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Old 02-15-2009, 03:19 PM   #431
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Originally Posted by fatpie42 View Post
The problem is that, like claims about huge crowds of followers, this is clearly complete cr*p.
Were the pharisees and high priests illiterate? If not, why did such a major figure with such a huge following fail to get a mention in any of their writings? Also, perhaps more importantly, why didn't the other messiahs (who would also be claiming religious authority) get a similar treatment?
What writings? We have already gone through this. What writing of any of the Pharisees present at the time of Jesus survive?

Maybe other messiah claimants (or other religious inciters) did get this treatment, just their message didn’t preserve past their execution because they didn’t bother with the whole martyrdom angle. Maybe people who were claiming to be the messiah or any other religious figure were stoned in regularity back then, they just couldn’t get Jesus to blasphemy enough to turn the people against him. Or maybe the reason they got him and didn’t get the others like that was because he was letting them take him down.

Luke 13:34 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her!”
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Just claiming to have religious authority isn't enough to get Jesus executed and even within the gospels it is fully admitted that there were many places Jesus went where he was unable to encourage any people to follow him at all.
The claim that the high priests ordered his execution because they felt he was a threat to their authority is not only completely unsubstantiated, but completely implausible.
It’s not his claim to authority it’s the people gathering around him listening to him that is the challenge to their authority. If the people are asking who he is then the religious authority has to come up with an answer for why he isn’t the authority and they still are. If they can’t come up with an answer then they need to get rid of him to remain in power.
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You've just made your theory completely unfalsifiable. On the one hand you are saying that if there were any reason to think that Jesus did anything wrong, he would have betrayed his cause. Yet, on the other hand if there is no reason to think that Jesus did anything wrong, we are meant to suppose that 'behind the scenes' he was actively attempting to get himself arrested by the authorities.
I don’t know about it being unfalsifiable. You don’t have to do anything wrong to get the authority to come after you. Not at all. You just have to get the attention of the people and become a threat to inspire them to revolt against their rulers.

If Jesus does something too criminal then he doesn’t look like a martyr, like strapping a bomb to your chest and blowing a bunch of innocent people up, kind of defeats the purpose.
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All of it. You have no basis on which to attach any of it to 'the historical Jesus'. If you believe you have such a basis you probably should have mentioned it about 5 pages back in the discussion.
Well read the gospel of John first and get back to me if you still don’t see it. I can’t believe the martyrdom angle, the eternal life or the authority problems are all foreign to you. I’ll just assume you are playing difficult and not completely unaware of the passages.
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I'm not sceptical of everything and everyone's existence. I accept that John the Baptist existed, I accept that Pilate existed, I accept that the high priests existed, and I accept that Socrates existed. There is evidence that these people existed, but there isn't any that a historical Jesus existed. As such, it seems clear to me that many of the people of the time can be expected to have historical backing, but Jesus is not one of them.
I don’t really want to play the opposing side on their existence game even though it can be done. You use whatever criteria you want until you get the results you want. But at the end of the day your level of skepticism isn’t going to provide an alternate theory to explain the data, which is the task at hand.
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My understanding of myth is exactly the same as that of Bultmann. If you don't understand Bultmann you won't understand me. Take the kingdom of God for example. Do they actually believe in the kingdom of God? Yes they do. Is this is a historical belief? Well no, it's a spiritual belief. It is eschatological, so it refers to both an end times (which many, if not most, followers will take literally) and to their present reality. The same goes for the understanding of sin which Paul explains through consideration of the figure of Adam and the same also goes for belief in 'eternal life'. These beliefs are eschatological, spiritual and form part of a clearly mythological world view.
If I understand Bultmann we should be in agreement since he is arguing for a historical core.

I don’t know about the kingdom of god being a good example because of its multiple uses. Coming in the future is a historical belief about the future history. Now you can also use it as the kingdom is understood ideologically like Zion but it will still be occurring in history not a myth/story.

