TedM

I don't dispute this view.

I don't see how my giving you over 100 examples from the NT that support the contention that NT writers thought they were writing about a person of history who had divine qualities shows that I'm asking you to help me. You have ignored my examples. Why?

Of course. It's elementary.

Your 'evidence' is the same I gave for showing there well may have been a historical core. The same evidence you pretend doesn't exist. Nonsense! I've shown it to you and yet you simply go about as though I've given you nothing to think about or work with. It's really bizarre..

aa5874

Well, if you don't dispute Matthew 1.18-20 why are you constantly making references to out-of-context verses to dispute Matthew 1.18-20.

The NT Canon is a NON-HERETICAL compilation. You are just wasting everybody's time by looking for HERESIES in the NT CANON.

How many times must I remind you that Church writers wrote and IDENTIFIED the Heretics who preached the HERESY that Jesus was just a man with a human father in "Against Heresies" 25 and 26 and also in "Refutation Against All Heresies" Bk 7. 20 and bk 10.ch 17 and 18.

You have ADMITTED that you have a CONTRADICTORY position. You don't dispute Matthew 1.18-20 where Jesus was the Child of a holy Ghost yet you use the very NT, a non-heretical writing, to dispute Matthew 1.18-20.

I won't tolerate your BLATANT flawed non-sense.

Well, Matthew 1.18-20 describes Jesus as the Child of a holy Ghost and a Virgin. Of course, we are DEALING with Ghost stories. That is ELEMENTARY.

You evidence could NOT be even close to that in Matthew 1.18-20 . You present passages taken OUT-OF-CONTEXT to DISPUTE Matthew 1.18-20.

Look at Matthew 1.18-20 You don't dispute Matthew 1.18-20. You don't dispute that Jesus was of a holy Ghost.

You have NO dispute so you are REALLY wasting time.

I never disputed Matthew 1.18-20

Jesus of Matthew 1.18-20 is UNDISPUTED MYTHOLOGY.

TedM

aa, what part of

do you not understand?

aa5874

Well, EXACTLY. That is MYTH Jesus. Jesus was NOT really HISTORICAL. People THOUGHT he was REAL. Do you understand that?

In Antiquity people THOUGHT MYTHS were REAL and historical. People whoTHOUGHT Marcion's Phantom was a character of HISTORY RIDICULED those who THOUGHT Jesus, the OFFSPRING of the Holy Ghost, was a figure of history even though Marcion's Phantom was WITHOUT BIRTH.

The VERY Greeks and Romans who BELIEVED MYTHS were figures of history were the very people who became Christians.

Do you understand that?

Marcion's Phantom story is a most PERFECT evidence or PERFECT example that people of Antiquity THOUGHT Myths were historical.

1. Marcion's Son of God was NOT of the God of the Jews.

2. Marcion's Son of God had NO birth and was WITHOUT earthly parents.

3. Marcion's Son of God had NO real flesh but was an APPARITION.

4. Marcion was supposedly came dowm from heaven to Capernaum in Galilee.

5. Marcion presented a PHANTOM that NO history.

But People of Antiquity STILL BELIEVED in the NON-HISTORICAL Phantom.

Jesus appears to be the same. In the NT stories, Jesus was the OFFSPRING of the Holy Ghost and People of Antiquity SIMPLY THOUGHT Jesus was a figure of history.

Doug Shaver

Arius wasn't even born until the middle of the third century. No mythicist doubts that by that time nearly all Christians believed in a historical Jesus of some kind or other. The standard mythicist argument is that (a) the earliest known Christians held no such belief and (b) the fact that Christians later (beginning in the early second or possibly late first century) acquired that belief is not evidence that there ever was such a man.

mountainman

But IMO it is far more likely that Arius was born in history than it is that Jesus was born in history.

There are exceptions to this generalisation, the evidence for which relies upon the suspicious testimony of the "Church Fathers". It is the Holy Church Fathers who assert that the world was being converted to Christianity prior to the birth of Arius of Alexandria, in accordance to the long and glorious and transcendental Apostolic lineage from the golden cloud bank in the 1st century, through which the HJ ascended in sytle.

Nearly all Christians? Exactly how many Christians were there at the Council of Nicaea, which according to a number of our earliest sources was "called on account of the words of Arius". Our sources for the age of Constantine are all "Christian apologists", and we may unconditionally trust these people to fairly represent the tapestry of history, or we may qualify this trust.

The mythicist argument is a spectrum. At the "standard myth " end of this spectrum you have this above standard argument. At the "pious forgery" end of the mythicist spectrum the earliest known Christians were pious forgers who simply fabricated a tall tale for the glory of a new and strange religion and its church. According to Joe Atwill it was the Emperor Titus and Josephus who did this. According to Francesco Carotta it was the Emperor Vespasian who did this by repackaging stories about Julius Caesar. I will stop providing examples here - there are others.

Under this side of the myth spectrum, the claim that nearly all Christians believed in a historical Jesus of some kind or other falls flat, because the history of the belief itself was fabricated.

Chili

Yes but aa5748 is wrong to use Matthew in his proof that Jesus was not a man because in Matthew's Jesus just did not quite make it to be fully man or he would have gone to heaven and there be a man in the image of God as Christ here on earth. Just go to John and hear Thomas exclaim "My Lord and My God . . ..

Matthew was a dreamer and aa even wrote that here someplace and it is foolish to think that you can dream yourself into heaven, I would say.

Doug Shaver

That's your hypothesis. Until I see a better argument for it than any I've seen so far, I'm not obliged to take it seriously.

gurugeorge

Yup, you're right on this.

The Christian canon is wholly about an entity that's part man and part divine. They undoubtedly believed that this entity existed.

Now, since the rise of rationalism, people have tried to trim off the divine aspects and have sought to find evidence of a mere man in the references to the human part of the god-man mix.

But that's just a huge, ludicrous non-sequitur.

You cannot just trim off the god half and what you're left with is historical evidence of a man. It doesn't work like that.

The supposed historical man is a hypothetical explanation of the god-man story, of the existence of the cult, etc., etc.

To affect to find historical evidence for the existence of this man in the man parts of the story about the god-man is just circular reasoning.

The man parts of the god-man story only crystallize as historical evidence just as soon as external corroboration has been found of the existence of a man who might fit the hypothesis.

Once you've found your man (through triangulation, through external, independent witness), then yes, you might get some purchase on the man parts of the god-man story, as being about that fellow.

But to date no such fellow has been found.

Another way of saying the above: all one is pointing to, in pointing to the human-sounding aspects of the god-man story, are elements that might potentially be about a historical human being. Only once such a person has been externally corroborated, then and only then, do they become something more like historical evidence (e.g. of tidbits of actual biography of an actual man).