Clarice O'C

P.S. For encouragement that MJ efforts are not in vain, I'll post this again here:

Here's a crumb but a large one. The topic made its entrance on CNN TV a while back in the US starting with Luigi Cascioli's lawsuit against the Catholic church. And then on 5/26/06. The beginning of the following transcript discusses Cascioli. Robert Price is also a Jesus Seminar fellow.

* * * *

COOPER: Robert, you identify as a Christian. You don't believe that Christ ever really lived. Why?

PROF. ROBERT PRICE, JOHNNIE COLEMAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: Well, he might have. It's impossible to know one way or the other, but I think from the little I hear of this man's case, I agree with most of it in that the gospel story of Jesus does agree in all major respects with the stories of mythic gods who are at the heart of other ancient religions, like Syrus, Mythrus, Adonis, and so forth. Those religions flourished for a long time without any historical founder.

And Jesus seems very similar. I mean, you'd have to go into a time machine and go into the past to find out for sure. But I would agree with him insofar as saying the burden of proof is on the one who would affirm a historical Jesus.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...26/acd.02.html

Doug Shaver

Against whose beliefs of the time? You're begging the question of cultural and philosophical homogeneity. Why should we suppose that the people of the first-century Middle East were any more of one mind and one accord than the American people of the 21st century?

ible

Who said I brush aside those other myths? It's true that I don't believe they are so historical (though most likely with some historical fact), but they have some truth in them--truth about the human condition at the time, truth about what humanity wants, humanity's desire for a higher power, etc.

Where I can tolerate any number of people for their beliefs arising from true and real sources (even if exaggerated), you have no connection to the great majority of humanity past, present, and future.

Yep, I've had dogs, too. We punish them for doing "bad" behaviors, and they start to learn a morality. Outside of humanity's influence, I doubt animals act in this way.

Yes, there are parts about destruction, punishment, etc. These sorts of things flow naturally from a good God into a world that is evil. You may capitalize on one instance in the Bible where God seems so terrible or idiotic, but I don't think you're reading it in context. For the times I've seen atheists nitpick about the Bible, they take a single sentence and blow it up. I'd like to see them take an approach to the Bible where they don't hold beliefs about what the Bible will be like when they read it (be open minded, and not thinking of it as false when reading), and then read it through with the passage and historical context in mind (know the background/history/culture/people and what comes before and after the passage).

Why should we expect the meeting of a spiritual and a material realm to be logical in the first place? There are times that there is going to be punishment, others where there is forgiveness. Unless we know the hearts and minds of the people being punished/forgiven, we have no right to say that God is contradictory. We only have ourselves, that we know our thoughts and motives. We can learn about God's interactions with others, but it is our own that we must worry about. It is probably most like a story--the connection between the spiritual and material realm--and not something logical. Stories progress from beginning to end, from beginning to climax or turning point to resolution. A choice, a punishment/reward. Sense can be made in a few different parts, but I don't think you can logically prove a story, or a history. And we have a history, a story of our own life, in the making.

The Luther Bibel did much to unify and retain the Germanic language, AFAIK.
Matthew 5. Oh, and apparently they also have a new German Bible out, "Hoffnung fuer Alle."

Amaleq13

Humans learn morality, too. Babies are amoral until they are taught the expectations of society.

Llyricist

a) What Amaleq13 said.

b) Actually they do, as Sven suggested you should learn more. Chimps exile (punish) members of their group for behaviours they don't tolerate (just as an example)

c) You appear to be rather human-centric on this issue, other species certainly DO have rules of behaviour, toward eachother, and "punishments" for deviations from those behaviors. Also note the emphasized "toward eachother", you seem to expect other animals to act with our morals toward us and toward eachother. No, they have their own set of morals which they only enforce toward eachother, just like us.

d) You also seem to hold animals up to a higher standard than humans are capable of.

Edit: their there they're always get it wrong the first time

aa5874

The Jesus figure is not a part of Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam but the followers of those religions display similar reverence to their Gods as followers of Jesus. These religions are thousand of years old, if Christianity is true, then who started these myths, and why do they last so long?

How is it that the earth was falsely thought to be flat for thousand of years. How is it that the native North American Indians' religion has never contained the Jesus figure, who started their myth?

Christianity has been fabricated in the same way as any other fabricated religion, through the use of fear tatics. Religions, throughout history, have fabricated a God figure that demands worship and praise. This God is ruthless and destroys the unbeliever's body and soul. 2000 years ago, when being blind was thought to be a spiritual problem, it was not very difficult to fabricate 'believeable' stories about Gods. 2000 years ago, Jesus was not the only Son of a God.

GakuseiDon

Against the beliefs found in the literature of that time.
We shouldn't. But, how do you rule on ANY claim about what people believed at a particular time? The claim is that Christians at that time believed that Christ was killed in a "fleshy sublunar realm" -- how would you evaluate that claim?

EarlDoherty

Don, you are misinterpreting me. And you are trying to be too literal, to impose some kind of restriction on a passage which supposedly rules out the thing you don’t want to see in it.

Is “envying” the only thing that goes on among the demons which has a parallel on earth? Why would that be, and what sense would that make? This “envy” and “struggle” (the word “warring” is added in some manuscript lines) may have been the immediate action the text is referring to, the activity which Isaiah witnesses and which prompts his remarks, but for the angel to go on to say that “for the likeness of what is in the firmament is here on earth” is hardly intended to mean that the “likeness” is restricted only to envy/war. It has become a statement that encompasses things in general. (If I pointed out a feature in common between a friend of mine and his son and then said, “Like father, like son,” I would hardly intend the meaning of that phrase to be restricted to the one feature or behavior I mentioned.)

Also, it doesn’t mean that this principle is to be literally and fully equated with the Platonic higher-lower world relationship, referring to the perfect and imperfect, the archetype and the copy, or the supra-lunar and the sub-lunar. I have never said that the demons were “higher Platonic forms.” You’re trying to impose too much on it in an attempt to rule something out. They belong to the spiritual realm in that their essence is spirit, but they inhabit a region which overlaps that of the material. It is a lesser form of equivalence, if you like, within the sublunar sphere itself, between the spiritual and material, between the demons and humans. But not in the sense of the demons being a ‘perfect Platonic form’ with an imperfect copy on earth. That would truly be nonsense, although angels in heaven (including evil angels) could be spoken of as ‘representing’ or guiding nations on earth (the evil angels evil nations).

This is not just something I’m making up. It follows from what is said about the nature of the demons, their placement in the sublunar realm, and their interaction with the earthly sphere. Anyway, you’ve already accepted a limited equivalence between the two in the activity of “envying,” so you accept the principle itself. You can’t very well go on and say, ah, but it’s only in that one aspect, nothing else, and there’s no equivalence between the demons and humans, between the firmament and the surface of the earth, in regard to any other activity or event except “envying”. I don’t think you’ll convince anyone of that, since it hardly makes much sense.

You’re missing the broader picture. As I’ve pointed out here before, and in The Jesus Puzzle (where I quoted the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament), the demons were regarded as part of the realm of “flesh”. (They were placed below the moon, when it was specified.) They were in some sense seen as “corporeal” though they possessed “heavenly versions of earthly bodies.” No less an unbiased authority than Jeffrey Gibson not too long ago informed us that even the BAGD gives as one of the translations of sarx: “(the flesh) of transcendent entities…Of flesh other than human…” Still, Satan and his demons are essentially spirit beings, so their activities are 'spiritual', and they take place in the sublunar realm. Ergo, both spiritual and material activities are encompassed within that realm.

You question that there was a ‘fleshy’ region below the moon. But that is exactly what it was, using “flesh” as a term referring to corruptibility, involving generation, change, decay, suffering and death. Again, quoting the TDNT, I pointed out that the demons were regarded as belonging to this realm of “flesh”. (Even “Ocellus,” according to Moore, locates the daemons below the moon.) Within that realm, inhabiting it, were two types of beings, spiritual (if degenerate) beings namely the demons or fallen angels, and human beings. The activities of the demons are not restricted to the surface of the earth, they also operate in the aer or firmament (that’s where they “lived”) which could be regarded as a ‘location’ in itself, as the Ascension attests more than once. This is true even if documents of Middle Platonism don’t spell that out. And even if they were to deny it, that wouldn’t mean that some circles couldn’t contravene such a concept and treat things differently, as the Ascension clearly does. Certainly, you’ve never produced documents or even modern opinions which define the sublunar region as something so monolithic it couldn’t encompass the differentiated activities which the Ascension refers to.

If Middle Platonism were not to allow for such heterogeneity in the sublunar region (though as I say, you haven’t demonstrated that), then the Ascension in that respect would not represent strict Middle Platonism. If the Ascension could deviate (there was no central authority for dogma or any ‘disbarring’ process), then so could Paul, especially when other indicators in the Pauline corpus (“rulers of this age,” a focus on the demons in the heavens as in Ephesians 6:12, etc.) place him in the same thought world.

Perhaps a quote from Mr. Moore’s article on Middle Platonism (a very fine and useful summary, I must say and I thank you for calling my attention to it) would be appropriate here:

You lament that you are being forced to “imagine” that Paul thought like this, as though I should be able to supply ironclad evidence that he did, but this is unrealistic. All we have are indicators in the texts (far more indicators, I might add, than those which suggest he knew of an historical Jesus) and deductive reasoning, based on the total picture throughout the record. For that, it helps to have an open mind, and a bit of a sense of adventure. But if “proof” were available, we wouldn’t be here today, and I’d be out on my patio in the sun sipping mint juleps.

All the best,
Earl Doherty

No Robots

Earl Doherty:

In your view, Paul, by his own avowal a Pharisee and son of Pharisees, is more a speculative Platonist. Why do you reject the idea of a wholly Jewish origin for Christianity? Do you see your work as cultural appropriation, an attempt to re-attribute a part of Jewish literature and history to non-Jewish sources?

I know you are uncomfortable with the user name practices on this board. You may address me by my real name, Barrett Pashak.

EarlDoherty

You seem to be making the common error (and even mainstream scholars regularly point this out) of assuming that Judaism was monolithic during the first century, as though all Jews in all places thought the same and had absorbed nothing of Hellenistic or foreign influences.

You point to Paul as proclaiming himself a Pharisee, as though this would mitigate against him holding any Middle Platonic views. But would Pharisees accept the deification of any man, let alone a crucified criminal? Would they accept a ritual which alleges to involve the eating of a man’s flesh and blood? Ideas like that would have given them apoplexy. If Paul could do these things, even being a self-proclaimed Pharisee, he could certainly become part of a savior-god cult (oriented toward Jewish biblical tradition) that owed many of its ideas to Middle Platonism and the Hellenistic mystery religions. If Paul truly was a Jew, he was a Diaspora Jew, open to all sorts of syncretization with Hellenistic concepts. It would be very misguided to consider Christianity as having “a wholly Jewish origin.” If so, why was it thriving so early in centers all over the empire, with a strong Gentile component? Why was every single document in that early record written in Greek (even the hypothetical Q)? And why are there no Christian artifacts of any sort from Palestine during the first century or so?

I’m not sure what you are implying with your accusation (?) of “cultural appropriation.” I certainly have never seen it in those terms. I’m simply trying to uncover actual history.

All the best,
Earl Doherty