freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6015408 / #143
aa5874

Which ones are not "evidence" and why? Perhaps the stories of Ovid or of the Greek tragedies are in the category of pure fiction, though even that might be debated. Assuming there is such pure fiction which has absoutely no value as evidence for history, we can identify what those writings are by certain features, and the gospel accounts don't fit in that category.

(I won't try to list all those features here, but one is that a total fiction account is a literary piece of art (probably by one author only) which does not have in it isolated disconnected fragments that don't fit in with the author's theme. There are many such disconnected fragments in the gospels -- one is Mk 14:51-52 about the kid who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested, and there are many other examples less conspicuous than this one.)

Epic poetry clearly is not in that category, even where we can assume it's mostly fiction, because they depict possible historical events, and we know the writer wanted to tie his fiction in with real history as much as possible. And the writer had word-of-mouth tradition as a possible source, and possibly also earlier writings which are now lost. So those writings are evidence, despite the fictional element.

So what is rejected as having no value as evidence for history? Anything where the "supernatural" plays some important role?

Why should these be totally rejected, as long as we're careful to recognize the lower credibility or probability of these parts? Why isn't it sufficient to recognize the lower credibility and just treat those parts as more doubtful? Some epic poetry contains the "supernatural" and yet they clearly have value as evidence of historical events.

We're able to discern the fictional from the factual and identify what is reliable, and we have to do this even with the most historical and least fictional accounts.

What is the real explanation for throwing out the gospel accounts as totally fictional and of no reliability as evidence? It is probably the traditional beliefs about biblical inerrancy which demand total acceptance of everything in the Bible, and so there is a psychological backlash against this which says the opposite, i.e., that the whole thing has to be thrown out as total fiction. Both extremes are irrational and simplistic.


And what could that "other source" be if not just more claims equally uncorroborated as the first claim? These demands for "corroboration" never tell us the difference between the original "claims by themselves" needing to be "corroborated" and the "other sources" which supposedly give the "corroboration."

Where did these "other sources" magically pop up from? Is this another rabbit-out-of-the-hat like the risen-Christ rabbit Paul popped out from somewhere on Gentiles who never before heard of such a thing? There's something wrong with your argument when it has to rely on these things that just pop up from nowhere. What's the origin of the "other sources"? Are they just a given? By what blind leap of faith do you accept that "some other source" without question?

There are plenty of historical facts that are known from only one source. Just because additional sources are helpful to strengthen the knowledge or the probability of something being true does not mean that the one source by itself is to be rejected as false.


I don't think they have been used that way. Where was Paul used to corroborate Paul?


I think you meant "not evidence that Achilles was the offspring of a sea-goddess."

How about the claim that Achilles killed Hector. Homer is probably the only source for that -- all others who mention it are just relying on Homer. And yet, don't students of history believe Achilles killed Hector at Troy because they trust Homer's account? It's not proof, but it's evidence, even though there is probably no source to "corroborate" it.

It's reasonable to believe Achilles killed Hector, also that David killed Goliath. It's not as certain as Oswald killing JFK -- there are differing degrees of certainty or probability. But just because there is only one source for a reputed event does not mean that source is not real evidence.

If the event is "supernatural," then it's less probable and the evidence is more doubtful, but that doesn't mean it isn't really evidence. Can't you understand the difference between stronger and weaker evidence? Even if the evidence is doubtful or weak, still if there is an accumulation of such evidence, it increases the probability that the claim is true.

What is "corroboration" other than additional claims which by themselves are "uncorroborated"? How much "corroboration" is necessary before a claim suddenly gains status as being "evidence"? Isn't it obvious that each claim, one at a time, each one separately, has its own independent measure of credibility, even if small, and that as each further claim is added which confirms the earlier one, then the credibility increases?

How can you draw a line at any one point and say it's not evidence until this exact threshold level of "corroboration" is reached, and so at this exact point -- Sh'bang! -- the claim is "corroborated" and credible, whereas before this point it was fiction? How does that make sense?

