Why do skeptics question whether the Biblical Jesus Christ ever existed?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Apparently you missed it.

And just to show those interested in the sort of dishonest games that you regularly indulge in, here is the sort of crap that you pull when you ask these sort of questions:









And when you finally admitted that I had been providing the answer all along, you then immediately turn around in the very next sentence and effectively accused me of not providing it the first two times







And this is but one example where you've done it. I tend to cite this one because it's short and the posts are all together, but there are other examples as well (go to the thread concerning the purported discovery of Jesus' home for a real humdinger).

Hence, as I've said, fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. I tried working with you a couple of times after the first instance. That was my mistake and one I don't care to repeat -- especially given how you typically respond to similar questions:









Reap what you sow.

I recommend attending morning Mass. It might calm you down.

[seer]

I recommend attending morning Mass. It might calm you down.

Is rogue a Catholic?

[rogue06]

Is rogue a Catholic?

Not that I know of. And I'm two days into a brutal tension headache so I skipped service. The good news is that I got my back to pop right near the base of the stiff muscles that are locking everything up, so with a bit of luck the headache will be gone tonight.

[rogue06]

I recommend attending morning Mass. It might calm you down.

Looks like someone is flummoxed in how to respond to having her dishonest gameplaying called out

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Is rogue a Catholic?

I understand the term can be applied to the religious services of some Protestant denominations.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Looks like someone is flummoxed in how to respond to having her dishonest gameplaying called out

I am not flummoxed. You made this comment

When I'm talking about everything being disparaging, I'm talking about scholarly reviews, not write-ups in the popular press,

I asked you for the specific journals/publications in which those scholarly reviews appeared, and you responded with a temper tantrum.

[rogue06]

I am not flummoxed. You made this comment



I asked you for the specific journals/publications in which those scholarly reviews appeared, and you responded with a temper tantrum.

Why don't you just admit that you yourself hunted for reviews done by academics and scholars and found what I did -- none supporting Nixey's self-admitted one-sided diatribe? But rather than acknowledge that you choose instead to try to compel me to play your hoop jumping game where you continue demanding more and more information -- and when you receive it, then dishonestly act like I haven't provided it and continue to hound me for what you have. In this case, you already discovered the reviews yourself (it isn't like they are hard to find )

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Why don't you just admit that you yourself hunted for reviews done by academics and scholars and found what I did -- none supporting Nixey's self-admitted one-sided diatribe? But rather than acknowledge that you choose instead to try to compel me to play your hoop jumping game where you continue demanding more and more information -- and when you receive it, then dishonestly act like I haven't provided it and continue to hound me for what you have. In this case, you already discovered the reviews yourself (it isn't like they are hard to find )

You have not provided any citations from academic periodicals or journals, which is what I requested despite writing that "When I'm talking about everything being disparaging, I'm talking about scholarly reviews". Nor am I entirely sure what relevance Chinese history and the actions of the Nazis have in relation to the behaviour of some Christians in late antiquity. You had also previously written:

So far, EVERYTHING that I have found on the book has been disparaging of it. Not "mixed."

Yet again you provided no evidence in support of that remark. Of course if you only read selected sites no doubt you would have found that "EVERYTHING" had been "disparaging" as several [including a Christian board on Reddit] offered some very scathing comments from the general public [N.B. not "scholarly reviews"]

You also used your standard "IIRC" to make the following observation concerning a book you have not read. If you have not read it, how can you recall correctly anything about it?

IIRC, Nixey still proclaims that the "Dark Ages" were real (and resulted from Christian malfeasance rather than a string of barbarian invasions as others had proposed), which indicates rather shoddy scholarship.

My very brief citation from her work demonstrated that error. The work starts and ends with the closure of the Athenian Academy in the early sixth century with Damascius and several of his fellow philosophers going into exile. She never employs the phrase Dark Ages.


I have also referenced the interview with Hall as well as articles by Whitmarsh, Hughes, and Rollason and all offered caveats but that is not unsurprising when academics are reviewing or discussing another work.

However both Whitmarsh and Hughes were writing in the "popular press" and therefore [applying your criterion] do not count. Tom Holland [a historian journalist ] also gave it a favourable comment albeit again with caveats.

