Metacrock

a five year old can see that it's set up to show that Christ is a myth. It says what are the charictoristics of a myth? Well, being born in Nazerath... ect ect. That's a parady but that's essentially what he's doing. I don't see criteria like symbolically relfecting the nature of the psche. I see stuff like "having an amazing birth." well right off the bat Jesus has to score high because he has an amazing birth.

Can you find people like Ab Maslow saying it's a valid technique? Who uses it? New agers.?


How so? And how might it be much worse than (say) religious studies?


religious studies isn't like that.



rather a dead give away when he uses Jesus as an example of a mythical hero. So of course he's going to score high on it.

But what about David Crockett? I think he would score high, we know he existed.



Aside from the fact that the term "Chrsit" means "hero" Jesus isn't really a hero. He's a religious leader/great techer figure. So that's in a category by itself. David Crockett is said to have killed a "bar" when he was only three, and to have born the day his mother swept 10 Indian cheifs out of her house with a broom stick. No one questions the historical reality of Crockett he was even in the U.S. congress.


The fact that Jesus was bucking for son of God and that he had to fit a pre given profile of a religious culture to qualify as their great prophetic figure would necessitate that he score high on such a test. It would also not mean he was made up. Do you understand that?





Why is the crierita about such things as stories of their birth? Why doesn' it occur to you that the criteria is sperious from the outset becasue it's desinged to reflect the notion that Jesus is mythical? That's so obvious, and coulnd't be more so if it included being born in Nazerath.


Sure can you improve your prejudices and your narrow lmiited mind set with it's pre given judgemental hatred of Christianity?

Metacrock

And of course the questions are desingied to include Jesus. So they ask about amazing birth stories rather than symbolic value or mythical archetypes.

Gee really? You think Jesus might pass that?



Does God count as a king?



All of these things are charactoristics that any major prophetic figure might score highly on, but especially Christ. They couldn't make it much more taylored to chatch Jesus if they added being born in Galillee.



You say that he doesn't mention Jesus as his criteria. I dont' know if he proposed these figures or if they are your explaintion. But who is the third one down on this list? That would seem to indicate that Jesus goes into the mix from the outset. Jesus is the criteria by which myths are judged according to this test. That's like saying "im going to give a test to determine if you ever beat your wife. You can only answer yes or no. Do you still beat your wife?"

Metacrock

But my questions goes unanswered. Is that the decision of the field, or just this one guy? Any scholar defending a thesis is going to say "orthodoxy now hangs in the balance due to my brilliant work." Of course!



I didn't say you are wrong. I asked a question. But it's unimportant anyone as it does not affect Mark's date.

Since that post Layman has pointed out to me that D doesn't question Mark as 1st century, but tries to chalk it up to midrash. I find that extremely excentric at best. But in any case the argument doesn't matter now.





I can prove everything I said on that page. I can prove and i run it into your arrrogant little face. And if fact most of it is common knowledge.





O yea I'm sure the whole Biblical scholarhsip world is abuzz with your brillant work and you have revamped the whole of western civlization. That's why you post on a message board. Is Derrida posting here too? Come one Jacques speak up!




Bull shit! Of coure his is. Why should mine be? He's the one arguing for a flat earth. He's the one trying to overturn 2000 years of grass growing up instead of down. He's the one proposing that Culumbus did sail off the end of the world. I'm just evoking what everyone else has known since Ceasar was in diappers, that you can't re-write history just to destroy your big mean preacher man.




NO that's bull. Of course we have to assume it. Sure, it could be transported immediatly upon being written, and Captin Kirck could have beamed it from Isreael to Egypt but why would we want to assume the atypical when it's so much more probable that it had to have time to circulate? Yea it's a rule of thrumb and in some case it could be wrong. Please show me why this is one of those cases?




It will take more than your arrogant bluster to make me take down a fine peice of work. There is not a single error in it. There's something you disagree with. There are some figure you can dispute. that is hardly "error." I mean errors are things Nomad exterminates. What you mean is "difference of opinon."



You haven't showen anything wrong with them. In fact you haven't even addressed them.

Give me a reason to supposse that Jesus didn't exit! I mean one based upon historical documents of testimony,not some new age quack's wish list






There is no reason to assume his assuptions. He can't offer any proof other tha circumstantial evidence and argument from silence. That's refutaion enough. i don't have to document anyting, he can't make his case.

"frought with error" you can't show any errors. You show a disagreement with your brilliant sacrosanct opinion but that's not error. It's a disagreement with an impotent would be scholar with delusions of grandure.




I was trying to respond to a summary with a summary. I also go on to document more fully on the page you haven't seen fit to examine. I can document everything I said in it and you know I can. You know the Rylands thing was standard assumption, and I bet still is except for the world a couple of footnotes and your dissertation. So that's just a difference of opinion. You want to treat it like some major mistake but you know it's nothing more than a difference of opinion. In your world that's "an error!" IN reality it's not.