So far no one posting here has explained why the reports in the gospel accounts do not qualify as evidence. What is the hangup with understanding that there are DEGREES of evidence? and that with each additional increment of evidence, the credibility of a claim increases incrementally? Why isn't this a good rule to apply to ALL documents that make claims?

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6015450 / #144
jakejonesiv
Deus ex machina


No, let's get it right. It is an event for which there is no KNOWN natural explanation. I.e., the explanation is NOT YET KNOWN, i.e., it has not yet been determined how such an event can happen or how such an act is performed. A "miracle" is not necessarily an event for which there is no possible explanation or natural explanation.

Let's not debate the meaning of a word here. Let's just clarify our original topic -- what is the possibility that the historical Jesus actually did perform the "miracle" healing acts?

This topic is not intended to analyze what "miracles" are or what is the standard definition of "miracle" but to suggest that actual healing acts may have been performed, without claiming anything about how it was done.

It isn't really necessary to insist that the acts were "miracles" other than to to use this word to identify what acts we're talking about and to recognize the obvious point that these acts were not normal medical cures based on standard medical science.

If you define "miracle" in such a way that they can never happen, then of course Jesus could not have done them. That kind of tautological argument does not apply here. It would only mean that those healing acts he did were not "miracles" after all (not by that definition of "miracle"), but were some form of scientific healing not yet discovered or invented by mainline medicine.

The argument here is that he did do those acts, which we commonly call "miracles" in our discourse, but not that he did something that is scientifically impossible and could never be done or could only be done by God etc. So it is an argument from the empirical evidence and not a semantics argument depending on how "miracle" is defined.


No, it requires doing both, considering all the empirical evidence and historical data available. It requires considering any kind of evidence bearing on whether those acts really did happen.


No more than with any other subject matter. There is "faith" involved in the claims of scientists and historians and archaeologists, so you do not escape the realm of "faith" in any branch of knowledge.

You have to believe the experts when they claim to have done experiments or tests or to have uncovered certain documents or artifacts -- the element of "faith" enters at some point in learning anything about the facts of history or nature, except in the rare case where you did all the investigating yourself directly, doing your own experiments in your own lab in the basement or digging up your own artifacts and so on.


99.9% of us can't prove science today either, especially the claims of medical science, that they cured a patient of cancer or other illness. Some of these claims by mainline medical science are quite unproven even by the experts who are closest to the evidence.

What they prove is that a certain treatment can cure test rats, where the experiments control all the variables and it can be proved that a certain drug produces a certain result. Beyond this, they can make a good case, where there's high probability, that a treatment benefited a patient, in some cases extending life for several years, though the more common result is only a few months of extended life.

We can prove that they alleviate pain temporarily, but outside this there's very little of what we believe mainline medicine does that we can prove ourselves, and also a significant amount which cannot be proved at all. There is a huge amount of "faith" in the medical establishment to "cure" us, only some of which is really warranted, and even where our faith is warranted, it is only a probability that the cure was due to medical treatment, not a proven fact.

The most common "proof" we have are anecdotes from people who claim to have benefited from their treatments or drugs. There is a certain probability of truth for these claims, but they are not proven -- they are beliefs based on anecdotes, and when the anecdotes accumulate to a certain threshold level, they might have a claim to high probability, but still there is doubt.

In the case of a drug that seems to work, theoretically a patient could prove that it works in his/her individual case, by doing several tests of using the drug for a period and going without it for a period. But unless this is done several times (not just two or three times), those results are weak evidence.

For such a test to be legitimate, it would have to extend for a period of years. And this testing would only be valid for that one patient, not for all others.

Since most patients do not perform such tests with their drugs, it cannot be said that the drugs are proven effective by those patients, but rather they just trust the doctors or the drug company's claims, which is "faith" rather than proof.

Mainline medicine has its share of "misses" as well as "hits" when it comes to proving its claims to "cure" patients, just as the faith-healers or psychic healers also have their "hits" and "misses." Neither can be proven, though you may calculate that scientific mainline medicine attains to a higher level of probability in its claims, probably only a few percentage points in most cases.


But this is a problem for ALL claims of historical events. Obviously the great time separation makes it more difficult to determine any events from so far back, especially before the invention of printing. But still it is reasonable to believe that those events did happen, depending on the evidence that is available.


