Steven Carr

This raises the question of why Paul thinks Jesus was the Messiah.

For Paul, 'Christ' is practically a name , rather than a job description.

For Paul, Jesus was the Messiah, but what did Jesus actually do that persuaded Paul that Jesus was the Messiah?

What was Paul expecting the Jewish Messiah to do?

Dean Anderson

Rather than just telling us what Professor Ehrman addresses, please can you ask him for permission for you to reproduce his communication with you here, so that we can see what he says in his own words.

dog-on

What are your feelings regarding the proposition, put forward by Detering, that 'Paul' was in fact not a Jew, possibly Simon Magus(?).

I thought he made a pretty good case for his hypothesis. Besides, I believe he is also correct in stating that the issues expounded upon by the Dutch have never been adequately refuted.

Clivedurdle

May we have some comment on this link? It looks like game set and match to the mythicists to me!

Which is maybe why historians don't bother with the subject - they see it closed in the mythicists favour. The only hjists are apologists and those who accept the hjist arguments, primarily out of ignorance of the people quoted above. Doherty has approached the subject from a slightly different direction and come to the same conclusions.

What probably is required is that this summary or something similar becomes the basis - like origin of the species - for study in this area.

gstafleu

I would tend to agree that this list merits some solid consideration. Perhaps it can be included in the recommended readings list?

There is clearly a long and distinguished mythicist history that seems to be often overlooked by many. It should be pointed out though that Doherty in his novel (I think, I'm going by memory here) has his protagonist remark with some frustration, after doing a bunch of research, that apparently lots of MJ research has been available for 200 years, but that the results keep getting suppressed by vested interests, so that every few decennia someone has to reinvent the wheel. It seems that Detering is studying some of those wheels again, and opinions about that would be interesting.

spin

What rebuttal? Paul just had tickets on himself. Nothing more. Association, well, Paul's social skills are so questionable.

What do you reckon about this passage though? What were the grafasthat Paul refers to (in the plural) here and only here? Is this the same Paul who believes that the end times are coming now, yet says that some of the whacking 500 have fallen asleep? And who are "all the apostles"?

I don't agree. It's pretty timeless to me.

Not a good analogy. I chose Marcion as a dating for a gospel, because it's a relatively secure one that causes Irenaeus to admit that Marcion touted a written gospel and it was related to the Lucan one that Irenaeus knew. Find me tangible evidence for a gospel before that.

Marcion's gospel cannot be used to argue for the existence of a prior Luke of course for we only have Irenaeus's posterior analysis of the relationship between the two. Our earliest attested gospel is that of Marcion.

So, we have a gospel in the middle of the second century. But before that, zippo. You don't like my showing that there is a long tradition of religious literary developments.

You were using it as though you knew the reference, but I was attempting to challenge that knowledge as convention rather than tangible.

I have argued for years that the "Peter" parenthesis is an obvious church interpolation. What is your problem with 2:12-13. Firstly it contradicts the Peter parenthesis, as Peter it says was sent to the circumcised, which in 2:12 we are told he's involved with gentiles. Secondly it doesn't have anything to do with any association or other relation with Paul, nor does it give insight into their message..

Wasn't Hercules on the Argo??

This is quite relative. But let's reduce the response to "so?"

I didn't take it that way. Besides, aa5874 (is that a birthday? 5-8-74) doesn't need slapping down. Gagging for a while until the brain switches (back) on, maybe.

In our case we perceive that the status quo is so corrupt that it would seem to contradict ourselves falling back on it.

Feeble analogy.

In a field in which everything is suspect, your reaction doesn't make sense to me.

Whoa thar. The possibility that Arthur was never based on a real person but may have represented a movement was given solely to stop you from making unnecessary assumptions.

Is Jesus not the personification of Wisdom walking the street and dropping pearls before the street swine? Isn't he the word from the mouth of god (Wisdom)?

I don't hold truck in the Luke/Josephus connection. They are two separate witnesses to the tradition.

But then, I don't think you've got anything better to offer or rely on.

The other leg plays Jingle Bells.

OK then,

1) How many hands worked on Matthew?
2) If #1 is plural, were the purposes of the earlier writers the same as the later ones?
3) Who exactly wrote the gospel of Matthew?
4) Where did he/they write it? (which part of the world exactly?)
5) In what context did each of the hands work under when adding their bit? or, if a single writer, what context stimulated the writing?
6) HTF would you know?

I think you are kidding yourself sorely.

Do you really want to tout Eusebius on Papias??


Have fun.


spin

Clivedurdle

From link above.

This makes complete sense to me - Waltham Abbey does have the zodiac on its roof, xianity this century - via pentecostalism - has returned to its alchemic magical roots.

Why turning wine into blood and bread into flesh is thought in any possible way to be historic is beyond me!

EarlDoherty

By way of introduction, I would like to point out that this posting (dated May 7, 1998 on the HarperCollins “Crosstalk” list) was not simply to question Mahlon Smith’s arguments for the historicity of Jesus but to comment on his often fallacious style of argumentation and the attitude he brought to it. As I often do to save space, I did not insert my comments into a reproduction of Smith’s earlier remarks, though I quote or paraphrase some of the latter. I think one of the principal observations I would make is that those who argue from a determined and inviolable position that an historical Jesus did exist, or that the arguments of any mythicist are totally erroneous and devoid of merit, (and I think that attitude shines through here)—along with mythicists themselves being charlatans (and “asses”: a certain Antonio supplied that)—can often lead one into mistakes of reasoning, exaggeration of claims, and misconstruing one’s own evidence, not to mention an almost ad hominem style of debate. Far better to approach the subject with an open mind and a spirit of inquiry. Unfortunately, too few defenders of an historical Jesus seem to be capable of that.

At this point, I have no desire to demean Mahlon Smith. Perhaps he was having a bad day. Or perhaps his antagonism just got the better of him. As RUmike has pointed out to me, he was responsible for putting the link to my site on his “rutgers” page to begin with. Ironically, that link gave me a legitimacy in early 1999 which persuaded Canadian Humanist Publications (and other donors in the Humanist movement) to fund the publication of The Jesus Puzzle, so perhaps I actually owe Mahlon a lot. (I’m sure that will make him feel better.)

I have not changed a word or punctuation mark from the original posting, at least as I printed it out originally. I have decided to post this in two installments, because of its length. The second should follow in a day or two.

….to be continued….

jjramsey

I am no expert in Greek, but the problem that I see is that kata is a weak spatial indicator. I find it telling that when C. K. Barrett, on pages 18-19 of his commentary on Romans (in this case verses 1:1-5), translates kata as "in the sphere of," he uses "sphere" in a very abstract sense, rather than in the sense of a concrete region of space or a particular territory. Certainly when Barrett uses the phrase "in the sphere of the Holy Spirit," he does not mean that the Holy Spirit is confined to a certain region of space. Yet when speaking of spheres in a Middle Platonic sense, e.g. the realms below or above the lunar sphere, the concrete spatial sense is what is meant. The Middle Platonists understood the spheres as a real physical part of the world. (This, BTW, implies that your use of Bartlett is wrong.)

I also find it telling that you need to write, "As Paul himself uses it, sarx is a term with a wide range of meaning." Under your scheme, Paul uses kata sarka in radically different ways. He either means "in the realm of fleshly spirits," or if the previous meaning is obviously absurd in context, he means "according to the flesh" in one of the more traditional senses. This might make sense if the verses where you translated kata sarka as "in the realm of fleshly spirits" made better sense than if the more common translation of kata sarka were used, but they don't. Unless there is a compelling reason beforehand to believe that Paul meant "in the realm of fleshly spirits" when he wrote kata sarka, it is more parsimonious to conclude that Paul used kata sarka with roughly the same meaning throughout.

He might have actually said that Jesus stopped short of the earth! Or at least mentioned that he was above the earth? It is ironic that you tout Paul's silence about Jesus' purported history, yet Paul is at least as silent about your supposed Middle Platonic scheme.

Clivedurdle

If xianity is primarily a magical alchemic religion

is the correct translation.

As there were several heresies on this point I would go with it!

(Has anyone here looked at http://www.egodeath.com/drewshistorymythiconlyjesus.htm ?)