Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 06-07-2010, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

I contest mythicism for reasons of enlightened self-interest. An accurate approach to Christ is necessary for the well-being of human culture. The persistent tendency to de-Judaize Christ is a significant threat to the values and stability of civilization. This was most obvious in the early part of the twentieth century, with the rise of theories about Christ being an 'Aryan'. Many Jewish voices were raised against this distorted pseudo-scholarship. Notable among those voices was that of Rabbi Stephen Wise. On December 20 1925, Wise delivered a sermon in which he exclaimed, 'Jesus was not only a Jew, but he was the Jew, the Jew of Jews.'....

But, isn't this all emotion. In the Gospels even the disciples of Jesus ran away when he was arrested and Peter denied that he ever knew Jesus or was a follower of Jesus, not once, but three times.

And in the very Gospel story, if Jesus was just a Jewish man, then he was guilty of blasphemy by claiming to be the son of the Blessed and would come back sitting on the right hand of Power in the presence of the Sanhedrin.

It is only for emotional reasons one can claim that Jesus as just a Jewish man was a Jew of Jews without his DIVINITY.

Without being emotional simply remove all the supernatural events, conception, miracles, and resurrection and ascension from the Jesus story and you are left with a Blasphemer who was lucky to have a trial.

Chaucer · 06-07-2010, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Without being emotional simply remove all the supernatural events, conception, miracles, and resurrection and ascension from the Jesus story and you are left with a Blasphemer who was lucky to have a trial.

Thanks. That's exactly what I've done already, as have thousands of skeptics before me. And since the passages that crop up the most often in the various texts are the same straightforward philosophical sayings while the passages that turn up the least often are the fanciful miracles like the miracle conception story and so on that are sometimes extant in no more than one or two places(!), it's not at all hard to do that. Jesus is an eccentric thinker and a blasphemer who was lucky to have a trial at all before his inevitable execution and whose biography acquired fanciful accretions after his death.

Chaucer

aa5874 · 06-07-2010, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaucer

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Without being emotional simply remove all the supernatural events, conception, miracles, and resurrection and ascension from the Jesus story and you are left with a Blasphemer who was lucky to have a trial.

Thanks. That's exactly what I've done already, as have thousands of skeptics before me. And since the passages that crop up the most often in the various texts are the same straightforward philosophical sayings while the passages that turn up the least often are the fanciful miracles like the miracle conception story and so on that are sometimes extant in no more than one or two places(!), it's not at all hard to do that. Jesus is an eccentric thinker and a blasphemer who was lucky to have a trial at all before his inevitable execution and whose biography acquired fanciful accretions after his death.

But, that's all emotion.

The Jesus stories have been written. They are cast in stone. It was the supposed actual resurrection of Jesus that made the difference.

The stories are there for you to read without any emotional attachment.

The authors of the Jesus stories did not claim or write that there were rumors that Jesus was resurrected and that the disciples simply believed the rumors.

In the short ending of gMark, they were terrified when they did not see the body and FLED.

And some wrote that the disciples were in a house SHUT TIGHT and Jesus walked straight through.

So from the Jesus story itself, putting emotion aside, even if the early short ending of gMark is used, we have a badly shaken up demoralised Jesus cult, some who have FLED when Jesus was arrested, one who completely Denied and dis-owned Jesus and those who trembled with fear when they could not even locate the body of Jesus.

Let's not get emotional.

There were NO FANCIFUL accretions after his death.

Look at the story in gMark 16.8.

Quote:

8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

They NEVER said a thing to a soul. There were NO FANCY accretions.

They were lying, running, hiding, and trembling.

No Robots · 06-07-2010, 08:03 PM

You would do well to harken to that most dispassionate man, Spinoza:

