Toto

I think so.

This board also values civil discussion, effective persuasion, and mutual respect. When you set yourself up as the professor, you elevate your own status, and expect others to accept their lower status, or pay grade. You thereby set up psychological resistance to your message, whatever it is.

We can all recognize when posters are not being rational. You can point that out without rubbing their noses in the dirt. You can be helpful and provide at least a hint of the information that they missed, instead of demanding that they retire from the boards and spend a few years learning ancient languages to read the original documents to find out if they have in fact missed an issue in translation.

Jeffrey Gibson

Could you please not only point me to some messages in which I have been less civil and less "respectful" of a board member's person than, say, the ones that have recently come in from Earl, but demonstrate that if my tone was anywhere approaching that of Earl's recent messages, circumstances didn't warrant it?

Besides, wasn't the issue solely about how the use of the elenchus was in violation of the board's "mores"?


Could you please not only define what "setting oneself up as the professor" actually means or entails but also point me to messages where I, not to mention I alone -- have actually done this?

And when is asking for evidence -- which I note, if memory serves, you do with some degree of regularity -- especially in the face of dubious claims and what appear to be under-informed assertions, setting oneself up as a "the professor".

And BTW, if I expect anything when I ask for evidence, it's what you expect when you ask for it -- i.e., to receive it, not to get the runaround or to have my motives for asking to receice it questioned. And if there is none to be had, then I expect, just as you do, if memory serves, nothing more than an admission that there's none to be had.

The issue is when the posters who are not rational fail to recognize it.

And how many times have I actually made that demand-- and under what specific circumstances?

Jeffrey

Toto

I will have to split this off if we want to discuss Jeffrey instead of the OP. Just look at your history here and take a survey if you don't believe me.

Toto

Can we get back to the OP.

"Would pre-Enlightenment intellectuals suspect that Jesus never existed."

I suspect that, for pre-Enlightenment intellectuals, the question of whether Jesus existed would not have made a lot of sense. The question only became an issue after the Enlightenment rejected most supernatural beings, and Enlightenment Deists tried to discover a human Jesus at the root of the supernatural mythology about Lord Jesus.

For example, we still can't agree on whether the Docetists should be considered mythicists or historicists. They believed that Jesus was a spirit - does that mean that they thought there was an apparently real person, but he was really a spirit, or that there was some ectoplasm that could walk through walls, and on water?

There is a lot of Christian literature that might as well be mythicist. The important issue for most Christians is the spirit of Jesus in them, not some historical details.

Jeffrey Gibson

If this is what you want to do -- in violation of the forum Rule, BTW, that posters are only to

then please do split this off. But please note that you were the one who made me and how I reputedly set myself up as professor the topic of conversation.

You could have ended your response to Clive's claim that I denied that I was "conducting an elenchus" with "Jeffrey does not deny that he is conducting an elenchus".

Jeffrey

Toto

Jeffrey - Do you have any comment on the topic of discussion here?

GakuseiDon

If intellectuals like the Platonic allegorists of the first few centuries had a concept of non-historical beings apparently being placed on earth, then they would be the natural group to have suspected that there was no historical Jesus.

Surely they are considered historicists, if those are the only two options we can choose from? Unless you are using "mythicist" in some other way?

Toto

Would the Platonic allegorists have criticized Christians for worshipping an ideal type, or a God who did not "exist" in this lower world?

Why do you think it is so clear that Docetists are considered historicists? Does that term have any meaning for them?

GakuseiDon

If worshipping beings in a "fleshly sublunar realm" as per Doherty was a belief, then they may have been critical of others abusing such a belief. (It's no secret where I sit on that topic). Plutarch's comment to Clea about being careful to not take the myths literally is a case in point.

Yes, if they believed that Jesus was someone who walked around on earth as an apparent human, and interacted with the disciples face-to-face.

mountainman

Dear Toto and Don,

It could be argued that Emperor Julian belongs in tbis class of "pre-Enlightenment intellectuals" and he certainly writes about Jesus in his "Kronia".

Best wishes,


Pete