Vorkosigan

Ok, read your critique. Thanks for the links.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

How many times MUST you be told that the HJ argument is NOT that Jesus was BELIEVED to have existed but that Jesus of the NT was just an ORDINARY man with a human father?

Why can't you understand that CHRISTIANS believed Marcion's PHANTOM existed even though the PHANTOM had NO birth and flesh?

Again, the HJ argument is that Jesus of the NT was just a man but some CHRISTIANS are claiming Jesus EXISTED just as described in the NT.

Some Christians have MANIPULATED the HJ argument by actually supporting the MYTH Jesus character and still simultaneously argue for HJ.

For the purpose of the HJ/MJ argument, You are NOT an HJer if you do NOT accept that Jesus was an ORDINARY man with a human father and that the NT is filled with MYTHOLOGY and FICTION with respect to the original human Jesus.

Doug Shaver

Under any of the usual historicist assumptions, (1) the first Christians were Jews, (2) Jews dominated Christianity during at least the first few decades of the religion's existence, and (3) they were preaching their religion to other Jews every chance they got.

Within any Jewish milieu, whether in Palestine or the Diaspora, a man who was also God would have been odd, to say the least. And for no literate Jew, anywhere in that part of the world, to have paid any attention at all to such preaching would have been just about equally odd.

ApostateAbe

There was only one such Jew in the time of Jesus--Philo of Alexandria. He didn't find John the Baptist to be important, but Josephus gave John the Baptist plenty of ink. I think there is a difference between having heard of someone and caring enough to include that someone in historical writings. Presumably, Philo had heard of a bunch of religious cult leaders, but it does not follow that he would have written about all of them. Jesus didn't even become "God" until the writing of the gospel of John. That is also the time when we see Jesus mentioned by Josephus.

Doug Shaver

Indeed, but what makes it seem so? Simply the fact that orthodox Christians have said so for as long as there has been a Christian orthodoxy. But that is not as long as there have been Christians.

Here is an excerpt from another essay I wrote on a related topic:

The conventional thinking in our own time about Christianity's origins, even among secular historians, is what some scholars have called the "big bang" theory. In this scenario, one Jesus of Nazareth, a charismatic Jewish preacher, was executed by Judea's Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, around 30 CE. Soon afterward certain of his disciples, known as apostles, having become convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead, formed a religious sect based on his teachings and claiming that he was the son of God and the fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecies. The sect's original membership was predominantly Jewish. Shortly after the sect's founding, a Pharisee called Saul of Tarsus was converted and commenced a missionary campaign among gentiles under the new name of Paul. He was successful while the original apostles had little success in converting other Jews. After the First Jewish War, Christianity in effect severed its connection with Judaism while maintaining that it was the legitimate heir to its parent religion. As the sect's founders died off, numerous competing versions of Christianity arose and had to be resisted by adherents of the original apostolic teachings. The dissident sects were eventually suppressed and the apostolic teachings survived as the historic orthodoxy.

One problem is that this account is itself just the historic orthodoxy. We are getting our history from the winners, and the winners, for nearly a thousand years, were the sole custodians of the documentary record. With almost no exceptions, we have no writings from ancient times except those that the church regarded as worth preserving. (The accusations of some skeptics that the church actively sought out and destroyed heterodox writings is both unsupported and unmotivated. The church never needed to destroy those documents as long as no one took the trouble to copy them; time alone would have ensured their eventual disappearance.)

In any case, for any historical investigation we can use no evidence except existing evidence. Hypothetical facts can never prove anything. The only facts we have are that certain manuscripts exist containing writings of a certain nature. They appear to be copies, several times removed, of certain original documents, concerning which the authors of certain other documents claim certain things about their provenance. It is not a fact, but only an inference based on presuppositions about the reliability of those claims, that the gospels' authors intended their works to be biographical sketches about the founder of their religion. It is a dogma originally propounded by some leaders of one particular sect of Christianity that happened by historical accident to become victorious over all other sects.
. . . . .

