That course is also available here: http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

including transcripts and video. I read the transcripts a while back

Aaron W., I'm satisfied to leave it. You apparently have great difficulty understanding what I write. (Did I just say that you HAVE NEVER and CAN NEVER understand what I wrote? It would not surprise me if you said so, if it suits whatever argument you make in your reply).

I've scanned through the thread again, and I think it is quite clear what I said, and it is also quite clear that there does exist scholarship on Jesus as myth, and if anyone wants to look into it further, it is also obvious that there are scholars who are not mythicists who do not dismiss it utterly as nonsense.

If you are genuinely interested, I would think you'd look into it yourself. In either case, what I have written stands and needs no further defense from your feeble replies.

That's great advice. No doubt if I took it, I'd end up thinking for sure that Jesus was real and made of magic!

So, you can't even come up with TWO peer-reviewed books? That's what you said that one could do. Read one or two of the peer-reviewed books. But if you can't even NAME two peer-reviewed books, it calls into question whether YOU have actually read two peer-reviewed books, and whether you really have the intellectual foundation that you're claiming exists.

I'm genuinely interested in what you're able to come up with. I've already looked into it and found it to be quite amateurish, just as Ehrman's analysis suggests. I now know of exactly ONE peer-reviewed book on the topic, and the initial reading of the information on it to be incredibly weak.

It comes in at the level of conspiracy nonsense from people who don't know much of anything. It's kind of like what you've put forth so far. The arguments are weak, vague, and they progress on correct concepts applied poorly and unevenly.

If you think you've got something better, you're welcome to present it.

I don't know where you would end up if you took it. But wherever it is, it's bound to be better than the intellectual slums that you're currently residing in.

One of the primary distinctions that people fail to make in the Jesus Myth conversations is the reading of intent of literature. Not all literature is equal. Books of fiction are distinct from books of non-fiction. However, since the verification of fact is at the heart of the fiction/non-fiction distinction and is also at the heart of the Jesus Myth conversation, we need to use a slightly different type of distinction, which is the communication of intention.

When looking at Sherlock Holmes novels, the question is whether the culture is able to distinguish whether the book was written AS history or whether it was written AS fiction. Clearly, we see that the culture understands and accepts that the Sherlock Holmes novels are written as fiction (though there may be some question as to whether they understand it to be "based on" history -- but since no direct link has been provided to that claim, it stands as unsupported and still isn't that relevant to the discussion).

The culture indicates that the gospels were written as history since it not only contains claims to there being real persons who were witnesses to the events, and there are other writings outside of the gospels to support the claims that there were witnesses to the events. This puts the texts in a category outside of the category of being written as fiction.

This can all be established WITHOUT any reference to or reliance upon the precise authorship of the gospels.

Part of Carrier's argument involves pointing out the similarities between the narrative stories told by Christians and other known mythological stories

I don't think those arguments are strong enough to make the Christ myth theory more likely than an historical Jesus, but I think arguing that there is a sharp and obvious difference between the intent of Sherlock Holmes and the Gospels probably begs the question a little. The argument is that on closer inspection the gospels look a little more like ancient mythology and a little less like history.

Of course, the fact that some people somewhere think Sherlock Holmes is historical also doesn't demonstrate that Jesus is purely mythological either. But I think mrmr's more limited point was that the fact that belief in a historical Jesus became widespread isn't proof, and that's fair enough as far as it goes.

If you read someone like the blogger I linked, he assigns the myth theory twice the prior probability of being true than a historical Jesus. Contrast that to OrP's statement that the prima facie evidence for a historical Jesus is "really good", which you'd imagine would mean that, if he chose to use Bayesian analysis, he'd assign the historical Jesus a much higher prior probability.

Then the blog delves into a handful of specific questions from the texts, most of which are chosen to cast doubt on the historical theory. But the prior probability assignments are doing a lot of work, I think. So it seems clear to me that much of the argument is over how historically compelling the "prima facie" evidence is. I'm not sure there's ever going to be any objective way to settle that, which is why the consensus of historians and scholars of the time period seems important.

