aa5874

I understand your hypothesis, now let's get the evidence or information that supports this theory.

These are some of your proposals:

• [1]There was an historical Jesus.

What credible source external of the NT and apologetics can confirm that there was an historical Jesus.?

• [2] Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem.

What credible source, external of apologetics and the NT, has placed a man named Jesus in Jerusalem, during the days of Pilate, and was crucified?

• [3] Jesus was a drifter, virtually nothing was known of his life.

What credible source has information to show that Jesus was a drifter? And nothing can be known of person if nothing is written or heard about that person.

• [4] After his death, the belief arose that he was divine, a messiah whose counsel could be sought through prayer.

What credible source has confirmed or supplied information to corroborate your theory?

• [5] This, IMO, is the Jesus worshipped by Paul's early churches.

What credible source has corroborated your Jesus and Paul's early churches?


Basically all you have done is to reject the Jesus of the NT, and then have produced or proposed a Jesus that you imagine WITHOUT any credible source to support you.

You have not really made a case for the historical Jesus, you have made a case for your IMAGINED JESUS.


I do not get the sense that you are with the MJ position, I get the impression that you are with those who reject the Jesus of the NT, but oddly enough, use the very same NT to fabricate another Jesus with erroneous and misleading information.

jules?

I can sympathise with Didymus in the sense that stripped of magical/fantastic the NT Jesus ends up being just another wannabe messiah. There were wannabe messiahs. wannabes were nailed up/stoned / beheaded/ murdered [betrayed] by other wannabes and also calling yourself g-dsaves and coming from bandit country indicates that there must have been someone who fits a stripped down version of the Jesus story. But does this Jesus have any real bearing on the NT one? I am sure you could probably find a Simpson family in Springfield that has a nuclear power station who happen to have three kids and although he isn't called Homer you could imagine he got the name change for comic effect, but is it really the same Homer?

andrewcriddle

Luke 9:58/Matthew 8:20

(You may not regard this as a credible source, but I thought it worth mentioning.)

Andrew Criddle

Half-Life

Such a shame. The immortal timeless God comes down from Heaven and no one has a place for him to stay. Is Jesus trying for the sympathy guilt trip?

Solo

You actually know of a way one can exist "non-ontologically" ? Do you mean JC existed in Paul's mind as an undifferentiated wisp of nothing-in-particular ?

Paul makes certain, definite, statements about the pre-existent being: i.e. Christ did not make any illegitimate claim on God's glory (unlike Adam) though in the form of God. On the contrary, he emptied himself of that form. He took on the likeness of a human, a servant, through a regular bioprocess. These statements imply choice, and will. There is no escaping ontology here, unfortunately for those who would want to argue "allusive" or "metaphorical" or "ideal" pre-existent Christology and build some illusory theological bridgework to "actual" pre-existence. A sober, mature, intellect will immediately seize on the fact that pre-existence is itself a contradiction in terms. For Paul to assert it as actuality - as he undoubtedly does - would have assigned him, even in his in his own time and place, among the naive, and intellectually maladapted.


You are a charming man, Jeffrey.

Does not answer my question. What did Jesus Christ empty himself of, or what did he lay aside, in taking on a human form ? And how is that possible to be said about a being (human or divine) who is assumed by the writer not to have existed prior to his birth ?

Jiri

kbrown45

http://www.christianism.com/html/add36aa.html#1789

from: "to the path breaker J.W. Ross (1878)", THE ANNALS OF POGGIO BRACCIOLINI AND OTHER FORGERIES, LOUIS PARET. Augustin S.A. 75018 Paris, Pb., 1992 [1995?], Numero d'Imprimeur 2-907 179-17-9 [my copy, is the only copy I have encountered (no copy in the University of California system)]. [See: 1690]. [Note: many misspellings, etc. (most are noted). Translation, etc., problems?].

[typed letter, inserted in book]

'Paris, 26.4.1997

Louis Paret...[Paris address (I mailed a letter requesting communication (no response)), and phone number (did not function for me), omitted]

University of Tennessee Knoxville.

This book presents FORGERIES THROUGH 30 CENTURIES.

The title refers to the forgery committed by the Florentine Poggio Bracciolini from 1423 to 1429.

This forgery was denounced by J.W. Ross in 1878 and by P. Hochart in 1890 and 1894. The author [Louis Paret] adds 14 arguments to the 18 arguments of Ross and Hochart.

The "Annals" are written on two parchments kept in the Laurenziana Library of Florence.

One, listed as Mediceus II, written in Lombard letters, relates in books XI to XVI the lasts years of Claudius (47 to 54 a.D.) and the first 12 years of Nero (54 to 66, two years before his death in 68). It appeared around 1450 in Florence, in an unexplained manner. "Certain aspects of its discovery are veiled in obscurity" - Michael Grant.

The other, Mediceus II [?] 58.1, written in Carolingian letters, describes in books I to VI, the reign of Tiberius (14 to 37 a.D.) "Rescued from the forests of Germany", it was bought for 500 gold sequins from an unknown seller by Pope Leo X in 1513.

As these Annals (name coined in 1533) were unknown until 1450 and 1513, their origin is wrapped in mystery. They are said without proofs by some Latinists to date from the eleventh century [ninth century claimed for Annales I-VI (see 1852 (Tacitus, Jackson), 238], though during these 400 years (c. 1050 to 1450) no author alludes to these texts.

Dating by C14 will easily reveal the age of the two parchments. The laboratory of Professor Willy Wölffi, which groups the physicists of Federal polytechnic School of Zürich and the Institute Paul Scherrer of Villingen (Switzerland) and ascertained the true age of the Turin Shroud, will easily determine the age of two parchments and the eventual difference of age between them which appeared mysteriously at an interval of 80 years.

Universities can certainly obtain from the Laurenziana the few square centimetres of parchments needed for the dating, from the bottom of pages and from the pages left for unexplained reasons partially unwritten with the uncompleted text.

The other 24 forgeries, culled from the tens of thousands of forgeries exposed by hundreds of specialists, have been chosen for their amusing character or their lethal result.' [End of letter]. [Received this book c. 7/22/2001].

PAGE 1789

Clivedurdle

http://physics.about.com/od/relativi...lativity_4.htm

Maybe a complex theory is required to make sense of this stuff? Fictional Mythological?

Jeffrey Gibson

[QUOTE=Solo;5372534]Nice of you to note this. But ... the answer is no, you haven't done any work in scholarly studies of the meaning and import or the intentions behind the use of pre-existence language in inter-testamental writings.

And yet you go on to tell me what Paul meant or had to mean had to mean when he used it?

Jeffrey

aa5874

Jesus said a lot of crazy stuff in the NT. I don't consider the words of Jesus credible unless I can find some external corroboration.

Jeffrey Gibson

Leaving aside the question of whether Jesus' saying at Lk. 9:58//Mt. 8:20 is "crazy stuff", do you use this same criterion when you are dealing with the words of any other historical figure whose words are not attested outside of one source or outside of patently "apologetic" sources?

And will you ever grace us with you definition of, and criterion for determining what is and is not, "credible".

Jeffrey