spin

Your opinion is based on misrepresentation of reality and a misunderstanding of the dictum: keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler. You have clearly made it simpler than reality.

Parsimony fails when you take into consideration that our earliest information about Jesus comes from someone who never met him and who got his information from god. This eliminates the necessity of a Jesus totally. Your claim of parsimony has no basis.

Consistency doesn't make sense when you don't know enough about the history of the sources you use. One cannot apply historical methodology to those sources for any significant results. The gospels are anonymous, undated and unprovenanced collections of traditions that give no help to the historian to verify their major content, while the few classical sources which deal with Jesus were maintained by people who had interest in the religious ideas that appear in those classical sources.

Coherence is as functional in explaining the reality of any fictional work as it is dealing with christian literature.

Once again, archibald, you crap on without any tangible content. If you really had something to say, you'd provide substance.

Toto

I'm sorry, I've had this discussion so often that I forget to go through the preliminaries. But I recommend the discussion in Walker's book on Interpolations in the Pauline Letters, which you can preview on googlebooks.

You added a lot to this after I first read it.

Some interpolations by MJers seem to be based on not much more than a subjective reading of texts which arguably, aren't even particularly ambiguous, and seem to rely more on simply a willingness to consider the MJ case as a prior plausibility. Which it is, to some extent, but surely this is hardly enough of a methodology on its own to warrant citing a possible interpolation?

Do you have an example of this? perhaps someone you had a debate with somewhere else? I do not recognize this argument.

The case for interpolations has nothing much to do with ambiguity - interpolations are likely to be quite specific.

Toto

Okay, wait for Richard Carrier's book to come out.

You have the link to his website. He discusses Hebrews (not a Pauline letter) and various noncanonical texts. I do not have the time right now to track down all the references.

I think you missed something. (I think you also missed my PM to you about not getting involved with a certain poster here.)

Since 2002, Carrier has become more of a mythicist, although I don't think he agrees with all of Doherty's thesis. He has a few books in the works.

avi

"unnecessary speculations"? How would you know what I regard as necessary, or speculative?

Which "basic assumptions" would those be?

I assume the following regarding my encounter with the written evidence:

Retina-> LGN-> area 17 -> association cortex.

Speculations which I regard as critical for my assessment of the "bible", whether that text is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc, ad nauseum....

a. homo sapiens is a relative term;

b. homo neanderthal genes reside in all of us;

c. some folks demonstrate dominance by the neanderthal genes.

Here, the word "ass", I presume, is not referring to the account in Matthew, as highlighted by Bart Ehrman, where JC is riding both an ass and the colt of a donkey, simultaneously.

No, I don't expect anyone, of any persuasion, to overturn any aspect of molecular genetics. DNA->RNA-> protein is as close to the holy grail as one is likely to encounter in this life, or the next.

I have no idea what a "creationist" scientist looks like? There is only one kind of scientist, in my opinion--as a scientist.

Scientists observe, test, examine, and hypothesize. They do not fabricate. They do not "interpolate". They do not forge. They do not confabulate. They do not confound hallucinatory activities with genuine life experiences.

Religious types engage in those sort of activities. There is no such thing as a "creationist" scientist. There are hypotheses, propounded by various folks, including scientists themselves, which are testable, and then proven, by experiment or repeated observation to be accurate, or inaccurate. Evolution is one of those "hypotheses" that is now cast in concrete. It is solid as the solar system itself. Natural selection is the truth, not because "important" person xyz says so, nor because of the assertion of any other authority. It is the truth, because ANYONE can confirm the validity of natural selection, as the mechanism underlying diversity of the animal and plant species on planet earth.

The discovery of Darwin and Wallace escaped Aristotle, brilliant though he had been. He should have been able to figure it out, but he didn't. Aristotle, as keen observer and collector of various species of animals, was on the right track, but he missed the boat. Most of us, similarly, look at something, and fail to see the obvious. That's not all bad. I feel better, looking in the mirror, realizing that I am in the same camp as Aristotle.

You look at the Greek manuscripts, observe the discrepancies, and fail to realize, that these clumsy, amateurish documents could in no way represent the efforts of an omniscient supernatural deity. You needn't feel bad. Your position is supported by the enthusiastic cheers of BILLIONS of other lost souls. All those billions of believers in supernatural demons and ghosts and spirits and zombies: kind of makes one wonder, though, doesn't it, just how much of our genome is Neanderthal?

avi

archibald

No, I meant 'you' as in 'one', or 'we', or actually in this case 'he'. The guy before you. Who hasn't replied yet. :]

archibald

To be fair, that's apples and oranges too. Evolution is much more evidenced. The MJ/HJ thing is much less clear cut.

I guess he didn't. Not to worry, he'll be back soon, and no doubt he'll admonish spin for attempting a new world record in abusive strawmanning in his recent, foam-flecked replies to me. Lol.

archibald

I have had many discussions with MJers,not just on this forum. It is my general impression that they tend to make claims for interpolations quite extensively, and in many cases way beyond what seems to be considered as interpolations by professional academics.

