spin

Jews had very conflicting positions at the time. The one thing that held them together as a group was praxis. The one thing that Paul clearly rejected.

In a heterodox situation you expect other people to hold ridiculous views.

My answer is still the same as the above. If people performed their duties, then they were at least to some degree acceptable.

His readers however only had him as their indicator of what was right. When someone else came along and attempted to set them straight, Paul pulled a hissy fit.

There need not have been any acceptance of Paul's beliefs and that mightn't have mattered so much. But scratch him and he was a Jew who didn't support Jewish praxis even nominally. You give him a hand shake and send him off to Timbuktu.


spin

Solo

I take that as an attempt to preempt.

I disagree. Going from later to earlier can often be a useful exercise in clarifying issues. Karl Marx used to say justifiably that the the anatomy of man is the key to the anatomy of the ape. There may be endemic issues and conflicts which may be hinted at earlier, but of which we only have some real evidence later (example, Paul's hints at gnosticism at Corinth vs. Ireneaus, Epiphanius, Hegesippus, later). I hear what you are saying but I think you are exaggerating.

Not surprised you would not be keen on that one.


No, it's just that you are starting with "what's not in is out", and I am starting with "what on balance of probabilities is not out is in"

So, in you view, describing the Jerusalem church as the Nazarenes, is historically hogwash. Ok, I get it. But, you see my point wasn't really about the church being called Nazarenes, so I take that as an attempt to deconstruct me by the syllable.

An how did you "conclude" this ? The "perhaps" would to a reasonable reader of my post extend to the second part of the sentence.

No idea what you are on about...especially since I am showing as the next thing that in some strands of the early traditions, Jesus was not necessarily thought of as the messiah....


which evidence is based on what ? and which relates to what ?

Doesn't need to be "kingly" messiah. spin. If the [Jerusalem church which Paul references] operated with its own messiah, or proto-messianic High Priest it could have been on the analogy of the Qumran Teacher. Ther may have been enough contact points between him and Paul's Redeemer, for Paul and Jerusalem to talk and divide missions.


But there was also some kind of a deal that Paul had done in Jerusalem with the pillars according to which, Paul was getting a piece of the missionary action. Can we also say that ?

And if that was the case, would it not have been around some kind of a central symbol or figure ? Or am I retrojecting something again ?



But then again, after 14 (or 17 ?) years in business, Paul did not know who the leaders of the Jerusalem group were and had to have them pointed out to him. Then there is the question of the extent of Paul's Hebrew, and whether if the church did refer to itself by some NZR/NCR designation he would have caught on. So ok, maybe calling the Jerusalem church Nazarenes at that juncture would be a bit misleading.

I am sure it can be made complicated.



You are not going to deny that when Paul says "Christ" in Gal 6:12 he means the "Jesus that we preach" in 2 Cr 11:4. Or are you ? If you are not, you should not have much trouble with the inference that "those who do not want to be persecuted for the cross of Jesus", are denying or downplaying the fact that Jesus (the same man they and Paul reference) was executed. The major point of contention in the theo-politics of Paul. The Petrine hypocrites in Paul's perspective are denying the "truth of the gospel"; i.e. that the man was killed by the very legal implements they insist their converts comply with.

Fair ? Dumb ? Retrojected ?

Jiri

Iasion

Hiya,

If the argument was :
"Jesus must have existed because all religions have founders",

then
this argument is shown false, as many religions have a central figure who did not exist.


Iasion

Jeffrey Gibson

Umm, you've equivocated here between founder and central figure. There are religions whose central figures are not their founders.

And in any case, your conclusion is not as slam dunk as you think it is, since there are; also religions which have central figures (and even founders) who did exist.

I take it you've never had a course in logic -- or that if you did, you failed it (or have forgotten what you learned in it).

Jeffrey

Didymus

[QUOTE=No Robots;5228072]The argument that the various Jesus pericopes and quotes found in the gospels must be accurate because they could be accurate is a weak one indeed, but that hasn't prevented stalwart Christians from touting it, despite the lack of evidence that the Greek-speaking writers of the gospels even adhered to the vaunted Rabbinic tradition that supposedly fostered scrupulous accuracy.

It is one thing to ascertain the accuracy of scribal transmissions based on a multiplicity of earlier writings; it is quite another to impute "great care and accuracy" to unidentified individuals transcribing oral material of unknown provenance. They wrote from unknown locations. Their material was supposedly shared with them by equally enigmatic correspondents, not one of whom is identified or even characterized as an eyewitness. At some point along the "telephone line," someone even had to translate Jesus' supposed quotes from Aramaic - a Hebrew -based language - into Greek. Whether these anonymous writers made any use of multiple sources or other means to verify assertions of divine intervention is unknown - but there are no claims to that effect. And there's the age-old question of the 40+ year interval between the purported events and the written narrative.

