The Bishop

I should think quite a number of people attempted looking at the gospels from the mythicist position and found it completely undermined by details that belie a mythicist hypothesis. There are in fact far too many "flaws" that actually make no sense from a mythicist position. One of which would certainly be Jesus talking as if Christ were somebody else - not something a fictional Christ is ever likely to do, but a human Jesus? The Christ is a major role in Jewish prophecy, and to suddenly distance himself from that position would not necessarily be unlikely. John the Baptist is supposed to have done that exact thing, and as A.N.Wilson pointed out in Jesus, it could all have been very different, and J the B could have been the worshipped God-creature.

Rather like in the evolution debate, flaws are what you expect of real life, not fiction.

I have been reading the jesuspuzzle this week, and I have found a lot of fallacious and inconsistent argument. I'm not convinced that there is a remotely persuasive case that there never was a historical Jesus, and I've failed to find a working model of what was supposed to have happened in place of the "there was a real Jesus" model.

So as to make myself absolutely clear, Clive, this, does not make me an apologist.

post tenebras lux

Sure, cos it just says 'fateful'. If it had been a 'fatal' it would have been a start.I would have no problem acknowledging someone - especially an educated german jew - who forsaw the Holocaust, but to cherrypick a few lines out of a massive screed of hyperbole is not up at the 'and fear will become synonymous with flight' level (imho). Those with the stamina can try and read Brunner's appendix for themselves to decide if it's a screed, but given its opening two lines are: 'My work Our Christ is now completed. In the face of opposition from the entire clerical establishment of religion, metaphysics and moralism ...'; followed quickly by 'Is it not a terrible thing that such a man as Christ can be torn to pieces by our learned critics, just as he was on the Cross! Christ still suffers most at the hands of the scholars.'; etc., I happen to think that it is.

Further, he is, after all, claiming that scholarly criticism can now combine with (recent) scientific knowledge so that 'human beings can be subjected to violence and massacred'. I don't really think that scholarly criticism was really the cause of the holocaust. :huh:No doubt many of the christian nazis (and the aryan-christian nazis, naturally) thought that they did have their god's approval to massacre the deicidists' decendants.

post tenebras lux

How about the times when Jesus is by himself - or with the devil - but the gospels record his exact words?

The Bishop

This is one area where it's important to make the distinction between the mythologising of a real Jesus, and the Mythical Jesus. Quite a lot of Doherty's arguments appear to me to discuss patent mythologising as if it's an indication that Jesus was a myth.

Jesus talking to the Devil does not come under the heading of a useful "flaw" in the narrative to either prove a Myth or prove Historicity, because it's patently fictional!

No Robots

Well, like you say, the second quotation is maybe better, but it's more long-winded. That's why I put the first quotation on the page.

It is clear that Brunner was predicting that "scientific" race theory would result in massacres of Jews. Brunner wrote a handful of books on the topic of antisemitism, so I'm hardly "cherry-picking". I'm just providing a taste of what he has to say.

The role of intellectual "theorists" in the fostering of social and political movements is generally underestimated. Here is a pertinent quotation:

The German medical profession was largely in league with the Nazis and had accepted the theories of rogue anthropologists like Otto von Verschuer and his protegé, Josef Mengele.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans / James F. Tent, p. 108

Clivedurdle

And someone just died mimicking this fictional fast by attempting not to eat for forty days!

If someone gets full marks on a hero scale, maybe they are related to superman! I think I tend towards a character in a play, a device to explain theological ideas. Paul had a clearly heavely Christ, at some point someone invented a character to teach the idea. Were plays used to teach before the medieval mystery plays? Parables also are a teaching technique.

Clivedurdle

A N Wilson argues that "verily verily I say unto you" is a verbal tic, an expresion that proves we are discussing a real human Jesus. But is it, or is it a soundbite a clever playwright would use?

Doug Shaver

But the words "from no man" do appear in the text. So, if Paul received the gospel indirectly from God, who was the intermediary?

Rick Sumner

Not in reference to the Lord's Supper, they don't. Which is the topic under debate. Taking passages from Galatians to use here is just proof-texting.

Paul's gospel and the Lord's Supper are unrelated. His gospel, as he makes quite clear (eg. Eph.3.6) is that the Gentiles can be saved. This gospel, of course, comes from scripture and from God--where else would you expect him to get it from? His opponents didn't agree--at least not in the sense Paul means, so they certainly couldn't have been his source. Besides which, he makes it abundantly clear what his sources are--the promise to Abraham, the prophesy of Isaiah and so on.

At any rate, it has nothing to do with the Lord's Supper, which, again, is the point under discussion.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

post tenebras lux

Ah, well that would have been the references I was looking for. Anyway, it was just out of curiousity as I'd only seen that 'fateful' quote.Which is all getting very off topic. What do you make of this paragraph of Brunner's that I had quoted earlier? :