Ted Hoffman

If you are talking about the NT accounts, what are you talking about - the stoning of Stephen in Acts?
The stoning of Stephen in Acts is not likely to be historical and was likely made up by the author of Acts. We know this because certain elements of the story are false. Acts 22:4 claims Paul/Saul was present at Stephen's stoning and was widely known by the people.

Nowhere does Paul himself speak of any persecuting in Jerusalem. Gunther Bornkamm, in Paul, cites the contradiction between Acts 7:58 and Galatians 1:22 as a sign that the Author of Acts may have made up the scene of Stephen's stoning. Acts 7:58 portrays Saul/Paul as someone known enough to have the "witnesses" put their garments at his feet. Acts 8:1 says Paul assented to Stephen's death and persecuted the assembly in Jerusalem and those in the regions of Judea and Samaria. It even says he went from house to house, dragging off men and women to prison. From these passages, we infer that the Christians must have known who their tormentor was. But Galatians 1:22 has Paul stating that he was unknown to the assemblies of Judea. Therefore Acts contradicts Galatians. Assuming that Galatians is an authentic Pauline epistle, Acts is an unreliable account. At least the stoning of Stephen event.

You have other NT examples?

James was killed for violating ritual by entering the Inner Sanctum on the day of atonement. This is not martyrdom.

I shall be happy to take out any other examples you can present here.

Steven Avery

And there is the general tone of persecution, in Israel and even the situation with the letter to Syria, which caused believers to spread the Gospel abroad.

Acts 12:1-2
Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.

I'm not sure about your John reference.
Here is a web page that seems to give the stories on others...
http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/whatapos.htm

I think in those discussions two issues often get mixed. Take the morman and islamic analogies, where people die for a spiritual falsehood. However, few doubts the actual historicity of Joseph Smith or Mohammed, only whether their visions, plates, writings, etc. are true, or properly represented. Few argue against the historical Mohammed or Joseph Smith in a way analagous to the mythicist attempt against Jesus. And of course the New Testament has the huge number of historical references, which gives the mythicists the necessity of claiming not really that it was the normal type of myth, but a carefully crafted multiple-author docu-drama, believed as fact. Never saw any analogous examples given :-)

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Ted Hoffman

Praexus, Yuri talked of martyrs. Persecution will need a thread of its own. Think martyrs. Christian martyrs.
Stay with the argument. Please.

Peter Kirby

Right. James Boanerges, not John Boanerges.

That means that there are two recorded Christian deaths in the New Testament: Stephen and James the Greater.

Fiddle faddle. I have several books on the apostles, and I may in the future write a book on it. "All martyred save one" is a myth.

What are the key features of the New Testament that you believe require analogy?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

Amaleq13

My apologies. I certainly did overlook it and it clearly deserves notice.

I suggested to him quite early in the thread that he might be better off shifting his emphasis in this fashion but he didn't seem interested.

I think Toto essentially does this when he describes those killed by Nero as "Probably not Christians - the passage is most likely a medieval forgery." IIUC, he appears to accept that "those persecuted by Domitian (81-96 CE)" were Christians but how could anyone know whether they believed in an HJ?

Amaleq13

As we approach 19 hours of daylight and my brain apparently thinking I only need to sleep when it is dark and the school year ending next week, I'm finding myself with more free time available.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Peter,

So you do accept Peter and Paul as historical persons?

And further, you think they _were_ killed by the authorities, but were not martyrs?

I don't have an argument. OTOH I have questions.

This is not my argument. I don't have an argument.

The purpose of this thread is to invite the mythicists to make their positive case -- the best they can.

You and Toto have begun answering my questions, but then gave up (for the reasons that I'll not speculate about). Thus, you cannot claim to have made a coherent case.

As a historian, I want to know how Christianity originated. But the mythicists don't seem to have a coherent case for how Christianity originated.

So if you _really_ want me to make an argument here, then this above is my argument.

If any mythicist here wants to present a coherent case for how Christianity originated -- that would include _their_ chronology for the earliest martyrs, and why they were willing to be martyred -- then I'm all ears.

For those mythicists who want to claim that there were no martyrs at all, that all the martyrs were made up, then this is going into the la-la land already...

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

YURI:
So you don't know when they were martyred, and you don't know why they were martyred... And yet you know that there was no HJ.

Hmm... OK.

Who is the earliest Christian martyr that you accept as historical?

Do you accept Justin Martyr as historical? What about Irenaeus?

Yuri.

Toto

I gave up on this thread because of other time commitments, and because this didn't seem to be going anywhere. Yuri has not given anything to argue against, only an assertion that there were Christian martyrs that mythicists have trouble explaining. I challenge him to name one of those martyrs and show how that fact is difficult to fit into the mythicist hypothesis.

Justin Martyr and Irenaeus are historical with 90% probability. Both believed in a HJ, but neither had any proof of a HJ, and both are too late to qualify as early. Neither challenges the mythicist hypothesis.

The story of St. Peter is at least 90% myth. (You can check out Drews' book.) I doubt that Peter was martyred for his beliefs. I also doubt that, if he existed, he was ever near Rome.

I accept Paul as historical, but I see no good evidence that he ever went to Rome or was martyred there. The Epistle to the Romans was constructed out of other material written by Paul or someone pretending to be him. The Book of Acts is not reliable - it may incorporate some historical accounts, but not necessarily about Paul. In particular, the whole sea voyage to Rome has no particular indicia of historical reliability.

So far, no problem for the mythicists.

There is no evidence that the James whose death is described in Josephus was a Christian, or that he died for his beliefs.

In fact, I don't see any evidence of any Christian martyrs among those who would have had some personal contact with a HJ, so I don't see why Christian martyrs are a particular problem for mythicists.

The mythicist reconstruction of the origins of Christianity is much more coherent that the Eusebius version (the so called "big bang" version), which has a charismatic historically unique person recruiting a few disciples and making an incredible personal impact on them, but leaving no clear historical record outside of their religious writings, and then these inspired individuals slowly recruiting other followers, until the movement suddenly appears several generations later. If Jesus was such a charsmatic teacher, why was his influence so limited? Why hadn't Philo heard about him? Why did Josephus write so much more about John the Baptist, if he wrote anything about Jesus at all? Why were there so many competing versions of his message, so many different memories? Explain that.

Peter Kirby

I accept Paul as a historical person and letter-writer. He mentions Kephas, so that is historical personage as well. The name Petros may be spurious. I woud say there is about a 65% chance that Paul and Kephas were killed in Rome.

So far, I haven't been making a case for mythicism so much as clarifying the relationship between the mythicist hypothesis and historical Christian martyrs. I thought this latter was the purpose.

I haven't given up. I'm replying now, aren't I? The above statement makes sense as a follow-up reply to your unanswered post, but not as a reply to my reply to you.

In a general way, what are you lookingfor in a coherent case?

And, what mythicist literature have you read?

I've already stated my chronology for the earliest martyrs (90-110 CE for anonymous persons under Domitian, or those in Pliny's letter at the latest). Since the belief in an earthly Jesus existed beforehand, why they (those after 90 CE) were willing to be martyred is no different from any historicist's account.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby