aa5874

Actually it is information that is given in court trials that are regarded as evidence, and people who give "evidence" are called "witnesses". However a "witness" can be charged with perjury if found lying under oath.

Outside of courtrooms, claims are generally not considered credible until they are confirmed or corroborated by some other source or eyewitness.

And, you are doing just that. You are using the claims that Jesus did miracles as evidence that Jesus did miracles.

Once I am investigating the claim that it is raining, it is simply absurd to use the claim as proof. I need to see rain or the results of rain.

If you read the Gospels carefully only one author claimed he used eyewitnesses. The authors of gMathew, gMark and gJohn did not divulge the means by which their Jesus miracle stories were derived.

Now, as soon as the Pauline writer claimed he and over 500 people saw Jesus in a resurrected state, he may have perjured himself.

You cannot even see a real person in a vision, you can only imagine. The Pauline writer saw nothing. His imagination just went wild or he was simply lying.

When there are claims all from the same sources or only from apologetic sources then there may be no corroboration, however when other credible sources independent of those biased sources make similar claims then there may be some corroboration.

And in addition, the claim itself may be implausible which would render external sources irrelevant.

The miraculous conception, transfiguration, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are all implausible, so there can be no external source of antiquity that can corroborate those events.

Sheshbazzar

Maybe the historical Jesus really did do miracles.
.....and maybe Paul Bunyan and his ox did pull all the kinks out of the Whistling River.:Cheeky:

There is no such thing as a "historical" Jesus, mythology is not History.

Doug Shaver

If you have a witness, then yes, their testimony is evidence. But no extant report of Jesus' miracles was written by a witness, and neither does any author of any extant report claim to have gotten any of his information from a witness. Therefore, we have no testimony from any witness to Jesus' miracles.

freetrader

July 22, 2009 #6025283 / #160
Amaleq13



They were unusual, because there are no other examples of miracle-workers for which there is persuasive evidence as in the case of Jesus.

"unusual at the time"? -- Is this period of history noted for an excess of miracle-worker stories, which would then explain the accounts of Jesus the healer? so that these stories about him are just part of an ongoing miracle-story pattern characteristic for this period?

I've checked a little closer into the question of whether this period of history, or this particular culture, had any unusual emphasis on miracles. My belief has been that miracle-workers or miracle stories were no more typical of this time (100 BC - 100 AD) than of any other time, also that they are no more typical of that Jewish culture than of any other culture. (All cultures have their miracle stories -- the only ones who didn't pass on miracle stories to us are ones that didn't have writing yet.)

But maybe I was partly wrong. In checking around some websites on this, I notice some that suggest there was an unusual increase (an "explosion"?) in miracle stories from the 1st century AD onward for 2 or 3 centuries, perhaps more in the Greek-Roman culture than in the Jewish culture, but some mixture of both.

So the truth looks more as follows:

Prior to about 30 AD there was no unusual amount of miracle story subject matter in the Jewish culture leading up to the Jesus event. I.e., the Jewish culture had only a normal amount of this folklore just like any other culture, and it did not increase in the 1st century BC, except for a general increase in ALL kinds of literature including miracle tales. So the miraculous element was not a greater percent of the literature or the general culture up to about 30-50 AD.

But somewhere from 50 AD - 100 AD there began a new wave of miracle stories which came to occupy a larger percent of the literature being produced in the Jewish-Hellenistic-Roman culture.

The vast majority of the literature on this came after 100 AD, but most of it referred back to alleged events before 100, and outside the accounts about Jesus in the gospels, the two most noteworthy figures that stand out in this new wave of miracle stories are Simon Magus and Apollonius of Tyana.

But almost all of this literature about them is dated long past 100 AD, in fact most of it is beyond 200 AD and thus mostly unreliable. But that doesn't mean there's nothing at all to the stories -- they're just not as reliable as the gospel accounts about Jesus, which were written within about 50-60 years after him.

So maybe it's true that there was a greater predisposition for miracle stories at this time period, BUT NOT BEFORE JESUS -- rather, AFTER him.

