steve_bnk

It would appear the short answer to the OP is no we can't.

stephan huller

I've lost track of the point at which the discussion actually had any value. No one has explained why Clement of Alexandria's point of view is of less value than Bart Ehrman's. Clement at most was three or four generations removed from the death of the evangelist. How can anyone claim that his testimony that Jesus was a divine hypostasis is valueless? This is what is so fucking annoying about the modern person.

Let's take Diogenes the Cynic as an example (I haven't made Bart Ehrman aware of Clement's opinion; many of the other participants in this forum are too stupid to bring forward as examples), I've just told him that someone living in Alexandria three or four generations from Mark the evangelist thought the gospel witnessed Jesus as something more than human. What was his response?

Basically - why should anyone care what Clement of Alexandria says?

Now Diogenes is a rational participant in this forum. He has a functioning brain which more than average abilities to reason through an argument. How could Clement doesn't impress him? How come it doesn't even register a 'maybe there is something to the mythical Jesus argument?'

Answer - I can't possibly figure this one out. Maybe it is because he doesn't believe in God. He believes that men exist so he is naturally prejudiced towards possibilities that might be true over those things which he deems totally impossible and not worthy of consideration.

He keeps going back to the idea that 'Son of Man' is a messianic title - not true. Or that 'Son of God' means messiah - also not true.

I think it just comes down to the basic problem that Diogenes can't see past the problem that the gospel must be a historical report - which it certainly wasn't. It was just the 'instruction manual' for the liturgy which was established at Alexandria. This is certainly how Clement imagined it. Which brings us back to the basic problem of why Bart Ehrman's testimony is deemed to be more convincing than Clement of Alexandria when it comes to what was the literary purpose of the original evangelist (and not - whether there really was a Jesus - which is impossible to ever know).

stephan huller

I find steve bnk's insight of less value than even mountainman or aa. He keeps bringing everything back to the ABSTRACT question of whether there was a Jesus rather than what the literary intention of the evangelist was (which is the only question that possibly has any relevancy here).

We can't know whether there was a Jesus independent of Mark's original testimony. The only question that matters is what did Mark intend to convey and I believe even that question must be further limited to what did his original text convey broadening that scope to include what Clement of Alexandria and the earliest Alexandrians understood his gospel to be (rather than simply what did the Catholic Gospel of Mark say).

Cosaert went through all the citations of Clement of Mark and basically limited the text to Mark chapter 10 (which is impossible). The only explanation here is that many of the passages which are commonly taken to be from Matthew, Luke or John are really from the Alexandrian Gospel that Clement thought was 'according to Mark.' Even Irenaeus broadens the possibilities of what was in 'according to Mark' (AH 4.2). I don't expect everyone to accept that hypothesis even though it is the only possible explanation for Clement's apparent limited interest in Mark (also Clement's apparent following of a Johannine chronology for the Passion narrative- how is this possible? Is the inference then that there was no original association of Mark with Alexandria?)

Diogenes the Cynic

Clement doesn't impress me with regards to the meaning of the "son of man" sayings because he had no way of knowing what they originally meant. He had no contact with the movement which produced those sayings, and he had no contact even with Mark. Why would a man living in Egypt a century after the crucifixion of an utterly obscure Palestinian preacher in Judea be able to shed any light on what that figure might have meant by what he might have said in an unfamiliar language a hundred years ago?

steve_bnk

I don't have a clue as to the point or place you are trying to get to. From your bio I don't know if mystca Hudiasm infers the supernatural. What is it you are seeking to prove or validate? The supernatural?

Hypostasis could be interrpeted psychologicaly as aspects of human nature/spirituality. I'd venture all mytholgy has a visible face and an esoteric hidden meaning. Tibetan Buddhism is a good example.

There is no resiolution as to what terms like son of god meant. Something I got from discussion with Christians, the Holy Spirit is a feeling one gets from reading scrpiture and ptractice of the faith. In her book Mother Teresa describes it as somethung tangible thyat is passed and sghaerd among nelievers.

