Steven Carr

According to Bart Ehrman, there is idiosyncratic... and then there is taking a passage that contains the word Messiah and imagining that it refers to the Messiah.

That is way beyond idiosyncratic, according to Bart. We can rule that out as being at all possible.

The fact remains that Bart scoffs at the very idea that Christians could think of Jesus as a crucified Messiah.

And then claims it must have happened. This is self-contradictory by him.

But it did happen. Christians really did invent the concept of a crucified Messiah, just like other people invented the concept of a castrated god.

Bart's only retort is to claim that you need a crucifixion before a crucified Messiah can occur to you (although he is of course unable to explain how a crucifixion can turn somebody into a Messiah having scorned and mocked people who think a crucified Messiah was even thinkable)

I guess you need a real castration before the idea of a castrated god can occur to you.

Steven Carr

I am grateful to Ophelia Benson for her kindly pointing out the huge leaps of faith in Bart's scholarship.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfl...03/the-unseen/


Talking about things for which there is no evidence....



'....that our surviving accounts, which began to be written some forty years after the traditional date of Jesus’s death, were based on earlier written sources that no longer survive. But they obviously did exist at one time, and they just as obviously had to predate the Gospels that we now have.'

Where is Ehrman's evidence that Mark's Gospel was based on earlier written sources?

In many ways, he is correct, as Mark's Gospel is often based on the Old Testament. These predate the Gospels....

How does Bart get to wave invisible documents at mythicists, claiming 'Eat these!' and then say that real, existing texts with the word 'Messiah' in them could never be taken as referring to the Messiah?


You don't like invisible documents as evidence? No problem.

Bart also has oral tradition for you to suck up.

'Instead, they are based on oral traditions. These oral traditions had been in circulation for a very long time before they came to be written down. This is not pure speculation. Aspects of the surviving stories of Jesus found in the written Gospels, themselves based on earlier written accounts, show clearly both that they were based on oral traditions (as Luke himself indicates) and that these traditions had been around for a very long time…...'

And where is the evidence for this oral tradition? (It is not PURE SPECULATION, wow. That makes it pretty solid in anybody's book)

It was written down in the invisible documents that were also the basis for the Gospels.

Choke on that, mythicist suckers....

With these Gospels being based on earlier reports and being independently corroborated and the sort of works historians dream of, it is a little surprising that they contain stories of demons, Satans, Moses returning from the dead, and resurrected saints appearing from their graves and wandering through Jerusalem.


Sure , they might contain a myth or two,perhaps three or four, but they are still based on solid oral traditions and reports written long before the Gospels were written. Honest. You can trust me. I'm a scholar.

Diogenes the Cynic

Ehrman doesn't say that Mark necessarily contains prior written sources, but cites the work of Joel Marcus in support of Mark using a preexisting passion narrative. From the book:

Steven Carr

'Could have'? 'Often thought'.

I imagined Ehrman was doing a takedown of mythicism, and he has to claim his knock down evidence 'could have' existed, and it is 'often thought' that all this trashing of mythicism is based on something solid.

Where is the evidence for Q?

And we know Mark used the Old Testament as a source.

Is Ehrman really playing pass-the-parcel apologetics, claiming he is not presenting the evidence in this book, but if you read some other guy, then you will find the evidence (which 'could have' existed, and is 'often thought' to have existed?'

And how does Ehrman get to wave invisible documents around claiming they are evidence?

His evidence doesn't exist.

