andrewcriddle

There are discussions about the Historical David of Wales at St David and David Welsh saint The earliest textual evidence seems to be 300 years after his death and the life is historically of little value.

It seems much more likely that he existed than that he is a myth or legend. On the other hand we know very little about him.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

You mean Jesus was a "mythological asshole"?

You need to DEAL with actual written evidence from antiquity and REFRAIN from BELIEVING what is NOT evidence at all.

Regardless of what you BELIEVE or presume, in the NT, Jesus was NOT an ASSHOLE, he was, God Incarnate, the CREATOR of heaven and earth, walked on water, transfigured and was RAISED from the dead for the SINS of Mankind.

By the way, David Koresh was NOT claimed to be the Child of a Holy Ghost, the Creator of heaven and earth, God Incarnate, without a human father, the End of the Law, the FIRSTBORN of the dead, and that he could REMIT the Sins of Mankind through his resurrection.

robert_bumbalough

The criteria of embarrassment is worthless at determining historical authenticity of Gospel characters because alleged story elements that conceivably might be opinionated as embarrassing to second century proto-orthodox church leaders or their more intelligent supporters cannot actually be shown to have been embarrassing to those long dead persons because they are dead or did not state the doctrine of Paraousa was embarrassing in their surviving records. It is more probable that alleged embarrassing story elements were written into the religious fairytale to add drama or to harmonize with earlier Jewish apocryphal literature such as the Wisdom personified theme. The fact is that everything Jesus is alleged to have done or said in the gospels offended some person, yet they must have sounded pretty good to the authors, editors, and redactors for those alleged embarrassing pericopes to have made the cut. Additionally, the Q community sayings identified as the Q2 chronological layer did not include the idea of a time limit related to “this generation shall not pass away until all this takes place”, nor does Q2 refer to a second coming of Jesus. Rather Q2 specifies the coming of the “Son of Man”, the Apocalyptic figure described in Daniel 7:13-14. This means the Gospel scribblers intentionally modified the Q material to fabricate a myth of a second coming of Jesus. While this might have embarrassed a rational skeptic like me, it defined an identifying Cult distinction for Gospel Christians and was in no way embarrassing for them and is still not embarrassing for modern evangelical or orthodox Christians. They simply do what the Jehovah Witness people did and mentally assign Matt 24 and Luke 17 to the category of “Spiritual Comings”. Harold Campings followers are doing this currently. My personal experience is that none of the Christians I’ve ever had discussions with that included talk about the Parousia were in the least bit embarrassed about the generational time-line. The criteria of embarrassment thus is no help to advocates of any historical Jesus position. Thanks to the reader and best wishes to all.

robert_bumbalough

Hello aa5874, God as imagined by followers or acolytes of any form of theism is impossible because consciousness cannot make, form, modify, or change existence. Consciousness is awareness of existence and requires something to be aware, a brain, and something to be aware of, information that only can come from existence. Thus consciousness is functionally dependent on existence and information. As such ir cannot be the cause of existence. Consequently God does not exist because it cannot exist. The ancient superstitions of an incarnation and super-natural magic should be dismissed along with any notion of the Gospel Jesus actually having had lived. That is not to say there could not have been any historical actual Jesus somehow involved with Christian origins, but for sure we can eliminate any notion of a super-natural God-man Jesus alleged to have walked about doing magic tricks. Likewise since there was no town or village of Nazareth in the first half of the first century, we can dismiss any "Jesus of Nazareth" as historical. That is not to say that there could not have been a delusional apocalyptic self-styled prophet called Jesus who was associated with ultra-Torah observant Messianic Jewish-nationalist Nazoraean sect as speculated by Albert Schwitzer in "The Quest for the Historical Jesus". Along with Burton L. Mack, I think the most likely candidate for a historical Jesus was as a Hellenistic Cynic Sage at the root of the Q1 aphorism sayings. However, it is not at all necessary for there to have been only one guy in this role. My time is up, so best wishes to aa and to the readers.