Presumably, you're referring to the Mythic Hero Archetype argument. It's built on a weird premise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero#Mythic_hero_archetype

To me, this is just a strange premise to attempt to argue from. Attaining mythological status over time says nothing about the likelihood of there being an actual person upon which the figure is based. That tends to demonstrate the progression over time of characters to attaining mythological status in the eyes of the culture. (Time is critical here, as no myths are known to have reached mythological status in a period of 50 years.)

Furthermore, there are lots of details about mythological characters that this analysis overlooks. For example, myths tend to have historical vagueness (no specific time period for the events or locations that no longer exist), and the Bible does not look or sound like that at all.

True, if he's making only the very limited point. But it still fails on the question of whether they believed that Sherlock Holmes existed as portrayed in the text or was merely based on a historical person. As I noted, those are two very different types of claims.

The assignment of values is probably arbitrary. I don't really know what the baseline claim is if one is saying "the myth theory [has] twice the prior probability of being true than a historical Jesus."

I also don't expect that OrP would be using that particular framing because I don't believe he's working from the same collection of prior probabilities.

I anticipate that the prior probabilities are an attempt to justify the conclusion that was reached before the prior probabilities were presented. They're almost certainly arbitrary values and frames the question in a biased manner (much in the same way that we can massage statistics to support a desired conclusion).

I would be curious to know whether the same probabilities can be applied to a person that is known to have existed from the same era and we discover that the calculations lead us to that conclusion. Most likely, it won't work that way because we'll have to create a brand new set of criteria for that individual, thus making the calculations incomparable.

It looks like OrP is using 3 things that could potentially be framed in probabilistic language:

1) Multiple works written about the person
2) A short time period between the claimed events and the writing of those events
3) The existence of a religion based on the person

1.
Where do the gospels identify real persons who were witnesses to the events? What are the other writings outside of the gospels to support the claims that there were witnesses to the events?

2.
There exist (even though I will not enumerate them!) works of fiction set in real places, containing references to real people, and describing real events; what is it about first century AD Jewish (or whatever) culture which dictates that referring to real people is exclusive to works outside the category of being written as fiction?

3.
If the gospels are factual, it stands to reason they would refer to real people who were witnesses to the events. However, if the gospels are a fictional account intended to deceive readers into believing they are true, it stands to reason they would refer to real people who were witnesses to the events. Furthermore, if the gospel authors believe the accounts to be true, and intended to write about them in a non-fictional way, doesn't what we know about human nature (see my previous post with a handful of examples; humans frequently believe stories, embellish them, report them as first (or first-er) hand accounts when they are not, etc. In effect, fiction is used with reasonably good intentions, but ultimately it distorts the story, whether it was true or not to begin with. When you say "written as fiction" do you include fictional works that are intended to deceive readers into believing that they are true? Do you include works in which the author(s) believe they are non-fiction, but due to biases and/or the desire to be persuasive and/or dishonesty, the author(s) embellish or otherwise change the story?

If AaronW is in, I'm out...

There are many names and cities in the Bible that would have been moderately verifiable at the time who would be counted as witnesses. For example, Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector of Jericho would be a witness to events. That's a specific person in a specific city that would have been verifiable at the time of writing due to family connections and the effect it had on the people of the city.

The book of Acts (which is not one of the gospels) refers many times to groups of people as being witnesses to events.

But, of course, you would doubt those things on the basis of being in the Bible, thus demonstrating a flawed historical approach that is not seen with any other historical document. But that type of special pleading is something you need to figure out for yourself because nothing I can say can convince you that it's an arbitrary approach erected specifically to deny the historicity of Jesus.

