Sojourner553

______________________________________________
To Amos:

Looks like I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I still don’t understand what you are saying though – but maybe the problem is on my end as I am fairly new here and therefore unfamiliar with your background. Are you a Protestant with a dislike for the abuses of past Catholicism?

_______________________________________________
To Koyaanisqatsi and Spin

I would like to debate both of you on whether a historical Jesus existed:

* If it was Greek Christians that made up the historical person, then some of the details on Jesus' life, ran counter to what official Orthodox held about Jesus:
-- passages that show Jesus treated women on an equal footing with men,
-- passages that Jesus was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
-- the scene of the money changers in the Temple as it didn't accomplish any meaningful changes. But it could be a reason why a historical Jesus would have been arrested, and later executed.

* When Jesus describes himself, the term “Son of Man” is almost always used. This was a Jewish concept

-- In the book of Daniel (see 7:13-14) and in the book of Enoch, the term "Son of Man" refers to a messianic savior-king. It was no doubt, in the Daniel sense, that the Gospel writers were referring to--whereby later Christians attributed a DIVINE meaning to the term --as opposed to a man
who took on divine attributes).

--Paul and the gospel writers are the ones who describe him as “Christ” and “Son of God”

Of course, the term "Son of God" can be found in the Jewish scriptures to refer to humans . see II Samuel 7:14.

--When the Jewish term "messiah" was TRANSLATED into Greek, the term used was "Christos" or "Christ" which did imply a DIVINE connection.


* the Josephus passages on Jesus would have to be 100% made up, and it has some unflattering references in it. Christians would not have written these unflattering references. It is also a short entry to his histories, similar to what he wrote on other minor prophets and criminals.

To Spin: What about the analysis (first two texts) for this at:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT</a>

* the earliest Jewish Christians saw themselves more as a sect within Judaism than a separate religion (The followers of Paul were from the Greek tradition). Therefore, there was no powerful religious Christian authority present at the time to be making this stuff up. (This may be Amos point – can’t really tell.)

* The Jewish tradition speaks of Jesus being born (and implied raised in Jerusalem. It was impossible for the gospel writers to fit Nazareth into their "proof" that Jesus' life was prophesized in Hebrew scripture.

* It's far simpler to assume that Jesus was a historical person who became embellished in mythology. This is exactly what happened to Buddha. Here earlier, simple Buddhist core beliefs were embellished upon (also from contract with Greek religions, and others) to add on a layer of supernatural powers.

The other example I often give is Elvis. When he died how many people insisted they saw sightings of him? Loonies are present, I think, in every generation. But they usually like to start with a historical kernel, no matter how small.

Sojourner

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

spin

Sojourner:
--------------
the Josephus passages on Jesus would have to be 100% made up, and it has some unflattering references in it. Christians would not have written these unflattering references. It is also a short entry to his histories, similar to what he wrote on other minor prophets and criminals.

To Spin: What about the analysis (first two texts) for this at:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/JOSEPHUS.TXT</a>
--------------

The literary critical approach found on this page is non-existent. It says, OK we accept that there is probably some Christian inpterpolation, so let's extract only that which is obviously unacceptable and accept all the rest, wanting to believe what's left is unflattering. (Yes, take out the flattering bits and what is left is not flattering. That's pretty obvious, isn't it?)

The admission that the text has been tampered with is enough to say that one has no more criteria with which to operate on the text. It must be left as a curiosity, unless new data comes along.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: spin ]</p>

Haran

On the Josephus argument, John Meier (in A marginal Jew Vol. 1) mentions that a majority of scholars believe that these passages in Josephus are only partial interpolations.

In his footnotes, he provides a convincing analysis of the underlying Greek which shows that the text (without obvious interpolations) is in the style and lanugage of Josephus. Therefore, it seems well within scholarly bounds to accept that Josephus mentions Jesus.

Haran

Toto

Sojourner - the primary contemporary proponent of the idea that Jesus was a fictional creation is Earl Doherty. You can read his arguments on <a href="http://www.magi.com/~oblio/jesus.html" target="_blank">his web site</a>, but it is better to read his book <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=663" target="_blank">The Jesus Puzzle</a>.

We started to have a formal debate last year between Doherty and a theist who posted here, but Doherty decided that the theist was an idiot not worth his time and left the debate. You can read it at <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=000003" target="_blank">The Jesus Puzzle Debate</a>.

It would be good to have a debate between reasonable people on whether Jesus existed, and it sounds like you have an interesting perspective. But it sounds like you have not yet read Doherty's work, and you would need to do that to have a really productive debate.

Amos

No need to apologize Sojourner, I am different and argue against protestantism of any flavor. According to me it is impossible for protestants to get to heaven which does not mean that they are bad people, but just that they are wrong about their religion. So I am one of those Catholics who doesn't go to Church much but likes to defend his religion.

