Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[jerry mcmasters]

That's simply not how probability works.

How would it work?  Count up all the times in human history religious literature produced a supernatural entity/god/prophet/miracle worker.  Create from that a ratio of such entities that we KNOW to have been completely made up by the authors of those texts, and such entities that we KNOW to have been based on some form of an actual human inspiration.  Then we will have some kind of average for how often it happens?  And that will somehow, EVEN IF ACCURATE (which it can't and won't be) tell us the truth about Jesus?

[Dānu]

That's simply not how probability works.

How would it work?  Count up all the times in human history religious literature produced a supernatural entity/god/prophet/miracle worker.  Create from that a ratio of such entities that we KNOW to have been completely made up by the authors of those texts, and such entities that we KNOW to have been based on some form of an actual human inspiration.  Then we will have some kind of average for how often it happens?  And that will somehow, EVEN IF ACCURATE (which it can't and won't be) tell us the truth about Jesus?

Do they have libraries where you live?

[jerry mcmasters]

That's simply not how probability works.

How would it work?  Count up all the times in human history religious literature produced a supernatural entity/god/prophet/miracle worker.  Create from that a ratio of such entities that we KNOW to have been completely made up by the authors of those texts, and such entities that we KNOW to have been based on some form of an actual human inspiration.  Then we will have some kind of average for how often it happens?  And that will somehow, EVEN IF ACCURATE (which it can't and won't be) tell us the truth about Jesus?

Do they have libraries where you live?

Just as vacuous as your special pleading claim, but a bit funnier.

[Dānu]

How would it work?  Count up all the times in human history religious literature produced a supernatural entity/god/prophet/miracle worker.  Create from that a ratio of such entities that we KNOW to have been completely made up by the authors of those texts, and such entities that we KNOW to have been based on some form of an actual human inspiration.  Then we will have some kind of average for how often it happens?  And that will somehow, EVEN IF ACCURATE (which it can't and won't be) tell us the truth about Jesus?

Do they have libraries where you live?

Just as vacuous as your special pleading claim, but a bit funnier.

It must be the booze talking.  It couldn't be that I actually know what I'm talking about.  Yeah.  It's the booze.

[jerry mcmasters]

It must be the booze talking.  It couldn't be that I actually know what I'm talking about.  Yeah.  It's the booze.

Ah, I was in "that place" last night...woke up wondering how stupid or incoherent I had been in real life and/or on line...  (not that you are being so, that was my experience)  Oh well, tomorrow's another day!

[Dānu]

It must be the booze talking.  It couldn't be that I actually know what I'm talking about.  Yeah.  It's the booze.

Ah, I was in "that place" last night...woke up wondering how stupid or incoherent I had been in real life and/or on line...  (not that you are being so, that was my experience)  Oh well, tomorrow's another day!

Something tell's me you're in that place every night, booze or not. Oh well. It's enjoyable trading barbs with you, but I prefer something with a little more meat on its bones.

[jerry mcmasters]

It must be the booze talking.  It couldn't be that I actually know what I'm talking about.  Yeah.  It's the booze.

Ah, I was in "that place" last night...woke up wondering how stupid or incoherent I had been in real life and/or on line...  (not that you are being so, that was my experience)  Oh well, tomorrow's another day!

Something tell's me you're in that place every night, booze or not.  Oh well.  It's enjoyable trading barbs with you, but I prefer something with a little more meat on its bones.

[Aractus]

No, Danny.... they are not multiple independent accounts.  They are all dependent on the first bullshit story known as "mark."  That they were later edited by later writers helps your cause not at all.

Acts 13:27-31 is not Markan at all in any way. You could possibly make the argument that it served at the basis for Mark's version, but it's idiocy to claim that it's based on Mark's.

You do understand that it is only assumed that Mark was the 1st gospel, right? The truth is we have no way of knowing it at all. For all we know, Mark could be some scaled down version of Luke, or Matthew, or some other unknown gospel.

It's not "assumed", it's a hypothesis based on evidence. And only takes into account the canonical gospels, not lost hypothetical gospels like Q and Signs.

It can't be a scaled down version of Matthew or Luke at least not the documents as we have them - Matthew and Luke "correct" Mark consistently, and nowhere is that clearer than in the Passion where they remove or alter parts of the narrative they don't like.

