The Bible was written by the victors to make themselves look good

The Bible was written by the victors to make themselves look good
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Yep, no brainer there. Maybe just change it up a bit to say "the stories in the Bible" since they were initially a collection of stories that ended up complied in a book (several books if you count the Torah and the Koran).
 
ddt said:
...

No-one was actually raped in the Lot story.
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Uhh, by the standards in this country sex with your daughters is considered rape (they were teens IIRC but even if not minors it's likely if the story has a kernel of truth, they were groomed). Of course if you are writing your own history, you blame them, they asked for it.
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
Indeed, I recall Ehrman mentioning on his blog thar he's actually quite unusual among NT scholars in that he has an actual history degree. Due to the sheer amount of languages, manuscripts and difficult textual issues one needs to study in order to be able to do serious NT scholarship, a lot of people apparently neglect it.
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Not that I know of, sadly. His Ph.D. is from the Princeton Theological Seminary. I don't think he actually majored in anything else than bible studies.

As I was saying, he applies SOME of the things from the historical method, and he's probably the closest to what we have to a historian in the field. Nevertheless, a lot of what he does, namely taking just the bible as telling about real events, IS bible studies, and a lot of the historical method he applies is actually at best an obsolete version.

You might say, "but hold on a minute, he's saying some things didn't happen exactly like in the bible, to say the least." Well, guess what? So does every bible studies professor ever. Nobody says that Jesus was born twice, at 10 years distance, for example. Most try to figure out a believable story where one or the other gospel is wrong. That's in fact, what theology has been doing since day 1.

Now I give him a lot of credit for at least trying to apply real historical thought to it, but... let's just say he's hardly in a position to lecture real historians about it.

Not that having a degree in history is a guarantee anyway, mind you. Craig Evans for example does actually have a BA in history, but he doesn't seem to apply much of that to Jesus :p
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Uhh, by the standards in this country sex with your daughters is considered rape (they were teens IIRC but even if not minors it's likely if the story has a kernel of truth, they were groomed). Of course if you are writing your own history, you blame them, they asked for it.
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The remark was only meant in respect to the incident within the city - where the mob demands the angels to come out, and Lot offers his daughters - not the subsequent incident in the cave where Lots daughter's have sex with him.

The first story has a parallel story in Judges 19, as Craig remarked, where a Levite stayed over in Gibeah with his concubine and offered her up to the mob. The mob gang-raped her and he found her dead on the doorstep the next morning.
 
ddt said:
The remark was only meant in respect to the incident within the city - where the mob demands the angels to come out, and Lot offers his daughters - not the subsequent incident in the cave where Lots daughter's have sex with him.

The first story has a parallel story in Judges 19, as Craig remarked, where a Levite stayed over in Gibeah with his concubine and offered her up to the mob. The mob gang-raped her and he found her dead on the doorstep the next morning.
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I see.

There is so much disgusting stuff in the Bible. :(
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Uhh, by the standards in this country sex with your daughters is considered rape (they were teens IIRC but even if not minors it's likely if the story has a kernel of truth, they were groomed). Of course if you are writing your own history, you blame them, they asked for it.
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This is completely at odds with the understanding of the writers of readers of these tales. The daughters got their father drunk, and had sex with him because they thought, in the aftermath of the destruction of the cities, that they were the only people left alive.

The modern understanding of "grooming" and "teens" etc simply has no application to this tale.

There is no "kernel of truth" here, as I have already argued. The story is an aetiological construction intended to exhibit the Moabites and Ammonites in an unflattering light.

No more is there a "kernel of truth" in the story of Lot's wife, except this: there are indeed deposits of salt near the Dead Sea. The story "explains" that observed fact, just as the daughter incest story explains the "observed fact" that the Moabites and the Ammonites are a misbegotten bunch of rascals.
 
HansMustermann said:
Not that I know of, sadly. His [Ehrman's?] Ph.D. is from the Princeton Theological Seminary. I don't think he actually majored in anything else than bible studies ...

