Toto

Sorry, I thought you had been around long enough to know the perils of trying to argue with aa.

aa5874

Now, which Paul have you accepted as STANDARD for dating? You must
know that it has been deduced that there were more than one Pauline
writer and MORE than ONE date of writing.

Some have accepted as STANDARD that more than half the Pauline writings
have a late date.

And who the f**k was Paul anyway? You know?

Again, you can answer your own questions.

And how can we find out the TRUTH about your teensy-weensy
Jesus cult?

Of course the Pauline writings have information that is found in Acts.
The Pauline writer admitted that he persecuted the faith, that he went
to Jerusalem to see the apostles, and that there were Jesus believers
before him.

The Pauline writings are addressed to churches all over the Roman
Empire which is consistent with Acts of the Apostles where Saul/Paul and
his supposed companion traveled all over the Roman Empire.

But your teensy-weensy Jesus cult chronology is directly related
to information found in Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline writings,
yet you have admitted constantly and consistently that you SIMPLY
don't know the veracity of Acts of the Apostles or the Pauline
writings.

But, the Pauline writer did himself make statement about Jesus that are
most likely false. The Pauline writer claimed he received information
from Jesus that he was betrayed in the night after he had supped.

Paul was LYING.

Jesus was an invented fictitious character who was betrayed in the
night in fiction stories.
LACK OF EVIDENCE is EXACTLY what is needed to maintain
the theory that Jesus did not exist.

LACK OF EVIDENCE is CONCLUSIVE until EVIDENCE IS FOUND.

Once we SIMPLY LACK EVIDENCE OF A HUMAN JESUS then we can simply MAINTAIN FOREVER THAT JESUS DID NOT exist as stated in the NT Canon.

And further there are also historical sources of antiquity that were
tampered with to give the false notion that there was an human Jesus.

Please tell of any case where ALL the DATA available or every single
piece of DATA was used to resolve a matter?

There is enough DATA available about Jesus the offspring of the Holy
Ghost to consider that the entity was MYTHOLOGICAL and that the Pauline
writer LIED when he claimed JESUS spoke to him and told him that he was
betrayed in the night after he had supped.

People do not make a case on lost evidence, people make a case on the
evidence available.

Consider Matthew 1.18 where Jesus is claimed to be the offspring of the
Holy Ghost. Please show that any lost evidence can make such a scenario
be true.

The Jesus of gMatthew was MYTHOLOGICAL as described.

NO. NO. NO. Your theories are up in the air. You are not concerned if
you are wrong right now.

I have enough information from sources of antiquity, even apologetic
sources, that clearly support my theory that the NT Canon is a pack of
LIES with respect to Jesus, the disciples and Saul/Paul.

You are fixated on speculation.

I am fixated on sources of antiquity that can support my theory that
Saul/Paul was not mad but just a LIAR AND LAST.

Not at all. I do not deal with unsupported speculation like you.

I am fixated on sources of antiquity that support my theory. The
admission by apologetic sources that a Pauline writer was aware of gLuke
is consistent with the writings of Justin Martyr.

The Pauline characters in Acts and the Pauline writings appear to be
all after the writings of Justin Martyr and in any event, the claim by
the Pauline writers that they got information from Jesus who was
raised from the dead and not from any man must be or was most
likely false.

Well, the evidence from sources of antiquity, even apologetic sources,
support the theory that the Pauline writers were LIARS.

What good is a proposal without evidence?

Now, that you have proposed that it was possible that apologetic
sources were lying about Paul, please provide the evidence to make such a
proposal really viable.

You seem to think your teensy-weensy Jesus cult was possible but have
failed to provide the evidence from sources of antiquity, just a ton of unsubstantiated speculation.

You must understand that once you make a claim of an historical nature
that you must provide the source of antiquity that can support your
teensy-weensy theory[/b].

Because, the EVIDENCE, sources of antiquity, even apologetic
sources, tend to agree or confirm that Acts of the Apostles was late.

Up to the middle of the 2nd century Justin Martyr did not mention one
single event in Acts of the Apostles, not even the day of Pentecost when
the supposed Jesus told the disciples that they would be filled and
EMPOWERED with the Holy Ghost.

