Jesus' Reasurrection [Archive]

triadboy

1st July 2005, 10:11 AM

If you are a Gnostic Christian - Jesus was always a spirit.
The person crucified was his "twin". Jesus was standing on a hillside laughing.

[On a side note: A Christian at work has an oil painting hanging in his cube (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) - of a laughing Jesus. I know of no place in the bible where Jesus laughs. But I know the tradition of the Gnostic Jesus laughing at the crucifiction of his twin. Should I tell him he has a Gnostic Jesus in his cube? :) ]

He appeared to Paul as a spirit - which is understandable since I believe Paul was Gnostic.

He appeared to Mary as a spirit

Matthew 27:62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,
27:63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
27:64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.
27:65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.
27:66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
.
.
.
[28:6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

The body was inside a cave with guards. Then the body was gone. That usually means his body was resurrected.

In Luke he appears to the disciples:
24:39 Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have

He has a body.

So the answer to your question is - who cares? It is entirely a myth. Pursuing it beyond this causes discussions based on technicalities within the myth!

Beleth

1st July 2005, 11:42 AM

Does Santa Claus, according to facts, have to lay his finger aside of his nose in order to successfully ascend a chimney?

Yahweh

1st July 2005, 12:53 PM

Originally posted by Hope12
Was Jesus according to facts, raised in a fleshly body or in a spirit body.

Many have tossed this one around and around and yet what is the facts.

Common sense tells us that once a body is dead who or what is to be raised? Yet, was Jesus raised with all the wounds he had gotten when nailed and slaughtered? What do you all think. What does religion teach verses what the Bible says?
I dont know, are the details of the crucifixion historically accurate? Seems strange to me that a bunch of Romans would crucify a guy, take him down three days later, and bury him - wasnt it in the style of the Romans to simply keep people on the cross indefinitely?

(I dont know anything about the Roman culture, I'm only speculating.)

Piscivore

1st July 2005, 01:07 PM

Was Jesus according to facts, a man-crazy boy lover or married to Mary Magdeline.

Many have tossed this one around and around and yet what is the facts.

Common sense tells us that a guy who spends all his time with twelve other dudes, has long hair and wears dresses, well, isn't there something suspicious? Yet, was Jesus canoodling with the alleged prostitute he seemd to like alot? What do you all think. What does religion teach verses what the Bible says?

I look forward to your replies.
Thanks,
Pesky

triadboy

1st July 2005, 01:32 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
He appeared to Paul as a spirit - which is understandable since I believe Paul was Gnostic.
[/i]

For clarification:

In my opinion, Paul was preaching about a gnostic Jesus. Paul doesn't know anything about an historical Jesus. He knows nothing about anything Jesus said in the New Testament.

His Jesus is a dying godman in the tradition of Osiris/Dionysus/Mithra. He was promoting a Jewish Mystery Religion.

It is only with "Mark" that the 'historical' Jesus comes to life. "Mark" places the dying god man in Jerusalem in 30 AD.

Matthew/Luke use Mark to create their gospels. And there you have it....

jjramsey

1st July 2005, 01:36 PM

Originally posted by Upchurch
There are four likely* possibilities: The entire crucifixion/resurrection story is myth.
The entire crucificxion/ressurection story happened as described in the Bible.
Jesus died on the cross and his ressurection fabricated over time.
Jesus didn't actually die on the cross and his "ressurection" after three days was due some necessary recovery time from his ordeal.

I will leave it to the apologists to argue for the second possibility. Of the remaining possibilities, the only one that stands a chance of being reasonable is that Jesus died on the cross but that the resurrection accounts are legendary. The other two are historically implausible.

Originally posted by Upchurch
I have to agree with Kev. We don't have hard facts to deal with, only different stories from different points of view.

That isn't quite true. That the New Testament exists and contains various statements is in itself hard fact. A historical reconstruction of the resurrection does not have to accept that all those various statements are true, but it does have to account for the existence of those statements in a plausible way.

The debate about whether the resurrection happened is highly polarized, and both sides tend to overstate their cases. For example, on the conservative side, N. T. Wright insists that both the empty tomb and post-resurrection appearances of Jesus would be necessary to convince the disciples, while on the skeptical side, Lüdemann insists that his historical reconstruction demonstrates that the resurrection did not happen, even though he is only justified in making the more modest claim that his reconstruction provides a plausible naturalistic explanation for the resurrection accounts.

Reginald H. Fuller wrote a book called The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, which dissects the New Testament resurrection accounts. Lüdemann's recent book, The Resurrection of Christ, is in a similar vein. On the conservative side, N. T. Wright's The Resurrection and the Son of God is a good read. Infidels.org (http://www.infidels.org) has a mix of utter garbage and useful information; if you sift carefully, you'll find some interesting leads (like bits and pieces about Sabbatai Sevi). Bede.org.uk (http://www.bede.org.uk) is a Christian site, but deals fairly with skeptics who argue well, like Robin Lane Fox, while countering the crackpot stuff from Infidels.org.

Piscivore

1st July 2005, 01:49 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
...does have to account for the existence of those statements in a plausible way.

The fact that humans have the capacity to invent fiction is not a plausible way those statements could have come into existance?

SezMe

1st July 2005, 02:27 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
That isn't quite true. That the New Testament exists and contains various statements is in itself hard fact.
The book, The Bible Code exists and contains various statements is in itself hard fact.

So what? It says absolutely nothing about the content of either document.

Lord Emsworth

1st July 2005, 02:45 PM

Originally posted by Hope12
Was Jesus according to facts, raised in a fleshly body or in a spirit body.

Many have tossed this one around and around and yet what is the facts.

Common sense tells us that once a body is dead who or what is to be raised? Yet, was Jesus raised with all the wounds he had gotten when nailed and slaughtered? What do you all think. What does religion teach verses what the Bible says?

I look forward to your replies.
Thanks,
Hope12;)

Taking the Gospel stories at face value one has to conclude a bodily resurrection. And I think a bodily ascension.

Seems like heaven is a material place after all ... ;)

jjramsey

1st July 2005, 04:22 PM

Originally posted by Piscivore
The fact that humans have the capacity to invent fiction is not a plausible way those statements could have come into existance?

Actually, often it is a plausible way, but it depends on the kind of statements. A story could very well be explained as a legend, but an offhand remark in a letter might need to be accounted for differently.

Piscivore

1st July 2005, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Actually, often it is a plausible way, but it depends on the kind of statements. A story could very well be explained as a legend, but an offhand remark in a letter might need to be accounted for differently.

Why? Are people incapable of creating fiction in correspondence? because I do it all the time.

jjramsey

1st July 2005, 05:03 PM

Originally posted by Piscivore
Why? Are people incapable of creating fiction in correspondence? because I do it all the time.

That's why I said offhand remark in a letter. Think of it, more or less, as a card player tipping his hand.

Now this isn't from a letter, but it's probably a good example of a text from which one can glean interesting information:

Mark 6:1-6:

He [Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Now, what might you learn from this passage? I await your response.

Piscivore

1st July 2005, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
That's why I said offhand remark in a letter. Think of it, more or less, as a card player tipping his hand.

I don't understand- "offhand remarks" cannot be fictional? Is that what you are saying?

By the way, my sidekick, JoJo the Squid Boy, says to tell you "hi."

Originally posted by jjramsey
Now this isn't from a letter, but it's probably a good example of a text from which one can glean interesting information:

Now, what might you learn from this passage? I await your response.

That the author may have wanted to show some weakness in his protagonist in order to avoid "Superman syndrome."

The author may have wanted to demonstrate some antagonism towards his protagonist to avoid the character being seen as a "Mary Sue."

The author may have wanted to demonstrate some early antagonism towards his protagonist to forshadow the conflict at the climax of the novel. This is my personal favourite- but it gives the author more credit than may be his due.

The author might have added the scene to introduce the protagonist's extended family and explain his alienation from them without a lot of exposition.

The author might have meant it as a commentary on the morals or customs of a specific group of his contemporaries.

The author might have just been trying to add flavour to an otherwise drab stretch of narrative.

Could have been some combination of all or some of these reasons. None of which require the passage be factual.

What do you make of this:

Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down
furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver
upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage
that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships with
a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot
his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their
hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves,
and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.

1st July 2005, 06:22 PM

While we're asking, was the Worm-Man who ruled the galaxy actually a God-Emperor, or merely a mutant freak?

Lord Emsworth

1st July 2005, 06:37 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Now, what might you learn from this passage? I await your response.

That it is a variation on the same old theme that you need faith before miracles can/will be wrought?

jjramsey

1st July 2005, 07:51 PM

Originally posted by Piscivore
What do you make of this:

Thus did he pray, and Apollo heard his prayer. He came down
furious from the summits of Olympus, with his bow and his quiver
upon his shoulder, and the arrows rattled on his back with the rage
that trembled within him. He sat himself down away from the ships
with a face as dark as night, and his silver bow rang death as he shot
his arrow in the midst of them. First he smote their mules and their
hounds, but presently he aimed his shafts at the people themselves,
and all day long the pyres of the dead were burning.

First off, it is obviously poetry. Googling shows that it was from the Iliad, Book I. The fact that it is poetry is significant in itself, since with poetry comes, well, poetic license, so we should expect flowery exaggeration. The surrounding verses actually do have some interesting historical clues, though:

"Hear me,"
he cried,
"O god
of the silver bow,
that protectest Chryse
and holy Cilla
and rulest Tenedos
with thy might,
hear me oh
thou of Sminthe.

If I
have ever
decked your temple with garlands,
or burned your thigh-bones
in fat of bulls
or goats,
grant my prayer,
and let your arrows
avenge these my tears
upon the Danaans."

From these stanzas, we get clues to how Apollo was worshipped in ancient Greece. We also get clues as to what the Greeks expected their relationship with the gods to be. They butter up the gods with ritual sacrifices, and hope for favors from the gods in return. Of course, the whole Iliad itself suggested that a city called Troy may have existed, which indeed it did. We can also surmise that the Iliad is possibly a highly fictionalized version of a real war. So even from something obviously fictional, we can glean some interesting information, or at least leads to information.

Now back to Mark. I'm surprised, Piscavore, that you miss the obvious skeptical interpretation. Presume, for the sake of argument, that behind Mark 6:1-6 are real events. If you read between the lines of Mark 6:1-6, what do you see?

hgc

1st July 2005, 09:35 PM

Originally posted by Hope12
What does religion teach verses what the Bible says? Huh? What?

What religion? Do you mean the Christian religion(s)? How is that different from what the Bible says? Do you mean some other religion, like Bhuddism? That's easy then. That religion says nothing about Jesus, which makes it considerably different from what "the Bible" says.

triadboy

1st July 2005, 09:49 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
If you are a Gnostic Christian - Jesus was always a spirit.
The person crucified was his "twin". Jesus was standing on a hillside laughing.

I reread my post and thought I should clear something up here. This portion made Gnostic Jesus seem maniacal, which isn't the case:

The spirit Jesus was laughing at the peoples inability to see what was going on. They were crucifying his twin - also a spirit.

triadboy

1st July 2005, 10:03 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Now, what might you learn from this passage? I await your response.

I learned there is a serious violation of the "Jesus is god" camp in this passage:

Mark 6:5 And he could there do no mighty work.

It's obvious to me - at this early point, Jesus was not God to the people telling his story. He became God at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD.

SezMe

1st July 2005, 10:49 PM

You didn't ask me, jjramsey, but I'd like to join the conversation.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that behind Mark 6:1-6 are real events (my emphasis), here is my interpretation.

Jesus left town and, upon returning, started carrying on like some messiah or something. All the homies knew he was just blowing smoke and they were offended that he thought he was something special. He didn't like their response and told them everyone else bought his act. So he tried a few Randi-like sleight of hand tricks and the local yokels just scoffed at him. Jesus, like Geller, got his feelings hurt and, like Geller, worked himself up a right good snit.

How'd I do?

hgc

2nd July 2005, 04:34 AM

...

How'd I do? You just made a prediction that spoon-bending and clock-starting will be the basis for a new religion in 300 years. Dystopian.

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 06:41 AM

Originally posted by SezMe
You didn't ask me, jjramsey, but I'd like to join the conversation.

Please do.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that behind Mark 6:1-6 are real events (my emphasis), here is my interpretation.

Jesus left town and, upon returning, started carrying on like some messiah or something. All the homies knew he was just blowing smoke and they were offended that he thought he was something special. He didn't like their response and told them everyone else bought his act. So he tried a few Randi-like sleight of hand tricks and the local yokels just scoffed at him. Jesus, like Geller, got his feelings hurt and, like Geller, worked himself up a right good snit.

How'd I do?

Pretty good, and much better than Piscivore. If you are looking for a parsimonious skeptical interpretion, you are on the right track. A few problems:

If Jesus were a magician doing sleight-of-hand tricks, he could do the same tricks in Nazareth that he did in Capernaum, but the passage implies, however, that Jesus all but ran out of juice in his hometown.

Sleight-of-hand tricks per se would not be the tricks one would use to effect supposed healing miracles, which were the kind of miracles Jesus was known for doing. You are better off looking at things like the placebo effect or other psychosomatic stuff.

There is no need to assume an intent to deceive on Jesus' part. Indeed, the problems Jesus had make more sense if he wasn't trying to deceive.

triadboy

2nd July 2005, 08:08 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Sleight-of-hand tricks per se would not be the tricks one would use to effect supposed healing miracles, which were the kind of miracles Jesus was known for doing.

Where do we find what Jesus was 'known' to do?