You might say, "but hold on a minute, he's saying some things didn't happen exactly like in the bible, to say the least." Well, guess what? So does every bible studies professor ever. Nobody says that Jesus was born twice, at 10 years distance, for example. Most try to figure out a believable story where one or the other gospel is wrong. That's in fact, what theology has been doing since day 1.
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Does Ehrman try to rationalise the contradictory birth stories in the later synoptics by choosing one of them and declaring it to be true, or by any procedure resembling that? In that case, what precisely does he say? I am disappointed in him if so.

The alternative solution to this "Synoptic problem" is to declare these birth stories in their entirety to be false, in light of their absence from every other source, including one or more of the component sources of Matthew. The magic birth is explained not as factual but as a construction based on interpretations of Isaiah, Micah etc as messianic prophecy, which they are not. That Ehrman adopts the course you suggest, if he does, I find most disquieting.

But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you have written about this.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Not that I know of, sadly. His Ph.D. is from the Princeton Theological Seminary. I don't think he actually majored in anything else than bible studies.

As I was saying, he applies SOME of the things from the historical method, and he's probably the closest to what we have to a historian in the field. Nevertheless, a lot of what he does, namely taking just the bible as telling about real events, IS bible studies, and a lot of the historical method he applies is actually at best an obsolete version.

You might say, "but hold on a minute, he's saying some things didn't happen exactly like in the bible, to say the least." Well, guess what? So does every bible studies professor ever. Nobody says that Jesus was born twice, at 10 years distance, for example. Most try to figure out a believable story where one or the other gospel is wrong. That's in fact, what theology has been doing since day 1.

Now I give him a lot of credit for at least trying to apply real historical thought to it, but... let's just say he's hardly in a position to lecture real historians about it.

Not that having a degree in history is a guarantee anyway, mind you. Craig Evans for example does actually have a BA in history, but he doesn't seem to apply much of that to Jesus :p
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His PhD dissertation was on Didymus the Blind (i.e. textual criticism), but both his M.Div and PhD studies focused largely on Church (i.e. Early Christian) History. Have you read Did Jesus Exist? He very much goes over the historical methods he used there (multiple attestation, criterion of dissimilarity, primarily.) But he also stresses the importance of having extensive textual criticism and exegesis knowledge, in order to make any use of Biblical material at all; the context they were written in, how many sources the authors had, etc. It's not a full historical treatment but well worth reading. He also goes over it on his blog, very much stressing that he uses the same methods as historians in any area do.

Having studied E. Christian history extensivrly might not make him a historian in your world, but given the nature of the texts, obviously one needs an immense knowledge of the intricacies of the NT. Not just finding the original text, but how certain bits differ in style, what parts have characteristics of hymns or creeds, and so on. A "real" historian would have a difficult time making use of all this, unless they had se knowledge of exegesis and textual criticism.

Of course, if you were to write an extensive critique of "Did Jesus Exist?" or "How Jesus Bdcame God", probably his most historical books, I eould love to read it.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd7Lanms-gY Then we have this 80-min lecture: On Tuesday, February 25, 2014 I gave a lecture at Dickinson College (Carlisle Pennsylvania) on “Jesus and the Historian,” in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium. In the lecture I deal with the historical problems posed by the surviving Gospels for evaluating the evidence for the life and teachings of Jesus.

Again, it would be very interesting if you presented concrete arguments aghainst the critera and methods he uses.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
... Have you read Did Jesus Exist? He very much goes over the historical methods he used there (multiple attestation, criterion of dissimilarity, primarily.) But he also stresses the importance of having extensive textual criticism and exegesis knowledge, in order to make any use of Biblical material at all; the context they were written in, how many sources the authors had, etc. It's not a full historical treatment but well worth reading. He also goes over it on his blog, very much stressing that he uses the same methods as historians in any area do.
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I agree that it is worth reading like all his other books.

The problem with the last book is that despite him TRYING to use the historical methods he fails to apply them correctly.

His Did Jesus Exist is an amazing jumble of ILLOGICAL FALLACIES... pretty much like most other theological works ever written from Augustine through Aquinas up to Ehrman.

Seriously I read the book and I was palm-facing almost all the way through it.

Although, I do love Ehrman's work and I own and have read most of his books.