Some scholars seem to base their assumption that Mark was written sometime after AD 70 due to the temple being destroyed, and because that gospel has Jesus predicting it would be destroyed. Those scholars obviously didn't put much thought into that evaluation since they failed to understand that Jesus' prediction was a complete failure because, according to what he allegedly said, the temple would be destroyed along with everything else, the whole world. Because the whole world was not destroyed, then his prediction was false, and the fact that the Romans destroyed the temple some 40 years later has absolutely nothing to do with how Jesus thought it would all go down.

You've strawmanned the argument. What several scholars argue is that (a.) there is a strong theme of the Israel's destruction in Mark and the Christ cult replacing it, with the temple's destruction playing a key role in this theme, and (b.) that certain parts only make sense to Mark's reader if the temple is already destroyed. On those points:

• Mark 14:58: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” This passage refers to Jesus' resurrection as the "rebuilding of the temple" and so can only make sense if the temple's destruction is also past-tense.
  
• Mark 15.29-30: "Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!”" (as above).
  
• The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12). This parable is really about the Jews killing Jesus, and the favour of Yahweh being passed on to a new chosen people. It was a way of explaining the destruction of the temple as being a direct consequence of the Jews rejecting his Son, as well as justifying the mostly gentile church's status.
  
• The Cursing of the Fig Tree, Mark 11:12-14: "On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it." This passage is based on Hosea 9 and is all about the coming destruction of Israel.
  
• Mark 13:1-23 appears to be a lengthy passage all written in the context of a war in Jerusalem, the specificity implies this is a past event that Mark is writing in response to.
  
  

Mark Goodacre put it thusly: "The theme of the destruction of the temple is repeated and pervasive in Mark's narrative, and it becomes steadily more intense as the narrative unfolds. Jesus' prophecies in Mark attain their potency because 'the reader understands' their reference."

There is further evidence to support the hypothesis of Mark being written later than 70 CE. Zeichmann 2017 considers the The Taxation Episode (Mark 12:13-17) and argues that it (a.) only makes sense to a monetised economy, (b.) that no such monetary tax taken by Rome existed at all in the southern Levant in Jesus' lifetime, and therefore (c.) this passage must have been written later than 71 CE. To quote: "Whatever tax Mark had in mind, it did not exist during the life of Jesus." Zeichmann's paper I think comes as close to proof as we will get for some time that Mark had to be written after 71 CE. Oh by the way to borrow from your own rhetoric - there is no evidence of a monetary taxation in Judea or Galilee in Jesus' lifetime.

So the argument that Mark is written "sometime after AD 70 due to the temple being destroyed, and because that gospel has Jesus predicting it would be destroyed" as you presented it is entirely wrong. That's only a small part of the argument. And we're talking about Mark as we have it - the critical edition derived from the third/fourth century version that's hypothesised to be "close" to the original first century edition - not some other substantially different "proto-Mark" gospel that may or may not have ever existed.

[Minimalist]

Acts is an attempt to reconcile the various strands of jesusism.  Pure propaganda, Danny.

BTW, that theory was proposed by Ferdinand Christian Bauer in the mid 18th century.  I'm sure all the jesus freaks will denounce him as not a "real scholar" because he doesn't fall for their bullshit.  I suppose "founding" whole school of thought doesn't count for people who rely on fairy tales.

[Free]

That's not at all true.  Folklorists and psychologists have studied the way that oral culture works and the way that myth and legend develops, and, we have considerable knowledge about the ancient near east as well as comparative examples of other myths and legends to compare the Jesus phenomena with.  So to say that we have no evidence to support the mythicist hypothesis is simply mistaken.  There probably are other things one can point to in order to support the hypothesis, but that is sufficient to put this notion that there is no evidence for the mythicist position to rest.  Additionally, this seems to be an example of a fallacious attempt to shift the burden of proof.  It is not the mythicist's obligation to prove that Jesus didn't happen, but rather that the evidence for a historical Jesus has explanations that are sufficiently probable to make the so-called evidence moot.  Asking the mythicist to prove that something didn't happen simply makes it look like you don't really understand the issues involved.

There is no evidence to support the position that Jesus is wholly myth. 

None.

It doesn't matter what other cultures have done to ascertain the mythical status of anyone or anything else. That is completely unrelated. Just because a mythical status has been ascribed to one character has nothing to do with it be ascribed to another completely different character in a completely different culture. The establishment of Zeus, for example, as being a myth is completely unrelated to Jesus.

Each evaluation stands on its own, and are not dependent on each other for the simple reason they are all unrelated.

