Amedeo

The DOCTRINE [teachings] of Christianity stands or fall entirely on what Paul stipulated: The SAVING sacrifice of Jesus by death on the cross and his resurrection (the conquest of death). Of course, his resurrection would be a miracle. In this sense, the miracles stated in the Goispels are one of the two pillars of Christian doctrine.

You may not validly impugn the scriptural miracles by simply saying that miracles cannot occur because they are against the workings of natural law. Religionists can retort by saying that God made the laws of nature [made nature to work, as we say, "according to the laws" which we have discovered and formulated] and God can suspend them [or make nature operate differently for a while or in some cases]. So, here one gets embroiled in a wide controversy which involves the existence of God, the possibility of and consequences of a hypothetical supension of natural laws, etc. A shortcut to the case: Did Jesus perform the miracles which are narrated in the Gospels? {This is a question of FACT.} On the one hand, there is no extra-scriptural evidence that he performed any miracle (or even that he ever existed). On the other, there is a scriptural episode [and I would have to read the Gospels again for reference purposes] where Jesus complained to his brother that he was not being believed. [That means: What he taught was not believed by his listeners.] So, his brother said (and I am nearly quoting), "If you [really] do the things that YOU SAY you do, go to Jerusalem for the passover, and do them in front of the crowds." Jesus did not take up the challenge and did not respond to his wise brother. After all, it was typical of Jesus to DEMAND FAITH IN HIM. He must have been teaching that he had performed miracles here and there, and he did not put himself to the test of performing a miracle in front of real people. (This episode is actually an indictment of the miracle-performing Jesus, which the Gospel compilers of traditional episodes did not quite understand.)

More generally speaking: One of the things Jesus taught was his own AUTO-BIOGRAPHY: not only his miraculous exploits, but also other exploits, such the encounter with the devil (the temptations, his being taken to mountain-tops, etc.) -- which only he could have known about and must have told his listeners.

As for the historical death of Jesus [aside from the value imputed to it by Paul]: Undoubtedly Jesus the King was crucified, but he did not necessarily die. Pilate was against crucifying him, and Pilate gave Jesus body to John of Arimethia, who deposited it in his own cave-tomb. When followers of Jesus went to the tomb, they did not find the body. (So, the theory was created that he rose from death and walked away.) One Gospel confirms that Jesus in the tomb was not dead: The body had been ointed and wrapped, but the band which should have been wrapped around his head was still on the floor and UNROLLED. He must have been left there for some hours in a condition to breathe! Eventually, when disciples of his met him on the way to Bethany, they did not even recognize him. (He must have gone through a great ordeal, but not death.) Then they recognized him from his behavior, from his mannerism of breaking bread.

Scriptural analysis is sufficient to reveal that nobody ever saw Jesus performing a miracle and that he did not die on the cross. The Jesus of Christianity is a fictitious construct.

Chris Weimer

If I recall, he was also one respondents to Tabor and Cameron's Jesus Family Tomb.

Chris Weimer

Except Paul wrote 2-3 decades after the time frame which Jesus is claimed to have lived, and Prometheus is too far in the distant past for any meaningful tradition to have survived. Comparing apples and oranges.

GakuseiDon

It's more like Paul saying that Jesus was crucified shows that Paul believed that Jesus was an earthly figure. Prometheus, for example, was thought to have been tied to a rock in the Caucausus. It doesn't prove that Jesus was historical (as Paul could still have regarded Jesus as being crucified long ago on earth and thus as mythical), but it does go against Doherty's "non-earthly crucifixion" notion. That is unprecedented AFAICS.

The people of Paul's time seemed to genuinely believe that many (though not all) of the myths were performed at some time and at some point in their past on earth. Doherty's Paul would have been an exception.

Paul does appear to imply that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem in the recent past. But he gives few such details about ANYTHING, including the visions of Jesus that he and the others apparently had, as well as the signs and wonders that were performed by Paul and others.

Roland

Jesus is thought to have lived 2-3 decades before the time of Paul's writing only if you assume he was writing about the same Jesus as the one in Mark's later gospel. Yet that is the very issue we are trying to figure out. Sounds like circular reasoning to me.

Chris Weimer

Isn't that the nature of literary evidence? Is the Egyptian a real person? Josephus mentions him, of course, but of other literature? Well, yes, Luke mentions him, but is Luke talking about the same Egyptian that Josephus talks about?

The rather simplified example shows that you don't know how history works - it all works on circularity. How do you know if the George W. Bush I'm talking about is the same George W. Bush you're talking about? How many Jesus Christ's are there? How many were crucified?

Doug Shaver

If anyone were to seriously question it, I could produce a mountain of evidence that we were almost certainly referring to the same person. That is one good reason why nobody would question it. The same reason does not apply to the question of whether Mark and Paul were referring to the same Jesus Christ. There is no mountain of evidence, and so it is reasonable to raise the question.