TubbaBlubba said:
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Of course, if you were to write an extensive critique of "Did Jesus Exist?" or "How Jesus Bdcame God", probably his most historical books, I eould love to read it.
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Here are a few

Here are two full books
 
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Carrier himself is hardly a paragon of solif methodology: https://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/mythtic-pizza-and-cold-cocked-scholars/
Also, Ehrman's responses:
http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/
Carrier, notably, never adresses the bulk of Ehrman's arguments (the NT literary evidence) and Ehrman clearly explains why the resurrection story does not pass historical muster, and yet Carrier introduces incessant vitriol. I really understand why Ehrmam doesn't bother with him much; he seems incredibly unpleasant.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
His [Bart Erhman's] PhD dissertation was on Didymus the Blind (i.e. textual criticism), but both his M.Div and PhD studies focused largely on Church (i.e. Early Christian) History. Have you read Did Jesus Exist? He very much goes over the historical methods he used there (multiple attestation, criterion of dissimilarity, primarily.) But he also stresses the importance of having extensive textual criticism and exegesis knowledge, in order to make any use of Biblical material at all; the context they were written in, how many sources the authors had, etc. It's not a full historical treatment but well worth reading. He also goes over it on his blog, very much stressing that he uses the same methods as historians in any area do.
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'multiple attestation' and 'criterion of dissimilarity' are not part of the Historical method, though.

Nor are so-called 'textural criticism' or 'exegesis' per se.

A key foundation of the historical method is using primary sources ie. material contemporaneous to the time in question -

  • texts - official records, first-person accounts, biographies,
  • artifacts - tools, furniture, art (sculptures, paintings, etc), coins, weapons,
  • archaeology
None of these exist for Christianity up until the end of the 2nd century, if that.
 
What you are referring to at first there is documentary evidence. True, for Christianity we only have literary evidence. The thing is, for anyone who wasn't extremely important, that's as good as it gets. For Pilate himself, the only documentary evidence we have is a partial inscription, and Pilate was the single most important person in Judaea in the day. If you are going to at all discuss people who weren't emperors and great generals, well, you just have to rely on literary evidence, and most of the time we do that. There just aren't that many Roman records that we have, if there ever were.

In the case of Jesus, we have at least a half-dozen first (at worst early second) century sources that assert key facts of his life - born a Jew, from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate, believed by disciples to have been resurrected. We have assertions in these sources and by early Church fathers that many collections of his sayings and deeds existed that we apparently no longer have, etc. We have Paul, who notes that he met James and Peter, despite being vocal in asserting that he learned all about Jesus from his visions; we have the Letter to the Romans, which Paul alleges to never even have visited, etc.

Absent any evidence of a massive conspiracy by James, Peter and/or Paul, it is very hard to conclude anything but the existence of Jesus.

Of course, once you go a step beyond this overview, you end up in massively technical and convoluted areas on manuscripts, textual criticism, and so on. Textual criticism must be applied to _any_ source, but the NT is uniquely complicated. Exegesis and an understanding of the contemporary theology is very much necessary to understand the context of the works, just as you would have to be versed in Platonism and their modes of ibterpretation in order to study neoplatonist texts.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Carrier himself is hardly a paragon of solif methodology: https://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/mythtic-pizza-and-cold-cocked-scholars/
Also, Ehrman's responses:
http://ehrmanblog.org/fuller-reply-to-richard-carrier/
Carrier, notably, never adresses the bulk of Ehrman's arguments (the NT literary evidence) and Ehrman clearly explains why the resurrection story does not pass historical muster, and yet Carrier introduces incessant vitriol. I really understand why Ehrmam doesn't bother with him much; he seems incredibly unpleasant.
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Ad hominem?

Deciding pro or con an argument based on the person giving it is an illogical fallacy.

Besides... expertise in FAIRY TALES and SKY DADDIES and their children and their magical exploits should come under the purview of the literature department not the history department.
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
What you are referring to at first there is documentary evidence. True, for Christianity we only have literary evidence. The thing is, for anyone who wasn't extremely important, that's as good as it gets. For Pilate himself, the only documentary evidence we have is a partial inscription, and Pilate was the single most important person in Judaea in the day. If you are going to at all discuss people who weren't emperors and great generals, well, you just have to rely on literary evidence, and most of the time we do that. There just aren't that many Roman records that we have, if there ever were.
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We have more than literary evidence for 1st century Judea, Samara, etc. We have coins; archaeology, etc.

