spin

Jesus = Joshua

The Emmanuel crap was a later development. Remember Mark gives no indication of it. It only appears in the Matthean birth story.

Because you have no way of knowing what relation they have with the past, of course.

Ye. Lots of errors get introduced that way. Look at the silly embarrassment theory, for example.

It depends what you want to do. If you want to just theorize without getting anywhere, do it however you like.

Looking back, I think I misread you. Forget it. My bad.

It is unrelatable to the period we are looking at.

I don't think anyone just invents mythical figures. That is your poor rationalisation of the past. We are not dealing with fiction, but the warped ways traditions develop. Embarrassment, Jeez. What's an embarrassment for one issn't for another. Do you think that the fundies who come here have any sense of embarrassment? Give it away as a waste of breath. You'll never know what embarrasses someone you've never met, other than if you get a report.

Think about Edward the second. Forget embarrassment.

(Crucixion was not a particularly Roman event. The Greeks did it. The Jews did it. It was just one more form of death. )

You've been fed this ignominious death stuff, but what is more ignominious about being crucified when compared to being put on spectacle in a theatre and torn to pieces by wild animals, as some criminals were in Rome? Claudius enjoyed watching such spectacles, but then everyone there did.

And Porphyry and Celsus can have their opinions.

Would you like him to have been torn apart by wild animals? Or the various ways some of the other saviours paid out?

When did crucifixion get into the tradition? Why does Mark seem to be two texts joined just before the passion? One is full of short sections sown together into long ones and the passion is one seemless narrative. Did the earliest form of Mark even have a passion or did it just end with Mk 13:37?

If you can't validate a text some way, then what use is it?

Well, fill me in on the references, thanks.

At what stage in the evolution of the tradition is this, do you think?

What do you think about Lucian's "Passing of Peregrinus?" It purports to be about a living person, doesn't it? As a historian do you deal with texts at face value? Or do you look for things about the text to see how to validate the witness? You can't take Tacitus on his word without weighing it with all the other information you have available. You work to understand the author's biases. Now this is a little easier with some authors than others. You know nothing about the authors of the texts you are analysing, except for the fact that there were numerous authors, not one. Numerous authorship does indicate tradition maintenance rather than historically directed information.

Why assume either when you have no tangible indications?

The material you are talking about is stuff for sociologists.

Back to embarrassment and the like. Have you got any evidence at all? It doesn't seem like it.

No, it's not. I'm not arguing anything about what makes more sense you your rationalisations. I work with evidence. Without it, you can rationalise all you like. It has the same effect as putting your hand into a bucket of water and pulling it out to see the hole.

If you want to see sense, you usually will... won't you?

I don't think there's an answer to my question here.

Naaa. I'm trying to talk rationally to you.

Are you saying that his followers didn't see miracles? Just which bits of the gospels are you trying to salvage from the dustbin anyway? What is your criterion for discarding stuff?

Plausibility is not a sufficient criterion.

Hang on. You've got a fellow who gets supernaturally announced. You get him unaccountably recognized by JtB. You get him traipsing around doing supernatural things. A lot of the rest of the stuff is contradictory. You're sifting to find the grain of truth without knowing where it might be. You just assume you can intuit it when you come across it.

A lot.

If it's based on rationalisations, it's rash.

I don't care, but there were a few reports of known people on the matter. Plato and Xenophon. Both eminently locatable in time and place and we have a sizable body of their works to know more about these individuals and how they operate.

I couldn't care less.

It doesn't matter. I can show you signs of where battles he reported were fought. I can show you statues of the guy. I can point to the historical results of Caesar's actions. We have his adopted son on record on Caesar. What is the worry about the Rubicon when there is so much else from coins to several witnesses to his life and actions generally.

[QUOTE=dongiovanni1976x]Where do you draw the line?
Relevance and evidence.

No, it's lack of evidence.

What troubles other people is that they can't leave things they can't answer until they have some evidence to help them.

You already know my answer by now. If it cannot be shown, you shelve it.

No, there's too much to be opinionated about.

