Clivedurdle

Have I missed the plot somewhere? Was Jesus deaf or did he have water in his ears?

Solitary Man

Just because he was God's son does not mean that he was god himself.

patcleaver

Ben,

I was thinking about what you have said, and I really want to know the following:

1) what do you think the probability is that Mark is late first century historical fiction, written as historical fiction for Mark's family and community, possibly midrash like Honi the circle maker.

2) What do you think the probability is that Mark is derived from the scriptures to answer the question: who was the prophesied messiah if we did not notice him when he was prophesied to appear?

3) What do you think the probability is that Mark was originally a drama written in chiasms and being performed by a group traveling between the cities along the Eastern Mediterranean.

4) What do you think the probability is that Mark was originally based on ancient oral traditions such as The Teacher of Righteousness or Jesus ben Pandira.

5) What do you think the probability is that Mark is a late second or third century forgery similar to the 46 or so other gospels that the Church claimed were forgeries.

6) What do you think the probability is that Mark is based on an first century stoic preachers in Judea since much of his sayings are from stoic Greek philosophy.

7) What do you think the probability is that Mark is based on first century Jewish rabbis in Judea since much of his sayings are from first century Rabbinical teachings such as those of Hillel and Shammai.

Amaleq13

Different subject but, while I wouldn't say "most", I would say that enough have that we need websites like snopes to know for sure.

Quite the opposite, actually. You seem to me to be too influenced by Christian interpretations of the stories than the stories themselves.

That doesn't make him a god and is entirely consistent with what I wrote. You have to wait until John before you can start making claims about Jesus being a god and even that is arguable.

I'm not a historian. I'm one of those psychologists with whom you want historians to talk.

patcleaver

Yes, but we have reasonable evidence that the Pharaohs really existed as men and were mythologized into gods, but we have no reasonable evidence that jesus really existed as a man, because Paul and the gospels could be fiction or myth or forgery or heavily interpolated.

If there is an historical core do you believe that other gods who came to earth are based on historical people such as Krishna of India?

Euhemerus asserted that the Greek gods had been originally kings, heroes and conquerors, or benefactors to men, who had thus earned a claim to the veneration of their subjects and that these men had been mythologized into gods. It seems to me that primitive cultures have primitive gods that are purely spiritual with no extensive histories of interaction with people, but when a society obtains writing and expands into a civilization then the god stories expand to include lots of history of interactions with people. So, think the opposite of Euhemerus - I think the Greek Gods were originally primitive myths about purely spiritual beings that were humanized over time until Euhermerus could strip away the myth and find a person. So I think it works both ways, that sometimes historical people are mythologized over time, and sometimes pure spiritual myths are historicized over time.

patcleaver

The Jews called themselves children of god.

Son of god was the traditional title of the hereditary King of Judea.

However among pagan deities, a son of god was usually a god himself.

The Roman senate would often deify dead emperors, and many emperors had the title son-of-god because they were sons of deified emperors.

Solitary Man

The offspring of a mortal and a god produced a mortal most of the time. There were only a few exceptions. Herakles, who was said to have been the offspring of Zeus and a mortal woman, was worshiped primarily as a hero, not a God, though in some places and in later cult practices that did change.

The practice of deifying emperors had only happened thrice (Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius) by Paul's time (and that's pushing Paul past the deification of Claudius).

But thanks for proving my point about the sons of Gods needing not actually to be gods themselves.

aa5874

There are no real reproduction of mortals and gods in the fisrt place. Gods are myths.

Achilles was described as the offspring a mortal and a goddess, but these are mythical episodes and cannot be deemed to be as a result of reproduction, but fabrications of their authors.

patcleaver

Yes your right.

Eventually the following Romen Emperors were all deified:
Alexander Severus
Antoninus Pius
Augustus
Aurelian
Caracalla
Carus
Claudius
Commodus
Constantine I
Constantius Chlorus
Decius (emperor)
D cont.
Diocletian
Gallienus
Publius Septimius Geta
Gordian I
Gordian II
Gordian III
Gratian
Hadrian
Herennius Etruscus
Julian the Apostate
Lucius Verus
Marcus Aurelius
Maximian
Nerva
Numerian
Pertinax
Philip the Arab
Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi
Probus
Septimius Severus
Titus
Trajan
Valerian
Vespasian
Victorinus

gurugeorge

ROFMLAO. Ok ok you got me good there. That's two of you guys who've been giving such a good impression of being historians I've been taken in. (So who is actually a historian here? Spin? Toto?)

But anyway, I'd still say the study of religion and particularly the study of the origins of Christianity needs to be put in a broader context that takes religious experience as the primary factor, and intellectual and social factors as spinoffs.