maryhelena

Oh, well - I don't remember seeing the words "GREATEST" and "STORY" used with the word "LOVE" in the gospels.............so my comment related to your insight to put these words together.....However, if you don't care for the word 'insight' - I quite understand.....

aa5874

Didn't you see John 15?

Joh 15:13 - Come on, maryhelena. I don't need INSIGHT just SOURCES, SOURCES, SOURCES...............SOURCES.

In the NT, there was NO GREATER LOVE STORY than the crucifixion story.

GOD sacrificed his OWN son for 72 hours and then BROUGHT back him to LIFE.

What GREATEST LOVE!!!

And then he made the Romans destroy Jerusalem and the Temple because the Jews killed his son.

Greater love hath no man than this

maryhelena

OK, aa5874 - Top Marks.........

aa5874

I really don't want any marks. I did NOT write gJohn and the Pauline epistles.

I want people here to deal with SOURCES, SOURCES, SOURCES, SOURCES.........SOURCES of antiquity instead of their imagination like those who INVENTED the Myth fables of Jesus Christ.

I am TIRED, real TIRED of "Chinese Whispers" and RUMORS even promoted by so-called Scholars.

gurugeorge

But don't you think, TedM, that this has the cart before the horse?

THE DUDE IS MAKING AN ASSUMPTION ABOUT "PAUL"'S PSYCHOLOGY BASED ON A PRIOR ACCEPTANCE OF THE HISTORICITY OF JESUS.

Instead of what? Instead of letting the "Paul" text speak for itself in the context of it's accepted temporal priority.

avi

I take a bath every day, too, but (ok, maybe not every day...) that doesn't mean that I was bathed.

Yes, in the myth fable, Jesus had some ointment spread on his body. Fine. So what? That is not what is meant by "cristou".

Cristou, means "THE annointed", in other words, UNIVERSALLY PRAISED as a great leader, for example, a king.

And it doesn't correspond to dog-on's idea of "the big g, himself" annointing Jesus.
Cristou means ANNOINTED BY THE MASSES OF JEWISH PEOPLE.

The fact that Jesus had a sunburn from spending too much time in the desert sun, and someone spread some ointment on his face, covered with blisters because of exposure to UV solar radiation, does NOT correspond to "cristou", used as an honorific title.

avi

TedM

Not sure the problem here. Manipulation does have a negative connotation, although I said it (the manipulation I perceived) may not have been intentional. You already said it doesn't apply to Doherty so what is the point in my providing clarification?



But Doherty isn't constructing a historical Jesus. He is deconstructing one by way mostly of arguments from silence. Therefore it is a bit of a red herring to hold up the gospels as the 'blueprint' of the historical Jesus he is deconstructing. To do so distorts the argument by introducing 'standards' which he can then say are not met. Doherty appeals at different times to specific actions and teachings attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and then asks why, if those had happened, the epistles don't mention them. Don has given some specifics for you. This distorts his argument and makes it seem more powerful as an argument against a historical Jesus than it is because the 'real' historical Jesus may not have said or done any of those things. IF he is doing that, I call it a form of manipulation because it uses evidence that may or may not be relevant to the issue of a historical Jesus.



Jesus may have claimed to be the Messiah. Others may have claimed he was the Messiah. Others claimed they saw him resurrected. Or, Paul had an overwhelming vision/dream of the resurrected Jesus. Jesus may have been crucified during Passover. Paul may have believed some combination or all of these things and been impressed by them in order to believe, without being impressed by anything else Jesus had said or done.

george, Toto is asking me to speculate, so that's all I'm doing.

archibald

You might be right. And you might be wrong. But I still don't see how you can feel certain. :]

My implied point was that despite never factually deserving the title, he got it, at some point, and neither you nor I know what that point was. So it could have been early. The fact that he never factually deserved it seems irrelevant.

Anyhow, maybe the word was originally the word for Messiah, and got translated later as Christou. I can run with that, if you like? Messiah certainly doesn't require 'universally praised', if other messianic cults are anything to go by. Not sure Christou necessarily does either. Couldn't it have been used by the cult in the first instance, if they thought he was a messiah,and received wider support later?

Toto

When you use the word manipulation, you are accusing people of being devious and underhanded. There is no such thing as unintentional manipulation.

That is why I asked if English were your first language. This isn't the first time you have written something that is so muddled that it invites a different meaning from what you seem to have intended.

I just want you and aa5874 to come clean with your language problems so we can avoid misunderstanding.

You are basing this on what GDon said, and not on reading Doherty. Doherty has a positive case for mythicism, not just arguments from silence - The Sound of Silence is just one chapter in his first book. The arguments from silence would only argue in favor of agnosticism on the existence of Jesus in any case.

And as I said, the only historical Jesus that we know about is derived from the gospels. If you claim that there was a historical Jesus who is not at all like the gospel Jesus, you are hypothesizing a Jesus that no one can disprove. It's not clear why this Jesus is of any interest to anyone.

archibald

No, in the epistles we have the bare bones, and many further references to what seems to have been an earthly personage.





We don't have MUCH in the epistles. I'll give you that.

Anyhows, you haven't told me yet why Jesus got crucified.

Or why you think Paul hadn't persecuted any followers.