Diogenes the Cynic

Freetrader, I really don't see anything new in your latest barrage of posting. You're just repeating the same questions that have already been answered over and over again. Your thesis is preposterous. A lot of your presumptions are erroneous, you appear to lack education of historical criticism of the NT (Q contains one healing and one exorcism, but does not treat them as extraordinary, which, indeed, they were not, and are not, especially in primitive cultures), your arguments are riddled with fallacious and already refuted reasoning, and you show no willingness to acknowledge refutations or counter-arguments. Why don't we narrow this down to say, the 5 strongest points or questions which you think will make the case that the origin of Chritianity cannot be explained unless Jesus was magic. Try to streamline your posts and stay targeted on a dialogue. I will be more than happy to help you understand why your thesis is untenable, but you have to take it down a notch, and try to actually engage in a dialogue instead of trying to win by verbal attrition.

Diogenes the Cynic

By the way, you're greatly exaggerating the degree to which Judaism would have seemed exotic or inaccessible to Hellenistic pagans. It was no more weird than Buddhism would be to Americans, and the mystique actually worked in its favor. Paul wasn't pitching Judaism anyway, he was pitching his own psychotically derived mythology and trying to use the Hebrew Bible to legitimize it. He was basically full of shit in that regard -- the Hebrew scriptures never said what he said they said -- but since he was talking to pagans who didn't know any better, it didn't matter. It's just as easy now for people to sell baloney disguised as "ancient eastern wisdom." especially when the target audience is a bunch of uneducated rubes like what Paul was preaching to. He wasn't "babbling" to them. he was telling them that his god would give them wealth and eternal life and annihilate the rich people and the slaveowners who had their boots on their necks. That's what they liked, not miracle stories. Miracle stories were a dime a dozen.

Susan2

2000 years later and a lie is still a lie. Maybe that is why some get desperate and hope for the miracles...................oops, they're for sale in the secular realm.

And I think using the OT was advantageous as well to solidify the fear factor; YHWH don't f*** around. He's a man of action. You see what happened to Jesus don't you, and that was his son, what do you think he'd do to you?

freetrader

Diogenes the Cynic, continued:


As long as you continue giving these theories that are silly and give rise to the question, and as long you continue not to give a serious answer but only toss out further theories that are even sillier, like the following:

Of course they did (or Paul did, must you keep nitpicking about whether it was Paul or someone else -- that's not the issue). You're saying some invisible force compelled him (them) to inject this Jesus figure into the new cult, something forcing them against their will? That's rubbish.

They or he made a choice here, to promote this new cult hero and make him into a deity -- Why did they choose this particular figure? Why not a Greek or anyone with some reputation or standing? This particular figure had no standing, if you're right -- Paul just make him up from thin air, just hallucinated him.


This only compounds the question: What cult, and why? Why this particular cult? And still, why this particular cult hero? And shined WHAT up for the Gentiles? You're not answering anything with these empty words.

He (they) HAD TO HAVE SOMETHING TO START OUT WITH!! You don't take nothing and go peddling that nothing to Greeks. There has to be something there to peddle in the first place.


Yes it was. They had trouble peddling this because of the prohibition on idol-worship in Jewish culture. It was such a weakness that the Church eventually had to give up this prohibition and encourage lots of statues, which were originally condemned.


Pick your example of westerners being drawn to Eastern traditions -- In all cases they are drawn to a Teacher or Swami or Yogi etc. who has a long reputation and was recognized over many decades of teaching, and in most cases promotes worship of Krishna or Buddha which have been revered for centuries, even thousands of years.

Only by attachment to such revered ancient figures or to a contemporary sage with a long career are westerners or anyone anywhere drawn in large numbers to a new religious movement, or superhuman hero figure, from an alien culture, or for that matter even from within their own culture.

Nothing here explains how Paul's audience could be hoodwinked into seizing hold of this new out-of-the-blue nobody messiah figure from an alien culture and turning him into a miracle-worker.


But his "message" or "information" is inseparable from the Christ figure he presents. The question you're not answering is why he finds it necessary to tie his hallucinations in to this Jewish figure instead of to something relevant to Greeks.


You haven't answered anything. There must have been at least a thousand Jews and 10,000 Greeks who would have done just as well as this Jesus figure to be presented to the Greeks as a new hero for their new religion. This choice has no explanation. Can't you see that he was a nobody to them?

Your problem is that you are so inculturated into the Western Christian mindset that you really don't understand that in this period (mid 1st century) the Christ figure was not yet established in the Greek and Roman environment.

To them he was a nobody (unless they really believed he had power such as that of the miracle acts he reputedly performed, which you assume they did not) and so you really have to explain why anyone would present this Jesus figure to them to adopt as their god or messiah figure.