If this is the case, it supports my thesis that the historical Jesus really did perform the miracle acts, because this unusual event in history can explain what set off the new wave of fictional miracle stories, beginning with the Book of Acts and the alleged miracles of Paul and Peter (good guys) and Simon Magus (the dark side). Maybe the latter served a purpose for the 2nd-century Christian writers who needed a satanic figure doing miracles in opposition to the forces of good led by the apostles.

You and others posting here will vomit at this theory and surely are chomping at the bit to find holes in it. So do your job and go find the evidence of an avalanche of miracle stories beginning EARLIER, like 50 or 100 BC, which might then explain how the Jesus case is just part of a wave of popular miracle-worker stories leading up to the early 1st century when Jesus happened to pop up at the right time to ride this wave to fame (or infamy) as the world's foremost reputed miracle-worker.

So go and find a 1st-century BC Simon Magus or Apollonius. I don't think there's any there. I suggest these are part of a new wave of miracle legends which was set off by Jesus the Galilean who set the stage for it with his unprecedented healing acts and kicked off a new miracle-worker fad which continued on for 300 years or so.

You won't find a wave of miracle-worker stories PRIOR to the Jesus case or leading up to him. In that sense Jesus was unusual for that time. His case is not explained as part of a series of ongoing miracle fictions in vogue at the time. Rather, his case explains the new trend of such mythologizing that set in after him.

freetrader

July 22, 2009 #6025283 / #160
Amaleq13 (continued)


There's no corroboration for Acts like there is for the gospel accounts. The best explanation for the alleged miracles of Paul and Peter is that they were riding on the wave of miracle-story tradition already begun with the case of Jesus.

They both became mythologized according to the kind of pattern I've already noted -- they were attached to an already-existing popular hero (assuming Jesus really was a reputed miracle-worker before Paul) and became mythologized in the Book of Acts and later literature.

There are no good examples of this from Josephus. Just because there were a few messianist charismatic hotheads who won over a crowd doesn't mean they were deified or mythologized into miracle-workers. These were mostly political rabblerousers who were trying to stir up revolution against the Romans, and since there was a lot of sentiment for this they were successful at gathering a band of militant followers. No one made them into gods or tried to start a religion in their name.

Although some of them might be casually called "messianic" in their appeal, none of them was declared to be "The Messiah" in the larger Jewish prophetic tradition.


There are no reports by Josephus that these rabblerousers you refer to had miracle powers or performed miracles. At most they promised to do a miracle if the crowd would follow them, but there's no report anywhere that they did actually perform any miracle deed they promised to do. And it wasn't really the miracle promise that drew the crowd, but the call to arms to overthrow the Romans.


No they weren't, because that story is probably fiction. Such stories in the Book of Acts are uncorroborated. It's easy to explain how Paul became mythologized later (80-90 AD) because of his status as a Christian missionary hero. But this story about Paul (from 55-60 AD) is fiction. The problem is to explain how Jesus became mythologized into a miracle-worker at a point where he allegedly had no recognition or status of any kind.

Jesus had been deified by 70 AD, I think everyone agrees, but when did this begin? Those who say he did no miracle acts argue that there were no miracle stories about him before Mark was written, and Paul's "resurrection" idea was only a hallucination or spiritual "revelation" he had and not a claim about a bodily resurrection. So then at what point did the miracles of Jesus creep into the picture? This is what needs explaining (if those events never really happened).


We can make a pretty good guess how long it was, and it almost certainly was 20 years or longer. The Book of Acts has him in Samaria just after the stoning of Stephen and prior to the conversion of Paul. It says "he had astounded them by his magic for a long time." The conversion of Paul was somewhere in 32 AD to 36 AD (according to Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible). So we can conclude that somewhere in that time frame Simon the magician had been practicing magic for a long time.

But if this is the same Simon the magician mentioned in Josephus, he was also still going at it after 52 AD, because Josephus puts him in the time of 52-54, connecting him to Felix the procurator, and describes him as "one who pretended to be a magician," which has a resemblance to the earlier Simon the magician described in Acts.