I've stated my position on the issue a few times. We've had close to two millennia of apologetics one way. Everybody's so busy trying to shut up people who want to look more closely at a contradictory position. I'd rather they had the opportunity to get it out. It might ultimately be crap, but it's too hard to tell, when people are too busy selling embarrassing theories of embarrassment.


spin

Clivedurdle

Yes. We have records of the knock on effects, the reactions. See Rubicon by Tom Holland

Rubicon : The Last Years of the Roman Republic (or via: amazon.co.uk)

What are the knock on effects of these Jesus stories? Nothing clear, traceable, only comparisons with religions, rituals, myth and drama interlaced with spirits and alchemy. Historicity of Rubicon is not comparable with historicity of tales of Brothers Grimm!

jjramsey

Considering that Carrier has been challenged by others of similar expertise, this is a weak argument from authority.

If you do not have access to C.K. Barrett's commentary on Romans, you can find a quote from the relevant portion here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biblic...s/message/8826.

You are shifting the goalposts. Earlier, you claimed, "Mark had to rely on the OT to construct a life of Jesus."

[QUOTE=Ted Hoffman]That he relied on the OT to create scenes in his gospel means that he was writing fiction, not history.

This would presume that Mark was directly using the OT rather than credulously using "urban legends" from Jewish Christians inspired by the OT.

Yes, you responded. That is not the same as rebutting what he actually wrote.

This is a gross strawman. If I am speaking of "lack of context to indicate that Paul is switching ...", I am obviously referring to contextual cues, not statements like, "hey guys, now we are switching locations."

But that's just it. The needed context isn't there. There is, for example, no talk of spheres, no indications that the crucifixion was above the ground, nothing to indicate that Paul is using kata sarka in a way that is beyond the known uses of the phrase.

To say that it is "barely intelligible" is wrong. Or do you consider Josephus' use of it with respect to the Essenes "barely intelligible"?

This is a thorough misreading of 1 Cor. 15. Paul is not arguing that Christ was resurrected, but that dead Christians will be resurrected.

Hardly. You used Theissen as support for your contention that Paul's belief that Jesus was of David's stock did not entail Paul believing that Jesus was human. I used another work of Theissen's to point out that Theissen obviously thought otherwise. Not a red herring at all.

You are shifting the goalposts again. Earlier, you denied that a resurrection involved a body, period. I notice, too, that you didn't touch the issue of Jewish beliefs on the resurrection, which do entail that those who would rise had been flesh and blood. You may want to look at Wright's brief survey on the matter here: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_J...surrection.htm (Wright has many faults, but he is useful here.)

Ted Hoffman

Okey dokey. So the experts disagree on kata sarka. No point wasting any more time on it. You take your pick.

Regarding sphere, after speculating, Barrett says that the sphere of the flesh is humanity and the sphere of the spirit is divine. His argument is easily refutable.
I had earlier written regarding Barret's take on "sphere":
You write that you took my statement "Mark had to rely on the OT to construct a life of Jesus." to "presume that Mark was directly using the OT rather than credulously using "urban legends" from Jewish Christians inspired by the OT."

Well, they are not mutually exclusive. One can combine OT rewriting, active imagination plus urban legends. It does not really matter. The argument is that if one is writing about history, they dont use urban legends, old texts and their own creativity.

You say that I did not rebutt GDon's claims. Prove it.

Provide epistolary examples of the kinds of contextual cues we should expect from Paul in this case. If you cannot do that, your demand is without merit and unreasonable.
We have been through this already. Plus, I can equally argue that Paul mentions no place, no time, no historical persons that we can use to place the crucifixion on a historical or geographical region.
What this means is that both you and me have to seek support for our interpretations from places other than the immediate context. But you make it appear as if the context supports your interpretation while it does not support the mythicist interpretation, which is incorrect.
You smuggle in gospel preconceptions and we will have none of it.
Context is everything. Josephus has no Christology to speak of, while Paul does. Is Josephus speaking about Jesus? Did Josephus hold Jesus as divine and pre-existent? Are you arguing that they shared a similar theosophy?
Your argument has no starting point. You cannot meaningfully compare Paul's usage of kata sarka with that of Josephus.

So how is that a common ground? Comon ground implies a shared experience. How did the Corinthians "already know" about the future resurrection of Christians before Paul told them?
So, instead of speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, now you are claiming that the future resurrection of Christians was "common ground" between Paul and the Corinthians.
When did it begin to be a "common ground"? And how do you know it was "common ground"?
You can throw away the baby with the bathwater if you like. The important thing is that their conception of structural homologue resonates with Doherty's parallelism of action. If they are led by historicist presumptions to reach different conclusions, that is another matter. The bottom line is that I was highlighting a concept that they also discuss. The fact that they differ in their assumptions and conclusions does not preclude that they mention concepts that are consistent with JM arguments.

