GakuseiDon

I was probably a little more direct than I usually am in my last post here. But I do get sick and tired of Doherty's crap occasionally. I keep intending to ignore mythicist arguments and let this board drown in mythicist crap, but Doherty keeps drawing me back in.

If anyone wants to investigate this for themselves, have a look through "Hebrews" and how it treats "heaven" and "earth", and then Doherty's comment on page 69 of his latest book "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" about "Jesus suffering outside the gate" meaning "outside the gate of Heaven" to see if it makes any sense at all. As they say, "They laughed at Galileo. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

This isn't just some standalone instance, by the way. People, if you are convinced Doherty is right, start reading his books and presenting Doherty's arguments and evidence here! What the hell is stopping you from doing that? Hasn't Doherty apparently collected the evidence already??? An 800 page book, and people can't find Doherty's evidence for themselves to present here? Shouldn't people be quoting the Modern-day Galileo left, right and centre??? C'mon! Earl has saved you the trouble for thinking for yourselves. Read through Earl's comments about Hebrews and present them here, so we can have a good laugh.

Don't let Earl get away with talking crap. Let's discuss this.

Toto

Hi GDon - Doherty claims that he is withdrawing from this debate, although who knows.

I don't get this comment. Earl says that the KJV translators, not proto-orthodox speakers of Koine Greek, are the only ones who translated this as into the heavens.

:huh:

Speak about bizarre . . . I have looked into this enough to know that getting into the mindset of first century thinkers is not straightforward, and your interpretations are often simplistic.

But there were other contemporary writers who believed in 3 or seven heavens.

This is not actually a burning issue for most people.

GakuseiDon

Yeah, I don't get it either. You'd think that Earl would have looked at various usages of "dierchomai" rather than critiquing any one reading. And then he ignores "eis ouranos" in Hbr 9:24 altogether. Does Earl propose that "eis" means "pass through" as well? He looks at this passage on page 242 of his book, but ignores "eis ouranos" AFAICS.

As for "dierchomai", it is used in the famous passage:

Mat 19:24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through [dierchomai] the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

I would suggest that the author doesn't mean that it isn't a problem for the camel to actually enter the eye of the needle -- that it is only passing through that is the problem -- but maybe Earl would disagree.

But even more clear is the following passage. Not only do we see "dierchomai", but we see "eis ouranos" as well:

Luk 2:15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven ["eis ouranos"], the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go ["dierchomai"] even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

Fine. My interpretations are often simplistic. But I am wrong? Look at my last couple of posts in this thread on my criticisms of Doherty, including this one, and please point out where they are incorrect. Thanks.

Doug Shaver

Oh, I found the evidence, all right, but there is no way to make the case against historicity just by excerpting a few proof texts from the book.

Recently in another thread, I mentioned that I was planning to update my own Web essay on Jesus' historicity, which is now over 10 years old. I have begun, but it's slow going, precisely because it is next to impossible to make the argument simultaneously (1) concise, (2) intelligible, and (3) cogent. I originally focused on producing something both concise and intelligible and sacrificed some cogency in the process. This time I'll be sacrificing conciseness. (I never intentionally sacrifice intelligibility for anything.) At the rate I'm going so far, I'll be lucky if I can finish it by the time I resume my academic work in September, but that's the deadline I'm setting for myself.

GakuseiDon

Why? Isn't the evidence there?

How about starting from one of the points I raised just above. What do you get from the following passage in Hebrews?

Hbr 9:24 For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, [which are] copies of the true, but into heaven [eis ouranos] itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us

What does this mean, in your opinion?

Has Doherty not done that in his latest book? Why not just summarise his work?

I'll look forward to it. Are there any points of disagreement with Doherty? Or is your essay consistent with his theories?

jgoodguy

Dang it Earl, you have the gift of prophecy to describe a work in progress of which no prepublication copy exists as a "wretched product".