This is the most reliable information there is about him. All the famous legends about him are from much later sources, 2nd and 3rd centuries, that are less reliable. Nothing anywhere suggests he had a short career. They all support the longer career. Some connect him to before the execution of John the Baptist, early '30s, when he ran a school that had 30 disciples, and one legend puts his death in Rome when Paul and Peter allegedly were there, so about 60 AD.

So it's a good guesstimate that his public career went 25 years or so. This plus his charisma can easily explain how he became mythologized into a miracle-worker, so that by 80-90 AD the author of Acts felt it necessary to include mention of him and his magic which "astounded" people.

Perhaps Simon Magus did have some paranormal powers. There's no reason to rule it out. But stories that he could fly or make himself disappear and so on can easily be explained as fictions added later as part of the normal mythologizing process.


There's too little information offered to speculate on the length of their career.

But neither of these characters did any miracle acts. They made a promise to do a miracle, but no account says they actually did. They were political rabblerousers trying to get an armed rebellion going against Rome. It was a popular cause, so they might have been able to attract a following of several hundred.

When the rebellion was crushed and they were executed, then their followers forgot them and awaited the next charismatic to come along to stir them up again. No one thought to deify them or mythologize them into miracle-workers. There's no comparison here to the case of Jesus.


There is every reason to assume it, because no one yet (including you) can give any example of obscure unknown figures who were deified into miracle-worker heroes. Jesus was deified and mythologized into a miracle-worker at a time when we see nothing in him to show that he had any recognition for anything at all, which is totally untypical and unprecedented -- so he is the sole exception.

Your best example is Simon Magus, who was mythologized mostly by later writers, like 100 years later or more, who already knew of him as a notorious wizard of some kind who got his powers from Satan. He falls into the pattern of a popular (or notorious) celebrity whose notoriety was furthered by writers already familiar with him and his legendary deeds, unlike the case of Jesus.

Simon M. almost certainly had some talent for clever tricks, so that he made an impression and left a legend of sorts that was picked up on by the writer of Acts who said he "astounded" people with his performances (plus Josephus who says only that "he pretended to be a magician"), and from this the legend began and the mythologizing picked up on it decades later.

There's nothing that names in particular any of the miracle acts of Simon Magus and no corroboration for such claims unless you jump forward 100 years or more, whereas we have five accounts attesting to the miracles of Jesus prior to 100 AD (or four accounts plus the "resurrection" and the 500 witnesses according to Paul).


No, in my quote above I'm talking about Paul choosing Jesus to be his "risen Christ" figure. If Jesus was the nobody your theory suggests, then why did Paul choose to deify him and make him into a resurrected savior? It wasn't his charisma, because Paul never saw the historical Jesus personally to be impacted by his charisma. So, what did Paul see in him to want to deify him for?

And not just Paul, but also the gospel writers. They too chose this obscure nobody Jesus figure to deify and mythologize into a miracle-worker.

Even if you assume Paul hallucinated or was high on coccaine or had a peculiar "revelation" of some kind, that doesn't explain why the four gospel writers also chose to deify this nobody. Did they all sniff the same drug or drink the same Koolaid to cause them to make this same choice out of the blue? Obviously it was not the charisma of Jesus that they experienced, because this was 70 AD or later.

It sounds more and more like you concede that the miracle stories of Jesus began right from the beginning, in 30 AD, and were not invented by Paul or the gospel writers.

freetrader

July 22, 2009 #6025283 / #160
Amaleq13 (continued)


Do you have the patience to try to understand the point I was making here? I will use some space here to explain it -- this is not a simple 5-second sound-byte point that can be dismissed with a short quip such as your above response.

This is an important point to think about if you're pondering the 1st-century Jews and Christians and want to explain how the Christian movement got started and spread.

Was the early Jesus movement one which involved a very narrowly-focused monolithic band of crusaders who all shared the same agenda, or were they a disconnected diverse mixture of opposing factions who strongly contended against each other and even might have wanted to kill each other? Or perhaps something in between would be a third choice.

This is not a point that resolves this debate by itself. It is another factor to consider, and I think the most reasonable answer to this is one which supports my contention that Jesus either did do the miracle acts, or there was an unusually strong belief that he did, and the miracle stories are likely of early origin.

