Fair enough. We need not care about much :D — AmadeusD
Well I did listen to some of it and skipped to the next topic once the discussion became stifled. It did not have the effect I expected. Bart said what I expected him to say. Both debated well though Bart seemed to have the upper hand. History is harder to debate than philosophy, linguistics, or any science.
See also : The Cambridge Companion to Jesus by Tuckett. Historians generally agree it occurred (Our friend Bart, here too). — AmadeusD
Those quotes are a whole nest of cats. I can say from the get go's that Paul Johnson's quote is obviously ideological and, if this guy is not actually a Christian, we must live in a parallel world. Robert van Voorst is a Christian theologist. James D Gunn is the same.
I mean, is it really far-fetched that Christians manipulate these pages to make so that reality seem other than it really is? It is always the same claims of a historical consensus that
doesn't actually exist. Where is the survey where historians are asked whether Jesus exists? There is not any. This consensus is fabricated. There are scholars that believe it is mythical, so it is not a consensus like it is a consensus in biology that the Tapanuli orantugans are monophyletic and that gorillas are polyphyletic while it is not a consensus that humans are either poly or mono.
There is even, funnily, a quote by Ehrmann in that very page:
The Jesus proclaimed by preachers and theologians today had no existence. That particular Jesus is (or those particular Jesuses are) a myth. But there was a historical Jesus, who was very much a man of his time.
Who doubts that there was a rabbi or preacher called Yeshu (Hebrew for Josh) during 1st century Judaea? Nobody, because it is common sense, Yeshu was a common name back then and Judaea was filled to the brim with (apocalyptic) preachers at the time. Now, that there was a Jesus, that was the son of two Galileans Jews, chased out of Egypt, that discussed with the rabbis at a young age, who had 12 apostles among many followers, who was condemned by the pharisees and whose execution was begrudgingly carried out by Romans? That is who we are talking about when we question whether Jesus existed, not some guy called Josh that preached a little bit. Even if you take out all the supernatural elements from the Bible, there is still no evidence to believe those stories happened. And that there was a Jesus that eventually became the figure that Christians worship? Well, that depends on whether that Josh guy from the beginning of the paragraph has some link to the New Testament, and we know of someone who does, Yeshu ben Ananias.
Then I don't think you've paid cursory attention to the topic. — AmadeusD
I did not find any historical evidence of the crucifixion there.
That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus ... agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact.
This quote by a theologian John Cross is particularly dishonest. This guy is no historian. As sure as any historical fact can ever be? Stratospheric, astronomical, gigametric and transdimensional bollocks. There are countless historical facts that are much more sure than that. Josephus obviously has Christian interpolations, and even if there is not, that is even worse, as he would be reporting what Christian believed in, not what he believed in, since as a Jew he would never call Jesus the Christ or say he came back from the dead. The same is the case for Tacitus.
That whole article is a can of worms, as expected from perhaps the most damaging website in the history of the internet, subject to several
cabals.
Besides, most of those quotes regarding "X passage is not a forgery" comes from theologians and Christian "historians", against the word of secular historians that raise the possibility it is — once again fabricating consensus despite literally saying in the sentence before that there are professional historians that disagree.
it is, though. So im unsure why you'd wade into this pretending it isn't. It is squarely theology, and perhaps this is what you've missed. The historicity of Jesus is a study theological in nature, and at the very, very least "biblical scholarship" can't be left off the description. But, in any case, this is actually pretty much settled history. — AmadeusD
It is about history; whether you think theology overlaps with history is another matter.