Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 06-14-2012, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

....."Again, using your "solid arguments" and "multiple traditions," what can you say about Jesus? What "facts" do you base your judgment that gMark's Jesus of Nazareth could not have been based on Jesus ben Ananias?"

OK, I will give you one such argument. Paul's epistle to the Galatians describes Paul's encounter with Peter and James in the Council of Jerusalem. In this letter, Paul writes of the crucifixion of Jesus (as in every letter), and he writes of a bitter theological dispute with Peter. No Christian would have reason to forge this letter, because they were interested in portraying Paul and Peter to be unified behind the same doctrines, as in the book of Acts. For this reason, scholars are unified on the point that Paul genuinely wrote the epistle to the Galatians. This letter necessarily predates the fall of Jerusalem, which means the Christian character of Jesus existed well before the popularity of Jesus ben Ananias.

Please, it is just ridiculous to date letters by Presumptions. You seem to have NO idea that ancient writings are DATED by Paleography or C 14.

If we use your ABSURD method of dating ancient text then Paleography and C 14 would NOT be necessary.

And further, it has been deduced that the Pauline letters have Multiple authors and were manipulated.

You are WRONG.

People had motives to make it appear that Galatians was written before c 70 CE because FORGED letters have been found attempting to place Paul in the 1st century.

Surely any reasonable person would recognise that any mention of Paul as a 1st century character must be thoroughly investigated when virtually all sources that mention Paul are sources of Fiction, Forgeries and Fraud.

Acts of the Apostles is a work of fiction but 50% of the fictitious Acts is about Saul/Paul which is EXPECTED when Paul did NOT exist in the 1st century.

The dated NT Manuscripts do suggest that there was NO Pauline writings in the 1st century which was EXPECTED when Paul did NOT exist in the 1st century.

The Forgeries of the Paul/Seneca letters was EXPECTED when Paul did NOT exist in the 1st century.

It was EXPECTED that Paul could NOT claim he saw a real Jesus and that is precisely what has happened. Paul SAW a fictitious Jesus.

ALL MY EXPECTATIONS have come to pass.

The Pauline writers were NOT contemporaries of Pilate the Governor and Caiaphas the High Priest.

outhouse · 06-14-2012, 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

I can't sort out where Abe's doomsday preacher ends and the Divine Christ begins.

I understand that problem, because the details of the human Jesus can be inferred only from accounts of a miraculous Jesus. I wrote my own narrative of the life of Jesus that sorts out those details, here:

The Gospel of Abe

that was pretty good.

Id make a few small changes such as handworker, odd jobs, possible stone working, but not wood. maybe a few day trips to Sepphoris leaving at 4;30 in the morning and returning shortly after nightfal.

more emphasis on poverty and starvation and healing. All of which he did for food scraps instead of donations. We know he healed for food not donations.

maybe, more as a peaceful tax zealot as noted all through scripture

less emphasis on the temple event, as that has quite a bit of OT influence and suspect as mythology, but some historical core should exist.

all in all a nice write up

ApostateAbe · 06-14-2012, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I understand that problem, because the details of the human Jesus can be inferred only from accounts of a miraculous Jesus. I wrote my own narrative of the life of Jesus that sorts out those details, here:

The Gospel of Abe

that was pretty good.

Id make a few small changes such as handworker, odd jobs, possible stone working, but not wood. maybe a few day trips to Sepphoris leaving at 4;30 in the morning and returning shortly after nightfal.

more emphasis on poverty and starvation and healing. All of which he did for food scraps instead of donations. We know he healed for food not donations.

maybe, more as a peaceful tax zealot as noted all through scripture

less emphasis on the temple event, as that has quite a bit of OT influence and suspect as mythology, but some historical core should exist.

all in all a nice write up

Thanks. I am sending it to the Vatican to have it canonized.

Grog · 06-14-2012, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

I can't sort out where Abe's doomsday preacher ends and the Divine Christ begins.

