The famous fifty docs.
Malcolm
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
100-150 1 Timothy
100-150 2 Timothy
100-150 Titus
100-150 Apocalypse of Peter
100-150 Secret Book of James
100-150 Preaching of Peter
100-160 Gospel of the Ebionites
100-160 Gospel of the Nazoreans
100-160 Shepherd of Hermas
100-160 2 Peter
100-200 Odes of Solomon
101-220 Book of Elchasai
105-115 Ignatius of Antioch
110-140 Polycarp to the Philippians
110-140 Papias
110-160 Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel
110-160 Traditions of Matthias
111-112 Pliny the Younger
115 Suetonius
115 Tacitus
120-130 Quadratus of Athens
120-130 Apology of Aristides
120-140 Basilides
120-140 Naassene Fragment
120-160 Valentinus
120-180 Apocryphon of John
120-180 Gospel of Mary
120-180 Dialogue of the Savior
120-180 Gospel of the Savior
120-180 2nd Apocalypse of James
120-180 Trimorphic Protennoia
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelhebrews.html
The alert reader might notice that there are substantially more than fifty -
about 74 in fact.
That's because I didn't draw up the list. The first two, the Passion
Narrative and Lost sayings, or Q, for instance are reconstructions of
hypothetical documents from the canonical scriptures, so you might want to
argue they shouldn't count.
Similarly, I've chosen 120 as the end of "living memory" and included
everything with an earliest date before then. However this obviously
overstates the situation. Since we can't know when the last eyewitness died,
and we can't date all the documents very accurately, it is impossible to
come up with a definitive figure. "About fifty" will do.
Now anyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject would have realised
instantly that when you add the canonical books of the New Testament (27) to
the early apocrypha (20 odd) you get a figure of about fifty documents
written within living memory of Jesus.
But these Jesus Deniers, so confident of their case, didn't cotton on.
Instead I was accused of having no such list of documents.
These documents are our evidence for Jesus. All the experts, of whom I am
not one, agree that they are conclusive evidence.
Mickey
news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
Snipped all the 9th party references taken from the Bible
oh look, nothing left
Niels van der Linden
Even by your own standards can we already do away with the above.
Which leaves just this one:
> 30-60 Passion Narrative
..that reads:
"The date could also be pinpointed: parts of the Passion account would have
to have been composed within the generation of the eyewitnesses and their
contemporaries, that is, somewhere between 30 and 60 C.E."
..that is called circular argumenting. Which is ironic because creationists
claim that that exact way of radiometric dating is used by 'evolutionists':
"Fossils are dated from strata; strata are dated from fossils."
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC310.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD010.html
Likely many people have talked to you about a Jesus character as if it were
history, but sadly, these people were led on in the same way. There is no
evidence for basically the entire Bible. It got created by humans just like
all other mythologies, and that's not a big surprise because these
goatherders really had no idea what was happening around them: what's a
star, what's the sun, what's the moon, what's a planet, what's evolution,
what's a rainbow, what's a disease, what's fire, what's electricity, .. , I
could go on for a while.
--
Niels
Alt.Atheist #2237
"The thing that saved me was Upanishads; Hinduism. Where you have
practically the same mythology [as Roman Catholicism], but it has been
intellectually interpreted. Say, already in the 9th century BC the Hindus
realized that all the deities are projections of psychological powers and
they are within you not out there [points away]."
-Joseph Campbell in The Hero's Journey
george
As it has been said by big pink sky pixy botherers
The bible is correct.
"How do you know that" ask the non sky pixy botherers
"The bible says its correct" is the only reply.
Go to http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/ and read up on the
'accuracy'
Ash
those that just repeat the early ones, or merely report what Christians
believe are taken out, how many are left? a dozen? half that?
Christopher A. Lee
<asha...@winterfell73.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Malcolm wrote:
>> Here they are.
Bloody hell.
Why did the assole wait so long?
But this includes NT stuff, which he already knows is worthless.
And which of the remainder are in historical context?
Which bits lead inescapably to the conclusionthat his Jesus actually
existed?
And where is the outside-the religion corroboration?
But (from another thread he started) he imagines we should know his RC
church is the only real one. HE was rude about people who said they
were all the same.
So we know where he is coming from.
But he still needs to point out the parts of these that place his
religion's hero-figure in a historical context.
Given the inclusion of Pliny, Tacius and Suetonius I doubt he has
bothered to check them before posting the list.
But he could have cites from them which we haven't seen before.
So let him give them.
He doesn't know what these contain - otherwise he would have left out
Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny which are part of the standard list and
don't say what he thinks they do.
The Da Clayton Code
"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
<snip>
Not a single one of those is contemporary, corroborated, first hand
documentation supported by anything besides scripture....what you have
posted is the equivalent of saying that a pile of book reviews of "Lord of
the Rings" proves the existence of hobbits!
<plonk>
Christopher A. Lee
The idiot just said "Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus" as though the names
were proof.
Although there are some debunked passages.
But he didn't say what they wrote that is evidecne.
><plonk>
>
Patricia Heil
"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
> Here they are.
>
Only proves you have a logic deficit. You have no proof.
PMDavis
wrote:
Smipped off the ability to reasonably explain the existance and
authorship of historic literature.
Oh look, no argument left.
Patricia Heil
"Ash" <asha...@winterfell73.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:dbhato$su$3...@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk...
And the references in Suetonius and Tacitus are all arguable, I've read the
Latin.
PMDavis
Sheesh, you have to do everything for some persons...
See-
Tacitus, Annales, xiii.32
Tacitus, Annales, xv.44
Suetonius, Vita Claudius, xxv. 4 (cf. Acts xviii. 2)
Suetonius, Vita Neronis, xvi
Pliny (Epp.X (ad Traj.), xcvi
Pliny, Epp. X, xcvii
These are well known passages.
Do we have to translate it and type it all out for you, also?
Terry Cross
Yes, please. And if you wouldn't mind, bring it on a silver tray with
our tea out to the parlor and read it to us. You know all us pompous
Atheists are illiterate and blind as moles. That way, if anyone ever
refers to this information again, we can pretend we never read it
ourselves, but we doubt it has any validity.
TCross
Christopher A. Lee
wrote:
>On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:45:47 -0400, Christopher A. Lee
><ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:42:28 +1000, "The Da Clayton Code"
>><cj...@SPAMBLOCKphonymails.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
>>>news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>>>> Here they are.
>>>
>>><snip>
>>>
>>>Not a single one of those is contemporary, corroborated, first hand
>>>documentation supported by anything besides scripture....what you have
>>>posted is the equivalent of saying that a pile of book reviews of "Lord of
>>>the Rings" proves the existence of hobbits!
>>
>>The idiot just said "Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus" as though the names
>>were proof.
>>
>>Although there are some debunked passages.
>>
>>But he didn't say what they wrote that is evidecne.
>>
>>><plonk>
>>>
>
>
>Sheesh, you have to do everything for some persons...
Whyt are you so dishonest? The names aren't evidence in themselves,
and we're not mind-readers to know what bits he means.
That's not rocket science.
>See-
>Tacitus, Annales, xiii.32
>Tacitus, Annales, xv.44
>Suetonius, Vita Claudius, xxv. 4 (cf. Acts xviii. 2)
>Suetonius, Vita Neronis, xvi
>Pliny (Epp.X (ad Traj.), xcvi
>Pliny, Epp. X, xcvii
>
>These are well known passages.
Irrelevant. He should have given these instead of just t he names.
And also cited what they said.
>Do we have to translate it and type it all out for you, also?
Yes, you're the ones making the claim.
Why did you imagine that the unqualified names meant anything?
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> The alert reader might notice that there are substantially more than fifty
The alert reader might notice that almost all the documents are Christian
documents. Gee, Christian documents that "support" a central tenet of
Christianity. Alert the media.
--
Mark K. Bilbo - a.a. #1423
EAC Department of Linguistic Subversion
Alt-atheism website at: http://www.alt-atheism.org
--------------------------------------------------
"Come to think of it, there are already a million
monkeys on a million typewriters, and the Usenet
is NOTHING like Shakespeare!" -- Blair Houghton
Richo
Malcolm wrote:
> Here they are.
>
<snip>
> http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelhebrews.html
>
The alert reader might notice that there are no writngs (zero) in the
list that are independent Corroborations of the existence and life of
Jesus - just writings of the early true believers and the occasional
mention of the existence of those believers by non believers (tacitus,
pliny).
The existence of christians is not in doubt - only the existence of
christ - so Malcom has still failed to produce a single example of a
corroborating text - let alone the "50" he boasted of.
Mark.
Ash
Kate
wrote:
LOL, that was truly lame. Did the argument fly over your head that
badly dear?
Here it is in sixth grade english. You don't get use a book as
scientific evidence. You need more than that. Sorry.
Now go apologize to your ninth grade science teacher for sleeping in
class.
Terry Cross
Obviously these folks have no interest in the documentation they have
been demanding. This is a real surprise.
TCross
Susan Cohen
"PMDavis" <pmdla...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:0agod1t3ea7gkq2r4...@4ax.com...
No, you just have to admit that they don't prove what you want them to.
Susan
>
>
Susan Cohen
"Terry Cross" <tcro...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1121733501.7...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Obviously these folks have no interest in the documentation they have
> been demanding.
Wrong again.
We *are* interested in the documentation we've been demanding.
We just haven't gotten it yet.
So of course we aren't interested in alist of drivel.
> This is a real surprise.
I'm sure it is, to you.
Susan
Susan Cohen
This is a lie, of course.
>
> Oh look, no argument left.
You never had one to begin with.
Susan
Don Kresch
<regn...@btinternet.com> let us all know that:
Notice how the further down the list you get, the more
reliance there will be on 3rd or 4th-hand accounts.
>
>
>http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/gospelhebrews.html
>
>The alert reader might notice that there are substantially more than fifty -
>about 74 in fact.
>That's because I didn't draw up the list. The first two, the Passion
>Narrative and Lost sayings, or Q, for instance are reconstructions of
>hypothetical documents from the canonical scriptures, so you might want to
>argue they shouldn't count.
>Similarly, I've chosen 120 as the end of "living memory"
Why? You should have chosen 85-90.
Note though that I personally don't give a shit if jesus
existed or not. A real jesus doesn't get the xers one fucking angstrom
closer to there being a god. So I let them have their dead jew on a
stick, as it doesn't help them at all.
Don
Emma Pease
But it is not scientific knowledge we are looking at but historical
knowledge and in that case documents can and must be used. However
documents must be evaluated and questions asked
1. In the case of these documents we rarely or never have the original
so how old are the copies?
2. Do the copies have differences amongst themselves which change the
meaning. Is there other evidence that changes were made from the
original. Can we make an educated guess at what the original document
actually stated?
3. How old does the document claim to be and is this verifiable in any
way.
4. How accurate is the document? This might be checked against other
documents or archaeological evidence. Is it first hand or second
hand.
