Sheshbazzar

But never forget all of those times that just verdicts have been denied and ignored in courts of Law, even when good science, rational evidence, and natural reason indicated the logical and right decision.
When a skilled orator or church theologian plays to human passions and so manipulates the jury. Or when a human judge is beholding to something other than blind justice hands down an unjust judgment.

Even today, with science transcendent, you will hardly win a case against a Christian religious belief or any long standing church practice of dishonesty and coercion, because the oratory of church's lawyers and defenders will play their audience like a violin, and men will continue to dance to that tune they play.

spin

It's fascinating at how many times you can tell some people this and they just won't believe you. For some reason you just have to be either a mythicist or a historicist. I think it's that the agnostic position presents no clear position to attack in lieu of the task of arguing a substantive case. Hence it gets treated as a surrogate mythicism. The weight of evidence seems to be of little concern.

spin

I have sympathy for each of the views you cited. I have no doubt that Paul has somewhat been through the scribal mill and gained and lost. However, one cannot write off Paul or segments of the writings attributed to him without solid reasoning. But generalizations such as "They are saying that we have excellent reasons to doubt the autobiographical, historical, and supposedly spontaneous content of the Pauline epistles" go beyond what your citations can support. Then to say, "The epistles... are deeply engaged in deceptively clever rhetorical games designed to trick the reader into thinking they are something they are not" is an assertion regarding intention not supported by anything substantive you've already provided, probably incapable of being justified. And the sentence that followed that is pure ideology.

aa5874

This is Precisely what is being played out on these very threads. People abandon evidence, abandon Science, abandon logic and natural reason to maintain FLAWED opinion.

People here as it were look you straight in the eye and tell you that 'Son of God' in gMark does NOT mean 'Son of God' but that a single unattested statement in Galatians 1,19 means Jesus is human.

Jesus is called the Son of God over 70 times throughout the Canon--the Only character to be Singled out and called the Son of God yet some as if in a dream world claim Son of God means Nothing Only a single verse in Galatians 1.19 where supposedly Paul met an Apostle called James.

Nowhere in Galatians did the Pauline writer MEET a real Jesus and in the same Galatians the Pauline writer claimed he was NOT the Apostle of a human being and that Jesus was the Son of God.

We cannot allow people here to continue to ABANDON evidence, Science, Logics, and natural reason or else we will get nowhere on BC&H.

'Son of God' means something--it means Jesus was MYTH.

And quite naturally, BELIEF in the Myth started AFTER the story was written.

Voila!!! A New Religion--Deja Vue.

Grog

Well, I typed a long answer to this earlier on my ipad, but it seems to not have made the journey.

I will try again.

My interpretation of "rulers of this age" is not something that I just came up with. It is the recognized meaning of the term, Paul, here is not referring to men (except by unnamed proxy), but to demons or "hostile angels."

Here is the best paper on this that I know of (if there are better please let me know!):

Jung Young Lee, Novum Testamentum, Vol. 12, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 1970), pp. 54-69

Here is what Lee says about 1 Cor 2:8:

Thus, as it is described in Hebrews (i I4), the hostile
angels who crucified Jesus on the cross (I Cor. ii 6-8) are to send
forth to minister for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Lee, here, is describing his own interpretation of the passage. Notice, though, that if we accept Lee's argument here, we can't be talking about events that anywhere near look like the Gospel story.

Here is a sampling of the discussion on this term, again from Lee (I have this paper on hand, so I can quote from it):

You accuse me of not understanding the context, but it seems like you have a very cursory understanding of the context, the spiritual world in which Paul and early Christians lived. This is a world in which "elemental powers" are real and have real effects on the world, where there is not a concrete division between a mythical history and events that actually did occur in history. Lee sums up:

"The cosmic redemption which we have discussed is very difficult
for us to comprehend, but for Paul's contemporaries this idea
would not be too difficult to explain."

It is you, not I, that don't understand the context. Or rather, I recognize that I don't fully understand the context completely, but you wrongly conclude that you have it all figured out.

tanya

As I wrote day before yesterday, post 147, avoided by one and all, the evidence is plain as the nose on your face.

Did Hercules exist? Was he the son of Zeus?

NO?

Why not, spin?

