ApostateAbe

OK. Do you otherwise agree with the methodology of "Reciprocal Expectations"? Thanks. Maybe we can focus on where you think I have made the force-fit.

aa5874

Jesus of gMark did NOT start any NEW cult under the name of Christ.

Please read gMark, the earliest Gospel.

Jesus did NOT even tell his OWN disciples he was Christ in gMark BEFORE Peter..

It was PETER who FIRST told Jesus that he was Christ.

It was PETER who FIRST told the other disciples that Jesus was Christ.

The disciples of Jesus did NOT even recognise Jesus as Christ before Peter told them so.

Jesus was just a MIRACLE worker and regarded as a Prophet by the Jews who observed Jewish Laws.

Immediately AFTER Peter told Jesus he was Christ, Jesus told the same disciples NOT to REPEAT what PETER said to ANYONE.

Mark 8 It is completely illogical that Jesus STARTED a NEW religion under the name of Christ when he did NOT even INITIATE the claim that he was Christ and BARRED his OWN disciples from telling anyone he was Christ.

Jesus in gMark was NOT the founder of any NEW religion under the name of Christ and was NOT the cult leader of any NEW RELIGION under the name of Christ.

And Jesus in gMark WANTED the Jews to REMAIN in Sin. See Mark 4.

Jesus in gMark had good news and bad news for the Jews but he only gave the Jews the good news.

In PRIVATE, he told his disciples the bad news in gMark 13.

Jesus PRIVATELY told his disciples that the Jewish Temple would Fall and that there would be UNHEARD of calamities for Jews.

Jesus could NOT BE an APOCALYPTIC preacher to the JEWS in order for the words of the so-called prophecies were to be fulfilled.

The apocalypse was supposed to be a SECRET in gMark.

Toto

He was a divine, non material being, and not a part of history. That's the relevant point of similarity.

Sociology is not an exact science, although statistics can give things a spurious sense of exactitude.

Your reference to the "Cult Studies" site indicates a basic confusion. This site is one of many devoted to opposing oppressive personality-driven cults. If we remove the value judgment, we are just talking about "religion." Religions have been a constant through human history, but they come in such variety that there is little you can say about early Christianity based on current events. You can pick and choose, and say Christianity must have been like Mormonism, or Scientology, but this is an interesting exercise, not a proof or even a probabilistic indication as to what early Christianity was like.

Then who founded Judaism, reputedly? What would Jews say?

On the contrary, Jews and Romans had classes of scribes. Writings from that time have survived.

Paul has a higher Christology than the later gospels. Does that falsify your claim that Jesus was historical?
The docetists come close. We know from the text that there were some who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh - which would make him mythical or spiritual. Does that falsify your claim?

I'm not sure why this would falsify the historical Jesus.
Myths often contain seeming embarrassing details.

The Messianic claimants and John the Baptist (if he even existed) were not trying to found new cults or religions. They were working within the Jewish religion. Anyone founding a new religion or distinctive cult needs to have their own texts, which Christians did not gather or produce until well after Jesus' time.

Toto

I don't think that this so called methodology adds anything. Practically every response I have made to you focuses on the forced fit.

aa5874

Now, that is evidence the Pauline writings were LATER than the Gospels.

This is so basic.

The Gospel with the HIGHEST Christology is gJohn the LAST Canonised gospel.

The Gospel with the LOWEST Christology is gMark the EARLIEST Canonised Gospel.

The Christology of the Pauline writings is SIMILAR to gJohn.

It more likely that the Pauline writings were LATE and AFTER gMark.

ApostateAbe

When I listed my points of commonalities between Jesus and Joseph Smith not shared by Angel Moroni, it was a list of confirmed facts. They were not assumptions. They were facts. If you think that Jesus is more analogous to the Angel Moroni than to Joseph Smith, then you should prove the plausibility of that claim with a similar exercise. List the confirmed facts, not just your conclusions.
A cult is a sociological phenomenon that follows patterns like many other sociological phenomena. If we remove the value judgment, then the items on the list still objectively describe the tendencies of a sociological phenomenon, because the claims are not value judgments, nor do they depend on value judgments. They are objective claims. If I were to tell you that you are ugly, then it would be a subjective claim, and removing the value judgment is nullifying the claim. If I were to tell you that your face is abnormally asymmetrical and non-homogenous, your limbs are abnormally disproportional, your clothing does not fit your body and was bought at an abnormally low price, and your hair is abnormally dirty and tangled, then the claims may be motivated by a value judgment, but the claims stand or fall depending on the objective realities. If you think the listed claims are either false or unreliable, then say so. So, what is your claim, exactly? Are you saying that there are no tendencies of cults that are distinct from the tendencies of religions?
Abraham. The problem is that he reputedly was not the founder of a seeming cult.
Right, and listing the few examples of the writings that have survived would illustrate the absurdity of your expectation that either Jesus or his followers would write anything that survives. Do you hold the same standard for John the Baptist? Apollonius of Tyana? Pythagorus? Prophet Muhammad? Judas, son of Hezekiah? Simon of Peraea? Athronges, the shepherd? Judas, the Galilean? The Samaritan prophet? Theudas? The Egyptian prophet? Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean? John of Gischala? Simon bar Giora? Jonathan, the weaver? Lukuas? Simon ben Kosiba? Moses of Crete? If not, then I hope you will correct yourself, and that will be the last time you ever claim to expect either Jesus of Nazareth or his followers would write anything that survives to the present day. It is nonsense of the face, and you seem to be perpetuating a terribly bad argument common among Jesus-minimalists, so please stop it. Please.
Sort of, though unfortunately I think that point gets only part of the way there. The primary problem is that Paul identifies Jesus as part human and part heavenly being, but not as one with God as in John ("The Father and I are one"). His Christology would be questionably on the same level as the gospel of Matthew, and lower than the Christology of the gospel of John. It is an aberration from the pattern of higher Christologies with time. A full reversal of the pattern would count as a falsification for sure.
The docetists believed that Jesus has only seemed to come in the flesh. That is a doctrine expected from the belief that Jesus was God, because the ancients commonly believed that humans and gods were distinctly different. You could have someone be half-god and half-man, but, if you are fully a god, then you would be no part human being, and so docetism was seemingly a way to reconcile the two beliefs about Jesus. More importantly, the ancient docetism is not expected from the theory that Jesus was purely myth. The theory that Jesus was purely myth expects people who believed that Jesus was purely myth. I know because this is precisely how Earl Doherty interprets the early Christian texts.
If Jesus was purely myth, then such an idea would seem probable to the ancient opponents of Christian orthodoxy, and the theory that Jesus was purely myth would expect this evidence. Modern Internet myths often misquote early Christian authors to that effect, but no such ancient evidence exists.
I don't think so. Speculations of details that you subjectively think should be embarrassing are not worth nearly as much as evidences of positive spins and white-washing of seeming embarrassments in the canon. That is what we see in relation to the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
I would like you to develop this expectation, because it is a central objection that is very common among Jesus-minimalists. Two problems:

(1) My model of Jesus and his disciples is that they were not trying to start a new religion. They believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of messianic prophecies, and they were Jews out-and-out. Jesus encouraged complete adherence to Jewish law, albeit with different interpretations.
(2) Do you think that expectation applies to a cult that believed the end of the world as they knew it was right around the next corner? That is what I mean by, "doomsday cult," by the way. Do you really think they would hire a scribe to start a new scriptural tradition? They may all need to skip a few meals in order to do that, but, if you really think they would be expected to do that, then maybe it is a good point. Do you have any more reason to expect that they might have done that?

Toto

This is pretty bizarre - what confirmed facts are there about Jesus? Your confirmed facts are a list of things that were reputed to be said about Jesus, and most of them were too general to be useful.

On the other hand, I assert that it is a fact that there was no historical Angel Moroni.

The difference between a cult and a religion is - what? Probably the amount of real estate they own.

If you look at the list in your link, they are characteristics of modern personality cults of the sort that prompt the parents of converts to send deprogrammers to rescue their kids. The sociologists of religion don't use the word cult - they call these groups "New Religions."

He was a mythic character who was invented at a later time for the purposes of a religion, which is indistinguishable from a cult.

That's part of the reason I am not sure whether he existed or not.

Wikipedia for convenienceApollonius appears to be the closest example comparable to Jesus, and the written record supports my idea that we would have expected something written by Jesus or his followers

lived 6 centuries before Jesus.