Pilate is only important b/c the Christian story makes him so important.

TubbaBlubba said:
In the case of Jesus, we have at least a half-dozen first (at worst early second) century 'sources' that assert key facts of his life - born a Jew, from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate, believed by disciples to have been resurrected. We have assertions in these 'sources' and by early Church fathers that many collections of his sayings and deeds existed that we apparently no longer have, etc. We have Paul, who notes that he met James and Peter, despite being vocal in asserting that he learned all about Jesus from his visions; we have the Letter to the Romans, which Paul alleges to never even have visited, etc.
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We have narratives b/c they were theologically important, not b/c they were historically important or of documentary importance.

Absent any evidence of a massive conspiracy by James, Peter and/or Paul, it is very hard to conclude anything but the existence of Jesus.
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If James, Paul, or Peter existed.

This -
Of course, once you go a step beyond this overview, you end up in massively technical and convoluted areas on manuscripts, textual criticism, and so on. Textual criticism must be applied to _any_ source, but the NT is uniquely complicated. Exegesis and an understanding of the contemporary theology is very much necessary to understand the context of the works, just as you would have to be versed in Platonism and their modes of interpretation in order to study neoplatonist texts.
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- is special pleading for special interpretation outside the Historical Method.
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
What you are referring to at first there is documentary evidence. True, for Christianity we only have literary evidence. The thing is, for anyone who wasn't extremely important, that's as good as it gets. For Pilate himself, the only documentary evidence we have is a partial inscription, and Pilate was the single most important person in Judaea in the day. If you are going to at all discuss people who weren't emperors and great generals, well, you just have to rely on literary evidence, and most of the time we do that. There just aren't that many Roman records that we have, if there ever were.

In the case of Jesus, we have at least a half-dozen first (at worst early second) century sources that assert key facts of his life - born a Jew, from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate, believed by disciples to have been resurrected. We have assertions in these sources and by early Church fathers that many collections of his sayings and deeds existed that we apparently no longer have, etc. We have Paul, who notes that he met James and Peter, despite being vocal in asserting that he learned all about Jesus from his visions; we have the Letter to the Romans, which Paul alleges to never even have visited, etc.

Absent any evidence of a massive conspiracy by James, Peter and/or Paul, it is very hard to conclude anything but the existence of Jesus.
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Facts???? Paul, James, Peter??????????

Here is the problem with the above in a nutshell...
Circular unreasoning​

The Buybull is nothing but a collection of myths and fairy tales.

Arguing that the protagonist of a fairy tale was historical because the secondary characters of the fairy tale attested to the "facts" about him is to say the least .... :confused::boggled::eye-poppi:eek::yikes:


TubbaBlubba said:
Of course, once you go a step beyond this overview, you end up in massively technical and convoluted areas on manuscripts, textual criticism, and so on. Textual criticism must be applied to _any_ source, but the NT is uniquely complicated. Exegesis and an understanding of the contemporary theology is very much necessary to understand the context of the works, just as you would have to be versed in Platonism and their modes of ibterpretation in order to study neoplatonist texts.
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I think this blog expresses it best
So Popeye and Sherlock Holmes existed, according to all the criteria of mainstream Biblical history.​
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
What you are referring to at first there is documentary evidence. True, for Christianity we only have literary evidence. The thing is, for anyone who wasn't extremely important, that's as good as it gets. For Pilate himself, the only documentary evidence we have is a partial inscription, and Pilate was the single most important person in Judaea in the day. If you are going to at all discuss people who weren't emperors and great generals, well, you just have to rely on literary evidence, and most of the time we do that. There just aren't that many Roman records that we have, if there ever were.
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The fact that there is no historical data for Jesus does not help your argument.

You want us to assume obvious mythology and fiction is history.

