Davka

During my numerous conversations with Dr. Pritz, he made it clear that the Nazarenes were quite deliberately ethnically Jewish. I'd direct you to talk to him about it, but he's currently quite weak due to the brain cancer which is likely to take his life.

aa5874

We have no writings from Christians from the 1st century and none recovered from Jerusalem or Galilee for that time period.

We have the Dead Sea Scrolls, writings attributed to Philo and Josephus and they show no awareness of a Jesus cult, the Pauline writers or Churches in Judea or Alexandria where a man was worshiped as a God in the 1st century.

From the writings of Philo and Josephus we know that Jews did NOT worship men as Gods--Not even the Emperors of Rome were considered Gods by Jews.

Davka

One would not expect the Dead Sea Scrolls to contain information about a cult which did not exist circa ~200 BCE, the period to which the scrolls most likely date.

As for worshiping men as gods, it seems fairly clear that this was a later addition to the Jesus cult, along with Trinitarian doctrine, anti-Semitism, and disdain for the Law.

aa5874

Your claims are a fallacies and completely without corroboration.

1. Christianity did not begin as a Jewish religion.

2. The New Testament is NOT primarily a Jewish document.

3. The story of Jesus was composed in Greek.

4. All Jesus cult writers were Non-Jews for hundreds of years.

The evidence from antiquity clearly suggests that the earliest story of Jesus was composed by Non-Jews and that the Jesus story is a product of Non-Jerwish INTERPRETATIONS of the Septuagint--a Greek version of Hebrew Scripture.

No Hebrew version of the Jesus story has ever been found and the earliest recovered stories of Jesus have not been found in Jerusalem or Galilee but in Egypt where the Septuagint and the Greek language was known.

There is no known time in antiquity where there were Jews who practiced the Ritual of Eucharist as stated in the NT Canon in remembrance of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth the Son of God.


1 Cor.11KJVThere is NO such practice in the Jewish religion. Christianity was Blasphemy to the Jews--Lawless and Godless.

Examine Dialogue with Trypho [the Jew] CVII

outhouse

Dont be to sure about this. There is confusion between "god and Jesus relationship to Yahweh" and Jesus divinity.

Men were worshipped as divine quite often.


Mortal men were called divine and son of god, like the emperor, and there are many parallels to the emperors divinity early on in many of Jesus legends.

The last supper which was also a divine celibration/meal with the emperor
The sermon on the mount
The large crowds like the emperor


Wad the term perverted in time? oh you betcha

outhouse

Correct.

And I love the fact we have the Nag Hammadi with plenty of apocryphal text back to this same time around 200 CE. Which as you know gives a great look at the gnostic version of the movement

James The Least

What is the best piece of evidence that the Nazarenes were "deliberately ethnically Jewish"?

Grog

Wrong. From Wikipedia:

From the Gnostic Library:
From the gnostic library:
from the gnostic library:

These documents apparently represent more than one form of Jewish thinking that emerged between 200 BCE and about 70CE. These were writings that were collected for one reason or another and stored for safe keeping (or were collected at the site originally by Essenes if we take the latter hypothesis). Either way, it is an opportunity to find texts relating to a jewish sect organized around a Jesus figure. True, absence of evidence is not usually evidence of absence. But it certainly doesn't help the case that there was a Jesus cult centered in Jerusalem in the 50s and 60s. That coupled with the failure of Josephus to make any mention of the existence builds a case on its face that the movement didn't exist at that time.

No, we wouldn't necessarily expect to find Christian writings within the DSS. But the fact remains, even after the important find of a cache of possibly Jerusalem originating documents dating to a contemporaneous time period, we have no evidence of Jesus Christ existing that can be dated firmly between 30 and 80 CE.

aa5874

Again, in Acts of the Apostles a source which claims Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead did state that Jesus was taken up in a cloud BEFORE the Holy Ghost gave the disciples the Power to preach the Gospel.

1. In the Canon Jesus was ALREADY dead before there were people called Christians.

2. In gMark 8, the Populace did NOT even call Jesus the Christ but one of the Prophets or John the Baptist.

3. In gMark 8, Jesus demanded that the disciples tell NO man he was Christ.

4. In gMark 4, Jesus deliberately spoke in Parables so that the Populace would NOT be converted and REMAIN in Sin.

5. The start of the Jesus cult was on the DAY of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost came down from heaven.

It is imperative that we understand the stories of Jesus in the Cult's very Canon.

1. The Son of God came down from heaven.

2. Jesus, the Son of God was Betrayed, Abandoned and Denied by his disciples.

3. Jesus was Rejected and delivered up to be Crucified by the Jews.

4. Jesus Resurrected and Commissioned his disciples.

5. Jesus told the disciples that they MUST wait for a Holy Ghost AFTER he Ascended.

6. The Holy Ghost came down from heaven on the Day of Pentecost.

7. 3000 persons were converted on the Day of Pentecost after Peter told the Jews to Repent for KILLING Jesus.

It is most remarkable that in the Canon itself that the authors of Acts and gLuke did claim that Jesus was ALREADY dead and implied that it was the Holy Ghost that finally gave them the Power--NOT Jesus--to preach the Gospel.

Luke 24:49 KJVActs 1:4 KJV

Grog

Good points. I tend to agree with you more often than not. I am still in the strange contingency phase of accepting late Paul. I have not rejected it. I find it more persuasive to argue from a point where there is agreement on certain elements, such as early Paul. Accepting for the sake of argument, Early Paul, problems for the HJ position are serious, or even fatal.