spamandham

this thread, 2 pages back

http://www.freeratio.org/showpost.ph...8&postcount=59

ApostateAbe

Well, I did say that there are many avenues of skepticism. Galatians 1:19 may be an interpolation. But, do we not have corroboration in Matthew, Mark and Josephus. The Christians who interpolated Paul were the ones who believed the myths of the gospels. But, why would they interpolate such a thing? To prove that Jesus had a brother. But, the interpolation comes off as though Paul or whoever wrote it doesn't seem to care, as though he was just giving trivial details of his time in Jerusalem. The interpolators were clever.

It has also been argued that Galatians is a complete forgery, and Paul never actually wrote it. It has been argued that Paul was lying when he says that he met James. Each explanation has a bunch of faults. To me, what matters is consilience, which is the unified conclusion that follows from many diverse lines of evidence. It hardly matters if each piece of evidence has their speculated faults and uncertainties. If they seem to work together toward a single conclusion, then we should accept that conclusion. To the skeptics and Jesus-agnostics, consilience either doesn't matter because it may have been something like a big conspiracy, and/or it is putting blind trust in Christian texts. That is where the difference in fundamental paradigms comes back into play. If I use an argument that assumes a methodology that other people simply do not have, then I can not hope to change their minds. I can only hope to get them to understand the arguments and the philosophies.

You say skepticism is a tool and not a philosophy. Well, that is the way it should be, and that is how I thought of it before I came to the BC&H forum. What do you call the philosophy that prefers to rest on ambiguity, that is focused on tearing down theories rather than building a better theory? I used to call it postmodernism. But, they tend to call themselves skeptics. I am also a skeptic, so I called them "hyperskeptics" or "super-skeptics" or "ultra-skeptics." Toto takes that as insulting, because it implies that I have just the right amount of skepticism, but she does not have any word to replace it. I have recently used just, "skeptics" and "philosophy of skepticism," though I am uncomfortable with that, because it makes me look like a dogmatist or something. And, you don't like the way I use that phrase, either. OK, please suggest another word or phrase.

Toto

But that's where you really miss the point - there is no such consilience. There are a few thin pieces of evidence that are all problematic.

No - it is just that the evidence is all weak, and your conclusions put too much trust in Christian texts.

You don't actually have a methodology that can be identified. You haven't identified a philosophical or other basis for insisting on drawing your conclusions.

How about recognizing the reality of the paucity of the evidence?

Clivedurdle

Lordy lordy!

Connections may be assumed to be there because of later theological beliefs - but assuming lord=jesus is dangerous.

There are an awful lot of assumptions - like Jesus in a mosaic with Roman gods in the 350's.

bacht

The philosophical position you're describing sounds closer to the idea that nothing is knowable, and I don't agree with this. I don't consider myself a post-modernist or deconstructionist, though I haven't studied these systems. Skepticism as an attitude is as old as humanity I would guess.

The story in the NT is fairly consistent within itself if we accept the premises of the Catholic editors, ie the historical reality of Jesus, Paul et al. Clearly the early organizers of this material made an effort to harmonize the texts as much as they could, within the constraints of the supernatural religious perspective they held. They probably also wanted to retain difficult bits simply because they were old (or believed to be).

I'm not a Christian, so I feel no compulsion to "clean up the loose ends" or whatever. If the answers to my questions about Christian origins come 20 or 50 or 200 years from now I can live with that. I have some guesses about what happened, but nothing that can be verified.

I'm not sure you're considering all the possibilities. For instance, it's not at all clear how much gnosticism and christianity influenced each other, and how much of either should be traced to Jewish sources. In the 2nd C the apologists started to craft what became Catholic orthodoxy in the face of various sects later branded heretical. One can go through Acts and identify various characters as contemporary competitors to catholicism, making the book a kind of satire of heresy. Thus James could represent some kind of Jewish-Christian sect in conflict with the gentile-centred Paul (who could really be a whitewashed Marcion).

judge

Ok that was Spin not Solo. :-)

Secondly you cant say what is the "right" translation, and Spin cant say that brother (meaning sibling) is not the right translation.
He is doing his best to speculate, but until he goes and deals with each case where Paul does in fact refer to Jesus as kurios then he has not, really, got very much.
But Spin wont do this. All he does is handwave them aside.
So yes, here, in a forum that is mainly friendly towards his speculations he doesn't get pulled up.

spin

You can deliberately misrepresent what you read as much as you like. All you do is ignore the fact that, while Paul uses "brother", in almost all examples he means a fellow believer. You don't like it so you ignore it.

So you won't look at them yourself.

You're the one not doing the relevant job. Why don't you get off your a and do some analysis rather than this predictably reactionary sniping?

Have you read my analyses in order to make this bogus claim? No. Talk about handwaving.

Case in point on handwaving.

oao :wave:


spin

aa5874

As I have pointed out BEFORE in order to show that Galatians 1.19 can even be true or is relevant both the LORD, and the apostle called James MUST be POSITIVELY identified.

Did they exist?

The same gMatthew that you say support that the Lord had a brother ALSO claimed in Matt.1.18 that the Lord Jesus was the CHILD of the HOLY Ghost.

The same gMark that you say support that the LORD had a brother also show that the LORD JESUS was walking on water like a SPIRIT and was transfigured.

The same Josephus that you say support that the LORD had a brother is the same Josephus that contains passages about Jesus called Christ that were forged.

And in the very same Galatians 1.1 the LORD Jesus was raised from the dead.

Once the LORD Jesus was the CHILD of a Ghost of God and walked on water like a Spirit, transfigured and was RAISED from the DEAD in the VERY SAME NT Canon where it is claimed the LORD had a brother then Galatians 1.19 resolves nothing.

The Lord Jesus was a Ghost of God and Paul met James the Lord's brother.

But, Papias claimed James the apostle was not the son of Mary the .supposed mother of Jesus, the son of the Ghost of God

It must be obvious that even if James and the LORD had the same mother that they had a DIFFERENT FATHER.

ONE FATHER was the GHOST OF GOD. James' father too? It does not matter.

JAMES was the brother of a GHOST of God, the LORD.

I think I found another Ghost. Let's call him James, the LORD's brother..

ApostateAbe

Thank you for putting so much thought into what I am saying, bacht, with so much tolerance and patience to boot. I appreciate it.

You used the word, "deconstructionist," which is a useful word for describing people who accept (or refuse to dismiss) multiple interpretations of written text. It may be the most appropriate word available for people like Toto, Spin, Robert Price and R. Joseph Hoffman. But, it would still be misleading, because they tend to limit the application of such a philosophy to the early Christian texts. So, I think I will coin and use the word, "Christo-deconstructionism," meaning the way of being so skeptical of all interpretations of early Christian texts that no knowledge can be gained about the founding of Christianity.

The question of whether or not the texts were too drastically changed throughout the early church may be a good way to justify Christo-deconstructionism. It is not a theory I accept, and I think I may have explained why days ago--once a Christian myth is put in writing, it tends to be treated as a sacred tradition or the word of God. I would make a better judgment if I could access and study so many of the ancient Christian texts, but I am just some guy on the Internet. I know that Ehrman made a lot of hay over the thousands of variations in the canonical texts. He also made the point that, by far, most of them were small, seemingly intended for greater clarity or a more "sensible" reading, or they were purely mistakes. But, of course there were some changes that were indeed drastic, such as the extended ending to the gospel of Mark and the story of the adulterous woman in the gospel of John, and still more changes intended to match a sectarian point of view.

I figure that such patterns of changes can be tracked and modeled using the hundreds of manuscripts that we have. If so, then we may be able to roughly extrapolate backward from our earliest copies what degree of changes took place before our earliest copies until the first hypothesized composition. If a theory demands a greater degree of change than the model predicts, then an explanation and evidence is necessary. Maybe this already been done, I don't know.

Doug Shaver

I beg your pardon. Some of us ahistoricists believe (rightly or wrongly) that consilience is on our side. I for one have no use for any conspiracy theory, and anyone who thinks that a great many Christian texts have been doctored by redactors and interpolators is hardly putting any blind trust in them.