Virtually all the writers we rely on had their hangups and ulterior motives that taint their reliability. But we can still extract some truth from them and piece together an accounting of what happened. The result we come up with is less reliable than something that can be tested today in a lab, but we still draw good conclusions. We can use a document to determine what probably happened while taking into account the bias of the writer.


No, a simpler explanation for the healing acts of Jesus is that they happened and we don't know how they happened, just as we believe the cures done by mainline medical science today but don't know how they are done or have proof that they really are done at all, but we have enough anecdotes to satisfy us that it's probably true.

The error of the "tall tales" explanation is that it falsely assumes that such "tall tales" or "miracle" stories pop up commonly for no reason and without any pattern, which is not so, because in all cases of such stories there is a pattern of attributing the acts to a popular hero having recognized status in the culture, and there is no precedent for attributing such acts to a totally unrecognized figure such as the Jesus of the NT accounts.

So the simpler explanation is that the acts really were done by him. If this required also an explanation HOW the acts were done, then yes, it probably would be complicated. But an explanation can simply be that the event happened without us knowing how, just like we know of the results produced by new science and technology but don't know how they are produced.

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6015512 / #145
show_no_mercy



Our question is how Paul came up with his "risen Christ" or "risen Jesus" figure, for presentation to the Gentiles, assuming that he invented the whole Jesus legend himself, without taking it from already-existing oral tradition or history. This separates him from the Jesus of Galilee story of the gospels and has him coming up with some new Jesus cult of his own which then became Christianity.

Your theory explains only how he settled on the name "Jesus" or "Joshua" for his new hero figure, but the question here is not only how he decided on this name, but on the rest of his "risen Jesus" figure he presents to the Gentiles.

Your theory to explain Paul's invention has to take into account everything he says about his Jesus figure in his epistles. It is not true that there is a total disconnect between Paul and the gospel accounts. Where they coincide, you need to explain how they seem to be talking about the same Jesus figure.

Without expounding on this point again, I'll just repeat that there is an overlap of Paul to the gospel accounts in 1 Cor. 11:23-26 and in 1 Cor. 15. These contain historical or biographical points of contact which cannot be coincidental. If Jesus was Paul's invention, then you have to theorize that the gospel writers got these points from Paul, and from there they added the remaining biographical matter about Jesus, which really makes no sense.

The most important point would be the "resurrection" concept, which either Paul totally invented himself, or which he derived from a popular word-of-mouth tradition already in circulation. The latter makes much more sense, because if Paul presented something totally invented by himself, then it is silly to think his Gentile audiences would have slurped this up from him so eagerly.

This would mean they believe this one fanatic's subjective feelings, who comes to them out of nowhere and pops a new messiah figure onto them out of nowhere, sharing with them some dark hallucinations he had about this obscure unknown phantom who did the "last supper" scene and then got arrested and killed and raised from the dead and was seen by James and Peter -- and this is all they ever know about this new messiah figure which this fanatic says will give them eternal life.

It makes no sense to say they got this only from Paul and otherwise had no clue of what he was talking about. What makes far more sense is that there was already a popular word-of-mouth tradition going around about this Jesus figure, containing most of the same information we have in the gospel accounts, and that Paul's audience was already familiar with this word-of-mouth tradition, or these rumors or reports, and he then capitalized on a belief system already taking shape.

So if Paul invented the whole Jesus idea and presented it to the Gentiles out of the blue, without them having any prior familiarity with it, you have much more to explain than simply how he decided on the "Jesus" or "Joshua" name. This is not just about that name choice but about the whole Jesus figure as it took shape and how it could be that Paul invented this entirely on his own and sold it to this Gentile audience who clearly would have thought he was a nutcase and would have run him out of town.

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6015861 / #147
aa5874


No, not if 100% were investigated and only 99% were proved fictitious.

Instead of 99%, let's say only 50%, or maybe even less. If that many are investigated and 100% of these are debunked, that would be strong evidence that all the remaining ones would also be debunked if they too were investigated.

