J-D

So (according to this): somebody came up with a new concept of Messiah and some other people accepted it; message preached and accepted.

outhouse

Not only that, but accepted by all, not just one sect that found it valuable.

J-D

Accepted by all? All who?

outhouse

Does not Guru George posit that his version of the movement was accepted by all those who followed the movement that would evolve into Christianity?

J-D

I don't know. You'd have to ask gurugeorge that. Unless you mean that it was accepted by all the people who accepted it, which is obviously true but fatuous.

outhouse

I mean those that followed Christianity from the onset.

GuruGeorge was trying to posit his replacement hypothesis, in which "all" those that followed Christianity followed his version.

To me it is a mistake, because we have so many different versions and beliefs within the first 300 years, which none reflect, in my opinion, his position which I do find fatuous.

J-D

I'll take gurugeorge's word about what gurugeorge meant; but not yours.

Grog

You are moving the posts here. I am not arguing that individuals do not innovate. I believe that the concept of Jesus Christ was the ultimate product of many such individual innovations. Yes, somewhere, sometime an individual made a connection between the name 'Jesus the Christ' and the idea of the messiah. Whoever that person was has been lost. We will never know who that was. Indeed, that's the whole idea behind evolving memes. Ideas are permeable, changeable, and ideas that serve a purpose or address a need survive and spread, and change and adapt.

Your position was that all religions begin with an individual who preaches a message that is accepted by followers. My position is that religious beliefs come about in a variety of way and one is that they emerge through a process of evolution.

Such a development can lead to a plethora of beliefs rather than a tightly controlled set of dogma. I believe that the record shows an early diversity existing in "Christian" and "proto-" Christian beliefs that you don't find in more cases where a religion is essentially founded like Mormonism or Scientology. In fact, unlike those cases where the words and teachings of the Founder (Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard) are authoritative and referred to constantly in order to establish credibility.

In the case of our earliest source of Christianity (Paul's writings), we do not find that appeal to authority that one would expect. HJers have to make ad hoc explanations, actually special pleading, for why Paul acts in a way other than what we would expect.

In fact, if we accept that Paul is writing at a stage in the evolution of Christianity, then the "teachings" of Jesus of Nazareth do not yet exist. What Paul knows is revelations from the Risen Jesus who was crucified in a timeless space (Carrier says "outer space," Doherty says "sub-Lunar") by elemental powers (this is what Paul says, after all, in 1 Cor 2:8), discovered through reading of scripture. An evolving, emerging view of "Jesus Christ" fits the evidence better, in my opinion, than any of the other possibilities such as a fabricated Jesus or a fictional Jesus.

Advancing the idea that Paul knows of a historical Jesus executed by Pilate a few years before Paul's own conversion to the cult depends on too much special pleading, in my mind. Special pleading regarding Paul's lack of appeal to authority, Paul's own statement that he knows of Jesus through scripture and revelation, Paul's lack of references to details about Jesus' life that relate to Paul's own teaching, Paul's baffling extolling of the civil authorities (Romans 13), and I am sure there are many others, all add up to an argument that is fatally flawed. And without Paul, there is no link to a historical Jesus.

If Paul does not know of a historical Jesus, then it is fundamentally weaker to claim that Jesus was a historical person. Our earliest and best reference fails to support the theory of origins advocated by historical Jesus advocates.

aa5874

Which Paul are you using? There are multiple "Pauls".

What history and of which time are you talking about? Non-apologetic writings mentioned NOTHING of Paul in the 1st century and 2nd century.

There was no later development where Jews worshiped a crucified man as a God or worshiped a heavenly Jesus as a God.

The Pauline writers wrote nothing of the life of a heavenly Jesus on earth or in heaven.

Please, tell us what did your supposed heavenly Jesus do in heaven before his heavenly crucifixion?

There is no such thing as an heavenly never on earth Jesus.

The Jesus story is extremely specific--the Jews delivered up Jesus, the Son of God, and he was killed after a trial under Pilate.

The Pauline writers claimed they persecuted the Churches of Jesus Christ and were the LAST to have been seen of Jesus.

The Pauline writers do NOT represent the early Jesus cult at all.

The Pauline Corpus was a later development and was unknown up to the end of the 2nd century.

By the way, there is no heavenly Jesus in or out the Bible. That was a real late development--1800 years later.

aa5874

You keep on repeating the known presumptive fallacy that the Pauline writings are the earliest source of Christianity when you know that no such thing can be shown to be true.

The Pauline writings were unknown by apologetics up to the mid to late 2nd century.

The sources, Paul/Seneca letters, to place Paul in the 1st century have been deduced to be forgeries.