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.

[East of Eden]

#1 - you can use google, and that question has already been answered and sources have been provided for you. You are clearly choosing to ignore them.

#2 - you have to deal with the evidence that is there, not ask for additional sources. Your problem set is not absurdity and continuing to raise standards to the point that antiquity can never reach it. It is examining what is there:

#1- The evidence provided to me has been addressed and continues to be addressed with people that actually know debate etiquette, Mithrae, Historia, Student, Eden.

#2- I am examining what is there and what is being debated currently. You just seem to want to jump in and derail what is already being addressed with blanket statements.

#1 - you keep claiming something without supporting it, even as you run to the moderators and claim that entire books, along with the results of a google search that lists literally thousands of sources (many of them previously provided) are not good enough.

Enough with the double standard. You make the claim, you back it up.

#2 - That your arguments have weaknesses does not mean pointing them out is an attempt to derail a thread. Its an attempt by you to dodge the questions. Please stop making unsubstantiated personal attacks that speak to state of mind.

The intent is civility.

The question you keep avoiding is why your position, loaded with factual errors (whose mention is clearly meant to derail rather than simple accuracy), is why ANYONE should treat as honest analysis rather than a biased interpretation from atheist?

Be sure to support rather than just claim you have supported something, because the only link I see anywhere in your posts is a reference to rationalwiki, a WELL KNOWN ATHEIST FORUM, that only points more strongly to use of highly biased material.

Feel free to address.

Odd, isn't it, that statements from atheists with an axe to grind are treated as fact, while early Christian testimony is to be discarded as biased.

[stubbornone]

East, he's been shown this several times, and still he persists on making factually inaccurate statements:

Date Rage:
30-60 Passion Narrative
40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
50-60 1 Thessalonians
50-60 Philippians
50-60 Galatians
50-60 1 Corinthians
50-60 2 Corinthians
50-60 Romans
50-60 Philemon
50-80 Colossians
50-90 Signs Gospel
50-95 Book of Hebrews
50-120 Didache
50-140 Gospel of Thomas
50-140 Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
50-200 Sophia of Jesus Christ
65-80 Gospel of Mark
70-100 Epistle of James
70-120 Egerton Gospel
70-160 Gospel of Peter
70-160 Secret Mark
70-200 Fayyum Fragment
70-200 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
73-200 Mara Bar Serapion
80-100 2 Thessalonians
80-100 Ephesians
80-100 Gospel of Matthew
80-110 1 Peter
80-120 Epistle of Barnabas
80-130 Gospel of Luke
80-130 Acts of the Apostles
80-140 1 Clement
80-150 Gospel of the Egyptians
80-150 Gospel of the Hebrews
80-250 Christian Sibyllines
90-95 Apocalypse of John
90-120 Gospel of John
90-120 1 John
90-120 2 John
90-120 3 John
90-120 Epistle of Jude
93 Flavius Josephus

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

And yet, even though most of the gospels are CLEARLY first century, he makes the bald faced claim that they are all second century or later.

You need to make specific claims and arguments for why these books support claims. I have already pointed out that the dates are not actual dates of the documents we hold. They are assumed dates for the originals which we don't have. If you want to debate these books, you need to start with one and claim why it supports Jesus' existence. Just because a book was written or letter doesn't mean diddly for the argument with out reasons why.

No, actually I do not. The only claim I am making is that they are from the 1st Century.

The idea that I have to prove that they are cataloged correctly, while you claim they are not ... based on nothing, is patented silly.

Your ENTIRELY unevidenced claim stands in stark contrast to the list, each of which can be clicked on and the sources and verification for the date range made ... with a single click.

However, we MUST take your word as the truth, eh?

And you wonder why I think your position is simply deny at any cost?

Do you know who Cristopher Price is. He is the author of your article! Here is a rebuttal to your article and everything Price claims:

So now we are smearing authors rather than addressing their accurate quote?

First you ONLY want to deal with Christian History, now you want to deny something because it is Christian.

Where is your evidence that Price INCORRECTLY quoted those people? Right, no where.

In short, JUST AS CHARGED, you went and used google to find ANY REASON to deny something. A charge I predicted right up front.

Your thesis is supposedly about WHY we should treat the Jesus Myth as serious scholarship?

From my rebuttal link
Page 1
For Price to find Case’s arguments “convincing� shows that he too is operating under the same prejudgment and refusal to properly evaluate evidence.

#1 - That does not address your postulated thesis.