The apostles NEEDED the POWER of the HOLY GHOST of GOD to kickstart the Jesus cult. Justin Martyr wrote not one thing about the HOLY GHOST and the the day of Pentecost.

And this is Chrysostom, even as late as the 4th century people did not
even know that there was such a book called Acts.

John Chrysostom's Homilies 1 The theory that Acts is late is WELL supported by sources of antiquity.
I cannot find a source of antiquity that support the teensy-weensy
theory.

I will reject your teensy-weensy theory since you admit it is just
speculative.

Well, just quote a friggen' biblical scholar. There must be some
friggen' biblical scholar who can show that the PAULINE writings
were the earliest by linguistic analysis and have already established the passages that were used in the linguistic analysis.

Just name the passages.

I am not a FRIGGEN' BIBLICAL SCHOLAR and I can show you passages
from sources of antiquity that can support my theory that Saul/Paul was
not mad but a LIAR and LAST.

Look at Galatians 1.1 If Jesus Christ did exist he had to be a man or human, and if Jesus
was a man or human, he was not raised from the dead.

You don't need to be a friggen' biblical scholar to recognise
the LIES of the Pauline writers.

Your teensy-weensy theory has nothing to do with writing style
but mere speculations as you have admitted.

You have already admitted that you rely on speculation (noise) for your
teensy-weensy theory.

You have already stated the thickness of your theory. It is
PACKED tight with speculation.

That's a lot of noise.

Your teensy-weensy theory has self-destruct.

Saul/Paul was not mad, just a LIAR and LAST.

gurugeorge

I'm making a general point that aa doesn't seem to understand.

My point is that aa is looking at the evidence we have, and making a certain judgement about the situation.

But that's not rational. We know there's some information missing, and we don't know what other information might be missing (but we can suspect there must be some).

IOW, you can't make a certain judgement unless you know you have before you all the relevant data.

What aa is doing is speculating, like everyone else, on the basis of the data that exists (which is insufficient) - he just doesn't see it.

gurugeorge

No, YOU can answer MY question: why, if you don't trust the apologetic writers, do you suddenly trust them at this point (on Paul knowing GLuke)?

What is your objective criterion for assessing that they are telling the truth on this point, when they are (as you believe) lying about so many other things?

This is quite consistent with Paul having a visionary experience of Jesus. He doesn't need to be lying about it.

He could have been an invented fictitious character, or he could have been a man whose story got blown out of proportion, or he could (as I think) have been a visionary hallucination of the Jerusalem people and Paul. (Or more accurately, "he" was initially a revised idea about the traditional Messiah, and then the people who had this idea also thought they had made contact with the Messiah in visions).

No it's not conclusive, no conclusive judgement can be made until all the relevant data are in. Any judgement made up till that point is tentative and speculative.

Yes, but that position is not conclusive, it's still just provisional.

IOW, the lack of external evidence for a human Jesus makes it possible to look for alternative theories about Christian origins - but there are many possible theories of Christian origins that are consistent with the evidence (including the lack of evidence for a man).

People literally lying is only one option and would need stronger evidence than you give, to distinguish it from people merely being mistaken, or people merely hallucinating, etc.

No, this is what you aren't getting: the likelihood that Jesus is a mythological entity is STRENGTHENED by the "Paul" admission that Jesus spoke to him.

So instead of merely the absence of evidence for a human Jesus (both external and internal) we also have POSITIVE evidence that, for at least one person involved in those early days, Jesus was a visionary being, something he hallucinated. This actually strengthens the mythicist case (and, in conjunction with the list of Jerusalem people before him, and the lack of any distinction in the type of "seeing" involved, strengthens the case that it was myth all the way down, right back to the first apostles).

Yes, but obviously this could have been myth that developed around a human being, evidence for whom we simply lack. (I've always thought it quite possible that if there was a human Jesus, he may well have been one of the madmen Josephus mentions - orthodoxy couldn't countenance that thought, but it shouldn't be too odd for people who have nothing invested in a real historical Jesus being some great preacher or thinker.)

No, you have enough to suspect that they were WRONG, but whether they were LYING, you DON'T know. They may have been misinformed themselves, or they may have been (as I believe) visionaries who were getting this "information" from their hallucinations.