Toto

I don't get your comment. Earl has studied Greek; you haven't. What is the source for you claims about the Greek? All the information that you posted indicates that Earl is correct - dierchomai means to pass through, go through. Later Christian Elizabethan translators wanted to interpret this passage as meaning to rise up and enter into heaven, but that is adding to the plain words.

Pass through = pass through. The camel doesn't "enter" a different plane. :huh:

Luke is a later writer who actually describes Jesus rising into heaven [without using the word dierchomia AFAIK], but even here, the shepherds are not entering a different plane of existence, just traveling to Bethlehem.

I think you are wrong, for the reasons above. And I don't know where the over to top emotional reaction comes from.

EarlDoherty

Well, Don, I’m glad to see that you are actually quite capable of blowing your cool—in spades. I guess your strategy has finally been turned against you. It also seems to have compromised your judgment and argumentation.

The very passage in Hebrews (4:14) you appealed to is: “has passed through the heavens.” Did you notice that? In the plural. Doesn’t that conflict with the point you then tried to make throughout the rest of the posting that the author seemed to envision only AN earth and A heaven (singular), and your effort to turn this simplistic observation into a discrediting of my reading of the epistle? You really need to be a bit more careful.

I’ll snip all your ranting against not only me, but against everyone who holds some sympathy for my views and interpretations. Not quite the way to win friends and influence people.

As for Heb. 13, it is entirely clear that when the author of Hebrews speaks of “outside the gate (of heaven, as I have suggested is his meaning)” he is speaking of the purely spiritual sphere of heaven inhabited by God himself and containing the heavenly sanctuary. The same meaning can be taken from 9:24. In such a sphere, the Son could not suffer and die, so he had to be outside the gate of this highest heaven in order to do so. It doesn’t mean that he had to suffer outside every sphere of the heavens, from top to bottom, namely on earth, as you would like to have it. Your semantic arguments, which seem to be a favorite of yours, are usually carried to ridiculous extremes, and this is one of those cases.

When the writer focuses on the idea of “heaven” in the singular, it is in relation to the dwelling sphere of God and the location of the heavenly sanctuary. But if that were the only area of “heaven” or “the heavens” he envisions, are you going to claim that he, alone of all the writers of this era, has no conception of multiple layers of the heavens, of other spirit layers below the one in which God dwells? Something more to “the heavens” than the highest spiritual sphere of God Himself? For that is what you would have to be claiming in view of the rant that passes for argument you put forward here.

And just to clarify that you are indeed arguing for a single, monolithic “heaven” alongside a monolithic earth:

And yet, as I have pointed out, the very passage which began this discussion was 4:14, which presents “heavens” in the plural. Whose mind seems to be blasted here? Incidentally, although “ouranos” in the singular can encompass an understanding of ‘the heavens’ collectively in general parlance, especially when used in conjunction with “the earth,” please note that 4:14 actually makes a point of using the plural, “tous ouranous”. It would seem, then, that the author actually envisions a multi-level meaning, laying stress on that multiplicity of heavens which Jesus the High Priest “passed through.” And note that in 9:24, he uses the singular, “ton ouranon.” Clearly, he can think and speak in terms of multiple layers of the heavens (which Christ “passed through”) and a particular sphere of the heavens, the highest, that of God, in the singular—which, by the way, in 9:24 he does not “pass through” but entered, the verb “eiserchomai”, not “dierchomai”. So it is not I who have ignored the significance of these various verses and their differences, but you.

Instead of seeing all this and acknowledging that in fact this passage supports the mythicist view, you chose to fall down and foam at the mouth and insult not only me but anyone who doesn’t agree with you. (My suggestion, Don? Take a few years off, take the trouble to learn Greek, and then come back and present arguments which will benefit from having the one ability which is absolutely essential to engaging in any kind of NT scholarship, historicist or mythicist, let alone a debate between them: being able to read Greek.)

