freetrader

Solo:

What I said pertained only to the miracle stories in Apollonius, not the rest, and I think it has been shown clearly that those stories were pretty much copies of similar accounts of Jesus in the NT. The biography of Apollonius dates from the early 3rd century, so it clearly was written after the gospel accounts, and the author apparently used NT accounts for the miracle stories he attributes to Apollonius.

I'm sure Apollonius was an exemplary citizen (assuming he existed) and a pillar of the community.


What did it proceed from? What brought special attention to Jesus originally? Didn't there have to be something?


Does that mean Paul played a conscious role in inventing the healing stories in the gospels? He consciously had those stories created as allegory? Assuming the miracle events did not really happen, I'm wondering at what point the stories came into existence. Who invented them and why?

If it wasn't Paul, was it someone connected to him? Did they come from one major source? Or was there a spontaneous popping-up of these stories at different places and from different writers who were unconnected to each other?


No references at all? In I Cor. 11:23f he writes: "the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, . . . etc." and in v. 26 concludes "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord . . ."

Now even if you think Paul might have invented the whole "last supper" scene, with this text as the origin of it, it still reads like a narrative of events happening on that night when "he was handed over" etc.

And it concludes with a reference to "the death of the Lord" and so connects the supper scene to the handing over (Judas betrayal) event and finally the death episode. How can this not be a reference to the earthly Jesus? It can also be allegorized if you wish, but still it sounds like the literal earthly Jesus it refers to before he's arrested.


It's OK to make metaphors or allegories from the healings and other events, but just as the above "last supper" text from Paul refers to specific literal events of the earthly Jesus, so also the healing miracles are most likely literal events and not just metaphors. The actual events came first, and then later the allegorizing began.

The theory that the literal events didn't happen and that the allegories or metaphors are the original subject matter around which all else came together leads to the dilemma of why or how Jesus pops into the picture having any role to play, or why Paul and his comrades chose Jesus for anything.

Why did they need him? Where did they drag him out from? Why him? Why didn't they choose Zoroaster or Hillel or some Greek or Roman hero? This is the question we're still not getting an answer to.

Transient

Why choose a non-jew if your aim is to take the last thing the jews have left, their religion, to hijack it and turn it into a state run religion - killing off all those who do not accept "Jesus" as their god after labelling them as "heretics".
You would place the guy back before the temple was destroyed, make sure he wasn't around too long so that might explain the lack of writing about him from external sources - even tho "the stories about what he did would fill all the libraries of the world if told".
No, you see, what the RCC did in setting up their lovely state imposed religion completely destroyed it's credibility in times that we are now in where we actually have the length of life, the time on the day and the resources to examine it's legitimacy.
Case closed.

Solo

Thanks for the info. I was merely trying to tell you that other than some trivial parallels, AFAIK there is precious little connecting Apollonius to Jesus.

I suppose you never heard of the "Radio Yerevan" jokes from the former Soviet Union. There was one in which a listener asks on a program called "Get It Right" : Is it true that comrade Gagarin received a new Volga during his recent visit to the kolkhoz New Dawn in Nabadakan ? Radio Yerevan replies: "Your information, comrade, is not entirely correct: It was not the kolkhoz New Dawn in Nabadakan, but one called Pobeda in Nakitchevan; it was not comrade Gagarin, the cosmonaut; but comrade Gurievitch, the accountant; he was not visiting but working there; it was not a car but a bicycle and it was not given to him but stolen from him."

So, my answer to you is, yes there likely was something that gave rise to stories about Jesus miracles.

I mentioned the possible origins of the beleifs in miraculous healings in Christian communities. Paul acknowledged that faith healing was a gift of the Spirit. The Spirit also gave visionary faculties to the converts through which they "saw" risen Jesus and acknowledged him as Lord. Mark, I believe was a Pauline Christian, who allegorized this as Jesus of Nazareth actually performing the cures.

I would say that the idea - as far as we can trace it - originates with the gospel of Mark, which supplied the allegorical style of theological discourse known to us as gospel.


I have to tell you that I don't believe this is authentic Paul. The problem of the Eucharistic synopsis is fairly involved but its crux are 1) the two traditions in Paul, 1 Cor 10 and 1 Cor 11, and 2) the nearly identical wording of Luke 22:19-20 and 1 Cor 11:23-25. There are not many ways to solve the riddle: Either Luke copied Paul nearly word for word, which is unlikely (or at any rate the only occasion that Luke would do that), or Paul and Luke were working with the same text tradition - which would make Paul a liar everywhere except in the most conservative exegetical circles who argue that Paul's claim he received the info "from the Lord" through the church channels, or.......someone copied Luke into Paul. This, among other things, has a textual parallel (Lk 10:7 is the "scripture" for the "worthy labourer" quote in 1 Ti 5:18).


I am sure you have noted that this would be the only passage in Paul in which he claims to have received from the Lord factual, historical information on himself before his death and that in making that statement Paul contradicts the oath he made 1 Cr 2:2.

Think of it as a miracle ! :huh:

Jiri

Lugubert

(My bold.)

I agree that the Radio Yerevan in principle kills freetrader, but it's rather:

"You're correct, in principle, but :"

freetrader

show no mercy:

You mean there's nothing in Paul's epistles about the miracles of Jesus. There also seems to be nothing about it in Acts except possibly 10:38, but there are many miracles in Acts allegedly performed by Paul and Peter and others.

This shows that the miracle stories are not something they like to reflect back on so much as to have them keep happening. Paul's epistles are not narratives, but sermons, and it's virtually only in narratives that the miracles are mentioned anywhere.