The interesting thing is that when I first arrived here not that long ago, I queried someone who cited an enormous number in Paul. This was D C Hindley in the thread, 'what real interpolations look like'. Turns out he is not a myther, just someone with an alternative hypothesis (which seemed equally unlikely to me), but I did notice that there were other posters agreeing with him, and I got the impression they were mythers, who liked his 'interpolations' for their own reasons.

By the way, my intention in starting the thread about Cor 1 15 was to examine/test my impressions. You will not find me stubborn if it turns out that this is not a good example. I may or may not change my mind as to whether it's an interpolation (IMO) but I will accept that it may not be a spurious one, if that is the case.

This sounds like an odd thing to say. I feel that there is a great deal of ambiguity in interpreting and assessing possible interpolations, which is why I can accept that the matter can often not be resolved for certain.

If you mean ambiguity being given as a reason to cite an interpolation, then I agree with you, but this is hardly surprising. Who is going to cite something as an interpolation on the grounds that it's ambiguous? :]

stj

Well, I'm going to venture into the thread, despite not having read Doherty (and no, I haven't been able to wade through the complex threads without getting confused.) The reason is because I'm baffled by Wells' current position as I understand it. Which is, there was possibly an historical Jesus who essentially originated "Christian" teachings, but wasn't crucified. The crucifixion was a conflation with Paul's otherworldly Christ who descended into the earthly sphere, like Wisdom or an early Gnostic redeemer.

I find this irresistibly like the newest theory of King Arthur I know of. This one says that Arthur was a Sarmatian cavalryman who led the troops remaining after the Roman withdrawal. (Yes, it inspired the recent movie with the kickass babe Guinivere.:grin A theory of King Arthur that says Arthur was neither a king nor British pretty denies everything about King Arthur that people mean by the phrase. I feel that Wells' new position is exactly the same thing. So what difference does it make if Doherty is different from Wells?
One's just diplomatic.

I don't think there had to be an historical figure actually saying the things in the reconstructed Q document. Modern preachers buy reference books of personal anecdotes and stories with a moral. That's what reconstructed Q seems like to me.

I don't think there necessarily has to be an historical figure teaching the temple theology hinted at in the story Stephen and the epistle of Hebrews. But if there is one it is a figure wholly antithetical to the Jewish Jesus taught by the Gospels. Stephen, Greek for Crown. Peter, Greek for Rock. James and John, the Pillars. Rock, Pillars, Crown: The Door to the heavenly temple? Isn't the story of Stephen a NT doublet?

It is still true that Paul's silence on historical Jesus is the true scandal to believers.

We know Luke distorted his sources. But they had a tradition of people dying over money.

We know Paul was a shameless liar.

I think that the writer of the gospel of Mark may have finished reading aloud his Gospel, the one without the original non-ending, then said to his congregation, I was the man Jesus taught on his last day and I bring you his teachings.

We know John claims there were conspirators in the Christian movement. Since when do people believe in conspiracy theories?

I think there is still considerable uncertainty about the dating of the gospel of John, which might mean that the true theological development is from Paul's cosmic Christ with a simple descent, to a cosmic Christ with the revelations that Paul only referred to spelled out (not necessarily the same ones, mind you,) and biography filled in. The later gospels increasingly emphasized the humanity of Jesus against the cosmic figure of developing Gnosticism.

The context of revolutionary against the Romans is omitted from Wlls and Price. Mack's talk of communities is nonsense because it posits communities without politics! The curious thing about this is that it seems to tie into the traces of a temple theology (which also implies the possibility of a sacramental approach we imagine was not Jewish because the later rabbis had no temple to sustain a sacramentalist wing.) Another curious thing is any relationship between any historical Jesus' apocalyptic teaching and Revelation. And yet another curious thing is how much of Jesus' biography seems to parallel or relate to historically known revolutionaries. Even the obscure Egyptian!

The case for an historical Jesus is nonexistent. We know no historical reason for thinking such a person, whose biography is composed of other stories, actually existed. There was a cargo cult in the Pacific which created stories of a man called John Frum, the founder of the cult, supposedly. This is in historic times, but in a largely illiterate society. We do not "know" whether this man ever existed either. Looking at this, I judge the burden of proof is on the people who claim that this man really existed. And I think only the power of habit keeps us from realizing the same for the historical Jesus.

So, again, what difference does it make if there are differences between Wells and Doherty?

Kapyong

Gday,

There are whole BOOKS worth of evidence, but you seem to have no interest in actually reading it. You read, what, ONE small article? That's IT ?

Meanwhile, you repeatedly post insults about us being like creationists, of being not rational etc.

But you cannot come up with any argument yourself, apart from :
* the consensus agrees with me
* the literal meaning is correct

What a joke.
What arrogance.


K.

spin

Yet again, you're crapping on with no visible content. Apples, oranges, foam-flecked replies.... It is too much to ask archibald to talk about biblical issues.