"Appear to be" - on what basis? On some more of your selective acceptance of some of the apologetic writings as not lying?

Let's have some more detail on this please, as this strange selectivity of yours is really the nub of the matter.

Why "most likely"? Visionary experience seems most likely, since that's precisely what the "Paul" writing (indirectly) claims, and precisely the sort of thing that (according to "Paul") went on in "Paul"'s congregation.

Note: the orthodox story says:-

1) god-man lived, died, resurrected, spoke to Paul in visions

A rational historical version of this (if we could find evidence for a human Jesus somewhere) would be:

2) man lived, died, was believed to have resurrected, Paul had visions of this guy

But what I'm saying is that both 1) and 2) require evidence we don't have. On the basis of the evidence we do have, we can say simply:-

3) no entity lived, Paul (and maybe the people before him) simply had visions.

Unless you have a reason to believe he SHOULD have mentioned these things in the context of the writings, this absence of evidence could mean anything or nothing.

Once again: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For an argument from silence to work, you need to have to have good reason to EXPECT that Justin Martyr SHOULD have mentioned the things that are missing.

Solo

That is a strange reading of Carmen Christi, I must say. Mybe I am just not familiar enough with Methodism but in my plain reading, the passage stresses the uniqueness of Christ all along. He was being in the form of God, (and it is because he was and we (the believers) aren't) he did not think it robbery* to be equal with God (as we do when we see some earthling try to do that) but took upon him the form of servant (which we resent when placed on us when we are born in flesh).....

Jiri

*I read harpagmos here more as 'sacrilege' than 'theft' or 'the thing stolen'.

avi

Why do you accept the "standard dating"?
What is the basis for this dating?
I hope it is not based upon handwriting analysis of the earliest extant papyrus document, P46, containing letters of "Paul".

OK, fine, but then, gurugeorge, don't you think it would be in harmony with the tenor of your post, to provide us with any tiny little bit of evidence to support this supposed "standard dating".

Orthodox Christians have internal reasons for seeking to push the date of the letters of Paul to the mid first century. We have no such requirement. You have asked the forum members to supply evidence refuting the "standard dating", as though the "standard dating" were some kind of "gold standard".

The traditional dates for the Gospels and Paul's letters are indeed carved in stone, but that does not mean anything more, to me, than that the Roman empire had skillful stone masons, all of whom worked under the control and authority of emperor Constantine.

"scholarship"? "linguistic analysis"?
What kind of linguistic analysis? I am not sure whether the term, "linguistic", applies to analysis of Koine Greek text. Yes, the jesus stories were transmitted orally in the second century, before the arrival of the four gospels, or "Paul's" letters, but, by the fourth century, it was the written text, not phonemic analysis of oral speech, which dictated Christian policy --> Nicea Council. So, don't you mean to write, instead of "linguistic analysis", rather, "textual analysis"?

and we never will. In any field of inquiry, there will always be a threshold, above which one feels confident that the conclusions drawn, based upon careful assessment of the data available, are accurate. Newtonian mechanics was very successful, very believable, very accurate, for a couple hundred years, until the atomic age blossomed, in the earliest decade of the twentieth century.

Given the paucity of genuine data, you are certainly correct, gurugeorge, in my view, to challenge any supposition based upon that inadequate data. You have challenged us to produce evidence that Paul's writings post date the synoptic gospels, and aa offered some quotes from Paul's text which could be interpreted as supporting such a late date of authorship.

Now I am asking you, the same question: Where's your evidence to support this so-called "standard dating", which is presumably based, at least in part, upon "linguistic analysis"?

For sake of completeness, one also should include the notion that Paul may have heard about the gospels by oral communication, AFTER having written in Galatians that he learned about Jesus exclusively from jesus himself. One would hope that ten years later, in mid second century, paul had come to learn one or two things about jesus, from discussions with other "apostles". In other words, we ought not exclude the option that the apologetic sources were not lying, when they wrote that paul knew Gluke. Lots of unknowns, lots of possibilities.