Acts does contain the post-resurrection appearances and ascension, because that is narrative. But after that, all the miracles are done by the apostles with no rehashing back on those of Jesus. This silence obviously does not mean the writer(s) of Acts had no knowledge of those events.

Paul's silence on the miracles of Jesus can be explained the same as that of Acts. We know that by the time Acts was written, the miracle tradition of Jesus was established, even if you believe it's a late tradition. So the writer(s) of Acts knew of the miracles of Jesus and maybe even wrote some of them in Luke (assuming same authorship), and yet in Acts they are silent about them.

What this shows is that unless it's a narrative and the narrative is about Jesus, there won't be any mention of the miracles of Jesus, even though the author knows of them. So silence on this subject does not indicate that the author didn't know of it.

Nor does Paul's silence mean his readers didn't know of the miracles of Jesus. They probably knew of them from word-of-mouth, just as they knew of the resurrection by word-of-mouth.

Paul's epistles assume his readers already know about the crucifixion and resurrection. How do they know about it? Not because Paul told them, but from word-of-mouth already going on. When Paul talks about the resurrection, it's not to inform his readers that it took place, but rather to theologize on it.

The miracles of Jesus are like the silent 800-pound gorilla in the room. They really do matter, but they are not necessarily a topic to be rehashed just to muse on them, which serves no practical purpose. Miracles are something to have happening, but not something to talk about. Once they are established as an essential part of the picture, the proselytizers go beyond them to the theologizing (christologizing).

So you cannot assume the miracles of Jesus were not an essential factor within the context of Paul's proselytizing. Without them as part of his subject matter, there would be nothing for him to proselytize and no one to proselytize to.


No, there was a memory or tradition about him that made it spread. It couldn't have been spread without that memory or tradition ("gospel"?). Without that basic "gospel" or "euangelion" which included the miracle stories, what was there to "spread"?


But what was this "Christianity" that was spread by Paul? What was there to spread? What was his starting point? You can't pronounce that "Christianity was spread by Paul" without identifying what the "Christianity" was that he was spreading. That word "Christianity" does not exist in Paul's writings. That's your word, not his. What do you mean by that word?

Almost certainly the miracle stories of Jesus were part of that "Christianity" that Paul was spreading. He was theologizing on it, not narrating it, so the only miracle he mentions is the resurrection, because he can use that for theologizing.

If you leave out those miracle stories, i.e., the physical literal events themselves, then what was Paul talking about, or what was he spreading? There was nothing there if those tangible events are not an essential element in it. If you think not, then tell us what was there. What was the "Christianity" you claim he was "spreading" if the miracles of Jesus, illustrating his life-giving power, was not a central element of it?


Although one might believe the miracle stories of Paul, it's not necessary that those events took place in order to explain the spread of "Christianity" or the Jesus story. Without the miracles of Jesus as an actual event, it is difficult to explain how the Jesus story got started.

But once this "gospel" started and was spreading, we can easily explain how the miracle stories about Paul got added as fiction, similar to further miracle stories in the Apocryphal New Testament writings.

The reasonable approach is to dismiss any miracle stories that are not necessary in order to explain something that happened which cannot be explained unless those miracle events really happened. Where that is the case we can reasonably assume the stories are true (or reflect what truly happened), but otherwise we should dismiss such stories as fiction.

Toto

The reasonable approach is to dismiss all miracle stories as fictional. One of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, did exactly that - he took his scissors and cut out all the supernatural parts of the gospels. How far have we regressed that people using electricity and the internet, products of modern science, still want to believe in miracles, and try their best to construct some sort of logical argument based on the possibilities of violating the laws of nature.

Happy 4th of July.

Amaleq13

Agreed. That's all of them because not one is necessary to explain a single thing. :wave:

Solo

Electricity and the internet have nothing to do with it, Toto - it's the parts of our brain that we share with reptiles that will have nothing to do with death. The intuition of immortality is wired into our limbic undercarrriage, it tells you like everyone else : fuck reason, fuck science, you are immortal, baby - you live in the days of miracles and wonders...don't cry baby, don't cry..and don't mind the noise and the scary smells that came after the amniotic sea spilled. You are covered, baby, you are still in the bubble. You don't have to kid yourself that you don't fall off the globe because you know the laws of physics or because the genie in your pocket tells you how much money you have in the bank and lets your mom call you through space even if the two of you happen to be at 180^o relative to the center of the planet.

Here is the secret of miracles: they, like the poor, will always be with us. We are wired for them. They help us cope with the nonsense of bodily functions while we need them. It's not other people that bullshit us. It's our own brain. You couldn't get the dick hard or the pussy wet if your brain did not bullshit you that the asshole is powerful or the bitch is beautiful. I remember my great grandma a few days before she passed on. She refused food. When my grandma tried to feed her some of her gulash the old woman told her: "now that I am not hungry any more I can tell you straight: Ashka, your cooking is crap !". We can't cope with reality qua reality because a certain concentration of it will kill us. Hence great assortments of miracles: yes, your saviour will need to be able to walk on water, if you have anxiety attacks that definitely have no rational cause and noone can offer other relief.

Let the scissors be ! You can't cut out the lower brain out of us ! Besides, I am sure that Jefferson's Jesus without miracles would most likely give comfort only to 18th century rationalist, well-heeled, libertine, slave-owning talking heads.

.....pssst, wanna see the room where Ananias baptized Saint Paul ? Some real internet miracle making, too !

Jiri

Solo

Key to the miracles of Myrna Nazzour:



Jiri

spamandham

So you do at least agree that in this general time period and location, it was not unusual to attribute miracles to men who were fondly remembered?

...that is after all, the case you are making for Apollonius.