Clivedurdle

Are the myriad roman, greek and other cultures gods mythical?

Were they invented?

Where did the "must assume" come from when we are discussing someone born of a virgin, is a son of a god and resurrected?

The gospel stories are plays - especially the passion. Stories about a god got passed on using plays. At some point a jump was made that this god was human. Only in the last few hundred years have we embellished this human jesus further, because we all agreed the god one did not exist.

This is a category mistake!

It was always a myth, because of a fantasy that religions need to be started by leaders, an assumption has been made about historicity.

We have a diasporic judaic messianic godman - it has to be away from the centre because the concept of a son is blasphemous, clearly following in a long tradition of god men and women!

spin

Creating theories quite often has the virtue of distorting the data so that you won't illuminate anything with it.

Yes, I know, but you are already manipulating your source material to get there. Are you not just being arbitrary in what you retain?

That's merely conjecture.

But there are lots more options here. Ever heard of Vlad the Impailer, for example?

You saw how. Celsus had his opinions so did Porphyry. So what? People eat meat, yet I think it's a disgusting abomination. Hey, you think, you're free to have your opinion.

About your embarrassment maybe.

I guess you're going to keep shoving this embarrassment crap at me, when I think it has as much to do with history as rap has to music.

Il tempo mi fuggi. Non ne ho piu'. Gotta go, 'n' when ya gotta go...

I read the rest. Only thing that needs a comment is on tradition having some historical core: you probably cannot dicern that core. The Jesus tradition need not be based on a person but on scraps of people, or scraps of earlier traditions. One of my favourites is that of Wisdom who walked the streets talking to those who could recognized the value in what she said. She jumped sex into Greek. Wisdom is what comes from the mouth of god, ie the word of god... Whatever the tradition was based on for Jesus, guessing and assumptions won't help find the kernel.

I'm running..


spin

Ted Hoffman

This expectation of clear expressions is not warranted IMO. The one "untimely born" example shows that Paul was not particularly keen on clarifying everything he wrote/said.
Furthermore, Paul did not make any clear effort to convey the idea that Jesus was a natural, flesh-and-blood man anywhere, so, again, your expectation is without any basis. In fact, he never bothered to mention Pilate, Mary, Joseph, Nazareth or any other place or person that could be linked to a putative HJ.

Even as I post my last bit on this, I think it is important to demonstrate, using Pauline epistles, that we should expect that "offhandly writing" from Paul. Look at how Ken Olson argues the Eusebian fabrication of the TF: he doesnt just lie down and make demands - he shows what we should expect from Eusebius and uses that to make his case.
You on the other hand, have simply made your objections from a reclining position. You have not put any effort towards making a substantive case.

It depends on whether Paul was talking about the cricifixion of a man, or that of a god. Paul depicts Christ as a pre-existent god. And scholars agree. Inanna is killed and hung on a hook in the netherworld after enraging Ereshkigal. She is resurrected after three days.

One scholar that regards the Pauline Christ as a pre-existent being is Burton:

Regarding Gal 4:4 "born of woman" Burton writes: Ernest De Witt Burton (Eds. S.R. Driver, A. Plummer, C.A. Briggs), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, 1948, p.217Except humanity occupies a location. Humanity as the collectivity of humans is physical. The fact that you have no suitable analogies should tell you plenty.

Lastly, you cannot validly project Tatian's writing style on Paul. Thanks for the discussion.

jjramsey

And I'm not talking about clear expressions, necessarily. I'm thinking of something just clear enough so that the highly unusual meaning of kata sarka that Doherty attributes to Paul doesn't get ruled out by Occam's Razor. Doherty of course claims that he has this, but his examples are strained (e.g. ginomai) and offset by having to explain away things like "born of a woman" and "brother of the Lord." That he uses a misinterpretation of Barrett doesn't help, either:

But humanity itself is not a location, and it was humanity itself that Barrett described as a realm, not the location of humanity.

Your misinterpretation of Burton doesn't help, either:

As noted before, regarding Gal. 4:4, Burton says, quite explicitly, "GENOMENON EK GUNAIKOS evidently refers to birth."

Pre-existent, yes, but Moses was also regarded as preexistent, but not a God. Paul also implies that Jesus was still second-in-command in 1 Cor. 15:28. John may be clear about identifying Jesus as God, but Paul stops just shy of this. See also how Enoch was treated.

