aa5874

Can you point out a non-fictional miracle story in the NT with respect to Jesus.

According to the NT, Jesus miraculously created the world, his conception was a miracle and he could, by some miracle, transfigure or change his physical features even after he was supposed to be dead.

The ascension of Jesus is another miracle, his supposed dead body vanished but the Pauline writers miraculously heard from the dead or the risen and ascended Jesus.

Please, name a non-fictional miracle of Jesus.

freetrader

Response to storytime (#135):


A more credible way to protect Jews would have been to adopt a Greek or Roman hero and have this hero defend Jews and condemn anyone who did harm to Jews. A Greek or Roman hero would have had more authority and credibility with Paul's Gentile audience. This hero could have pronounced a curse on anyone who wages war against the Jews or threatens the Jewish temple or other symbol.

This might have worked to protect Jews from the Romans waging future war against them. Paul was smart enough to know that curses and prophecies have a way of getting fulfilled in people's minds one way or another. Also that a Greek or Roman hero would have been an easier sell.


A Greek/Roman hero could have just as easily been transformed into such a god-man savior, and would have sold better to Paul's intended audience.


This did cause him trouble. He could have spared himself this by creating his messiah figure out of a Greek/Roman hero.


No, a Greek or Roman name would better have served his purpose.


What promise? Paul was pitching to them an obscure nothing figure which had no credibility, absent the power demonstrated by his healing acts. What credible promise can come from a nobody with no status or recognition? A popular Greek or Roman hero figure would have been much more credible, and then a promise of future reward would be more believable and more assuring.

What craving did Romans have for any kind of "equality" with Jews? If there was a need to bring Jews and Romans together, let it be done through a Greek hero, through the process of hellenization already in progress. Jews and Romans were already being brought together within this new "religion" (hellenism).

Or why not a hellenized Roman celebrity like Cicero? Paul could have made Cicero into the new messiah, probably have him be crucified and martyred as a sacrifice for human salvation. In many ways he was heroic, defending the innocent against injustice, taking on the bullies. He had a far more distinguished career and far more recognition than the obscure nobody Galilean.


No, the opposite is the case, as I pointed out above. A Greek or Roman would have commanded more respect. Greeks and Romans had no reason to respect a crucified Galilean of no accomplishment or recognition. A Jewish hero meant nothing to them. A nobody barbarian who got crucified is exactly the worst choice for a hero to offer to Greeks and Romans.


Why should they feel beholden to Jews? Paul had no credibility with these Gentiles. He offered them nothing. Why should they believe anything he says to them or feel anything other than contempt for this fanatic and his subjective hallucinations? Greeks and Romans had no reason to feel spiritually inferior to the Jews.

The Greeks/Romans had their own philosophers and poets and historians, who offered ideas equal to those of the Jews. The heroes of Homer and Virgil and the myths were just as legitimate as the Jewish heroes and offered just as much in the way of moral instruction and lessons of life, plus they were just as historical, for what it's worth.


So then why did Paul choose an obscure Jewish hero to offer to the Gentiles? You're giving no reason why a Jewish hero would serve Paul's purpose better than a Greek/Roman hero. Everything you say above argues the opposite -- that a Greek/Roman hero would better serve his purpose of recruiting Gentiles.


What worked? Choosing an obscure barbarian unrecognized nobody to deify into a God? No, such nonsense could never work.

What worked was that Paul offered the Gentiles a hero figure they already knew about, the Jesus figure they knew from the oral tradition already in circulation, and all the apostle did was add his theology to that already-known hero figure.

He did not do something cock-eyed like offer them a new unknown alien figure he popped on them from nowhere. They already had the accounts of Jesus, in word-of-mouth form, and this included the miracle stories, which were credible enough that they took them seriously and so had respect for this hero figure being presented to them by Paul.

This makes sense of what happened. But to say that Paul popped a new unfamiliar messiah figure onto them out of nowhere is nonsense and not to be taken seriously. If he had wanted to invent some new savior figure for them, he would have chosen a Greek/Roman hero, which would have made much more sense and would have been received more favorably.

Yes, what Paul did worked. But the "it" that worked was that he theologized a hero figure they already identified with, because of the oral tradition they had which depicted him as a miracle healer with life-giving power and therefore someone of importance and authority.


They retained the Jewish traditions and scriptures because they wanted or believed Jesus to be a fulfillment of the ancient prophecies, thus tying him in with long-standing tradition. Any god figure is more convincing if he is seen as part of a long tradition going way back and having been promised by the ancient authorities.

But more basic is why they initially chose this messiah figure. Why they want to make him more convincing or connect him to the Jewish prophets is secondary to the question of why they picked him in the first place. And the best answer is that the accounts of him doing the healing acts were credible enough that they believed he had real power, and in trying to explain this power they deified him.


The answer is that there was no Roman or Greek hero who had similar credibility as someone with power. If they had not believed the miracle stories of Jesus were credible, because of the unusual supply of supporting anecdotes, then they would have paid no attention to Jesus the nobody, probably wouldn't have even known of his existence, and they would have a chosen a Greek or Roman hero instead, assuming they were shopping around for such a hero.

