freetrader

Response to show no mercy:


This is a conclusion, based on some facts. It best explains the whole NT Jesus legend which has come down to us from the 1st century.

Paul and the gospel writers must have relied on some oral tradition and written accounts in circulation at that time. It is illogical to think that Paul or the gospel writers invented the Jesus story. They were relying on sources already circulating, and they added some of their own elements, but something had to already be in circulation in order for these additional writings to take hold or have any impact.

For example, Paul could not have had any success with his risen Christ message if his audience did not already know of the resurrection and other elements of the Jesus story. So this reputed event was already being reported before Paul.

And likewise the gospel writers needed something already in existence to which to attach their narratives and their preaching texts. There was already a market for their writings. There was already an audience willing to believe and accept their accounts, i.e., the reported Jesus events were already familiar to them.

So we need to explain where the Jesus story got started in the first place. If you assume the miracle stories are fiction, you still have to identify where they originated. The claims had to begin somewhere. It is not logical to suggest that they originated from Paul and the gospel writers.

There has to be an established figure to which the stories can be attached by their inventors. They can't choose a nobody figure to which to attach the stories, because no one will buy it -- there is no market for miracle stories done by a nobody. If there were such a market, you could find other examples of a nobody mythologized into a mircle-worker, and there are no such examples.

The stories could easily have existed, in oral form, before they were written down by the NT writers. There were almost certainly some other written accounts, containing some of the gospel material, in circulation earlier. This and the oral tradition served as the source for Paul and the gospel writers.

So everything is easily explained if we assume that the stories were of early origin. Whereas if we assume they became attached later, we have no explanation how they became attached to the Jesus figure, because he was a nobody and it is unprecedented for people to spontaneously mythologize a nobody.

The stories could easily have been transmitted, by word-of-mouth, from the earliest point, i.e., from about 30 AD or the time of his death. If they were believed at that point, then it's easy to explain how they were transmitted and how fictional elements and theology could then be added gradually over time.

But without the miracle stories there to begin with, it is impossible to identify the original Jesus figure to whom the accretions were added, because without the original belief that he performed miracles, there is no hero figure there of importance or recognition to serve as the object of the mythologizing process.

If you claim he was recognized as the "Messiah" to whom the miracle stories became attached in order to give him credibility, you are failing to explain how he became recognized as this "Messiah". Messiah figures to not pop up overnight -- they require a long career of teaching and attracting followers.

So it's not that we know at the outset that the miracle stories were in circulation from the beginning, but rather it is a reasonable conclusion that this was so and that these stories were passed on by word-of-mouth, and the belief that he performed such acts are what caused him to become recognized as a "messiah" figure or a deity or savior and so on.

It is easy to explain how an actual miracle-worker gets deified into a "messiah" figure, but not how a nobody gets deified into a "messiah" or a miracle-worker. So the easier conclusion to draw is that the miracle stories were there from the beginning.

Deus Ex

And I am sure that Muhammad really did fly to heaven on a winged horse since so many people believe that story as well. Maybe Joseph Smith really did get a revelation by the angel Moroni and shown the Golden Plates since so many people believe that story?

Must be some truth to these stories since so many people could not all be fooled?

Amaleq13

By this "logic", no missionaries have ever had any success with any people who haven't already heard about Jesus. Do you know any missionaries? Their whole freaking mission is to bring the Gospel to people who haven't heard it.

Paul didn't think so. In fact, he makes it essential to his theology that Jesus appeared as a nobody (ie form of a servant) after somehow setting aside that which made him equal to God. Otherwise, the powers that crucified him might have recognized him and, one assumes, refrained from "killing" him.

You really should read the Bible before you try to defend your beliefs about it.

Only if you aren't required to explain the miracles is such an effort "easy".

No, that explanation has already been provided to you numerous times and it is quite obviously a simpler explanation that requires fewer unsubstantiated assumptions than your magical fantasy. Your failure to comprehend or accept that rather mundane explanation only speaks to your own state of mind. It says nothing about the explanation, itself.

spamandham

Although I don't think there's any justification to the claim that only men of wide repute had miracles attached to their memory, I'm really not interested in that point anyway, so I'll ignore it for the moment.

Why do you believe Jesus was attributed with miracles before his reputation had spread? Paul doesn't discuss Jesus' miracles (or for that matter, even quote from Jesus...).

I think this is heading toward who you think authored the Gospels and when you think they were authored.

Tom Sawyer

Right now, I'm reading an account of how Julius Caesar got himself declared a god.

His claims of divinity have far better backing and support from far more witnesses than Jesus's do. My personal opinion is that everyone's been worshipping the wrong JC, because Caesar is a deity worth having. I'm very impressed by that guy.

freetrader

Diogenes the Cynic:


Aside from the fact that no such promise was offered to them, there is nothing to suggest anyone believed any such nonsense or would believe it or wanted any such nonsense to happen. No one had any motive to promise anything like this, nor was there any market for such rubbish. The poor masses of the 1st century were not the mindless idiots you are suggesting here.

Further, if Jesus was not believed to have superhuman power, then no one would have believed he had any ability to "come down" from anywhere to kill anyone or do anything else, and preaching such nonsense to them would make no more sense than offering them Obi Wan Kenobi.


It is not true that the masses will slurp up any nonsense whatever dished out to them. There is a certain threshold of credibility required below which they will not buy a "messiah" figure offered to them, regardless of the consoling promises made. You can't cite any other case where someone of no repute and no standing was deified and sold to a wide audience as a savior or messiah figure.


