoptics. They put it in, because it had become popular ... it had nothing to do with early 1st Century thought. .... forest for the trees .... do try to keep that in mind. 

Nice try there sport with all that .... methinks you doth protest too much. 

You, of course are delusional. I never took part in that stupid "stoning" discussion, and I never complimented you about it. 
You clearly are quite impressed with yourself about it, though.

And yet the best and most widely agreed upon argument is that the Gospels reflect the religious beliefs of the early Christians and Jews in regards to a historical man named Jesus, who was crucified by Pilate. And that argument is based upon the totality of the evidence, as opposed to cherry picking this or that individually and saying, "See this?! Gotcha!"

Sorry gramps ... you can't have it both ways. First you say the above, then you say you're an atheist and know it's myth. Which is it ?
YOU never said one word about the literary formatting Carrier talks about in the video.
Christian BELIEFS which we know developed all throughout the 1st Century are not in any way useful for anything. They are evidence of nothing, except that they believed all sorts of wild shit ... INCLUDING the resurrection. You are a cherry-picker. The point was (remember gramps ... forest for the trees) the ONLY reason Tacitus heard about (if he even did) a Jesus, was because  believing communities had arisen .... NOT because of anything Jesus did, or anything that happened to him. You're basing your entire argument on the crazy beliefs of nuts who never even met him. It doesn't matter what they believed. Beliefs do not confirm anything .. at all. Oh well, Gramps. You lose again.

Just one question, Bucky Boy.

Did John say "The Word was God" or not?

Just a simple answer would be suffice.

[Bucky Ball]

Just one question, Bucky Boy.

Did John say "The Word was God" or not?

Just a simple answer would be suffice.

Forest for the trees, gramps. Forest for the trees.

[Free]

Just one question, Bucky Boy.

Did John say "The Word was God" or not?

Just a simple answer would be suffice.

Forest for the trees, gramps. Forest for the trees.

Yep, just as I expected. You took lessons from the Republicans on evade and deflect. 

[Minimalist]

But does that story of Goldilocks have numerous variant attestations? Does it have a historian(s) mentioning any part of it and listing it as an actual event in their history such as what Tacitus and Josephus did?

Do you think it's a fair comparison?

 

Actually, it is an unfair comparison but that is because Goldilocks is far better attested than any of that jesus shit.  We know who wrote it and when and we even know how many alternate versions of the story there were before the final version came out.

Of course the question must be asked why would anyone forge the Goldilocks story into any history?  Unlike the early church propagandists who were trying to sell 10 pounds of bullshit in a five pound bag to a bunch of ignorant peasants they were simply writing what turned out to be a children's story.

But.  If some Anglican asshole in 1820 had decided to make Goldilocks a saint who was ripped apart by three demonic bears because she broke into the house to plant crosses on the wall you can bet that they would be writing all sorts of horseshit about her.... just like all their other "saints."

Was Muhammad a myth? His grace has been a guarded shrine since he died.

That's a fair comparison. Not Goldilocks.

Try reading the Islamic Origins thread.  I don't think mo was any more real than jesus.  But we do have exactly the same kind of "evidence" for him.  The pious blather of later believers separated from events by 70-100 years.  In that sense, yes, mo and jesus are a fair comparison.  Both are bullshit.  But I agree with you that it is fair.

Would it be fair to say that the reason you are dubious now is because of the Bible? My scenario proposes no Bible. Therefore, why would you have any reason to be dubious?

If there was no bible there would have been no monks tampering with either piece.  Tacitus would refer to Chrestus and Chrestianos and Josephus' writing would probably have been allowed to wither into dust just as they did with his contemporary Justus of Tiberias who, as Photius said "did not know Christ." 

But then you have 1 Clement, written either just before or just after Justin,

You probably won't believe this - or maybe you will - but Clement of Rome seems to be another legendary figure.  Perhaps that is because there are too many legends about him?  The letter is usually dated between 70 and 140 AD but they normally try to insist on 95-96 because of the "Persecution of Domitian."  The only problem there is that there was no Persecution of Domitian.  In spite of its allegedly hallowed status an actual "copy" of the letter did not show up until the 1620's.  One of the central themes of the epistle is that the Corinthians should STFU and listen to their elders.  This was a few years after Luther started his shit.  Convenient timing, eh?

For the record we have only one text of Justin, that dated to 1365.  One day when I get the time I'll track down the earliest of some of the other xtian pillars.  For now, let me just say that I have no reason to put any credence in much of anything that early church writers claim.  They had an agenda and they pushed it vigorously.  As I believe you said a day or two ago, it is important to understand the point of view of every author. 

