Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clivedurdle · 05-01-2008, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being";
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust;
the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust;
and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brethren:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Is there a problem with reading what this states?

The bodily Jesus is Adam. The new Jesus is heavenly.

Flesh is corrupt, therefore Jesus cannot be flesh.

Paul is attempting to create a plan of salvation. His thinking does have illogicalities, but this is is the old idea of proposing two contradictory ideas - thesis antithesis - and coming up with a synthesis.

He is arguing for "in a twinkling of an eye".

Later people looking at this make the completely logical jump - oh Jesus must have been both human and divine to save us - the chimera solution.

I must quote Darwin on how people jump to conclusions.

Quote:

October 1st.—We started by moonlight and arrived at the Rio Tercero by sunrise. The river is also called the Saladillo, and it deserves the name, for the water is brackish. I stayed here the greater part of the day, searching for fossil bones. Besides a perfect tooth of the Toxodon, and many scattered bones, I found two immense skeletons near each other, projecting in bold relief from the perpendicular cliff of the Parana. They were, however, so completely decayed, that I could only bring away small fragments of one of the great molar teeth; but these are sufficient to show that the remains belonged to a Mastodon, probably to the same species with that, which formerly must have inhabited the Cordillera in Upper Peru in such great numbers.

The men who took me in the canoe, said they had long known of these skeletons, and had often wondered how they had got there: the necessity of a theory being felt, they came to the conclusion that, like the bizcacha, the mastodon was formerly a burrowing animal!

In the evening we rode another stage, and crossed the Monge, another brackish stream, bearing the dregs of the washings of the Pampas.
Beagle Ch VII

http://www.bartleby.com/29/7.html

Solitary Man · 05-01-2008, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnosis92

Is there any early Christian heresies whose beliefs match up with Doherty & mythicist description of how early Christianity started?

If Doherty's hypothesis is correct, then Paul's writings are the latter, but that raises the question of how much sense it makes to call them heretical.

But Doherty's hypothesis is bunk, ergo...

Gamera · 05-01-2008, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Doherty gets his ideas of the earliest Christianity from such documents as the epistle to the Hebrews. He thinks that the docetists were a transitional form between the early mythicists and much later historicists. By the time the heresy hunters got busy in the second century, these early mythicists had evolved into docetists and gnostics of various sorts.

So the heresy hunters and the early mythicists never crossed paths, per Doherty's theory.

Does that answer your question? If not, why not ask it directly of Doherty?

The point is, given the luxuriant categorization of heresies in ecclesiastical writings, you would expect a category to fit Doherty's description of the proponents of mythicism that he claims got Christianity going.

And yet, not a word on the matter. It's almost of if Doherty's early christain mythicists never existed. Exactly like that in fact.

Why are you so defensive on this clearly relevant critique of the mythicist position?

Gamera · 05-01-2008, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Quote:

Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being";
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust;
the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust;
and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brethren:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Is there a problem with reading what this states?

The bodily Jesus is Adam. The new Jesus is heavenly.

Flesh is corrupt, therefore Jesus cannot be flesh.

Paul is attempting to create a plan of salvation. His thinking does have illogicalities, but this is is the old idea of proposing two contradictory ideas - thesis antithesis - and coming up with a synthesis.

He is arguing for "in a twinkling of an eye".

Later people looking at this make the completely logical jump - oh Jesus must have been both human and divine to save us - the chimera solution.

And the point is, if this construction of early Christianity were true, you would expect ecclesiastical authorities to mention it as a heresy.

But they don't.

And this suggests your narrative of the development of Christianity from myth to man didn't occur.

A more plausible construction (based on what we often see in historiography) is that Paul is making symbolic connections in a commentary based on a narrative about an historical Jesus, placing his story in a larger symbolic story glommed from the Old Testament, and Paul's Helenism.

Gamera · 05-01-2008, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnosis92

Is there any early Christian heresies whose beliefs match up with Doherty & mythicist description of how early Christianity started?

If Doherty's hypothesis is correct, then Paul's writings are the latter, but that raises the question of how much sense it makes to call them heretical.

From the perspective of orthodox ecclesiastic authorities with an unhealthy interest in heresies, it would make a lot of sense. They had a almost baroque interest in identifying and categorizing and descrimating between heresies. Surely, the claim that Jesus was myth, not man, would fall into that category, and so you would expect such a claim to appear in the endless commentaries on heresies.

And yet it is conspicuous by its absence.

Another silence that undermines the mythicist argument.

Gamera · 05-01-2008, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vincent Guilbaud

gnosis92 asked:

Quote:

How would the idea of Christ as Paul's private revelation
transmute to the idea that matter is inherently evil?

I see two ways to resolve your question gnosis92
and to know the relation between an heavenly spiritual Savior and the denial of the Flesh.

1 - Google
Try with 'paul evil flesh'.
Then, click and read about any link.

Flesh, the Source of Sin
http://www.stpauls.net/Ecclesia/Apostolic/3.5.html
But according to Paul flesh, or human nature, in contrast with spirit, or the divine nature, is evil in its present state, whatever may have been true of it originally. God alone is holy; man is sinful always and everywhere. [Cf. Rom. 5:12 sq.]

