Yuri Kuchinsky

I'm only asking questions. But so far, answers are very few...

Well, if one wants to differentiate between those early martyrs who believed in the HJ, and those that didn't, then it will simply be two questions instead of one,

1. Please locate chronologically those earliest Christian martyrs who didn't believe in the HJ.

2. Please locate chronologically those earliest Christian martyrs who did believe in the HJ.

So it seems to me like both you and Ted are simply making more work for yourselves!

Well, I'm glad that you're so good at reading peoples' minds. You seem to know exactly what those ancients had in their heads!

Yes, this is another question I asked that still remains unanswered...

Yours,

Yuri.

andrewcriddle

I only listed the Popes where there is reasonably contemporary evidence of death through violence or ill-treatment.

According to stories five hundred years later almost all of them died as martyrs.

Andrew Criddle

Yuri Kuchinsky

Well, after three days, what do we have in this thread? None of my questions have been answered so far by the mythicists!

Frankly, I'm surprised by this lack of substantive response on their part. I would have thought that, after all those years of active (perhaps overactive?) controversies around these subjects, they should have all their answers down pat! But, alas...

Not even my first question was answered by anyone, the question that on the surface really seems quite simple,

1. Please locate chronologically the earliest Christian martyrs that you do accept as probably historical.

So what's the problem here, folks? Don't you know any history at all?

What I see instead is a lot of nitpicking and negativity, and plenty of good ol' babbling... Still beating around that bush!

There have been lots of reasons given why my questions are not 'quite right'... Why don't you just admit you cannot answer them, and be done with it?

Well, I used to debate with Doherty on Crosstalk before anyone else even heard of him, and I raised some of these same questions even back then... But it seems like the status questionis still hasn't advanced much in all these years, apparently...

OK, so let me now try to answer some of these questions from Doherty's standpoint (since nobody else here seems to be able to do it).

Doherty seems to think that those 7 "authentic" letters of Paul are really authentic. And that, based on them, Paul didn't believe in the HJ (although, it seems, Doherty had to torture both logic and Greek grammar severely to arrive to this conclusion...).

Does Doherty accept that Paul was martyred? If so, then maybe here we already have the first Christian martyr who didn't believe in the HJ (according to Doherty)!

Come on, don't we have a whole bunch of Doherty specialists here? Can anyone of them fill us in on the particulars? Why the silence?

I'm afraid that the intellectual poverty of the mythicist case may be even worse that I've suspected...

Regards,

Yuri.

Wallener

Yeah, you really showed them.

Julian

Your questions were shown to be irrelevant. Bzzzz... Try again.
Probably because of the lack of substantive questions.
I would have thought that, after all that time you could have asked some intelligent questions! But, alas...
Peter already did this. Still, you have been shown that it is irrelevant. Your arrogance is ill placed seeing how the posts addressed to you have been (willfully?) disregarded.
Don't you know how to read at all?
Blah, blah, blah...
Why don't you just admit that your questions are braindead and be done with it?
The horse is dead, stop beating it. It is not that your question aren't 'quite right' they are, in fact and demonstrably, completely irrelevant. Your smugness is childish.
There has been no silence, there have been lots of replies. You simply chose to ignore them.
As is the intellectual poverty of the idea that there is a connection between martyrdom and historicity. I wonder what that says about people who insists on it?

Julian

Amaleq13

The answer has been repeated by many: your focus on martyrs does absolutely nothing to expose any potential weakness in the mythicist position.

You continue to miss the point that this focus on martyrs is entirely misguided. Such a differentiation, in and of itself, is pointless.

It doesn't require mind reading, Yuri, it only requires common sense. If the earliest Christians believed in a Sacrificed Savior executed in a more-real-than-earth spiritual plane so strongly that they were willing to die for that belief, they obviously could not have considered that belief to be "just a myth". :banghead:

I suspect that might be due to the fact that it was buried amongst so much misguided nonsense.

Clivedurdle

I'd like to take this question of why people might have died for their faith in a slightly different - a psychological - direction.

The evidence is clear that people, definitely early on, were executed for legal reasons - later it may have turned into spectacle reasons in the games. They were given every opportunity to recant. The reports state they came out with what are really magical incantations - above is a classic example.

The Roman authorities did not know how to deal with it, so used trusted methods of torture and execution, but even under torture they continued to spout mumbo jumbo.

Isn't this a classic example of hypnosis, that is so deeply embedded it won't shift?

Did the early xians invent an effective and closed system of ritual, incantation, singing, repetition and possibly speaking in tongues so that they continuously reinforced their self and group hypnotic states, to such an effect that they were so trapped in their delusional system that death and torture was not a problem?

This kind of self induced mind game is easily transferrable to others and explains the rapid growth of numbers - really the passing on to others of a mind infection.

No need for any leader to start this - its a mental disease (West side story!)

Jayhawker Soule

In my case, clearly and admittedly not enough. So please help me with this, Yuri: suggest an answer and, what is to me far more important, exlain the relevance of the question. Thanks.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Yuri:
I'm only asking questions. But so far, answers are very few...

Failure on the part of the mythicists to answer my questions has already exposed the weakness of their position.

And especially the failure by the mythicists to present any sort of a positive case about how Christianity emerged is highly indicative. This amounts to their failure as historians.

Yes, it's all hot air, it seems to me...

Yours,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

The relevance of the question is that it exposes weakness on the part of the mythicists, their inability to come to terms with early Christian history.

Here's the list of possible earliest Christian martyrs,

John the Baptist
Jesus himself
Steven
those killed by Nero in 64 CE
Peter
Paul
James the Just
those persecuted by Domitian (81-96 CE)
those mentioned by Pliny the Younger ca 112/113 CE
Ignatius of Antioch
Pope Telesphorus (martyred ca 125 CE?)

My answer is that I accept John the Baptist, Jesus himself, Steven, Peter, and Paul as historical.

My challenge to the mythicists is to pick out from this list which of them they accept as historical, and which are not historical.

But this is just the first step. Later, there are also some other questions that I've already asked. But none of our mythicists here have gone even as far as the first step...

It's a total disgrace!

Regards,

Yuri.