There is no evidence for a biblical jesus

[Tassman]

I'm afraid the paranoid schizo around here is you my friend. It was very clear from the outset that conservatives did not take part in this fraudulent seminar and you yourself also argued that it was made up of liberals and skeptics but now you want to claim that the invitation was open to anyone. SO open that that the conservative majority did not even attend the seminar. That alone should tell you that something is wrong right there. Oh course anti-theists such as yourself always have an agenda to uphold and you will stick to that agenda even though the facts of reality do not stick to your case. it is very common for anti-theists to have these delusional fantasies in which they believe that they must be right though the facts do not support them.

I said that membership of the Jesus Seminar was open to all – not good on detail, are you?

The reason for conservative biblical scholars avoiding the Jesus Seminar is because they are not sympathetic to its goals - as should be obvious. Conservative scholars bring to their research the assumption that the bible is divinely inspired. And “inspired texts” and “miracles” lie outside the scope of historical-critical methodology as adopted by the Jesus Seminar.

Re the bolded: You seem to speak with authority about “delusional fantasies.”

Movie director a biblical scholar does not make. You have been shown now several times that your pathetic of an excuse of a Jesus Seminar included know nothing layabouts like Paul Verhoeven, a film director of such films as Showgirls and Starship Troopers. I'm not sure what Biblical anaylsis that Paul Verhoeven showed in these films at all. I don't think I heard the word Jesus in those films once, neermind a historical analysis. However it is clear as daylight, except in your delusional little mind that this undermines the whole process that the Jesus Seminar based itself on or would you accept Ken Ham speaking on evolution as a legitimate process. It is so often shown in the swarm of anti-theists such as yourself, that approach these boards that you are not interested in facts but you are only looking for excuses to remain ignorant in your delusional self-obsessed beliefs. Also not to mention that your precious Jesus Seminar is now only 74 members big from an original 150 associates. The Jesus Seminar will soon be forgotten about and will fade away and everybody will not remember the delusions of a group that tried to misrepresent history.

I provided the link for you to check on the credentials of the Jesus Seminar Fellows but all you can do is witter on about how one particular Fellow is unsuitable in your view. Now click on their names and check on their credentials for yourself. It’s not up to me to hand-feed you.

http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/list.html

The rest of your paragraph is merely wish-fulfillment. The fact is that your favored conservative apologist/scholars are very much a minority in the world of biblical scholarship.

I know for a fact that you haven't read Witherington. That's very easy to see. If you want to prove me wrong then you will quote something by him from one of his books. Witheringtons work has been praised by many, and he is a well respected historian. It would do you well to remember that a lot of his work as been peer reviewed and no the westar institute is not the official organisation that does this.

The likes of Witherington and Blomberg are peer reviewed by each other and others of their small, insular conservative clique. They are primarily American evangelicals and as well as the two above include Darrell Bock, Timothy Paul Jones, J. Ed Komoszewski, and Philip Jenkins. Also there are the Canadians Stanley Porter, Gordon L. Heath, and Craig Evans, and the English bishop N.T. Wright.

They peer-review each other, contribute testimonials to one another's books and most depend upon small conservative Christian presses to get published – or self publish like the thuggish JP Holding.

Your guru Craig Blomberg is a professor at Denver Seminary and has committed himself “without mental reservation” to the belief that “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments” are “the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak”. Thus he approaches his biblical scholarship with committed religious presuppositions as is seen in the Statement of Faith where he holds tenure:

http://www.denverseminary.edu/about-us/what-we-believe/

The same applies to Ben Witherington at Asbury Seminary.

http://www.asburyseminary.edu/about/statement-of-faith

And before you scream “genetic fallacy”, the inescapable fact is that the scholars of ANY research institution who claim to have the answers before they begin their research CANNOT claim objectivity.

You didn't mention anything because I didn't cut anything from any of your posts, so I will ask you once again to quote it and link it. If not then quite simply you didn't say it. Understand? Once again the pope is not a biblical scholar, it's not that hard to understand but I know it will be for you because you have a hard time telling reality and fiction apart.

I have already said that I don't really care what he thinks in this reagrd and that is that. That is the end of it. I will listen to bright scholars who know what they talking about and publish their works for review on a regular basis, and yes, this includes the likes of Witherington and Craig Blomberg, etc.

The pope has a Ph.D in theology and was for many years a university professor in biblical studies. Are you saying that theology is not connected to Holy Scripture?