Surely their findings describe Mohammed and Buddha and L. Ron Hubbard and Mary Baker Eddy and Krishna and Sai Baba and so on. No doubt all the renowned religious compensators fall neatly into the pattern of offering reward for belief, as outlined by the above eminent scholars.

Supported by their charisma and prestige and credentials, which they earned over decades of preaching and service, these religious compensators were able to attract a great flock of disciples into their fold and reward them with promises and comfort. You're right that empirical proof is not needed in order to attract a flock, but only the authority and prestige of the religious compensator.

But how do the lost sheep gain any "reward for belief" from an obscure unrecognized fly-by-nighter who has no credentials and no background of accomplishment? No, the religious compensator has to be someone of preeminence and recognition to be able to offer rewards for belief. You cannot cite any example of a successful religious compensator who did not have wide recognition and status in his lifetime or who acquired this status only over a period of many centuries of mythologizing.

So you may apply this schematic to all the other great teachers and reputed miracle-workers, but it does not fit the case of Jesus and of Paul trying to sell his "risen Christ" figure. These theories do not explain how this product could have been sold by Paul to his Greek and Roman audiences.


It's not an answer. Suppose Paul claimed his camel was the Risen Christ and Son of God and I ask "what was it that Paul found in his camel that was important?" -- your above answer would be the same. You're not explaining what Paul thought about the Christ figure anymore than what he thought about his camel. To answer this question you have to explain something specific about Paul's Jesus figure who he claimed had resurrected.

You're telling us nothing about this specific "crazy thing" he chose as his tool to manipulate his audience. If instead he had chosen to offer his camel to them as the risen Christ, then the question would be what was special about his camel that he should offer it to people to be their risen savior.

But it wasn't his camel that he chose for this purpose, but the Jesus figure. Give an answer to this that is different from the answer you would give if it had been his camel he was trying to sell and I asked you what he thought was special about his camel. There has to be a reason why Paul chose Jesus for this role rather than his camel or rather than some other person or some other symbol or object.


Then why didn't he preach that his camel was the Son of God? Why does a nutcase choose to preach Jesus as the risen Christ rather than his camel or some other arbitrary object? Is it just a coincidence that the gospel writers also happened to choose the same messiah figure as Paul? Why are all the nutcases choosing the same risen Christ figure to preach instead of each one coming up with his own unique nutcase fetish messiah figure?


Why didn't he hallucinate that his camel was talking to him and was promising to come back? Why should he hallucinate about Jesus as opposed to some other object he could equally become obsessed with?


And they would have been equally convinced if his visions had been of his camel being martyred and resurrecting from the dead? shedding his blood for their sins? Either vision was just as credible and would have been equally believed by his audience?


What was meaningful and convincing to his audience is that he offered them a hero figure with whom they already identified and they thought was important and offered them hope. And armed with this marketable product, and using his communicating skills, Paul was able to gain credibility from his audience and get his ideas across, and those ideas helped confirm his hearers in what they already believed about the Jesus figure and gave further support to their hopes.

But without that market for the Christ figure already waiting for him out there, Paul would have fallen flat. They would have tossed him out on his ear just as surely as if he had tried to sell his camel to them as the risen Christ. By your theory they would have believed him and believed in his camel as the "risen Christ" just as easily as they believed in Jesus to play this role.

Why don't you just admit that you don't know how Paul succeeded at selling his risen Christ figure? It would be better to just admit that you don't know instead of saying Paul hallucinated and was a Rasputin-type nut case who could have sold a "risen Camel" to his audience as easily as his "risen Christ" idea.

It's not true that they were convinced "only by words" -- there has to be something of substance other than just words hallucinated by a nut case. That substance might be charisma and other talents accompanied by 30+ years of preaching, but even with this the promoter probably needs to identify with a familiar tradition or symbol the audience already recognizes, like Joseph Smith and Sai Baba and others did.

By having Paul offer the audience a totally alien hero figure to them, unrelated to anything the Greeks and Romans had any respect for, you are putting Paul in a very unique special category, unprecedented among all previous examples. He had longer than Jesus to do his public preaching and traveling, maybe 15 years at most, and so he had at least a little time to cultivate a following.

But to foist a totally obscure and foreign deity onto those Greek and Roman audiences, a figure of no more standing than his camel, out of nowhere, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and win over hundreds or even thousands of converts to this nonsense -- this has to require many decades of crusading and impressing those audiences, if it can ever be done even in several centuries, let alone in only 15 years -- no, this is not a serious theory, you can't really believe such nonsense.


You apparently believe Paul existed. You have no reason to believe Paul existed except that others say he did. You have documents given to you by others and you believe they came from the 1st century only because those others claim to have evidence of it. You have no evidence yourself that the Bible you read came from writers back then.

You believe others who claim to have such evidence. You probably don't even know someone who has such evidence, but rely on 2nd- and 3rd- and 4th-hand indirect evidence that someone, some expert, has such evidence, but unless you're one in a million, you have no direct evidence yourself.

Probably 98% of what you believe about the world, outside your own direct experience, comes from others who told it to you and you just take their word for it, whether it came by word-of-mouth, or from a document, or from the electronic media.

How do you know any place in the world you haven't travelled to really exists? You believe it because someone told you it's there -- from the news, from a teacher, from a book -- you do not know these facts from direct experience but from the testimony of others, and without these anecdotes from others to rely on there is virtually nothing you know about the world.


Of course it means they're justified, as long as there is a preponderence of testimony to support those beliefs. The beliefs become more and more credible as the evidence or testimony or anecdotes accumulate, and beyond a certain threshold level you accept them as fact without question.