5. What exactly does the document support.
For instance Pliny's letters from the early 2nd century CE are first
hand evidence that Christians existed in the early 2nd century CE in
the area where he was ruling. They aren't good evidence that Jesus
lived and died in the early part of the 1st century CE.
Tacitus and Suetonius are second hand evidence (at least) about what
was going on some 50 to 70 years before they wrote. One of
Suetonius's references is also doubtful in being a reference at all
(Chrestus who is instigating the Jews in Roman in the 40s isn't quite
the same as Christos who died in the early 30s in Judea).
Josephus is closer to the time frame but there are strong suspicions
that through the process of copying various bits have been changed.
The gospels are amongst the earliest documents; however, some of their
details which one would expect to have been reported elsewhere,
aren't. For instance Mark, Matthew, and Luke report darkness for 3
hours over the entire land and the curtain in the Temple was ripped.
No mention in John, no mention in Josephus. No mention in any Roman
records (and the Romans did collect omens). Matthew mentions lots of
dead people reviving and walking after the execution. No mention in
any of the other gospels or in Josephus. It is also fairly well
accepted that Matthew and Luke are based heavily upon Mark plus some
other unknown source(s) and therefore are definitely second hand (or
more). My own feeling is that the gospels have a kernel of truth (a
wandering preacher did live and die in the 20s and 30s CE) but have a
huge accretion of legend to get the story to fit the
expectations/hopes of the audience (for instance to fulfil perceived
Old Testament prophecies).
--
\----
|\* | Emma Pease Net Spinster
|_\/ Die Luft der Freiheit weht
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
Fictional books are not proof!
"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
: Here they are.
:
:
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
Feh!
"The Da Clayton Code" <cj...@SPAMBLOCKphonymails.com> wrote in message
news:42dc3dbc$0$3392$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
:
: "Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
:
:
Kate
<em...@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote:
>In article <42df48ef....@news-west.newscene.com>, Kate wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 23:53:11 GMT, PMDavis <pmdla...@earthlink.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:46:50 -0400, "Mickey" <mic...@comcast.net>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
>>>>news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>>>>
>>>>Snipped all the 9th party references taken from the Bible
>>>>
>>>>oh look, nothing left
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Smipped off the ability to reasonably explain the existance and
>>>authorship of historic literature.
>>>
>>>Oh look, no argument left.
>>
>> LOL, that was truly lame. Did the argument fly over your head that
>> badly dear?
>>
>> Here it is in sixth grade english. You don't get use a book as
>> scientific evidence. You need more than that. Sorry.
>>
>> Now go apologize to your ninth grade science teacher for sleeping in
>> class.
>
>But it is not scientific knowledge we are looking at but historical
>knowledge and in that case documents can and must be used. However
>documents must be evaluated and questions asked
Historical knowledge must be based on scientific evidence or it's just
speculation. You have to have physical evidence - not just unproven
books that may have been written at any time.
As proof, you go on to ask for exactly that.
PMDavis
Sorry Love, but the original photographs were all spoiled at the
photoprocessing desk at Walgreen's, and we can't seem to locate his
original issue driver's license.
(Must be why God keeps sending those images on old toasted cheese
sandwichs, and reflections on sides of buildings.)
>As proof, you go on to ask for exactly that.
Yes, well you prove to me the existance of five or six other
carpenters living in the middle east during the same time period. In
the meanwhile, we will all assert that there weren't any.
Otherwise, perhaps you can familiarize yourself with standards of
substantial evidence as applied to ancient history.
Terry Cross
Bravo, PM.
TCross
Malcolm
"Kate " <cob...@newscene.com> wrote
> Historical knowledge must be based on scientific evidence or it's just
> speculation. You have to have physical evidence - not just unproven
> books that may have been written at any time.
>
> As proof, you go on to ask for exactly that.
>
evidence.
Malcolm
"Emma Pease" <em...@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote
>
> But it is not scientific knowledge we are looking at but historical
> knowledge and in that case documents can and must be used. However
> documents must be evaluated and questions asked
>
an experiment and demonstrate evolution on a lab bench. I can't produce the
arachaeopteryx / dinosaur intermediate on demand. Similarly I cannot conjure
up a document written during Jesus' last week in Jerusalem just because it
would be nice to have such evidence.
>
> 1. In the case of these documents we rarely or never have the original
> so how old are the copies?
>
primarily from the physical manuscript, although obviously that provides a
latest possible date.
>
> 2. Do the copies have differences amongst themselves which change the
> meaning. Is there other evidence that changes were made from the
> original. Can we make an educated guess at what the original document
> actually stated?
>
entire second mention of Jesus in Josephus is an interpolation. That's
obviously relevant for our purposes. However generally it is not possible
that a manuscript went from not metioning Jesus at all to being primarily
about Him.
If you want to argue that our ideas about Jesus might be wrong, rather than
that they are so radically wrong that no such person even existed, the of
course this question becomes much more relevant.
>
> 3. How old does the document claim to be and is this verifiable in any
> way.
>
on my list have a firm date accurate to a single year.
>
> 4. How accurate is the document? This might be checked against other
> documents or archaeological evidence. Is it first hand or second
> hand.
>
fifty documents are so radically inaccurate that they refer, usually at some
length, to a non-existent person.
>
> 5. What exactly does the document support.
>
> For instance Pliny's letters from the early 2nd century CE are first
> hand evidence that Christians existed in the early 2nd century CE in
> the area where he was ruling. They aren't good evidence that Jesus
> lived and died in the early part of the 1st century CE.
>
believed that a man called Jesus had existed. We also know that there is a
complete absence of any Christians in the early part of the first century or
before. So Pliny is consistent with the accepted theory that Christianity
was started in the first century by a man called Jesus.
>
> Tacitus and Suetonius are second hand evidence (at least) about what
> was going on some 50 to 70 years before they wrote. One of
> Suetonius's references is also doubtful in being a reference at all
> (Chrestus who is instigating the Jews in Roman in the 40s isn't quite
> the same as Christos who died in the early 30s in Judea).
>
hundred percent sure of this. Maybe an unrelated "Chrestus" caused a riot
amongst the Jews. Maybe there was another messianic claimant.
>
> Josephus is closer to the time frame but there are strong suspicions
> that through the process of copying various bits have been changed.
>
rioter. The minority scholarly view on Josephus's passage being an entire
interoplation may be correct. But the Jesus Deniers rely on all these things
being correct to explain away the inconvenient evidence.
>
> The gospels are amongst the earliest documents; however, some of their
> details which one would expect to have been reported elsewhere,
> aren't. For instance Mark, Matthew, and Luke report darkness for 3
> hours over the entire land and the curtain in the Temple was ripped.
> No mention in John, no mention in Josephus. No mention in any Roman
> records (and the Romans did collect omens).
>
accept that everything in the gospels is literally correct. Only that they
are not written about a non-existent person.
>
> Matthew mentions lots of
> dead people reviving and walking after the execution. No mention in
> any of the other gospels or in Josephus. It is also fairly well
> accepted that Matthew and Luke are based heavily upon Mark plus some
> other unknown source(s) and therefore are definitely second hand (or
> more).
>
He knows full well that there was a man called Jesus wandering around
preaching. He even attends one of the meetings. However he is away on
business during that fateful Passover. Later on he gets ivolved in the
Christian movement, and decides to document Jesus. However where is he going
to get his material?
>
> My own feeling is that the gospels have a kernel of truth (a
> wandering preacher did live and die in the 20s and 30s CE) but have a
> huge accretion of legend to get the story to fit the
> expectations/hopes of the audience (for instance to fulfil perceived
> Old Testament prophecies).
>
Resurrection one of those accretions.
>
Basically the weakness of the Jesus Myther argument is that they don't take
the evidence as a whole. They take one piece at a time and then look for
reasons to reject it. Now if we only had one document describing Jesus, say
Paul's letter to Philemon, then of course there would be a question. Is this
"Christ Jesus" a real person or not? Generally a "Christ" or "Messiah",
would be assumed to be an individual, and "Jesus" is a perfectly normal
Jewish proper name. However the way this "Jesus" is referred to he is
obviously also considered to be a god or spiritual being of some sort. So a
"celestial Jesus" theory would be tenable, based on this one document alone.
However we don't just have one, we have fifty.
That's the strength of evidence that the Jesus Deniers fail to acknowledge.
However you will read in previous threads actual claims that there is "zero
evidence".
Malcolm
>
To see whether any of the atheists actually knew about this list. It is not
too difficult to look up. However we had constant claims that I was making
up these documents.
They are the evidence. The very basics are not even known.
>
> But this includes NT stuff, which he already knows is worthless.
>
So why is it worthless?
>
> And which of the remainder are in historical context?
>
Every single document has an associated range of possible dates.
>
> Which bits lead inescapably to the conclusionthat his Jesus actually
> existed?
>
Take the whole of the evidence. One piece of documentary evidence is rarely
conclusive on its own. You need to take the evidence of all fifty together.
>
> And where is the outside-the religion corroboration?
>
Not all the writers are Christian. The majority are not canonical. However
it would be nice to have a lengthy account of Jesus by a non-Christian. You
have to use the evidence that exists, not the evidence you would like.
>
> But (from another thread he started) he imagines we should know his RC
> church is the only real one. HE was rude about people who said they
> were all the same.
>
I call this the "Wicca" argument. It goes. "All religions are the same. Now
we all agree that Wicca is nonsense. Therefore Christianity is also
nonsense."
Or as someone put it, "there was no krishna, therefore there was no Jesus"
>
> So we know where he is coming from.
>
> But he still needs to point out the parts of these that place his
> religion's hero-figure in a historical context.
>
All the documents mention Jesus. Only some of them give biographical
details, as you would expect.
>
> Given the inclusion of Pliny, Tacius and Suetonius I doubt he has
> bothered to check them before posting the list.
>
See what I said about "probabilities multiplying" elsewhere in this thread.
>
> But he could have cites from them which we haven't seen before.
>
> He doesn't know what these contain - otherwise he would have left out
> Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny which are part of the standard list and
> don't say what he thinks they do.
>
I didn't draw up this list. Actually when I said "fifty documents" I meant
27 canonical books of the New Testament plus about twenty apocryphal works
mentioning Jesus.
Of course if we look at, say, Tacitus on his own we can build some sort of
explanation that Christ is a different messiah to Jesus of Nazareth, or he
is just repeating an urban myth, or something. Look at the fifty documents
as a whole.
Your historical method is fatally flawed. And you seem to think that you can
correct the earlychristianwritings people on the Romans, whilst being so
ignorant that you don't know that the number of primary sources written
within living memory of Jesus is indeed about fifty. Everyone with an
interest in the question should be aware of that most basic fact, and you
weren't aware of it. Why?
Christopher A. Lee
<regn...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
>"Christopher A. Lee" <ca...@optonline.net> wrote
>>
>> Why did the assole wait so long?
