Detering, etc.

[Adam]

Is anyone naïve enough to believe that even a time machine that duvduv entered would change his beliefs if what he found on the other side differed at all with what his faith already dictated? He would know an elaborate trick had been played on him.

[Duvduv]

Adam, Adam............I see your little barb. But that is not the point, especially since there are no time machines, and your guess is as good as mine. My argument or challenge (however you want to label it) is straightforward. History at best is an approximation of events based on INFERENCE, LOGIC, CONTEXT AND CONTENT, as well as empirical evidence. All the rest is simply FAITH. And yes, Adam, faith is something we all have. Some people have faith in scholars; some have faith in the government; others have faith in the texts of their religion - all whether one is religious or not.
Indeed, when a person gets on an airplane he has no evidence that the pilot will get him to destination and has no idea of how the airplane works. He sits down in the aircraft with the FAITH that the pilot and aircraft will get him to where he is going.

[Peter Kirby]

Faith, damned faith, and statistics. Air travel on commercial airliners in most countries has a pretty good record for safety.

[Duvduv]

That was NOT my point, and I am sure you understood that.......My point was that the fact of accepting on faith the technology operating the aircraft for your flight is done based on inference, precedence, logic, and not on empirical evidence of your flight because you don't have the foggiest idea of how the aircraft operates before embarking and intending to get to your destination.

Faith, damned faith, and statistics. Air travel on commercial airliners in most countries has a pretty good record for safety.

[Peter Kirby]

Faith, damned faith, and statistics. Air travel on commercial airliners in most countries has a pretty good record for safety.

That was NOT my point, and I am sure you understood that.......

You should not assume that your thought process is as transparent as you seem to think it is.

My point was that the fact of accepting on faith the technology operating the aircraft for your flight is done based on inference, precedence, logic, and not on empirical evidence of your flight because you don't have the foggiest idea of how the aircraft operates before embarking and intending to get to your destination.

History proceeds from "inference, precedence, logic, and not on empirical evidence." I think we can all get behind this, or something like it, but I don't think it takes us where you want to end up, that you gotta have faith faith faith, oh, you gotta have faith faith faith. Applying the term "faith" to it implies an arbitrary blindness to the decision to proceed on the basis of inference, precedence, and logic.

It's anything but arbitrary, but the allegedly arbitrary and blind nature of historical conclusions is exactly what you need (rhetorically) so that you can make the case that the historical existence of Moses is just as arbitrary (in its support and in its denial) as the historical existence of Marcion. It isn't, and I suggest again checking the Wikipedia for some words on historical method as it is actually practiced in secular history.

Historical method

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Hermann is on a German TV
Phoenix (a serious channel)
12/21/2014, 1:00 p.m. and 12:00 p.m. (CET)
discussion with two other theologians
one of the questions to answer "Did Jesus really lived?"

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Price or both, however, has said that Marcion might have had his hand in Galatians (but not, on the same hypothesis, the rest).
I do see the pastorals as anti-Marcionite fabrications. I'm stuck with doubt about the others.

any idea who might have fabricated the pastorals, Peter?

Robert Price says Polycarp.

[DCHindley]

Price or both, however, has said that Marcion might have had his hand in Galatians (but not, on the same hypothesis, the rest).
I do see the pastorals as anti-Marcionite fabrications. I'm stuck with doubt about the others.

any idea who might have fabricated the pastorals, Peter?

Robert Price says Polycarp.

That makes sense, considering that someone had taken the effort to edit and publish collections of gospels, or letters, or historical narratives (or some combination of the latter two, and whether these are accurate or not being another question) that later became the authoritative accounts we call the NT. Since Irenaeus seems to know of and exclusively use all the books of the NT, showing no suggestion that he is publishing them himself, and Irenaeus was once a disciple of Polycarp, the latter is a good candidate. David Trobisch also thinks the party who edited and published these sets of books was Polycarp.

Unfortunately, the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp and the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians are both questionable as bona fide compositions of Ignatius and Polycarp. In the end, I'm afraid, we really just don't know who Polycarp was, much less what importance he exerted, on Christian development in the late 1st and early 2nd century CE.

DCH

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Hermann is on a German TV
Phoenix (a serious channel)
12/21/2014, 1:00 p.m. and 12:00 p.m. (CET)
discussion with two other theologians
one of the questions to answer "Did Jesus really lived?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFswsEdH40E

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Interesting. I wish I understood German better, but from what I can understand from my high school German, the debate sounds like it follows the same contours as it always does in English. A lot of argument over whether Paul was talking about a real person or not.

What's wrong with Detering's eye?