I have taken miracles and ignorance as equivalent terms, because those, who endeavour to establish God's existence and the truth of religion by means of miracles, seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure and completely unknown, thus introducing a new sort of argument, the reduction, not to the impossible, as the phrase is, but to ignorance. But, if I mistake not, I have sufficiently explained my opinion on miracles in the Theologico-Political treatise. I will only add here, that if you will reflect on the facts; that Christ did not appear to the council, nor to Pilate, nor to any unbeliever, but only to the faithful,; also that God has neither right hand nor left, but is by His essence not in a particular spot, but everywhere; that matter is everywhere the same; that God does not manifest himself in the imaginary space supposed to be outside the world; and lastly, that the frame of the human body is kept within due limits solely by the weight of the air; you will readily see that this apparition of Christ is not unlike that wherewith God appeared to Abraham, when the latter saw men whom he invited to dine with him. But, you will say, all the Apostles thoroughly believed, that Christ rose from the dead and really ascended to heaven: I do not deny it. Abraham, too, believed that God had dined with him, and all the Israelites believed that God descended, surrounded with fire, from heaven to Mount Sinai, and there spoke directly with them; whereas, these apparitions or revelations, and many others like them, were adapted to the understanding and opinions of those men, to whom God wished thereby to reveal His will. I therefore conclude, that the resurrection of Christ from the dead was in reality spiritual, and that to the faithful alone, according to their understanding, it was revealed that Christ was endowed with eternity, and had risen from the dead (using dead in the sense in which Christ said, "let the dead bury their dead "), giving by His life and death a matchless example of holiness. Moreover, He to this extent raises his disciples from the dead, in so far as they follow the example of His own life and death. It would not be difficult to explain the whole Gospel doctrine on this hypothesis. Nay, 1 Cor. ch. 15. cannot be explained on any other, nor can Paul's arguments be understood: if we follow the common interpretation, they appear weak and can easily be refuted: not to mention the fact, that Christians interpret spiritually all those doctrines which the Jews accepted literally.--Letter 23 (75) Spinoza to Oldenburg.

bacht · 06-08-2010, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

Do you accept the idea that the Deuteronomic reform was a top-down imposition of monolatry on a previously polytheistic culture?

Possibly. I’m by no means an expert on the subject. Here’s what Constantin Brunner has to say on the matter:

Paganism had been entirely destroyed by Judaism as it had developed since the days of Ezra, by Pharisaic, rationalist Judaism. The ability to absorb pagan elements was extinct in the Jews of that time; all pagan thoughts were weeded out and their roots destroyed.

Brunner goes on to speculate that Ezra also suppressed much of the prophetic/mystical elements of Judaism.

Quote:

It's one way a new deity could have re-entered Judaism two millenia ago, an underground eruption so to speak.

Are you saying that polytheism persisted underground within Judaism? In light of Brunner’s statement, I don’t think so, no.

Early on we see a High Christology, where Christ is called “Lord,” the word reserved for Jahve. This is a mark of the enthusiasm with which the earliest Christians exalted Christ. But all this takes place within Judaism. As Brunner puts it:

So Paul put forward this Christ against the whole of pharisaic Judaism, as the real fulfillment of Judaism against a Judaism gone astray, as blessing against damnation. Henceforth he knew no other love but love for this true Judaism through his love for Christ. For him, Christ was "in the place of God." Thus—and here we are faced with the immensity of his overflowing enthusiasm and his unprecedented revolutionary daring, at the very heart of the problem—he applied the name "Lord," which the Jews used instead of the word Jahve, to Christ (1 Cor. 8:6; and the Pauline Gospel of Luke follows him in this); thus he calls himself "a prisoner in Christ" (Eph. 4:1) and was obliged to say: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." As far as the other Jews were concerned, this made him no longer a Jew, since he was no longer a pharisaic Jew; as far as he himself was concerned, however, in the depths of his conscience, it made him a proper Jew for the first time.

The fact is that we have a case where a man is fit into an existing framework of spiritual thought. That he fits that framework so well is most wonderful. The framework without the man, however, is just sad, a pathetic sidenote to history.

Yes, the current historical consensus seems to be that Ezra cemented the monotheism instituted by Josiah and the former prophets. The challenge of Hellenism from the 3rd C bce onward may have cracked whatever conformity existed in Persian times. The treatment of the Pharisees in the gospels does lend support to Barker's idea that early Jewish-Christians were open to quasi-polytheism, if we assume the Pharisees were the guardians of Ezra's system.

As for "Paul versus the Pharisees" I don't see much point in exploring the idea. We don't even know if Paul was a Jew, and his letters may have been written decades after the first revolt, when Phariseeism evolved into Rabbinic Judaism. Pharisees are straw-men in the gospels, portrayed negatively, when in fact they seem to have been closest to the ordinary people of Palestine. Their roots in Maccabean Hasidism and their resistance against the later Hasmoneans probably gave them credibility with the masses.

