aa5874

And that is what I expect from those who promote propaganda, and rumors.

It would appear to me that some are attributing errors or interpolations in the NT Canon to scribes when they may well have been written by forgers from the Church itself.

Iskander

You are spreading Japanese Gossip. A most senseless proposal

J-D

I was intending the word 'tradition' in a broad sense, a sense in which the Jewish scriptures are included as part of Jewish tradition, and also a sense in which the concept of 'God's reign' itself might be part of Jewish tradition. So if you see Jesus as seeing himself following the Jewish scriptures, that would come under the heading of what I meant by interpreting Jewish tradition.

J-D

In that post I was responding to what mountainman wrote, not to what you wrote.

J-D

Who said Paul had to be a drug addict? Why do you even ask that question? Is the question you really meant to ask 'why does one of the poll options refer to the possibility that Paul had drug-induced visions?'? If so, the answer is 'because that one was one of the possibilities suggested by somebody in the previous thread from which the poll options were drawn'.

And if you are also asking 'why isn't there a poll option which suggests that Christanity began with people listening to the teachings of Paul, which he drew from his interpretation of the Septuagint [or, Jewish scripture or Jewish tradition more broadly]?', then the answer is 'because that possibility was not suggested by anybody in the previous thread from which the poll options were drawn'. Do you think it should have been added to the list? Would you have voted for it?

mountainman

He was persecuting the disciples and followers of a relatively little known Religious sect called the Manicheans, following the crucifixion of their leader, Mani, in the late 3rd century in the Persian capital city. Diocletian's Manichaean persecutions were concentrated in the eastern empire. Mani and followers of Mani (the Manichaeans) flourished under Shapur c.340 to 370 CE in the Sassanid Persian empire. Coins minted by Shapur's brother Peroz show Buddha on the reverse side. The Manichaeans appear quite Buddhist-Like and in fact had monasteries in the Roman empire, even in Rome c.312 CE. There is no evidence to suggest that the Diocletian persecution had anything to do with Christians, except the attestations of Eusebius, who should be regarded as the most thoroughly dishonest historian in antiquity. The Christians persecuted the Manichaeans throughout the 4th and 5th centuries and all other non christian religious groups in the empire. Manichaean literature (ie: the books of Mani, and the stories of his crucifixion and the crucifixion and persecution of his followers) were burnt in front of the sturdy doors of basilicas by the Christian Bishops.

Petergdi

If you know the Gospel, it will seem to be very obviously already present in the Hebrew Bible. This is true even if you read a translation by and for Jews. But it isn't how the Rabbis read the Bible, and it isn't (as far as I can tell) how any pre-Christian group read it.

While I do think that Jesus's kind of metanoia must have been in the minds of many of the prophets who wrote the Bible, I don't think anyone told Jesus it was there.

Peter.

mountainman

We do not have enough information to draw a conclusion.

What a wimpish position. We have the basilicas and the crosses and the Bishops and Vicars and Dioceses and the Tetrarchy of Gospels and an explosion of archaeological relics and the bones of dead people litering the fourth century. We have Eusebius the beaver digging a dam in those fateful years that parallele the rise of Constantine 312 to 324 CE.

We have academic publications such as Graydon Snyder's "Ante pacem" asserting vast lists of evidence of various forms none of which can stand up to critical and skeptical review as being in fact <i>ante pacem</i> (before the "Peace of Constantine" --- ha ha ha what a joke!).

Are we entitled to hypothesise that Constantine pulled Christianity out of a helmet? Or found it under a rock in the Tiber near Maxentius' head c.312 CE? Perhaps he was handed a pamphlet about the gospels by believers in the streets of Trier?


What about a the concept of a wager or a bet?

What's the betting the Boss just dreamt it all up on his way to the top?
What are the odds that the Boss's mother found the One True Cross?
What is the likelihood that the evidence in the catacombs of Rome dates to the epoch when Pope Damasius (c.365-380 CE) renovated the Roman catacombs for the "Pilgrimage Industry"?


We do not have enough information to draw a hypothesis.

This is not only wimpish, but sadly neglectful of the value of the scientific method, whereby hypotheses are discussed on their merit of explanatory power with respect to the evidence itself. If discussion cannot support the putting foward and examination of hypotheses, then that discussion is stultified, and it becomes anti-productive to research and advancement.

What is the difference between a conclusion and an hypothesis?
What value is placed on the information being compared on the scales of judgement?
Previously the HJ theories already had a given "weight" by tradition.
We all know that we are dealing with an historical jesus right?
Information about the HJ gets weight (by tradition alone) even if it has no evidence.
Who or what is going to allocate VALUE to the informational evidence if not an hypothesis?

J-D

No, obviously not. Anybody who votes for this option is voting that Christianity originated with Paul and therefore well before Marcion.That's what somebody said on the old thread I referred to, which is why I included it as one of the options here.

J-D

No, it shouldn't.