How do you know George Washington was the first President except on the accumulated testimony of numerous others who claim it and believe it and publish it? And even the historical documents from that time are handed to you from someone who claims they came from that period and you have no way to prove with certainty that they are not forgeries, so you just take their word for it.


You have no basis for saying people will believe anything at all. If Paul had claimed his camel was the risen Christ would people have believed it? According to your logic so far, they would have just as easily believed it and the whole of Western Christendom today would be worshipping The Risen Camel instead of the risen Jesus.

freetrader

Responses to Diogenes the Cynic, continued


You're nitpicking. What I said above is correct.


You mean we should never believe anything someone else says unless we first prove it ourselves? You can't prove that the moon-landing really happened, or that 9-11 happened (unless you were physically present yourself to see it), without appealing to the media and putting your trust in all those reporters and commentators etc.

How can you prove those events without trusting those sources?

Can you prove yourself that dinosaurs existed 100 million years ago? Without believing scientists who claim to have discovered the fossil remains and so on? No, obviously you have faith in them that they're telling the truth and are not all making it up.


As a practical matter we do have to take other people's word.

We always have the choice to question any one claim that is made -- we never have to take someone else's word in any one case. However, if we try to prove every claim that is made and never take their word for it, we will get bogged down constantly trying to add each additional item of information to our knowledge. So to economize we generally believe them without putting everything to a scientific test on our own individually.

In that sense we do have to take their word for it -- that is, usually we have to believe what others claim if they seem to have more knowledge than we do. But in any one isolated case we can question it, and we can choose randomly when to question any particular claim.

And for any truths about what happened historically, we have to finally rely on someone's anecdote(s).


But we generally take their word for it that they did the tests and verified the evidence. We don't check each claim by scientists ourselves, but just accept their report that they did the testing and found the results they claim. And if there are additional anecdotes from further scientists claiming to have done the same tests and produced the same results, then it reinforces our belief in the claim they're making.


How about two scientists? How about three? Where is the line drawn? Obviously there is no one point where The Absolute Truth is finally established. Rather, with each additional verification by one additional scientist, the credibility increases.

It is perfectly reasonable to give credibility on the witness of one scientist, if it is not contradicted by others. If one scientist claims that he proved his theory in his lab, and no others contradict it, then it is reasonable to regard the probability of that theory being true as higher than before, while further corroboration from others can help to increase the probability higher still.


But no matter how much proof he has, most of us are only taking his word for it that he proved it. And if other scientists confirm his findings, we also take their word for it that they did the proper testing to arrive at their results. So we still are putting FAITH in them without proving it ourselves.


Not totally, but it partly is. We still believe the scientists, or we take them on faith without making them prove all their claims to us.


Of course it does. Why are scientists (and other experts) expected to show their credentials? Why do they cite their degrees and what institution they graduated from? How does the media know which scientists are the experts to interview on global warming and other hot-button issues?

Do you imagine every TV interviewer first does a full study of astrophysics and meteorology etc. and figures out all the scientific truths for himself before deciding who is credible to be interviewed?

Obviously authority plays a huge role. The politicians who debate are constantly citing this or that scientist or scientific source or other expert to prove they're right, and they take the word of the expert as the gospel truth, and they have no other choice, because they can't become an expert in every subject that comes up for dispute.


It certainly does play a role, unless you want to prove every scientific claim on your own and never believe any claim by scientists that they did this or that experiment and came up with these results.

The vast majority of science knowledge you have is based on your faith that the scientists are telling you the truth when they claim to have done their tests and proved this or that scientific fact.

You didn't prove that stuff yourself personally -- you take it on faith that they proved it, and the only time you have doubts is when the experts contradict each other, and then if you still don't have time to do the scientific tests yourself, you count the number of experts on each side, and you make a guess, you listen to them debate and try to discern who sounds more credible. There's lots of faith involved in the process of deciding what the real truth is.

Without faith, science as we know it would be impossible, because knowledge could not be transmitted.


They were shown evidence. The same kind of anecdotal evidence you have that European settlers colonized North America. They didn't see it themselves, but heard it or read it from others who in turn got it from others going back to original eye witnesses.

Yes, when there are documents claiming to be written by the original players themselves, that is stronger evidence, but even without such documents we have reliable anecdotal evidence.

And even if there are documents, you still have to take someone's word for it where those documents originated from and who wrote them and who discovered them and so on, all of which is anecdotal evidence because you have to believe the ones who claim to have discovered the documents or to have examined them -- one way or another, you have to take others at their word in order to claim anything as evidence.

All of them are just giving you their own anecdotes -- each expert, each scientist, each archaeologist, each researcher -- just because they have a degree behind their name doesn't change the fact that they are reporting to you what they experienced (how do you know where they got their degree except by taking their word for it?), just like an alien abductee reports his alleged experience. You can't go back and prove or disprove every report you hear from someone who claims to have seen or heard or touched something you never saw or heard or touched.

The only difference between the evidence for the miracles of Jesus and the evidence that Europeans colonized America is that for the latter the total quantity of evidence is greater. Thus, as I pointed out earlier, 2000 anecdotes is greater evidence than only 20 or 30 anecdotes. All else being equal, the claim having a much greater number of anecdotes to support it is more credible than the claim supported by a much smaller number. But even a small amount of evidence lends more credibility than no evidence at all.


We needn't argue the exact number at any particular time point. However far into the future you go, the same process of transmitting the tradition or the reports continues from one generation to the next. It all traces back to the original 1st-century accounts, however you believe those originated.

The believers centuries later had reason to give some credibility to those accounts, whereas we do not have credible accounts (not as credible) of any other miracle-worker, which explains why Jesus eventually became the most widely-reputed example of this.

The fame of Jesus as a miracle-worker by 100-150 AD is unprecedented in history, considering he was a nonrecognized figure during his time and had such a short career. There's no purpose served by arguing over the exact point in time where the number of believers passed the million mark.

What's important is that the evidence given in the NT accounts was mainly what drove the process of the believers continuing to increase in number, and this exanding process swept Constantine and others along with it.

What needs explaining is why the belief spread so rapidly in the earlier period when outside the gospel accounts Jesus was totally unrecognized and of no standing whatever, and yet he became the most reputed miracle-worker in such a short time.

It was not Constantine who swept Christianity to power in the Roman Empire -- it was the rapid spread of Christian belief that swept him into power. He jumped onto a train that was already speeding down the track. If he had not seized that opportunity, it's a good bet that he would have been defeated and some other warlord would have jumped onto that train and rode it to power instead of him.

The driving force of this rapidly-spreading belief system is best attributed to the fact that Jesus was believed to have demonstrated superhuman power. And no one yet has explained how that belief got started if he did not in fact do the miracle healing acts described in the gospel accounts.

It was basically a rational belief rooted in those NT written accounts or in similar word-of-mouth accounts in the mid-1st-century which trace back to early reports in the '30s. People believed them the same way people believe that other events took place, i.e., they believed the reports tracing back to eye witnesses. That's how most of history is known.

Just because you don't like the particular events or those who believe them or the religion that evolved from this doesn't mean those events didn't happen. There's a lot to dislike in Christianity and those who seized power in the name of Christ and who burned heretics and so on. But none of that tells us what the original events were in about 30 AD that gave rise to these later events.


I won't waste my time checking up on Joseph Smith here. If he showed someone some golden tablets, then maybe those tablets really did exist. If they took the tablets to a goldsmith and had an analysis done, I'm even ready to believe they were made of gold. If there's evidence that Smith found some gold tablets, why should that disprove that Jesus did miracles?

Every reported case has to be judged on its own merit. I have a vague recollection that no one else actually saw the tablets, but it doesn't really matter one way or the other. If some witnesses really saw them or if they're on display today in Utah somewhere, then OK, he found some gold tablets. So what? Interesting objects are uncovered from time to time.


Smith's basic belief was in the Christ of the New Testament. He seized upon a popular superhuman hero already worshipped for centuries and expanded on this hero to add more mythologizing of his own.

If he had not started out with this already-accepted figure as his centerpiece (or an alternative figure of similar wide repute), he would not have met with any success. He chose a figure already strongly entrenched into the popular culture in which he lived, even gave them some new scripture in a King-James-style language that they easily understood and related to. This explains why he so easily attracted a following.

The same cannot be said of Paul and the gospel writers. They introduced a nobody alien messiah figure into a culture that had no attachment to him and had no reason to adopt this alien figure being spoon-fed to them by the evangelists.

The only way to explain how the Jesus-promoters had any success is that there was an already-existing tradition about this Galilean figure, mostly oral, circulating around the Mediterranean world and containing believable stories about the many miracle healing acts he performed, and these accounts were so believable that they had a strong impact on large numbers of people who then were ready to hear more about him and were hoping the stories were true.

This is the best explanation. Comparisons to figures like Joseph Smith don't begin to shed any light on how a nobody alien unrecognized figure suddenly gets deified and mythologized into a miracle-working savior hero, from nowhere, out of the blue. You're failing miserably if this is the best comparison you can come up with.

freetrader

Responses to Diogenes the Cynic, continued


They wanted to believe many things. Why did they choose to believe this "risen Christ" preached by Paul instead of something else equally desirable to believe in? The correct answer is that there was reason for them to believe in the risen Christ rather than some alternative figure, however appealing, due to the life-giving power shown by Jesus in his miracle healing acts.

If there were reports or rumors that Jesus did perform the miracle healing acts, this was good reason to believe it was true (not proof, but good reason to believe), provided the reports were numerous and were coming from different kinds of witnesses.

After many years, the hearers had to rely on 2nd- and 3rd-hand testimony, from indirect witnesses only. But this kind of testimony is reliable for other events, so it cannot be ruled out for the events concerning the Jesus case.

Yes, if the reports are about something irregular, like miracle healing acts, then the hearer is rightly more skeptical, but if the stories come from enough different witnesses, or indirect witnesses who are relaying what they heard from earlier indirect witnesses, then they can still be credible.

And the fact that the stories might give some satisfaction to the hearers, i.e., they WANTED to believe it, does not ipso facto make the stories false, even though further skepticism is called for. You can't automatically assume that nothing can be true if it's something people want to be true. You take that into consideration, but you can't dogmatically rule out every belief or claim that contains in it something that people wanted to be true.


You say that based on your premise that the events did not happen and therefore there were no witnesses. Let's not just repeat our conclusions here as our argument. It's already clear that you believe the miracle healing acts did not happen. You are trying to prove they didn't happen and I am trying to make the case that they probably did happen. Just repeating that they did not happen is not a way to argue that they did not happen.

Obviously if they did happen, the reports of them originated from witnesses, and the later written accounts are based on the word-of-mouth reports going back to the original witnesses. My point in the above post was to explain the process how they might have originated and were passed on, assuming they did happen. This was only to show a plausible process.

Obviously all we have today are the written documents from about 50 years later, just like that's all we have for many events of history that we know happened. What ridiculous point are you trying to make -- that the actual witnesses who might have seen the events are not here today in the 21st century?

I think we all agree that witnesses from the 1st century are not here today in the 21st century -- all we have are the later written documents. We also don't have witnesses today who saw the assassination of Lincoln, but that hardly means that there were no witnesses to that event.


This is really a ludicrous thing to say, as each of the accounts of these events claims there were witnesses present. You can say you don't believe the account, but now you're saying the accounts themselves make no mention of any witnesses, which is quite preposterous.

Of course the literature makes such claims, in every reported case. How silly to say there were no witnesses, when at least the one healed is obviously a witness, and usually there were many others who reportedly were present. You can say you don't believe the accounts, but don't say the accounts included no witnesses


Paul doesn't mention any miracles other than the resurrection. But his purpose is not to narrate events, but to preach. I have pointed out elsewhere that the Book of Acts mentions almost nothing of the miracles of Jesus, even though it is obvious to everyone that the writer of Acts did believe Jesus did miracles. The purpose of Acts was to narrate events AFTER Jesus, and so it is virtually silent on the events of his life.

The only NT literature that reports the miracles of Jesus are those which narrate the events of his life, or his public career. The miracles of Jesus are also missing from any of the epistles and the Apocalypse. Surely some of this literature dates from a late-enough point that the writer knew of the miracle stories, and yet those stories are omitted. So omission of the stories in no way means that the writer didn't know of them.

Paul also omits any mention of the parables of Jesus or of anything of his background, such as his career in Galilee and trip to Jerusalem. But this hardly means Paul knew nothing of these elements in the background of Jesus or that these elements were fictional.

Paul assumes his audience already knows of the Jesus event. I've pointed out elsewhere that he refers to one biographical element about Jesus, i.e., the "last supper" scene on the night of his arrest (1 Cor. 11:23-26). This is strong evidence that there was an oral account of Jesus already in circulation at Paul's time and that Paul merely tapped into this tradition and expounded upon the crucifixion and resurrection theme that his audience already was familiar with.

So the reports of Jesus already were circulating before the gospels and even before Paul. Were the miracle stories part of those reports? If not, no one yet has explained how they entered the picture at a later point. They were probably part of the early accounts in circulation just as other biographical elements were which Paul did not mention.

The miracle healing acts of Jesus can explain how the term "euangelion" ("gospel") got started. Why is this word used so much by Paul? Why should anyone believe there was any "good news" in connection with Jesus? This "good news" idea obviously dates from at least as early as Paul.

If Jesus actually did the miracle acts, including his bodily resurrection, or if it was widely believed that he did, then this would easily explain the sudden appearance of this unusual word. We're used to it today, but in 30-40 AD it was extremely rare, and actually had a somewhat different earlier meaning than it acquired in Paul's writing.

Despite the attempts, no one here has explained how Paul's "risen Christ" caught on and the "gospel" of Jesus spread so fast if Jesus did not actually perform the miracle acts described in the gospel accounts. With that element included in the picture, everything falls into place, whereas without it, we have the evangelists selling an alien unknown unrecognized nobody to an alien culture which had no inclination to adopt such a figure for any purpose that makes any sense.


It's incorrect to say they cannot be traced back. By this argument many events of history cannot be traced back because they are not available to us any earlier than documents written decades or even centuries later. You would have to say the Trojan War cannot be "traced back" before about 700 BC, even though we know it happened centuries earlier.

So what does it mean to say it cannot be "traced back"? The events still happened and are known even though the first surviving document mentioning them is from a later time than the events.

No doubt there are millions of established events of history that cannot be "traced back" to when they happened, in the same sense that the miracles of Jesus cannot be. So then they didn't really happen? Are you going to throw out more than half of the historical events which happened before printing was invented and are taught in the history classes and books?

There are thousands of events we know from Josephus and Herodotus and Tacitus and other historians which cannot be "traced back" to when they happened, even not recorded until centuries later, let alone just 40 years later. Actually 40 years from the event is unusually close by comparison to most of what we have from that time as recorded history.


And why can't you figure it out that you could say the same thing about most of recorded history, which you must throw out if you demand current surviving documents claiming to be written by witnesses? "There are no original claims from witnesses" could be said about 98% of recorded history (or 97%, a huge quantity of what is commonly taught in history classes and history books).

There ARE original claims from witnesses -- they just did not write it down in documents which survive to our time. Which is the same for most of recorded and established history, especially from so far back as 2000 years ago.

You need to get off this obsession with "original claims from witnesses" which is never demanded for other historical events, or at least not from back before printing was invented. Just because you want to dogmatically exclude miracle stories from being any part of history does not entitle you to change the rules of how history is established in such a way as to exclude these events.

Facts of history are established without requiring surviving documents written by the people who directly witnessed the events.

You need to write the above sentence on the blackboard (or recite it) 500 times in order to impress it into your brain to help you overcome this obsession.


The biographical details about Jesus, including the account of the night when he was arrested after the "last supper" scene. Paul refers to it in that text (1 Cor. 11:23-26).

As I've pointed out several times now, that account had to already exist when Paul wrote about it. His audience was familiar with it. This pretty much proves that there was an oral tradition about Jesus already in circulation before Paul. He did not make up all this stuff about the Jesus figure, as you imagine.

That text contains elements also found in the gospel accounts of this event, showing Paul had a familiarity with the same accounts that the gospel writers knew of. So they did not make up the whole story -- the account already existed earlier.

