Chris Weimer

If you're seriously pressing me to go through the entire Pauline corpus, I will. It will take some time, as I have not gone through it before. And the translations alone, oh my.

Strawman. I said the letter itself was non-fiction, not elements in the letter. Letters as a literary genre are non-fiction. This isn't being pedantic. It's being precise. Perhaps you're thinking of fabrications. Moreover, I don't see anything in Paul to seriously think it's an outright fabrication. What do you have in mind?

Sheshbazzar

Which is the point I am making, there was not, is not, and never has been any "consensus", not among the "believers", and not among the "unbelievers", the same divisions among believers that predominate today, were among the believers even back then, and the objections you are raising today were raised by the unbelievers even back then, else there would have been no unbelievers.
Your statement regarding faith requiring nothing is provably false.
Because faith, for it to be faith, requires a continuing resistance to doubt. You reason, and you hope, "that the basis was a myth, and not an objective real event." We take it on faith above reason, that the whole story will fully vindicate itself in due time.
And this IS the present reality.

Amaleq13

Is this a common way to refer to a person in Greek?

rlogan

I think this represents a denial complex. If you grew up in a muslim society you would think very differently about Jesus.

In sincerity, Chris - you need to look carefully at this question.


Sure as I said: you interpret this as a historical statement.

Rapunzel had golden hair. Not the 'likeness" of hair or something that needs to be interpreted as hair. Golden hair.

And yet, she is not real. Here Paul is even less assuring than in the Rapunzel story. The mystical gibberish with "according to the flesh".

Believe in your heart all you want about ghosts. How is this evidence of a historical person?

Well, I am wondering if you expected me to cry "interpolation" here. It is, according to many.

Nevertheless what you are failing to supply is something so incredibly simple.

Paul simply does not tell us anything resembling a history of some person named Jesus. Just look at how hard you are trying and can't come up with anything.

Was he short? Tall? Fat? Skinny? Not even one anecdote to tell about him?

I know you want for this to be so.

Please detail what kind of logic you are trying to invoke here. I sure don't see it.

Historicists have a "just so" story explaining why Jesus or Christianity is not mentioned by any contemporaneous historian. Too small a ministry.

Is that derived from statements Paul or anyone else made? No. It is an excuse.

An excuse without merit. They are not looking through material that actually exists.

He is not mentioned by anyone. Not even Paul, as far as any actual identifiable history.

But as far as Josephus is concerned, he wrote a specific chapter on Sects of the Jews. Nothing on Christianity or Jesus there.

Is it an argument from silence? No - there is a specific chapter dedicated to the express subject matter where Christianity ought to appear, and it is written in 90 CE or so. So even by then it isn't significant enough to have been written about as a "Sect of the Jews".

It is only one option of the two possibilities. This one takes an existing person who was not Jesus, and merely some kind of "inspiration" for a myth, and hoping people do not notice the chasm between this and a claim for linear succession. Didn't sayh you were doing this.l

Straw man.

We have a very specific case here of an individual purportedly of high notoriety - not some anonymous shepherd. Persons of lesser notoriety appear in historical writings of the time.

Chris Weimer

Considering that I once subscribed to the position espoused by American Atheists regarding Jesus, I think your accusation is unfair, biased, and uninformed. If you're going to continue with the ad hominem, I won't discuss it further.

I see no reason why not?

If you look at my most recent post in "Doherty, Gibson, and Barrett oh me" you'll see quite clearly why I think kata sarka is not religious mumbo-jumbo that you make it out to be. Besides, the importance is placed on Seed of David, kata sarka is there for emphasis.

How often do you see someone claiming a mythical person as a ghost?

I thought you would. The burden, however, lies upon you in demonstrating.

Why would Paul? What does Zhuang Zi say about Lao Zi?

Perhaps because Paul quite clearly says he never met the man.

Wit. Dry, at that.

And Christianity is mentioned by contemporaneous historians - Paul.

No, it's a reasonable explanation that fits everything else we know about Christianity in the first century.

Are you kidding me? Let me guess, when Paul says "of the seed of David by the flesh" he's talking about being born of the David in heaven and the flesh is really a metaphor for light.

There's quite a bit he didn't write about.

Yes - argument from silence. Just because you deny it is an argument from silence does not make it so. Moreover, by 90 CE one can hardly call Christianity a sect of Judaism, especially if it was a Roman threat.

[quote]It is only one option of the two possibilities. This one takes an existing person who was not Jesus, and merely some kind of "inspiration" for a myth, and hoping people do not notice the chasm between this and a claim for linear succession. Didn't sayh you were doing this.l

Purportedly is the key word here. Unless you take Mark as fact, which virtually no serious scholar can do, Jesus did not have high prominence or notoriety, and there's no reason to assume he did.

Ted Hoffman

Alan Dundes was also a mythicist. Add Tim Thompson to your list.
And when did Burton Mack become a mythicist?
Dundes was a professor of anthropology and folklore at University of California Berkeley

Llyricist

Yes please, show me all the sayings he attributes to a living, breathing Jesus, show me any biographical details at all other than the seed of David, and crucifixion. Show me any aactions he attributes to a living, breathing Jesus.

Yes it is, it is exactly what I said you were doing, I was applying the all the definitions of fiction EXCEPT the one you are insisting on.

1.a. applies as I was using the word, as does 1.b., maybe 2, but Paul may have actually believed what he wrote, 3 a. works the way I used it, and the law definition fits perfectly. that leaves you with insisting that the only RIGHT definition is 3.b., NOT EVEN 1. fercrissakes.

ETa: Actually 3.a. seems to be the best fit for the way I meant it, though I don't rule out the others.

You misspelled pedantic , besides this is the first time you narrowed your wording to "literary genre" neither you nor I used that phraseology before.

Nope I was thinking of fictional, just as defined above.

That's why I used the word fiction.

I told you what I had in mind in the rest of the quote that you snipped.

Didymus

I was referring to canonical sources for sayings attributed to JESUS, not to unattributed sayings or sayings attributed to "the Lord" or "God." Paul attributed only a few words, e.g., the eucharistic injunction, to Jesus. The other sources you list are non-canonical, and most are 2nd century.

Didymus

jjramsey

The times that the pamphlets about Paul Bunyan were published are definite. The time in which the tall tales were set is trickier.

The evidence indicates that Nazareth has been around since the Middle Bronze Age.

So there were letters written that referred casually to a contemporary blood relation of Paul Bunyan? That's news to me.

But Jesus has some not-so-tall tales associated with him as well.

No, just a layman who keep track of some of the people who do the historical Jesus stuff.

Except they don't all do this. The guys from the Jesus Seminar certainly don't.


No. Gone With The Wind was always marketed as fiction, unlike the Gospels, two of which (Luke and John) explicitly indicated that their authors expected them to be taken as fact. Also, there are no indications that the characters in that book existed in the outside world, no letters, no family records, etc.

andrewcriddle

Hi Chris

When you say the gospels are fiction, could you expand on what exactly you mean ?


I've suggested before that claims that the gospels are fiction about a real person are, in the context of late antique prose writing, either wrong (eg they exaggerate the similarity between the gospels and works such as the Alexander legend) or are misleading and would be better put as the claim that the gospels neither are nor are attempting to be historically accurate.

Andrew Criddle