aa5874

You seem to be subconsciously arguing AGAINST DOHERTY.

DOHERTY does NOT represent ALL mythicists.

DOHERTY does NOT claim to represent all mythicists.


In the HJ/MJ argument, MYTH Jesus is a non-historical character that NEVER actually lived ANYWHERE.

The very claims of the Church and their writings, including the NT Canon, promote Myth Jesus, the Jesus of Faith.

We cannot be going over the same things over and over.

You have already ADMITTED that as far as you are concerned NOTHING is Conclusive.

Well, if NOTHING YOU SAY IS CONCLUSIVE then HJ is NOT CONCLUSIVE.

mountainman

The point is that we dont really know what Arius's heresy really was since aside from the famous five sophisms (appended to the earliest reported Nicaean creeds), a few fragments of "Thalia" and a few letters preserved by the orthodox where Arius appears orthodox (i.e. probable forgeries) we do not have much data. I have listed the documents here:

There is more to Arius than meets the eye Toto. Arius of Alexandria was arguably Christianity's greatest heretic, and the author of Christianity's greatest heresy. Precisely what that heresy was is difficult to determine because all the orthodox sources are hostile, and probably complied with Constantine's "damnatio memoriae".




They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I have often thought what thousand words might correspond to this picture. As it happens we do have preserved a very nasty letter by Constantine to Arius. If we were to go though this letter sequentially, and make a note in a point by point form of what Constantine informs us about Arius, the result is something like this ...

Extracted from Constantine's Nasty Letter to Arius c.333 CE

He was a wicked interpreter
He was an image and a statue of the Devil
He had a nature absolutely most base
He offered error
He proffered profusely the poisons of his own effrontery
He introduced a belief of unbelief.
He introduced a belief of unbelief that is completely new.
He was trusty for evil
He had lost the grace of taking advice.
He vomited pernicious words
He produced pernicious words his writings
He did not coexist with the Eternal Father of his origin
He wrote books that collected and gathered terrible and lawless impieties
He wrote books that agitated tongues [Editor: Very popular books]
He wrote books which deceived and destroyed
He said "Either let us hold that, of which already we have been made possessors, or let it be done, just as we ourselves desire."
He had fallen in matters.
He had fallen dead in matters
He considered holy only what was in him
He said "We have the masses."
He was a warrior of insanity.
He was an Ares
He fashioned the finest things for the masses
He had little piety toward Christ
He needed to be cured.

He had the audacity worthy to be destroyed by thunderbolts!
He wrote with a pen distilling poison
He added certain things somehow swaggeringly
He added certain things quite accurately elaborated
He went further and opened the whole treasury of madness
He asked to celebrate services to God in Alexandria
He asked to celebrate the lawful and indispensable services to God in Alexandria
He has terrible shamelessness
He needes to be refuted and thoroughly
He answered to "foolish one"
He constructed a disease of savage thought
He constructed a discord against the church

He was involved in evil.
He hastened to destroy his friends
He had a mask of modesty
He pretended silence
He showed himself to be tame and submissive
He used the artifice of pretence;
He - within - wass full of countless evils and plots.
He was made by the desire of the Devil
He was made as a manufactory of iniquity for us.
He possessed a perverted mouth
He possessed a nature quickly roused to wickedness!
He talked of one God.
He added things further to orthodox doctrines
He was abrogated
He joined things to an impous separation of orthodox doctrines
He substituted a foreign hypostasis
He undoubtedly believed badly
He detracted from Jesus who is indetractable
He paved the way for the marks of addition
He detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of Jesus
He detracted from the belief in immortality of Jesus
He detracted from the uncorrupted intelligence of the Church
He engaged in silly transgression of the law