I quoted from Pope Benedict’s book “Jesus of Nazareth” in #203 which you dismissed in the following post as being “asserted but not shown”, i.e. you did not address his point that historical-critical methodology has severe limitations when it comes to alleged “inspired texts” in that they can only be accepted on faith.

As for Witherington and Blomberg, see above.

You misunderstand, but that because you are delsuinal and stupid. Of course miracle claims are not accepted apriori in the first place and the Bible is treated as an historical text by all scholars, including the likes of Witherington and Blomberg.

Nonsense! The bible is NOT treated as an historical text by the likes of Witherington and Blomberg and the miracle claims ARE accepted a-priori in the first place.

They are committed to believing that the bible and its miracles are THE WORD OF GOD: “We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation, and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak” - Denver Seminary Statement of Faith.

THIS is their starting point.

However arguments can be made in favour of the resurrection based on the evidence we have and this is what you have missed big time. Remember I said that historians work towards an inference to the best explanation, this can be done and it can be argued for a Christian reality. The fact that you are unaware of this leads me to assume that you don't actually know very much at all and that you haven't read any historical works outside those of your select few favourites who just s happen to agree with you. It is this delusional pyschopathy that you display so elegantly that leads me not to only conclude that you are misinformed but that you also have great difficulty differentiating between reality and fiction.

Now you're getting into the realms of philosophy instead of history. You are losing this argument badly and you know it and now you are retreating into the philosophical debate with phrases like "Any natural explanation, no matter how improbable, is more probable than a supernatural explanation". The fact is that historians argue for an argument based on an inference to the best explanation. They do not always decide on what is the most probable thing to happen. It is most probable for a volcano not to errupt, but this does not explain Mt Versuivius actually errupting, so obviously probability cannot come into the framework on that deduction.

The fact is, the resurrection fits perfectly well with the data we have and all other explanations that have been forwarded in an attempt to explain Christianity does not fit the evidence we have.

Theft may be suggested for the empty tomb but it is ruled out because it does not fit the data perfectly. It does not explain the resurrection appearences afterwards, it does not explain why the disciples came back to Christianity after deserting it, it does not explain why Christianity rose to a popular religion in the area. There would have been no reason for anybody to steal a dead body of a poor Jewish carpenter, he was not burried with any gold, so why steal a dead Jewish body of a normal man who didn't do anything. It does not explain how the thiefs got past the guards of the tomb or how they rolled the stone away to get to the body. In short it does very little to explain the evidence that we have.

It has been ruled out. This is another sign that your delusional mind has done nothing to read any texts on the matter which show how these things have been ruled out.

All the above is a confused self-justification for believing in miracles and based on wish-fulfillment not evidence. Re the disciples returning to the faith, we have no way of knowing what their motives were any more than we know the motives of the early Mormons following the teachings of Joseph Smith or the original Muslims following Muhammad. This is all speculation not evidence.

The fact is that for as long as a possible natural explanation of an alleged miracle, then it cannot be positively ruled out by apologists. It will always stand as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in miracle claims or alleged post resurrection experiences.

There is insufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection and your attempt, along with such as WL Craig, to regard the resurrection as a sort of default event, having in your own minds ruled out a natural explanation, is invalid. If there is not an obvious natural explanation then one can only say we do not know what happened. Btw: Mt Vesuvius eruptions are natural events – predicted or not predicted. Bodily resurrections are not – they are supernatural phenomena and there is no verified evidence of the supernatural.

The comparative handful of apologist scholars who accept miraculous explanations are suspending historical methodology at that point and indulging in special pleading favoring miracle/faith claims. This is the point I have been making all along.

The Jesus Seminar did not use history in their assessment, which I have repeatedly shown you, oh like a 1000 times now. Their criteria for dismissing passages from the Bible was so insanely delusional that it would tear the whole of history apart and I have already shown this to you. It is not reasonable to make those faith based assumptions instead of having accurate historical methods to determine thos things. And yes, it is a faith based assumption to assume that the early church back-tracked a lot of theological agenda into the words of Jesus instead of thinking they could have come from Jesus himself.

This is precisely what scholars practicing historical-critical methodology are attempting to determine – as history divorced from assumed religious presuppositions as per you and your apologist scholars.

This is nothing but an attempt to besmirch my character which is so often found in anti-thesits such as yourself who have an agenda to push and will not let the facts speak for themselves. The swarm of anti-theists on these boards usually hold the same attack strategy in claiming falsely that they have been insulted by "personal attacks" when they don't have any rebuttals to the arguments laid at their door. They are normally so self-assured of their correctness and their delusions that they don't need any argumentation to show their points and willfully misrepresent those that provide reasons to show why they are wrong.