Okay then we have a misunderstanding on our hands. You argued that Jesus had to be historical because one has a body in order to be crucified and in order to resurrect.
I falsified this claim using Inanna's example. That was the point.

Jewish conceptions do not really matter because we are examining ideas that emerged in the cultural milieu of the Hellenistic era at which point cross-pollination and syncretization of religious ideas had taken place. The very fact that the Jewish conception of a messiah did not entail a cosmic saviour should indicate to you that Christiaity entailed a degree of departure from Jewish beliefs. So your fixation with "the issue of Jewish beliefs on the resurrection" is unwarranted and misguided. Unless you want to argue that "the issue of Jewish beliefs on the resurrection" were fixed and immutable.
So I dont see how Wright is useful here.

Ted Hoffman

I just read the NT Wright article. He claims that Christians conceived the resurrection as entailing an "act of new creation" that will involve an act of "transformation, the gift of a new body with different properties".
If we accept this, it is consistent with the MJ hypothesis, which allows for the presence of different bodies (transformed or otherwise).

Anyway, some people from Corinth even outrightly rejected the alleged future resurrection of Christians. This proves further that there was no alleged "common ground" as jjramsey is claiming.

1 Cor 15:12-14:As we can see, Paul is using the tactics I said he was using to force the resurrection upon the Corinthians: blackmail, guilt-trips and fallacious reasoning. If they later accepted the concept of the resurrection, as they did, we can see that it was because they lacked critical tools to take apart Paul's fallacious logic and spiritual blackmail. The could have asked for evidence, they could have asked for specifics. They did not Challenge him because Paul showered them with guilt and threats of losing a shot at eternal life (he appealed to them to trade faith with eternal life). Plus, he clearly had a way with words and mastered "high concepts" that the ignorant masses did not dare challenge openly. Not because they had any "common ground" with Paul regarding the resurrection of Christians.

More importantly, Barrett uses "sphere" in the same sense as Doherty: a concrete location. The only difference is that Barrett places the sphere on Earth (which is the sphere humanity occupies) and Doherty places it above the Earth.

Perhaps jjramsey has in mind "station"? If so, I await his reasoned arguments.

jjramsey

That is only true if one is talking about a good historian, which Mark is not.

Ahem. To quote from my previous post:

Not necessarily. Shared background knowledge can be common ground as well. Common ground is whatever is held, well, in common.

You misread what I was saying. To quote what I wrote earlier:

The common ground is Jesus' resurrection. Paul builds on that to argue for the general resurrection of Christians.

I was not arguing that. As I said to Clivedurdle:

The various other considerations that bridge the gap from Paul's beliefs about Jesus to an HJ (for example, "brother of the Lord") do not apply in Inanna's case.

Excuse me, but part of the input into the "cross-pollination and syncretization of religious ideas" was Judaism, so it borders on nonsense to say that "Jewish conceptions do not really matter."


Not true. Barrett writes, "Paul does not mean that on a fleshly (human) judgement Jesus was a descendant of David, but that in the realm denoted by the word flesh (humanity) he was truly a descendant of David." (p. 18, The Epistle to the Romans) Note that when he clarifies parenthetically what he means by "realm denoted by the word flesh," he clarifies it as being "humanity," not as being "the Earth." Humanity is clearly not a geographical region. Further, when he writes "in the sphere of the Holy Spirit" (also on p. 18), he clearly does not mean that the Holy Spirit is contained within a region of space. Barrett is simply not using "sphere" in a locational sense.

dongiovanni1976x

I have read Holland's book and seen Richard Carrier debate this very issue with Mike Licona. I see no "evidence" by the standards that spin is setting becuase we must "rationalize" in order to come to the conclusion that sucha crossing took place.
Where in Holland's book will I find a response to this?

