RUmike

Agreed. darstec's reasons are not the "most logical" by any stretch.

darstec

Yeah, right. An important church leader who knew someone, who knew someone that knew god himself and nobody considered his writings important enough to preserve??? Of all the voluminous work he was supposed to have written and not a scintilla of this great man not far removed from god himself was deemed important enough by the very church who claimed its start from that god to be preserved. Give us a break.

Ted Hoffman

jjramsey,
Thanks for such an intelligent response. Your take on kata sarkais logical but suffers from one weakness in my view: you test Doherty's interpretation against a historicist paradigm.

That of course will not work. You are like someone insisting on remaining seated in place, yet you are being invited to come and see something out of your sight. You have to abandon your current position and come and examine what the mythicist hypothesis is. You keep questioning it from a purely historicist perspective, yet this is a different perspective.

We have all understood the historicist paradigm. It is now time to consider the mythicist paradigm. One has to examine the entire documentary record and consider how the mythicist hypothesis accounts for what is available.
It has to be examined in terms of its internal consistency and explanatory power. In my view, you have not examined the mythicist paradigm on its own, then compared it with the historicist paradigm. You are so enamored to the historicist paradigm that you cannot see anything without using it as a lens and as a litmus test.
Every objection you have raised can be addressed from the mythicist paradigm. They appear problematic to you only because your assumptions are different.
Lets have a look at your latest post.

On the one hand, you are right about Muller and kata sarka. He does "provide a decent list of the usages of kata sarka". But there is a problem with your position: If you maintain that Doherty's meaning is totally new, we can still consider Doherty as arguing for an additional meaning of kata sarka to be included in that semantic range. We can say that he has brought on board a new paradigm. You therefore would not discount it by arguing that there is already a recognized semantic range in place.

And Doherty is not just pulling this meaning out of a hat: (1) he has an entire Jesus Myth Hypothesis in place (2) This interpretation that he proposes has been hinted at by scholars like C. K. Barrett. (3) This interpretation dovetails with Pauline Christology and other 'peculiar' expressions bu Paul (like ginomai and archontes). (4) The MJ hypothesis explains why Mark had to rely on the OT to construct a life of Jesus.
I cant think of a word right now but I believe there are Greek words that have a semantic range and the meaning has to be determined from the context. This is true even for English and I dont see it as a problem.
Even "hell" can be used in an abstract sense and in a concrete locational sense. He does not need to do that. You derive that meaning from background knowledge regarding platonic cosmogony.
The TDNT explains: "...the witness to Christ who reached men were strangely influenced by Gk. thought. It was planted in a society to which the idea of a history which develops and moves towards a goal was alien. This society does not think in terms of detached aeons. Being generally dualistic, it thinks in terms of superimposed spheres. Here, then, the pneuma cannot be regarded as the mere sign of things to come. As a part of the heavenly world is the thing itself...Logically, the [gnostic] thought meant that the spiritual nature of man was already pre-existent" TDNT, Vol VI, p.416

If he is repeating to what he stated to them before, you cannot argue that they already knew. You can only argue that he already told them. These were his own visions he was sharing with them. You cannot assume, without evidence, as you have been doing, that they also knew about Christ's resurrection.
Not true.
Read what Doherty's "parallelism of action" and what Gerd Theissen calls a "structural homologue" in Sociology of Early palestinian Christianity, p.121.
Paul and co. envisioned a layered universe. And stuff was happening in the upper layer in synchrony with what was happening here below. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament explains:
TDNT, Vol VI, p.416
Again incorrect.
Inanna died too and resurrected. Yet she was a god, not a mortal being. Tammuz too. In Ezekiel 8.14-15 Tammuz worshippers are weeping over the death of Tammuz.
For Inanna, check History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firstts in Recorded History by Samuel Noah Kramer, pub 1956, rev 1981, University of Pennsylvania Press. Pages 154-167 have the tale.

Ted Hoffman

That may not have been very clear: through divine revelation, Paul discerned that Christ had died and resurrected. It is through revelation that he knew what happened in another layer in that superimposed universe. Christ is acting in another realm here and now, not in the past. That is why Paul writes in Heb 8:4 "if he[Christ] were on Earth" instead of "when he was on Earth"

Barret writes:
"He was in the sphere of the flesh, born of the family of David; in the sphere of the Holy Spirit, appointed Son of God-' The preposition (KATA) here rendered 'in the sphere of' could also be rendered 'according to', and 'according to the flesh'"
Davidic kinship is a form of exaltation. K Schubert says that "Son of David seems to denote a provisional stage of exaltation" TDNT p.417. "The formula [in Romans 1:3] originally contains a Christology according to which Jesus is instituted as the son of God only by exaltation"

I hope this clarifies things.

S.C.Carlson

Paul didn't write Hebrews.

Stephen

jjramsey

Of course--but that is not all that I am arguing. Doherty has to show that his proposed additional meaning of kata sarka makes better sense of Paul than the already recognized semantic range.

No, it has not. The problem here is that you are glomming onto Barrett's use of "sphere" without taking into account that he is not using it in the sense of a concrete region in space--which is the sense that Doherty requires.

ginomai has been discussed briefly above. Paul's use of archontes was discussed on an earlier thread. What I find interesting is this bit from the thread:

Pilate, Nazareth, baptism, and the crucifixion are not from the OT. That Mark and others constructed "events" in Jesus' life is not in dispute, but the whole thing is not derivative of the OT.

Of course words can be used in both a concrete and an abstract sense. That isn't the problem. The problem is the lack of context to indicate that Paul is switching his use of the kata in kata sarka from the abstract to the concrete.

The most that a background in Platonic cosmogony could possibly establish is that such a meaning of kata sarka was available, which is difficult as is. Carrier still has to establish that Paul likely used it that way.

But that is not what Paul is doing. He reminds the Corinthians that Jesus was resurrected, but does not give details about the resurrection itself, so he is not repeating everything that he stated to them before, but enough to call the rest of what he taught to mind.

If one looks at p. 194 of The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide by Theissen and Merz, it is clear that Theissen understood Paul's reference to Davidic sonship as being literal.

Yet in that story, she was depicted as having a body, and even had clothes which she removed as she descended to the underworld. If one looks at Jewish ideas of resurrection, the body is clearly involved.

Ted Hoffman

Carlson
You mean the author is unknown. You are right.

Ted Hoffman

Doherty has done that. Richard Carrier, who is competent in Greek, finds the orthodox meaning "barely intelligible" and favours Doherty's interpretation. What weight should we assign jjramsey's divergent "opinion"?
I dont mean to belittle you, but all you are saying is "Doherty has not done X". Others disagree. I would assign more weight to Carrier's view because:

(1) Carrier has provided the most thorough Critique of Doherty's Work. This means that he understands Doherty's theory better than almost anyone else with his kind of credentials.

(2) Carrier's competence in Greek is unquestionable. Carrier studied Greek for two years, reading and translation, at UC Berkeley; one year at Columbia in dialects and linguistics (etymology, morphology and phonology) and Greek manuscripts and paleography; and he studied the translation of Homer, Xenophon, Plutarch, Josephus, Lucian, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, the New Testament and various Church Fathers, and smaller passages from countless others, and he passed the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences translation competency exam for ancient Greek.

Barrett is using it in what sense? What and where is the sphere of the flesh and what is the sphere of the spirit?
What is the meaning of "sphere"?
That it is not wholly derivative from the OT does not make it a historical source. The important thing is that if there were historical sources, and Mark was writing history, then Mark would have used them. That he did not rely on any demonstrable historical source is consistent with the MJ hypothesis, which maintains that there was no historical Jesus. That he relied on the OT to create scenes in his gospel means that he was writing fiction, not history.
Feel free to point out any historical passages in Mark.

Regarding AoI, I responded to GDon fully in the same thread.

I find this requirement for Paul to advertise to readers that "hey guys, now we are switching locations", to be arbitrary and inconsistent with what is known in literary criticism. What are you relying to in making this assertion? The surrounding words provide the context. Knowledge of platonic cosmology provides background information.
After all, the orthodox interpretation is "barely intelligible". Why do you favour it?
The correct thing to say is that Carrier has been unable to convince you. Do you think en sarki would have been more direct?
It does not matter that he is not repeating everything. In any case I never claimed that he is repeating everything. The point is that it is Paul who is claiming that Christ resurrected. He claims it repeatedly. No Corinthian is known as claiming that Christ resurrected. So there is no common ground of resurrection that Paul is appealing to: he is just employing an early version of the no-true Scotsman fallacy. He implies that those who do not believe Christ resurrected are not true Christians and their possible non-belief makes Christ's death useless and salvation impossible. So, he is using blackmail, guilt-trips, an unverifiable claim of having divine revelation and fallacious reasoning to get them to accept that Christ resurrected.
There is no common ground because there was no resurrection. If there was any resurrection, Paul would not have needed divine revelation to know that Christ resurrected.
This is a red herring. You have left the argument untouched.
The point is that a body does not have to be a flesh and blood body. Some early Christian texts say that demons had "bodies" like fire. AoI has demons fighting in heavens and they do not recognize a transformed Jesus.

Bottom line: you do not have to be a flesh and blood man in order to have a "body".

dongiovanni1976x

How did you come to this conclusion?

Why would the author of Matthew feel it necessary to change the name Emmanuel, a name with significant implications to Jesus’ divine origins (i.e. “God is with us”), to Jesus, a much more common name, unless Jesus was known to be the name of those who originally followed him?

This is a weak objection. Why are we not allowed to use modern rationalizations? I am not retrojecting my opinion on them as much as I am trying my best to explain why something may be the case. I think it is a valid assumption as it transcends the time gap between our day and the 1st century. Though I agree with your Markan Priority arguments or when you say, “Luke shows no interest in the Isaiah reference, which of course has nothing to do with Jesus and is based on a misunderstanding of the original text,” in the latter half of your posts, I would venture to guess that these statements are founded upon modern rationalizations as well. We can’t just throw out the baby with the bathwater- yet this seems to be your suggestion if we ignore our best efforts of recreating the past via modern rationalization.

Huh? Matthew is the one that seems to have Jesus “living” in Bethlehem in a house…I never said it was Luke. What am I confusing?
How did you come to this conclusion?
What kind of objection is this? This is a very strong argument in favor of a HJ. The fact that “nothing good could come from Nazareth” – regardless of whether Jesus was a Nazarene or literally “from Nazareth” it was believed that the Messiah MUST come from Bethlehem and this inconsistency had to be explained. Thus the embarrassing nature of this is positive evidence of a real historical event. Why “invent” all this confusion if you just are constructing a Mythical figure?
Good point. That is only fair, and the clearest way to avoid unnecessary assumptions. I will try to keep this in mind as I question this issue.
I am arguing strictly facts. Roman crucifixion was commonly practiced, it was an extremely embarrassing way to die and was one of the central points of ridicule from such figures as Porphyry and Celsus. Conventional wisdom should not be discarded by such a simple wave of the hand. There is something to look into here. Robin Hood was seen as heroic, Jesus, arguably, was killed in the most embarrassing and painful way possible. How does a crucifixion story lend MORE credibility to a mythical Jesus than to a historical one?
Do you hold this opinion for all ancient sources?
This conclusion can be drawn without even opening Acts.
What we know is that we have claims of an actual person who walked the earth. Thus as a historian we analyze those sources. In doing so we must make some assumptions. My suggestion was only meant to show that the conclusion could be drawn for either side depending upon which assumption you begin with. My main point throughout my earlier post was to make a case for why “assuming” a HJ is stronger than assuming a MJ. This ties directly into your next question:
I can imagine that such a tale began that way but I see far more evidence for a HJ than a HZ (Historical Zeus) regardless of the attributed supernatural attributes of either putative deity.
That is what historians do- they attempt to make sense of the past. The evidence for a crucified man as being the founder of a faith that we now call “Christianity” is stronger than that this man was not crucified and is likewise stronger than that a mythical legend that such an event was attributed to him for some other reason given the embarrassing nature of this form of punishment and the alleged fact that this event discredited him in the eyes of his Jewish followers. This is exactly what we are arguing spin…what makes more sense…a MJ or a HJ…
There is nothing extraordinary in this from an ancient perspective, no. You sound like you are talking to me as if you think I am a Christian or something.
This was likely due to the fact that those who are “seeing” post-crucified Jesus are having visions of him and not actually seeing him. This is not a very far fetched explanation.
I do not think it is arbitrary. It is a valid historical approach to weigh the data and find the most plausible explanation. Such supernatural claims are by definition the least plausible so it would be wise to seek more plausible explanations before assuming what we read is true and swallow it whole. I find it hard to believe that you think we must take all the stories about Jesus together without analyzing which ones are more plausible than the next.

I completely respect this but wonder how much fence sitting is necessary when it comes to other things in the past. What is your litmus test for whether a decision is rash or not? Did Socrates drink the hemlock? Did Alexander the Great break the Gordian knot? Did Julius Caesar cross the Rubicon? Where do you draw the line? Is it just the supernatural claims that trouble you? Do those about Caesar and Alexander ebing divine or performing great deeds trouble you? Do you arbitrarily pick and choose things in their life or swallow it whole…something else?
I guess what I am wonder, as a fellow skeptic myself, does your rump ever tire of sitting on that fence post?
My guess is that it doesn’t since you seem to lean one way more than the other…I am just curious why that seems to be the case….

Amaleq13

"Jesus" is also "Joshua".