Weighing up the evidence for the ‘Historical Jesus’

[cienfuegos]

^No one between the 70s and 90s believed them either...

And therein is the problem. Like the fictional Forrest Gump, no one expressed a belief in the historical facts related to him between the time the events in the story were said to occur and when they were written down. That's the same for Jesus.

You need to find a more suitable analogy. This one's pretty poor. There is historical data in Forrest Gump just as there is in the Gospels and Acts.

Yep. My point. They are all fiction.

[toejam]

And therein is the problem. Like the fictional Forrest Gump, no one expressed a belief in the historical facts related to him between the time the events in the story were said to occur and when they were written down. That's the same for Jesus.

What is your evidence that "no one expressed a belief in the historical facts related to [Jesus] between the time the events in the story were said to occur and when they were written down"? No one? This is an argument from silence.

We can gather from Paul's letters that some believed in a crucified Jewish Messiah figure.

Seems to me you want to drill everything down to the point of silence and then claim that "it's all fiction". Forrest Gump is fictional, but it still contains many historical facts, as do the Gospels and Acts. If you acknowledge that there are historical facts in Forrest Gump, then, by definition, it is not all fiction.

Outhouse stated that "The NT is factually not devoid of historical data". This is as true a statement as saying "Forrest Gump is factually not devoid of historical data". So I don't know why you guys are pouncing on him for it.

[Peter Kirby]

This article has been crossposted to the Washington Post, where "tutor" got morphed into "lecturer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postevery ... p/?hpid=z2

3000+ comments followed.

[cienfuegos]

And therein is the problem. Like the fictional Forrest Gump, no one expressed a belief in the historical facts related to him between the time the events in the story were said to occur and when they were written down. That's the same for Jesus.

What is your evidence that "no one expressed a belief in the historical facts related to [Jesus] between the time the events in the story were said to occur and when they were written down"? No one? This is an argument from silence.

We can gather from Paul's letters that some believed in a crucified Jewish Messiah figure.

I refer to the specifics of the gospel story. We can speculate that someone somewhere did in fact express a belief in Jesus from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate. We don't have evidence for that though.

Seems to me you want to drill everything down to the point of silence and then claim that "it's all fiction". Forrest Gump is fictional, but it still contains many historical facts, as do the Gospels and Acts. If you acknowledge that there are historical facts in Forrest Gump, then, by definition, it is not all fiction.

Do you think this is the entirety of what I believe? My point is that a work of fiction can contain historical facts. I just didn't think I had to spell it out. Would you agree that Forrest Gump is fictional? Is Oliver Barrett fictional? There might be historical facts in those fictional stories, they might even be based on real people, but the characters are still fictional, as in, made up by the author. Would you agree that in my analogy, whether poor or not, the character analogous to Jesus is Forrest Gump? JFK would be analogous to Pilate? See?

Outhouse stated that "The NT is factually not devoid of historical data". This is as true a statement as saying "Forrest Gump is factually not devoid of historical data". So I don't know why you guys are pouncing on him for it.

Yep. We agree, then, that fictional works are not necessarily devoid of historical data. We don't agree though that fictional works then are reliable sources for historical data.

[Peter Kirby]

James McGrath fires back and points out a new book:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringo ... ating.html

"Mythicists Gain Nothing by Exaggerating"

[neilgodfrey]

James McGrath fires back and points out a new book:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringo ... ating.html

"Mythicists Gain Nothing by Exaggerating"

Raphael's Conversation article has since appeared in The Washington Post.

Meanwhile for my painstaking efforts to alert McGrath and his readers to fundamental factual errors in his posts and points of fallacious reasoning he has banned me from his site. He calls it "moderation" but my comments alerting him to facts that contradict his assertions are now sent to his spam. One does not question the authorities in this matter! I have also posted comments congratulating him on some points -- presumably he will continue to allow those through.

The new book McG referred to he H/T'd via my own post on it but failed to mention that.

[neilgodfrey]

Ah, I see you already referred to the WP re-posting.

[cienfuegos]

This article has been crossposted to the Washington Post, where "tutor" got morphed into "lecturer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postevery ... p/?hpid=z2

3000+ comments followed.

nice.

[outhouse]

This article has been crossposted to the Washington Post, where "tutor" got morphed into "lecturer."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postevery ... p/?hpid=z2

3000+ comments followed.

I posted here something along one of James McGrath comments on it.

I think Crossans take on mythicist sums it up for him

[outhouse]

Jesus baptized by John.
Jesus creates a scene at the Temple.
Jesus is crucified by Pilate.

.

No I don't think they are facts.

Just highly probable

Less #3 I don't think Pilate crucified him or tried him. I think he was just there at that Passover in charge. Trouble making Galilean peasants would not need meet anyone up top.

To me that is rhetoric to make him more important then he was.

So once again your wrong and show poor methodology with your red herring "gump"