Lord Emsworth

2nd July 2005, 09:06 AM

There is abosultely no need to interpret anything in the passage as real history or as a real event. It is chock full with symbolism:

Nazareth and its inhabitants = Israel; the Jews
Jesus and his doings and teachings = Christianity; the right way to follow "God"
the few healings = a few Jews that are receptive to Christianity
The outlying villages = the Gentiles, who are far more receptive to Christianity than Israel. Rome, Corinth, Galatia maybe even
etc

Here is a line of the passage that has been left off in what jjramsey quotes:
Mark 6
6 [...] Then he went about among the villages teaching.

Triadboy:
I learned there is a serious violation of the "Jesus is god" camp in this passage:[Mark 6:5]

Not necessarily. In Christianity it is never "God's" fault if something doesn't work, remember that. Everything will be blamed on the individual or the individuals in question most likely for a lack of faith, trust etc.

That Jesus can work no wonders here is quite obviously not his fault, but the fault of the inhabitants of the town who are lacking the proper attitude.

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 09:52 AM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
There is abosultely no need to interpret anything in the passage as real history or as a real event. It is chock full with symbolism:

Nazareth and its inhabitants = Israel; the Jews
Jesus and his doings and teachings = Christianity; the right way to follow "God"
the few healings = a few Jews that are receptive to Christianity
The outlying villages = the Gentiles, who are far more receptive to Christianity than Israel. Rome, Corinth, Galatia maybe even
etc

Do you honestly think this passes the parsimony test? As a way of conveying the message that Christianity would be the province of a handful of Jews and a multitude of Gentiles, it is entirely too cryptic. There is nothing in the text to clue the audience that it is an allegory.

Now here is the obvious, most parsimonious skeptical explanation:

Jesus is charismatic enough that, like some modern-day faith healers, he can convince some people that they have been healed, especially since these people are strangers who are curious about him and even in awe of him because of rumors, his own personality, and so on. In his own hometown, however, everyone knows him and isn't in awe of him, so the placebo effect that Jesus would normally be able to encourage doesn't work here very well, if at all.

That explanation makes a lot more sense than Mark burying an allegory in an account that doesn't even resemble a parable, let alone any other figurative language. :rolleyes:

Lord Emsworth

2nd July 2005, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Do you honestly think this passes the parsimony test?

Yes. Nothing of that happened in reality. How parsimonious can you get?

Originally posted by jjramsey
As a way of conveying the message that Christianity would be the province of a handful of Jews and a multitude of Gentiles,

Would be?? Has been or is. Don't forget when Mark was written: mid sixties or later. At least sometime after Paul adressed his letters to communites in Rome, Corinth, Galatia etc pp.

Originally posted by jjramsey
it is entirely too cryptic. There is nothing in the text to clue the audience that it is an allegory.

Except that it fits like a charm the already past history of Christianity you mean?

Originally posted by jjramsey
Now here is the obvious, most parsimonious skeptical explanation:

Jesus is charismatic enough that, like some modern-day faith healers, he can convince some people that they have been healed, especially since these people are strangers who are curious about him and even in awe of him because of rumors, his own personality, and so on. In his own hometown, however, everyone knows him and isn't in awe of him, so the placebo effect that Jesus would normally be able to encourage doesn't work here very well, if at all.

That explanation makes a lot more sense than Mark burying an allegory in an account that doesn't even resemble a parable, let alone any other figurative language. :rolleyes:

Allegory != parable

Maybe calling the whole thing a myth (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=myth) would be most apt.

Myth
1.
1. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.
2. Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
2. A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal: a star whose fame turned her into a myth; the pioneer myth of suburbia.
3. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.
4. A fictitious story, person, or thing: â€œGerman artillery superiority on the Western Front was a mythâ€ (Leon Wolff).

Piscivore

2nd July 2005, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
First off, it is obviously poetry. Googling shows that it was from the Iliad, Book I. The fact that it is poetry is significant in itself, since with poetry comes, well, poetic license, so we should expect flowery exaggeration. The surrounding verses actually do have some interesting historical clues, though:

From these stanzas, we get clues to how Apollo was worshipped in ancient Greece. We also get clues as to what the Greeks expected their relationship with the gods to be. They butter up the gods with ritual sacrifices, and hope for favors from the gods in return. Of course, the whole Iliad itself suggested that a city called Troy may have existed, which indeed it did. We can also surmise that the Iliad is possibly a highly fictionalized version of a real war. So even from something obviously fictional, we can glean some interesting information, or at least leads to information.

And as you already agreed, prose can be fiction as well. From the Illiad's example, we can surmise that the author of Mark, as Margaret Mitchell did, used a few historical details to lend some versimilitude to his novel.

Originally posted by jjramsey
Now back to Mark. I'm surprised, Piscavore, that you miss the obvious skeptical interpretation.

"The obvious skeptical interpretation?" By that do you mean the one you're prepared to argue against? There is no "skeptical dogma" to dictate my interpretation of the text, so I'm afraid the "obvious" one escapes me.

This text has all the hallmarks of myth, of fiction so I approach it as such. I can also recognise the use of several techniques of plot construction, exposition, and use of character typical of fiction in this work. Therefore, I'm skeptical this is a true account. Sorry if this doesn't agree with your preconcieved notion about what I, as a skeptic, "should" say.

Originally posted by jjramsey
Presume, for the sake of argument, that behind Mark 6:1-6 are real events. If you read between the lines of Mark 6:1-6, what do you see?

Only if you agree to discuss the impact Sauron's defeat would have on the political landscape of Gondor and The Shire next. Presume they were real events.

SezMe

2nd July 2005, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Pretty good, and much better than Piscivore.
I don't think so. I gave a smart-mouthed, irreverent answer. Piscivore was straight-ahead with plausible explanations that derserve consideration.

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 03:54 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey

Do you honestly think this passes the parsimony test?

Lord Emsworth:

Yes. Nothing of that happened in reality. How parsimonious can you get?

A parsimonious explanation is the simplest explanation that fits the facts, not the explanation that takes the fewest of syllables. You just made the same mistake about what "parsimony" means that an advocate for intelligent design did (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001115.html).

Originally posted by jjramsey

As a way of conveying the message that Christianity would be the province of a handful of Jews and a multitude of Gentiles, it is entirely too cryptic. There is nothing in the text to clue the audience that it is an allegory.

Lord Emsworth:

Except that it fits like a charm the already past history of Christianity you mean?

So you honestly expect Mark's audience to read his account and think, "Oh, Mark doesn't really mean that Jesus went back to his hometown. We know from our history that we should allegorically interpret Nazareth as Israel." Please! :rolleyes:

Piscivore:

And as you already agreed, prose can be fiction as well. From the Illiad's example, we can surmise that the author of Mark, as Margaret Mitchell did, used a few historical details to lend some versimilitude to his novel.

--snip--

This text has all the hallmarks of myth, of fiction so I approach it as such. I can also recognise the use of several techniques of plot construction, exposition, and use of character typical of fiction in this work.

"[P]lot construction, exposition, and use of character" is present in any work that tells a story whether it is fiction such as novel, or non-fiction such as a biography or a history, or even a work of propagandistic history, which may be wholly fictional or a mix of fiction and fact. Authors try to fit bits of history into a thesis, an outline, one or more themes, and so on.

How the Gospel of Mark is used tells against it being a novel. No one treated it as a work intended to be fiction. Also, it doesn't have the melodrama of, say, Chaereas and Callirhoe, a Greek historical romance written roughly the same time as Mark, give or take a century, and most definitely an intentional work of fiction. So that leaves it as being some flavor of history, even propagandistic history, which brings us back to the question of how much of Mark is fact and how much is fiction.

Piscivore:

"The obvious skeptical interpretation?" By that do you mean the one you're prepared to argue against?

No, I meant the interpretation that would jump out at a reasonable atheist. I guess I forget that not all reasonable atheists look at the back and forth between apologists, counter-apologists, scholars at the conservative and liberal sides of the spectrum, fundamentalists both religious and atheistic, and so on, and are aware of the overreachings and crackpot theories at the extremes.

If you want to argue that Mark is an unreliable source, and should be treated as heavily encrusted with fiction, that is perfectly fair. If you want to argue that it is pure fiction akin to a novel written for entertainment, that is an abuse of the facts.

Lord Emsworth

2nd July 2005, 04:01 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
A parsimonious explanation is the simplest explanation that fits the facts, not the explanation that takes the fewest of syllables. You just made the same mistake about what "parsimony" means that an advocate for intelligent design did (http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001115.html).

So you honestly expect Mark's audience to read his account and think, "Oh, Mark doesn't really mean that Jesus went back to his hometown. We know from our history that we should allegorically interpret Nazareth as Israel." Please! :rolleyes:

Wow what a deep reply. Anyways, yes I would say that the author of Mark expected his audience to understand it that way.

Lord Emsworth

2nd July 2005, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by Piscivore

"The obvious skeptical interpretation?" By that do you mean the one you're prepared to argue against?

I think that the reply you got to this question means "Yes."

triadboy

2nd July 2005, 04:26 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
If you want to argue that Mark is an unreliable source, and should be treated as heavily encrusted with fiction, that is perfectly fair. If you want to argue that it is pure fiction akin to a novel written for entertainment, that is an abuse of the facts.

What are the facts?! Mark was not written by an eyewitness to any events. His geography is sketchy - he doesn't seem familiar with the area. Give me some facts!

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey

So you honestly expect Mark's audience to read his account and think, "Oh, Mark doesn't really mean that Jesus went back to his hometown. We know from our history that we should allegorically interpret Nazareth as Israel." Please!

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth

Wow what a deep reply. Anyways, yes I would say that the author of Mark expected his audience to understand it that way.

Okaaaay. At least I know where you stand.

May I ask what scholars you could reference to support your position?

Originally posted by triadboy

What are the facts?! Mark was not written by an eyewitness to any events. His geography is sketchy - he doesn't seem familiar with the area. Give me some facts!

Ok, here's stuff that we can glean from the New Testament:

Jesus' hometown was Nazareth, an insignificant town in the Galilee.

Jesus was probably born during the tail end of the reign of Herod Matthew and Luke, despite their diverging birth narratives, agree on this much. Matthew implies that Jesus' parents had lived in Bethlehem and had moved to Nazareth because of threats to Jesus' and their safety, while Luke implies that Jesus' parents' hometown was Nazareth, with a trip to Bethlehem being a census-imposed detour for a few days. The divergent (if not outright conflicting) accounts of how Jesus had Bethlehem as a birthplace, plus the historical problems with the census that Luke reports, suggest that Matthew and Luke are trying in their own ways to "force" Jesus to be born in Bethlehem--which suggests that Jesus probably wasn't really born in Bethlehem.

Jesus' base of operations during his ministry was Capernaum.

Jesus' family thought he was nuts.

Jesus has several brothers, one of whom was James.

He was the son of a carpenter, and probably a carpenter himself for most of his lifetime.

Jesus did baptisms during his ministry, and seems to have been associated with John the Baptist. He may have been a disciple of John the Baptist, an embarassment that the Gospels cover in the way they present Jesus' baptism and John the Baptist himself.

Jesus was crucified as a would-be Messiah.

This is the stuff that the historians and the moderate and liberal Bible scholars would agree on. I'd recommend at least skimming through the first couple volumes of John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew. I hesitate to outright recommend E. P. Sanders' work only because I haven't read it yet :( , but I've heard good things, and his name comes up frequently in the footnotes and references of other works on the historical Jesus. I've mentioned Lüdemann, Fuller, and Wright already.

triadboy

2nd July 2005, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey

Jesus' hometown was Nazareth, an insignificant town in the Galilee.

It depends on which gospel you believe. Matthew had to have Jesus be from Bethlahem because the OT said the messiah would come from there.

There is a tradition that the man was "Jesus the Nazarene" - which is NOT a person from Nazareth.

Then, of course there is the question about the existence of Nazareth during this period.

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god â€“ surprise, surprise! â€“ no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

â€¢ Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) â€“ in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area â€“ records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

â€¢ The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

â€¢ St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

â€¢ No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.

*************

In his histories, Josephus has a lot to say about Galilee (an area of barely 900 square miles). During the first Jewish war, in the 60s AD, Josephus led a military campaign back and forth across the tiny province. Josephus mentions 45 cities and villages of Galilee â€“ yet Nazareth not at all.
Josephus does, however, have something to say about Japha (Yafa, Japhia), a village just one mile to the southwest of Nazareth where he himself lived for a time (Life 52).

From here -
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

I can't buy this 'fact'.

...which suggests that Jesus probably wasn't really born in Bethlehem.

Agree

Jesus has several brothers, one of whom was James.

Of course this is a problem for a perpetual virgin (BTW, I dated her in High School) There is the case where "brother' means "comrade".

He was the son of a carpenter, and probably a carpenter himself for most of his lifetime.

Jesus did baptisms during his ministry, and seems to have been associated with John the Baptist. He may have been a disciple of John the Baptist, an embarassment that the Gospels cover in the way they present Jesus' baptism and John the Baptist himself.

This is part of the story, but by no means a fact.

Jesus was crucified as a would-be Messiah.

There are people that say Jesus was 'hung on a tree'. There are no Roman records of this crucifiction. There were a lot of writers in the area at that time who no nothing of this event.

This is the stuff that the historians and the moderate and liberal Bible scholars would agree on.

Hard to believe.

2nd July 2005, 07:04 PM

Historians can't even agree whether or not Jesus actually existed.

Even the scant evidence in the form of a few census lists is questionable.

As for the New Testament - might as well use Aesop's Fables as a source of 'historical evidence'.

eta Here ya go - evidence, pro and con.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcno.htm

H3LL

2nd July 2005, 07:18 PM

Assuming the buybull to be true, Jebus is the immortal son of god.

So he could never have died in the first place.

It was just another scam. "Hahahahah! Fooled you!" sniggered god in his infantile way.

But from the guy that pulled the hillarious fruit in Eden stunt, it is what we have come to expect.

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 07:27 PM

Originally posted by triadboy

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

Sigh. There are many places to find garbage on the Internet. The above link is one of them.

Originally posted by jjramsey

This is the stuff that the historians and the moderate and liberal Bible scholars would agree on.

Originally posted by triadboy
Hard to believe.

Well, this is what libraries are for. I found most of the books I mentioned in my local public library, and it's in little ol' Akron, Ohio, so there's at least a decent chance you'll be able to find in your own library some of the titles and authors I mentioned. If you want to settle for woo-woo junk history, I can't stop you, but if you actually want to get acquainted with real scholarship, go and read stuff by the scholars who work in the field.

Oh, one guy I forgot to mention: Robin Lane Fox. Classical historian, atheist, wrote The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible. It's written for a popular audience, but definitely not woo-woo. The only downside as far as this discussion is concerned is that it isn't about historical Jesus issues per se, but is a survey of the good and the bad in the whole Bible.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Historians can't even agree whether or not Jesus actually existed.

You know, if I got all my news from Fox News, I would think that scientists still disagreed about whether global warming was happening. That's the level of ignorance involved in saying "Historians can't even agree whether or not Jesus actually existed."

2nd July 2005, 07:36 PM

You're just showing your own vast ignorance now, Ramsey.

FYI - I don't even have cable TV, nor satellite TV, nor regular network TV. I don't bother with it, because it's all biased nonsense.

What I do get my information from is directly from university publications, professional journals, etc.

The simple fact is, that almost no historical evidence exists in support of there ever having been a Yeshua bin-Yosef, aside from religious writings. By evidence, I mean writings that are not biased toward Christianity, and have no chance of having been altered or edited to insert references to Yeshua, and which are not merely parroting Christian propaganda.

But I don't expect you to know this, either. You're using the NT as reference material.

Just what 'proof' do you have that Jesus may have existed? I'm really curious what your scholarly research in the small, Christian-biased town of Akron, OH could turn up. Remember, I live in Cincinnati, so I know just how religion-oriented folks are in Akron.

Let's just say it's no mistake that, until Spring of 1997, there were no copies of 'Farenheit 451' in their main Library.

Just out of curiousity, does this library have many books concerning modern Paganism? Does it have works by GA Wells, WB Smith, Michael Martin? I wonder.

Lord Emsworth

2nd July 2005, 07:57 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Okaaaay. At least I know where you stand.

May I ask what scholars you could reference to support your position?

Me. :D

No, I actually do not know if some scholar has a like interpretation as I do hence I can't reference one. But I would be quite surprised if at least the consideration wouldn't dawn on somebody in the field.

KelvinG

2nd July 2005, 09:08 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey

You know, if I got all my news from Fox News, I would think that scientists still disagreed about whether global warming was happening. That's the level of ignorance involved in saying "Historians can't even agree whether or not Jesus actually existed."

Can't you point us in the direction of the smoking gun evidence that proves Jesus' existence.
I'm not saying he didn't exist, but the research I've done (admittedly, it hasn't been extensive) certainly raises doubts on both sides of the issue.
But, I'm more than willing to be proven wrong if you feel there is sufficient historical data to prove definitely that Jesus actually existed.

jjramsey

2nd July 2005, 09:43 PM

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Just what 'proof' do you have that Jesus may have existed?

As I pointed out before, that the New Testament exists and contains various statements is in itself hard fact, and while a historical reconstruction of the resurrection does not have to accept that all those various statements are true--or even most of them, it does have to account for the existence of those statements in a plausible way. Here are questions that deal with the accounting of the very existence of statements in the New Testament:

Why are there references at all to a James who is supposedly the brother of this Jesus?

Why is there a sentence in Luke mentioning that Jesus started his ministry at thirty?

Why does Christianity have as a core claim an account of a peasant who died a criminal's death as a troublemaker and would-be insurrectionist?

These kinds of questions are trivial to answer and hardly worth asking if there was an actual Jesus of Nazareth, but involve convolutions and implausibilities otherwise.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon

I'm really curious what your scholarly research in the small, Christian-biased town of Akron, OH could turn up. Remember, I live in Cincinnati, so I know just how religion-oriented folks are in Akron. Just out of curiousity, does this library have many books concerning modern Paganism? Does it have works by GA Wells, WB Smith, Michael Martin?

65, yes, no, and yes.

G. A. Wells, by the way, is a professor of German, not a classical historian, nor a Bible scholar. However famous he is in freethought circles, he is no more an authority on historical Jesus matters then Duane Gish (http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Duane_Gish) is an authority on biology.

There is a wide spectrum of views on the historical Jesus, with N.T. Wright at the conservative end, John Dominic Crossan and Gerd Lüdemann at the liberal end, and John P. Meier sort of in between (but closer to Crossan than Wright). E. P. Sanders, I think, stands about where Meier is. Where even these guys have a consensus, you can be pretty sure that you are dealing with facts.

triadboy

2nd July 2005, 09:48 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Sigh. There are many places to find garbage on the Internet. The above link is one of them.

I haven't figured out how garbagey this site is yet, but I used it for convenience to make a point that I read in a 'boook' (did I say that right?)

I didn't feel like going upstairs and finding the reference. Sorry.

triadboy

2nd July 2005, 10:03 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
[Why does Christianity have as a core claim an account of a peasant who died a criminal's death as a troublemaker and would-be insurrectionist?

These kinds of questions are trivial to answer and hardly worth asking if there was an actual Jesus of Nazareth, but involve convolutions and implausibilities otherwise.

["peasant" is not the right word for a 'sage'.]

The tales of god men dying a criminals death are numerous.

What if Paul was spreading a Jewish Mystery Religion using the Mithra model - a model he was well aware of coming from Tarsus - And that's why the first Xians didn't know anything about Jesus' earthly life.

Judging by your criteria - you should be a believer in Mormonism too. That book has signed witnesses.

Kopji

2nd July 2005, 10:15 PM

Jesus died so that trolls might live.

3rd July 2005, 12:00 AM

Originally posted by Kopji
Jesus died so that trolls might live.

Well, I've written off this guy.

He's one of these, 'Bible must be a valid source' fellas.

Pity, really. He almost sounds intelligent.

Still, how do these things - James, brother of Jesus, etc. - turn a fictional account written possibly 60 or more years AFTER Jesus' life into a true account?

Sadly, almost every question people ask about Jesus supposed life can be neatly covered by analyzing concurrent mythologies from other 'religions' and 'cults' of the period, and of the 2-3 hundred years prior.

Anyway, as I thought, he has nothing except the NT. OK, moving right along.

jjramsey

3rd July 2005, 12:42 PM

Originally posted by triadboy

The tales of god men dying a criminals death are numerous.

A quote from my sig: "Tim Leedon has produced an important book entitled The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read. So far so good, but he included in that an item that was first published in 1875 titled "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors." This is nonsense. It's completely wrong. It's not only more than a hundred years out of date, it has nothing to do with the facts." [emphasis mine] That quote came from an atheist Bible scholar.

So pardon me if I take claims like yours with a grain of salt.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon

Sadly, almost every question people ask about Jesus supposed life can be neatly covered by analyzing concurrent mythologies from other 'religions' and 'cults' of the period, and of the 2-3 hundred years prior.

That would be more a more convincing statement if the supposed parallels that I've seen weren't ridiculously forced. Here's a particularly egregious example from the chapter "Religious Illiteracy" of The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read: "The Christian 'Mass' was, and is, basically the old sacrament of the Mithraic 'taurobolia' (a symbol of divine sacrifice and of the saving effect of blood)"

Now those of us from a Christian background know that Mass is where Christians drink bread and wine that stand for (or supposedly are) the body and blood of Jesus. This is "a symbol of divine sacrifice" because Jesus is supposedly God and is essentially letting himself be sacrificed.

But what are the taurobolia? The chapter "Religious Inerrancy" doesn't say, but one can look it up. A taurobolium is the ritual sacrifice of a bull. Typically, a bull would be sliced open and its blood would drip all over a Mithraic worshipper. Now how is this "a symbol of divine sacrifice"? Because it commemorates the tauroctony, where Mithras kills a bull and all sorts of agricultural goodies like grain come out of the bull.

Notice what has happened here. A supposed parallel is established by using ambiguous language to hide the radical differences between the two rituals: In Mass, the "divine sacrifice" is one where the divinity is the one being sacrificed, while in the taurobolium, the "divine sacrifice" is one where the divinity is doing the sacrificing. The problems with this parallel are further disguised by not describing the taurobolium in any detail.

The article by J. Z. Smith, "Dying and Rising Gods" in Encyclopedia of Religion debunks the claims that Osiris, Attis, etc., are examples of dying and rising gods. Again, the library is your friend. Go and read it.

BTW, zaayrdragon, you wrote that you get your information directly from directly from "university publications, professional journals, etc."? Which publications would those be? I've given you the courtesy of given you authors and titles in case you want to *gasp* do research. You might as well do the same for me.

And one more thing. Do you even know who John Dominic Crossan, John P. Meier, Gerd Lüdemann, Reginald H. Fuller, E. P. Sanders, and Robin Lane Fox are? Did you even try to find out?

triadboy

3rd July 2005, 01:58 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
A quote from my sig: "Tim Leedon has produced an important book entitled The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read. So far so good, but he included in that an item that was first published in 1875 titled "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors." This is nonsense. It's completely wrong. It's not only more than a hundred years out of date, it has nothing to do with the facts." [emphasis mine] That quote came from an atheist Bible scholar.

I bought this book a long time ago and LOVED IT! It has over 50 essays by different people on different subjects dealing with Xianity. The article The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors is one of them. In the Table of Contents Tim Leedom writes "This 1875 classic names the names of the pagans, mostly before Jesus' time, whose stories parallel his in startling detail." I later heard this article by Kersey Graves was scholarly tainted in some way. Okay. So? It doesn't change my mind about Osiris, Mithra, Dionysus, Attis, Serapis, Krishna, etc. I don't understand the problem. If I convince you that 1 Timothy is a fraud - will I be able to convince you to discount the entire bible? Does knowing 1 Timothy a fraud nullify all the lovely anti-gnostic rhetoric contained within it?

This book has articles by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, Dan Barker, Joseph Campbell, and Bertrand Russell. There are articles about Zoroastrianism and the similarites between Horus and Jesus. It's a fun book. I recommend it.

But to discount an entire book of essays based on one or two of the essays is strange behavior. Just don't read those.

I find it odd you use a book in your sig line you've never read.

triadboy

3rd July 2005, 02:18 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Here's a particularly egregious example from the chapter "Religious Illiteracy" of The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read: "The Christian 'Mass' was, and is, basically the old sacrament of the Mithraic 'taurobolia' (a symbol of divine sacrifice and of the saving effect of blood)"

Now those of us from a Christian background know that Mass is where Christians drink bread and wine that stand for (or supposedly are) the body and blood of Jesus. This is "a symbol of divine sacrifice" because Jesus is supposedly God and is essentially letting himself be sacrificed.

But what are the taurobolia? The chapter "Religious Inerrancy" doesn't say, but one can look it up. A taurobolium is the ritual sacrifice of a bull. Typically, a bull would be sliced open and its blood would drip all over a Mithraic worshipper. Now how is this "a symbol of divine sacrifice"? Because it commemorates the tauroctony, where Mithras kills a bull and all sorts of agricultural goodies like grain come out of the bull.

As Christianity gathered momentum and eventually became the Roman Empires state religion, Mithraism was not tolerated. The Apologist saw it as a Å’satanic transversty (sic) of the holiest rites of their religionÂ¹ (Fanz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra). Nevertheless Catholicism has preserved some of the outer form of Mithraism to name some; the timing of Christmas, Bishops adaptation of miters as sign of their office, Christians priests becoming Å’FatherÂ¹ despite JesusÂ¹ specific proscription of the acceptance of such title (Matthew 23:9), and Å’the Mithraic Holy father wore a red cap and garment and a ring, and carried a shepherdÂ¹s staff. The Head Christian adopted the same title and outfitted himself in the same manner (citing William Harwood, Mythologies Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus).

From MITHRAISM: The Legacy of the Roman Empire's Final Pagan State Religion," written in 1993, David Fingrut

While Mithras was worshipped almost exclusively by men, most of the wives and daughters of the Mithraists took part in the worship of Magna-Mater, Ma-Bellona, Anahita, Cybele, and Artemis. These goddess religions practiced a regeneration ritual known as the Taurobolium, or bull sacrifice, in which the blood of the slaughtered animal was allowed to fall down upon the initiate, who would be lying, completely drenched in a pit below. As a result of their association with practitioners of this rite, Mithraists soon adopted the Taurobolium ritual as their own.

This baptism of blood became a renewal of the human soul, as opposed to mere physical strength. Mithraic baptism wiped out moral faults; the purity aimed at had become spiritual. The descent into the pit was regarded as symbolic burial, from which the initiate would emerge reborn, purified of all his crimes and regarded as the equal of a god. Those who made it through the Taurobolium were revered by their brethren, and accepted in the fold of Mithraism.

During the celebration of the vernal equinox, the Phrygian priests of the Great Mother attributed the blood shed in the Taurobolium to the redemptive power of the blood of the Divine Lamb shed on the Christian Easter. It was maintained that the dramatic Taurobolium purification ritual was more effective than baptism. The food that was taken during the mystic feasts was likened to the bread and wine of the communion; the Mother of the Gods (Magna Mater) received greater worship than the Mother of God (Mary), whose son also had risen again.

An inscription in the Mithraeum under the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome referred to Mithras saving men by shedding the eternal blood of the bull. On the very spot on which the last Taurobolium took place at the end of the fourth century, in the Phrygianum, today stands the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica.