TubbaBlubba said:
In the case of Jesus, we have at least a half-dozen first (at worst early second) century sources that assert key facts of his life - born a Jew, from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate, believed by disciples to have been resurrected. We have assertions in these sources and by early Church fathers that many collections of his sayings and deeds existed that we apparently no longer have, etc. We have Paul, who notes that he met James and Peter, despite being vocal in asserting that he learned all about Jesus from his visions; we have the Letter to the Romans, which Paul alleges to never even have visited, etc.
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Your statement is completely erroneous. In the NT and Christian writings Jesus STILL EXISTS--Jesus of Nazareth STILL LIVES.

We can read what the so-called early Church fathers wrote about Jesus.

The so-called early Church fathers confirmed Jesus was born of a Ghost and God Creator, the Lord from heaven who survived the crucifixion, resurrected and LIVES in heaven.

TubbaBlubba said:
Absent any evidence of a massive conspiracy by James, Peter and/or Paul, it is very hard to conclude anything but the existence of Jesus.
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It is extremely easy to conclude Jesus in the NT and Church writings existed as a myth/fiction character who could NEVER DIE.
 
This conversation about the Buybull and suchlike is very reminiscent of the discourse (now moderated) in the historical Jesus thread, to which I think it should be transferred.
 
Belz... said:
Or Pilate, or Tiberius, or Eusebius, or Innocent III, or Brad Pitt. I mean, I've never met any of them. Something fishy there.
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Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson did not exist.

But Queen Victoria, Scotland Yard and Sir Conan Doyle did exist but not Inspector Lestrade.

Also Charles Prepolec who wrote an article about Sherlock Holmes existed.
 
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Leumas said:
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson did not exist.

But Queen Victoria and Scotland Yard did exist but not Inspector Lestrade.

Also Charles Prepolec who wrote an article about Sherlock Holmes existed.
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I am now even more strongly of this opinion.
Craig B said:
This conversation about the Buybull and suchlike is very reminiscent of the discourse (now moderated) in the historical Jesus thread, to which I think it should be transferred.
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Leumas said:
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson did not exist.

But Queen Victoria, Scotland Yard and Sir Conan Doyle did exist but not Inspector Lestrade.
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Queen Victoria? All we have are pictures of someone who is claimed to be Victoria, and reports by people who believed that she existed.
 
Censorship via proxy

Craig B said:
This conversation about the Buybull and suchlike is very reminiscent of the discourse (now moderated) in the historical Jesus thread, to which I think it should be transferred.
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Title of the thread
The Bible was written by the victors to make themselves look good​

Is the NT not part of the Buybull?

The first paragraph

pgwenthold said:
Something I think about with the bible, and particularly the old testament, is how much it reeks of "history is written by the victors." Two stories in particular come to mind.
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Wasn't the NT basically the compilation of the victorious Christian cult over all the other ones to the exclusion of their ideas and writings?

Part of the discussion is about whether any of the buybull was true before we can argue about it being embellished history.

Since Jesus and the NT are parts of the buybull then a discussion about them being fairy tales or embellished history and about people who think they are or not is very much the topic of this thread.

However, your attempts at censorship via proxy are well noted.
 
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Wow, it's really sad what level people stoop to whenever one discusses how scholars treat the biblical narratives. Each book and epistle is analysed, both on its own, in contrast to other works, and in the context it was written. Various inferences are made about the source materials, their relation to each other, and the motivation of the scribe. It is a long and involved process.

What many so-called skeptics seem to do is give the early church the privilege of interpreting the nature and purpose of scripture, whereas good scholars try to understand the purpose of the authors, the nature of their sources, etc.

Also, "if Paul existed"? Seriously? We have seven letters from him. He is the main character of Acts. He was important enough that people forged letters in his name. Does anybody seriously think the Church fathers or whoever just made up Paul and wrote a bunch of letters in his name? Why the hell would they do that? What evidence is there? That people went to the length of forging things in his name (and that of James and of Peter) clearly suggests that they were understood as authority figures.

