aa5874

1 Corinthians 1.231 Corinthians 2.2 I don't think it is your job to "fill in" anything. It makes no sense sense "to fill in" information just to support your own conclusion.

Plausibilty is not history. You must realise that many many novels of fiction are entirely plausible and would have appeared to be non-fiction were it not for the author's declaration of fiction.

There is just no support for the letter writers before the apostles, or the churches in Judaea, and then, there is no support for the Jesus stories, the apostles or the churches before the letter writers died.

In order for you to claim the letter writers preceeded the apostles, or the churches in Judaea, you will have to reject the words of the very same letter writers and then fill-in whatever you think is plausible.

Maybe the letter writers did fill-in stuff, too, and called it "revelations.

show_no_mercy

Definitely. The redactors of Josephus' works saw fit to insert Jesus, but they didn't think to insert Paul who was supposedly the sole reason that they were Christians in the first place - Paul being the self-appointed apostle to the gentiles. Paul's charge of teaching Jews to relinquish Mosaic law and his faux pas inviting a non-Jew into the temple causing a ruckus and subsequent arrest didn't catch Josephus' attention, but Jame's martyrdom did.

Maybe "Paul" wasn't as Jewish as he claimed...

LogicandReason

I've always questioned why Paul needs to tell us he was a Pharisee and further, by what authority would a Pharisee have to arrest Christians? Saducees were the only group with temple authority.

gurugeorge

Sorry, no "blasphemer" there.

But that's not what I'm claiming. Of course there were apostles before "Paul"; it's the nature of that apostleship that's in question, the nature of what existed before Paul that's in question, the nature of their beliefs that's in question. Are these all what other, later Christian writings like Acts say they were? Or something different?

aa5874

So, who was crucified, was it not Jesus Christ that was accused of blasphemy?

You need to read the Jesus stories in the NT.

Mark 14.61-64 But, that is exactly what you are doing. You have rejected or just cannot trust the words of the author of Acts or the letter writers called Paul. You appear to be confused and think it is your job to fill-in.

Now, if you read Justin Martyr, you might get a different picture of believers after the supposed resurrection of Jesus to Marcion and you may not have to fill-in anything.

Justin wrote that Simon Magus was called a Christian and he never even mentioned the letter writers who were supposed to be founders of churches all over the Empire, apostles, evangelists, missionaries and Holy Ghost healers, far superior to Simon Magus, a magician.

gurugeorge

Where does "Paul" say that he was accused of blasphemy?

And the Mark story I view as a later development of the myth.

Why should the situation have to be un-confusing?

However, I don't think it was all that confusing - I think it's a fairly clear, simple story that fits the facts, as do several other options.

aa5874

And where does "Paul" say he was "Saul"?



You do not read your own post.

You have already stated that the "material we have is too ambiguous and self-contradictory so the job is to fill-in.

gurugeorge

AFAIK in Acts, a product of the early 2nd century.

I mean that the history doesn't write itself out of the texts and archaeological materials we have. You have to tell a story to link up the evidence. There are several stories about Christian origins that are more or less coherent with the evidence - but as you will note from arguments here on this board, hard conclusions about this matter are hard to come by. I think my story is fairly simple, strains the evidence least, and does justice to sound scholarship from many quarters - while yet being extremely radically mythicist. I think to take your view (which is also extremely radical) you have to reject too much of the mainstream story. One wants to conserve the acknowledged results of scholarship, including orthodox scholarship, as much as possible, not throw them away in an ad hoc manner whenever it suits. (I think Doherty was absolutely right to start on the basis of accepting as much as possible of standard scholarship - simply because, with so many clever brains working on these problems, it's likely to have a good deal of truth in it. Of course that's not a guarantor of truth, but it's the closest thing we have, just like with science.)

aa5874

Well, your story is not simple. It is too ambiguous and self-contradictory.

teamonger

Aren't you only assuming there was silence after Jesus' death? Perhaps nothing was put in writing for awhile, true, but that was likely because all the believers expected the world to end quick. In that case, there would be no need to write down accounts about Jesus for posterity.

It could well have been Jesus who first projected himself into some Jewish scripture, if he believed himself to be the Messiah (that's a big if, I know). Perhaps he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey because he thought he was supposed to.
t