Tom Sawyer

This is what I've been saying. Your posts do not take the content of my posts into account when you respond to them.

aa5874

No, No, No!!!! You are the one who wrote "Ummm ... ya?"

Please IDENTIFY your source of antiquity that show, " Over the years, various attributes were assigned to that personification and stories about him invented and you've eventually got a whole mythology".

You MUST provide the actual dated evidence for your claims or else your conversation is separate and unrelated to HJ argument.

Tom Sawyer

Yes, that's why taking one individual sentence out of context with the matter in which it's presented and attempting to portrary that as the argument being made is not only not only not considered to be a valid debate style, but also only ever used to portray a gross misrepresentation of what they other poster is saying, such as in this current case, and is something that should be avoided since it never does anything but create a strawman position that's unrelated to anything that anyone is actually arguing.

That statement was in response to a hypothetical supposition of IF there was a historical Jesus, not saying that I had the position that there was one.

I'm still curious how it is that you feel that the definition of "baseless guess" is "a position I have concluded is backed up by well-documented evidence". That would be the main stumbling point I'd have with your argument against whomever it is that you're arguing against.

Toto

Another poster under the illusion that it is possible to have a productive discussion with aa5874 . . . What are we to do?

Horatio Parker

If you're talking history then yes history matters. If you're talking theology, history matters not at all.

Much of the relationship between OT narratives and events are unknown; how we can be sure that NT will fare better.

But I agree in the sense that only if MJ predominates will enough energy be focused on these questions.

Horatio Parker

Scroll.

Riding the aa merry go round is a FRDB rite of passage, God Bless him(which in no way is intended as a reflection on the many excellent if less idiosyncratic minds here).

Adam

Even assuming aa's continued misunderstanding of Tom Sawyer gets split off as a digression....
I'm not making much progress on this thread. No one wants to be the first to admit that the Passion Narrative in the Johannine source may be an excellent record of what actually happened. In the spirit of my concession above, what if we take for the sake of argument that something like the Passion Narrative really occurred? Suppose there was someone we will call Jesus who so offended the chief priests that they seized him at night that they convicted him, and got the Romans to flog him and execute him. Add in per the above that Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem also occurred. Assuming these hypotheticals, what other source documents in the gospels would fit to explain why Jesus acted the way he did? The Synoptics show us that Jesus had a very exalted opinion of himself, but it's always a mystery to his disciples. If we look instead at gJohn, we find chapter after chapter of teachings that jibe with a Jesus who would march in as the Messiah, turning out the moneychangers in the temple, and challenging all authority. Of course, that's obvious enough from the Synoptics as well, but in gJohn we get an underlying document in which we discover its origin, observe its procedure, but discover it viewpoint changes and its manner of recording changes.

My thesis regarding the Johannine discourses is that the core of it derives from a brief for a court case against Jesus. We know that a trial did come about, so it is to be expected that some written preparation for this was made. As I wrote in Post #38 of Gospel Eyewitnesses

Since these were notes for a court case, the sayings quoted by the prosecution cannot be trusted as a fair representation of Jesus's views. A lot of it is unpleasant, getting dismissed by some as anti-Semitic even though it appears directed only at the church authorities in Jerusalem. FRDB is neither Fundamentalists deriving theology nor the Jesus Seminar trying to find a liberal view of Jesus, so prideful polemics from Jesus don't need to be filtered out. Whatever Jesus is recorded as saying is not of ultimate importance, which is important is uncovering records that get us nearer to the living Jesus, providing evidence that we do know much about him after all.

We wind up finding that accepting the Passion Narrative as historical would be a domino falling that imply acceptance of the Johannine discourses as well. The problem is that much of Christian theology is based on these discourses. Those this is irrelevant for Atheism, this would not be welcome for those here whose purpose is more anti-Christianity than pro-Atheism. Jesus mythicism offers a safer refuge. Thus it is safer to reject any evidence that there could be eyewitnesses to Jesus.

steve_bnk

Views of Jesus

If you are a slave be good one
No divorce
Someone hits you, turn the other cheek
Some one asks for your cloak, add your shirt
No fornication
Blessedeare the peaemakers
The meek shall inherit the Earth
If you lust with your eye, you have sinned.

aa5874

You must have forgotten that your posts are recorded.

Examine your own words.

This is the Massive problem I am having with you and others on these threads. You say one thing at one time and then another at another time.

Why are you blatantly mis-representing your own self and think nobody knows what you are doing???

You MUST take responsibility for what you say. If you can't even accept your own words then it MAKES NO sense to post on BC&H.

Tom Sawyer

Right. You know, it would have been really convenient if I had provided the answer to what you're saying immediately after that in the part which you then decided not to quote.

:huh: