Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Johann_Kaspar · 06-14-2006, 04:21 PM

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Originally Posted by RUmike

And by the way, I don't know of one scholar who believes Nazareth didn't exist at the time. So no biblical scholars can be considered "professional" by your definition.

According to archeological evidence http://www.kevalin.org/myth.html ... yes. Blinded by their agenda, they believe only, they don't know. :wave:

RUmike · 06-14-2006, 05:05 PM

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Originally Posted by Johann_Kaspar

As you can't ask anymore the author about his intentions, you are left with guesswork...
And imo the question has no meaning, no interest. :wave:

The point is, there is no good reason for an early Christian to invent a saying that places John above Jesus. The most plausible explanation of how it entered the tradition in the first place is that Jesus in fact said it. Of course you ignore this because it doesn't mesh with your theory that nothing historical can be found in the gospels.

Chris Weimer · 06-14-2006, 05:05 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

I missed them as I usually avoid the stuff.

I don't blame you. I've been trying to ignore it here recently as well.

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Overinterpretation. He neither associates himself with the "so-called" pillars other than communicating with them, nor are they "the Pillars of Jesus movement".

His communication with them, along with his rebuttal of the Jacobian (James) Judaism, is rightly association. Finally, if the untimely born passage is authentic, then we see a succession - Cephas, the Twelve, James, the Apostles, then finally Paul. Paul implies that James and company follow the same Jesus as his.

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So you don't believe in creatio ex nihilo either. Good. This is not an argument. All traditions had to come from somewhere, but they are usually too difficult to put an origin too. Remove the later strata of the stories and you lose anchorage in time.

For the most part, yes. Lots of the gospel material we won't know much about - lost to time as you said. But we can see where the earliest layer fits well with - and that is early first century CE Levant.

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Where did the infancy gospels come from? The Acts of Pilate? The correspondence between Paul and Seneca? Scratch another non-argument. Chris, you need not to supply only one answer to your speculations unless you have evidence for such answers.

But none of those are early compared to what we find in the earliest layers of the gospels. It's like asking where did Joseph Smith get his ideas from - entirely irrelevant to the debate.

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And what does that capitalized epithet mean?

Dunno. We can only speculate. Some argue literal, some argue titular. I don't think it matters - I didn't make it crucial to my position. It can rise and fall for all I care.

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You must have a different copy of Galatians from me. Or else you're combining Acts and Galatians and other traditions to get something else.

Galatians 2.7, 12-13? That's in your copy too, I hope.

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Hercules comes back onto my TV screen. Flesh and blood. But really perceived as participating in this world?

I haven't studied Herculean mythology, but from what I gather, he was neither fixed to a certain time period, nor had anyone near that time to write about him. Hercules is on a different level than Jesus.

Quite assuredly, perhaps there was a man whose name was "Herakles" who was reknown as a great hero. But what we have for him is far less than for Jesus, where we at least have the gospel traditions and traditions evinced from Paul. The gap is significantly reduced with Jesus.

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You got that right. But, though I don't usually comment onthis stuff, I was a little taked aback by your stance.

My stance was in direct opposition to the mindnumbing statement by aa5874, who, as you ought to now see, rightly deserves the impailment.

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You have already put yourseslf in opposition to the status quo. Why be so arbitrary as to pick and choose. Why not go the whole hog and accept it all?

Because I don't rely on the status quo for my thoughts. I rely on what evidence I have. The status quo is what we start out with, and then move from there. Likewise, if someone comes out claiming that aspirin was given to us by aliens, do you think we should abandon the standard history of how it was invented? In all subjects, for all things, what is the status quo is what we start out with. We learn, and hopefully we change the status quo to better reflect reality. It's never an all or nothing judgement.

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Perhaps there's not just one though. What happens if say Arthur reflects the resistence tradition to the Germanic invasions?

All the better for him. If there was enough evidence that Jesus was the representation for some movement, again, that must be demonstrated. Likewise, if Lucretius was the representation for the Epicureans in 1st century BCE Rome, then it too must be demonstrated. If the evidence points there, I will follow, but I won't assume it so until I see the evidence.

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Too easy. Just because someone is writing in a genre you've decided means something it doesn't mean that the content doesn't reflect somethig else as well, perhaps including reality. Pumpkinification?

It's possible, but overall, narrational satire is often fictional, even if based on real characters and events (such as Trimalchio being based on Nero). This is the default. This is where the evidence has pointed thus far. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

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I guess you're right there.

:lol:

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No, it's not. You do what you can with what you have. The rest is, well ...

What do we have? We have no autobiographical citations of Lucretius until Jerome and Donatus, centuries after he died. We can certainly figure out what he thinks, where he stands, perhaps even who his patron is (Mammius), but when it comes to where he was born, the friends he had, the taverns he visited, his parentage, what legion he served under, we're served nothing.

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But there are other approaches. Most of these people are trying for magic bullets that don't exist. Tradition comes from somewhere, though where can be extremely difficult to discern. When you find things from ancient cultures resurfacing in the grail legends, do you think that the writers of the audience even know? When Gilgamesh motifs find their way into Sinbad the Sailor?

Tough call, but ultimately no. It is quite a feat to figure out the lineage of a tradition. We also have to take into account universal themes, which two identical themes can come from two entirely different sources without mixing any bloodlines. I'm up to the task, and I think that is a major aspect in the "historical Jesus" field. Where to look oh where to look.

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The best that can be made out of the Egyptian is that there seemed to have been religio-political movements which the figure epitomizes.

But is he an actual person himself, as Josephus mentions, and later Luke seizes upon?

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However, Jesus mythicism apologetics has had no opportunity to develop. You haven't been fed on Jesus myth apologetics, yet you have Jesus apologetics. We are talking over 1700 years of apologetic development. Give coherent Jesus myth a few centuries. Who knows, it might turn out crap. But you won't know until it's had time to develop.

But until then, I see no reason to even give it my regards.

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Your being a historian doesn't enter into the first part of your comment. If being a historian means being a scholar doing historical research the same scholarly rule holds: if the evidence doesn't support it, you can't.

But I think the evidence does support it. It fits quite nicely, actually.

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But when were the texts written. How many hands worked on them? Were the purposes of the earlier writers the same as the later ones? Who wrote them? Where? under what conditions? You can usually make comments on these things when dealing with those classical authors generally used by historians.

Which text do you have in mind? I've done work on Matthew, and others have done monumental work on the other gospels and Paul. Much of this has been explained.

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I think you kid yourself. What gospel was written before Marcion?

At least three - Mark, Matthew, and Luke. John probably surfaced around the time of Marcion, depending on the dating of one very small manuscript.

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It's only relevant when you are trying to do historical research. If you can't relate a tradition to an era, you will probably fail in your research.

I see now what you mean.

best regards,

Chris Weimer

Chris Weimer · 06-14-2006, 05:24 PM

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Originally Posted by lpetrich

As to Lucretius being a myth, there's the problem in that he didn't become the central figure of a cult that worshipped him as their lord and savior. And such people tend to get lots of myths created about them.

That Jesus was made into a central figure of a cult and was worshipped as God says absolutely nothing about his historicity. See Caesar and Augustus, for example, or the Japanese emporers, or the Chinese emporers, or the pharoahs, or Alexander. All of them were worshipped as gods. Making that a point against Jesus reeks of anti-Christian bias.

Chris Weimer · 06-14-2006, 05:26 PM

Hello Earl,

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A comment like this makes me wonder if you have actually read anything in the field of Jesus mythicism. To claim that there is nothing in the way of “hard evidence” (note that no one is claiming conclusive proof) for the position is simply nonsense and a burying of one’s head in the sand. (To claim that the mere existence of the Gospels, which are all dependent on the first one written, and whose virtually entire content is not attested to in the rest of the early record, constitutes “hard evidence” on the other side, is a misuse of language, and sidesteps one of the cruxes of the mythicist case.) And neither Robert Price nor myself has “shrugged off” historical Jesus evidence; we have both dealt with it in great detail. (I’ll assume that the succeeding comment about “fools” was not directed at myself, or Price.)

You assume correctly. I did say that there were exceptions to what I said, that there were several mythicists who actually engaged in scholarship, though I still disagree with their positions. You, for one, I thought I made explicit by the reference to kata sarka. Robert Price and Richard Carrier are other examples, though from last I heard neither were mythicists per se, i.e. they thought that though we cannot know anything about them, they didn't begin as myths, as you posited in The Jesus Puzzle. The exchange I had with Carrier not too long ago led me to believe that was his position, and what I read of Price in The Incredibly Shrinking Son of Man that was his position as well. Deterring is another mythicist. If you know better of Price's and Carrier's positions, do tell. I'm all for listening.

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If I have failed in my understanding of Paul, then I have not come even close. However, the failure to come close should be applied to those who think they have disproven my analysis of Paul and the Christianity of the early epistles. Certainly, it hasn’t been done by anyone who refers to a key phrase in the debate as “kata sarkon". The fact that you’ve repeated the mistake here (see below) even after I pointed it out, would seem to indicate that (along with not knowing Greek) you truly don’t read anything I say. Or perhaps it just makes your eyes glaze over, which seems to be a common response in some circles.

