Toto

You can read a short excerpt from Maccoby here:

Paul's Bungling Attempt At Sounding Pharisaic excerpt from: The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity

You can often find remaindered copies of the book at Barnes and Noble for under $10.

Amaleq13

Is this only an option with a physical B&N or can I get that online as well? Amazon has used books available but I've had inconsistent success working with those so I try to avoid it.

Thanks for the link. I first got interested in the book thanks to Llyricist and that is when I discovered it was out of print.

capnkirk

The heart of my previous response is that it is not necessary to take the "we" passages as honest and true. The mere existence of the passages constitutes a prima facie case that someone intended the readers to believe that the author had traveled with Paul and agreed with him philosophically.

Toto

Go to www.bn.com and search for The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby. They have it for 6.98 plus SH. (I don't know if their search URL's translate - if they do, you can click
here.)

Amaleq13

Excellent! It is already on the way. Gotta love the internet!

Amazon has me so brainwashed I don't even think about B&N.

Amaleq13

That is true unless the use of "we" in those passages is the result of the nature of the narrative rather than the motivation described above. This was discussed most recently in this thread: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=73159

external solipsism

http://www.essene.com/Yeshua/Yeshua.htm

This link has some relevant information about Jesus's birth. According to this branch of Messianic Judiasm Jesus's birth was a natural one, thus the title "Son of God" would not be meant in terms of actual parentage but instead metaphorically. The link mentions mistranslations in the texts of the New Testament.

NOGO

I would not call that mistranslation.
At any rate moving the deed to his baptism does change anything to my argument.

The words used, however, are interesting because they are similar to the words used in Hebrews 1 which probably means that this is the original version of the Gospels.

NOGO

Can anybody comment on this statement?

external solipsism

From the link....

When Isaiah had been translated into Greek, the Hebrew word almah (veiled), which meant a young woman of marriageable age was mistranslated as parthenos - virgin.. Had Isaiah meant Emanuel's mother to be a virgin he would have called her bethulah, the proper meaning of which is a virgin maiden. (Genesis 24:16; Leviticus 21:13; Deuteronomy 22:14,23,28; Judges 11:37; I Kings 1:2).

Matthew's original wording has been preserved only in an early Syriac codex, in which the genealogy concluded:

"And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, and he fathered Jesus, the reputed Messiah." - Matthew 1:16
All surviving Greek manuscripts contain the revised genealogy:

"And Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, the reputed Messiah." - Matthew 1:16

I would call it a mistranslation when one word is inappropriatelly translated into a word in a different language that is not entirely accurate.

This would help to illustrate how the title of Jesus as being the son of God would have been inappropriate at his birth, because he was actually the son of Joseph (paternally speaking). The title of "son of God" would be metaphorically speaking.