mikem

Tht's news to me! What evidence do you have for this?

Julian

If I am not mistaken, it sounds like Jake is adhering to the dutch radical school and similar lines of thought. Start here:

http://www.hermann-detering.de/in_engl.htm

and a discussion here:

Detering: The Fabricated Paul

Julian

TedM

Yes, Jack, can you present what you think are the top 2 or 3 arguments for this theory which surely you will admit is accepted by almost no scholar at present?

thanks,

ted

GakuseiDon

Jake, what do you mean by "sub lunar realm"? Since it can also include the earth, do you mean the air below the orbit of the moon?

jakejonesiv

Hi Ted!

In addition to Dr. Hermann Deterings site, you might want to check out Robert M. Price's home page and The Journal for Higher Criticism.

And of course, there is always the JM archives, but you know that.

Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Well, it is not my term. If it is used to mean that mythical Jesus was not conceived to get to ground level, (or below!) then I can't agree.

I think Earl Doherty worries too much about the the vague phrases concerning the flesh of Jesus in the Pauline material. Most of them are catholic redactions and are not in the more original Marconite recension, so they are not relevant.

I have a great deal of respect for Earl Doherty, and he has done a fantastic job IMHO in calling into question the alleged historical underpinnings of the Jesus story. So I am going to bow out of this discusssion now.

Jake Jones IV

TedM

Thanks for the sites, but honestly I don't want to read all of that right now. I was just hoping for a taste of what the top 2 or 3 pieces of evidence are. Maybe it isn't that simple, but it seems to me that if it can't be made that simple something's wrong with the theory.

ted

guy_683930

Because of its allegorical meaning. The cross represented dying to your old sensual self and being reborn in a spiritual body. The idea can be traced back to Plato in some form or another.

Galatians 6.15: "But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. "

Galatians 2.20: "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

Romans 6.5-7:
"5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

7 for he who has died is freed from sin. "

TedM

But those quotes are after the possible choice of a cross, so we can't know if they cross was chosen upfront by the creators of the faith as a means for rebirth or if the means for rebirth was the cross only after an actual death by crucifixion of a man deemed by some to have been perhaps the messiah prior to his being killed.

ted

Toto

Are you mixing up your threads?

How can it be made simpler?