From the desk of Mr. Rain Bronner so stupid that despite not self-identifying as a Christian believes the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth actually existed and serves as a humanitarian role model (despite the Good, Bad, and Ugly behavior across history of supposed Christ followers) regardless if just human or perhaps more, and Mr. Bronner is not only stupid because he believes that biblical Jesus existed, but he is also a brainwashed sheep as pointed out to him by persons Bronner will not name so as not to tit-for-tat personally, but rather than turn the other cheek fully, Bronner will parlay his ancestral Celtic-Viking berserker tit-for-tat urge as follows: Theres abusive bullying ideological tyranny on both sides of the Is Jesus a myth or a historical man and possibly divine? debate. One side has included advocates of Violently conquer the world in the name of Jesus despite no scriptural support that Jesus supported such behavior, the other side includes pontification that Believers in a historical and/or divine Jesus are brainwashed stupid sheep and Im arrogantly smarter than them because I know for sure I am right that Jesus never even existed even though I wasnt around circa the alleged Jesus on earth era but I am just so much smarter than Jesus believers so I just know better. In the middle between those ideological extremes that can lead to violence and even genocide [e.g., labeling others as sheep can help create conditions that allow for the actual slaughter of said sheep, as is happening to 1000s of :Jesus existed and was a manifestation of God believers yearly], are intelligent respected scholars whose assertions are not driven by personal anger, contempt, etc. and who attempt objective analysis (all research is biased, but efforts can be made to reduce that to the point validity and reliability of conclusions have close to 100% epistemic correlation with reality). Heres Wikipedia copy re: The Christ myth theory, which questions the existence of Jesus, appeared in the 18th century. Some of its supporters contend that Jesus is a myth invented by early Christians. Supporters of the theory pointed to the lack of any known written references to Jesus during his lifetime and to the relative scarcity of non-Christian references to him in the 1st century, which they used to challenge the veracity of the existing accounts of him. Beginning in the 20th century, scholars such as G. A. Wells, Robert M. Price and Thomas Brodie have presented various arguments to support the Christ myth theory. However, today virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed and regard events such as his baptism and his crucifixion as historical. Robert E. Van Voorst and (separately) Michael Grant state that biblical scholars and classical historians now regard theories of the non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted. In response to the argument that the lack of the contemporary references implies that Jesus did not exist, Van Voorst has stated that, as every good student of history knows, such arguments from silence are specially perilous. Arguments from silence generally fail unless a fact is known to the author and is important enough and relevant enough to be mentioned in the context of a document. Bart D. Ehrman argues that although Jesus had a large impact on future generations, his impact on the society of his time was practically nil. It would therefore be unsound to expect contemporary accounts of his deeds. Ehrman says that arguments based on the lack of physical or archeological evidence of Jesus and of any writings from him are poor, as there is no such evidence of nearly anyone who lived in the first century. Teresa Okure writes that the existence of historical figures is established by the analysis of later references to them, rather than by contemporary relics and remnants. A number of scholars caution against the use of such arguments from ignorance and consider them generally inconclusive or fallacious. For example, the same argument from ignorance could apply to Socrates, who did not leave behind any writings at all; everything we know about Socrates is based on the writings of two of his disciples, Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of Aristophanes. Douglas Walton states that arguments from ignorance can only lead to sound conclusions in cases where we can assume that our knowledge-base is complete. Non-Christian sources used to establish the historical existence of Jesus include the works of first-century historians Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus scholar Louis H. Feldman has stated that few have doubted the genuineness of Josephus reference to Jesus in book 20 of the Antiquities of the Jews, and it is disputed only by a small number of scholars. Tacitus referred to Christ and his execution by Pilate in book 15 of his work Annals. Scholars generally consider Tacituss reference to the execution of Jesus to be both authentic and of historical value as an independent Roman source. Roman senator and historian Tacitus wrote of the crucifixion of Jesus in the Annals, a history of the Roman Empire during the first century. Approaches to the historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus have varied from the maximalist approaches of the 19th century, in which the gospel accounts were accepted as reliable evidence wherever it is possible, to the minimalist approaches of the early 20th century, where hardly anything about Jesus was accepted as historical. In the 1950s, as the second quest for the historical Jesus gathered pace, the minimalist approaches faded away, and in the 21st century, minimalists such as Price are a very small minority. Although a belief in the inerrancy of the gospels cannot be supported historically, many scholars since the 1980s have held that, beyond the few facts considered to be historically certain, certain other elements of Jesus life are historically probable. Modern scholarly research on the historical Jesus thus focuses on identifying the most probable elements. Most modern scholars consider Jesus baptism and crucifixion to be definite historical facts. James D.G. Dunn states that they command almost universal assent and rank so high on the almost impossible to doubt or deny scale of historical facts that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus. Scholars adduce the criterion of embarrassment, saying that early Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader, or a baptism that might imply that Jesus committed sins and wanted to repent. Scholars use a number of criteria, such as the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of coherence, and the criterion of discontinuity to judge the historicity of events. The historicity of an event also depends on the reliability of the source. Mark, the earliest written gospel, is usually considered the most historically reliable. John, the latest written gospel, differs considerably from the Synoptic Gospels, and thus is generally considered less reliable. For example, many scholars do not consider the Raising of Lazarus to be historical, partly because it appears only in John. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus Amy-Jill Levine states that there is a consensus of sorts on the basic outline of Jesus life, in that most scholars agree that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, debated with Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables, gathered followers, and was crucified on Pilates orders.
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 21:33:47 +0000
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