jgibson000

Don't blame me for this. I was following to the letter your syllogism in which no such premise was stipulated. It's not my fault that your syllogism leads to conclusions you don't want to accept.

So in changing it now and in stating that the syllogism applies to Jesus but not to Augustus and Julius Caesar, you are trying to have your cake and eat it, all the while indulging in the fallacy of special pleading.

In any case, I'm not sure how your objection does anything to mitigate the conclusion that one must reach about Augustus and Julius Caesar by following your logic. For it is indisputable that, like Augustus and Julius Caesar, Jesus was also (to use your own words) "classified as human".

JG

aa5874

You are the one who introduced Juius and Augustus Caesar with flawed logic, I have just highlighted your flaw.

I dealt with Jesus Christ both from a God and Human perspective. You, on the other hand, never dealt with Augustus or Julius from a Human perspective.

jgibson000

What flaw? Did you not produce a syllogism with the pattern:

all Xs (gods) are Ys (mythical)
Z was classified as an X (a god)
therefore Z is Y (mythical)?

I simply filled in the Z with a name other than Jesus.

And as long as what is placed in Z has been classified as an X (a god), which Augustus and Julius Caesar certainly were (do you dispute this?), there is absolutely nothing fallacious or illegitimate in "introducing" Augustus and Juilus Caesar into the second premise and drawing the conclusion that you do about Z when Z = Jesus.

In fact it is actually more legitimate and logically correct to do so, since both of these men were "classifed as gods" either in their life time (Augustus) or very shortly after their death (Julius), where as it is higly disputable that Jesus was recognized or "classified" as "a god" until the second century or after (Jn 1:1 and Philippians notwithstanding).

You seem now to want to change the syllogism you originally used to "prove" your point about Jesus to:

all Xs (gods) are Ys (mythical)
Z was classified as an X (a god)
therefore Z is Y (mythical).
but if Z was also "classifed" (by others) as P (human)
then Z is not Y (mythical)

Fair enough.

But note that if this is so, then you must admit that instead of making it, you've actually screwed your case that Jesus is "mythical".

For the third premise is just as true of Jesus as it is of Augustus and Julius Caesar. Jesus was also "classified" by others as P (human).

Therefore, unless you want to be charged with inconsistency and hypocricy, you must conclude that your own logic constrains you to conclude that Jesus is not Y (mythical) and that your own logic ruins your case..

So please, no more of the nonsense above. It only reveals that you have never studied logic or understand what a syllogism is and how it works, and that you are exceedingly out of your depth.

JG

aa5874

jgibson000, is it this you wanted to say in your last post?

All Gods are mythical.
Augustus and Julius Caesar are classified as Gods and Human.
Augustus and Julius Caesar are mythical as Gods and historic as Human.

All Gods are mythical.
Jesus Christ is classified as a God and Human.
Jesus Christ is a myth as God and fictitious as Human.

jakejonesiv

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply.

Could you comment on syncretism, the fusion of different myths? It seems the canons you have derived would exclude this real phenomena.

Jake Jones IV

jgibson000

No. It's what you want to say.

But thanks for proving my point about how you have absolutely no understanding of elementary logic or the foggiest idea of what is and what is not a fallacious argument and how you operate from a double standard when dealing with arguments about Jesus.

Thanks too for showing once again how much you are incapable of engaging with the issues you say you want to talk about, how you reveal every time you post that you are totally out of your depth, and how once again you have given us cause to say that no one here has any reason whatsoever to take seriously anything you say.

JG

jakejonesiv

When we speak of corn as Ceres, and of wine as Liber, we use, it is true, a customary mode of speech, but do you think that any one is so senseless as to believe that what he is eating is the divine substance?
Marcus Tullius Cicero, On The Nature of the Gods , Book III 44 BCE.

Well, if Cicero had been around a bit later, he would have the answer to his question; Christians! Liber was equated with Dionysus, as we were discussing earlier in this thread. Yes indeed, Christians were (and still are) senseless enough (from Cicero's view, no disrespect intended) to believe they are imbiding the divine substance in the sacraments.

Likewise, the corn is baked into bread, as we see here:

The conferring of benefits gave the name of gods to Ceres and Liber. I am able to prove from the sacred writings that wine and corn were used by men before the offspring of Cœlus and Saturnus. But let us suppose that they were introduced by these. Can it appear to be a greater thing to have collected corn, and having bruised it, to have taught men to make bread; or to have pressed grapes gathered from the vine, and to have made wine, than to have produced and brought forth from the earth corn itself, or the vine?

So we have the divine substance being swigged in the wine and the divine substance being guzzled in the bread. IN 44 BCE! The more you look, the more this Jesus stuff fades into the myths and salvation cults that arose in Hellenization.

Jake Jones IV

Chris Weimer

Nah, but they still need a trajectory, and they need to show that it was invented, and not acted.

For example, what's the difference between Jesus initially eating bread and drinking wine of the body and blood of the Lord, and later it was connected with Jesus? This at least has precedence in that later stories tend to embellish more than earlier ones. However, creating a god-human out of a mishmash of stories doesn't seem to have any ancient precedent.

We do see syncretism, but usually only with gods already believed in. Jesus wasn't so.

No Robots

Or perhaps Christ draws his great mystical parable from his own Jewish tradition:

Rabbi Hillel said, "There shall be no Messiah for Israel, because they have already eaten him in the days of King Hezekiah." (Sanhedrin 99a)

Rick Sumner

I can't find this (or, for that matter, 9:9 in the Tract Sanhedrin) in either translation I have access to (Neusner's and Rodkinson's, the latter available online).

Are you sure your cite is correct? As near as I can see the verse doesn't exist. The word "Messiah" only occurs in Neusner's translation of the Mishnah in m. Soma 9:15w.

m. Sanhedrin only goes up to 9:6 before beginning 10:1.

Regards,
Rick Sumner