[skissane]

> With Christianity we don't have much idea of what Christ wanted, Christ existence has an absolutely terrible historical source base. In fact I found it pretty embracing how little there was. Christ probably existed (I would put it 75%/25%) but if he did he was a insignificant preacher

Still better than what we have for Siddharta Gautama. Buddhist sources can't even agree on which century he lived in. Christian sources are unanimous in dating Jesus of Nazareth to within a decade, and the Jewish historian Josephus (writing approximately 60 years later) also confirms his existence. One of the two references to Jesus in Josephus has obviously been tampered with by Christian copyists, but the majority of scholars believe there was a genuine reference there prior to the tampering; and most scholars believe the second reference is entirely genuine.

Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into

> So pretty much all Christians have a massive problem.

Some Christians are big on arguing for Christianity based on the claimed historical accuracy of the New Testament – an approach called "evidentialist apologetics". You have correctly pointed out the massive problems with that approach. However, not all Christians argue for Christianity in that way – indeed, I think it is historically a minority, despite the huge fad for it in 20th century Anglophone Christianity (and especially evangelical Protestantism). Other Christians put greater emphasis on other arguments – philosophical arguments, arguments from religious experience, historical arguments that rely on the broad sweep of Christian history rather than just its first decade, etc. Maybe all those other arguments have problems too–but not these problems.

[panick21_]

I know nothing of Buddhism as it has never interest me much.

> Jewish historian Josephus

In general we have a history in this field where early on almost everything was accepted and for decades more things have been stripped. Once upon a time it was consensuses that there was an empty tomb and that wasn't that long ago.

This is a field absolutely dominated by fundamentalist scholars and a historiography that mostly made by strongly believing Christians.

The history of the field is basically one of attempting to prove that Jesus existed, that Gospels are historical and so on. It took decades to remove and change the field an some things are still in flux, such a Q.

Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that. There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.

As I said, Jesus most likely did exist but the evidence isn't that great.

> Also, the majority of secular scholars believe we can work out roughly what Jesus taught – although it seems likely that what he actually taught was much closer to 1st century Judaism than what Christianity later evolved into

Even scholars don't have a unified agreement on what he taught. Most likely some for of Apocalyptic Judaism as you said. There were many of those kinds of Jewish cults during that time. And there is also evidence that these were partially overlapping and so on.

The issue is that after his death and supposed resurrection he apparently appeared in vision to the Apostles and gave them knowledge (that is what they believed). And its very likely that they all at different kinds of visions that likely changed what he would have taught in live.

So basically the very reason there is a Christianity (the believe in supposed resurrection) basically implies changes to the theology.

[skissane]

> This is a field absolutely dominated by fundamentalist scholars and a historiography that mostly made by strongly believing Christians.

Geza Vermes was never a "fundamentalist" scholar. Although he was once a Catholic priest, he left the priesthood and stopped believing in Christianity. Both his parents were Jewish by birth, but had converted to Catholicism–which didn't stop the Nazis from murdering them in the Holocaust. He went back to identifying as a Jew–at first as a purely ethnic/cultural non-religious identity, but he later accepted Liberal/Reform Judaism as his religion.

And yet, he was one of the scholars who agrees that Josephus contained original references to Jesus of Nazareth, prior to any Christian tampering. In his reconstruction of the original text, Josephus' brief discussion of Jesus was mostly neutral, albeit slightly negative/sceptical, but nevertheless affirming the historical reality of his existence. Vermes argues that Christian scribes replaced Josephus' slightly negative/sceptical attitude towards Jesus with expressions of Christian belief which a believing Jew such as Josephus could never have written.

Vermes was convinced that Jesus was a real historical figure – but he saw him as a Jewish teacher, whose actual teachings had little in common with the doctrines of Christianity. Most of his scholarly career was after he'd left Christianity, so it is not like he had any religious motivation to believe in the historical existence of Jesus – on the contrary, as an ex-Christian, you'd think if he was biased towards anything, it would be towards the opposite.

> Even if Josephus did write those things (or there were earlier things later changed) it would most likely have been writing based of reports from Christians so even if he the reference are real and refer to the actual Jesus as we understand it, its not great evidence because of course Christians tell him that.

Why couldn't Josephus have had independent knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth? Some Jewish apocalyptic teacher turns up in Jerusalem, causes a stir, the authorities (both Roman and Jewish) get rid of him. Why wouldn't people in Jerusalem remember that? Even though it happened 5-10 years before Josephus was born, why couldn't his parents have remembered it and told him about it? Josephus' parents were members of the Jewish elite in Jerusalem–his father Matthias was a senior priest at the Temple–so it seems entirely plausible that his father (or grandfather, uncles, etc) may have had some firsthand knowledge of the incident.

Jesus was surely not the only apocalyptic teacher to be executed for causing a stir – but the fact that his followers endured and grew rather than dying out likely helped stick him in people's memory.