It is theoretically possible to launch an investigation of miracle stories on a grand scale, and if every case examined could be explained and debunked, then you'd have a strong case to claim that all the rest would similarly be debunked if they too were investigated. However, it's difficult to see how that project would be kept honest and not distort its findings in order to promote the theory the investigators started out with.

For example, a group led by The Amazing Randy about 25 years ago claimed it did scientific investigations and debunked every case and so this proves all the remaining cases could be debunked as well. But I just don't believe they did honest investigation of all the cases, or that they took the cases randomly without picking out the ones that were easier to debunk. Clearly the guy was on a crusade to debunk all such stories and was not going to admit it when he ran into trouble with a particular case. Obviously the believers in this or that miracle-worker also do their own investigations and come up with the opposite results.

So even though a good reliable investigation theoretically could test a significant number of cases scientifically and determine once and for all whether there's any truth to the claims and decide with good probability what percentage of the remaining cases were credible or if 100% of all such cases are refutable, the practical reality is that this investigation probably will never happen, or at least not one with enough safeguards that we could all be sure of its integrity and trust its findings.


How can they be examined?


What "method"? We don't know how he did it. That doesn't mean it was "implausible" but just not explainable by current mainline science.


Yes, let's bring up the spitting again, that's always good for a laugh -- You can't come up with anything else? It's quite irrelevant. It doesn't matter how the healing acts were done -- this spitting example is only from Mark's gospel, not any of the others. These were not typical -- there are only two stories, both from Mark, of the spitting, and it doesn't say he spit in the person's eyes or face -- it's silly to obsess on this nonsense.

We don't have to take these details seriously, with there being only these two isolated examples. It only proves that there is a fictional element in the accounts. Your commentary on the Lazarus case is pointless and not worth responding to. It doesn't matter what method Jesus used or what he did or said or whether Lazarus could hear Jesus calling him -- all those details could be fiction and it makes no difference.


It was Constantine's power that got saved. Without hopping on and riding that Christ wave already sweeping across the Mediterranean world, Constantine would have fallen flat.

The proper question about Constantine is: What gave this Christ wave such momentum that Constantine was forced to hop on and ride it? What drove it in the first place, back when it began? How did the wave get started, if it was not the psychological impact due to the actual miracle healing acts Jesus performed?

Toto

2 rebuttals to your last post, ft:

1. Randi has not found any alleged miracles that stand up to scientific investigation. In face, he has a million dollar bet outstanding that no one has been able to collect on.

2. Read The Rise of Christianity (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Rodney Stark. The spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire can be explained by normal sociological principles, with no need for any miracles.

You've got nothing. Please try to wrap it up.

spin

If I understand the progress of this thread your post will be looked at around November 20. Any wrapping it up will have to happen after that date, though I can see the comment "You've got nothing" stimulating further discussion.


spin

aa5874

Once you now admit that there may be pure fiction that have no value as historical evidence in documents of antiquity, then you have self-destructed.

And once you have isolated total fiction in the NT, then it was false to claim that all documents have historical value.

Another example of self-destruction. Once you admit that there are many examples of total fiction then the credibility of the authors of the Jesus stories is doubtful.

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6015921 / #148
Toto


That doesn't mean he didn't exist or that we don't have any knowledge of him -- we know of him just as we have knowledge of King Arthur and Confucius and Hercules and Wyatt Earp and Socrates and Daniel Boone and other legendary figures.

He was probably a 16th-century hero who lived in Switzerland and did some deeds that made him popular with the common folks. Just because someone is "legendary" and there is less known about him than some other historical figures, or just because the information about him is less certain, does not mean he is fictional.

To disprove my point, you must give us an example of a popular hero figure who was believed to exist and became mythologized widely in 100 years or less and yet did not really exist. You can't give any evidence that William Tell meets that description. Your inability to come up with a better example than this proves my point.


There are written accounts of both Jesus and William Tell which most probably were derived from earlier oral tradition, just like our knowledge of many historical figures. The burden of proof is on anyone who says they did not exist, unless you maintain that all historical figures known only from later accounts are fictional, in which case most history books have to be recalled and rewritten. Virtually all these legendary figures really did exist, even though we have trouble determining definite details of their lives.