For the record, I don't believe used car salesmen or political ads, either.

It's late.  Manana.

[mordant]

Would it be fair to say that the reason you are dubious now is because of the Bible? My scenario proposes no Bible. Therefore, why would you have any reason to be dubious?
 

I am not sure about this. I make a similar argument about reading Paul with the mindset that there are no gospels (which there weren't, at the time) as this makes his lack of what should naturally be references to the life and ministry of Jesus as a physical person all the more striking. Reading Paul that way, the "celestial Jesus" theme is far more strikingly prominent.

On the other hand, my thought experiment is actually getting the modern thinker OUT of the thought experiment they're unwitting participants in; it's not a hypothetical like yours. It's asking you to imagine what actually WAS at the time of Paul (or more exactly, at the time of the generally accepted dating of the authorship of what we refer to as the Pauline works, relative to the rest of the NT), not to imagine some sort of alternative history.

Sure, if the only mention of Jesus was a passing reference in Josephus, we wouldn't think much of it, but so what? It would be of so little significance that probably a half dozen people on the planet would even notice it, much less tuck it away as an interesting point of dinner conversation.

If that was all we had, we wouldn't "doubt the existence" of Jesus, but WHY? Because we'd have no reason to? Actually we'd still have every reason to doubt it, it's just that now the stakes, instead of being sky-high and involving the cherished beliefs of billions of people living and dead, are reduced to basically zero. So the consequence of just granting the authenticity of these references without further critical examination, and being wrong about it (or right about it, for that matter) is nil. It's even arguably justifiable based on the overall reputation of Josephus as a historian. Although, even then, the TF would still stick out like a sore thumb and be suspected / likely forgery -- so there's that. Or maybe not ... as if there were no NT there'd be no Christians mucking about seeking to commit pious frauds. So ironically, in your hypothetical, the TF probably would not even BE there.

It is not really possible to remove the Bible from the equation because it's the entire reason there's an equation to begin with. What I am trying to do with my similar thought experiment is to get the reader to see things in order of date of authorship instead of in the order the official canon was published. What you're trying to do is more like a "what if Hitler hadn't been defeated in WW2" type of rumination. It is sheer speculation.

[Minimalist]

If Hitler had won WW2 there would be a statue of him in every city in Europe and the church would have made him a saint.

[Bucky Ball]

Just one question, Bucky Boy.

Did John say "The Word was God" or not?

Just a simple answer would be suffice.

Forest for the trees, gramps. Forest for the trees.

Yep, just as I expected. You took lessons from the Republicans on evade and deflect. 

The *point* was that first came Philo THEN came John using concepts they took from Philo ....
Actually the deflection is your question ... trying to evade the POINT.

[Free]

But does that story of Goldilocks have numerous variant attestations? Does it have a historian(s) mentioning any part of it and listing it as an actual event in their history such as what Tacitus and Josephus did?

Do you think it's a fair comparison?

 

Actually, it is an unfair comparison but that is because Goldilocks is far better attested than any of that jesus shit.  We know who wrote it and when and we even know how many alternate versions of the story there were before the final version came out.

Of course the question must be asked why would anyone forge the Goldilocks story into any history?  Unlike the early church propagandists who were trying to sell 10 pounds of bullshit in a five pound bag to a bunch of ignorant peasants they were simply writing what turned out to be a children's story.

But.  If some Anglican asshole in 1820 had decided to make Goldilocks a saint who was ripped apart by three demonic bears because she broke into the house to plant crosses on the wall you can bet that they would be writing all sorts of horseshit about her.... just like all their other "saints."

The problem is that with your comparison here is that there is no historical records of Goldilocks and the 3 bears actually merely existing in the state as so described in the story ie; talking bears, as compared to the mere existence of Jesus who was an ordinary man who was crucified.

There is no comparison at all here.

Was Muhammad a myth? His grace has been a guarded shrine since he died.

That's a fair comparison. Not Goldilocks.

Try reading the Islamic Origins thread.  I don't think mo was any more real than jesus.  But we do have exactly the same kind of "evidence" for him.  The pious blather of later believers separated from events by 70-100 years.  In that sense, yes, mo and jesus are a fair comparison.  Both are bullshit.  But I agree with you that it is fair.