That's simply not how probability works.

The truth value is what matters to the probability scale. For example, is there any evidence that Zeus ever existed as an ordinary man like the evidence we currently have for Jesus?

To make those comparisons, you need to actually find comparisons. The question here is whether or not it's a fair comparison. If you cannot find evidence that Zeus existed as an ordinary man, you cannot use such an obvious mythical figure as a comparison to another character which does have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity. 

Otherwise, you fall victim to false comparison.

[Aractus]

Acts is an attempt to reconcile the various strands of jesusism.  Pure propaganda, Danny.

If you say so, Delbert Burkett has a different take:

The central theme of Luke-Acts is that the message of salvation was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. We can infer the centrality of this theme not only because it appears so frequently in Luke-Acts, but also because it appears at all the high points of the story.

In emphasizing this theme, the author of Luke-Acts was seeking to justify a situation that existed in his day: the church consisted primarily of Gentiles rather than Jews. Though the message about Jesus began among Jews, most Jews had rejected it, while many Gentiles had accepted it. This situation raised a theological problem: how did a Jewish Messiah wind up with a Gentile church? God had promised the Messiah to the Jews. How then could the church be the people of the Messiah when most were not Jews? T o defend the church as the legitimate people of the Messiah, the author of Luke-Acts had to explain how it came to consist primarily of Gentiles. Repeatedly , we see him giving the same explanation: because the Jews rejected Christian preaching about the Messiah, God sent the message to the Gentiles. Gentile Christians were therefore the legitimate heirs of God’ s promises to the Jews. This theme is developed in both Luke and Acts.

By the way, that very theme is present in Mark too. Hence the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.

Also, it's irrelevant if Acts is "pure propaganda". The fact is that its author got that tradition (Acts 13:27-31) from somewhere and he didn't get it from his copy of gMark. He actually makes use of another passion narrative as well, one that includes Herod and has several differences to Acts 13 and to Mark, including giving Jesus a different final phrase before his death, and is thought by some to come from Q. But we don't have that version in isolation in its entirety, unlike the Acts 13 passion narrative which is complete.

[Dānu]

There is no evidence to support the position that Jesus is wholly myth. 

None.

It doesn't matter what other cultures have done to ascertain the mythical status of anyone or anything else. That is completely unrelated. Just because a mythical status has been ascribed to one character has nothing to do with it be ascribed to another completely different character in a completely different culture. The establishment of Zeus, for example, as being a myth is completely unrelated to Jesus.

Each evaluation stands on its own, and are not dependent on each other for the simple reason they are all unrelated.

That's simply not how probability works.

The truth value is what matters to the probability scale. For example, is there any evidence that Zeus ever existed as an ordinary man like the evidence we currently have for Jesus?

To make those comparisons, you need to actually find comparisons. The question here is whether or not it's a fair comparison. If you cannot find evidence that Zeus existed as an ordinary man, you cannot use such an obvious mythical figure as a comparison to another character which does have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity. 

Otherwise, you fall victim to false comparison.

Is making straw men just a hobby of yours, or is it something more serious? You obviously don't have the first fucking clue.

[Free]

That's simply not how probability works.

The truth value is what matters to the probability scale. For example, is there any evidence that Zeus ever existed as an ordinary man like the evidence we currently have for Jesus?

To make those comparisons, you need to actually find comparisons. The question here is whether or not it's a fair comparison. If you cannot find evidence that Zeus existed as an ordinary man, you cannot use such an obvious mythical figure as a comparison to another character which does have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity. 

Otherwise, you fall victim to false comparison.

Is making straw men just a hobby of yours, or is it something more serious?  You obviously don't have the first fucking clue.

Please specify the alleged strawman you claim I have made. Since your argument is that the establishment of other mythical figures provides precedence to ascribe the same status to Jesus, and I argue that it is not a fair comparison because the previous characters are firmly established as mythical but Jesus is not, then where is the strawman? 

Since I am directly contesting your argument, your claim of a strawman is non sequitur.

[Dānu]

The truth value is what matters to the probability scale. For example, is there any evidence that Zeus ever existed as an ordinary man like the evidence we currently have for Jesus?

To make those comparisons, you need to actually find comparisons. The question here is whether or not it's a fair comparison. If you cannot find evidence that Zeus existed as an ordinary man, you cannot use such an obvious mythical figure as a comparison to another character which does have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity. 

