aa5874

Again, your claim is false. I am addressing the OP. It is absurd to suggest that only people who agree with your OP can post on this thread. This is an open forum. People can disagree with your assumptions and show that the very Bible contradicts your speculation.

This forum was not really set up for the propagation of false assumptions.

1. gMark is in the Bible.

2. gMark contains a story of Jesus in Galille in the time of Pilate.

3. gMark shows that Jesus was a Transfiguring Sea Water walker who was raised from the dead.

4. gMark mentions Jews including Pharisees.

5. gMark shows that Jesus was NOT called Christ by the Populace in Galilee and Jerusalem.

6. gMark shows that Jesus deliberately spoke in Parables so the the Populace would REMAIN in Sin.,

7. gMark shows that Jesus commanded his disciples to tell NO man he was Christ.

8. gMark shows that Jesus was either Betrayed, Abandoned or Denied by his disciples up to the day he was DEAD.

9. gMark shows that Jesus was REJECTED and asked to be Crucified by the Jewish Populace.

10. gMark shows that the visitors to the Empty Tomb told NO-ONE that Jesus was resurrected.

11. gMark shows that there were NO Jewish Christians up to the time Jesus was dead.

12. Apologetic sources have ADMITTED that the Jews claimed the Christ had NOT come.

The assumption that there were Jewish Christians is extremely weak, wholly flawed and is not supported by the early stories of Jesus in the very Bible.

Toto

So you don't know how peer review works.



I'm not following the argument. Which two ending scenarios?

I find this all very contrived. It assumes that the forgery or interpolation was done with evil intent, so the forger would have tried to cover his tracks. But I think the more likely scenario was that Eusebius was the forger, he spent enough time reading Josephus to absorb some of his language, and he didn't think he was doing anything wrong by adding in some text that should have been there. He might have felt himself guided by the Holy Spirit.


You always claim not to be pushing Christianity, but you always repeat arguments that Christian apologists use, and most of these arguments are very poorly reasoned.

Well, there's the gotcha. If Jesus was such a highly popular figure, why has no one else mentioned him? Where is there any undisputed evidence of his existence?

The entire scholarly historical Jesus industry has had to define Jesus down to be an obscure Jewish wandering wisdom teacher to make him fit the lack of evidence. If the mention if Josephus makes him out to be a well known popular figure - there's a big disconnect.

Iskander

1-Christianity began as a breakaway sect of Judaism


http://noahide-ancient-path.co.uk/in.../2012/07/4447/

2- The followers of the Jewish dissenter were declared heretics and enemies of Judaism around 80 AD


In the 18 benedictions of the Amidah a curse was inserted which was directed against the Jewish Christians.


http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/mb/63mb.htm

And explained by,


Lawrence H. Schiffman, Who was a Jew?, Ktav Publishing House Inc.,Hoboken , New Jersey,1985 ISBN 0881250546 In pages 51 to 67 he discusses Judaism with early Christianity. In pages 60-61 he writes:

3- What did the one Jewish sect believe in before its expulsion from the synagogue circa 80 AD?

PS I am asking what the Jewish sect of Yeshua Messiah believed before the Pharisees effectively barred them from participation in the Jewish synagogue

Davka

The answers came from the myriad of Jewish cults which survived the destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora. The largest Diaspora cult was the Pharisees, who had moved their HQ out of Jerusalem years earlier. But other groups survived as well, and each of them had their own theories as to why YHWH had allowed the Temple to be destroyed.

The Pharisees became the torch-bearers of what is today Orthodox (Rabbinic) Judaism. The Jesus cult was considered apostate by the Pharisees, and the two groups split early in the 2nd century, with the Jesus cult becoming more and more Gentile as Pharisaical Judaism pushed them further and further away.

"Where the answer(s) came from" was classical Jewish argument and discussion. Some of these arguments were written down in the Talmud. Others are lost to time.

Davka

There was no "one Jewish sect" prior to the Diaspora. Judaism was as diverse as Christianity or Islam today, with dozens of competing schools of thought arguing between and among themselves. The destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple also destroyed most of these sects, since their schools were in Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was sacked, most of the the Rabbis were killed. The only major sect to survive was the Pharisees, whose school had left Jerusalem years earlier in protest against the "unclean" practices of the Sadducees, among other reasons.

This left the Pharisees as the only major Jewish sect in the post-Diaspora world, making it possible for them to determine the course of Judaism going forward.

As to what they believed, there's a decent wiki on the Pharisees which is worth a read.

ETA: Apologies, I misunderstood your original question. Are you asking what the Jewish sect of Yeshua Messiah believed before the Pharisees effectively barred them from participation in the Jewish synagogue? The answer would appear to be that they believed pretty much as the Pharisees believed, with the oddball addition that Messiah had already come, and been killed with the consent of a Jewish mob.

