Derec

Not to mention Athenian navy holding off the Persian navy and preventing them to land troops to the back of Greeks.

aa5874

Jesus, Paul, the thousands of followers, aka the tribe of Christians and the Gospels cannot be accounted for in the first century. No extra-biblical source can place these figures and writings in the first century.

Until new evidence surfaces, I consider the historicity of Jesus, Paul, the tribe of Christians and the writings of the Gospels as fiction. It is inconceivable for such a phenomena, in my opinion, to have occured, and not a single word or shred of evidence to have surfaced in the century which the events occured.

I have closed my case on Christianity, it is bogus.

GakuseiDon

You misunderstand. I meant that comparing Paul's Jesus to the Gospel Jesus to identify silences is problematic if the Gospel Jesus isn't being pushed. First we need to examine Paul for his Jesus. Let's see if Paul is referring to an earthly Jesus or not. If the evidence appears to favour that he is, THEN we can look at why he doesn't provide details (which is where Tertullian would come in). I'm suggesting that we investigate this in more depth, without the distraction of trying to match Paul's Jesus with the Gospel Jesus.

Yes, as far as it goes, if it could be shown that Paul is referring to an earthly Jesus, then Doherty is refuted. It wouldn't prove a historical Jesus existed, but Doherty's "sublunar" reign of terror would be at an end. At the least, he would need to revise his thesis.

Jesus appeared in visions to people after his death, which convinced Paul and others that Jesus was the new Adam or new Moses, along the lines laid out by Philo. I've brought this up a few times. Is my point reasonable? If not, why not? We can look into this in more depth in a new thread, if you like, to see how this looks.

Did you read Ben C Smith's post on the Ascension of Isaiah? What did you think about that?

gnosis92

Do you have any such writings from the Pharisees, Saducees, Essenes, Zealots, Sicarri?

MJ = meme

spamandham

I suppose it would be helpful if you noted which scriptures you think sound familiar. The Jewish scriptures were penned over the course of about 700 years.

Chris Weimer

I don't know if I'd stretch the span out that long - especially considering, which spin didn't take into account - oral tradition.

spin

Hey, shirc, there are some interesting possibilities. I don't mind pins or snip, either, though a few others are a little too esoteric.

Naaaa. At least not directly. I think other Greek literature probably had a slightly greater influence over the bigger more coherent works.

True, but you must remember that the exilic Jews came to Jerusalem as strangers who had lived in Babylon for a varying number of generations. A lot of Jews stayed. The first high priest that Herod appointed when he terminated the Hasmonean control over the high priesthood was from Mesopotamia, someone who had claim to be able to go into the holy of holies, otherwise the Jerusalemites would have kicked up all hell. They came back and functioned like a foreign ruling class after the Jewish lower classes had been left to fend for themselves for several generations.

We don't know what culture they brought back -- though I know that Persian royalty went for their own brand of monotheism centred on Ahura Mazda, the wise lord --, but with the proto-Jewish locals to fend for themselves I'm sure that there was conflict. Is this conflict not that which we see in Ezekiel when that writer talks about stuff going on under every green tree? What remained from earlier times may have been radically repressed or transformed.

:wave: rhisc


spin

Niall Armstrong

It's a good question. And I certainly won't presume to know the answer. But couldn't it be a matter of Tertullian not being a particularly stable proponent of orthodoxy (or whatever passed as such in his time). Here's a quote from wikipedia:

In middle life (about 207) he broke with the Catholic Church and became the local leader and the passionate and brilliant exponent of Montanism, that is, he became a heretic. But even the Montanists were not rigorous enough for Tertullian who broke with them to found his own sect. The statement of Augustine (De Haeresibus, lxxxvi) that before his death Tertullian returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church is very improbable.

Should we expect such a person to only have a single view of Jesus? But perhaps someone can enlighten us on Tertullian's compositional history.

Though this should perhaps be on a more precise thread than "Spartans and Spartacus"!

Gamera

Well we have a self-serving story that says that happen, as with most of historiography from antiquity.

Casper

That was pretty much how they kept the Helots in check, yes. Guerilla terror tactics in a sense.

There were also olympic games going on and the participants were bound from warfare by solemn oath.