LegionOnomaMoi

I wasted time, now time doth waste me.

It appears that whatever else you may or may not have, you have plenty of time to waste.

And why do you assume that by saying this the author of Mark necessarily thought Jesus divine? After all, we have plenty of examples of historical figures who were said to be divine, sons of gods, gods, etc. from Egyptian Pharaohs to Roman emperors, without even getting into the use of "son of god" within Jewish circles.

You continually make the mistake of equating texts which contain mythical/magical/ahistorical elements with myths. If every text which contained such elements need be discounted, then we would have virtually no historical records, from the ancient greeks to the centuries of european witch trials and beyond.

dog-on

This discussion seems a bit anachronistic to me, but just to clarify, let me ask you this. When is the first time, to your knowledge, that a Christian writer specifically rejects the actual existence of any god or gods other than YHWH?

Steven Carr

As Casey is the world's leading expert on finding the Aramaic underlying a Greek document which translated that Aramaic, could you tell me the name of just one Greek document, where Casey has found the Aramaic it was translated from , and he has been proved to be correct?

Usually I find that the world's leading expert on something has done at least once what he claims the be the world's leading expert on doing.

But I would be happy with the name of just one document. You don't have to provide the names of 10 or 20 that Casey did.

Steven Carr

Mercury and Zeus were not the same entity.

Does that mean that Mercury was not a god?

I wonder why the very early Christians wanted to symbolically eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood, when they never regarded him as anything other than an ordinary human being.

Please feel free to quote Bart Ehrman in your answer, as I'm sure he would have considered that when he started denying that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus as divine.

Diogenes the Cynic

When do any Christian writers explicitly reject the existence of werewolves? Why would you expect them to explicitly reject other gods? It went without saying. They mostly take Yahwist monotheism at face value, and even though Jesus evolves chronologically in Christian literature from human to God, no other Gods are accepted other than the Jewish God.

Steven Carr

So if Christ was an ordinary human, not divine at all, no way, that came later, in the very earliest Christian circles, why did they want to symbolically eat his body and drink his blood?

dog-on

I am afraid that you have misread the intent of my question, I am not asking you who they rejected, (as in did not worship).

You could, instead simply try to answer the specific question I did ask, if you wish.

dog-on

For the Epistles, I suppose one could view Paul as the Elijah figure, as perhaps Paul himself might have.

Rick Sumner

It's shorthand for "and contained therein."

Not in Matthew they're not. See the transfiguration. The figures are divine.

This is true in the sense that Casey does not explicitly state the nature of Jesus at the Parousia, but no more than it's true of your reading.

He does state that the figure will "come on clouds," and "sit on the throne of glory," so divinity is a pretty natural inference. Rather than attempt to tease it out, I've sent Casey an email in the hope that he'll clarify. If he doesn't respond, I'll see if Steph Fisher can get to the bottom of it for us.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

thief of fire

Intersting discussion, Rick , LegionOnomaMoi, Diogenes and Iskander.
Rick thanks for your reply earlier and I'll be interested to see if Casey has something to add.