Doug Shaver

You're treating the Bible as if it were a coherent whole. That isn't going to work. It is a collection of disparate documents compiled under several assumptions (including unity of thought) for which there is no good warrant.

Mark mentions Jesus' siblings, barely, on just one occasion. Matthew repeats the story and tells no others about them. Since neither book existed in Paul's time, they cannot be used as a basis for inferences about Paul's thinking.

Vivisector

It seems obvious to me that you're right. But why wouldn't this be an indication that Paul simply had independent knowledge of the existence of Jesus's brothers?

Cheers,

V.

Didymus

Well, belief in a completely fictional earthly hero ought to have even worse problems than belief in a real one that's been mythologized, i.e., there's not only a lack of evidence for his exploits, there's a lack of evidence for his very existence. That sounds like it would be a big problem, but Christianity hasn't been fazed by it. For all the 2nd and 3rd century attacks on Christian orthodoxy, we know of none that asserted Jesus' non-existence as an earthly man (or apparent earthly man).

Perhaps by luck, perhaps by design, the Christian message was composed in a time and place that neatly rendered it immune from the sort of fact-checking that would bring down most such cock-and-bull stories. Paul's Christ was so vague as to be utterly untraceable; Mark's gospel was more specific, but it was published long after Pilate's administration, and hundreds of miles from Galilee and Jerusalem. To help things along, there's no evidence that the gospels were disseminated outside the cult of believers until well into the 2nd century, when all the possible eyewitnesses were long gone. Not only was there no way to ascertain at that time whether Jesus was real or mythical, there's no record of anyone undertaking to find out.

Under those conditions, the gospel authors had free rein. They could construct the legend to suit their Jewish, Gentile and God Fearer audience in the Diaspora. A "mythological Jesus/Joshua" would have had no particular advantage over a "historical hero."

Didymus

Richbee

Christianity, unlike paganism or Neopganism is not about fables, legends and old stories, invented by poets, long ago abandoned to the wind of change and the truth of the Gospel preached by St. Patrick in Ireland, or Ninian is also called Nynia, Ninias, Rigna, Trignan, Ninnidh, Ringan, Ninus of Galloway, Scotland.

Jesus Christ is the faint hope of myth, who became fact! God incarnate!

Or as Lewis remarks, "Myth became Fact."

Jill Carattini writes well about the time when Myth became History

<snip irrelevant cut and paste>

Source: Slice of Infinity

openlyatheist

Why would any of the things in your 1st paragraph pose a problem? Christianity was born in an age of Hellenism when people believed all sorts of crazy crap. It didn't stop people from believing in Hercules and Theseus or bathing in the blood of oxen in the name of Mithra. Why should any such fact-finding mechanism have existed? And if it did exist I'd think we would have some of those facts on hand to lay this very issue to rest. I was recently informed that no one really knows where the “empty tomb” is.

It sounds to me like despite any attacks on Christianity in the old days no one really took the time to check anything. Nor did they bring forth any positive evidence for the physical existence of Jesus. I bolded your second paragraph for emphasis. Sounds to me like people in a superstitious era just didn't think about it.

One thing that made an impression on me from Jonathan Kirsch’s book, was that when Jews brought the concept of there only being One God into Hellenistic society, it was a relatively novel concept. Actually denying the existence of anyone’s god was an entirely new idea.

blastula

Oh for imaginary being's sake, Christians need to get the fuck over themselves with this "we all know deep down it's true" bullshit. That is exactly their crutch. This "you don't want to admit what you know to be true" game they like to play, so they can pretend to themselves that their belief is not based on faith alone, but has objective proof. Go ahead and believe if you wish, but don't give me this "everyone knows it's true if only they listened to heart" ca-ca. There are billions of people alive today who don't know it to be true, so shut the f up already, mkay.

Red Expendable

I don't know enough about the subject. I guess I'm agnostic on the matter, but I can accept a historical Jesus, some little kernel of events and person where all this shit started from and still say that Christianity is all bullshit.

Also, my 'heart' is an organ that pumps blood - so I don't want anyone in there, except maybe a heart surgeon, and even then, only if absolutely necessary!

You know, it's not too terribly difficult for SOME person to have existed that gave birth to this monster. But without all the hocus-pocus anyway, a historical jesus is just a guy. And frankly, I'm not impressed with people nowadays, let alone someone who a guy who was alive 2000 years ago.

What's the big deal with this topic and people getting all pissed off at each other? It's not politics or anything.


RedEx

Richbee

Spot on is:

"Myth became Fact."

For the Christian story is exactly that. God did show Himself. He stepped through the unseen and came to dwell within the seen. The Eternal reached into time and touched real and datable history. In our creed it is stated that Jesus, "suffered under Pontius Pilate…" A reminder that what man has longed for most has really happened: John 1:14 "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."

Lewis' words provide a fitting conclusion.

"For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact, claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher."

(See: God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1970) 67.)

May the One who was, and is, and is to come be to you all things this day and always.

Source: Slice of Infinity

Richbee

Nice language you <edit>

Richbee

Have you been hiding in a digital Black Hole?

http://www.christianorigins.com/doherty-muller.html