Columbia PhD in Ancient History says Jesus never existed

[alwayson]

How do Christians respond to Dr. Richard Carrier?

There are several lectures and debates with him on youtube.

[Goat]

... yet what is he compared to you? What egotistical rubbish. The fact of the matter is:

1. Not all opinions are created equal, and
2. puerile efforts to shift the burden of proof serve only to embarrass you.

Shrug. I see you want to get personal rather than ADDRESS THE ISSUE.

I will also note some very respected scholars also think that Antiquities 20 is partly modified. ..such people as Professor Tessa Rajak. Even John Painter does acknowledge there are reasons to potentially think the passage is partly modifed (see Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition. by John Painter, pages 132-137). While he doesn't, he acknowledges that other people might.

G.A. Wells has also given a lot of good reasons to suspect that the passage has been tampered with.

So, no.. it's not as universal as you claim.

And dismissing the objections as 'fringe' is frankly putting your fingers in your ears and yelling 'I can't hear you'.

It certainly makes it so that Josephus can't be used as a good source.

[The Tongue]

Hi Mithrae,

You wrote:

29:30 - Carrier suggests that Mark invented an eclipse from whole cloth, which as far as I can tell is deception by omission at best: Carrier knows (it's mentioned in one of his infidels.org articles) that there was in fact a midday eclipse in the middle east during the rule of Pontius Pilate (29 CE to be precise, in August if memory serves).

There was no midday eclipse in 29CE and certainly not one in August.

There were 3 solar eclipses in 29CE and they were in January, June and November.

Some apologetics sites have claimed the one that happened in November is the one you perhaps are referring to, however it peaked at 9.24am and ended over an hour before midday.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html

Cat.

The eclipse that you refer to was not some object passing in front of the sun, it was an incoming object that cast its shadow over the land of Israel for three hours and was the cause of the earth tremors wherein the mountains shook and the veil to the inner most sanctuary of God's Temple was torn from top to bottom, allowing all believers access into the Holy of Holies. (If you are a mind that is able to comprehend what has been revealed)

[stubbornone]

... yet what is he compared to you? What egotistical rubbish. The fact of the matter is:

1. Not all opinions are created equal, and
2. puerile efforts to shift the burden of proof serve only to embarrass you.

Shrug. I see you want to get personal rather than ADDRESS THE ISSUE.

I will also note some very respected scholars also think that Antiquities 20 is partly modified. ..such people as Professor Tessa Rajak. Even John Painter does acknowledge there are reasons to potentially think the passage is partly modifed (see Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition. by John Painter, pages 132-137). While he doesn't, he acknowledges that other people might.

G.A. Wells has also given a lot of good reasons to suspect that the passage has been tampered with.

So, no.. it's not as universal as you claim.

And dismissing the objections as 'fringe' is frankly putting your fingers in your ears and yelling 'I can't hear you'.

It certainly makes it so that Josephus can't be used as a good source.

Have you ever actually read GA Wells's book? I have, or tried to, and it was so horribly illogical and deliberately offensive that I could not finish it - even as an atheist.

Its basically what I would term atheist baseball, a series of random excuses to basically avoid accepting any evidence whatsoever. The standards are no controlled (which is a major portion of history). There is no explanation of how the author handles critically the evidence with a set of OBJECTIVE standards. Instead its finding excuses to avoid EVERYTHING. We cannot verify the authorship of many of the Romans who wrote about Jesus, therefore we reject the historical record, we can verify Paul, who verifies much of the other evidence, but he's never seen Jesus, so his corroboration of the witnesses existence and veracity of their statements must be rejected ... and so on and so forth.

Really, I see arguments like the one above, and what I see is googlism rather than intellect. Well wrote a book so it must be true! The only problem is his book has been rebutted, those rebuttals are not mentioned nor are their scathing criticisms of Wells attempts at what is effectively a smear, and the near total rejection of Wells's position by academics from all over the field.

"In his book Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels, Atheist historian Michael Grant completely rejected the idea that Jesus never existed.

This sceptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth.... But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because some pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms.... To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars.' In recent years, 'no serous scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

http://bede.org.uk/price1.htm

Can you tell me why no atheist mentions AN ACTUAL PERIOD HISTORIAN WHO IS ATHEIST, but they all mention Wells, who is NOT a period expert?

Is that how searching for the 'truth' works?

Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question.

That is what period scholars actually think? And even Dr. Carrier does not make the leap of Wells in claiming that Jesus was a myth. Yet atheists appear to have taken intellectualism to a new low by quoting widely discredited sources in support of ... a conspiracy theory?

Seriously, what is the alternative to historical Jesus? A cabal that go together an just made everything up (and yet you have no contemporary sources making this claim), who then invented time travel to place evidence all over the historical record? A conspiracy so vast that it took two thousand years and Wells to uncover?

Please explain why the later should be treated as rational?