You can always find a few crackpot "scholars" who will say whatever you want to hear. If you're going to claim that no one really landed on the moon and that it was all faked in Hollywood, then the burden of proof is on you, not on those who just accept the mainline sources. Mainline sources say Confucius did exist.

Just because you can produce one or two nutcases who say otherwise and that he was really cooked up by the freemasons or other clique of conspirators does not make it so. You have to give the evidence if you disagree with the mainline sources of information.


And this name confusion is supposed to prove what? That Confucius never really existed?

Alright, let's look at a few other alleged historical figures who also must not have existed:

Lao-tzu, whose other names were Lao Tan and Li Er.

Mencius, also known as Meng Zi and Meng Tzu and Meng Ke or Ko.

Sun-tse, also known as Sun Wu.

Of course we already know that the Buddha never existed, because his alternate name was Siddhartha Gautama.

But this only scratches the surface. The Tibetan yogi Milarepa (1052-1135) also never existed, because he was also named Mila Thopaga.

Also the notorious butcher Ghenghis Khan never really existed after all, thank God -- his alternate names were Temujin and Yuan Taizu.

More recently there's the famous Hindu Avatar Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (1836-86) whose other name was Gadadhar Chattopadhyay, so he never existed either -- wipe him off the record.

And even in modern times there are some alleged historical figures who never existed:

The nationalist Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek really never existed, because he had several alternate names: Jiang Zhoutai and Jiang Zhiquing and Jiang Jieshi and Jiang Zhongzheng and Jiang Riuyuan and Chiang Chung-cheng.

And we can also erase Sun Yat-sen from the books, because he was also named Sun Yixian and Sun l-hsien and Sun Ek-sian and Sun Zhongshan and Sun Tiong-soan.

And we can forget about the alleged modern Sai Baba, because he also has the name Sathyanarayana Raju, so forget all those stories about his alleged miracles or that such a person even exists in India.

Also we can erase the Viet Nam War from the books -- it never really happened because the alleged leader of the Viet Cong, Ho Chi Minh, never really existed, despite those stories about a long bloody war -- because his other names were Nguyen Tat Thanh and Nguyen Sinh Cung and Nguyen Ai Quoc.

So much for people who never existed because they had more than one name!


The crackpot theory that Confucius did not exist, along with half the other historical figures before 100 AD, cannot be taken seriously as long as your only evidence for it is one or two wacko scholars you selected out in order to prop up your theory.

Miracle birth tales are no evidence that the historical figure did not exist, anymore than having extra names. Some historical figures who had miracle birth tales attributed to them are Caesar Augustus, Scipio Africanus, Alexander the Great, Plato, and Pythagoras. Some of these were fathered by Apollo and/or Zeus, which in some cases assumed the form of a snake. So does your above crackpot scholar also claim these historical figures did not really exist?

When will you cut out this nonsense and come up with some real evidence? When are you going to figure out that a famous hero figure had a tendency to become mythologized and accumulate miracle stories about his birth and other events of his life?

It doesn't mean they didn't exist -- on the contrary, they attained to some high repute because of acts they did or high position they held in real life, and out of this high position of status the fictional element was added to them. There had to be something real there in the first place in order for the mythologizing to then take place.

And again, for someone obscure like Jesus to accumulate such tales is highly unique in history. All these miracle-birth heroes were highly reputed figures who became mythologized as a result of their high position or widespread reputation, none of which was the case with the Jesus from Galilee figure, who was a nobody and had virtually no recognition for anything of importance, if you assume he did not do the miracle acts.


That's not the point. Yes, he existed, but what was not true is the claim that he was leading the Luddite movement in the later period after 1800. They pretended he was their leader, carrying signs of him and talking about him leading their protest marches. They referred to him as "General Ludd" etc.

They even signed his name on threatening letters sent to employers and machine owners, pretending that it was Ned Ludd who authored the letters.

Now the point is that these fanatics did NOT really believe Ned Ludd was leading their protests and attacks on the employers. They did not really believe he authored those letters or was one of their group or was physically present with them, leading the charge, even though they pretended he was or were using him as a symbol.