It is this agenda that anti-theists cannot let go of, and you have demonstrated this in this thread clearly. It was never in dispute that most critics of the Jesus Seminar were Conservatives but the Jesus Seminar itself was only a representation of 150 people, some of which were not even scholars but of laymen such as movie directors who have no business attending such an event. Lots of other liberal scholars and skeptics didn't even attend or take part in the Jesus Seminar despite your claim that it was open invitation and this is immediately suspect based on that data. The fact that you continually deny that this is the case shows that you are so far gone from your delusions that it is too late for you to engage in any rational thinking or discourse. Such is the way that insane anti-theists such as yourself usually result in a complete mental breakdown from living in their so called fictional reality world that exists in their head rather than having any basis on the real world outside of them. They continually harp on about a Biblical God they don't believe in and don't want to waste their life on and yet here they are arguing away and wasting their life on something they don't "believe in" and yet nobody cares about what they have to say and it makes no difference.

The fact that so many people on this board have dismissed your rantings as pretty much insane and yet still you post away on this board as if it is going to make a slight bit of difference just shows how delusional you are and it is this typical anti-theist behaviour that eventually leads to their mental breakdown and their insanity. It has been self-demonstrated in history that anti-thesitic attitudes are harmful to the mind and also to society as a whole. A look at the actions of Stalin and Mao quite clearly show this.

Not at all! You are besmirching your own character without any help from me as can be seen by your extraordinary rant I’ve bolded above. This is truly amazing stuff.

And last time as well. Remember:

“your pathetic little delusions”, “the type of gutter trash that you read to keep yourself in your delusional thinking”, “more ramblings coming from that delusional mind of yours”, “It is completely ridiculous and delusional to think otherwise”, “instead of this utter trash that you're so used to posting to keep you in your own self deluded day dream”. o quite clearly show this.

Do you really think such an immoderate rant is going to affect me one iota? Or sway the viewing public into believing that you are presenting a reasonable, well argued case? I don’t think so. Get a grip, you Christian fool, you’ve totally lost it.

[Darth Ovious]

I said that membership of the Jesus Seminar was open to all – not good on detail, are you?

The reason for conservative biblical scholars avoiding the Jesus Seminar is because they are not sympathetic to its goals - as should be obvious. Conservative scholars bring to their research the assumption that the bible is divinely inspired. And “inspired texts” and “miracles” lie outside the scope of historical-critical methodology as adopted by the Jesus Seminar.

Re the bolded: You seem to speak with authority about “delusional fantasies.”

Exactly membership to the Jesus Seminar was so open that even know nothing film directors such as Paul Verhoeven could attend and throw in their unqualified voice on the subject, just like Ken Ham turning up to a biology lecture to speak about evolution.

And yes, Conservative scholars would be uninterested in attending a fraudulent unhistorical exercise in concerns to the Jesus Seminar. It was already proven by me that the Jesus Seminar were using unhistorical rules in their dismissal of Biblical passages and this is clearly so because the members of the Jesus Seminar had a dishonest agenda to push and they make assumptions that all the early Christian leaders were liars and con men. Only such anti-theists such as yourself with a lack of arguments make such blanket character assassinations in order to try and discredit their opponents in such a fraudulent way.

I speak with knowledge about "delusional fantasies" because I have had to talk to such anti-theists such as yourself for the last few years I've posted here.

I provided the link for you to check on the credentials of the Jesus Seminar Fellows but all you can do is witter on about how one particular Fellow is unsuitable in your view. Now click on their names and check on their credentials for yourself. It’s not up to me to hand-feed you.

http://www.westarinstitute.org/Fellows/list.html

The rest of your paragraph is merely wish-fulfillment. The fact is that your favored conservative apologist/scholars are very much a minority in the world of biblical scholarship.

I did indeed look at your link, but what I found was a list of unknown, liberal/skeptical nobodies with a reputation that matches their credibility, which sums up to about zero. The list you have provided was of the westar institute and not necessarily all of them had anything to do with the Jesus Seminar so their remains to be seen which ones on that list did take part. Also the Jesus Seminar list of fellows is now only roughly 74 members strong from their original 150. A good half of the fellows have abandoned the ideas that the Jesus Seminar espoused so long ago and those that did leave woke up from their delusional paranoia and realised the crap that they were trying to pull off was highly fraudulent and unhistorical.