Did al Buraq exist? HBO has a nifty series called Game of Thrones, in which one of the characters cavorts with dragons....

Are you agnostic about dragons, and tooth fairies?

NO. Of course not.

But, when it comes to a guy walking on water, curing the blind by spitting in their eye, curing epilepsy by waving his hands around, gossiping with demons on building steeples, flying around with satan, to inspect the world, there, you suddenly become "agnostic". Are you agnostic, spin, about "the resurrection"? Do you imagine that the dead can be restored to life, like Lazarus, and Jesus, spin? Is that the lack of evidence which mythicists fail to present, that leads you to adopt an agnostic position? No one has yet proven, to your satisfaction, that society failed in its mighty efforts to achieve resuscitation of jesus and lazarus, therefore, the only honest position to take is that one doesn't know whether or not resurrection is possible?

You can believe whatever you like. What you cannot do, however, is write, on this forum, that you make decisions based on EVIDENCE, and then ignore the evidence of Mark 1:1, while writing something so completely idiotic as:

This sentiment is absurdly false. The weight of the evidence is overwhelming, that the Jesus and Heracles stories are two Greek myths, in the same category as the myth of Odysseus. As I indicated in post 147, I am very confident that you are not agnostic about Athena's role in helping Odysseus win the race. Please try to present arguments using consistent logic.

What, you mean that since Darwin only wrote about Finches on the Galapagos, that therefore Parrots and Flamingos attained their unique stature not by virtue of the mechanism of evolution outlined by Darwin, but rather, these two exotic species, simply serve to remind us of Noah's travails?

:huh:

Grog

I accept that the extant manuscripts could be based on older manuscripts no longer available to us. I might be wrong in doing so. Here I make a crude appeal to authority: scholars whose opinion on this matter accept this and I don't have good reason to take exception. I have read your arguments, you make good points and I hold them in my thoughts at all times. I just don't agree. I cannot actually make sense of the Pauline writings if they are post-Gospel. I actually don't have a problem with them being post-70's if we push the Gospels back as well (I believe that gMark has traces of reliance on Josephus, so I don't believe gMark could be much before the turn of the century).

No more imaginary than the manuscript of Josephus that does not contain the TF.

Yep, I don't either. But if something were ever found, I believe it would be a Pauline writing.

You will be irrelevant if you do not engage discussion where people are at and not from your firm convictions. Already many readers don't read your posts. That's too bad because they are informative and your position is valuable.

Grog

I see that this is to spin.

Agnosticism has no value to historiography. One can be agnostic, but there can't be an "agnostic" theory about the origins of Christianity. Either Christianity began with a founder figure who was crucified by Pontius Pilate, or it did not. It is unlikely that the two possibilities are exactly evenly balanced. "Agnostism," is based on either an unwillingness or an inability to take a position based on the evidence. I believe there is plenty of evidence to show that Jesus-belief evolved and did not start with a crucifixion under Pilate. Arguments for historicity, which are either the Gospel Truth or Jesus 2 Christ, have fatal flaws, disqualifying falsifications. The mythicist case (which is usually poorly understood by detractors) resolves many of the paradoxes that plague the historicity hypotheses. Mythicism just fits the evidence better than other theories.

The argument that "well, we can't know," is true, but valueless. We don't know for sure that is true so we try to come up with the best explanation that we can based on the evidence that we have.

aa5874

Agnosticism does NOT require any KNOWLEDGE.



Right here you commit a most fatal error. You make an assertion that is completely unsubstantiated.

We have NO credible sources with Jesus stories WITHOUT the crucifixion.

It makes no sense to commit unforced errors. Once you FOLLOW the actual DATED evidence you cannot go wrong.

The DATED Jesus stories are NO earlier than around the mid 2nd-3rd century so that is PRECISELY where I will begin.

It is time to stop using Imaginary evidence to reconstruct the past.

Only EVIDENCE of the Past can be used to reconstruct History--NEVER Imagination.

spin

Jesus, stick a pin in it, willya tanya? It's like you've eaten far too many cans of beans. The lack of thought of your comments could have been overcome by umm, thinking about the context of the discussion and understanding what was being commented on. You've certainly earned a spot on my reduce-comments-to-a-ribbon list with this flatulence.