angelo

But how do you know when you have found any truth? Why could it not be B/S.?
You would never know the difference in reading any so called scripture what is true and what is baloney.
If scripture has, say 10% baloney, it can no longer be regarded as the word of any god, but the words of mortal men/women. How could you pick out the 10% of baloney from the truth?

angelo

I never claimed 1 on 1 similarities. But I see you admit to some. Bachus, for instance, the god of wine is one though wildly different to the jesus tale.
I have spent many hours looking for jesus outside of the bible, I have yet to find him, despite Josephus, Tacticus and others. I feel they were writing hearsay, nothing more. In the case of Josephus, he wrote nothing of jesus at all.

sschlichter

What do you mean by trusted? There are a couple if issues. The first is authenticity. I trust that the Koran (to use a different example) is a product of verbal sayings of Mohammed. Evidence is that they are very accurate.

I personally do not know the scoop on authenticity on Hindu Scriptures because I never made it that far. I do not need spells to ward off my enemies and the fire-God Agni has not gone to the same trouble as the one true God to invasively inject himself into history leaving a foot print I can see, feel, and touch. the truth of Christianity is dependant on the historical events that comprise the core of it's creeds. No crucifixion, no resurrection, then the rest is empty rituals wasting time.

Doug Shaver

You did not use those exact words. But here is what you did say in reference to Osiris, Dionysus, and Mithras:

You then said, in such as way as to clearly imply that you still are referring to all three of Osiris, Dionysus, and Mithras:

Are all those things true of all three of those gods? Or did you make a mistake?

spin

It's not a defense of the trinity, but something that conditions the development of it.

Hopefully the notion of title, such as "the lord Jesus" or "my lord", is evident and the difference between it and a straight reference as a substitute for a name, as in "(the) lord (said...)".

Is Rom 4:8's "(the) lord" refer to Jesus or to god? (You can answer this one.) What about Rom 9:28? (It's easy because of 9:29.) Others can be quite hard to decide. What are "brothers of the lord" (1 Cor 9:5)? Are they a religious group or brothers of Jesus?

A hint of interpolation? There are numerous different hints that indicate textual disturbance, grammatical oddities, discourse "ripples", change of name, change of subject, tagging on stuff that is related but not directly relevant to the discussion, etc. Look at the OP in this thread, which deals with two different types of interpolation, one supported by manuscript tradition and the other not. It is also an example where the reference "lord" is used specifically for Jesus.


spin

andrewcriddle

I noted earlier that we have a Greek fragment of Irenaeus (POxy 405) dating from before 250 CE.

On the point of retranslation; this is actually quite standard in classical scholarship. Scaliger, working with a bad Latin translation of an ancient Greek chronicle, was faced with the bizarre claim (for a date in the early part of the chronicle) that at that time "the sun was built". He eventually realised on back-translating it to Greek that the Latin translator had confused hHLIOS the sun with ILIOS Troy. IE the original was "Troy was built"

Andrew Criddle

Jedi Mind Trick

That is "all or nothing" and I don't subscribe to that idea. I take what seems right to me, as everyone else does. Even the fundamentalist do this, they just couch it in proof texts.

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

A "hint" of an interpolation, is much less than a hint of mint in herb tea.

Hi scchlichter, actually when it comes to theories of interpolation, folks can come up with pretty much whatever theory they please, since without any evidence, all it has to do is sound remotely plausible. And most of the audience is not familiar with the material anyway.

One irony is that even in verses where there is a known variant, opposite and differing redaction and adjustment theories can co-exist quite comfortably, depending on what is convenient for the doctrine of the theoretician. The theories of interpolation or omission or textual change can be compared on verses like John 1:18 and the heavenly witnesses, and very opposite theories can be proposed with the same data. (The gnostics did it, the church orthodox did it, the Trinitarians did it, the Sabellians did it.) And that is in the cases where there actually is a textual variance and specific discussions. When there is not .. the sky is the limit.

You learn to just at redaction theories on this forum, especially on verses and section that have zero / zilch extant evidence for any redaction. This is a game, not a discipline, the purpose being to sound erudite.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

gurugeorge

Yeah, or a guy called Jesus did it. All hypotheses are welcome in the fight.

You seen to be in a state of high dudgeon, convincing yourself that there's some nefarious reason for mythicists to believe there's a lack of evidence for a human Jesus; but even if there was a nefarious reason for mythicism, it wouldn't make any difference: because, FOR WHATEVER REASON, the evidence for a human Jesus just isn't there. You might be right in your reasons for why it isn't there, but it's still not there, so for someone not priorly committed to Jesus, there's no reason to believe in him.

And just to be clear, by "evidence not there", I mean evidence of a living human being known personally by anybody connected with the writings we have.

There's plenty evidence of a myth with some historical-seeming aspects, but plenty of myths have historical-seeming aspects. Some gods were connected with cities, or actual geographical locations; were known to have had dealings with ancient kings, etc., etc., etc. It's true that there's a relatively unusual amount of this historical-seeming detail in the Jesus myth as we have it (and it is quite clearly a myth as it stands, without any further investigation), but that doesn't mean anything in and of itself.

The kind of evidence that would raise the probability of a human Jesus isn't hard to conceive (i.e. you need things like eyewitness reports of a human being, specifically in the earliest texts like Paul). Triangulation from an outside source would be great too - although it's not absolutely necessary, truth can still be teased out of a partisan text. The bar isn't impossibly high, and to suggest it is, or that it shifts height according to mythicist whims, is really just bluff.

Lack of these things don't mean Jesus didn't exist, of course; but absent other evidence, it's not rational to go with a hypothesis that has such weak support in the context of extant evidence. Take the punt yourself, by all means, but don't think that people who don't take that punt aren't being reasonable: they are.

sschlichter

I am finding that there is little rhyme or reason to the suggested redactions. I used to research each one presented, now I add to a list because they are getting tedious. Soon, I expect the list will get tedious. Maybe a surprise will reinvigorate my interest.