aa5874

This is just total baseless speculation. There is no information whatsoever anywhere to support such a fable. Fables can be started in a million different ways.

All I have seen from HJers are just personalised anecdotes of their version of how Jesus could have been human.

Well, Jesus could have been human, only if we had the evidence instead of bedtime stories.

rlogan

We saw a wolf two days ago pulling the guts out of the butt end of a dead moose.



Well you are filling in a little more of the theory, but it is still not just inconsistent with the evidence - but actually the opposite.

The data we see shows the first solid evidence of any Christianity in the Pliny/Trajan exchange.

There is no man who sacrificed himself for us. You have invented this where there is no data to support it. I cannot get you to see that. Show me where it is in the Pliny/Trajan exchange please. Quote where it is.

When Pliny interrogates, he simply finds no story of a man like you propose. There is no mother of a serial killer saying "he sacrificed himself for us". We are talking the distance of rememberance of a grandfather to the living people at the time. Not a word about that (effectively) grandfather. No place he lived, no walking about, nothing. No execution by Pilate.

This is not just a little inconsistent, but a complete refutation of the paradigm because this alleged sacrifice is no minor detail - it is instead the central focus of all Christian belief.

The history we see is that it is not until later that a man who lived starts to be circulated, with competing details in rival versions and finally the official version ossified in the 4th century by state sanctioned official religion.

You don't actually address the Pliny-Trajan exchange, and how it supports the version you are working with. Why any story of a man crucified by Pilate is absent. Remember that they interrogated many christians under a systematic attempt to find out what they believed. So you can't pose that it was overlooked. It did not exist at the time.

Paul's version has no Pilate. Paul's version has no historical man. No man who raised lazarus or fed people with fishes and loaves of bread, etc. It is a Christ that never lived. So this too is different from the version you are working with. I think you need to be clear whether you are coming down on the side of viewing Paul's Christ as a flesh-and-blood historical man. I don't

I am trying to get a coherent linear timeline out of what you are proposing here.

I think you've been in the sun too much. Heh. :wave:

Cheers!

spamandham

Nothing I've read supports this claim.

Amaleq13

You are confusing discussing whether a notion is preposterous with arguing that it is true.

Why don't you stick to ignoring your own errors and logical fallacies? It is your strength.

Amaleq13

Yes and that seems to me to be consistent with an initially small movement that only began to grow exponentially after it transitioned from the man to the myth.

Paul and the Gospels describe the sacrifice. I didn't realize we were limiting the evidence to external sources but I don't see why it is reasonable to expect a letter about what acts/assertions real Christians won't make to tell us what they believed. The minimal description Pliny offers is clearly an outsider's view of the observable behavior of Christians at worship.

He doesn't describe any story so this observation doesn't appear support either MJ or HJ.

And you've never heard of even a drunk, abusive grandfather being mythologized at his funeral or variations? I certainly have and on a regular basis. Humans have a difficult time not mythologizing the dead and only more so when they are important to them.

How would any of that be relevant to Pliny's communication with Trajan?

That holds true from an MJ perspective as well, doesn't it?

They appear to be describing belief in the myth rather than remembrance of the man. Just as I described the movement :huh:

I don't understand why it would be present. It is irrelevant to the apparent purpose of the letters (ie IDing Christians by what they refuse to do).

By asking them to do something a "real Christian" wouldn't, not by asking them to assert exactly what they believed. They were being punished for what they would not do rather than for what they believed. Pliny appears to have only a vague outsider's view of their actual practices.

Nope but I wouldn't necessarily expect him to, though, given his near total focus on the risen Christ and a desire not to appear as though he had a grudge against Rome.

Assumes the MJ conclusion. A seed of David who was born of a woman could clearly be an historical man. That it can be interpreted otherwise doesn't eliminate that obvious possibility.

Let's not pretend that the evidence clearly points in either direction. Too many of these exchanges become tiresomely mired in exaggerated claims of support from the evidence.

I recognize that Paul can be interpreted either way so I'm looking for evidence that only points one way. There isn't anything conclusive as far as I can see.

What more do you need from my previous post?

There is no such thing as too much sun in southcentral AK.

aa5874

But, Paul's Jesus is the very same god/man Jesus as found in the NT gospels. It was for that very reason why the Pauline letters were canonised.

The writer Paul claimed Jesus was betrayed in the night after they had supped, was crucified and resurrected. These events are consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels.

Paul's Jesus was not human only like that of the heretic Cerinthus or god only like that of the heretic Marcion, Paul's Jesus was god and man.

fatpie42

Isn't it the other way around.

Jesus walked on water. - Yes, in the story.
Jesus raised the dead. - Yes in the story.
Jesus was Jewish. - Yes in the story.

Heck don't they use terms like 'Christ' and 'messiah'? Isn't Jesus described as meeting up with John the Baptist? Don't they make reference to him hanging around the Jewish Temple? Doesn't he say "salvation is from the Jews".

The guy described in the story is Jewish!

fatpie42

I'm confused. Certainly I should have said "conquered death" rather than "didn't really die". However, "was still appearing to people in a supernatural way" and "was really raised from death, and was really seen by many people" sounds like the same thing to me....

maryhelena

Off course the guy in the story is Jewish....

In reference to the historical Jesus position: This is a position that, in seeking a historical Jesus, a historical Jesus without the elements of walking on water, raising the dead, a position that rejects these elements - and yet hangs on to the idea that a normal Jesus was Jewish. In the gospel storyline all these things are a part of the Jesus story - but when one wants to put aside the storyline for a normal human man - there is no reason to expect that the normal man is Jewish!

From the mythicist position - a position seeking to understand the early beginnings of Christianity - again the same reasoning is relevant - don't let the gospel storyline cloud the historical research - Christian origins may well have been involved with a hijacking of Jewish prophetic elements rather than it springing naturally from a Jewish source....

That was my intent - apologies if my wording left something to be desired.....

Petergdi

Christ conquered death for others, he didn't raise himself from the dead or anything like that. God raised Christ from the dead.

Christ appeared to people. There seems to be something outside the ordinary about the appearances. Calling this this supernatural seems to be involving a category unknown to the NT authors.

Peter.