You really cannot reason. I am telling you, I DO NOT enjoy conversing with you and cannot wait when there is a better platform so I can block you. You are not worth the trouble. You take the position: I’ll insult here, there, and everywhere. You are not worth the trouble. As if the only people who understand it bye and bye or your critical scholars. You are in error, F on your final exam. You flunked. Truth does not work that way. Your camp of critical scholars do not have the patent on what Christianity actually is. Jesus was born with no biological impregnation by a human male, who ran afoul of ** you do not have permission to see this link ** in the late 20s/early 30s?
Answer: zero %.
And you want people to get scholarly academic credentials IN THAT? You are enamored by that? Jesus is a composite character of historical fiction. I am not in the least bit interested in paying for and working towards getting a doctorate degree in fiction. I have already put 17 years in publishing my book and more months with continued study. My conclusions are drawn. My methodology and train of thought is set. It would be different if you impressed me, but you do not. Do I want to get the amount of schooling Bart has and have few job prospects? No.
You really cannot reason.
What exactly are your scholarly academic credentials? You have so many scholarly academic credentials, so, what dissertation have you published? What book have you published?
I have my army of scholars in my bibliography and with my excellent past and present reading list, I’m not wanting.
You should be able to understand Ralph Ellis was speaking from his personal experience–with books that are written below MY standards, so I pass on answering your question that is outside of my scope.
Your critical scholars are not critical. If they were, independent investigative research would not have revealed important discoveries requiring conclusions uncritical scholars missed or have no popularized or have not gotten the churches to popularize.
What I am NOT going to do Robert, is put up with your insults. Your input is not worth the trouble and are not a good use of anyone’s time, not just mine.
Bart Ehrman
Grow, mature, develop new ideas, chart new territories, acquire new knowledge, as you get older, there is a change in understanding.
Steefen
So, insult and put down people all you want, Roibert. Please, insert yourself where you bring value.
Yes, Claudius was a historian but his works or lost except for the Lyon Tablet.
The Lyon Tablet is an ancient bronze tablet that bears the transcript of a speech given by the ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
That’s what I have so far. // Robert Graves in Claudius, the God says King Agrippa, father of Agrippa II, thought he could be the prophesied messiah. So, yes: we have a self-proclaimed king and messiah killed by Rome. The Manu royal line had competition. … No, I do not know if any of the historians and I do not know if Robert Graves comment on Tiberius, Caligula, or Claudius interacting with them BUT Claudius did know of the King of Osroene, Sampsigeramus.
Osroene is in lower Armenia. Samsigeramus, I am getting, was a priest-king in Syria. Graves does say there was a Cotys in Lower Armenia.
Cotys IX or Kotys IX (name in ** you do not have permission to see this link ** and Pythodoris I of Thrace,
Osrhoene is adjacent left to Adiabene (Queen Helena and her husband).
Either way, Emperor Claudius was concerned with Agrippa probably trying to, as Messiah, take over the Roman Empire using Syria and Osrhoene, and Monobazus and Helena, representing Adiabene and Judea since they had a palace there. So, Claudius had Agrippa, with allusions of Messiah, poisoned.
The day Agrippa was poisoned, he appeared publicly in a robe that made him shine like an angel–his transfiguration.
Steve Campbell, Author of Historical Accuracy
With Emperor Claudius suspicious of Agrippa aspiring to be the prophesied king and Messiah,
and Agrippa dressing like an angel
Agrippa certainly did not defer to Jesus of the late 20s C.E. as the Christ. Agrippa I did not recognize Jesus as a Christ.
Steefen said
So, Luke, in Acts, says the persecution was in Judea.Paul says in Galatians, the persecution was not in Judea.
And when Paul speaks to Agrippa, the author of Acts says there,
Chapter 26
9 “I too was convinced that I ought to do all that was possible to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And that is just what I did in Jerusalem. On the authority of the chief priests I put many of the Lord’s people in prison, and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. 11 Many a time I went from one synagogue to another to have them punished, and I tried to force them to blaspheme. I was so obsessed with persecuting them that I even hunted them down in foreign cities.
In addition to persecuting in Judea, he even went to foreign cities.
So, I questioned Saul’s persecution actually happened.
