Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 09-22-2011, 03:50 PM

Warning: Pete has persistently misinterpreted Julian's statement about ""the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men." Julian, like other anti-Christians in the Roman empire, believed that there had been a historical Jesus who was the illegitimate child of a prostitute and a Roman soldier named Pantera, and who was crucified and stayed dead.

The fiction that Julian refers to is the miraculous part of the gospels and the part about Jesus being the son of god.

aa5874 · 09-22-2011, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

..... There were heretics around in the early days. They were slated. What I need is evidence that any of the heretics thought he hadn't existed in some form, on earth. Docetism doesn't seem to qualify....

Why does not the evidence qualify that show Christians believed a Phantom was a God on earth?

Your assertion is most absurd.

Jesus Christ in the NT was the Child of a Ghost which is a MYTH just like a Phantom.

The Phantom did NOT require an historical character since there would have been NO records of his birth, No records of any parents and no records of his Life BEFORE the Phantom came down to Capernaum directly from heaven.

Marcion's Phantom show that Christians did NOT need an HJ of Nazareth to believe the story about a GHOST/MAN called Jesus Christ.

It is IMPERATIVE that it is KNOWN that Christians of antiquity WORSHIPED GHOSTS and PHANTOMS as GODS.

Jesus Christ was one of them Ghosts.

Iskander · 09-22-2011, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

..... There were heretics around in the early days. They were slated. What I need is evidence that any of the heretics thought he hadn't existed in some form, on earth. Docetism doesn't seem to qualify....

Why does not the evidence qualify that show Christians believed a Phantom was a God on earth?

Your assertion is most absurd.

Jesus Christ in the NT was the Child of a Ghost which is a MYTH just like a Phantom.

The Phantom did NOT require an historical character since there would have been NO records of his birth, No records of any parents and no records of his Life BEFORE the Phantom came down to Capernaum directly from heaven.

Marcion's Phantom show that Christians did NOT need an HJ of Nazareth to believe the story about a GHOST/MAN called Jesus Christ.

It is IMPERATIVE that it is KNOWN that Christians of antiquity WORSHIPED GHOSTS and PHANTOMS as GODS.

Jesus Christ was one of them Ghosts.

Quote:

Marcion's Phantom show that Christians did NOT need an HJ of Nazareth to believe the story about a GHOST/MAN called Jesus Christ.

Marcion has never existed, see page 7 #170. Are you falsifying evidence????

mountainman · 09-22-2011, 06:52 PM

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Originally Posted by Iskander

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by archibald

The one which involves people went around saying that a messiah had recently come to earth in the vicinity when no one had.

I prefer as even more convoluted the Pontifex Maximus's claim that the Roman poets Cicero and Virgil in the epoch BCE retweeted the Sybil's prediction of the birth of Jesus on earth before it didn't happen.

“The pontifex maximus “... conveys no useful information. What are you trying to say?

It is a convoluted claim made by the emperor Constantine c.324/325 CE at the Council of Antioch preceeding Nicaea. You have already somehow managed to copy/paste the text from Robin Lane-Fox's "Pagan and Christians" in another recent thread. See Did Constantine burn Plato and Euclid after Nicaea?

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And when you say it, have you made certain that it meets aa5847 exacting requirements? I would not want him to call you names.

The object of aa5874's assessments would not be I but the British historian Robin Lane-Fox.

mountainman · 09-22-2011, 07:24 PM

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Originally Posted by archibald

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Originally Posted by mountainman

So who burnt the books of these heretics, and why? They were busy protecting the interests of the church and the glory of the canonical books over the blasphemy of the gnostic heretics.

Whatever. There were heretics around in the early days. They were slated.

That is the official story presented by Eusebius and his "research". In fact they were more than just slated. I think there is evidence that the heretics ridiculed the bible and Jesus and the Apostles. For example, here's what Eusebius says about the reception the Constantine Bible got in Alexandria when it was first floated in the east ....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eusebius Life of the Thrice Blessed Constantine Chapter LXI

"the sacred matters of inspired teaching
were exposed to the most shameful ridicule
in the very theaters of the unbelievers."

Quote:

What I need is evidence that any of the heretics thought he hadn't existed in some form, on earth. Docetism doesn't seem to qualify.

UNBELIEVERS

The Christian heresiologists simply classified the unbelievers as heretics and systematically over the course of generations and the 4th century, wiped them from the empire. You ask the question "How do we know these unbelievers thought Jesus did't exist"? Their books were burnt, they and their houses and families were burnt, and their resistance to the establishment of the supreme monotheistic state church of the 4th century was expunged from the record to make the story of the state church harmoniuous, when it was far from it.

