Vorkosigan

This occurs where?

Maklelan

He walked on water and the text says they thought he was a spirit. You're 1 for 2, but neither of those attributes makes him preexistent.

The text says nothing of him being a spirit. The shining just has to do with the divine commission. See the example of Moses coming down from Sinai.

You've not shown anything that at all supports this, and the fact that Mark doesn't present a birth narrative only shows he wasn't concerned with a protological understanding of the "Son of God" epithet, but an eschatological one.

There's not a single word in the text of Mark that at all supports such a goofy conclusion.

Way off base. If your cognitive dissonance with the Chrestos issue is any indication, though, you really don't care what the texts actually say.

stephan huller

This never stops being fun to watch.

Maklelan

Commentary on Matthew 10.17.

Vorkosigan

Doesn't say anything like the Agapius TF at all. Did you give me the right part of the Commentary on Matthew?

Vorkosigan

Maklelan

I didn't say he quoted it, I said he referred to it. He states that Josephus talks about "James, brother of Jesus who is called Christ." Origen nowhere else, as far as I have been able to ascertain, uses the phrase "Jesus who is called Christ." The reference to the idea that Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ likely indicated Origen is quoting or paraphrasing Josephus, who may have said something along the lines of "they thought he was the Christ," or "they called him the Christ." Agapius' text preserves the comment, "they believe he was the Messiah."

aa5874

What you say makes very little sense. I did not know that Jesus could have pre-existed. Explain what makes Jesus preexistent and what makes a sea water-walker that TRANSFIGURED a figure of history?


You are making stuff up. What "divine commission" ??

I am dealing with the Transfiguration of Jesus with the Resurrected DEAD, Moses and Elijah.

You are making stuff up. The author who copied gMark claimed Jesus was FATHERED by a Ghost.

What "protological and escathological" understanding do you get when the author of gMatthew claimed the mother of Mary was WITH CHILD of a Holy Ghost and that the child was called Jesus.

Now, I showed the passage that support the claim Jesus was a PHANTOM.

You agree that Jesus walked om sea water so it could have ONLY Apppeared to have happened. It could have only appeared true. Jesus was an Apparition when he WALKED on sea water and then he Transfigured.

GO FIGURE.

The Earliest Jesus was an Apparition, a PHANTOM, a Myth Fable just like the Myth Fables of the Greeks and Romans.

Justin Martyr and Trypho admitted the Jesus story is like the Myths of the Greeks and the Romans.

Well, EXPLAIN how Jesus managed to WALK on sea water if it is NOT goofy ?

You are just making ad hoc unsubstantiated claims. In all the writings attributed to Justin Martyr and the ENTIRE NT Canon there is no claim that Jesus was NOT born of a Holy Ghost and a Virgin.

In "Dialogue with Trypho" Justin Martyr clealy stated that his Jesus was NOT born man of men.

Maklelan

How ironic.

You were responding to a comment about preexistence. What am I supposed to think you're talking about? I don't have the foggiest idea what your second sentence is trying to say. You're using "transfigured" in a transitive way, but you have no object, and nothing in my comment about Mark has anything to do with whether or not Jesus was an historical figure.

Also, this doesn't actually address my concerns with your rather bizarre exegesis.

Are you serious?

And you don't know about the significance of the transfiguration?

No, Mark says no such thing.

Matthew is not Mark, aa. Matthew and Luke prefix a protological understanding of Jesus' sonship onto the eschatological approach they got form Mark. The eschatological one was the fundamental one, but as time went on, concern was cast further and further back in time. In mark Jesus became the son at his baptism. In Matthew and Luke we hear about his divine begetting. In John the concern goes back to the beginning of creation. I'm quite surprised that you are presuming to speak authoritatively about Christian origins and you really can't engage a discussion like this intelligently.

No, you pointed to passages where the word "spirit" occurred within a couple lines of the name "Jesus," or where he glowed and you arbitrarily insist that's only possible of spirits, and you just nakedly asserted that Jesus was a phantom. You can't even acknowledge, much less engage, any serious challenge to your exegesis.

What on earth are you babbling about?

No, you just really want that to be the case, so you're groping rather ignorantly for whatever semblance of a piece of evidence you can. This is just ludicrous argumentation, aa.

Justin Martyr was an apologist trying to make Christianity palatable to Greco-Roman intelligentsia. Have you ever read his apologies? They're full of attempts to paint Christianity as fully translatable. It's a rhetorical tool, not an "admission." On the other hand, there are very clear affinities between some Greco-Roman literature and the way Christ is presented in the gospels. The clearest parallel is found in Mark 1:1, where Mark opens his gospel with a comment strikingly similar to an inscription praising Caesar from several decades prior. He also draws a lot of parallels between Jesus' mission and the Bacchae. These are literary tools, though, aa, not admissions, and not syncretism. Haven't you ever noticed that Greco-Roman writers often build stories about historical rulers and soldiers around stock mythological narratives? Does that mean the rulers never existed? Does that make those histories "admissions" that they're really just aping mythology? You've got to understand the genres and the literary conventions from back then, and you can't do that by just quote mining from ignorant mythicists and people still stuck on The Golden Bough.

I didn't say Mark wasn't goofy, I said your conclusions are goofy. I don't believe that anyone walked on water. You know what? I also don't believe George washington cut down his father's cherry tree. That doesn't mean George Washington never existed, though. Mark doesn't view Christ as a phantom. Mark has the most human view of Christ of all the authors within the New Testament.

There's also no claim that Jesus was not really Michael Jordan in a previous life. I guess you know what that means.

The reason Mark didn't address it was because it had never come up. No one cared about a protological view of Christ's divine sonship when Mark wrote. You can't point to Mark's ignoring the question of Jesus' birth and say, "See, he doesn't deny a virgin birth, so he promotes a virgin birth!" That's just lunacy.

And Justin Martyr was writing almost 100 years later, well after the virgin birth had become normative in Christianity. Where on earth are you getting all these ridiculous ideas? Do you read any scholarship at all on the New Testament and early Christianity?

Vorkosigan

You often accuse others here of belief without evidence, but in this passage you go even further, simply randomly making up stuff that isn't in the text to fit your beliefs. It does not say anything within a million miles of "they thought he was the Christ" or "they called him the Christ." Origen identifies the James under discussion himself -- he does not attribute that to Josephus. This later found its way into the famous reference via later interpolation.

That this identification is habitual because in Against Celsus Origen again gives the identifier of James as the brother of Jesus (called Christ) while discussing Josephus. If Josephus had really called James the brother of Jesus Origen would certainly have jumped all over it -- in that very passage he is using Josephus as a witness for JBap, and if Josephus had identified James as the brother of the crucified madman Origen could hardly have failed to trumpet that.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

It is the same Phantom that walked on the sea and Transfigured in gMark that is found in the other Canonized Gospels.

You are really wasting my time with the Myth Fable called the Gospels.

Do really expect me to accept Myth Fables as history?

This is Justin Martyr in "First Apology" I really don't have time to waste. I have SOURCES, apolgetic sources of antiquity that claimed Jesus was born WITHOUT Sexual union.

The Jesus story is FOOLISHNESS just as Trypho stated in "Dialogue with Trypho".

Examine "Dialogue with Trypho" Based on "Dialogue with Trypho" the Jesus story is FOOLISHNESS like the Greek Myth Fables.

I will NOT accept Myth Fables and Foolishness as history.