aa5874

If you are really interested in the origins of Christianity then why don't you read what the Pauline writers wrote of their Jesus?

The Pauline writers claimed their Jesus was God's son made of a woman, of the seed of David, that he died for our sins, was buried and resurrected on the third day according to the Scriptures.

The supposed earliest writings of the Jesus cult claim that Jesus was on earth. The earliest story of Jesus in the Canon described or implied the character as the Son of God who was on earth.

The only book to mention a "biography" of Paul claimed he preached about Jesus AFTER the ascension and AFTER he persecuted believers.

Jesus cult writers who used the Pauline Corpus also claimed or implied the Pauline Jesus is the character called Jesus of Nazareth or the same Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels born of a Ghost and a Virgin who was crucified after a trial under Pilate, who was buried and resurrected in Jerusalem.

It is not at all necessary to attempt to claim the Pauline Jesus is not the same Jesus in the Gospels when there is no known evidence in or out the Canon to support such notion.

The criterion of embarrassment is completely useless to determine historical accounts in the Gospels when it is already known that the Gospel Jesus is NOT even claimed to have been conceived as human and was engaged in non-human activities.

spin

You aren't really getting the drift of the problem. Early christian literature is text containing christian tradition. We are likely never to get beyond that fact. Yet here you are apparently oblivious to how one can treat the content of the tradition as anything other than, well, text bound narrative.

They have different sorts of sources, sources that they are at least in part able to relate to some specific past contexts. We are dealing with tradition texts. We can perform all sorts of wonderful analyses of those texts, but what we need to be able to do is find a way to change the modality of those texts from unattached narratives to specific past-related data. How do you get historical facts out of tradition narratives??

What has the event in Josephus concerning events about the real world got to do with the content of christian tradition narrative?

The forensic analyses you see in TV shows such as CSI reflect the sorts of techniques frequently employed in the real world. You can apply the logic of looking for similar events in the real world, supplying probabilities to them and relating the events on CSI to the resultant probabilities. What is the end result as to the veracity of CSI? Both real events and non-real events can meet standards of plausibility, such that some might give them probabilities for some reason. In the end you have no way to distinguish between plausible real and non-real events.

I don't want to stop you from doing what you want to do. I just think you could find more fruitful ways of using your skills in your efforts to deal with this literature.

aa5874

Your question is frightening. You imply that christian tradition narrative was not ever in the domain of the real world and propagated by real people in antiquity and that christian tradition narrative could NOT have have had any influence in the real world.

Your suggestion is completely unacceptable

Did not Josephus write about the contents of Jewish tradition narrative?

Did not Jewish tradition narrative have influence on the very War against the Romans c 66-70 CE?

When Josephus wrote the "Antiquities of the Jews" in the real world he used Hebrew Scripture or the Septuagint to relate to events about the real world.

In Antiquities of the Jews 10--Josephus claimed Daniel predicted the desolation of Jerusalem and the Temple c 70 CE.

The very Roman/ Greek tradition narratives had influence on the real world in antiquity.

It is an extremely simple matter to see that christian tradition narrative had ZERO influence in the real world in the 1st century.

It was in the mid to late 2nd century that christian tradition narrative had influence in the Roman Empire.

The writings of Lucian of Samosata and Celsus suggest that christian tradition narrative was in the real world from the 2nd century.

Grog

You have to define what you categorize as "tradition texts." I don't use the Gospels or Acts for any historical facts at all. In the case of Paul, I recognize there are legitimate reasons to question the authenticity of those writings and the supposed author of them. However, for now, I think there is warrant to utilize those writings to get an understanding of early Christian beliefs. I accept the dating of Paul because I don't really have any reason not to. When I compare the thought of Paul to the thought of someone like Philo, it seems reasonable to suggest that Paul is living in a similar ethos as Philo.

I don't particularly care if obscure Jesus was crucified by Pilate or not. I think obscure Jesus is irrelevant to the development of Christianity. However, I think attempting to imagine a sequence of events that takes us from obscure Jesus, man from Nazareth, crucified by Pilate to glorified Jesus, son of God, by the time of Paul there are a series of implausibilities that must be overcome. I used to be fascinated by how this could have occurred. Not anymore, I just don't think there's a reasonable chain of events that can lead us to Jesus of Nazareth worshipped as a God.

I do think, on the other hand, that we can easily identify an evolutionary line of thought that is not dependent on the teaching of any man named Jesus.

I think that Josephus was an influence in the development of the Jesus myth story.

Can you give me a real event that is implausible? Are implausible real events as likely to occur as plausible real events? When crime investigators attempt to discover the identities of perpetrators do they focus on the implausible or the plausible? Which do you think is probably more effective? If we can agree that one event or chain of events is less plausible than another, can't we make a case that it is more probable?

I think it is less plausible that aliens visited ancient Incas and inspired the Nazca Lines than that ancient Incas for reasons of their own and by their own means produced them. Do you disagree?
That's probably true. But partly, I am just having fun. I find it intriguing.

aa5874

This is extremely strange. Why are you committing yourself to an admitted questionable and manipulated source? The Pauline Corpus has no dates ascribed to the letters so I do not know how in the world you can accept them as early.

No Pauline Corpus have ever been recovered and dated to any time before c 70 CE.

The very same Acts that you admit you do not use for historical facts is the same writings that place Paul before the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

You are using Acts to date Paul because without Acts we would have virtually NO idea when the supposed Paul was converted and when he was called to preach Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected.

Acts is the fundamental basis for the presumption of an early Paul.

If we remove Acts of the Apostles from the Canon then Paul has NO history.

Without Acts, the Pauline writers would have been as UNKNOWN as Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Jude, and Peter.

andrewcriddle

No-one is disputing that Mark believed that Jesus is both the Messiah and the suffering Son of Man. IMO Jesus believed that he was both the Messiah and the suffering Son of Man.

My point is that Mark provides no evidence of a pre-Jesus identification of the Messiah and the Son of Man. Without such an identification, a pre-Jesus belief in a suffering Son of Man does not amount to a pre-Jesus belief in a suffering Messiah.

Andrew Criddle

Grog

Ok, but i'm not sure where that gets you. For one thing, you are presuming a "pre-Jesus" time period. I'm not sure when that is.

aa5874

Actually the author of gMark implies the Son of man was the actual Son of God.

In the very first chapter of gMark, a voice from heaven declared that Jesus was his Son.

The actions of Jesus in gMark show that his 'physical' body ONLY appeared like the son of man but it was ONE of a Spirit.

See Mark 6.49.

It is documented in gMark Jesus WALKED on the sea in the Night without Fear.

See Mark 9.----Does it not say Jesus transfigured?

Jesus was One LIKE the son of man but was NOT.

andrewcriddle

Replace pre-Jesus with pre-Christian if you like. The point is basically the same.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Your statement shows that you either do not understand that the word 'Christian' is not derived from Jesus or that you do not know that some people of antiquity called Christians did not need the Jesus story.

Pre-Christian and Pre-Jesus are not the same at all.

Pre-Jesus is later than Pre-Christian.