I have read them, and it reads like a work of manufactured denialist fiction to any historian. No one worthy of note disputes the existence of Muhammad, and the only time we ever see this claim of his non existence is when anyone makes a comparison to Jesus.

Again, Muhammad has a grave that has been guarded for 1400 years. There is physical evidence of his existence.

You're entitled to you opinion, but it just doesn't pass the litmus test of reason.

Would it be fair to say that the reason you are dubious now is because of the Bible? My scenario proposes no Bible. Therefore, why would you have any reason to be dubious?

If there was no bible there would have been no monks tampering with either piece.  Tacitus would refer to Chrestus and Chrestianos and Josephus' writing would probably have been allowed to wither into dust just as they did with his contemporary Justus of Tiberias who, as Photius said "did not know Christ." 

You are making assertions here without evidence or any solid reasoning. You have no evidence of any monks tampering with either piece. Suspicion is not evidence, and as far a Tacitus and the 2nd mention of Jesus in Josephus is concerned, not even suspicion is warranted due to a complete lack of evidence to support it.

Tacitus wrote history according to the Romans, not Christians. Same for Josephus writing about the Jews.

But then you have 1 Clement, written either just before or just after Justin,

You probably won't believe this - or maybe you will - but Clement of Rome seems to be another legendary figure.  Perhaps that is because there are too many legends about him?  The letter is usually dated between 70 and 140 AD but they normally try to insist on 95-96 because of the "Persecution of Domitian."  The only problem there is that there was no Persecution of Domitian.  In spite of its allegedly hallowed status an actual "copy" of the letter did not show up until the 1620's.  One of the central themes of the epistle is that the Corinthians should STFU and listen to their elders.  This was a few years after Luther started his shit.  Convenient timing, eh?

For the record we have only one text of Justin, that dated to 1365.  One day when I get the time I'll track down the earliest of some of the other xtian pillars.  For now, let me just say that I have no reason to put any credence in much of anything that early church writers claim.  They had an agenda and they pushed it vigorously.  As I believe you said a day or two ago, it is important to understand the point of view of every author. 

For the record, I don't believe used car salesmen or political ads, either.

It's late.  Manana.

Sorry, but you can't just say that everyone who provided good evidence for the argument of the existence of Jesus didn't exist either. Muhammad? Clement? Who's next? Tacitus? Josephus?

The argument is simply untenable.

[Free]

Forest for the trees, gramps. Forest for the trees.

Yep, just as I expected. You took lessons from the Republicans on evade and deflect. 

The *point* was that first came Philo THEN came John using concepts they took from Philo ....
Actually the deflection is your question ... trying to evade the POINT.

^^^ This.

The face of desperation.

Firstly, Philo was a Hellenistic Jew, influenced by Greek culture.

Secondly, the Greek culture was influenced by Stoic philosophy which began some 300 years previous with Zeno of Citium, as well as other variants.

What this means, Bucky Boy, is that the concept of the logos/gnosticism was already well permeated into the Greek culture long before Philo. John was influenced by the Greeks, not Philo. Philo was influenced by the Greeks also. 

The Greeks had variations on the philosophy. You had the Pyrrhonists, Stoics, and Isocrates' logos as those influencing variants, among others. Undoubtedly, you would have philosopher pretenders offering their own take on the concept, such as Philo, John, the Gnostics, etc.  But none of those 3 are exactly alike, and just because you see some similarities between Philo and John doesn't at all mean any kind of a direct influence from one to the other. After all, of course there are gong to be similarities, since both were immersed in the Greek culture that propagated that philosophy.

So ... you know ...

There's that.

[Free]

Would it be fair to say that the reason you are dubious now is because of the Bible? My scenario proposes no Bible. Therefore, why would you have any reason to be dubious?
 

I am not sure about this. I make a similar argument about reading Paul with the mindset that there are no gospels (which there weren't, at the time) as this makes his lack of what should naturally be references to the life and ministry of Jesus as a physical person all the more striking. Reading Paul that way, the "celestial Jesus" theme is far more strikingly prominent.

On the other hand, my thought experiment is actually getting the modern thinker OUT of the thought experiment they're unwitting participants in; it's not a hypothetical like yours. It's asking you to imagine what actually WAS at the time of Paul (or more exactly, at the time of the generally accepted dating of the authorship of what we refer to as the Pauline works, relative to the rest of the NT), not to imagine some sort of alternative history.

Sure, if the only mention of Jesus was a passing reference in Josephus, we wouldn't think much of it, but so what? It would be of so little significance that probably a half dozen people on the planet would even notice it, much less tuck it away as an interesting point of dinner conversation.