>>
>To see whether any of the atheists actually knew about this list. It is not
>too difficult to look up. However we had constant claims that I was making
>up these documents.
Which was pointless stupidity on your part. Why the fuck should we be
expected to know what you meant? We're not mind-readers.
And just because you say they are historical evidence does not make
them so.
It just demonstrates that you have no idea what "historical evidence"
is.
Some of it was the standard garbage trotted out by Christians, eg
saying "Pliny, Tacitus, Suetonius" as though the mere names were
proof.
Others were from the NT which you already know is worthless as
"historical evidence" for anything other than the fact that people
believed something.
The rest of them are all church documents which are not part of the
"standard" list that you loonies trot out.
>They are the evidence. The very basics are not even known.
And they're worthless.
>> But this includes NT stuff, which he already knows is worthless.
>>
>So why is it worthless?
Duh. Is the Book of Mormon evidence for the Angel Moroni and the
golden tablets?
But the whole list is worthless...
BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T CITE ANY PART OF THEM, LEAVING US TO DO YOUR WORK
FOR YOU.
BECAUSE SOME OF THEM WEREN'T EVEN DOCUMENTS BUT MERELY NAMES OF
AUTHORS.
BECAUSE SOME OF THEM WERE PARTS OF THE NT.
Are you really, honestly so out of touch with reality?
HECK, SOME OFTHEM WEREN'T EVEN DOCUMENTS.
>> And which of the remainder are in historical context?
>>
>Every single document has an associated range of possible dates.
>>
>> Which bits lead inescapably to the conclusionthat his Jesus actually
>> existed?
>>
>Take the whole of the evidence. One piece of documentary evidence is rarely
>conclusive on its own. You need to take the evidence of all fifty together.
And the conclusion is that it is merely a religious belief.
>> And where is the outside-the religion corroboration?
>>
>Not all the writers are Christian. The majority are not canonical. However
>it would be nice to have a lengthy account of Jesus by a non-Christian. You
>have to use the evidence that exists, not the evidence you would like.
AND YOOU HAVEN'T CITED WHAT THEY SAID, MORON.
Is this really so hard to grasp?
>> But (from another thread he started) he imagines we should know his RC
>> church is the only real one. HE was rude about people who said they
>> were all the same.
>>
>I call this the "Wicca" argument. It goes. "All religions are the same. Now
>we all agree that Wicca is nonsense. Therefore Christianity is also
>nonsense."
And it's a stupid strawman.
Why don't you take notice of what you are told?
THAT THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF DIFFERENT RELIGIONS, AND THERE IS NO
REASON TO THINK THAT YOURS IS SUBSTANTIVELY DIFFERENT - *U*N*T*I*L*
*Y*O*U* *D*E*M*O*N*S*T*R*A*T*E* *T*H*A*T* *Y*O*U*R*S* *I*S* *R*E*A*L*
*A*N*D* *T*H*E* *O*T*H*E*R*S *A*R*E*N*'*T*.
Have the honesty not to turn this into something which wasn't said,
next time. AND DON'T IGNORE THE PART WHICH WOULD FALSIFY THE DEFAULT
POSITION.
>Or as someone put it, "there was no krishna, therefore there was no Jesus"
You're lying.
Again.
>> So we know where he is coming from.
>>
>> But he still needs to point out the parts of these that place his
>> religion's hero-figure in a historical context.
>>
>All the documents mention Jesus. Only some of them give biographical
>details, as you would expect.
AND YOU HAVE YET TO PROVIDE ANY OUTSIDE-YOUR-RELIGION CORROBORATION TO
PUT IT INTO A HISTORICAL CONTEXT INSTEAD OF A RELIGIUS CONTEXT.
>> Given the inclusion of Pliny, Tacius and Suetonius I doubt he has
>> bothered to check them before posting the list.
>>
>See what I said about "probabilities multiplying" elsewhere in this thread.
BUT WHAT DID THEY WRITE THAT SHOWS A HISTORIC JESUS, MORON - ALL YOU
HAVE DONE IS GIVEN THEIR NAMES AS THOSE THE NAMES THEMSELVES WERE THE
EVIDENCE.
God (tm), you're stupid.
>> But he could have cites from them which we haven't seen before.
>>
>> He doesn't know what these contain - otherwise he would have left out
>> Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny which are part of the standard list and
>> don't say what he thinks they do.
>>
>I didn't draw up this list. Actually when I said "fifty documents" I meant
>27 canonical books of the New Testament plus about twenty apocryphal works
>mentioning Jesus.
Which are all worthless as evidence for an historical Jesus UNTIL YOU
DEMONSTRATE THAT THESE RELIGIOUS WORKS ARE HISTORICALLY RELIABLE.
And at the same time showing why equivalent religious works aren't.
Using exactly the same litmus test for them all, including yours.
>Of course if we look at, say, Tacitus on his own we can build some sort of
>explanation that Christ is a different messiah to Jesus of Nazareth, or he
>is just repeating an urban myth, or something. Look at the fifty documents
>as a whole.
SHOW WHERE TACITUS EVEN MENTIONS JESUS.
SO FAR ALL WE HAVE IS THE NAME, AS THOUGH SIMPLY SAYING "TACITUS"
WERE THE EVIDENCE.
>Your historical method is fatally flawed. And you seem to think that you can
>correct the earlychristianwritings people on the Romans, whilst being so
>ignorant that you don't know that the number of primary sources written
>within living memory of Jesus is indeed about fifty. Everyone with an
WE DIDN'T KNOW YOU MEANT THESE, LIAR, BECAUSE WE'RE NOT MIND READERS.
AND IT IS NOT EVEN UP TO US TO KNOW THEM.
ESPECIALLY WHEN NONE OF THEM ARE PRIMARY STORIES BUT MERELY
DESCRIPTIONS OF PEOPLE'S RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
You have to provide corroboration FROM OUTSIDE YOUR RELIGION.
Which you have still failed to so.
Quote the parts of Pliny's, Tacitus' and Suetonius' works that do
this.
Of course if you had been able to do that, you would not have needed
to your list of religious works - which again you merely mentioned
without citing the bits that you think satisfy your evidenciary
burden.
Read that paragraph again until you understand it.
Again, because this is important:
IF YOU HAD BEEN ABLE TO CITE MENTIONS OF JESUS IN PLINY, TACITUS AND
SUETONIUS YOU WOULD NOT HAVE NEEDED YOUR RELIGIOUS WORKS.
Got that yet?
But none of the stuff you list is a primary source. The religious
works describe people's religious beliefs. The secular ones don't even
mention Jesus. That's all.
I'm sure that even you can tell the difference.
But then you know that.
>interest in the question should be aware of that most basic fact, and you
>weren't aware of it. Why?
It's not "my" historical method. It's merely the way historians work.
Ben Goren
> Here they are.
Well, well. I'll be. finally got tired of being a bitch,
eh? Congratulations.
Now, let's see what you have.
> 30-60 Passion Narrative
Doesn't exist. If you claim otherwise, give a copy.
> 40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
Ditto.
> 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
These are all books of the Bible, except for one which is an
apocryphal gospel. The dates you've given aren't the dates of the
actual documents, but the church's earliest guess for when the
first drafts of these documents might have been written. The
actual earliest copies of these documents don't exist until the
second century, at least.
If you had those original drafts, we might have something to talk
about. But you don't.
> 50-120 Didache
> 50-140 Gospel of Thomas
> 50-140 Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
> 50-200 Sophia of Jesus Christ
These apocryphal gospels suffer the same problems as the books
of the Bible, but their origins are even more clouded in
mystery. Anything which can't even be pinned down to within a
century isn't conclusive of anything.
> 65-80 Gospel of Mark
Another book of the Bible. See above.
> 70-100 Epistle of James
> 70-120 Egerton Gospel
More apocrypha. See above.
> 70-160 Gospel of Peter
Bible.
> 70-160 Secret Mark
> 70-200 Fayyum Fragment
> 70-200 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Apocrypha
> 73-200 Mara Bar Serapion
Here's our first non-Biblical, non-apocryphal source. At the
absolute earliest, it was written forty years after the alleged
crucifixion, a couple generations. Anybody old enough to remember
Jesus would have been a dottering old fool at the time. Still,
let's consider what Mara Bar Serapion's letter said:
> What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to
> death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their
> crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning
> Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What
> advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It
> was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly
> avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger;
> the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined
> and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But
> Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of
> Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the
> statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on
> in the teaching which he had given.
Nothing in that mentions Jesus or uniquely identifies him, and it
doesn't even provide a hint as to when any of these things
were supposed to have happened. Socrates, Plato, and Pythagoras
certainly weren't contemporary to the writing of this letter, so
one can pick any king the Jews ever executed before any of the
several times the Jews were exiled and dispersed and the letter
fits equally well.
> 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
Bible and apocrypha.
> 93 Flavius Josephus
I've so thoroughly debunked this one I'm not going to do anything
more but laugh, ha ha ha, and call you a fool, you fool.
You draw the line at 120 CE. You're a fool. I'm being most
generous and drawing the line at 100 CE. Anybody who was at least
a teenager at the time of the alleged crucifixion would be an
octogenarian in 100 CE. For that day and age, that means they've
been dead at least a decade or two. Quite thoroughly senile if
not.
> [snip hopelessly late documents]
>
> The alert reader might notice that there are substantially more
> than fifty - about 74 in fact.
No, the alert reader will note that, once we've eliminated all the
books of the Bible, the apocrypha, Serapion, and Josephus, you're
left with...nothing. Which is exactly where we started.
Elsewhere you bleat about looking at the big picture, asserting
that, if enough people say the similar things enough times, it
proves something. Joseph Goebbels had a term for that, the ``Big
Lie.'' In polite company, it's referred to as /argumentum ad
numeram./ The fact is, all this ``preponderance of evidence''
is valid for is proving that these people were saying those
things. It does /nothing/ to establish their validity as
witnesses, let alone establish the factual nature of their claims.
Now, consider that the /earliest/ date you can even pretend to
claim is 50 CE. We all know that's a fabrication, that it's a
guess that the documents that existed in the second century showed
signs of about a half a century's worth of revisionism, but let's
play along for a moment.
The best you can hope to assert is that some people were so moved
and so inspired by a man called Jesus that they didn't even bother
to start writing down their memories of him until after a
generation had passed since they saw him die. And that, Bitch
Malcolm, is damned strong evidence that the earliest Christians
weren't much impressed with Jesus, either.
Think about it, for a moment. You're a young lad of, say,
thirteen. Just had your Bar Mitzvoh. At the same time you're
studying for this most important rite of passage, some strange new
Rabbi is going around, healing the sick, walking on water, and
generally doing the impossible. Maybe you were one of the ones
who ate some of that fish and bread. Preaching love and kindness
(and hatred and slavery and murder, too, but we won't get into
that right now), if nothing else. Then, there's this huge scandal
where Pilate doesn't think he should be executed but goes
along with it just to keep the local priesthood happy. They
most publicly crucify him; you probably see it with your own
eyes. Then, the dead start coming out of their graves. A few days
later, after he's dead and buried, you see this same man whom you
saw crucified walking the streets.
Then, you, a most impressionable boy-become-man, completely ignore
all of this until you're forty years old, an old man for the time,
with naught but a few more years left in you. That's when you
finally decide to write it all down. And you're the first to do
so. And, for some reason, not one historian, Roman official, or
anybody else saw fit to write any of this down, either. In the
middle of the first mostly-literate society in history.
I mean, what the fuck? I'm supposed to buy that shit? It makes
even less sense than the Bible itself--and /that/ takes doing.
Cheers,
b&
--
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
All but God can prove this sentence true.
The Jesus challenge: put up or shut up http://tinyurl.com/9x22f
Mark K. Bilbo
Goren burst into the room and exclaimed:
> Think about it, for a moment. You're a young lad of, say,
> thirteen. Just had your Bar Mitzvoh. At the same time you're
> studying for this most important rite of passage, some strange new Rabbi
> is going around, healing the sick, walking on water, and generally
> doing the impossible. Maybe you were one of the ones who ate some of
> that fish and bread. Preaching love and kindness (and hatred and
> slavery and murder, too, but we won't get into that right now), if
> nothing else. Then, there's this huge scandal where Pilate doesn't
> think he should be executed but goes along with it just to keep
> the local priesthood happy. They most publicly crucify him; you
> probably see it with your own eyes. Then, the dead start coming out of
> their graves. A few days later, after he's dead and buried, you see this
> same man whom you saw crucified walking the streets.
>
> Then, you, a most impressionable boy-become-man, completely ignore all of
> this until you're forty years old, an old man for the time, with naught
> but a few more years left in you. That's when you finally decide to
> write it all down. And you're the first to do so. And, for some reason,
> not one historian, Roman official, or anybody else saw fit to write
> any of this down, either. In the middle of the first mostly-literate
> society in history.
That *is one of the most damning things in all of this. That nobody
noticed. That even *if there was an historical figure behind the myth, he
must have been so unremarkable, nobody noticed him. Hell, even among his
own alleged followers, nobody so much as took notes!
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> "Christopher A. Lee" <ca...@optonline.net> wrote
>>
>> Why did the assole wait so long?
>>
> To see whether any of the atheists actually knew about this list. It is
> not too difficult to look up. However we had constant claims that I was
> making up these documents.
>
> They are the evidence. The very basics are not even known.
>>
>> But this includes NT stuff, which he already knows is worthless.
>>
> So why is it worthless?
Because they are the documents making the assertion which is in need of
support.
Duh.
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
>
Not everything is evidence.
In this case, the documents written by the people who were making the
assertion cannot be used as evidence of the assertion. That's circular.
Masked Avenger
exactly ...... and the evidence says the Bible is bullshit .....
--
Masked Avenger
aa#2224
EAC Chief Technician in charge of remotely rigging Fundie 'Spell
Checkers' so they all look like hick home schooled yokels
Does Schroedinger's cat have 18 half lives ?
Masked Avenger
> Here they are.
>
> 40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
> 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
> 50-140 Gospel of Thomas
> 50-140 Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
> 50-200 Sophia of Jesus Christ
> 70-100 Epistle of James
> 70-120 Egerton Gospel
> 70-160 Secret Mark
> 70-200 Fayyum Fragment
> 70-200 Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
> 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
> about 74 in fact.
> Narrative and Lost sayings, or Q, for instance are reconstructions of
> hypothetical documents from the canonical scriptures, so you might want to
> argue they shouldn't count.
> Similarly, I've chosen 120 as the end of "living memory" and included
> everything with an earliest date before then. However this obviously
> overstates the situation. Since we can't know when the last eyewitness died,
> and we can't date all the documents very accurately, it is impossible to
> come up with a definitive figure. "About fifty" will do.
>
> Now anyone with the slightest knowledge of the subject would have realised
> instantly that when you add the canonical books of the New Testament (27) to
>
> But these Jesus Deniers, so confident of their case, didn't cotton on.
> Instead I was accused of having no such list of documents.
>
> These documents are our evidence for Jesus. All the experts, of whom I am
> not one, agree that they are conclusive evidence.
>
>
....... so where are these 50 documents then ? ............
None of these are contemporary accounts ..... certainly none of them are
historical documents ....... you have yet to produce a contemporary
eyewitness account ..... no surprises there .... very lame .....
Kate
wrote:
If there's no scientific evidence for the document's age and origin
then whatever they say can only be used for speculation. Seems pretty
simple to me.
You telling me you think history has far lower standards than other
sciences?
Christopher A. Lee
He's starting from a presumption that the Bible is historically
accurate and can't understand why non-Christians (not just atheists)
don't see it the same way. So he invents all sorts of "reasons" which
satisfy his ego and self-image.
Everything is filtered through that. Including what we say, and what
his "evidenciary sources" say.
He can't separate himself from his presumption that the bible is
historically accurate and sees the secular works as corroborating it
even when they don't.
But does he have to be so nasty about it?
Malcolm
>>sciences?
>
biologists can put living organisms in test tubes and manipulate them.
However we cannot get exactly repeatable results, becuase living things
always behave slightly differently. The physicist can draw straight lines.
However his material doesn't obey the commonsense laws of ours. The
astronomer cannot manipulate his material at all. The social scientist can
to an extent, but he cannot always prevent the material from knowing that it
is under study and reacting accordingly.
Similarly historians rely very heavily on written evidence. Most events
leave very little arachaeological trace. And the evidence that survives is
necessarily selective - thousands of copies of the gospels, for instance, so
we can trace textual variants, but only one seventeenth century copy of a
letter of Clement containing an extract from the "secret gospel of Mark". So
it would be nice to have the full text of this gospel to compare with
canonical Mark, but we can't do that. However it does mention Jesus, so we
have another piece of evidence that such a person existed, which is the
issue causing all the trouble.
Malcolm
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>
>> So why is it worthless?
>
> Because they are the documents making the assertion which is in need of
> support.
>
> Duh.
>
You have to deal with the evidence you have, not the evidence you would like
to have. The evidence is those fifty documents.
Not all the documents were written with the purpose of proving that a man
called Jesus existed, though some of them were. They all support each other.
Fifty witnesses all asserting to a single basic fact.
Malcolm
"Patricia Heil" <paj...@earthlink.net> wrote
>
> And the references in Suetonius and Tacitus are all arguable, I've read
> the Latin.
You don't understand the strength of the evidence.
Let's take the reference to "Chrestus". It isn't even the name "Christ".
With this passage alone, we'd never guess that there was such a person as
Jesus.
Now let's look at Tacitus. Jesus Deniers mess about endlessly with this one,
for instance trying to throw out the whole passage because he calls Pilate a
procurator rather than a prefect.
But wait a minute. Tacitus also says that Christianity started in Judea, and
then moved to Rome at an early period. And Suetonius says that a "Chrestus"
started trouble in Rome at about that period. When we look at the book of
Acts, we also see the claim that there was a Christian church in Rome from
an early period. Suddenly the picture is beginning to make sense.
So does that tell us that absolutely, definitely, Suetonius' "Chrestus" must
be our Jesus. Of course not. But taking the whole of the evidence, it looks
a lot more plausible.
Similarly, Tacitus says that Christ was crucified, and St Paul says that
Jesus Christ was crucified. Unless you want to argue for two crucified
messiahs, obviously they are talking about the same person. Obviously
Tacitus believes that Christ was a real historical person. So when we take
the evidence together, we've got immensely powerful evidence for the
traditional story. Suetonius is just a very minor part of that evidence, and
it might well be that some other unrelated rioter called Chrestus was
causing trouble amongst the Jews at that time.
The illegitimate procedure is to say "Chrestus - not Christos, get rid of
that evidence. Pilate - not a procurator, get rid of that evidence. Oh look,
there's no supporting evidence for St Paul to show that this Jesus was a
real person, get rid of that evidence." You need to look at the whole of the
evidence, as a whole.
Malcolm
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>
>
> In this case, the documents written by the people who were making the
> assertion cannot be used as evidence of the assertion. That's circular.
>
assertion by Joe that Muggins was the villain.
Similarly an assertion by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that there was such a
person as Jesus can be used in support of an assertion by me that Jesus
Denial is a kook theory.
However sometimes Fred is the only person who asserts that Muggins did it.
But we don't reject the whole thing. We look at Fred's account for internal
consistency, plausibility, and the like.
For instance the Domesday book is the only source we have for most 11th
century Englishmen. Since that book is the only source we have that asserts
that, say, Gilbert of Warwick existed and had ten acres of waste, would you
say that we have no evidence that there was such a person?
Now suppose that fifty 11th and twelfth century documents survived, all
making reference to this Gilbert of Warwick. Would you still say "sorry, no
evidence in support of their assertions. Arguing that such a person existed
is circular.?"
Ben Goren
> Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
>
>> Not everything is evidence.
>>
>> In this case, the documents written by the people who were
>> making the assertion cannot be used as evidence of the
>> assertion. That's circular.
>
> No. An assertion by Fred that Muggins did it can be used in
> support of an assertion by Joe that Muggins was the villain.
Not when Fred is Joe's sockpuppet.
> Similarly an assertion by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that
> there was such a person as Jesus can be used in support of an
> assertion by me that Jesus Denial is a kook theory.
Nope. By your own admission, Matthew and Luke are copies of Mark,
and Mark is a copy of ``Q.'' And John postdates Q by so much, and
contradicts Q so much, that we can quite rightfully dismiss John
as nothing more than a distant interpretation inspired by Q.
> However sometimes Fred is the only person who asserts that
> Muggins did it. But we don't reject the whole thing. We look at
> Fred's account for internal consistency, plausibility, and the
> like.
Exactly. And what do we find in the Bible? The Gospels can't even
agree with each other. They make factual claims that are easily
refuted, such as of a city of Nazareth, impossible eclipses that
nobody saw, and earthquakes that were never recorded. They then go
on to devote great attention to the most ludicrous claims of
people walking on water, thousands of dead people coming out of
their graves, scores of people miraculously healed, multitudes fed
with mere scraps, and more. Yet, the first records of these opium
dreams can't be found until decades after they were supposed to
have happened, at absolute best.
So, your ``Fred'' is horribly inconsistent and laughably
implausible.
Next witness!
Oh, wait...you don't have one....
Well, if that's it, then case dismissed!
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
>
> "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>>
>> Not everything is evidence.
>>
>> In this case, the documents written by the people who were making the
>> assertion cannot be used as evidence of the assertion. That's circular.
>>
> No. An assertion by Fred that Muggins did it can be used in support of an
> assertion by Joe that Muggins was the villain.
