Amaleq13

Speaking of logic, this is an example of the logical error known as "argument from personal incredulity" or an Argument from ignorance. :thumbs:

Your personal satisfaction with a conclusion, or lack thereof, is utterly and completely irrelevant to the reliability and validity of that conclusion.

No Robots

Satirize messianism by creating a figure who so completely overpowers the concept of the Messiah that all peoples eventually come to call him the Messiah? Some trick.

bacht

You don't think that anything got "lost in translation" in the crossover from Judaism to Christianity?

How many things in life are done for rational reasons? How much of religious belief and practice was ever based on logic?

I suspect that even proto-Catholics may have been surprised at the popularity of the Jesus stories. They may have seen a good game was in the works, and got on the bandwagon of soul-saving.

aa5874

Why don't you deal with the OP. This thread is not about me. When will this stop? It must stop.

I am of the opinion that anything you say about me is likely to be false and solely intended to derail the thread.

The discussion is whether there was an historical Jesus.

Amaleq13

I don't find it as interesting as the logical error you commit while criticizing someone else's logic.

As soon as you stop making assertions that are logically flawed. Good luck.

Wrong again. Logically flawed arguments derail a thread and pointing out the flaws should help to avoid that. That is assuming, of course, that the individual making the flawed argument is capable of understanding the nature of their error and has the intellectual integrity to make the necessary changes.

aa5874

Why are you trying to derail the thread? You are just wasting time. I could say that you are illogical, too, but please deal with the OP.

We are discussing whether Jesus was historical.

You don't know?

I think if Jesus was just a man, actually living in the days of Tiberius, then the stories about the man were stupid monstrous lies.

I find untenable that such a man could have existed where everyone lied about him, from his supposed mother, his supposed brother, all his disciples, and the multitude of followers from the prophecies to his ascension through the clouds, and still worshipped him as a God, knowning he was just a man who was crucified for blasphemy and that his body was never found.


Jesus was just a story.

No Robots

What seems to get lost is that we have here a portrait of a man whose personal power and originality so completely overwhelm all categories that we can only give him the title of Messiah (Christ).

bacht

Yes, and this remarkable man was invisible to all contemporaries, his biography written decades after the eyewitnesses were dead. This is one of the main arguments of the MJ position, that no-one except second- or third-generation Christians paid any notice.

Portrait: we don't even know if the NT writers were trying to write objective history

Originality: what was original in Jesus' message? the only originality was his person, the Christ of God

Messiah: surely you don't see Jesus as a fulfillment of contemporary Jewish expectations? in the mouths of gentiles this title became something different from the ideas in the Jewish writings

No Robots

Many great men have been invisible to their contemporaries. Van Gogh, for example.

His followers originally transmitted his thought orally.

I recommend looking at Joseph Klausner's summary of the portrait of Christ's power and originality, from which we read:

The contradictory traits in his character, its positive and negative aspects, his harshness and his gentleness, his clear vision combined with his cloudy visionariness—all these united to make him a force and an influence, for which history has never yet afforded a parallel.

Better yet would be to read Brunner's Our Christ, but I'm sure that that recommendation will not be positively entertained.

I said so at the outset, didn't I? What he did was overpower the expectations, and replace them with his own person.

Quite true, the main thing being his deification.

Amaleq13

I'm not. Your argument is related to the OP and I am simply pointing out the rather obvious logical flaw in it. :huh:

Only if you refuse to correct your argument and continue to make logically flawed claims. I'm still optimistic despite past experience.

You could but it would have no basis in reality or the rules of logic. I am dealing with your argument as it relates to the OP so your complaint has no basis whatsoever.

Make better arguments.