darstec

Why is it a false analogy? Paul Bunyan was not born in some hazy time in the past nor in some invented town like Nazareth that has no evidence of existing in the time period the fable said some indeterminate Joshua was born. Paul
Bunyan was said to have been born in an actual city that existed at the time he was said to have been born. And according to this site: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020510.html there is about as much evidence he was a real person as there was for Joshua nee Jesus. And the tall tales are equally fantastic for both Paul Bunyan and Joshua.

So you are an expert in the field? How many of your so-called associates have honestly examined and critiqued the mythcist position without fear of losing there collar or position?What experts in the field? How can you call anyone an expert that starts in the seminary, bible school, etc. with the predispostion that everything in the New Testament about Joshua, the disciples/apostles, and Paul are true and historicial? And how many of your so-called experts do not have an invested interest in the determination that Joshua, etc. are historical? To maintain otherwise would be heretical, and could get them a strong reprimand by the authorities in their particular Christian ministry, or the administration of the seminary, bible school, or religous department of some university? The would be ostracized, defrocked, or fired. So where would they then find employment in their field of expertise? We already know of a number of former experts that disagreed with the status quo and are ostricized.

Please show how the analogy was false. Remember the events in Reb Butler's life took place in real cities, during a real war, during specific time periods. So according to your criteria he must have an historical basis.

Chris Weimer

I don't see the problem in claiming there was an historical character for Paul Bunyan necessarily? I mean, what if there really was a real person named "Paul Bunyon", a lumberjack, who was a tall guy. And legends of his tallness just grew exaggerated over time. Similarily, I remember readings as a kid (though I could have been mistaken) that there was a real Johnny Appleseed. Or should we disregard George Washington because there's the myth of the cherry-tree? I don't see the logic in that.

darstec

And yet you didn't even attempt to answer the question. I ask again, what percentage of those historicists do you suppose are affiliated with a relligious department of a university, college, seminary, bible school, or are employed in a religious ministry within the broad scope of Christianity? Why is it shameful to point out that those whose employment depends upon their point of view have a strong impetus to maintain that point of view? I am personally aware of the integrity (or rather lack thereof) of at least a few of those experts. I know what they stated in class and what they wrote in their official publications.

Tell me, what do you think that the employment outcome of senior vice president of Microsoft might be with Microsoft if he constantly and publically maintained that Linux was superior to Windows? At least he could work for a Linux/Unix company. Where does a person employed in a religious capacity find alternate employment in his field of expertise if he propounds hertical points of view?

darstec

You can't be serious comparing Joshua with George Washington! We have letters in his handwritting and replies by his contemporaries. We have paintings of him by autheticated painters. We have contemporary writings by many discussing Washington. All of that is absent with Joshua or even Paul. Do we have even one original letter to which Paul replied? Do we have any correspondence in reply to Paul? How about a picture or likeness? And Paul was such a strong force in his time, how many of his contemporaries endorsed or opposed him in comtemporary literature? How about Joshua? What did he write? What pictures do we have of him? Or for that matter what personal description of him? What contemporary wrote of him? An absolute minimum of two generations later just doesn't cut it as far as comparison of either Joshua or Paul to Wahington. That stretch was too much of a knee jerk reaction even for you.

rlogan

i certainly don't see it as such, and again apologize for any appearance of that accusation. So on to the discussion...


Yes, undoubtedly, but that doesn't mean that Christ started as a myth.


This is a question that at its core has the proposition that a society must be 100% Christian in order to have Christian influence. Are you really going to front this as an argument?

The problem, Chris, is that there isn't anywhere that Paul simply writes of a historical Jesus when it is so trivially easy to do. All of it requires "interpreting" what he said instead of him actually saying it.

Excuses abound for it. But excuses do not put the text to paper. It does not exist.

I think here we have a pretty clear dividing line. If we are going to play the game that Jesus flew under the radar of every contemporaneous historian, and yet was responsible for this movement - then that is simply grasping for the "just so" story out of a prior belief and not a conclusion drawn from facts.

Does Paul tell us that Jesus had a tiny ministry unknown to anyone of consequence? No, he does not. That is the "just so" story made up thousands of years after the mythical setting.


Between myth and reality? I've already asked for the evidence of who it was specifically that started the Christ myth. The Robin Hood people have done so. They have found candidates. Someone here is suggesting the same for Paul Bunyan. I don't know about the latter, but I have spent a little bit of time with the Robin Hood question and there are a couple of candidates.

Why are historicists as a group not even trying? I think it quite telling.

I understand why you propose this, Chris.

