Diogenes the Cynic

We already do know there was a pre-Pauline movement which disappeared and left no records.

Toto

How do we know this? Paul refers to The Way - were these people recognizably Christians? Did they bear any relation to a historical Jesus?

outhouse

he is not qualified to analyze the documents we have.

scholars do this. we dont lol

Toto

Why not? He reads them in the original language. Are religious texts reserved for a high priesthood???

Speak for yourself.

Please stop adding lol to your posts. No one else is laughing. At least no one is laughing with you.

Diogenes the Cynic

I would say almost certainly not to the first question (though we have no record of what they actually thought, we can divine from Paul himself that they were still obedient to Jewish law and demanded that converts get snipped, so that implies that they did not recognize a "new covenant," and did not think their sins had been redeemed). The answer to the second question is probably (but not dispositively) yes, depending on how you define "Historical Jesus," but that's really germane to the fact that a movement a.) predated Paul, and b.) left no extant documentation as to what they believed.

We know there was something before Paul, but we don't know exactly what it was. The post-Pauline literature (i.e. the New Testament) is disconnected from the original movement. The authors of the Gospels knew little or nothing about their subject's real "history," but that doesn't mean the person they were trying to write about never existed, only that they didn't know anything about him.

aa5874

You keep on repeating what you BELIEVE and do NOT provide any actual corroboration for Paul and the Pauline writings.

We cannot allow you to DICTATE your imagination as evidence.

Please show that the Pauline writings were composed BEFORE C 70 CE and that they are historically accurate???

Once you have LITTLE or NO evidence for your Jesus then you cannot argue for an historical Jesus.

It is that simple.

Whether or NOT Jesus existed there is NO DATA to allow you to argue for an HJ.

An HJ cannot ever be recovered.

An HJ is UKNOWN to history, UNKNOWN to the Jesus cult of antiquity and unknown to the ancient Skeptics.

Sheshbazzar

Q. How can anyone write anything about someone they don't know anything about?
A. Make up shit.

Q. Does a person whom everything that is known of, is made up of shit, really exist?
A. Well, if one is a bloody christer, one can believe any made up shit.

Or one can be a carrier infected with the Zombie Jeebus shit-for-brains disease.

Grog

And this brings up an interesting dichotomy.

On the one hand, our earliest Christian sources show a general lack of interest in the details of the Life of Jesus. The very inner circle referred to by Paul seems to have left not trace and "we don't know what the original movement though."

On the other hand, we have fragments of original stories passed on by oral tradition that are embedded in our Gospels. Stories originally told in Aramaic that preserve actual words and deeds of Jesus.

Isn't this a case of having your cake and eating it too? How is it plausible that we have this very active oral tradition about the teachings of Jesus and yet the earliest sources preserve nothing from it?

The HJ theory is fatally and fundamentally flawed. It recedes beyond the event horizon to a point of, as Toto said, unfalsifiability. It is not a viable theory.

The hypothesis (and I don't like "Jesus Myth" or "MJ" as terms) that the idea of Jesus evolved out of pre-existing is falsifiable, easily so. Just as evolution could be falsified or at least substantially undermined by a discovery of an organism out of sequence, unexplainable by what we know of geologic processes, so, too could the idea that Jesus did not exist be falsified by just such a discovery. For example, we could find an early graffito that clearly references a crucifixion event under Pilate from the 40's or so. Instead we find things like this from the second century. Or the the Alexamenos graffito from the third century (probably). A good prediction is that we will not find anything that nullifies the "MJ" hypothesis, but if we did, then we would have to rethink what we belive.

To compensate for a weak theory, HJ proponents have to engage in cognitive dissonance: early christians were not interested in regurgitating teaching of Jesus or details of his life. Yet, all that material was preserved in oral tradition.

aa5874

If there are NO records of a Pre-Pauline movement then you DON'T know what you are talking about.

These are the repeated contradictions that you continue to spout.

You have failed to establish the veracity , historical accuracy and time of writing of the Pauline writings yet are continue to PRESUME your own history.

You can NO longer Dictate history by PRESUMPTIONS about Paul and the Pauline writings.

You were to FIRST establish and provide credible sources of antiquity to support your claims about Paul and the Pauline writings but you have failed to live up to your obligation.

The Pauline writers were NOT Silent about their Jesus. They claimed he was the Son of God.

Godfrey

Very true. We should never forget the real level of "certainty" here...