Toto

Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman have very similar backgrounds - graduate study in theology, Phd's from respected universities - often treated as similar academic critics of Christianity - but you have elevated one (the man) to near godhood and dismissed the other (the woman) as an ideologue. Why?

Toto

The broken record technique?

You are admitting to spamming this board and repeating the same set of arguments without interacting with other posters.

Please stop this. If you don't have enough respect for other posters here to actually interact with their arguments, there's no point to your being here.

Horatio Parker

Because I can't satisfy every point you can raise doesn't mean the myth world doesn't exist. I can't tell you the color of Jesus robe either.

Numenius, Macrobius, Proclus are all writer/thinkers who discuss the sublunar realm. It's obscure stuff, but it's out there.

From "Homer the Theologian"

When the myth is part of a thousand year tradition, it's not so hazy.

Music is as arbitrarily culturally determined as myth, and even more abstract. Hazy, handwaving, mysterious etc. Beyond the reach of science. Is it worth studying?

I'm agnostic on HJ, tho I think the mythicists have the better case.

I agree the egalitarian appeal accounted for Christianity's success.

I think you're off 180 degrees here. Assuming Jesus is a myth, then what were the influences that created him? We're back at the top...you want it both ways - a mythical sublunar realm is not worth investigating but for some reason Jesus is.

Horatio Parker

Granted there is a difference between the characters.

But both are myths who were presumed to be historical.

Of course it's not so. What I'm discussing is what was believed in antiquity. If ancient thinkers believed that figures didn't have to be historical to represent the truth(scriptures not novels), that would be significant. That sometimes seems to be the case, but I've never seen it explicitly.

ApostateAbe

If Elaine Pagels wrote textbooks used in state-accredited colleges, then those textbooks would be suitable for getting an accurate understanding of ancient history. It would mean that the opinions expressed in those textbooks represent probable opinions generally held by the secular academic establishment, and the ideology of Elaine Pagels would be irrelevant. But, she instead writes popular books, vetted only by publishers interested in selling copies.

ApostateAbe

It evokes frustration, but it is not meant as disrespect. It is meant to save time. It takes much longer to respond to a falsehood or a bad argument than to state one, and some falsehoods and bad arguments are common, much more common than they should be.

EarlDoherty

I don't know why I bother to post here when readers can't understand the simplest point being made.

That the Pauline Savior Christ was historical or regarded as historical is the very issue needing demonstration. You are begging the question by paralleling him with Achilles. Achilles in Homer is unmistakeably presented as a human being, supposedly believed to be historical. In Paul and the other epistles, it is anything but conclusive that their Christ is a human being or regarded as historical, with a lot of indication that he is not.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

I know he did. That's not my point. If Einstein's first paper on the theory of relativity had stated: "e=mc cubed", would there be any point to some later scientist attacking him for making that statment when it had already been supplanted by a subsequent paper containing the "e=mc squared" correction?

The difference between what I stated in The Jesus Puzzle and what I revised it to in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man is not on the scale of this analogy, but is rather a matter of nuance. Still, I have conceded to Don many times that such a nuance was lacking and ought to have been present in The Jesus Puzzle. Yet he continually persists in quoting that passage from the earlier book as though it represents the full extent of my present position.

That's what we are all here for. To present ideas, listen to comment and criticism, and defend or amend one's theories in light of that feedback. At least, that is the way true scholarly discussion operates. Neither you nor Don follow that kind of methodology. You, Abe, are immersed in concrete, with a very limited set of mantras delivered with eyes blindfolded to opposing argument, and I see no sign that you have undertaken any movement since the day you arrived here--what, two centuries ago.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

OK, that's actually really good to hear. You changed your mind about the "World of Myth" thing that you had in The Jesus Puzzle. I don't want to get the wrong idea. I want to get a good idea of what you really believe, so that the appropriate corrections can be made for others who have read The Jesus Puzzle but not the other book. What did you get wrong about the "World of Myth" as you described it in The Jesus Puzzle?

Horatio Parker

I don't know why I bother to post here when readers can't understand the simplest point being made.

I understand your theory about Paul. I'm not addressing it, at least not directly.

I agree that it's not conclusive that Paul's Jesus is human. That's not my point.

If other writers of allegorical commentary are any indication, it would seem to weigh against mythicism rather than for, at least in regards to Homer. If they consider the historical existence of their subjects as questionable or irrelevant, they never say so.