The beliefs about eternal life and sin aren’t part of mythological world view but about how they understand the physical world. Eternal life is considered the intended state of man and death is because we are in a fallen state having imitated the ways of those who came before us. Jesus’ resurrection and claim to give eternal life to those who believe on him is a way around the wages of sin, which is death. There is nothing mythological, it’s an actual plan to achieve eternal life.
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Well there's where we clearly differ. I cannot understand how you can see such a view as anything other than mythological.
Well it would be because I personally believe in both being possible. I don’t have to imagine them as referring to mythological occurrences or symbolic representations.
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I don't think you quite understand this. You claim there would have to be a real person otherwise Paul could not have come up with a myth surrounding them. However, all Paul needs to have been told about is a mythical person who he mistakes for a historical one. If I presume that Spin was wrong about Paul being the originator of the myth (as I have generally suspected), Paul came across a mythical character which was being tied in with the Jewish concept of the messiah and then came to the conclusion that this person must have been historical. It was already believed that Jesus had risen from the dead, but Paul, contrary to many of those around him, decides that Jesus' resurrection must have been historical. Does he decide to affirm this by appeal to personal testimony from mulitple sources? No, he decides to find a mythological reason why a historical resurrection is important i.e. because it enables eternal life.
I said someone could have been pulling his leg but there is no reason or evidence to believe that he was told of a mythical character he confused for historical. I don’t know what you are really suggesting happened. Someone told Paul of a mythical messiah and he went around preaching him historically and no one noticed or said “hey that is mythological character not an actual person.” Or why would he be confused in the first place? Didn’t he ask the person he was talking to or do you suggest they were just lying to him? Or is it a he found a text scenario?
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What we are talking about here, of course, is the development of the myth. What we haven't touched upon is where the historical Jesus would come in. What seems particularly implausible to me is that there was a historical Jesus who never rose from the dead who nevertheless managed to encouage a die-hard following. In such a scenario it seems like the historical Jesus would not play much more of a part than a random anecdote about an execution to get the ball rolling when forming the more extravagant myth. In which case, I wonder why we are supposed to presume that the myth had any particular historical case of an execution in mind.
That’s why the sacrifice is what I consider the historical core. It is really hard for me to believe that someone would martyr themselves after reading a story but not so hard to imagine if they are imitating someone else who did. Because I view people as sheep who imitate what they see. It’s the initial establishment of the line of martyr that spreads the faith in Jesus that is the historical core.

How does the mythical origin explain the die-hard following?
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It sounds like your protestant bias in interpretation coming to the fore again. "The ruler of this world" is clearly 'the devil'. If the devil is meant to represent the Roman authorities then that is, once again, mythological. In any case though, criticism of Rome is not the issue I was getting at.
Where do you get the ruler of the world is the devil? And how do you know the devil shouldn’t be understood rational as the ruler/s of the world. Satan and the devil are usually reserved for authority figures like Bush.

Yes I’m bias towards the Protestants in political understanding but more along the lines of the Catholics in philosophical understanding of Christ.
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All I was saying was that the use of the concept of 'first fruits' is mythological.
I’m not sure how you are using the word mythological or myth exactly or how much stuff you have it encompassing. Symbolic would be the word choice there for me and symbology can be used when describing historical events and in mythological stories.
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This is a false dichotomy. What we have to go on is the Jesus myth as recorded in the epistles and the gospels. In those books Jesus clearly has elements of both demi-god and messianic status. He cannot be claimed to be entirely one without the other.
I’m not sure about that but I’m also not sure about your understanding of pagan gods and demi-gods. Do you think the story started as a pagan god or a Jewish messiah or do you think the story how we have it now is basically what it looked like in the beginning?
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So does there have to only one guy, or could it be a variety of guys? Plenty of people were executed in Jerusalem. Can the historical Jesus be several cases of this, or does he have to be a singular individual? You see, I wouldn't take a myth based on real executions to mean that there was a real historical Jesus, but perhaps you are looking at this differently.
The guy who sacrifices his life and starts the line of martyrs. The odds of multiple people doing that are pretty slim.
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The complete lack of historical evidence. I thought I'd made this pretty clear.
That isn’t a theory at all, that is a critique on my theory’s lack of evidence. What is the theory you are presenting? No evidence is acceptable and understandable for me but not having a theory at all isn’t.