Of course, this is up to you to find for yourself. It’s not up to me to hand-feed you.

The likes of Witherington and Blomberg are peer reviewed by each other and others of their small, insular conservative clique. They are primarily American evangelicals and as well as the two above include Darrell Bock, Timothy Paul Jones, J. Ed Komoszewski, and Philip Jenkins. Also there are the Canadians Stanley Porter, Gordon L. Heath, and Craig Evans, and the English bishop N.T. Wright.

They peer-review each other, contribute testimonials to one another's books and most depend upon small conservative Christian presses to get published – or self publish like the thuggish JP Holding.

Your guru Craig Blomberg is a professor at Denver Seminary and has committed himself “without mental reservation” to the belief that “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments” are “the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak”. Thus he approaches his biblical scholarship with committed religious presuppositions as is seen in the Statement of Faith where he holds tenure:

http://www.denverseminary.edu/about-us/what-we-believe/

The same applies to Ben Witherington at Asbury Seminary.

http://www.asburyseminary.edu/about/statement-of-faith

And before you scream “genetic fallacy”, the inescapable fact is that the scholars of ANY research institution who claim to have the answers before they begin their research CANNOT claim objectivity.

Your delusion is so great that you seem to be unaware that there exists independent peer review organisations that peer review the works of these scholars. For instance if we were to take the Society of Biblical Literature and link to it then you could see exactly what I mean.

http://www.sbl-site.org/publications...ejournals.aspx

You can also see that the works from Blomberg and Witherington are indeed reviewed. Take one such review after a search.

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/7150_7770.pdf

This book has several distinguished contributions to offer to biblical scholarship. One of these is its verifiable premise that the New Testament writers are well-versed in ancient rhetoric and that their works reflect their rhetorical sensitivity and skill. Another
important contribution is its stress on the fact that form reveals function and content, as
Witherington underlines that rhetoric is “not just about style or the form of a discourse,
but indeed the form shapes the very substance and meaning of the discourse”

Of course I don't expect you to take notice of this because of your delusional mindset. Also the SBL is responsible for the Journal of Biblical Literature.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal...cal_Literature

Blomberg too is also reviewed in the same manner.

The pope has a Ph.D in theology and was for many years a university professor in biblical studies. Are you saying that theology is not connected to Holy Scripture?

I quoted from Pope Benedict’s book “Jesus of Nazareth” in #203 which you dismissed in the following post as being “asserted but not shown”, i.e. you did not address his point that historical-critical methodology has severe limitations when it comes to alleged “inspired texts” in that they can only be accepted on faith.

As for Witherington and Blomberg, see above.

Once again anti-theists like yourself always like to misrepresent what people say and now is no different. It is their only defence when they cannot put any arguments on the table so they attack with strawmen, misrepresentations and quote mining. You continually quote the pope as if this is supposed to have some authority over me or something but continually I tell you that I don't care what the pope says, he does not represent everyone in the CHristian community and what we have to say.

The quote as far as I am concerned is "Asserted, not shown" just like I said before and that doesn't change based upon who said it and why they said it and it certainly doesn't apply to any misrepresentations that you are posting of it with any quote mining.

As for Witherington and Blomberg, see above.

Nonsense! The bible is NOT treated as an historical text by the likes of Witherington and Blomberg and the miracle claims ARE accepted a-priori in the first place.

They are committed to believing that the bible and its miracles are THE WORD OF GOD: “We believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God, inerrant in the original writings, complete as the revelation of God's will for salvation, and the supreme and final authority in all matters to which they speak” - Denver Seminary Statement of Faith.

THIS is their starting point.

Nonsense! The Bible is tretaed as an historical text by Witherington and Blomberg and they always argue from their books from a non faith based position to justify the eivdence properly. They are respected authors and yet again your denigration of their reputation with your venom is typical once again to anti-theists with an agenda to uphold that they must prove the Bible wrong at all costs including if it means the attack of character of respected professionals in the field who have had recieved great praise from many, not just conservatives on the subject.

Not to mention that some of the names mentioned studied at secular universities to do their degrees in the first place. For instance Darrell Bock earned his degree on the subject from Aberdeen University in Scotland, my home nation, which is by far a lot more secular that America. We do not have any University's over here with statements of faith, so to suggest that these Biblical scholars are not doing their jobs properly is not only insulting but it is an attempt at character assassination that deluded anti-theists such as yourself regularly take part in.

