rlogan

A big disconnect between what Doherty is saying and what you make him out to be saying.

Steven Carr put it succinctly.

Trying to get into microscopic precision on the boundary between the mythical world and the observable world gets us into useless pedantic arguments, because there really isn't one. Both are real. The underworld and heaven are real places. The Gods are real things. To them. Trying to make religious concepts adhere to science standards of thinking is a fail. Anyone trying to put a formal structure on it is an easy target for not getting things exactly "right" because the integration of fiction with reality is such a dubious thing to begin with.

Christ Crucified is a concept extracted from interpretation of Isaiah. That's how it "happened". From our modern conception of reality vs myth, we have the clarity of saying it happened in the spiritual realm as opposed to the earthly realm. Yet, this is every bit as "real" to them as having happened in front of their eyes. It isn't until much later in Christianity though that the story of Jesus arises as one that has him interacting with the observable world in a time certain. In the beginning Christ Crucified is "real" to them, but is not occuring at a time certain in the observable world.

ApostateAbe

rlogan, you actually seem to be on my side in this debate. Earl Doherty is exceptionally specific, on pages 97-100 of The Jesus Puzzle, of what constitutes this "World of Myth." He claims that "the ancients" generally believed that "earth was the mirror image of heaven... the visible material counterpart to the genuine spiritual reality above." You and I are knowledgeable enough to know that this claim is too precise to apply to the diversity of the ancient world of myths, but Doherty makes this claim without citing evidence!

aa5874

What you claim cannot be found in the NT or any Apologetic sources. Ancient Apologetic sources that mentioned the crucifixion of Jesus claimed he was crucified on earth.

The Jesus character was indeed mythological but in the Myth Fables in the NT Canon Jesus was crucified on earth.

Paul wrote NO story of Jesus. The Jesus story was already known and composed and believed when Paul was a Persecutor. See Galatians and Corinthians.

There are FIVE Canonised stories of Jesus, Son of Man, the Son of God, Son of a Ghost and God the Creator and this Quadruple Myth character was Delivered up by the Jews and Killed after trials of the Sanhedrin and Pilate.

Mark 9:31 KJVMark 10. There is absolutely no need to change the FIVE stories of the Son of man, Son of God, Son of a Ghost and God the Creator.

The Pauline writer claimed the resurrected Son of a God was REVEALED to him by God after he consulted Mythological entities.

The Pauline writings are NOT even confirmed to be early sources of the Jesus cult.

The Jews were blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus under Pilate.

Examine the words of Justin Martyr.

Dialogue with Trypho Dialogue with Trypho Examine Aristides Apology

EarlDoherty

I think you'd better speak for yourself, Abe. I doubt that rlogan regards your knowledge as being on the level of his, or anyone else who is actually knowledgeable about ancient cosmology.

As he and Steven Carr have pointed out, your hair-splitting technicality appeals are simply a smokescreen to cover up your own ignorance and reluctance to grant anything to the mythicist case and me in particular. You've joined forces with the likes of GDon, Bernard Muller, and to some extent, Bart Ehrman, who had the gall to suggest that alleged Platonic views of the universe were my own invention (even though we can presume that he knows otherwise).

Too precise to apply...etc.? You know, I'm going to go out on a limb here. This kind of transparent red-herring indulgence is something that is very familiar as part and parcel of the technique of another well-known anti-mythicist frequenting this board. (Well, OK, maybe there was a world of myth in the upper heavens, but no way was there one below the moon!!) Either you are in close cahoots with the "student" known as G-Don, or you're his alter ego.

You know, in any other academic discipline, people like you and GDon and the antics you both indulge in would not be given the time of day. You drag the debate down to sandbox level, and with about as much sophistication and scholarly integrity. Kicking sand in others' faces is about all you think is necessary, letting you revel in your own ignorance. Unfortunately, there are those in the academia sandbox who also think that this is all that's necessary to deal with the mythicist case. Bart Ehrman is proof of that.

When you can get the sand out from between your toes, and approach all facets of New Testament exegesis with something resembling post-adolescent maturity, maybe we can make some progress here.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

Earl Doherty, not that you aren't the obvious master at rhetorical zingers, but I find that rhetorical zingers are most potent when accompanied by arguments that effectively defend your position.

EarlDoherty

It's funny that so many others are already familiar with those arguments since they have actually read my material. I have no intention of quoting you an entire chapter from Jesus: Neither God Nor Man just because you have a pathological aversion to actually reading the material you want to criticize.

Earl Doherty

Thought Criminal

I've read your material and I'm sympathetic, with necessarily having a strong opinion on your specific arguments. The way I see it, the question isn't whether Jesus was mythical but to what extent.

Even if there really was a single historical figure behind the Biblical character, it's still a myth because there were no miracles, no divide descent and so on. For reasons you've mentioned and others, I'm quite skeptical of there being such a historical origin, but even if we were to generously grant it, we wouldn't be granting much of anything, really.

aa5874

We are not going anywhere if Scholars, MJ and HJ, continue with their "Flat Earth" theory that the Pauline writings were early.

It is completely unpardonable that Scholars continue to develop theories about the Jesus story and cult without supplying a shred of evidence to support an early Paul.

This cannot continue since it is unacceptable.

Scholars have deduced that Pauline writings have been manipulated to appear early YET are using the very writings as sources of history WITHOUT corroboration.

Manipulated sources cannot be accepted without corroboration.

In the very NT, the Pauline letters are unknown by all other authors.

Even the author of Acts wrote about letters from the Jerusalem Church and Nothing at all of the Pauline letters.

Scholars, MJ and HJ, must realise that ordinary people are looking at the very same evidence and can see that the Pauline writings cannot be accounted for by Apologetic sources and had NO influence at all on authors of the Canon.

It is true that Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" is a Failure of Facts and Logic but on the other hand it is NOT a fact that the Pauline writings are historically reliable or that they were composed in the 1st century, or that there was a Jesus cult at that time.

Doherty argues that 1 Cor.15 was manipulated which means that the Pauline writings are not reliable so why is he using them without corroboration as sources of history for an early Church??

Ehrman argues that the NT is filled with discrepancies, contradictions and events that most likely did NOT happen so why is he relying on those very discredited sources??

It is time Scholars, MJ and HJ, understand that ordinary people know that there is NO credible evidence for an historical Jesus or early Pauline writings.

I am looking at the NT right now.

No author claimed they SAW a human Jesus.

No author claimed they READ a Pauline letter.

MrMacSon

So clearly dishonest, ApostateAbe: False Witness!!
.

Horatio Parker

I'm not so sure.

I'm currently reading Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Ancient writers appear to have accepted spiritual accounts as historical. They never address factuality or historicity in their interpretations that I can see. They were concerned with the symbolic meaning behind the drama of the story. To our minds, the importance of the higher meaning or reality negates the need for historicism since we tend to view myth as imaginings. It's not clear to me that the ancients did. My impression is that they gave much weight to tradition and if tradition said there was an Achilles or a Jesus, then there was.

The difference may be that they were more aware of the role of myth in everyday life and therefore every myth had to originate with people.