If that was all we had, we wouldn't "doubt the existence" of Jesus, but WHY? Because we'd have no reason to? Actually we'd still have every reason to doubt it, it's just that now the stakes, instead of being sky-high and involving the cherished beliefs of billions of people living and dead, are reduced to basically zero. So the consequence of just granting the authenticity of these references without further critical examination, and being wrong about it (or right about it, for that matter) is nil. It's even arguably justifiable based on the overall reputation of Josephus as a historian. Although, even then, the TF would still stick out like a sore thumb and be suspected / likely forgery -- so there's that. Or maybe not ... as if there were no NT there'd be no Christians mucking about seeking to commit pious frauds. So ironically, in your hypothetical, the TF probably would not even BE there.

It is not really possible to remove the Bible from the equation because it's the entire reason there's an equation to begin with. What I am trying to do with my similar thought experiment is to get the reader to see things in order of date of authorship instead of in the order the official canon was published. What you're trying to do is more like a "what if Hitler hadn't been defeated in WW2" type of rumination. It is sheer speculation.

But my scenario was completely different. No bible at all, including no Paul.

All you have is Tacitus and Josephus. All you see is both confirming each other's reports of a man named Jesus, who was called Christ, getting crucified by Pilate. That's it. Two independent records of a person and events surrounding him. You could even add in the letters of Pliny to Trajan, as they spoke about the Christians and Christ.

Now what would we think about that? 3 records of Christ and the Christians, with two of them relating that this Jesus dude was crucified.

That's more than enough to establish historicity, and with no bible to hold up to support any degree of mythology, there would be no good reason to doubt he existed at all.

None.

[Minimalist]

The problem is that with your comparison here is that there is no historical records of Goldilocks and the 3 bears actually merely existing in the state as so described in the story ie; talking bears, as compared to the mere existence of Jesus who was an ordinary man who was crucified.

There is no comparison at all here.

You are too impressed by the Holy Horseshit argument.  "Jesus" is not special.  It was a fairy tale that gained political power and for 1,000 years with the help of co-opted secular authorities ruthlessly suppressed opposing views.

Those days are over.

I have read them, and it reads like a work of manufactured denialist fiction to any historian. No one worthy of note disputes the existence of Muhammad, and the only time we ever see this claim of his non existence is when anyone makes a comparison to Jesus.

You're doing it again.  Anyone who departs from orthodoxy is a lunatic or a denialist or a fringe or whatever ad hominen you choose to use.  Why can't you examine the evidence they put forward dispassionately.  With all due respect, what are you afraid of?

Again, Muhammad has a grave that has been guarded for 1400 years. There is physical evidence of his existence.

There are bullshit tombs all over the middle east.  Every year there are massacres as the fools of one sect murder the fools of another who are making pilgrimages to them.  If you want to believe islamic bullshit, go ahead.  I'll pass.

You are making assertions here without evidence or any solid reasoning. You have no evidence of any monks tampering with either piece. Suspicion is not evidence, and as far a Tacitus and the 2nd mention of Jesus in Josephus is concerned, not even suspicion is warranted due to a complete lack of evidence to support it.

Tacitus wrote history according to the Romans, not Christians. Same for Josephus writing about the Jews.

We have evidence of manuscripts being tampered with for Tacitus.  If you don't want to believe it there is nothing else I can do.  We will have to disagree. 

TF is a 4th century fraud.  The bleating of apologists does not change that.

Again, we will have to disagree.

Sorry, but you can't just say that everyone who provided good evidence for the argument of the existence of Jesus didn't exist either. Muhammad? Clement? Who's next? Tacitus? Josephus?

The argument is simply untenable.

No, Tacitus and Josephus were real people.  In that they differ from all the holy horseshitters.  Perhaps you've heard the observation,

How many lies can someone tell you before distrust sets in? How many lies can you tell before you are a liar? Once someone has lied to us we look back on past conversations and ask: “What else has he lied to me about?”

The church has a long history of lying and forgery.

And now, I do not trust anything that any of the fuckers has ever said.  And they have no one to blame for that but themselves.

[Free]

The problem is that with your comparison here is that there is no historical records of Goldilocks and the 3 bears actually merely existing in the state as so described in the story ie; talking bears, as compared to the mere existence of Jesus who was an ordinary man who was crucified.

There is no comparison at all here.