But I have real persona from Josephus, for example, none of whom fit this bill and could all be named as "The Historical Jesus" if we just ignore the differences between them and who Jesus was according to whatever concept you want to apply.

It becomes an exercise in silliness to be proposing theoretical people whom we cannot demonstrate existed or on the other hand remoulding people who actually did exist.

The question again is can we find a linear history tracking a real person through specific known followers, events, sites, and etc? That answer is no.




I'll look at that thread, but again - excuses can't produce the evidence itself.

As far as who the original inspiration was, then I do not see why JBapt is credited. Here is a much more solid claim to historicity.

Cheers.

Chris Weimer

I'm not seriously comparing George Washington to Jesus. I'm showing how ludicrous it is to assume that though some mythical components make up a story that automatically makes the entire thing fictitious.

Llyricist

As many others have pointed out, Paul never made it clear that he was talking about a real human person that recently existed in or around Jerusalem.

Kata Sarka, Seed of David and....(what? rulers of this age?) are all ya have to even hint at a real person.
So everything in a letter is by definition non fiction? huh?
You may have some pedantic, literary genre specific definition in mind. But as far as I, and many other people are concerned, if his claim of his revelations are not true, that makes them fictional. And places severe doubt about what those revelations contained, ie, most of what he had to say about Christ Jesus. Keep in mind that he never claims to have gained any knowledge of Christ from anyone except Christ or the Lord (ETA: or scripture), he secifically DENIED it in fact.

There is no there, there.

Sheshbazzar

The diverse presentation of the details does not infringe upon the theme;
Deut.21:22-23, Num. 21:8-9, John 3:14, 2 Kings 18:4
Some looked upon the Nehushtan to deliver them then, and some look upon the Nehushtan to deliver them now, some were delivered from the Nehushtan then, and some are delivered from the Nehushtan now.
Faith never requires consensus, but individual obedience to that quiet, small voice saying; This is the way, walk in it;

Malachi151

We are talking her about the historical existnace of a person, and the evidence for it.

Faith requires nothing and proves nothing. Faith requires only belief, not reality. We are talking about reality, which is the point.

Which is the point. The "theme" was a common one in the region at the time. There were already many existing religions that had a belief in a man-god that died and came back to life after three days.

The fact that the story matches other myths that existed in the region at the time, and the fact that the facts of the story fit the societies in which it was told, i.e. the mode of death in each case matched the popular mode of execution for each respective culture, lends much credibility to the view that the story of the death fo Jesus was a complete myth, based on no reality at all.

There was a preexisting matching myth that was already part of many Mediterranian cultures, and every culture that told the story in relation to Jesus told it based on their own cultural bias, indicating that the basis was myth, and not an objective real event.

Chris Weimer

Not necessarily in you, but whatever. It's a moot issue now.

I think that America being Christian has zero influence on my arguments, and I don't think the issue needs to be brought up at all.

Romans 1.3 αυτου του γενομενου εκ σπεÏ?ματος Δαυιδ κατα σαÏ?κα
"who is having come out of the seed of David according to the flesh"

Romans 10.9 και πιστευσηις εν τηι καÏ?δια σου οτι ο θεος αυτον ηγειÏ?εν εκ νεκÏ?ων
"and should believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead"

I Thessalonians 2.14-15 και αυτοι υπο των Ιουδαιων των και τον κυÏ?ιον αποκτειναντων Ιησουν και τους Ï€Ï?οφητας.
Also those from the Jews who both killed the Lord and their prophets.

I'm sure I could come up with more. If I really ran through it. All this points to Jesus living on earth. The seed of David, killed by the Jews, whom God resurrected (and from Romans 1.4 we learn that we was resurrected according to the spirit - a very big distinction from (Mark)/Matthew/Luke/John).

Must have been overshadowed by John the Baptist. Funny how John the Baptist actually has Josephus going for him and yet his religion is barely existent. Funny how that works, huh?

Could you explain this more?

Christ Myth? I don't know. We probably don't have too much of their writings. If by Paul's time Jesus was already fairly mythicized, or what if it was Paul himself? From Paul's context in Galatians, he battled the "false gospel" of the Judaizers, which I had shown elsewhere to be fairly inherent in early Christianity. Perhaps it was Paul's ideas that helped destroy what earthly, Jewish connotations Christ contained. Oddly enough, it backfired.

Probably because Robin Hood is over a millennium newer than Jesus Christ. The older the character, the harder it is to pinpoint anything exactly.

Why does he have to be mentioned by Josephus at all?

Who am I remolding? As for proposing theoretical people, it's not silly at all. We might as well write off every person who might have existed as pure fabrication regardless whether they actually existed. That's silliness.

It's always no if you don't try.