I suggest that the early Jesus movement was a very diverse group having in it factions which were opposed to each other, or rival Jewish camps, and there was no identifiable unifying ideological theme that united the members of this movement.

And in considering this, it's helpful to distinguish between two different periods of the movement -- 1) the very earliest period of the original followers who knew the historical Jesus directly, about 30-35 AD, and 2) the period when the gospel accounts were written in their final form, when most antimiraclists claim the miracle stories were introduced or invented, 60-90 AD.

Arguably these two different groups of Jesus followers might have been very different, sharing hardly anything in common. The later group had in it many Gentiles who had joined in, including crusaders trying to recruit more Gentiles, whereas the early group arguably were only Jews.

Although one can imagine that the early group was monolithic -- we have little or no hard evidence one way or the other -- it was more likely a diverse group having the opposing camps in it, and in any case the later group almost certainly was diverse and contained the conflicting camps, and we have clear evidence for this.

There is a TV documentary from the History Channel, "Banned from the Bible," which expounded on this point of whether the Jesus movement was monolithic or diverse, and their claim is that it was an extremely diverse movement, having many rival factions and no common teaching or ideology that could be identified.

This documentary did not distinguish between the earlier and the later periods I've noted, but just spoke of the entire 1st-century Christian movement as being extremely diverse. It was clear they meant the whole movement back to 30 AD.

Anyone who thinks this early "church" was monolithic in its agenda or its ideology needs to try to identify what its agenda was, or what its ideology or teaching was. What core ideas or goals did all those Jesus followers share in common that brought them all together into a common cause?

Perhaps divide the question into two parts: What was the agenda/ideology of the early group (30-35), and what was the agenda/ideology of the later group (60-90)? If the group was monolithic and had a unifying goal or teaching, there is no agreement among the experts on what this goal or teaching was.

One example of rival camps was that of the anti-Roman nationalists vs. the pro-Roman accommodationists, which might have been the strongest division, and there's every indication that both camps were involved in the early Jesus movement. There has to be an explanation how these rival camps could have both been among the followers of Jesus.

And there were other rivalries also, such as the anti-social withdrawalists vs. the Jewish mainliners, and the celibists vs. the anticelibists, and the Mosaic-Law circumcisionists vs. the Gentile anticircumcisionists. Also the followers of Paul vs. the followers of Apollos.

If any one group or crusade is identified as the unifying element and a cause that Jesus had promoted, then how could he have attracted stalwarts of the other opposing camps? Wouldn't these others more likely have seen him as a prevaricator to be stopped before he does damage to their cause?

The seriousness of these divisions is clear from the fact that there were accusations of heresy from very early, and certain schools were condemned and their leaders accused of being false prophets and even wolves in sheep's clothing having come from Satan to lead the faithful astray.

Whether this movement was monolithic or diverse, a problem arises: If the movement was monolithic, then what was the cause or unifying ideology around which the followers came together, thus making them monolithic? But if it was diverse, having rival camps within it, then how were they brought together in spite of these conflicting differences?

The best answer is that the movement was diverse, with conflicting ideas, and what unified the opposing factions was a focus on the Jesus person himself or the one who spoke the ideas (or was believed to have spoken them) -- this individual personally was the object that drew different people together, many of them crusaders for one cause or another.

Now you could argue that it was his charisma, since he must have been a great orator perhaps, but how can that explain the attraction of those later who never saw him or heard him speak? And obviously the number of these later ones was the much greater number as the movement spread.

If Jesus actually did perform the miracle acts, or there was an unusually strong belief that he did, then we have the explanation. If the belief was uniquely strong and widespread (only locally in the earliest period), then that could explain it even if the stories still are fictitious, but in that case an explanation is needed why the belief was so strong or had circulated to such an unusual degree.

How could the later mythologizers agree to create a new religion and give the new cult its holy writings if they are divided about the cause they are crusading for, or if they harbor opposing factions which are fighting against each other? How would they all agree on this one obscure Galilean figure who did nothing important (if the miracle stories are fictitious)?

Isn't it reasonable to suppose that these later mythologizers would be working together in a common cause that drove them to make their teacher-hero into a miracle-worker? Isn't the purpose of this to strengthen their cause or their crusade? And yet there was no unifying cause or crusade that can be identified.

Who has explained what these creators of the new cult were thinking or crusading for? They put together these writings which contain a hodge-podge of mainline religious teachings, some withdrawalistic asceticism, some exhortations both for and against the political and religious establishment, plus some gnostic mysticism and apocalyptic nightmares that all add up to nothing in the way of any clear goal or direction they want to take the society. So, what is the bond holding all these discordant elements together and serving as the purpose for the mythologizing?

If there was a strong widespread belief that Jesus had demonstrated power such as the miracle acts suggest, especially that of his resurrection, evidenced earlier by Paul's reference to it and the 500 witnesses, then we have the explanation of what unified the 1st-century Jesus followers, including the gospel writers and other evangelists.

Even if you disbelieve any of those events ever happened, must there not have been a strong belief in those events, or acts of Jesus, in order to explain how the many rival factions within the early movement were held together, and how even the ones ostracized and branded as heretics or false prophets still insisted they were part of the true church and were the true disciples of Jesus?

freetrader

July 22, 2009 #6025283 / #160
Amaleq13 (continued)


Why did he convert to this group? Was it their teachings that impressed him? No, the obvious answer would be that he believed the resurrection story, which already was circulating earlier, and he heard about the witnesses and became convinced that it was true.

In the same text where he says he had earlier persecuted the "Church of God" (1 Cor. 15:9), he also says Jesus resurrected and was seen by the 500 witnesses, and also by some who had known him directly, so this resurrection story seems not to have begun with Paul but earlier with the very first disciples. So are you agreeing that at least this one miracle story traces back to the earliest point rather than being invented later by the evangelists?

Those who argue that Paul invented the resurrection idea are without any explanation of why Paul converted to this group he had earlier persecuted.


Again, the examples you gave from Josephus were not miracle-workers -- there's no claim that Theudas or Jonathan the Weaver did miracles or that anyone claimed they did miracles. Nor is there anything in Josephus saying that either Theudas or Jonathan the Weaver claimed to be messiahs -- that's just modern interpretation. One of them claimed to be a prophet, which is not the same thing.

All it says is that they persuaded a group, a few hundred in number, to follow them into the desert to prepare for battle against the Romans. And they promised they would perform some miracle, but what really attracted the followers was their agreement with the political agenda. There were a number of these retreats into the wilderness by a group led by a charismatic who was to lead them in attacking the Romans.

Yes, a charismatic demagogue can attract a following by offering his audience something they want, or rallying them to a cause they strongly agree with and are ready to fight and die for. This is not what Paul did when he presented his "risen Christ" figure to the Gentiles, especially if he invented the resurrection idea himself and there was no already-existing belief that Jesus did miracle deeds.

Without that already-existing tradition of Jesus having miracle power circulating among Paul's audiences, he could not have sold his Christ figure to them out of the blue. That's not how messiah figures or miracle-workers are invented. They are invented by a mythologizing process that attaches to a popular hero figure already recognized by the targeted audience who are supposed to buy into it.

Paul could not have obtained a following for some invented "risen Christ" fiction he invented for their consumption. There's nothing from the history of the period to suggest that Jews or Greeks or Romans were predisposed to believe in any nutcase instant messiah cult that might pop up out of nowhere. It's not there -- there's no example anyone can give of such a thing, not from Josephus or any other source.

Now if you mean Simon Magus, it was not Josephus but writers much later, like 140-300 AD, who said such things and mythologized him. Plus one reference by the writer of Acts.

Simon Magus almost certainly had a career of 20 years or longer in which to amass his followers, who popularized him enough for the writer of Acts later to mythologize him and pass him on to the 2nd-century Christian writers who made him into a satanic practitioner of the black arts.

This is your best example to prove that it was "not difficult to obtain a following," but you're wrong -- Simon Magus had to spend many years displaying his tricks and doing whatever he did to win over those admirers. It was not easy to gain a following and become famous (or infamous in this case).