He was a witty and sweet-voiced fellow
He sang evil songs of unbelief
He was quite fittingly subverted by the Devil
He was a wicked person
He was a destructive evil.
He was barred publicly from God’s church
He was (be well assured) lost
He engaged in folly.
He claimed the masses acted with him.
He did not listen to Constantine.
He did not lend his ears to Constantine.
He did not understand his folly
He was clearly mad
He was a knave
He never admited where in the world he was
He wrote letters to Constantine with a pen of madness
He claimed all the Libyan populace was supporting him
He was not really blameless
He was a gallows rogue
He did not perish even when surrounded by great horror
He was known for his wits - they were not dull
He was a profane person
He undermined the (orthodox) truth
He undermined the (othodox) truth by various discourses
He was a sick and helpless soul
He was not ashamed to disparage (state orthodox) doctrine
He refuted (state orthodox) doctrine
He admonished (state orthodox) doctrine
He seemed superior in faith
He seemed superior in discourse
He was a source of aid for people
He was not to be associated with
He was not to be addressed
He was the author of rotten words and meters
He was notorious - "It was mistake to be around him"
He had a bitter tongue
He was the contraversial subject of imperial discourses against him
He was a fool in respect to his soul
He was a wordy one in respect to his tongue,
He was an infidel in respect to his wits.
He was asked to grant a field for discussion
He was a truly profane and base.
He was a truly dissembling person.
He made Constantine exited writing compositions against him
He needed to be captured in order to keep an imperial appointment at the public gallows
He was a worthless person
He was very hasty
He did invoke some God for aid
He caused Constantine to speak against him

He reproached the church
He grieved the church
He wounded he church
He pained the church
He had marvellous faith
He demoted Jesus
He dared to circumscribe Jesus
He questioned the presence of Jesus
He questioned the activity of Jesus
He questioned the all-pervading law of Jesus
He thought that there was a place outside of Jesus
He thought that there something else outside of Jesus
He denied the infiniteness of Jesus

He was a shamless and useless fellow
He progressed to the height of wickedness
He progressed to the height of lawlessness
He pretended piety.
He told Constantine to go away

He wrote that he did not wish God to appear to be the subject of suffering of outrage
He wrote that (on the above account) he suggested and fabricated wondrous things indeed in respect to faith.


He accepted Jesus as a figment
He called Jesus foreign
He did not adapt, he did not adapt (it was said twice) to God [Editor: the "new" orthodox God]
He was twice wretched
He was truly an adviser of evil
He was a villain
He was a mediator of wild beasts. (See Plato)
He was described as mad and clearly raving
He was a patricide of equity
He did not conclude that God is present in Christ
He talked disgracefully
He brought punishment upon himself
He had no faith in Christ
He did not follow the law that God's law is Christ
He appeared to take thought from his own self
He had august consuls
He was a fellow full of absurd insensibility
He hastened to disturb the whole world by his impieties.
He did not understand that Constantine, the man of God, already knew all things

He brought state orthodoxy into the light;
He hurled his wretched self into darkness.
He ended his labors with this

He claimed there were a multitude of persons wandering about him
His supporters were asserted to have given themselves to be eaten by wolves and by lions.
His supporters were each oppressed by additional payment of ten capitation taxes and by the expenses of these
His supporters sweated unless they ran as speedily as possible to the salvation-bringing Church,
His supporters were condemned for wicked complicity
His investigations were called abominable

His sophisms were clear
His sophisms were known to all persons, at all events for the future.

He struggled to accomplish something.
He counterfeited fairness of discourse
He counterfeited gentleness of discourse
He donned externally a mask of simplicity
He was an artificer
His flame was quenched with the rain of divine power
His associates were threatened by local and state authorities
His associates were threatened to speedily flee his association
His associates were to accept in exchange the uncorrupted faith [of the church]

He was an "iron-hearted man"
He received an invitation from Constantine saying: "Come to me, come, I say, to a man of God"
He was perhaps healthy in respect to spiritual matters

Archibald you asked ... what form of heresy was the heresy of Arius? If you skim the above source comments from Constantine about the heretic Arius (and his beliefs etc) you may appreciate that your question is not necessarily answered on the WIKI page referred to by Toto. WIKI does reference a spectrum of opinion about the Arian heresy.


Sloncha !

mountainman

Making a Mudmap of possible historical heresies using R.G. Price's Spectrum of Historical Possibilities

It occurs to me that it may be possible to clarify discussion of the issues related to heresy by making a chart which has been mentioned in other threads. The source page is here. Eight positions may be defined as follows:


Do the God-Fearing Orthodox Heresiologists (like Eusebius et al) all Vote for Option Number One?

Is it reasonable to argue that the orthodox heresiologists of the 4th and 5th century (and tangentially 21st) century monotheistic state church would assume the ground of the Option Number One above? If this is the case, then we can represent a mapping between this Official God Position, which seems to have been promulgated from Nicaea onwards (at least), and all those groups of people who may have subscribed to any other of the spectrum positions (2) through to (8).

I have made a diagram showing these relationships, and have marked on the chart a dividing line between what might be called the historicist and mythicist positions. It should be obvious that the heresiologists wanted everyone to adopt option numero uno. It should also be obvious that, to varying degrees according to the spectrum of belief, the holding of other opinions was deemed to be the heresy of not believing Option One.




