freetrader

delete this.

freetrader

I need to correct an error a few posts back. I said:

". . . this spitting example is only from Mark's gospel, not any of the others. These were not typical -- there are only two stories, both from Mark, of the spitting, and it doesn't say he spit in the person's eyes or face . . ."

There are a total of three healing scenes where Jesus is said to have spit. In addition to the two in Mark, there is also John 9:6. I came across this note: "The curative value of saliva was highly esteemed in antiquity." No doubt, this common belief was picked up on by these two gospel writers.

The fact that there are so many of these healing stories in the NT and yet only three have this spitting element is actually an indication that the NT healing stories are genuine, because if these were stories were entirely fictional, the spitting should be more common.

Toto

What is the basis for your claim? The consensus of historians is that William Tell was legendary. Who are you to deny this?

<snip baseless speculation>

It seems that you are going to deny any evidence I have, so my inability to persuade you proves nothing.


These are not crackpots. These are recognized scholars.

It is part of a pattern of evidence or lack of evidence.

Lao-tzu is pretty universally regarded as legendary, so I don't know what your point is.

<snip pointless missing the point>


What is your evidence for these assertions?

Sources for this knowledge?

Well, you're still stuck on Bastille Day. Perhaps you will get around to this by Christmas.

aa5874

Spitting miracles appear to be common anecdotal miracles in the 1st century. The mythical God Serapis told Vespasian in a dream to spit into the eyes of a blind man. The myth Serapis cured the man's blindness through the spit of the Emperor.

See Suetonius "Twelve Ceasars".

And further, the veracity of a miraculous event is not confirmed or augmented by quantity, but by credibility and corroboration.

The fabricators of the Jesus the God/man stories claimed Jesus did miracles simply because in antiquity Gods were believed to have the ability to perform miracles.

freetrader

July 15, 2009 #6016554 / #151
spamandham

All the scenarios that have been presented are ones which would make Jesus a one-of-a-kind unique case in history. I've named what the factors are that made it easy for all the other reputed miracle-workers to become mythologized though the alleged acts they are credited with may have been fictitious. All of them were highly reputed celebrities during their lives, or in the case of some mythological figures, they became mythologized over many centuries.

Such mythologizing is how a person becomes transformed from a mortal human into a miracle-working god. He had to be a famous celebrity or person of high repute in order for this to happen. No one can cite another example of a nobody becoming transformed into a miracle-worker.


No, I'm not demanding "proof" -- I've made it clear that we're just talking about probability, or reasonable possibility. I'm asking for a plausible hypothetical scenario how the miracle stories could have gotten attached to Jesus without turning him into a one-of-a-kind unique special case in history.

Such stories do not get attached to someone of no repute. It does not happen. If you think it does, then give an example from history of a nobody who got mythologized into a miracle-worker, other than by perhaps a dozen or so crackpots. What's an example of a miracle-worker of wide repute, having hundreds of followers, who had no wide recognition or status or a long career in which to accumulate these followers with his deeds or charisma?

They're in the improbable category, meaning one should be more skeptical. But with enough evidence that they really happened, it becomes more probable that the events did happen than a scenario of how such evidence (anecdotes) could accumulate without the accounts being true.


No, such a simplistic dogma (miracle events absolutely cannot happen, no matter how much evidence there is) cannot be imposed universally. The possibility that a "miracle" event happened has to be left open, if there are sufficient anecdotes attesting to the event. It's a judgment call where to draw the line and say "this much evidence is necessary" and short of this, the claim has to be rejected as fiction.

Furthermore, one is not required to pronounce for all time that the event did or did not happen. Other choices are:
A. The event is a possibility, but not likely -- we don't know.
B. It is probable, or at least a 50-50 possibility, but we don't know.
C. It is highly improbable.
And so on. We don't have to draw a line in the sand and demand that everyone agree that it's either this or that. We can leave it open as a possibility, and one can reasonably believe either way, because we don't know enough to determine with certainty.


It's really not about "how Christianity formed" basically. Perhaps it would have formed anyway, even without this Jesus figure, probably with some differences in the outcome. Rather the question is: "Why did this new religion choose to make a god out of this nobody figure and mythologize him into a miracle-working deity?"

It's interesting how so many posters here claim to have answered this question, or that someone answered it, when obviously they have not. Why not just admit that it's a peculiar case? To say "Well every religion is unique" totally dodges the question. If the Jesus case is not really unique, or if there are a hundred or thousand other cases of something equally unique, then give an example.

Sure, every speck of dust is unique in its own way. In that sense, the word "unique" might just as well be eliminated from the vocabulary -- if EVERYTHING or EVERY case is unique, then what does "unique" mean? In that case, anything that is not unique is really the most "unique" of all because it is the only object in the universe that doesn't have the quality of being unique. Surely abusing the language like this is not the way to settle the argument.