Otherwise, you fall victim to false comparison.

Is making straw men just a hobby of yours, or is it something more serious?  You obviously don't have the first fucking clue.

Please specify the alleged strawman you claim I have made. Since your argument is that the establishment of other mythical figures provides precedence to ascribe the same status to Jesus, and I argue that it is not a fair comparison because the previous characters are firmly established as mythical but Jesus is not, then where is the strawman? 

Since I am directly contesting your argument, your claim of a strawman is non sequitur.

A couple of quick points, because I really don't have time for this. My argument focused on a question of the probability in the form of an argument to the most likely hypothesis. That argument stresses, among other things, that the existence of figures like Jesus that are likely mythical raises the probability of alternate hypotheses that ascribe mythical status to Jesus. Maybe that is what you meant. If so, and if I accept your interpretation, then it may not be a straw man under those assumptions. However, the "among other things" there is important, as it wasn't the only factor in an overall inductive argument. You've selected it out and basically ignored the rest of the argument, thereby misrepresenting the substance of the argument, even if you might have accidentally captured part of it. Recall that my original response was that your reply to my general remark about evidence for the mythicist position was that you were applying probability theory incorrectly[*]. When you ignore the actual inductive probabilistic argument being made in order to focus on only one thread in that calculation, you at the least have not addressed the argument that was made. So, even if you are right on the comparative myth aspect, you would still be wrong on the overall point. The other point is that I don't think your interpretation is correct. I think there are valid comparisons that can be made, and I am not analogizing them to Jesus because they are known to be mythical, but rather because they were actually considered historical at one time as well. You claim that Jesus' evidence is clearly different than that for similar legendary figures, but that's simply a circular argument. You claim that we have evidence for a historical Jesus because the evidence for Jesus is different from that for other figures in that we "have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity." The petitio principii there is as plain as day. And that is the only basis for your claim of the faulty comparison, that the evidence for Jesus supports a historical Jesus because it is historical evidence. Feel free to correct my error if I have missed what you are basing that on, but it seems a clear case of question begging.

Anyway. Out of time, and I'm trying to avoid posting in the morning, but I'm not going to have much time otherwise until Tuesday or Wednesday, so it is what it is.

[*] In particular, you were claiming an epistemic independence which simply doesn't exist, and ignoring the fact that things such as I listed do form a part of our background knowledge and evaluation of probability as they are not unique to the Jesus phenomenon.

[Free]

Is making straw men just a hobby of yours, or is it something more serious?  You obviously don't have the first fucking clue.

Please specify the alleged strawman you claim I have made. Since your argument is that the establishment of other mythical figures provides precedence to ascribe the same status to Jesus, and I argue that it is not a fair comparison because the previous characters are firmly established as mythical but Jesus is not, then where is the strawman? 

Since I am directly contesting your argument, your claim of a strawman is non sequitur.

A couple of quick points, because I really don't have time for this.  My argument focused on a question of the probability in the form of an argument to the most likely hypothesis.  That argument stresses, among other things, that the existence of figures like Jesus that are likely mythical raises the probability of alternate hypotheses that ascribe mythical status to Jesus.  Maybe that is what you meant.  If so, and if I accept your interpretation, then it may not be a straw man under those assumptions.  However, the "among other things" there is important, as it wasn't the only factor in an overall inductive argument.    You've selected it out and basically ignored the rest of the argument, thereby misrepresenting the substance of the argument, even if you might have accidentally captured part of it.  Recall that my original response was that your reply to my general remark about evidence for the mythicist position was that you were applying probability theory incorrectly
[*].  When you ignore the actual inductive probabilistic argument being made in order to focus on only one thread in that calculation, you at the least have not addressed the argument that was made.  So, even if you are right on the comparative myth aspect, you would still be wrong on the overall point.  The other point is that I don't think your interpretation is correct.  I think there are valid comparisons that can be made, and I am not analogizing them to Jesus because they are known to be mythical, but rather because they were actually considered historical at one time as well.  You claim that Jesus' evidence is clearly different than that for similar legendary figures, but that's simply a circular argument.  You claim that we have evidence for a historical Jesus because the evidence for Jesus is different from that for other figures in that we "have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity."  The petitio principii there is as plain as day.  And that is the only basis for your claim of the faulty comparison, that the evidence for Jesus supports a historical Jesus because it is historical evidence.  Feel free to correct my error if I have missed what you are basing that on, but it seems a clear case of question begging.

Anyway.  Out of time, and I'm trying to avoid posting in the morning, but I'm not going to have much time otherwise until Tuesday or Wednesday, so it is what it is.

[*]In particular, you were claiming an epistemic independence which simply doesn't exist, and ignoring the fact that things such as I listed do form a part of our background knowledge and evaluation of probability as they are not unique to the Jesus phenomenon.

The problem with your argument is the following wrong assumption:

"That argument stresses, among other things, that the existence of figures like Jesus that are likely mythical"

The historical evidence and argument is greater than the "argument" for myth. The myth position has no direct evidence. The historical position does. Therefore the existence of figures like Jesus are more likely historical.

[Phaedrus]

Absurd.

[Free]

You do understand that it is only assumed that Mark was the 1st gospel, right? The truth is we have no way of knowing it at all. For all we know, Mark could be some scaled down version of Luke, or Matthew, or some other unknown gospel.

It's not "assumed", it's a hypothesis based on evidence. And only takes into account the canonical gospels, not lost hypothetical gospels like Q and Signs.

It can't be a scaled down version of Matthew or Luke at least not the documents as we have them - Matthew and Luke "correct" Mark consistently, and nowhere is that clearer than in the Passion where they remove or alter parts of the narrative they don't like.

How is an hypothesis NOT an assumption? I understand the hypothesis, but I assure you it isn't based on any evidence at all. What the scholars claim to be evidence is not evidence at all. 

Some scholars seem to base their assumption that Mark was written sometime after AD 70 due to the temple being destroyed, and because that gospel has Jesus predicting it would be destroyed. Those scholars obviously didn't put much thought into that evaluation since they failed to understand that Jesus' prediction was a complete failure because, according to what he allegedly said, the temple would be destroyed along with everything else, the whole world. Because the whole world was not destroyed, then his prediction was false, and the fact that the Romans destroyed the temple some 40 years later has absolutely nothing to do with how Jesus thought it would all go down.

You've strawmanned the argument. What several scholars argue is that (a.) there is a strong theme of the Israel's destruction in Mark and the Christ cult replacing it, with the temple's destruction playing a key role in this theme, and (b.) that certain parts only make sense to Mark's reader if the temple is already destroyed. On those points:

• Mark 14:58: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” This passage refers to Jesus' resurrection as the "rebuilding of the temple" and so can only make sense if the temple's destruction is also past-tense.
  
• Mark 15.29-30: "Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!”" (as above).
  
• The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12). This parable is really about the Jews killing Jesus, and the favour of Yahweh being passed on to a new chosen people. It was a way of explaining the destruction of the temple as being a direct consequence of the Jews rejecting his Son, as well as justifying the mostly gentile church's status.
  
• The Cursing of the Fig Tree, Mark 11:12-14: "On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it." This passage is based on Hosea 9 and is all about the coming destruction of Israel.
  
• Mark 13:1-23 appears to be a lengthy passage all written in the context of a war in Jerusalem, the specificity implies this is a past event that Mark is writing in response to.
  
  

Mark Goodacre put it thusly: "The theme of the destruction of the temple is repeated and pervasive in Mark's narrative, and it becomes steadily more intense as the narrative unfolds. Jesus' prophecies in Mark attain their potency because 'the reader understands' their reference."

There is further evidence to support the hypothesis of Mark being written later than 70 CE. Zeichmann 2017 considers the The Taxation Episode (Mark 12:13-17) and argues that it (a.) only makes sense to a monetised economy, (b.) that no such monetary tax taken by Rome existed at all in the southern Levant in Jesus' lifetime, and therefore (c.) this passage must have been written later than 71 CE. To quote: "Whatever tax Mark had in mind, it did not exist during the life of Jesus." Zeichmann's paper I think comes as close to proof as we will get for some time that Mark had to be written after 71 CE. Oh by the way to borrow from your own rhetoric - there is no evidence of a monetary taxation in Judea or Galilee in Jesus' lifetime.

So the argument that Mark is written "sometime after AD 70 due to the temple being destroyed, and because that gospel has Jesus predicting it would be destroyed" as you presented it is entirely wrong. That's only a small part of the argument. And we're talking about Mark as we have it - the critical edition derived from the third/fourth century version that's hypothesised to be "close" to the original first century edition - not some other substantially different "proto-Mark" gospel that may or may not have ever existed.

