aa5874

When one examines the Pauline writings in detail your claims turn out to be unsubstantiated.

The Pauline writer is claiming to be a WITNESS of Jesus Christ AFTER he was RAISED from the dead.

This is extremely important to understand.

If Jesus Christ was an ordinary man, or even superhuman, who could NOT resurrect on the THIRD day then the Christian Faith would be FALSE and there would be NO Salvation, No remission of Sin.

ONLY one writer DARED to LIE about an ACTUAL resurrection of Jesus Christ and it was a Pauline writer.

1Cor 15:17 - Now, it is interesting to note that Justin Martyr did NOT name anyone as a WITNESS for the resurrected Jesus EXCEPT the apostles and disciples.

"First Apology" LXVII
Justin Martyr did NOT submit any witness of the resurrected Jesus called "Paul" up to the middle of the 2nd century to the Senate and Roman Emperor.

MCalavera

It's not that I can't. It's that the question is just stupid.

Some people here need to re-learn what "evidence" actually means.

Toto

OK - what does "evidence" mean to you?

Kapyong

So,
to avoid admitting you have no evidence,
you play word games about what 'evidence' REALLY means ?

How silly.


K.

MCalavera

You have at least three relatively early accounts stating that Jesus got baptized by John the Baptist and no denial whatsoever of this event in any of the other books of the New Testament.

You can't just come up with your own hypothesis just to support your presuppositions. That's an ad hoc argument, and it's not what Occam's razor favors.

Besides, you didn't really answer my question. Why would they make up a myth about the supposed Messiah being baptized at all (regardless of who started the myth)?

As you quoted yourself, it was a baptism of repentance. What did the Messiah have to repent of?

MCalavera

In this case, any source that we can rely on for a good historical reconstruction of Jesus. The earlier the source, the better.

Note that "evidence" is not equal to "proof".

aa5874

That is just bullshit talk.

Every time you get an opportunity to present evidence for your HJ of Nazareth you give us NOTHING but rhetoric.

Look, people here know what is evidence and where to find the evidence for MYTH Jesus.

Jesus was a Ghost Child that was born in Bethlehem and the SOURCES for that claim is Matthew 1 and Luke 1.

What SOURCE, what evidence, do you have for YOUR HJ of Nazareth that was NOT born in Bethlehem, did NOT transfigure, and did NOT walk on water ?

The same Ghost stories!!!

Vorkosigan

We have three accounts of an interaction with JBap, all late and dependent on literary and fiction conventions, and more importantly, on each other. There is only one known source for the tale, Mark; Luke and Matt all depend on him. All other early Christian tale making either contradicts or ignores this tale; in Acts the tale is clearly denied.

What we have is just one source, then. Does any other source from that period give us this tale?

In other words, the "evidence" is pretty clear that the writer of Mark made up this interaction to suit some theological or narrative purpose of his own....

I don't have any ad hoc hypothesis, I go with what the data analyzed by reliable methodology says -- "evidence" being data worked over by a methodology. Methodology says that the data we have is questionable, that multiple sources conflict, that the Gospel writers are ardent liars and fiction creators. The Paulines, which predate the Gospels, do not know this story.

I did answer your question by pointing out its assumptive and invalid nature. it was not "they" who made up the story, but the author of Mark. There were numerous Christianities in the first three centuries of the Church, so there is no reason to point to "they" making up stuff, with your default position of Christian Whig history as its background, but rather try to see what the author could have meant when he made the choices he did. Why that writer chose to invent the tale of Jesus' baptism is not difficult to speculate about, but we'll likely never know. His gospel is heavily dependent on Paul and on the notion of Baptism, and his Christology appears to be Adoptionist. He's working within the literary conventions of the historical romances that he builds his tale out of. He dragged in a historical figure known to be a famous baptizer to baptize Jesus. Not only are later authors clearly unhappy with this tale, but Acts totally denies it ever happened. It seems likely that it never occurred.

Exactly. So clearly whoever invented it wasn't thinking of it as a baptism of repentence, but rather another kind of baptism into something else, as in the Didache, which I recall is not a baptism of repentence. Note that in Mark Jesus is not specifically said to have been baptized for remission of sins. Rather, the key point of the baptism is that it makes Jesus a son of god, as Paul avers in Romans. Jesus could be anyone; which is, I suspect, the whole point of Jesus in Mark.

Vorkosigan

maryhelena

aa5874

Story, aa5874 - story - it's 'Paul's storyline - the storyline is not history...

archibald

I just want to make the observation that the responses to mcAlvera's points have, by and large, been exceptionally poor. I'm not even sure there hasn't been an odd over-reaction and a few diversions (and I've said it a few times lately that it's weird to read of one side saying the other has no evidence for their hypothesis) :]

I think any objective person would readily admit that the inclusion of a messiah who needs a baptism from someone else, who comes from a village so non-significant that he has to be contrived in the story to go elsewhere, and whose powers do not always function, are all better indicators for an HJ than an MJ.

It's not as if they are killer points. They are just hints in one direction. At other times, there are hints in the other direction.

Just one more thing, Paul's letters are the only written accounts, by Paul, that have survived, that's all. I can understand why some say that Paul represents the 'early tradition', because his written material seems to be the oldest we have, but I'm really not sure if it's rational to imply that one person is likely to be the only source, especially when that person refers to numerous others, including some who had been Christians before him. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's not rational.



Also, if Mark was written in 70CE, that's not even remotely 'late' by the standards of biographical accounts of people from ancient history, partcularly (but not even exclusively) when the figure is a minor one. What we have is actually more evidence than average. It's just that inconsistent standards are being applied to the evaluation of it.