Basically, your Christian indoctrination has you so deeply imprisoned that you cannot break free to see why this Jesus figure was unpresentable and unattractive to this Greek & Roman environment he was injected into.

Your basic instinct is saying: "What? Christ is not already a given? They don't know he's supposed to be the savior God for the Gentiles and everyone else? How can that be?"

You just keep taking the Christ figure for granted, like everyone always knew of him and knew he was supposed to be God or something -- they did not! You're superimposing your Christian-inculturated mindset onto the Greek world in the mid 1st century. They had no idea who or what this alien figure was.

Yes, to us, the question "Why this particular hero figure, this Jesus figure?" seems unreal because we're so accustomed to hearing this name every Christmas season and so on. But to the Greeks in the 1st century, this name was nothing -- and it is necessary to ask: why this particular figure? What significance did this figure have to them? It had none (without the reputation of having performed the miracle acts).

You have to put yourself in their shoes. He was not the Christ who is popularly believed in by millions today.

He not only had no standing among Greeks, but even among most Jews he was an irrelevant nobody. The scenario of Paul peddling such a figure to the Greeks is ludicrous on two levels: 1) What possible motive or driving force would drive him to do something so nonsensical? and 2) What about this meaningless Jesus figure could possibly be of any interest to the Greeks?

Back then it was necessary to explain to people who this figure was, why he was important, why he was relevant. Just because he's a household term today doesn't mean he was back then -- to them he was an unknown alien nobody Jew with no standing or respect outside a limited group of Jews in Palestine.

There is no plausible reason to make this unknown figure into a god -- no reason for Paul or anyone else to fix him up to present him to the Greeks, and no reason to think the Greeks would give any credence to such a nobody.

On a scale of 1 - 10, among Jews he might rate a 1 or 2, as a logical choice to make into a god or messiah, being that he had no standing and no reputation and no widespread recognition, whereas among Greeks he was a zero, a nothing alien barbarian with nothing to offer them.

If Paul had some influence with that Greek audience, he surely would not waste it trying to sell such a nobody savior figure.

Of course this picture changes if it was widely believed that he performed miracle acts, such as the NT describes.


Hellenistic? Are you imagining there was some great need among the Greeks for apocalyptic symbols, like a huge vacuum needing to be filled, which their own culture was not satisfying?

We can agree that apocalyptic literature along the line of the Book of Enoch is little to be found within the Greek tradition. However, if there really was a market for such a thing among Greeks, there surely would have been a bountiful supply of it.

The Greeks were not interested in apocalyptic scenarios. If they had been, any number of Greek heroes could have been made into a "Son of Man" figure coming in the last days to thwart the wicked and bring an end to suffering and injustice.

The reason such a theme is not common among the Greeks is that they had little or no interest in such apocalyptic hero figures.

The Book of Enoch was more than enough to satisfy any supposed need by Greeks or others for apocalyptic figures, and the "Son of Man" could easily have been offered to them without complicating the picture with the unimportant Jesus from Galilee figure.

Just because today we draw a connection between the Jesus figure and the "Son of Man" figure does not mean the first-century Greeks or others of the time would associate them, nor was there any reason for Paul or the gospel writers to connect them, or their readers or listeners (unless they believed he was a miracle-worker -- that, of course, would connect Jesus to the Son of Man figure).

It is one thing to say an apocalyptic figure might appeal to some Greeks. But to suggest they were desperately yearning for some such messiah to the point that they would even import a foreign barbarian hero figure to fill this longing -- no, this is superimposing onto the Greeks an alien idea they did not relate to. Nor were Romans in the market for such a thing.

It is only in your imagination that you see some great clamor by Greeks for an apocalyptic figure. In fact, if that's what Paul wanted to sell, he certainly would have offered them the Book of Enoch and the "Son of Man" coming in the clouds without confusing it with the Jesus figure.


Paul did not offer any "subversion" of the social order, nor were the Greeks clamoring for any such thing. If they had been, any number of hero figures could have been fashioned for that purpose from within their own tradition without importing a nobody Galilean.


There were plenty of Greek & Roman heroes already available who could have been fashioned for this need. Odysseus, Achilles, Socrates, Hercules, Aeneas, Romulus, Zeus, Apollo, Juppiter -- and if they needed an exotic flavor from the East, Zarathrustra. Even Krishna and a hundred other avatars. There was no shortage.

Any of the above could have been fashioned into a "Son of Man" figure based on the Book of Enoch symbols. All the material was there, nothing lacking. No reason to import the irrelevant nobody Galilean.

