spin

There is nothing ridiculous about asking you to justify your claims. It is simply good practice and you need to be able to do it if you want to claim anything and be listened to. It's the way that formal communication works. Anyone should be able to hear what you say and ask questions if they feel that what you say needs elucidation. How does one know that you are not just speaking through your hat if you won't justify your claims?

aa5874

Just re-read my post. The method of healing by Jesus has not been accepted universallyby the Medical Fraternity. Seewww.wrongdiagnosis.com/ or the World Health Organisation www.who.int/en/.

spin

Just re-read jgibson000's post and deal with the questions, rather than blandly dismissing what someone has taken the time to say to you about your thoughts. (That's all I was saying, nothing more.)

rlogan

look, Chris - the vast majority of this exchange has no productive use.

I'm putting you on ignore because there isn't really any point in cluttering threads up with sniping.

I took your challenge to me on the James passage as indicative of your belief in a reference to Christians.

If I understand you now, you are agreeing with me that there is no evidence in Josephus for Christianity - and that you don't think there should be any.

You have moved the goalposts from your initial assertion that he wrote only about "prominent" Jewish groups when shown evidence to the contrary, and now demand even more evidence as if the first were not sufficient to disprove your false claim.

You made a false claim, and that's that. Honest iquiry requires admission as opposed to tedious sophomoric games.

If I did not understand your position on Josephus, then I happily correct it. I don't need to go back like some coy little girl trying to say "see, see what you said here..." to continue sniping when you say I have misunderstood.

I don't care much what you think. There are plenty of people here that have some actual skills and are not blind to the obvious problems in relying on the bible as "history".

Take care, but that's it insofar as any further discussion with you.

aa5874

Blindness, epilepsy, deafness, being dumb are not caused by evil spirits, that is universally accepted by the Medical Fraternity.

See Mark 9:13, '...Master I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit.
See www.wrongdiagnosis.com/

Mark 9:18, 'And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth and gnaseth with his teeth, and pineth away; and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.
See www.wrongdiagnosis.com/

Mark 9:20, ' ...and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.
See www.wrongdiagnosis.com/

Mark 9:22, 'And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the fire, to destroy him....
See www.wrongdiagnosis.com/

Mark 9:25-26, 'When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him and enter no more into him.
And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out him, and he was as one dead....

See www.wrongdiagnosis.com/
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hippocrates.htm
www.ama-assn.org/
www.who.int/en/

Writings in the Bible has been universally rejected. Jesus appears to be a quack.

spin

Why tell me?

Solo

Allegedly ? You can't be serious !

Are you sure about this, Jeffrey ? I am not aware that any of the great physicians of antiquity were priests: Hippocrates wasn't one, Galen wasn't one, Celsus wasn't one, Asclepiades wasn't one (he was the major anti-Hippocratic voice, but philosophically a materialist too, close to Democritus), Soranus wasn't one, Dioscurides wasn't one. Now, the only one of any stature that I am aware being even remotely associated with a religious cult (and it has been disputed ) was Aretaeus Kappados. Can you shed some light on this ? Just so we don't go from being "pat and anachronistic" to "pat and overly generalized".

Can you provide one example of a major physician of antiquity who challenged Hippocrates' medical view that epilepsy had natural origins ? I would be much obliged for such a reference.

Jiri

jgibson000

Well this is interesting. We started off with the claim on your part that a "number of [the writings in the Bible] are already universally declared as fraudulent".

Then you shifted what you were claiming to "the writings in Mark 9 are universally rejected by the Medical Fraternity" because they conflict with the notion, advanced originally by Hippocrates, that epilepsy had a natural and not a supernatural cause .

Now it's "Jesus was a quack" because "the method of healing by Jesus has not been accepted universallyby [sic] the Medical Fraternity" (but not so by the Medical Sorority? are there no women doctors?)

So what is it you are arguing?

In any case, it should be noted that if, as you seem to be wanting to say, the criterion to be used to determine whether or not a corpus of writings is to be declared "fraudulent" is the universal rejection by the modern medical community of the particular method of healing recommended or believed in or accepted as true in a corpus of writings, then, unless you work from a double standard, you are bound by your own logic to say that all of Hippocrates' writings must also be declared "fraudulent" (and that Hippocrates was a "quack").

For as JAMES LONGRIGG, formerly Reader in Ancient Philosophy & Science, University of Newcastle, has noted in his article "Epilepsy in ancient Greek medicine—the vital step" (Seizure 2000; 9: 12–21)

...although in the opening chapter of Sacred Disease [Hippocrates] criticizes his opponents for ‘pretending to have superior knowledge about what causes and what cures disease’, he is himself susceptible to this same charge, since the particular treatment recommended by him, dietetic control of temperature and humidity, in fact afforded no greater possibility of cure. While his establishment of a naturalistic basis for the understanding of madness and his rejection of any reference to the divine or demonic marks a release from one sort of mystification, he achieves this at the cost of the substitution of another. His manifest confidence that salutary effects are to be derived from the antibilious or antiphlegmatic diet he recommends is itself clearly a matter of faith. [emphasis mine]

JG