Bingo the Clown-O

Thanks for posting that Earl.

I’m chewing on it now.

Figuratively - of course.

aa5874

Where do you get your stories from about Athenagoras??

Who adopted Athenagoras?? When did this adoption take place??

Examine "Church History" and you will NOT find a single word about Athenagoras--it is as if he never existed.

You do NOT understand that Athenagoras writings do NOT support the Jesus story of the Jesus cult.

aa5874

You have NOTHING and I will Expose your emptiness. I will NOT ever ignore your unsubstantiated claims about Epistle Hebrews.

You are the one who have dated Epistle Hebrews BEFORE the Jewish War without a shred of corroborative evidence.

I can argue that the Epistle Hebrews was composed AFTER the Jesus story was known and AFTER 115 CE

1. No author of the NT used a single verse from Epistle Hebrews

2. Up to c 180 CE it was NOT even listed in "Against Heresies".

3. No NT manuscript or text of Epistle Hebrews as been found and dated to the 1st century.

4. The claim that Jesus was Sacrificied for Sins in Hebrews is NOT found in gMark but in the Later Gospels.

5. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius up to 115 CE wrote NOTHING of Jesus Christ or a Celestial Christ that was a universal Saviour of mankind.

6.Up to 150 CE, Apologetic sources like Aristides, and Justin Martyr mentioned stories about Jesus that he was killed by the Jews WITHOUT making any rerefence to Epistle Hebrews.

7. The Christology in Epistle Hebrews is far more advanced than the short gMark.

8. In the short gMark, Jesus preached Salvation by the Works of the Law but in Epistle Hebrews the author claimed that Salvation is by FAITH.

maryhelena

"it could be possible to see the Gospel Jesus' dying and rising dimension as not having to be based on the Pauline celestial sacrifice"

Earl, it is irrelevant which way you come down on the 'possibility'. The fact that you acknowledge that there is a possibility is all I am highlighting. Take your pick of possibilities - and allow others to do likewise.

The possibility that Mark did not use 'Paul & Co' allows for the gospel Jesus story be be interpreted without a Pauline lens.

'Mark need not" And then again, he might well have. Earl, you don't know. We are dealing with possibilities - and this can go either way.

And that's all I mean also, Earl. "historical figures", "elements in the Jewish experience, ....are reflected in the story created by Mark".

Earl, come on now - don't start misrepresenting me. Just where did I write this: "And it certainly does not justify you saying that now we can abandon the Pauline Christ as derived from scripture,"

You are misrepresenting me. Where did I state any such thing as this: "But to go from that optional choice on your part to claiming that the mythicist view of Paul is therefore consequently wrong is a logical non-sequitur and I will definitely bother to oppose you on that-"

Earl, my advise to you is be more careful in reading what I wrote so that you don't end up misrepresenting what I write. Your ahistorical/mythicist theories are heading for a fall and no amount of shouting down your opponents will help you save them.

Yes, of course, Hoffmann is not going to find a historical gospel JC, of whatever variant. But Hoffmann is on the correct pathway for a historical search - it's the gospels, the gospel story, that has to be center stage - not speculation on the Pauline epistles.

jakejonesiv

Dear Earl,

How very deficient and amateuristic can your understanding of Hebrews be? (No scorn intended). The Greek grammar alone can never demonstrate your idiosyncratic point that Jesus had never been on earth. To "prove" anything else, you appeal to an "exception" and recycle the same exegisis of using Doherty to prove Doherty. It takes you five hours of hair splitting dogmatics to respond to Ted. Each split hair is a decision point of less than 100% probability. I'll count the number of split hairs for you in a future post.

But your arguments have no shred of external confirmation. You have driven yourself into a cul-de-sac. You failed to name one external source in antiquity that shares your opinion of Heb. 8:4. You failed to make any coherent case that your opinion of 8:4 influenced anything in the larger development of Christianity..as AA has demonstrated. There is no smoking gun, only an entire pack of dogs that never barked.

Best Regards,
Jake Jones IV

Duvduv

It DOESN'T have to "support" the Jesus cult. All it has to suggest is that it had been written by someone unrelated to Christianity and it was adopted as a text because someone liked its teachings. What's the big deal?!
I was also suggesting that this is what happened to epistles. They were the products of pre-existing Torah-friendly letters that were adopted AND ADAPTED with emerging Christian beliefs without having to reinvent the wheel from scratch.

EarlDoherty

Jake, I don't know why I bother, because anything I say just goes right by you. This will be the third or more time that I have said that I do NOT claim that the Greek grammar alone proves my interpretation of Hebrews 8:4. How many more times must I say that?! I have said that the grammatical structure of the phrase in 8:4 per se allows for either a present or a past understanding. Greek grammarians agree. Nor is it a case of an "exception," but an available application of the contrafactual structure in certain circumstances. It then becomes encumbent to demonstrate that such an ambiguity could allow the translation to go either way. I have demonstrated based NOT on the grammar but on a logical analysis of the passage itself that it CANNOT go either way, but must be put into a past understanding, which, given the nature of a contrafactual statement renders the meaning of the verse that Jesus was never on earth.

If you cannot understand that basic groundwork for my analysis of the passage, then it is hopeless to even try to have a discussion of it. Do you get that, Jake?

Furthermore, how many times do I have to point out that the fact that there is no external attestation for Hebrews before the later 2nd century (possibly excepting 1 Clement, which in itself would disprove yours and aa's position) does not automatically disprove a provenance in the first century? (I make the same observation to aa.) There are all sorts of documents from the ancient world whose internal content demonstrates a certain date or date range while not enjoying external attestation for the immediate period following its writing. This is simply not a logical claim on your part.

How many times must I point out that Christians were incapable of subjecting the earlier record to the degree of scholarly analysis which would lead them to perceiving things which scholarship today now takes for granted--and I'm not talking about just in the area of mythicist theory. Did Irenaeus or Tertullian perceive that the Gospel story was put together out of elements of the Hebrew bible? No, they regarded those elements as prophecies, and today we know that they were not. So stop regarding any silence by Christian commentators on Hebrews 8:4 as proof that it cannot be seen by us moderns as a statement that Jesus had never been on earth. That is illogical, whether it is you or aa or anyone else who says it.

And when did I ever say that Hebrews 8:4 influenced any later development in early Christianity? I said that Hebrews as a whole was a reflection of the diverse and uncoordinated expressions of belief in an intermediary Son/Logos as an avenue to salvation across a wide range of sects in the first and second centuries. Stop creating distorted straw men.

And I look forward to your critique of my "hair-splitting dogmatics" response to Ted. I can only hope that it makes a little more logical sense and understanding of what I am actually saying and the reasoning employed than you have shown thus far. If it doesn't, I will not be paying very much attention to it.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Because I am not in the habit of choosing interpretations solely on the basis of whether it helps my case or not. I don't think the question of whether 1 Clement knows Hebrews is that clear cut, as I discussed in my posting from JNGNM on the dating of Hebrews. Actually, each alternative interpretation happens to help my case in different ways. If 1 Clement knows it, this gives us a first century dating of Hebrews. If he does not, it strengthens the picture I have created of a diverse picture within the early Christ-belief movement and against any central origin or organizing force.

(Yes, I know, the 2nd century Radicals date 1 Clement much later, specifically in order to eliminate the problems created for their 2nd-century fixation by a more traditional dating. I have argued at length against that, and would point to such a Radical opinion as a good case of choosing an alternative on the basis of need rather than reasonable exegesis. The reasons given for late dating are weak and problematic. Jake can tell you about that, as we have crossed keyboards on it on JM.)

And I will be interested in any comments Andrew has to make in regard to my handling of the 1 Clement knowledge of Hebrews question.

Earl Doherty

Chili

Bolding mine to say that this is preeminent with regard to the question: "who am I" and is universal to man in the image of God for whom only his genus needs to be identified and the rest will be added unto him.

To say otherwise is like asking, 'never mind who I am but who is my neighbor' and worship the image presented from the pulpit . . . and that has to be the height of ignorance in a field of its own, with no other like it for sure. IOW, HJ is totally absurd.

EarlDoherty

I might also add to Jake that I expect a full and substantive response to my posting of the JNGNM Appendix on the dating of Hebrews and the question of its postscript, since he pestered me to make it available to the board, being unwilling to investigate it for himself.

The postscript question is also relevant to the dating, since such an interpolation would obviously come from a period when the Pauline corpus had been collected and was beginning to circulate (mid 2nd century) and an attempt was made to link this earlier document, not identifiable with anything else in the second century world, with the Pauline tradition.

Earl Doherty