Also not to mention that Craig Blomberg aslo recieved his degree from the exact same University over here in the UK in Scotland. So to question his credentials is not only laughable but delusional and insulting.

All the above is a confused self-justification for believing in miracles and based on wish-fulfillment not evidence. Re the disciples returning to the faith, we have no way of knowing what their motives were any more than we know the motives of the early Mormons following the teachings of Joseph Smith or the original Muslims following Muhammad. This is all speculation not evidence.

The fact is that for as long as a possible natural explanation of an alleged miracle, then it cannot be positively ruled out by apologists. It will always stand as a severe detriment to any confidence one can have in miracle claims or alleged post resurrection experiences.

There is insufficient evidence to warrant belief in Jesus' resurrection and your attempt, along with such as WL Craig, to regard the resurrection as a sort of default event, having in your own minds ruled out a natural explanation, is invalid. If there is not an obvious natural explanation then one can only say we do not know what happened. Btw: Mt Vesuvius eruptions are natural events – predicted or not predicted. Bodily resurrections are not – they are supernatural phenomena and there is no verified evidence of the supernatural.

The comparative handful of apologist scholars who accept miraculous explanations are suspending historical methodology at that point and indulging in special pleading favoring miracle/faith claims. This is the point I have been making all along.

As expected from all anti-theists we have more delusional rantings that dismiss evidence with a handwave and then confused reasoning trying to compare the disciples with other religious figures in history while not taking into account context or reasoning. This is the breakdown in sanity that anti-theists normally undergo where their minds slowly start to crumble and thinking relatively simple things will become more incoherent and deranged.

Meanwhile you once again ignore the process to the best inference of explanation and how it does not rule out miracles. You also ignore how this is a question of philosophy rather than history and you are retreating once again into the philosohical realm because you cannot justify the criteria as a historical one, which you so erroneously claimed that it was, probably partly due to your overbearing insanity and mouth dribbling.

You once again miss the point with Versuivius. It is more probable for a volcano not to errupt, than for it to errupt. So using your convuluted irrational reasoning, because a volcano erruption taking place is unlikely then you must assume that an erruption does not happen. Probability does not come into history, like I told you but you so obviously ignored. It is inference to the best explanation which is valued. An explanation that fits the evidence best, not what is more likely. In the New Testament the evidence fits the ressurection best despite your claim "we cannot know what possibly happened" despite the evidence saying to the contrary that a ressurection did happen.

The comparative handful of skeptical scholars who blank out deny the Biblical explanations held within the texts are suspending historical methodology at that point and indulging in special pleading favouring non faith based claims. This is the point I have been making all along.

This is precisely what scholars practicing historical-critical methodology are attempting to determine – as history divorced from assumed religious presuppositions as per you and your apologist scholars.

No, it is not. You are wrong. Scholars like Witherington and Blomberg use history correctly while the Jesus Seminar smuggled in unhistorical criteria in their dismissal of biblical passages which was repeatedly shown to you and which you continue to ignore.

Not at all! You are besmirching your own character without any help from me as can be seen by your extraordinary rant I’ve bolded above. This is truly amazing stuff.

And last time as well. Remember:

“your pathetic little delusions”, “the type of gutter trash that you read to keep yourself in your delusional thinking”, “more ramblings coming from that delusional mind of yours”, “It is completely ridiculous and delusional to think otherwise”, “instead of this utter trash that you're so used to posting to keep you in your own self deluded day dream”. o quite clearly show this.

Do you really think such an immoderate rant is going to affect me one iota? Or sway the viewing public into believing that you are presenting a reasonable, well argued case? I don’t think so. Get a grip, you Christian fool, you’ve totally lost it.

There is nothing amazing about it. It is a general tactic of anti-theists such as yourself to degrade their opponents with character assassinations instead of answering the arguments laid on the table. They use insults as a way brushing aside and ignoring their opponents critical and devastating arguments and you are no excemption from this.

This common tactic is used in order for anti-theists to stay inside their delusional little fantasy world instead of facing up to reality and having to present any arguments to establish their anti-theistic cause. If you think that this blatant ignorance and self delusion is even close to presenting a reasonable, well argued case, then you are sadly mistaken. Get a grip, you deluded fool, you've totally lost it.

[eklypised]

Theirs about 10 sources outside the Bible that mention either Christ or Christians, early sources, but of course skeptics say they are frauds or Christian interpolation . And skeptics always dismiss the fact that the Gospels and Epistles can be used to provide historical evidence for Jesus. No matter what evidence their is, skeptics closed minds will always see it from their point of view. When you show them evidence they'll just tell you, thats not evidence.