#2 - YOU JUST discovered who price was, and basically says, "We can't trust Christians". Well, that is bigotry not academia.

Page 3
While it is true that older mythicists were guilty of “radically late dating of the canonical Gospels� (so Price), this is generally not true today. 15 or 20 years later than the preferred date of 70 for Mark is hardly risible, and Van Voorst’s use of “probably� indicates that scholarship lacks its own sufficient basis to lock any of the Gospels into a firm and narrow date range.

#1 - No source, appears to be plagurism which violates the TOS for this site.

#2 - The source addresses that by providing a DATE RANGE, many of which are ENTIRELY WITHIN THE FIRST CENTURY.

#3 - Only adds to the case of deliberate dishonesty.

On Tacitus and Josephus
Van Voorst and others seem to be presupposing an era of communication like our own, widespread and available libraries and archives, a rational and educated populace able to differentiate fact from fiction, memory from wishful thinking, religious truth from scientific and historical truth. Detractors in this vein go so far as to demand that Celsus—a century and a half after the reputed Jesus—should have availed himself of the argument that Jesus never existed. On what grounds, through what exegetical means and abilities, Celsus could possibly have uncovered the fundamental falsity of what Christians had claimed and written about their origin, is never explained. Even a cursory consideration of this whole argument ought to reveal its obvious illusory basis, yet from Goguel to Van Voorst it is regularly parotted as historicity’s Second Law.

#1 - Once again, no source appears to be plagurism.

#2 - Does not actually address the documents on record and is entiely speculative. Indeed, in uses terms like 'probably' as posits 'facts' from a clearly speculative basis.

Why again should we treat it seriously?

Price, too, repeats the same mantra, equally oblivious to the realities of the situation and the limitations of ancient times. He calls Van Voorst’s argument “one of the least discussed but most obvious flaws in the Jesus Myth,� ignoring or ignorant of the many times a response of this nature has been made, including on Internet discussion boards he has been a part of. He also refers to “the absence of internal Christian conflict on this issue,� overlooking the very texts of 1 John and Ignatius which point to that very thing. The dramatic conflict between Gnostic and orthodox expression of the faith (according to which some like to interpret those texts), which began in the early 2 nd century, is also a telling indicator. It can be no coincidence that docetic and separationist views of Jesus arose at that time, whereas they had not troubled the Christian mind in the 80 years previous. The concern about whether a god could partake of full humanity is not likely to have arisen until a new trend of the faith developed which claimed that the spiritual Christ had actually been a human man on earth. The otherwise unexplainable lack of conflict over such a matter during almost a century was arguably because no such idea had as yet appeared. (Any Gospel in existence before that time would not have been regarded as history, and would have enjoyed very limited dissemination, as the record shows.)

#1 - Again, plagurism.

#2 - That did you bother to read this?

Why again should we take your position seriously if you do not even bother to read the sources you find after the fact with google?

[strike]This is only one example of how the simplistic views and arguments of Price and Van Voorst show no cognizance of the subtlety and complexity of much of the mythicist case, locked as they are into old paradigms and an inflexible adamance against considering any others.[/strike]

Once again, unsourced plagurism.

“Fifth, Wells and his predecessors have been far too skeptical about the value of non-Christian witnesses to Jesus, especially Tacitus and Josephus. They point to well-known text-critical and source-critical problems in these witnesses and argue that these problems rule out the entire value of these passages, ignoring the strong consensus that most of these passages are basically trustworthy.

�

Oh so these NON_CHRISTIAN SOURCES DO exist? And they are trustworthy?

Did you read this?

I am going to stop there, because you clearly didn't even bother to read the source you were plagurizing.

I think you look at the Jesus Myth with contempt and don't look at all the scholarly opinion on the subject because it would devastate your beliefs.

Really? The guy pointing you to the books he has read and invited you to read up is scared of scholarship? The guy running to mods because he is given the books he refuses to read is a scholar of first order?

And a plagurizer to boot. No comments, no nothing.

See above? Thats how to source a link and provide quotes. It also goes into the gospels and almost every aspect of Jesus, addressing in detail. Ill post more from the link in refutation to your claims after I eat my lunch.

No all you did was dump a source AFTER THE FACT, that you found on google - its filled with speculative rants, and rests upon easily disprove claims.

So, conclusions:

#1 - You did not previously address it - you lied.

#2 - You JUST used google to blindly paste anything that supports your position - including scholars who accept claims that you have made falsely - like early and extra Christian sources.

