Chili

It became known as the "iota argument' that changed the face Western world by allowing the spirit to flow from the father and from the Son that so validated the 'Angel of the Lord' as equal to the 'Angel of God.'

It made it monotheistic in theory but dualistic in effect since we now have the 'angel of light' banging believers inside the flock, wich is fine in the West-without-end but not inside the flock.

Doug Shaver

The supernatural may be inconsistent with plausibility, but its absence implies, at most, only possibility, not plausibility.

Of course the crucifixion, strictly speaking, could have happened, but so could everything Margaret Mitchell wrote in Gone With the Wind. In fact, some of it did happen, sort of. There really was a Civil War, and Atlanta was in fact set afire by Union troops. Well, Herod really existed, and Pontius Pilate really was governor of Judea for a few years.

The historicity of Jesus has to judged in light of the entire body of evidence that pertains to Christianity's origins. You can't just look at the gospels, in isolation from all other early Christian writings, and expect to find a good answer to the question "Did this man really exist?"

PhilosopherJay

Hi Doug,

Good point.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Chili

So did the Titanic and the iceberg and the Titanic did sink while the iceberg survived the crash but that has nothing to do with the "Convergence of the Twain: lines on the Titanic" by Thomas Hardy or we would be worshiping that iceberg today . . . or are we?

PhilosopherJay

Hi JoeWallack,

Interesting observations. I think there is perhaps a better chance of Paul and Mark coming from a community of shared texts and interests than that Mark directly developed his gospel from Paul. I think that Mark has developed his gospel from prior gospel source material.

Perhaps looking at temple cleansing scene which comes early in the Passion narrative will clarify things.

Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all include the temple cleansing scene, but they develop it in different ways.

The Temple Cleansing is the action in the story that motivates the chief priests and scribes to see him as a political enemy. They see him as being popular with the masses who are listening to his teaching.

Here, it is not Jesus' preaching that astonishes the masses, it is the miracles that he performs. The chief priests and scribes are merely indignant, there is nothing about them plotting to take him down.


Luke simply copies Mark, just adding the details that Jesus taught "daily" and that that the Priests were powerless because of Jesus' popularity.

John's text is interesting because it comes during Jesus' first of three Passover visits to Jerusalem. Note that even at this early stage, he is already fighting in the temple and talking about the destruction of the Temple. The point is that the disciples misunderstood him and he was talking about his body and not the Temple. If his own disciples misunderstood him, then they must of thought of him as a violent revolutionary who was preaching violence to overthrow the Jewish High Priests and Scribes. If his own disciples mistook him for a violent Jewish Nationalist revolutionary, how much more likely that the Jewish authorities took him for a violent Jewish Nationalist revolutionary?

The gospel of John is actually a much more realistic picture than what is presented in Mark, Matthew and Luke. It says nothing about the High Priests or any conspiracy against Jesus. It merely says that the Jews asked for a sign. Jesus' answer is extremely clever. He offers to do a sign for them. If they will destroy the temple, he will rebuild it in three days. The Jews are caught in a trap. He has offered to perform the sign that they requested, they just have to destroy their temple in order for him to do it.

The writer of Luke's Gospel seems to know that the temple scene is followed by a request for a sign by the Jews. He writes this directly following the temple scene:

The writers of Mark and Matthew also put in this scene after the temple cleansing, but they interspersed the story of the cursed fig tree before it.

We can hypothetically reconstruct what was in the original gospel from this material.

After his violence in the temple, the Jews asked Jesus for a sign, exactly as they do in the Gospel of John. He answered that they had to destroy the temple first and then he would give a sign. The Jews then asked for his authority. Jesus then answers with the John story. If we go back to the gospel of John, we then see the third action of the Jews - they send Nicodemus to argue with him:

Nicodemus is being condescending to him by saying that he knows that he comes from God, Jesus answers him by saying that a man must be reborn with water and spirit in order to see the Kingdom of God. He is clearly preaching baptism here.

Thus, it seems that in the original gospel the Jews offered three responses to the attack on the temple: 1) asked for a sign, 2) asked for his authority, 3) sent Nicodemus to spy on him and learn his secrets.

While the four gospels are at pains to show him as not being a violent Jewish Nationalist revolutionary, it seems that the material they were working from did show him as a violent and clever Jewish Nationalist Revolutiony.

We still cannot answer the question if the original gospel was based on an historical or fictional, perhaps an ideal conglomerate, picture of a Jewish Nationalist Revolutionary.

However, it is clear that the four gospels, in the form we now have them is a reboot of an earlier story.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

mountainman

Perhaps Caesar and Pontifex Maximus thought he could get an Emperor Cult cooking while he was very much alive with a sword in his hand?

