Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Diogenes the Cynic · 03-23-2012, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bernard Muller

Yes, a sacrificed Messiah could have been invented (as the suffering servant of Isaiah

Is that not circular? One has to demonstrate that Isaiah's servant was liable to be invented, which means finding a close conceptual parallel in lore other that that of Abraham. Which may be a tall order.

I think Bernard just meant that Jews might hypothetically have re-invented the Messiah as a sacrificial figure in the image of the suffering servant, not that the servant itself was invented.

In point of fact, though, the suffering servant is an explicit metaphor ("you are my servant Israel"), not a literally alleged human being, so it is "invented" by definition.

hjalti · 03-23-2012, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes

I find the notion that Palestinian Jews in the Roman period would have, for no discernible reason, suddenly decided that they didn't want the Messiah to liberate them, but to be sacrificed for their sins instead completely unbelievable, personally.

Have you read the article "The dying Messiah" by Richard Carrier? Here's a short quote:

Quote:

A fragmentary pesher among the Dead Sea Scrolls explicitly identifies the servant of Isaiah 52-53 with the messiah of Daniel 9. This decisively confirms that this specific equation had already been made by pre-Christian Jews, as it exists not just in a pre-Christian text, but in this case a pre-Christian manuscript. The passage in question is in 11QMelch ii.18 (aka 11Q13). A pesher is an interpretive commentary on the OT that operates on the assumption that the OT text has hidden, second-level meanings (a view Christians shared, e.g. Rom. 16:25-26). Thus some pre-Christian Jews were already finding hidden "secrets" in the OT that basically are the Christian gospel: that Isaiah 52-53 is about the messiah whom Daniel 9 predicted will be killed (this same pesher also identifies Isaiah 61 as being about this same messiah, thus proving again that the Christians did not come to this conclusion post hoc either). See my analysis in NIF for why this pretty much gives away the game.

outhouse · 03-23-2012, 10:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarpedon

I didn't say I got it from Jewish philosophy. Judaism wasn't the only religion in the Middle East. To claim that Christianity is solely based on Judaism is absurd. The Roman Empire was an enormous melting pot of religions.

The Adonis myth is the most commonly proposed origin. You could also see it in the Osiris myth.

And the difference between a Messiah, Mythical Hero, and God are trivial. In the realm of mythmaking, the terms are virtually interchageable, and attributes of one are frequently swapped onto others. The idea that Jesus could be a man to some, a hero or prophet to others, and a god to the rest is so commonplace in the realm of mythology as to be trivial and uninteresting.

christianity started out as a sect of judaism, the jewish romans stole this and it took of to pagans/gentiles.

Diogenes the Cynic · 03-23-2012, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarpedon

I didn't say I got it from Jewish philosophy. Judaism wasn't the only religion in the Middle East. To claim that Christianity is solely based on Judaism is absurd. The Roman Empire was an enormous melting pot of religions.

I don't say that Christianity was solely based on Judaism. It obviously has pagan influence, but the paganism was added after the Judaism. The Jesus movement was a purely Jewish Messianic cult before it was anything else, and the crucifixion is ground zero for the formation of that cult. Everything radiates out from it. It's original, not accretive. The crucifixion was a Jewish claim before the pagans ever heard of it.

Quote:

The Adonis myth is the most commonly proposed origin. You could also see it in the Osiris myth.

I'm aware of them, and as they pertain to how they influenced interpretations of Jesus outside Palestine I'm wide open, but it's not plausible that Jews set out to create a Jewish Adonis. It's far more plausible and parsimonious to say that this was how pagans might have interpreted this Jewish Messiah figure. Pagans would not be aware of, or especially care about Jewish theological distinctions between their gods and their heroes. It's far more likely that they would interpret Jesus as akin to something they were familiar with (even if they didn't really grasp what a Jewish Messiah was) than that the Jews in Palestine, and right at the Temple in Jerusalem (the literal abode of Yahweh) would adopt a pagan god as their Messiah.