#3 - The date range of 20 years is speculative, and already covered in sources provided ... er, before you rebutted. Indicating that you did not even bother to read your own source.

In short, just as charged, you aren't even arguing. You are using google to find and dump anything that supports your conspiracy theory ... without even bothering to read it.

Why now should we treat it with respect? Why should we pretend that your recently found article on Price - which you didn't even bother to read - is what drove you to conclusion BEFORE you even ... er, failed to read it?

Jesus Mythers are nuts.
[/b]

[East of Eden]

He may have been a credible historian but all he had were Christian sources.

And you know that how?

What other sources can you show to exist outside of Christianity?

That is an irrelevant question, and you and I don't know where Tacitus got his information. If Rome's greatest historian isn't good enough for you, this discussion is a waste of time.

We don't discard the sources, we show that they are not reliable representations of an extra-biblical source due to their bias of source material.

What false bias, or is that just your unsupported speculation?

I was a Christian for 25 years. I never saw one miracle despite my devotion and zeal. I discredit the gospel sources because they are not eyewitness accounts, they are contradictory, and they date to the second century. They are copies of copies and I have no way to confirm any of what is written is actually true. Neither do you.

I disagree with you on your list, but will note many intelligent people have come to faith because of the evidence for the Gospels.

East, he's been shown this several times, and still he persists on making factually inaccurate statements:

Date Rage:
30-60 Passion Narrative
40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
50-60 1 Thessalonians
50-60 Philippians
50-60 Galatians
50-60 1 Corinthians
50-60 2 Corinthians
50-60 Romans
50-60 Philemon
50-80 Colossians
50-90 Signs Gospel
50-95 Book of Hebrews
50-120 Didache
50-140 Gospel of Thomas
50-140 Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
50-200 Sophia of Jesus Christ
65-80 Gospel of Mark
70-100 Epistle of James
70-120 Egerton Gospel
70-160 Gospel of Peter
70-160 Secret Mark
70-200 Fayyum Fragment
70-200 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
73-200 Mara Bar Serapion
80-100 2 Thessalonians
80-100 Ephesians
80-100 Gospel of Matthew
80-110 1 Peter
80-120 Epistle of Barnabas
80-130 Gospel of Luke
80-130 Acts of the Apostles
80-140 1 Clement
80-150 Gospel of the Egyptians
80-150 Gospel of the Hebrews
80-250 Christian Sibyllines
90-95 Apocalypse of John
90-120 Gospel of John
90-120 1 John
90-120 2 John
90-120 3 John
90-120 Epistle of Jude
93 Flavius Josephus

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

And yet, even though most of the gospels are CLEARLY first century, he makes the bald faced claim that they are all second century or later.

Not only is his 'evidence' nothing more than plagurized Wells, a fully discredited source, but his statement are provably factually wrong.

Indeed, why treat Jesus Mythers and their denial as anything other than meandering denial at any cost?

Indeed, here is what scholars have to say:

"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."

"Even the famously liberal Professor Bultmann, who argued against the historicity of much of the gospels, questions the reasonableness of Jesus Mythers themselves in Jesus and the Word."

"Given the broad consensus against the Jesus Myth, it has been left to a few non-professional commentators, such as Earl Doherty and GA Wells to question Jesus' existence. Despite their vigorous efforts, they have failed, and continue to fail, to even give their position respectability in the broader academic community."

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

I think Nicjman is providing a wonderful demonstration on the accuracy of the NT Scholars assessment of the Jesus Myth.

What do you think?

Agreed, Stubbornone, this whole discussion is about like arguing with 9/11 truthers, it is so silly as to be entertaining.

[stubbornone]

By all means Nickam, instead of claiming that you 'previously addressed it' . prove it.

If you are going to quote rules, you had best make sure you are following them.

Particularly when you tell a person who is providing you with a book, a list of THOUSANDS OF LINKS, and direct links to lists of the very documents you claim don't exist ...

Well, we should take your claims as fact because you say so?

You quoted the rules, now pony up.

And it is exactly these kinds of antics that lead me to question the validity of your position entirely.

Im not in any violation of rules. It is not my duty to provide you with a link to the same thread we are on. Your list of a thousand links presents no argument at all. I don't claim those books and letters don't exist. I claim they need to be looked at individually to gain context and dispute each one at a time. It's your link so, by all means, provide evidence within the link that supports your arguments.

Wow, MORE base dishonesty.