And while the work is tendentious it does echo texts on the same subjects by Rohmann, Gaddis, and Pollini. The latter noting:

Christianity is generally viewed today as a positive force – one that is even responsible for the preservation of the classical past. And while it is true that a number of artefacts, buildings, customs, rituals, and myths were taken over and preserved in some form or other, Christianity was directly responsible for the loss of a great deal of the rich literature, art, architecture, and culture of the many polytheistic peoples who inhabited the lands around the Mediterranean.

As Shenoute [c.360 - c.450 CE] contended after his goon squad was accused of lesteia [usually translated as banditry] following an illegal raid on the house of a non-Christian to look for idols to destroy, "There is no crime for those who have Christ".

In other words, he considered the actions of himself and of his monks to be above the law.

[rogue06]

You have not provided any citations from academic periodicals or journals, which is what I requested despite writing that "When I'm talking about everything being disparaging, I'm talking about scholarly reviews". Nor am I entirely sure what relevance Chinese history and the actions of the Nazis have in relation to the behaviour of some Christians in late antiquity. You had also previously written:




Yet again you provided no evidence in support of that remark. Of course if you only read selected sites no doubt you would have found that "EVERYTHING" had been "disparaging" as several [including a Christian board on Reddit] offered some very scathing comments from the general public [N.B. not "scholarly reviews"]

You also used your standard "IIRC" to make the following observation concerning a book you have not read. If you have not read it, how can you recall correctly anything about it?



My very brief citation from her work demonstrated that error. The work starts and ends with the closure of the Athenian Academy in the early sixth century with Damascius and several of his fellow philosophers going into exile. She never employs the phrase Dark Ages.


I have also referenced the interview with Hall as well as articles by Whitmarsh, Hughes, and Rollason and all offered caveats but that is not unsurprising when academics are reviewing or discussing another work.

However both Whitmarsh and Hughes were writing in the "popular press" and therefore [applying your criterion] do not count. Tom Holland [a historian journalist ] also gave it a favourable comment albeit again with caveats.

And while the work is tendentious it does echo texts on the same subjects by Rohmann, Gaddis, and Pollini. The latter noting:

Christianity is generally viewed today as a positive force – one that is even responsible for the preservation of the classical past. And while it is true that a number of artefacts, buildings, customs, rituals, and myths were taken over and preserved in some form or other, Christianity was directly responsible for the loss of a great deal of the rich literature, art, architecture, and culture of the many polytheistic peoples who inhabited the lands around the Mediterranean.

As Shenoute [c.360 - c.450 CE] contended after his goon squad was accused of lesteia [usually translated as banditry] following an illegal raid on the house of a non-Christian to look for idols to destroy, "There is no crime for those who have Christ".

In other words, he considered the actions of himself and of his monks to be above the law.

IOW, you are tacitly acknowledging having run across at least some of the scholarly reviews that are not exactly hidden on the interwebz, and surely would have cited any that promoted the book if they had existed. But considering that there aren't any favorable reviews you thought starting one of your dishonest games would be appropriate instead.

[rogue06]

Given the various internal contradictions found in the four canonical gospels, I suspect not. These texts were never intended to be "generally accurate" nor historical [in the sense in which we understand that term today]. They were intended to preach and teach the Christian beliefs of their respective communities.

The presence of discrepancies between accounts hardly justifies a conclusion that the accounts are historically unreliable. For example, the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic were interviewed almost immediately after the ship's sinking they provided contradictory testimonies as to whether it went down intact or broke in two just prior to sinking. How could they have been mistaken on this point? It happened right before their eyes. It was the most terrifying night of their lives with the details freshly etched into their memories. So, how could so many of them make such a mistake? We'll likely never know, but one thing is certain. Absolutely nobody has ever cited these contradicting testimonies on such a basic unmistakable detail, and concluded that the Titanic didn’t sink.

Likewise, look at all the contradictions in the accounts concerning the burning of Rome. Suetonius, Dio Cassius and Tacitus differed over a number of details but no sane person argues that Rome didn't burn in Nero's day.

Or as the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dale C. Allison, Jr., once quipped

myths about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy abound, but Kennedy was in fact shot by somebody

Moreover, Christians face a no-win situation with people like you. If the Gospel accounts harmonize perfectly, you will claim that the writers of the Gospels conspired together. If the accounts have some differences, then you will claim that the Gospels contradict each other and therefore cannot be trusted.

