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Old 06-15-2011, 06:36 AM   #41
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If you believe that spinach gives you super-strength , you cannot scoff at people who claim that Popeye never existed, even though scholars have demonstrated that there was a real historical person that Popeye was based on.
Steven, maybe we are not scoffing at you: maybe we are sorry you don't see the obvious: spinach gives you super-strength, if you have faith in spinach.


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Old 06-15-2011, 06:46 AM   #42
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If you believe that Jesus walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, raised people from the dead, and was himself resurrected from the dead, then you don't get to dismiss the "Jesus never existed" theory as too silly or crazy to take seriously.
Welll you see, Toto, the story says exactly what it says about Jesus. I am unaware of any other relevant story about Jesus that says anything different.

The fringe nutters are those that make up another story about Jesus that is unevidenced by any of the actual sources. Today these fruitcakes are referred to as HJers.

At least Christians deal with the sources, however gullible their dealing might be...
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Old 06-15-2011, 07:58 AM   #43
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Is it just "symbolic" when Catholics (v. transubstantiation) and Lutherans (v. consubstantiation) assert that they literally ingest the meat and blood of Christ?
Catholic and Lutheran doctrine is that it is not symbolic, but actual. This literalism is, of course, an absurd distortion of Christ's use of the Jewish symbolism of the Afikomen.
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Old 06-15-2011, 12:35 PM   #44
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I don't know if Jews wrote anything we read now in the NT (Revelation seems a good candidate) but clearly someone was mining the available Greek versions of Jewish literature. For the sake of argument we could identify these writers as Jewish apostates or heretics, which more or less describes Paul. Another choice would be syncretistic gentile proselytes.

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That's an interesting question. In its present form I think we'd have to say that it's a Catholic document, but the autograph texts could have come from Jewish hands (or some of the texts).
That's like saying that, in their present form, the Elgin marbles are British, not Greek.

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As far as content I think most Jews would disavow the New Testament on theological grounds, though I guess there were some who accepted Jesus as a prophet. The rejection of the Torah is a pretty clear dividing line, or would have been in pre-modern times.
Well, let's here what an actual Jewish scholar has to say:
When this old tradition confronts us in this manner, then the Gospel, which was originally something Jewish, becomes a book—and certainly not a minor work—within Jewish literature. This is not because, or not only because, it contains sentences which also appear in the same or a similar form in the Jewish works of that time. Nor is it such—in fact, it is even less so—because the Hebrew or Aramaic breaks again and again through the word forms and sentence formations of the Greek translation. Rather it is a Jewish book because—by all means and entirely because—the pure air of which it is full and which it breathes is that of the Holy Scriptures; because a Jewish spirit, and none other, lives in it; because Jewish faith and Jewish hope, Jewish suffering and Jewish distress, Jewish knowledge and Jewish expectations, and these alone, resound through it—a Jewish book in the midst of Jewish books. Judaism may not pass it by, nor mistake it, nor wish to give up all claims here. Here, too, Judaism should comprehend and take note of what is its own.--"The Gospel as a document of history". In Judaism and Christianity / Leo Baeck. Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society of America, 1958. p. 101-102.
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Old 06-15-2011, 12:55 PM   #45
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I don't know if Jews wrote anything we read now in the NT (Revelation seems a good candidate) but clearly someone was mining the available Greek versions of Jewish literature. For the sake of argument we could identify these writers as Jewish apostates or heretics, which more or less describes Paul. Another choice would be syncretistic gentile proselytes.
It seems that you are holding open the door to a de-Judaized interpretation of the New Testament. That's par for the course with both traditional Christian scholarship and its mythicist bastard child.
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Old 06-15-2011, 01:18 PM   #46
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I don't know if Jews wrote anything we read now in the NT (Revelation seems a good candidate) but clearly someone was mining the available Greek versions of Jewish literature. For the sake of argument we could identify these writers as Jewish apostates or heretics, which more or less describes Paul. Another choice would be syncretistic gentile proselytes.
It seems that you are holding open the door to a de-Judaized interpretation of the New Testament. That's par for the course with both traditional Christian scholarship and its mythicist bastard child.
It seems you're determined to read some sort of anti-semitism into this. I'm just trying to do justice to the evidence we have. If virtually all traces of Jewish nationalism and culture are absent from the texts how can we call them Jewish documents? You're smart enough to be aware of the various anti-Jewish sentiments scattered around the NT (eg gJohn). The largest quantity of material comes from Paul, who at best can be described as a messianic Jew, but he was hated by synagogues around the East.