Don’t understand your point at all. Where in this verse is there anything about entering the eye of a needle? (Another of your attempted semantic contortions.) The idea, which the verb fits, is to pass through something. Which, by the way, means that it comes out the other side. (Does the camel stay inside the eye?) SO, if “heaven” in Hebrews is a single monolithic entity, as you seem to be arguing, how can Christ pass through it? You ask what area he had to come from which is NOT in the heavens, but what in heaven’s name is the area beyond the heavens that he goes to when he passes through your monolithic Heaven? Only with a series of multiple heavens which Christ passes through until he gets to the highest one (which can perfectly well be all within the range of the multiple layers of heaven themselves), do these problems resolve themselves.

Again, the “eis ouranos” is not used with the verb “dierchomai” but with “aperchomai” which simply means to go away (here with a destination specified). It does not mean to “pass through” heaven or pass through anything on the way to heaven. You simply don’t know what you are talking about, Don.

In the second part of Luke 2:15, you may think you have at least half an argument, for here “dierchomai” is used with a destination. Unfortunately, there is also a connotation here which compromises any such thing. Note that the preposition used with “Bethlehem” is not “eis”, a simple “into”, as though “dierchomai” could indeed be understood as ‘entering into’ or ‘passing into’ as the KJV reads into Heb. 4:14.

Rather, it is “eōs”, which is a temporal conjunction, meaning “till, until.” And as Bauer says (you could at least get yourself a Lexicon and learn the alphabet so you can look up what someone like Bauer says about Greek words), it is also used as an “improper preposition”, and with a noun of place it means “as far as”. Thus there is a decided focus on what precedes the arrival, a connotation of the course of the journey itself. So you cannot read the verse as “let us pass into Bethlehem.” Rather, the meaning is “let us ‘go’ as far as Bethlehem.” Thus the “go” is rendered by “dierchomai” because there is a sense included in the preposition of what the shepherds will “pass through” on their way to their destination of Bethlehem.

You simply don’t know enough to hold your own, Don, which is the point I have been hammering away at for years now. You not only don’t know enough, you ignore what you are told and given as counter-argument, and simply repeat your initial contentions while failing to even acknowledge let alone rebut those counters. I really think that by now you ought to realize that, at least where mythicism is concerned, you should simply “aperchomai—to whatever destination you like, and I don’t care what you “dierchomai” on your way to it. (And no, that’s not grammatically correct usage of the Greek.)

As for me withdrawing from this debate, or any debate with you, it looks like it will depend on my mood on any given day and my reaction to any given posting of yours. But I think it would be suitable to append this quote to all those postings of my own:

GakuseiDon

Haha! That's kind of ironic, in the circumstances. This was actually a test, though not of you. It started with your post here, where you accused me of "deliberate falsification and deception" and of tactics that are "disreputable, dishonest and fraudulent", etc etc etc. Nothing that you haven't called me or others who have critiqued your theories before, of course.

So I waited for the reaction, and I thought "That's interesting." This kind of pissed me off, not so much for what you wrote than for other things that have been happening in the general area.

So in my next post on that thread I carefully repeated your accusations, highlighting them. And I waited for the reaction, and I thought, "That's interesting."

Then in my post above I used the same words that you used or similar. And I waited for the reaction, and I thought, "That's interesting."

Anyway, it's all very interesting, and most people probably won't know what the hell I'm talking about, so I'll make an end to it here. The only thing I'll note is that I can't wait for you to do the same thing to Ehrman. Ever since he announced he was writing an e-book against mythicism, it's like he has painted a big red bullseye on his cyber chest. I guess his reputation is going to take a big hit on this board, even before he publishes anything.

Now on to more serious matters.

No, it doesn't conflict at all. My point was the dichotomy in Hebrews: earth vs heaven. Whether this is "heaven" or "heavens" is irrelevant. There is no explicit notion of a "lower heaven" in which Jesus suffered, shed tears, etc in Hebrews.

Earl, is Jesus' suffering, shedding tears and dying consistent with the upper heavens, e.g. like Paul's Third Heaven in which Paradise existed? We can rule that out, right?