People who disagree with Doherty misunderstand him? You mean like 99% of historians and Bible scholars? Why should we work at understanding him when he's full of shit? Why don't we understand him enough when we just get the basics about how wrong he is.

I've already listed about 10 points where he'sjust aboslutely totally out to lunch no question about it. NO one answered them. Things like trying to read Neo platonism into the first century.

When are you going to document for me a cosmic crucification myth before Paul? Where was it? Who believed it? Why can't you document it? why can't he?




right right right. Other's are wrong so I must be wrong to. sound thinking. I disagree with your preudices so I'm full of error.

What you are doing is so typically atheist. Here's some minor point that has little to do with the real issues. and that is going to mean that everything I say is wrong becuase you can knitt pick with some small unimportant piont and then you can say I"m incompetant because I'm wrong because I disagree with you and that's "error."

and you try to trun the issue to me and when you can't offer any of the stuff I've asked for, like some proof that Doherty is right, you start in on my spelling. Well spelling determines rightness of cousre. No one who spells badly can be right about anything so I guess I lose. But we knew that because I'm a christians and christians are shit.

But all you really did was find a couple of points upon which to differ, then attach to them monumental significance and call that "error" and pretend that it's a referendom on my worth as a scholar. Meanwhile, Doherty still can't offer a single reason to actually accept his premise.

Metacrock

that's the date I was assuming for Mark. Of course it's probably an "error" since it must disagree with the V man, but such is life.




Helmutt Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels. Also Crosson probably talks about it because on that same basis both Crosson and Koester agree on the pre Markan redaction and proto Mrarkan stuff Koester talks about to AD 50.





that's a nice little myth that the atheist on the net love to keep alive. But it bears no relation to any achaeologial facts. The three major 20th century excavations all found that it was inhabited in the first century, and the lattest one in the 90s kicked off a project to reconstruct the villiage. If you look up Nazerath village project you will see they are reconstructing it as it was in the first century.


http://www.uhl.ac/NazarethVillage/nazareth.html

there are numerious sources documenting the habitatin. But it's only logical, Why would the redactors give him an origin form ghost town? That doesn't make sense in the first place. It's mentioned in two Gsoples. But moreover, it's mentioned in two first century sources as inhabited.

http://www.geocities.com/metagetics/Nazareth.html


It's mentioned other Gospels, at least in Luke. That lingusitic argument is totally bogus. I don't care. The excavations found habitation.





I don't understand what that has to do with anything.




I don't have to. Those don't have to have happened for Jesus to have been an historical figure. They are matters of faith. I base faith in them upon my own experiences. That is not germaine to the question about Jesus historicity.


It doesn't. It's a redactors impression of Pilate and his litterary liscence vs an imcomplete impression by a historian who also, like the redactor, did not know him and wasn't there. But Pilate existed. that's the point.

lpetrich

Calling it self-evident is not an argument.

I'm not sure what's the psche is supposed to be.

As if nobody else had had such a birth -- consider the birth of the Buddha.

(the wavy gravy of academia...)
Don't make me laugh. If there is anything that might deserve to be called wavy gravy, it's religious studies.

Lord Raglan did NOT use Jesus Christ as input for his profile. How many times will I have to repeat that?

And even if he was an input, he would have been one of several inputs, like Moses and Oedipus and Perseus and Romulus and so forth.


I've never heard of a "Chrsit"; do you mean "Christ"? That literally means "anointed" in Greek, just as "Messiah" does in Hebrew.

Pure hairsplitting. He can very reasonably be called a hero.

But did some evil leader try to kill him when he was a baby? And did he fall out of favor late in his career? Was his death fundamentally mysterious?

Metacrock, have you turned around and endorsed the mythic-hero assessment of him? I gather that you are now claiming that he made himself fit the mythic-hero profile just to seem like a Real Religious Prophet.

Because many legendary heroes have had unusual things happen to them in their infancy.

Metacrock, why are you so sensitive about this?

Like what?

[QUOTE=Metacrock]And of course the questions are desingied to include Jesus. So they ask about amazing birth stories rather than symbolic value or mythical archetypes.

(The hero's mother is a royal virgin)
Mary does not quite fit, though being a virgin, she is a commoner.

But if we are to believe the apologetic that the Luke genealogy of Joseph refers to her instead, then she has Davidic ancestry, making her sort-of royalty.

(His father is a king)
It's Joseph, who also does not quite fit. Though he is a commoner, he is traced back to King David by both Matthew and Luke.

(the rest of the list)
So why do you think a "major prophetic figure" must follow that mythic-hero profile?

That's just plain silly.

(list with Jesus Christ in it...)
This is a secondary source, not Lord Raglan's original work.