Is this useful in clarifying anything? Someone is likely to claim that the mythicist positions listed on this modern spectrum of opinion would not have, or did not, or could not have existed in the "Early Church", but I would argue that all these beliefs may have been historical possibilities at least from the Council of Nicaea onwards. Some people have commented that there should be more than 8 defined positions. 8 provides a draft spectrum.

The mudmap thus lists seven positions of heretical belief (Options 2 through 8).
Options 2 to 4 may have been heretical because the HJ was not just an important reknown historical man, but the Humble God.
Options 5 to 8 may have been heretical because the MJ was designed and supposed to be viewed as "historical"

archibald

Well, if it related to a figure who was supposed to have lived and died recently, within the region, then I think it would be unusual.

And, I am still inclined, as outlined before, to read the texts as relating to such a figure.

Myth heroes from the dim and distant past are two a penny.

William Tell may be another exception. There again, I'm not sure the William Tell events wouldn't have been allegedly at least a few hundred years old before they were first told. Someone can correct me.

Yes, there is a lot of detail built around not a lot. But then this is true of Spartacus. And, you know, if this guy was being thought of as a messiah, it's not surprising the story was heavily elaborated.

Very possibly true. Of course, the one 'basic' which appears throughout, arguably even before Paul, and isn't in the OT, is death by crucifixion.

I honestly don't think it is a problem. I think it seems like a problem to those who want more historically accurate bio (or 'causal chains'), but it doesn't seem unusual to me in view of the stature of a very minor figure in the context of the standards of ancient history.

Say, for example, very little was known about him, beyond lists of things he was purported to have said, and maybe some deeds he was purported to have done, during only a very short 'ministry', and these were transmitted orally for several decades, circulated mostly by people who didn't actually meet him.

To me, if you get to the time of Mark, and all you have is this sort of material (plus perhaps Paul's stuff), what gets written in Mark sounds quite like what I would expect to get written in Mark, filling in blanks.

I'm not sure we should say that 'his bio' is not in there. I read Mark much more like embellishment than creation.

gurugeorge

Conjecture of course, conjecture that would have to be roughly plausible if we had independent evidence of a man (plausible but still odd - we'd yet have to seek reasons for it). But there we circle back to the great "dilemma" - why would people think of "someone" (i.e. some preacher, an ordinary human being, on the hypothesis) recently-deceased as the Messiah on such a thin basis?

That's a hell of a lot of embellishment over "of the line of David, died for our sins, was buried, rose on the third day". Beyond that, you have no basis to distinguish possible "embellishment" from possible "creation".

But on the other hand what you do find (according to scholars - one scholar dealing with one aspect here, the other dealing with another aspect there, but none of them except people like Price seeing the whole incredibly shrinking picture) is a bunch of stuff cobbled from other, known sources.

So are we to believe that this person (ex hypothesi an ordinary human being known personally to some of the early Christians) who was remarkable enough to inspire devotion as being the Son of God right from the get-go, had a life and teaching that nobody bothered to remember any details about at the time, other than the "basics"? This goes against everything we know about religious devotion. Religious people treasure the very dust under their beloved avatar's feet, the crumbs, the tidbits of their story. (Ananda remembered NEARLY EVERY FUCKING WORD of Gotama Siddhartha's preaching, and noted times and places he visited, people he talked to, etc - and those teachings were recited and preserved as best and as meticulously as Buddhist could do, for centuries. Yet Christians had to make stuff up, when it came to "what Jesus said"???)

That this is so can be seen from the proliferation of things like "infancy gospels" and "holy artefacts", later on. So later Christians behaved according to religious type but early Christians didn't. Why? Because he was so remarkable that they were bowled over? But then if he was so remarkable why didn't he make a bigger splash at the time? Even if he was a trickster, like say someone who had received yogic training and had been able to fake death by reducing his lifesigns to imperceptibility, why did he only appear thereafter to a few friends? (Ah but of course, it's later discovered that he appeared to 500 roman soldiers (see discussion re. Acts of Pilate in another thread) )

I'm sorry but none of this fits with someone known personally to anybody. It fits totally with a divine avatar believed to have been on earth in the not-too-distant past, but not with someone known personally to anybody.

archibald

You think? Seriously, people around here to stop saying that other people's hypotheses are conjecture. I think we're all doing it. :]

It is very plausible. You, as I keep reminding you (politely) are asking for more than we should expect, in the circumstances. You'll be asking for photos next. :]

Btw, it's not a 'great dilemma'. It's not even a dilemma. Repeatedly saying that you think it is one, won't make it so. To you personally, it feels odd. That's fine. That's about all you can say. To a lot of other people, it doesn't.

