aa5874

Please, a Pauline writer did state he was VISITED by a resurrected Jesus and that he was LAST visited after over 500 people. The same writer claimed he can be called a False Witness if the dead rise NOT.

The Pauline writer SWEARS by God that his Jesus was NON-HISTORICAL--a resurrected being.

The Pauline writer CANNOT falsify MYTH Jesus.

The Pauline writer ENHANCES Myth Jesus.

1 Corinthians 15:15 KJV Galatians 1:1 KJV
gMark CANNOT falsify MYTH Jesus. gMark ENHANCES Myth Jesus.

Mark 3:11 KJVMark 5:7 KJVMark 15:39 KJV

Diogenes the Cynic

I didn't say it does, but what does it mean to "refute a mythical character" anyway? What would refute a mythical Jesus? That's exactly the question I'm trying to ask.
"Son of God" is a completely human designation in Judaism. It usually just an honorific for kings (like "Messiah"), but it can also just mean people in general. Luke calls Adam nios tou theou as well. It signifies nothing otherworldly. It's just Mark calling Jesus the Messiah.

It's also contradictory to try to cite this as evidence that mark belived in an otherworldly Jesus when his entire Gospel is patently about a worldly one. Even if the entire thing is fiction, Mark is still presenting it as a story in a historical time and place.
He is never called upon to repudiate a mythical Jesus (this is an idea simply not expressed or even hinted at in the New Testament), but he does say that Jesus was born of a woman, was Jewish, was crucified on earth by earthly rulers, that the crucifixion was a "stumbling block for Jews" (Why would a mythical, pagan imagined, celestial crucifixion of a pagan God with a Jewish name mean anything at all to Jews? The only way the "stumbling block" line has any meaning is if it referred to a real dead person. Being crucified in space is no stumbling block to the Jewish Messiah. the Jewish Messiah is defined entirely by earthly accomplishments (not birthright or heavenly antics).

Paul's "first fruits" Christology also makes no sense without a real death.

And not for nothing, Paul also claims to have met a man he calls "the Lord's brother."

One of Ehrman's strongest attacks in his book is, in my opinion, his dismantling of alternative (and frankly ad hoc) attempts to explain that phrase as non-literal.
Then you need to improve your knowledge.

This kind of dismissive, categorical handwaving away of established scholarship is not persuasive to your case.

I am as open minded on this subject as anyone you will meet. I have always identified myself as agnostic on this question. I don't think there is dispositive evidence either way, but I think the prima facie case that Christian origins had something to do with a crucified Palestinian Jewish holy man named Yeshua is as strong or stronger than a great number of other historical claims that we never bother to question.

I don't think we can know much, if anything about this person, but I have yet to see compelling evidence that this germinal event, no matter how little it might resemble the Gospel stories, is something there is anything to doubt at face value (and again, I am open minded about this, have no desired outcome and have wavered on the question for years).

I see a lot of attempts to find gaps or linguistic ambiguities or other perceived loopholes in HJ assumptions, and lots of those observations are legitimate, but what I have not seen (and believe me, I say this as somebody who has always looked at this debate honest curiosity, not with belligerence. I don't have a side) is clear and unambiguous evidence that the crucifixion event was made up and that no personality cult ever existed around any real person.

I'm not saying that can't be the case, I'm saying I haven't seen clear evidence for it.

I do think (and I think even Bart Ehrman would agree) that Pauline Christianity absorbed a lot of paganism, and Paul's "Christ" (who was really an entity now all but divorced from earthly reality) got turned into a hybrid Jewish/Greco-Roman mystery cult amalgamation of Jewish Messiah with various other pagan allusions (certainly the eucharist is a purely pagan ritual which not only makes no sense to any part of Judaism, but is actually anathema to it. Blood was ritually unclean, and this was culturally and psychologically internalized by Jews into a revulsion to blood akin to the revulsion that most people have for human waste. It is not an exaggeration to say that somebody pouring out wine in the middle of a Jewish Seder and saying, "drink this, this is my blood," would have the same social impact as saying, "here this lemonade is really my piss. Drink my piss." It would be seen as a grotesque and baffling non-sequitur, even by Jesus himself. it could not have happened. Paul simply made up a story and plugged in a double eucharist to compete with other mystery cults) but that doesn't mean that an original crucifixion event couldn't have happened, or that Paul couldn't have known a real sect that venerated a dead former Rabbi who they thought had gone to Heaven after his death.

