Mageth

I've done that just that before, several times. I also like to point out that it works out to something less than 40 hours, more like about 36 (sunset Friday to no later than sunup Sunday).

Llyricist

ummm supposedly they were his disciples right?? we ARE trying to establish an actual historical Jesus right?? and what and who he may have been if he existed? If they were his disciples then they WERE his followers yes?

Though according to the Gospels they didn't really "get it" which I explained below.
[quote]Paul never deifies a "person". If anyone is deified by Paul, it is the Risen Christ. Paul's beliefs involve a pre-existent Christ "taking on the appearance of flesh", getting executed, and being resurrected. I don't see any practical difference between the pre-existent Christ and the Resurrected Christ except, of course, for the "taking on appearance of flesh" and getting killed part. If the Risen Christ was deified, I think he got that way when Paul described him as pre-existent.

This doesn't seem all that different from the Jewish tradition of God's Wisdom incarnate. It certainly doesn't seem different enough to warrant death.[quote]
It gets different when you apply that concept to an actual human, Which of course is one of Doherty's major points. My point being similar, that IF an actual human Jesus existed, and James et al believed the way Paul did about that actual person, they would have been stoned in VERY short order.
Not quite, they had major disagreements about keeping the Torah. And though Paul and Acts don't cover this, that would include identifying a man with the logos concept.

Risen or resurrected? those would be two different things, Paul's risen Christ seemed to be purely spiritual, while the gospels tend to depict a physical coming back to life. And what do you mean by "our pillars"?
I have no idea, I was just saying that if it is accurate, then we face a whole different set of problems.

On edit: oops you were referring to the different set of problems, okay for starters, did the gospel writers base their passion stories on that mistranslation?? That would place a huge pall over the authenticity of ANYTHING within them, though it would fit better the idea that Jesus was actually preaching against the Torah.... though where would the "not one jot ot tittle" part have come from? ....see a whole new way to cause problems...lots more I suspect, that's just off the top of my head.

mike_decock

Is Mk arguing for the divinity of Jesus? Messiah, certainly, but I'm not sure about divinity. The Jewish expectation of a Messiah was not a divine figure.

Jn is pretty explicit about Jesus being divine, but that was much later.

-Mike...

Amaleq13

I think I'm finally getting this but let's be sure.

Mark's author believed that the living Jesus was the Messiah and criticized the Pillars/Disciples for failing to recognize this.

Given that Paul and the Pillars believed in the Risen Christ, aren't we forced to assume that, in line with Llyricist (I think), that Mark held a completely different understanding of the meaning of the resurrection?

Even with what little Paul has to say about guy who got crucified, there is hardly any support for such a belief. If anything, it could be argued that Paul believed that Christ completely "undivined" himself so as to be killed and was "redivined" upon his resurrection.

Amaleq13

What reason do we have to assume that members of the Jerusalem Church had previously been followers of a living Jesus?

According to Mark, yes. I'm asking why we should believe Mark.

Regarding Paul vs Pillars, Llyricist wrote:
I get the impression that Paul only got in Torah-related trouble when he started suggesting that even Jews were no longer bound by it if they accepted Christ. They don't seem to have cared at all if he told this to Gentiles. Also, where does Paul identify a "man" with the logos? He only talks about the Pre-existent Christ and the Risen Christ in that way. He barely mentions a "man" at all.

I had a book in my to-be-read list that argued the Paul vs Pillars disagreements are significantly downplayed in the NT but I can't find it. Do you know what I am talking about?

I wrote:
Our Pillars do appear to have shared Paul's belief in the Risen Messiah.

Why should we assume that the Pillars' beliefs were closer to the Gospels' than Paul's? Isn't Mark criticizing them (assuming Pillars=Disciples) for not sharing his beliefs?

If you do not share my feelings of familiarity with the Jerusalem Gang, you are free to stick with "the" Pillars.

Regarding the cross=tree theory:
I would assume so.

You mean "add to the huge pall over the authenticity", don't you?

Until I see some linguistic evidence, I'm going to ignore the "cross=tree" argument. It gives me a headache.:banghead:

Amaleq13

Good point! No wonder they anointed you as "moderator".

Mark provides the most human Jesus of all the Gospels. It is difficult to imagine him attributing divine status to a guy who has to try twice to cure a blind man.

Doctor X

Amaleq13:

The audience stands . . . the Chorus belts out "Halleluja" . . . the audience cheers not so much because Amaleq13 has, indeed, "got it," but that the miserably repetitively pretentious production of Handel will soon end. I mean, how many times can you be "depis'd and reject'd." To think we could have obtained tickets for The Producers with [GET ON WITH IT!--Ed.]

Right, yes, ineed. Which brings me to mike_decock:

To defend this, I would cite cases in Mk where Jesus clearly demonstrates his divinity with a miracle--such as repeating "the Loaves 'n Fishies"--Mr. Legion was hungry!--and asking in exasperation if the know who he is. For specifics I will have to go through the texts--reading them on-line is tedious--and I can list some passages.

The one I remember best is what a mentor called "Mark's last joke." He argued, briefly, that the Centurian's statement is better translated "a son of a god." To my recollection, the literal is "Truly this the man (a) son of (a) god was," with the "(a)" implied. Mk stresses "man" with "this" and "the" and should have done the same if he wanted the Centurian to refer to "the god" as in "Big Daddy." According to my mentor--and others "with understanding,"--"son of a god" is akin to saying "Michael Jordan's a god!"

Thus, the Centurian is close . . . but he gets closer than the disciples ever do.

Back to Amaleq13:

Yes. It does not seem that Mk stresses the resurrection. Is there a resurrection in Mk. I think--let me slide a little bit more out on this tree branch . . . ah TweetyBird!--that Mk demonstrates a empty tomb and implies the body is gone but not that Junior is walking about--as in visiting the disciples or other people. I think--suffering suckatash!--that the naked man who flees the arrest and the young man in the tomb symbolize that "da man" could not capture or hold what Junior was. They got, at best, the "clothes" the naked man had!

Now, did traditions of "a walking, talking Junior" exist before Mk and others? I ask that because, it may be that they did--everyone claims to see Elvis--and whatever could be considered "authorities" in the groups wanted to limit it. It could be that the concept of "no body/empty tomb" existed and this is all Mk stressed. There are others . . . I do not know.

I may misunderstand your objection . . . do I have to sit through Handel again? For whatever political, social, religious reason Mk does not like the disciples--indeed, the rest do not either--Mt, Lk, Jn. One of the charges is that they are idiots who do not understand "da Truth."

If they do not understand it, they cannot represent it or teach it. I think Mk and the others had to write to present a story against the tradition represented by the disciples. How many of them were left . . . how much an influence . . . I do not know. It could be that Mk came from a group that had a tradition of conflict/disagreement with the "established" group.

There is a lot of apology. The True Followers will be poor. Those rich guys with the chariots equiped with GPS . . . they will not really be saved. In fact, gang, the fact you live in crap and the opponents us you as a ashcan PROVES that you are "it" and "they" are not.

This exclusion pervades the Synoptics and Jn--heck, with Jn you are either "born from above" or too bad! This polemic serves to legitimize the audience will denegrating someone else.

So . . . it may be that the charge of never understanding who Junior "really was" may just be a made up attack first seen in Mk and continued in the rest.

--J.D.

Llyricist

None, unless there really was some Jesus figure it was based on...... which was what I thought we were trying to show!

Again, I thought we were trying to create a plausible HJ.... not refute it
Well I think there are more than one, but perhaps it was Hyam Maccoby's "Mythmaker, Paul and the Invention of Christianity"?

Umm only closer in that they would have had a real person in mind, which I thought is what we were discussing. If you're back to arguing for no HJ then fine....... but not if there WAS one!!

well yeah, but we were trying to accomodate at least the historocity of it's main character.............. weren't we?

me too

mike_decock

Well, "miracle worker" being a pretty common profession in those days, I don't know if performing or repeating miracles can be seen as evidence of divinity (especially when the miracle worker can't always perform the first time).

Ahhh... So Mark is intentionally ambiguous in making a claim for divinity. He is writing to an audience which is already aware of it and the fact that nobody in the story really "gets it" is the whole point of the story.

An interesting angle but you can only really come to this conclusion if you assume that the audience already believed Jesus to be divine. Doesn't that make you guilty of reading Mark through John's theological lens? It's still an orthodox interpretation of the gospel and I'm not convinced the orthodox viewpoint existed when Mark wrote. If you view Mark through a gnostic lens, the only divinity implied is the sort of divinity everyone can achieve.

-Miek...

Vorkosigan

That's an interesting interpretation. So how would you view the messianic secret in that light?