[rogue06]

I suspect a man existed.

These texts were neither dispassionate accounts nor histories - they made no enquiry.

Well, since the concept of what we consider "history" effectively didn't exit back then. There was no idea of separating secular from religious accounts or provide a history in the modern sense of what we think of as history. Historical exactitude was rarely if ever the goal.

But I will agree that the Gospels were not intended as "history," but rather the proper genre is Greco-Roman biography, with Plutarch's Lives being an example with which they compare well with.

[tabibito]

IOW, you are tacitly acknowledging having run across at least some of the scholarly reviews that are not exactly hidden on the interwebz, and surely would have cited any that promoted the book if they had existed. But considering that there aren't any favorable reviews you thought starting one of your dishonest games would be appropriate instead.

Hypatia_Alexandria: In sum, the book can very easily be described in the terms so beloved by yourself -

oversimplifying complex events, presenting speculation as fact, and offering limited evidence to support dramatic conclusions.

The question then arises as to why scholarly reviews of the book would even exist; it should be beneath notice.

[One Bad Pig]

True, and some things from the NT. but both the Tanakh and the NT are historical narrative set in history, and not historical records.

Then pretty much nothing from ancient history is a historical record.

First, the Ba'al cycle does not 'tend' to confirm the Tanakh as history, nor as a whole historically accurate.

I did not say "as a whole"; clearly, the Ba'al cycle is only relevant to part of the Tanakh. However, Psalm 2, for example, mocks the Ba'al cycle (in the Ba'al cycle, Ba'al revolts against his supreme deity and wins the highest position).

The Ten Commandments are evidence of ancient treaty forms, with a twist; whereas one copy would typically be placed in a temple and one given to the king, in Exodus both copies were placed in the tabernacle because YHWH was both God and king. The blessings and cursings in Deuteronomy are similarly related to ancient treaty forms, attesting to the antiquity of the work. These treaty forms were not in use in the time of the late Judaic monarchy, which is why the Torah should not be dated to around that time.

It is a fact that archaeology and geology have determined many things in the Tanakh are clearly wrong and historically accurate.

I'll assume you left out a negative somewhere.

Second, there are materials such as stone, treated animal skins and papyrus that can be mediums that can and do exist as texts millennia before the Bible was ever composed, edited and redacted in its present form.as evidences by outside sources.

Your objections cannot explain the lack of any references to Jesus in his life time, and the fact that no text of the Tanakh exists before ~900 - 600 BC. There is no evidence of the Hebrew language before about 11th-10th century BCE, and the earliest forms are primitive forms of language evolved:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Hebrew_writings#:~:text=The%20earliest%20known%20precursor%20to,at%20that%20early%20a%20stage.

Before the Aramaic-derived Hebrew alphabet was adopted circa the 5th century BCE, the Phoenician-derived Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used for writing, and a derivative of the script still survives to this day in the form of the Samaritan script.

© Copyright Original Source

Animal skin as parchment was used as early as 2500-2450 BCE:

Source: https://words.usask.ca/historyofthebook2018/2018/10/17/a-brief-history-of-parchment/

The earliest accounts of animal skin being utilized as a writing base date as far back as the Egyptian fourth dynasty (2550–2450 BC). Assyrian and Babylonian writing from the sixth century B.C.E. onward, as well as many early Islamic and Jewish texts,

© Copyright Original Source

This is all largely irrelevant. Stone is extremely cumbersome to use for writing extensive accounts, and papyrus and parchment just don't last long enough to be reliably around as original texts. Be cautious when arguing from a lack of evidence; the Hittites were thought to be mythological until evidence was discovered a century and a half ago. And yes, languages evolve; the book of Job abounds with archaic language.

[rogue06]

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

IOW, you are tacitly acknowledging having run across at least some of the scholarly reviews that are not exactly hidden on the interwebz,

I am doing no such thing. Comments from the general public on a discussion board and blog sites do not constitute "scholarly reviews".

But considering that there aren't any favorable reviews you thought starting one of your dishonest games would be appropriate instead. ]

There are several favourable reviews [albeit with caveats] including Whitmarsh's review in The Guardian but they also are in the "popular press" which you have stated you "didn't bother with".