No Robots

You're right. It's great to explore ideas. But when it is done in a public forum, it invites opposition. Perhaps that is the way to go for mythicists, through debate. From my Hegelian perspective, the dialectic between mythicism and traditional Christianity is bound to produce the New Christian synthesis, a thoroughly naturalistic, Christocentric programme for human social organization. The problem for me is the synthesis has no real part in the debate itself. So, I just sit around making inane comments, I guess.:frown:

No Robots

It's just making history, man.

FIFY

Ferryman to the Dead

And just what action do mythicists take? What do you purpose we do? Burn people at the stake? Maybe a murdering Christian crusade to stamp out all the Jesus followers? People would not be trying so hard to disprove the Mythicists Position if it did not hold some truth. Fact of the matter is that Jesus was a replica of most every other Pagan Sun God in history. Tell you what you do? Look at all the pictures of Jesus, what do you see behind his head? The Sun. The crown of thorns is a sun representation. Man has held the sun in high regard ever since the start of time. Why? Fear of the dark. Always praying the sun would rise agian to light their way. Disprove the MP by contemporary evidence, primary sources, valid eyewitness accounts not second hand hearsay then maybe a case can be made for Jesus.

spin

Why did you suddenly bring in mythicism? Have you known me in all the time you've been here ever to espouse the notion? I talked above about the infidel position--which merely doesn't start from a position of belief in its attempts to understand religious matters--not having had sufficient opportunity to grapple with all the implications of the religious material due to lack of time and organization.

And need there be a synthesis of the opposing forces? "Heresy" can be totally uprooted, can't it?


spin

GakuseiDon

Yes, one that they believed was historical, one who lived in around 30 CE.

Yes. They considered their god-man was historical.

Yes, a myth that was thought to be historical.

Yes, one that they thought was historical.

That's right, one that they thought was historical. One they thought was crucified under Pilate.

No we don't, not for the question of historicity. For details about Jesus, yes.

For details about Jesus, yes. But not for the question of historicity.

Yes, it is. Or at least" "Does the evidence from Paul and how the Gospels were treated indicate that people thought that Jesus historically existed"? The answer is "yep".

I agree it is irrelevant.

If you mean "a fleshly sublunar realm in which the myths of the gods took place", then no-one ever thought that way as far as I can tell from the literature.

Yes. It's about someone they appeared to believe actually existed.

No we don't. We just have to understand whether they thought that the character was historical. When Anne Rice wrote her book about the life of Jesus, did she make up whole conversations, events, characters? Yep. Did she treat Jesus as just a man? Nope. Did she think that Jesus was historical? Yep.

Knew someone who knew someone? How about Papias, as below?

Papias provides the vague connection (my bold):

For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth; nor in those who related strange commandments, but in those who rehearsed the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and proceeding from truth itself. If, then, any one who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings,--what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord's disciples: which things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.

Papias knew people who knew the disciples, and even gives them by name. Papias also mentions the fate of Judas, indicating that this was the historical Jesus he was talking about, unless you want to propose that Judas betrayed the mythical Jesus (and why not?)

Gurugeorge, I went on a bit to show you that you are blurring two separate questions:
1. The historicity of the character
2. The history of the character

The evidence suggests that Jesus was historical. But there isn't much verifiable evidence to tell us about him. I agree with Price that Jesus may as well have been mythical (in the non-existing sense, not in the nonsensical "sublunar god" sense), but I can't see any reasonable person denying that "Jesus was probably historical" as the most likely answer, after thoroughly checking the alternatives.

GakuseiDon

The first two are not indicators of ahistoricity (unless you are claiming that they are?) For the last one: the epistles appear to show that they thought that Jesus lived on earth and then went into the heavens. So of course there are positive indications that Paul thought Jesus was in heaven after the resurrection. The question is, what did Paul think about the pre-risen Jesus? It is best summarized here:

Rom 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;
4 And declared [to be] the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead

Paul thought that Jesus was declared as "Son of God" at his resurrection. Before that, he was a man, a descendant of David. Now, if you have evidence that non-earthly beings could be "seed of David", etc, let's see it. By all means, feel free to use Doherty's books, website, etc. But let's see YOU actually getting down and digging out the evidence for yourself, if you want to claim something about Paul. If you only fop people off with "read the book" when responding to your own claims, then you are no better than Dave31.

Thank you. I hope that one day you might try to support your thesis as well.

I'm also looking forward to his book.

aa5874

The problem with the Pauline writers is that they were supposed to be contemporaries of Jesus but did not ever claim they SAW Jesus alive.

They did the opposite.

They claimed they SAW Jesus after he was RESURRECTED.

Toto

Anne Rice thinks that Jesus was a historical figure because that is the convention in our culture, and the requirement of her (then) religion.

Can you say that first century Christians had the same definition of "historical" that we use? We think of historical as a materialistic. Did early Christians confine themselves to the material world?

This is indirect evidence that Papias said he knew people who are identified elsewhere as the followers of Jesus. But there is no way to know if that Jesus was a historical or a spiritual entity, or if Papias had any evidence that Jesus was historical, or if Eusebius or Apollinaris of Laodicea reported his words correctly.

Judas is identified as a traitor. I don't see a specific indication that he betrayed Jesus, and the account of his death appears to be a tall tale.

In short, there is no clue here about a historical Jesus.

This goes way beyond the evidence.

Toto

Unless, of course, those allegedly positive indications are Catholic interpolations meant to bring the epistles into compliance with Christian orthodoxy.

GakuseiDon

You've said something similar before, and I'm not sure I understand. What was the First Century Christians' definition of "historical", and how does it differ to the one we use?

Named disciples of the Lord, Judas the traitor... but not even a clue about a historical Jesus, eh? OK, what about Irenaeus:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/polycarp.html

But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time, a man who was of much greater weight, and a more stedfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics.

Irenaeus claims to have known Polycarp, who claims to have conversed with many who had seen Christ. What's your opinion on this?

I think "Jesus was probably historical" fits very nicely with the evidence, even after recognising that what we have has passed through a filter of centuries of orthodoxy,