If Jesus wasn’t a real historical figure, where did Christian theology come from?
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Anonymous
He’s definitely biased. He was uber Christian for most of his life. His doctorate was about the New Testament. Not employed by the history department: https://religion.unc.edu/_people/full-time-faculty/ehrman/ |
Anonymous
They think the circumstantial evidence is compelling. That doesn’t make it definitive. |
Anonymous
Why lie about something so easily disproven? Again, the PP was merely defining the term "likely" for the people who seem unfamiliar. "Likely and not 100% certain or not mutually exclusive in anyway. In fact all of the percentages between 51% and 99% qualify as both." PP was talking about the general definition. |
Anonymous
Why are you speaking for thousands of scholars and academics? |
Anonymous
All theologists. https://as.vanderbilt.edu/jewishstudies/people/emeriti/amy-jill-levine/ https://www.bu.edu/religion/faculty/paula-fredriksen/ https://religion.unc.edu/_people/full-time-faculty/ehrman/ |
Anonymous
Because there is only circumstantial evidence available. And many say “I accept” the historicity. |
Anonymous
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Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure.
Most theological historians, Christian and non-Christian alike, believe that Jesus really did walk the Earth. While historians and scholars abound who doubt Jesus performed miracles, literally over 99.9% of them (and 100% of relevantly credentialed professors) believe he existed. See examples of experts commenting on the status in their own field: Paul Maier (Ancient history professor at Western Michigan): “Open nearly any text in ancient history of Western civilization used widely in colleges and universities today, and you will find a generally sympathetic, if compressed, version of Jesus' life, which ends with some variation of the statement that he was crucified by Pontius Pilate and died as a result. No ranking historian anywhere in the world shares the ultimate criticism voiced by German philosopher Bruno Bauer in the last century, that Jesus was a myth, that he never lived in fact.” [“Christianity Today”, XIX (1975): 63.] Michael Grant (Atheist professor at Edinburgh, Classicist): “To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.” [Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels (Simon & Schuster, 1992.] (Approvingly citing Otto Betz) Richard Burridge (Biblical exegesis professor at King's College, Classicist): “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.” [Jesus, Now and Then (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 34.] Robert Van Voorst (NT professor at Western Theological): “The nonhistoricity [of Jesus] thesis has always been controversial… Biblical scholars and classical historians now regard it as effectively refuted.” [Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), 16.] Craig Evans (NT professor at Asbury; Founder of Dead Sea Scrolls Inst.): “No serious historian of any religious or nonreligious stripe doubts that Jesus of Nazareth really lived in the first century and was executed under the authority of Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea and Samaria. Though this may be common knowledge among scholars, the public may well not be aware of this.” [Jesus, The Final Days eds. Evans & Wright (Westminster, 2009), 3.] Mark Allen Powell (NT professor at Trinity Lutheran, a founding editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus): “A hundred and fifty years ago a fairly well respected scholar named Bruno Bauer maintained that the historical Jesus never existed. Anyone who says that today – in the academic world at least – gets grouped with the skinheads who say there was no Holocaust and the scientific holdouts who want to believe the world is flat.” [Jesus as a Figure in History (Westminster, 1998), 168.] |
Anonymous
You have zero right to speak for any historian, scholar, or academic. What are your qualifications to speak for these people? |
Anonymous
At least two are also historians. As you know very well because you linked to them. More crucially, none has made a career in Christian apologetics, in fact the opposite. All three have spent the past few decades trying to debunk other aspects of Christianity. As you also know. Congrats, you get the prize for most dishonest troll on the thread. |
Anonymous
Watching atheist pp trying to argue that Bart Ehrman is not a scholar and is biased in favor of Christianity is worth the price of admission. |
Anonymous
In the introduction of Bart Ehrman’s book Did Jesus Exist? he says, “I am not a Christian, and I have no interest in promoting a Christian cause or a Christian agenda. I am an agnostic with atheist leanings.... But as a historian I think evidence matters. And the past matters. And for anyone to whom both evidence and the past matter, a dispassionate consideration of the case makes it quite plain: Jesus did exist.” |
Anonymous
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Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary. Every classicist has it on their bookshelf. It summarises scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just over 1,700 pages. There is a multiple page entry on the origins of Christianity that begins with an assessment of what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts at all are raised about the basic facts of Jesus’s life and death.
Or take the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in 14 volumes. Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period”, right about the time that Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and — yes — Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’ life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternising with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements. Not wanting to labour the point, but we could also turn to the compendium of Jewish history, the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period”. Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as an interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter — 60 pages in length — focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament when they think the evidence is against it. The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think about the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, and his death on a cross are all treated as beyond reasonable doubt. In 2014, in a rush of blood to the head, I offered a cheeky bet, first on Twitter and then in an article for the ABC: I will eat a page out of my Bible if someone can find a full Professor of Ancient History, Classics, or New Testament in any real university in the world who argues that Jesus never lived. My Bible has been safe these last seven years. Professors of philosophy, sure. Professors of English literature or German language, yes. But no Professor in the relevant fields has yet been named. Maybe such a scholar exists somewhere. There are thousands to choose from. So I have the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel (which recounts Jesus’s birth) primed. I’m willing to rip it out, cut it up, and eat it with my Christmas pudding. John Dickson is an author and historian, and the presenter of the podcast Undeceptions. He holds a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and is a Visiting Academic (2016-2022) in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford https://www.abc.net.au/religion/john-dickson-why-historians-dont-doubt-jesus-existed/13687464 |
Anonymous
Thanks, pp, that’s a great quote |
Anonymous
But does Bart Ehrman exist? Are there any first-hand accounts of him writing this book by reliable, third parties? /s |
Anonymous
I never said he wasn’t a scholar. Seems like you have trouble reading. He certainly has a bias given his background. |