LogicandReason

Magic tricks are often successful when the illusion employs various sleight-of-hand techniques to create the desired effect, a deception, taking the audiences’ eyes off the mechanism used to produce the effect. Those being entertained see the box but cannot judge it impenetrable or as having a secret compartment. Imagine how easily this can be accomplished if one controls the time and delivery of said illusion with a camera or projecting it back into a history with little evidence to disprove the magic’s results. Are the Gospels a reflection of this?

The HJ versus MJ debate intrigues me. Not only did I enjoy the scholarship of Doherty in this discussion, but also I further posit either answer is irrelevant. Jesus, the intentional object of our debate, can never be the same as Jesus a historical man, a teacher, a Rabbi, or a deity. Proving a man in time will never answer for the biological impossibility of a “virgin birth.” Displaying a cloth attributed to a man, deemed “Son of God,” bares no evidence as to the truth claim of that person’s ability to perform miraculous acts, which violate physical and biological laws. Combing ancient writings to correlate predictions with the past actions of another is no proof of prophesy fulfillment. Thus each straw man becomes the sleight–of-hand devise that diverts us from a better question as to the silence of this man’s followers for decades after his reported sacrificial death.

After reading the Christian apologist of the late first and second century, one quickly begins to ask how a studied philosopher like Justin Martyr could have been deceived by a contrived story that included the required exegesis to defend a punished criminal as the story’s hero, unless someone before him answered that question with a viable explanation. Just try to imagine the expression on Marcus Aurelius’ face, the learned stoic and Emperor of Rome, as he read Martyr’s first apology which discusses the deity of a man who was both convicted and crucified by Rome for sedition. So if a person, identified as Jesus, really lived, taught, had followers and died by Roman execution, why did those around him, later credited with writing historical biographies (polemics) about Jesus, wait for decades to pen these stories? Maybe, they were shocked and had no explanation for his death when it happened.

Thus Saul/Paul. Unlike Jesus and his illiterate followers, Paul was a highly educated man. Self-described as a Pharisee, Paul was faced with this same dilemma when he chose to convert to the newly developing cult. Paul’s first challenge was how to elucidate his worship of a dead man to his educated peers. Next, The Apostle faced the Herculean task of explaining to potential converts, mainly poor and illiterate, that the emerging religion was centered on a crucified convict. Paul proved to be just the man needed to explain Jesus’ death, bridging the time between the crucifixion and the polemics written decades later to resurrect this man.

Notice that Paul never quotes the Gospel Jesus, never cites progenitors, never assigns a location or specific time of Jesus’ death or resurrection, does not know the names of the twelve disciples, is ignorant as to a betrayer named Judas (conveniently a name that can later represent all Jews), and never cites any of the Gospel narratives later written by a person we identify as Mark. How could Paul know any of this and report it, as Mark’s creative writings, while laconic, are not written for another two decades? So Paul, following two decades of silence after the death of Jesus, becomes the chief architect of the mythology that becomes a major religion labeled as Christianity.

Paul’s first challenge was to give the hero’s death a purpose – he decides that man and God couldn’t be reconciled, due to man’s sin, without an ultimate sacrifice. Paul posited that Jesus had died for mankind’s sin. This was a tough sell at best, even to ignorant and superstitious people in Asia Minor. So Paul further created a story about this man being seen after his death, therefore canceling death. But Paul’s greatest contribution to creating the myth was his scholarship. Paul was a Jewish scholar who went back and combed the scriptures to find correlations between the prophets and Jesus. It was most likely Paul who took from Psalms 22, Isaiah 53 and Micah 5 and began to place Jesus into a historical setting that would align with ancient prophecy. It is not difficult, without fact checkers and already created historical reports, to make a person’s actions fulfill a prophecy predicted long ago. So Paul gives the Jesus story enough explanation to develop into the religion today. He provided an explanation for the death, sightings of the man after death to prove divinity and insignificance of the death, and a correlation to Israel’s prophets. Christianity is born.

Mark and the others, generations after the fact, write a narrative to prove Paul’s statements correct. They added the “virgin birth,” miracles, and resurrection antidotes to try and reinforce what Paul had reasoned with much scholarship and pure mental ability.

Perhaps the miracle-worker was Paul.

aa5874

Justin Martyr's writings show NO influence by the letters that bear the name Paul. He never quote a single passage from any letter of the writer called Paul.

Justin Martyr never claimed to have received the Holy Ghost or ever claimed that he had the gifts of the Holy Ghost or could speak in tongues.

Justin made no reference to any miracle done by Jesus through Paul, or made any acknowledgements of an evangelist or missionary with the name of Paul that was in Rome.

No Church writer ever claimed the letter writers called Paul was the first person to start Christianity, in fact, all writers claim the gospels predated Paul.

Paul, it would appear, was not a man, they were perhaps a body of men.

LogicandReason

Nor does he quote "Mark, Matthew, Luke or John." Justin quotes "Memiors of the Apostles." Those names first appear in history in 180 C.E. when Irenaeus pens "Against Heresies" aimed against Marcion. We have zero proof that Irenaeus himself does not fabricate or assign the names to the Gospels.

He probably missed the memo...who said that he did?

Who implied that he did?

Too bad for you that the Enlightenment and Reformation stole the church's monopoly of the truth which stayed cloistered from us for over 1000 years. You have been writing your polemics here too long to make the statement above. While there are many opinions (and only opinions) about the actual dates of the Gospel writings, a consensus of biblical scholars judge the approximate dates of the Gospels as follows:
Mark - 70 C.E., Matthew - 80 - 90 C.E., Luke - 80 - 100 C.E. and John 100 C.E.

Yes, Paul and deutero-Paul.

aa5874

Justin Martyr, it would appear, knew nothing about any authors of any gospel named Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, but he quoted many many passages from the "memoirs of the apostles" which appear to be identical or quite similar to the gospels called Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Upto the middle of the 2nd century, Justin Martyr seems not to be aware of authors of any gospels who are called Matthew, Mark, Luke or John and appear not to be aware of any letter writers named Paul, Peter, James, John or Jude.



The consensus is faith-based. It is not based on logics and reason.

You should know what approximate means. No-one is certain when the entire NT was written.

Based on Justin Martyr, the original Jesus stories appear to have had no specific or single named author.

Why are sure that there were only two of them now?

"Paul" may be the code for "the Church".

gurugeorge

Which is one reason why it's just much simpler and easier to conclude that there was no Jesus as a person with twelve disciples and all the rest of that stuff, and that "Paul" was merely a peripheral member of a community that had a new messiah concept (Joshua Messiah) that put the Messiah in the past instead of the future.

IOW there was no "two decades", because nothing special happened 20 years before. There were just a bunch of people who started believing neither in a Messiah to come nor some Messiah claimant in the present, but a Messiah who had been, in some vague, recent-ish past, and in a highly spiritualized (non-military) form, with a "dying/rising" trope added.

It makes much more sense to see the "clothing" as being not a progressive mythologization of a man, but a progressive man-izing of a myth. Paul's version of the myth is just an earlier one that's not very conducive to manification, nor was there yet in "Paul's" time any particular drive to nail the cult figure to any particular time and place; later versions were more specific, more man-ized, and with the power of Roman organization and money, more successful.

dog-on

Looks like Paul agrees with you, guru...

gurugeorge

Yeah, exactly. This new idea of "a Messiah who had been" was first something "seen" in scripture by, or "revealed" in scripture to, a bunch of religious enthusiasts, probably mystics too.

dog-on

This is why the concept of the unknown good god, his ransom (soter) and the demiurge (Yaweh), found traction in certain circles. It is also why I am of the opinion that "Paul" was not, orginially, a member of the 'Orthodox press'.

gurugeorge

Yeah he was co-opted. The majority of churches were "heretical" from the (relative latecomer) orthodox point of view, and mostly descended from Paul, or from other proto-gnostic "apostles" (for all of whom "Joshua Messiah" was simply this new Messiah-in-the-past idea). "Paul" was co-opted in order to bring him on board with the Roman attempt to unify and organize the movement; and he is split, in Acts, into the "good" Paul (who toes the orthodox party line - as Robert Price says in an interview, it's like the proto-orthodox were saying, "yeah, Paul, he was a great guy, look, he was one of us!") and the recalcitrant "Simon Magus", who remains the father of the "heretics", and represents those proto-Gnostics (turning into fully-fledged Gnostics by this stage), who refuse to throw their lot in with the Roman movement - but who yet has many of the same storyline characteristics given to "Paul" (the most blatant example being the attempted "Simony" of Paul with the Jerusalem people which is vividly re-painted as Simon Magus' "Simony" in the pseudo-Clementines).

aa5874

There is no evidence whatsoever that "Paul "was co-opted.

Justin Martyr mentioned Simon Magus, never "Paul".

Justin mentioned Marcion, never "Paul".

Justin mentioned Miithra, never "Paul".

Justin mentioned Josephus, never "Paul".

Justin mentioned the apocalypse of John, never "Paul"

Justin quoted passages from the "Memoirs of the Apostles, he never mentioned Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts of the Apostles or "Paul".

Based on Justin, then, there are real indications that there was no person known as "Paul" upto the middle of the 2nd century.