BEFORE him, yes, they chose Jesus earlier. But they did not choose Jesus FOR Paul. He made his own choice. And so did his gentile audiences, and so did the later evangelists and their readers. The question is: Why did they make this choice? What did they see in the Jesus figure that they chose to make him into a god?

I'm asking WHY they made that choice. The fact that someone else chose something earlier is not the reason why someone later chose it. Even if they were influenced by those earlier, that doesn't make it their reason for the choice, i.e., the earlier ones did not choose Jesus FOR the later ones, including Paul.

You might be influenced by a commercial to buy a product, but when you buy that product you're not thinking "I am buying this product because the commercial told me to." No, you are making a choice for which you have a reason, regardless whether you're responding to that influence (the commercial). There are many other influences you do not respond to, but ignore. When you make this choice, it is a willing response to that influence while you ignore other influences.

The later "believers" or converts probably gave currency to claims or beliefs expressed by the earlier ones. However, the earlier ones did not choose for those later what to believe.

The later ones, like Paul's audience, or the readers of the later gospel accounts, looked at the claims or reports or anecdotes of the earlier believers, especially the original miracle accounts, and considered the claim that there were witnesses and others close to the reported events, and they drew a conclusion, or got an impression, that these reported events really did happen.


But why did they think that? Why did they think the reverence of those earlier ones was legitimate? Are you saying the later converts were impressed only by the "original reverence" of the first believers? You mean they thought, "Oh, see how reverent they are. What beautiful reverent people -- let's create a new religion to honor their reverence."?

No, the "creators" of Christianity heard reports of the deeds done by Jesus, and the abundance of anecdotal evidence of eye witnesses convinced them that the reports were true and that Jesus really had done those acts. They adopted the term "euangelion" or good news and began the process of writing their accounts and theologizing and deifying Jesus, and they especially tried to tie him into the Hebrew prophecies, claiming he was the promised Messiah.

It wasn't the reverence of earlier believers that impressed them, but the reports about Jesus and his power and the credibility of these claims that had an impact on them and motivated them to begin evangelizing.


No, AFTER that, i.e., at the point where Paul converts.

I'll say what the connection was, or reiterate it, since you are reluctant, and you can correct me later if I'm wrong:

Paul changed his mind when he considered the evidence that Jesus had risen from the dead. He became convinced, partly by the witnesses he later mentions in 1 Cor. 15, and became a believer along with these earlier ones he had persecuted. It's very simple. That's the clear connection, that's how Paul got involved with that group, joining their effort to spread the word instead of continuing to oppose them.

Yes, he changed the message or the mission, he had conflicts with the circumcisionists, he introduced new theology, but he picked up on the basic reports in circulation about Jesus having resurrected. He did not invent a whole new belief system, but theologized on the already-existing "gospel" good-news "risen Christ" account which was similar to what was later published in the gospel accounts.

freetrader

July 22, 2009 #6025283 / #160
Amaleq13 (continued)


However you characterize it, the reason they did it is that the one deified was always a popular respected hero figure who was recognized in the culture for his accomplishments or his status, and by deifying him they were paying a kind of honor to him and possibly making a role model out of him or in some other way endorsing him or his life, and in the case of a Roman emperor or other tyrant, he himself might be the inventor of his own divinity and require acknowledgment from the populace, in which case it's done by them out of fear and by him to help consolidate his power.

This is the reason they sometimes deified a person. No one is deified or mythologized into a god or a miracle-worker unless he had status or power or recognition or some great accomplishment. They did not deify a nobody chosen out of the blue, like a lottery-winner.


OK, "must have done something special or must have been BELIEVED to have done something special." However, it is still the case that a nobody cannot be mythologized into a god, because the one mythologized must have done something that led people to believe those things about him. The beliefs about the hero might be fictional, but something special had to happen to cause those fictions to be believed.

And thus you cannot name any case of a nobody being deified. You can name examples of someone who was a great liar and demagogue and made himself famous, or someone who acquired power somehow and battered the populace into submission, and so on.