Author of Acts not only “embellished” he recorded non-events in Judea. Letters of Paul do not speak to persecutions in Judea.
The fault of Acts supports my statement. 50% of my position on the resolution:
Saul did not persecute (50%) in Judea and did not persecute (50%) outside of Judea holds.
The authentic letters of Paul do not admit to Saul opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem.
If I remember correctly the letters of Paul speak of persecuting the Church of God, NOT synagogues with followers of Jesus.
It is obviously a desperate plea for relevance. No one can see the superiority of his reasoning because what he is proposing is merely a string of assertions that neither fit the evidence at hand or, in the end, even add up to the conclusions being asserted. He proposes an elaborate conspiracy to create a new religion by vague forces that would have invested a huge and concerted effort carried out by extremely tenuous means with a payoff that was by no means guaranteed and would not happen for centuries. In the end, at best, even if it could be anticipated as a wild success, it would gain something pretty much like what they actually already had. It simply makes no sense to anyone who is thinking it through even at a minimal level. The clumsy, haphazard way that Christianity arose certainly does not suggest an overarching master puppeteer, unless one is proposing a cosmic one with a rather careless interest in casualties among the followers. The insult is that anyone would find Steefen’s posts to be even remotely worth deep consideration.
Robert said
You really cannot reason. … You take the position: I’ll insult here, there, and everywhere. … You are in error, F on your final exam. You flunked. …
You really cannot reason. …
What I am NOT going to do Robert, is put up with your insults. …
So, insult and put down people all you want, Roibert.
I apologize that I have made you feel insulted, Steefen. I have taken your position seriously enough to question it. Your response is to claim that your reasoning is superior and that I am incapable of reason. If you do not want your views to be questioned, why are you posting them on a discussion board?
Now, for other people to respond. You have searched high and low, even going to what’s his name’s website, to insult.
That is what the these discussion boards are for: for members to have discussions. People post and people respond with manners.
“There will be trolls. The internet is full of hate.” That is why the discussion boards have adversary lists. When the new site goes live, hopefully the adversary function will work better than it does with this site.
Fine: be as relentlessly rude as you want, Robert and whoever else who wants to be rude and insulting. “I haven’t laughed so hard in a week because someone used an encylopedia, Britannica”–senseless ridicule, and as Site Administrator, you say nothing. You are the leader with the insult and rudeness, the Site Administrator.
Bart’s audience is trade book readers, also. Some of us may go to museums, may subscribe to BAR, may go to speaker events, may read other trade book, may read a dissertation book, may read scholarly books, may travel to the Jerusalem, Turkey, Rome, France, Greece, Iraq, may watch National Geographic documentaries, newspaper articles, magazine articles, visit seminary and university libraries, may be members of ARCE, go to adult classes at Untied Methodist churches or Unitarian churches, may take a religion class at a top university, but are mildly impressed by scholars.
It’s nice if a scholar has something valuable to say in a documentary, in an interview, or in a debate.
Herod Agrippa I died in 44 C.E., plenty of time for him to explore the teachings and sacrilegious rituals of the biblical Jesus if he existed in the late 20s, but he did not. So, given a prophecy, Caligula, the Manu princes and kings, and Agrippa overlooked the non-existent Jesus, much of his content was unknown or undeveloped by Paul who exploited the pious by making up his angel religion. Given the prophecy of a holy king, Paul probably had a headstart on setting up a religion for that prophesied holy king: exploit the prophecy.
Is there 30% chance Jesus is historical? No. Zero percent. Critical scholar Bart Ehrman said, Jesus didn’t even meet the challenge of a real Satan. Again, you are dealing with fiction, historical fiction. Bart D.E. says Jesus exists but Satan does not exist. I disagree. There are critical scholars that are not persuasive on certain topics. So, after they have been given a fair hearing on specific topics, judgements have been made.
Steefen
As a very good editor, I would say, I rank
Francesco Carotta with a grade of B- for delivering his material (not for content)
Ralph Ellis with a grade of C for delivering his material (not for content)
Joseph Atwill with a grade of C- for delivering his material (not for content)
As an author, myself, I needed patience (not tinfoil hats) reading the works of Carotta, Ellis, and Atwill. An author’s writing should be B+, A, or A+.