My list of links is merely to provide you with the documentation that there are extra-biblical sources to provide evidence for Jesus. That's it.

However, plagurizing someone else's argument, even as it contradicts your claims, is not an argument - it is called blind dumping and you fail to add anything or derive anything from it save the claim:

"Gee golly gosh, you are scared because my use of google ... er which I cannot seem to use to find countering arguments to anything! Or evidence!!! Gosh golly darn!! will make you quake in intellectual terror! YEAH JESUS MYTHERY!!!"

Indeed, you are in violation of the rules because you keep claiming something is there which is not there. You just blindly dumped the results of google search without comment, which violated most of your previously made points RIGHT HERE ON THIS THREAD, and you keep telling us that other than blandly claims evidence (like reading rationalwiki's synposis) drove you to reject scholarship you didn't even bother to read.

Why again take your claims seriously?

[East of Eden]

Ah, so you mean "very near" in a relative sense. Still, while it may seem intuitive that older claims are better than newer claims, you are indeed committing a logical fallacy by making such an assumption.

So your position is the farther away from an event in time an observer is, the more accurate the account?

Why didn't they need the internet? How did they get the information? You can't just say they were close to the events as if the fact of John's authorship somehow floated across the Mediterranean into the mind of Iranaeus a century later. If he didn't get his knowledge from the internet, where did he get it?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Modern scholars find that, for example, the pastoral epistles are falsely attributed to Paul. I'm sure you don't mean to dismiss the findings of modern biblical scholarship as "conspiracy theories with no evidence."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship ... e_epistles

The honest way to put it would be to say some modern scholars reject Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles.

http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archive ... _of_p.html

"There's a recent more-conservative trend among the major and more influential commentaries on these letters toward a more Pauline origin. The recent Anchor Bible volume (not a conservative series by any means) on I and II Timothy argues for Pauline authorship. The Word Biblical Commentary and New International Greek Testament Commentary volumes also argue that Paul wrote these, considering the ammanuensis hypothesis as an explanation for some of the differences with earlier letters. These are not always conservative series either, though some authors in them are very conservative."

What do you call the logical fallacy that the majority is always right?

[stubbornone]

Ah, so you mean "very near" in a relative sense. Still, while it may seem intuitive that older claims are better than newer claims, you are indeed committing a logical fallacy by making such an assumption.

So your position is the farther away from an event in time an observer is, the more accurate the account?

No, actually, it appears that his position is that thinking that things closer to the event are more accurate is so logically untenable that it SHOULD be dismissed as an uncategorizable fallacy.

You see is the magic of the Jesus Myth ... wherein anything that you don't want to acknowledge is dismissed as a logical fallacy whether it is or not.

I mean, how uncooth to think an Eseubius, dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus's Disciples and arguably operating from texts now lost to history would be more accurate in his assessments that someone 2,000 years removed from an event and bereft of many of the sources lost to antiquity!

We Christians are so illogical to make assumptions like that ...

[Goat]

Ah, so you mean "very near" in a relative sense. Still, while it may seem intuitive that older claims are better than newer claims, you are indeed committing a logical fallacy by making such an assumption.

So your position is the farther away from an event in time an observer is, the more accurate the account?

No, actually, it appears that his position is that thinking that things closer to the event are more accurate is so logically untenable that it SHOULD be dismissed as an uncategorizable fallacy.

You see is the magic of the Jesus Myth ... wherein anything that you don't want to acknowledge is dismissed as a logical fallacy whether it is or not.

I mean, how uncooth to think an Eseubius, dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus's Disciples and arguably operating from texts now lost to history would be more accurate in his assessments that someone 2,000 years removed from an event and bereft of many of the sources lost to antiquity!

We Christians are so illogical to make assumptions like that ...

You made some claims here, I would like to see you provide evidence for. Providing evidence does not mean 'Here is a link, go look', or 'google it'

Please show that Eusebius was 'dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus' disciples. Please show that a descendant of someone would know any better than anyone else.

[stubbornone]

Ah, so you mean "very near" in a relative sense. Still, while it may seem intuitive that older claims are better than newer claims, you are indeed committing a logical fallacy by making such an assumption.

So your position is the farther away from an event in time an observer is, the more accurate the account?

No, actually, it appears that his position is that thinking that things closer to the event are more accurate is so logically untenable that it SHOULD be dismissed as an uncategorizable fallacy.

You see is the magic of the Jesus Myth ... wherein anything that you don't want to acknowledge is dismissed as a logical fallacy whether it is or not.

