Okay, you claim to see weaknesses in his arguments, but all you have done is set up your own views without engaging with Tim's arguments. You simply ignore his argument and replace it with your own. That is not how one demonstrates the weakness of another's argument.Bernard Muller wrote: ↑Thu Sep 07, 2017 9:06 am to Neil,I cannot believe that somebody like you, full of smarts and knowledge, do not see the enormous weaknesses of Tim's arguments in http://vridar.org/2016/01/16/the-functi ... tians-119/.Tim is a real devil, isn't he. He takes a passage that makes perfectly clear sense to everyone and that fits entirely within the Acts-Eusebian paradigm and doesn't need to go beyond any nice simple, clear-cut assumptions that the text we read is a translation of just what Paul wrote back in the 50s CE with no corruption over the centuries through the war-zones of ideological transmission, and that needs none of the gumpf from me that brings the above model into question by contextualizing the data that lies beyond the letter itself -- -- Tim does all of that just to confuse the issue, the devil
It seems when you see something which opposes the historicity of Jesus your critical power goes to a dead zero.
Cordially, Bernard
BUT BUT BUT ... can I pause here for a moment. The point is not the rights or wrongs of Tim's analysis, but the fact that he was applying such an analysis at all, and bringing to bear the questions he did to the text. That is what historians need to do and do do (except in biblical studies, all too often).
Tim might be wrong and his conclusions found erroneous, and that's fine. I have no problem with that. My own methods might well be found to have serious shortcomings in the post I pointed to (but you seem not to have bothered with). No doubt I will find points to change my mind about over time.
I have no problem at all in admitting that Galatians 1:19 was indeed written by Paul in the 50s. I have my doubts for reasons I stated in my post, but I am quite willing to be shown I am wrong.
But if you want to make your own case as a substitute for anything else, you need to actually engage with the alternative. Simply ignoring other arguments by restating your own view only indicates you do not like (or do not really understand, or have not bothered to read) the opposing arguments.
P.S. ....
(You do know, I trust, that most mythicists do in fact accept Galatians 1:19 as genuinely by Paul. So why you keep throwing out some "mythicist" accusation I do not know. If you want to know where my doubts about the authenticity of the passage arose, they arose from a book by an author who was arguing AGAINST mythicism!)