All three synoptics relate the same episode, which cannot be explained any way other than that it was a common tradition, oral or written, already in circulation, independent of Paul or any of the gospel writers.

You cannot piece together any scenario of Paul copying from the synoptic gospels or them copying from him. None of that adds up. There had to be at least one written or oral version of this episode separate from all of them and earlier than Paul.

The only question is: how much more was there in that oral tradition already circulating? We don't know, but it probably contained much of what we have in the gospel accounts, including the miracle stories. Obviously the crucifixion and resurrection theme was already present in that tradition. That much at least had to already be in circulation by 50 AD when Paul began writing. Probably there was more, and probably the tradition went back many years.

At the very minimum, we know that that episode (1 Cor. 11:23-26) plus the crucifixion and resurrection themes already existed prior to Paul, in the oral tradition in circulation. At least this much could not have been invented by Paul or the gospel writers. But there had to be more, in order for this part of it to make sense, and it's difficult to imagine how the healing acts of Jesus would not have been part of it along with much else that Paul was silent about because his audience already knew of it.


What is "pre-Pauline" tradition and pre-Gospel?

The only writings we have are Paul and the gospel accounts. The crucifixion and "resurrection" tradition already existed by Paul's time, and however you want to interpret the "resurrection" to make it symbolic in some way, it clearly was not Paul's invention.

Paul speaks of the resurrection in such a way that his audience is already familiar with it, just as he speaks of the crucifixion that way. So the "resurrection" was already a popular notion before him and he gave it his theological interpretation.

It is really nonsensical to suggest that Paul invented the "resurrection" by hallucinating it and then thousands of believers all adopted it from him. Just ludicrous and even silly.

Paul was not so important in 50 AD that all those people should suddenly slurp up something that was just his hallucination, including the gospel writers, who knew little or nothing of Paul. Paul hopped onto the "resurrection" wagon that was already rolling. That tradition went back to an early point.

Just because we have all these letters of Paul which were canonized does not mean he was that important or that he invented the Christian belief system.

And what else "pre-Pauline" and pre-Gospel do we have? The earlier-mentioned account of the "last supper" scene and arrest of Jesus (1 Cor. 11:23-26). This too is earlier. Plus also the names of Peter and James, the alleged brother of Jesus.

If by "sayings and parables" you mean the Q document, that also contains miracle healing stories.

So the "pre-Pauline" and pre-Gospel tradition hardly exists now -- how can you demand that the miracle accounts be included in something that virtually is not there?

In Paul we have only the night of the arrest, the crucifixion and "resurrection" references, and names of James and Peter. Obviously there was really much more than this, and there's every reason to believe the miracle stories were a part of the circulating oral tradition along with much else of the events in the synoptics.

There had to be something. Without the miracle healing events as a major part of the picture, it's difficult if not impossible to figure out what prompted all the interest in this obscure and unrecognized and unaccomplished character who pops up for no reason. If he did not do those acts, then what did he do that caused all the interest in him?

freetrader

Responses to Diogenes the Cynic, continued


We have as much reason to believe this was part of the original tradition as anything else, except the crucifixion and resurrection, the "last supper" and arrest episode, and the names of James and Peter, which is all Paul mentions.

Any event in the gospel accounts which serves no theological purpose or seems awkward or out of place or out of style for the writer is likely to be early and have a kernel of truth to it. An example of this is the exorcism story (Mt. 8:28-34, Mk. 5:1-17, Lk. 9:26-37) in which the supposed demons were sent into a herd of swine which stampeded over a cliff.

Something of this event probably did happen, because the story has a distastefulness to it which the gospel writers had no incentive to create and provide to readers, as it could have a negative impact on them, and a bad taste is left in the reader's mouth as Jesus is treated as a troublemaker by the local residents and implored by them to go elsewhere.

The best explanation of what happened is that Jesus healed a mentally deranged person (or persons) who made some kind of commotion which frightened the pigs nearby, and some of them ran over the cliff.

So this is a miracle healing story which was probably of early origin and was not invented by the gospel writers, as they would have no reason to make up such an unattractive story as this.

Some other examples of likely early stories, not invented by the gospel writers, are the story of the young man who ran away naked at the scene where Jesus was arrested (Mk. 14:51-52), the story of encountering Simon of Cyrene upon leaving Pilate's headquarters, who carried the cross, and the story of the assaulting of Jesus by the guards (Mt. 27:67-68, Mk. 14:65, Lk. 22:63-64), in which the phrase "Who is it that struck you?" (Matthew) appears out of place.

Passages of this kind have more likelihood of being pre-Gospel or of early origin, and some of them contain miracle healing accounts, indicating that the miracle tradition is of early origin.


I believe you have subsequently learned that Q does contain miracle stories in it after all. In addition to the two examples you mentioned, there is also this passage from Q: Jesus said to them in reply, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them." (Mt. 11:4-5)

In the above passage, the word euangelizomai (proclaim good news) juxtaposed right next to the list of miracle healing acts, suggests that the "good news" or euangelion is closely associated with the life-giving power demonstrated by Jesus in his healing acts, and it is reasonable to conclude that the meaning of this word, as used heavily by Paul, is closely connected to this meaning.

As for Thomas, that is probably much later. There's not a consensus on its date, but even if you agree with the extremists at putting it as early as Paul, again, like Paul, it excludes everything biographical, including the origin of Jesus from Galilee, and yet surely some of that information did exist and Jesus must have come from somewhere.

