Toto

to Logical and outhouse:

Serendipitously, the audio of Richard Carrier's talk I posted in this thread addressed your concerns about probability and reconstructing a historical Jesus from later evidence. It's worth a listen (35 minutes)

Toto

Wrong. He was the emperor with an army willing to kill for him.

How does this relate to this point:

If the Romans did indeed deify at will, then this is easy to explain. Jesus had his 5 minutes of godhood.

But the reverse process also occurred. Gods were "euhemerized" - they started as celestial beings, and then a backstory was written about how they came down to earth, interacted with historical beings, etc.

How are you going to tell which model describes early Christianity?

No Robots

By looking at its literary origin in Judaic culture. We find no examples there of euhemerization. Nor do we find much in the way of deification, which points to a post-facto deification. And indeed the literary record shows a movement from the prophetic genius of the earliest sayings to the more-or-less overt theomorphizing in Paul and of course later commentators. The mythicist position that Paul's writings predate the material in Gospels is of course not tenable.

outhouse

I still like unbiased sources that dont just cover one religion.

if you search a little more you will find its not just a jewish term

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_God

Throughout history, emperors have assumed titles that amount to being "a son of god", "a son of a god" or "son of Heaven".

For thousands of years, emperors and rules ranging from the Western Zhou dynasty (c. 1000 B.C.) in China to Jimmu Tenno of Japan (perhaps c. 600 B.C.) to Alexander the Great (c. 360 BC) have assumed titles that reflect a filial relationship with deities.



In the NT it is used differently though, but we have unknown roman authors competing with Caesar using a jewish source [OT] since we have a jewish based movement, im not convinced the difference is that great.

Toto

Surely there was a reason to preserve these early stories about the founding of the religion.

But if you say that your aunt drove to the part yesterday and while she was there grew wings and flew around, is there any reason to believe any part of that story? Your intent and your credibility would be impeached.

But no early Christians say that and stop there. These are just two elements of a story that has many improbable elements, including the problem of why the Romans would want to crucify a harmless nutcase.

This is not how historians work. It's just how Christian apologists want you to think that they work. Historians are more skeptical than you seem to think.

Have you been oblivious to all the discussion about the lack of methods in Biblical scholarship, the total bankruptcy of the criteria that they use to separate out what can be known from the myths?

You are describing the Quest for the Historical Jesus. There have been three such quests, and they have been failures.

Toto

Oh really? What about Samson, clearly a solar deity?

And Christianity arose in the context of Hellenistic Judaism, Jews who adopted many elements of their surrounding culture.

The idea that Paul's writings predate the material in the Gospels is the standard scholarly consensus, not just a mythicist position.

outhouse

And jesus like many jewish zealots, would and did die to fight him.



heres your problem. jews didnt do that. they were Yahwist and never had any sort of celestial foundation.

Caesar was a mortal man, not a celestial based "son of god"





fail again bud, the backstory, and this I agree on,there was one. But it has no celestial foundation at all. a few influences yes! as all cultures at that time had some celestial influence, but the foundation is clear as a bell in its absense of typical celestial worship.


by the hellensitic religion the romans left us with that doesnt worship a celestial being.

instead we have a jewish movement admittedly taken by a hellenistic culture who added their mythology basd on judaism and STILL missing a celestial foundation.

Toto

OK - was your Jesus a pacifistic preacher or a zealot?



??? So where was YWHW? By the first century, I think he had moved from being a mountain god to a celestial god.

How does this help you?


So make up your mind - all cultures had some celestial influence, therefore you are sure the origins of Jesus did not?? :constern01:


You've stopped making any sense. Jesus is now a celestial being, and was from the earliest time that Christians thought that he resurrected.

James The Least

But that doesn't help the case for the HJ at all, since the Gospels were clearly written by Gentiles with an anti-Jewish agenda. Orthodoxy cannot allow for that phenomenon to happen as early as the 40s. It is supposedly Paul's "Mission to the Gentiles," described in his letters, that sets the stage for the later development of Gentiles writing and editing gospels with an anti-Jewish slant.

James The Least

Except that the supposed arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus are all historically spurious and unbelievable. That something in a text is not blatant myth does not mean that it becomes credible by default. The tendenz of the gospel writers is quite clear: the Jews are inhuman barbarians whose only goal in life is to kill the Son of God. There is nothing "believable" in the authors' portrayal of the Pharisees and Jews in general. It's just a sick fantasy written by highly imaginative but deeply perverse religious fanatics.