I mean, how uncooth to think an Eseubius, dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus's Disciples and arguably operating from texts now lost to history would be more accurate in his assessments that someone 2,000 years removed from an event and bereft of many of the sources lost to antiquity!

We Christians are so illogical to make assumptions like that ...

You made some claims here, I would like to see you provide evidence for. Providing evidence does not mean 'Here is a link, go look', or 'google it'

Please show that Eusebius was 'dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus' disciples. Please show that a descendant of someone would know any better than anyone else.

Agh, so now we are into the 'make false allegations to the mods' phase are we?

And yes, when asking for 'evidence' of extra-Biblical sources, a link to a cateloge of JUST SUCH DOCUMENTS is indeed evidence.

But, rather than admit he is wrong, an atheist will simply change the rules entirely for no particular reason.

And now we have non-germane claims ... because clearly, I would not know my own grandfather better than some dolt 2,000 years from now ... that is just a silly claim that requires evidence - especially two thousand years from now to some conspiracy theorist who doesn't even think my grandfather existed!!!

Jesus Mythers. Can't prove anything to those who have embraced the absurd as a way of life.

[East of Eden]

Ah, so you mean "very near" in a relative sense. Still, while it may seem intuitive that older claims are better than newer claims, you are indeed committing a logical fallacy by making such an assumption.

So your position is the farther away from an event in time an observer is, the more accurate the account?

No, actually, it appears that his position is that thinking that things closer to the event are more accurate is so logically untenable that it SHOULD be dismissed as an uncategorizable fallacy.

You see is the magic of the Jesus Myth ... wherein anything that you don't want to acknowledge is dismissed as a logical fallacy whether it is or not.

I mean, how uncooth to think an Eseubius, dealing with the direct descendants of Jesus's Disciples and arguably operating from texts now lost to history would be more accurate in his assessments that someone 2,000 years removed from an event and bereft of many of the sources lost to antiquity!

We Christians are so illogical to make assumptions like that ...

Exactly. More confirmation of my long-held opinion that men will give up their rationality before they surrender their rebellion against God.

[East of Eden]

One can only conclude from this post that the argument is grotesquely dishonest. Post #287 REPROVIDES exactly what Nickman, and apparent master of all things relating to Christian evidence in unaware of. Its been provided before, and equally ignored.

Post 287 is you posting a link to a book and saying read this and educate yourself, which is outside of the rules and etiquette of the forum. That is improper debate. You must provide an argument then source it with quotes to the part you are citing. Giving me a book that you like means nothing. Please read the rules and print them out. Then place them on your computer desk and read them before each post. This will help you educate yourself on proper debate.

When a poster is too lazy to click on links providing exactly what he is asking for, one can only conclude that such extreme laziness is a sign of the intent to avoid an actual search for the truth. A clarion, "Believing in my speculation rather than ... er, actual evidence. Harrah the Jesus Myth!"

Again, your not posting within regs. It is laziness to just post a book and say "here read it". You bring nothing to the debate and are out of regs.

Again, he claims that his opinion is based on scholarship and evidence, but he provides none and pointedly ignores evidence when provided.

Blanket statement
5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not persist in making a claim without supporting it. All unsupported claims can be challenged for supporting evidence. Opinions require no support, but they should not be considered as valid to any argument, nor will they be considered as legitimate support for any claim.

If any greater evidence were needed to prove that the Jesus Myth was little more than a bigoted conspiracy theory, Nickman's latest bland denial provides ample fodder for that case.

Blanket statement

Again, lets open the floor to anyone as Nickman will not only not answer the questions posed to him, but is actively claiming that questions asked were answered somewhere, where, like the scholars he is referencing, we can only guess at.

Why should we treat such an opinion as if its the result of study rather than ignorance and bigoted bias?

As stated before, you are asking me questions I have been engaged in for days now. If you want to know the answers read my posts. I have answered every question on your list in posts to Mithrae, Historia and Eden. Im not gonna repeat myself just because you want to jump in mid conversation and disregard what has already been debated.

Its my posting to a book, AND to the results of a google search that provide thousands of individual links to sources. That is addition to previously provided DIRECT links short lists of documents that are commonly examined in the evidental record.

Here is one of them directly again:

http://carm.org/non-biblical-accounts-n ... dor-people

That one was previously provided as well. Yet here you are claiming that no evidence has been provided.

Interesting that Thallus from your list of extra-Biblical references to Jesus, even references the darkness at the time of the crucifixion.