The Cult of the Emperor

To Caesar, GOLD spoke louder than GOD. Why is this?
Because Caesar needed the GOLD to pay his army.
The more centuries that passed in the Roman empire,
the more expensive the running of the army became.

Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire
Mises Daily: Monday, September 07, 2009 by Joseph R. Peden

PhilosopherJay

Hi all,

Just another note here:

After Jesus attacks the temple, the gospel of John has Jesus talking about destroying the temple. This is in GofJ, but not in the synoptics.

After Jesus attacks the temple, the synoptics have the high priests threatening to destroy Jesus. the is in the synoptics, but not in GofJ.

It makes sense if both were in an earlier gospel text. Jesus threatens to destroy the temple (which is the same as threatening to destroy the high priests), and the high priests respond by threatening to destroy Jesus.

Assuming that Luke is just following Mark and Matthew, this suggests that Mark or Matthew copied and pasted from John, but also cut material that was in John from John. On balance, I tend to think that Matthew was the one cutting from John and cutting John, but it is possible that Mark was the one.

This earlier John Gospel, before being cut down by Mark or Matthew was trying to present the whole Jesus thing as a misunderstanding. Jesus talked about the destruction of the temple, but he was actually talking about his own body. The high priests (as well as Jesus' own disciples misunderstood him).

So we have a gospel - proto-John - that is saying that Jesus was misunderstood as been a violent Jewish revolutionary extremist.

The fact that it does not deny that Jesus made anti-temple statements, but says that they were misunderstood, indicates that this document is revising and explaining an earlier document where the main character made anti-Temple statements. In other words, Proto-John was responding to a document where Jesus was an openly violent Jewish revolutionary extremist fighting to destroy the Jerusalem temple.

If proto-John was a post war revisionist response to an historical pre-war revolutionary person who was crucified or a revision of a story about an imaginary literary pre-war revolutionary is the million dollar question.

Warmly,

Philospher Jay

Toto

Jay - I think you are working too hard to rationalize these story lines. Why do you think they made sense to start off with?

I caught a radio interview last night with Ellen Hodgson Brown, the author of Web of Debt about the symbolism behind the Wizard of Oz. There was a "historical" Dorothy (the wife of a farmer who got foreclosed and became a self taught lawyer and agitator.) The "historical" cowardly lion was William Jennings Bryant (who did not want to crucify mankind on a cross of gold) and the "historical: wicked witches were the bankers. The plot there makes sense as a Theosophical allegory of American economic theories and solutions. Why should the gospel story be anything more concrete?

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Great question.

The radio show sounds fascinating. I am not sure that the original gospel will be anything more concrete than the Wizard of Oz. In fact, if we can nail it down to the symbolic level that Ellen Hodgson Brown does with the Wizard of Oz, I would be very happy.

I think we now have lots of analytical tools developed over the last century that we can use to understand the development of the Gospels. These include psychological, literary, cinematic, philosophical, linguistic and even comic book theories. Remember that before Sigmund Freud, people generally thought that dreams were visitations from the Gods or nonsense. Freud showed that they weren't visitations from the Gods, but they weren't nonsense either. They had their own logic and by understanding them, we could understand human beings better.

I think that by understanding the gospels better, we can understand some of the social madness behind religion and certain kinds of politics as well as the popularity of certain kinds of art and literature.

Like dreams, I don't think that the gospels are visitations or inspirations from any Gods or a God, but I also do not see them as nonsense. Right now I see them in their current form as a reaction to a major defeat in one or two wars by the Jewish population. It is an attempt to assign blame for the defeat in the war to a very specific group - the Jewish leadership. At the same time it shifts blame away from the Jewish God and the Romans. It can be compared to the way the fascists - ultra militarists who promoted World War One - shifted blame away from themselves after World War I and blamed instead Jews, pacifists, socialists and communists for the defeats, most of whom had opposed the war.

Politically, one sees the same things happening in the United States now, where Tea Baggers are unhappy that their deregulation policies of the last thirty years have led to economic disaster. But instead of blaming themselves and their ideas, they blame the people who opposed those policies. They erase the last 30 years of history and create a fantasy that it is 1776 and King George is passing laws against the wishes of the poor colonists.

So, I see an understanding of gospel origins as important to an understanding of concrete problems we face today.

Warmly,

Jay

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay.

Do you think that the reverse applies? That if we understand the social madness behind religion and certain kinds of politics as well as the popularity of certain kinds of art and literature, then we can understand the gospels better?

And if in fact you agree with this, then can you explain to me why so many people in this forum think it is counter-productive to openly discuss the social madness, the evidenced types of art and literature, and the political and religious roles associated with the known publisher and the known editor-in-chief of the first known widely distributed editions of the gospels in the Roman empire of the 4th century?