Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Why then did the docetist Christians deny that Christ came in the flesh? From a trajectory stand-point, how did they go from "Jesus with a sort of flesh in the heavens" to "Jesus with no flesh on the ground" to "Jesus with flesh on the ground"?

Originally Posted by EmmaZunz

HJ earlier than Hebrews or Revelation?
GMark maybe? Nothing else.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Is there any evidence for a historical Lucifer? By what criteria do we declare that Lucifer is entirely mythical, entirely historical, or some combination of both, and can we use that same criteria for Jesus?

Originally Posted by aa5874

It is documented in Existing Codices that Jesus and Satan were together ON TOP of the Jewish Temple.
Matthew 4:5
...
It was the Skeptics like Celsus the Roman writer who attempted to historicise Jesus but was Ridiculed as an inventor of falsehood in writings attributed to Origen.

Originally Posted by EmmaZung

I'm only saying that Justin believed in HJ and talked about him as such.

Originally Posted by aa5874

We must understand that it was Trypho that told Justin that Justin's Jesus was NOT historical but like the Myth fables of the Greeks.
Justin ARGUED for a Divine Jesus, a Jesus of Faith--Myth Jesus.

Originally Posted by EmmaZung

I think you are being too semantically strict with your definition. For me, a HJ merely means a Jesus who was recently on earth. Maybe not theologically human in the normal way, but still seen and heard on earth.
...
...
Of course the Gospels can be interpreted as historicist.

Originally Posted by Grog

No, the gospel comes through revelation, not through an earthly Jesus.

Originally Posted by Gakusei Don

Okay, so probably around 130 CE. .... What did the the author know of Jesus,...

Originally Posted by youngalexander

Might we reckon that since you & Earl are still arguing the toss over that evidence that it doesn't tend to support either case all that much?

Originally Posted by Toto

Paul allegedly met the historical Jesus' actual flesh and blood, and showed him no respect.
...
Do you even read what I write?

Originally Posted by Kapyong

Paul's Christ was a spiritual being who existed in heaven.
NOT a fictional being, which is what you seem to take mythical as meaning.
Paul's Christ was a real spiritual being,
G.Mark's Christ was fictional/allegorical
Later Christ was historical, because someone came to believe G.Mark's story.
...
I think 'mythical' and 'spiritual' are completely different concepts,
but are getting confused here.

Originally Posted by Gakusei Don

Paul seems to think that Jesus came in the flesh, ...

Originally Posted by EmmaZunz

No, Jesus had a sort of flesh in the heavens that was like ours but not quite the same.

Originally Posted by tanya

You view Gospel of Mark as evidence of an historical Jesus?
Really?
Can you explain this to me then? I am a little slow....
αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιησου χριστου υιου του θεου
From my perspective, "god" = myth.


:thumbs:

:notworthy:


I assume you intend to write, that Justin Martyr WROTE about Jesus, and that therefore, Justin must have believed in the actual physical existence of a Galilean preacher, who performed miracles, including raising the dead.





Wow. There is a whole book here. Amazing.

1. you think aa is too strict semantically, but look at what you wrote, above, about what you think Justin Martyr believed. You quote his text, as evidence in support of your contention. How is that not behaving in a fashion which is "too strict semantically"?

2. "HJ does not mean merely a Jesus who was recently on earth." Of course not. HJ means a living, breathing, human being, "born of a woman", "born in accord with the law". Now, Emma, think about it. What is a MALE? Can you have a male Mammal, without a y chromosome? What do we call humans born of a woman, with ONLY one X chromosome, and no y chromosome, Emma? You may wish to google Turner's syndrome.

3. "Maybe not theologically human"???? What is that, Emma? There is only one kind of human, and that is an animal defined biologically, not theologically. "Still seen and heard on earth"??? Really? You think that ghosts and spirits and elves and gremlins are walking about the earth, to be seen and heard? People are seen and heard, Emma, not fictional characters from a novel.

4. Gospels as history? What? So, in your opinion, then, can the Superman comic books be considered as history?


:thumbs:

Whatever he/she knew or thought she knew, it was based on hearsay, at 130CE.


Yup, most of the arguments here on this forum derive from inadequate evidence available.



Yes, I do, and I have, and I do not know the source for your assertion. My prejudice is to understand that Paul wrote his epistles DECADES after the demise of the fictional Jesus, without ever seeing JC in the flesh.

If you could please post a link to some source contradicting my impression, I would be grateful.


Well, you are certainly entitled to use our language anyway you wish. I like to imagine that we are communicating with non-native speakers. They must rely on dictionaries to understand what we write.
Then, too, some of us are simply less clever than others. I am notoriously a member of this impaired group, consequently, I prefer to keep things simple, and orthodox, rather than idiosyncratic. Accordingly, I profoundly dispute your idea.

Fiction = not true; 10 != 20;

Spiritual = imaginary; square root of -1 (aka i);

Real = genuine, not imaginary; pi = 3.14159, the ratio of Circumference of a circle to its diameter; Pi is irrational (transcendant), but real.

heaven: imaginary locus;

mythical: referring to supernatural attributes;

historical: based on genuine, scientific data and documents. Rocks, for example, can be dated.


All mythical literature is fiction, but not all fictional literature is supernatural:

War and Peace is fictional, Superman is myth. Both stories contain historically accurate descriptions of people, or places, but neither represents historical source information. One must not employ Tolstoy's account of Napolean, to create an accurate history of the reign of the French despot. His writing, while colorful, and elegant, is nevertheless CREATIVE, inventive, in short, fiction.

Any mythical account, whether of Paul Bunyan, Hercules, or Jesus, by definition, may not be used to propose history. These are fictional accounts, with wildly imaginative vignettes based on centuries old fairy tales and legends. If, fortuitously, an author inserts a bit of genuine detail, into the narrative, this does not transform the work into something authentic. It remains a work of fiction, and cannot be employed to deduce history.

"Paul" was Schizophrenic, by contemporary definition. He suffered hallucinations and delusions. Not exactly an authority one would rely upon. Think of Rasputin...
No, not quite.
You confirmed the nature of Jesus' flesh in heaven, how? By riding AlBuraq?
That's an awful lot of flesh for one thread...

Originally Posted by The Quest for the Historical Jesus

The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence.

He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb.

This image has not been destroyed from without, it has fallen to pieces, cleft and disintegrated by the concrete historical problems which came to the surface one after another, and in spite of all the artifice, art, artificiality, and violence which was applied to them, refused to be planed down to fit the design on which the Jesus of the theology of the last hundred and thirty years had been constructed, and were no sooner covered over than they appeared again in a new form....

Originally Posted by The Quest for the Historical Jesus

Whatever the ultimate solution may be, the historical Jesus of whom the criticism of the future, taking as its starting-point the problems which have been recognised and admitted, will draw the portrait, can never render modern theology the services which it claimed from its own half-historical, half-modern, Jesus.

He will be a Jesus, who was Messiah, and lived as such, either on the ground of a literary fiction of the earliest Evangelist, or on the ground of a purely eschatological Messianic conception.

Originally Posted by EmmaZunz

As for the rest, I'm afraid I can't tell what you're getting at.

Originally Posted by EmmaZunz

For me, a HJ merely means a Jesus who was recently on earth.

Originally Posted by tanya

I suspect that you are not alone!!

The point is, you consider that Jesus did live on Planet Earth, a couple thousand years ago, right?

Then, you accept the HJ hypothesis. Many, perhaps most forum members, agree with you.

I disagree, because I view Jesus as a myth. I think you would agree with me, that an entity can only be either human, else myth.

The gospels make clear, as aa5874 has illustrated, frequently, that Jesus did not have a human male source of DNA, to combine with the haploid gamete in Mary's uterus. Accordingly, if Jesus were born, according to the account in the gospels, he would have lacked a y chromosome. Such individuals are found in society, I suggested you read about Turner's syndrome.

These people are phenotypically FEMALES, not males. Clearly Jesus could not have been a person with Turner's syndrome. He would not have gained entrance to the Temple, as a female.

So, the contradiction is this: The gospels claim Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, aka YHWH. As spin has noted, YHWH is not thought to possess gonads, in Jewish lore. Then, how could Jesus have been human?

Zeus, by contrast, in Greek mythology, DID HAVE GONADS, so Zeus was able to impregnate a human female, and the result of this coupling was Hercules.

Hence, we have two different paths to reach a conclusion that Jesus is a myth, based ONLY on the account of Mary's impregnation:

a. Jesus could not have been a normal genetic male, lacking a y chromosome; No human male sperm donor = no human male progeny.

b. Jesus could not have been a normal genetic male, with YHWH as his parent.

In other words, the account of Mary's pregnancy is a hoax. If she did deliver a normal human baby male, his paternal DNA did not derive from YHWH, so the account in the Gospels is wrong. Those forum members who insist that Jesus was an historical person, a living, breathing, blood flowing through his veins, human, are obliged to repudiate the Gospels.

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Why then did the docetist Christians deny that Christ came in the flesh? From a trajectory stand-point, how did they go from "Jesus with a sort of flesh in the heavens" to "Jesus with no flesh on the ground" to "Jesus with flesh on the ground"?

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

So, just trying to understand this: Do you think the docetics developed their ideas after being influenced by the Gospels, or is the idea of a spirit Christ independent of the Gospels?

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

So, just trying to understand this: Do you think the docetics developed their ideas after being influenced by the Gospels, or is the idea of a spirit Christ independent of the Gospels?

Originally Posted by EmmaZunz

Spirit-Christ is independent of Gospels. Docetist-Christ (HJ but not human) is I think possibly one of the ways Spirit-Christ believers as well Gnostics incorporated Gospel-HJ into their pre-existing faith.

But here we're getting very hypothetical. Who knows what twists and turns the variety of Xian ideas and groups might have taken?