Diogenes the Cynic

Careful. Richard Carrier ripped Bart Ehrman for calling that a mistake by Tacitus.
It's facile to say that's what he "usually" meant, that's a reading that doesn't make much sense in the context of the Galatians quote (it makes no sense for Paul to single out James, alone of the other Pillars for this distinction), and there's no reason not to take a plain reading unless you don't want Jesus to have a brother.

First of all, it's not just Paul and secondly Paul does give every indication that he thought Jesus was a real person. He was "born of a woman," born kata sarka, was killed by the "rulers of our age." was "buried" and raised as the "firstfruit," which I still maintain makes no sense without an earthly death.

To support the idea of a completely fictional Jesus we have nothing. Not a single claim or indication in any Christian literature or even anti-Christian literature.

graymouser

No, it's impossible that this is what Paul meant. "Brother of the Lord" in Gal 1:19 is used to differentiate the apostle Paul met from any other apostles named James (there must have been at least two, which is consistent with the Gospel accounts) - and such apostles would have also been "believers in the religion." To explain it away you have to invent a religious order called "Brothers of the Lord" out of whole cloth, like Doherty does.

outhouse

but they can


personal opinion

James The Least

Not to mention the supposed "tradition" of letting the public decide who to let go free and who to execute. And that the people would choose a murderer over a messiah claimant. Pure fiction, and massively slanderous as well.

outhouse

that was all fiction written for a roman audience to vilify the jews

spin

You'll note I didn't say that they couldn't.

That's where you're wrong. You are trapped in an epistemological quandary, ie you have no way of knowing, thus of showing, what--if anything--is real, as you have no means of discriminating undifferentiated tradition. You have no perspective from which to do so and looking back through the tradition doesn't provide you with any synchronic data as a constructable point of comparison. If you can't fathom this, try to explain exactly how you know what is real and what is not in a story told to you. You won't be able to without prior knowledge of the material, a prior knowledge unavailable to you here. If you're still not on the wavelength, think of a storytelling game in which each member of a group is allowed to advance the story and each is chosen by the throw of the dice. It's all then written down from memory by another person. Your task is to determine who contributed what purely from the written text. Good luck on that.

Adam

Sorry, all,
I meant to be refuting Atheos's #26 in this thread at the same time in my Post #55 I was refuting Dio's #37. (And now you, James, as Barabbas is not mentioned in gJohn.) You see, my emphasis on the Passion Narrative source in gJohn gets back to the earlier material before the items Atheos ridicules in gMark. Scholars are generally recognizing now that gJohn does not rely on the Synoptics, and this is particularly true for the source that underlies gJohn. The Passion Narrative in gJohn relies on a source it shares with gLuke, whereas gMark (and following it, gMatthew) goes off somewhat on its own.

outhouse

Boy those are some big words, I hope I can keep up ><


exegesis of content and context can and does work as well as any other written material.

Not only that we have a track record of ancient hebrew oral tradition as well as cross cultural oral tradition in which we have in the past, tracked influence's hebrew's used and how the legends evolved. Same for many hellenistic sources.

there are ways to verify written oral tradition



take noahs legend

we have a real flood in 2900BC and we have a mythical global flood in the end. we see the gaps in the middle as many were written about. OF COURSE this all started with legends recorded then transmitted through oral tradition but in the end [in this case, not always] there was a historical core.


have you read Vasina?? I butcher it trying to explain it

spin

Not getting there. Exegesis may help you understand a text, if that.

The game is not to guess at what might have been behind a tradition and show intimations of the different sources. You need to get to some reality behind it. And you have failed. The realization may only come later.

An old joke:

Q) What's the last thing that passes through a bug's mind as it hits the windscreen?

A) It's anus.

In short, you're clueless. You guess about a flood in 2900 BCE and hope that it has some significance, yet others claim that the flood referenced was a distant memory of the filling of the Black Sea, something far above any ordinary flooding. It might ultimately have come from a nightmare or from a sailor's bad experience. But who knows? Nobody. The anus will catch up one day.

I've tried to make the problem simple for you. One more attempt:

Tradition is like a punchbowl. People drink and people refill it, but at any one time you can't say who put what in it by examining the punch alone. At any one time you only have the state of the tradition as it has been accumulated, things added, things removed and you have no way of deciding what was added, when it was added, or what its origin was. The people who pass on the tradition cannot evaluate it. They just trust that they are passing on the best money can buy, because it is their received tradition. So whether a datum that has entered the tradition is veracious or not the tradition itself won't help you decide. The most you can do is point out inconsistencies. But there need not be any inconsistencies and still be from diverse sources and times, given the art of the person passing the tradition on. Then again inconsistencies may arise from various people's input regarding the one issue and perhaps be based on something real. The tradition alone cannot tell you.

You couldn't do worse on your track record.

outhouse

No sir, in this case you lack the knowledge. Your supposed to be one of the more knowledgable people here and I do enjoy your banter but there comes a limit.

in this case your ignorant, while its my specialty.

sir, your only belittling yourself with ignorance at this point.

Your wrong about oral tradition, and your dead wrong about this.


only the uneducated mythers.

there is ZERO evidence for this AND its not even dated, but guessed to be the end of the ice age. IN which no oral tradition would ever survive.


I do Mr Spin.


The flood of the Euphrated in 2900 BC places the legend exactly where noah is said to originate and the flood time is almost dead nuts.

Now getting deeper, have your anus keep up please, i dont want to have to go through this again

Ziusudra is a verfied king from the kings list who reigned at the time of the attested flood [that means its a real flood in case you didnt know that word] Its also the oldest of the flood legends that describes the real river flood that devistated the cities along the river that had never experienced a 5000 year flood [or longer] the real flood was very bad leaving meters of silt in places.

So we have a real devistating flood, and we have a real man. Ziusudra is said to have went down the river on a barge loaded with goods and livestock only to land on a hill and burn a animal sacrifice. [sound familiar?] the mythology created surrounding this matches noah's flood in places word for word. As do many other flood myths in the levant and Mesopotamian regions. AND we know for a fact Mesopotamian's migrated to Israel bringing these legends with them in oral tradition. No scholar worth hi salt would ever doubt that. Ah but then there's you! somehow your magically special.



I have a great attitude, and love learning and accept I could be wrong.



I agree, nicely said

very well written and you hold a high degree of intelligence, so quit stepping on mine. Your not always right.