steve_bnk

If 'render to Ceasar what is Ceasar's..' is any indication of who JC may have been they would not want him eliminated, he would be a counter to the Jewish anti-Roman militant radicals.

steve_bnk

You are presuming the texts you have are true, for which you have no proof.

From what we have now as the NT, JC was preaching a rejection of the Earthly material life and preparation for eternal afterlife, if you are slave don't rebel, be a good one.

'My kindom is not of this Earth'..interpeted by one as me who sees the NT as wisdom literature, he meant he was not interested in material world power, and he was not a threat to Roman power.

The problem is when Chrtians pick and chose what to focus on the the NT. I belive if you objectively parse all of the NT you'd find modern Chrtianity in the USA does not match up.

The question for Christians is not wether JC existed or not, it is how they live their lives. Modern Christans are in large part what JC sets himself against, the hypocritcal Jews who talked the talk but did not walk the walk.

http://bible.cc/matthew/23-3.htm

If you are arguing details of the NT, what say you about fornnication, divorce, and adultery, all of whuch JC considered serious offenses? At what point do you get past trying to prove the exstence of JC and get on to doing what he said to do?

Baalazel

The first post in our exchange ends with this quote of Acts 9:1,2 from me:

I will take the time to point out again the weight of scripture. You have stated that as Paul was a Pharisee he could have not had the backing of the Sadducees. Scripture proves you wrong on that count.

You then claim the quote of Acts 9:1,2 has nothing to do with what you said. You said Paul did not have the backing of the Sadducees. I quoted scripture which proves Paul did have the backing of the Sadducees. You are wrong.

The Sadducees were Sadducees to the very last breath they breathed. You are going to have to reference Josephus on the conversion of the Sadducees because I have never heard such a thing in forty years of religious study. The Sadducees maintained the control of the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem untill their friends the Romans burned their temple in 70CE at which point they disappear from history.

Not only can you not understand scripture you can't take a joke. Which is what my comment about Paul and the Sadducees starting a new religion was. Although I'm beginning to warm to the idea. I'll see if I can flesh it out. Might prove an interesting study.

Where does your reference to the resurrection come from? And are you talking about Pharisees or Pharisee/Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in resurrection but the Sadducees didn't. The general resurrection that is but not the resurrection of Jesus. But if the Saducees became Pharisees they would have to believe in resurrection then wouldn't they. But if Paul was a Pharisee and believed in the resurrection of Jesus then some Pharisees could have been Christians. But could they have remained Pharisees?
There are no vague expressions as long as dictionaries exist. If "dictionary" is too vague for you I am at a loss to help.

I sorely doubt the spiritual maturity of any Christian who wonders what reading scripture would achieve. You seem to be ignorant of the most basic points of the life of Paul. You claim Pharisees and Sadducees are interchangeable. As is so with so many of your kind you think that if Paul said it it must be so.

Which means we have arrived at the question of Pauls veracity. To save you the strain of looking the word up I will tell you it means "Devotion to the truth: truthfullness." Its relevance here is that Paul had a lack of it. Paul was willing to side with the Sadducees, something no Pharisee would do. Which brings us to Pauls lie about being a Pharisee. He wasn't. I could go on but I must allow you to discover some things on your own.

Obviously you have read too few of Pauls letters or you would know more about him.

But dear boy the idea about the new religion was an offhand comment as I have said. You are confused enough. Put the thought right out of your head and read Philippians again. It was less than nothing, a mere trifle. Not to worry. Paul was a Sadducee before he became a Pharisee. Josephus said so. Paul actually wrote all the books with his name. Don't let nobody tell you different. And you only need to read one or two books in the Bible to gain a clear understanding of theology. Don't let nobody tell you different.

Must be off now. I have interesting things to do.

Baal

renassault

I fail to see what in that quote motivates you to think you're right for the 50th time. If it's the religious authorities, who were indeed Sadducees, I already gave you the answer, and this doesn't give Pharisees any support from the Sadducees who were regarded as 'minim' or heretics by mainstream Judaism anyway (as the Talmud says). They would have acted accordingly with Judaism in that case, but certainly not in starting a new religion, or hijacking Christianity. Especially with Josephus' comment regarding the Sadducees' way of disagreeing with each other (War 2-8).

Josephus Antiquities 18.1.4:

But the doctrine of the Sadducees is this: That souls die with the bodies; nor do they regard the observation of any thing besides what the law enjoins them; for they think it an instance of virtue to dispute with those teachers of philosophy whom they frequent: but this doctrine is received but by a few, yet by those still of the greatest dignity. But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them.

Even without this, the verse doesn't support your assertion that they would support Paul on such a radical thing as starting Christianity.

Try fleshing it out with some real support in that case. If it was a joke, it must not have been one of your best funnies.

I was talking about the general resurrection which the Pharisees did and Sadducees didn't causing the stir when Paul was on trial. I'm fairly sure some could believe in Jesus and remain Pharisees as seems to have been the case even during Christ's ministry (e.g. Luke 7:38ff., and parallels, where Matthew and Mark change Simon the Pharisee to Simon the Leper), and there are Pharisee believers in the early Church as per Acts. But not Sadducees. This is why Paul wouldn't have really started a new religion backed specifically by the Sadducees.

But there are vague phrases that are supposed to have vague connotations, certainly.

Where have I claimed Pharisees and Sadducees are interchangeable? If anything I'm trying to point out to you how Paul, a Pharisee, could not have had the backing of Sadducees.

Where does he ever side with a Sadducee? If he opposed Judaizers in Antioch at the expense of his reputation, it's hardly likely he'd do any of these imaginary allegations.