I never suggested kata sarka (ack, I made the same mistake twice, haven't I? Latin is my language I love - sarx, sarkos, sarx, sarkos, sarx, sarkos...) as a key phrase. I only responded to it when it was brought up by Ted Hoffman and Gakusei Don about your interpretation of it, which was that by kata sarka you meant not flesh but sublunar realm. Am I misunderstanding this?

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I guess you’ve missed all those discussions here and elsewhere about what exactly Paul says about the “born” idea, and how all of Jesus’ “humanity” seems to be derived from scripture, unrelated to time and place, and so on.

This was never convincing. What's the difference between creating someone ex scripturis or justifying what they've done by selective example of the scripture?

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I think my various discussions with GakuseiDon would indicate that the “struggle” is not so much on my side. And by the way, it was Don who recently wanted to make Paul the quintessential Middle Platonist. I have never portrayed him as such, simply influenced by and adopting some of its ideas (as do many of the early epistles, such as Hebrews), along with much else. That’s what syncretism is all about, and Christianity was a syncretistic religion.

Sorry about the confusion then.

jjramsey · 06-14-2006, 07:38 PM

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Originally Posted by EarlDoherty

I guess you’ve missed all those discussions here and elsewhere about what exactly Paul says about the “born” idea, and how all of Jesus’ “humanity” seems to be derived from scripture, unrelated to time and place, and so on. I think my various discussions with GakuseiDon would indicate that the “struggle” is not so much on my side. And by the way, it was Don who recently wanted to make Paul the quintessential Middle Platonist. I have never portrayed him as such, simply influenced by and adopting some of its ideas (as do many of the early epistles, such as Hebrews), along with much else. That’s what syncretism is all about, and Christianity was a syncretistic religion.

I have not seen GakuseiDon try to "make Paul the quintessential Middle Platonist." What I have seen him do is say that your particular ideas about the sublunar realm do not appear to be part of Middle Platonism. If your counter to this is that Paul did not take these Middle Platonic ideas straight but adjusted them to fit his own scheme, then you have to give evidence that this is what Paul did. What you cannot do is make your thesis unfalsifiable by saying that the reason we don't see Middle Platonic ideas in Paul is because his versions of them are radically altered.

Chris Weimer · 06-14-2006, 07:46 PM

aa - you really need to admit that you have no clue what you're talking about. Where in the Bible does it say that Jesus was born of a ghost? Please, I only accept it in the original language.

Rick Sumner · 06-14-2006, 08:21 PM

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Originally Posted by jjramsey

I'm not so sure of that. The criterion for embarassment, for example, doesn't work in the mythicists' favor, nor does the criterion of accidental information. I see here a potential for a slippery-slope argument here: if 90% of the Gospels are false, why not go the whole hog and go for 100%? Yet there is no reason to presume the slope is slippery.

That's why I said "negative criteria." Embarassment is not a negative criteria.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Doug Shaver · 06-14-2006, 10:49 PM

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Originally Posted by No Robots

Attempts to "prove" these propositions, however, are liable to thorough-going attack.

Fine. I have no problem with that.

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Originally Posted by No Robots

"Proofs" regarding UFOs are relatively harmless, but distorted "proofs" regarding Jesus are dangerous, as we know from history.

The danger in either case is not in the particular proof. The danger lies in the kind of thinking used to develop the proof. Uncritical or illogical thinking is always dangerous, as history does indeed attest.

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Originally Posted by No Robots

That is why mythicism cannot be left uncriticized.

No belief system should be left uncriticized, ever. I have never in my life suggested otherwise, not even when I was a fundamentalist Christian. That is why I'm not a fundamentalist anymore.

dog-on · 06-15-2006, 12:27 AM

One issue always bugged me. Maybe some of you HJ guys could help shed some light on it. To the best of my recollection, nowhere in the Epistles or the Gospels does one find a physical description of Jesus. You would think that something as basic as this should have been included by some writer in the NT. I can't imagine the evangelists, in all the preaching about this man being the Son of God, never comment on this. Any ideas?

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06-14-2006, 07:46 PM	#107
Chris Weimer Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: none Posts: 9,879	aa - you really need to admit that you have no clue what you're talking about. Where in the Bible does it say that Jesus was born of a ghost? Please, I only accept it in the original language.

06-15-2006, 12:27 AM	#110
dog-on Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 3,397	One issue always bugged me. Maybe some of you HJ guys could help shed some light on it. To the best of my recollection, nowhere in the Epistles or the Gospels does one find a physical description of Jesus. You would think that something as basic as this should have been included by some writer in the NT. I can't imagine the evangelists, in all the preaching about this man being the Son of God, never comment on this. Any ideas?

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