>
> Similarly an assertion by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that there was such
> a person as Jesus can be used in support of an assertion by me that Jesus
> Denial is a kook theory.
>
> However sometimes Fred is the only person who asserts that Muggins did it.
> But we don't reject the whole thing. We look at Fred's account for
> internal consistency, plausibility, and the like.
I notice you conveniently gloss the matter of corroborating evidence. I
wouldn't want to live in a country where your vision of a justice system
exists. The claims of a single individual could--sans any supporting
evidence--convict another?
> For instance the Domesday book is the only source we have for most 11th
> century Englishmen. Since that book is the only source we have that
> asserts that, say, Gilbert of Warwick existed and had ten acres of waste,
> would you say that we have no evidence that there was such a person? Now
> suppose that fifty 11th and twelfth century documents survived, all making
> reference to this Gilbert of Warwick. Would you still say "sorry, no
> evidence in support of their assertions. Arguing that such a person
> existed is circular.?"
You ignore (deliberately I suspect) the issue of source. Almost all of
your "fifty documents" has, essentially, a single source: believers.
Finding that the documents written by, controlled by, edited by, and
selected by believers agree with the belief system is hardly a surprise.
Nor is it an indication that the belief is accurate.
But back to your (not very good) analogy attempt, if the Domesday book is
the only source that asserts the existence of this Gilbert, we have no way
of knowing if he actually existed. People do make mistakes. Even modern
census workers make mistakes.
And if there were fifty such documents, we'd have to know something about
the source of each. If all fifty made the assertion because the authors
read the Domesday book, that would indeed make using them pretty damn
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
>
You insist they are evidence. They are not. They are religious documents
written with an agenda. An *open agenda mind you, no "conspiracy"
involved. They were written by believers asserting their belief. The
assertion is not evidence of the assertion.
Ash
>
> Similarly, Tacitus says that Christ was crucified, and St Paul says that
> Jesus Christ was crucified. Unless you want to argue for two crucified
> messiahs, obviously they are talking about the same person. Obviously
> Tacitus believes that Christ was a real historical person.
And obviously he was getting his information from the Christians
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>>
>> Not everything is evidence.
>>
>> In this case, the documents written by the people who were making the
>> assertion cannot be used as evidence of the assertion. That's circular.
>>
> No. An assertion by Fred that Muggins did it can be used in support of an
> assertion by Joe that Muggins was the villain.
Do you know for certain that Fred didn't get his information from Joe?
Mark K. Bilbo
> Malcolm wrote:
>
>> Here they are.
>
> Well, well. I'll be. finally got tired of being a bitch, eh?
> Congratulations.
>
> Now, let's see what you have.
>
>> 30-60 Passion Narrative
>
> Doesn't exist. If you claim otherwise, give a copy.
>
>> 40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
>
> Ditto.
Read something interesting recently that made argument that "Q" was
invented to get Christians out of a awkward issue with the gospels. That
it was essentially invented of whole cloth so they could order the gospels
in a way more to their liking.
It's over this way:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_deardorff/battles.html
Or: http://makeashorterlink.com/?I65C2557B
Abstract: The most obvious solution to the Synoptic Problem (order of
priority among the New Testament Gospels) has been rejected by most
scholars since the 19th century largely because of embarrassments it
was causing for the church and/or their own theologies. However, if
theological commitment is abandoned and the evangelists are considered
to have been human beings with human emotions, rather than pipelines
from God, it is seen that numerous editorial oddities associated with
the traditionally attested order (Matthew-Mark-Luke) are easily
explainable and make good psychological sense. They indicate that the
gospel writers were engaged in a behind-the-scenes tit-for-tat battle
brought on by the strong anti-gentile slant of the Gospel of Matthew
in its Hebraic form.
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> "Patricia Heil" <paj...@earthlink.net> wrote
>>
>> And the references in Suetonius and Tacitus are all arguable, I've read
>> the Latin.
> You don't understand the strength of the evidence.
>
> Let's take the reference to "Chrestus". It isn't even the name "Christ".
> With this passage alone, we'd never guess that there was such a person as
> Jesus.
>
> Now let's look at Tacitus. Jesus Deniers mess about endlessly with this
> one, for instance trying to throw out the whole passage because he calls
> Pilate a procurator rather than a prefect.
> But wait a minute. Tacitus also says that Christianity started in Judea,
> and then moved to Rome at an early period. And Suetonius says that a
> "Chrestus" started trouble in Rome at about that period. When we look at
> the book of Acts, we also see the claim that there was a Christian church
> in Rome from an early period. Suddenly the picture is beginning to make
> sense. So does that tell us that absolutely, definitely, Suetonius'
> "Chrestus" must be our Jesus. Of course not. But taking the whole of the
> evidence, it looks a lot more plausible.
Yet according to Christian myth, Jesus never went to Rome...
IEJ
"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:dbjs18$id$2...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
Can you please give exact quote and ref to where Tacitus say that Christ was
crucified?
Inger E
Llanzlan Klazmon
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> Malcolm wrote:
>
<SNIP>
>> However sometimes Fred is the only person who asserts that
>> Muggins did it. But we don't reject the whole thing. We look at
>> Fred's account for internal consistency, plausibility, and the
>> like.
>
> Exactly. And what do we find in the Bible? The Gospels can't even
> agree with each other. They make factual claims that are easily
> refuted, such as of a city of Nazareth, impossible eclipses that
> nobody saw, and earthquakes that were never recorded. They then go
> on to devote great attention to the most ludicrous claims of
> people walking on water, thousands of dead people coming out of
> their graves, scores of people miraculously healed, multitudes fed
> with mere scraps, and more. Yet, the first records of these opium
> dreams can't be found until decades after they were supposed to
> have happened, at absolute best.
There is also the curious narration of events where the supposed authors
(if you take the Matthew/Mark/Luke/John designations at face value) were
either not present or in one case asleep. For example the recounting of
what happenned when Jesus was alone in the desert. That report is
written in the same style that an author writes a work of fiction. Even
if Jesus subsequently told the apostles what happenned, why would they
retell the story as though they were observers themsleves? Other cases
are the recounting of the trial scenes before the Sanhedrin and Pilate.
Even the case when the apostles went to sleep in the garden.
Klazmon.
Iasion
Just a minor quibble:
MalcomX: "I cannot set up an experiment and demonstrate evolution on a
lab bench."
Yes you can.
Biology students do this as a standard lesson.
Iasion
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:dbjs0v$id$8...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
You have fifty different authors now? BTW the non Christian ones
indicate only that Christians existed in the second century. What you
need is something like a report say from the the Roman authorities of
the day mentioning the peculiar trial & execution. If such a thing
happenned it would be fairly certain that the Praefect's staff would
have recorded it. Of course any such documents appear not to have
survived. We only have the gospel stories of this. Even the gospel
reports of the trial scenes are peculiar, the story suggests that the
apostles were not present yet they recount as though they were. Indeed
it is most improbable that any rabble would be allowed to waltz into the
procedings of either the praefecture or the Sanhedrin.
Klazmon.
Terry Cross
> "Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in
> news:dbjs0v$id$8...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>
> >
> > "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
> >>
> >>> So why is it worthless?
> >>
> >> Because they are the documents making the assertion which is in need
> >> of support.
> >>
> >> Duh.
> >>
> > And that's the level the atheists are at.
> > You have to deal with the evidence you have, not the evidence you
> > would like to have. The evidence is those fifty documents.
> > Not all the documents were written with the purpose of proving that a
> > man called Jesus existed, though some of them were. They all support
> > each other. Fifty witnesses all asserting to a single basic fact.
> >
> >
> >
>
> You have fifty different authors now? BTW the non Christian ones
> indicate only that Christians existed in the second century. What you
> need is something like a report say from the the Roman authorities of
> the day mentioning the peculiar trial & execution. If such a thing
> happenned it would be fairly certain that the Praefect's staff would
> have recorded it. Of course any such documents appear not to have
> survived.
When documents are lost, does the past cease to exist?
> We only have the gospel stories of this. Even the gospel
> reports of the trial scenes are peculiar, the story suggests that the
> apostles were not present yet they recount as though they were.
Read Herodotus' account of the Peloponnesian Wars. The literature in
that day was not cluttered with attributions. A lack of attribution is
more the rule than the exception.
> Indeed
> it is most improbable that any rabble would be allowed to waltz into the
> procedings of either the praefecture or the Sanhedrin.
Rabble? Your personal opinions are leaking through your personna and
dripping on the text.
TCross
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> With any science, you've got to use the evidence you have. I cannot set up
> an experiment and demonstrate evolution on a lab bench.
Well, maybe *you can't...
Emma Pease
Well except Chrestus not Christos and also in the wrong place in the
wrong time makes it very weak evidence. Note I'm not getting rid of
the evidence but saying it is very weak evidence.
Tacitus' error is a different matter but he was writing in the early
second century about events some decades before. There is no
disagreement that by the beginning of the second century the story of
Jesus was fairly well established (with variations) amongst Christians
and that Christians existed. I very much doubt that Tacitus looked up
government records to see Pilate's actual status and his actions (even
if records of crucifixions in the 30sCE in Judea existed in his time)
instead he must have taken the story at second or third hand. His is
more evidence about what people believed in his time about the origins
of Christians rather than what the actual origin was.
--
\----
|\* | Emma Pease Net Spinster
|_\/ Die Luft der Freiheit weht
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:dbi6do$im7$5...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>
> "Emma Pease" <em...@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote
>>
>> But it is not scientific knowledge we are looking at but historical
>> knowledge and in that case documents can and must be used. However
>> documents must be evaluated and questions asked
>>
> With any science, you've got to use the evidence you have. I cannot
> set up an experiment and demonstrate evolution on a lab bench.
Why not. It's a standard experiment starting with monoclonal bacteria.
Klazmon.
<SNIP>
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:1121819744.8...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Llanzlan Klazmon wrote:
>> "Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in
>> news:dbjs0v$id$8...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>>
>> >
>> > "Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>> >>
>> >>> So why is it worthless?
>> >>
>> >> Because they are the documents making the assertion which is in
>> >> need of support.
>> >>
>> >> Duh.
>> >>
>> > And that's the level the atheists are at.
>> > You have to deal with the evidence you have, not the evidence you
>> > would like to have. The evidence is those fifty documents.
>> > Not all the documents were written with the purpose of proving that
>> > a man called Jesus existed, though some of them were. They all
>> > support each other. Fifty witnesses all asserting to a single basic
>> > fact.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> You have fifty different authors now? BTW the non Christian ones
>> indicate only that Christians existed in the second century. What you
>> need is something like a report say from the the Roman authorities of
>> the day mentioning the peculiar trial & execution. If such a thing
>> happenned it would be fairly certain that the Praefect's staff would
>> have recorded it. Of course any such documents appear not to have
>> survived.
>
> When documents are lost, does the past cease to exist?
Don't be silly, you don't make claims based on evidence you don't have.