[rogue06]

And skeptics always dismiss the fact that the Gospels and Epistles can be used to provide historical evidence for Jesus.

That's why it always floors me when one proclaims that there isn't any written evidence to support the fact that Jesus ever existed

[Jaecp]

I've always taken someone saying that to mean extra-biblical

[seanD]

I've always taken someone saying that to mean extra-biblical

The problem with that is that skeptics can't demonstrate any extrabiblcal sources that should have mentioned Jesus but didn't. The only sources I know of that even cared about Judean life apart from the Roman Empire is Luke, Josephus, Tacitus, and Philo. The former three do in fact mention Jesus, whereas the latter focused briefly on Caligula and events in Alexandria in the time after Jesus.

[Hamster]

Haha yes, there certainly wasn't a religious and political agenda to make Christianity "A More Authenthic Contemporary Faith "

[Doug Shaver]

Theirs about 10 sources outside the Bible that mention either Christ or Christians, early sources, but of course skeptics say they are frauds or Christian interpolation .

I'm a skeptic, and I don't say that.

[Jaecp]

The problem with that is that skeptics can't demonstrate any extrabiblcal sources that should have mentioned Jesus but didn't. The only sources I know of that even cared about Judean life apart from the Roman Empire is Luke, Josephus, Tacitus, and Philo. The former three do in fact mention Jesus, whereas the latter focused briefly on Caligula and events in Alexandria in the time after Jesus.

There are some pretty big problems in trying to show the existence of the biblical jesus using those sources (and since when is luke extrabiblical?)

[seanD]

There are some pretty big problems in trying to show the existence of the biblical jesus using those sources (and since when is luke extrabiblical?)

The point was a simple one. Let me simplify it. There are hardly ANY sources that even mention anything about Judean culture. I pointed out Luke because he is only one of about four ancient historians who cared about this culture. So guess how many secular sources which bother mentioning anything about Judean culture that leaves. Three. One of which didn't even bother with the period during the time of Jesus or even the right historical location. So guess how many secular sources which bother mentioning anything about Judean culture that leaves. Two. Both of which do in fact mention Jesus. As far as "showing" the biblical Jesus from secular sources to skeptics, I don't think Christians are really concerned about that. Why should they be?

[Jaecp]

Judaen culture is significantly less important and/or memorable than the God of creation coming down for 33 years and magicking up the place. If Jesus's miracles made as big a splash as we would imagine them to, like the stuff with the walking dead and the sky being dark for hours in the middle of the day, we'd expect people to record this. As it stands though, we get a single biblical source (Matthew) and no extrabiblical about it. Did the 5000 people fed of magic fish and loaves not talk of it? Did rumors not spread of authentic miracles happening? Did none of the roman officials bother writing down anything about authentic miraculous occurrences?

Then we have the references to Jesus, which, speaking again of Josephus, we have one forgery and one "James, The Brother of Jesus". Which is great and all. I don't mind granting that there was an itinerant preacher who gained a following preaching love. That doesn't get you any closer to extrabiblical evidence of of the Biblical Jesus.

Why should you care? Your're posting on an apologetics forum, it looks pretty obvious to me that yes, you do in fact care about defending your religion. Some Christians, William Lane Crane mentioned this in Reasonable Faith, want a positive case for Christianity since it leaves you in a stronger position if there is another religion present. Secular sources are less likely to be biased in favor of a religion, so arguing from secular sources makes for a stronger argument.

If a Christian wants to make a case for the truth of his religion, then a stronger case is necessarily better. Ergo, secular sources are more persuasive than religious ones.
The people with a great interest in showing this cases to be wrong are atheists and other skeptics, which means your argument needs to be solid or it'll have holes poked in it. There is a reason why you don't see any Josh McDowell defenders in Apol 301.

So yeah, I think its pretty safe to say that yes, if you want to be a proponent of your faith via Apologetics then yes, that involves talking to people who do not already believe your claims

[seanD]

Judaen culture is significantly less important and/or memorable than the God of creation coming down for 33 years and magicking up the place. If Jesus's miracles made as big a splash as we would imagine them to, like the stuff with the walking dead and the sky being dark for hours in the middle of the day, we'd expect people to record this. As it stands though, we get a single biblical source (Matthew) and no extrabiblical about it. Did the 5000 people fed of magic fish and loaves not talk of it? Did rumors not spread of authentic miracles happening? Did none of the roman officials bother writing down anything about authentic miraculous occurrences?