I understand that problem, because the details of the human Jesus can be inferred only from accounts of a miraculous Jesus. I wrote my own narrative of the life of Jesus that sorts out those details, here:

The Gospel of Abe

I note your response to spin's critique:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abe

If I were to stick to only the claims certain enough to produce a conviction in a criminal court, the gospel would be short enough to contain nothing at all.

I think you could lower your standard significantly and still come up empty handed.

Grog · 06-14-2012, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

My position is that the Christ of Paul is not the same as the apocalyptic preacher. I think the Christ of Paul is the same Christ of Peter and James. The names of Peter and James were just retrofitted into the Gospels later and the Gospel story, the biography (at least the passion) is derived from Jesus ben Ananias.

I do agree with you that Galatians would appear to be written before the fall of Jerusalem and not entirely a later forgery...which is why I haven't accepted aa's argument for a late, forged Paul.

That complicates the theory, but that is not the only problem. Paul wrote a helluva lot about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Such things are only vaguely similar to what happened to Jesus ben Ananias, but, if the myths of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus can be attributed to Paul's Christ, then you go from very little connection to hardly any connection, and there is very little reason to weave a convoluted historical model of Jesus Christ around Jesus ben Ananias. It has become, even more so than before, a bizarre and historically-implausible model of the myth. The problem of plausibility has become troublesome enough, but you add to it that handful of instances where Paul mentions a human Jesus that matches the gospel portrait of Jesus, and then you have a theory that is both implausible and divorced from the evidence. There are thousands of models of how Christianity began, and, if we are serious about doing history right, then we need to choose theories according to what is most plausible and what follows from the evidence best, not the theories that are merely interesting and appealing.

Abe, you have a big problem with your approach and that is you want to cherry pick bits and pieces from the extant evidence to fit into your presupposed picture of what actually happened. This has been pointed out to you before, but here you are nonetheless, over 2 years later, still doing it.

You say that Paul gives us a "helluva" a lot of details about the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Ok, I will bite. What does Paul tell us about:

--Why Jesus was crucified?
--Who crucified Jesus?
--When Jesus was crucified?
--How Jesus came to be crucified (condemned to die)?
--By What means was Jesus crucified?

IN these questions that Paul says a "helluva a lot" about, how much of it fits your biography?

Incidentally, I very much sympathize with what you did in that Gospel of Abe. I attempted to do that very thing but gave up on it as a useless enterprise. It was that attempt as an undergrad history student to write a "historical biography" of the life of Jesus that led me to the conclusion that Jesus probably didn't even exist. This was years before I stumbled on Doherty, who was the first real mythicist I ever read (actually was referred to him by Metacrock on CARM). Before that I was caught up on Crossan, Fredriksen, Vermes and the like, but was everywhere disappointed.

Anyway...I think I'm going to get another beer and some more of this great gorgonzola I picked up at the market.

ApostateAbe · 06-14-2012, 06:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

That complicates the theory, but that is not the only problem. Paul wrote a helluva lot about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Such things are only vaguely similar to what happened to Jesus ben Ananias, but, if the myths of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus can be attributed to Paul's Christ, then you go from very little connection to hardly any connection, and there is very little reason to weave a convoluted historical model of Jesus Christ around Jesus ben Ananias. It has become, even more so than before, a bizarre and historically-implausible model of the myth. The problem of plausibility has become troublesome enough, but you add to it that handful of instances where Paul mentions a human Jesus that matches the gospel portrait of Jesus, and then you have a theory that is both implausible and divorced from the evidence. There are thousands of models of how Christianity began, and, if we are serious about doing history right, then we need to choose theories according to what is most plausible and what follows from the evidence best, not the theories that are merely interesting and appealing.

Abe, you have a big problem with your approach and that is you want to cherry pick bits and pieces from the extant evidence to fit into your presupposed picture of what actually happened. This has been pointed out to you before, but here you are nonetheless, over 2 years later, still doing it.

Bart Ehrman is often accused of cherry picking, and he has a great line: "What's wrong with cherry picking? I like cherries!" The truth is that we are "cherry picking" when it comes to deciding the historical reality of almost any ancient human being, separating the mere myth from the historical reality. There are ways to do that reliably. Ehrman's three criteria are contextual credibility, dissimilarity, and independent attestation, and that works for a narrow focus on plausible hypotheses concerning the New Testament, though I prefer to be more general, because I argue against a lot of theories that are implausible: the most probable theory is one where the theory is maximally expected from the evidence and the evidence is maximally expected from the theory. It is like a verbal summary of Bayes' Theorem. My model of the historical Jesus follows from that. The way I see it, it isn't even about picking the cherries from the non-cherries, but it is about explaining the evidence with greatest probability.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

You say that Paul gives us a "helluva" a lot of details about the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Ok, I will bite. What does Paul tell us about:

--Why Jesus was crucified?
--Who crucified Jesus?
--When Jesus was crucified?
--How Jesus came to be crucified (condemned to die)?
--By What means was Jesus crucified?

IN these questions that Paul says a "helluva a lot" about, how much of it fits your biography?

I think there are good answers to four of those five questions, but the questions seem to miss my point. It doesn't actually matter if Paul mentioned it a "helluva a lot" or only once. The point is that he mentioned it and it does NOT come from the story of Jesus ben Ananias! What part of the gospel story actually originated from Jesus ben Ananias? Even less than before, and you didn't have much to begin with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Incidentally, I very much sympathize with what you did in that Gospel of Abe. I attempted to do that very thing but gave up on it as a useless enterprise. It was that attempt as an undergrad history student to write a "historical biography" of the life of Jesus that led me to the conclusion that Jesus probably didn't even exist. This was years before I stumbled on Doherty, who was the first real mythicist I ever read (actually was referred to him by Metacrock on CARM). Before that I was caught up on Crossan, Fredriksen, Vermes and the like, but was everywhere disappointed.

Anyway...I think I'm going to get another beer and some more of this great gorgonzola I picked up at the market.

I knew Metacrock on CARM, too. I was on CARM years ago, and I forget how long it has been, but I remember Metacrock was as formidable as Christian apologists can get.

outhouse · 06-14-2012, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

that was pretty good.

Id make a few small changes such as handworker, odd jobs, possible stone working, but not wood. maybe a few day trips to Sepphoris leaving at 4;30 in the morning and returning shortly after nightfal.

more emphasis on poverty and starvation and healing. All of which he did for food scraps instead of donations. We know he healed for food not donations.

maybe, more as a peaceful tax zealot as noted all through scripture

less emphasis on the temple event, as that has quite a bit of OT influence and suspect as mythology, but some historical core should exist.

all in all a nice write up

Thanks. I am sending it to the Vatican to have it canonized.

you know we have to let it age for a few hundreds years the redact it heavily LOL

Grog · 06-14-2012, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Abe, you have a big problem with your approach and that is you want to cherry pick bits and pieces from the extant evidence to fit into your presupposed picture of what actually happened. This has been pointed out to you before, but here you are nonetheless, over 2 years later, still doing it.

Bart Ehrman is often accused of cherry picking, and he has a great line: "What's wrong with cherry picking? I like cherries!" The truth is that we are "cherry picking" when it comes to deciding the historical reality of almost any ancient human being, separating the mere myth from the historical reality. There are ways to do that reliably. Ehrman's three criteria are contextual credibility, dissimilarity, and independent attestation, and that works for a narrow focus on plausible hypotheses concerning the New Testament, though I prefer to be more general, because I argue against a lot of theories that are implausible: the most probable theory is one where the theory is maximally expected from the evidence and the evidence is maximally expected from the theory. It is like a verbal summary of Bayes' Theorem. My model of the historical Jesus follows from that. The way I see it, it isn't even about picking the cherries from the non-cherries, but it is about explaining the evidence with greatest probability.

Popper would argue that you should adopt the least likely, most content-rich theory. I think, in that sense, you might have something going for you.

Quote:

I think there are good answers to four of those five questions, but the questions seem to miss my point. It doesn't actually matter if Paul mentioned it a "helluva a lot" or only once.

No, you said that Paul said a helluva a lot about the crucifixion. I want you to support that assertion and tell me what he said about the Who, What, Where, When, and How of the crucifixion.

Quote:

The point is that he mentioned it and it does NOT come from the story of Jesus ben Ananias! What part of the gospel story actually originated from Jesus ben Ananias? Even less than before, and you didn't have much to begin with.

I have answered that already. Paul's Jesus is not the Jesus of the synoptics.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Incidentally, I very much sympathize with what you did in that Gospel of Abe. I attempted to do that very thing but gave up on it as a useless enterprise. It was that attempt as an undergrad history student to write a "historical biography" of the life of Jesus that led me to the conclusion that Jesus probably didn't even exist. This was years before I stumbled on Doherty, who was the first real mythicist I ever read (actually was referred to him by Metacrock on CARM). Before that I was caught up on Crossan, Fredriksen, Vermes and the like, but was everywhere disappointed.

Anyway...I think I'm going to get another beer and some more of this great gorgonzola I picked up at the market.

I knew Metacrock on CARM, too. I was on CARM years ago, and I forget how long it has been, but I remember Metacrock was as formidable as Christian apologists can get.

Metacrock (and I grew to have a camaraderie with him) had a schtick. He relied on a lot of outdated, tired arguments. Even when I was at my most naive, I could see through his HJ arguments. I never understood his ground of being arguments really, other than it seemed close to the Force. I would say I'm not too far from that position (though I am classified as an atheist). I saw him on a blog somewhere recently begging for a debate, it was sort of sad. Is he banned here or something?

ApostateAbe · 06-14-2012, 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

N/A

I did a search, and Metacrock was banned from this forum (a second time) in 2005 for insulting other members. Yeah, that's Metacrock.

You say, "Paul's Jesus is not the Jesus of the synoptics." But you also think that Peter and James were integrated into the gospel accounts. Maybe I don't get your meaning, or else this is going much deeper into the crazy zone. What exactly is the relationship between Paul's Jesus and Jesus of the synoptics? For example, where did the gospel authors get the idea of crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, if not from Paul? A creative reading of Josephus on Jesus ben Ananias, and the point that Paul also believed in a Jesus who was crucified and resurrected is just a coincidence?

aa5874 · 06-14-2012, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

.... I wrote my own narrative of the life of Jesus that sorts out those details, here:

The Gospel of Abe

Quote:

Originally Posted by outhouse

that was pretty good.

Id make a few small changes such as handworker, odd jobs, possible stone working, but not wood. maybe a few day trips to Sepphoris leaving at 4;30 in the morning and returning shortly after nightfal.

more emphasis on poverty and starvation and healing. All of which he did for food scraps instead of donations. We know he healed for food not donations.

maybe, more as a peaceful tax zealot as noted all through scripture

less emphasis on the temple event, as that has quite a bit of OT influence and suspect as mythology, but some historical core should exist.

all in all a nice write up

Quite amazing isn't it. Two INVENTORS of their own history of Jesus openly discuss how to FABRICATE stories of Jesus of which they have NO credible evidence.

ApostateAbe INVENTS his own version of an Apocalyptic preacher man and calls it the Gospel of ABE without establishing the veracity, historical accuracy and date of writing of his sources.

Gospel means "Good News" which Contradicts Abe's own Jesus.

Jesus in the Bible preached GOOD NEWS NOT an Apocalypse.

Can someone explain to ApostateAbe that Gospel means "GOOD NEWS" and NOT "BAD NEWS"???

Mark 1:14 KJV

Quote:

Now after that John was put in prison , Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God

Jesus, the Son of a Ghost, was a GOOD NEWS preacher in the Bible.

outhouse INVENTS another Jesus--the Tax Zealot who did NOT pay his taxes when the very Bible source utilised by outhouse claimed he did.

We may be witnessing PRECISELY How the Jesus stories were INITIALLY INVENTED by reading the posts of ApostateAbe and outhouse.

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