spin

Hurdle one: when you can't date your texts you can't pretend you know the date.

Still, hurdle one: when you can't date your texts you can't pretend you know the date.

Aren't all the letters of Ignatius spurious? I have been trying to date them based on Polycarp's letter to the Philippians and the Martyrdom of Polycarp. These texts are from the 160s, so the letters he knew of Ignatius are from about that period.

Now we're into the second century.

How do you date this'n?

The onus is on you to justify a dating.

Well, we've got 150 years or more of messianic thinking within Judaism.


spin

Amaleq13

That is false. If there is a human Jesus in Hebrews, he exists only to be sacrificed. No other activity is attributed to him. That you are able to read this into the text does not make it "clear". That only means your interpretation isn't impossible.

From the previous post:
I replied:
none of this except the reference to a crucifixion in Jerusalem can be considered as establishing Jesus in any specific point in history. What passage are you talking about?

So, a reference to the crucifixion taking place outside the gate makes it "quite clear" that the author was talking about Jerusalem? I know you can do better than that! Your suggestion is only "clear" if you read Hebrews through the lense of the later Gospel story. That is a great way to get earlier texts to read as though they agree with the Gospels but a rather poor way of figuring out what the earlier author was actually saying.

It seems to make more sense to consider sources written before this one and, probably, to texts that we can be sure he knew thoroughly (i.e. Scripture). It doesn't seem nearly as much of a stretch as your "interpretation" to suggest that the author of Hebrews only had Psalm 118:20 in mind:

"This is the gate of the LORD; The righteous will enter through it."

I wrote:
The "first appearance" apparently only involved the crucifixion. He appeared in order to die but we don't know where or when or if it even happened on earth rather than the heavenly settings the author spends so much time describing.

According to Young's Literal Translation, the reference actually reads:

"for [it is] evident that out of Judah hath arisen our Lord, in regard to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood."

This assertion comes within the larger context of an argument for non-Levitical priesthoods. The author is explaining why the Messiah could also be considered a priest, he is not describing the Messiah's lineage.

Don't sell yourself short, you've done a great job here of supporting my point! Even the Gospels show that all the things you describe above need take no more than a few hours. When the author gets specific, it is clear that the "suffering" was part of the death: "because of the suffering of death" (Heb 2:9). I'm not sure which passage you are referring to with regard to the "crying out" but I'll bet it takes place during the crucifixion.

Clearly, none of these requires the Jesus of Hebrews to have existed any longer than it took to be crucified.

From a previous post:
I wrote:
...the author places the reception of the God-given knowledge that the sacrifice/resurrection happened within his lifetime.

Now that we've seen you have demonstrated no such thing, do you have anything of substance to offer against this interpretation?

Regarding Hebrews' crucifixion as placing Jesus in history, I wrote:
A "time limit" of several centuries given the mass crucifixions that took place under Janneus according to Josephus.

My mistake. I forgot to include the crucifixions under Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164BCE). Janneus = 103-76BCE.

My apologies but I assumed someone who claims to be so much more knowledgeable than myself would be familiar enough with the relevant information.

Antiquities of the Jews, 12.5.4 and 13.14.2

What you said and what you can prove are clearly two different things. The author does not place the events as contemporary but the God-given knowledge of those events. The reference to those who heard the Lord narrows the time frame for the reception of the information. For example, I'm sure the author of Hebrews would have considered Paul as "one who heard the Lord".

Like I said, all you've established (assuming Doherty is unable to support his "heavenly spheres" theory), is that the author of Hebrews believed the sacrificed/raised Christ to have been literally incarnated as a human in order to be killed. We don't know when the author thought this human lived or where he died. All we know from Hebrews is that what was important was what the Raised Christ did in the heavenly sanctuary in the heavenly Temple in the heavenly Jerusalem. It is because the sacrifice was offered in that heavenly location that salvation was possible.

Layman

Yes, Jesus is human in Hebrews. Yes, the ultimate purpose of Jesus' incarnaton was to be crucified and then resurrected. But a human Jesus who was descended from the tribe of Judah, suffered on earth, prayed to God for deliverance, was crucified and then resurreted surely is inconsisent with Doherty's theory.

I'm not sure what point you think you make by noting that the focus is on Jesus' death and resurrection.


Having demonstrated that the author sees Jesus as having come to earth as a descendent of Judah as a human being, I am unwilling to assume radical discontinuity between his understanding of Jesus' death and that of, say, Mark-which was written around the same time. That there is agreement about Jesus being crucified outside the city strengthens the relationship.

Of course, if your agenda is to deny any possible link between the two, I can understand your resistance to the idea.

Assuming creativity based on the Hebrew Bible s unconvincing.

http://www.bede.org.uk/price6.htm

Not that I see much of a connection between the two.

Right. Jesus was from the tribe of Judah. This matches the Gospel stories quite well.

Actually, he is describing Jesus' lineage. It is a problem for the author because Jesus was born into the wrong tribe. If Jesus was not a man but only had certain OT attributes, then this would be no problem. But because he was a man who was born of the tribe of Judah, he was not eligible to be considered a priest. So the author of Hebrews finds a way out of this.

Since I explained this in depthy in my article, I'm becoming skeptical that you read it all.

Again, it it seems obvious you did not read my article.

That he was born into the tribe of Judah certanly seems to suggest so. Unless you think he was crucified as an infant.


I'm waiting for something substantive to respond to.

This seem much to early to be part of "these last days."

I do not have Josephus memorized nor do I expect anyone else to.

Perhaps not. This gives us one generation.

And that they "heard" the Lord instead of just witnessing his death certainly suggests that the author of Hebrews saw Jesus as doing more than just dying.

It's hardly relevant that the author does not give us the date of Jesus' death. Neither do the Gospel authors. It's unlikely that the date of Jesus' death was all that relevant to his point.

What we know is that the author of Hebrews explicit rejected he notion that Jesus only came as a spirit. He claims that Jesus came to earth as a human being. That Jesus, as a human being was descended from a particular tribe of Israeles--Judah. And that Jesus was heard by his followers. That Jesus experienced fear over his destiny and cried out to God. That Jesus died and was resurrected. That the author believed Jesus would come to earth a second time.

None of which is consistent with Doherty's theory.

Vinnie

Where, in my last post do you see any ridiculing? If you consider disagreeing with Jesus mythicism ridiculing that is your problem.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Huh?

Vinnie

rlogan

I had the same question. If spin has a copy of "Q", I'd like to buy one...

I'm about to start a thread to blow Fredriksen and company out of the water on veneration.

spin

Yeah, yeah. A big huh.

You are aware of the Q hypothesis. The source for both Matthew and Luke's common material. If it existed and I believe it has the best likelihood, then it was obviously around before M & L.

There are editions of a hypothetical reconstruction of Q, even broken into chapters and verses.

You know all this. Look it up.

You could just as easily argue that Justin Martyr had seen a copy of Q.

Besides a conflation of two texts is less likely than two writers adapting the one source differently. We have loads of examples.


spin

Layman

Why is it obvious that it existed before L?

spin

Umm, the Q hypothesis involves Luke incorporating Q material.


spin

Layman

That just means that Q preexisted the Gospel of Luke. Yes, that is obvious. But "L" is Luke's special material. Another source of sayings and narrative about Jesus that probably preexisted the final Gospel. That is generally what scholars mean by L.