None of this points to Mark being written after the Romans destroyed the temple. What it appears to be is scholars making the same hindsight mistake the Christians make with the so-called "prophesies" of Jesus. Just because Jesus mentions the destruction of the temple in no way whatsoever has anything to do with a prediction that the Romans would destroy it.

And no where in any Gospel is there any reference whatsoever that the Romans would destroy the temple, nor then present-tense narrative even alluding to it in the past tense.

The bottom line is that Jesus predicted that the destruction of the temple would occur as per his end-times religious philosophy, and that never happened. One would think that if Mark was written after the destruction of the temple by the Romans the writer would have said something to the effect of (and it happened) but there is not even a hint that the writer knew anything whatsoever about the destruction of the temple at all. 

In regards to taxation during Jesus' lifetime, perhaps your scholar needs a lesson on ancient Roman taxation practices. 

https://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

All the provinces were taxed during Jesus' lifetime, and the tax system wasn't changed until the late 1st century. Taxes were collected by an individual known as a Publican. Compare from that website and search the gospels for that word. It's every where.

[Aractus]

How is an hypothesis NOT an assumption? I understand the hypothesis, but I assure you it isn't based on any evidence at all. What the scholars claim to be evidence is not evidence at all. 

Simple - it's an idea that can be tested. Not an assumption about the past. There is ample evidence for Markan priority.

None of this points to Mark being written after the Romans destroyed the temple. What it appears to be is scholars making the same hindsight mistake the Christians make with the so-called "prophesies" of Jesus. Just because Jesus mentions the destruction of the temple in no way whatsoever has anything to do with a prediction that the Romans would destroy it.

Again, you're strawmanning the argument. I didn't say Jesus didn't make a prophecy. That's not relevant - what's relevant is Mark's clear theme relating to the Temple's destruction.

And no where in any Gospel is there any reference whatsoever that the Romans would destroy the temple, nor then present-tense narrative even alluding to it in the past tense.

If Jesus made a prophecy about the temple being destroyed it's implied it would be by the Romans.

In regards to taxation during Jesus' lifetime, perhaps your scholar needs a lesson on ancient Roman taxation practices. 

https://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

All the provinces were taxed during Jesus' lifetime, and the tax system wasn't changed until the late 1st century. Taxes were collected by an individual known as a Publican. Compare from that website and search the gospels for that word. It's every where.

In only appears in one passage in Mark - where Jesus calls Levi. As for the other gospels - they're written 80 CE or later. The evangelists know who publicans are and deal with them - but did Jesus in 30 CE? There is no evidence of any tax paid in denarii being collected in Judea or Galilee in Jesus' lifetime - your link doesn't change that. From Zeichmann's article:

"In fact, no monetary capitation taxes are known at all in the southern Levant before the war, much less any paid in denarii or equivalent coinage (e.g., didrachm). In short, there was no κήνσος that a resident of Judea or Galilee paid to Καίσαρ with aδηνάριον or any other coin for that matter at the time. Whatever tax Mark had in mind, it did not exist during the lifeof Jesus."

[Dānu]

Please specify the alleged strawman you claim I have made. Since your argument is that the establishment of other mythical figures provides precedence to ascribe the same status to Jesus, and I argue that it is not a fair comparison because the previous characters are firmly established as mythical but Jesus is not, then where is the strawman? 

Since I am directly contesting your argument, your claim of a strawman is non sequitur.

A couple of quick points, because I really don't have time for this.  My argument focused on a question of the probability in the form of an argument to the most likely hypothesis.  That argument stresses, among other things, that the existence of figures like Jesus that are likely mythical raises the probability of alternate hypotheses that ascribe mythical status to Jesus.  Maybe that is what you meant.  If so, and if I accept your interpretation, then it may not be a straw man under those assumptions.  However, the "among other things" there is important, as it wasn't the only factor in an overall inductive argument.    You've selected it out and basically ignored the rest of the argument, thereby misrepresenting the substance of the argument, even if you might have accidentally captured part of it.  Recall that my original response was that your reply to my general remark about evidence for the mythicist position was that you were applying probability theory incorrectly
[*].  When you ignore the actual inductive probabilistic argument being made in order to focus on only one thread in that calculation, you at the least have not addressed the argument that was made.  So, even if you are right on the comparative myth aspect, you would still be wrong on the overall point.  The other point is that I don't think your interpretation is correct.  I think there are valid comparisons that can be made, and I am not analogizing them to Jesus because they are known to be mythical, but rather because they were actually considered historical at one time as well.  You claim that Jesus' evidence is clearly different than that for similar legendary figures, but that's simply a circular argument.  You claim that we have evidence for a historical Jesus because the evidence for Jesus is different from that for other figures in that we "have evidence to support physical non mythical historicity."  The petitio principii there is as plain as day.  And that is the only basis for your claim of the faulty comparison, that the evidence for Jesus supports a historical Jesus because it is historical evidence.  Feel free to correct my error if I have missed what you are basing that on, but it seems a clear case of question begging.