But the evil flesh or nature expresses itself necessarily in desires or lusts, [Rom. 7:7; Gal. 5:16,25] and those desires, bring the expression of an evil nature, are evil or sinful, and that too even though a person may not yet have come to self-consciousness and may not yet have taken cognizance of them. [Rom. 7:7 sq.]
...

Paul's Argument on Law, Flesh and Sin
http://nov55.com/rel/arg.html
The Spirit and the flesh are not able to coincide together in unity. Jesus taught that man will either serve God or mammon (cf. Matt. 6:24), that he would not be able to serve both. Paul, earlier on in Galatians, made reference to this same idea when he first addressed the Galatian churches (cf. Gal. 1:10)

2 - the Epistles

1 Corinthian 15 42-52
So is it with the resurrection of the dead.
What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.
It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.
Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being";
the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust;
the second man is from heaven.
As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust;
and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust,
we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
I tell you this, brethren:
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Lo! I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet
....
and many others

Needless to say, if Paul's mythicism is so obvious, you would expect it to have been obvious to ecclesiastical authorities.

And yet they didn't put the construction on Paul's writing you have.

Let me suggest that the reason is, your cites are not obviously mythicist in nature, and that it much more plausible glosses exists (some of them provided by the very ecclesiastical authorities who had the texts in front of them).

Clivedurdle · 05-01-2008, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Is there a problem with reading what this states?

The bodily Jesus is Adam. The new Jesus is heavenly.

Flesh is corrupt, therefore Jesus cannot be flesh.

Paul is attempting to create a plan of salvation. His thinking does have illogicalities, but this is is the old idea of proposing two contradictory ideas - thesis antithesis - and coming up with a synthesis.

He is arguing for "in a twinkling of an eye".

Later people looking at this make the completely logical jump - oh Jesus must have been both human and divine to save us - the chimera solution.

And the point is, if this construction of early Christianity were true, you would expect ecclesiastical authorities to mention it as a heresy.

But they don't.

And this suggests your narrative of the development of Christianity from myth to man didn't occur.

A more plausible construction (based on what we often see in historiography) is that Paul is making symbolic connections in a commentary based on a narrative about an historical Jesus, placing his story in a larger symbolic story glommed from the Old Testament, and Paul's Helenism.

You may have misunderstood my point - no one knew what Paul meant and they assumed - identically to the assumption that mastodons were burrowing or a fossil femur was a giant's scrotum, that Paul was discussing a human Christ. No heresy because it was a basic assumption - in fact a logical error.

And I do not appreciate quote mining - the quote from Darwin that you deleted was my main point!

Quote:

The necessity of a theory being felt

And the theory they came up with is the orthodox chimera Jesus one, later extended to a chimera trinity thingy - as ridiculous as burrowing mastodons and giants' scrotums!

Roger Pearse · 05-01-2008, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Quote:

Originally Posted by gnosis92

Is there any early Christian heresies whose beliefs match up with Doherty & mythicist description of how early Christianity started?

If Doherty's hypothesis is correct, then Paul's writings are the latter, but that raises the question of how much sense it makes to call them heretical.

If that is as good as Doherty's argument gets, then it hardly needs discussion. Paul did not write in a vacuum, did not advance Doherty's ideas, and did not leave his works without a context or people to take them forward.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle · 05-01-2008, 12:49 PM

I must repeat - orthodox xianity - in believing in a chimera - a godman - is a mythicist position!

Why do not people understand that?

Next question - how did they get to that position?

History and then transform to the current myth?

Or Turtles all the way down?

The Pope has condemned the idea of a historical jesus to which god ideas acreted.

Why not say OK, it is a godman and by definitiion chimera are human imaginings!

Clivedurdle · 05-01-2008, 01:01 PM

Would it help if instead of thinking orthodoxy versus heresy we thought of clusters of interrelated ideas, much like a ring species, except that a select few of those ideas gained enough power to call all its brother and sister ideas evil and enforced its views via inquisition and crusade?

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

Quote:

n biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighboring populations that can interbreed with relatively closely related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series that are too distantly related to interbreed. Often such non-breeding-though-genetically-connected populations co-exist in the same region thus creating a "ring". Ring species provide important evidence of evolution in that they illustrate what happens over time as populations genetically diverge, and are special because they represent in living populations what normally happens over time between long deceased ancestor populations and living populations. Ring species also present an interesting problem for those who seek to divide the living world into discrete species, as well as for those who believe that evolution does not create new species. After all, all that distinguishes a ring species from two separate species is the existence of the connecting populations - if enough of the connecting populations within the ring perish to sever the breeding connection, the ring species becomes two distinct species.

We have had extinction of interconnecting belief systems, and the existing of docetism is evidence for one form of mythicism. Paul is evidence of another - a human Adam, a spiritual Christ.

Gnostic ideas are further evidence. Orthodoxy with its godman is another form of mythicism.

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05-01-2008, 12:49 PM	#19
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	I must repeat - orthodox xianity - in believing in a chimera - a godman - is a mythicist position! Why do not people understand that? Next question - how did they get to that position? History and then transform to the current myth? Or Turtles all the way down? The Pope has condemned the idea of a historical jesus to which god ideas acreted. Why not say OK, it is a godman and by definitiion chimera are human imaginings!

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