Steven Carr

http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com...rse-on-method/

An excellent article, of interest to many on this forum.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Steven,

I agree that it is an excellent article.

It is nice to know that others think this type of work, questioning the exact nature of the historicity of Jesus or the Jesus character and the early historical development of Christianity, is useful, or, at least, may discover something useful.

The situation may be a little analogous to the study of dreams before Freud. There were people who thought that dreams supernaturally foretold the future and therefore took them very seriously. Other people thought that they were meaningless and random events without significance and therefore thought that they were not to be taken seriously. Freud showed that both positions were problematical: dreams did not foretell the future, but they did reveal insights into personality and other social phenomena, and therefore should be studied seriously.

Like the Dreamscape, the territory that we are attempting to chart is actually quite strange and it is guarded in a strange fashion.

We have a number of people talking about God, the Invisible Maker of Everything. According to these people, the Invisible Maker of Everything, in addition to making everything, has made a book that tells about his adventures on Earth or at least the adventures of his favorite people on Earth. The Invisible Maker of Everything, according to one extended version of the book, has made a son. So, according to these people, in addition to making everything and making a book, he has made a son, and this book also tells about the adventures of his son on Earth.

We ordinarily do not see or hear this Maker of Everything. However, there are people who speak for him and represent him, and we can hardly help but see and hear them. In fact, this is their job. They are the voice of the Maker of Everything. They are also the voice of the Son of the Maker of Everything. These voices interpret the words in the book of the Maker of Everything. Actually these voices claim to speak for the Maker of Everything and the Son of the Maker of Everything and to possess the spirit of the Maker of Everything. Quite often, hundreds of millions of people gather to listen to these voices of the Maker of Everything and the Son of the Maker of Everything and the spirit of the Maker of Everything. They also give a great deal of money and volunteer a lot of their time and energy helping these voices be heard by more and more people, over and over again.

Those who believe the voices of the Maker of Everything, his Son and his Spirit believe they are in fact what they say they are. They believe that they are hearing the voices of the Maker of Everything, the voices of the Son of the Maker of Everything, the possessors of the spirit of the Maker of Everything, and the best readers of the one book written by the Maker of Everything.

Those who do not believe in these professional voices treat these men as mistaken in some way or as lunatics. Those who treat them as mistaken in some way often confess to believe a great deal of what these voices say, even when they deny the truth of some parts of the sayings of the voices. Those who see them as lunatics are simply saddened by their influence, but hope for a miracle to cure people and have them stop listening to the voices. They often suggest paying no attention to them and minding our own gardens as the best way of dealing with the situation.

Personally, I think it is important to know how these voices of the Maker of Everything and his Son really started. I do not think we can rely on these voices themselves to give us the truth of their beginnings.

In the same way as we need to interpret dreams to understand their natural meaning and origin, we need to interpret these voices of the Maker of Everything to understand how they came about and why they influence so many people throughout the world.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

Uh oh, it looks like Hoffman is a visiting professor in Pakistan right now, blogging eruditely about the imminent take over by the Taliban.

Toto

Hoffman's blog is worth checking out. He has written a provocative post on humor in the Islamic world.

And a new post on the Jesus Project, which ends a bit sentimentally: The Importance of the Historical Jesus. I wonder if that last can be agreed on? Is there any evidence that the Christians that Pliny arrested knew the gospels?

maryhelena

Love that word, Toto, sentimentally - sums up so well the attachment so many have to their historical Jesus. They just can't let 'him' go - for old times sake they seek the warm comfort of the equivalent of that childhood blanket.....

wordy

By Gospels you refer to the texts that we now see as the Christian Gospels but is that really what that text says?

What one maybe can agree upon is that these people had heard spoken words even if they never had read any written such. Those spoken words may not have been what we refer to as Gospels but could have been Gnostic such about Christ as the emanation from the One and that within all of us there are a spark of that One?

Such works still to create believers and one don't need written Gospels or a historical Jesus to create it either. Castaneda created a Shaman named Juan out of three real Shamans but that invented/fictional Juan worked for the New Age believers in shamanism better than the three real Shamans he was based upon.

so no Jesus needs to have been historical for a following to have happen.