Marcus Borg and the lack of evidence as "evidence" for what the Historical Jesus never said

In this interview, liberal New Testament scholar Marcus Borg says this:

The first is that Lewis’ statement depends upon accepting John’s gospel as a historically factual account of how Jesus spoke: “I am the light of the world,” “Whoever has seen me has seen God,” “I and the Father are one.” Most mainstream scholars today would say that Jesus never made those claims for himself, that they are the post-Easter testimony or witness of the early church, and when one no longer thinks of Jesus making those claims for himself, then Lewis’ argument evaporates.

In the past few years and months, I've dedicated a major part of my time to survey carefully the scholarly literature on the Historical Jesus, searching for the positive EVIDENCE for Borg's and other liberal claims.(Keep in mind that in the Jesus research context by "evidence", it means those traditions about Jesus which pass the criteria of authenticity).

After months and months of reading papers, technical articles, books, watching debates, keeping online correspondence with some New Testament scholars and hearing tapes about the historical Jesus, I can say very confidently this: There is NO EVIDENCE at all for Borg's claims like the ones above. There is not ONE criteria of authenticity which support the conclusion that Jesus "never" said that.

When you press liberals to provide exactly a single piece of historical evidence for such claims, their answer consists mostly in a bunch of question-begging assumptions and speculations. In other cases, you get only ad hominem replies, red herrings, speculations about your motives (they will accuse you of "fundamentalist" if you keep pressing questions about evidence) and so forth (all of them sophistical methods intended to distract the attention from the issue at stake, namely, the specific historical evidence for the claim that Jesus never said such and such).

The criteria of authenticity are positive criteria, namely, they provide positive evidence for what Jesus said and did, not negative evidence for that Jesus did not said or did. 

The liberal methodology of Borg is an egregious misapplication of the criteria of authenticity.

The abscence of evidence for Jesus saying X at most would support the conclusion that we don't know if Jesus said it or not. Such lack of evidence is not positive evidence for the negative conclusion that Jesus didn't say it. This is a basic logical and historical point.

For example, A Course In Miracles put in Jesus' lips this claim:

The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within Its Levels, because They are of one Mind and one Will.  This single purpose creates perfect integration and establishes the peace of God.

There is not shred of evidence that such words came from Jesus. But does it "prove" that Jesus "never" said that? Obviously not. At most, we can conclude that, lacking positive evidence for that, we don't know if Jesus said this or not. We're left with a position of agnosticism, not of denialism.

But then the same historical logic and reasoning applies to Jesus' putative words in John's Gospel (specially given that John's Gospel comes from the 1st century in contrast with ACIM, which is 19 centuries later. So John's Gospel stands historically far better than ACIM in regards to the criterion of date, which implies that, on that criterion, John's Gospel is a lot more reliable than the ACIM. But even in this case, it doesn't prove definitively that ACIM is false).

Consider the claim "I am the light of the world". This appears in John's Gospel, but in the Gospel of Thomas (the favorite apocryphal Gospel of revisionists like the Jesus Seminar) something very similar is reported, and (for New Age believers) in ACIM too (an entire section of the ACIM is entitled "I am the light of the world").

Given that it appears in John's Gospel and it is also attested by Thomas' Gospel (provided such tradition were independent), how in the world can Borg to claim such confidently that Jesus "never" say that?

Even if it appears only in John, how exactly this proves that Jesus didn't say that?

Even if it didn't appear in any historical source whatsoever, how exactly such lack of evidence is a positive proof for Borg's categorical assertion that Jesus "never" claimed that?

It is just bad logic and scholarship (put in the service of atheism, religious pluralism and anti-Christian prejudices).

The underlaying liberal (and question-begging) assumption is that if the early Church strongly believed X about Jesus, then any tradition in which Jesus says X is not historical, but an invention of the Church. This is so absurd  and prejudiced as saying that if parapsychologists have interest in proving telepathy, any positive data or reporting supporting telepathy must be flawed or seen with suspicion (this is the standard skeptical position).

According to such liberal "logic", since Chris Carter, Titus Rivas or Michael Prescott are strong believers in the afterlife, all their arguments for the afterlife must be false or at best seen as suspicion, since they are biased and strongly interested in defending the afterlife hypothesis.

Since Dean Radin has dedicated his entire professional life to make of parapsychology a science, we must doubt of all his arguments and evidence shown in his books since he's a "believer" in psi.

This amount to claiming that all or most of the evidence coming from parapsychologists and believers in the afterlife is unreliable, a sheer invention of credulous people who are not interested in the truth.

The last point was made by skeptic Martin Gardner:

How can the public know that for fifty years skeptical psychologists have been trying their best to replicate classic psi experiments, and with notable unsuccess? It is this fact more than any other that has led to parapsychology's perpetual stagnation. Positive evidence keeps coming from a tiny group of enthusiasts, while negative evidence keeps coming from a much larger group of skeptics

In Gardner's jargon, enthisiasts = parapsychologists = tiny group of believers in psi. (The implication is that the evidence coming from "tiny group of enthusiasts" is unreliable. Only the evidence from the "large group of skeptics" is trustworthy).

Exactly the same can be found among "liberals". They assume that if the evidence about Jesus' divine self-perception come from Christians (i.e. enthusiasts of Christianity), the evidence cannot be taken seriously. It MUST be an invention of the Christian enthisiasts.

What is the difference between Gardner's position and the liberal's position? None. Zero... except that Gardner is talking about parapsychologists and the liberals about the early Christians. That's all.

Both are working on the assumption that enthusiasts (of parapsychology or Christianity or...) are not reliable sources of information, and such assumption overrides any possible contrary evidence.

My study of the debate around parapsychology prepared me to discover the misleading ways of argumentation of liberal scholars like Borg.

Exposing a person's prejudices is useful AFTER you have shown that their arguments are wrong (this is what I've made regarding liberals: After showing that their use of the criteria of authenticity are wrong and misleading, I've explained that fact arguing that their methodology is strongly prejudiced. My contention is not that liberals are prejudiced and non-liberals are free of prejudices; rather, my contention is that the prejudices of liberals, influenced by naturalism and religious pluralism, are question begging against the Christian view of Jesus, and that such prejudices force them to misuse the criteria of authenticity, like Borg does when arguing that Jesus "never" claimed what John says that Jesus claimed).