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Originally Posted by mountainman

There is other stuff from Nag Hammadi such as NHC 11.1

"But our generation is fleeing since it does not yet even believe that the Christ is alive.

I would like to look into this more. Do you have a link to the context? Can anyone else comment? Is there more from Nag Hammadi you would cite?

There is a mountain of stuff I could cite. If you start here you will find a list of articles concerning the appearance of the Gnostoc Gospels and Acts, then a series of articles headed "A Brief Examination of some of the Gnostic Gospels and Acts, etc", followed by "Other Gnostic Gospels and Acts, etc" and finally a series of articles headed "The Nag Hammadi Codices" in which you will find the cited material under "The Interpretation of Knowledge" with a link to the English translations, etc.

Alternatively there is a table of data concerning the Nag Hammadi Codices here and a more general table, including the Nag Hammadi texts with all known and available "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" (over 100 texts) here

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Originally Posted by mountainman

There is also possible evidence from Nestorius in the 5th century concerning heretics who subscribed to "theories of fiction". Also you might want to check what Emperor Julian wrote about Jesus and in ... "the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men" ...

Sounds interesting too. Do you have a link to the context? It being 5th C doesn't inspire me. I'm more interested in early sources. By 5th C, as now, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if things were so remote that there wouldn't have been at least some few wondering. Depends on what basis, or what texts, they were doubting. Could be just like mythicists here.

By the way, I know it's not impossible. I just don't see enough reason to prefer it.

Thanks for the concession on the not impossible concession. Others do not extend this concession, thinking they are already in possession of the full story about the 4th century. You should be able to find articles about the massive controversy over the books of the Emperor Julian and those of the ex-archbishop of Constantinople Nestorius, on the linked index page above.

Sloncha !

J-D · 09-22-2011, 07:30 PM

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Originally Posted by maryhelena

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by maryhelena

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Originally Posted by archibald

People follow a figure who was thought of as purely spiritual. At some point not long after, someone decides to make it that the guy actually existed. Other people in other locations appear to follow suit. No trace is left of any of the former group. No especially persuasive reason is given for the switch, which is rather unique in any case. Later enquirers, hundreds and thousands of years later, conclude that the most likely explanation is that this coordinated yet unevidenced switch took place and that earlier material was also heavily interpolated to give the false impression that he had always been thought of as having existed and no one ever even addresses the heresy that he didn't, even though addressing heresies was arguably something of an obsession. No one outside the religion does either.

Well now, I’ve been a ahistorict/mythicist for around 30 years and I’ve never found it necessary to propose such an unnecessary and such an implausible idea....People can believe many strange and wonderful things that they imagine will happen to them when they die. Ideas by the dozen and nothing that anyone can do to stop the imagination running wild. But that’s the downfall of ideas - they last only until the next big visionary pops up with his new claims to even bigger and brighter things in that after-world. In other words - for the Christian ideas to have found a foothold in reality, in the here and now, they had to have some reference point in history.

We can debate and argue just what that reference point was - but, methinks, to deny a historical grounding to the gospel JC story is to be denying reality any relevance to human thought. Flights of fancy come and go - but without our intellect seeking a base, a connection, in reality, within our physical environment, our flights of intellectual fantasy will ultimately let us down.

And no, none of the above suggests that the gospel JC was a historical figure. What it does suggest is that history was necessary for the creation of the gospel JC story. The gospel JC story is a prophetic reflection upon a specific historical time period; ie. history has been viewed through a prophetic lens - and the picture that was seen is the gospel JC story.

It's not clear to me whether you're saying anything more than 'every historical event depends on earlier historical events', which is obviously true but not very interesting, and hardly needs to be stated at the length you have gone to.

Of course, every historical event depends upon what has gone before - nothing happens in a vacuum. There is no need, surely, to have to make such a point...

I agree. But I couldn't see that you had any other point to make. I still can't.

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Originally Posted by maryhelena

My point is the the gospel JC story is a 'picture', a 'picture', a snapshot, that has been taken, by a prophetic lens, of a specific historical time period.

Consider this analogy:

I have considered your analogy. I did not find it illuminating at all. It struck me as another attempt to fit the minimum quantity of thought into the maximum quantity of words.

