aa5874

Am I reading you correctly if I insert, 'Saul/Paul should have known more, unless, of course, his "Jesus" was of the "mythical realm" only. And, if that was the case (and, I believe that it was), what was "mythical" could, over time, become "physical". And, the rest, as they say, is 'a story'....?

Doug Shaver

It could have been, but if so, then the author was pretending to be a mid-first-century Christian missionary who was acquainted with Peter and other leaders of a Christian community in Jerusalem. In that event, all the biographical information in it is fiction, and the ostensible author of the epistles never really existed. If he never existed, then it makes no sense to say that Paul lied about his conversion or anything else. Nonexistent people don't tell lies.

I'm not insisting on Paul's historicity, but at this stage of my research I don't see any questions that are parsimoniously answered by supposing that there was no such man.

Alf

Who was it that said something along the lines of:

A book fit one of the following descriptions.

1. It is entirely in line with the bible - if so, it is not necessary, we already have the bible. Burn it.

2. It is contrary to the bible. If so, it is heretical and we definitely burn it.

3. It says nothing either way about religion. If so it is unecessary and we can burn it.

Essentially any book that is not the bible is to be burned according to this line of thinking.

I just can't remember who said it but it was one of the early chrisitians.

They wiped out much of our ancient literature through such thinking.

Alf

Alf

Josephus is easy enough - he was jew but he did not write for the jews, he wrote about the jews. I.e. he told the story of the jews to other people of the roman empire.

There were also hellenized jews who used greek and the septuagint was originally written because many jews no longer could read their native language.

My point was just that "Christ" in jewish literature as "Messiah" occur several places. Josephus for one mentioned 3 - none of which can be identified with Jesus. In lieu of this it appears strange to claim that only Jesus was referred to as "christ". True, Josephus might have used the jewish term "messiah" instead of :"christ" when referring to these three but it is still essentially the same as "christ" it is just the jewish word for "christ" instead of the greek word.

To then claim that nobody ever spoke of any christ apart from Jesus sounds strange to me and unfounded.

In addition, the infamous paragraph by Josephus where christ is referred to could be a genuine christ reference - just not Jesus - and if so it would be an example of a reference for "christ" who is not Jesus. Of course, for this to work one must assume that phrases such as "supposed" or "which people believed was christ" etc might have been found in the original paragraph and removed by the interpolators. I don't know enough details about the paragraph to speculate upon that, just mentioning that it just might be possible that that paragraph is a genuine "christ reference" without being a reference to Jesus and if that is the case then it is an example of the things you claim is not there.

However, even if this is not the case and I admit that such speculation is weak, it doesn't really harm the main argument which just says that there were such references around on the basis that 1) It doesn't sound unreasonable that such references were to be found, we would expect them to be there and it would be surprising if they weren't and 2) We do know that christians had a huge book burning fest as soon as they got in position to do so and so wiped out whatever references that might conflict with their teaching.

Alf

Alf

I read the dispute here a little like "the title christ was never used until christians referred to Jesus as Christ" and that is what I find meaningless.

Especially considering that "christ" means "annointed one" and that annointing people was something they did in a crowning ceremony etc to show reverence to a new king. As such "christ" simply means "king" and then claiming that only Jesus is christ is a little like saying that only Jesus is king and ignore that there has been numerous other kings both before and after.

So, if we can agree that "christ" can meaningfully be applied to other people both before and after Jesus then it also implies that it is reasonable to assert that there were "christians" before a bunch of people started to worship Jesus. This also implies that "christian" might not originally have been one single sect but rather a bunch of many different sects who may have had similarities and dissimilarities among them and in so far as they found common ground they would listen to what their brethren from the other sect said - that was exactly the kind of diplomatic travelling that Paul engaged in. By convincing those other christians that they fundamentally shared the same belief as himself - that their christ figure was essentially the same christ figure that he worshipped - he suddenly got a large group of followers all over the roman empire, much faster than if he had just gone to a street corner and started preaching.

Alf

post tenebras lux

As I mentioned in post 30 earlier in this thread: the Jesus Seminar refused to even look at the MJ position. To quote the editor of Fourth R: To which we can now add the earlier Funk quote:So, is he sceptical himself, has he taken his own leap of faith, or is the whole premise of 'The Jesus Seminar': "well, assuming that there was a real guy behind all these Jesus stories then ..."?

post tenebras lux

I haven't finished reading it myself yet (as it's rather long), but there is this: The Falsified Paul by Hermann Detering from RadikalKritik.

Alf

Why would we want to do that? As far as I know, do we have any reason to think he is not jewish to start with?

Alf

Jehanne

Yes.

jjramsey

What is this "Josephus might have used" bit? Either he did or he didn't. You seem to be arguing on the basis of your personal incredulity, not on any knowledge of the extant literature. You have also provided no evidence of an early book-burning that you claim would have removed all evidence of references to a Christ that did not refer to Jesus.