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How would you know either?
Within the gospels we are told of a man who is arrested and executed. People who are arrested and executed are not sacrificing themselves. They are being murdered formally by the state. Jesus is claimed to have been sacrificing himself because he had the power of God to prevent his execution and refrained from using it. If we are prposing a human historical figure without the power of God then, in the story we see within the NT, he did not sacrifice himself but was simply executed by the state.
You are the one who claimed he didn’t’ sacrifice himself, I’m asking how you know. If you have read the story, then you can see it is presenting him as sacrificing himself. If the story is correct, I don’t know but that is the story of Jesus. It’s his sacrifice.
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Indeed. That would be 'mythology' then....
You really need to explain your understanding of “mythology”.
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What exactly do you want me to say. Dionysos, like many mythical figures, is often described as existing within a historical context, interacting with real people, and his actions are believed to have meanings for human beings in the here and now. Where is that drastically different from the Jesus myth?
I want you to explain your understanding of pagan gods as well as you can so that I can see where you are coming from and why you are comparing them to Jesus. What is the nature of the myth and the entity described in the myth? How should we understand the nature of Dionysus and how should we understand the story in which he is presented in? Is it just a story or is there more to it?
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I don't know that there is any confusion. Dionysos was believed to be real by his followers. Believing that mythical figures were real was quite normal. I could not, for the life of me, find evidence of how the 9/11 conspiracies got started. Thing like this just have a life of their own and the same goes for myths in the first century.
Real or historical? Evidence?

Are you trying to say Jesus is now an urban legend like 9/11 conspiracy theories?
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I have a mythological story and you don't think that is enough to assert that Jesus was a myth? Have you given this any thought at all?
You are begging the question that it is a mythological story at its core and not an embellished account (with impossibilities) about a messiah claimant. We are talking about how it started not how it is presented later on down the road.
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In other words a 'mythological messiah'.
If you use the word “mythological” for everything then yea. But the “mythological” messiah still had a historical core in that scenario.
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Originally Posted by fatpie42 View Post
What I said was that some messiahs around Jesus' time (i.e. failed messiahs of course) claimed that they would perform a huge miracle. One based their miracle on Moses and the other based their miracle on Joshua. I never meant to say that Moses or Joshua were messiahs. My point was that people such as 'the Egyptian' claiming to be the messiah around Jesus' time did claim that they could perform magic tricks of a kind. That's all I was saying.
By your reasoning shouldn't all magical accounts be considered mythical tales? Or is something else going on with Jesus you think?
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Old 02-15-2009, 03:24 PM   #432
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Originally Posted by arnoldo View Post

Vernard Eller goes into great depth about this concept of "revererse fighting" in his book War and Peace: From Genesis to Revelation (or via: amazon.co.uk) which was commented in the following post. Also the following source gives a good interpretation of this concept as well.
Thanks! You're on top of it.

"Reverse fighting", I will try to remember to call it that and see how that works.
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Maybe the comment "he spat in peoples [sic]eyes" is meant to be an appeal to ridicule? :huh:
Maybe, but I think it's more that he just has a ridiculous understanding of the passage. I think he believes it's implying that Jesus had superpowered spit and not that the man only needed the faith to see in order to do so. Superpowered spit can only come from a mythical character in a mythical story so case closed.
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Old 02-15-2009, 03:57 PM   #433
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Maybe, but I think it's more that he just has a ridiculous understanding of the passage. I think he believes it's implying that Jesus had superpowered spit and not that the man only needed the faith to see in order to do so. Superpowered spit can only come from a mythical character in a mythical story so case closed.