Then we have the references to Jesus, which, speaking again of Josephus, we have one forgery and one "James, The Brother of Jesus". Which is great and all. I don't mind granting that there was an itinerant preacher who gained a following preaching love. That doesn't get you any closer to extrabiblical evidence of of the Biblical Jesus.

Why should you care? Your're posting on an apologetics forum, it looks pretty obvious to me that yes, you do in fact care about defending your religion. Some Christians, William Lane Crane mentioned this in Reasonable Faith, want a positive case for Christianity since it leaves you in a stronger position if there is another religion present. Secular sources are less likely to be biased in favor of a religion, so arguing from secular sources makes for a stronger argument.

If a Christian wants to make a case for the truth of his religion, then a stronger case is necessarily better. Ergo, secular sources are more persuasive than religious ones.
The people with a great interest in showing this cases to be wrong are atheists and other skeptics, which means your argument needs to be solid or it'll have holes poked in it. There is a reason why you don't see any Josh McDowell defenders in Apol 301.

So yeah, I think its pretty safe to say that yes, if you want to be a proponent of your faith via Apologetics then yes, that involves talking to people who do not already believe your claims

There are how many secular sources again that detail anything about Judean culture? Four, correct? So that means we have four sources that we could suppose should have mentioned all the spectacular miracles. So let's analyze these sources. We can exclude two, since Luke is the bias source. Philo didn't even mention Christians at all, so since he did not write about that era or location, we can assume either those events weren't in his historical scope, or being a Jew, had no glowing opinions about Jesus and Christianity, thus had no reason to mention a movement he disdained. Tacitus clearly had a disdain for the Christian movement and called it superstitious, thus didn't buy the claims, but since he was writing in the second century, he was a secondhand or even third hand source, so his opinion doesn't matter one way or the other. So we are left with Josephus. Perhaps he can bolster a strong skeptical argument from silence or perhaps he can't. He too doesn't mention anything about the Christian movement other than the area he mentions Jesus, so he obviously had other historical intents that didn't include anything particularly religious outside of Judaism. And even though the passage does mention miracles, since the passage is in dispute about exactly what it did say, the matter is inconclusive. So there's your reason why no historian detailed the events of the NT.

And I don't think I said I didn't care about defending my faith. I care very much. I said Christians are not concerned about showing the biblical Jesus from secular sources, because you won't find this from secular sources for the reasons I explained above. We have the historical source that is the NT, and this is more than enough for us. Now if you want to have a discussion about how reliable those sources are, that's a different subject. After being here about as long as I have, I'm pretty sure you've heard all the arguments for this, and then some. Most of the skeptics in here are apostates, and though I am always baffled why they're here and what drives them to continue coming here, I personally believe they are basically the walking dead (spiritually speaking). There ain't no reviving these people. So other than defending the facts about Christianity from false facts, which is what I do, as far as trying to make those facts convincing to people like you and others I realize is an endeavor that is impossible for me and beyond my control.

[Darth Ovious]

In addition to what SeanD has wrote I will add to it. I don't know why, because I know for a fact that you have already been told this but you make no effort at all to take on board what you've been told before.

Judaen culture is significantly less important and/or memorable than the God of creation coming down for 33 years and magicking up the place. If Jesus's miracles made as big a splash as we would imagine them to, like the stuff with the walking dead and the sky being dark for hours in the middle of the day, we'd expect people to record this. As it stands though, we get a single biblical source (Matthew) and no extrabiblical about it. Did the 5000 people fed of magic fish and loaves not talk of it? Did rumors not spread of authentic miracles happening? Did none of the roman officials bother writing down anything about authentic miraculous occurrences?

Your response here shows a distinct lack of knowledge in concerns to history and how it works. As a comparison for instance we only have one historical source that talks about the erruption of Mt Versuvius, which was a great event also. Only one and even then it comes from a source of a person who just mentioned it in passing. The reasons for this are numerous

1) We only have between 1-5% of what was actually written in the first place from that era. Most of it has erroded/disappeared over time.

2) Paper was expensive to buy & literacy rates were low, so not a lot of documents were written in the first place.

3) The culture was largely focussed as an oral culture, in fact if it wasn't worth remembering via oral tradition then it wasn't even worth writing down in the first place. Most things that were written down were written down years after they happened, because first of all they would be remembered via the oral tradition practice.

There are more, but I think these reasons should suffice.

