HelenM

Hi IM , yes, I think Meta has dyslexia.

Helen

Iasion

Greetings all,

re the epistle of John,
to deny that "Jesus came in the flesh" clearly means to not believe in a physical Jesus. Which is exactly my main thesis - the original was a spiritual Iesous, not an actual person (even though beliefs about that spiritual being varied, e.g. the doketics).

1 John shows a split between :
* the writer's Christian sect
* a competing Christian sect
both of which consider themselves real Christians.

Furthermore, Earl argues the document shows :
* the writer's sect believes in the Son of God
* the other Christian sect does NOT believe in the Son of God !

And crucially that :
* belief in the Son of God was NOT an original Christian belief held from the beginning.


This result is echoed in other omissions recently discussed, e.g. :

* NO mention of the empty tomb story by ANY Christian writer until early-mid 2nd century

* NO mention of Jesus or Christ in some Christian writings even as late as the late 2nd century :

e.g. Athenagoras' "On The Resurrection" which argues for resurrection without ONCE even mentioning the resurrection of Jesus or even the words "Jesus" or "Christ";
or "to Diognetus" with its "close and careful" description of Christian doctrine which never even ONCE mentions Jesus or Christ.

Not to mention the 2nd C. M.Felix who explicitly claimed Christians did NOT believe in a crucifixion or the incarnation.


All of which goes to support the view that the Gospels and their stories of Jesus of Nazareth were :
* late productions, unknown until early-mid 2nd century
* not fully accepted until late 2nd century
* NOT part of original Christian beliefs


re the sects mentioned by Hegesippus, I included this comment because it expressed doubts about the resurrection, and the odd phrase "did not believe ... in the coming of One to ...", its not clear that they denied a historical Jesus, nor did I claim so.


What IS clear is that the Gospels, and their central event, the resurrection, WERE doubted, by Christians and pagans, from their very earliest times.

It is also clear that the Church attempted to DESTROY these criticisms, so its not surprising if there are few to be found - but there remain many fragments and clues that point in the same direction -> that originally, there was no Jesus of Nazareth.


This is sometimes dismissed as an argument from silence - not so, as Richard Carrier has pointed out - its an Argument from a Better Explanation - Jesus is better explained as a myth not a person.


My argument rests on several facets - we see :
* NO clear early references to an original historical Jesus,
* instead, early references to Jesus as a spiritual entity,
* the Gospel elements all pre-existing in OT and pagan myth,
* the Gospels arise a century or so after the alleged events,
* the Gospels criticised as fiction when they arise,

The conclusion is clear -
Jesus was a Myth,
later misunderstood or re-written as a historical personage.


Iasion

Iasion

Greetings all,

as an example of a clue to early doubts, consider the heretics decried in the Constitution of the Holy Apostles -

To deny "generation after the flesh" means they don't believe he was born.

But,
they don't mean that he was not Christ, merely man, because that is the view of ANOTHER bunch of heretics mentioned immediately following :

So,
the first comment seems clear evidence of some who did not believe Jesus was EVER born physically.

Iasion

Jayhawker Soule

Four months earlier ...Would not removing the reference be better than finding yourself forever thankful of correction?

Iasion

Greetings ConsequentAtheist,

whoops,
you're right, I forgot that, it won't happen again.
I'll amend my page.

Iasion

Bede

Iasion,

I believe you say the Constitution is fourth century. I must ask, even if you are right and it refers to fourth century heretics who deny Jesus was born, why on earth should this tell us anything about the existence or otherwise of a first century man. It is like you producing a letter from the 1998 that mentions there are some people who deny the existence of Jonathan Swift as evidence Swift did not exist.

You simply cannot go and pick out tiny references in late documents that might agree with your preconceptions and wave them around as evidence for your thesis. You are pretty typical amateur historian in this respect and your sin even has a name - it is called Whiggism (don't ask why!). Furthermore you are relying on unclear translations. Like Doherty does, you must work in the original language to claim an unusual reading of the texts.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Metacrock

Meta => by the fourth century they did! so what? That says nothing about the early centuries. Are you assuming that if people in the fourth century thought that then they must have in the first century too? That doesn't follow. Why not the 21st? Use yourself as proof?

Besides, that still doesn't mean they denied that people say a being they called "Jesus of Nazerath." that's not the same as thinking of Jesus only as a aetherial being. They did think of him as having a life on earth, so clearly they had a memory of the historical Jesus, they just transformed him to suit their theology.


bTW did you see the quote from Heggesipus? You were wrong about him.

Metacrock

that's ok, I'm used to it, and I know my spelling does turn people off. I try to correct it when i can.


as for presentation, what exacty is wrong with it?

I just meant that I go by outline form:

I. Major label for argument.

A. subpoints making up major content of argument.

1) smal subpoints with confirming documentation

of course there are quotations under the sub-sub structure.


2) more small subpoints.

B. use of paraell substructure.

C. like that.

keyser_soze

Not to be pedantic, but is there someone who believes Swift was not born? The analogy is fair, to a certain point. The problems lie in that Swift never claimed godhood, and there is plenty of evidence of his existence. He even authored works that are extant. Jesus, on the other hand, wrote nothing, is only mentioned in the bible and interpreted to be present in a couple other sources, while another source is an admitted forgery. I personally believe swift existed, plutarch, even socrates(but that is more to do with the fact that he had numerous students who wrote...and we could even debate HIS existance, if it were not for all of the VALID outside sources that remark on him.

Metacrock

Meta =>No we don't know that. In The new Testament Writtings Luke Timothy Johnson says we do not have a clear idea of what the heratics of 1st John believed. Just because latter one's believed that doens't mean that those of the time of the epistle did. Do you realize that we have no copies of any lGnostic work until the late second century at the earilest? Most of them come from the fourth. WE really have no idea what 1st century heratics really believed.

that phrase proabably does mean they didn't believe Jesus to be flesh and blood, but not necessarily.

You also keep ignoring what i think is a cogent point. They may have believed that Jesus wasn't flesh and blood, but they did not deny that there was a being called "Jesus" that people thought was human, thought was from Nazerath, and who was seen and who taught and who was thought to be a man at the time. They never deneied that. They never said he was just an aetherial being in the heavens and was never on earth!

Obviously this was just a theological tweeking of the real historical memory of the man.

1 John shows a split between :
* the writer's Christian sect
* a competing Christian sect
both of which consider themselves real Christians.


Meta => Holy dual edged sword Batman, that argument cuts both ways! If they were the heratics becaus they believed that Jesus was not a flesh and blood human, then the people calling them heratics must have believed that Jesus was flesh and blood, yes? that means that early chrisians, wheather the original group or not, did believe that. but doesn't that sort of blow Doherty's theory?

Furthermore, Earl argues the document shows :
* the writer's sect believes in the Son of God
* the other Christian sect does NOT believe in the Son of God !


Meta => but isn't it true that according to his theory, they didn't believe that until the second century? But most scholars put the Johonine epistles in the 90s. Besides, where did the "orhtodox" of the epistles get the idea that Jesus was flesh and blood and that this made them orthodox and that the others were departing from the truth, if it was not an old idea that was in the chruch for a long time?

And crucially that :
* belief in the Son of God was NOT an original Christian belief held from the beginning.


Meta =>But that doesn't follow. Why did they believe that it was, and that the others had fallen away, if it hadn't been around for a long time? And why is it that the Elder is the authority, the Bishop? The others are leaving the group, going out away from the established authroity, departing form the faith. That indicates that they are taking the new view. that the established guy is defending what has always been thought the truth.

Why do you domatically take the heratics side? why make the assumption that they came first, and just assume that the established Bishop is the innovater?


This result is echoed in other omissions recently discussed, e.g. :

* NO mention of the empty tomb story by ANY Christian writer until early-mid 2nd century



Meta => Except Paul, who speaks of the burial and who says that Jesus rose form the dead. Now maybe he didn't believe in a bodily resurrection, but he must have believed in a bodily Jesus, otherwise why burry him?

why do you put so much value on silence? It seems to me that the chruch all accepted the tomb. They didn't have Doherty's website to answer, so it wasn't an issue. Why should he make a big thing of it if it wasn't an issue? The thing Paul had to do was to make a theology for the chruch;that was his task, not to reaffirm basic things they already accepted and that no one questioned.

IN additon to all that, you know they didn't have modern court rooms, so they didn't have court room evidence, they didn't have Josh McDowell. They didn't think in terms of proving it in the way we do today. They weren't worried about eye witnesses. The empty tomb didn't mean the same thing to them it means to us. So there was no reason to mention it.

* NO mention of Jesus or Christ in some Christian writings even as late as the late 2nd century :


Meta =>So you think that means none of them believed in a Christ? Then who were the guys kicking out the heratics in the Johannine community? Why would they defend the "doctrine of Christ" if they didn't believe in christ? And you know there is mention of Christ in all the documents between them. You pick out irrelivant late second century material with no connection to the early phase, and there are plnety of earlier docuements that do mention him.

Moreover, I've given major evidence from Koester and other scholars as well about Egeton 2 and the Diatesseron and how those are early readings that go back to AD 50. That proves that all the basic doctrines, flesh and blood historical Jesus and empty tomb were around just 20 years after the original events.

that is proven because the readings are clearly older veriations of synoptic saying source readings, so clealry preMakran redaction.


Meta => But so what? Those are late second century and have nothing to do with the early period. There is older material, I just named, that 's well documented. You can just dismiss Koester all you want to, he's not the only one who said that.


Meta => I quoted the full context of that passage. IT looked to me like he was talking about Roman crinminals. Besies, many scholars place him in the 3d century, he has nothing to do with the early days, and he was a heratic!



Meta => Hu? HOw does quoting late stuff prove what the ealry guys thought?


Moreover, I've proven that they were early productions because the passion narrative goes back to pre Makran, and even Paul days.

furthermore, you are dogmatially placing the Gospels at the dates of the extistant mauscripts, but no scholar does that. Scholars almost universally agree that Mark was written in AD60, and that Luke no latter than 80, Matt in about 70 and John about 90. Those are like 90% accepted. It's an elmentry mistake to take the date of the existant MS as the date of the writting. Scholars methodically allow 20 years for circulation as just a rule of thumb.


* not fully accepted until late 2nd century


[color=blue]Meta =>[/font]HOw you arrive at that is even more mysterious. Clement quotes Matt and Luke and Ignatious quotes John, and even Athenagorus qutoes ideas and phraseology of John, and all of the Gosples are echoed in the Apostolic fathers.



* NOT part of original Christian beliefs[/b]


Meta => but that's based upon ignoring their enstances of being quoted, ignoring the proof for pre Markan redaction, dogmatically refusing to accept the lgoical metholgoy of attributing the writting to a period before the existant ms. (Rylands fragment dates to no latter than 130 and you can dismiss it as a mere fragment but it does prove the Gospel existed as eary as 110 if not sooner).

BTw I mentioned this before. 1 Clemet mentions the Virginal conception. That means he must have thought Jesus as a flesh and boold person, because why would a spirit being be born?

1 Clem. is placed in 90s by most scholars.



Meta => then why bring him up? The point is he thoght that Jesus had flesh and blood realitives, you have not denyed that. That means he must have thought that Jesus was flesh and blood. doubting the res is not germaine to the topic. He believed in the histoircal jesus, so good old Earl is out of luck.



Meta =>you haven't said anything to prove that. And so what? That doesn't disprove a historical Jesus! you aren't sticking to the topic. That's slippery slope, the central event was doubted, that doesnt prove the doubted the historical Jesus.

but you havne't proven that, or said anything to prove it. Just saying "why didn't they talk about it?" Is no more provint it than my saying "I believe in God" would be proof of God.


Meta => Woe Nelly! how does that follow? Because the chruch thought that denying the resurrection was falling away from the orignal truth, that proves that there was no Jesus? That doesn't follow at all. why did they think it was the original in the first place? Why would they call those who doubte dit "hereatics" in the frist place?

the most you have proven at this point is that some Christians believed that Jesus and the res were always part of the deal



Meta => if it isn't argument from silence, what else is it? It's nothing more than going "why didn't they say this?" But guess what I offer clear and positive proof that they did and you haven't answered it but juts dismissed it!You offered any kind of evidence.

but i'll tell you what i have the stuff to blow early out of the water, and i'm gonna do it as soon as i have time.


My argument rests on several facets - we see :
* NO clear early references to an original historical Jesus,



not fact, been disproven! you ignore textual evdience. Textual evidence is the srongest kind!


* instead, early references to Jesus as a spiritual entity,


Early references to Jesus as man exist, even in the Gospel of Thomas!


* the Gospel elements all pre-existing in OT and pagan myth,


I've disprovent he pagan myth stuff,, read the thread! that they existed in the OT is no big deal, because they understood everything in relation to that, so that's how told a story

* the Gospels arise a century or so after the alleged events,


only becasue you dogmatically fly in the face of all scholarship and amaturishly date them from the existant ms not from the 20 year pre-date which all scholars give them as a matter of priniciple.


* the Gospels criticised as fiction when they arise,


hu?

The conclusion is clear -
Jesus was a Myth,
later misunderstood or re-written as a historical personage.


what's clear is that you are sold on an ideology, and Earl has sold you a bill of goods.