outhouse

I agree

It just fits the evidence were left with better then anything so far proposed.

Sheshbazzar

Really? When 'Paul' addresses his readers with; "I Paul..." and then goes on -in the first person- relating his first-hand personal experiences and miracles...
That is only 'oral tradition'? Either he did and experienced the things and events that he reports, or he is a liar.

-Or perhaps, .....and by far more likely, he is a writers creation, a fictional religious propaganda 'talking head'.

spin

Tite has very little relevance to your initial claim, ie that there are some who actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history". Tite is certainly correct that the text "Interp. Know." deals with two groups, but your summary doesn't represent his ideas, merely yours, mistakenly mapped onto his two groups.

The misguided group is that which "fled without having heard that the Christ had been crucified." They were driven off "through reproaches and humiliations" and missed out.

In footnote #58, p.293, Tite writes, "The reference to “signs and wonders and fabrications” (albeit largely a textual reconstruction) may designate pre-crucifixion miracles (Jesus as the wonder worker) that failed to inspire the disciples to remain true to Jesus when the test of his death occurred. Post-resurrection visions, however, are by contrast far more valuable for faith." He gives no sign of either group not accepting that Jesus existed. It seems like mm conclusion-driven eisegesis.

mountainman

This is just false. Tite refers to the two groups throughout his article and provides textual extracts from NHC 11.1 pertinent to the author's description of these two groups. All I have done is to drawn his descriptions into a format where the two separate groups are delineated. None of the references furnished in the above list of the descriptions of the two groups are derived from me. They are provided by the author of NHC 11.1 according to the analysis of Tite.

So your claim that I have mapped my own ideas of these two groups into this analysis is completely misguided and simply false. All I have done is to label the two groups as Group 1 and Group 2.

The author of NHC 11.1 is a member of what you yourself have termed this misguided Group 1. They fled the "Good News".


Group 2 provided the reproaches and humiliations such that Group 1 fled. They naturally missed out on hearing about Jesus's crucifixion because they were fleeing the reproaches and humiliations being handed out by Group 2.

Contrary to your assertions, all of the above is provided by the analysis of Tite.
So now I will introduce my own thoughts on this.



A Possible Conclusion concerning who Groups 1 and 2 represented in the political sense

If the author of NHC 11.1 wrote after Nicaea, a possibility that is allowed by a number of commentators including Tite himself in the article, then it is a reasonable possibility that the two groups may be politically allocated as follows:

GROUP (1): The pagan generation that fled the "Good News" published by Constantine.

The author is part of this group consistent of the 95% of pagan citizens of the (Eastern) Roman Empire. I am putting forward the notion that the first generation to flee from the Nicaean agreement of a state church is none other than the pagan generation which included the "Sacred Assembly of Pagan Priests" and other collegiate represented by physicians, mathematicians, logicians, astronomers, writers, philosophers, orators and other collegia.

GROUP (2): The Constantinian regime who published the Bible.

The second group I am putting forward as the minority group - the Constantinian regime. They were extremely ruthless and taught "dead writings". The Ruler ordered the army to destroy the major pagan temples, execute a few head priests and prohibited their traditional use. Religious privileges were reserved for those who followed the Ruler's Bible.

The corollary to this is that the oppressive tyranny over Biblical scholarship commenced at Nicaea, and was instigated by the publisher of the Bible for the benefit of uniting the Roman Empire by the implementation of a centralised monotheistic cult and the destruction of all opposition. Whether the New Testament Bible was originally authored in the 1st or 2nd (or subsequent) centuries of the common era is immaterial.

Toto

Why are the last two posts in this thread? I think they belong in another thread - right?

spin

There's nothing more to say. Despite mm trying to open up the issue and deal with it at large and misinterpreting some of my comments, he hasn't shown any evidence from the text to support his initial contention, which was that there are some who actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history". If mm wants to continue with it, perhaps he could try another thread and see if he gets any responses.

aa5874

Ehrman is NOT right. The Belief that a Myth exists in not evidence for a figure of history. Virtually all mythological figures of antiquity were believed to have existed.

The argument that Jesus was Mythological does NOT in any way suggest that people of antiquity would have argued Jesus did NOT exist.

Ehrman knows that it is the very description of Jesus provided by the Jesus cult writers that make us know that their Jesus was a Myth.

Writers for the Jesus cult argued for hundreds of years that Jesus had NO human father and was the product of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin, that was God the Creator, walked on the sea, transfigured, resurrected and ascended.

Jesus of Nazareth perfectly fits the description of a Myth whether or not people believe the Myth, the Son of the Ghost, was real.

Sheshbazzar

And really the point is that they really believed these things. Accepted them as being the Holy facts.
Not something that was to be questioned, but as established premises to reason from, and to build upon.
And it is still that way among devoutly religious people.

My cousin the Pastor does not think that he is reciting ancient lies when he preaches.
He is preaching what he is indoctrinated to believe, and what he has been persuaded of are the facts.

That don't make them so, but it certainly is what he is convinced is the right understanding of the Scriptures,
and how he sees and understands this world to operate, and his personal obligations with respect to it.

A Fundamentalist minister, he doesn't at all buy into the 'Great Man theory' of Jesus.
His Jesus was and still is the one of the Bible; The one with NO human father, Whom was the product of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin, And IS God the Creator, who took on human form and flesh, lived among men, taught in The Temple, traveled the hills and valleys of Galilee, healed the sick and raised the dead, walked on the sea, was transfigured, crucified, and did in the flesh resurrect from the dead, and ascended into heaven. No excuses. No down-playing of the Scriptural attributes of his Saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what he is convinced of, and daily meditates upon and convinces himself the more of, and works to convince others of.
I know him. I do not at all doubt his sincerity, nor his desire to do what he believes is best for the welfare of his fellow man.

I no longer agree with his views, but I can certainly understand where he is coming from, and how he got to where he is.
A person such as he cannot help but to exercise whatever attainment of 'Tyranny over "Biblical Scholarship" possible.
His entire world view, and labor of love in this life, depends upon him maintaining the most sincere belief and defense of the integrity of these texts that his intelligence can muster, absolutely believing that he is engaging in spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness and Satan himself.
For him, to even contemplate the idea that the Bible is anything less than Divine revelation, is strictly off limits, as willingly giving in to doubts instilled by demons.

There are many like him, and the words of The Bible are their life, even if they sometimes have to engage in bending over backwards and seeking out the most far-fetched of apologetics to maintain their convictions.

But generally he does not argue texts or religion with non-believers and skeptics, he simply preaches what he believes and prays with compassion for every one.

mountainman

In order to investigate the claim sourced from NHC 11.1 that there are some who actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history" we need to investigate and analyse the entire text of NHC 11.1 which I have attempted to do.

If you are not happy with this analysis say so. Because some of my arguments to support the claim that there are some who actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history" will rely on that analysis being reasonable.

BTW spin have you ever looked at the evidence in the writings of Nestorius in support of this claim that there are some who actually believed that Jesus "did not appear in history"? If you have not yet examined this, let me know.