No it doesn't mean that when you use it to create a strawman.
I'm not attempting to create strawman arguments when I write "so".
A. You propose a position about the state of phenomena (P).
B. I pose a challenging question regarding the epistemology of that position.
C. You answer to that challenging question by presenting an object for accessing the information to draw that position in some capacity.
D. I write "so" or "therefore" in regards to (C) requiring only (A), and do so in question form because...
E. I also offer other possibilities than only the one possibility of (A) by producing questions and considerations which are other variations which could be employed where (C) is employed in the logic, and of which would alter conclusion of proposition (A) regarding phenomena (P) if different.
F. I then rest in rephrase on my epistemological position that without knowing more about how (Q) group valued phenomena (P), we cannot readily isolate only one possible (C) and therefore only one possible (A) of (P) because the only information about (P) in which we have resides on a given (Q) writing of a given (P), and that therefore the motive of (Q) for writing of (P) is of value to us for deduction.
Stating "so" or "therefore" in (D) to clarify the link between consequent claim (A) of logic (C) is not a "strawman" - it is a drawing of a conclusion in summary: a recognition that (B)'s question of (A) is being answered by link (C) - which, in this discussion - requires that only (A) is possible and is only possible via (C).
It is not that (F) relies on (D) to counter the assertion of (A) [an actual strawman argument].
(F) relies on interrupting the link provided between (C) and (P), and offers possible interruptions of that linking via (E), and not (D).
(D), then, is not rested upon nor capable of being a "strawman" argument.
It is a rephrase in summary of the implied statement that if proposition (A) regarding (P) is inquired of as to the epistemology of (A), and the answer to (B) is provided in (C), that answer (C) is therefore suggesting that only (A) is possible by consequence of (C), regarding (P) - otherwise claim (A) would be pointless to begin with (since you aren't claiming ideas about possibilities, but absolutes; such as - that we can know to remove Bethlehem as actually a place of birth of a reductionist Jesus without knowing the cultural value of that literary entry unto whatever culture produced the entry).
I think the Messianic movement was a general opposition to the Authorities in charge of the Temple and that these guys were the leaders of that movement which led to the revolt against Rome.
'These guys' refers to the DSS group.
I haven't any issue with stating the Messianic movement was a general opposition to the given political environment of the time.
I would question the second part, however.
This is how this section has gone:
B said:
I'm convinced (even if you are not) that the DSS contain the Jewish seeds of what later became Gentile Christianity. Not that the Gospels were directly influenced by the DSS, because the Authors of the DSS were all killed or enslaved by the Romans in the war and those scrolls were untouched by anyone until the 20th century.
J said:
So a sect who no one witnessed the works of until the 20th century influenced a religious movement not yet identified in provenance?
B said:
These DSS people were the Zealots who fought against Rome. The specific Sectarian texts that were in those caves were not seen. Although the Damascus Document was found in one other place in Egypt.
J said:
That wasn't my point.
You said their documents weren't found until the 20th c CE and that you weren't claiming they had direct influence to the Gospel texts (or any of the other near 100 texts), but that you are convinced that the DSS contain the Jewish seeds of what later became Gentile Christianity.
So a bunch of texts which did not influence the later Christian texts because they weren't available did somehow create the seed for non-Hebrew Christianity?
To be clear:
The DSS was being claimed as the influence.
You made this judgement based on your comparing of the DSS content and the Gospel texts.
You were able to do so via texts.
One means, then of the influence, was texts.
In this exchange, textual relation was removed as a consequent link that [the DSS influenced Christianity and that therefore the DSS can be employed as the cultural value set for determining a reductionist Jesus] (as that was my entire point, and why you brought them up - in answer to me claiming that we don't know the culture to base the values off of...you then offered the DSS).
B said:
It wasn't the texts, but the beliefs of the people who wrote them. These things exist outside of the texts in the culture.
I'd like to also point out that you, here, just did what I said is required and needed as a solution to the problem - you assigned a culture to the problem, and admit that the cultural values were considerations which were extra-textual - that is: capable of existing outside of textual reliance.
J said:
And we know this is only something linked to just the DSS culture because?
Even though we admit to having dozens of messianic cults at the time, only THIS cult is the one to relate to Christianity?
At this point it is being stated that the DSS is a good facsimile for values in judging a reductionist Jesus, not because of their texts, but because of their beliefs.
It is then being challenged a second time as to why this specific group is the link for judging values for a reductionist Jesus when looking at the gospel texts.
The answer supplied is that we can know this is the culture to use as a decent facsimile for values in judging a reductionist Jesus....
B said:
Mostly because they numbered in the thousands and they were in Jerusalem.
This means that the DSS is a good facsimile for values in judging a reductionist Jesus out of the Gospel texts because of their population size and location.
J said:
Therefore only they have the influence possible?
Because no other groups had large followings in Judah at the time?
None?
All other Messianic followings had what number of followers, exactly?
To be clear: because the reason was given that the DSS is a good facsimile for values in judging a reductionist Jesus out of the Gospel texts because of their population size and location, it then becomes a valid question to ask how large or small other groups were IF we are to be asked to judge influence by population (which, in itself is not inherently indicative of influence to the point of single entry access to being the culture we judge value from for a reductionist Jesus composition).
The reason given for how we can know that this DSS group was the influence upon Christianity has been population.
When the question is raised in regards to confusion regarding the population of messianic groups in general around the same period, the reason for determining their influence into Christianity is stated to be because...
B said:
I think the Messianic movement was a general opposition to the Authorities in charge of the Temple and that these guys were the leaders of that movement which led to the revolt against Rome.
Naturally, the question becomes three-fold:
A. Did messianic movements organized into sectarian clusters which never-the-less all bowed to ONE other sect as all sects' leading sect (even if they all disagreed on doctrine)?
B. How do we know this DSS group were the leaders of the messianic movements?
C. How do we know that IF
(A) was even possible, that any leadership sect of the sects was the ONLY sect which would have had influence upon the formation of
ALL later Christian texts (even
if by "all" we only mean "Canon Gospel")?
How many Ebionite groups do you think there were?
I do not know how many there were - it appears there were, however, multiple such groups.
Exactly how many is a very heated debate.
Is it usual for many different unrelated groups to share the same name?
The easiest example of this is: "Christian".
There are a very, very great many different and unrelated groups of peoples claiming to be "Christian", yet their extra-textual doctrinal cultures are vastly different in regards to Christologies, Ontologies, Salvation, Baptism, divine Revelation, etc...
Further; when we pick one such branch and look into it, we find further sectarian fractures such that Baptist is a movement separated into multiple forms of Baptist, Mormons are fractured into multiple forms of Mormons, etc...
There remains quite
easily the possibility for multiple "ebionite" groups to exist.
I guess they could have been, why is that relevant? The epistle of Jude is another NT book that reads very similar to the DSS, with its talk of a liar deceiving the children of Israel...
Because the question is in regards to discerning values of the culture of provenance for the texts we do have, for the purpose of discerning which values were not of literary value, for the purpose of chiseling out those values, for the purpose of then only leaving behind non-literary values of descriptions regarding the Jesus figure, for the purpose of then having deduced a reductive Jesus...as opposed to a constructed Jesus.
So, given an axiom of Pauline influence upon Gospel textual creation, it does remain valid to ask how we know that only one set of Christians were influenced by Pauling texts.
Further, still not addressed in the response: it becomes of question as to WHICH later Christian culture do we lay claim to as the culture to couple with the DSS and apparently Pauline texts to discern values from?
This has to be asked as well because there were multiple later Christian groups out of the orthodoxies, and multiple varying value sets.
I'm not sure I'm following you here, but closest would be Apocalyptic Judaism, but they were mostly wiped out by the Romans, first in Palestine and later in Egypt and Syria.
How do we know this was the CLOSEST to the original culture of provenance regarding the stories of Jesus?
The only way we know this is IF we accept the axiom of the DSS being the genesis point as proposed above, or IF we accept the axiom that Jesus did exist and was alive.
If we don't accept any of those axioms and just look for a culture which holds the values, symbolic languages (all of them), and literary styles as what exists in the texts...and only use these means because they are the only actual pieces of evidence remaining...then do we clearly land ourselves into Palestine, or Egypt, or Syria, or ______?
How so? By what measure?
I've shown multiple instances whereby the DSS are not the only possibility for us to select regarding the provenance of the texts.
Is that what you think I said? Really?
That was the chain of inquiry and the thread of thought you offered in response to query.
If it became forgotten what the tangent was in the response, then we can go back to the previous inquiry and re-examine for a response.
All of this is irrelevant to the question of a HJ. What happened decades or centuries later in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece or Rome only takes us further away from 1st century Palestine, which if there ever was an HJ, is where he lived.
No; it doesn't.
We cannot just jump into Palestine in 1st c CE, assume this is our cultural starting point and then use THIS culture to discern a reductive Jesus from texts created in the 2nd c CE and found in Egypt which also happens to be a place where multiple culture's texts ended up, thereby confusing the matter of provenance.
We cannot because without the cultural identity for the provenance we are at great disadvantage for determining what the authoring culture simply wrote for non-factual reasons vs what they would have written for factual reasons.
And we don't know that because we don't know their culture, and different cultures wrote differently about both fiction and fact - variously.
I don't understand your obsession with the idea that we have to categorise all of the influences on each of the gospels before we can tell if there was an HJ or not. What is the point of noting 2nd century Anatolian influence in gJohn when we are looking for a 1st century Palestinian?
Again; because we cannot know what is and is not a possible intention of writing what was believed to have been factual or what was included for reasons of narrative motivation without knowing how the authoring culture wrote of factual and fictional structures - that is; what their values were.
I just think most of those questions you asked are irrelevant to the question of whether or not Jesus was a first century Jewish teacher sandwiched somewhere between John The Baptist, James and Paul.
Our only pieces of evidence to examine are texts of various differences which we received much later than the alleged time frame represented in the narratives, and without knowing the authoring culture's values in regards to narrative structure of facts or fictions, we cannot well discern which objects, subjects, events, or other such components, are therefore fact or fiction.
Just because something is benign does not mean that it is accurate to apply to the reductionist Jesus as indicative of what that Jesus would have been like, and therefore if probable to have existed.
An easy example of this is, again,
Aeneid.
If we take that method to this text, then we would have a vast entry of non-historical events and people into history as there are many mundane items mixed into the supernatural events of the story, and yet their mundane property compels us none to declare them true, and we can do so because we understand the cultural context of the writing.
This is rather commonplace paleographic anthropology...it's done with pretty much every other text we receive or find...except for these texts.
When it comes to these texts, provenance comes up ad-hoc (and less than half-arsed) in support of hypotheses in argument; not independent OF arguments as arguments of themselves, void of concern over impact to other non-provenance hypotheses.
Someone might take that as a serious comment. 
then 
then 
then finally 
WHAT?!?