The existence of one early source (Paul) and, according to a small minority opinion, a second (Thomas), which leave out some narrative information because they were not narrative accounts, does not somehow negate the additional information contained in the later sources (20-30 years later).

Yes, if the later accounts were not until 1000 years later, like Virgil's account of the Trojan War, you could say they are less reliable. But the time gap here between the acts of Jesus and the gospel accounts is only 50 years or less, and the information contained in the gospels explains who this Christ figure was that Paul was talking about. There's plenty of reason to date the miracle stories with the earliest of the traditions about Jesus.

There is more likelihood of the sayings and parables having been added later than the miracle stories. It's not likely that a scribe was present with pen and parchment to take down the words of Jesus as he spoke. Explaining how these discourses were preserved accurately is much more difficult than explaining how a miracle healing event would be remembered and put into words to be passed on to others.

The miracle anecdotes might become corrupted as to the details, but the general story would be accurately preserved more easily than the teachings, which are abstract and philosophical and thus not as easily remembered. So there is less reliability in the case of the sayings and parables than for the miracle stories.


No, other cult leaders offer their flock something they already identify with. You gave Joseph Smith as an example, who fed his listeners a revised version of Jesus, actually the same Jesus they already worshipped but with some additions. They believed Smith because they already believed in his Jesus figure and needed a little more to go with it, which he offered to them.

Paul did not offer his audience anything they already identified with, but a totally unrecognized alien savior figure that really made no sense to the Greeks and Romans (unless you assume they already knew of Jesus from the stories circulating about him, later recorded in the gospel accounts, including the miracle stories).


No, if all he was offering them was the obscure nobody unrecognized alien empty suit nothing that you're imagining, then they paid no attention to him and laughed him off the stage. It is not true that people will believe any rubbish that a would-be preacher bellows at them -- he has to present them with something they recognize. They did not recognize this Christ figure as anything of credibility.

By your logic, he could have offered them his camel and they would just as likely believed him and wanted the so-called "reward" you're suggesting they wanted. But it's not true that he could have offered them his camel as the "risen Christ" and they would have believed him. So you still are not saying what attracted them to Paul's message.

Only if they were already familiar with the "risen Christ" would his message have made any sense to them. They had to already be familiar with the resurrection of Jesus from other accounts and have already been attracted to this figure, and only then would the preaching of Paul make sense and they would want to identify with the "risen Christ" figure he spoke of.


You mean they were not direct witnesses to his acts? 20 years later? No, but they had evidence, probably 1st- or 2nd-hand indirect witnesses, and the oral tradition in circulation.


No, I agree with you that an audience can be gullible and believe claims that were not true. But what they do require is that the promoter present them with something they are already familiar with, not an alien hero figure with no credibility or recognition in their culture.

What Paul's audience had was the same word-of-mouth accounts that Paul and the later gospel writers had, and at that time there were still some eye witnesses to those miracle healing acts (if they happened), so they had close connection to those events and to direct witnesses or at least 2nd-hand witnesses to them. So they had strong evidence of those healing acts, and these did impress them and gave them reason to believe Jesus had life-giving power.

And thus this explains how Paul was able to convince them, by appealing to this "risen Christ" figure they were already familiar with and was having an impact on them. But without that Jesus tradition already in place, and Paul coming at them with his rabbit-out-of-the-hat "risen Christ" that you imagine, which would have been totally alien rubbish to them, they would have laughed him off the stage, or more likely run him out of town.


Yes, they will believe fantastic unproven claims in some cases, but only if the guru recruiting them has credibility, and/or also if the messiah figure he is selling to them is a reputed hero figure recognized by the audience. But it is not true that Paul, an unknown figure of little repute, could sell to Greeks and Romans an obscure unrecognized Jewish symbol such as the "risen Christ" figure.

If you're right that Paul had such extreme power over his audience, then again, he could have offered them his camel as the "risen Christ" and they would have believed him. Or he could have offered himself as the "risen Christ," though he also offered virtually nothing that his audience would have recognized.

But according to you they would have believed anything he offered them, even would have worshipped Paul himself, and so today it would be Paul Christ who is worshipped by Christians rather than the obscure Galilean. Which is really ludicrous and nothing that warrants serious consideration.

Your crazed obsession with Paul is naive and simplistic. It is simply not true that a promoter, even having charisma, can feed to a gullible audience any crazy thing he hallucinates, foreign to what they already believe, and they will slurp it up -- no, not in any signicant numbers, not more than a dozen or so nutballs. It is not true that there are any examples of this. You have given no examples of it, even though you imagine you have.

No, Joseph Smith did not do that. No, Simon Magus did not, neither did Sai Baba or Vespasian or any other example you have cited.

The target audience, that is any signficant number of them, will believe the unproven claims only if they come from someone of repute and the product he is selling to them is a recognized symbol, such as a long-standing hero figure.

It's not that the claims have to be reasonable, but that the one making them has to have credibility, and also the hero figure to be worshipped has to be recognized. And it might be sufficient if a self-promoting guru has charisma and other qualities and a long public career of preaching during which he accumulates a significant number of admirers.

If those minimum conditions are met, then yes, a significant number of people might be drawn into the cult and will believe unproven claims made by the promoter or guru. You cannot name any case in all of history where a new cult formed and spread to a large number of followers which did not meet these minimum conditions. You are frantically trying to come up with examples, but you are failing entirely to offer any other cases.

Jesus is the first in history, or Paul promoting the unrecognized Jesus figure. In fact, there are two unprecedented cases here, Paul and Jesus, according to you pulling off something never done before, completely contrary to anything we've seen in all known history.