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Originally Posted by maryhelena

Pretend for the moment that you like baking cakes....Out you go to the supermarket to buy the ingredients; the butter and eggs, flour and sugar, some vanilla essence and the best chocolate for a great Black Forest cake. Oh, and don't forget the cream, the cherries and the Kirsch liqueur.

Right: The supermarket is the historical context. You select from history the events, the people, the time, the place. You mix all the historical ingredients and the mixture goes in the intellectual oven; the transforming and interpretative oven. What comes out of the oven, your cake, has transformed the ingredients, the historical details, into something new. That something new that has been created out of history is the gospel pseudo-historical JC. What comes next, for we don't want a bare bones, naked JC - is to dress up your cake. A sprinkle of Kirsch for the supernatural mind blowing kick; lashes of cream for the soft emotional touch, and just to add some colour, those glorious cherries will add the mythological fancy dressing.

OK, so now you have your tea party. And your visitors are simply dying for your recipe for Black Forest Cake. How much sugar, whole eggs or did you separate them. Flour, self-raising or plain. Oh, and what is that intriguing flavour? Did you add a little orange juice? And so on...

Those are the sort of questions, translated from baking ingredients, to historical 'ingredients', that we should be asking re the gospel figure of JC. We have to first establish the history of the relevant time period - not just from Herod the Great in 40/37 b.c. but the events that led to his siege of Jerusalem in 37 b.c. and the initial consequences of that siege. That requires that we consider Hasmonean history.

And it is considering Hasmonean history that will take one to the last King and High Priest of the Jews, Antigonus, and his being bound to a cross, crucified, flogged and beheaded in 37 b.c.

Crucifixion, flogging, and beheading are things that happened to many people in Roman times. I don't see how this one particular instance is supposed to have special relevance to this discussion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

It will take one back to Antigonus being taken prisoner to Rome in 63 b.c. It will take one back prior to that - to the time of his birth - which would have been during the later years of Alexander Jannaeus. And what happens then is that one is face to face with those old Jewish Toledot Yeshu stories. Whatever the strange goings on with these stories, one thing is very clear - they are set in a time period prior to Herod the Great, ie during Hasmonean rule. Why would a Jewish 'propaganda' story place a gospel parody years prior to the gospel time frame? Well, is it not that that gospel time frame is itself contradictory? And put gLuke on the shelve (being the last of the synoptic) and one does not have the 15th year of Tiberius as any sort of marker.

I do not know why the Toledot Yeshu stories are set in the time period in which they set. You haven't given any explanation, either.

Sheshbazzar · 09-22-2011, 07:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by archibald

..... There were heretics around in the early days. They were slated. What I need is evidence that any of the heretics thought he hadn't existed in some form, on earth. Docetism doesn't seem to qualify....

Why does not the evidence qualify that show Christians believed a Phantom was a God on earth?

Your assertion is most absurd.

Jesus Christ in the NT was the Child of a Ghost which is a MYTH just like a Phantom.

The Phantom did NOT require an historical character since there would have been NO records of his birth, No records of any parents and no records of his Life BEFORE the Phantom came down to Capernaum directly from heaven.

Marcion's Phantom show that Christians did NOT need an HJ of Nazareth to believe the story about a GHOST/MAN called Jesus Christ.

It is IMPERATIVE that it is KNOWN that Christians of antiquity WORSHIPED GHOSTS and PHANTOMS as GODS.

Jesus Christ was one of them Ghosts.

Allowing for a little revision;

Why does not the evidence qualify that show that the messianist believed in a Spirit which was an elohim on earth?

Joshua the anointed one in the NT, was a spirit and begotten of a spirit, a MYTH, a legendary imaginary phantom, Who yet ably served the purpose.

This legendary hero did NOT require an historical character since being legendary and imaginary there would have been NO records of his birth, No records of any parents and no records of his Life BEFORE this legendary imaginary spiritual being was alleged to have came down to Capernaum directly from heaven.

Marcion's phantom shows that the messianists did NOT need any historical 'Joshua of Nazareth' to believe the story about a SPIRIT/MAN called Joshua the anointed. (recall, the word 'Christian' is an anachronism to the early messianic believers, it was only introduced (and in a foreign country) years latter)

It is IMPERATIVE that it is KNOWN that messianists of antiquity believed in spirits and in powers as being active elohim.
(elohim are not necessarily 'Gods', the English word is not exactly equivalent)

JOSHUA The Messiah was one of them elohiim, an unseen yet legendary hero, one to be believed in and invoked in times of trouble.
And effective within the minds of those believing, giving them unbounded hope and confidence in the face of overwhelming odds.
It WORKED, that is why it is still with us, albeit in a much corrupted form.

