show_no_mercy

This seems to be a different type of "speaking in tongues" than what the writer of Acts of the Apostles meant:

In Paul's letters, speaking in tongues is just unintelligible gibberish - some unknown language of god. In Acts, speaking in tongues means that you speak in one language and whoever hears you will hear what you say in their own language. Like some sort of magical translator - the exact opposite of Paul's version of speaking in tongues.

In Paul's letters, speaking in tongues isn't understood by anyone. In Acts, speaking in tongues is understood by everyone, regardless of what their mother language is.

aa5874

Now, you understand why Paul is a liar and gibberish-talker. If talking in tongues was talking gibberish, then Paul did talk a lot of it.

1Cor 14:18 -

There is a lot more gibberish in the letters with the name Paul.

Gibberish (tongues) is a sign for those who do not believe.

1Cor 14:22 -

danrael

According to Hyam Maccoby, a Talmudic scholar and author of "The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity", Paul brilliantly synthesized three important factors to launch what became modern Christianity: Jewish history as background, to lend authority and credibility to the story; the idea of the descending Gnosis, derived from Gnostic teachings; and the idea of the atoning death of a divine savior who rose from the dead, taken from his having been steeped in the mystery religions as a youth.

see here: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/maccoby2.htm

As for his state of mind, I suspect that, at the least, he interjected a bit of a tall tale to augment his own presitige when he claimed that there were 500 eyewitnesses to the Resurrection. Christian claims of proof of the Resurrection are nothing more than fluff. In reality, the claim of the 500 remains in a historical vacuum. No written or oral record has ever been recorded by a single member of the alleged 500. It is wholly unlikely that not a single word survived from any of the 500, considering the magnitude of the alleged event involved. Surely the word would have spread like wildfire from at least a handful of them into the surrounding population. Paul claimed, at the time of his writing, that there were living survivors of the original 500, and yet, no one, especially he, made even the slightest attempt to encounter them for an interview. This is highly unlikely, since Paul had never seen Jesus, and would certainly have wished to meet with even one who had seen Him rise. Instead, the story seems to be a footnote in Biblical history, and only by Paul. It is my conclusion that the 500 eyewitnesses are but concoctions of Paul's overzealous imagination.

In Maccoby's book, he suggests that Paul actually experienced some sort of psychotic experience on the road to Damascus.

In the world of Zen, for example, it is common for practitioners to experience vivid, lifelike hallucinations called makyo during intense periods of meditation called sesshin. The students, convinced that their visions are real, excitedly tell their teachers things like "Roshi, I actually saw Buddha!", or sometimes it is Jesus, or other divine images. The Roshi, fully understanding what is going on, calmly instructs the student to return to his meditation mat, over the student's protests, and focus on his breath. These experiences are little-publicized, if at all, since they are recognized for what they are, and not for what they are imagined to be.

dog-on

I think that Paul was claiming that there were many individuals that "saw" the Christ in the same way that he did, spiritually.

I do not think that Paul ever actually claims that anyone ever saw the Christ in the "flesh".

(But then again, this is part of an interpolation... )

danrael

I know there is the idea that Paul himself is thought by some to have had spiritual visions of Jesus, as he was never his contemporary, but, as I understand it, the general Christian claim is that the 500 eyewitnesses he speaks of actually saw Jesus's Resurrection, that Paul's mention of them alludes to their witnessing of the actual event, rather than just to their having experienced some spiritual vision of Jesus. They are referred to as 'eyewitnesses', which would imply actual visual witnessing of the event of the Resurrection, rather than to some 'vision'.

In either case, we have no surviving accounts, either oral or written, of these alleged 'eyewitnesses', whether they were experiencing visions or visually witnessing an event, and so, both stories remain highly suspect.

Not only do we not have a single word from a single 'eyewitness', but nary a whimper from even one neighbor with whom they would surely have had lively conversations deep into the night. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

Seems that someone has been working with whole cloth again.

dog-on

Christians, of course, never simply make crap up either. Their arguments hold no water, like my bottomless bucket...

aa5874

Maybe it was the resurrection story that gave Marcion the idea that Jesus only appeared to have a physical body.

How can it be proven that even if Jesus did actually rise that it was a bodily resurrection when it is claimed he floated or ascended through the clouds?

To float through the air, the body of Jesus must have been lighter than air.

Marcion was right. In the end Jesus did exhibit his true "physique", he was lighter than air. Jesus simply floated away. He was a phantom, indeed.

Luke 24:51 - Mark 16:19 - Acts 1:9 - Jesus appears to have been a mythical character, lighter than air, that could out perform oxygen.

spamandham

...well of course Christians are going to say nonsense like that. These are people who believe Jesus really was a magic god man in the flesh.

angelo

Even if all the claimed 500 who saw the risen Jeebus did leave some kind of record, evidence. Would a 21st century critical thinker believe the balderdash?
Wouldn't an explanation for such phenomenon be seeked out? Such as mass hallucinations, mistaking Jesus for someone else, remember, no one actually met this historical man, so no one would have the foggiest what he looked like.

dog-on

Seems someone already though of that...