Here's the thing: you can always explain any historical documents with "it was a conspiracy". But in order to argue it, you need evidence that it was a conspiracy.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
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Here's the thing: you can always explain any historical documents with "it was a conspiracy". But in order to argue it, you need evidence that it was a conspiracy.
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Circular unreasoning?
Don't you think that you ought to establish that they were "historical documents" before you argue that they were historical?​


Special pleading?
Why do you accept the VICTORS' assertion that these documents were not historical?

Why do you accept the VICTORS' assertion that these documents were fairy tales?

 
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Leumas said:
Circular unreasoning?
Don't you think that you ought to establish that they were "historical documents" before you argue if they were historical?​


Special pleading?
Why do you accept the VICTORS' assertion that these documents were not historical?

Why do you accept the VICTORS' assertion that these documents were fairy tales?
<snip>​
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They are documents, are they not? From history. Historical documents. :confused:
That does not mean they accurately describe historical events.​
 
All of those are historical documents (well, literature). Some of them are indeed useful. There is nothing controversial about that.

Wow, here I thought it was possible to have a readoned discussion on historical methodology. But given the sad state of the HJ thread, I guess that was naive of me.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
They are documents, are they not? From history. Historical documents. :confused:
That does not mean they accurately describe historical events.
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Equivocation?

Ok... so The 1001 Arabian Nights was a historic fable.

What's next... are you going to start arguing for Ali Baba and his 40 disciples and how their magical door was not really magical but a clever mechanical device?

What about the Aeneid... it is a historic poem too... no?

What's next... are you going to argue that Romulus and Remus were real but they did not suckle from a wolf but rather a feral human female?

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a historic document too... no?

So what is next.... are you going to argue that Anubis was real too?

Why all the special pleading for the Buybull and its fairy tales?
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
All of those are historical documents (well, literature). Some of them are indeed useful. There is nothing controversial about that.
...
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Equivocation?

Do you argue for the reality of King Lear or Hamlet or Romeo?

Do you get so irate at people who think Robin Hood was a legend?

Are you so adamant to vehemently argue for the veracity of Achilles?

Why all the special pleading for the Buybull and its fairy tales?
 
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Leumas said:
Do you argue for the reality of King Lear or Hamlet or Romeo? Do you get so irate at people who think Robin Hood was a legend?

Why all the special pleading for the Buybull and its fairy tales?
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King Lear, Hamlet and Romeo mss are all historical documents, fictive literature. Clearly they are not intended to be in any way historical (other than as an ostensible narrative). Robin Hood may or may not have existed, AFAIK the earliest ballads are scant on clues indeed.

I really don't see what you find so difficult about assessing each document on its own grounds. Some are clearly fiction, perhaps historical fiction; some are vastly embellished accounts only very vaguely similar to real events (e.g. Song of Roland); some fairly straight reports, others are a mix of one or the others. But if you have a set of very different documents from different hands, by all accounts with different biases, intended to describe someone the authors believed to have existed, not all appearing to draw from the same sources, where each of them contains a consistent core set of biographical information not apparently religiously motivated and often quite the opposite (e.g.they try to explain away his Nazarean origins) then at least one can reasonably infer that those core biographical pieces of info describe someone who existed.

Personally I'm not quite as convinced by the "he was definitely an appcalyptic rabbi" idea; that seems far less certain, but it is not unreasonable considering the many apocalyptic views in the earliest documents.
 
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TubbaBlubba said:
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I really don't see what you find so difficult about assessing each document on its own grounds. ....
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Humanity has been doing this for the Buybull for 2500 years now.

Anyone who doubted its veracity in the past was put to a slow tortuous agonizing death... today they get called all sorts of names... well at least they are not getting killed as before.... yet!!


Modern archaeology, anthropology, sociology, biology, microbiology, neurology, physics, mathematics, geography, geology, astronomy, psychology, epistemology economics, history and about all the ogy's and sciences we have demonstrate beyond any SANE doubt the INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE the fairy tales are.

I think it is about time people in the 21st century stopped their SPECIAL PLEADING for the Buybull's fairy tales.
 
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Leumas said:
Humanity has been doing this for the Buybull for 2500 years now.

Anyone who doubted its veracity in the past was put to a slow tortuous agonizing death.