If the documents existed and checked out as being genuine. Then they
would be considered evidence. That is what we are discussing here -
actual verifiable direct evidence. I was just offering an example of the
type of evidence that would be acceptable to a disinterested party.
>
>> We only have the gospel stories of this. Even the gospel
>> reports of the trial scenes are peculiar, the story suggests that the
>> apostles were not present yet they recount as though they were.
>
> Read Herodotus' account of the Peloponnesian Wars. The literature in
> that day was not cluttered with attributions. A lack of attribution
> is more the rule than the exception.
That may be so but it brings the accuracy of the reports into question.
>
>> Indeed
>> it is most improbable that any rabble would be allowed to waltz into
>> the procedings of either the praefecture or the Sanhedrin.
>
> Rabble? Your personal opinions are leaking through your personna and
> dripping on the text.
The run of the mill of the local population would have been considered
rabble by the Romans at best. I think barbarians was a term nearer the
mark of what they thought.
Klazmon.
>
> TCross
>
>
Kate
If there's no physical or inadequate physical evidence then the worth
of the document is extremely or completely weak. All you can do is
speculate.
The only difference in hard sciences and history is that historical
documental evidence usually isn't very hard to verify. The problem is
a lot of people assume because of this, that you don't need to do so.
Masked Avenger
>
>
>>Think about it, for a moment. You're a young lad of, say,
>>thirteen. Just had your Bar Mitzvoh. At the same time you're
>>studying for this most important rite of passage, some strange new Rabbi
>>is going around, healing the sick, walking on water, and generally
>>doing the impossible. Maybe you were one of the ones who ate some of
>>that fish and bread. Preaching love and kindness (and hatred and
>>slavery and murder, too, but we won't get into that right now), if
>>nothing else. Then, there's this huge scandal where Pilate doesn't
>>think he should be executed but goes along with it just to keep
>>the local priesthood happy. They most publicly crucify him; you
>>probably see it with your own eyes. Then, the dead start coming out of
>>their graves. A few days later, after he's dead and buried, you see this
>>same man whom you saw crucified walking the streets.
>>
>>Then, you, a most impressionable boy-become-man, completely ignore all of
>>this until you're forty years old, an old man for the time, with naught
>>but a few more years left in you. That's when you finally decide to
>>write it all down. And you're the first to do so. And, for some reason,
>>not one historian, Roman official, or anybody else saw fit to write
>>any of this down, either. In the middle of the first mostly-literate
>>society in history.
>
>
> That *is one of the most damning things in all of this. That nobody
> noticed. That even *if there was an historical figure behind the myth, he
> must have been so unremarkable, nobody noticed him. Hell, even among his
> own alleged followers, nobody so much as took notes!
>
Not to mention the Earthquake and Eclipse that *no one* noticed .......
except the Gospel writers ....... ?
ריעין ברתון/Riain Barton
these things did not happen during that time frame.
"Masked Avenger" <cootey5...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:dbldha$kv1$1...@austar-news.austar.net.au...
fact-c...@hotmail.com
> Not only did no one notice, but we have scientific data to prove that
> these things did not happen during that time frame.
=======
What does your evidence say about the Tanach's stories about the flood,
about the plagues on Egypt and the parting of the sea,
about the day that the sun stood still in the sky (Joshua 10),
about Elijah raising someone from the dead,
rabbinic stories about the Hanukka oil lasting for several days longer
than possible,
about the rabbis creating golems,
etc.?
fact-c...@hotmail.com
> "PMDavis" <pmdla...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:75god1lh0ak9tjjbb...@4ax.com...
> >
> >>"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
> >>news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
> >>
> >>Snipped all the 9th party references taken from the Bible
> >>
> >>oh look, nothing left
> >>
> >
> >
> > Smipped off the ability to reasonably explain the existance and
> > authorship of historic literature.
>
> >
> > Oh look, no argument left.
>
>
> Susan
=======
Once again, Susan is not complaining about a thread that is
cross-posted between alt.messianic and soc.culture.jewish.
Because it is only a "sin" when I cross-post between the 2 groups.
Ben Goren
> Riain Barton wrote:
>
>> Not only did no one notice, but we have scientific data to
>> prove that these things did not happen during that time frame.
>
> What does your evidence say about the Tanach's stories about the
> flood, about the plagues on Egypt and the parting of the sea,
> about the day that the sun stood still in the sky (Joshua 10),
> about Elijah raising someone from the dead, rabbinic stories
> about the Hanukka oil lasting for several days longer than
> possible, about the rabbis creating golems, etc.?
What the fuck does any of that have to do wither whether or not
Jesus actually existed?
Please, we've got all the nails in the Christian coffin on this
one; we just need to sit on the lid a bit longer until the
screaming subsides.
No Jew I know of is trying to shove Judaism down people's
throats. (Yes, there's a lot of...unpleasantness...going on in
Israel and Palestine, but that's a fight for survival, not
of religious conversion.) So long as they remain polite about
it--and, really, they have for the past few thousand years--we can
let them have their delusions in peace.
So let's not lose focus, okay?
Malcolm
"Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
> Don't be silly, you don't make claims based on evidence you don't have.
> If the documents existed and checked out as being genuine. Then they
> would be considered evidence. That is what we are discussing here -
> actual verifiable direct evidence. I was just offering an example of the
> type of evidence that would be acceptable to a disinterested party.
>
Evidence is anything of relevance which is consistent with a hypothesis. It
may be strong, it may be weak, usually there is some evidence for a disputed
position.
The fifty documents are all very clearly evidence. You might not like some
of them. A person who believes in a historical Jesus may even agree with you
on a few points, such as a late date for a particular document that some
scholars think was early. But evidence it is. And since we have fifty
pieces, it is conclusive evidence that only kooks dismiss.
Ben Goren
I have two pieces of evidence sitting right in front of me. One
is a ream of blank paper; it's exactly as relevant as the
overwhelming majority of items from your list. The other is a
clump of fur that came off my cat while I was brushing her. I'm
not sure, but I think it's in the shape of this sentence: ``Jesus
never existed.'' That's exactly as relevant as the one or two
remaining items on your list.
So, why aren't you happy with my evidence? Why do you dismiss it
and call me a kook?
By the way, Iasion is at it again. This time, he compiled an
exhaustive list of first- and second-century authors, historians,
and astronomers who should, could, might, and shouldn't have
mentioned Jesus. Here it is:
Combine that with his absolute demolition of your famous fifty
sources, and that makes you look like one of the dumbest bitches
on USENET. Careful, or you'll start to even catch up with
duke....
kathryn
"Malcolm" <regn...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:dbh455$ner$7...@nwrdmz01.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com...
>
> 30-60 Passion Narrative
> 40-80 Lost Sayings Gospel Q
> 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
> 100-150 1 Timothy
> 100-150 2 Timothy
> 100-150 Titus
> 100-150 Apocalypse of Peter
> 100-150 Secret Book of James
> 100-150 Preaching of Peter
> 100-160 Gospel of the Ebionites
> 100-160 Gospel of the Nazoreans
> 100-160 Shepherd of Hermas
> 100-160 2 Peter
> 100-200 Odes of Solomon
> 101-220 Book of Elchasai
> 105-115 Ignatius of Antioch
> 110-140 Polycarp to the Philippians
> 110-140 Papias
> 110-160 Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel
> 110-160 Traditions of Matthias
> 111-112 Pliny the Younger
> 115 Suetonius
> 115 Tacitus
> 120-130 Quadratus of Athens
> 120-130 Apology of Aristides
> 120-140 Basilides
> 120-140 Naassene Fragment
> 120-160 Valentinus
> 120-180 Apocryphon of John
> 120-180 Gospel of Mary
> 120-180 Dialogue of the Savior
> 120-180 Gospel of the Savior
> 120-180 2nd Apocalypse of James
> 120-180 Trimorphic Protennoia
>
>
*LMAO*
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:dbm74i$4ad$4...@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>
> "Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
>> Don't be silly, you don't make claims based on evidence you don't
>> have. If the documents existed and checked out as being genuine. Then
>> they would be considered evidence. That is what we are discussing
>> here - actual verifiable direct evidence. I was just offering an
>> example of the type of evidence that would be acceptable to a
>> disinterested party.
>>
> Very basic logic lacking.
> Evidence is anything of relevance which is consistent with a
> hypothesis. It may be strong, it may be weak, usually there is some
> evidence for a disputed position.
The logic is correct, see below.
> The fifty documents are all very clearly evidence.
They are evidence only that christians existed at the time and of what
christians believed and other party accounts of what christians beleived
or what they thought about christians (abominable cult seems to be the
common consensus for the later).
> You might not like
> some of them. A person who believes in a historical Jesus may even
> agree with you on a few points, such as a late date for a particular
> document that some scholars think was early. But evidence it is. And
> since we have fifty pieces, it is conclusive evidence that only kooks
> dismiss.
Peter Kirby's list does not even address the question of evidence for
christ as an historical figure. I personally believe that Jesus/Yeshua
bin Yusef as the founder of the christian religions was an actual
person. That is just based on the observation that religious cults
usually seem to start with a single leader. I do also believe that the
gospel stories are highly embellished version of second or third hand
oral accounts mixed up with the mythology of other religions that
existed at the time. All that is a different question as to whether or
not direct evidence for Jesus as an historical figure exists. As I said
Roman records of the trial would fit the bill but we don't have those.
What we do have is evidence of christians, what christians believed and
other party accounts of what christians believed. No evidence at all for
Jesus as an historical figure. You seem to lack the brain power or
comprehension to grasp this fact.
Klazmon.
>
>
>
Malcolm
"Ben Goren" <ben....@gmail.com> wrote
>
> Think about it, for a moment. You're a young lad of, say,
> thirteen. Just had your Bar Mitzvoh. At the same time you're
> studying for this most important rite of passage, some strange new
> Rabbi is going around, healing the sick, walking on water, and
> generally doing the impossible. Maybe you were one of the ones
> who ate some of that fish and bread. Preaching love and kindness
> (and hatred and slavery and murder, too, but we won't get into
> that right now), if nothing else. Then, there's this huge scandal
> where Pilate doesn't think he should be executed but goes
> along with it just to keep the local priesthood happy. They
> most publicly crucify him; you probably see it with your own
> eyes. Then, the dead start coming out of their graves. A few days
> later, after he's dead and buried, you see this same man whom you
> saw crucified walking the streets.
>
> Then, you, a most impressionable boy-become-man, completely ignore
> all of this until you're forty years old, an old man for the time,
> with naught but a few more years left in you. That's when you
> finally decide to write it all down. And you're the first to do
> so. And, for some reason, not one historian, Roman official, or
> anybody else saw fit to write any of this down, either. In the
> middle of the first mostly-literate society in history.
>
> even less sense than the Bible itself--and /that/ takes doing.
>
You make a very obvious error.
Not all documents survive. That we don't have anything by the young man,
doesn't mean that the young man didn't write anything down.