Cultures understand their own fiction as fiction, and respond accordingly. First, there are no other documents of a similar type which are known to be fiction that were mistaken for truth. Second, the largely illiterate culture would not have much value with written works of fiction. This leads into the third point, which is that a culture that is largely illiterate places a higher value on the concept of a witness to an event because oral communication is basically the only way information can be conveyed. If they can't tell truth from fiction in common language, then they can't communicate effectively with each other.

You've created a multi-part hypothetical.

You have

A) The gospel is factual
B) The gospel is NOT factual AND intended to be deceptive

Notice the uneven standard being applied. You have left out "The gospel is not factual AND NOT intended to be deceptive" as an alternative that has not been analyzed. In other words, what you're doing is presenting a false dichotomy, and in the details (explained below) you're raising possibility instead of probability. You have not made any case that we should expect the account to be deceptive.

Again, you're raising a hypothetical possibility, but not giving any particular reason to think it's true. If they were to cite specific persons, we can expect that those persons or their families could be contacted because of the temporal proximity to the event. Again, we're not talking about events that have happened a nebulous time period before the indicated dates.

The fact that those people were named and that the stories propagated forward is an indication of either the failure of the individuals or their families to stop the falsehoods under their name (which is a very serious matter) or the acceptance by those families of the truth of the statements.

Clearly, you don't know what "written as fiction" means. When authors write things, they intend their works to be interpreted in a certain way. "Written as fiction" means written in a manner in which their work is to be interpreted as fiction. That you can't even accept that language is more evidence of the depths of intellectual dishonesty that you must engage in for your points to appear salient.

If I were to accept that the stories were embellished, wouldn't this still imply a historical Jesus? There must be an original story upon which the embellishments were created, no?

See? This is precisely the amateurish nonsense that I was expecting. The analysis is speculative and devoid of meaningful content, but you keep presenting yourself as if you've got some interesting insight into the question. It's mostly just noise and nonsense. That's why the professional historical community doesn't really take the Jesus Mythers seriously.

By the way, I'm still waiting to see the title of peer-reviewed book #2. What do you have? Nothing? That's what I thought.

How logical of you to put yourself in a thread to announce that you're out of it.

As an atheist, I do find it enraging when these kind of stories break, because the notion that the bible references real places and people undermines my entire belief system.

It's much like when I talk to one of the other inmates, a nice guy, but he doesn't believe that my friend Spiderman is real. Anyway, we'd been going back and forth about this for weeks, so I got one of the nurses to bring us a copy of the New York Times - that's right, a newspaper from Spiderman's home town!

How we laughed! Well not straight away of course because he flipped out and had to be restrained by several nurses. But after the Thorazine had worn off.

I appreciate the concise and accurate demonstration of one of my points.

I asked a question to understand how you were using a term. Evidence of the depths of my intellectual dishonesty?

I've grown weary of your insults.

Suffice it to say, you are almost always in your latest reply taking it for granted that the bible is true. I do not assert that it is generally false, but I do not agree with your implicit claim that it is true. Do you take it for granted that every other religious origin story is true? Or when it comes to those that aren't Christian, are you skeptical of the motives of the authors, and of later changes to text? Or do you assume anything written to look factual is factual? No need to answer.

Seriously? You really don't know what "written as fiction" is intended to communicate? I guess it's *possible* that you just don't know, but I find it highly improbable.

Then make better posts. Or just providing a link to a second peer-reviewed book. It's not that hard. After all, it's "out there" somewhere, right? You just have to look.

In what ways have I taken for granted that it's true? Be specific in your criticism. Oh wait, you don't have specific criticism. Just more nebulous and erroneous comments.

Okay. You are welcome to maintain your delusions as deeply as you choose. But what you are doing here is simply continued evidence of things I suspected many posts ago regarding your ability to handle an actual critical analysis:

You can prove me wrong, but so far you've only managed to prove me right.

This is always true. But I choose to answer anyway. It's more entertaining that way.