Now, look at the passage and you will see it is you who refuse to accept that the authors wrote ridiculous things about Jesus and his spit

Mark 8:22-26 -
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22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him.

23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.

24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking.

25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.

26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
I do not make up stories about Jesus like you.

All the ridiculous stories about Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, are in the NT, the church writings and the non-canonised.

And you believe Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, did some of them.

You believe that Jesus, born without sexual union, did exist.
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Old 02-15-2009, 04:05 PM   #434
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Now, look at the passage and you will see it is you who refuse to accept that the authors wrote ridiculous things about Jesus and his spit
Guess I was right. He really does believe it's about superpowered spit.
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Old 02-15-2009, 04:12 PM   #435
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Now, look at the passage and you will see it is you who refuse to accept that the authors wrote ridiculous things about Jesus and his spit
Um, I'd actually say that this was in support of a historical Jesus. *gulp*

Using spit is just a more extravagant (and yes hygienic) form of the sort of faith healing we see in figures like Benny Hinn today. That Jesus acts like you'd expect a magician to act during the period may not prove that Jesus was based on a historical person, but it certainly doesn't count against that idea.

I thought you were on a better line of argument when you said that such actions were out of character for a messiah. You seem to be taking this argument in a distinctly less convincing direction now though.
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Old 02-15-2009, 04:50 PM   #436
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Maybe other messiah claimants (or other religious inciters) did get this treatment, just their message didn’t preserve past their execution because they didn’t bother with the whole martyrdom angle.
You seem to be overlooking the major issue that figures like the Egyptian were considered more worthy of mention than Jesus. Even if we were to presume that Josephus really mentioned Jesus we'd still be left confused as to why he fails to mention any events in Jesus' life when he writes all this about The Egyptian prophet:
http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah...aimants09.html

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
It’s not his claim to authority it’s the people gathering around him listening to him that is the challenge to their authority. If the people are asking who he is then the religious authority has to come up with an answer for why he isn’t the authority and they still are. If they can’t come up with an answer then they need to get rid of him to remain in power.
Why would the high priests see Jesus as a challenge to their authority? Asides from the belief that Jesus was God incarnate, there aren't really any ideas from Jesus mentioned in the NT which would be seen as terribly radical.

Your argument for the historical Jesus relies on the idea that Jesus was a man-god being a later addition, so what are the high priests supposed to be so upset about?

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
I don’t know about it being unfalsifiable. You don’t have to do anything wrong to get the authority to come after you. Not at all. You just have to get the attention of the people and become a threat to inspire them to revolt against their rulers.
So since Jesus does not appear to have got very much attention during his lifetime, why would anyone have considered him a threat?

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
Well read the gospel of John first and get back to me if you still don’t see it. I can’t believe the martyrdom angle, the eternal life or the authority problems are all foreign to you. I’ll just assume you are playing difficult and not completely unaware of the passages.
The gospel of John was the last gospel to be written so I don't see why you think it's going to give clues to any historical origins. In any case my complaint remains the same. You have no basis on which to attach any of these ideas to the historical Jesus. In fact you have no basis on which to attach anything to a historical Jesus, but particularly something as mythological as the concept of 'eternal life'.

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
If I understand Bultmann we should be in agreement since he is arguing for a historical core.
Well no, I don't think you do understand. Bultmann's method is to rule out anything mythological, not to rule in anything historical. Since you still don't seem to understand why I am referring to elements of the NT as mythological, you clearly don't understand Bultmann.

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
How does the mythical origin explain the die-hard following?
I fail to see how a historical origin explains it any better. The main tenet we see in the writings about Jesus is not his death, but his resurrection. If you seriously don't think of this as mythological, then are you suggesting that the die hard following is because someone really came back from the dead?

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
Where do you get the ruler of the world is the devil?
It's a common interpretation by Biblical scholars.