> There is no evidence Josephus did any independent study or had any source other then Christians or maybe some of the Gospels like Mark.

There is no good evidence that Josephus had access to the Gospel of Mark or any other Christian source. We have no real idea where he got his information from. It could have come from Christians, it could have just as easily have come from independent Jewish sources – we just don't know.

[panick21_]

You misunderstand, I didn't say everybody was a fundamentalist who believe in historicity. I'm saying the feel was dominated by fundamentalist and the universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true.

And the Church own historical record and assumption was the jumping of point for all modern scholarship. So the universal trend of the secular field is to basically dismantle many of these things.

So what I am saying is that anything that can be interpreted as pro-historicity has received about 1000x more study and attention, while every counter point gets pushed of or dismisses and could even get you fired, even into the 1980s. Even today many schools that claim to be un-bias have faith requirements. The same was true with the history of the gospel, there are whole fields of 'scholarship' just to prove the gospels true.

So its pretty clear where the focus of scholarship is and was on all these issues. There are simply far fewer secular scholars on this topic. And scholarship has already moved on from Geza Vermes.

Josephus reliable mention of Jesus is pretty clearly added and claims that was rewritten of an earlier version are far less credible then somebody simply adding a Christian creed to the text. That is what the evidence points to.

The second mention of Jesus in Josephus is incredibly brief and is also increasingly being questioned.

So overall I would simply don't Josephus is good evidence. In fact, if anything, its evidence that Christians were really just not that important or relevant to most people. Ken Olson makes these points very well if you want to look up these debates.

I said its 75%/25% and in general the field seems to be continuously moving in the direction of removing evidence for history, rather then adding it.

[skissane]

> I'm saying the feel was dominated by fundamentalist and the universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true.

Who was the founder of modern biblical scholarship? Not any "fundamentalist" – many say it was the 17th century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza [0], who was excommunicated by Amsterdam's Jewish community for heresy, because he questioned traditional Jewish doctrines – most significantly in this case, he argued that the Torah contained inaccuracies and historical errors, that most of it was not written by Moses, that its transmission had been imperfect and had allowed the text to become corrupt – all positions which were just as heretical to the Christians of his day as they were to his own Jewish community. And although, as a Jew, his arguments were about the Jewish scriptures only, not the New Testament, it wasn't long before the debate he started about the former grew to include the later.

The 18th/19th German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was no fundamentalist either – he is often called the "Father of Modern Liberal Theology", but he also made major contributions to the development of biblical scholarship – in particular by arguing that the only correct way to interpret the Bible is to start out by treating it like any other text, to seek to find general principles applicable to all texts (even non-religious ones) and then seek to apply those general principles to the Bible in particular.

One of the founding figures of the "Quest for the Historical Jesus" was the 19th century German liberal Protestant theologian David Strauss – who rejected the traditional Christian belief that Jesus was divine, and argued that any attempt to discover the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth must begin by rejecting all supernatural explanations. A very long way from Christian fundamentalism.

The word "fundamentalism" was coined in 1920 to describe those Christians who were fans of the essay series The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, published in Chicago between 1910 and 1915 – one of the major themes of those essays was a rejection of the tradition of modern biblical scholarship, as taught in leading academic institutions (especially Princeton.) So, rather than modern biblical scholarship being founded on fundamentalism, fundamentalism arose as a reaction to it.

And, claiming there were "universal default assumptions for 1500+ years was that Gospel were historically true" completely ignores the long history of Jewish and Islamic scholarship on the New Testament, none of which ever assumed it was true. The earliest surviving detailed Jewish criticism of the Gospels is the 10th century "Book of Nestor the Priest", which quotes extensively and critically from the Gospel of Matthew; similar mediaeval Jewish works include Jacob ben Reuben's Milhamoth ha-Shem (12th century); the Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne and Sefer Nizzahon Yashan (both 13th century); and Ibn Shaprut's Touchstone (14th century). Similarly, there was a voluminous mediaeval Islamic literature attacking the credibility of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures, which extensively quoted from them and sought to expose their absurdities and inconsistencies – important authors in that literature included al-Baqillani (d. 1013), 'Abd al-Djabbar (d. 1025), ibn Hazm (d. 1064), al-Djuwayni (d. 1085), Samau'al al-Maghribi (d. 1175), al-Qarafi (d. 1285) and ibn Qayyim al-Djawziyya (d. 1350). [1]

[0] https://janes.scholasticahq.com/article/2348-the-father-of-m...

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztthw

[panick21_]

> Who was the founder of modern biblical scholarship?

Yes, so what does that tell you about all other biblical scholarship? And all the other scholarship that happened since.

Literally since this modern scholarship has existed a larger group has been attacking it. There is a whole field based around that.

And as I pointed out, many who claim to do modern scholarships do it at schools that have a faith requirement for these positions.

There are literally cases where people got removed for advocating the wrong ideas. This is simply a reality.