Amaleq13

The only way your paper can break the circular nature of the "debate" in this thread is if it provides an argument or evidence to support your unsubstantiated assertion about early Christian crucifixion embarrassment.

Clutch

Well, Vinnie, I don't see where I've gone around in circles, nor you and I together.

I asked a question, and you didn't answer it, is all.

I've been polite to you -- one of few on this thread -- and of course I'm willing to wait longer if you're busy with your formal debate and other stuff. But no new thread or dialectical structure is required, surely, for you to answer my question once you have the time. Thanks in advance.

Craigart14

I've read most of this post, and it just hit me how much time I've wasted. I don't care if there was a historical Jesus. There were lots of itinerant preachers about in the early first century, lots of men named Yeshua, and lots of men who got crucified, particularly during the administration of Pontius Pilate. I don't doubt that some itinerant preacher named Yeshua got crucified by Pilate. I doubt that he performed any miracles, rose from the dead, and is planning to come back. I doubt that he was divine--though he was probably a regular little heart breaker. He would hardly have been the first or last preacher to convince his flock he was something more than a man.

Write all the papers you want, Vinnie. There is no proof. There is no reliable evidence. There is only skewed reasoning based on the desperate need to believe in the farcical.

Craig

Clutch

Craig,you have just substantially agreed with Vinnie.

spin

I love this dating to within the ten years after 70 CE. Simply hilarious. I wonder what criteria that was based upon, wishful thinking and the best of all possible scenarios? It's understandable that xians embarrassed by the lack of historical evidence try hard to stretch out what they've got, a bit like a trojan condom used on an elephant... well, it just doesn't cover the requirements, now, does it?

Now I can understand "valid after" arguments, eg Daniel mentions events regarding Antiochus IV, so it had to have been written after 175 BCE, but "valid in the ten years between" arguments are a little more difficult to sustain, as it makes assumptions about the writer which can never be verified, ie they are meaningless assumptions.

If the evidence we have to the first verified gospel is that to Marcion, as attested to by various people including Irenaeus, who incidentally provides a better dating for the Marcion gospel than he does for Luke, how can you get back before Marcion's gospel? What makes anyone think it was not one of the first? Isn't Luke just an expanded version of Marcion's gospel? That would be the simplest way to explain the evidence, you know Occam and all that.

So, what makes anyone think that Mark is earlier than Markion, our earliest datable gospel. (And Papias, as preserved in Eusebius that honest scholar, tells us of something attributed to a Mark which is obviously different from that which we have.)


spin

Vinnie

Its rooted in how crucifixion is viewed across the board by society at that time. Its rooted in the "Messiah" aspect being attached to the Jesus movement very early and there being only slight traces of a suffering messiah in pre-Christian Judaism (that we know of anyways).

Also crucifixion pre-exists the Gospels. I have come to think that we do only have one major source for crucifixion as the passion material and the kerygma cannot be seen entirely as indepdnent. But whether or not indepdnent traditions are preserved by Mark, Matt and Luke and john requires detailed discussion.

Though in my estimation we have Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus is of less value but he has four things in common with Josephus on Jesus (movement, execution, continuation and expansion).

Paul aside, the Jerusalem school can be shown to be piously Jewish. Arguing that they invented a crucified Christ is not very convincing to me.

The fact is that when layers of creativity are removed from the passion only brute facts emerge.

Also we note that the passion and kerygma seems to have developed separately from the Gospel pericopes. No one outside the Gospels (all dependent) knows a linked passion account. Its also not found all over various strands of tradition that have survived. If it was there from the beginning this is inexplicavble.

All the Gospels are in very close agreement until Mark 16:8. Where Mark originally ends the divergences begin. So much for history remembered.

If the passion was so important, why do we not find evidence of more independent versions of it?

Whjy doesn't it appear in Thomas or Q?

Most pf tje passion layers can be removed leaving only brute facts.

As I stated: "Also we note that the passion and kerygma seems to have developed separately from the Gospel pericopes. "

So given these pericopes, why someone would purposefully create the figure behind these as being crucified goes against the grain of all the extrabiblical evidence on crucifixion we have.

This skandalon occured, and was apologized. Cruifixion can't be isolated in a vaccuum but it does favor the HJ side over the MJ side if you ask me. What has to be considered is that the movement started out thoroughly as Jewish in Palestine (this is found embedded in Mark, Acts, Paul and other works) regardless of what it involved into with Paul and /or the Gentile mission and/or the Gospels and later Christian beliefs.

Given my Marcan paper. the formal debate (if Robert comes back which I hope he does as we are almost at 8 days I think) and the books I am reading and need to peruse for my Marcan paper, I doubt I will have time to respond to this thread again. I did this as a courtesy. Regardless of who tears my latest post up I make no promises about returning to this one--well except to blast Craigart but I'll be doing that in about 30 seconds from now .

Vinnie

Vinnie

That sounds more like a depserate conclusion rather than an informed argument.

And as Clutch said, you have agreed with me. Let me do the same thing I did for capnkirk to you. Following this will be all quotes of mine from this thread of which you claim to have read most of. I guess you just missed most of my posts yet felt the need to call them desperate :notworthy:

Vinnie

Vinnie

My dating of Mark should be up shortly. You questions will be answered there. See Gospel of Mark thread.

Amaleq13

The claim you made that you have yet to substantiate is that early Christians were embarrassed by their crucified Christ. This claim is clearly contrary to the obvious pride with which Paul repeatedly asserts this claim. No one has denied that Paul and his fellow believers had faith in a concept that most of their society considered bizarre and/or ridiculous. The point is that you assert the historicity of the crucifixion based on the unsubstantiated assumption that early Christians were embarrassed by it and, thus, could not have been making it up. They weren't embarrassed but proud so that argument lacks credibility to a significant degree.

Q refers to Jesus as God's Wisdom.

Jewish Wisdom literature portrays the "just man" (Wisdom personified) as suffering humiliation and rejection on earth.

Pre-pauline hymns appear to have had the concept of the cross added to them. They describe a descending/dying/ascending redeemer.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. When the crucified Christ is considered an invention, it is Paul who is identified as the creator.

Yes and the origin of those "brute facts" is, according to Paul, divine relevation and Scripture though the "brute fact" of the crucifixion may have its origin in the Jewish Wisdom literature that Paul clearly values highly.

Paul consider the "against the grain" nature of his theology to be a source of strength.

Not by the "early Christians" as represented by Paul. Repeating this unsubstantiated assertion does not make it true.

spin

I've seen your wishful dating.


spin