Malcolm
"Emma Pease" <em...@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote
>
> Well except Chrestus not Christos and also in the wrong place in the
> wrong time makes it very weak evidence. Note I'm not getting rid of
> the evidence but saying it is very weak evidence.
>
Christian community in Rome. Therefore it is extremely weak evidence for a
historical Jesus, because it tends to reinforce the general historical
credibility of the Christian documents.
But it is perfectly consistent, in itself, with a messiah born hundreds of
years before.
>
> Tacitus' error is a different matter but he was writing in the early
> second century about events some decades before. There is no
> disagreement that by the beginning of the second century the story of
> Jesus was fairly well established (with variations) amongst Christians
> and that Christians existed. I very much doubt that Tacitus looked up
> government records to see Pilate's actual status and his actions (even
> if records of crucifixions in the 30sCE in Judea existed in his time)
> instead he must have taken the story at second or third hand. His is
> more evidence about what people believed in his time about the origins
> of Christians rather than what the actual origin was.
>
he simply accepted Christians' own account of their origins. But St Paul was
supposed to have believed in a celestial Jesus, crucified by the spirits of
heaven. So how come Christians in Tacitus's day had decided that Jesus was
crucified under Pontius Pilate? That's one of the gaping holes in the Jesus
Deniers' case.
Malcolm
"Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
>
> Why not. It's a standard experiment starting with monoclonal bacteria.
>
I'm not sure I understand the exact protocol you are referring to.
One thing you can do is take a mixed (not monclonal) population of bacteria,
and add an antibiotic. With any luck, you get two or three colonies forming
where individuals were resistant to bacteria.
However the creationists won't be happy with this. You are demonstrating
artificial selection, not evolution (except in a technical sense).
So you do what I think might be your experiment. Take some bacteria with
antibody resistance, and knock it out with a mutagen. These bacteria are all
genetically identical.
Then add the antibody and, with any luck, you get what is called revertants.
A few mutants which have gone back to being resistant.
However the creationist might with some justification regard this as
cheating. You've just gone back to a form you once had.
Then of course some smart creationist will point out that antibiotic
resistance is carried on plasmids. The resistance isn't being transmitted to
descendants at all. These plasmids are passed around between bacteria,
sometimes even over species barriers.
If the evolutionist hasn't prepared really well, at this point his case
starts to look rather weak.
In fact there is a long term bacterial evolution experiment that has been
running since 1988. I obviously don't have time to repeat such an experiment
personally. The bacteria were E coli in 1988 and now are still what anyone
would call E. coli. Response to selection is slowly levelling off, in a
typical pattern for artificial selection experiments. Creationists would
reject this evidence.
So if they can't do it in seventeen years, I doubt that you can devise an
experiment to demonstrate evolution on the tabletop, according to
creationist standards.
However creationism remains a kook theory. We don't believe in evolution
because we can recreate it in the lab.
Malcolm
>
> If there's no physical or inadequate physical evidence then the worth
> of the document is extremely or completely weak. All you can do is
> speculate.
>
evidence is a manuscript that was obviously copied from some original
written many centuries before.
Often, as with most of the Greeks, we still have a text which is extensive
and largely intact, and there is no reason to believe in any major
interpolations or editing.
>
If you have a manuscript created close to the date of composition, then of
course you examine it physically and use that evidence, for instnace to get
a firm last date.
>
> The only difference in hard sciences and history is that historical
> documental evidence usually isn't very hard to verify. The problem is
> a lot of people assume because of this, that you don't need to do so.
>
everything must be treated with the most extreme scepticism. Few historians
adopt such a stance, even the Jesus Deniers when a date or the historicity
of a certain person happens to be to their liking.
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:dbmhfb$3ar$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>
> "Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
>>
>> Why not. It's a standard experiment starting with monoclonal
>> bacteria.
>>
> That's where you get into trouble with creationists.
>
> I'm not sure I understand the exact protocol you are referring to.
>
> One thing you can do is take a mixed (not monclonal) population of
> bacteria, and add an antibiotic. With any luck, you get two or three
> colonies forming where individuals were resistant to bacteria.
Nope, you start with a monoclonal colony. Expose to a mutagenic source to
speed up the onset of genetic variation. After a while apply selective
pressure such as exposing to antbiotics as you suggest above.
>
> However the creationists won't be happy with this. You are
> demonstrating artificial selection, not evolution (except in a
> technical sense).
Creationist wouldn't be happy if god himself showed them evolution working.
They worship a literal interpretation of the old testament not a god.
BTW Not all science is done in the lab. Field work is perfectly valid.
The evidence for common descent summarised:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
BTW your comment that the E coli you were talking about are "still E coli",
that is exactly how evolution works. Humans are still apes and still
primates and still placental mammals, , ad nauseum, ,, still eukaryotes -
life.
http://www.tolweb.org/tree?group=life_on_earth
Not that it has anything to do with the topic at hand.
Klazmon.
<SNIP>
Ben Goren
> But St Paul was supposed to have believed in a celestial Jesus,
> crucified by the spirits of heaven. So how come Christians in
> Tacitus's day had decided that Jesus was crucified under Pontius
> Pilate? That's one of the gaping holes in the Jesus Deniers'
> case.
What the fuck? Did I actually read that correctly?
You're saying that the /MOST/ important figure in early
Christianity, the one who was closest to the source, believed that
there was no real Jesus...and you're using that to justify your
belief that there really /WAS/ such a person?!
That's it. I give up. Your head is so far up your ass that you
think your own farts are the Word of God.
Goodbye.
Ben Goren
> <SNIP>
It's hopeless, Klazmon. A bit farther down in the thread, Malcolm
just used the fact that Paul didn't believe that Jesus actually
existed...as evidence that Jesus actually existed.
We've got a duke wannabe on our hands, here. Toy with him if you
like, but that's all he's good for.
Mark K. Bilbo
And how the Chinese managed to not notice they were under water during
"the flood"...
Patricia Heil
"Emma Pease" <em...@kanpai.stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:slrnddr7e...@munin.Stanford.EDU...
That's what I was saying, Tacitus is not evidence.
Iasion
Malcom:
> The fifty documents are all very clearly evidence.
> You might not like some of them. A person who
> believes in a historical Jesus may even agree with
> you on a few points, such as a late date for a particular
> document that some scholars think was early.
> But evidence it is. And since we have fifty pieces,
> it is conclusive evidence that only kooks dismiss.
Rubbish.
I carefully and comprehensively analysed your "50 documents" (of
course, you couldn't even get the number right, let alone their
import.)
You totally IGNORED my anaylsis!
Did you think we didn't notice you RAN away?
Now you make the same empty claim that has been clearly proven wrong?
You showed us quite clearly that you have no knowledge of the subject,
that you cannot debate in good faith, that you cannot deal with
arguments, that you just preach your faithful beliefes no matter what.
Why do you bother?
No-one here believes a word you say anymore.
Iasion
Kate
I was talking about the common person making that assumption.
Mark K. Bilbo
burst into the room and exclaimed:
> We don't know where Tacitus got his information from. It may have been
> that he simply accepted Christians' own account of their origins. But St
> Paul was supposed to have believed in a celestial Jesus, crucified by the
> spirits of heaven. So how come Christians in Tacitus's day had decided
> that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate? That's one of the gaping
> holes in the Jesus Deniers' case.
Christian theology was seriously in flux in its early days and had several
variants. And Annals was written about 117 C.E., plenty of time for a
"celestial" being to be in the process of being anthropomorphized. Paul
was writing about the 50s? A good half century of separation...
Malcolm
"Mark K. Bilbo" <alt-a...@org.webmaster> wrote
>
> variants. And Annals was written about 117 C.E., plenty of time for a
> "celestial" being to be in the process of being anthropomorphized. Paul
> was writing about the 50s? A good half century of separation...
>
We agree that St Paul mentioned a Jesus person in the 50s of so. And that
Tacitus said in 117AD that this person was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
So your thery is that St Paul believed in a celestial Jesus, but that by
117AD this had been transmuted into a historical figure.
So can you give any more details? For instance, was St Paul the only person
to believe in the celestial Jesus, or was this the general opinion at the
time? Was there any dispute between the celestialists and the anthropists?
At what point did the changeover take place?
Malcolm
"Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
> Peter Kirby's list does not even address the question of evidence for
> christ as an historical figure.
>
>
> No evidence at all for Jesus as an historical figure. You seem to lack the
> brain power
> or comprehension to grasp this fact.
>
mentioning Jesus, obviously you have nothing to say about the strength of
such evidence. There is "no evidence at all" that Jesus was historical,
right. So you can't think that such evidence is weak, or that you have found
an alternative explanation for it. How can you explain evidence that doesn't
exist?
Ben Goren
> Llanzlan Klazmon wrote:
>
>> Peter Kirby's list does not even address the question of
>> evidence for christ as an historical figure.
>
> Kirby's list is the evidence.
Kirby's list is a list of documents about what the nascent church
believed. It is wonderful evidence for that, but it is not
evidence for an historical Jesus. For one, none of the documents
are anywhere near close enough in time to be useful for that
purpose; for another, only a very few even make claims that
can be interpreted as being of an historical figure; and,
finally, the documents themselves are such a horrible mish-mash of
contradiction that they can't be relied upon for anything but a
description of the author's mental state.
>> No evidence at all for Jesus as an historical figure. You seem
>> to lack the brain power or comprehension to grasp this fact.
>
> Since you don't seem to believe that there is such a list of
> early documents mentioning Jesus, obviously you have nothing to
> say about the strength of such evidence. There is "no evidence
> at all" that Jesus was historical, right. So you can't think
> that such evidence is weak, or that you have found an
> alternative explanation for it. How can you explain evidence
> that doesn't exist?
We're not saying that the documents Kirby lists don't exist, liar.
(Well, there /are/ a couple on that list that don't exist and
might well never have, and we have serious problems with many of
the dates.)
What we /are/ saying is that they're not evidence for an
historical Jesus.
Look. I've got a file on my computer that is evidence that
my great-grandfather was the rightful heir to the King of
Phlogiston. Is that evidence that evidence that Phlogiston
existed, or is it evidence that I think that Plogiston existed
(and that I'm insane)?
Cheers,
b&
--
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
All but God can prove this sentence true.
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Iasion
You ignored it all,
now you make the same nonsense claims again !
What a sad joke.
Come on Malcom, when are you going to actually LOOK at the list?
Iasion
Ben Goren
> Mark K. Bilbo wrote:
>
>> Christian theology was seriously in flux in its early days and
>> had several variants. And Annals was written about 117 C.E.,
>> plenty of time for a "celestial" being to be in the process of
>> being anthropomorphized. Paul was writing about the 50s? A good
>> half century of separation...
>
> Ok, now we're getting somewhere.
Only if you're not trying to set up a strawman.
> We agree that St Paul mentioned a Jesus person in the 50s of so.