Yet it is somehow not obvious to you that Sadducees would not have backed a Pharisee into starting a new religion.

I think it's clear to me how 40 years of religious study can make you miss some very important things...you don't actually read things in context, a problem many atheists plague when going about finding contradictions. You obviously don't even know what I'm talking about. There are plenty of arguments for the authenticity of the 13 Pauline letters, heck I'm almost certain he wrote Hebrews too, but none of this has anything to do with the fact that you consider it a real possibility that the Sadducees would have backed a Pharisee about something like this. Don't jump to conclusions buddy, but instead actually respond with logical answers.

Must be finding new imaginary verses that support your conclusions.

Baalazel

Acts 9:1,2. it's scripture you dunderhead. It proves Paul had the backing of the Sadducees. That Paul was under the control of the Sadducees is a fact accepted by every knowledgeable reader of scripture. Every one but you it seems. How can you read clear language and deny it says what it says?

The only thing that makes this understandable is the thought that you don't know that Saul and Paul are the same person. But even you can't be that wrongheaded. Can you?

Baal

Switch89

Possibly not. It is only in the gospel of John (the latest of the gospels) plus it may be symblic.Richard Carrier comments on the story:
"Of course, this is probably an invention--there was a belief that the messiah came "with water and blood" (1 John 5:6-8), representing baptism and death. Consequently, several church fathers (Ambrose, Augustin, and Chrysostom in particular) understood this spearing passage symbolically, not literally: the blood represented the eucharist; the water, baptism."

Well, no historian of the time (such as Philo or Josephus) records it, and you would think an earthquake with damage to the temple would be recorded. Besides, if it has a symbolic meaning, we don't need to posit that it occurred historically. Occam's razor tells us not to multiply entities beyond necessity. I would say we should also not multiply explanations beyond necessity. If it can be accounted for as myth, why bother accounting for it as an event that actually occurred?

renassault

What I meant was, bringing up verses to imaginarily support conclusions.

Do you honestly think I don't know that Saul and Paul are the same person. I never disputed that Paul was under their authority. I disputed the assertion that any Sadducee would have backed Paul in something so radical as starting a new religion.

The divine symbollism is probably there, but the fact is, for the guard to check that a body is dead, he would have probably simply stabbed him in the heart. I think the water and blood is a real condition, but I'm no doctor. The Gospel of John maybe latest, I won't mention anything regarding date and authorship so that I don't start 10 pages of offtopic comments, but it doesn't need to be invented just because he is the only one to mention it. I think there was an Old Testament quotation regarding the piercing of the Messiah. Certainly then, you would expect the Christians to have 'invented' a tradition long before John, so he probably didn't invent it. Its lack of inclusion into the other Gospels may reflect the fact that only John the Apostle (the beloved disciple, and this can be no one else but John) was close enough to the crucifixion.

Philo was not a historian on every little detail, and Josephus apparently didn't have such motivations: he mentions John the Baptist in passing to an incident where Herod lost his army. An earthquake which rents the temple's curtain may be odd not to have been mentioned by Josephus, but of the many strange details he omits and contradicts in his two versions of that time period, it shouldn't be taken as insurmountable evidence (plus the traditions mentioned above about a curtain-renting). For example, Josephus when talking about the Sicarii, first gives a number of about 500 people, then 30,000. Josephus is not a day-by-day newspaper of facts apparently, though he is a superb historian with invaluable testimony.

We might not need to posit it is historical, so why posit it isn't? Nobody is 'multiplying entities' beyond any necessity if this was an event which happened both historically and with symbollic implications (like the high priest's statement that if they don't kill Jesus, the Romans would come and destroy the nation and Temple in John, albeit this is going to be taken as proof of a post-70 date).

Who is multiplying explanations beyond necessity? It hasn't been accounted for as myth except on the basis that it must be one since it sounds like one. But if God used historical events to symbolize things, such as Hosea's prostitue wife who divorced him, which happened literally and symbolized God's people abandoning faith to Him, then why must it be an invention? I understand if you show this through form criticism, but you have not done so.

mountainman

Pilate tells the world quite calmly that Jesus healed by the power
invested in the tradition of the Hellenistic Healing God Ascelpius,
according to the fourth century "Acts of Pilate".

The Jewish-Italian ancient historian Momigliano more than once
infers that the phenomenom of "Early Christianity" and the notion
of the "Universal Church" was -- not a spiritual realm -- but a
transcendental realm. In other words --- imaginary.

show_no_mercy

So only Jews use the term "revolutionist"?


Funny that you would bring up Josephus. He also writes about incidents where Pilate almost causes a rebellion. One where he writes about what Philo wrote about, and another time when he embezzled some funds from the 2nd Temple to build an aqueduct. When the Jews protested, he had them silenced by hiding his soldiers in plainclothes in the crowd of Jews and had the protesting Jews beaten and killed.

Why Josephus didn't seem that interested in yet a supposed third time Pilate almost caused a rebellion in Jerusalem due to Jesus' massive unpopularity during the trial is another inconsistency. This trial scene seems to only appear in the gospels. It's not corroborated by any other writer - Jewish, Samaritan, Greek, or Roman - who would be interested in events and rebellions happening during Pilates tenure.

Pilate, again according to Josephus, was fired for massacring some Samaritans - who were unarmed - when they went up to Mount Gerizim to follow a messiah claimant who went to demonstrate a miracle.

The Pilate in the gospels is the polar opposite of the Pilate presented in Josephus and Philo.

But whatever... you're going to believe what you want to believe, no matter that it isn't corroborated by any other source outside of documents whose sole purpose is evangelism.

Doug Shaver

:rolling: