Geetarmoore

Agreed. His 'analysis' is void of logic too. There was nothing contradictory about the two statements of Doherty's that The Bishop posted.

Geetarmoore

This is poor, excuse-ridden speculation.

Why doesn't Paul, who is an excellent writer, 'take one for the team', and write down the Jesus story? What a better way to preach the message of Jesus, than to use Jesus' own words and deeds! It is abundantly clear that he possessed the skill to have done so. There is only one thing that Paul didn't possess in order for him to accomplish the task......... :huh:

post tenebras lux

For much of the period between then and now the church was in control of copying documents and deciding which documents were worth copying and thus preserving. If, as Gamera claims, the labour costs of (a secular) copying of documents was 'US$ 30K' in our money, then if the church didn't consider the writings of some pagan roman to be important enough to copy it would not be too surprising if nobody bothered to make copies of his documents.

However, to try and claim the same for early christian documents, is to try and claim that the church would have had no interest in copying said documents (and that pious laymen wouldn't be interested either), which I find rather unlikely. No?

Geetarmoore

This is only one of the things that needs to be explained, of a huge list of problems.

-Why does Paul not know of the life of Christ?
-Why does Mark not know of the Q sayings, if they were attributed to Jesus?
-Why does Mark pull large parts of his Gospel - the MOST IMPORTANT PARTS directly from the OT, instead of relying on his actual account?
-Why do Luke and Matthew need to 'copy' another eyewitness' version of events?
-Why does Luke disagree with Matthew in regards to Q information context? Genealogy?
-Why does Q appear to be multi-layered?
-Why does no one write about a synoptic Gospel until 35 years after the first one is supposedly written?
-Why does John rewrite not only the Gospel story, but re-casts Jesus himself into a new persona?
-Why do second century apologists (with the exception of Justin Martyr) not have anything to say about a fleshy Jesus?
-What is the Didache, and who believes it is consistent with an earthly Jesus?
-Why did Marcion hold the view of Jesus that he did?

That is the core problem with the HJ case; It requires excuse after excuse to clear up why the documents we have appear as they do, as well as when they do.

If there was a true leader to this cult, who really spoke the things attributed to him, there is NO WAY the story would be as disjointed and appear as jagged as it is.

Clivedurdle

Latest edition of Scientific American Mind has major feature on mirror neurones. It seems we work by mimicking and copying - new born babies will stick their tongue out in response to an adult doing that. Language, movement, dance, drama, learning all happen because of our incredible abilities to copy.

We have plenty of examples of crazes spreading across the planet - picachou (sp?).

A leader starter is not needed for the type of mass behaviour we label religion.

With xianity, there is actually a sophisticated ritual that arguably by copying it would spread this craze - the eucharist. This has evolved with standing and kneeling, song, smells and bells. Imagine the classic pose of hands in prayer.

Christ is an imaginary friend in heaven who we are all very easily able to imagine.

darstec

But they didn't have a vision of the same thing. It seems everyone believed something different about their visions. And of course we have no evidence that "all those Apostles" weren't simply characters in a story whom the authors could make do or say anything they wished.

And you have the scenario backwards. The people could well have come together because they shared some type of philosphical relgious idealogy and later had the visions. I've seen that before in some of the New Age groups. Members share some kind of vague ideas about spirituality because they rejected orthodox and conventional religious institutions. They might flint from one type of group to another for instance Spiritualists or Theosophists. Many of those are instroduced and see each other again as they make the rounds. Eventually they end up together in a group that feels comfortable.

As they become accepted members of the group (meeting in one or anothers home) they start sharing similar experiences becoming braver the more they gain accceptance. Soon all the members are sharing out of body experiences, the ablility to see halos/auras and in the proper home, the cahedral effect.

I was a member of such a group once. At one session everyone claimed to have experience the same out of body phenomenon interacting with with the "brilliant white aura" of one of the more revered members. I dampened the room by stating (and defititely a heretical act) I saw nothing much to the protest by everyone else that they saw exactly what everyone else did. Later after the meeting a couple of people told me privately they didn't actually see anything but were afraid they might not be pure enough for the experience so went along with everyone else. In questioning the others at later times I found that not one of them experienced exactly the same thing as al the tiny details were missing. Those clinging to their believe they saw something only had the one major thing in common, i.e. the white aura (because the group believed white meant purity).

Unfortunately we have no way of examining "all those Apostles" to see if their visions were the same. And we only have a few writers word for it that they did see something. And worse, they might not have existed at all.

The Bishop

Apart from the last supper, the crucifixion and the Resurrection. And that he was "born of woman". In any case, he wasn't there.
Q is defined as "the parts of Luke and Matthew that are not included in Mark". That Mark was unaware of Q seems to be a fact. It's rather unfair to criticise him for it.
He wasn't there as an eyewitness. He was interested in the life of Jesus as the fulfilment of Scripture, as was Matthew.
Is that because they weren't eyewitnesses themselves, and no serious scholar claims they were?
Dammit, why does Fox News disagree with CNN?
Because Jesus never existed. :huh:
For all we know, they did, and the writings are lost. There is a lot of argument from silence in Doherty that doesn't seem to even consider the question that there might have been other written works which we don't have any more simply because the Gospels were considered superior. Even Q is thought to have utterly disappeared once it was incorporated in more widely distributed works.
Only a problem which has taxed theologians for over 1500 years. Nevertheless, it's hard to see how it's solved by a mythical Jesus. Whether the myth was created by Mark, by Matthew, by Paul himself, it doesn't alter the fact that the difference of John is still something of a mystery.
1) there's an exception. 2) As far as the whole church was concerned, Paul included, the important event of Jesus's life was the Resurrection, and the consideration that he was alive in his Kingdom, and the promise this held out to all Christians.
Nothing written in the 2nd century is reliant on a historical Jesus, that doesn't mean there wasn't one. What does it matter what Marcion's view of Jesus was? He wasn't there, and he never met the man, nor claimed to. What were his Christian antecedents? Did he get the story from the horse's mouth? Or was he not working in a world of extant Gospel tales?

