aa5874

Again, your claim that Jesus would seem trivial and was a small religous cult is not supported by the NT, or the Church writers.

Jesus of the NT had thousands of people following him in broad daylight.

Your Jesus is NOT in the NT, he may be in your head or heart.

bacht

I don't see the historical references in the epistles you indicate. What I do see is an apocalyptic group expecting the earthly advent of their spiritual saviour who died and resurrected in the spiritual realm. I admit that this could all be later fabrication, but it does offer one possible source for the Christ mythos.

ApostateAbe

When I say to take into account religious interests, this is an example of what I mean. Religious followers are notorious for over-inflating their numbers. It makes them believe that their way of thinking is commonly accepted, easy to believe and legitimate. You can trust a religious adherent when he states something against his religious interest. Otherwise, if the statement is strongly in his religious interest, then there is very little reason to trust him, at least without corroboration. The same for the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes. You don't just trust as historical fact things like that, if you have any brains at all. That is a very normal way to analyze historical accounts. There is no author who is 100% right or 100% wrong, but it all needs to be picked apart depending on probability and conflicts of interest.

ApostateAbe

OK, first of all, the Christians are not to be believed when they make unlikely claims in line with their religious interests. If the gospels claim that he was the son of God, that doesn't mean he was. If he was not the son of God, and he actually didn't deal out miracles at every hour of the day, then he would not have been an especially notable and conspicuous figure in that time. Without the likely religious interpolations, he was apparently an itinerant homeless traveling preacher with a small following.

Suppose that some non-Christian did write about Jesus. The reason why we have those Christian sources and not those non-Christian sources on Jesus is because writing was very temporary, and Christians had a trans-generational tradition of copyists who copied the text, distributed it and preserved the information.

The earliest Christian writings are the letters of Paul, supposedly written in the middle of first century (around 50 CE). But I am not certain on that date. the earliest Christians were Jews (Jesus and his disciples were exclusively Jews), but it was Paul's agenda to include Gentiles in the religion.

aa5874

The information about the character called Jesus is found in the NT. The authors of the NT presented a chronology where Jesus was physically on earth, then ascended to heaven. Later, the apostles after receiving the Holy Ghost began to preach the gospel and Saul/Paul was converted sometime afterwards.

The Gospels presented the so-called history of Jesus until ascension, the Acts of the Apostles presented from the ascension to the assumed arrest of Paul followed by the letters of the writers.

Now the writers called Paul claimed over 500 persons saw Jesus after he was resurrected. You mean all these people saw Jesus in heaven?

But the writers called Paul claimed some of the 500 have now died. You mean these people died in heaven?

1 Corinthians 15.6 Do you not see that chronology of Jesus and Saul/Paul in the NT?

What you claim to see is nowhere in the NT.

No writer in the NT ever claimed they precceded the physical Jesus. The letters in the NT as presented are there because they were compatible with the story-line, Jesus came to earth as predicted in Isaiah 7.14 and Saul/Paul was converted after Jesus went back to heaven.

If you shift the Jesus stories, the epistles must follow the shift in the same direction and later.

Justin Martyr never wrote about anyone who worshipped a spiritual only Christ , as rthe son of the God of the Jews, before Marcion.

bacht

No, no NT writer claimed to pre-date Jesus. But I accept Doherty's interpretation of the epistle writers as originally describing a spiritual saviour who was coming soon, not one who had been here and was coming back.

The letters all came after the formative experiences of the group, which would have been visionary, not corporeal. They saw the Son in heaven who performed a self-sacrifice, but not in this world. To them this meant that the end was near, and the (first) earthly advent of the Christ was imminent.

By the 2nd C Jesus has become historicized, with two earthly advents. This is the Catholic doctrine, complete with geneologies and birth stories.

Doherty's theory hinges on accepting some parts of the epistles as authentic to real 1st C apostles like "Paul". I admit this can't be proven, but it does explain the lack of mention of an earthly Christ in the older letters.

aa5874

Well, I hope you see your problem when you accept that parts of epistles are authentic without evidence.

You must make stuff up without any evidence. You have to guess or imagine that you know which parts are true, and then think your imagination is history.

Accepting something as credible, when it may not be, does NOT explain anything other than you may be totally wrong.

The letter writer called Paul claimed that over five hundred people saw Jesus after he was resurrected. The letter writer called Paul is not credible. And scholars have deduced more than one person used the name Paul.

The letters of Paul can no longer be regarded as authentic or credible without external corroboration. And there is none.

ExMormon_Dude

This is why I'm collecting as many books critical of Paul. I want to find out where proposed interpolations have been placed and try to understand his writings without those interpolations or glosses. Perhaps the epistles in their raw form will reveal Saul/Paul to be something other than what most apologists claim him to be. Then again, a study of the proposed interpolations themselves might reveal something about the circumstances as to why, when, where or who was responsible for the insertions.

spamandham

If you actually read and absorb all those books, you'll be better prepared to answer your questions than the rest of us here (with the exception of a very few).

But if you'd liek the Reader's Digest version...no one really knows. The evidence is too sparse and too filled with propaganda to determine the answers.

However, I noticed that Hermann Detering is missing from your list. The Dutch radicals would probably be right up your alley. They have a completely different perspective you may appreciate, and much of his work is available for free online (though it doesn't look like you have a budget problem... )

aa5874

You have just destroyed your own arguments.

If as you claim you should NOT trust religious adherents if their statements are strongly in their interests, it can then be said that Jesus of the NT did not exist, religious adherents claimed that Jesus did exist, a statemenr strongly in their religious interests.

Jesus did not exist.