Anyway.  Out of time, and I'm trying to avoid posting in the morning, but I'm not going to have much time otherwise until Tuesday or Wednesday, so it is what it is.

[*]In particular, you were claiming an epistemic independence which simply doesn't exist, and ignoring the fact that things such as I listed do form a part of our background knowledge and evaluation of probability as they are not unique to the Jesus phenomenon.

The problem with your argument is the following wrong assumption:

"That argument stresses, among other things, that the existence of figures like Jesus that are likely mythical"

The historical evidence and argument is greater than the "argument" for myth. The myth position has no direct evidence. The historical position does. Therefore the existence of figures like Jesus are more likely historical.

That's not a problem for my argument at all, as my argument was that there is evidence for the mythicist position, which you're now basically conceding by moving the goalpost from "there's no evidence" to "there's no direct evidence." I wasn't arguing that the strength of the evidence for mythicism was greater than that for historicism, only that your claim that there was no evidence is wrong. And you're still focusing on one line of evidence in spite of the fact that multiple lines of evidence were mentioned. I could argue the question of directness of evidence, as it's not clear what you mean by "direct" if hearsay counts as direct evidence, but it's a moot point as you've basically admitted you were wrong.

I also have to wonder about your language. You seem to use words more for effect than to communicate ideas. You say that the above "assumption" is a problem, and I'm at a loss as to why you think that is an assumption. At worst, it's a fact derived from the law of non-contradiction. And I'm still puzzling over what possible meaning to attach to your earlier claim that, "The truth value is what matters to the probability scale." I'd be most appreciative if you could unpack that one for me.

[Phaedrus]

I also have to wonder about your language.  You seem to use words more for effect than to communicate ideas.

No surprise, really. Some people like to confuse others by stating a great deal that means absolutely nothing.

[Paleophyte]

Arguing from the Bible is like trying to pick pepper out of the fly shit. There's no primary source and the various different stories have been written and over-written by so many different agendas that try to tease truth out of them two millennia later is likely to drive you mad.

What we can tell is that it was written by Gentiles for Gentiles. The near complete lack of Jewish culture or thinking in the NT is damning on that account. Jesus is tried and crucified over Passover, but Passover itself gets passed over with barely a mention. So whoever wrote the NT they weren't Jesus' Disciples. At best they were Gentiles who were one step removed and had no cultural framework for the Messiah that they thought they were writing about.

As to whether there was an individual for the basis of the myths I defer to Occam's razor and human behaviour.

- Power hungry people who concoct religions almost inevitably base them around themselves.

- Why take the risk and trouble of inventing a Messiah when they're available on any street corner in Judea?

- If Christianity had been completely invented at some point then I would expect it to be more coherent and better written. The editing stinks.

[Deltabravo]

The NT in Matthew starts by setting out Jesus' ancestry showing him to be a royal pretender.  I think it's unlikely that one could get away with writing a book about a figure with that kind of background within forty or fifty years of his death if the guy did not exist as a real person, but not, obviously, a god-man.  There would have been too many people still alive who would have been able to say he did exist.  I mean, my grandmother was born in the late 1890's and she would have been able to meet up and speak to someone who was alive at the same time as Napoleon.   My dad told me about stories his father told him about WWI.  

The story was plainly based on a real person, and embellished to give him god-like qualities, in the religion of the region.  

What I find more interesting is that the reason for "God" to send his "son" is to tell us all a lot of rather unexciting homilies about how to behave.  I mean, if he was a "god" you'd expect him to cure all of mankind's illnesses, solve all the world's problems, make night turn into day or solve a Rubic's cube but, no, he tells us to love each other....hmmm....