Heresy, according to Eusebius, was no big thing as long as the apostles were still around to keep everyone in line. Simon Magus was one apparent exception, but by and large everyone was singing from the same hymnal up until the last of the apostles died off, and then it all started to come apart. Heresies sprang up right and left and the defenders of orthodoxy were obliged to battle them constantly. But, in due course,

. . . the splendor of the catholic and only true Church, which is always the same, grew in magnitude and power, and reflected its piety and simplicity and freedom, and the modesty and purity of its inspired life and philosophy to every nation both of Greeks and of Barbarians. At the same time the slanderous accusations which had been brought against the whole Church also vanished, and there remained our teaching alone, which has prevailed over all, and which is acknowledged to be superior to all in dignity and temperance, and in divine and philosophical doctrines. (Ecclesiastical History, 4.7.13-14.)

And so the doctrinal wars did end. Eusebius got that part right. But the story doesn't seem to have begun the way he said it began. Paul himself complained about how many people were preaching gospels other than his own, and several modern scholars he had good reason to complain. According to Bart Ehrman, there was a multitude of sects calling themselves Christian "as far back in fact as our earliest sources go" (The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, p. 11), and we have no clear evidence that any one of them had a better claim than the others to be the real thing. A list of scholars whose research provides data supporting Ehrman's position would include F.C. Baur, Walter Bauer, Walter Schmithals, James M. Robinson, Helmut Koester, J.D.G. Dunn, Robert K. Price, and Burton Mack.

The point of this digression is: The epistles were canonized because the winners of the doctrinal wars could construe them as being supportive of their orthodoxy. The actual thinking of the men who wrote the epistles, whoever they might have been, was entirely beside the point. There was no necessary connection between their beliefs and the beliefs of Eusebius's contemporaries and successors.

Doug Shaver

If you can read Paul and deny, with a straight face, that Paul thought Jesus was God or something very like a god, then you and I just don't have enough intellectual common ground on which to continue this discussion.

aa5874

You claim is ERRONEOUS once you have PRESUMED "Paul" was BEFORE the author of gJohn.

You must KNOW that "Paul" claimed Jesus was GOD'S OWN SON in Romans 8.3 and 32.

You ALREADY that "Paul" DESCRIBED Jesus as GOD INCARNATE, God in the Flesh. God's Son made of a woman is God Incarnate with the SEED of God and the Flesh of man.

See Galatians 4.4.

Please stop your PROPAGANDA.

Once you introduce the Pauline writings as EVIDENCE for an historical Jesus then the Pauline witness will commit PERJURY when his WRITTEN statement is EXAMINED.

The PAULINE witness has CONFESSED in a WRITTEN STATEMENT that he was NOT the Apostle of a MAN and did NOT get his Gospel from man.

Examine the CONFESSION of "Paul".

Galatians 1 The Pauline witness will COMMIT PERJURY if he allowed as a witness for HJ.

The Pauline witness can ONLY give evidence for MJ and has made WRITTEN STATEMENTS claiming that he and OVER 500 people AT ONCE saw the RESURRECTED Jesus.

Doug Shaver

There you go again, presenting an argument as if it had not already been discussed a zillion times in this forum.

Sheshbazzar

If what is admittedly a PROPAGANDA document revises and rearranges the ORDER of events and presents a FALSE 'version' of history, do we have to accept the 'HISTORY' presented within that PROPAGANDA document, -KNOWN to contain FALSE and MISLEADING INFORMATION-, as being ACCURATE and FACTUAL?
And CONFORM ALL of our CONCLUSIONS in an exacting CONFORMITY with the ORDER and CONTENTS of that acknowledged PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT?

PLEASE STOP BELIEVING IN THE ACCURACY OF WHAT YOU KNOW IS A FALSE PROPAGANDA DOCUMENT!

avi

I know nothing of "historicist assumptions". In my opinion, the first Christians were NOT Jews, but Greeks. I doubt that Jews dominated earliest Christianity.

I write this because of the message of early Christianity: one can attain paradise, upon death, without need to follow the Jewish dietary laws, and without need to undergo circumcision.

Neither of these two qualities bears any significance to practicing Jews. They already are circumcised, and accustomed to following the traditional dietary laws. The new religion, (first introduced, in my opinion, following the third Roman-Jewish conflict,) demanded of adherents, acceptance of mythical qualities, assigned to someone entirely ill-suited to portray the heroic figure of the Jewish messiah.

Folks who would have been impressed by this new religion were surely not Jews, (accustomed to reading Hebrew,) but Greeks, most of them pagans, the rest heathen. The sine qua non for entry into the new religion was not an understanding of LXX, but rather, a belief that they themselves would rise into heaven and sit adjacent to JC.

avi