Koyaanisqatsi

Sojourner

I have little doubt a man named Jesus existed and was most likely a radical Rabbi of some nature that had garnered a considerable popular following in the area, incited insurrection against Rome and was crucified accordingly by the Romans for sedition against the State.

I contend, however, that this was the extent of his existence and that Roman intelligence ministers created everything else (i.e., that "Mark," "Matthew," "Luke," "John," were Roman versions of "black operatives" and Paul their Oliver North).

I have no direct evidence for this contention, outside of the New Testament and even then it is speculative at best.

If you'd care to debate the comparative concepts of "Flesh God" as opposed to "Anti-Jewish War Destabilizations" and which contention makes the more logical sense between the two, by all means, but whether or not a man named Jesus actually existed is entirely irrelevant.

If he didn't, christians would just pretend that he did like everything else.

Your call.

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Sojourner553

Your position seems to be if these texts were tampered with -- ie there were interpolations, then that makes them worthless because all analysis can only be based on conjecture.

I agree with Charlesworth on this--that when you take out the OBVIOUS interpolations, you have interesting passages left that (1) imply an ORDINARY man -- whom Jews and pagans viewed skeptically and (2) Jesus' followers were among the more uneducated and most "eager for novelties."


At this site
<a href="http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9846.htm" target="_blank">http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9846.htm</a>

It quotes Wilson's position of why all of Josephus' writings on Jesus are suspect. There is a conflict on the facts I see whether or not Origen mentions Josephus' writings on Jesus. Per Charlesworth he mentions them, but is astonished that Josephus does not believe Jesus is the Messiah.

At this same site (Entitled "Seek Jesus: Josephus Said He Existed" by Rebecca Phaeton) it also states:

"The Slavic translation of Josephus, by the way, contains extensive interpolations."

This is different than saying 100% of it is a forgery. Again I think the analysis of what is left when the most obvious interpolations were taken out is interesting:to note the heavy references to revolutionary activity: The Jewish authorities are concerned that THEY will be punished by the Romans if Jesus' activity stirs up the people into a revolt.

As the revolutionary activity was a subject early Christians wanted desparately to erase from the record (to prove THEY were loyal Roman citizens)-- it is "interesting" to see this remaining in the Slavic account (as Josephus would clearly have had this "revolutionary" perspective.)

From what I have seen of the mindset of many genuine religious believers: they would have thought they are "clarifying" the original texts by their tampering with the original texts, not "inventing" lies. Of course, con men always exist -- but usually there was a specific purpose for this... like making money from relics, forging the Donation of Constantine to justify the Vatican's authority. Without the economic or political factor(s), most religious Christians would not want to outright lie -- distort maybe which they would justify to themselves as "clarification", but not outright lie.


Sojourner



[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

spin

Sojourner writes of my comment on the interpolation in Josephus:
----------------
Your position seems to be if these texts were tampered with -- ie there were interpolations, then that makes them worthless because all analysis can only be based on conjecture.
----------------

I was referring specifically to the disputed text, ie where the original text was tampered with in some way. This is a bit like removing fly specks from a piece of buttered bread you drop on the floor, the bigger the bits you remove the more likelihood of not eating fly shit. I say one has to remove the passage, as compromised.

Some people say we can remove bits from it and the rest, which suits us, is ok. This is arbitrary and unjustifiable.

Sojourner553

I guess you and I will just continue to disagree on this one. It seems to me you can assign probabilities to each phrase/sentence,

When one sees a sentence such as:
"[Jesus] was a teacher of such people as are eager for novelties." and "the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has to this day still not disappeared."

-- I would assign it a low probability that these lines was written by a Christian.

Of course certain lines are very obvious (with close to a 100% probability) of being interpolations: Such as "HE WAS THE MESSIAH."

I think text analysis -- for consistencany and substance can provide information. Most ancient texts are not 100% clear/accurate anyway -- meaning probabilities are involved in accepting their accuracy.

The key is to obtain a large amount of data, so that the probabilities, taken as a group, are meaningful! (Does it show I was a math major once?)

BTW -- Thanks for the book list on another post!

Sojourner

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

spin

sojourner:
--------------
It seems to me you can assign probabilities to each phrase/sentence,
--------------

How do you distinguish contextualisers and content bearing phrases, assuming for a moment that they both have been interpolated at the same time. You can't have a sudden "And he was the messiah" thrown in without context, so when we remove the "And he was the messiah" from the text what we have may easily be contextualisation and you have no way of determining whether it is or not. This should be clear and anyone thinking that they can assign percentages to such things are simply kidding themselves, ie I don't think you should believe such specious crap!