Chrtianity is a mystical tradition. while I may not belive in the supernatiral, I dio belive there are psycho-physical aspects of the practice.

I was sitting next to a Jew on a plane, pre terrorism. He took out a small block with symbols on it and tied it to his fprhead. He put a black cloth over his head. He was transporting himself to the presence of god. Real god or not, he had an experience.

All of Christianity maps to an experience. I''ve been liistening to the late Mahelia Jackson sing Negro gospel. It rocks, and one gets a sense of the old time Negro Christian expeience. It is all about feelings, not meaning. If you don't get that then I don't see how religion can be understood.

In one of her songs she sings about god's children going to heaven, wearing shoes,and being able to walk and talk freely. It would sound silly if you did not make the connection to slavery and Jum Crow with barefoot blacks and limited movement and speech.

Diogenes the Cynic

Incidentally, I thought it went without saying that supernatural claims do not merit any credible consideration. I assume the impossible is impossible until proven otherwise.

Gorit Maqueda

That evolution would be clear if we hadn't Paul. Hebrews, Peter and the like. But we have them. Do we ignore them?

stephan huller

I'm sorry but this is downright stupid. Acts is subsequent to Marcion. Right? So where is the evidence that the Marcionites corrupted this belief in Jesus as a Jewish messiah? It can't be done. Marcion trumps Acts. So what are you left with? Your analysis of the four canonical gospels? Mark's baptism of Jesus by John does not help support your case. John baptized many people. Only with Jesus did something important happen. We know from the Anonymous Treatise and Justin and many other sources that the 'something special' manifested itself from Jesus's own person - i.e. that because he was already divine fire appeared in the water.

I ask again - why do you insist in drawing all your information from these counterfeit gospels? Justin et al make clear that there was another gospel used in an earlier period where Jesus's divinity causes fire to appear in the water. So once again your argument about Mark is discarded.

Now we are still left with Clement of Alexandria and his Jesus the supernatural God and a parallel tradition among the Marcionites and other sects which predate the Catholic tradition. There simply is no basis to the historical Jesus. Your evidence only testifies to what happened AFTER Jesus was already established as a God.

stephan huller

It must be late but I am finding Diogenes's argument more annoying especially this one:

It's a fucking text. We aren't dealing with photographic evidence or multiple eyewitness testimony about Jesus. Just what one particular individual claimed he 'saw' - either through a trance state or eyewitness testimony - about this figure 'Jesus.' To argue that we have to discount the supernatural might be worth something if we had multiple and independent attestations of the same narrative, but we just have one original witness and a handful of forgeries of that original account.

This is so infuriating. We have a witness in Clement who says Jesus was a superhuman God based upon a variant gospel used in his Alexandrian tradition but you insist on taking our gospels alone and merely discounting the supernatural. How are you going to give the Jesus is God argument a fair shake if you start off by discounting all evidence for the supernatural???

That's like starting off with the question whether Asian food is as good as American food but adding the caviat that you will discount any dish that has rice in it!

Vorkosigan

GMark says he went out to the Mt of Olives. Not to some place below it. They then go to Gethsemane, a place with no known location whose siting on or near the Mt of Olives has to be read into the text, an assumption of the reader. They were not in some tent village, that is pure fantasy on your part. This is exactly the kind of freewheeling invention you claim to deplore when you say mythicists do it.

More freewheeling invention -- it is easy to invent plausible why-stories for either fiction or history. Why did Frodo put on the Ring at the end? Fed up with traveling was he!

The whole thing is an excellent example of construction from the OT. The entire sequence of going out to Gethsemane/Mt of Olives in Mk 14 parallels 2 Sam 15-16. The details are also built out of the OT. There's no history in it whatsoever -- except what the reader decides to inject into it, like fantasies of tent cities, for example.

Vorkosigan