I agree. aa5874 has presented a cogent argument, based, it is true, on a paucity of evidence, but not particularly less evidence than anyone else uses... In my opinion, aa is correct about paul's epistles having been written AFTER the synoptic gospels, in the mid second century, and the "standard dating" of Paul's letters, mid first century, is nonsense. I will gladly change my opinion, if someone can present some convincing evidence to support the "standard dating".

aa's style, as gg and others have noted, is challenging, but the content is there. For a non-native speaker, his writing is remarkably fluid. I am unsure exactly how Toto's comment can be viewed as other than slightly diminutive, and unworthy of the excellent job Toto performs on this forum.

From my vantage point, it is irrational to insist that it is irrational to judge a situation prior to possession of ALL the data. For a simple example, is one obliged, confronted with with a positive skin test, in a three year old Haitian patient domiciled in a Tuberculous riddled environment, and suffering abject poverty, to commence quadruple, oral, antibiotic therapy per CDC recommendations, despite not yet having culture results following pulmonary bronchoscopy? Yes, we often act without having ALL the pertinent data. We do perform judgments in situations even without knowing everything, without concomitantly receiving the epithet "irrational" as an indicator of our behaviour. We do NOT regard as irrational, an attempt to synthesize a conclusion based on scanty data. Risky, yes. quite possibly erroneous, YES. Yeah, aa could be wrong. I agree. But, I don't agree that his methodology is irrational, nor do I share the prevailing notion that his style of communication diminishes the scope of his thinking. His thoughts, to me, are completely rational, well organized, highly structured, and evidence based.

In my opinion, it would appear that aa did indeed understand your message, gurugeorge. You have indicated a belief, based I guess, upon faith, rather than evidence, that the "standard dating", offers a realistic date of authorship of paul's letters in the middle of the first century, well before any of the synoptic gospels had been written. aa has disputed that mid first century date, and has proposed a date one century later. I completely agree with aa5874.

avi

gurugeorge

So far as I'm aware, no, I haven't done this. I have a mythicist argument that plays out thus-and-so IF the standard dating is correct.

As I've said to aa, I'm not averse to the idea of a late, inauthentic "Paul", I've read some Dutch Radical stuff, I'm familiar with the idea. It's just that in the context of this thread, I was arguing based on provisional acceptance of the dating; it's a general position I'm taking at the moment in my thinking. Maybe it's time for me to revise my thoughts on all that, but what interests me at the moment, is the degree to which EVEN IF YOU ACCEPT A LOT OF STANDARD DATING, you can still make a tolerable mythicist case. It kind of tickles me that this is so - I also admire Doherty for sticking to this policy too.

aa is good to argue with, I agree, except when he gets over-dramatic and mocks others' use of language. If English is not his native language, I'd advise him to be more circumspect while arguing with people in a foreign language. I think a lot of people here think he's an ass - I've never thought so myself, but I can understand that's how he comes across to some people.

andrewcriddle

It is an interesting question how the Septuagint in the 1st century CE represented Yahweh.

It is probably relevant that Philo, in the early 1st century CE, quoting the Septuagint, uses Kurios where the Hebrew has Yahweh.

Andrew Criddle

avi

Not probably, Andrew, you are being too modest. It is surely very relevant.

This is one of the most important points on this thread, i.e. the historical change from Yahweh to kurios. In my longwinded reply to gurugeorge above, I cut out about half of the text (still way too long!!!), including that very topic: asking whether or not the second century BCE time frame for creation of Septuagint, corresponded to the change from yahweh to kurios. I sought to inquire, and you would certainly be the right person to ask, whether or not the authors of the four gospels used kurios to differentiate Jesus from the Greek Pagan gods, who were represented by theos?

avi

andrewcriddle

Hi avi

I'm not quite clear about what you are asking, so apologies if my answer is off-topic.

Kurios can have a wide range of meanings varying between a title of everyday respect and a title of divinity. Some of the Gospel usages of Kurios (Lord) when referring to Jesus are merely titles of respect. However some do imply a quasi-divine status for Jesus.

I don't think that the Gospel writers saw confusion between Jesus and Pagan Gods as likely enough to need worrying about. In so far as the Gospel writers were faced with an issue of differentiation it was probably the issue of differentiating Jesus from his heavenly father.

Andrew Criddle