No Robots · 06-08-2010, 02:49 PM

The question of the connection between Gnosticism, Christianity and Judaism is a fascinating one, and is still under active inquiry. Those interested in the subject may want to look at Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, by Birger A. Pearson. Pearson’s summary of an earlier work, Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, by Moriz Friedländer, makes clear that Christ was adopted into Gnosticism, and not created by it:

Christian Gnosticism is simply a secondary version of the older Gnosticism, which attached itself to the emergent Christian sect and appropriated for itself the figure of Jesus Christ.--p.11

Gnosticism was a movement within Judaism that found in Christ a perfect exemplar of its own spiritual thought-realm, and quickly reformulated itself around him. This movement ultimately failed due to its own inadequacies and pressure from the emerging Gentile Christian orthodoxy.

What may appear to be polytheism among the Gnostics is in reality an expression of the principle of the distinction between the two kinds of thought: hylic and pneuma, the material and the spiritual.

bacht · 06-09-2010, 10:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

The question of the connection between Gnosticism, Christianity and Judaism is a fascinating one, and is still under active inquiry. Those interested in the subject may want to look at Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, by Birger A. Pearson. Pearson’s summary of an earlier work, Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, by Moriz Friedländer, makes clear that Christ was adopted into Gnosticism, and not created by it:

Christian Gnosticism is simply a secondary version of the older Gnosticism, which attached itself to the emergent Christian sect and appropriated for itself the figure of Jesus Christ.--p.11

Gnosticism was a movement within Judaism that found in Christ a perfect exemplar of its own spiritual thought-realm, and quickly reformulated itself around him. This movement ultimately failed due to its own inadequacies and pressure from the emerging Gentile Christian orthodoxy.

What may appear to be polytheism among the Gnostics is in reality an expression of the principle of the distinction between the two kinds of thought: hylic and pneuma, the material and the spiritual.

I know you like to inject philosophy into these old belief systems, but it really isn't necessary afaics. I mean, if the gnostics saw themselves as some of kind of elite, a group with special secret knowledge, we don't have to posit a philosophical content to their ideas (Philo's friends seem like better candidates for this). They seemed to be more interested in eschatology, angelology etc.

I don't see why Pearson should be confident that we understand the dynamics of the time (1st-2nd C). If he's following the orthodox Christian story and dating I can't give him much credence.

No Robots · 06-09-2010, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

I know you like to inject philosophy into these old belief systems, but it really isn't necessary afaics. I mean, if the gnostics saw themselves as some of kind of elite, a group with special secret knowledge, we don't have to posit a philosophical content to their ideas (Philo's friends seem like better candidates for this). They seemed to be more interested in eschatology, angelology etc.

The division of mankind into hylic and pneumatic was the foundational doctrine of the Gnostics. See, for example, these terms in this Gnostic glossary.

This division of mankind into hylic and pneumatic by the Gnostics was not based on philosophy, but on their own development of the prophetic/mystical strain of Judaism. A comprehensive elaboration in terms of modern philosophy of this two-fold division was put forward by Constantin Brunner as his Lehre von den Geistigen und vom Volke.

sion · 06-09-2010, 11:14 AM

What if you have an opinion which falls within both camps?

As a student of Anthropology and History, I find myself thinking that perhaps the truth falls somewhere in between.

I consider the Christian Bible to be a text similar to that of Homer's Iliad and the existence of Troy with associated Trojan War:

a text based (the Old Testament in particluar) upon probable historical events and figures (though likely Mesopotamian in origin) with mythic embellishment which were then transferred from ethnic/nationalist oral tradition to written form.

a text based (the New Testament) on the doctrine of a faith documenting an idealized and exaggerated version of a historical figure (or possibly a combination of several figures).

This is based on archaeological data which supports some geographical, physical, and historical elements of these texts, and the tendency of members of groups to embellish the actions/attributes their leaders such as iconic American figures (George and the cherry tree, 'Honest' Abe, JFK, Clinton, Reagan, etc.), not emotion.

bacht · 06-09-2010, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Quote:

Originally Posted by bacht

I know you like to inject philosophy into these old belief systems, but it really isn't necessary afaics. I mean, if the gnostics saw themselves as some of kind of elite, a group with special secret knowledge, we don't have to posit a philosophical content to their ideas (Philo's friends seem like better candidates for this). They seemed to be more interested in eschatology, angelology etc.

The division of mankind into hylic and pneumatic was the foundational doctrine of the Gnostics. See, for example, these terms in this Gnostic glossary.

This division of mankind into hylic and pneumatic by the Gnostics was not based on philosophy, but on their own development of the prophetic/mystical strain of Judaism. A comprehensive elaboration in terms of modern philosophy of this two-fold division was put forward by Constantin Brunner as his Lehre von den Geistigen und vom Volke.