Here is a review of Marcus's commentary 'What particularly appeals to me is the power of Joel Marcus's rooting of the Marcan Jesus in the Jewish background. The key source is of course the Old Testament, but the intertestamental and rabbinic literatures are shown to contribute to authenticating almost every sentence of Mark's picture of Jesus. Marcus strongly links many Marcan texts to Genesis (especially ch.1) and Exodus (passim - the Crossing, the Mosaic role, the manna, the `temptation'). Exodus, like Gen 1, prefigures Christians: a new creation, new people of God through baptism and the manna/Marcan-bread-multiplications/Eucharist connection). Everywhere, Mark's Jesus echoes/fulfils Psalms, Isaiah (massively: proto-, deutero- and trito-), Daniel and 1 Enoch. Usefully, Marcus frequently quotes the exact words of the LXX (the pre-Christian Jewish translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek, used both by diaspora Jews and by the first Christian communities and the NT writers), words that Mark in his turn uses when describing a parallel feature of the person and activity of Jesus.

Of course, all modern exegetes make such relevant connections and emphases, reading back the New Testament story into the Old Testament and reading forward the Old Testament into the New, but Marcus does it splendidly.'

Wow! All those sources predate the Gospels. Ehrman was right all along.

steve_bnk

Crucifixtion was a standard form of execution.

It could be said the 'executed Jesus' instead.

The common icon of a cross with a hanging suffering Jesus is part of the Christian cult of pain and suffering worship. Suffering on Earth leads to glory in heaven.

The Opus Dei wear pain braccelets around the thigh, a concealed crown of thorns. The last pope enjoyed a little self flagelation.

Christ crucified is the perfect symbol for the relgion.

If you look at it as liertaure and drama, the crucufixtion scenes are high drama with a great plot device.. JC shows forgiveness under great duress and faces his mortality apparently wavering, 'why have you foresaken me'. The story ends with the resurection, the hero returns.

The Acts is JC Part Two--The adventure Continues


In the old gangster movies executions were often the peak dramatic moments of the movie. A Cathoilc priest Pat Obrian begs the defiant to the end gangter, James Cagny, to show fear at the end to break the idol worship of a group of street kids.In the end Cagney is dragged screaming and begging for mercy to the electrtic chair and the kids in the end up seeing him as a coward that failed them. All things aere made right in the world.

I think many look too deep into the gosples. They are literature for a target demographic of the times.

andrewcriddle

There is a previous discussion of Richard Carrier's interpretation of 11Q13 at Richard Carrier blogpost: The Dying Messiah It is possible that Carrier is partly basing his argument on a speculative reconstruction of a fragmentary passage.


Andrew Criddle

steve_bnk

Romeo And Juliet was supposedly based on a folk tale. I'd be surprised if the gosples as we have them were origimal creations. We can see today how plot devices, themes, and forms are reused.

Crucifixtion would not have been invented, it was a form of state execuition. Makes perfect sense that JC was killed by crucifixation , and not the gas chamber, firing squad, or electric chaiir.

aa5874

Please, we don't have get into all kind of complex explanations.

It is claimed "nobody would invent a Crucified Messiah".

We just have to EXAMINE all Extant non-apologetic sources for a Crucified Messiah.

There is NO non-apologetic source that documents a Crucified Messiah called Jesus.

The Crucified Messiah called Jesus was INVENTED.

Somebody INVENTED Jesus the Crucified Christ.

Diogenes the Cynic

What is so implausible about the idea that a Galilean preacher once went nuts in the courtyard of the the Temple during Passover and got crucified for it? There is abundant independent attestation for that bare claim alone. The Romans executed would-be Messiahs all the time. Josephus (who did not like them) lists several others.

Saying the Romans in Jerusalem once took out a crazy preacher who was stirring up shit at the Temple and crucifying him has no more innate implausibility than saying the cops rousted a drunk at the mall during Black Friday. I fail to see why there is anything unbelievable about just that alone, and that alone is all you really need for an HJ.

Steven Carr

After all, Paul does say that the Romans were God's agents, sent to punish wrongdoers, and who did not bear the sword for nothing.

Paul knew what they did with nutcase preachers.....

Of course, when Jesus was crucified, his followers knew that that had made him the Messiah, because a first-century Jew would nore more have conceived of a crucified Messiah than they would have conceived of a crucified Roman Emperor.

Such is the logic of the historical Jesus theory.