jakejonesiv

No, I have not misunderstood the point. You keep asserting that the early Christians were embarassed by the alleged crucifixtion, but you have not offered one scrap of evidence that they were.

Do you have anything?

Jake

jakejonesiv

That is pure spin.

Why would Justin Martyr want to do that? It makes no sense. The reason Justin had to retreat to diabolical mimicry was the fact that the parallels in the competing mystery religions were much too close for comfort.

The mystery religions were proof that Christianity was not unique. By positing "diabolical minicry" Justin was saying the competing religions were copycats created by Satan, sometimes ahead of time! Pitiful.

If these other religions had been so totally different from Christianity as modern day "defenders of traditional Christian origins" say they are, Justin and Tertullian would have not have been concerned with them as a threat to Christianity.

Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

The Masoretic text is obviously corrupt at Psalm 22.16; it has: Like a lion my hands and my feet. The original may well have been כרה, to dig, just as it is in the LXX, which has ορυσσω, to dig: They have dug [or excavated] my hands and my feet. Both of these words are commonly used in the OT in the sense of digging a grave or digging a pit.

I am not altogether certain about the range of meanings for the Hebrew כרה in later times (as in the Mishnah or the Talmud), but I am rather certain that the Greek ορυσσω was not at all commonly associated with crucifixion except on the strength of Psalm 22.16 itself. Scanning the passages adduced by Martin Hengel in his book on crucifixion, I find many instances of hanging, fixing, nailing, and fastening, but none as yet to digging. The LSJ lists a number of usages for this word, but none pertain to crucifixion.

Ben.

JoeWallack

JW:
So you don't consider Time Travel "far-fetched"?



Joseph

TRANSLATOR, n.
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

jakejonesiv

The early Christians showed a marked preference for the Septuagint over the Masoretic text. If the two disagreed, Christians would most often go with the Septuagint. Justin and Trypho got into a dispute over this. Chapter LXXI

Ben C Smith

I agree. That is why I commented that ορυσσω (from the LXX) is apparently not a word one normally associates with crucifixion.

Ben.

jjramsey

Because he is trying to convince pagans that Christianity had a claim to antiquity. He wasn't anticipating the Jesus-mythers. GakuseiDon talks about it here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...ysis_Part2.htm

It seems that your argument is that the ones who became the first Christians had no mental bias against crucifixion to start with, so they could have easily made up the doctrine without having to overcome gut-level feelings against it. The texts, though, that you use in support of this don't support this contention at all, since what you are looking at are the attitudes of Christians after they have embraced the doctrine, at which point, the gut-level feelings would have been either overcome or drowned out by bravado.

If you are indeed arguing what I think you are arguing, then the onus is on you to show that it is realistic to expect that there were those in the first century who could have heard of crucifixion without developing the biases that would have precluded making up such a doctrine "cold."

Whether consciously or not, they are still essentially making stuff up, and they are far more likely to make up stuff that fits with their biases.

This is what I mean by dodging the question. We aren't talking about the motive to do good, but a motive to overcome the cultural biases needed to create a particular new doctrine.

Actually, you just highlighted why a crucified Messiah would be regarded as an oxymoron. The Zealots were not crucified saviors. Rather, becoming crucifixion victims was a result of them failing to save their fellow Jews.

But that doesn't solve your problem, which is why any of this tradition is ascribed to a man named Jesus at all.

jakejonesiv

Show me in the New Testament where, before or after conversion, Christians were embarassed by the doctrine of crucifixtion. If the death of a god was a problem, they would not have converted.

You seem to think that a particular death is proof that the alleged victim is historical. Is the god Attis historical? He was allegedly castrated and died, and that is arguably more repugnant than crucifixtion. Those who wished to be priests of Attis castrated themselves, hey didn't Tertullian do the same thing? Jesus himself advocated castration: “There be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it” (Matthew 19:12). So, if Jesus was historical, he castrated himself, unless you are going to argue that he was a big hypocrite.

So why would all these gods and men want to transgender themselves? I don't know, but if you think Christianity had cornered the market on disgusting things, you are misinformed.

Jake Jones

jakejonesiv

According to Justin, Jesus was a divine name before it was ever applied to a human being.

Jake

Ben C Smith

Historically, castration has often been a legitimate option for certain social and religious reasons. Not everybody would want to be a eunuch, but for many it was not a bad way to go. Castration would not carry nearly the stigma crucifixion would in the ancient world, IMHO.

I think J. J. put his finger on the issue when he responded to the connection of crucifixion and the zealots. Crucifixion was the raw symbol that, whatever purpose your life was supposed to have, it had failed. Crucifixion stripped every last vestige of honor from its victims. They would be denied the twin priviledges of an honorable burial, namely (A) female lamentation and (B) interment in the family tomb (Byron R. McCane, Where No One Had Yet Been Laid: The Shame of Jesus' Burial, in Authenticating the Activities of Jesus, Evans and Chilton, editors). That might not mean as much to us in our kind of society, but in an honor-shame system it must have carried a tremendous finality. We do not often think in terms of honor and shame like that; even a convicted murderer might get a second chance. The closest thing I can think of as a modern equivalent to the stigma of ancient crucifixion would be the stigma of being a convicted child molester.

Ben.