storytime

Wasn't there forced prophecy, "so that the OT scripture might be fulfilled"? It seems some people wanted a messiah but could never agree upon one. Then a group of prophecy fulfillers, (for lack of a better name), decided to create one, a made-up mythical character called Jesus. So the story was written and told and the newly created god-man was put into action. How different is that from today's action figure called Spiderman? So, people believed and the myth of Christ grew. PS..names and places were changed to protect the guilty in their fabricated myth.

aa5874

Again, your claim is NOT supported at all by the very passage you provided.

You are attempting to MIS-LEAD.

Zindler was NOT claiming that ALL the so-called prophecies in Hebrew Scripture could not be found. Zindler was dealing with ONE SPECIFIC so-called prophecy about Jesus living in Nazareth found in Matthew 2.23

Zindler was DEALING with one particular issue and that of Nazareth.

Please EXAMINE what you posted earlier.

It is CLEAR that ZINDLER did NOT claim ANYWHERE in the quote you provided that ALL so-called prophecies in the Jesus stories could NOT be found.


But, to EXPOSE your ATTEMPT to MIS-lead.

Please look at an earlier passage from the very same Zindler from the very SAME article.

This is Zindler.

See http://www.atheists.org/Nativity_-_T...Birth_of_Jesus

You have been busted again.

Your claim about mythicists appears to be bogus.

gurugeorge

Yeah, it has to be something like this.

The key to it is almost stupidly simple:-

In the earliest days (let's say with "Paul" and the Jerusalem people he's talking about) they were Messianists who had a novel concept of the Messiah. Whereas other Messianists around them may have conceived of the Messiah as one to come, who would be a military victor, these people believed he'd already been, and was a spiritual victor. And they believed they had proof of this in Scripture. (1 Corinthians 15, "according to Scripture" means quite literally, "Scripture is where we get the idea from" - and this is the only place they're getting this idea from, not from any human being any of them knew personally. It's an idea, not a person they knew.) Hence the notion of "gospel" - good news of a victory won. These people weren't looking to the future, or looking at any contemporary putative Messiah claimants - for them, the Messiah had already been and won a spiritual victory, under the aegis of which the world was already transformed into a spiritual Kingdom, if you but have eyes to see and ears to hear.

It's like a "duck-rabbit" switch in what the very concept of "the Messiah" (i.e. Christ) was.

So of course in one sense they believed he was historical (they believed this divine being, this chip of God, somehow secretly appeared on earth and tricked the Archons, etc., at some recent-ish time in the past); but this is not sufficient to show what we moderns expect of the concept "historical", i.e. a human being any of these people knew personally.

But of course, this left hostages to fortune. We see vagueness in the early days, as to the dates of this Messiah they believed had been and gone.

People "filled in", confabulated, Scripture-fulfilling pseudo-history about this divine being whom no-one, not one single person ever connected with the Church, actually knew as a human being.

But the real novelty was when a sub-sect decided to one-up the majority of other Churches, by fabricating a lineage back to the cult deity. This made for a more pinned-down, more heavily historicized version of the myth, filled with bogus eyeballing claims (i.e. "Our bishop's lineage goes back to someone who knew Jesus personally - you can't say that for any of these "heretical" churches, whose authority derives only from the spirit!")

And thus was the myth concretized in a rather unusual way.

aa5874

If one is investigating the start of the Jesus stories it cannot be ASSUMED that "Paul" was the earliest when one is NEEDS external corroborative for "Paul" himself.

There is virtually NOTHING in the Pauline writings about the state of affairs with regards to belief in Jesus or where his Jesus lived BEFORE the Fall of the Temple that can be CONFIRMED.

None of the Pauline writers claimed Jesus lived in Nazareth or Bethlehem and none of them wrote that they SAW Jesus alive.

And it is complete fiction that they SAW a resurrected dead called Jesus as they claimed.

Now, if Marcion was the first to claim Jesus was ONLY of a SPIRITUAL nature and "Paul" was really a Marcionite then he may be AFTER Marcion or AFTER 150 CE.

Toto

I got your point. Your point is mistaken and hopelessly mangled.

To start off with, Zindler is one of those new mythicists, not one of he old prophecy-debunkers - unless he is both? In which case, what is the problem?

This argument was not invented by mythicists. It derives from Christian scholarship and secular scholarship that accepts a historical Jesus. Most liberal Christians (a group that you claim to belong to IIRC) think that the gospels were constructed at least in part on literary themes from the Hebrew Scriptures, or "prophecy historicized."

And the argument is not that they match, but that there is a connection.

Mythicists only differ from liberal scholarship in that they think 100% of the gospels are myth, as opposed to a percentage that might range from 20 to 90%.

This is an attempt to smear your opponents with guilt-by-association with Acharya S and the Pygmy origin of all religion. It is off topic here and will be split off if you continue.

That earlier saying that you paraphrased was insulting enough. This one is close to being a violation of the Board rules.

Kapyong

Gday,

So, your argument amounts to :

"Anyone who disagrees with me about HJ is stupid."


K.

GakuseiDon

??? I AM making them the same thing. That's the whole point.

Was the Judges passage a prophecy about the Messiah? No. It was taken out of context and turned into a 'prophecy'. The 'old argument' would have found that a problem (i.e. "Christians are being dishonest"). The 'new argument' doesn't (i.e. "It was accepted practice").

I'm referring to the use of 'Nazareth' in the Gospels, thus the single quotes. The full quote of what I said is: "The new argument is that the details described in the Gospels DO match what is in the OT. The mythicist who proposes that 'Nazareth' is derived from the Judges passage is working honestly from the evidence. But it is simply apologetics, mythicist style.". Perhaps (with a tip of the hat to Toto) I should have written "It is now reasonable to connect Gospel details to the OT"

That the early Christians had to quote-mine from the OT in order to get 'prophecies' prefiguring Jesus.

Toto

Both the "new" and the "old" view think that the Scriptures were quote mined, taken out of context and turned into prophecy or gospel narrative. Why do you think there is any difference?

What apologetics? The new argument and the old are exactly the same. Only old style Christian fundamentalists think that there actually were TRUE prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures about Jesus. Every one else sees some sort of creative use of the HS by the gospel writers, including you.

Please stop using the word "apologist". You don't seem to know what it means. It is merely inflammatory in this context.

GakuseiDon

Ferryman to the Dead quotes Acharya S referring to "astrotheology" in the definition of mythicism, and no-one makes a comment. Too late on the "guilt-by-association", I think.

Yes, I realise that Acharya S is the black sheep of the mythicist family, But black sheep are the family's problem. I tell you what, split of the comments in this thread about Acharya, and I will continue this in that thread. I'm sure there is much more admiration for Acharya amongst mythicists than you suspect.

GakuseiDon

True. But -- back to Zindler and back to my point (and sheesh it was a minor one after all) -- if the connection between Judges and 'Jesus of Nazareth' does exist, then from the evangelist's perspective why couldn't he have been right about Judges prefiguring Jesus being from Nazareth? Why does he have to be ignorant or dishonest?

Either the connection is there or it isn't. If it is there, my (very minor) point is that Zindler is wrong to say that the evangelist is 'dishonest' or ignorant. If the connection isn't there, then that weakens the force of the mythicist argument that 'Jesus of Nazareth' comes from Judges. I'm pointing out a double-standard, not a fatal flaw in the mythicist argument.

From here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/apologist
1. A person who argues in defense or justification of something, such as a doctrine, policy, or institution.
2. A person who offers a defence by argument