Wouldn't the Ebionites/Nazoreans be closer to what you're alluding to? Their Jesus was a prophet, born and died like other men.
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Old 06-15-2011, 02:31 PM   #47
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It seems you're determined to read some sort of anti-semitism into this.
I certainly wouldn't be the first. See, for example, "Higher Criticism—Higher Anti-Semitism."

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I'm just trying to do justice to the evidence we have. If virtually all traces of Jewish nationalism and culture are absent from the texts how can we call them Jewish documents?
I would submit that you are misreading the documents, vitiating their Jewish elements.

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You're smart enough to be aware of the various anti-Jewish sentiments scattered around the NT (eg gJohn).
This is an intra-Jewish dispute. In John we see those Jews who had become, in the words of Constantin Brunner, "such fervent Christians in their enthusiasm for the new knowledge that they had to demonstrate a commensurate hatred for the other Jews and their Judaism."

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The largest quantity of material comes from Paul, who at best can be described as a messianic Jew, but he was hated by synagogues around the East.
At best?! Another attempt to strip even Paul of his Judaism?

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Wouldn't the Ebionites/Nazoreans be closer to what you're alluding to? Their Jesus was a prophet, born and died like other men.
Sure, they are close to the original community of followers, and to the authentic intent of the New Testament.
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Old 06-15-2011, 03:28 PM   #48
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I don't know if Jews wrote anything we read now in the NT (Revelation seems a good candidate) but clearly someone was mining the available Greek versions of Jewish literature. For the sake of argument we could identify these writers as Jewish apostates or heretics, which more or less describes Paul. Another choice would be syncretistic gentile proselytes.
It seems that you are holding open the door to a de-Judaized interpretation of the New Testament. That's par for the course with both traditional Christian scholarship and its mythicist bastard child.

That's not any way to talk about Jesus. I think someone paid these syncretistic gentile proselytes good gold to fabricate Jesus from the Greek texts of the LXX.
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Old 06-15-2011, 06:59 PM   #49
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A very perceptive post, whatever your position:

Landon Hendrick's blog
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New Rule

If you believe that Jesus walked on water, cast out demons, healed the sick, raised people from the dead, and was himself resurrected from the dead, then you don't get to dismiss the "Jesus never existed" theory as too silly or crazy to take seriously.
I read the post and can't disagree with any of it. Nor can I disagree with how you've tagged it.

Having said that,

1. "Fringe" requires, for a proper context, not only time but place (country and/or region of country).

2. It would be really nice if people like us (well, me, at least) could influence the next wave of poll-takers to ask not only are people Christian, but also follow-up questions, such as, do they believe Jesus healed the woman with an issue of blood, raised Lazarus from the dead, etc. I suspect the degree of Christian belief (in the US) is softer than the answers to the single, basic question would suggest, and I think the sooner people are forced to answer relatively detailed questions that involve the same depth of cognitive abilities as driving to work, the sooner many people will realize that maybe they really aren't Christians in the current, US sense of the word.

Unrelated to your intended direction, perhaps, but I couldn't resist my sense of wanting to capitalize on the fact that some of these core Christian beliefs would, I think, be regarded as plain, outright goofy if anyone but Jesus were playing the lead role.

Cheers,

V.
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Old 06-15-2011, 10:15 PM   #50
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"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." — C.S. Lewis

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
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