The only places left are the lower heavens and earth. And Hebrews only talks about earth and heaven (or heavens). There is no explicit references in Hebrews about "fleshly" lower heavens and upper heavens, except your (IMHO) torturous readings. Correct?

If it is entirely clear, then that is powerful evidence for you.

Sure. That's what I was arguing. Ehrman is going to be for a treat.

Sure. I'm now suddenly arguing against multiple heavens, after all these years. Thanks, Earl.

As for "dierchomai": if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again. I checked Strong's thesaurus, which for an amateur is dangerous. I make no bones about my lack of language skills, which is precisely why I stress that people shouldn't take my word for anything on the subject (or any subject in which I am an amateur, for that matter.)

Earl, is "dierchomai ouranos" as it is used in Hebrews compatible with a starting point on earth?

Fair comments on my ancient language skills.

Earl, is “eis ouranos” as it is used in Hebrews compatible with a starting point on earth?

EarlDoherty

You have argued that certain passages in Hebrews referring to heaven(s) tend to disprove the mythicist case. I have argued otherwise. Now you think to shift the focus in one of your straw-man directions: does Hebrews present an EXPLICIT reference to a lower heaven in which Jesus suffered and died? I have never claimed that it does, and you know that. If it did, we could all go home and do something productive; we would never have had this debate in the first place, we'd all be mythicists. The issue here has been whether the language of Hebrews 4:14 could be forced into saying that Jesus ascended from earth to heaven, which is what you tried to argue based on ignorance of the Greek in several passages.

Now, typically, you’re trying to fudge or simply get around that issue by asking me if Hebrews anywhere specifically states that Jesus died in a heavenly sphere. When I say no, are you going to declare victory? That’s not what we were arguing. In regard to what we WERE arguing, you lost. Period. But that’s another one of your infuriating techniques. When you got knocked down or out in one ring, you simply take your gloves and mouthguard and get into some other ring and claim, well, you didn’t knock me down in this one, so I win.

And this is precisely the same tactic:

First of all, there is no “dierchomai ouranos” in Hebrews. Your 4:14 is “(dierchomai) tous ouranous,” plural. But technically speaking, of course it’s compatible. I never said it wasn’t. Once again, you’ve shifted ground. The issue was not whether it might be theoretically compatible with such an idea, though that idea is never stated. Rather, you tried to rule out any other understanding based on a garbled argument about a singular heaven, an argument you are now trying to worm out of. Like I said, you lost.

Can I get you now to admit that the phrase is compatible with a starting and a finishing point entirely within the layers of heaven?

When everything else that is said and not said in the document as a whole, the most compatible meaning is a mythicist one, not a starting point on earth. In fact, when one takes into account a couple of passages, a notable one being 8:4, it is not only compatible, it is the only feasible one. 8:4 rules out any presence or starting point for Jesus on earth. Or did you skip that 8-page section in my chapter on Hebrews? You didn’t so much as devote a whisper to it in your review. My case is airtight that 8:4 tells us that Jesus was never on earth. Care to challenge that by taking it apart and discrediting it?

And what is it going to take for you (and judge) to realize that declaring my ‘heavenly Christ’ case to be “absurd” or any other synonym you care to use, no matter how many times you appeal to it, does not constitute a counter-argument? It does not discredit the case simply because your personal incredulity finds it unacceptable. How many people in ancient and medieval times do you think declared that the idea that the earth went around the sun was “absurd”? It’s “nonsense” to think that the earth is hurtling through space and we don’t feel it, right? It was absurd, said the traditional field of geology in 1915 in response to Wegener, to think that the entire surface of the earth was made up of shifting tectonic plates, right? Just as it’s nonsense to think that the ancients, despite their Platonic (and Jewish) cosmology that viewed the universe as possessing multiple layers of heaven in which many divine activities went on, could ever think that a god could be sacrificed in the heavens, right? Give it up, Don, if you can’t come up with anything better than that.

Earl Doherty