[Dancefortwo]

The NT in Matthew starts by setting out Jesus' ancestry showing him to be a royal pretender.  I think it's unlikely that one could get away with writing a book about a figure with that kind of background within forty or fifty years of his death if the guy did not exist as a real person, but not, obviously, a god-man.  There would have been too many people still alive who would have been able to say he did exist.  I mean, my grandmother was born in the late 1890's and she would have been able to meet up and speak to someone who was alive at the same time as Napoleon.   My dad told me about stories his father told him about WWI.  

The story was plainly based on a real person, and embellished to give him god-like qualities, in the religion of the region.  

What I find more interesting is that the reason for "God" to send his "son" is to tell us all a lot of rather unexciting homilies about how to behave.  I mean, if he was a "god" you'd expect him to cure all of mankind's illnesses, solve all the world's problems, make night turn into day or solve a Rubic's cube but, no, he tells us to love each other....hmmm....

Except that Luke's ancestry of Jesus is completely different.  I'm not a mythicist but the two communities  around which Luke and  Matthew's stories were written didn't seem to  consult each other to make sure  the geneaology was consistent.  There's also the problem of Joseph being listed as the father.   Wut??  Did Jesus have two daddies?  You could make a case for same sex parenting using the Jesus story. 

[Minimalist]

but the two communities  around which Luke and  Matthew's stories were written didn't seem to  consult each other

And that is an incredibly valid point.  Xtians were isolated in scattered communities.  There was no over-arching "church" guiding them.  That was a much later development.

Not only were they separate and widely diverse in their views but the first Greco-Roman writer to mention this "jesus" guy also tells us:

"Christians, needless to say, utterly detest one another; they slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse, and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense..."


Celsus c 180 AD  with thanks to Origen of Caesarea who preserved much of his writing from the later xtian bonfires of stupidity.

[Deltabravo]

The NT in Matthew starts by setting out Jesus' ancestry showing him to be a royal pretender.  I think it's unlikely that one could get away with writing a book about a figure with that kind of background within forty or fifty years of his death if the guy did not exist as a real person, but not, obviously, a god-man.  There would have been too many people still alive who would have been able to say he did exist.  I mean, my grandmother was born in the late 1890's and she would have been able to meet up and speak to someone who was alive at the same time as Napoleon.   My dad told me about stories his father told him about WWI.  

The story was plainly based on a real person, and embellished to give him god-like qualities, in the religion of the region.  

What I find more interesting is that the reason for "God" to send his "son" is to tell us all a lot of rather unexciting homilies about how to behave.  I mean, if he was a "god" you'd expect him to cure all of mankind's illnesses, solve all the world's problems, make night turn into day or solve a Rubic's cube but, no, he tells us to love each other....hmmm....

Except that Luke's ancestry of Jesus is completely different.  I'm not a mythicist but the two communities  around which Luke and  Matthew's stories were written didn't seem to  consult each other to make sure  the geneaology was consistent.  There's also the problem of Joseph being listed as the father.   Wut??  Did Jesus have two daddies?  You could make a case for same sex parenting using the Jesus story. 

The fact that the two are different is, in my opinion, by design.  My point is that the whole of the NT are designed, not written up by itinerant drifters who just felt an urge to write about the god man they knew or heard about. It's a work of political polemics.  

The difference in lineage can be accounted for in two ways. First, discrepancies in the stories of witnesses often vary for a variety of reasons.  The lineage is a matter of oral history, perhaps, coming from different sources, so some recollections are not as good as others and mistakes are made. But, it is argued, the result is the same. These two different sources, evidenced by them having slightly different aspects, point to Jesus being of royal lineage going back to King David.  If the two stories were exactly the same one might say that one just copied the other.  The other way it can be accounted for is that the whole "procreation" thing in the Old Testament religion is of a piece. It starts with Adam and Eve and then Cain and Abel and then... they somehow get wives. It's a family incest story, by necessity. It's the same with Noah.  He has sons.  This is like the story of Osiris.  Egyptian pharoahs and many other monarchic rulers married sisters, mothers, or close relatives to keep the lineage pure.  So, in that sense it doesn't matter who the father is, because it could have been one of a number of brothers.

As for the immaculate conception, Matthew says, I recall, that Mary was visited by the Holy Spirit.  In a religion in which procreation and ancestry is everything, I think that when Mary says this she means that she was in a sexual mood and she had sex with someone who would, in the day, be described as a "lord".  That lord may have been her own father, for instance and Joseph may have been her own brother.  That's entirely plausible in terms of accepted behaviour back then and doesn't involve an invisible being having sex.