Layman

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Toto
This is about what we expect, since the church wrote or selected those scriptures. But the church fathers did not do a perfect job, and there are clues as to what might have actually happened in the contradictions and difficulties.[/quote[]

Prove it. Don't just purport to regurgitate it.

So you concede that there are no such passages? Are you sure you are not a man of faith?

Someone has to make it first. You can only use the "yeah, but look at the big picture" so many times without explaining what that big picture is.


Actually, what Wells means is that the use of OT passages to base new beliefs on does not mean that the early Christians did not believe it really happened. Whether it happened or not is irrelevant to the point.

I think it's pretty clear what Carrier is talking about.

Carrier does.

Such as, who? And even if true, weren't they just trying to find some way to adapt the supersitions of most people to their own philosophical viewpoints?

So all this talk about "missing" details and historical references is irrelevant. According to your theory, Paul could have listed Jesus' birth place, mother, father, itenarary, and you'd still insist it was nothing but allegory. But as Kirby points out, that's not really Doherty's point. Jesus is not just an allegory, but a spirit being who accomplished certain things in a different realm--the spirit realm. Remember, Doherty thinks that the early Christians expected Jesus to eventually come to earth. He just denies that Jesus had already done so. But if Paul is referring to Jesus as a human being born of a woman and born under the law, there is no reason to think that Doherty's "coming" is a first one. Rather, as Hebrews quite plainly states, it is a second coming.

Vorkosigan

I think a neglected issue here is whether Jesus was regarded as of Davidic descent in his own lifetime, if we take the restrictive interpretation "of the line of David" to mean literal descent rather than simply an ethnic claim meaning Jesus was a Jew.

Hengel, in discussing this passage, rejects the claim that Paul is saying here that Jesus is of biological descent. Rather, he argues that Paul is referring to the full realization of Jesus kingship by his heavenly enthronement. Note that Paul clarifies his "son of David" remark by saying that Jesus' sonship is demonstrated by his resurrection of the dead through his power.

Further, as John Collins points out in his discussion of this passage in Scepter and Star, the term messiah could also refer to a prophet who was "annointed" as a prophet. Jesus was no warrior messiah, as the Davidic messiah was supposed to be. Collins suggests more or less that the notion of royalty could well have been a claim that attached itself to Jesus once his followers decided that he was the messiah, rather than merely a prophet. There is no sure line to a human Jesus from here. In John 7 the objection to Jesus as messiah is that he is NOT of Davidic background.

Thus, Paul's assignment of 'son of David' status to Jesus cannot qualify as a mark against Doherty because it is ambiguous at best. Either a real person was the son of david and thought to be god, or after-the-fact royal messianic status was imputed to (either a real figure or an invented one). Either explanation suffices, and evidence as we have it now seems insufficient to make a judgment on the original meaning of the passage.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

That was not the major point at issue here. I am taking this to PM.

Layman

As usual, no references and no attempt to deal with the substantive points of the other side.

Vorkosigan

I am sorry to have wasted your time. I will bow out.

Peter Kirby

Be a little more charitable! Vorkosigan raised an issue with a "substantive point" of the historicist side, re: descent from David. A problem in this context is that Gal. 4:4 is not one of the Davidic descent passages, so it has less applicability to your original post.

best,
Peter Kirby

Layman

Well, when nonmoderator's chime in to accuse me of "churlish nonsense" and to play referee on my behavior in a forum already dominated by skeptics, I get a little uncharitable.

Toto

I was not suggesting that this is Doherty's theory, and I probably should not have brought this up in this context. It was just something that has been bugging me for a while - that someone could argue for a historical Jesus based on stories of Dionysus.

Dear Layman, the moderators of this forum (I am not one) are much too well behaved to accuse you of "churlish nonsense", whatever you write.