It's an extreme coincidence that these two so closely connected in time and location each did something totally unprecedented -- we would expect to see the two most exceptional cases at least come from different traditions or cultures instead of from the same. One of them created a new religion and the other got himself made into a new god, and each of them did this in violation of the rules applying to all other new gods or relgion-creators ever, before their time and since.

I know you squirm and even want to vomit when you read this, because you hate being confronted with this fact, but again, give us other examples of a new religion or a new god being created where these conditions were not the case. Why do you keep giving examples which do not fit?

Why don't you just admit that the case of Jesus is unique in history (not in the silly sense that everything is "unique" in its own way), standing apart from all other reputed miracle-workers and deity figures, and you can't explain it, but still there must be an explanation and no miracles played a role, and of course Christianity is still no better than any other religion, etc. You would be on firm ground with that response.


No, they listened because the one speaking or writing to them was talking about something they took seriously, or something they related to. The speaker had credibility, because he was talking about the risen Christ figure they were already familiar with and which had credibility with them, because of the reputed power he demonstrated in the miracle acts they believed he had done. Without this, they would not have listened to Paul or believed he could offer them any "reward."


The way it always worked is that the guru or the promoter always offers something their listeners already relate to, such as a hero symbol whom they already recognize and identify with and give some credence to because of his status or his background. In a case where it's the speaker's charisma alone which attracts followers, then it takes many years, decades, even generations, for him to establish any following or widespread reputation.

That's the way it really works, but in the case of Jesus it was different.


That's not a comparable case, since the number of followers was never more than about 40. You are right that any nutcase with some charisma can accumulate a small following. However, the leader of that group had over 20 years of preaching in which to accumulate his followers, so this also explains how he was able to gain his reputation.

This was about twice as long as Paul was active, and of course there's no comparison to Jesus whose public career was only 1 or 2 years.

Furthermore, that cult based most of its teaching on the Bible, especially the apocalyptic passages, so they chose a symbol which was already familiar to the culture to whom they were selling their crusade. Whereas the product Paul was selling to the Greeks and Romans was totally alien to them.

So again you are making comparisons which don't fit the case of Jesus at all and you are failing (again and again) to explain how the Jesus figure got mythologized into a deity.


Yes, you keep giving bad answers. You keep giving examples which don't compare to the case of Jesus. I keep telling you why the examples don't work, and yet you keep coming up with more of the same.

Give an example of a cult which tried to introduce an ALIEN messiah or hero figure to its audience -- a deity totally unfamiliar to its audience. Name a hero figure who had a short public career instead of a long one. Yes yes yes, given 20 or 30 or 40 years of public preaching, a talented clever charismatic guru figure can win a following, maybe even hundreds of followers if he's good, even thousands today with the mass media. You keep forgetting that Jesus did not have that luxury.

Yet even in these cases of a charismatic figure with a long career, they still usually tie themselves in with a long religious tradition going back many centuries, like Mohammed and Sai Baba and most other examples.


Without something familiar to them in his message, no, they were not interested in Paul. You have no basis for claiming that. He was talking about something they already were familiar with, and that's why they were interested in it.

Again, you are insulting the 1st-century Greeks and Romans to insinuate that they would just slurp up anything Paul tried to spoon-feed to them. Again, they were not the imbecilic idiots you're depicting them as.

A demagogue cannot manipulate any significant audience unless he appeals to them on the basis of something they are already familiar with. He has to appeal to certain symbols they already recognize. He can't just pop something out of a bottle they never heard of before. This is not done -- there is no precedent for it. You are really just making up stories to suggest something so silly.

spin

How did this thread get to such a stage that one could rabbit on so much that they have to divide their posting into four messages?

I know this is a waste of effort, but let me just pick on one sentence:

We haven't seen any means of verifying the existence of Jesus. The usual tactic is to shift the burden onto who questions that hypothetical existence.



If material under discussion hasn't been shown to reflect the past, then someone has to make the demonstration in order to talk about that material. The contrary position is not necessary to require the demonstration. This is purely a historical consideration: you want to talk about something, you have to demonstrate its existence first.

What exactly was Paul doing that any religion disseminator didn't do? (Just think of anyone who advocated Mithra or Dionysus or the usual range of mystery figures.)

Paul didn't need a historical Jesus behind him to believe that Jesus was a real entity who interacted in this world and performed his salvific act. Paul's interest was salvation, not history. His vision (Gal 1:11-12) is sufficient for him to proclaim his religion and he declares stridently that his information comes not from humans but directly from god, who revealed Jesus to Paul. Paul cannot in any sense be used to argue a historical Jesus. Paul's proselytes didn't need a historical Jesus to continue Paul's work. They just trusted Paul.

What happened between the time of Paul's dissemination of a Jesus religion and the writing of the gospels which present a series of interactions with the world by Jesus is a matter of an evolving tradition, the same evolving tradition that would give us apocryphal gospels, acts of Pilate, the sanctification of Pilate, letters between Paul and Seneca, various other pseudo-Pauline letters. Once something is in a tradition it so frequently gets developed upon. There is no reliable way that I can see to turn tradition into history.

To talk about a historical Jesus requires work by the talker before this historical Jesus can be taken seriously. Why should your listeners regard Jesus as having participated in this world? Paul didn't need such a Jesus and neither did his converts.

So, please, don't let me interrupt the rabbiting. I just wanted to put a fly on the wall comment in as the entertainment went by.


spin