You are too impressed by the Holy Horseshit argument.  "Jesus" is not special.  It was a fairy tale that gained political power and for 1,000 years with the help of co-opted secular authorities ruthlessly suppressed opposing views.

My whole point was that Jesus was not special. He was most likely an ordinary man who went afoul of the authorities and got crucified. Afterwards, his followers manufactured tall tales about him and Christianity took root. Nothing special about any of that. Completely reasonable, and completely supported by evidence.

But the rest of what you said appears to be some wildly concocted conspiracy theory that you will likely string together with tidbits of evidence that either doesn't actually exist, or exists as evidence for something completely different.

It's fine if you want to see things through that narrow lens, but I prefer a more complete peripheral view just so that I can evaluate everything I see.

I have read them, and it reads like a work of manufactured denialist fiction to any historian. No one worthy of note disputes the existence of Muhammad, and the only time we ever see this claim of his non existence is when anyone makes a comparison to Jesus.

You're doing it again.  Anyone who departs from orthodoxy is a lunatic or a denialist or a fringe or whatever ad hominen you choose to use.  Why can't you examine the evidence they put forward dispassionately.  With all due respect, what are you afraid of?

I am not afraid of everything. I never view any evidence with any passion. I view it objectively. 

You view it with passion. You view it with hatred. You will view it with anger.

But me? Complete indifference. No bias whatsoever.

Again, Muhammad has a grave that has been guarded for 1400 years. There is physical evidence of his existence.

There are bullshit tombs all over the middle east.  Every year there are massacres as the fools of one sect murder the fools of another who are making pilgrimages to them.  If you want to believe islamic bullshit, go ahead.  I'll pass.

There's a historical record of his grave-site for over 1000 years.

That's evidence. Not assertion.

You are making assertions here without evidence or any solid reasoning. You have no evidence of any monks tampering with either piece. Suspicion is not evidence, and as far a Tacitus and the 2nd mention of Jesus in Josephus is concerned, not even suspicion is warranted due to a complete lack of evidence to support it.

Tacitus wrote history according to the Romans, not Christians. Same for Josephus writing about the Jews.

We have evidence of manuscripts being tampered with for Tacitus.  If you don't want to believe it there is nothing else I can do.  We will have to disagree.

What you have is a 10th century scribe correcting what he believed was a spelling error by a previous copiest. Changing an 'e' to an 'i' to reflect how the Christian name was spelled  during the 10th century is a perfectly natural correction. We have seen the same corrections numerous times with other manuscripts.

That does not qualify as "tampering" in the sense to change what was being said. Virtually all scholars agree- based upon their own investigations- that Christian and Chrestian were interchangeable. It's a no-brainer.

TF is a 4th century fraud.  The bleating of apologists does not change that.

Again, we will have to disagree.

Again, you have no direct evidence of that. You have assertions just because you don't like it. The TF, as it sits, is what we have. We have absolutely no direct evidence that anyone ever tampered with it, despite the fact that almost all scholars agree that it is likely someone altered the original to reflect a Christian sentiment, but all of them admit they don't actually have any direct evidence to even support that much. The harsh reality about the TF is this:

1. It exists.
2. We have evidence it existed in its current state within 225 years after Josephus published his book, as it was quoted verbatim.
3. We have no direct evidence anyone ever tampered with it.

However, we do have enough circumstantial evidence to warrant suspicion of tampering, but that suspicion simply isn't enough to warrant any claims of wholesale interpolation. Yes, if it was tampered with Eusebius appears likely to have been the culprit.

A couple of months ago I spoke with Ken Olson about this. You might like to read his views on it from his Harvard publication you will find here.

https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/disp...-ken-olson

But the bottom line is, I and virtually all others agree that the original almost certainly said something about Jesus being crucified by Pilate.

Sorry, but you can't just say that everyone who provided good evidence for the argument of the existence of Jesus didn't exist either. Muhammad? Clement? Who's next? Tacitus? Josephus?

The argument is simply untenable.

No, Tacitus and Josephus were real people.  In that they differ from all the holy horseshitters.  Perhaps you've heard the observation,

How many lies can someone tell you before distrust sets in? How many lies can you tell before you are a liar? Once someone has lied to us we look back on past conversations and ask: “What else has he lied to me about?”

The church has a long history of lying and forgery.

And now, I do not trust anything that any of the fuckers has ever said.  And they have no one to blame for that but themselves.

Yet, you have no good evidence that anyone "lied" to what Tacitus wrote or to what Josephus wrote in regards to James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ.

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

well, I'm ready for @Free to reveal his identity