Given all that, the gospel tales are not merely hearsay; they have no more evidentiary value than the "urban legends" encountered on the Internet. As such, any judge in any court would strike them from the record and tell the jury to disregard them. They cannot even be taken with the proverbial grain of NaCl.

Ddms

Didymus

The argument that the various Jesus pericopes and quotes found in the gospels must be accurate merely because they could be accurate is a weak one indeed, but that hasn't prevented stalwart Christians from making it, despite the lack of evidence that the Greek-speaking, Hellenized writers of the gospels even adhered to the Rabbinic tradition that supposedly fostered scrupulous accuracy.

It is one thing to ascertain the accuracy of scribal transmissions based on a multiplicity of earlier writings; it is quite another to impute "great care and accuracy" to unidentified individuals transcribing oral and written material of unknown provenance. Their geographical origins are unknown, and they wrote from unknown locations. They all derived their material from Mark, who, after the Romans destroyed the second Temple in Jerusalem, updated and expanded selected passages from the Septuagint, shaping them into a tidy "historical" narrative about a wandering worker of wonders who was supposedly crucified by the authorities forty years earlier. They added quotes and other biographical material from the lost Q gospel, regarding which no provenance can be determined, along with an expanded birth story and a couple of politically-inspired crucifixion narratives. Whether these plagiarists made any use of multiple sources or other means to verify the claims they reasserted is unknown - but there are no assertions to that effect.

Given all that, the gospel tales are worse than even hearsay; they have no more evidentiary value than the "urban legends" encountered on the Internet. As such, any judge in any court would strike them from the record. They cannot even be taken with the proverbial grain of NaCl - but seem to go down nicely if preceded by a large dollop of faith.

Ddms

J-D

Depends on what the 'other explanation' is. The only other explanation I have seen offered here with a similar amount of concrete detail is the Pauline invention of Christianity, and as far as I can see now (and I admit that I haven't gone into this very deeply, and am ready to change my view I get more information) the account above is preferable to any account in which Paul originated Christianity, for reasons which I will explain in a moment in response to some other posts.

J-D

No. I think that he did exist. I posed the question because I am trying to get a clearer idea of your methodological principles. I assume you have some standard by which you judge that Saul of Tarsus did exist, but which you consider does not apply to Jesus, and I am trying to find out what that is.Which life story is that? Where are you getting it from? Does it include the story of his vision on the road to Damascus? Doesn't that count as 'extraordinary'?Are you suggesting that if extraordinary stories are told about people, that is a compelling reason to dismiss them as having been real flesh-and-blood historical people? Extraordinary stories are told about Frederick Barbarossa, about Charlemagne, and about Alexander the Great. Are those stories compelling reasons to dismiss them as having been real flesh-and-blood historical people?

On the other hand, even if no extraordinary stories are told about people, is that sufficient reason to think that they were real flesh-and-blood historical people? There are no extraordinary events in the Biblical accounts of Jephthah and Saul, to name but two examples. Is that enough reason to suppose that they were real flesh-and-blood historical people?What makes you think that?There I agree with you. But those are not the only two options.Naturally. But can you explain why you prefer it to the alternative account I have outlined in previous posts?

J-D

I am interested in the historical question 'How did Christianity originate?' I think this is a legitimate subject of historical enquiry.

There are a number of possible positions that people could take on this question.

Some people might take the position 'We are not interested in this question'. That's fair enough. But it's not a reason why other people should not take an interest in the question, as I do.

Some people might take the position 'There is insufficient information to settle on a preferred account of origin of Christianity'. That's a reasonable position. However, even so, there are some accounts we can exclude. The religious Christian account can't be true. The religious Muslim account can't be true, either. Saying that there are some accounts which can't be true implies that there are other accounts which don't fall into that category and hence might be true. Therefore, it's still legitimate to ask which category the account I've mentioned before falls into. I haven't seen any reason why it can't be true; hence, it might be true. The fact that there's no mention of it in contemporary non-apologetic literature is beside the point here. Lots of things have happened without being recorded in contemporary apologetic literature or, indeed, at all. There's no contemporary record of any kind of the origin of Judaism; nevertheless, it must have had an origin, even if it's not possible to know what that origin was.

Some people might have another account of the origin of Christianity which they prefer to the one I've mentioned. If so, I'm keen to hear that account and the reason people prefer it. I'm open to be convinced. Given that there's no record of the origin of Christianity in contemporary non-apologetic literature, the only way to form views about how it happened is by drawing inferences from the data that do exist. Historians do that kind of thing all the time. Historians don't restrict themselves to events recorded in contemporary non-apologetic literature, and I can't see any reason why they should.

J-D

If we're going to go by a plain reading of the text of Galatians, it says explicitly that Paul's religion predated Paul himself, most directly at 1:23.Exactly.