Then we have the references to Jesus, which, speaking again of Josephus, we have one forgery and one "James, The Brother of Jesus". Which is great and all. I don't mind granting that there was an itinerant preacher who gained a following preaching love. That doesn't get you any closer to extrabiblical evidence of of the Biblical Jesus.

We do have an arabic version of Josephus that we can assume is accurate. It is free from the Christian interpolation that is disputed in the first place and we have no reason to doubt it. I also think it would be unreasonable to think that Christians could add interpolation to an arabic version of the document.

Why should you care? Your're posting on an apologetics forum, it looks pretty obvious to me that yes, you do in fact care about defending your religion. Some Christians, William Lane Crane mentioned this in Reasonable Faith, want a positive case for Christianity since it leaves you in a stronger position if there is another religion present. Secular sources are less likely to be biased in favor of a religion, so arguing from secular sources makes for a stronger argument.

I have never understood this argument about bias. I mean sure perhaps some Christians nowadays can be pretty biased but I have never understood why a skeptic takes that from our 21st century culture and then imposes it on 1st century Palestine.

What obvious bias can a group of people who were raised strictly Jewish could have in concerns to Christianity? If anything they would want to biased against the ressurrection of the claim that Jesus is the son of God since it was considered blasphemous and punishable by death.

Not to mention that the arabic version of Josephus still mentions that it was reported he was seen alive 3 days after his crucifixion and also not to mention that the Talmud accussed Jesus of being a sorcerer who led Israel astray.

I can't imagine what more you would expect to find considering the reasons I stated above.

If a Christian wants to make a case for the truth of his religion, then a stronger case is necessarily better. Ergo, secular sources are more persuasive than religious ones.
The people with a great interest in showing this cases to be wrong are atheists and other skeptics, which means your argument needs to be solid or it'll have holes poked in it. There is a reason why you don't see any Josh McDowell defenders in Apol 301.

There is nothing we can do from our end if the skeptic is going to be unreasonable and demand a level of evidence which just isn't possible and is not the normal level of evidence used to judge the rest of history.

As SeanD has noted, what more do you want? The sources that we have put forward that care about Jewish history just isn't enough for you. Are you wanting me to cite evidence from India in regards to Jesus' miracles? Or would evidence contained within South American history be enough for you?

So yeah, I think its pretty safe to say that yes, if you want to be a proponent of your faith via Apologetics then yes, that involves talking to people who do not already believe your claims

And you have to note that we on the other hand don't believe any of your claims, but I doubt if you would think it reasonable if we asked you to produce a mountain load of evidence for every single claim you make.

[Tassman]

The problem with that is that skeptics can't demonstrate any extrabiblcal sources that should have mentioned Jesus but didn't. The only sources I know of that even cared about Judean life apart from the Roman Empire is Luke, Josephus, Tacitus, and Philo. The former three do in fact mention Jesus, whereas the latter focused briefly on Caligula and events in Alexandria in the time after Jesus.

What Christians can’t demonstrate is why, in the small (at the time) town of Jerusalem, such events as Jesus triumphal entry, desecrating the temple, miracle healings including raising Lazarus from the dead, earthquake and an eclipse, the temple curtain rent in twain and the dead rising from their graves and strolling into town was not written of by the locals. Paul never mentions them, contemporary writers like Philo don’t mention them and yet the gospels, written 70+ years later, describe the impact of Jesus on Jerusalem as nothing short of sensational - turning the town upside down.

[seanD]

What Christians can’t demonstrate is why, in the small (at the time) town of Jerusalem, such events as Jesus triumphal entry, desecrating the temple, miracle healings including raising Lazarus from the dead, earthquake and an eclipse, the temple curtain rent in twain and the dead rising from their graves and strolling into town was not written of by the locals. Paul never mentions them, contemporary writers like Philo don’t mention them and yet the gospels, written 70+ years later, describe the impact of Jesus on Jerusalem as nothing short of sensational - turning the town upside down.

We have those records, and it's called the gospels. There was no such thing as a "neutral" source in ancient history. Everyone had an agenda. Notwithstanding the lack of sources that detail anything about Judean history, which I pointed out in another post, the only secular sources that would have mentioned these events and attributed them to Christ would have been those with affinities to the movement, thus you would immediately discredit them as bias. So the only alternative source would have a skeptical source. A skeptic would have had no reason to aggrandize any of these events, because to do so would have been to aggrandize a movement they considered superstitious or adverse as Tacitus did.