Even now, in 2012 CE, how likely is that your going to find any Orthodox Jews in Israel telling you that they expect the Messiah to be an avatar of Vishnu? It's not an exaggeration to say 1st century Palestinian Jews would find it just as alien to suggest that the Messiah would be a Greek sex god.

Sure there were pagans in Palestine, and particularly in Galilee, but theer are Hindus in Israel now, and Vishnuism isn't rubbing off any. Christianity, for that matter, is prevalent in modern Israel, yet the Jews still aren't buying the Jesus theory.

Quote:

And the difference between a Messiah, Mythical Hero, and God are trivial.

Not to a 1st century Palestinian Jew.

tanya · 03-23-2012, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sotto voce

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

'Crucified Messiah' is a theological term, like 'Archbishop'

An invention, a heretical term, born of political oppression.
Another invention, a heretical term, of humanist origin.
This is tautology. Lore does not become 'scripture' unless it is inerrant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul, I Corinthians 15:4, Byzantine version

και οτι εταφη και οτι εγηγερται τη τριτη ημερα κατα τας γραφας

So, sotto voce, is "γραφας" here, "inerrant", or "scripture"?

How does one differentiate "writings" or "holy writings"

άγιος γραφας (or, as in 2 Timothy 3:15 ιερα γραμματα )

from "scripture"--by context? What need have the authors of the word for holy, if all writings are understood to be "sacred"?

Who decides which text is inerrant? May I assign inerrancy to Catch 22?

How can we assign inerrancy to some verse of a collection which is known to include errors....?

Diogenes the Cynic · 03-23-2012, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hjalti

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes

I find the notion that Palestinian Jews in the Roman period would have, for no discernible reason, suddenly decided that they didn't want the Messiah to liberate them, but to be sacrificed for their sins instead completely unbelievable, personally.

Have you read the article "The dying Messiah" by Richard Carrier? Here's a short quote:

Quote:

A fragmentary pesher among the Dead Sea Scrolls explicitly identifies the servant of Isaiah 52-53 with the messiah of Daniel 9. This decisively confirms that this specific equation had already been made by pre-Christian Jews, as it exists not just in a pre-Christian text, but in this case a pre-Christian manuscript. The passage in question is in 11QMelch ii.18 (aka 11Q13). A pesher is an interpretive commentary on the OT that operates on the assumption that the OT text has hidden, second-level meanings (a view Christians shared, e.g. Rom. 16:25-26). Thus some pre-Christian Jews were already finding hidden "secrets" in the OT that basically are the Christian gospel: that Isaiah 52-53 is about the messiah whom Daniel 9 predicted will be killed (this same pesher also identifies Isaiah 61 as being about this same messiah, thus proving again that the Christians did not come to this conclusion post hoc either). See my analysis in NIF for why this pretty much gives away the game.

Bart Ehrman actually addresses this in his book - not the pesher directly, but Carrier's identification of the Messiah in Daniel. I'll quote Ehrman directly:

Quote:

