Clutch

Well, good. But in discussing what a word means, it is no fallacy to appeal to how it is used. In this case, I suggest that the use is ambiguous; lots of people would call divinity criterial for something's counting as the referent of 'Jesus', and lots would not. I would not, but I wonder what arguments either sort would offer for their view; this goes as much for Goliath as for Vinnie.

I even started a thread about this a couple of days back, which sank like Argentinian currency.

Jayhawker Soule

Perhaps you're right, though I find it surprising. Can you think of any scholar who would fall in the former camp when discussing historicity?

Metacrock

Meta =>First, let me apologize if you took offense. I was just pulling your leg. But I thought the argument was that there is a differnce between mythological grenre and historical. That I think is a pretty good argument, because we can tell when a text is mythology, and when it is inteneded to be historical. That's not ciruclar reasoning, that' s just an example of understanding how to do litterary criticism.



Meta =>No, but we know the movie is not meant to be a documentary, a cartoon, a comedy, or a soap opera. We can tell this without even seeing it, just by reading the script. So we can tell that the Gospels are not written as mythological archetypes, but with a certain history-like consciousness on the part of author/redactors.





Meta =>You are right that we can't confrim historical details just by looking at the gerne. But, knowing that Jews were not given to paganism, that dying/rising savior god cults were not previlant in Palestine in first centry, and that the Gosples are not written with a heavily mythological consciosuness, we can rule out the dying/rising savior god theories. That doesn't prove the historicity of the events in the Gosples, but it disproves certain people's theories.

Metacrock

Meta =>Look, if your theory is that the autor/redactor made up the plot line, you're right. WE can't tell that didn't happen just by looking at the genre. If your theory is that is' based upon legonds and the basic story isn't true, we can't really tell that just by looking at the genre.

But if your theory is that it borrows heavily from pagan mythology and especially if you think they do so conciously, that we can cast a lot of doubt upon by assertaining the way it's written.

Metacrock

Meta =>It's not the number, but how basic the changes are to the story line. You want to call any difference "significant" or "non-trivial." I put a list of 11 points that I think are basic to the story line. I see no changes in them or any contradictions. They deal with who the charcters are, what they did in the major focus of their lives, where they lived, how they died, and so on. It doesn't matter if Jesus fed 5000 people with 2 fish, or 2 people with 5000 fish in another story. He's always Jesus from Nazerath, his mother is always Mary, he was always crucified.







Meta =>I don't care if the Homeric hymns were based upon real events. Of course we can't be sure if the events realy happend, but we have a good indication in that there are no others version without them; how Jesus died, who he calimed to be, who his freinds were, where he died. But its a pretty good bet that he was crucified and that there was some claim made about an empty tomb, since those are constants in the story whenever it is told. There are no other versions of that. That does't prove he rose form the dead, of course! But it is a good indication that the cliam was made early on and believed by a lot of people.

But I'm still only arguing that he existed as an historical figure.



Meta =>First of all, there was no canonization process until the end of the second century, then it was only just getting started. If the story was a myth it should have had several other versions by that time. We don't get to a point where you absolutely can't introduce new material until about 321. AD. Moreover, Secondly, the ending of Revelation is not a canonization thing, since there was no canon when that statment was made; it does not pertain to all the books of the NT. It's only speaking of that one book, and none of the others have it. Besides all that, there was no official grouping of those books at that time, or for 200 years after. So there would have nothing to prevent other groups that weren't connected to the Johannie circle from circulating their own stories and their own set of books.

In fact other circles did come to be. They were the Gnostics, and they had their own stories and books, but even they never dendied that Jesus was historical, or the basic facts of the story line.









Meta =>Right, and no one ever did disagre with the major points of the story.

Metacrock

Meta =>then how is it that I believed Jesus existed as a man when I was an atheist? Are you aware that most athesits don't agree with the myther position? Not the Doherty type myther.








Meta =>Man you guys live in an unreal world! What has happened here to civilization? I can't even communicate about basic things with you people.

All my life, while I was an atheist, I thought this way:

Jesus is a human being, he lived historically, some claim he was the son of God. Me may have been, but I doubt it, he may not have been, but he did exist as a man.


We dont' have to argue about him being a man. he was a man. Even christians believe that (becasue he was truely man, truley God). So that is fact, and the "son of God" thing can be an open question that we ask about this man whom we both argee really lived.

tu compron?








Meta =>Well that doesn't come into the question about the historical Jesus!

Metacrock

Meta => If I understand you right, You are saying that being divine is so intrinsic to our view of Jesus, that we can't ever argue that he existed historically as man, without givnig away the store on our belief about his deity???


But that would mean that when I was an atheist and I said Jesus existed as an historical figure, I was right. But when I became a Christian and said he existed as an historical figure, then suddenly I'm wrong, because I can't hold the same view of what it means to be Jesus, an historical figure?

But that doesn't make any sense. Becasue either way if there was really a guy called Jesus of Nazerath, it doesn't matter wheather my idea of him being the son of God or not is right. That doesn't come into it at this point. It's just an X, it's an open question we can debate, but in either case the man Jesus did exist as a man

BTw you are aware that christians believe that Jesus was a man right? I mean we believe tha he would have been like any other man, went to the bathroom, scratched, ate food ect ect. You do realize that right?

Llyricist

How can you tell when a text is mythology? If not by using one of those methods that consistently FAILS when presented with KNOWN fictions. THAT's the argument.

HOW do we know that it wasn't a documentary? Without the disclaimer at the beginning it looks JUST like one. And excuse me but "Titanic" was written just as much (if not more) "with a history-like consciousness" than the gospels!

No I said we cannot even determine the genre!
where do you get the idea the gospels were necessarily written by Jews?? (Mathew shows this tendency but none of the others).
Christianity was not prevailent in first,second or third century Palestine either, so what?

What is a mythological consciousness? And how can you tell when something is written with one?

Metacrock

Meta => they don't! Textual critical methods have been proven over and over again. But this isn't so much textual as litterary. I think there's any kind of test to show that litteray criticism doens't work!


you tell by understanding the nature of mythological archetypes and mythemes and then looking for them, and how they are used in the text.




Meta => Not shot like one. Documentaries have narration, interviews, show documentation, and don't take a narratival form. They don't have much dialouge, no charactorization, except mabey in small snippetes of dratmatized work but that's the more "tacky" kind. Then we have "documdramas" but that's not really anything.





Meta =>The genre is unique. There were never Gospels before those. But it's not mythology. For one thing, it barrows its mythos completely. Doesn't have a mythos of its own. NO sacred space, no sacred time, no hyrophanies, no enchanted world, all grounded in historical setting; time and place.

Yes we know they were Jews, except for Luke. John is very Jewish. The scholarly world has come to understand this as a result of Qumran. We now know that John is the most Jewish of the Gospels.


Meta => It's the kind of consciousness that permiates a mythological work; it's a lot like dream logic, the mythic world is what matters in mythology, not history, not reality, not grounding in historical setting.

you can tell by the presence of the charictoristics I mentioned above.

NOGO

Where does it say that Jesus had a follower named Peter?
All that I can remember is that Peter was the first to see him which contradicts all four Gospels.

Please provide verses on all of these and then we can assess how many of the eleven points you actually have.