gurugeorge

Is Moses supposed to have been in a one-to-one relationship with an entity, described in such a homely way that the entity in question might reasonably be understood by us moderns to have been a human being (using smoke and mirrors to fool Moses, perhaps), and the Pentateuch therefore reasonably good evidence of a "historical God", or a "human God", a "wandering mountain-climber God", etc., etc.?

aa5874

But when a Jew makes reference to Jewish sources then it is evidence??

You have no idea what you are talking about.--No idea.

stephan huller

I don't understand the question. I don't see why we becoming the ultimate arbiter of an ancient paradigm. Moses is (secretly) understood to be God too. MSheH = HaSheM or ShMaH. His title is 'the man of God.' Same difference.

gurugeorge

Well everyone's secretly God if it comes to that

But we (or at least I) am talking about the criteria for sifting out evidence for historical human beings from descriptions of divine beings' doings.

It's possible that there was a preacher/prophet/madman called "Jesus Christ" who started Christianity. But the kind of evidence one would need to plausibilify that hypothesis (e.g. traces of what could have been human-on-human action, such as discipleship, such as someone eyeballing Him in human form prior to His crucifixion, such as someone-having-been-given-teachings prior to His crucifixion) is missing from Paul. However, while evidence for that hypothesis is absent, evidence for the hypothesis that the "Jesus Christ" entity in Christianity started off, in its very beginnings, as a hallucination, based partly on particular readings of Scripture leading to a revision of the very Messiah idea itself (in the over-arching context, I would venture, of a short period of Jewish optimism following Caligula's death), is very much present in Paul (and Hebrews).

That's all I'm saying. And I think that's pretty much what Carrier is saying, and what Doherty is saying, and what Price is saying. (Doherty and Carrier lay a stronger emphasis on a purely celestial character to the cult deity as conceived by the early Christians, but that's not even strictly necessary to a mythicist hypothesis, since quotidian elements in a story don't make it true, and a fleshly component to the mythical Jesus in and of himself has never been particularly good evidence of a historical human Jesus - i.e. what was always required was that further step, of a connection between a text, a human being, and that human being's report of meeting something else that at least looked like a human being, and was called "Jesus")

That is, taking a fairly consensus reading and dating of Christian texts, without claiming too much interpolation, without claiming too much lateness, without special pleading, it's quite easy to see the texts as strong positive evidence for a mythical Jesus, a Jesus who was never at any time a human being, but was always an imaginary friend, through and through.

Clivedurdle

Isn't this game set and match for mythicism? We have a heavenly God and Christ, an earthly Christ and a Holy Spirit fluttering between the two?

A wonderful marinade of Greek and Jewish and Persian ideas?

Pick and mix!

Duvduv

There you go again, AA. If you want to discuss this issue, start a new thread. However, at least admit to the importance of FAITH in fields that are not exact sciences such as biology and chemistry.

aa5874

Your questions are really irrelevant. The Pauline writer claimed he stayed with the Apostle Peter for 15 days and met the Apostle James the Lord's brother which is no different to any claim made in fiction stories.

The Apostle Peter and James are characters in the Jesus stories who were supposedly disciples of Jesus.

Now, you have not presented any actual corroborative evidence that the Pauline letters are early. You basically invented all sorts of stories that were unsubstantianted.

These are the facts.

There is NO corroboration at all in the very Canon that any Pauline letter was composed in the 1st century and the author of Acts wrote NOT ONE thing about the Pauline letters and the Revealed Gospel from the resurrected Jesus.

You are confusing the issue. The Pauline writer never claimed he saw Jesus BEFORE the resurrection. In Galatians 1, the Pauline writer claimed God Revelaed his Son to him after he consulted with NO Flesh and blood.

You seem not to grasp that a fiction story, a myth fable, can be about a Son of a God with disciples Peter and James that was crucified on earth which is exactly what is claimed in the NT.

It does not matter if Adam and Eve were created on earth or that Romulus and Remus were the founders of Rome--they are all Myth Fables.

In the Pauline letters there is absolutely no claim that Jesus was never on earth whether or not they are authentic.

gurugeorge

On a related point:-

One of the most striking things in Carrier's presentation, in particular, is the table of syncretisms.

There seem to be syncretisms for all Asian forms of religion plus Hellenism, except for Judaism ... oh wait ...

But those other syncretisms are all obviously made up and not based on anyone real .... oh wait ....

One has to lol

gurugeorge

But they are not mentioned as disciples in the Paul writings!!!! The word "disciple" is nowhere found in the Paul writings. Only terms like "Apostle", "Pillars", "brothers of the Lord", etc., etc.

It's quite comical that you're ultra sceptical on Paul, yet swallow hook line and sinker the gospel presentation as the authentic expression of the beliefs of earliest Christianity.

I'm simply taking the scholarly consensus as valid on that issue. I don't see any reason to doubt it (unlike with the Jesus figure himself). As we've wrangled many times, I just don't find Justin's silence convincing, because as I pointed out above, you can be silent about someone for many other reasons than that someone not existing.

Indeed - and nor does he claim that any of the people he talks about - Apostles, Pillars, Cephas, etc., saw Jesus before the resurrection.

Please think about this. See if you can find something in the Paul writing that lines up with the gospels on this issue of discipleship - that actually lines up, and not that you just assume lines up because some of the names are the same. Look at the 7 letters and see if you can find anything in them that really looks like the story of a divine god-man preacher AND HIS HUMAN DISCIPLES.

There's nothing in the Paul writings other than a report of some people in Jerusalem who appear to have some sort of cultic priority, but there's no sense in those writings, in and of themselves (without looking at them through gospel goggles) that the piority consists in those people being disciples of the deity he's talking about, while that deity was on earth.

Yes, there's a whole fable in the gospels about a Jesus preacher part-god, and his disciples who he walked with, etc. That's the overt meaning of the gospels. But you're jumping the gun if you take it at face value as the actual first beliefs of the first Christians and automatically (without thinking about it) bring that background to your reading of the Paul writings.

And that's especially peculiar coming from you, since you rightly acknowledge the variety of types of Christianity right from its earliest traceable beginnings.

Just put the question of priority to the side for a moment, and just focus on the content, the meaning, the characters in the gospel story on the one hand, and in the story Paul tells about his doings with people in Jerusalem.

Set aside, also, the question of whether any of these stories and reports are true or false, for the moment. Just notice that the content isn't identical. The Pauline content (re. the Jerusalem people) is different from the gospel content (re. disciples). If you just read Paul, you wouldn't get any sense that the people he's talking about were actual disciples of the cult deity, Jesus Christ, while he was on earth.

In the gospels, it's:- APPEARED (gathered disciples, preached, etc., etc.), CRUCIFIED, RISEN, APPEARED AGAIN.

In Paul it's:- EXECUTED, RISEN, APPEARED.

It's just an assumption, that comes from looking at the Paul writings with gospel goggles, that the Pauline "appeared" is not the ACTUAL FIRST "APPEARANCE" of Jesus in the Paul story.

stephan huller

But God isn't made up for people who believe so you are projecting the concept of 'non-existence' into what was originally a historical equation. Again I ask, does the presumed fact that 'God doesn't really exist' change the historical claims of the Exodus? The Christian formulation at Passover in that year of Tiberius is no different. If the followers of Alexander wrote a text about his apprenticeship and performance of a 'great miracle' with the assistance of Aesculapius or some other god in a particular year, the fact that Aesculapius doesn't exist doesn't disprove that the text was meant to be taken as a description of an historical event.