aa5874

You are just regurgitating worthless rhetoric.

You have ALREADY discredited the authors of the Gospels as Fiction writers and now are trying to give the impresion that the Gospels must be trusted.

1. You don't trust the birth narratives of Jesus in the Synoptics.

2. You don't trust the baptism of Jesus WITH the Holy Ghost Bird and the Voice from heaven.

3. You don't trust the Temptation of Jesus with the Devil on the pinnacle of the Jewish Temple.

4. You don't trust the miracles of Jesus where he INSTANTLY healed incurable diseases with the SPIT and TOUCH technique.

5. You don't trust the raising of the dead by Jesus.

6. You don't trust the claim that Jesus WALKED on the sea.

7. You don't trust the claim that Jesus TRANSFIGURED.

8. You don't trust the claim that Jesus resurrected.

9. You don't trust the claim that Jesus visited the disciples and ate FISH after he was resurrected.

10. You don't trust the claim that Jesus ASCENDED in a cloud.

You don't trust the Jesus story in the NT so please stop giving the impression that the Gospels are now magically trustworthy.

You have Discredited the authors of the NT Jesus story.

Please explain why we must accept that Jesus story as history?

ApostateAbe

When I listed my facts, again, they are facts. They objectively describe the ancient myths. That is not the same as affirming the claims by the myth-tellers, but you know. And they have detail. They are the sorts of facts that are expected to follow from patterns of cults.
Do you or do you not think that there are tendencies of cults that are distinct from the tendencies of religions? You don't have to call it a "cult." You can call it a "new religion." One way or the other, I assert that there are distinct sociological patterns that identify these groups. You may want to look at these studies for examples:

1. Colin Campbell - Clarifying the Cult
2. Allan W Eister - An Outline of a Structural Theory of Cults
3. Bryan R. Wilson - The New Religions: Some Preliminary Considerations

All three of these articles identify tendencies of cults. I have full access to the first two articles, and I will have full access to the third article next week. Please ask if you would like more information. I am willing to make my case from these studies, if you demand it, though I hope these studies are enough to at lease prove the point that "new religions" have more distinctions from old religions than either real estate or subjective value judgments.
So, yeah, the apparent distinctions between cults and religions are an important hinge point. I am willing to grant that Abraham was probably mere myth. If there is no objective sociological difference in tendencies between a cult and a religion except the number of adherents, then my primary argument fails. I really do think this your counterargument that rests on a lack of knowledge of the patterns of cults.
Maybe you should give your explicit reasons why you are uncertain about the existence of John the Baptist. John the Baptist apparently founded a religious movement, but we have no direct written attestations to his existence, therefore we should be uncertain that John the Baptist existed. Is that right?
OK, great, I think we should make Apollonius a case study. Apollonius reputedly composed a letter, and the attestation to this letter follows after three iterations of myth. If Apollonius never wrote a letter, then you would think that we would be out of luck, and you would think that we would have to be uncertain of whether or not Apollonius existed. Are you with my so far?
When I gave my counterargument concerning the Christology of Paul, I was arguing from the evidence that we see directly on the face of the texts, without need for unlikely ad hoc speculations of either metaphorical interpretations or scribal insertions. If we are concerned with the Christology of Paul, then we can leave the ad hoc speculations out of it. Since the Christology of Paul does not appear significantly different from the Christology of Matthew but lesser than the Christology of John, it does not fulfill the expectation that Jesus started out as a character who was entirely divine.
There are at least two other reasons for dating the gospel of John late:
1) John's gospel plays down and all but eliminates the imminent doomsdayism of Jesus. In John 21:20-23, an excuse is made for the "rumor" that there was supposed to be an imminent return of Jesus before the apostles die--it was just a misunderstanding. This is expected if John was written only well after the synoptic gospels.
2) John's gospel reflects the most highly-developed antipathy toward the Jews who administered the temple of Jerusalem. The anti-Jewish sentiment is shown to increase with time in the Christian writings.
Like I said, you could have a half-man-half-god, but you could not have someone who was both fully a god and fully a human being. Christianity was seemingly the first to have such a belief. It seems to be an assumption among historians, though I am not sure exactly what their evidence would be. It seems plausible since the Christian doctrine really is absurd on the face, developed merely to make two conflicting things true at the same time. I welcome evidence to the contrary.
No, I mean that the theory that Jesus was purely myth expects people who believed that Jesus was purely myth, as in Jesus never even seemed to be a human being but just a thought construct. The theory that Jesus was purely myth does NOT expect ancient belief that Jesus merely seemed to be in the flesh and wasn't.
OK, that really does seem to be a sound argument, and you win that one.
The embarrassment about the baptism is also seen in Mark, albeit to a lesser extent than in Matthew, Luke and John. In Mark, John the Baptist is quoted as exceptionally humble and deferential to Jesus. Also, there is a revelation by God at the baptism event in Mark where God publicly appoints Jesus as his son, and this is in the presence of John the Baptist. This sort of thing would be expected from the theory that Mark wanted to spin the baptism story positively. Matthew, Luke and John took that behavior a few steps further. They were taking a well-known fact about Jesus that was otherwise embarrassing and spinning it positively in their own favor. The explanation that Matthew and Luke were positively spinning an account that was poorly told without embarrassment in Mark, well, that seems a little ad hoc. You would also need to believe that this poorly-told account in Mark became popularly believed among Christians. Otherwise, it would be expected that Matthew and Luke would simply leave it out.
OK, I would love to know of an example of evidence of such Pagan embarrassment.
By coincidence, I am arguing with someone in Acharya S's forum about something related to this, only in this other case he or she thinks that the spin was pro-Marcionite. He or she thinks that Paul's (or Pseudo-Paul's) willingness to relax Jewish law for the sake of the Gentiles is evidence of pro-Marcionite anti-semitism. Here is my response:

OK. I think I would accept that explanation if we saw indications in the epistle to the Galatians that the author (Paul or Pseudo-Paul) renounces Judaism, especially the authority of the Jewish Law. Instead, I see him walking a tightrope. On one side, he is adhering to Jewish Law. On the other side, he is making special exceptions for the uncircumcised gentiles.

My explanation for this tightrope-walk seems to require some detail. I will give my explanation in the form of two "Uh-oh"s and a Problem.

Uh-oh #1: Christianity was entirely a Jewish faith, making sense only within the context of Jewish Law, prophecies and tradition. Paul was a Jew (educated as a Pharisee), so was Jesus, and so were all of his disciples.

Uh-oh #2: The Jews were not as keen to Christianity as the non-Jews. The Jews were not convinced by a Christian's interpretations of "messianic" prophecies in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. The Jews typically knew better. The non-Jews, however, ate it up, and it would make sense to evangelize to the non-Jews, not the Jews.

Problem: The Jewish faith required males to be circumcised. For native Jews, this was hardly a problem, because they were circumcised when they were infants. For non-native Jewish wannabes, it was a big problem. They were not circumcised as infants. If they were to be circumcised as adults, it would be possibly the most painful thing that they ever experienced in their lives. They didn't have painkillers or antiseptics, and they saw it as seemingly ridiculous and needless. They weren't too keen on the kosher diet, either.

So, the non-Jewish Christian converts believed the first Jew who told them that they did not need to adhere to all of the Jewish laws, because Jesus fixed that. And it worked. Therefore, Paul's writing in Galatians is roughly what we expect.

The thing that would prevent the earliest Christians from doing the same is that they were poor and illiterate, and they believed that the end of the world as they knew it was right around the next corner. This is not ad hoc. This expectation for the silence follows directly from the theory. We do not have the belief in an imminent doomsday in the Book of Revelation. It was written in the second century, when there were plenty of Christians who could afford to write. And, like you were telling me before, we know that the author really was trying to establish a textual tradition. We see it explicitly in the text itself:

Revelation 22:18-9

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

Guest46854

What's hardly worth a single comment is throwing around the term "evidence'' as if there was any.

ApostateAbe

I think this thread is for you, because I explain in the OP why texts containing unreliable claims still count as evidence.

aa5874

You are completely wrong. Revelation is the ONLY book in the Canon with a theme of an IMMINENT doomsday.

Revelation 2:5 - The author of Revelation is the ONLY author who claimed the THIRD WOE comes QUICKLY.

