chrisrkline

Read Jay's posting above. Even if you disagree with that, then why not a cross? They used that to crucify, I believe.

Next, do you want to know why it was made of wood?

aa5874

Or is it "where" and not "why", but in any event, I cannot say where or why, only the real Paul can answer those questions.

Chris Weimer

Jay Raskin doesn't know what he's talking about. Have you ever heard anyone making a comment about mythicists and creationists? Jay fits that paradigm. He's in the wrong field and hasn't made himself familiar with the material before he spouts his pseudo-knowledge nonsense. Jay doesn't know Greek, and therefore anything he says about Greek is derivative and lacks the Grecian context. Similarly, I don't comment about Nietzsche's German when discussing the Übermensch.

Why not the cross? Well, I mean, I'm not the one proposing the idea of a mythical Jesus. Things don't just come out of thin air. Myths have meaning, as any beginning anthropologist can tell you. What's the meaning behind the cross?

chrisrkline

It would have been the death and sacrifice that was important. Why was Isaiah sawn in half in the Ascension of Isaiah? (Oh, I know that it is based on earlier scripture, but why was it in there originally.)

Chris Weimer

Red Herring. Please stick to the issue at hand.

spin

This reduction of the range into the mythicist v. historicist positions is truly mindnumbing.

I have often asked on this forum about Ebion the eponymous founder of the Ebionite movement, an eponymous founder who apparently never existed, seeing as the name "Ebionite" is derived from the Hebrew word (BYWN, meaning "poor". Was Tertullian being a mythicist when he talked of Ebion, or was he working under the misapprehension that there was such a figure? Did Tertullian believe that Ebion was a mythical figure?? Did Epiphanius, when he reported that Ebion had a hometown in Judea and named it? Obviously, they did not believe that Ebion was a myth (yet the information about this non-existent figure grew from one retelling to the next). There are more options in the field than mythicist and historicist -- unless of course someone can show that my brief presentation of Ebion really does fit into one of these two categories. The adversarial approach to the discussion (ie MJ/HJ antagonism) stultifies discussion. It merely makes it easy to prattle on along well-worn tracks.

Both Jesus-mythicists and Jesus-historicists have to explain the phenomenon of Ebion. The mythicists because they want to reduce to a myth the information about Jesus, when that reduction is not the only "unhistorical" explanation of the data. The historicist because Ebion shows that there is nothing inherently historical about their approach.


spin

chrisrkline

OK, whatever.

It would have been the death and sacrifice that was important. Why was Isaiah sawn in half in the Ascension of Isaiah? (Oh, I know that it is based on earlier scripture, but why was it in there originally.)

Once, they decided he had suffered and died, then they needed a method.

spin

Presupposing the first part, Jesus, we are told, died for the poor (and the weak and the infirm), in lieu of the poor, so what was the form of execution around the Mediterranean for the poor if not crucifixion?

Would someone care to posit another suitable form of death that this world could impose at the time, which would have been appropriate for a savior to suffer in substitute for the poor, a form of death which would have been transparent to all the Mediterranean?


spin

Iasion

Hi Jay,

Aha!
Great stuff - I tried to figure out anew what Paul meant by "crucified" from the context - I came up with "deadened".)

I think you are on to something here, and also your comment about the "cross" - I always wondered what Paul meant by : "having made peace through the blood of the cross".

The blood of the cross? What?

But "the blood of his self-denial" - the blood he had spilled through his act of self denial - seems reasonable.


Iasion

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chris,

Ignoring the argumentum ad hominem, you imply that there are some rules in Greek that prevent the translations of the terms in the way that I have proposed. I would consider it the greatest kindness if you could tell me what these rules are or where I may find them.

If I am mistaken, I would very much like to find the reason so I do not make such an error in a similar situation again in the future.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay