Steven Carr

This is all pretty astonishing.

Ehrman claims repeatedly that early Christians regarded Jesus as a perfectly normal human being, who was then appointed by God.

And yet he also claims this is a total misreading of Paul.

Will we get the usual Ehrman claims that our earliest Christian source (Paul) is not as early as the ideas in later Christian sources?

hjalti

Yes, it would be fascinating to hear if this affects his case against mythicism in any way. Although I guess he would still say that adoptionism was the earliest belief, based on Rom 1 and the speeches in Acts.

Tommy

I think this is a good point for the MJ thesis. How would you balance it with Jesus himself at the end of gMatthew sending his followers to baptize in His name and that of the father and Holy Ghost? (Interesting that at the end of gMatthew some followers still doubt.)

John Dominic Crossan makes a case for HJ based on the apparent discrepancy between Jesus as the cynic and pacificist and Jesus as the powerful apocalyptic judge; only the latter would be necessary for the myth leaving the former as a possible memory of an actual preacher. (Beilby, J. and Eddy, P., 2009, The historical Jesus, Five views (or via: amazon.co.uk) ( via: Amazon UK ), Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press).

Chili

It reminds me of Luther when his eyes were first opened, just a little bit, mind you, and thought it was enough for him to start a rebellion that later got the best of him when 'scholars' ran away with it. poor guy. And so here now we have another one, except that this one credits 'higher learned' scholars who pointed this out to him and he feels happier than a pig in shit about that now, and in looking back wonders what this shit is all about.

Chili

Baptism here is equivalent to understanding wherein now the baptized themselves baptized more than Jesus did to point at how illumination works inside the human mind where so now 'tied and loosed' is happening.

Understand here well that water represents the celestial sea that must be brought to understanding so we can walk on it as if on solid rock because in heaven the sea is no longer (Rev. 21:1) and all that means is that we must learn to go by intuition instead of reason as the enemy to overcome (the TOK here now and our self become resident of the TOL where the reign of God is at).

It is therefore that the feeding of 5000 is the next step in life wherein faith and hope are the 2 loaves and fishes to hand out from love for life and there set free more scraps then the daring step we made as 'deep see' diver now, as if head first like Peter did on that famous post-resurrection fishing trip when he put on this new cloak that he called Catholic that we might come to understand what exactly is what they dragged to Rome.

This so will be our own key to heaven that is religion specific now for us. And so yes, the iota argument will stand, of which now the "Book of Martyrs" speaks in evidence as those who insist that that good things can only come our way and after they bury us.

Symptomatic here is also that Mary is now Queen of heaven and of earth that they still must deny. Causally perhaps, but is like a slap in the face to them.

Of course you may not be able to defend this all, but it is true beyond the first illumination that baptizing is all about.

Chili

And good of you to observe that some still doubted it . . . as we see today when the holly roller Evangelistic rally tent comes to town and many people wonder what that is all about.

Just look at Nicodemus when Jesus said:

I solemnly assure you,
no one can see the reign of God
unless he is begotten from above.

To which Nicodemus said: [Huh?] How can a man be born again when he is old?

Then notice that Jesus never called it "born again." He never would and especially not in John where the infancy is not part of it, but instead called it begotten from above and thus not a rally tent event where desire is used to suck you in (see Mathew 3:8 who wants some evidence against the pride in them so he can zap them too).

So yes, suspicion is well founded there.

But now, the real question is why Matthew and Mark are just opposite to Luke and John as if they are foreshadows for them to be just their opposites to set the gate to hell wide open as opposite to the narrow gate wherein only God will do the trick for us (Jn. 1:13 here now where desire is placed just opposite to "'but by God [alone]."

And notice then that Jesus's brother James in Matthew and Mark goes 'back to Galilee' again [to fry some more].

Good catch, I say.

jdboy

From Toto's link;"Admittedly, in which precise sense was Jesus a seditionist is unclear, precisely because the extent of the misrepresentation of Jesus’ story carried out by the transmitters of the tradition and/or the evangelists is a debatable matter. Some scholars (e.g. K. Kautsky, R. Eisler, J. Montserrat….) have surmised that the considerable degree of editorial manipulation and tendentiousness which can be tracked in the Gospels indicates that the revolutionary atmosphere of Jesus’ activities has been altered almost beyond recognition, so the underlying story must have originally been a quite different one."

The bible actually tells us who Jesus really represented.
Jesus said lift up The Son of Man and know that i am he. Jesus claimed the Son of Man would destroy the temple. And the Roman Titus destroyed the temple.

Chili

Sure, and he was taking about the temple of his mind known as the TOK that Adam occupied is usurper there, and now at 42, the second Adam comes along to undo the division between these two so he could walk thru that great divide and moved into the upper room and there was called Christ in the new temple of his mind.

aa5874

What do you mean that it was "Jesus" himself? From the begining to the End of gMatthew Jesus himself was the Son of God born of a Ghost and a Virgin.


It would appear to me that many so-called Scholars do NOT understand that it is the evidence--the witnesses from antiquity--that will say who Jesus was.

This is precisely why there are court trials.

We go to hear the evidence from the witnesses not the opinion of all experts.

The witnesses of antiquity did publicly declare that Jesus was born of a Ghost and a Virgin.

It is documented.

One cannot reject the witnesses to reconstruct the past.

Sincer the 2nd century it was accepted that Jesus was a God born of a Ghost--A Myth.

The claim that Jesus was born of a Ghost had NO negative impact on the Romans.

Constantine must have accepted that Ghosts were figures of history.

Chili

The real problem is that we think we are real and ghosts are not and if that is not true how can the virgin Mary be Ever Virgin while we can do that only once, and is the queen of heaven throughout eternity and we only think that we are king and queen and all the rest of these fancy-full things that we pretend to be.

To figure this out we must look at the definition of real as seen by them, while I do agree that angles are just messengers for them.