Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Doug Shaver · 06-30-2006, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by post tenebras lux

I haven't finished reading it myself yet (as it's rather long), but there is this: The Falsified Paul by Hermann Detering

Thank you. I have downloaded it.

S.C.Carlson · 06-30-2006, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alf

Who was it that said something along the lines of:

A book fit one of the following descriptions.

1. It is entirely in line with the bible - if so, it is not necessary, we already have the bible. Burn it.

2. It is contrary to the bible. If so, it is heretical and we definitely burn it.

3. It says nothing either way about religion. If so it is unecessary and we can burn it.

Essentially any book that is not the bible is to be burned according to this line of thinking.

I just can't remember who said it but it was one of the early chrisitians.

They wiped out much of our ancient literature through such thinking.

Alf

Such a quotation is usually attributed to Caliph Omar at the time of the the Muslim invasion of Egypt in 640 who supposedly ordered the destruction of books in the Library of Alexandria because they "will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." (see Bede's page for more info). This quotation is widely dismissed as legendary.

A late, anti-Muslim libel about book burning is hardly evidence of similar practices among early Christians.

Stephen Carlson

Amaleq13 · 06-30-2006, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alf

I read the dispute here a little like "the title christ was never used until christians referred to Jesus as Christ" and that is what I find meaningless.

If you think it is meaningless, you missed the point.

There is zero evidence that anyone in history was ever called "Christ" as though it was their name except Jesus.

IOW, based on the existing evidence, the term was uniquely applied to Jesus.

Quote:

So, if we can agree that "christ" can meaningfully be applied to other people both before and after Jesus...

It is not whether it can be "meaningfully applied" to anyone else but whether it was ever used of anyone else in the same way. Given that the answer is "No", the rest of your argument is substantially weakened.

Toto · 06-30-2006, 10:15 AM

Re Christian book burning: How do you interpret this? (thanks to Landover Baptist)

Quote:

"Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Acts 19:19-20

I do not automatically assume that Acts is historical, but this does indicate a certain approval of book burning, even if the books pertained to "curious arts."

Solo · 06-30-2006, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

Have MJers actually seriously tried to get their arguments out before the professionals? Have they ever submitted papar proposals to professional societies or to the major and indexed journals? Participated at conferences? Have they published their ideas anywhere except in vanity presses or on the Internet?

I believe G.A.Wells would be an example of a scholar's scholar from that group but I suspect that these questions are purely rhetorical.

JS

S.C.Carlson · 06-30-2006, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I do not automatically assume that Acts is historical, but this does indicate a certain approval of book burning, even if the books pertained to "curious arts."

The Acts incident refers to people burning their own books (of magic) after becoming Christians. I don't think that Alf is suggesting that the heretical books were burned because the heretics converted to orthodoxy and decided to destroy their own books.

The part of Alf's charge that is giving me the most pause is that the proto-orthodox were sufficiently numerous and organized to accomplish this book-burning "early on." I can understand the systematic eradication of texts in the Middle Ages, perhaps, but not "early on."

Stephen Carlson

jgibson000 · 06-30-2006, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

If you think it is meaningless, you missed the point.

There is zero evidence that anyone in history was ever called "Christ" as though it was their name except Jesus.

The hidden assumption here is that the conjunction of XRISTOS with IHSOUS indicates a view on the part of those NT authors who used the phrase IHSOUS XRISTOS that XRISTOS was part of Jesus' name.

But you should know that, as a number of scholars such as Kraemer and Culmann and Hahn and Brown and Dunn have pointed out, that there is actually not only zero evidence for this view, but evidence which counters this idea (e.g. the use of XRISTOS IHSOUS among other things).

In any case, the real issue is whether any one other than Jesus was viewed as worthy of the office that XRISTOS signified to Jews.

Have you looked at the claims made about Simon Bar Kosibah by Akiva?

Jeffrey Gibson

jgibson000 · 06-30-2006, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

I believe G.A.Wells would be an example of a scholar's scholar from that group but I suspect that these questions are purely rhetorical.
JS

Sorry. Wells is not an example of a scholar from that group and my questions are most certainly not rhetorical.

Jeffrey Gibson

S.C.Carlson · 06-30-2006, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

Sorry. Wells is not an example of a scholar from that group and my questions are most certainly not rhetorical.

Another issue is how much of a mythicist Wells currently is. For example, in A Reply to J. P. Holding's "Shattering" of My Views on Jesus and an Examination of the Early Pagan and Jewish References to Jesus (2000), we wrote:

Quote:

In the gospels, the two Jesus figures -- the human preacher of Q and the supernatural personage of the early epistles who sojourned briefly on Earth as a man, and then, rejected, returned to heaven -- have been fused into one. The Galilean preacher of Q has been given a salvivic death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the Pauline and other early letters), but in a historical context consonant with the date of the Galilean preaching.

I do not claim to fully understand mythicism, but postulating the existence of a "human preacher of Q" does not quite sound to me like a 100%-pure MJ position.

Stephen Carlson

Solo · 06-30-2006, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000

Sorry. Wells is not an example of a scholar from that group and my questions are most certainly not rhetorical.

Jeffrey Gibson

I see.

But you would not deny that Wells was a (,if not the,) prominent spokesman for the "MJ" position for at least three decades, would you ?

JS

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