Malachi151

Well Jesus was perhaps symbolized by the fish, so by this logic, Jesus was defiantly historical, since people saw fish on a regular basis...

Zeus was historical also, since people heard thunder, and Neptune was historical, since the sea existed, and Hades was historical, since people saw pits in the earth and volcanoes, and Prometheus was historical since people had fire, etc., etc...

Amaleq13

According to the Blue Letter Bible, the word is "didomi" which would appear to be a variation of the same word.

jgibson000

Interesting. In order to claim that you've scored points in this exchange, you've equivocated "personange" to "historical" and changed the terms of the argument from whether Helios was believed to be a personal entity that one could and did commune with to whether he ever lived on earth.

Way to go!

JG

Toto

I would strongly discourage anyone from trying to score points, or keeping a count of them. But we can see that this started out as a discussion of "historical personages."

Please stick to the topic. Thank you.

Toto

jgibson000

Actually, if I remember things correctly, it started out with a claim that an encounter between Mithras and Helios was not believed to have taken place in history since it was assumed that no one believed that Helios was a personal entity, let alone one who was/could be encountered in history. To wit:

A common image in Mithraism was of Mithras and a Sun god sharing a meal, yet this wouldn't have been viewed as an historical event happening on Earth.

And as I said before, the Greeks who cave cult to Helios and who erected Temples and statures (the Collosus of Rhodes, for example) and offered sacrificial meals to him, and thought of him as having an origin in history and as acting in history, would have certainly found this surprising.

JG

Toto

OK - add this to the beginning:

This is "not historical" for obvious reasons that do not depend on Helios being a "personal entity" or not.

jgibson000

And those reasons -- especially for those who believed in the existence Mithras and Helios-- are...?

Jeffrey

Solo

Vork,
you are right, I have worded it wrongly. What I had in mind was the interpretation of Paul by the likes Cullman, Bornkamm and J.D.G.Dunn who consider the formula in 11:23 as refering to church tradition (on the model of 1 Cr 15:1), rather than "personal revelation". But Mark would naturally not see that sort of opinion, and would have taken it as Paul wrote it.......that is if he saw the passage. For what it's worth here are spin's and my arguments combined, against Mark seeing 1 Cr 11:23-28 passage.

Cheers,

Jiri

Toto

Do you have a point here? And what part of stick to the topic are you having trouble with? Finding the topic? Let me help you.

This is all about whether we can infer a historical Jesus from the silences of Paul. I.e., do Paul's words depend on pre-existing knowledge on the part of his readers, and is this knowledge necessarily of a historical Jesus?

Do you have any evidence for the strange proposition that there were people who thought that Helios had a meal with Mithras in a historical time and place? If there were such deluded people, would we be interested in their opinion of whether Jesus was a historical person or not?

jgibson000

You beg the question when you call it strange, especially since you are working from the perspective of a 21st century atheist and not from that of those who believed that meals between gods and humans, let alone gods and gods, had and did happen in history.

So far as I can see, I'm only responding to a claim that was made and carried out in this thread.

And if there's a misunderstanding of a point within this thread to be attributed to anyone, it's to be attributed to you, and is to be found in your claim that a belief on the part of Mithras believers in Mithras and Helios having a meal together would show them to be nuts, when the issue is not the truth or falsity of this belief, but only that to them such things were accepted as possible. That these believers were (or were not) deluded in their belief is irrelevant and a red herring.

To put this another way, the question is about what they thought, not whether what they thought is true or untrue.

And my "digressions" do have a bearing on the OP, since the question was raised of whether a particular understanding of a reputed meal between Mithras and Helios could stand as evidence for how the meal that Paul reports as having happened on the night that Jesus was "delivered over" would have been understood. To wit:

It is also possible that they did understand the background, but associated it with spiritual Christ, as Doherty maintains. A common image in Mithraism was of Mithras and a Sun god sharing a meal, yet this wouldn't have been viewed as an historical event happening on Earth.

Discussing whether this "evidence" for what ED "maintains" is good evidence is entirely on point.



Sorry you don't see this.

JG