There are reasons to think that 'Jesus sayings and doings' were what was passed on orally to begin with.




?

There's embellishment. What's the prob? Jewish prophets claimed to be from a notable descendancy? Wow. Controversial. As for 'died for our sins, was buried', that's the part you need to come up with a better hypothesis for than 'someone found a secret message in a vague (non-messianic) OT verse and brought it into play, going on to actually believe that it had happened (recently, not far away, IMO). Now that, is what I would call 'proper' conjecture.


Not that old chesnut.

Yes, everybody accepts that the methodologies cannot provide certainty. Big deal. Everyone is working with the same material and methodologies.


I think it more likely that there is a mixture of sources. By no means are they all known. I think Price overstates this. I haven't read that book, but I've read his monograph on Mark. I didn't find anywhere near enough persuasive evidence that it was cobbled together from other known sources. Not at all. Looked to me like it was partly that.


How much bio detail do we have for the average ancient Jewish or Christian prophet, George?

Regarding Buddha, I'm no expert but I read;

'The primary sources for the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are in a variety of different and sometimes conflicting traditional biographies. These include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā.[8] Of these, the Buddhacarita is the earliest full biography, an epic poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa, and dating around the beginning of the 2nd century CE.[8] '
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

Isn't that approximately 600-700 years after his supposed lifetime?

I take it Ananda is one of the supposed disciples?

How are you able to tell what was written about Buddha during the first few decades?

And are you taking into account That Jesus may have had a very short 'preaching time', before getting the chop, and arguably nearly all of this while sticking to a small out of the way backwater?




Personally, I'm not even sure he appeared alive again, to anyone.

I honestly don't get most of your concerns.


You've lost me.


Well, I already know that this is what you feel, but I can't say I find it convincing.

By the way, I think you should provide more info on your (Bauer's) model of the order of events. Andrew Criddle made an interesting reply.

GakuseiDon

This was discussed back in 2008 on this board (then known as IIDB). That was a heyday period here, when we had Ben C Smith, Jeffrey Gibson, Amaleq13 and others regularly slapping Doherty around a bit (with Doherty, as now, claiming attacks on his integrity, smear campaigns ad nauseum).

Here is a typical link dealing with your point above:
http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives...=248534&page=9

As Ben C Smith puts it:

So the pivotal event is the Resurrection. Jesus has been resurrected, so that means the End Times have started. It's not "a remarkable man who is Son of God has appeared, gave us teachings, performed mircales; thus it means the End Times have started."

You keep wanting to read the Gospel Jesus into Paul, i.e. the idea that Jesus was thought of as anything more than a prophet or healer during his life (like the Ebionites apparently did). You need to step back, and read Paul for Paul.

One remarkable thing the early epistles say about Jesus (other than he ascended to heaven) was that he was sinless, or resisted temptation, or was perfected somehow, and was obedient to God unto death. It was this obedience that led to his exhaltation by God. This makes him more of a "John the Baptist" figure than a Dionysus or Hercules type figure.

But, like Doherty, you simply should stop expecting Paul to refer to a Gospel Jesus, and then find meaning when he doesn't. It's fine when you are arguing against evangelical Christians, but they are few on this board.

mountainman

If one runs with such a hypothesis how does one confront the reality of the evidence of the statements made by all the "Early Church Fathers" and "Eusebius"? In other words, if one assumed your example to be provisionally true, then one has to logically assume that Eusebius has deliberately fabricated material about the HJ. Where does it start and end?

mountainman

Does anyone know from which illuminated manuscript of the 4th century the above image is sourced?

Toto

I don't think Ben Smith or Amaleq13 did a lot of slapping - they were too polite. Jeffrey Gibson spluttered a lot about credentials.

The Resurrection cannot be shown to be historical. Are you trying to say that the pivotal event was someone's belief that there was a resurrection, but that Jesus' character on earth was irrelevant to that belief?

Paul doesn't say much of anything about Jesus' life between his birth and death - and in particular he doesn't identify him as a healer or prophet.

You are quoting Hebrews, not a Pauline letter.