aa5874

This response is highly speculative. I have no idea how you came up with your characters, like "Pauline Christ worshipers from Mark's time" and "Pauline mystics".

But, to settle the matter, let's deal with the OP.

The question was posed "Why isn't Mark and Paul enough to conclude "probably a HJ"?

And I responded in post #301 And a little later, this was part of your response. You have therefore clearly demonstrated that my position is very reasonable that Mark and Paul are enough to conclude that Jesus was probably ONLY BELIEVED to have existed.

The information about Jesus in gMark and the Pauline letters are perfectly in harmony and compatible or may be true in every respect with believability NOT history.

Solo

Not that I want to quibble but you asked for an explanation of a term that seemed esoteric to you and I gave it to you. And, btw, I am sure that one day you will make the discovery that any interpreation of the NT texts involves speculation. And you will be amazed and flee the tomb immediately in great panic.


But - and here we at the root of your problem - you do not logically refute a proposition of probability by assigning probability to a counter-proposition (unless of course we are dealing math propositions involving calculations). GDon is asking 'why is this not probable' and you retort thoughtlessly ' because something else is probable'.

...or, more probably, your very wishful thinking trumps reason yet again.

Jiri

aa5874

What! Speculation does not make me panic. I really expected you to do a lot of speculation.

I try to avoid speculation as much as possible and quote passages that are less susceptible to speculation.



What? Perhaps you don't understand logics. Perhaps you don't understand that counter-proposals are valid for discussions.

One person proposes A and another can counter-propose with not A.

Once something else is considered more probable then one may reasonably conclude that the other probability under consideration is far weaker or is no longer valid.

Mark and Paul is far more in agreement that Jesus was PROBABLY just a BELIEF.

Every single event in Mark and Paul about Jesus satisfies PROBABLE BELIEF, but, NOT every event satisfies PROBABLE HJ.

Or in other words, the Jesus in Mark and Paul need not to have existed for the very same events to have been written about him. Waking on water, Transfigurations, resurrections and visions do NOT need an actual physical Jesus but simply a BELIEF.

MARK and PAUL support PROBABLE BELIEF far more than PROBABLE HISTORY when every single event about Jesus is taken into account.

That is my counter-proposal to the OP. And it is VALID and LOGICAL.

Solo

I understand that you want to babble away freely and that is why you need more than one logic that works the same way for everyone.


Jiri

Craigart14

I'm joining this late, and I haven't read through to the finish, but is it possible that Paul knew the beliefs of the Jews in Damascus, whom he says he was going to arrest, but did not believe that the core of their beliefs, Jesus, had actually existed? I don't suppose the Temple authorities would send him off to Damascus without telling him about the sect he was to persecute. Would it matter in this scenario if Jesus had died twenty years before or, as Ellegard argues, a century or more? Paul is sent to rein in a heretical sect--not yet called Christians--but "experiences" Jesus in a vision, and is immediately converted. Come to think of it, a lot of Christian testimony today follows this pattern, as when Kirk Cameron claims he was an atheist prior to his conversion, though he was probably was just indifferent to religion, as so many young people are. The claim to have been an atheist or, even better, a persecutor of Christians, makes a conversion more dramatic. In any case, a vision in no way confirms the existence of Jesus, let alone makes him "historical," whether we use that term as a synonym for "having once existed" or to mean, as I think Spin is using the term, historically verified through multiple, reliable sources. Why wouldn't Paul, a religious fanatic, embellish his experience and embrace the authority a revelation confers on him as an apostle? Claiming that he knows Jesus only through the revelation of God, if true, would certainly make Paul a very special member of the movement--perhaps even an instant leader.

Craig

Toto

The Road to Damascus scene is undoubtedly not historical - it is highly improbable that the High Priest in Jerusalem would send an agent to a foreign country to rein in Jewish dissidents. Paul's letters do contain an admission about having persecuted the church, but are not specific. We don't know what those early Jewish dissidents or proto-Christians or Christians believed, or what they communicated to Paul.

Modern Christians think that a religion is defined by its beliefs, but most religion is defined by practice. If Paul actually did persecute early Christians or people like them, it was probably because of some practice that was out of line.

aa5874

But, Saul/Paul had no such luck. He was not made an instant leader.

How could the supposed Saul/Paul, an outsider and former persecutor, expect to be more authoriative by claiming to know Jesus by revelation when the insiders and former disciples of Jesus knew Christ personally and was taught by him?

Solo

......very much the question asked by Peter in the Pseudo-Clementines.

Jiri

aa5874

It would appear that Paul's claim to fame was implausible.

Why could not Peter also get revelations from Jesus whom he personally knew?

Jesus supposedly spent considerable time, on earth, teaching the disciples, yet it only took a BOLT of LIGHTNING to convert Paul.

Paul may have thought LIGHTNING was a God.

Craigart14

Perhaps they didn't know Christ. We don't have any eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ. Perhaps there were no eyewitnesses? Besides, people in the ancient world believed that visions were real, sent by real gods, not, as we would think today, hallucinations. I see your point, though; much of Paul's authority derives from the fact that his letters are in the NT. However, he seemed to think of himself, judging by the tone of his letters, that he had a special status. And again, a great many conversion stories begin with "I used to be an atheist," followed by evidence that the speaker has no understanding whatsoever of the phenomenon of atheism. The fact is that many true believers just make up evidence for their beliefs. In the Acts of Thecla, we are told that Thecla resurrected a smoked tuna. Good story.

Craig