gurugeorge

But the search for a historical human being is a product of modern thinking.

Whether some early Christians thought he was Messiah and merely a man is irrelevant to the requirements NOW for looking for evidence of a human being in the record, except insofar as the opinion of those few might be considered a trace of an earlier contact with a human being. But there is no reason to think that, as both GMark and Justin Martyr are relatively late, on the cusp of, or post-Diaspora, whereas the texts under consideration (the "Pauline" writings) are thought to be among the earliest.

And among these earliest texts, "Paul" and Hebrews, it's the god-man, i.e. Son of God, a divine being partaking of a human form in some way, who features.

Further, the notion "Messiah but merely man" is quite compatible with a mythical start too, so it doesn't get us anywhere. For the HJ to satisfy us moderns (if we are thinking straight) we need to move away from "opinions about X (whether wholly divine, part divine part man, or man)" to some causal link between some person we can otherwise place in history, and the hypothesized human being that's supposedly at the root of X's story - something heard, seen, spoken, even second-hand. Or even something internal to the texts that might give the game away (my paradigm "Cephas told me Jesus had said ...").

It's the absence of anything of that nature in the earlier texts (plus the apparently cobbled-together nature of the later gospels, in terms of "things X said and did") that makes the MJ idea a plausible avenue to pursue.

None of this rules the HJ idea out - it may just happen to be the case that for some obscure reason nobody cared about anything he said or did in the early days, or that knowledge was lost, or whatever. But the simple absence of that kind of causal evidence, or historical triangulation, for a human being (as opposed to a mythological entity with some human aspect), opens up alternative ways of thinking about the matter.

hjalti

Everybody should read that book, at least the first chapters.

EarlDoherty

You are right, Ted. Romans 9:5 is only one feather. But who is putting all their eggs on a handful of selected feathers and ignoring all the rest? Why are alleged prima facie readings appealed to for only some feathers and not for others? If you think the epistles as a whole convey the impression of looking and walking like your historical duck, you have closed your eyes and ears to what mythicism has to show. All you have is a handful of quacks making sounds which a 21st century reader would naturally tend to hear according to modern usage and understanding. Don’s question is one blatant begging of the question, for he is asking, with no qualification: How do these passages sound to YOU and to ME? He offers no consideration of what such quacks might have meant to duck believers of Paul’s cultic times.

To paraphrase JustSteve: 1. A passage that seems to describe Jesus as a non-historical being doesn't, for historicists, mean what it seems to mean.

Such as (in no particular order):

Colossians 1:15-20
Hebrews 1 (all of it)
Titus 1:2-3
Hebrews 8:4
Hebrews 10:37
1 Cor. 15:35-49
1 Cor. 2:8
Romans 16:26-27
Romans 1:2-3 (scripture as the source of Paul’s relation to David)
Hebrews’ heavenly “sacrifice”
Galatians 3:23-5
Romans 10:11-21
Hebrews 9:10
Romans 8:22-3 and 2 Cor. 6:2
Colossians 3:4 and 1 Peter 5:4
1 Peter 2:22
Galatians 1:16
1 Thess. 4:9
1 Cor. 12:28

This duck has left no webprints on the surface of the earth. And that’s just off the top of my head on a tired day with a bad cold. Two can play the prima facie game.

And no, I’m not going to argue the above passages. Banging one’s head on a closed mind is just as painful as on a concrete wall. And I’ve already got a headache!

Earl Doherty

aa5874

You claim is EXTREMELY strange. I have already stated that the Canonised Gospels AGREE with respect to the historicity of Herod the Great, Tiberius the Emperor, Pontius Pilate the governor of Judea, and Caiaphas the High priest.

J-D

You have now shown one scholar, just one, who says that the Gospels are historically unreliable. You have given no reason why the word of Bart Ehrman alone should be accepted.

You have still not shown that historians and scholars accept Josephus, Philo, Suetonius, and Tacitus as historically reliable sources.Yes, I know that that's your position, but you have not shown why anybody else should accept it.

J-D

So you say, and yet you state all sorts of beliefs here all the time without having reliable sources of antiquity for any of them.

Sheshbazzar

Yes? And your point is?
Does this mean that because you have already stated they agree on these four personages, -WHOM WE WERE NOT AT ALL DISCUSSING- that you accept these Canonised Gospels as being uncompromised?
as being unbiased accounts?
as being free from superstitions?
as being true history?
and as being free from any lies?
IN WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT PAUL?

That does not fit the tenor of all your your arguments against the integrity of these texts presented within thousands of your other posts within this Forum.
I find your response here to be beyond strange.
Contrarian only for the sake of being contrary, and downright weird.
DO TELL.
That is, explain just what the hell it is that you think you are objecting to here.




.

aa5874

My position is that Jesus was MYTH based on the fact that he was described as Myth and that there are NO reliable history for Jesus.

I do not know that MYTHS have reliable historical evidence.

J-D

That's just another example of you stating your beliefs without having reliable sources of antiquity for them. By your standards there are no reliable sources for ancient history, so your standards it should be impossible to write ancient history at all. Historians and scholars evidently disagree with you.

aa5874

Myth fables do NOT require any historical sources.

Homer's "Iliad", and Plutarch's "Romulus" do NOT require any reliable historical sources.

The Gods Zeus or Apollo and Serapis do NOT require credible sources.

The Ghost stories about Jesus in the NT Canon do NOT require any credible sources.

It is HJ of Nazareth that NEED a credible source and there is NONE.

1. In the NT Jesus was described as a Myth.

2. In the NT Jesus ACTED as a MYTH.

3. There is NO credible source for Jesus.


Jesus of the NT is MYTH as described in the NT.