(I.e., not unique). But Jesus was not a "leader" at this time, that is, he was not recognized, had no wide reputation, minus the miracle stories. It IS unique to idolize a nobody who has no status or reputation in the culture. Nor was he an "icon" in the period of 30-50 AD minus the miracle stories. It is totally unique and unprecedented to idolize a nobody and form a religion from this nobody.

It is normal and non-unique to idolize a popular celebrity who has a wide reputation and start a new religion from this popular figure. But this does not explain the Jesus case.

aa5874

The NT is supposedly filled with people who were no-bodies or had no bodies.

The apostle called Peter was a nobody who supposedly did miracles and could miraculously talk several languages through the reception of a Holy Ghost of God.

Peter raised the dead and healed people with his shadow. See Acts of the Apostles.

Jesus and his disciples were fundamentally '"nobody".

The claim that Jesus did miracles was not unique at all.

freetrader

July 14, 2009 #6016609 / #152
Lugubert


I guess this means the gospel writer(s) thought the miracle acts did violate physical laws.

Perhaps so, but what's important is what happened, not what the writers philosophized or imagined about the event.

The healing acts could have happened similarly as described without necessarily violating physical laws. They simply happened by some manner not yet known by medical science yet still totally compatible with the laws of physics.

aa5874

You need to provide the evidence for the miracles of Jesus.

In the NT, Jesus used spit to make people see. Where is the evidence that such a miracle can occur?

Medical Science may not be able to explain how certain medication works but they have documented their effectiveness.

What has been documented about spit and blindness. What is its cure rate?

ZERO or less.

freetrader

July 20, 2009 #6023178 / #155
spamandham


You mean do something unprecedented, like invent a deity from a nobody, which had never been done before or since. Or rather, invent a new deity from a nobody and succeed in selling this new deity to thousands of believers.

Yes, people can conjure up something new and unprecedented. But even so, they do it for some reason, and if they're selling this novelty to others, the buyers have to have some reason or motivation for accepting it.

Without any reason or logic or point to it -- no, people don't buy some new deity figure someone invented out of the blue, from nowhere. It's not that they "cannot" do it, but they don't, or they wouldn't.

To exaggerate a little, you could go around selling a new religion, in which people are asked to roll on the ground, bark like a dog, scream some slogan like "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy insnide" and then sit on a pumpkin for 30 minutes reciting the Gettysburg Address backwards and dip their head in a bucket of paint thinner etc. etc. -- but I think the odds that people would do this are less than someone performing a miracle healing act.

At some point, the chances that people (hundreds of them) would actually do some crazy thing are less than the odds that a miracle cure could be performed. We have enough anecdotes of "miracle" cures that there has to be left open the possibility that it actually happened.

So it's not a lack of creativity, but just that people do not do certain weird things, and an example of such a thing is to mythologize a nobody into a miracle-working god. Possibly in small numbers, like only a dozen or so crackpots -- yes, maybe that. But not thousands. This is perhaps less probable than the possibility that the nobody in question actually did perform those acts (and thus became a somebody that got mythologized).


If you leave it at that, yes, maybe so. But if you add to the 2nd option that thousands of people then took the plunge, adopted this nobody as a miracle-worker for no reason, out of the blue, and started worshipping this nobody as a god -- that is ludicrous enough to make it less probable than the first option.

Yes, it is possible that one or two crackpots, or even half a dozen, might get caught up in this stunt somehow, but it is out of the question to suppose that thousands would slurp up this new Instant Deity from nowhere popped on them out of someone's imagination.


But many do cite other cases, or alleged cases, and argue that just because someone made claims of miracles doesn't make it so. So it's necessary to look at those examples and note that none of them is analogous to the case of Jesus.

So the CLAIMS that he did these acts are evidence that he did them, even though such claims are not always true and one is skeptical. Since the case of Jesus is so different from all those other cases, the claims that he did these acts does constitute evidence (not proof) that they happened.


No, just improbable. Requiring a higher standard of scrutiny.


Yes, and the numerous examples from the gospel accounts ARE extraordinary evidence. What does "extraordinary" mean if not that there are no other examples of the same thing, or no other examples that are comparable to this case? What would be another example that is comparable to the accounts of the Jesus miracle healings?

I don't think you can get away from the need to look at other reputed cases. If the argument is given "But there are dozens of other cases, and each case is "unique" in its own way, and you could claim for any of them that they are different from the others, and so the case of Jesus is not special after all" and so on, then it is necessary to look at all the other cases that anyone puts forward. When this is done, it turns out that there are not other cases, and the case of Jesus is "extraordinary" in a way that the others are not.

If you demand "extraordinary evidence" then you're already comparing the Jesus case with all other reputed miracle-worker examples, and if you say the case of Jesus is NOT "extraordinary" then you are caught in the trap of examining the other reputed cases.

aa5874

This is totally illogical and contradictory. How can claims where their veracity is questioned become evidence of themselves? All claims of miracles by Jesus must be corroborated by some external credible source.

And miracles cannot be deemed to have occurred because they are unique or different.

And, again, because you have no source or evidence for the miracles of Jesus you simply declare that the miracles of Jesus were different so did occur. What non-sense.