And not only do they add Jesus Christ, they add:
Superman - 1938
Batman - 1939
Luke Skywalker - 1977
Harry Potter - 1996

None of whom Lord Raglan could have worked from.

Peter Kirby

Okay, his e-mail address is on his homepage:

http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm

Let us know what he says.

best,
Peter Kirby

Metacrock

Look, I'm just saying the criteria is taylor made for Jesus. It's not a proof of anyting because it's constructed to allow one to make the argument. You can see that because the criteria are all things that pertain to a religious figure fulling prophesy and having supernatural elements pertaining to major aspects of life,and they are elements that fit Jesus.

It's as though he said "any figure born in Naerath who has a virgin birth and is the Messiah is mythcal. Now how high does Jesus score on that scale?"



Well that's sort of like, real criucial to the study of mythology. Why don't you read Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces and get back to me.



Buddha was a real guy. But look, tha'ts just begging the question to even include such things in the criteria. It's assuming that any such elments have to be ficitional to begin with. So when those elments are found it's hardly surprising that Jesus scores high, the criteria are tyalor made for him.


Apparently you don't know the difference in Religious Studies and Biblical Schoalrship. Lucky for me I'm in Intellectual History.



The quote you gave suggests that he did. Even if he didn't, the designed the criteria to "catch" Jesus in the mix. So what's the diff?



right, that's my point. He's begging the question by assuming Moses is mythological. That's what I'm saying, he's just including the conclusion he wants to reach as part of the premise.




No, you are wrong. It means "Hero." The Greeks didn't have a concept "annointing." Messiah means annointed. Do you know Greek? It was my undergraduate language.

on that Crist vs Crist, see that's a common thing in dyslexia to reverse the order of letters.





no it's not hair splitting, because the assumption is all religion is false. that' s what the criteria is desinged to assume. That's the whole point, any figure who includes religious dogma is assumed to be fictional.So it's begging the question.




Why are those criteria? They were chosen so Jesus would be included. Why those be the criteria for myths? The assumption is that Jesus is patterned after the dying rising savior gods. Of cousre if you look at real mythology they don't really fit the pattern for the most part. But criteira includes those, not because this happens all the time in mythology, but so that Jesus would fit.



No, that's not what I'm saying. But I grant that his early followers scambaled to draw up a profile of the Messiah that would eplain his death in terms that put a good spin on his Messianich qualities.



But not necessiarily virgin biths and being chased by the king and having to flee to foreign land. that is exaggerated by mythers.



Because it's stupid, and it's given such total credence by the mythers. When I was on their email lists it became obvious to me early on that they just don't even care about truth. Then they keep reapeating this stuff until it becoms such a palieumcest that you can't ever show them that it's not true.


Like what?



Being a virgin doesn't make her a commoner.she's decended from David, and would be part of the royal house, even though her line is not the royal line.


which is why that's included in the criteria. it's stupid to include it really, because most mythological characters are gods,and thus part of royal houses. So that would just come with the territory of being mythological. that doesn't mean that any roaly line is mythological.


who says he's a commoner? The Royal line was hidden. they weren't living in a palace because they were not on the throne.


Because any prophetic figure has to conform the crietia of the religion in question. But if anything that follows religious doctirne is mythological, than any figure that fufills prophesy would a priori be mythological.


That's just plain silly.

(list with Jesus Christ in it...)


I see. Well I'm glad we now have a way to prove that those Super Heros are not real. Why would we need such a test anyway, if not to debuck religion?

Metacrock

He'll probably say (*^%( off the way the Amazing Randy did.

Metacrock

Why is it that when I look for The Raglaon scale, I find discussions on message boards. I find verious fandom sites for sci fi, gay organizations, renaissance fairs, and the like?

what I do not find is the assocition of that scale with:

(1) anything acadmeic or scholarly

(2) Any account of who created it

(3) or any kind of verification or a sense of its validity?

I could make scale measuring the historicial nature of characters and find that Jesus is a real historical guy. What does that prove? What I don't see is any kind of indication that scale has any meaning at all.


Lord Reaglon is to the scale as Bodacilli is to the parlor game that bears his name. He has nothing to do with it, but it's name after him because there is some question as to how much of his life we can say with certainty is historical. He was suppossed to be a professional solider in the Crimean war who fought for England.He was an English nobelman of the 19th century.


Who invented the scale? On one message board I see an admission that it is recent invention and I get the feeling it was made up by Christ mythers.

I also see this reference to a book form 1936 callled "the Hero" but I don't see it on Amazon. Well Ok I need to check there, but it didn't come up on google search.

So here's my scale.

any figure who fits this criteria is historical

(1) if Gospels are written about him

(2) we have the works of those who knew his friends

(3) major historians of the succeeding era assume he was historical

(4) No evidence exists to the contrary.

Jesus just happens to score 100%! wow! amazing! It's proven!!!

Peter Kirby

So are you going to e-mail him?

best,
Peter Kirby