ודבר יהוה אל־משה פנים אל־פנים כאשר ידבר איש אל־רעהו ושב אל־המחנה ומשרתו יהושע בן־נון נער לא ימיש מתוך האהל׃
"And YaHWeH spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaks unto his friend. And he turned again into the camp:
but his servant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not out of The Tabernacle."

ויאמר יהוה אל־משה קח־לך את־יהושע בן־נון איש אשר־רוח בו וסמכת את־ידך עליו׃
"And YaHWeH said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him;"

נביא אקים להם מקרב אחיהם כמוך ונתתי דברי בפיו ודבר אליהם את כל־אשר אצונו׃
"I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in His mouth; and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him.

והיה האיש אשר לא־ישמע אל־דברי אשר ידבר בשמי אנכי אדרש מעמו׃
And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto My words which He shall speak in My Name, I will require it of HIM.

ולקחת כסף־וזהב ועשית עטרות ושמת בראש יהושע בן־יהוצדק הכהן הגדול׃

ואמרת אליו לאמר כה אמר יהוה צבאות לאמר הנה־איש צמח שמו ומתחתיו יצמח ובנה את־היכל יהוה׃

והוא יבנה את־היכל יהוה והוא־ישא הוד וישב ומשל על־כסאו והיה כהן על־כסאו

"Take silver and gold, and make crowns, and set them upon the head of Joshua the son of Josedech, the High Priest;

And speak unto him, saying, Thus says YaHWeH Tzbaoth, saying;
Behold the man whose Name is The BRANCH; and He shall grow up out of his place, and He shall build the Temple of YaHWeH:

Even He shall build the Temple of YaHWeH; and He shall bear the Glory,and shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a Priest upon His throne:.."

Behold Joshua the anointed Priest, the Redeemer and Deliverer of His people, Him of whom it was spoken, saying; "I will require it of HIM."

If a man might grasp it, the stories are stories, full of subtle allusions, and allegories, historical yet not actual history, a medium for a message to those who will hear it;
There is a spiritual Joshua present in all ages, able to help and to deliver all who believe upon His Name.

[A lot I am not saying here]

mountainman · 09-22-2011, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Warning: Pete has persistently misinterpreted Julian's statement about ""the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men."

Toto has forgotten to mention the fact that my position is that the thug Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, who burnt the three books of Julian and who wrote many books "Against Julian" (which we have before us - Julian's original works dont survive) has persistently mirespresented the "Lies of the Emperor Julian".

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Julian, like other anti-Christians in the Roman empire, believed that there had been a historical Jesus who was the illegitimate child of a prostitute and a Roman soldier named Pantera, and who was crucified and stayed dead.

Toto seems to know what Julian believed more authoritatively than I do, To Toto it appears that Julian perhaps thought that Jesus was the offspring of the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as outlined in the Toldoth Yeshu.

My position is that we are dealing with the text from the hostile witness Cyril, and not the words of Julian directly. We may assume Cyril presented Julian fairly, or we may be suspicious that he did not. Cyril already has a history of dealing with opponents unfairly and with many anathemas.

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The fiction that Julian refers to is the miraculous part of the gospels and the part about Jesus being the son of god.

He may also have been also referring to the entire Constantine Bible, and his political censor Cyril conveniently forgot to mention this fact. The massive controversies caused by Emperor Julian's books were turningpeople away from the church in droves and it was not good for business. The Emperor Julian we are told by Cyril, murderer, pyromaniac, terrorist-boss and Doctor of the Church, was a person who wrote "LIES". The case of the controversy over Emperor Julian is thus far from resolved. It just sists at present with many other massive controversies in the 4th and 5th centuries which were "buried and censored" by the victors of the conflicts.

We may say Julian had little or no regard for Jesus, whom he soundly satirizes , along with the Emperor Constantine, in his surving text called "The Caesars" aka "Symposium" aka "Kronia" (361 CE).

And if anyone here thinks Julian was not satirizing the historical (or otherwise) jesus, in which source in antiquity did Julian discover that Jesus said these words .... ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by JESUS via the Emperor Julian

"He that is a seducer, he that is a murderer,
he that is sacrilegious and infamous,
let him approach without fear!
For with this water will I wash him
and will straightway make him clean.

And though he should be guilty
of those same sins a second time,
let him but smite his breast and beat his head
and I will make him clean again."

