BK

I never bother taking time to debate with people who use expletives on discussion boards. It is the sign of a small intellect.

BK

lpetrich

So what?


Sorry if I did not make it clearer. It was item 8.

However, those other entities are big villains whose defeat the hero can be proud of. Which fits the Devil very well.

True, but there are those that claim that the wedding early in John was his.

Meaning that he qualifies as an honorary king.

But for the most part, it's a rather quiet life; he wanders around, teaches, and works miracles.

Which concedes my point.

However, those disciples seem to have been very cowardly.

However, he was kept from his followers and kept under the thumb of the authorities.

Perhaps "unusual" was a better word here. Remember that he was no ordinary human being; according to the Gospels, he could work LOTS of miracles. So why would he be vulnerable to crucifixion? Why couldn't he have worked another miracle and jumped off?

Read what I wrote more carefully. IF he had made MM pregnant...

Also, read LR's criterion more carefully. IF he has children, they do not succeed him. That does not mean that he had to have children; that condition will be satisfied if he had had no children.

Including the two totally different creation stories? And four grossly contradictory resurrection accounts?

However, even they were a few centuries after JC had lived. And if we were to use this criterion, we would have to consider the view of Lucian of Samosata, who considered early Christianity to be a cult whose followers were easily duped.

News to any critical student of the Gospels. Matthew and Luke include a lot of word-for-word copying from Mark, and Matthew and Luke share some material that is probably from a now-lost source that's been named "Q".

I'm implying no such thing. It was something that they became convinced of.

Although I'm not a professional biologist, I've done a lot of study of this subject. I've long been interested in the question of evolution and the family tree of life.

What are you talking about now? The light-detection mechanism of the light-sensitive cells of the retina? I don't pretend to have a blow-by-blow account of their evolution on hand, but I note that a variety of protists are light-sensitive, and such light-sensitivity is what is needed for a retina cell.

One problem is that natural selection is a great amplifier of improved variations; consider computerized evolution simulations.

RD is simply pointing out how bizarre that view seems to him(her?).

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

GunnerJ

The fact that the Gospel writers actually show Joseph's lineage suggests that it was important for Joseph to be descended from royalty. Also, isn't Jesus' status as the Son of the King of the Universe enough to fulfil this? Unless, of course, you don't really think Jesus was the Son of God...

Not really when you consider that the one time the Bible describes Satan, in Revelations, it is as a seven-headed dragon.

I see. So you don't follow the Beatitudes? You don't say the Lord's Prayer? You don't consider the greatest commandment to be "love thy neighbor as thyself?"

Sorry, but point 16 says that the Hero loses favor with the people or the gods.

Yeah, earthquakes and eclipses and temples being destoryed when you die, and pure water and blood flowing out of your wounds, and dead people coming out of graves and walking around; this is ordinary, everyday stuff. Happens to everyone when they die.

BTW, LP, I have a bone to pick with you about Jesus' "uneventful" reign. You say:

Now, come on! You can't say that feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread and some leftover fish, or walking on water, or fabricating wine from water, count as non-events! You're like a fireman, responding to someone's question about your day, by saying, "Oh, nothing much happened. A few hundred buildings went on fire and we had to put them out, but other than that, pretty quiet." The oddity here is that you're not being ruefully sarcastic, but dead serious. You should really consider taking a point off for this.

-DM-

Just for a point of information, the Bible says that the Gospelists said that Jesus said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and most important command." [MT 22.37, MK 12:39-30, LK 10:27]

--Don--

BK

My point exactly.

So, basically LR's factos is that he overcomes a major foe? 1st, it seems as if you are interpreting his language too broadly. Second, everyone overcomes something or they wouldn't be considered great.

And there are those who claim that the universe was created intact in 1922 by an entity named Charlie. So what? The Bible doesn't even suggest that it was Jesus' wedding.
If you want to go to that extreme, okay. But he certainly was not a king in any ordinary understanding of the word or in a way that would be consistent with any other ancient being.

Yeah, calming the storm, healings, pretty quiet stuff.

Funny, I don't see any concession.
Again, I guess it depends upon how loosely you want to read these factors.
I think that "unexpected" would be the best word in light of the circumstances. The why is explained, fully.
And if pigs could fly . . .

Oh, so now he gets a factor if it is only possible that if something happened, it may have happened in this way even though there was no evidence that the initial contingency never happened.
I don't find them to be "grossly contradictory", but that is for another thread.
No, the ones I am thinking of were withing 100 years if I remember my History of the Christian Church correctly (which I just finished reading volume II).

That is one view, and not the only view. There are many who reject "Q" and date the Gospels to the traditional dating with the traditional authorship. Don't mistake one school of thought as necessarily dispositive of the issue.


Please explain this to me. How did these guys who were eyewitnesses to his death become convinced of his resurrection if he wasn't resurrected?

Then we share the same background. I have just reached different conclusions than you.
The problem is that the photoreceptive cell requires something like 85 separate chemical reactions to work. If there are 84, it doesn't work at all. How did the 85 chemical reactions come together. Science has no answer.

BK

lpetrich

But what is the Devil supposed to be, but a great villain?

BK, you keep on misunderstanding. The idea is that the hero has no offspring successors. This is trivially correct if the hero had no offspring, of course.

How many? And does that include anyone without an a priori commitment to the literal historicity of the Bible?

E.Z. They were not eyewitnesses. The writers of the Gospels wrote some decades after the historical Jesus Christ, if there was such a person.

I don't know what's being counted here, so I cannot make any firm conclusions as to how that had evolved. I would not be surprised if someone has addressed that question in the professional literature, however.

Furthermore, even if that feature was designed, it could have been the result of genetic engineering performed by extraterrestrial visitors, understood as fellow inhabitants of the physical context of this Universe. The numerous design oddities and deficiencies can simply be a result of these visitors' finite powers and fallibility.