No Robots

And Jesus hearing this, marvelled; and said to them that followed him: Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.

--Mt 8:10

teamonger

Yes, Jesus must exist for them... but must exist in the now. They have been brainwashed to accept a Jesus who is still alive. A Jesus who is now dead is of little spiritual use to them.
t

aa5874

You have evidence that Jesus of the NT was just a man? Where? Just produce the corroborative evidence or information to support your imagination.

Up to now, Jesus is still a myth, no evidence has surfaced.

teamonger

Some things are more binary than others. The Bible need not be completely correct, nor completely crap - it can be something in between (as most human books are). However, the human Jesus either existed or he didn't. One can certainly be on the fence, of course...

There's no doubt that Paul much preferred the Jesus in his head, and got much of his "gospel" by revelation. But 1 Cor 15 would indicate that the things of "first importance" were things he "also received". Paul "delivered" those things to his converts, i.e. told them. I think the implication is, those things were delivered to him the same way. What things? Some basic background about a human who supposedly resurrected.

Before Paul himself converted, wouldn't it stand to reason that he heard something about a Jesus from the earlier believers he was persecuting?
t

spin

The mythicist approach is only one possibility of the didn't exist side of the existence binary taxonomy. Two others are the fictional approach and the tradition accretion approach. The first says that some person or persons invented Jesus, eg Josephus or Eusebius. The second is that Jesus entered a tradition through ordinary means, and not historical, mythicist or fictional. The example I sometimes give of Ebion who was brought into existence rationally though mistakenly as the founder of the Ebionite movement is a tradition accretion approach. I've used the way traditions tend to develop through time as a means of explaining the data we have, a means which is logical, requires no fraud nor confabulation, but which is not historical in its source.

Paul's revelation is of a crucified messiah (an oxymoron for Jews). My reading of Galatians is that Paul by his own words didn't get his gospel from anyone but his messiah through revelation. No historical Jesus is necessary for kickstarting Pauline christianity.

All this is a means to show people like you that all your presuppositions on cheap arguments such as embarrassment or economy are baseless. You just don't need a historical Jesus to have christianity.

As to whether Jesus existed or not, I don't know and I can't see how anyone can know, given the nature of the evidence. Anyone who thinks s/he does is deluding him/herself.

I've stuck to analysing Galatians for what it says first of all because you need to know what the text itself says and not what you think the text says. In the past I've argued that the details in 1 Cor 15 are in conflict with the knowledge that Paul displays elsewhere in its detail and strangeness. The notion of the twelve there isn't transparent. The 500 is ludicrous. The separation of the twelve from the apostles is problematic. But above all it is in conflict with the revelation described in Galatians. 1 Cor 15 must be held suspect.

When Paul went to Jerusalem to present his gospel, he came away having lost all respect for the so-called pillars. His faith in Jesus based gospel is contrasted throughout Galatians with torah observance. It's hard not to see the Jerusalem group as torah observant messianists, while Paul has a very different notion even as to what a messiah was.

To me Paul doesn't seem to know what a messiah was. The Jesus of christianity is certainly not a messiah. There is no champion of Jewry, no warrior to do away with oppression, no liberator of Israel, no subjugator of the nations.

The people Paul persecuted were messianists, "the assemblies of Judea in the messiah". Paul saw himself as messianic and the people he'd persecuted heard he was, but we, knowing what "messiah' means, can see him as someone who doesn't support true messianism at all. What then do you think Paul got from the Jerusalem group and on what textual evidence?


spin

teamonger

But surely those "pillars" had beliefs and knowledge? And some reason for being considered "pillars"? Paul is silent, but what is the reason? The answer seems to be twofold (1) basic beliefs and knowledge about the human Jesus were background knowledge, mostly known to his readers, (2) Paul doesn't want to put a finger on his own weakness as a 2nd hand apostle, as opposed to his 1st hand rivals.

Is there some reason to think these were two different people? My understanding is both names mean "rock". I'm not seeing the contradiction which you say follows...

As I wrote elsewhere, it seems Paul also "received" some things of first importance just as his hearers did in 1 Cor 15.

I was referring to the "pillars" interactions with Jesus in the gospels, whether there's some reason to think those were complete fabrication.

You say they have been misunderstood. If they were not associates of a human Jesus, do you have another theory then about who they were, what their beliefs were? If not, why reject the prima facie evidence of their association with a charismatic guy who impressed them?

The word of god is perfect? Hmm, not sure how you mean that, or if you're actually meaning it.
t

teamonger

I haven't studied about Aeneas, but I wouldn't a priori decide he was or wasn't historical. If there were as good recent textual evidence as we have for Jesus, then perhaps yes.

Prove? I never said the historical Jesus is proven. I say that's the high probability, given the prima facie evidence of the NT, and the lack of evidence for complete fabrication.
t

aa5874

The letter writer called "Paul" claimed he persecuted the church of God, but there is no evidence anywhere that anyone name Paul persecuted anyone.

There is no mention of messianist or messiah in the letters of the writer called "Paul".

There is no corroborative information for a real human Paul that existed before the death of Nero.

spin

You're not dealing with what Paul says. You are trying to explain it away my reading without listening to him.

Paul considered himself a believer in messianism, just like those people he persecuted.

I have argued elsewhere that the Hebrew behind Cephas also fits the name Caiaphas. The Epistle of the Apostles gives the two as separate people. But that doesn't matter so here much as your attempt to read more into the term "gospel of the uncircumcised". The structure of expression at the end of 2:9 should clarify the issue for you.

And as I'd just written to you:

I've stuck to analysing Galatians for what it says first of all because you need to know what the text itself says and not what you think the text says. In the past I've argued that the details in 1 Cor 15 are in conflict with the knowledge that Paul displays elsewhere in its detail and strangeness. The notion of the twelve there isn't transparent. The 500 is ludicrous. The separation of the twelve from the apostles is problematic. But above all it is in conflict with the revelation described in Galatians. 1 Cor 15 must be held suspect.

As I pointed out, Paul didn't need him.

It seems that you are still catching up with messages, so what I've written previously you may not have read yet.

The word of god being perfect has been so for the ideologues and apologists of systematic christianity for much of the past two millennia. There is a minority of christians for whom this is not the case, but they tend to be a relative recent phenomenon. The assumption of godly text has required a certain apologetic approach of making everything fit, whether they do or not.


spin

Rick Sumner

That was actually but a little more than a year ago. The culprit was none other than Earl Doherty himself. The person taking issue was me.

And it was ruled that it was an ad hominem in a clever guise, used to frame the opponents argument a certain way, and subsequently declared inappropriate for dialogue here.

I suppose there are occasions where it's appropriate. Describing J P Holding or William Lane Craig as "apologists," for example, is wholly appropriate. Describing the usual dating of the gospels as the "apologist dating" (which happened recently) probably isn't.

Regards,
Rick Sumner