But one way or another that person had to acquire STATUS or high position or recognition in order to become an object of mythologizing. He could not have been a nobody of no status or recognition whatever and somehow become mythologized into a god. You can't name an example of that.


There has to be an explanation of what made the deified figure special in the minds of the mythologizers. In the case of the Jesus figure, a good explanation is that he really did perform the miracle acts. That can explain how he became special in their minds. There hasn't been any alternative explanation so far that is as plausible as this one.


Was he not deified at least by the time of Paul's preaching? Surely Paul presented the risen Jesus as a god, and he was doing this by no later than 50 AD. So I think there can be no question that Jesus had become deified by 20 years at most after his death. That should not be in dispute.


Or that he was believed to have actually performed miracles, even if he did not really.

But the antimiraclists here have been virtually unanimous in insisting that not only did he do no miracles, but no one believed he did until about 70 AD when Mark was written, and only then did the mythologizing begin. And from that premise it is difficult to explain how the gentiles would believe the evangelists and adopt this obscure nobody messiah figure being peddled to them.

But also prior to Mark we need an explanation how Paul's audience could have accepted the Christ figure being peddled to them by him. So it is necessary to grant that the resurrection story was already circulating around, at the time Paul was preaching, so that they were already familiar with the risen Christ figure he was expounding upon to them and he was not popping something on them solely from his imagination, in which case they would have laughed him off the stage.

So this means by about 40 or 45 AD the resurrection story was already familiar and widespread among Paul's audience, and it was not invented by him, as most others here are insisting. And so those who speculate that Paul invented the resurrection idea need to explain how his audience could have adopted his obscure risen Christ figure if it's true that he popped it on them from his imagination.


People said or wrote that he did them, also that there were eye witnesses. It is not true that people fabricate such stories, unless it is about a recognized celebrity who has status in the society. This would be the only time in history that large numbers of people claimed that someone of no status or recognition in society did miracle acts and that eye witnesses saw it.

It is interesting that so many of you here insist there are other cases of this and yet no one can give a single example.


Yes they do, as I have noted many times. Very commonly folks attribute miracles to recognized heroes or celebrities and deify them, even though the miracle claims are not true.

However, they do not ascribe such powers to an obscure unrecognized figure of no standing, such as Jesus would have been at that time if he did not do the miracle acts. And so the best explanation why people claimed he showed such power is that he actually did do those acts.

You repeatedly fail to give any example of such a person being mythologized into a miracle-worker, though, amazingly, you imagine you have given such examples.

So my logic is not that people believed it and therefore it must be true. Where that belief can be explained by the normal mythologizing process, then the claim is rejected as unlikely even though some believe it, and there is no argument here that because people believe it, it therefore must be true. Rather, if a large number believe it and say there were eye witnesses, and if the normal pattern of mythologizing a popular hero does not explain it, then there's a good possibility that it's true.


What they were convinced of was that he would lead them in an armed rebellion against the Romans. Yes, he persuaded a few hundred to join his armed insurrection, which included a ritual of taking a band of them out into the desert to prepare for the attack. But they did not deify him or mythologize him into a miracle-worker.

Jonathan the weaver is not an example of "gullibility" of the followers -- the guy really did have an ability to lead a band of rebels. Just because their insurgency attempt failed doesn't mean they couldn't have succeeded with a little better luck or a larger number of supporters.

These people were no more "gullible" than a large number of activists who support a political candidate who ends up losing the election, or protestors at an economic summit meeting who succeed at nothing more than getting their butt wacked with a club and getting thrown in jail. None of that means they're "gullible."


By using this analogy, you are conceding that Jesus did something which people saw and which appeared like real healing acts. You're not talking about later converts influenced by the evangelists. Rather, you believe these miracle stories existed right from the beginning with the real historical Jesus, around 30 AD, and that he actually performed something that appeared as healings like the ones described in the gospel accounts.

And he did these healing acts through some kind of illusionism skills which can be learned over many years of studying sorcery or psychology or the secret arts of healing magic.

