Solitary Man

Yes, you've made your point, but it's false (or misleading, take your pick). The ancients had no problem giving flesh and blood to certain gods. Prometheus even had a liver. The Olympians lived on an actual mountaintop in the real Greek world. Spirits actually lived in trees, in rocks, in streams, etc. Your suggestion is entirely warped by modern Christian bias.

No? That someone existed and were later made a god is not a statement that that person existed? Are you smoking crack?

I have already started with the presupposition that there is no divinity. Divinity hardly has anything to do with historicity. Since you mentioned the earliest sources, you must be talking about the beliefs of the people who wrote these sources.

Otherwise, your arguments belong in EoG and not BC&H.

schilling.klaus

it's fraudulent euhemerism,as already debunked by Plutarch, and has nothiong to do with questions of historical existence

only those are smoking crack who believe in the base reliability of Eusebian
history of christianity

such a bias makes the studies of the origins of Christianity impossible.

Klaus Schilling

Solitary Man

First of all, do realize that nearly all in historical studies, including Doherty, Acharya, Price, etc. is hypothesis. A theory explains a set of data. We set up a theory based on evidence. So are you asking for the evidence? I think that's been rehashed here often enough. It's getting a bit tiring explaining it again and again to people with fingers stuck in their ears shouting "nanny nanny boo boo I can't hear you".

How did you come to this conclusion?

Frankly untrue. The early gospel, Q, the mere existence of Ebionites, and the universal linking of the pillars to Jesus Christ is more than just an iota of a hint. It's blatantly shouting out. Is it true? I think the evidence weighs in favor of it. I think this theory best explains the evidence. I don't think you have a better theory.

schilling.klaus

no, there's less than zero evidence

he had two fathers, a heavenly one and an earthly one,
exactly like Osiris, which underlines that we're in the realms of
mythology


Mary is to be understood as a goddess ,
not as a human as naivelings and charlatans do.

Klaus Schilling

schilling.klaus

no, it's no crap, but the one and only logical consequence

the actual historian is as naive as it can get,
like his forerunner Euhemeros of Messene.

no, they worshipped the genius of the emperor.
This makes the emperors possessed by gods. Thus those gods are not deemable
as historical, same is valued for Jesus.

Klaus Schilling

schilling.klaus

this is a lie interpolated into the Pauline epistles
by Catholic forgers and fakers who reworked
previous Marcionite tractates.


Klaus Schilling

Ted Hoffman

Its called mythology. Yes, they even became swans and had sex. Who gives a shit?
The Mount Olympus of Greek mythology was mythical just like the throne that God sits on. Lets not be overly naive. Jesus and Moses were wearing clothes during the alleged Transfiguration - according to your reckless style, we are to believe that there are actual tailors in heaven.
Yes, Yahweh loved Mount Sinai. It doesnt make him historical, or make the story history.
Yes you are, since you cannot even read straight. Just say no to drugs and you will be fine. Devotees tell us about their beliefs. History covers more than what devotees believe.

Solitary Man

Now you're just being obstinate, Ted.

youngalexander

No. The emphases (italics) were different.
That historical Christians thought something, and their literal thoughts, may be historical. Nevertheless, the actual subject of their thoughts is not necessarily so.
You seem to be confusing the two.

It seems to me that TH expressed the case well when he said,
It does not matter what Christians of any era think, the above quote is the case.

Well I do not.
Neither strikes me as obvious, but we are straying from the point.

Good, you got it!
Their beliefs may be history, but neither of the propositions is.

Take a squiz at Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths?

gurugeorge

I'm not talking about evidence for a belief in some historical aspects to Joshua Messiah - that exists, even in the early stuff. However, such belief could just as easily have been about a mythical entity, such supposed details merely pseudo-historical, and the scantiness of the existing evidence for historical/pseudo-historical aspects is at least consistent with him being a mythical entity right from the beginning.

Forget about that stuff. I want to see where this oh-so-strong confidence comes from that Paul's predecessors knew personally a man named Joshua, who they thought of as the Messiah.

Paul gives the creed in Corinthians as being "what he received", there are no hints of any doctrinal differences with the Jerusalem crowd other than the Jew/Gentile, observant/non-observant stuff. What other conclusion ought I to come to?

Which is itself a hypothesis, not evidence.

Who are a later phenomenon than the crucial period in question.

Again, as I point out above and below, this is only evidence for a Historical Joshua Messiah if we can be reasonably confident that they knew personally a human being, called Joshua, who they thought of as the Messiah.

The problem is, as I explained above: we can accept that there are what at first glance look like potential historical details peppered throughout the obviously fantastic stuff, but we also know that mythological entities had "historical" details in ancient times.

So we need to disambiguate historical from "historical" (pseudo-historical decoration of a myth).

In order to do that, we need to link the Jerusalem crowd to a living human being whom they eyeballed. This is the absolute crux of the matter for any Historical Joshua Messiah theory. If you think there was a Historical Joshua Messiah, then this is what needs to be shown, nothing more, nothing less. If you don't have this crucial link, why on earth would you believe there was ever a man behind what is so obviously a spiritualized version of a traditional Jewish "superhero" myth?

Without this crucial link, why on earth would the idea of a Historical Joshua Messiah ever occur to you? Tradition? But surely as rationalists and sceptics we put that to the side as a matter of course, and look at the evidence afresh, and look at tradition in that context, rather than the other way round?