But the Jesus followers did believe he was physically there (or even if he never existed, the later followers believed he had really been there physically and did the miracle acts) and that he physically did what the gospel accounts describe.

So in this important sense the Luddites really knew their hero and pretended "commander" was fictional, i.e., not really present with them leading the charge, including the later Luddites when the movement was dying. They all knew this Ned Ludd figure as commmander of the protests and raids carried on against the employers and sending threatening letters was only a symbolic figure who did not really do these things physically.

The only real historical Ned Ludd was the earlier figure from the original story about him smashing a machine with a hammer. All the later stories about him as commander of the movement were only symbolic, and everyone knew this.

So because of this important distinction, the Ned Ludd figure is not analogous to that of Jesus in the gospel accounts.


Probably not everything, especially all the minor details. But they did believe the major points -- that he did the miracle acts and traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem where he was crucified. The basic story was believed literally to be true. But not so the basic story of Ned Ludd leading the Luddites in 1800-1810.

That basic story was fictional or symbolic, and everyone knew it, even though the Luddites pretended he was leading them. Are you still having trouble figuring out the difference between the Ludd and the Jesus examples? Both were historic figures, but one was used later in a fictional or symbolic way, while the other was believed to be real and historic in the written accounts that we have.

So they are not analogous. That should be obvious.


Yes, they theologized, but they believed the basic story or portrayal of Jesus as literally true. It was this basic Jesus story that they added their theology to, the account of him doing miracle acts and teaching and traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem where he was crucified. This much was believed to be literally and physically true. They took liberty to fill in details, partly fictional, but the overall picture was not changed by those writers.

But the overall portrayal of Ludd leading the militant anticapitalists after 1800 was fictional and everyone knew it.


We're talking about two different groups here: 1) the first Jesus followers in 30-35 AD, and 2) the later converts after 50 or 60 AD.

Assuming the miracle stories were invented and are fictional, which of these two groups are the ones who invented the miracle stories? According to virtually everyone posting here so far, it was the later group, after 50 AD, probably more like 70 or 80 AD. Their theory is that the miracle stories did not exist until about that time. So let's consider mainly this group:

My point is that a diverse group is much less likely to engage in mythologizing or inventing miracle stories. Such mythologizing is carried on by propagandists and fanatics who want to promote their crusade, such as the Luddites, who were a united single-minded band of fanatics much more likely to mythologize their hero than a diverse group would be.

The later Christians, from 70 AD onward, are the ones who included the gospel writers and their intended audience. Those writings reflect the thinking of the Christians or the converts at that time. And for this group there can be no doubt -- they are a very diverse group with many conflicting factions which argue and fight with each other.

We can name some of these factions: Essenes, Pharisees, Zealots, Gnostics -- and within these groups there are factions also. Even each group was not necessarily monolithic -- because some of them contained both anti-Roman Jewish nationalists as well as antinationalists who favored assimilation with Rome, while others are withdrawalists who are antipolitical. For example, the Essenes contained both antinationalist militants as well as antisocial withdrawalists.

And there are other conflicts: there are the strict Mosaic law circumcisionists vs. the pro-Gentile anticircumcisionists. There are also the celibists vs. the anticelibists.

There are also conflicting schools such as the followers of Paul vs. the followers of Apollos. And there are conflicts with the followers of John the Baptist and confusion over whether he was equal to Jesus or inferior to him. Obviously Jesus wins out in this contest, but the conflict did exist. There was also the Simon Magus figure who seems to have influenced some of the Jesus believers but was condemned by others.

In a TV documentary on the History Channel, "Banned from the Bible," the narrator says that the early Christians were a vastly divergent group with many struggling factions and no common theme uniting them. It's possible this applies only to the later believers after 50 or 60 AD, but in the History Channel documentary this distinction was not made and the characterization was applied to all the 1st-century Christians back to the earliest time.

