archibald

I am prepared!

Now, you may have to help me with detail for these, because I'm not familiar.

My 1st reaction would be:

1. Was this guy describing walking beside post-crucifixion Jesus, or imagining himself walking beside Jesus while he was supposedly on earth? If the former, then that would be self-explananatory. If the latter, and he is walking beside someone who appears to be real to the extent that the guy is expecting footprints, then that's just regular Docetism. I have no problem with Docetism. It's basically HJ, with a twist. He was here on earth, but not in the form that you think.

2. What is an anti-Christian? This sounds like it might be a variant of item 1, in which case my comments would be similar.

3. Sounds like this could almost be said of me, at least the first two lines.

A.

J-D

I am not asking for reliable historical sources for mythology. I am asking for reliable historical sources for your position.

maryhelena

aa5874 - thanks for making my day - sometimes your remarks are just brilliant :wave:

dog-on

His reliable sources, much like the reliable sources for Christian origins in general, have been drowned in Russel's teapot.

Perhaps what is really needed is a spaceship and a net...

maryhelena

Of course, every historical event depends upon what has gone before - nothing happens in a vacuum. There is no need, surely, to have to make such a point...

My point is the the gospel JC story is a 'picture', a 'picture', a snapshot, that has been taken, by a prophetic lens, of a specific historical time period.

Consider this analogy:

Pretend for the moment that you like baking cakes....Out you go to the supermarket to buy the ingredients; the butter and eggs, flour and sugar, some vanilla essence and the best chocolate for a great Black Forest cake. Oh, and don't forget the cream, the cherries and the Kirsch liqueur.

Right: The supermarket is the historical context. You select from history the events, the people, the time, the place. You mix all the historical ingredients and the mixture goes in the intellectual oven; the transforming and interpretative oven. What comes out of the oven, your cake, has transformed the ingredients, the historical details, into something new. That something new that has been created out of history is the gospel pseudo-historical JC. What comes next, for we don't want a bare bones, naked JC - is to dress up your cake. A sprinkle of Kirsch for the supernatural mind blowing kick; lashes of cream for the soft emotional touch, and just to add some colour, those glorious cherries will add the mythological fancy dressing.

OK, so now you have your tea party. And your visitors are simply dying for your recipe for Black Forest Cake. How much sugar, whole eggs or did you separate them. Flour, self-raising or plain. Oh, and what is that intriguing flavour? Did you add a little orange juice? And so on...

Those are the sort of questions, translated from baking ingredients, to historical 'ingredients', that we should be asking re the gospel figure of JC. We have to first establish the history of the relevant time period - not just from Herod the Great in 40/37 b.c. but the events that led to his siege of Jerusalem in 37 b.c. and the initial consequences of that siege. That requires that we consider Hasmonean history.

And it is considering Hasmonean history that will take one to the last King and High Priest of the Jews, Antigonus, and his being bound to a cross, crucified, flogged and beheaded in 37 b.c. It will take one back to Antigonus being taken prisoner to Rome in 63 b.c. It will take one back prior to that - to the time of his birth - which would have been during the later years of Alexander Jannaeus. And what happens then is that one is face to face with those old Jewish Toledot Yeshu stories. Whatever the strange goings on with these stories, one thing is very clear - they are set in a time period prior to Herod the Great, ie during Hasmonean rule. Why would a Jewish 'propaganda' story place a gospel parody years prior to the gospel time frame? Well, is it not that that gospel time frame is itself contradictory? And put gLuke on the shelve (being the last of the synoptic) and one does not have the 15th year of Tiberius as any sort of marker.

mountainman

The incident is referred to in the Acts of John. How many Emperors and Bishops curse the author of the Acts of John for how many centuries?

Here I am referring to the references in John to the antichrist.
See this thread for the references ....Docetic belief and the Non Historical Jesus: "who did NOT come in the flesh" [John]

Arius was damned for saying this.
Why?

This all goes back to your comment ....

In general it might be reasonable to say that the opinion that Jesus never existed may have existed among the heretics (especially after Nicaea) but who do we have to thank for preserving the views of the gnostic heretics? Orthodox heresiological church figures wrote the history of the orthodox canonical victory. They harmonised the history of the 4th century controversies over the theological status (or indeed historical status) of Jesus.

I am sorry if you choose to uncritically believe the harmonized legend that there was noone in ancient history who stood up and said that Jesus was fabricated out of nothing existing and had no physical historical existence. I can see as quite reasonable the observation that the Constantine Bible was a product of war, and part of the racket of victory, just like the Hebrew Bible, the Sassanid Persian Zoroastrian "Avesta" and the Islamic Koran.

gurugeorge

Yes, prophecies, prophecies made in the distant past (relative to those early Christians) about the more recent past (relative to those early Christians).

That may indeed have been their original intention, but you don't know that's how they were read by anybody in those days. Judaism was not Judaism pre 70 CE.

Nor do we know that it's those passages that were referenced at all.

There are basically only two possible options, either "according to Scripture" is an anachronistic interpolation referring to the later gospels, or "according to Scripture" refers to the Septuagint. If it's the latter then there must be some passages in there that, to some early Christians, including "Paul", prophesied their Messiah.

There's no crucifixion in 1 Corinthians 15 either! He "died for our sins", that's it.

Here's the way I'm reading that passage:-

That, according to the Scriptures, The Messiah died for our sins

That, according to the Scriptures, [The Messiah] was buried, and that he was raised on the third day

Picture the referent here, "The Messiah", as being the traditional Messiah. What is being said here is that, contrary to what everyone else was thinking (i.e. that The Messiah would be coming in the near future to give the Romans a bloody nose and put the Jews on top), Scripture (to these early Christians) revealed that The Messiah had already come to earth, and done something totally unexpected of him.

It's the same "The Messiah" as in the (then contemporary) Messiah myth - it's myth all the way down, not a living human being known to anybody personally in sight. But yet it's certainly believed to have happened - on the strength of Scripture, of holy writing.

It's as if these guys are saying "we have found the truth about The Messiah [the mythical figure] in Scripture - don't bother waiting for him, he's already been".

gurugeorge

As I explained, it's a principle of charity of interpretation. Tens of thousands of people throughout the history of man have said "I saw deity X and he told me to tell you this".

Which is most Humeanly likely? That the majority of them are liars, con artists and frauds, or that the majority of them are victims of a trick of the brain under certain conditions such as intense religious fervour, life crisis, spiritual exercises, etc. etc.?

archibald

And I am sorry if all you have are Docetists, with whom I have no problem, because it appears to be obfuscation and a lame attempt at dodgy semantics to imply that they support a mythicist argument, based on any texts which have survived. Bar some sort of conspiracy theory. And I think you'll agree, that would be a bit speculative. :]

archibald

For me, most likely the latter, and yes, in that case the scriptures were believed by the writer and apparently by Christians to refer to something that had happened, most likely recently.

Not sure why you're restricting yourself to 1 Cor 15. The point was that 'Paul' preached a crucified Messiah, and it isn't in any of the prophecies.

Exactly. And what makes you think this wasn't because someone had been, recently?

George, you are using an odd reading of 'according to scriptures' to try to support your convoluted hypothesis with a skyhook.

For starters, have you any examples of this sort of thing ever having happened?