I will no longer be quoting Dulldrama's long-winded fallacies.
Anyone who clicked through to the Bart Ehrman's post I linked from the Huffington Post would have noticed three things:
1) Ehrman gleefully threatens the careers of anyone who dares to raise the questions of mythicism,
2) Ehrman's writing, much like Daldolma's, is rife with logical fallacies and falsehoods, and
3) Ehrman is plugging his book confirming, yes, you guessed it, Jesus definitely for sure no doubt about it existed. This, despite the fact that Ehrman concedes that the Testimonium Flavianum is an insertion.
Here is Richard Carrier shredding Ehrman:
Ehrman Trashtalks Mythicism. Carrier's PhD in ancient history is from Columbia University. Ehrman responded to Carrier, then deleted his post.
Here is a link to one of Thomas L. Thompson's book on Amazon:
The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David. His PhD in Old Testament Studies is from Temple University. He was blacklisted in the United States for daring to write his dissertation on
"The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham." He moved to Denmark and taught at the University of Copenhagen. Investigation of evidence for biblical figures is taboo within American academia.
Robert Price, first inadvertently cited by Daldolma without actually reading, you know, what he was copying and pasting from Wikipedia, and then casually discredited, holds two PhDs from Drew University: one in theology and one in new Testament Studies. His most relevant work is probably
Deconstructing Jesus.
The two factions in the debate over the historical existence of Christ have names. Dulldrama's position is firmly within the historicists. My position is with mythicists. There are many academics with impressive credentials on both sides of the dispute. Evidence boils down to the Bible, especially the writings of the theorized Biblical scribe labeled Q, the Testimonium Flavianum, the passing reference in Tacitus, and the lack of mention and missing books of the otherwise extremely thorough Philo. Everyone depends on copied and translated versions of these works BECAUSE THE ORIGINALS DO NOT EXIST ANYMORE.
Disagreement over the authenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum has been going on since the sixteenth century. The only copies of Antiquities of the Jews derive from Christian sources and the oldest manuscript dates from the eleventh century, a millenium after Jospehus wrote.
Contemporary versions of the Annals of Tacitus are based on what are called the Medicean manuscripts and they also date to the eleventh century. The authenticity of the Annals has been questioned by many great minds including Voltaire.
The Bible's revisions, insertions and interpolations are well-known and, for the sake of brevity, I will not even summarize them here.
My interest in this topic is not casual. I've read Carrier, Thompson and Price as well as Ehrman. The volume of material on the issue, despite the very real penalties academics face for daring to address historicity of any biblical figures, is daunting. The dispute is not new; it dates back to the Renaissance. No archaeological evidence exists to confirm the historicity of anything in the Bible. Yes, nothing. No tablets, no temple of Solomon, not even a potsherd that says Abraham.
Daldolma apparently first explored this topic two days ago with a 30-second glance at Wikipedia. He has, perhaps inadvertently, taken the stance of a Christian apologist, specifically a presuppositional apologetic. This is to say that no one who doesn't agree with his axioms is qualified to discuss the topic at hand. Despite his calls for reason, this is just a word for him. He is openly disdainful of my references to symbolic logic in analyzing arguments.
No, bro, I was not mad. Just thoroughly bored with your repeats of one-sided, out-of-context pull quotes from the first page of Google. If you want to discuss this with any credibility, you're going to have to read more than the first paragraph of a Wikipedia entry. It's a very complex topic and you're stepping on your own dick when you infer that anyone can read original versions of writings that have not existed for centuries. You are a disaster of a thinker, apparently unable to analyze arguments, including your own. Your last post was over 500 words of ad hominem attack, which you conclude by begging me for more personal information to continue your nonsensical rant. For real?
tl;dr: Daldolma quotes from Wikipedia, gets mad, calls names.