Steven Carr

That goes back to a Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus was a common name, so you have to be specific , if you are talking about a specific Jesus.

spin

Because you know nothing about the actual founding of the religion.

Sorry, I'd hoped my reference was clear, Gal 1:15-17. This is the brick wall, unless you can see some way of getting past it. Paul's gospel was not taught to him by men, but by direct revelation. Whether this is veracious or not, it was after this event that Paul claims to have started preaching his gospel. Wasn't Paul on his own admission the founder of christianity?

(Acts, well, if you can tell me when that was written, we might have something to discuss about it.)


spin

J-D

So? How is that a reason not to use the name 'Jesus'?I assumed you were talking about Acts because Acts does describe Paul having a vision on the road to Damascus. I can't see that Galatians does. But whatever sort of revelation Galatians is talking about, it describes it as having happened after Paul had been persecuting the 'church of God'. What do you take that to be a reference to? It also refers to 'them which were apostles before me'. How do you understand that reference? Both of them seem to me to fit most simply with the view that some sort of Christianity existed before Paul's revelation, and that Paul acknowledged that fact.

I have no problem with the idea that Paul invented new doctrine and that Christianity is closer to Paulinism than to pre-Pauline Christianity. What I don't see is how a version that denies the existence of pre-Pauline Christianity is better attested in evidence or more plausible.

spin

For the founder of the religion? If there was no Jesus or Jesus figure or whatever, then it makes no sense to insist that there was.

Paul claims to have been a conservative Jew. He of his own admission gave trouble to those who weren't. Our trouble is that we don't have enough information to clarify this, do we?

Paul was a messianic Jew, but his variety of messianism didn't appeal to those apostles before him. That's understandable: he didn't listen to them. In fact he gives no respect to them, so we have apostles but we don't know much about them other than their irreconcilable religious views and their insistence on circumcision and other Jewish ritual in their version of messianism.

What pre-Pauline christianity? I mean, you have some evidence for such a beast? Or do you just have the gospel stories and assumptions about the pillars in Gal. who contributed nothing to him?


spin

Toto

The someone who started it need not be the object of worship. (Ramtha does not exist; Ms Knight is his Paul.) We don't know who the Galilean sage was, and he might not have existed - the sayings might have been a compiliation of collective wisdom. If you identify this sage as Jesus, you have a Jesus, but you haven't explained Christian origins. Why were they adopted? I don't know that this needs an extraordinary explanation. The Analects of Confucius probably do not go back to a single sage, but were preserved as useful wisdom teachings.

The founder is not necessarily the god of the religion. Most new religious movements are started by a charsmatic individual; some secular historians who tried to reconstruct Christian origins assumed that Christianity must have started the same way, and that Jesus was the charsimatic originator of Christianity. Others have identified Paul as the founder, whether or not they thought Jesus was a myth. If Christianity existed before Paul, then there was probably some other person - John the Baptist? James? But not necessarily the Jesus who is described several generations later in the gospels, or anyone who was crucified by Pilate.

aa5874

The emergence of Christianity does not confirm your speculation about how Christianity was founded. You need to show, with specificity, that there was a Jesus, rumored to be the son of a ghost, with thousands of followers during the time of Tiberius and had a trial under Pilate that resulted in his execution.

JoeWallack

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2...character.html


JW:
The first thing that Price needs to do here is clearly define the position he is arguing against. The proper related Skeptical argument is that references to the Jewish Bible is Evidence of Fiction as opposed to Proof of fiction.

In the bulk of Price's article he is acting as an Advocate for a position as opposed to a Judge. He only discusses supposed reasons to favor his position. We have the following reasons to think that when the Christian Bible refers to the Jewish Bible for its Narrative there is Fiction:

1) The Christian Bible is based on Fiction (the claims of the Impossible) so its credibility is impeached regarding possible claims.

2) The Christian Bible claim is based on an unlikely claim that a Christianity which is based on the end of the Law is the logical succession to a Jewish Bible which is based on the Law.

3) The original Gospel narrative "Mark" itself recognizes that its claims of prophecy fulfillment are all Ironic (unlikely).

4) "Mark" has a primary theme of impeaching the witness of its own Narrative witnesses such as Peter.

5) When subsequent Gospels that used "Mark" as a primary source add information it often has good parallels to the Jewish Bible.

6) When referring to the Jewish Bible Gospels usually prefer Greek translations for the wording over the original Hebrew, especially when there are differences in meaning.

7) And, as the British say, the cruncher, we have instances in Gospels, canonical and not, where there is Disagreement as to the same event, and both versions have parallels to the Jewish Bible. "Matthew" making a whole ass out himself comes to mind.

Prices' conclusion:

also needs to be clearly defined. He has presented evidence that similarities might not be Fictional but he also needs to consider the evidence for Fiction here and than compare his evidence against in order to support a conclusion. As it stands his argument does not support his conclusion.



Joseph

"The Simontic Problem" - An Inventory Of "Mark's" Negative Casting Of Peter

Toto

For clarity, this is Chris Price, aka Layman, to be distinguished from others with the same last name. He is a lawyer by vocation and an admitted Christian apologist, not someone who is interested in articulating the other side.

Steven Carr

Price is 'a proven lawyer' in Peter Cook's phrase.

And , of course, it is not the argument of mythicists that Jesus did not exist, because there are parallels between the OT and NT.

Gamera

Take away the literature and we wouldn't know what happened during Alexander's time. The narrative is the result of texts not coins. The coins tell us nothing in the form of what we mean by Alexander. If we didn't have the literature, we have to impute one, which could take as lush or sparse a form as our literature about the fall of Troy.

To discount texts in the discussion of historiography seems about as desperate a stance as anybody could take. To call actually relying on mss that are close in time to events as "drivel" gives a whole new meaning to anti-historicism.

It's rather humorous that Spin has utterly internalized the Alexander narrative (despite it's dubious mss support), so much so that he actually thinks that the narrative transcends those texts and can be found in some inscriptions and coins.