At this point, I also expect to bow out of this thread, as there are a few other things I need to do with my time. (I want to finish reading Pervo's book and write something about it.) I am sure that, whatever I write, you will claim victory, and I will remain unconvinced. But even if Paul did believe in a historical Jesus (and his letters could be proven not to be forged), it would prove nothing else to me - it would not prove that either there was a historical Jesus who bore any resemblance to the gospel Jesus, or that this Jesus was God incarnate, or that I would burn in hell if I didn't believe in him.

Peter Kirby

Dionysus is Doherty's argument. Someone (like me) is pointing out that the play of Euripides about Dionysus and the odes of Bacchylides of Cos and Hesiod's Theogony and Homer's Iliad (long before Platonism) do not mean that a Greek could understand Dionysus as the son of Semele and as existing only ever on a sublunar or higher plane. Herodotus writes, "Now the Dionysus who was called the son of Semele, daughter of Cadmus, was about sixteen hundred years before my time, and Heracles son of Alcmene about nine hundred years; and Pan the son of Penelope (for according to the Greeks Penelope and Hermes were the parents of Pan) was about eight hundred years before me, and thus of a later date than the Trojan war." (Histories 2.145.4) Pausanius in his Description of Greece can point to "the tomb of Semele" (9.16.7) and says, "But I cannot bring myself to believe even that Semele died at all, seeing that she was the wife of Zeus." (2.31.2) Obviously many Greeks took Hercules and Dionysus to have been literally figures on earth. There is no evidence that someone who believed that Dionysus was a timeless being would have said that he was "born of a woman, born of the Greeks" or somesuch. What we need is to (1) name and identify these writings which treat the gods and god-men of Greece as acting in Heaven [not that there aren't any, but we must deal with the actual texts] and (2) point out where they use human-sounding language like Paul does. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that a writer in the Jewish tradition would use the phrase in Gal. 4:4 of human beings. This is part of the picture we get from Paul's writings.

Looking forward to it!

The Gospel itself says that there should be no proof of hell (Luke 16:28). But, anyway, I don't think that Layman is attempting to convert the members of BC&H.

best,
Peter Kirby

CJD

You're right about my not dealing with the entire issue. Whatever the faults of my previous post (plenty, to be sure), I do think I have shown at least one thing: Doherty's comments on the Galatians 4:21–31 are well-nigh non-points, irrelevant to his discussion about Saint Paul's "mythicist" tendencies.

I definitely did not think that Doherty was asking why Mary as theotokos went unstated in Paul's thought; indeed, I saw him "asking why Mary was not mentioned as a mother, since Paul has been weaving analogies involving mothers," and I thought I answered him in kind—because the analogy has everything to do with Abe and his two wives, two children, one child of promise by God's grace, not ethnicity, and nothing to do with any other family, the gospel-Jesus or no. I think I have simply shown Doherty's demand to include notitia about Mary and Jesus to be UNjustified. Nothing more or less.

Besides all of this, does Doherty ever discuss the general nature of much of the writings of the NT, and how if the authors wrote in a consciously generalized manner, then his entire enterprise must needs be re-thought? A classic example of this is Ephesians 4:20–21:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus . . . .

Was the apostle thinking of a particular aspect of Jesus' earthly life? If so, why not mention it? Ah, Doherty thinks, he must have known nothing of it. But the text begs the question for me: How did the audience learn Christ? From whom did they hear? Who taught them "in him"? What exactly did they hear and what were they taught?

Well, what does Saint Paul conjoin to what they "heard about him and were taught in him"? Why, the reforming of LIFE, continually putting off the "old self" and putting on the "new self." Tell me what kind of sense it would make to have a "therefore, live this new life" without a Christ who lived that life already?

As I mentioned previously, " . . . why must the author say anything about the earthly life of Jesus when his audience became a community of faith because of the earthly life of Jesus? Am I assuming too much? How is the opposite position not assuming too much? Where does the burden of proof lie?

If every time you try to speak, you try to say everything, you end up saying nothing at all."

Regards,

CJD