Ben C Smith

Okay, but I am just happy to see that I am apparently no longer on your ignore list.

Ben.

aa5874

This is mind-boggling. Jesus was presented as the offspring of the Holy Ghost, the son of a mythical god called the God of the Jews, and you want people to believe that Scriptures about the mythical God can corroborate that Jesus did exist.

That is so absurd.

The Jewish Scriptures are about a MYTHICAL God.

Jesus was presented as the son of that very MYTHICAL creature of Jewish Scripture.

The Sriptures only re-inforce the theory that Jesus was fictional or mythical since there are no historical facts about the creature.

Toto

Yes, it is clear that early Christians searched the Scriptures. But you seem to think that they searched the Scriptures for things that actually matched a known fact. Most interpreters seem to think that the searched the Scriptures for pure enlightenment and imposed whatever meaning was needed onto the Scriptures.

GakuseiDon

Toto, of course they did. :huh: I've given an example earlier, where Paul says that Israel has stumbling at a stumbling block, then goes to Scriptures to shed light on it.

Here is another example:

Rom 15:20 And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation,
Rom 15:21 but as it is written:
"To whom He was not announced, they shall see;
And those who have not heard shall understand."

Paul uses Scriptures here to shed light on what he is currently doing.

And Scriptures were thought to foretell events, as Paul makes clear:

Gal 3:8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed."

If the Scriptures were "foreseeing" that this justification would occur, when did the justification occur, Toto?

Great! So what do they make of the Zion passages then? And how do these passages fit personally into what YOU believe about early Christianity?

Toto

How do you know that they read current events and looked in the Scriptures for understanding? The Scriptures were much more real to them than reality. I suspect that they read the Scriptures - after training in an esoteric method of interpretation - and made that their reality.

Luke 24

On the Road to Emmaus

13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him.

. . .

25 He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ[b] have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

. . .

30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

. . .

[Jesus then rematerializes, eats fish, shows his wounds (although he has a new perfect body)]

44 He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."

45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46 He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Why is it that the Risen Christ has to resort to Scripture to prove his own existence? Why does Paul continually refer to "according to the scriptures" as opposed to "according to what an eyewitness said?"

GakuseiDon

Because I gave you examples where that happened? :huh:

OK. Let's grant that this is so. So what reality did they make out of "the stumbling block being laid in Zion"? What are the possible choices, in your opinion?

He isn't resorting to Scriptures to prove his own existence, he is resorting to Scriptures to show that he was the Messiah. How could you prove that a crucified, rising person is actually the long-awaited Messiah predicted by Scriptures, unless this was done by using the Scriptures?

Because it isn't a question of trying to prove some brute historical fact, but trying to prove that these things conformed to Scriptures. Haven't I already said this before? Yes, I'll grant that they also used Scriptures to get information about current facts, so it goes both ways.

So, what you think best fits what Paul was trying to say by using those "Zion" passages?

rlogan

Gosh thanks.

I apologize and really will try to be civil. This site has a lot to offer right now. Always did but there's some interesting discussion at the moment. eg Pliny/Trajan

spin of all people has me thinking a little earlier than I have been for some time.

I tentatively accept the principle of a "Paul" as he phrases the description of a candidate in another thread. For discussion purposes. An interesting idea. Wrongheaded but worth fleshing out more fully.

My prior is that Paul too is a myth that was peddled in the proximate vicinity of Marcion. These convenient & allegedly remote (therefore not subject to challenge) "letters" appeared buttressing a local theological development.

/derail


Jesus Gak -Toto is mopping up the floor with you on Jerusalem vs. Zion.

Statistically the odds of using it out of context like you insist goes to zero under that kind of data.


Here is something very central that needs to fall simultaneously with other assumptions in the circular reasoning school of thought:

Not quite. They selectively mined the HB to extract, or concoct the Christ story.

I was doing the same thing you are doing now when I was a freshman at U of I. Quoting out of Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict to show why Jesus was the Christ.

But if you accept the proposition that people do not fulfill prophecy nor perform miracles and in general just reject the supernatural - then you have to explain the same data:

How is it that this Jesus fit all of those HB passages? Born in Bethlehem. Came out of Egypt. From Galilee. Has a Moses story weaved in there. The voice crying in the wilderness. Virgin birth. Give me a break. 100% mined.

So you have nothing save a stupid story about Jesus blowing away the wise men at the temple age 12 or whatever. Made up. No such thing happened. Silly "credentialing". OK, genius at 12 - we get the picture. That's why he never wrote anything How stupid do we have to be to accept that?

So now you are up to that blitzkrieg ministry that on the one hand fulfills all the prophecy and threatens the religious establishment, also overthrowing the banking establishment's tables at the temple, yea sure - thousands following him around like sheep, getting executed for it in the end...



And Neither Josephus nor Pliny knows of such a person.

aa5874

Because, they now say he was really a nobody, an itinerant preacher, perhaps shouting only, " Woe unto the Jews" and due to some confusion he was believed to be the Christ, the Messiah, the son of the God of the Jews.

GakuseiDon

That's good. So what are the options that make up these statistics? Which option is the most reasonable? I've asked that of Toto nearly every post. I'm more than happy to say that there may be other readings than mine that make better sense. What I want is to see the argument for this, based on Paul's work.

All that is data that needs to be explained, I agree. So, what do you make of the Zion passages? What is the best explanation, IYO?

ph2ter

This is usual argumentation, but in order to be probable, we should in Paul's writings, beside the Scripture, also see some historical data about the actual human Jesus. The problem is that Paul lacks any historical data about Jesus. It appears that he's not concerned about actual historical person at all. This is not natural even for the first Christians because people's curiosity is unstopable. We know that also from the fact that the stories about actual human Jesus started to pop out immediately after Paul's death. And it looks that they created those stories mining the Scripture.
For the believer the concordance of actual Jesus, as presented in the Gospel, with the Scripture predictions about him is proof of his divinity, but for the nonbeliever that same concordance is proof of fabrication.
And I think that many concordances are too strong to be only adaptations to the real events of Jesus life.