Yes, I understand matter/spirit dualism, this is where the docetic arguments come in (not to mention asceticism and misogyny). I'm not particularly interested in gnostic teachings, except in their possible connections with early christian development. For instance there's the alleged John the Baptist group of Sethians, from whom early 'christians' like Simon Magus supposedly developed.

it's funny how your posts always end up with Brunner...

06-07-2010, 08:03 PM	#64
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	You would do well to harken to that most dispassionate man, Spinoza: I have taken miracles and ignorance as equivalent terms, because those, who endeavour to establish God's existence and the truth of religion by means of miracles, seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure and completely unknown, thus introducing a new sort of argument, the reduction, not to the impossible, as the phrase is, but to ignorance. But, if I mistake not, I have sufficiently explained my opinion on miracles in the Theologico-Political treatise. I will only add here, that if you will reflect on the facts; that Christ did not appear to the council, nor to Pilate, nor to any unbeliever, but only to the faithful,; also that God has neither right hand nor left, but is by His essence not in a particular spot, but everywhere; that matter is everywhere the same; that God does not manifest himself in the imaginary space supposed to be outside the world; and lastly, that the frame of the human body is kept within due limits solely by the weight of the air; you will readily see that this apparition of Christ is not unlike that wherewith God appeared to Abraham, when the latter saw men whom he invited to dine with him. But, you will say, all the Apostles thoroughly believed, that Christ rose from the dead and really ascended to heaven: I do not deny it. Abraham, too, believed that God had dined with him, and all the Israelites believed that God descended, surrounded with fire, from heaven to Mount Sinai, and there spoke directly with them; whereas, these apparitions or revelations, and many others like them, were adapted to the understanding and opinions of those men, to whom God wished thereby to reveal His will. I therefore conclude, that the resurrection of Christ from the dead was in reality spiritual, and that to the faithful alone, according to their understanding, it was revealed that Christ was endowed with eternity, and had risen from the dead (using dead in the sense in which Christ said, "let the dead bury their dead "), giving by His life and death a matchless example of holiness. Moreover, He to this extent raises his disciples from the dead, in so far as they follow the example of His own life and death. It would not be difficult to explain the whole Gospel doctrine on this hypothesis. Nay, 1 Cor. ch. 15. cannot be explained on any other, nor can Paul's arguments be understood: if we follow the common interpretation, they appear weak and can easily be refuted: not to mention the fact, that Christians interpret spiritually all those doctrines which the Jews accepted literally.--Letter 23 (75) Spinoza to Oldenburg.

06-08-2010, 02:49 PM	#66
No Robots Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Edmonton Posts: 5,679	The question of the connection between Gnosticism, Christianity and Judaism is a fascinating one, and is still under active inquiry. Those interested in the subject may want to look at Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity, by Birger A. Pearson. Pearson’s summary of an earlier work, Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, by Moriz Friedländer, makes clear that Christ was adopted into Gnosticism, and not created by it: Christian Gnosticism is simply a secondary version of the older Gnosticism, which attached itself to the emergent Christian sect and appropriated for itself the figure of Jesus Christ.--p.11 Gnosticism was a movement within Judaism that found in Christ a perfect exemplar of its own spiritual thought-realm, and quickly reformulated itself around him. This movement ultimately failed due to its own inadequacies and pressure from the emerging Gentile Christian orthodoxy. What may appear to be polytheism among the Gnostics is in reality an expression of the principle of the distinction between the two kinds of thought: hylic and pneuma, the material and the spiritual.

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06-09-2010, 11:14 AM	#69
sion Junior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Kossuth, PA Posts: 6	What if you have an opinion which falls within both camps? As a student of Anthropology and History, I find myself thinking that perhaps the truth falls somewhere in between. I consider the Christian Bible to be a text similar to that of Homer's Iliad and the existence of Troy with associated Trojan War: a text based (the Old Testament in particluar) upon probable historical events and figures (though likely Mesopotamian in origin) with mythic embellishment which were then transferred from ethnic/nationalist oral tradition to written form. a text based (the New Testament) on the doctrine of a faith documenting an idealized and exaggerated version of a historical figure (or possibly a combination of several figures). This is based on archaeological data which supports some geographical, physical, and historical elements of these texts, and the tendency of members of groups to embellish the actions/attributes their leaders such as iconic American figures (George and the cherry tree, 'Honest' Abe, JFK, Clinton, Reagan, etc.), not emotion.

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