Toto

Only up to post 135?

freetrader, life is passing you by. Your long winded speculations haven't impressed anyone. You have one long argument from personal incredulity. You can't believe that the Jesus character could have been invented, but you can believe in miracles.

The purpose of this board is discussion, not monologues.

Is anyone reading this?

spamandham

I've skim his posts on occasion, but the thread is mostly worthless. I recommend closing it.

Amaleq13

Only because of the train-wreck value.

freetrader has made it very clear he has no genuine interest in rationally considering arguments opposing his position. He refuses to accept and has been incapable of denying that his own Bible refutes him when it explicitly describes people immediately accepting strangers as gods after a single apparent demonstration of magical powers.

He is falsely attributing a degree of skepticism to the general populace of the 1st century when, even today, such skepticism is obviously in short supply.

His Bible tells us that people believed Paul and the other apostles because they appeared capable of divinely-inspired magic. Whether his risen Christ had been killed on Earth or in some heavenly realm, this is what his Bible tells us.

His refusal to accept this fundamental refutation of his position is simply willful ignorance. I'm in favor of shutting this train wreck down as well.

spin

The idea is not to post any more direct comments until s/he catches up. Then one person might be able to dialog with him/her. (If anyone, I vote for Diogenes.) I can't see how you can rope him/her into a meaningful exchange though.

I've seen this approach once before here. You all will just have to refrain.... or forget it.


spin

Toto

Assuming that freetrader is working through this thread in order, he is about to come on a post from July 13 (over two months ago) by Diogenes the Cynic

So let's wait for the answer to that.

freetrader

Response to Diogenes the Cynic (#137):


Again, most of the Christian writings, even long after the gospels were published, do not mention the miracles of Jesus. The later NT writings did not mention the miracle stories, even though most of those writers knew of them.

Also the Book of Acts says virtually nothing about the Jesus miracles, though the writer of this Book obviously knew of those stories and believed them.

So the absence of those miracle stories in Paul does not mean he didn't know of them. The only sources that mention them are the narratives about Jesus. There's no narrative in Paul.

He refers to Jesus biographically at only two points: 1) the night of the arrest (1 Cor. 11:23-26), and 2) the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3-7). Both of these are used by Paul for theologizing, which is his only purpose, not narrating.

It's easy to explain why Paul and others would not mention the miracles of Jesus, except the resurrection which he could not avoid mentioning because he had to use it for theologizing.

And the explanation is that their whole point was to expound on the meaning of the Jesus event, or the power that Jesus had, not to gawk over his great deeds.

The attention was not to be focused on those events per se, to muse over them, but to proceed to the next step of explaining the importance of this power that Jesus possessed and what it means for future human life, also to the next step of using Jesus as an authority on Truth, meaning that any ethicist or social theorist or philosopher from now on would be obligated to use Jesus as their final Authority in some way, because he has now been established as the One who really has the final Say, having shown his superhuman Power.

And so on. Proceeding to that next step -- what to use Jesus for? -- now became their object. He was now established or put into this special Place of Supremacy or whatever you want to call it -- that's a done deal, and now the task is to put him to use and make him into the world's Imperial Grand Social Engineer.

It is only to be expected that the various thinkers and leaders of the new cult would turn to the task of putting Jesus to use, because there are so many things to use him for, and all the bickering and theologizing and creative thinking from this point would basically be on how to put this risen Christ to use -- in fact, for some it would even be how to give Jesus something to do to keep him out of mischief.

Why didn't Paul cite some of the healing acts of Jesus in order to support his theme that salvation comes through faith? Though the gospels were not yet officially published, there must have been earlier writings or word-of-mouth anecdotes which were sources for some parts of them. That Jesus would say such things as "Your faith has healed you" was probably in the oral tradition or some writings known to Paul. This theme that the victim's faith is what healed him/her is in the Q document (Mt. 8:5-13) which is thought to be earlier, so this faith idea precedes the gospel writers.

A possible explanation why Paul did not cite any of these quotes from Jesus on faith as part of the healings is that he actually had a disdain for the healing stories, because of their pettiness or parochialism as he saw it.

A healing event is only for that one victim and is of no interest to anyone else, and it belittles Jesus to focus him in to just this one person's petty little problem, because there is a whole Universe out there to fix, and why are we wasting the Son of God here in this one limited place to fuss over this one individual? -- and each healing is just a one-time benefit for that victim at that time and not anything long-lasting even for that one individual. How petty!

And so this might easily explain why Paul, and many others, look with disdain on the miracle healing acts and prefer to reduce their role and turn Jesus to matters of a higher level of importance.


The best guess is that Paul and others were impacted by the widespread belief that Jesus performed miracle healing acts and even returned from the dead. This can explain Paul's behavior and the positive reaction he got from his Gentile audiences, where these beliefs were circulating and people were seeking an explanation about the Jesus figure and were hoping he was a god or savior offering them salvation through his life-giving power.

People having these beliefs and wanting answers were a ready market for someone with a crusading spirit and an energetic impulse to change the world and an ability to persuade. This easily explains why Paul took up the challenge and set out to spread his "good news" or euangelion.

