aa5874

It is the authors of the NT that STATED Jesus was Fathered by a Holy Ghost and that is PRECISELY why I can say Jesus was NOT human.

Is it NOT found in gMatthew that the birth of Jesus was the product of the Holy Ghost and Mary??? See Matthew 1.18-20

Is it NOT found in gLuke that Jesus was the product of the Holy Ghost and Mary??? See Luke 1.26-35

I no longer accept people's imagination as evidence.

What!!!! God's Plan????

Your response is just rather strange.

Which God has a plan for the world??

aa5874

duplicated

Sheshbazzar

My position is very similar, but not quite identical.
My main difference from aa is that I believe that this process of invention actually began in the BCE era, with midrash providing the 'sayings', and miracle tropes from drawn various sources that were eventually gathered and cobbled together and edited into the original 'gospel' story.

Religionists (not just 'christans') invented 99% of the situations and dialog of the NT.
Inventive bunch that they were, I find no reason at all to believe they did not also invent its protagonist and most of the characters.
People who did not recognize it as a literary construction, soon took it to be a factual account of literal historical events.
It created the equivalent of the original 'War of The Worlds' panic, but with no mass media in place to disseminate the message that tale was fictional, and to calm and restore sense and rationality to the public.
The belief, and the panic that ensued just kept on rolling and building, with people for centuries afterward acting upon the fears, hatreds and the religious insanity that the fictional story had stirred up.

The god Jesus, and his 'holy ghost' arriving and 'inspiring' (or infecting) the minds of those who 'received the Holy Ghost' seed was the social equivalent of announcing an invasion by aliens from space, only with Zombie Jesus and his 'Holy Ghost' infected followers in place of the tentacled aliens.
Christians were the original Pod people that set out to rebirth everyone on earth into christian Pod people. With the whole shebang being orchestrated from 'heaven' above by their E.T. god





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aa5874

Again, Toto has COMPLETELY mis-represented my position. Toto MUST retract it. I have STATED before that HJers should find credible sources for THEIR Jesus and should NOT use discredited unreliable sources with Fake authors and unknown date of composition.

The NT does NOT support an historical Jesus.

It is utterly erroneous that I have ever stated that the Historical Jesus must be Jesus of the NT when it is HJers themselves that INTRODUCE THEIR Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth, baptized by John, and Crucified under Pilate.

Bart Ehrman uses the NT as the fundamental historical source for his Jesus.

Bart Ehrman use Galatians and the Gospels.

Bart Ehrman JESUS is from the NT.

Toto must know that Bart Ehrman's Jesus is from the NT.

DCHindley must know that Bart Ehrman's Jesus is from the NT.

This is the problem on these threads- people here forget or don't care that HJers themselves are the ones who DEPICT their Jesus of Nazareth from the NT.

spin

I think we might be able to agree that "historicist" in our discussions is not directly related to history, but is used as a label for those people who advocate the necessity of there having been a real Jesus.

We seem to have a difference between two notions of what is historical.

1. everything that happened, and
2. what can be established about the past through evidence.

This means we have two different understandings of the notion of the historical Jesus at play here.

The notion of the historical1 Jesus is that which equates to the Jesus of the past, if there was one. The notion of the historical2 Jesus is that which equates to showing from historical sources that there was a Jesus of the past.

Diogenes the Cynic

I agree with that. I don't think the historical Jesus can necessarily be recovered by historical method.

aa5874

You must have known that all along.

Please, tell the HJers---a lot of them don't know.

Tell Bart Ehrman, too.

The HJ argument is just a waste of time since the evidence to support it is missing since the 2nd century.

spin

I don't know what you are agreeing about. Your definition of history seems to involve historical1. If you "don't think the historical Jesus can necessarily be recovered by historical method", on what grounds do you assert the validity of the historical1 Jesus?

I merely need to point out that there is no historical2 Jesus.

Diogenes the Cynic

I agree that we're using two different definitions of "historical."

What do you mean by "validity?" Valid in what sense?

I reject the assertion that historicity can only be defined by what is recoverable. Stuff happens historically whether it's recoverable or not. You seem to be using "historical" as a term of art - as a reference to a repository of what is known to have happened rather than (as I am defining) simply as the entire set of everything that has ever happened.

Most history can't be recovered. That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I posted a comment on Hoffmann's blog today to the effect that "like Jack the Ripper and the inventer of the wheel, Jesus can only be inferred, not identified."

That's what I think. I think there was probably a person there behind the incipient movement. We just don't know who it was.

Toto

If Jesus is comparable to Jack the Ripper, what is comparable to the murder victims? The existence of Christianity?