And would you add that he might have also possessed some natural-born talent for this, in addition to his skills acquired through the studying and training? (Probably Criss Angel possesses some inborn talent for this, don't you think? added to the skills he learned?)

You understand that everyone else posting here on this topic disagrees that Jesus did any such acts and insists that the miracle stories of Jesus are of much later origin and did not exist before 60-70 AD. Most of my argumentation is directed against that view.

If you go this far in granting that he had some ability to do these acts, then you already believe at least half-way what I am suggesting here. Do you think the victims he healed only imagined they were healed or did they really know they were not healed? Did a blind man or leper only imagine there was a change and later discover it was just an illusion and he was still afflicted with the same blindless or leprosy?

My speculation is that Criss Angel has some natural talent for doing his stunts, inborn/genetic, which probably is not totally explained by standard science, just as much else is yet to be explained in the area of genetics -- the same could be said about more normal abilities, like a talent for music or art, or a talent to persuade (charisma), or a natural instinct for business or for hunting or for gardening and other disciplines that some people are good at and others not.

Possibly Simon Magus had a similar inborn talent to perform unusual stunts.

If you would go so far as to say Jesus may have had a natural instinct for healing, similar to the above examples (a natural talent for magic, music, oratory, business, sports, etc.), and, just as science cannot explain how some people have these inborn abilities and others do not, it also cannot explain the inborn talent that Jesus had for healing -- if you grant that much, then you're 90% in agreement with me. But if that's not what you believe, then the case of Criss Angel is not a good analogy.

An important difference is that Criss Angel has the benefits of modern technology to help him perform amazing stunts, and also the mass media to broadcast his product to millions of viewers, which helps explain how he becomes mythologized, whereas Jesus became mythologized without those tools, and also without a long career of performing in public for 30 years to expand his reputation.

When you say people are "gullible" because they believe he can levitate, and that must be why people believed Jesus did miracle healings, you're suggesting Jesus had similar resources at his disposal to carry out such grand stunts before an audience.

That's like saying movie-goers watching a violent scene are "gullible" because they believe the stuntmen on the screen are really getting banged and slammed and blown up and torn apart -- how gullible they are to believe that's really happening! No, the explanation there is not about the gullibility of viewers, but about the amazing feats of modern mass entertainment technology.


You should know by now why this analogy is totally wrong, as I have said many times that one way a person becomes mythologized is that he is a popular celebrity with a long distinguished career. People do believe fictional tales about such a celebrity figure, but not about a nobody who has no wide recognition or status.

Even if those who worship the hero are "gullible" to believe the myths, it is still NOT true that they make up or believe such stories about a nobody character who had no wide reputation or standing as a popular hero in their culture.

So it is NOT true that Jesus became deified or mythologized as a result of any "gullibility" such as you're describing. Actually it's only the last example where there's any "gullibility" to speak of, which is due to Jackson's high-profile worldwide celebrity status.

The rebels who followed Jonathan the weaver were not "gullible" just because their attempted coup or political agenda failed, and the spectators who admire the amazing stunts of Criss Angel are not "gullible" for being amazed and applauding him for his extraordinary talent.

aa5874

The resurrection miracle was witnessed? You mean Paul and over 500 persons actually saw Jesus come back to life as it supposedly happen?

Was he naked? He left his burial clothes at the scene of the miracle.

There is no indication that there were any unified belief about Jesus in any century up to Constantine.

Justin Martyr claimed that the whole of Samaria and even other nations followed a magician called Simon Magus during the days of Claudius, and that all these people were called Christians.

The followers of Simon Magus were not impressed with JESUS or his miracles, virtually ALL of Samaria and even some from other nations were held together by the magical deeds of Simon Magus during the time of Claudius.

Believers do not need actual miracles but make-believe miracles, magic, as recorded by Justin Martyr. Marcion's JESUS believers did not need a real human Jesus but a Phantom, some entity that only appeared real.

Simon Magus the magician has destroyed your argument that Jesus must have done miracles.

MAGIC worked just as well.

And Marcion has destroyed your argument that a real Jesus must have existed to perform miracles.

The PHANTOM worked just as well.

spamandham

Please close this thread