The answers I have given are not excuses, they mainly point out that those "problems" are irrelevant to whether Jesus existed or not. The Doherty-ites never acknowledge that when they say, "Oh, Paul didn't really mean James was Jesus's flesh-and-blood brother", they are the ones making excuses.

The principal problem with all these so-called "problems" is that they are all negative. "Why didn't this?" "Why not that?" You really can't do history by retro-fitting what you think ought to have happened, given a certain starting point. That lies things like <inflammatory irrelevant example removed>.

This is idle speculation! Jesus's ministry was a year or two in length, at the most. They were working towards some great possible rebellion, overthrow of the Roman oppressor and creation of a new Jewish kingdom. It all went wrong with startling suddenness over a single weekend.

Jesus didn't found the cult, by the way. Jesus didn't claim to be God, either. A.N. Wilson points out that he would probably have distinctly disapproved of the cult which did result after his death. And Paul not only would have been surprised that his epistles were considered Scripture by 300, he would have been surprised that the world still existed.

Incidentally, disjointedness of story is an indicator of the jumbled testimonies of witnesses, ie a historical basis. A fiction or myth is much more cast in stone. The Tetrateuch is the work of three different authors, but tale after tale is told and retold - in different terms, with different outlooks, but generally with the same personnel and the same basic events, such that it was the 1700s before anybody substantially noticed that there were more than one author involved.

The Bishop

Clive, what on earth has any of this to do with the subject? You've moved substantially away from apostolic testimony into how a religion survives and propagates. Nobody is denying the imaginary nature of the Jesus who is worshipped (except the Christians, of course).

The Bishop

Actually you were the one who originally called it "analysis". What happened was, I said I found Doherty inconsistent, you asked for examples, and I provided them. Then you laughed at my "analysis", when all I'd claimed to do was explain why I find them inconsistent. Of course you don't find them inconsistent, but that wasn't the question.

Your idea of "showing respect" is agreeing with everything Doherty says. I've shown him the respect of reading his work and carefully following the logic, such as it is. I've shown you the respect I was hoping to receive by not dismissively laughing at what you've posted as a result of my having moved the goal posts. I didn't "foist" anything, I was asked for something and at 3am I provided what I could. I hoped for reasonable discussion so that I could expand on what I started with.

As to showing Doherty disrespect by claiming he makes fallacious arguments, as the author of a public domain work, I don't think that's disrespectful. He is subject to criticism, and I'm sure he's open to it. I am open to criticism, and I've received it, but that's not quite the same thing as being dismissed. I still haven't seen anything substantial in refutation of the points I made, simply your assertion that I'm wrong, and a blatant appeal to authority.

For your benefit and for that of Didymus, I will here post again my summary of the inconsistencies. But this time in list format.

• The Gospels can't be relied on because they aren't attested early enough, but lets bolster the theory by referencing Q, a document which was never attested at all.
• Paul obviously saw Jesus in a vision - so all the apostles must have seen Jesus in a vision.
• Brother doesn't mean brother the way you think from reading the plain text at that one point, it can only mean what it means every single other time it's used.
• Jesus wasn't real because we can rely on 1 Timothy (a late-written Pastoral epistle) that describes him in not-real terms. On the other hand, we can't rely on 2 Timothy (another late-written Pastoral epistle) that does describe him as real because obviously it was written when the myth of a historical Jesus got going. In other words, 2 Timothy is decried for reasons that can be used, but aren't, to dismiss 1 Timothy.

I would like somebody to explain why these various positions are not either internally contradictory or inconsistent with common sense.

Incidentally, Didymus, I never claimed to "refute" Doherty, I simply pointed out areas where his "brilliant scholarship" needed a severe looking at. I may be arrogant, but I wouldn't presume to instantly be able to turn over a theory accepted by such great minds as are on this board. In fact that's why I originally kept my own comments to the minimum.

If Jesus was historical, exactly what is it that the mass hysteria is supposed to explain? I thought it was the common view of someone called Jesus in the absence of such a real personage. If it isn't, we're just talking about how the religion got started, and I'm 100% with the consensus view here of how that happened.

Geetarmoore

It is easier to believe Paul as the source of the last supper ritual, than it is to believe that he concealed the fact that he got it from a pre-existing apostolic tradition. And, if you claim that Paul 'knows' the stories of the Crucifixion and Resurrection like Mark 'knew' them, you'd be very mistaken.

The problem with all of these excuses is, if there was an actual known 'story' of the life of Christ, NONE of this stuff should be at this level of disagreement.

Q, for example, shouldn't have been multi-layered - because there wouldn't have been a constant supply of new information to add.

Another problem. If Paul didn't know Jesus, and none of the Gospels are written by people who knew Jesus, and the only account of discussion from the people who supposedly actually met Jesus is Acts, an anonymous account that could easily be (and I believe is) fiction, then - who are these stories coming from?

So, do you deny the miracles of Jesus? I'd say you can't, because as we know, you can't do history by retro-fitting what you think ought to have happened, given a certain starting point.