I'm seriously getting bored now. I thought this debate was going to reveal something I didn't know already, but all I'm discovering his how little you know about this subject.
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Old 02-15-2009, 05:25 PM   #437
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You seem to be overlooking the major issue that figures like the Egyptian were considered more worthy of mention than Jesus. Even if we were to presume that Josephus really mentioned Jesus we'd still be left confused as to why he fails to mention any events in Jesus' life when he writes all this about The Egyptian prophet:
You keep going back to this “there should be more evidence” angle. What historically possible event do you think should have been obviously mentioned in the text?
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Why would the high priests see Jesus as a challenge to their authority? Asides from the belief that Jesus was God incarnate, there aren't really any ideas from Jesus mentioned in the NT which would be seen as terribly radical.
Your argument for the historical Jesus relies on the idea that Jesus was a man-god being a later addition, so what are the high priests supposed to be so upset about?
The crowds as I already said. The people make him a threat. If you can draw a crowd it’s a real easy step to raising an army. Why are you having such a hard time seeing the authority being threatened by a working class prophet/teacher/messiah claimant?
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So since Jesus does not appear to have got very much attention during his lifetime, why would anyone have considered him a threat?
Jesus doesn’t appear to have gotten much attention because of the very limited amount of texts that remain from that time and area. You don’t have the evidence to say that Jesus didn’t appear to get much attention. You don’t have a single text from the time of a person that should have mentioned him. And again it was the crowds giving him popularity and making him a threat to the status quo. Drawing a crowd makes you a threat but isn’t worth mentioning in historical accounts.
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The gospel of John was the last gospel to be written so I don't see why you think it's going to give clues to any historical origins. In any case my complaint remains the same. You have no basis on which to attach any of these ideas to the historical Jesus. In fact you have no basis on which to attach anything to a historical Jesus, but particularly something as mythological as the concept of 'eternal life'.
John being last is just a theory. I don’t think we are talking about his origins but his/their ideology here. Either way read John for an understanding and we’ll go to the epistles and see if the belief was there early.
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Well no, I don't think you do understand. Bultmann's method is to rule out anything mythological, not to rule in anything historical. Since you still don't seem to understand why I am referring to elements of the NT as mythological, you clearly don't understand Bultmann.
I don’t have a problem recognizing symbolic/mythical representation in texts. What understanding of his do you have that gets you to a mythical origin if his own understanding of his own method didn’t do the same?
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I fail to see how a historical origin explains it any better. The main tenet we see in the writings about Jesus is not his death, but his resurrection. If you seriously don't think of this as mythological, then are you suggesting that the die hard following is because someone really came back from the dead?
It’s one thing for a person to see someone sacrifice themselves and imitate that sacrifice because the person did it claiming that there would be a reward and it’s another thing to do it after reading/hearing a story. When does the line of martyrs start in your theory and with who?

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It's a common interpretation by Biblical scholars.
Just because it’s a common interpretation doesn’t mean it is correct.

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I'm seriously getting bored now. I thought this debate was going to reveal something I didn't know already, but all I'm discovering his how little you know about this subject.
Completely understandable. This was an attempt to compare hypothesis and if you don’t have a hypothesis to compare and are only going to point out that there is a lack of evidence for a historical core there is only so much that can be discussed.
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Old 02-15-2009, 05:45 PM   #438
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Now, look at the passage and you will see it is you who refuse to accept that the authors wrote ridiculous things about Jesus and his spit
Um, I'd actually say that this was in support of a historical Jesus. *gulp*

Using spit is just a more extravagant (and yes hygienic) form of the sort of faith healing we see in figures like Benny Hinn today. That Jesus acts like you'd expect a magician to act during the period may not prove that Jesus was based on a historical person, but it certainly doesn't count against that idea.

I thought you were on a better line of argument when you said that such actions were out of character for a messiah. You seem to be taking this argument in a distinctly less convincing direction now though.
How can a ridiculous story about Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, spitting into someone's eyes make the creature historical?

Are you claiming that anything in the NT that appears to be plausible is an historical event?

For Jesus to be regarded as historical there must be credible historical evidence of Jesus external of apologetic sources which no-one has been able to find.