Another important reason why I am not persuaded is because the evidence is tainted. When I read that there was a guy + raising the dead, the sun stopping in the sky, miracles, etc., I do not assume the obviously false parts are false, but the rest is probably true. In and of itself, it is not evidence for either side; however, it does establish that there was myth making occurring around the guy, whether or not he is part of the myth or based in reality.

And of course the extra-biblical sources typically cited come later and my impression is they reference that their are Christians and that they believe in Jesus, not that Jesus is causing a problem in Jerusalem and the Jews and/or Romans are trying to put him down because he is gaining many followers, etc.

Again, "tainted" and "completely made up" are two very different standards. In the standard of demonstrating existence of a historical person, you would have to believe that this story arose from absolutely nowhere. That within approximately that 50 year period, some person that doesn't even exist was written about by multiple people and this completely non-existent person was exaggerated to the point that reached a mythological status, but yet the mythology was uncharacteristically consistent across multiple retellings and includes details that are not generally found in mythological constructs.

If you want to understand what that means, go visit snopes and look at the internet stories that are spread. We see multiple versions of it, and the facts change across multiple iterations over a short period of time.

It actually doesn't. You accuse me of taking for granted the story is true, but you establish myth-making on the basis that you already believe it has reached mythological status. You haven't yet established your concept of what a myth is yet (see the wiki quoted earlier: Ehrman says that they do not define what they mean by "myth"...), so it's impossible for you to have established that myth-making occurred. You're just asserting it while simultaneously denying that an actual argument was constructed on the other side.

(Also, do you not see the irony of arguing that "This is not evidence for either side, but it establishes evidence for my side"? Maybe you don't, but I think it's pretty obvious to everyone else. You don't assume that the obviously false stuff is false... you just assume it's false.)

Josephus was not Christian. And he wasn't particularly favorable to Christians (though edits to the text over time tried to make it look that way).

Wow, what a big fat lie...

You might realize that the above claim requires you to deliver evidence?

But who am I kidding, we know you won't.

And some people are aware that jesus was not mentioned at all outside of the bible.

But go on, link some sources where a trustful person (no reli-tards) mentions jesus christ outside of the bible.

A well-researched position to hold, grounded in fact and professional consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

---

Also, it seems quite clear that you don't even know what "prima facie" means. It will be such an embarrassment when you actually take the time to look up the words and discover that you've just made one of the dumbest arguments ever.

It's not like quoting the first half of a sentence and pretending the second half doesn't even exist isn't a sign of intentional misrepresentation or anything like that.

You clearly haven't realised yet that you're saying this to one of the smartest posters on the forum and if OrP says that there are "multiple works written within fifty years of his death" then believe me, he'll be able to link them, I haven't seen him make a single stupid mistaken claim in the two years I've been posting here.

Whether or not you'll be convinced is another matter, but here, I'll get you started with some 'non-biblical' records that mention Jesus- Is There Any Evidence for Jesus Outside the Bible?. When you've finished debunking those, I'll see if I can rustle up some more.

(First search result for the keyword phrase 'evidence that jesus existed outside of the bible' on Google)

I guess I already disproved this, and it took me all of 30 seconds.

Rig,

You look extremely foolish here. Have you even taken the 5 seconds needed
to research this? Or did you just come to this conclusion from listening
to other atheist-tards?

The ignorance is astounding.

I'm pretty sure that he's referring to the gospels themselves:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Dating

Note: The date of the crucifixion is usually placed at 33 AD.

The Jesus story is something in between a myth and historical. I am certain there was a preacher called Jesus during that time and that he preached some of the things written down in the bible. I am also certain that certain things written in the bible and attributed to Jesus either never happened or were said and done by other preachers. This has happened to historical figures much younger than Jesus so it must be true of him.

None of this is really important anyway. For Jesus to be divine you have to believe the resurrection and other miracles and those parts read more like a Harry Potter novel than reality.