Revelation 11:14 - Other authors claim Jesus will come UNEXPECTEDLY but the author of Revelation claimed Jesus did tell him that he was coming QUICKLY.

The author of Revelation appears to Believe that Jesus would come WITHIN his lifetime.

Revelation 22:12 - Revelation 22:20 - Your assertion is ABSOLUTELY erroneous that there is NO belief of an IMMINENT doomsday in Revelation.

Revelation is the ONLY book in the Canon with an IMMINENT doomsday Belief and was written SPECIFICALLY to WARN the Churches of its soon arrival.

Revelation 2:5 ........ I will come unto thee quickly,
Revelation 2:16 ........I will come unto thee quickly,
Revelation 3:11 ......... Behold, I come quickly
Revelation 11:14........the third woe cometh quickly.
Revelation 22:7 .................Behold, I come quickly.
Revelation 22:12 ................behold, I come quickly.
Revelation 22:20 ................ Surely I come quickly.....

AposatateAbe is now totally confused so I can't trust what he says about the books of the NT.

Toto

You list "facts" that are ancient claims, but you can't reliably date the claim or give its context. But then you demand an explaination as if there is something to explain other than a text.

I have read quite a bit of cult studies. Rodney Stark made his reputation by studying the Moonies; he was criticized for taking money from them.

I don't think there is a sharp line between so-called cults and religions. There are degrees of differences, and cults that survive tend to become standard religions. But I don't see how this helps you. There is too much variation among religions to allow you to conclude much of anything about early Christianity's origins.

I live in Los Angeles. I know cults.

My uncertainty is based on the problems that various critical scholars have pointed out in Josephus' account. The portrait of John the Baptist in the gospels appears to be highly mythologized. I don't think it is possible to be sure that such a person existed; it's entirely possible, but it's also possible that this is an evolved myth.

I think that, like John, the existence of Apollonius can't be proven.

The speculation about scribal interpolations is well developed. It is not ad hoc.
This would require that you naively accept the texts as written. If you want to be that naive, go ahead. But I don't see any way that the Christology of Paul is comparable to that of Matthew.

OK, but I would not try to base any argument on the dating of the gospels.

You seem to have lost track of your original assertion - that the culture of the time could not imagine an entity that was part god and part man. The doctrine of the Trinity is a unique Christian solution to the theological quarrels over whether Jesus was man or god.

Doherty explains this an in intermediate step between the original spiritual Jesus and the later fully human-fully divine Jesus. Freke and Gandy claim that docetists were mythicists full out.

From our modern viewpoint, we don't have a good way of getting into the mindset of docetism. Historicists want to believe that docetists accepted that Jesus existed, but felt that he was of a different substance. But the docetic Jesus walked through walls and left no footprints. It's hard to know what they really thought, or if they even had a clear idea of what they believed.

Here's an example of your force fitting the facts into your theory. Mark writes as an adoptionist. He shows absolutely no sign of embarrassment.

Matthew and Luke appear to have been working directly from Mark's text. The baptism scene is too good of a story to just leave out.

It's well known. I don't have time to look it up.

,

Are you a masochist? :Cheeky:

I don't quite see how this relates to my argument. Paul has Marcionite-sounding elements and orthodox sounding elements.

John of Patmos seems to have thought that the end was near.

It is ad hoc, and the theory was devised to take this silence into account.

Revelation is usually dated to 90 CE. It is considered to be the earliest writing in the NT after Paul's letters. How do you explain Christians suddenly getting rich and literate?

Toto

Since Abe has aa5874 on ignore, I will point out these detailed citations to Revelation.

ApostateAbe

I hate to admit it, but I think aa5874 got something right. The author of Revelation did believe in an imminent doomsday, though the author leaves it up to the reader to decide exactly what "quickly" or "soon" means. Unlike the gospels, Revelation does not have an unambiguous deadline. I think the author learned from that mistake. He really was trying to establish a textual tradition.

Toto

You are referring to the "generation" that Jesus addressed, one of whom would still be standing. Do you seriously think that the author of Revelation had read the gospels? Is there any evidence of that?

Doug Shaver

I did not say that, and I would not say it. All evidence needs to be explained. But if it is documentary evidence, then we cannot assume that the explanation must be "The writer was, in at least some sense, reporting a fact."