tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post4309453649557817568..comments2024-02-29T03:34:23.190-05:00Comments on Who Were the Sea Peoples?: Finding the historical Jesus in biblical inconsistenciesgcallahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-73863375065742056302013-07-30T13:00:28.318-04:002013-07-30T13:00:28.318-04:00"Inference to the best explanation": Sir..."Inference to the best explanation": Siri!gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-90081290634864815542013-07-26T20:14:21.015-04:002013-07-26T20:14:21.015-04:00Ken, you are correct: Saying it is the only plausi...Ken, you are correct: Saying it is the only plausible explanation is an overstatement. But in friends to the best explanation would give us "yes, Jesus was from Nazareth."gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-76874209132884176642013-07-26T14:54:37.741-04:002013-07-26T14:54:37.741-04:00@master: A bit more on the logic. This is the prin...@master: A bit more on the logic. This is the principle of dissimilarity in action. Early Christians would have preferred to NOT have a tradition that the man was from Nazareth because that is a problem for their theology. So the preservation of this *embarassment* by M&L indicate that M&L recieved the tradition (and believed it), ie that the tradition is OLDER than M&L. That's a big deal since M&L are fairly late (circa 75). Ken Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12976919713907046171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-89669698832800905412013-07-26T14:43:34.842-04:002013-07-26T14:43:34.842-04:00It's not the ONLY plausible reason but it is t...It's not the ONLY plausible reason but it is the simplest. And there is other plausible evidence too. The existence of a Jewish teacher Jesus from Nazareth who was crucified seems pretty solid. <br /><br />I'm always amused at skeptics who need to argue he's an invention out of whole cloth. Displays a lack of imagination I think.Ken Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12976919713907046171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-36244337050863346292013-07-19T19:07:39.608-04:002013-07-19T19:07:39.608-04:00My source on the discovery of Nazareth is Prof. Ba...My source on the discovery of Nazareth is Prof. Bart D. Ehrman of UNC. <br /><br />And now to really piss you off: i made the post using siri. gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-61038576751336068762013-07-18T19:28:14.397-04:002013-07-18T19:28:14.397-04:00You know, "too clever by half" is a comm...You know, "too clever by half" is a common expression. It's not a compliment, but neither is it a harsh putdown. That you stoop to responding with invective detracts from your argument.<br /><br />I don't know a lot about the documentary evidence for Washington and Napoleon, but I suspect they are not at all comparable because I suspect there are various sources linking them to Virginia and Corsica, not the extremely limited range of sources we have about Jesus.<br /><br />As far as I can tell, your argument boils down to: "Jesus was a real person who came from Nazareth, because Mark says he came from Nazareth, and why would anyone make that up?" How could anything good come from Nazareth? Matthew and Luke don't really have anything to do with it, since they are clearly responding to earlier sources: Mark and possibly others that we might speculate about.<br /><br />The presence of details about Jesus' life that don't fill an obvious narrative role (another example is the sign on the cross: INRI, which none of them gospels seem to be using to make a point) can be taken to imply that Jesus was a real person. It could also just mean that we're not psychics who can known for sure why an author made each narrative choice that he or she did. Perhaps the earliest Christians that Mark knew of were from Nazareth, so he assumed that would be where Jesus was from. Maybe Mark knew that Jesus was called "the Nazarene" (or that his followers were called Nazarenes) and concluded incorrectly that that meant he was from Nazareth. Maybe Mark's immediate audience was mostly people from Nazareth, so he wanted to make Jesus one of their own. Maybe Jesus was a real person. This and more is possible.master_of_americanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11649653266887681184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-56379119135832573182013-07-18T12:47:27.247-04:002013-07-18T12:47:27.247-04:00See, here's the thing master. i would guess of...See, here's the thing master. i would guess off the top of my head That there must be several hundred places in Israel and Judah Mentioned in the Old Testament. If you were going to just make up some guy quote obviously you choose one of those places for him to come from. What you would not do is choose a place that absolutely no one had ever heard of before that point in time. As I said, the only plausible explanation is that Jesus really was from Nazareth, And that explains quite well why there was a "tradition" saying he was from Nazarethgcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-54597614147837654092013-07-18T12:38:49.758-04:002013-07-18T12:38:49.758-04:00Too stupid by half. Why do Americans have a "...Too stupid by half. Why do Americans have a "tradition" that George Washington was from Virginia? Why do the English have a "tradition" that William was from the Netherlands? Why did the French have a "tradition" that Napoleon was from Corsica?<br /><br />Perhaps because they were?gcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-80313197865632455982013-07-18T02:44:49.770-04:002013-07-18T02:44:49.770-04:00Too clever by half. This evidence from Matthew and...Too clever by half. This evidence from Matthew and Luke implies that there was an earlier tradition that Jesus was a Nazarene. It hardly shows that Jesus was a real person. It's a bit of a strawman to show that Matthew and Luke didn't make Jesus up from whole cloth. Of course they didn't: they had Mark and Q as sources, as well as possibly others. The tradition that Jesus was from Nazareth is in Mark.master_of_americanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11649653266887681184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-73705070837836733912013-07-18T00:44:06.979-04:002013-07-18T00:44:06.979-04:00"The town of Nazareth did not exist at the ti..."The town of Nazareth did not exist at the time Jesus lived."<br /><br />Sorry, archaeologists have found the town. Yes, of course it was not the modern city of Nazarethgcallahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10065877215969589482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-91782871880342451892013-07-17T23:14:10.247-04:002013-07-17T23:14:10.247-04:00To add a fifth difficulty: The town of Nazareth di...To add a fifth difficulty: The town of Nazareth did not exist at the time Jesus lived. He was not "from Nazareth." He was a Nazorean.Thomas L. Knapphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16271473384378782680noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7225373.post-33047385468526910852013-07-17T20:21:16.095-04:002013-07-17T20:21:16.095-04:00By application of the well attested "NTG Cyph...By application of the well attested "NTG Cypher" (pitifully, I've seen attempts this done on English translations), we can easily extract from the New Testament the message, "Idiotically implausible message in Latinized Greek from the University of Illinois." Nuff said.Wabulonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16838347174718251102noreply@blogger.com