With regards to the bare, prima facie claims that the Christian movement originated with the veneration of a crucified Jewish cult leader, I have yet to see personally persuasive evidence that a purely mythical event is more likely than simply a mythologized event (i.e. a real event exaggerated into pie in the sky bullshit as opposed to being bullshit from the ground up).

mountainman

From the Nag Hammadi codices ...

The Reality of the Rulers aka The Hypostasis of the Archons

mountainman

No I did not assume this. I have seen people of all forms of philosophical persuasion from atheists to hindus to rastfarians all arguing for the existence of the historical jesus - because that is what they have been taught in the conceptual framework of their education and conditioning.



How do we know this for sure?

For example have you read "The Acts of Pilate", and if so, what is your take on this?



I fail to see the source of annoyance, because many historicists and historians make the same claim.

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,

This is a most excellent point that should be repeated.

There can be no absolute conclusions in the business of doing history, because not only can new evidence enter the arena to reverse the tide of opinion, but old evidence can be revised in the light of modern scholarship to overturn previous opinions. All conclusions must therefore be of a provisional and hypothetical nature in the field of history.


Best wishes



Pete

Diogenes the Cynic

Mountainman, that piece is 3rd Century and Coptic. What application does it really have to the Greek Epistles of Paul? This is a sect that didn't even exist in the 1st century.

tanya

That may well be true, Dio, but, the Jesus story is not about Judaism. It is a Greek fairy tale, think of it as Hercules part deux.

Part of the trouble here, especially on this forum, but also in society at large, is the lack of perspective.

People, perhaps including you, are so "brain washed", i.e. "in tune with" the idea of Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism, that they fail to consider the two other enormous influences on it: Gnosticism, and reverence for Hercules.

I did not appreciate just how important the Hercules nonsense was, until last month, studying the archaeological excavations of Herculaneum.

Think about it: the second biggest library in the world, after the famous one in Alexandria, attracting SCHOLARS, not just uneducated peasants like me, but brilliant minds from the whole of the Roman empire. Why would they go there--> to an entire city named in honor of Hercules? Why would a guy like Philo write about Hercules, in laudatory terms? The whole world, even famous Jewish scholars, expressed kindly thoughts about this mythical creature. Hercules was the most important role model of the Roman Empire, at least until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in 79 CE, with the amazing good fortune to generate a low viscosity pyroclastic outflow that preserved, rather than destroyed the city.

Now, Constantine could have named his city, after Iesous. Right? He had the power. People would do whatever he wanted. He snapped his fingers, and the action was accomplished. Why didn't he name his new capital Jesusville? Why didn't he create a library, dedicated to Jesus, devoted to study of science, art, music, medicine, languages, as did the leaders of Herculaneum? So, I read Mark's first line, and I recognize that he is not starting out with something about Hebrew tradition, but rather something about Greek mythology. In those days, as shown by Philo's description, Hercules was on the mind of every well educated man.

The Jews would never accept the idea that YHWH required, desired or sired, progeny. It would have been insulting, and very disrespectful to their ancient tradition. But, as Greek fairy tale, the story is harmonious with the mythical Hercules, similarly parented by a human female, with male sperm supplied by a divine entity.

mountainman

Why then does Eusebius cite the books of Apollonius of Tyana as an authority for the obsolescence of sacrifice?

mountainman

The codex was manufactured in the mid 4th century. Modern academics HYPOTHECISE that the original greek work is earlier - from the 3rd century.

The forged correspndence between Paul and Seneca was in circulation during the 4th century as legitimate letters of Paul. There was therefore a sect in the 4th century who wished to provide the author "Paul" with an enhanced appearance of credibility. Who was this sect?

mountainman

If the Gnostics were still writing in the 4th century, and a study of the manuscript traditions for many of the NT apocryphal texts suggests that they were, then it is quite conceivable that these gnostic authors were referring to the political context of Constantine's centralised state monotheistic cult

Constantine was the "boss" of the 4th century monotheistic state - bishop of bishops. What is to prevent these 4th century Nag Hammadi texts to be refering to Constantine as the "Blind Ruler"?