Ted Hoffman

We have no reason to believe that Mark was a historian in any sense of the word. We know he was a creative writer who mastered mimesis and was familiar with Greek/Hellenistic literature.
There is no evidence that he wanted to write history, or that he viewed his evangelion as history.
I repeat, why should we expect Paul to provide these extra details? Do you have examples of where Paul goes an extra length to clarify the meaning of an expression?
I you do not have, then you are projecting your own expectations onto Paul.
In any case, historicists are comfortable in their assumption that Paul means an earthly crucifixion yet Paul provides no indication in terms of geographical place, historical period, or any other markers that would allow us to place the Pauline Christ somewhere on earth.
Doherty argued that:You did not counter Doherty's objection. You simply restated your assertion:
I asked you to prove that Christ's resurrection was "common ground" between Paul and the Corinthians.
You have repeatedly failed to do that. You claimed the proof was "Right at the beginning of chapter 15". When I argued against that, you shifted and instead argued that he was talking about the future resurrection of Christians, which I also challenged and now, in your most recent post, you write:
I have even shown that some people from Corinth outrightly rejected Paul's claims. You have done nothing to prove that the People of Corinth, like Paul, believed in the resurrection of Christians, or of Christ, at the time Paul wrote to them.
If you could do it, you would have done it by now so I think the point has been made and I will just drop it.

What is remarkable is your double standard approach: you claim, without any logical reason, that there was common ground between Paul and the Corinthians and therefore Paul neednt have mentioned "Christ, as the prototype for the resurrected body of Christians".

Yet you turn around and claim that Paul should have provided additional material to allow for the mythicist interpretation of kata sarka. Yet you cannot demonstrate, from Paul's writing style, that we should have expected that additional material from him. For example, does Paul explain what he meant when he said he was like one "untimely born"? No.
You have been unable to sustain a consistent, coherent argument.

This is not significantly different from arguing that Paul must have believed in a HJ because only historical people have bodies.
But back to your appeal to parsimony.
In the ancient world, the most parsimonious explanation of the nature of a being that could resurrect and save people would be a god. Only the deaths of gods would be salvific in nature. Only gods would resurrect. You are guilty of projecting the thinking of a 21st century man, twenty centuries back.
You are alluding to Galatians 1:19. This is easily taken care of by 1 Corinthians 9:5:
If the "brothers" were Jesus' blood brothers, it means Jesus' sublings were active members of the missionary movement. Are you ready to argue that?
My point remains. You were relying on one source to challenge claims regarding a concept that arose from syncretization of various beliefs. It is called tunnel vision.
You have simply repeated what Barret writes and repeated your assertion that Barrett is simply not using "sphere" in a locational sense. When you state "he clearly does not mean that the Holy Spirit is contained within a region of space", you are simply repeating your assetion: you have not explained anything, or clarified anything.

There is no such thing as the "realm of humanity" other than the Earthly sphere. Human beings live on Earth. That is their realm. That is their field. That is their sphere. That is their province. That is their terittory. The ancients inferred from the alterity on earth: changing seasons, changing weather, death and decay, contrasted with the stars, which seemed stationary, and the sky, and they concluded that the Earth, where fleshly beings dwelt, was subject to decay and impurity, and the heavens were pure and immutable. The moon, of course moved and changed shape, so thereabouts dwelt demons and other spirits. God was far off in the stars.

If we consider the dichotomy spiritual/fleshly realms, we are talking about the earthly/heavenly dichotomy. We have documents that speak of demons and angels living in some other place - other than the earth. Tatian writes regarding the Holy Spirit in Address to the Greeks:
This means that the spirit's dwelling place is above (the heavens) and the flesh (humanity) dwells below. Of course, sometimes the spirit descends to fill people according to Tatian.

A sphere is a location. A realm is also a location or place. Humanity is not a realm so take that up with Barrett, not me. Barrett wrote:
And oh, we are talking about cosmogonical locations, not just geographical ones. You really ought to read Carrier's long response to Muller.

dongiovanni1976x

Sorry…I had it in my mind you were referring to Moses for some reason. Thank you for the clarification.
Creating theories helps illuminate what possibilities there are and can foster searches in particular directions to validate or invalidate those theories. Thre is practical value in making educated guesses.
Perhaps we are equivocating a MJ with a HJ + mythical developments. I am not arguing that there was a man named Jesus who performed everything that is ascribed to him in the gospels. I am simply arguing that it makes more sense historically to assume that a man from which all these traditions later developed from. And here is one good reason why this assumption is a valid one. If Bethlehem was to be the birthplace of the Messiah, we would likely only see conflicts develop over Jesus’ alleged birthplace if he was a real man born elsewhere- which in fact seems to be the case.

Good point – that has to trump crucifixion! Lol
How can you simply dismiss Porphyry and Celsus like that? The argument from embarrasment is a valid one.

I think you understand my question spin…why, if you are going to have a convincing argument for the Jesus’ claim to messiahship it seems that had almost any other tradition developed than that of having him suffer in such an embarrassing way, would have been far more convincing. Had this alleged man come from Bethlehem instead of Nazareth would also make it more convincing. The fact that such details did not bother the average convert says more about the willful ignorance of people who are desperate for hope than it does for their eye to accuracy. So to answer your question, I think the story could have developed under different circumstances but had a story developed that Jesus floated up into the sky instead of all the stories about him dying on a cross, then Porphyry and Celsus, among others, would have had less ammunition to ridicule the fledgling faith. This is all I am saying. For these reasons I think it is myopic to dismiss the “embarrassment” arguments outright as if they are foolish. Bart Ehrman using them extensively in demonstrating the corruption of scripture…it demonstrates motive effectively. Playing the skeptic is easy. Actually trying to recreate the past takes effort- but I agree with you that many recreations are “rash” and I certainly don’t know any of this for sure.

Well it is in our earliest manuscripts so I think the burden would be upon the MJ’er if they wanted to use such a line of reasoning to strengthen their case. Mark ending at 16:8 is far more credible. And seems to point to more “embarrassing” details for the fledgling faith as the later gospel writers did not seem to like how Mark ended his gospel. But unless you can demonstrate that Mark’s passion story was inserted I assume it was a part of his original text since it is in our oldest copies.
Is this an answer to my question? What criteria do you use to “validate” a text? You mentioned But where do you draw the line. Your rabid skepticism seems to suggest that nearly ALL historical sources are useless. I tend to be more optimistic and believe that when a sources says x, then x happened unless it is an obvious bias, it is contradicted by another source or the nature of cause and effect is violated. This is a generality but for the most part is how many historians operate. A healthy dose of doubt prevents me from engraving such assumptions into stone and this doubt allows for new information at anytime. I just feel that if we sat on the fence all the time we couldn’t make any further rationalizations about the past and then the entire endeavor of historical inquiry would become meaningless. Am I being too pessimistic here by misinterpreting your position?
Either the first claim was based upon a real person or it was made up- those are our ONLY two options. From the first claim further embellishments are then possible as well. You yourself have said that we are not talking about inventions: Therefore I think we can agree that there is a real person at the core of these later traditions. And I assume the stage when the first claim was made was from someone who actually knew this man Jesus. In fact I think the evidence points to quite a few who knew of him and circulated/embellished stories about him. As I have quoted Bart Ehrman before: This stranger that passed through Bart’s town got his story from somewhere and his source likewise got it from somewhere else…so on and so forth. Since we agree that mythical figures are not “invented” then you can jump down off of that fence and join the HJ’ers because it seems far more likely that there is a real person at the core of all these later embellishments.