Carrier’s argument becomes more interesting when he appeals to a passage in chapter 9 of the book of Daniel...Verse 26 then indicates that sixty-two weeks of years later an “anointed one” shall be “cut off and shall have nothing.” Carrier argues strenuously that this shows that the author of Daniel expected that the messiah (the “anointed one”) had to be killed (“cut off”). It is an interesting interpretation but highly idiosyncratic. You won’t find it in commentaries on Daniel written by critical Hebrew Bible scholars (those who are not fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals), and for some good reasons. To begin with, the anointed prince of verse 26 is obviously not the same as the anointed one mentioned in verse 25. Are they both princes, that is, traditional messianic figures? It is important to recall that the term anointed one was sometimes used as a technical term to refer to the future ruler of Israel. But it was not always used that way. Sometimes it simply referred to a king (Solomon) or a high priest or anyone who went through an anointing ceremony. That is, it was not only a technical term but also a common term. It is striking in this passage that the figure in verse 26 is not called a prince or “the” anointed one—that is, the messiah. And so, in one of the definitive commentaries written on Daniel, by Louis Hartman, a leading scholar of the Hebrew Bible (Carrier does not claim to be one; I don’t know offhand if he knows Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages in which the book was written), we read about verse 25: Although in the preexilic period [the period in Israel before the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE—four hundred or more years before Daniel was written] the Hebrew term masiah, the “anointed one,” was used almost exclusively of kings, at least in the postexilic period [after the people returned to the land years later] the high priest received a solemn anointing with sacred oil on entering his office…. It seems much more likely, therefore, that the “anointed leader” of 9:25 refers to the high priest, Joshua ben Josadak.15 In other words, 9:25 not only is not talking about a future messiah, it is talking about a figure from the history of Israel whom we already know about: the priest Joshua described elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (see, for example, Zechariah 6:11). Verse 26 is referring to someone who lived centuries later, but it too is not referring to a future messiah. As Hartman has argued—along with many, many other Hebrew Bible scholars—the reference to “an” (not “the”) anointed one in 9:26 “almost certainly” refers to another figure known from Jewish history, the high priest Onias III, who was deposed from being the high priest and murdered in 171 BCE, several years before the famous Maccabean revolt broke out, an event recounted in 2 Maccabees 4:1–38.16 The two who are called “anointed” are not future messiahs. They are both high priests who, in that role, were anointed. And they both lived in the past. Most important of all, this passage was never, so far as we know, interpreted messianically by Jews prior to the advent of Christianity. In other words, there were no Jews in the early 30s who would have resonated with the idea of a suffering messiah based on Daniel 9:26. No one thought that this is what the passage was about.

Basically, Ehrman is saying it doesn't matter if a pesher identifies the suffering servant with the 'anointed one' in Daniel 9, because that particular "messiah" was not THE Messiah, but a high priest who had been murdered. Not every use of the word 'anointed' necessarily refers to THE ANOINTED. Sometimes "the man upstairs" is just a man upstairs. This is one of those cases.

aa5874 · 03-23-2012, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Where did you get "sacrificed God" from (in any Jewish tradition) and what does that have to do with the Messiah?

The expected Jewish Messiah was a conqueror, not a redeemer of sins, not a scapegoat or a Paschal lamb, not a suffering servant, not a God and sure as hell not a crucified criminal (who would be "cursed" simply by virtue of being crucified whether he was guilty of any crime or not). The whole sine non qua of the Messiah was that he was first and foremost an ass kicker. He was Chuck Norris in sandals. The Jews weren't looking to the Davidic heir for forgiveness or spiritual salvation, but to kill the fucking Romans (and maybe take a few of those sell-out priests with them)....

EXACTLY, EXACTLY, EXACTLY. Jesus of the NT was the ANTI-CHRIST.

Jesus in gMARK wanted the JEWS to PERISH in their Sins.

Mark 4

Quote:

10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. 11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables...... lest at any time they should be converted , and their sins should be forgiven them.

Jesus NEVER said anything negative against the Romans but THREATENED the Scribes and Pharisees with damnation.

Matthew 23:27 KJV

Quote:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness...

Jesus claimed the Jewish authority was of their FATHER the DEVIL in gJohn.

John 8:44 KJV

Quote:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do .

He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

The Jesus of the NT is NOT really a Jewish Messiah and was most likely NOT invented by Jews.

The Jesus Messiah story was ANTI-JEWISH.

Jesus of the NT was the ANTI-CHRIST of the Jews.

In the NT, the ANT-CHRIST of the JEWS MUST GET KILLED by the JEWS.

Remarkably, Jesus TAUGHT his disciples he MUST get killed but will Resurrect.

Luke 23:4 KJV

Quote:

Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man.

The Romans FOUND NO FAULT with a Jewish Messiah???? That is UNHEARD of.

THE ROMANS FOUND NO FAULT WITH THE ANTI-CHRIST of the Jews in the NT.

The Jesus story was MOST likely INVENTED by a NON-JEWISH source.

Sarpedon · 03-23-2012, 11:20 AM

Oh, I'm sorry, did somebody prove that Jesus was a real person, the crucifiction actually happened, and that christianity was formed right there on the spot while I wasn't looking?

Are you suggesting that Jews were immune to absorbing other religious beliefs into their religion? Really? It seems to me that much of the bible is made up of tales of orthodox jews killing other jews who did just that. Heck, where did the idea of the Messiah even come from? It wasn't in the Pentuech. Couldn't they have imported the idea wholesale from other savior type religions?

Bernard Muller · 03-23-2012, 11:21 AM

to sotto voce,

Quote:

Is that not circular? One has to demonstrate that Isaiah's servant was liable to be invented, which means finding a close conceptual parallel in lore other that that of Abraham. Which may be a tall order.

My bad, I did not want to mean the suffering servant of Isaiah was invented or not. Just he was an example of a sacrificed one (for atonement of sins).
Actually I think that a man had just existed when the passage of Isaiah was written, as such:
He was well known in Jerusalem and probably victim to the 'elephant man' disease causing deformities which eventually killed him. The author used that as a precursor for the new divine order to come: the growing deformities were because that "servant" was absorbing the sins of the Jews then, making them eligible (if they did not sin again!) for the new Zion (a good reason to keep the Jewish faith! Even if you had been a sinner so far!).
As usual, it is better to interpret something "spiritual" from fact which was known to exist (providing some credibility) rather than to invent everything from scratch.
So, in my views, the diseased man (who eventually died) existed but his sacrifice for atonement of sins was invented.

aa5874 · 03-23-2012, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bernard Muller

...My bad, I did not want to mean the suffering servant of Isaiah was invented or not. Just he was an example of a sacrificed one (for atonement of sins).
Actually I think that a man had just existed when the passage of Isaiah was written, as such:
He was well known in Jerusalem and probably victim to the 'elephant man' disease causing deformities which eventually killed him. The author used that as a precursor for the new divine order to come: the growing deformities were because that "servant" was absorbing the sins of the Jews then, making then eligible (if they did not sin again!) for the new Zion (a good reason to keep the Jewish faith! Even if you had been a sinner so far!).
As usual, it is better to interpret something "spiritual" from fact which was known to exist (providing some credibility) rather than to invent everything from scratch.
So, in my views, the diseased man (who eventually died) existed but his sacrifice for atonement of sins was invented.

What INVENTIONS!!!! you have invented another Gospel because you don't like the others.

gMark's Jesus was NOT a SAVIOR and was NOT killed for Remission of Sins.

gMark's Jesus was KILLED to FULFILL prophecy.

You don't understand the FIRST Jesus story.

It is RATHER SIMPLE.

The Jews caused Jesus to be crucified AFTER the Roman Governor found NO fault with him.

Prophecy was FULFILLED.

The Jewish Temple MUST fall, Jerusalem would be made desolate and the KINGDOM of God will soon come with Apocalypse--Judgement Day.

Please SEE MARK 13.

The UNIVERSAL SAVIOR who was SACRIFICED is found in the LATER gJohn.

gMark's Jesus story was MERELY an EXPLANATION for the Fall of the Jewish Temple and to warn people that JUDGEMENT DAY is NEAR.

The Crucifixion of gMark's Jesus had NOTHING whatsoever to do with the END of the Law or UNVERSAL SALVATION through Sacrifice.

Mark 13 is the KEY to understanding the EARLIEST Jesus.

gMark's Jesus story was later changed to include UNiVERSAL SALVATION by Sacrifice of Jesus which was NOT predicted by the Prophets.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

03-23-2012, 11:20 AM	#18
Sarpedon Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Minnesota, the least controversial state in the le Posts: 8,446	Oh, I'm sorry, did somebody prove that Jesus was a real person, the crucifiction actually happened, and that christianity was formed right there on the spot while I wasn't looking? Are you suggesting that Jews were immune to absorbing other religious beliefs into their religion? Really? It seems to me that much of the bible is made up of tales of orthodox jews killing other jews who did just that. Heck, where did the idea of the Messiah even come from? It wasn't in the Pentuech. Couldn't they have imported the idea wholesale from other savior type religions?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.