From a review of Bart Ehrman's defense of historicity:

The historical Jesus that emerges from Ehrman’s mainstream defense is a purely human, miracle-free Jewish male with a very common name living in first century Palestine, who after an unremarkable youth went on to teach things that many others had taught before; one more apocalyptic preacher, among many others at the time, whose predictions were proven wrong within a generation; one more “troublemaker” crucified like countless others by the Romans after a drive-thru trial during the Pilate administration. Being such, the Jesus that can be reconstructed from history with any certainty is, for all practical purposes, as irrelevant as the mythical one, effectively shrinking the debate on his existence from a grandiose quest with theological implications to an inconsequential and endless exercise in academic hair-splitting.

From a staff writer for "The Tech," MIT campus newspaper. Link: http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N16/ehrman.html

Amen-ly yrs,

S

Yep... Even if he did exist, he was NOT MAGIC!

Which makes the stories about him loosely-based on him at BEST.

And really, if the actual Jesus DID exist, but is NOTHING like he's described, does the historical figure really exist?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2015 06:49PM by Xyandro.

moose Wrote:
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> n/t


got popcorn?

I'm not making up my mind until we hear from that poster who "all the scholars agree with." 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. . . .

Well, as a teacher of ethics and morality he has achieved the same degree of notoriety as the Buddha, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Gandhi, and others. He is in good company!

I was re-reading Erhman's 'Did Jesus Exist?' last night and found myself in strong disagreement on one point of his. I'm sure, given time, I will find many more.

Erhman, after admitting that no trustworthy Roman historic records exist regarding Jesus, then makes the argument that the Gospels can be "used as significant historical sources". (page 74)

I thought about that and concluded that I couldn't agree. Let's say that someone wrote the history of George Washington at Valley Forge. In it the author included a purported story about Washington yelling at and severely whipping a soldier. While it doesn't sound like the father of our country we learned about in school, it may have happened. After all people lose it and beat on others all the time. The inclusion of that story alone would not cause us to reject the remaining history in the book.

However, let's say that the author instead stated that George walked across the Potomac river, fed all the starving soldiers with a couple of fish, and brought a dead general back to life that Washington needed to lead some of the troops. I feel that any reasonable thinking person would have a difficult time using the book as a "significant historical source".

A more important point against using the new testament as a historical source is that it was written long after the fact (several decades) which makes makes a dubious source becauase of potential embellishments to the story.

Congratulations, schweizerkind! You seem to have made a point no Christian cares to contest, even though they're active in other threads.

Well done.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2015 01:07AM by Xyandro.