You're reading a great deal more into Mark's statement than I
think he intended.
Paul /might/ have been writing about Jesus in the 50s, at
the earliest. But we don't know. Paul's existence is somewhat
established, though by no means certain.
> And that Tacitus said in 117AD that this person was crucified
> under Pontius Pilate. So your thery is that St Paul believed in
> a celestial Jesus, but that by 117AD this had been transmuted
> into a historical figure.
Before writing another word, I /must/ stress that this is
speculation.
We have a complete lack of evidence as to the historicity of
Jesus. (Once again, very few of your ``FIFTY DOCUMENTS'' even
/claim/ an historical Jesus, and those are all far too late and /
or self-identified as hearsay.)
In the absence of evidence, speculation is reasonable.
We know that Paul, if he existed, had an hallucination on the
road to Damascus. And we also know that that's the earliest
recorded encounter with Jesus in all of your famous ``FIFTY
DOCUMENTS.'' From there, speculation that that's the origin of the
myth is not unreasonable--but /far/ from conclusive.
> So can you give any more details? For instance, was St Paul the
> only person to believe in the celestial Jesus, or was this the
> general opinion at the time? Was there any dispute between the
> celestialists and the anthropists? At what point did the
> changeover take place?
I'm not the world's greatest authority on the beliefs of the early
church. I think you'll find it most profitable to do a bit of
research for yourself to discover the origins of your own
religion.
You might find this link a good starting point:
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/beginnings.html
Yes, it's biased against Jesus. But what would you expect of a
source from us? Examine it, and refute, if you can, anything you
find offensive.
Remember, science proves nothing; it /falsifies./ The truth is
what's left after everything else has been demolished. If you
can't refute something, it just might be true.
Llanzlan Klazmon
news:dbp5bs$qu5$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>
> "Llanzlan Klazmon" <Kla...@llurdiaxorb.govt> wrote
>> Peter Kirby's list does not even address the question of evidence for
>> christ as an historical figure.
>>
> Kirby's list is the evidence.
The question is what those documents are evidence of. As stated none of
them legitimately address the historical existance of Jesus.
>>
>> No evidence at all for Jesus as an historical figure. You seem to
>> lack the brain power
>> or comprehension to grasp this fact.
>>
> Since you don't seem to believe that there is such a list of early
> documents mentioning Jesus, obviously you have nothing to say about
> the strength of such evidence.
Early documents mentioning christians do not establish the historical
existence of Jesus. The gospels, which do specifically mention Jesus are
not acceptable evidence as they are too late and they cannot be attributed
to eyewitnesses. i.e they are hearsay as a court of law would say.
> There is "no evidence at all" that
> Jesus was historical, right. So you can't think that such evidence is
> weak, or that you have found an alternative explanation for it.
The poster Iasion already gave you a detailed explanation of why the list
is invalid. You have not refuted anything he wrote on this subject.
> How
> can you explain evidence that doesn't exist?
What are you babbling about. If the evidence doesn't exist, why would I
want to explain it?
Klazmon.
>
>
Iasion
> We agree that St Paul mentioned
> a Jesus person in the 50s of so.
Nothing in Paul is a clear reference to a HISTORICAL PERSON.
Paul makes clearly spiritual references to a spiritual being crucified
by the powers of the Astral plane.
Note that NOT ONE person except you has used the phrase "celestial
Jesus" - just another typical Malcolm balls-up.
> So your theory is that St Paul believed in a celestial Jesus,
> but that by 117AD this had been transmuted into a historical figure.
80 years - a couple of generations, (the Gospels were arising in this
later period), easy for someone to think the STORY of Jesus was real.
> For instance, was St Paul the only person
> to believe in the celestial Jesus,
< or was this the general opinion at the time?
> Was there any dispute between the celestialists and the anthropists?
Dear me, you know NOTHING about this subject do you, Malcom?
Many Gnostics believed in a NON-physical spiritual Jesus :
* Basilides called Jesus a "phantom",
* Bardesanes did too,
* Marcion claimed Jesus was a phantom or spiritual entity,
* 2 John mentions those who denied Jesus "came in the flesh"
* Polycarp mentions those who denied Jesus "came in the flesh"
Indeed, some of the items in YOUR list of "50 documents" are Gnostic
works which include a "celestial Jesus" - but of course, you wouldn't
know that because you never even checked any of the documents :
* Apocryphon of John
* Gospel of Mary
* Dialogue of the Savior
* Gospel of the Savior
* 2nd Apocalypse of James
* Trimorphic Protennoia
The 2nd century is a battle-ground between the Gnostics and the
Literalists - eventually the Literalists won and burned the Gnostics
and their works.
Iasion
deowll
"Ben Goren" <b...@trumpetpower.com> wrote in message
news:42e03025$1...@spool9-west.superfeed.net...
with your world view. Bye.
deowll
"Iasion" <quen...@iinet.net.au> wrote in message
news:1121991940....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Malcolm:
>
>> We agree that St Paul mentioned
>> a Jesus person in the 50s of so.
>
> Nothing in Paul is a clear reference to a HISTORICAL PERSON.
>
> Paul makes clearly spiritual references to a spiritual being crucified
> by the powers of the Astral plane.
Paul would have considered you to be an abomination for evening speaking of
an astral plane. The dude was ultra orthodox!
Ben Goren
> Got it. Think all the old documents were written by liers if it
> doesn't go with your world view. Bye.
My, what a lovely strawman.
My world view has absolutely fucking diddly-squat to do with it.
First, with just a few exceptions, the old documents don't even
address the question of the historicity of Jesus (assuming, that
is, we're using Malcolm's famous ``FIFTY DOCUMENTS'' as the
list). Those that do are self-described hearsay. And /all/ are so
far after the fact that they're of no use in settling the
question, even if they said what Malcolm claims they say.
Show me a document that dates to the first half of the first
century, is authentic, claims to be written by an eyewitness,
makes specific claims about an actual Jesus, and is devoid both of
obvious tampering and outrageous claims, and then we'll have
something worth discussing.
Until then, you're just full of shit.
Cheers,
b&
Christopher A. Lee
wrote:
Where did he say that, liar? Hint: he didn't; that is your invention.
Darrell Stec
deo...@bellsouth.net wrote:
Let us try another approach. Start with three or four passages from those
50 sources (leaving aside the NT for now) which you think support your
point of view of an historical Jesus, contemporaneous to him, and let us
discuss them.
Personally I doubt you have read any of them, and I'll chance to guess you
haven't even read the biblical books thoroughly. Assuredly you haven't any
idea what the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or Coptic versions say, nor where they
differ. But give it your best shot. The ball's in your court.
>> --
>> BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
>> All but God can prove this sentence true.
>>
>> ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet
>> News==----
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--
Later,
Darrell Stec dar...@neo.rr.com
Webpage Sorcery
http://webpagesorcery.com
We Put the Magic in Your Webpages
Darrell Stec
b...@trumpetpower.com wrote:
>
> Show me a document that dates to the first half of the first
> century, is authentic, claims to be written by an eyewitness,
> makes specific claims about an actual Jesus, and is devoid both of
> obvious tampering and outrageous claims, and then we'll have
> something worth discussing.
>
That's not fair. The earliest of even the smallest FRAGMENT of any
document, presently considered the Egerton Document, cannot be reasonably
dated earlier than the middle of the second century, and most scholars
would give a date into the third century CE. And even the Egerton Document
(5 fragments) contains parts of a gospel story unrelated to any others
found in the canonical works except for one piece that is reminiscent of or
parallels some sentences in GJohn.
Darrell Stec
quen...@iinet.net.au wrote:
Or better yet, read those things that appear on the list.
Ben Goren
> quen...@iinet.net.au wrote:
>
>> I answered your list, showing you were totally wrong.
>>
>> You ignored it all, now you make the same nonsense claims
>> again!
>>
>> What a sad joke.
>>
>> Come on Malcom, when are you going to actually LOOK at the
>> list?
>>
>> Iasion
>
> Or better yet, read those things that appear on the list.
How true. It's quite clear that nobody who cites Josephus as a
source has actually read the /Testimonium/ in context. Here it is,
with a bit of that context, shamelessly stolen from:
http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-18.htm
> So he bid the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting
> reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had
> been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows
> than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that
> were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare
> them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were
> caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a
> great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran
> away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition.
>
> 3. Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be
> lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful
> works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
> pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of
> the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the
> suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to
> the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake
> him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the
> divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other
> wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so
> named from him, are not extinct at this day.
>
> 4. About the same time also another sad calamity put the Jews
> into disorder, and certain shameful practices happened about the
> temple of Isis that was at Rome. I will now first take notice of
> the wicked attempt about the temple of Isis, and will then give
> an account of the Jewish affairs.
So Jesus the Christ was ``another sad calamity put the Jews into
disorder''? After /that/ glowing description of him? The Messiah
/HIMSELF?/ I mean, what the /fuck?/
And just look at how much text Josephus gives to Paulina and
Mundus in paragraph 4 of that chapter. A harlot and her lover get
/ten times/ as much copy as the founder of a new religion who's
stealing away Jews and gentiles both? I mean, what the /fuck?/
But, then again...these are the people who take the religion
itself seriously. None so stupid as those with a closed mind....
Cheers,
b&
Ben Goren
> Ben Goren wrote:
>
>> Show me a document that dates to the first half of the first
>> century, is authentic, claims to be written by an eyewitness,
>> makes specific claims about an actual Jesus, and is devoid both
>> of obvious tampering and outrageous claims, and then we'll have
>> something worth discussing.
>
> That's not fair. The earliest of even the smallest FRAGMENT of
> any document, presently considered the Egerton Document, cannot
> be reasonably dated earlier than the middle of the second
> century, and most scholars would give a date into the third
> century CE. And even the Egerton Document (5 fragments)
> contains parts of a gospel story unrelated to any others found
> in the canonical works except for one piece that is reminiscent
> of or parallels some sentences in GJohn.
Hey, it ain't /our/ problem that the Christians don't have
anything to document their made-up god, is it?
If he were real, my request would be trivial to comply with. QED
and all that....
Darrell Stec
b...@trumpetpower.com wrote:
Interesting, a complementary bit from the viewpoint of a believer about
Jesus the Messiah breaking into the middle of a discussion about Pilate (a
technique found nowhere else in Josephus) by a faithful Jew (a Sadducee in
fact) who would have known the formula required by their messiah. And in
Eusebius' style of writing too. Damn that Josephus was good. Copying the
writing style of a man who wouldn't be born for a few more centuries.
Recently read a new book about Pompeii and Herculeanum. Seems some
university has perfected a technique that allows them to take the chard
lump of a manuscript, separate the pages, and bring the dark ink to the
foreground of the black pages. It's a shame Jewish Antiquities wasn't
written until 94, else we might have had a first run copy. But at least we
will soon know how faithfully some of our classics have been reproduced.