Modern archaeology, anthropology, sociology, biology, microbiology, neurology, physics, mathematics, geography, geology, astronomy, psychology, epistemology and about all the ogy's and science we have have demonstrated the INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE the fairy tales are.

I think it is about time people in the 21st century stopped their SPECIAL PLEADING for the Buybull's sake.
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What special pleading? The only thing remotely similar that I have said is that the textual situation with the NT is uniquely convoluted; there are a ton of manuscripts in many languages, most of them poorly copied, many doctored or ill-advisedly "corrected", each made in its own social context, and along with that quotes and references made by people with agendas. And even the authors of the original texts had their sources and agendas!

As far as I know, there is no other set of documents in such a complicated situation, although obviously those issues exist to some degree with all ancient documents.

What I am saying then, is that we should investigate the Bible in exactly the same way we investigate other documents. It's just very difficult to reconstruct the original text, let alone figure out what the author meant with what they wrote, what sources they had, why they wrote it, for whom...
 
Leumas said:
Title of the thread
The Bible was written by the victors to make themselves look good​

Is the NT not part of the Buybull?

The first paragraph




Wasn't the NT basically the compilation of the victorious Christian cult over all the other ones to the exclusion of their ideas and writings?

Part of the discussion is about whether any of the buybull was true before we can argue about it being embellished history.

Since Jesus and the NT are parts of the buybull then a discussion about them being fairy tales or embellished history and about people who think they are or not is very much the topic of this thread.

However, your attempts at censorship via proxy are well noted.
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This should be transferred to the Historical Jesus thread and subjected to the moderation prevailing there. Your post convinces me of that.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
King Lear, Hamlet and Romeo mss are all historical documents, fictive literature. Clearly they are not intended to be in any way historical (other than as an ostensible narrative). Robin Hood may or may not have existed, AFAIK the earliest ballads are scant on clues indeed.
...
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Romeo
...Although both Salernitano and da Porto claimed that their stories had historical basis, there is little evidence that this is the case.​

King Lear
Leir was a legendary king of the Britons whose story was recounted or invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain.​

Hamlet
According to a popular theory, Shakespeare's main source is believed to be an earlier play—now lost—known today as the Ur-Hamlet. Possibly written by Thomas Kyd or even William Shakespeare himself, the Ur-Hamlet would have been in performance by 1589 and the first version of the story known to incorporate a ghost.[16] Shakespeare's company, the Chamberlain's Men, may have purchased that play and performed a version for some time, which Shakespeare reworked.[17] Since no copy of the Ur-Hamlet has survived, however, it is impossible to compare its language and style with the known works of any of its putative authors. Consequently, there is no direct evidence that Kyd wrote it, nor any evidence that the play was not an early version of Hamlet by Shakespeare himself. This latter idea—placing Hamlet far earlier than the generally accepted date, with a much longer period of development—has attracted some support, though others dismiss it as speculation.
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Oh, I thought you meant Shakespeare's plays. If we bring in Geoffrey of Monmouth and the like, then obviously things get more complicated. It's not an area of my expertise. Regardless, Monmouth is writing far further after-the-fact (500 years) than any author of the NT, and is AFAIK the sole source for most of his writing, thus obviously not comparable to Jesus in the NT. A comparison between King Lear (or Arthur) and Moses or Abraham might be more apt.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
I really don't see what you find so difficult about assessing each document on its own grounds.
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That is way too difficult, man. Like, that requires some actual work from people who may have had to spend their entire lives learning about this stuff. We're laymen, you know. We don't want to have to go through all of that, but we want an answer. And not just any answer, but one that sits well with us. I'm an atheist, by the way, so not only is Christianity an evil organisation and their god doesn't exist but, guess what? There's no historical basis to the story of Jesus, either. There. Simple, easy and satisfying. Anyone who disagrees with me is a closet Christian.
 
Belz... said:
You have letters attributed to him. Have you ever met Paul? Neither have I.
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Attributed to and claimed to be written by. We have seven letters, written by the same person, who calls himself Paul.

Have you ever met Flavius Josephus? What evidence of him is there apart from his writings? (IIRC none).
 
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