spin

Ummm, it's written on the gate. It features a piece of epigraphy that bears the signs of the time, while the names of those responsible for the repairs are also written on the gate.

While you're floundering around, let's see what other evidence you are prepared to jettison for your faith.


spin

Gregg

This is mind-boggling. Apparently, context means nothing.

Jesus is a FIGURE OF FAITH. He is regarded as the One through whom all things were made, and the One who reconciles the creation to God through himself. The gospel of Mark is structured on the 5 books of the Torah and the crucifixion scene is constructed entirely out of scripture. It is a faith document, not a biography. Before the first gospel, people were talking like mad about Jesus, yet somehow never found the time or need to mention anything about his human life and spoke of him only as a heavenly redeemer who was revealed to them through scripture and divine revelation. Taking this into account, you simply cannot use the same standard you use to determine the historicity of an Augustus or Socrates to determine the historicity of Jesus the Christ.

Tell you what. Maybe I'll consider your deal if you accept Attis, Adonis, Mithras, Isis, Apollo, and Zeus as historical figures. After all, if being mentioned in a text is all it takes to be considered historical, they certainly qualify.

spin

It was of course appropriate to the original statement it was rebutting.

That was a little too telegraphic for me to understand your comment.

"[A]mazingly close" is empty rhetoric for over a hundred years out. This is still you playing your my manuscripts that can't be relevantly dated are better than your manuscripts that can't be relevantly dated. So far, your texts prove to be the same relevance as Petronius's Satyricon to history.

The reason why scholars prefer Arrian's accounts of Alexander to Curtius Rufus's is because they are able to match Arrian's accounts much better to other available evidence. (Curtius Rufus wrote 100 years before Appian.) One has to actually look at the texts. It's not good enough to say things like "my sonically shielded gravitational discombobulator is better than yours" and hope to say something meaningful. You have to look at what they do.


spin

spin

You are still peddling this error: I can't show that my manuscripts are datable to the era they describe, but they are better than yours, so there.

When you remove your head from the sand you might see that there is hard evidence. Res Gestae, Prenestine Gate, Tiburtine Gate, Arch of Titus, Arch of Septimus Severus, Trajan's Column, the Column of Marcus Aurelius. Then again there is a chronological epigraphy of much of ancient Egypt's history. All the coin evidence. All the monumental evidence. You want to ignore all that because you prefer texts. Your texts.


You are saying older sh*t is better than newer sh*t, but unless you can catch the beast in the act, all you've got is the same sh*t.

Too much TV Gamera and not enough homework.


spin

Gregg

Don, I might respond to your latest remarks later, but I'd really like to see Earl comment on them. I did want to say I don't understand what point you're trying to make bringing up Doherty fans you've encountered who haven't really studied his arguments in depth. So what? I've encountered people who enthusiastically support and defend evolution but don't understand it at all. The fact that there are people who accept Doherty's conclusions without thoroughly reading and understanding his arguments (probably because the conclusion is all they're really interested in) obviously says nothing about the validity of the arguments themselves.

I don't have any emotional investment in Jesus being a historical figure or not. Like Brooke who started this thread, I was initially an agnostic who accepted that there was probably someone named Jesus who was some sort of pacifist-yet-revolutionary figure who had a brief ministry then was caught and crucified by the Romans, and whose followers then had some visions that convinced them he was the Messiah and savior of the world. I didn't think accepting Jesus' historicity required one to accept Christian theology. (Prior to becoming agnostic I'd been a New Thought Christian who believed in Jesus' miracles and resurrection, but intepreted the crucifixion as something a bit more complex than simply a substitutionary atonement.)

I accept the mythicist case not only because of the evidence supporting the individual parts of it but because taken as a whole, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than any historicist argument I've ever heard, either from the "minimalist" historians or, certainly, from those who argue that Jesus' ministry pretty much took place as described in the gospels. I really don't get why the mythicist argument seems so far-fetched or unlikely to some people. We know people in the 1st century believed in dying/rising savior gods, divine intermediaries, multilayered, demon-infested heavens, and spiritual processes having effects on the world of matter. Take away the gospels with their surface veneer of historicity (which quickly vanishes when one looks a little closer) and would anyone today think that the beliefs of Paul and the other epistle writers were that much different than those of various other cults in existence at the time? (That is if early Christian writings had even survived--without Mark, Christianity might not have stuck around long enough to preserve any writings.)

One last remark, I'm not particularly impressed that you were able to find six examples of "born of a woman" referring to someone actually born of a woman. So what? That was probably said of lots of people ... of course you're going to find several examples of it being applied to regular human beings. You'll probably be lucky to find any examples of it being applied to Christ-like figures other than Jesus Christ, of course, because 1) Only one expression of Christianity survived, and we have little information about those versions that didn't, and 2) The expression that survived was a specifically Jewish interpretation, and according to Judaism the Messiah was "born of a woman" thus Jesus had to be to fulfill the prophecy The whole POINT of Jesus Christ was that he took on human-like qualities, even if in some mystical fashion only. If he was not human enough he could not suffer and die, and thus the initiate could not share in his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. But if he was TOO human ... if he was an actual human being, on Earth, his sacrifice would have only the same temporary efficacy as the priestly sacrifices of animals in the Temple. The sacrifice or blood offering had to take place in heaven to be permanent--as above, so below.

Toto

GDon: at one point, I accused you of projecting materialistic post-enlightenment ideas back onto Greco-Roman pagans, since I felt you were being overly literalist in demanding to know exactly where all this happened. You responded by turning that back on me, by claiming that mythicists were projecting modern thoughts derived from the Twilight Zone back on the ancients.

I thought this was just a debate tactic, but you haven't dropped it, and I am concerned. Do you really think that ancient pagans were so materialistic and literal-minded? After all, they believed in ghosts, in angels, in gods who popped in and out of the world, in Platonic forms, in spells, etc. The Twilight Zone, I would contend, was popular because it reflected earlier magical ways of thinking. It did not introduce new thought patterns to modern people.

GakuseiDon

That's true.

You may be right. But I think that we just shouldn't be so quick to assume what First Century people believed without examining the evidence, and (IMHO at least) the evidence doesn't support Doherty.

On your point (1): doesn't that mean that, at least on this score, the evidence is against Doherty?

On your point (2): "According to Judaism the Messiah was "born of a woman" thus Jesus had to be to fulfill the prophecy" -- why does this support ahistoricity? I don't understand how this negates the implications of "born of a woman".

Again, you may be right, but I think the evidence is against it, at least as far as I've seen.

GakuseiDon

That sounds more like an argument that Doherty accuses me of making rather than one that I've actually made myself. What do you mean by "so materialistic and literal-minded"? Can you give me an example?

True, they believed all that. My "Twilight Zone" comment is to do with Doherty's "dimension in the sphere of flesh", or "pagans believed that the myths set on earth actually took place in another dimension", like Attis being castrated or Osiris being dismembered. There's no evidence for this AFAICS. I believe that people find it convincing because these are modern concepts.

Gamera

I know you can't show it to me. That's my point.

Gamera

Not older, closer in time to the event. Most reasonable historians accept that maxim.

But keep up the rhetoric. It just make your lack of credibility more evident to everybody here.