[catalyst]

Hi Mithrae,

You wrote:

29:30 - Carrier suggests that Mark invented an eclipse from whole cloth, which as far as I can tell is deception by omission at best: Carrier knows (it's mentioned in one of his infidels.org articles) that there was in fact a midday eclipse in the middle east during the rule of Pontius Pilate (29 CE to be precise, in August if memory serves).

There was no midday eclipse in 29CE and certainly not one in August.

There were 3 solar eclipses in 29CE and they were in January, June and November.

Some apologetics sites have claimed the one that happened in November is the one you perhaps are referring to, however it peaked at 9.24am and ended over an hour before midday.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html

Cat.

The eclipse that you refer to was not some object passing in front of the sun, it was an incoming object that cast its shadow over the land of Israel for three hours and was the cause of the earth tremors wherein the mountains shook and the veil to the inner most sanctuary of God's Temple was torn from top to bottom, allowing all believers access into the Holy of Holies. (If you are a mind that is able to comprehend what has been revealed)

If that is your claim, then once again, please provide evidence to support, or retract the claim.

Look forward to it.

Catalyst.

[stubbornone]

Hi Mithrae,

You wrote:

29:30 - Carrier suggests that Mark invented an eclipse from whole cloth, which as far as I can tell is deception by omission at best: Carrier knows (it's mentioned in one of his infidels.org articles) that there was in fact a midday eclipse in the middle east during the rule of Pontius Pilate (29 CE to be precise, in August if memory serves).

There was no midday eclipse in 29CE and certainly not one in August.

There were 3 solar eclipses in 29CE and they were in January, June and November.

Some apologetics sites have claimed the one that happened in November is the one you perhaps are referring to, however it peaked at 9.24am and ended over an hour before midday.

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcat5/SE0001-0100.html

Cat.

The eclipse that you refer to was not some object passing in front of the sun, it was an incoming object that cast its shadow over the land of Israel for three hours and was the cause of the earth tremors wherein the mountains shook and the veil to the inner most sanctuary of God's Temple was torn from top to bottom, allowing all believers access into the Holy of Holies. (If you are a mind that is able to comprehend what has been revealed)

If that is your claim, then once again, please provide evidence to support, or retract the claim.

Look forward to it.

Catalyst.

Its called minutia. Paul did not have access to the internet and modern space tracking devices, and much of what he wrote was from memory. The fact that he gets some details wrong only points out that he is human ... not that Jesus was a myth.

Indeed, the Pauline Epistles, along with the Synoptic Gospels, are remarkably in agreement with one another, particularly about the larger details.

So if we base our rejection of Jesus on errors of detail, minutia, rather than of substance, then we have fundamentally mistaken how history works.

The Bible was not written by God. The exacting words of inerrency, is at best misleading. The creation of the Church Canon took hundreds of years, and there are many records that simply did not make the cut of authenticity at that time. Modern history has proven that the records included are remarkably accurate, remarkably in agreement, given their differing authorship, and it is presented as the BEST record of Jesus and his message.

Focusing on the exact timing of an eclipse, when, by your own record, there were three (one within a month of Paul's claim), and ended a hour before mid day ... well, that seem remarkably close to what a man travelling in a time of looser Calendars would have written would it not?

Expecting records from two thousand years ago to conform EXACTLY to modern scientific exactness ... well, perhaps inerrency in not just a religious problem when dealing with ancient texts after all?

[Jayhawker Soule]

From wiki

The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time."

But let's not let facts or reason complicate Goat's silly dance.

[Goat]

From wiki

The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time."

But let's not let facts or reason complicate Goat's silly dance.

You mean, we have to take what other people say about what Wells says, rather than what Wells says??

Amazing.. that some people's interpretation of what Wells says is different that Wells clarification.


He says

'Wells allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century Galilee: "[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents).

He disagrees with the slant that some people want to put on his interpretation... that you are pushing. So, your point is not relevant.

[stubbornone]

From wiki

The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time."

But let's not let facts or reason complicate Goat's silly dance.

You mean, we have to take what other people say about what Wells says, rather than what Wells says??

Amazing.. that some people's interpretation of what Wells says is different that Wells clarification.


He says

'Wells allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century Galilee: "[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents).

He disagrees with the slant that some people want to put on his interpretation... that you are pushing. So, your point is not relevant.

Yep, because that is how debate works.

Given that nearly the entire field of scholars has lined up against Wells, and even the few fringe who continue to poke at minutia are closer to the refined position pointed out by Jayhawker.

In short Goat, all you are advocating in the blind adherence to Wells - a work that has been professionally rubbished.

Which is why modern scholars write this about Jesus Mythers:

"Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."

http://bede.org.uk/price1.htm

Indeed, you are certainly not making a case based on anything that Wells is saying or the evidence he is presenting (making me personally doubt that you are even aware of how he made his silly case), you are effectively advocating that we merely accept that Jesus was a myth because Wells said so ...