He said there were 500 witnesses who saw Jesus after his resurrection (1 Cor. 15) and also named individual witnesses to it. His audience must have already had knowledge of the resurrection event, and Paul interprets it theologically rather than informing them of it for the first time.

In this 1 Cor. 15 text he expounds on the nature of resurrection and rebukes those who say it's not true, so the topic is already familiar to his Gentile readers or hearers, indicating that he did not invent this story or idea but deals with it as something he has authority to explain or interpret to others.

A widespread belief that Jesus resurrected would explain how Paul was able to preach the risen Christ to these Gentiles and not get laughed off the stage as a crackpot. But without that belief already circulating among his hearers or readers, there's no explanation why his audience would be receptive to his preaching and writing on this subject matter.

So although no one "knows" how Paul happened to connect into the Jesus cult and went on his crusade, it can be explained as arising out of the widespread belief that Jesus did those acts, and the best explanation why people believed this would be that those acts actually were done by him and there were witnesses. From this remarkable starting point, Paul saw the beginning of a new expanding movement that would sweep the Roman world, and he wanted to play a role.

It adds up. But it's true that we can't know -- it's a good possibility, or it's the best explanation. There's no certainty.


I.e., the question why Paul connected himself to this early Jesus movement, or why he chose to make the Jesus figure into a god, or what he saw of importance in this Jesus person.

Why isn't this an important question to consider? Why isn't it relevant? What attracted Paul to this Christ figure, or what was the origin of his "risen Christ" theme? This is a question about the origin of Christian belief or of what became the Christian Church that later ruled or shaped Western culture.

Why should we be afraid to inquire how this whole thing got started? Are there some things that should just be left alone? What are you afraid might be hidden under that rock?


Paul wasn't any crazier than average. There had to be something he noticed in this risen Jesus figure that he thought was important.

If the resurrection literally did happen, or just if there was a very strong belief, including witnesses, that it happened, we have the answer what attracted Paul's attention.

But if it didn't happen and there was no belief that it did, during the time of 30-40 AD, then how do we explain what came next? Even if you assume that Paul had strange hallucinations, which is just one individual, it doesn't explain how he could sell these personal subjective feelings to hundreds or even thousands of Gentiles who have no interest in his personal fantasies.

What came next makes no sense unless there was an "urban legend"-kind of story circulating around about the Jesus character who had done miracle acts and even had risen from the dead.

Without such a story or oral tradition circulating around, you cannot explain how this unknown Paul crackpot got anywhere trying to sell his spontaneous nonsense to a population where he and his "risen Christ" had no standing or credibility of any kind (as I've pointed out many times, miracle fictions always arise out of a context of a recognized hero figure, not out of the blue from an unknown character with no standing in the traditional culture).

Much more rational would be that there was a Jesus "urban legend" going around, including the resurrection story, already there for Paul to tap into, and he knew how to manipulate it to his designs. And you could still dismiss the healing stories and try to explain how this oral tradition or legend got started without any miracle events having really happened. That would be more realistic.

freetrader

Response to Diogenes the Cynic (#138):


Obviously you will continue to talk about the mud and spit, for their comic value. I also chuckle about it. There's also one where Jesus puts his fingers in the victim's ears. And there's a funny story in the OT about Elijah performing what would be a perverse act on a child in order to heal him, and there are other grotesque Bible stories.

But these details are not important. It doesn't matter how a healing act was done or whether it happened the way the story describes. What matters is that Jesus was reputed to have performed many miracle healings, also to have brought some of the dead back to life, who might have been in a condition of what is called "near-death" and perhaps were not really dead yet.

Hopefully he performed all these acts without needing any special techniques and those details in Mark are just from the writer's imagination.

It isn't necessary to explain scientifically how these acts were possible. There can be a scientific explanation that is not yet known. Also there can be a technique or power or talent to perform an act which science does not yet have an explanation for. There are certainly proven cases of individuals with an unusual talent to perform something that generally requires years of learning and practice, such as doing complicated math problems or playing the piano, and these cases cannot be explained yet by science.

So the healings done by Jesus could have a scientific explanation that just is not known yet and there need not be any violation of physical laws.


The events probably happened, yes. But there's no need to believe any particular explanation, such as that demons were inhabiting the victims' bodies.


These stories are invented to explain behavior of mentally disturbed people who act strangely, even someone with a speech impediment or who shakes or does something that might appear as intentional behavior.

To cure these conditions is just as legitimate or important as curing physical illnesses or handicaps. In the final analysis, they are all physical afflictions in one way or another, caused by disorders in the chemistry of the nerves or muscles or bones or organs and so on.

We should not obsess on the popular misconceptions or myths in describing the events, or on what technique was used, but just consider the widespread belief about Jesus performing the healing acts and how that came about if the events didn't ever really happen.

aa5874

Again, you cannot show that there was widespread belief of the supposed miracles of Jesus when he was thought to have lived.

Who wrote about your claim that there was actually widespread belief in the miracles of Jesus?

It was not Philo, Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius or Pliny the younger.

It was same questionable sources that claimed Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, was transfigured, resurrected and ascended through the clouds.

Your sources have no credibility.