Is this an agraphon ?

gurugeorge · 09-22-2011, 08:28 PM

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Originally Posted by archibald

You think it was outside Israel, for some reason?

Why would I think that? But there's no reason in the text to think they thought it had happened in their "vicinity" (i.e. roundabout Jerusalem), or in their lifetimes.

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And regarding the timing, if it hadn't 'happened' (even your way) then why imagine the Kingdom was coming,

But the kingdom is ALREADY HERE, for "Paul":-

"He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" Col 1:13

Obviously, since the world was still under the Roman thumb at the time, this is a mystical concept. There's some sense in which a victory over death has been won, the winning event is in the past (The Messiah "dying for our sins" - instead of coming as a military victor as was expected). That's the "good news". There's also a sense of a more complete version to come, where the inner spiritual victory works its way out to the mundane world and transforms it, and that's viewed as imminent.

Again, this fits with my view of this "revisionist Messiah" concept arising in a short period of Jewish optimism following Caligula's death. Something good had happened (Caligula had been struck down by God), this revision of the Messiah concept is in part an attempt to explain that, and a sort of "egging on" of the full banana. A key has been turned in a spiritual sense that will soon work its way fully to an earthly Utopia.

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and that people were 'still alive', though some had 'fallen asleep'

What on earth makes you think this has anything to do with a human Jesus known personally to any of the people mentioned? In the first place, the word used there, "ophthe", is used of "Paul"'s own "he was seen" - so it's the same kind of "he was seen" as the other people mentioned, right? And we know elsewhere from "Paul" that his contact with The Messiah is visionary. In the second place, that term is used elsewhere in the NT - in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts and Revelations - to refer to visions . In the third place, the term is used in the Septuagint to refer not just to any old visions but to self-revelation of the Divine (Theophany), especially as appearing from Heaven.

Therefore, the picture given by 1 Cor 15, is of a small cult having a Scriptural revelation and some visions of - guess who? - The Messiah. This is preceded by no personal knowing or hearing or eyeballing, by any of the people mentioned, of any priorly living human being called "Jesus".

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and their fellow cult members needed to be reassured by 'Paul' that this didn't mean the eschatological stuff wasn't actually happening.

Not sure what you mean here.

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So, still no examples of your scenario then. Ok.

What do you mean "examples of my scenario"? "My scenario" is simply a change in a religious concept, an alteration in the concept of "Messiah" or "Christ". What are you after? More examples of changes in religious concepts? You need to have the concept of change in religious concepts made plausible to you by examples?

J-D · 09-22-2011, 09:59 PM

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

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Originally Posted by J-D

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

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Originally Posted by J-D

I didn't say that every such claim is a deliberate fraud. I asked, about a particular instance, whether it was the product of fraud or hallucination, a question which I notice you did not attempt to answer.

I did - I think Mormonism was initially a product of visions, then subsequently of fraud. You are aware that the Smiths were occultists? It often happens that people sincerely believe their own shit, but will indulge in fraud when it comes to public tests (such as the plates). Cognitive dissonance, but what they hey, we all have it sometimes.

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I don't see how you can be sure that all such claims are the product of hallucination and none of fraud.

You can't be sure the other way either, but in view of the fact that visions, mystical experiences, are fairly common, and in view of the fact that there are plausible non-pathological explanations for such phenomena (as well as sometimes pathological ones) and in view of the fact that nearly every mother******g religion or religious movement or cult on Earth has some sort of claimed visionary or mystical experience at its beginnings, fraud need not be the default explanation, even for rationalists.

Check out William James.

Hallucinations are fairly common, but so are frauds. I did not say that fraud should be a default explanation, but I see no reason why hallucination should be a default explanation.

As I explained, it's a principle of charity of interpretation. Tens of thousands of people throughout the history of man have said "I saw deity X and he told me to tell you this".

Which is most Humeanly likely? That the majority of them are liars, con artists and frauds, or that the majority of them are victims of a trick of the brain under certain conditions such as intense religious fervour, life crisis, spiritual exercises, etc. etc.?

I don't know, and I don't see how you can, either.

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09-22-2011, 03:50 PM	#271
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Warning: Pete has persistently misinterpreted Julian's statement about ""the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men." Julian, like other anti-Christians in the Roman empire, believed that there had been a historical Jesus who was the illegitimate child of a prostitute and a Roman soldier named Pantera, and who was crucified and stayed dead. The fiction that Julian refers to is the miraculous part of the gospels and the part about Jesus being the son of god.

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