... and who cares if what he says has been rebutted, exposed as bafoonery, and it universally rejected by period scholars? If that is not blind devotion to a preconception, then I do not know what is.

[Goat]

From wiki

The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time."

But let's not let facts or reason complicate Goat's silly dance.

You mean, we have to take what other people say about what Wells says, rather than what Wells says??

Amazing.. that some people's interpretation of what Wells says is different that Wells clarification.


He says

'Wells allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century Galilee: "[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents).

He disagrees with the slant that some people want to put on his interpretation... that you are pushing. So, your point is not relevant.

Yep, because that is how debate works.

Given that nearly the entire field of scholars has lined up against Wells, and even the few fringe who continue to poke at minutia are closer to the refined position pointed out by Jayhawker.

In short Goat, all you are advocating in the blind adherence to Wells - a work that has been professionally rubbished.

Which is why modern scholars write this about Jesus Mythers:

"Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."

http://bede.org.uk/price1.htm

Indeed, you are certainly not making a case based on anything that Wells is saying or the evidence he is presenting (making me personally doubt that you are even aware of how he made his silly case), you are effectively advocating that we merely accept that Jesus was a myth because Wells said so ...

... and who cares if what he says has been rebutted, exposed as bafoonery, and it universally rejected by period scholars? If that is not blind devotion to a preconception, then I do not know what is.

I see..is that the way that scholarship works?? Calling it 'rubbish' because it disagrees with you. I SEE. How so very nice of you to point that out. oh.. and calling it 'bafoonery'. Such a wonderful rebuttal to his points. And I am sure you say the same about Richard Carrier.

Shall we analyses the proclamation by Price? He selectively quotes some people, and ignores anybody else.. except for quote mining Richar Carrier, a dishonest tactic.

[stubbornone]

From wiki

The updated position taken by Wells has been interpreted by other scholars as an "about-face", abandoning his initial thesis in favor of accepting the existence of a historical Jesus. However, Wells insists that this figure of late first-century Gospel stories is distinct from the sacrificial Christ myth of Paul's epistles and other early Christian documents, and that these two figures have different sources before being fused in Mark. Wells argues that Paul's Jesus was "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time."

But let's not let facts or reason complicate Goat's silly dance.

You mean, we have to take what other people say about what Wells says, rather than what Wells says??

Amazing.. that some people's interpretation of what Wells says is different that Wells clarification.


He says

'Wells allows for the possibility that the central figure of the Gospel stories may be based on a historical character from first-century Galilee: "[T]he Galilean and the Cynic elements ... may contain a core of reminiscences of an itinerant Cynic-type Galilean preacher (who, however, is certainly not to be identified with the Jesus of the earliest Christian documents).

He disagrees with the slant that some people want to put on his interpretation... that you are pushing. So, your point is not relevant.

Yep, because that is how debate works.

Given that nearly the entire field of scholars has lined up against Wells, and even the few fringe who continue to poke at minutia are closer to the refined position pointed out by Jayhawker.

In short Goat, all you are advocating in the blind adherence to Wells - a work that has been professionally rubbished.

Which is why modern scholars write this about Jesus Mythers:

"Contemporary New Testament scholars have typically viewed their arguments as so weak or bizarre that they relegate them to footnotes, or often ignore them completely.... The theory of Jesus' nonexistence is now effectively dead as a scholarly question."

http://bede.org.uk/price1.htm

Indeed, you are certainly not making a case based on anything that Wells is saying or the evidence he is presenting (making me personally doubt that you are even aware of how he made his silly case), you are effectively advocating that we merely accept that Jesus was a myth because Wells said so ...

... and who cares if what he says has been rebutted, exposed as bafoonery, and it universally rejected by period scholars? If that is not blind devotion to a preconception, then I do not know what is.

I see..is that the way that scholarship works?? Calling it 'rubbish' because it disagrees with you. I SEE. How so very nice of you to point that out. oh.. and calling it 'bafoonery'. Such a wonderful rebuttal to his points. And I am sure you say the same about Richard Carrier.

Yes goat, modern scholars dismiss the Jesus Myth as a conspiracy theory whose adherents are beyond reason. That this offends you?

Its a fact, the Jesus Myth and fake moon landing theory are in the same intellectual category - for much the same reason.

Indeed, its much more expensive and difficult to fake the moon landing than was to actually go there when examined, and the same is true of fabricating he historical Jesus ... little points that escape you.

Now, what was it you said about simply rejecting things as not being uncivil?

When your position is clearly and cleanly rejected by scholars?

buf·foon·er·y
/bəˈfo͞onərē/
Noun
Behavior that is ridiculous but amusing.

Well, you emotionally do not like that term, but unfortuantely it is accurate about Wells and the Jesus Myth.