ApostateAbe

Hey, robert_bumbalough. Embarrassment really isn't my argument--it is actually more to do with the patterns of history (religious myths of doomsday cult leaders are always inspired by actual doomsday cult leaders). But, it is one of the related issues. I really do think it would be easy to get the wrong idea of what would be "embarrassing" to ancient people, given the vast differences between ancient times and modern times. However, there is very good reason to conclude embarrassment when it is almost directly seen in the texts themselves. For example, 2 Peter 3:3-9, written in the middle of the 2nd century CE, tells of "scoffers" who ridicule Christians for the failed apocalyptic deadline. As another example, the passage of John 21:20-23, written after 90 CE, gives an excuse for the "rumor" of the deadline of the return of Jesus (just a silly misunderstanding by the disciples). So, it would be highly mistaken to think that the criterion of embarrassment to be absolutely useless. I use the apparent points of view of ancient authors, including apparent embarrassment, as one of the means to best explain what they wrote. If you can't make plausible sense of their perspectives, then obviously you can't make much sense of the historical realities reflected in their writings.

aa5874

I do NOT believe the Jesus story and can only say how he was described. Jesus was NOT described as an ASSHOLE but the Creator of heaven and earth that was God, the Child of a Ghost and God Incarnate.

The description of Jesus fits mythology and I have NO obligation to assume Jesus was an asshole or could have been an asshole when he was NOT decribed as an asshole.

robert_bumbalough

Using the criteria of embarrassment we can be confident that Spock must be a real person. Why else would anyone tell that embarrassing story about his brain being stolen. Why would “The Others” go to such trouble as to leave Sigma Draconis VI to take control the the USS Enterprise unless they really did need an advanced and living biological brain to direct their civilization’s central controlling computer? This is very embarrassing for them to have to admit they needed Spock’s brain so desperately as to go to the extreme length of dusting off the old ion drive space vessel when that fancy new fangled Warp Drive technology was available in most high tech civilizations throughout the galaxy. Additionally, why would anyone think Spock not an actual historical person when the inhabitants of Sigma Draconis VI were totally segregated by both sex and technological selection? Its insanely embarrassing that the males of Sigma Draconis VI, as shown by Captain James T. Kirk’s questioning of caveman Morg, knew of their species’ females only as the “The Others”, the “bringers of pain and delight?”

The fact that Dr McCoy had to utilize an electronic and remotely controlled simulated brain device to animate Spock’s body while Captain Kirk and the other members of the landing party searched for Spock’s brain is extremely embarrassing, so much so that the obvious seams of redaction detected in Episode #56 must indicate how Star Fleet, Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise were back pedaling away from the derisive and humiliating scornful laughter of Spock’s fellow Vulcans. The story where Kirk and the landing party members including Dr. McCoy with Spock’s animated body first enter the subterranean city of “The Others” and encounter Luma and subsequently stun her is obviously a redaction because its just inconceivable that Luma could have been so slow to have activated her man control bracelet. All she had to do was to push the control button on the bracelet to render Captain Kirk and the other landing party member unconscious. This redaction and others like it show beyond the shadow of a doubt that Star Fleet was back pedaling from this regrettable and humiliating loss of Spock’s brain. That Star Fleet would go to such lengths can only be explained by the FACT that Spock must be a real guy.

So, all you A-Spockists out there are totally unworthy of my respect. How can you call yourselves human when your reasoning ability is so obviously defective?

ApostateAbe

robert_bumbalough, basically, we make plausible sense of any text by making plausible sense of the perspective of the author. For example, if the gospel texts really are sci-fi screenplays, then maybe it wouldn't be so embarrassing to the screenwriter if Captain Jesus is accounted to make a failed prediction of annihilation by the Klingon-Borg alliance. If, on the other hand, the gospels are actually Christian evangelistic texts, as they very much appear to be on their faces, then a failed apocalyptic deadline would be embarrassing, and we can see the retrospective embarrassment very much in John 21:20-23 and 2 Peter 3:3-9.

Now, maybe the synoptic gospels were written for a drastically different purpose than the gospel of John, and maybe the author of Luke lied or somehow fictionally accounted about his own explicit intention in his introduction (Luke 1:1-4), but I don't think it is appropriate to conclude that a certain criterion is useless just because of unlikely ad hoc possibilities, nor is it appropriate to strike down a very useful method of making sense of texts just because they don't apply so well to Star Trek.

As I said before, the Criterion of Embarrassment doesn't need to be its own criterion, but the idea of "embarrassment," along with many other aspects of an author's intentions, is essential to making plausible sense of a writer's perspective, and that is the only way to make plausible sense of the writing itself.

Toto

Is there any historical evidence of any cult that was embarrassed by a failed prediction of doom? Certainly not in recent American history.

ApostateAbe

I can think of a handful of examples. William Miller, for example--a very large part of the Millerites quit the movement in shame after the Great Disappointment (though of course the movement lived on and evolved). As a very recent example, some of the investors of Harold Camping appeared on the news either highly confused or bitter.