We have every reason to suspect the earliest believers, in 30-35 AD, were also a divergent group, but there's no clear evidence one way or the other. You can just say we don't know, which is always the case. But if we do some reasoning, the logic leads more to the conclusion that they were diverse:

Either the miracle events happened or they did not. Let's assume they did not. Then, what brought those earliest believers toward Jesus? It must have been something in the teachings, and yet these are not a single focused consistent group of ideas -- they are a mixture. You can argue that some or all of them were put into the mouth of Jesus later, and he never said them, which may be true.

But if you assume it was the teachings that attracted the original followers, then you have to believe he said some of those things. So, what did he say? Who did he attract?

Surely he must have attracted some of the Zealot dissidents. Isn't it likely that this was part of the reason for the disturbance leading to his arrest? And yet there was also some contact with withdrawalists who wanted nothing to do with politics, like some of the Essenes and those of the John the Baptist variety.

Plus there are pharisaical sayings in the Q document which would have been among the earlier sayings, assuming we can distinguish the earlier from the later sayings. But the pharisees were antinationalists and anti-Zealot or anti-militant.

So it is really impossible to hypothesize who these earliest followers of Jesus were without stumbling into the problem of conflicting groups being part of this movement. You cannot name any well-founded theory of the earliest followers of Jesus which has them being a monolithic group. And there is a lack of strong evidence for us to know for sure what those earliest believers were thinking or crusading for.

What is certain is that it would have to be later believers, after 60 AD, who mythologized Jesus and invented the miracle stories, if they were invented. And yet this later group of followers definitely were a very diverse group with many conflicts going on within their ranks, totally unlike the Luddites who were a monolithic group of fanatics with one single-minded agenda of smashing machines to prevent new technology.

So there is no legitimate analogy between these two, and whereas we can easily explain the mythologizing of Ned Ludd into a folk hero, we cannot explain how Jesus became mythologized, as the followers who supposedly mythologized him were quite disunited and had none of the motivation or psychology that leads to mythologizing the hero such as we see in the Ned Ludd case.

And so we cannot explain the miracle stories as a product of mythologizing, as we can explain such stories in the case of all other legendary miracle heroes.


The best example of activists were the anti-Roman nationalists and their opponents who favored the status quo. And we have every reason to believe the Jesus movement contained both these conflicting elements. Or, we KNOW it contained them after 60 AD, and we have every reason to believe this division goes back to the earliest point.

And so, as usual, you are failing to provide a plausible explanation how Jesus got mythologized and the miracle stories invented. Your analogies all break down and fail to show any other precedent in history for a nobody becoming mythologized into a miracle-worker messiah figure.

aa5874

I can give you two examples, and there are more.

Marcion's Jesus and gJohn's Jesus.

Marcion's phantom Jesus was believed to have existed but could not have existed. Marcion's Jesus was implausible, some kind of ghost or docetic entity. By the middle of the 2nd century, about one hundred years after Tiberius, Marcion had many followers based on Justin Martyr.

GJohn's Jesus was believed to have existed but could not. This Jesus was described as the Logos, the Creator of the world who became flesh but was really God. This Jesus is incredible, some kind of Super-entity that was fully God and yet a man.

Even today 2000 years later, millions, maybe billions, believe gJohn's Jesus created the world and then later became flesh and resurrected when he was supposed to be dead.

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6016162 / #149
spamandham


Yes, they would appear to us as "miraculous," but that does not necessarily mean those acts violate physical laws. Perhaps they violate certain laws as they are presently formulated.

A better way to put it is that they were acts done outside known medical science, including what is known today. The issue is not that of focusing on the meaning of the word "miracle," but just on what is the believability of those acts having been done, however they were performed.

Of course we are assuming they were not done by trickery -- that would not be a "miracle" event. Or rather, if you can prove he did those healings through some kind of trickery, then it would disprove the thesis that he did "miracle" acts.

A conspiracy would be a possible explanation: actors were hired to play the role of victims and pretend to be healed, and so on. An elaborate conspiracy to pay actors and probably also to murder some people who would get in the way, and so on. I suggest this is perhaps the best alternative explanation to the theory that he really did the miracle healings, and even though it is a "naturalistic" explanation, still it is so improbable that the actual miracle acts is the more likely explanation.