True. But it does indicate that such stories were circulating and tracing these stories backward to Paul we get even closer- though Paul never met the man his letters suggest that he knew people (i.e. Cephas) who did. This is not solid by any means but still ties these loose threads together enough to adhere to the majority opinion in New Testament scholarship. I just feel that the only argument from the MJ side is that “Well we don’t know for sure…what if X happened…what f this was an interpolation…yada yada yada…” well I am prepared to keep an open mind about that but the MJ case is far weaker at the present time so holding a HJ position seems entirely more credible. I suggested this when I attempted to summarize my earlier post: To which you replied: Well I think I have been trying to demonstrate that to you. My assumption lies in my optimism- whether for good or ill. Its rooted in my respect for those with more education on the matter than myself. My belief is tied to the fact that we really only have two options with a claim about history- either it is based upon something or it is made up. Since we are well aware how such traditions can be embellished and since we agree that mythical figures are not necessarily just “invented” then we must assume that the stories surrounding this “Jesus” figure stem from a real figure at some point in the past. Sifting through the embellishments is not necessarily as arbitrary as you claim. I simply assume that miracles are the least possible occurrence of all possible occurrence by definition and thus look for more plausible explanations. Throwing it all out just seems like someone’s lazy way to discredit Christianity…I think it is far more complex than that. Actually I am beginning to think that we all agree we just define our terms differently. Because if you agree that Jesus was not “invented” then it seems logical to assume that you think he was a real person. The stories about him need not even enter the debate yet.
You keep dismissing me whenever I use the word “embarrassment”. What reasons do you have to do so? I believe it is a powerful reason to conclude that these later stories developed from a real person- i.e. someone who was not “perfectly” fitted to the ideal messiah. This is evidence for a HJ.
Sorry. I thought it was implicit in my reply. To answer more directly: Yes, I “find that many people believed to have been raised form the dead in ancient literature.” It is much more common than it is today and thus it is not as “extraordinary” of a claim in my opinion.
I am assuming that miracles are the least likely occurrence of all possible occurrences by definition and approaching any claims to such occurrences with a great deal of skepticism. Therefore I assume that if the followers saw great works or events happen there is a reason for their belief that likely will be found in either a later embellishment of the event by a non eyewitness or via some psychological way that does not contradict my understanding of the laws of physics. This is the approach a historian must take when trying to discover what was the most likely way the past unfolded.
It is when there are no more sources left to validate against. This is when the historian makes guesses about what may be in the “gaps”.
I will not know. But I argue that that it is more likely that these miraculous stories were attributed to a real man than that they were attributed to a made up one. What we know about this man is next to nothing, so if I happened upon some “truth” about him I would have no sure way to know. My only argument in this debate is to demonstrate why I think Jesus was a real man and not a mythical one. Nothing more at this time.
Whether you desire to know something or not has no bearing on the historicity of the event itself. Let me play the devil’s advocate to demonstrate what rabid skepticism can do to such assertions. You claim that Plato and Xenophon can both be “eminently locatable in time and place” please demonstrate how you come to this conclusion and the methodology you employ to do so.
I didn’t ask you whether you cared whether the event(s) mattered. We are discussing the events historicity not their entertainment value. Events such as these must be rationalized from other evidence- that is all I am demonstrating. It doesn’t lend any evidence to the position that they are made up stories and therefore we should conclude that Caesar and Alexander did not exist. This is why I think the MJ position is so weak- what evidence is there that this is all made up and that a real man is not the source for all these stories attributed to him?

I think the part where you insert “relevance” can go along way to demonstrate why rationalizations are necessary to fill in the gaps we are lacking in history. But mind you, I stress that a healthy does of doubt should always be applied in such cases so that when new evidence does arise, your paradigm can be altered accordingly. Otherwise you are stuck on a fence saying, “I could care less…It doesn’t matter” all the time.
Sometimes it is necessary to make a guess in order to shed light on some other historical event. It is not that people just can’t let the issue sit on the shelf, it is that by positing what they think is “most plausible” which allows them to venture further guesses about other events. A good historian does this all the time and recognizes that such guesses are completely revisable at anytime.

I respect that. I really don’t see too much to disagree with you on. “Doubt is the beginning of wisdom” (F. Bacon) and you demonstrate more than a healthy share. I guess our differences lie in the fact that I see some pragmatic value in making opinionated guesses about the gaps in history in order theorize into other more complex issues. Quit a bit of wisdom can be generated from such guessing and as long as the guesser doesn’t grasp too tightly onto the worlds he and she creates about the past, then we are not in any danger of promulgating falsehoods. Most good historians know this and are quick to offer such disclaimers when they make educated guesses about events we know little about.

But something we seem to know enough about is that there likely was a man named Jesus from which the Christian faith originated until the MJ’er actually presents a good reason to think otherwise.

jjramsey

I'm not thinking of Paul going out of his way to clarify what kata sarka means. I'm thinking of him offhandly writing to make it obvious that the already known meanings of kata sarka are not a natural fit.

There's a simple reason for this. Crucifixions by default took place on Earth, so there would be no need to emphasize that it would be on Earth. It would be a crucifixion in the heavens that would be unusual.

These are such strawmen, especially in light of my clarifications above, that is obvious that there is no point in arguing further with you on these points.

"Sphere" and "realm" are not necessarily actual references to locations. One can discuss, for example, religion and science as being in separate spheres, or talk of a "realm of possibilities," neither of which entails a concrete location. Barrett is perfectly within his rights to use describe humanity as a "realm" in an abstract sense.

I do not concede that Tatian helps us parse Barrett, since Barrett already indicated how he was using "sphere" and "realm" by how he described humanity as a "realm." However, you do have a point in that Tatian shows that speaking of a realm of the Spirit does not require that the Spirit be constrained to exist only there. Notice, though, that Tatian is dead clear in his descriptions. He does not use kata to imply spheres but talks directly about dwelling-places. That is roughly what I might expect from Paul.