In any fiction story there are events that may appear plausible.
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Old 02-15-2009, 05:58 PM   #439
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This was an attempt to compare hypothesis and if you don’t have a hypothesis to compare and are only going to point out that there is a lack of evidence for a historical core there is only so much that can be discussed.
You seem to think that an hypothesis is derived from guessing or making stuff up.

You need historical evidence to support an historical Jesus. It is absurd to claim Jesus had an historical core and yet cannot show the evidence for it.

The evidence, the written statements of the NT, church writers and non-canonised writings all support a mythical creature. And there are only forgeries about Jesus found in Josephus where it is claimed he rose from the dead.

Jesus, the offspring of the Holy Ghost, has a mythical core.
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Old 02-15-2009, 07:02 PM   #440
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You keep going back to this “there should be more evidence” angle. What historically possible event do you think should have been obviously mentioned in the text?
You keep asking me what historical evidence I expect. You seem to have forgotten that I don't expect any historical evidence. I find it amazing that you can claim that Jesus has historical origins without any historical evidence.

As I said before, my view is that Jesus is mythical and the huge amount of evidence in favour of this view makes it fairly uncontroversial. I know there's always the possibility that Jesus is based on a historical figure, but without evidence for it, why propose it?

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The crowds as I already said. The people make him a threat. If you can draw a crowd it’s a real easy step to raising an army.
But you have no evidence that there even were any crowds. Once again you are presuming too much without first giving good reasons. On what basis can you say it is reliable to think that Jesus had a huge crowd of followers when there is no historical evidence for it and good reason to imagine that, when the gospels were written, believers would want to over-estimate Jesus' following?

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
Jesus doesn’t appear to have gotten much attention because of the very limited amount of texts that remain from that time and area. You don’t have the evidence to say that Jesus didn’t appear to get much attention.
I have the evidence to say that The Egyptian and John the Baptist both got attention while Jesus did not. If that doesn't translate to 'Jesus didn't get much attention' you are going to have to explain that to me.

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
John being last is just a theory.
It's widely accepted and a quick look at wikipedia shows why:
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The Alogi, a 2nd-century heretical sect that denied the doctrine of the Logos, ascribed this gospel, as well as Revelation, to the Gnostic heretic Cerinthus. Irenaeus, on the other hand, asserted that John wrote his gospel to refute Cerinthus.
If either view is at all reliable it would mean that John would have to be written quite late on.

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
I don’t think we are talking about his origins but his/their ideology here.
You're trying to avoid later additions, right? So that's why I thought you'd want to stick with earlier accounts.

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Originally Posted by Elijah View Post
I don’t have a problem recognizing symbolic/mythical representation in texts. What understanding of his do you have that gets you to a mythical origin if his own understanding of his own method didn’t do the same?
Look it's quite simple. Bultmann rules out everything which he thinks is mythological and pretty much finds that nothing is left asides from the crucifixion. If practically everything in the NT is mythological and there's no historical evidence to back up any of it, why on earth should I suppose that there was a historical origin?

You claimed earlier that Bultmann believes there is a historical core. Bultmann never says anything of the sort. He consoles fellow Christian readers with his assertion that he is not ruling out Jesus' historicity, but failing to rule it out isn't the same as ruling it in.

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It’s one thing for a person to see someone sacrifice themselves and imitate that sacrifice because the person did it claiming that there would be a reward and it’s another thing to do it after reading/hearing a story. When does the line of martyrs start in your theory and with who?
Most martyrs would never have seen a historical Jesus, even if there was one. As such, they could only possibly have heard about him through word of mouth. If hearing about Jesus through word of mouth were not enough, there would not have been many martyrs.

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Just because it’s a common interpretation doesn’t mean it is correct.
Yes, but your response to this interpretation appeared to completely ignore the way the concept of 'the devil' developed. The idea of the devil being identified with evil political figures had not developed yet. The devil in the NT is a being who is employed by God to test mankind. The idea of the devil as pure evil had not yet developed.
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