Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Peter,

Yes, I think you're right. But in science it is imperative that all the evidence is considered carefully, before any conclusions are drawn, or a theory is formulated.

Failure to consider all the evidence (i.e. shunting some of the evidence to the side) is the first sign of pseudo-science.

Fair enough... But then of course you'll also have to specify if you consider Peter and Paul as historical persons, and explain your reasoning in these cases. If historical, they would have been the most famous Christian martyrs, perhaps.

Yes, this sounds reasonable. It's a lot easier to believe that the first martyrs already believed in the HJ, than otherwise IMHO. Any mythicist who wants to argue otherwise would have a hard job making his case.

Thanks for answering these questions. Most other replies to this thread so far are still missing the point, I'm afraid...

Once again, I'm asking people to make their _positive_ case. It's the easiest thing in the world to engage in nitpicks -- little side-criticisms here and there... _Any_ theory can be nitpicked into oblivion, given enough motivation for the nitpickers.

Do you have a positive case or not? If not, then your nitpicks are not welcome here.

The question of the earliest martyrs is extremely important, because we all know that there _were_ early martyrs (and it doesn't really matter how many there were). At some point, even the most hardened of sceptics will have to accept this, and to specify which ones of these traditional reports of martyrdom can be accepted as historic.

So I'm now asking the sceptics to specify this. By doing so, they'll begin presenting their positive case, which then can be subject to scrutiny. If they don't have a positive case, then they prove their inability to reconstruct a coherent picture of how Christianity really emerged -- i.e. their failure as historians.

Also BTW, by doing so, they are likely to come into conflict with other sceptics, since this is the area where the sceptics often disagree with each other. So then they'll begin to contradict each other, thus negating each others case.

I suspect that this is the reason so many sceptics are afraid of these questions that I'm asking, as they seem to be... Their lack of unity is really made apparent in this area -- which is the sign that they don't really have a good case.

The stories of martyrdom is what fuelled early Christianity, and made it grow. This seems obvious to me. So I don't buy any of those various convoluted explanations for why the martyrs should be simply swept under a rug -- how they are supposedly unimportant. If you think that the martyrs are unimportant then you're simply showing your ignorance of history, that's all... or perhaps your extreme bias against Christianity, which colours all of your perceptions of these matters, and thus invalidates all your attempts to be objective in this area.

Regards,

Yuri.

Clivedurdle

Were xians ever punished for being xians, or for being stubborn, superstitious, offensive to the gods and treacherous?

Yuri Kuchinsky

Beg your pardon, Joe, but this was not my conclusion...

Regards,

Yuri.

Amaleq13

Why do you hold that opinion when Paul was clearly willing to suffer and die for his sacrificed savior despite a complete indifference to, if not total ignorance of, a historical Jesus?

What makes a martyr is the strength of their faith. Why should the faith of a martyr be assumed stronger if it is based on an event that happened on earth than if it is based on an event that happened in a spiritual realm considered more important than life on earth?

It seems to me that your attempt to differentiate between martyrs for a historical Jesus and martyrs for a spiritual Jesus entirely misses the point of Doherty's appeal to Platonic concepts.

How are you defining "early"? It seems obvious to me, from Paul's letters, that what fueled earliest Christianity were stories of Risen Christ appearances possibly combined with displays of miraculous healing powers by the claimants.

I don't think anybody is saying they are unimportant. I think most of us who are confused by your approach are saying they are a not an appropriate point of differentiation between Christian believers in a spiritual Jesus and Christian believers in a historical Jesus because BOTH are assumed to have been willing to die for their beliefs in imitation of their savior's sacrifice!

Yuri Kuchinsky

YURI:
It's a lot easier to believe that the first martyrs already believed in the HJ, than otherwise IMHO.

Never mind my opinion. It is your positive case that I'm still waiting to see.

Yuri.

Amaleq13

I understand the desire to see a positive case described for a mythicist position but I don't understand why you think this focus on martyrs is helpful to obtaining that goal. The basis for your opinion is clearly relevant to understanding that focus. As it stands, this focus on Christian martyrs appears to be entirely misguided.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Judging by the lack of positive response on the part of the mythicists, this focus on Christian martyrs appears to be entirely successful in exposing just how weak their case is.

Yuri.

Marxist

Why is that? And in any case, who is to say the first martyrs are synonymous with the first Christians?

And wasn't it Origin who made the comment about the number of martyrs being exaggerated?

Clivedurdle

Pardon?

They were not martyrs - they were superstitious treacherous rabble rousers who destroyed perfectly good temple businesses, caused farmsteads to be deserted and met surreptitiously at dawn to ....

They were cracked down on by an empire that had no problem with using decimation to create order in the troops.

They were not being picked on for their faith, they were being picked on for criminal activity. If they had been following a leader that would have been a clear part of the charges - it isn't - the charges against them are about being superstitious and atheistic - the mythicist position!

Amaleq13

On the contrary, your focus on Christian martyrs appears to say nothing about the strength or weakness of the mythicist position and your failure to explain how it should does not help change that appearance.

You only have to read Ted Hoffman's post to see that I am right, at the very least, about the perception of your questions. He is arguably the primary representative of the mythicist position here and he doesn't appear to think your questions are any more appropriate or relevant than I do. To take from this response an admission of weakness is simply foolish. What it should suggest is that clarification on your part is necessary regarding exactly why you think it is important for mythicist's to explain Christian martyrs better than they already do. So far, it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Martyrs are about faith and early Christians had ample faith whether one argues that their faith was based on a historical or mythical Jesus.

Unless you can offer some sort of clarification of your questions, the sentence above appears to render your approach completely moot.

You seem to me to be operating under the completely misguided assumption that early Christians, according to mythicists, somehow believed in their sacrificed savior while simultaneously thinking of it as "only" a myth. They didn't consider it a myth, Yuri. They considered it to be The Ultimate Truth for which they were willing to die. Why doesn't that constitute a positive response to your martyrdom questions?

IMO, you would be much better off with a focus on when and why, according to mythicists, a historical Jesus became part of Christian dogma.