gurugeorge

No, but it looks funnier :devil1:

No, precisely speaking, they purport to provide evidence of a God-man called Jesus living, they don't purport to provide evidence of some Joe-normal revolutionary rabble rouser or preacher called Jesus living. That's something scholars excavate from the purported evidence of a God-man. The whole function of the "Canon" is to prove, to anybody who's interested, that an entity walked this Earth at a specific time and place, who had God-like powers and was in some sense literally God on Earth, or His representative in some way. That's what it's all about Chris, a living God-man - that these texts are evidence of an ordinary Joe rabble rouser or obscure preacher is something scholars are reading from the texts, are sifting, dredging, excavating, extracting, analysing out of, the texts.

"My own personal bias"???? "Obviously"???? I'm sorry Chris, I'll be wanting nothing less than links to refereed academic journals for that sort of bold statement. :angel:

So you, who make great play of taking evidence seriously, are prepared to rule out the evidence of a God-man living on Earth at that time on apriori grounds, going by what seems "obvious" to you - and yet when you reject that evidence's being what it purports to be on the face of it, you still affect to find a living human being at the root of it? WHY? Why is that the "obvious" step, why isn't it an equally "obvious" step that the whole thing is a pile of made-up woo-woo crap from start to finish?

OK, so in your worldview (and pretty much in mine, although I wouldn't be so blase about ruling it out altogether, it's conceivable that extraordinary evidence could prove the existence of a God-man, if one did exist), there are no beings (that at least look like human beings) who have God-like powers, resurrect themselves, etc. That's for the comic books. So any text that purports to prove the existence of a God-man must be wrong, right?

But if it fails to prove the existence of a God-man, why is it automatically still evidence of some man?

Do you think the external (non-cultic) evidence is so strong that that's the "obvious" next step? There's enough, and strong enough, contemporary non-cultic evidence to show that there was some guy called Jesus Christ around at that time, to make that hypothesis, rather than the hypothesis that it was all a made-up pile of woo-woo crap, the most obvious hypothesis?

This is absurd Chris, those people left physical traces in their name, buildings, records of wars fought and won, etc., etc., so it's not even worth a moment of doubt that their God-like status is something added on to them.

But with "Jesus Christ" we have no such independent confirmation. He left no physical traces, he seems to have left no impact on his (again I stress non-cultic) contemporaries in any way, shape or form. All we have is a woo-woo story. So why isn't it just a woo-woo story?

AFAIK they come later, and are "heresies" from the point of view of the texts we have that purport to be evidence (scilicet - evidence of a God-man). So far as I can see the earliest cultic stuff we have gives Him divine status: He's divine from the start.

"The guy was a human being" is a move in logical space we'd expect some contrarians to make anyway, later on, no matter what the facts of the case. Human beings do that sort of thing.

Roger Pearse

I can see some immediate problems with this, however. Is it not precisely the imposition of an 'interpretive framework' that causes the problems? Once we have discarded all the data that doesn't fit our framework, we tend to find that the evidence all fits our framework. The practical difference between this and all fitting our preconceptions would seem imperceptible to me.

Getting our own preconceptions out of the way must be the first necessity of objective scholarship. Most of the bad scholarship that I have seen seems to arise from a failure in precisely this area. After all, as Procrustes would have observed, once we've lopped off all the bits that don't fit, we find that we were right all along. Most gratifying!

Incidentally are you claiming the consensus of the academy in support of your comments above?

Let the data speak, in my humble opinion.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Do we include the Aquarian gospel on the same logic?

This will not do. There are indeed only four gospels known to us. The origins of the others are well known. To include them, as if equally originating from the apostolic circle, is to perpetrate a fraud.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

dog-on

Firstly, Paul doesn't say that Jesus was crucified in Zion. You say that Paul says that. Secondly, I pointed out (using the NT) that the meaning of the word Zion is at best ambiguous. The word Zion is used in seven places in the NT:

Matthew 21:5
"Say to the Daughter of Zion, 'See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.' "

John 12:15
"Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt."

Romans 9:33
As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Romans 11:26
And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.

Hebrews 12:22
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly,

1 Peter 2:6
For in Scripture it says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Revelation 14:1
Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads.


If Paul was, indeed, a gnostic, which definition would he have chosen?

The references you refer to are simply mined out of the OT (mystery revealed through the scripture...!!!). I see no need for historical reality (or any other type of reality) to be a part of Paul's beliefs about Jesus and God. The fact that the "scriptures told him so" was enough. In the end, I don't believe the either/or choice you are trying to set up is actually relevant or correct.

Yea, but so what. It's an OT prophesy, in which Zion appears to refer to Jerusalem. Paul tells us he received his Gospel through the scriptures and God himself, not from current events.

In the original OT passage, "him" refers to God. Unless you are a Mormon, you can see that the meaning of "him" has been changed to Jesus, though if I am correct about what was done to these letters by later scribes, it may indeed still refer to God.

Or it can mean that the deliver will come from heaven, which in Paul's mind at least, I think it's safe to say, he did!
I'm saying that since Paul doesn't provide it, maybe he wasn't expected to.

Chris Weimer

[QUOTE=Vorkosigan;4528988]You've got to be off your rocker. Evidence is evidence, Michael. You're conflating two totally different concepts.


You're a joke, Michael. First of all, you cannot correctly parse my own writing, else you'd make the distinction I made between evidence, its use in court, and its use here.

You're using fancy words to describe the exact same fucking thing I did, except now you know it and want to confuse the readers.

Did I not say that data is evidence when it's used for a theory? No, Michael, your obfuscation won't fly here.

Are you blind? Or do you really just not know how to read English? You yourself contradict yourself.

"Data is never evidence"." "The Greek text...is...data...until you impose an interpretation on it. Then it becomes evidence."

So we have the Greek text - data - which is evidence after it's put through an interpretation. What happened to it never becoming evidence?

Give it up, Michael, you're just trying obfuscate the argument.

That's not borne out by the rest of your post.

The same I've used to determine that the letters of Cicero and Pliny are real letters. What do you use, Michael? Did Cicero really write to Atticus? Pliny to Trajan? How can you tell, Michael? I'm more than willing to rely on tradition - for all three letter writers. You, on the other hand, hypocrite that you are, intend to throw away the Christian one, while keeping the other two, with still no methodology to offer up.

Isn't it a bit hypocritical to demand one's methodology while having none of your own?

Chris Weimer

Gurugeorge - until you can quit the Christian apologetics, I'll have nothing more to do with your posts.

Chris Weimer

We "include" whatever anyone can make a case for. If you can make a compelling case for the Aquarian gospel, I certainly doubt you can, then it can be admitted.

Technically, there are more.

No, not quite. What are the origins of the Egerton Gospel?

dog-on

Chris,

Hypothetically, could the epistles have been a product of the second century? If yes, why, or if no, why not?

I would sincerely appreciate your view on this.

Thanks.

Ted Hoffman

Good work Vork, dogon and the rest. I wanted to weigh in but I can see you guys are doing a good job and my contributions would be utterly superfluous. I am looking forward to seeing Chris explain how he tells the authentic from the inauthentic letters.

Ted Hoffman

Is this vacuous ad hominemization all Chris has? How tragic.