jules?

well, yes of course, I just wonder if the average greco-roman had the same thoughts as you. Celsus would have agreed with you.

Doug Shaver

You pointed out that the gospel asserted his divine parentage. I can treat that as false without denying that he was born.

But if I did deny that he was born, then of course I would also deny that he died, no matter by what means.

On the other hand, if he was born, then he must have died somehow, and there is nothing inherently implausible about his dying by crucifixion.

You persist in treating the gospels the way fundamentalists do, assuming that one is compelled to believe either everything or nothing of what they say.

Didymus

But did he? Do we have any evidence of early anti-Christian writers objecting to the crucifixion story on the grounds of implausibility?

Ddms

neilgodfrey

There is so much symbolism, irony, theology, whatever, riddling the original (Markan) crucifixion narrative that I see little ground for treating it as having an historical base at all. Just to point to one of the oodles of examples, that titulus in the original is not, as it is often assumed, an "admission" of Jesus' crime -- but an ironical theological statement. They really were crucifying the "king of the Jews", the "son of God", the Messiah, etc. It's a theological claim in a theological narrative without any whiff of historicity interfering in it at all. Not surprising -- if Paul was the first to speak of the crucifixion of Jesus, he spoke of it as a theological phenomenon.

An admission of a crime would be, as the author of GJohn is well aware, a titulus statement like: "He said, I am the King of the Jews".

aa5874

There is nothing implausible about crucifixions. There is nothing implausible about a real human being named Jesus or that a real human named Jesus was crucified.

However, it is implausible that the offspring of the Holy Ghost was crucified, and that is how the gospels presented Jesus, as an implausible being.

I persist in treating the gospels exactly as the early Christians and the gospels writers presented them.

You persist in fabricating another Jesus and then you crucify him.

Huon

There is another interpretation of the crucifiction of JC, the docetic interpretation, as it is described in the Gospel of Peter. In this docetic interpretation, JC is clearly an actor, playing a tragedy. Actors do not die (usually) at the end of the play. They go to bed. The docetic JC goes to bed, in the sky.

But this docetic story is not the best possible tragedy. And this is why it has been rejected by the main christian current. If JC suffers as an ordinary man, you should weep on his miserable fate. And when your heart is softened enough, it is possible to tell you his ascension to the sky. After all, he is God, nom de Dieu ! ( I don't know how to translate this exclamation : God is God, by God !).

Doug Shaver

Nonsense. If you did that, you'd be a Christian.

However, you do have something in common with modern fundamentalist Christians. Like them, you make the ridiculous assumption that the gospels must be either entirely true or entirely false.

No Robots

Yeah, it's ironic how mythicists still maintain that Christ is divine, even when most self-declared Christians don't even believe this any more. It's like mythicists are making themselves out to be the last remnant who alone remain faithful to the true meaning of the Bible. In this sense, they are like a living fossil of absolute fideism. And the over-arching need to separate the NT from its Jewish roots is like a remnant of the old Christian antipathy toward Jews, flying in the face of the unanimous consensus among scholars as to the wholly Jewish basis of the NT.

aa5874

You appear not know what is fundamentalism with respect to religion.

Fundamentalist do NOT claim that the Gospels is entirely false.

And liberal Christians believe that some parts of the Gospels may be true, therefore you are the one who may be a Christian or a Bible believer.

I am a non-believer, the entire NT is false with respect to Jesus, the disciples and Paul.

You appear to believe Jesus was ENTIRELY real, and still you want me to think you are not a Bible believer or even a disciple.

spamandham

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on which particular citing(s) you are referring to.