Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 07, 2024 9:39 pm I have never yet met an unbiased person. Everyone is biased.

Spoken truly. Respect.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 1:16 am How do you figure that any of this is unbiased, Giuseppe?

it doesn't matter. I love to remark the tiny clues of great upheavals in the air.

Usually the great philosophers of the past have ignored completely Jesus. When I see that this prudent silence is broken first by that quote by Schopenhauer, we are already projected in the core of the problem (the presence or less of a historical Jesus in the epistles, the question of the authenticity of the pauline corpus).

I feel that the non-existence of Jesus is more easily defensible than that of Paul.
We all have subjects where we are biased. A completely impartial human being does not exist. However, when it comes to biblical studies, I like to think that I am.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Fri Jun 07, 2024 10:36 pm . . . The "final" answers never seem to last, do they? I wonder why that is.

Of course we are all biased, but everyone here shares an interest in trying to determine what “really happened” to form the foundational texts of the religion we know as Christianity between the days of, say, Herod the Great and Constantine.

A truly unbiased approach of working backwards through the sources available to us would have to take account of each branching of possibility based on a source's reliability, motives, and the ability to corroborate. At the end, if we are honest, we have to admit there are many possibilities. Some are more plausible than others, but there are still many possibilities.

Our bias works into this in may ways:

1. Opinions of the church and religion generally. For example, was the early Church devoted to saving souls, or a cynical operation devoted to accumulating wealth and power? This may well affect our views of forgery, interpolation, and reliability of texts.
2. The desire to have an “original” or “earth-shattering” hypothesis. (Personally, I'm not sure how possible that is anymore. Every time I think I discover something interesting, I usually find out it was already discussed in the 19th century – or even in the 4th century.)
3. The desire to prove one's hypothesis rather than test it. This leads to selective use of data, and selective decisions about dating manuscripts and what has been interpolated, forged, etc.

Of course, having a hypothesis and arguing about it is far more interesting and entertaining than hoping that a conclusively dated treasure trove of the lost writings of Papias, Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria will turn up in the desert someday and answer all of our questions.

Yes, everyone, I think, has biases, though some more than others.

Above, Sinouhe » Sat Jun 08, 2024 3:22 am, wrote
"I feel that the non-existence of Jesus is more easily defensible than that of Paul.
We all have subjects where we are biased. A completely impartial human being does not exist. However, when it comes to biblical studies, I like to think that I am."
~~~~
Hmm. "....I like to think that I am."
No bias?