The only reason you imagine Jesus was a logical choice is because of the Christian environment in which you were raised and indoctrinated. At that time in that place HE WAS NOTHING.

Any of the above figures and dozens of others would have been more logical than this irrelevant Galilean. You haven't shown one reason why he was more relevant to Greeks than any of the above names. Everyone of them would have been a far better choice.


You're not answering because you're brainwashed by your Christian society into thinking automatically that Jesus has to be the savior and everyone knows this without question, and so it is "prattle" to ask such a question.

You're oblivious to the fact that in the mid 1st century everyone did NOT know automatically that Jesus was the messiah figure -- it was not obvious that this figure was an appropriate apocalyptic hero or savior figure for some psychotic to offer to them and for them to "convert" to.

Nothing was obvious about this choice or this particular individual to be chosen to be shaped into their messiah. It's only today that this seems an obvious choice, not back then.

You are confronting this question with your 20th-century mindset and forgetting that it was the 1st-century mindset who was being presented with this figure. To them, the "prattle" would have been what Paul was saying (if your theory of him is correct), i.e., the meaningless babble phrases about the "risen Christ" and other empty words about the nobody Jesus figure.


Again, this is your code language for saying you have no idea why Paul chose Jesus.

You could give that kind of silly rhetoric for why anyone chooses anything. "Why did he choose chocolate instead of vanilla?" Answer: "Because that's what his psychosis chose for him."

When you dismiss a question with this kind of sophistry, you are just saying you cannot answer the question.


Again, this has to be clarified. You have to account for 1 Cor. 11:23-26: Did Paul get this idea of the "last supper" from the gospel accounts, or did those writers get the whole thing from him, or did they insert this passage into Paul? Or, which is most likely the case, did both get their idea from a third source such as a current oral tradition?

And once again, the language "I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you" etc. is obviously Paul's way of trying to claim an independent source, but all of it is obviously his interpretation of the common story which he got from the same source as everyone else, i.e., the current word-of-mouth tradition at the time plus any preliminary written accounts that may have existed at that point.

The answer to my question above (which you avoid answering by throwing around this rhetoric that Paul got it "directly from Jesus" which you know is hogwash), is that he got his basic Jesus story (crucifixion and resurrection) from the same oral tradition that his listeners got it from.

But please still give a serious answer to the question if and when you stop fooling around with Paul's language and start really considering where he got his Jesus story from (although you probably already know that he got it from the then-current oral tradition).

When you throw out the idea that the actual historical Jesus really had power, such as expressed in the miracle stories, or was BELIEVED to have such power, you also throw out any explanation why Paul or others would go out and recruit converts or believers, plus any explanation how Jesus became important or noteworthy to the point that people would make him into a god.

storytime

"Why didn't Paul choose some Greek hero, like Hercules or Socrates, or someone the Greeks could relate to? Or a Roman hero?"

Maybe it was the Conspiracy of Paul. In his mind was the idea of how to protect the Jews. So, to put a protective barrier around the Jews he preached to the Gentiles a Jewish hero. A hero that transformed himself into a god-man via resurrection. And this god-man was a saviour to not only Jews but Gentiles. Paul would have known the non-Jewish aversion to circumcision and the Jewish laws so he changed his Jewish doctrine to fit more easily into the Roman world. All the while keeping the Jewish name at the forefront among the Gentiles he preached to. The promise of equality with the Jews in a world to come probably gained the interest of many a Roman, and Paul's gospel was no threat to the Roman rulers, for it was a gospel of love, whereas the Romans were accustomed to hearing hate and protests from the religious Jews.

A Greek or Roman hero would not have given Paul what he desired in a protection clause for his Jewish brethren. But a Jewish hero would fit perfectly into his scheme. Paul also made sure that the Gentiles knew they were beholden to the Jews and should pay respect and recognition to them in material things as the Gentiles had received spiritual things from the Jews by his gospel. Paul preached a love thy neighbor gospel to the Gentiles all the while knowing that his Jewish doctrine commanded hatred to all non Jews. The Gentiles were gullable not knowing Jewish scriptures or that Jesus wasn't sent to save them or offer them anything. But Paul knew how to fool the Gentiles in a promise of hope and a faith only gospel.

It worked. Why else would the Roman church fathers have kept the old testament scripts instead of ditching them? Why else would they have not created a new religion based on one of their own Roman hero's?

freetrader

All the available documents from the period are evidence. Some parts of the written record are stronger evidence than other parts. But all of it is evidence, despite your artificial maneuvers to redefine "evidence" to suit your subjective opinions and exclude evidence you don't like.


More correctly, the miracle events require a higher standard of proof, i.e., they are assumed to be less probable, all else being equal. But they are not automatically excluded as impossible.


I don't claim to know they happened or that they can be proved. I'm saying they are a possibility. The hypothesis that they happened explains the facts we know better than any hypothesis that they did not happen. However, there is no proof that they did or did not happen.


No, they are improbable, or less probable. They are not all to be lumped into the same boat and condemned en masse. It's possible for some of them to be true, even though most are untrue.


"no less impossible" -- is that a triple negative?

How about this: The probability of the healing events is greater than that of the corpses rising and invading Jerusalem. You can give both a low probability if you choose, but the corpses rising has a lower probability than the healing stories.

The reason is that we have vastly more anecdotes of miracle healings than we have of corpses rising.

Anecdotes are evidence, even though they are not the best evidence and miracle healing anecdotes are usually unpersuasive. But each claim has to be judged individually. They are not all equally improbable and cannot all be rejected. In some cases the best judgment is that we don't know.


You're right. It's only 85%. Thanks for the correction.


You need to stop stumbling over the numbers. These are very rounded-off figures, guestimates only to make a point.

We have to assume probabilities when we don't know. Even when we cannot precisely calculate the numbers, at least in theory they are there, and we could calculate them if we had enough information.

Some claims are more probable than others. When we don't know, the best we can do is guess where the probability is approximately between 100 and 0. Despite your horror at assigning percentage numbers, the fact is that they help to communicate, especially for comparing one possibility with another.

Even when we cannot calculate it precisely, still we can compare two possibilities and say "If this is 20%, that other would be something like 50%" and so on. This helps to compare the two possibilities. The numbers do mean something.

It is not wrong to try to compare the probability of one claim to another. In the above numbers I don't claim to calculate anything precisely. You are missing the point when you obsess on taking the numbers literally or precisely.


That's like saying nothing unexplained can ever happen.

We did not establish any definition of "miracle," though I implied it a few times. I think it has to be defined as "an event or act which cannot be explained by currently-known science," or more strongly, "an event or act which goes against natural patterns as understood in currently-known science."

If you dictate ipso facto that the odds of any miracle happening are zero, then that means no phenomenon ever happened which was not explained by the currently-known science.

In Aristotle's time the known science said that when any two objects fall, the more dense object always falls at a faster speed. So if you had shown Aristotle a container with all the air pumped out of it and then dropped a rock and a feather inside the container, Aristotle would have been shocked to see them fall at the same speed and would have to declare it a "miracle."

But since "the odds of any miracle are zero," then the falling of the rock and the feather must not have really happened. Or, in Aristotle's time it was impossible for a feather and a rock to fall at the same speed in a vacuum, but today it is possible because the "physical laws" have changed since then.

This must be the conclusion if "the odds of any miracle are zero." Instead of throwing around a cliche like "the odds of any miracle are zero" it would be more helpful to speak of higher and lower probability and what can be explained by current science and what cannot be.


There's no reason to assume the healing acts of Jesus would necessarily involve a violation of physical laws.

Diogenes the Cynic

You're still repeating the same uninformed, uneducated questions over and over again and ignoring the answers. There's no such thing as magic, dude. Sorry.

You keep asking the same absolutely fatuous question about Paul "choosing" Jesus.Aside from the fact that you simply don't have any idea what you're talking about when you try to discuss 1st Century Greco-Hellenistic culture, you also seem to have a lot of difficulty processing the information that Paul did not say Jesus did miracles. Why Paul's psychosis latched onto an obscure, Palestinian apaocalyptic movement is unknown. It's also a question with no relevance. Crazy people don't need reasons.

Diogenes the Cynic

And what is the natural mechanism by which mud and spit can cure blindness?

Jesus was also said to have been an excorcist. Do you believe that too? Do you believe that there are evil, invisible spirits which get inside people's bodies and control them?

aa5874

There is no known evidence that Jesus did miracles. The NT and church writers only made claims of miracles by Jesus.

The claim that Jesus made the blind see. the lame walk, the deaf hear and the dead come back to life, cannot be proven to be true.

All claims about Jesus performing miracles are uncorroborated.

steve_bnk

Herodtotus is known to have filled in the blanks and recorded here-say as first hand accounts. Yet there are histoical facts strewn in hist histories.

Even with our net comuunications today there are legions who believe crop circles are alien made, even when you can buy low cost GPS based kits on the net that allow anyone to make crop circles, and when the guys who did the origional crop circles fessed up and showed how they did it.

There are people who believe in levitaion yet have never seen it first hand.

It really isn't hard to see how a myth can evolve in those times, especialy when it happens today as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus

'..Although some of his stories are not completely accurate, he claims that he is reporting only what has been told to him...'