The Qur'an was supposedly dictated by him.

It is not a common argument - I might have just came up with it, or read it one other place. And Apollonius seems to confirm my idea.

Paul identifies Jesus as a spiritual being, with a later interpolator adding a few formulaic references to Jesus' human nature.

You realize that most scholars date the gospel of John as especially late because of its high Christology.

Did you just make that up? What about all the offspring of gods and mortal women in ancient times?

like those who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh?

This idea has been debunked - perhaps you were off when we went through that. The opponents of Christian orthodoxy attacked Christianity by saying that Jesus was a mere man who was born of a prostitute and died on the cross and stayed dead. It is only in modern terms that it is an attack on Christianity to say that Jesus was a myth and not a human on earth, because modern materialists reject supernatural gods and spirits. The ancients did believe in supernatural gods.

It does not appear that Mark thought that the baptism of Jesus by John was at all embarrassing. What was embarrassing to later writers was the story in Mark.

Compare this to the way first century pagans became embarrassed by the activities of Zeus in their myths.

This is a complicated issue. The stories about Jesus in some of the gospels show him upholding Jewish law, but a case can be made that these were anti-Marcionite additions to the text. Paul (or the letters that we have) seems to be fairly explicit in rejecting the necessity of following the Jewish law in any form.

I think this idea that Christians didn't write things down because the apocalypse was upon them is an ad hoc rationalization for the lack of early written records. If John of Patmos could write his Revelation, what would prevent other early Christians from doing the same?

aa5874

There are ZERO confirmed historical facts about Jesus of the NT except how he was described.

The FACTS are that Jesus of the NT was claimed to be FATHERED by a Ghost was God and the Creator of heaven and earth, WALKED on the sea, Transfigured, Resurrected, ATE FISH and Honey after his resurrection, and Ascended in a cloud.

There are ZERO commonalities between Jesus of the NT and Joseph Smith of Mormonisn.

You MUST know that Joseph Smith even WROTE about and BELIEVED in Jesus Christ.

Joseph Smith FIRST DOCUMENTED his doctrine, Jesus of the NT did NOTHING and wrote NOTHING at all for 30 years in Nazareth. NT Jesus MAY have been ILLITERATE or blind if he did live.

Jesus of the NT should have known he was the FORE-RUNNER to John the Baptist. After John the Baptist was KILLED why did NOT Jesus begin to DOCUMENT his doctrine, and miracles. Jesus in the NT supposedly PREDICTED that he would be KILLED so why did he NOT document his TEACHINGS and Life on earth?

Jesus LEFT NOTHING documented for his disciples when he supposedly was executed as Predicted.

And further, on the day Jesus was ARRESTED the disciples either Betrayed, Abandoned or Denied Jesus and WAS REJECTED as a Jewish Messiah.

In a most ridiculous addition to gMark, Jesus came back from the dead to COMMISSION his disciples to preach the Gospel and to Baptize, the very same baptism he was to replace.

What a most ridiculous additional story. See Mark 16.9-20. Jesus knew he would be killed but waited until he came back from the dead to tell his disciple TO BAPTIZE people.


Mark 16:16 - There is NOTHING common between Jesus and Joseph Smith of Mormonism since there are no confirmed historical Facts of Jesus.

Steven Carr

ABE
John the Baptist would be a good example to that effect, in my opinion--the earliest evidence indicates that he was a doomsday cult leader, and his religion survived his death, but we have no written evidence from either himself or his followers (only Christian gospels and Josephus).

CARR
Where does Abe get this stuff from?

There is zero evidence that John the Baptist was a doomsday cult leader.

aa5874

Josephus could NOT have mentioned Jesus of the NT. Jesus the brother of James in Antiquities died at at least 5 years before James the Lord's brother according to apologetic sources.

James died at around 62 CE in Josephus when Albinus was just made governor and James the Lords brother was ALIVE after the death of Peter c 67-68 CE based on The Preface to the Recognitions attributed to Clement and translated by Rufinus.

Other Church writers claimed the mother of James the Lord's brother was NOT Mary and that the FATHER of Jesus was a Holy Ghost.

And further, Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius wrote of NO Messianic ruler named Jesus. See Wars of the Jews, Suetonius "Life of Vespasian" and Tacitus "Histories 5"