aa5874

Based on your own view, It really doesn't matter what MCalvera is suggesting since it is NOT conclusive.

Your own views are NOT conclusive so it doesn;t matter what you say.

It is ERRONEOUS and Chinese Whispers that Jesus' healings sometimes did NOT work in the NT. Every single healing attempted by Jesus was ALWAYS eventually successful.

In the NT, No blind, deaf, mute, epileptic, demon possessed or even dead that was under the healing power of Jesus left him without the healing.

Rhetorical Questions are NOT evidence of anything unless you have the answers.

Why would you have Jesus as a publicly known man and then have to "contort your story" and LIE he was the Child of a Ghost?

Why would you have Jesus as a man and then have to CONTORT the story and claimed Jesus was TRANSFIGURED?

Why would you have Jesus as a man and then having to contort the story and claim he WALKED on the sea?

HJ of Nazareth would NOT be sinless. HJ is PRESUMED to be a man. You are EXPOSING the errors of the HJ theory.

Why would HJ of Nazareth be sinless?

Jesus was NOT even called the Messiah by the Jews and he did NOT start any religion under his own name.

Jesus FORBADE the disciples from telling anyone he was Christ.

archibald

Yeah, that's what I mean by less convincing. A fictional/allegorical saviour, with faulty powers.

Apart from anything else, sometimes you seem to move from 'it was all taken from the Septaguint' to 'except the bits that weren't'.


Sure. In regard to Paul. We all know about what paul does and doesn't deal with. Not sure how you feel confident that it wasn't in early oral traditions ematating from others.

And we do note That Paul talks of people being convinced by miraculous signs and wonders, which tends to suggest that this might have been something being deployed (emulated?) in paul's ministries, at least.

Ok, but it's hardly OT allegory, so what do you have to do, contortions to get him to Bethlehem. Less convincing.

Having an announcer is one thing. I think the problem for Gospel writers was that someone baptizes the messiah. I think we could chart the course of this bit of the story as it developed in later gospels. There is an argument that it clearly didn't fit with notions of a messiah, and as such had to be redrafted to be less awkward, for example, so that eventually, in John, John the Baptist 'recognizes' Jesus before he baptizes him. Contrast this with simpler Mark.

Sure. All I am saying is that it's not in the OT.

Anyhows, I guess we could go around for days, me saying I prefer one explanation and you saying you prefer another. Are either of us getting anywhere?

Stringbean

Circular reasoing, trying to prove the Bible with itself.

How do you know? Cause the Bible says so.

:banghead:

archibald

Kapyong. I was specifically talking about evidence of there being an early Christian mythicist heresy. There's a thread on it. If you have anything, you can post there.

MCalavera

You don't see a distinction because of this strong bias you have for mythicism. It's a big issue if you agree that Jesus was promoted as the Messiah from the moment the Jesus cult emerged.

The Messiah should've been from Bethlehem, not Nazareth. So why Nazareth?

Historicists can explain this much better than mythicists and in accordance with the current evidence. Mythicists have to speculate extra stuff in order to come up with their explanations ... such as that Jesus was originally just meant to be a character of a very good moral story to tell to the Jews and to give them some form of hope and encouragement under the regime of the Romans.

archibald made a very good point with the ad hoc hypotheses bit.

The historicist's explanation is simpler and less complex than yours, so Occam's razor favors the historicist's explanation for this rather than yours.

The argument isn't about whether or not they happened. The argument is why the hell have the supposed Messiah fail at all at doing miracles.

The historicist has a good simple explanation for this. The mythicist, on the other hand, continues to have some struggles.

That's not a good explanation because (a) it's not in accordance with what the primary texts say and (b) the awaited Messiah wasn't supposed to be crucified or punished to death by the Romans.

Neither the evidence nor Occam's razor supports your point.

Ok, you will have to explain what exactly historicists may struggle with here. :huh:

MCalavera

Then why mention Nazareth? Your argument just makes things unnecessarily more complex than they should be.

You're arguing like a high school kid now. Did you actually care to pay attention to the point I'm making?

Let me rephrase my question for you. From the mythicist point of view, why did the early Christians make up an account about the supposed Messiah being baptized ... and by someone supposedly lesser than him?

Missed the point.

Again missed the point.

Doug Shaver

So say historicists, but they need to prove it. It isn't so just because they say it is so.

Some of us mythicists don't assume that anybody was "making up a messiah from scratch."

To argue that Paul was close in time to the crucifixion is to assume the historicity of the gospel Jesus. Paul himself gives no clue as to when his Jesus was crucified.

Stringbean

Better read your post agian dude. Your the one that mentioned it.

And your spoiled brat tactics are helping? Dude your not making a point.

You tell us. Your the one that believes this cock and bull story. You HJers are all the same in my book. You go around quote mining and cherry picking bible verses and 130 year after the fact sources and then try and solidify them as history of a Jewish MESSIAH.

There is not one single piece of archaeological, forensic or documentary evidence that shows Jesus was ever alive.

MCalavera

I know, but your argument is that it never existed in Jesus' days. So why did they have a fictional town be the hometown for their supposed Messiah?

Man, you're using very similar tactics to what aa5874 is using. Please address my arguments as stated or just don't reply.

Here it is again:

From the mythicist point of view, why did the early Christians make up an account about the supposed Messiah being baptized ... and by someone supposedly lesser than him?

You believe this was made up, right?

That's pure bullshit talk.

Vorkosigan

You mean, why would a particular Christian writer create such a scene? What does it tell you about the writers' beliefs? Clearly the early Christians -- if we look at Paul....

• "For Paul, baptism is the prime sacrament of Christian ritual, through which the convert dies to his old, sinful self and rises to a new one. In Romans 6:1-11 he breaks down the baptismal ritual into its ritual and mystical parts. Yet never do any of these parts relate to the scene of Jesus' own baptism. The descent of the dove into Jesus would have provided a perfect parallel to Paul's belief that at baptism the Holy Spirit descended into the believer. The voice of God welcoming Jesus as his Beloved Son could have served to symbolize Paul's contention (as in Romans 8:14-17) that believers have been adopted as sons of God. Yet from first century writers like Paul we would never have even known that Jesus had been baptized." (p58)

0r Acts, where the followers of John are presented as unaware of any such relationship between JBap and Jesus...

• Acts 19:1-6 contains the strange tale of Paul meeting disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus:
  
  1While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples 2and asked them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" They answered, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." 3So Paul asked, "Then what baptism did you receive?" "John's baptism," they replied. 4Paul said, "John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus." 5On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. (NIV)

clearly the "early Christians" whoever they were, and hardly a monolithic group... did not know of this event. Or at least the ones who left records before the writer of Mark invented it.

Vorkosigan