And Hosea 6:2 reads,

The "third day" motif gets around. Actually, "three", like "seven" or "twelve", is a number that gets recycled in multiple contexts, so its presence in both the legend of Inanna and in Hosea should be unsurprising. This verse is easy to pull out of context in support of a resurrection, and I would not be the least bit surprised at this being the reason for being Jesus being described as resurrected on the third day. Of course, this argues mainly against paganism as a direct source of Christian resurrection belief, as opposed to such beliefs being mediated through Judaism.

Strictly speaking, in regards to an HJ, it is mostly a "So what?" No one here is claiming that the resurrection really happened.

dog-on

I would like to interject that there is no reason to accept 4:4. If Galatians was truly authored by Paul, I would argue for the possible Marcionite reading:

4 But when the fulness of the time came,
God sent forth his Son,
5 That he might purchase those under law,
and that we may receive adoption.

Maybe a more appropriate reading based on the overall theology contained within the Pauline corpus as a whole? This reading can be derived from Tertullian's argument 'Adversus Marcionem'.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Itha...EGalatians.PDF

dongiovanni1976x

I am not talking about the claims ABOUT the person but about the fact that claims were in fact made. The former requires us to analyze the credibility of such claims, which I disregard as implausible by definition, the latter requires that we answer why such claims would be made in the first place had not a being walked the earth.

You are assuming that Christ’s divinity preceded his humanity, whereas I am assuming the opposite. And spin argues that we should both stop assuming things and admit that no one knows.

Spin is correct but only insofar as Humes demonstrates that no one can really know the relation between cause and effect and as a consequence all historical inquiry becomes moot. I do not want to go down that slippery slope so I prefer to address which “assumption” is the stronger of the two.

So when you say: What are you basing this upon?

Clivedurdle

My personal reading of the christian bible, backed up by many varied mythicist arguments and my Christian background as well - assemblies of god pentecostal. I was brought up to worship this jesus god in a way most protestants and catholics do not understand. I suppose I have been privileged to have a religious upbringing that does reflect the mystery religions of old, with the key texts being from Hebrews and Revelation.

To me it is obvious the human bits were added to this Christ, Melchizadeck, sacrificial lamb figure. I do turn Christology on its head and say this stuff is earlier with direct links to Judaic concepts.

This heavenly Christ is too heavy for us humans, we need him to have a mum and dad and to understand our sorrows and heal our sicknesses. The human stuff to me is obviously later. Paul's silences, and the way he writes shows he was into this heavenly Christ. Even 1 Corinthians 13 is about perfection - of love and charity - very heavy stuff! The gospels humanise this crystal sea, holy, perfect God.

We believed in communion that we were in God's presence, experiencing heaven.

Clivedurdle

Actually, the god Christ gives a reason for the evolution of church structures, doctrines and the concept of heresy.

A mythical all powerful god with a high priest in the heavens allows the development of a Pope and a priesthood who are holy enough to discuss things with this god. Doctrine and heresy follows directly from this idea of a commander in chief god with son.

How does someone wandering around Judea explain the heirarchy and doctrinal structure of the church?

dongiovanni1976x

If you are suggesting the absurdity of Jesus supposedly saying such things I agree. But I find nothing that suggests that Jesus ever said anything of the like.
The HJ paradigm doesn't require anything but a man named Jesus, who was not all that extraordinary in his day, having people talk about him in order to develop into little communities of Jesus followers. The heirarchy of the Church has more to do with Diocletian's reforms and Constantine's tax breaks than anything else. Ambrose is a great example of a secular govenor turned bishop overnight with no qualifications whatsoever.

Q: who do you think Paul was and what do you base your answer upon?

jjramsey

To clarify what I see the fundamental problem with Doherty's translation of kata sarka:

Now I am not an expert in Greek, but from what I've read so far, kata is a very general preposition that is about as vague as the English prepositions "to," "by," "at," "around," etc. For this reason, kata X, cannot denote "in a hollow globe that is the domain of X," or "in a hollow globe that is where X dwells." kata just isn't that specific. Given this, kata is ill-suited to refer to the hollow globes of Middle Platonic cosmology or the spaces within them.

Doherty seems to use a two-step process for his ideosyncratic translation of kata. First, he translates kata as "in the sphere of." This is all well and good, provided that "sphere" is used in a loose sense that accords with the inherent looseness of kata, e.g. as in "sphere of influence." This is how Barrett uses "sphere." Second, Doherty shifts from using "sphere" in a vague sense to using "sphere" in the sense of "hollow globe." It is the latter sense of "sphere" that Middle Platonists use to describe their cosmology. This second step is purely a fallacy of equivocation, based not on the Greek but on ambiguities in the English word "sphere."

No wonder then that we don't see in the literature examples of kata sarka used in the way Doherty describes.