NT Christianity as expressed in the Gospels was Pharisaical. Jesus was a Pharisee, if his teachings are any indication. This is actually another bit of evidence for Christianity emerging in the post-Diaspora period, when Pharisaical Judaism was the only Judaism left standing.

Duvduv

Davka, there is not a shred of mention anywhere in Jewish texts of the existence of Jewish Christian minim at the time of the Pharisees in Judea in synagogues or anywhere else.. The minim were Hellenist and Saduccee sects. Isn't it interesting that even Acts forgot to document their alleged existence throughout Judea?

James The Least

If NT Christianity was Pharisaical, and Jesus was a Pharisee, then can you explain why the NT writers make the Pharisees the arch-villians of Jesus (and therefore Christianity)?

aa5874

Your post is filled with imaginative fiction completely unsupported by ancient sources of antiquity.

It is already known that the Jews did not claim Jesus Christ had come up to at least the 4th century and the author of the earliest Canonised story was Not likely a Jew.

There is no actual documented evidence of any Jew who worshiped a man called Jesus as a God.

In the earliest Canonised story of Jesus there were NO Jewish Christians up to the day Jesus character was Crucified.

Jesus was asked to be Crucified when he was REJECTED as Christ and the Son of God.

Mark 14 kjv There were NO Jewish Christians in gMark, the earliest Canonised story of Jesus, up to the day he was dead and None have been identified by non-apologetic sources.

Jewish Christians are found in the fiction story called Acts of the Apostles AFTER Jesus ascended in a cloud and a Ghost from God gave the disciples Power to preach the Gospel in multiple languages on the day of Pentecost.

TedM

The statistical argument by several statistitions working on the Taipot Tomb, for example, was 'peer reviewed' and published, yet they certainly didn't agree with his use of statistics, as that use requires underlying assumptions. I assume Carrier also used underlying assumptions, and probably qualified his statistics/conclusions on those. That's accurate and ok to do but doesn't mean (think Taipot Tomb again) that the assumptions are not debated among the peers.



The ones YOU gave when you said:




For me THAT has the feeling of being contrived, and unlikely. You don't just 'absorb' someone else's language like that. Eusebius didn't just spend all of this time reading Josephus. You are suggesting the following:

1. Eusebius decided to make up an entire passage about Jesus and try to pass it off as from the hand of Josephus himself without considering the idea that it was forgery and wrong to misrepresent the work of someone else.

2. Eusebius did this without considering the idea that Josephus himself would never have written some of the things in the passage, including that Jesus was the Messiah, because they were completely out of character for Josephus.

OR

3. Eusebius, seeing the need to correct a tremendous omission by Josephus, decided to write a passage to insert into Josephus' works. He did not try at all to write a passage that looked Josephan even though he knew that anyone reading it would assume it was written by Josephus, but that as it turned out it DOES look remarkably Josephan in all but a few phrases because Eusebius 'absorbed' Josephus' style and language.

I find these to be highly contrived and unlikely. A whole cloth interpolator wasn't accidentally doing anything, and would have KNOWN they were forging work. As such, even if his intent isn't 'evil' he would still TRY to pass it off as the original work. In doing so he wouldn't don't show his cards by putting in phrases that clearly weren't original, and that he knew were not consistent with anything else the writer wrote, while simultaneously and subconsciously using that writers style and vocabulary for the other parts.




Like Jesus was a Nazirite? Like the spark for Christianity was a theological coincidence of a sacrificed man during passover, and NOT actual resurrection appearances? You see what is consistent with your worldview.


Like who? JTB was a highly popular figure too. Who else mentioned him? Why didn't others? Those who think the Josephus passage about JTB was interpolated have no credible argument, as it says nothing about the most important Christian claims regarding his role to prepare 'the way'.

It would be different if Jesus' ministry lasted 20 years, with thousands of obvious proofs of his miracles, etc.. But that's not how he is described inthe gospels. His ministry only lasted a few years. Almost all of his miracles weren't witnessed by any large groups of people. His ministry was in the wilderness and small towns, and not based on a city like Jerusalem, or a place where those likely to record the events lived. Herod, though he had heard of him didn't even go out to see him. Pilate didn't know who he was. And, there were many skeptics eager to dismiss his importance -- enough to get him crucified.

He was, in the whole scheme of the historical record, but a flash in the pan. Just as things were getting going, he was killed. That doesn't mean he wasn't widely followed or highly popular though. It just was too quick to expect much record in the history books. However, one WOULD expect some record of Christians once they became significant in number or deed.

Duvduv

I would go one step further and say that among the fictions of Eusebius were the alleged Ebionites or other "Jewish Christian" sects. There is no proof that there were any Ebionites or such anywhere. So much of the house of cards of the history of the earliest centuries before Constantine is built on fictions created by Eusebius (=Josephus?).