Steefen (corrected)
David Rohl with a grade of A for delivering his material (not for content)
sample book: Exodus: Myth or History
Francesco Carotta with a grade of B for delivering his material (not for content)
sample work: YouTube channel: God Spanker, video/documentary: The Gospel of Caesar
Ralph Ellis with a grade of C+ for delivering his material (not for content)
sample work: Jesus, King of Edessa
Joseph Atwill with a grade of C– for delivering his material (not for content)
sample works: Caesar’s Messiah and Shakespeare’s Secret Messiah
Robert said
Steefen, you just said I am incapable of reason. That’s OK. I’ve learned to expect such from you. Have I ever insulted you by saying anything comparable to that?
Yes. You have even gone to an external website and brought back a baseless insult from an external website.
When I agree to disagree, obviously, I am not changing my line of reasoning to agree with what I judge to be a faulty line of reasoning. So, when people cannot reason with one another, one says: I agree to disagree and move on after I’ve given you evidence and reason galore.
Here is an example, I said there is no external evidence of Pilate giving Jesus the death penalty and/or there is no external evidence outside an unreliable Acts of the Apostles (written beyond AD 70, possibly as late as AD 120) that Paul persecuted. Nothing in the records or history of Rome. There is no persecution or even existence of Jerusalem churches for Paul to persecute as per author/s of Luke. THEN, Bart answered
By “followers” do you mean people walking around with him? Maybe 15-20? People who were comletely commited to his teachings during his lifetime? Surely fewer than 100. Not 13,000 as in the Gospe of Mark! (5000 men fed, not counting the women and children!) There weren’t any Jesus communities in his day. After his resurrection, the first community was Jewish, in Jerusalem. There may have been others in Judea and Galilee, but there’s not much evidence of it. The ones we know about are primrily or entirely gentile.
Then, you said something like: well you haven’t read the literature, you still disagree with Tacitus and the burning of Rome?
And that’s the exemplary point of why I said you cannot reason [you cannot be reasoned with]: We’re talking about an event before Paul’s conversion and you’re jumping over at least two emperors (Let’s count them: Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero) and you still did not present a source from the decades of AD20 and AD30 to support your position Pilate ordered the death of Jesus and your position that Paul persecuted.
I asked where did Paul persecute. To make a long story short: author/s of Acts said in Jerusalem and EVEN outside of Judea. Letters of Paul said, Paul was not recognizable in Jerusalem, so, he could not have been pulling people out of their homes and throwing them in jail. I doubt he was in disguise from home invasion to the jailer and judge making his accusations.
Robert said
I did not insult you; that was what Richard Carrier said about your ideas and the ideas of others that you seem to share. As far as I know he’s the only other credentialed scholar who’s familiar with your ideas. Ideas may be discussed here freely.
Oh, I didn’t not throw a glass of wine on your shirt, I traveled back in time and brought Richard with me to this this site to throw wine on my shirt again.
Another prime example of you gaslighting.
Robert said
As for the content of your post above, the earliest external evidence (external in the sense of material not preserved in what eventually became the New Testament) for the execution of Jesus is found in reconstructions of what Josephus may have said about Jesus and in Tacitus.
Hearsay. Tacitus was born 26 years after AD30. Josephus was born 7 years after AD30. You have no evidence that needs to be read.
Robert said
Steefen said
Robert said
I did not insult you; that was what Richard Carrier said about your ideas and the ideas of others that you seem to share. As far as I know he’s the only other credentialed scholar who’s familiar with your ideas. Ideas may be discussed here freely.
Oh, I didn’t not throw a glass of wine on your shirt, I traveled back in time and brought Richard with me to this this site to throw wine on my shirt again.
Another prime example of you gaslighting.
Go back and read my remarks in context. My point was that whereas others have banned you, we discuss your ideas with you.
It was ill-mannered. And you were wrong to do it. We agree to disagree. End of discussion.
Robert said
Steefen said
Robert said
There’s nothing there that is in any way an insult directed toward you.
I will not be gaslighted, Robert: a baseless claim of insanity is an insult.
Take that up with Richard Carrier. Contrary to Carrier, I have tried to reason with you.
It was ill-mannered for you to do that. I am not taking anything of the sort up with Richard Carrier. And you were wrong to do it. We agree to disagree. End of discussion.
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