Kopji

3rd July 2005, 02:47 PM

There must be a bot running somewhere that creates these guys automatically after a particularly rousing sermon. They always have a name like 'faith', 'hope', 'Christ', 'inChrist', etc... followed or preceded by a number.

Visualize a sea of expensive gas guzzling SUV's over at the drive-in church... parked next to paint chipped posts wired to little beat up speakers clipped to the rolled up window. Engines are kept idling to keep the air conditioners from over heating.

The Internet connections are wireless though, due to the Starbucks across the street. As they listen to the sermon they log in here to evangelize. The misspelled words are not actual typos, but minor lapses when their butts get sore and they shift position.

The bigger the slacker they are the bigger the number. "Hope12" got there almost too late for the morning sermon.

Just trying to help clarify things today.

triadboy

3rd July 2005, 03:04 PM

Originally posted by Kopji
Just trying to help clarify things today.

Understood Kopji - But jjramsey is not an xian right? Did I miss the morning briefing?

jjramsey just dislikes the notion that Jesus never existed - even if He wasn't god! [That's the perplexing part to me.] I think to 'jj' (if I may be so bold), Jesus was a common sage, whose life became mythologized - but he wasn't god.

jjramsey - Am I off here? What are your beliefs concerning the whole jesus thingy? (Core beliefs please) :)

3rd July 2005, 03:57 PM

I, too, am curious on Ramsey's stand.

BTW, I'm not ignoring your request, but I recently loaned almost my entire collection of material to a student at Xavier State who is trying to decide whether it's worth studying theology and archaeology at this point. Seems his main question was whether or not the judge was in on this one.

And skimming on-line comes up with the usual gymnastics: Doherty's semi-educated claims up against hardcore apologetics who will bend any fact to fit their pre-conceived notions, that Ashuray (or whatever the heck his/her name is) who quotes a few valid sources, but gets context messed up a lot and doesn't always properly quote sources; etc. etc.

I've done a lot of reading at Bible Archaeology Review, and try to keep an eye on much of what comes out of Tel Aviv, as well as keeping an ear to the ground in other places.

In the end - even with a fresh review of newer material - the bottom line seems to be that IF Jesus existed at all, it was as an early Jewish teacher with an outspoken manner, disliked by church and state alike, whose teachings led to his stoning - and who was promptly picked up by a core group of early Christians who were seeking some solid core to unify a disparate grouping of radical churches of the time. Certainly, it's telling how, as one moves further in time from the supposed time of the events of Christ, the embellishments become more outlandish. Certainly, it's interesting that, in a largely literate area like what Jesus supposedly preached in, that nothing survives of first-hand accounts of this radical person. And with the contraversy over the burial box (James brother of Jesus), what little evidence might be said to exist is highly questionable.

Also, what is Mr. Ramsey's take on the whole 'Nazareth' contraversy?

Lord Emsworth

3rd July 2005, 06:16 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
G. A. Wells, by the way, is a professor of German, not a classical historian, nor a Bible scholar. However famous he is in freethought circles, he is no more an authority on historical Jesus matters then Duane Gish (http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Duane_Gish) is an authority on biology.

Not being an authority does not make you automatically wrong. This goes for both Gish and Wells.

jjramsey

3rd July 2005, 06:40 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
I bought this book a long time ago and LOVED IT! It has over 50 essays by different people on different subjects dealing with Xianity. The article The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors is one of them. In the Table of Contents Tim Leedom writes "This 1875 classic names the names of the pagans, mostly before Jesus' time, whose stories parallel his in startling detail." I later heard this article by Kersey Graves was scholarly tainted in some way. Okay. So? It doesn't change my mind about Osiris, Mithra, Dionysus, Attis, Serapis, Krishna, etc. I don't understand the problem. . . . to discount an entire book of essays based on one or two of the essays is strange behavior. Just don't read those.

The problem is that the editor who compiled the book clearly chose his material for its ideological bias without regard to whether the material was true. Hopefully, he was was not malicious, but simply naïve and presumed that skeptics and freethinkers wouldn't stretch the facts or make dishonest arguments to make their case. In any case, he obviously neglected to do any fact-checking, so why should I trust his choice of material?

Sure, having articles by Paine and Jefferson are nice, but I can get them anywhere, and while their opinions about the value of religion may be interesting, they are simply not authoritative on issues relating to the history of the Bible.

BTW, there are serious problems with the supposed parallels with Osiris, etc. Go and read the article by J. Z. Smith that I mentioned above.

Originally posted by triadboy
If I convince you that 1 Timothy is a fraud - will I be able to convince you to discount the entire bible?

It would certainly be damaging. Indeed, the flaws in the Bible that I've already pointed out are already damaging to the Bible as an authority.

As a body of documents from which one can glean historical information by reading between the lines, of course, it is useful.

Originally posted by triadboy
But jjramsey is not an xian right?

Ask me again in ten years, and I may be able to give you a definitive answer on that. In the meantime, this thread on the Ship-of-Fools forum (http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=006633) ought to give you an idea of where I stand.

(Note about Ship-of-Fools: while nominally a "Christian" website, it has quite a few atheists and agnostics, and a pagan or two. One of the running jokes there is "I thought this was a Christian website," which tends to get said after someone curses or flames or says something randy.)

Originally posted by triadboy
From MITHRAISM: The Legacy of the Roman Empire's Final Pagan State Religion," written in 1993, David Fingrut

Careful about citing Fingrut. As noted on the web page of his essay (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Religion/Mithraism/David_Fingrut**.html):

Thayer's Note: This is a student essay written in 1993 by David Fingrut in conjunction with a high-school course at Toronto's SEED Alternative School. Although it would get a good grade from me and I happily went out of my way to obtain Mr. Fingrut's permission to reproduce it here, if you cite this work in a term paper or other work, you should be aware that it was written by a student rather than by an authority; and furthermore, that I'm no authority either. The ultimate original source is mostly the work of Franz Cumont (1868â€‘1947), with which the serious researcher will start, then to move on to more recent and/or differing views of Mithraism

Fingrut's work isn't too bad, from what I can tell, but it does seem to do what many who try to make comparisions between Christianity and pagan religions do, which is to describe pagan rituals using Christian language, i.e. describe a criobolium (a sacrifice of a sheep) as being "washed in the blood of the lamb." You also have to watch out for pagans borrowing terminology and ideas from the Christians. I would take Thayer's advice and use Finghut's work (especially his bibliography) as a starting point for research, not the last word.

Originally posted by triadboy
jjramsey just dislikes the notion that Jesus never existed - even if He wasn't god! [That's the perplexing part to me.]

It's not that I dislike "the notion that Jesus never existed," but rather that, as far as I can tell, it is the freethinkers' counterpart to creationism, that is, a notion only peddled by polemicists who distort the facts and use contorted explanations to fit the evidence to their theories. I consider the idea that "Jesus never existed" on the order of the idea Ptolemaic geocentrism. Why believe in a mess of epicycles upon epicycles when a heliocentric system with elliptical orbits fits the facts so much more simply? Positing a flesh-and-blood Jesus of Nazareth, even one encrusted with legends, streamlines things immensely.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
what is Mr. Ramsey's take on the whole 'Nazareth' contraversy?

For one, the guy seems to try to cast doubt mostly by recounting the known history of Nazareth in a sarcastic tone, describing the archaologists dealing with Nazareth as partisan Catholics, and offering short, undetailed explanations for why the archaeologists are supposedly wrong. Bear in mind that John P. Meier and John Dominic Crossan are both Catholic, yet that doesn't stop Meier for suggesting that the accounts of Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist are a cover for Jesus having been a disciple of John's, or Crossan from suggesting that Jesus' dead body was probably buried in a criminal's grave rather than a tomb, so dismissing archaeologists as being partisan because they are Catholic is dodgy. One quote of his is telling:

If Nazareth really had been barely a hamlet, lost in the hills of Galilee, would not the appellation 'Jesus of Nazareth' have invoked the response 'Jesus of WHERE?'

The point of calling him "Jesus of Nazareth" is to avoid confusing him with other "Jesuses", since "Jesus" (or Y'shua, really) was a common name, so where Nazareth was is immaterial. This is a shoddy argument on the part of the guy arguing that Jesus didn't exist.

Originally posted by jjramsey
G. A. Wells, by the way, is a professor of German, not a classical historian, nor a Bible scholar. However famous he is in freethought circles, he is no more an authority on historical Jesus matters then Duane Gish is an authority on biology.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Not being an authority does not make you automatically wrong. This goes for both Gish and Wells.

No, but someone keeps repeating theories that are not even taken seriously by mainstream scholarship, that is usually a sign that said someone is a crackpot.

bruto

3rd July 2005, 07:07 PM

Originally posted by H3LL
Assuming the buybull to be true, Jebus is the immortal son of god.

So he could never have died in the first place.

It was just another scam. "Hahahahah! Fooled you!" sniggered god in his infantile way.

But from the guy that pulled the hillarious fruit in Eden stunt, it is what we have come to expect.

I'm not sure whether you'll actually find in the bible the assertion that Jesus was immortal in any sense but the sense of being resurrected. Part of the point of the whole git of salvation and all that blah-blah is that Jesus really suffered and died, at least briefly, for our sins. Looking at the world these days I suspect a wasted effort, but that's another story.

If you don't believe in the resurrection it really shouldn't matter how it's said to have happened since it didn't. You'll never be convinced it did.

If you do believe in the resurrection it really shouldn't matter how it happened, just that it did. * Nothing anybody tells you will change your mind anyway.

*unless of course you're looking for an excuse for a nice bloody religious war, in which case this should be as good an issue as any.

Lord Emsworth

3rd July 2005, 07:18 PM

triadboy

3rd July 2005, 08:48 PM

Originally posted by bruto
If you do believe in the resurrection it really shouldn't matter how it happened, just that it did.

But how does a rational person suspend belief in physical and natural laws during biblical times.

You know you can't change water to wine. But Dionysus and Jesus did it. Either they both didn't. They both did. Or one of them did. c'mon

Yahweh

3rd July 2005, 09:02 PM

Kopji

3rd July 2005, 09:54 PM

There are religions with millions of adherents in the mideast founded on the premise that Jesus lived through the crucifixion, and went on to teach in other countries. So did he?

When he was born is inconclusive, the events around his death are contraversial... the precise events and teachings of his life are blurred by the existence of thousands of sects holding often paradoxical beliefs.

A new word was even coined by theologians: "polydoxy" signifying religious beliefs people hold that don't make any sense.

And yet, despite all this fuzziness around Jesus's life - with absolute surety the historians all agree on one thing - Jesus really did exist! humm.

If Jesus were alive today would he recognize himself in the New Testament? Or as the object of a global religion of billions?

Another unpopular take on the NT is some recent scholarship comparing the arrangement of the gospel of Mark to the Homeric Odyssey.

A little less 'junk history' for the Christians, if they can tear themselves away from the works of experts like Lee Strobel.

The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
by Dennis MacDonald, Yale University Press (May, 2000)

The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus by Earl Doherty,
Canadian Humanist Pubns; 1st edition (October 19, 1999)

Deconstructing Jesus by Robert M. Price

Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert M. Price

H3LL

4th July 2005, 12:56 AM

Originally posted by bruto
I'm not sure whether you'll actually find in the bible the assertion that Jesus was immortal in any sense but the sense of being resurrected.

Timothy
[...our Lord Jesus Christ:]
6:15 Which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;
6:16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting.....

but open to interpretation, I guess, as is the Alpha and Omega quote and just about everything in the bible.

Numerous references to 'forever' and 'everlasting' would also suggest immortality.

Most would suggest that Jesus had knowledge of his father and of his immortality (in whatever form), so however you look at it the resurrection was a con.

When it comes down to it just about every firmly held belief taken from the bible is contradicted somewhere and the most important events have differing accounts. There is even two different locations stated where Jesus revealed himself post resurrection.

When the text is unsure on a simple thing such as how many animals went into the arc and also critical and fundamental events are confused one would think that the bible was just a collection of made-up stories collected together.

Oh! Wait a minute! It is just a collection of made up stories collected together.

ETA: During a quick search I stumbled across the biblical statement that souls can be killed (it's mentioned at least twice). I have no idea how that sits with xians. Live and learn. :D

Dredred

4th July 2005, 03:35 AM

A certain branch of Islam believes Jesus survived his crucifiction because he was taken off the cross after a few hours. Then they (i forgot who) hid him from the Romans in a cave until he was recovered, and then Jesus appeared before his disciples, who thought they were seeing a ghost.
I can't remember the details of this story, but you can read it all here (http://www.alislam.org/books/jesus-in-india/).

I don't know if Jesus ever existed, but if he did, i find this story more plausible than the story of Jesus's resurrection.

jjramsey

4th July 2005, 07:22 AM

Originally posted by Kopji
And yet, despite all this fuzziness around Jesus's life - with absolute surety the historians all agree on one thing - Jesus really did exist! humm.

Like I said, it's a matter of the simpler explanation. Which fits the facts better? A real Jesus whose history became embellished and exaggerated by religious enthusiasm, or a Jesus that never existed? The former explains a lot of issues better, such as, for example, the incidental references to a James who is the brother of Jesus.

Originally posted by Kopji
A little less 'junk history' for the Christians, if they can tear themselves away from the works of experts like Lee Strobel.

Who's been talking about Strobel? The works I've cited go way beyond him, and many, like those by Meier, Crossan, and Fuller, would radically disagree with him.

Originally posted by Kopji
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark
by Dennis MacDonald, Yale University Press (May, 2000)

Reviewed by a professor of classical literature (http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/faculty.html#rabel) and found to be junk:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2000/2000-09-16.html

And another review:

http://www.ibiblio.org/GMark/afr/HomerorNotHomer.htm

Mark's Greek is known to be relatively crude, and IIRC, it contains phrasings that reflect Aramaic grammar rather than good Greek grammar. The likelihood that he was educated enough to be exposed to Homer is questionable.

Originally posted by Kopji
The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus by Earl Doherty,
Canadian Humanist Pubns; 1st edition (October 19, 1999)

Another amateur. This guy has Jesus be crucified in some upper heaven, just the sort of thing that makes me liken the idea that Jesus was a myth to the complicated Ptolemaic geocentrism. It's an overcomplication, and one that is highly speculative and wholly unnecessary.

Originally posted by Kopji
Deconstructing Jesus by Robert M. Price

Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert M. Price

A polite review of Deconstructing Jesus that refrains from outright calling it BS but nonetheless does not find its claims that Jesus was a probably a myth credible:

http://www.bookreviews.org/pdf/805_599.pdf

Unfortunately, Googling for "Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" and "review" seems to yield no scholarly reviews, just reviews from cheerleaders, apologists (who obviously hate it), and a layman whose expertise is in medicine (http://www.accampbell.uklinux.net/personal.html) (review here (http://www.accampbell.uklinux.net/bookreviews/r/price.html)). Considering the polemical title, it was probably ignored by academics.

There is a lot of garbage out there. You have to be discerning on both sides.

bruto

4th July 2005, 07:52 AM

Originally posted by H3LL
but open to interpretation, I guess, as is the Alpha and Omega quote and just about everything in the bible.

Numerous references to 'forever' and 'everlasting' would also suggest immortality.

Most would suggest that Jesus had knowledge of his father and of his immortality (in whatever form), so however you look at it the resurrection was a con.

When it comes down to it just about every firmly held belief taken from the bible is contradicted somewhere and the most important events have differing accounts. There is even two different locations stated where Jesus revealed himself post resurrection.

When the text is unsure on a simple thing such as how many animals went into the arc and also critical and fundamental events are confused one would think that the bible was just a collection of made-up stories collected together.

Oh! Wait a minute! It is just a collection of made up stories collected together.

ETA: During a quick search I stumbled across the biblical statement that souls can be killed (it's mentioned at least twice). I have no idea how that sits with xians. Live and learn. :D

Isn't Timothy post-resurrection? Not that it really matters as far as biblical "accuracy" is concerned, but unless Jesus was really killed, at least for a while, it kind of takes the wind out of the whole Christian "god gave his only son" stuff. Of course if Jesus knew all along that he'd be resurrected in the sense that Christians conventionally believe it, then yes, it's a con, though even so the experience must have been pretty unpleasant to say the least. I'd prefer to think he didn't know, in part because there wasn't anything to know in the first place, but then I also prefer to think of the "resurrection" as more metaphorical, in the sense that you could kill Jesus but two thousand years later the world is crawling with Christians and guess where the pope lives now...(nyah nyah take that you nasty old Romans, etc. etc.). You can cut down the tree but the suckers keep popping up.

I'm not convinced that the inaccuracy and contradiction of the Bible mean just that it's a bunch of made-up stories. It could also be a bunch of loosely remembered, altered, mixed, poorly transmitted stories based at least in some cases on facts. I find it easier to believe that Jesus existed and was mythologized, defied, etc. after death, than that he didn't exist at all and was made up. For one thing if the people who wrote the gospels had made him up out of whole cloth I'd expect more consistency rather than less. Some of the gospel inconsistencies could easily be explained by the likelihood that like any public speaker and wandering performer, he reused material a lot, and accounts of these things will vary some depending on which instance was remembered. Combine this with the several generations of distance between the events and the gospels (except perhaps for Mark, which is earliest), as well as different target audiences and different emphases, and it would be surprising not to find inconsistencies.

The time in which Jesus (perhaps) lived was a tumultuous one, and a lot of people apparently thought the world was about to end. It's a time of prophets, messianic cults, and whatnot. The incorporation of John the Baptist into the gospels could be interpreted as a political maneuver - a buyout if you like. Jesus was one of many people out there preaching, reforming, rabble rousing, etc. Whether you decide that the success of his cult was more due to better politicking or just better luck than to a better message is a matter of choice (or faith, I suppose).

All idle speculation here, anyway. I think we're agreed that if you want history, science and consistency, the Bible is the wrong place to be looking. If you want religious inspiration (not suggesting you should, only that you might) then it's a useful place to look. I suspect that people who desperately mine the bible for supposed factual accuracy don't really understand what it's all about. If adherence to Christianity is dependent on the Bible being accurate in all respects, it's a pretty p***- poor excuse for a faith, and a losing battle too, even if the fundies have managed to capture the occasional beachhead. At least I hope so. I hope that isn't just "faith."

jjramsey

4th July 2005, 11:15 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
No, but someone keeps repeating theories that are not even taken seriously by mainstream scholarship, that is usually a sign that said someone is a crackpot.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Like once upon a time - what was your example? - heliocentrism?

Careful here; pseudoscientists are fond of citing Galileo and Copernicus when it is pointed out that a vast majority of scientists disagrees with them.

Seriously, though, it's an apples-and-oranges comparision. The way consensus was formed in Galileo's day was often by deferring to the authority of the Church, which one opposed at one's peril. Today, consensus is reached by peer review, debate, and critical analysis amongst trained scholars. Obviously, consensus is no guarantee of truth, but these days, it's usually a good sign.

Oh. In an earlier post, I posted that Doherty is an amateur. He does, however, have a B.A. degree in ancient languages.

nelsondogg

4th July 2005, 06:43 PM

Originally posted by Dredred
A certain branch of Islam believes Jesus survived his crucifiction because he was taken off the cross after a few hours. Then they (i forgot who) hid him from the Romans in a cave until he was recovered, and then Jesus appeared before his disciples, who thought they were seeing a ghost.
I can't remember the details of this story, but you can read it all here (http://www.alislam.org/books/jesus-in-india/).

I don't know if Jesus ever existed, but if he did, i find this story more plausible than the story of Jesus's resurrection.

Yep, or Jesus, the religious cult leader, convinced a follower to take his place. Judas gave him up to the Romans who had no clue what Jesus looked like. Jesus probably told him not to worry, god would save him, etc. "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me" makes a lot more sense in that scenario than Jesus/god compaining to himself. Jesus dumps the body and makes his miraculous "resurrection" and a religion is born.

Or, some con artist assumed Jesus' identity after he got killed by the Romans. In the scriptures some of the people who saw him resurrected didn't recognize him. The dude probably took all their money and skipped town before the disciples started asking too many questions and got wise.

Either is more plausible than a dead guy coming back to life after three days.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 07:08 AM

Grief hallucinations and cognitive dissonance I can buy as a possible explanation for belief in the resurrection. But this?

Originally posted by nelsondogg
Yep, or Jesus, the religious cult leader, convinced a follower to take his place. Judas gave him up to the Romans who had no clue what Jesus looked like. Jesus probably told him not to worry, god would save him, etc. "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me" makes a lot more sense in that scenario than Jesus/god compaining to himself. Jesus dumps the body and makes his miraculous "resurrection" and a religion is born.

Okaaaay. So Judas points the Romans to someone who was not Jesus and the Romans arrest this not-Jesus and have him crucified. Now if this arrest was done in the presence of the disciples, it would be dead obvious that the one being crucified was not Jesus. So for this scheme to work, this not-Jesus disciple has to be separated from other disciples at the time of his arrest, and Jesus has to make himself scarce right around the time of the arrest, since if not-Jesus is arrested and Jesus is still with his disciples, then it is again obvious that the one being crucified is not Jesus. Then you have the problem of why Jesus would leave the disciples after "surviving" the crucifixion. As a leader of these disciples, he has power over them; he's a somebody, and the kind of sicko, Manson-esque Jesus that you describe would find that important. Away from the disciples, he's a nobody, just another peasant. He has no motive at all for disappearing.

Originally posted by nelsondogg
Or, some con artist assumed Jesus' identity after he got killed by the Romans. In the scriptures some of the people who saw him resurrected didn't recognize him. The dude probably took all their money and skipped town before the disciples started asking too many questions and got wise.

This implausible scenario is even more implausible than your last implausible scenario. First off, it is misleading to say that in the post-resurrection accounts, "some of the people who saw him resurrected didn't recognize him." It's pretty clear that what is being described is that they don't immediately recognize him, but upon a more careful look, they realize it's him. This is not the kind of effect a con artist would be likely to create.

Originally posted by nelsondogg
Either is more plausible than a dead guy coming back to life after three days.

Only if you assume that any old naturalistic explanation for the resurrection will work, no matter how ad hoc. The problem is that this mode of thinking would make naturalism unfalsifiable, which I suppose is fine for a dogmatic atheist, but not for a skeptic.

5th July 2005, 07:48 AM

When we eliminate the impossible - such as a person coming back from being dead for three days - whatever is left, no matter how improbable (or implausible), must be the truth.

I am not an atheist, by any stretch of the imagination. But the Bible reeks of the downright impossible.

If we stick wholly to the idea that Jesus was an outspoken radical Jewish preacher, the Jesus myth remains at least in the realm of the possible. But the Resurrection story is where the possibility of historical accuracy comes to a screeching halt.

Of course, it all depends on what you consider 'impossible' vs. 'improbable'. In this case, I hold out against any theory that clearly violates basic premises of biology, chemistry, or physics; especially considering, in 2000 or so years since these times, when men regularly turned staves into snakes and lived for hundreds of years without modern medicine, we have NOT seen any proof that the supernatural is real. Further compounded with the fact that almost all prophecy laid out by the Bible concerning what would happen AFTER Jesus' time has been proven wrong - again and again - we are left with little to convince us that the possibility of being raised from the dead after three days is more probable than a con artist stepping in and taking the reigns.

I'm not sure what your angle is supposed to be, Ramsey, but it is clear from the content of your posts that you believe that there MUST be truth in the Gospels, and that Jesus really was resurrected from the dead three days after his burial/entombment. This is clearly not something a skeptic would consider OVER the scenarios posited by nelsondogg, or the much more likely scenarios involving an itinerate Jewish preacher, a 'Church of God' group of sects trying to band together, and a well-laid plan for unity by some very skilled writers of myth.

But, then, it's clear what bias you carry, as you seem to have some problem with naturalism being unfalsifiable. Guess what? So far, it is.

So unless an explanation of the events is compatible with naturalism, then that explanation must be rejected.

And this is coming straight from a Wiccan Priest. Thank you, good day.

Dredred

5th July 2005, 08:26 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Then you have the problem of why Jesus would leave the disciples after "surviving" the crucifixion.
If our hypothetical Jesus survived his hypothetical crucifixion, he would still be wanted by the Romans. That would be a good motive for fleeing the country, wouldn't it?
In the Ahmadiyya version (http://www.alislam.org/books/jesus-in-india/) of the story, he went to Kashmir, to promote his gospel to the tribe of jews living there.

UrsulaV

5th July 2005, 10:29 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Like I said, it's a matter of the simpler explanation. Which fits the facts better? A real Jesus whose history became embellished and exaggerated by religious enthusiasm, or a Jesus that never existed?

Err...isn't that the same argument you could make about King Arthur and Robin Hood, though?

I don't know enough about the topic to say whether Jesus existed or not--until really this thread, I hadn't thought about it particularly, since as a non-Christian, his reality or lack thereof would be only a historical footnote. But this particular argument strikes me as pretty shaky. I mean, wouldn't it be a simpler explanation if all the ballads about Robin Hood was about a real guy who's history became embellished with the medival equivalent of fan fiction? But last I checked, they don't think there was one, it was just a conflation of a bunch of folkstories with a couple of people who did exist, but not in that particular way.

I'm perfectly willing to allow that there probably was a historical Jesus who lectured a lot and got extensively mythologized--but not on the basis of that argument.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Careful here; pseudoscientists are fond of citing Galileo and Copernicus when it is pointed out that a vast majority of scientists disagrees with them.

Sure, I know. Though if you look back throught the tread note well who is citing these guys. :)

Originally posted by jjramsey
Seriously, though, it's an apples-and-oranges comparision. The way consensus was formed in Galileo's day was often by deferring to the authority of the Church, which one opposed at one's peril. Today, consensus is reached by peer review, debate, and critical analysis amongst trained scholars. Obviously, consensus is no guarantee of truth, but these days, it's usually a good sign.

Oh. In an earlier post, I posted that Doherty is an amateur. He does, however, have a B.A. degree in ancient languages.

And I believe ancient history.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Another amateur. This guy has Jesus be crucified in some upper heaven, just the sort of thing that makes me liken the idea that Jesus was a myth to the complicated Ptolemaic geocentrism. It's an overcomplication, and one that is highly speculative and wholly unnecessary.

I am not sure which way your anylogy holds true here. Doherty makes a lot of 'problems' go away almost entirely. One example is of course the evolution of a/the Christology. It would pretty hard to account for an almost exclusively divine figure in the earliest documents (Paul) if there had been a normal guy who was turned into human+divine figure. With Doherty it would be the other way around, namely that it was a divine figure that had more and more human features attached to him.

There is yet another thing ... On just what basis would you still trust the gospels for narrating any kind of history if you have already tossed out say 50 % as legend, analogy etc? Seems hard. Doherty can take almost everything (an interpolation here and there amybe) at face value.

A third thing is that a lot of apologist would point out that the time span for excessive legend forming is just too short. They _may_ have a point here against any heavily mythologized HJ, but they have no point against Doherty's heavenly Christ.

pgwenthold

5th July 2005, 11:07 AM

Discussions regarding a "historical Jesus" always leave me asking the question, if the guy in question bears only a passing resemblence to Jesus of the bible, is it fair to call him a "historical Jesus."

Typically, there is a suggestion that the "historical Jesus" was basically a rabble-rousing Jewish rabbi who pitted off the Romans and maybe even the Jews. If so, what does this have to do with Jesus of the bible, who was supposedly a great teacher, a performer of great miracles (including raising people from the dead), able to fend off the tempations of Satan, and bore the weight of our sins on his shoulders.

As the question was asked above, would this "Jesus the roaming rabbi" recognize himself in the new testament gospels?

I tend to compare this to the Wizard of Oz. L. Frank Baum had a niece named Dorothy, who was supposedly the inspiration for his Dorothy character. Baum's wife was Maude, meaning Dorothy had an Aunt "M". As far as we know, Dorothy might have even lived in Kansas. That means there are probably non-coincidental characteristics that are shared by Dorothy the niece and Dorothy the book character. But...

[list=1]
Does that mean Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz was a "historical figure"?
Were the Wizard of Oz stories actually about his niece Dorothy, or did he just use her name and some of her attributes?
Does it say anything about the truth of the Wizard of Oz stories that there was an actual Dorothy?
[/list=1]

It sounds to me like calling Jesus a "historical figure" based on the fact there may have been someone who shared certain trivial characteristics with the character in the bible (rabble rousing rabbis were a dime a dozen, back then) and may have even inspired the character is special pleading, and well beyond what would normally be considered. Again, the comparisons to King Arther and Robin Hood are appropriate. Same situation, but no one calls anyone the "historical Robin Hood."

Jesus of the bible appears to be equally a legend.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 11:21 AM

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
When we eliminate the impossible - such as a person coming back from being dead for three days - whatever is left, no matter how improbable (or implausible), must be the truth.

The problem with this statement is that this begs the question of whether the resurrection could happen--and while a dogmatic atheist can beg the question with regard to miracles, a skeptic cannot.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon

I'm not sure what your angle is supposed to be, Ramsey, but it is clear from the content of your posts that you believe that there MUST be truth in the Gospels, and that Jesus really was resurrected from the dead three days after his burial/entombment.

Actually, I am fence-sitter who on the one hand, finds atheism a good explanation for the way most if not all of the universe works, but on the other hand, considers the resurrection a strong apparent "outlier" with regards to naturalism, something not trivially explainable within a naturalistic worldview. I've being banging on the question of whether it can be explained naturalistically in a plausible way for a while.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
This is clearly not something a skeptic would consider OVER the scenarios posited by nelsondogg

Garbage. The conclusion that miracles don't happen is reached by inductive reasoning based on observations like the following: that miracles always seem to happen around a friend's uncle's brother but never witnessed personally, that reports of miracles have fallen off as communication improves and we are less dependent on rumor, that reports of the paranormal consistently have been debunked when investigated. Since the conclusion that miracles don't happen is based on inductive and not deductive reasoning, it is never 100% solid. It can potentially be found false by new contrary evidence.

That means that to say that "unless an explanation of the events is compatible with naturalism, then that explanation must be rejected" is an intellectual cheat, because it prevents potentially contrary evidence from being considered.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
But, then, it's clear what bias you carry, as you seem to have some problem with naturalism being unfalsifiable. Guess what? So far, it is.

You don't know what "unfalsifiable" means, do you? Being "unfalsifiable" is a bad thing. The classic example of a unfalsifiable proposition is "there is an immaterial invisible unicorn in the room." Nothing can be done to disprove this assertion. An unfalsifiable proposition is barely meaningful. Now naturalism is obviously falsifiable, otherwise Randi's Million-Dollar Challenge would be be meaningless. Does Randi expect naturalism to be falsified, that someone would win the Million-Dollar Challenge? Of course not. Yet the opportunity for falsification is there. For you to say that naturalism is unfalsifiable shows that you don't know what you are talking about.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 12:04 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Like I said, it's a matter of the simpler explanation. Which fits the facts better? A real Jesus whose history became embellished and exaggerated by religious enthusiasm, or a Jesus that never existed?

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Err...isn't that the same argument you could make about King Arthur and Robin Hood, though?

Hardly. Context is everything.

The evidence about Jesus of Nazareth doesn't come from a loose bunch of tales that are difficult to even nail down in a timeline, but from several documents purporting to be giving information about this Jesus, and from letters that took his existence for granted. The documents and letters name enough names, places, and reigns of officials that the events that they purport to describe can be dated, often within a range of a few years. This distinguishes the stories about Jesus of Nazareth from stories about King Arthur and Robin Hood.

Further, these documents were made by and for communities who believed that this Jesus of Nazareth existed and made certain claims about him. This distinguishes them from works intended to be fiction. Baum never claimed that Dorothy was real. Margaret Mitchell never claimed Gone With The Wind was a true story.

pgwenthold

5th July 2005, 12:35 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Further, these documents were made by and for communities who believed that this Jesus of Nazareth existed and made certain claims about him. This distinguishes them from works intended to be fiction. Baum never claimed that Dorothy was real.

Then why did Baum call himself the "Royal Historian of Oz"? In fact, he claims to have gotten the information directly from Oz (and after Glinda enchanted Oz to keep it hidden from non-fairy folk at the end of "The Emerald City of Oz", Baum wrote that he could only communicate with them by wireless)

I've heard this crap before from other ignorant apologists. There is NOTHING in any of the Oz books that would suggest it is anything but a real story.

As I said, it comes down to special pleading on the bible. That, or the "a lot of people believe a lot of it to be true" argument ad populum.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by pgwenthold
Then why did Baum call himself the "Royal Historian of Oz"?
I've heard this crap before from other ignorant apologists. There is NOTHING in any of the Oz books that would suggest it is anything but a real story.

From the last paragraph to the introduction of my copy of the Wizard of Oz:

". . . the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please the children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, . . ."

Aside from the fact that you were wrong about Baum, there is this matter that there are plenty of external cues to indicate that the Wizard of Oz was meant to be taken as fiction. Baum, I'm sure, did not try to convince his publisher that his manuscripts were true stories. The publishers do not even try to sell his works as non-fiction. You will never find it in the non-fiction of a bookstore. All the external cues tell the prospective readers to expect the Wizard of Oz to be fiction, even before they open its cover.

In contrast, the New Testament was always presented in a context that indicated that the authors and audience expected it to be true. Now that obviously doesn't assure that it is true. Such a context is also consistent with a book that is totally wrong, or with a book that is a mix of truth and legend. What such a context is not consistent with is a book that is meant to be taken as fiction.

UrsulaV

5th July 2005, 03:28 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Hardly. Context is everything.

The evidence about Jesus of Nazareth doesn't come from a loose bunch of tales that are difficult to even nail down in a timeline, but from several documents purporting to be giving information about this Jesus, and from letters that took his existence for granted. The documents and letters name enough names, places, and reigns of officials that the events that they purport to describe can be dated, often within a range of a few years.

Great! Wonderful!

Now, are any of those NOT in the Bible? Like, oh, birth records from Bethlehem or tax records from Nazareth or Pontius Pilate's paperwork? (This is a serious question, I genuinely don't know.)

After all, documents and letters containing accurate names, places, and events, and relatively reliable dating, and a fair degree of internal consistency, can be found in, say, the Cthulhu Mythos, too, and I'm pretty sure Lovecraft and cronies wrote to each other in terms that would appear to take, say, the existence of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred for granted. Plenty of people even believed that the Necronomicon was a real book at the time. So in order to have evidence that the Bible is something other than an old-time shared-universe story, I'd need sources OUTSIDE the Bible referring to people IN the Bible. Merely having stuff in the Bible that refers to real stuff outside the Bible doesn't work for me as a source--I mean, Lovecraft talks about Boston and New England and Cotton Mather and the witch trials, undeniably real places and people and events, but I'm not checking under the bed for Yog-Sothoth on the strength of that, ya know?

If there's non-Biblical sources for the existence of Jesus, however--and there certainly may be!--then just point me to 'em, and I'll be the better for knowing it.

pgwenthold

5th July 2005, 03:36 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
From the last paragraph to the introduction of my copy of the Wizard of Oz:

". . . the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please the children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, . . ."

That's why it was written.

There are plenty of non-fiction books that are written soley to entertain people.

Aside from the fact that you were wrong about Baum, there is this matter that there are plenty of external cues to indicate that the Wizard of Oz was meant to be taken as fiction. Baum, I'm sure, did not try to convince his publisher that his manuscripts were true stories.

And you know that the authors of the bible stories did try to convince their pubishers that their manuscripts were true stories?

Now, your argument boils down to, "No one has ever claimed that the WoO is a true story, but they did with the bible."

bruto

5th July 2005, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Great! Wonderful!

Now, are any of those NOT in the Bible? Like, oh, birth records from Bethlehem or tax records from Nazareth or Pontius Pilate's paperwork? (This is a serious question, I genuinely don't know.)

After all, documents and letters containing accurate names, places, and events, and relatively reliable dating, and a fair degree of internal consistency, can be found in, say, the Cthulhu Mythos, too, and I'm pretty sure Lovecraft and cronies wrote to each other in terms that would appear to take, say, the existence of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred for granted. Plenty of people even believed that the Necronomicon was a real book at the time. So in order to have evidence that the Bible is something other than an old-time shared-universe story, I'd need sources OUTSIDE the Bible referring to people IN the Bible. Merely having stuff in the Bible that refers to real stuff outside the Bible doesn't work for me as a source--I mean, Lovecraft talks about Boston and New England and Cotton Mather and the witch trials, undeniably real places and people and events, but I'm not checking under the bed for Yog-Sothoth on the strength of that, ya know?

If there's non-Biblical sources for the existence of Jesus, however--and there certainly may be!--then just point me to 'em, and I'll be the better for knowing it.

I'm not up on current research, and frankly too lazy and with too slow a connection to check it out now, but I do seem to recall reading that there have been a couple of parallel non-biblical references found. Pretty iffy at best, and of course the people who hunt these things down might themselves be suspected of bias, and nothing is very certain. But I think to be fair, when researching a thing like this, it's useful to look at what records and corroboration there might have been for anybody at that time and place. What records would you expect to find for anybody in Nazareth at the time, especially one born on the road somewhere else. Jesus was said to have been from a good family, but he wasn't anybody special in his youth, and if he was who he's said to have been, the apostles and their followers, who were, after all, writing and speaking and touring at a time when he would have been freshly remembered by many, would hardly have felt the need to pull out birth records or probate documents to prove that he was out there. In fact, if you wanted to speculate a little more, as some biblical scholars have, the very fact that the Gospels are so casual about corroboration of his existence could be read as implying that there was at the time no reason to question it, because enough people were aware of him to make this a non-issue. This is of course a weak and tendentious argument, but it is not outright preposterous. I imagine we look at things a little differently at this distance than people were accustomed to back then. We don't have much on many other notable historical figures except for the accounts of their friends and disciples, either, but I also believe in a historical Socrates, and a historical Epictetus.

I would consider the existence of some historical Jesus to be speculative, but a pretty good bet. The speculation that he did not exist and that his entire career was fabricated, and that the promoters of early Christianity were able to get away with this, even preaching as they did during the lifetime of those who might have met him or heard of him from other sources, requires a measure of conspiracy and fabrication and a good deal of luck, more elaborate than the simple theory that he existed and that after his very dramatic, convenient and politically charged execution they made the most of it.

5th July 2005, 05:29 PM

Eh, there's no point in discussing this with Ramsey. He's just another ignorant apologist.

He probably believes that there is 'undeniable evidence' for a great flood, too... and that Eden and the Ark might be found some day.

Ramsey: it's all make-believe. It's all mythology. It's loosely based around a few actual figures, and the rest largely extrapolated for political reasons.

And I don't care if it's deduced, induced, or directly observed; there has been no accurate and reliable evidence of resurrections occuring, and they are biologically impossible - either naturally or by current technology. Therefore, the idea that Jesus was resurrected is to be rejected.

It's very simple logic, and has nothing to do with atheism.

And certainly nothing to do with 'dogmatic atheism'.

But, then, you're probably in the lifegazer school of antilogic too.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 06:06 PM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Doherty makes a lot of 'problems' go away almost entirely. One example is of course the evolution of a/the Christology. It would pretty hard to account for an almost exclusively divine figure in the earliest documents (Paul) if there had been a normal guy who was turned into human+divine figure.

But that's just it: What Paul presents is an "almost exclusively divine figure." There are definitely signs that when Paul speaks of Christ, he speaks of a human+divine figure. He has referred to Christ as being born of a woman, of being of David's stock, of taking on human form, and he refers once to James as "the brother of the Lord," which suggests that he was aware that Jesus had been flesh and blood and that he had brothers. (More on that in a bit.) He didn't really have much occasion in his letters to refer to the biographical details of Jesus which would emphasize his humanity, so what we see from Paul emphasizes the divine, but the human side is definitely there.

And there is no reason to presume that the disciples would have been slow in turning Jesus into an almost divine figure after his death. Here's a quote from a Dead Sea scroll about the Qumran's Teacher of Righteousness:

I shall be reckoned with the angels, my dwelling is in the holy council. Who [...] and who has been despised like me? And who has been rejected of men like me? And who compares to me in enduring evil? No teaching compares to my teaching. For I sit [...] in heaven. Who is like me among the angels? Who could cut off my words? And who could measure the flow of my lips? Who can associate with me and thus compare with my judgment? I am the beloved of the King, a companion of the holy ones and none can accompany me. And to my glory none can compare, for I [...]. Neither with gold I will crown myself, nor with refined gold [...]

(From http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messiah_16.html)

The idea of a Messiah as an exalted quasi-divine viceregent to God is hardly unknown. Plus making him divine (or almost divine) helps to counterbalance the shame of the crucifixion.

My point is that by the time Paul was exposed to the apostles' teaching, he could easily have been looking at kind of divine figure that we see in his epistles.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
With Doherty it would be the other way around, namely that it was a divine figure that had more and more human features attached to him.

Except that is backwards from the usual trend of legendary development, and if we look at the later non-canonical Christian literature, we see the usual trend of embellishment and exaggeration.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
There is yet another thing ... On just what basis would you still trust the gospels for narrating any kind of history if you have already tossed out say 50 % as legend, analogy etc? Seems hard.

It's not about trust. It's about looking at things like incidental details into which people just don't put enough thought to lie about them. It's about looking at patterns of discrepancies, like those in the birth narratives. It's about looking at stories that seem like apologies for embarassing events, like Jesus seemingly losing his power in Nazareth. And yes, it is hard, but historians do this all the time.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Doherty can take almost everything (an interpolation here and there amybe) at face value.

This is the one thing, though, that Doherty does not do. For example, he writes

from Galatians 1:19 comes the tradition that James was the sibling of Jesus, whereas the phrase "brother of the Lord" could instead refer to James' pre-eminent position as head of the Jerusalem brotherhood. Apostles everywhere (e.g., Sosthenes in 1 Corinthians 1:1) were called "brother," and the 500 who received a vision of the spiritual Christ in 1 Corinthians 15:6 were hardly all related to Jesus. The phrase in Philippians 1:14, "brothers in the Lord," is a strong indication of what sort of meaning the Galatians phrase entails. On the other hand, it is not impossible that the phrase began as a marginal gloss, subsequently inserted into the text. Some later copyist, perhaps when a second century Pauline corpus was being formed and after James' sibling relationship to the new historical Jesus had been established, may have wished to ensure that the reader would realize that Paul was referring to James the Just and not James the Gospel apostle.

With a historical Jesus, the offhand reference to James as the Lord's brother fits neatly with other incidental references to James as the brother of Jesus in the Gospels and in Josephus. By positing a mythical Jesus, he now has to explain away this consonance amongst differing documents.

This quote is even worse:

In this upper world, too, Christ had been crucified at the hands of the demon spirits (1 Corinthians 2:8, Ascension of Isaiah 9; see Supplementary Article No. 3).

This is pure speculation, and a strained reading of 1 Corinthians 2:8.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
A third thing is that a lot of apologist would point out that the time span for excessive legend forming is just too short. They _may_ have a point here against any heavily mythologized HJ, but they have no point against Doherty's heavenly Christ.

But there is no good reason to interpret documents with regard to what apologists might think.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
He probably believes that there is 'undeniable evidence' for a great flood, too... and that Eden and the Ark might be found some day.

Umm, no. (http://talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html)

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
And I don't care if it's deduced, induced, or directly observed; there has been no accurate and reliable evidence of resurrections occuring, and they are biologically impossible - either naturally or by current technology. Therefore, the idea that Jesus was resurrected is to be rejected.

Not quite. You skipped a couple steps. The last line of that should be "Therefore, the idea that Jesus was resurrected is to be doubted." One's reaction to the resurrection accounts should be "Waaaaiiiit a minute!" Then you dig around and try to see if there are good ways explain the resurrection accounts naturalistically. If you can find a good way of explaining it away, you can reject it outright. If you can't, well, I don't know if there are any good answers. Ignoring "outliers"? Not good. God-of-the-gaps? Also not good. Suspend judgment, stick with whatever worldview you got? Maybe. Epistemological limbo sucks.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 07:13 PM

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Eh, there's no point in discussing this with Ramsey. He's just another ignorant apologist.

He probably believes that there is 'undeniable evidence' for a great flood, too... and that Eden and the Ark might be found some day.

Ramsey: it's all make-believe. It's all mythology. It's loosely based around a few actual figures, and the rest largely extrapolated for political reasons.

And I don't care if it's deduced, induced, or directly observed; there has been no accurate and reliable evidence of resurrections occuring, and they are biologically impossible - either naturally or by current technology. Therefore, the idea that Jesus was resurrected is to be rejected.

It's very simple logic, and has nothing to do with atheism.

And certainly nothing to do with 'dogmatic atheism'.

But, then, you're probably in the lifegazer school of antilogic too.

Sorry Zaayrdragon I can absolutely not follow you here. Most if not everything that jjramsey has said and posted are fair points. Some points may be arguable, some even wrong, but they are fair nontheless.

Robin

5th July 2005, 07:32 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Not quite. You skipped a couple steps. The last line of that should be "Therefore, the idea that Jesus was resurrected is to be doubted." One's reaction to the resurrection accounts should be "Waaaaiiiit a minute!" Then you dig around and try to see if there are good ways explain the resurrection accounts naturalistically. If you can find a good way of explaining it away, you can reject it outright. If you can't, well, I don't know if there are any good answers. Ignoring "outliers"? Not good. God-of-the-gaps? Also not good. Suspend judgment, stick with whatever worldview you got? Maybe. Epistemological limbo sucks.
An empty tomb does not equate to a resurrection. There are plenty of good ways of explaining the resurrection accounts naturalistcally here are just 2:

1. They were not telling the truth. It seems likely that people in those days are somewhat like people today and we see lots of cases where people just don't tell the truth about things (urban legends, UFO stories etc...), then those untruths are repeated in good faith by others. You cannot say that it is good testimony because more than one person told the story, they might easily have heard it from the same source.

2. OK try this one on, somebody tells you that they met and spoke to a dead relative last night. You ask how they knew it was the person and they say, well I didn't actually recognize him, he looked entirely different, but he had the same wounds as the deceased had when he died so it must have been him. Would you believe that?

5th July 2005, 07:34 PM

Well, italics-boy, you're certainly welcome to that opinion.

Nevertheless, it certainly appears as if he's defending the Gospel tales whole-cloth, in spite of the faerie-tale nature of them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that I missed where he has admitted that, at most, Jesus was nothing but an over-glorified human being. That, after all, is what this thread is about, really - was Jesus actually resurrected in the body, or only in spirit? Well, that doesn't really matter, since Jesus wasn't resurrected at all.

And that's the key point he seems unwilling to bend on.

It is highly illogical to look at these tales and say, yep, he just happened to be the ONLY person in the history of our reality to be resurrected. It is much more logical to look at what sort of political motivations, con-games, etc. would actually be behind this sort of myth-making.

Besides, has Ramsey even bothered refuting the rather heavy evidence against any of the Gospels being even near-contemporaries to Jesus? Or dealt with the fact that Jesus did not, in fact, fulfill ancient Jewish prophecy at all?

Anyway, I'm done. I'll bow out. He has his mind made up, I have my mind made up. You all are still able to decide as you wish, of course. But maybe he'll think again before deciding that 'dogmatic Atheists' are the only ones who won't accept the Resurrection stories at face value.

Maybe, maybe that's what's rubbing me so raw here - that, and the fact that most of his 'evidence' that he's bothered to reply with has been entirely literary - biblical - in nature. He seems to live in a world where it's Abrahamists and Atheists only. Sure, it's a simple off-handed comment - but an insulting one for many reasons.

Oh, and did I miss it, or did he never come back with solid, verifiable, reliable, non-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Christ? Or did I correctly observe that he is focusing entirely on Bible-text and a few extra-biblical references whose authenticity and veracity are deeply in doubt?

Anyway, I'll not return to this thread. I've said my bit, and I remain (as usual) thoroughly unconvinced by the counter-arguments presented.

And for all his 'amateur status', I still think Doherty has the main of it pretty well in hand.

A few points to consider in parting:

1) In as literate an area as Jerusalem was at the time, why didn't more records of the Miracles of Jesus survive? Where are the personal journal records of the Sermon on the Mount, or records of his various amazing feats?

2) Was it possible that Mary, being a politically-active independent woman of good family among the Hebrews, strove to artificially fulfill Hebrew prophecy as best she could, thereby forcing her son to fit the mould of a Hebrew savior?

3) Just playing devil's advocate - why are their New World and Oriental tales describing visitations by a Jesus-like figure, roughly dating to just after the Resurrection?

OK, good day.

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 08:03 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
The documents and letters name enough names, places, and reigns of officials that the events that they purport to describe can be dated, often within a range of a few years.

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Now, are any of those NOT in the Bible? Like, oh, birth records from Bethlehem or tax records from Nazareth or Pontius Pilate's paperwork? (This is a serious question, I genuinely don't know.)

Yes, that's the point. We know when Herod the Great reigned, when Tiberius Caesar ruled, etc. That's the point of mentioning that this happened when so-and-so reigned. It's a very common way of dating events described in ancient documents. (It's also a good way to make embarassing historical errors, which Luke has done a couple times, such as Quirinius and the census, or getting the order of the revolts of Theudas and Judas the Galilean backwards.)

jjramsey

5th July 2005, 08:26 PM

Originally posted by Robin
An empty tomb does not equate to a resurrection. There are plenty of good ways of explaining the resurrection accounts naturalistcally here are just 2:

Right now, I lean more towards some combo of grief hallucinations and cognitive dissonance.

By the way, if you read either Lüdemann or Fuller, you'll find that an empty tomb is not necessarily something that must be directly accounted for in a naturalistic explanation of the resurrection. Paul doesn't mention an empty tomb, so that leaves leeway for the empty tomb accounts to be later legends.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
But that's just it: What Paul presents is an "almost exclusively divine figure." There are definitely signs that when Paul speaks of Christ, he speaks of a human+divine figure. He has referred to Christ as being born of a woman, of being of David's stock, of taking on human form, and he refers once to James as "the brother of the Lord," which suggests that he was aware that Jesus had been flesh and blood and that he had brothers. (More on that in a bit.) He didn't really have much occasion in his letters to refer to the biographical details of Jesus which would emphasize his humanity, so what we see from Paul emphasizes the divine, but the human side is definitely there.

1. born of a woman:
Being born of a woman is cetainly a human feature, but it is something that is self-understood, something for which there is usually no need to point it out. Being born of a woman is so obvious that its pointing out cannot but raise suspicion. All in all I think that with a real human Paul would not have needed to inform/assure his readers of this fact. But with some heavenly Christ, that is different.

2. David's stock:
I think this is the best counter that there is against Doherty's Christ. It certainly can be made to fit, but not without a dose of ad hocness.

3. taking human form:
Momentarily not present as to which passage you refer (I am writing off the top of my head).

4. James the brother of the Lord:
One of the big probelms here is that Lord is used primarily to refer to "God" and not to Jesus. Careful about importing notions that Paul may not have held. It may just be that botL was a religious title that this James held, after all he seems to have been qiute an eminent person, even if you just go by Pauls letters. (Another thing that I have read (messageboard) is that this may have been a name.)

Another thing I want to point out is that according to Doherty Paul's Christ was reaveled in Hebrew scripture*, IOW Paul did some heavy eisegesis on the OT writings. And it is undoubtedly clear that the OT does prophesy some messiah - or something like that - who has human features that Paul somehow has to fit into his "cosmic" Christ, especially the Davidic stock.

* of course also via visions

All in all I think that Doherty has a very strong point that cannot just be handwaved away. Much of Paul's Christ is just too cosmic.

Originally posted by jjramsey
And there is no reason to presume that the disciples would have been slow in turning Jesus into an almost divine figure after his death. Here's a quote from a Dead Sea scroll about the Qumran's Teacher of Righteousness:

(From http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messiah_16.html)

The idea of a Messiah as an exalted quasi-divine viceregent to God is hardly unknown. Plus making him divine (or almost divine) helps to counterbalance the shame of the crucifixion.

My point is that by the time Paul was exposed to the apostles' teaching, he could easily have been looking at kind of divine figure that we see in his epistles.

I do not know all that much about this Teacher of Righteousness. Can you tell me whether it is accepted that there is a real person behind this? From that which is quoted it could be that he is just some sort of (in want for a better word) ideal.

Originally posted by jjramsey
Except that is backwards from the usual trend of legendary development, and if we look at the later non-canonical Christian literature, we see the usual trend of embellishment and exaggeration.

Yes, later.

Originally posted by jjramsey
It's not about trust. It's about looking at things like incidental details into which people just don't put enough thought to lie about them. It's about looking at patterns of discrepancies, like those in the birth narratives. It's about looking at stories that seem like apologies for embarassing events, like Jesus seemingly losing his power in Nazareth. And yes, it is hard, but historians do this all the time.

That is the way it is done, I agree. And there is nothing wrong with it per se.

But my point was that there has to be some point after which which you shift your paradigms, i.e you do no longer regard the texts in question (esp. Mark) as embellished and half-true historical accounts but instead approach them as whole-cloth fiction.

Originally posted by jjramsey
This is the one thing, though, that Doherty does not do. For example, he writes

With a historical Jesus, the offhand reference to James as the Lord's brother fits neatly with other incidental references to James as the brother of Jesus in the Gospels and in Josephus. By positing a mythical Jesus, he now has to explain away this consonance amongst differing documents.

This quote is even worse:

This is pure speculation, and a strained reading of 1 Corinthians 2:8.

I think that you misunderstood me here. Doherty certainly has a unothodox interpretation of some passages (whether he is right or not is irrelevant here) but he barely has to toss out passages as later interpolations etc.

Originally posted by jjramsey
But there is no good reason to interpret documents with regard to what apologists might think.

You will hardly get a big disagreement here, except that they are certainly not axiomatically wrong.

Robin

5th July 2005, 08:57 PM

...of being of David's stock....
Of course the Jesus of the Gospels was not of David's stock. A great attempt is made in Matthew and Luke to show that Joseph was of David's stock - but Joseph was no relation to Jesus.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 09:16 PM

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Well, italics-boy, you're certainly welcome to that opinion.

Nevertheless, it certainly appears as if he's defending the Gospel tales whole-cloth, in spite of the faerie-tale nature of them.

Then your textual comprehension is lacking. I just replied to a passage written by our "apologist" that seems quite clearly to me to talk about and admit a couple of gospel DISCREPANCIES. Moreover do I remeber just having replied to the statement that there is no reason to give anything about apologists's opinions, or something to that effect.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that I missed where he has admitted that, at most, Jesus was nothing but an over-glorified human being.

Even if that is the case, is that a crime around here nowadays?

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
That, after all, is what this thread is about, really - was Jesus actually resurrected in the body, or only in spirit? Well, that doesn't really matter, since Jesus wasn't resurrected at all.

Sounds like something a fundy would say. Only the other way 'round.

And who cares about the thread topic anyway?

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
And that's the key point he seems unwilling to bend on.

How about you just go and sue your Straw Man.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
It is highly illogical to look at these tales and say, yep, he just happened to be the ONLY person in the history of our reality to be resurrected. It is much more logical to look at what sort of political motivations, con-games, etc. would actually be behind this sort of myth-making.

jjramsey: "It's not about trust. It's about looking at things like incidental details into which people just don't put enough thought to lie about them. It's about looking at patterns of discrepancies, like those in the birth narratives. It's about looking at stories that seem like apologies for embarassing events, like Jesus seemingly losing his power in Nazareth. And yes, it is hard, but historians do this all the time."

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Besides, has Ramsey even bothered refuting the rather heavy evidence against any of the Gospels being even near-contemporaries to Jesus? Or dealt with the fact that Jesus did not, in fact, fulfill ancient Jewish prophecy at all?

Has it ever occured to you that he just may agree with this?

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Anyway, I'm done. I'll bow out. He has his mind made up, I have my mind made up. You all are still able to decide as you wish, of course. But maybe he'll think again before deciding that 'dogmatic Atheists' are the only ones who won't accept the Resurrection stories at face value.

If you have a problem with his statement, why don't you just discuss it? I certainly would know what to reply but it wouldn't be as nearly as vitriolic as your last few posts.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Maybe, maybe that's what's rubbing me so raw here - that, and the fact that most of his 'evidence' that he's bothered to reply with has been entirely literary - biblical - in nature. He seems to live in a world where it's Abrahamists and Atheists only. Sure, it's a simple off-handed comment - but an insulting one for many reasons.

Evidence for this accusation? And even it it was true if it a crime around here nowadays?

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Oh, and did I miss it, or did he never come back with solid, verifiable, reliable, non-Biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus, the Christ? Or did I correctly observe that he is focusing entirely on Bible-text and a few extra-biblical references whose authenticity and veracity are deeply in doubt?

Why should he? Oh wait, I think I know why: That is what you are prepared to argue against.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
Anyway, I'll not return to this thread. I've said my bit, and I remain (as usual) thoroughly unconvinced by the counter-arguments presented.

Now where is that whining smiley?

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
And for all his 'amateur status', I still think Doherty has the main of it pretty well in hand.

Yeah, and? Doherty is an amateur and will remain one until he picks up a profession that is directly related to the field of NT studies.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
A few points to consider in parting:

1) In as literate an area as Jerusalem was at the time, why didn't more records of the Miracles of Jesus survive? Where are the personal journal records of the Sermon on the Mount, or records of his various amazing feats?

2) Was it possible that Mary, being a politically-active independent woman of good family among the Hebrews, strove to artificially fulfill Hebrew prophecy as best she could, thereby forcing her son to fit the mould of a Hebrew savior?

Certainly, if you can show that Mary existed. Extra biblical references ranging from 20 BC-40AD please.

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
3) Just playing devil's advocate - why are their New World and Oriental tales describing visitations by a Jesus-like figure, roughly dating to just after the Resurrection?

OK, good day.

Lord Emsworth

5th July 2005, 09:22 PM

Originally posted by Robin
Of course the Jesus of the Gospels was not of David's stock. A great attempt is made in Matthew and Luke to show that Joseph was of David's stock - but Joseph was no relation to Jesus.

But it is only of academic value whether he really was or was not. What is important is what was believed to be the case. To wit, did Paul believe that there was a human Jesus being a descendant of David? Or can it be made to fit with a belief in a Doherty-style Christ Jesus?

UrsulaV

5th July 2005, 11:24 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Yes, that's the point. We know when Herod the Great reigned, when Tiberius Caesar ruled, etc. That's the point of mentioning that this happened when so-and-so reigned. It's a very common way of dating events described in ancient documents. (

That's lovely and all, but do they mention Jesus? I mean, like I said, the fact that we know when Cotton Mather was around does not make Lovecraft's work that mentions him any less fictional. Talking about his time on the Crusades does not make Robin Hood real, even though the Crusades really happened.

So...one more time...

Is there any non-Biblical reference to Jesus as a historical figure?

'Cos using real people/places/events to add that air of versimultude to a fictional account has been goin' on halfway to forever, so what I'm trying to get at here is--does Jesus show up anywhere BUT the Bible?

If he does, just say "Yes, and here's where," and I shall go away satisfied. I'm really quite easy to please, I promise.

nelsondogg

5th July 2005, 11:51 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
...This implausible scenario is even more implausible than your last implausible scenario. First off, it is misleading to say that in the post-resurrection accounts, "some of the people who saw him resurrected didn't recognize him." It's pretty clear that what is being described is that they don't immediately recognize him, but upon a more careful look, they realize it's him. This is not the kind of effect a con artist would be likely to create...

Sure they're implausible, but infinitely more plausible than a dead guy - who by the way was the son of a virgin knocked up by god - coming back to life. Is it less plausible than true believers making it all up or twisting a story a couple generation removed from any witnesses..? Yes, of course. The point is, the least plausible of all the possible scenarios is that there really was a resurrection.

Lord Emsworth

6th July 2005, 12:25 AM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
One of the big probelms here is that Lord is used primarily to refer to "God" and not to Jesus. Careful about importing notions that Paul may not have held.

I think I have to correct myself. The above is total bull.

6th July 2005, 04:08 AM

Originally posted by UrsulaV
Is there any non-Biblical reference to Jesus as a historical figure?

I haven't been participating on this thread because I got fed up with the last four or five times this subject has been discussed.

But there are several extra-biblical references:

- Tacitus who repeats what Christians told about Jesus.

- Josephus who mentions Jesus two times. The established view is that one of these passages was rewritten by some Christian scholar(s) sometime between 250-450 AD. Some folks like to claim that both passages were completely fabricated by Christians. In my opinion (and in opinion of many scholars) this is unlikely. The strongest argument against it is that Origen explicitly mentions inContra Celcum (written in 240s) that even though Josephus accepted John the Babtist and James the brother of Christ as holy men he still failed to acknowledge Jesus as the Christ. The relevant part is in chapter XLVII:

For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite. Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet, says nevertheless-being, although against his will, not far from the truth-that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus (called Christ),-the Jews having put him to death, although he was a man most distinguished for his justice

pgwenthold

6th July 2005, 07:17 AM

Originally posted by Robin
Of course the Jesus of the Gospels was not of David's stock. A great attempt is made in Matthew and Luke to show that Joseph was of David's stock - but Joseph was no relation to Jesus.

ISTR that Wayne Delia on alt.atheism at one time even showed that Joseph was not of David's stock. Something about one of the begatters having been officially disowned or something like that.

pgwenthold

6th July 2005, 07:24 AM

Originally posted by UrsulaV
That's lovely and all, but do they mention Jesus? I mean, like I said, the fact that we know when Cotton Mather was around does not make Lovecraft's work that mentions him any less fictional. Talking about his time on the Crusades does not make Robin Hood real, even though the Crusades really happened.

Moreover, not only are they only mentioned in passing, they are described incorrectly. We know that the guy who is claimed to be governor during Herod's reign was not governor at that time.

So to add to your concept, consider mentioning the Crusades in the Robin Hood tale, but getting certain details about the Crusades wrong? If you think that just mentioning the Crusades does nothing for the validity of Robin Hood, then you would have to think that giving incorrect facts about the Crusades has got to sabotage any claims to authenticity. Yet, nary a blink from bible apologists.

UrsulaV

6th July 2005, 07:26 AM

Originally posted by LW

But there are several extra-biblical references:
*snippage*

Hallelujah, a straight answer! Thank you! That's all I wanted. Much gratitude.

This sort of dicussion may eventually end in circles and flames, but at least I learned something today. *grin*

Skeptical Greg

6th July 2005, 07:30 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey

Actually, I am fence-sitter who on the one hand, finds atheism a good explanation for the way most if not all of the universe works, but on the other hand, considers the resurrection a strong apparent "outlier" with regards to naturalism, something not trivially explainable within a naturalistic worldview. I've being banging on the question of whether it can be explained naturalistically in a plausible way for a while.

If there was a resurrection, what was it's purpose ?

RamblingOnwards

6th July 2005, 08:45 AM

jjramsey,

I am personally a great fan of incidental references. One letter about "that damn Jesus rabble knocking over my fruit stand" would go a very long way to establishing his historical existance in my mind. It fits well within the argument of 'why would anyone at that time have bothered saying it if it wasn't true?'

But I can't see how this argument extends to the fact that whoever wrote the gospels also included both provably true and provably false statements unrelated to Jesus's existence. Could you expand on this for me?

bruto

6th July 2005, 10:23 AM

Originally posted by RamblingOnwards
jjramsey,

I am personally a great fan of incidental references. One letter about "that damn Jesus rabble knocking over my fruit stand" would go a very long way to establishing his historical existance in my mind. It fits well within the argument of 'why would anyone at that time have bothered saying it if it wasn't true?'

But I can't see how this argument extends to the fact that whoever wrote the gospels also included both provably true and provably false statements unrelated to Jesus's existence. Could you expand on this for me?

The simple answer is that it doesn't extend, any more than the existence of some modern saints whose lives are thoroughly enough documented to satisfy any sane skeptic proves the miracles attributed to them.

triadboy

6th July 2005, 01:34 PM

The key to the whole stupid xian mess is Paul. He is not speaking of a real person in time and history - he is speaking of a spirit.

Pauls knows nothing of an earthly Jesus.

Think about it.

Mephisto

6th July 2005, 01:52 PM

Originally posted by Yahweh
I dont know, are the details of the crucifixion historically accurate? Seems strange to me that a bunch of Romans would crucify a guy, take him down three days later, and bury him - wasnt it in the style of the Romans to simply keep people on the cross indefinitely?

I think the story of the removal of Jesus from the cross is a beautiful one. A young girl having witnessed the crucifixion felt sorry for Jesus and retrieved a ladder. She put the ladder against the crossbeam and pulled out the first nail from his hand. Moving the ladder to the other side, she worked hard to pull out that nail, at which point, Jesus (falling forward) began yelling, "the feet! The feet!"

:rolleyes:

bruto

6th July 2005, 02:09 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
But how does a rational person suspend belief in physical and natural laws during biblical times.

You know you can't change water to wine. But Dionysus and Jesus did it. Either they both didn't. They both did. Or one of them did. c'mon

I'm not suggesting you should believe in miracles like the resurrection - I'm just suggesting that analyzing the mechanism of the miracle is not what it's about. I prefer the "resurrection didn't happen" version of it all, so it hardly matters how it's supposed to have happened, but I'm always surprised by how many people are willing to something like this on what is supposed to be pure faith and then quibble about the details. It's like trekkies arguing about the properties of dilithium crystals or the schematics of the hyperdrive.

edit: P.s. On the question above of whether it would be expected to take the body down and bury it after three days, I believe I heard at some point(sorry, as usual I can't remember where) that it wouldn't have been that unusual to essentially buy or ransom the body back for burial.

Lord Emsworth

6th July 2005, 04:13 PM

According to the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is taken down on the same day as the crucifiction, and not after three days.

Lord Emsworth

6th July 2005, 04:28 PM

What do people make out of this?

Hosea 6:2
After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.

1 Corinthians 15:4
and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,

Did the OT passage properly predict something or is it that Paul fashioned his theology to be "in accordance with the scriptures?"

jjramsey

6th July 2005, 08:47 PM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
But my point was that there has to be some point after which which you shift your paradigms, i.e you do no longer regard the texts in question (esp. Mark) as embellished and half-true historical accounts but instead approach them as whole-cloth fiction.

The thing is that the Gospels don't read like whole-cloth fiction. They have little tells that suggest a working around of embarassments. I already pointed out that the infancy narratives look like they were trying to "force" Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. In Mark 6:5, it reads "And he could do no deed of power there, . . . " Mark follows that up with a mention that he did cure a few sick people, but the Freudian slip, so to speak, has already been made. As I pointed out before, it looks like a case of him being able to awe strangers into believing that they are healed, but not people who know him. The excuse about Nazareth's unbelief is inconsistent with some of the other miracle stories that don't require belief on the part of those healed. He also refuses to do miracles for those wanting to test him, suggesting that opponents (understandably) challenged Jesus to give a sign, and he had to make an excuse as to why he could not make good. His cursing the fig tree when it had no reason to have fruit looks downright petty. These look like bits of reality poking through the embellishment.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
I think that you misunderstood me here. Doherty certainly has a unothodox interpretation of some passages (whether he is right or not is irrelevant here) but he barely has to toss out passages as later interpolations etc.

The problem is that he is multiplying entities beyond necessity, and that's why he has to resort to "unorthodox," or strained, interpretations.

triadboy

6th July 2005, 10:29 PM

Originally posted by Mephisto
I think the story of the removal of Jesus from the cross is a beautiful one. A young girl having witnessed the crucifixion felt sorry for Jesus and retrieved a ladder. She put the ladder against the crossbeam and pulled out the first nail from his hand. Moving the ladder to the other side, she worked hard to pull out that nail, at which point, Jesus (falling forward) began yelling, "the feet! The feet!"

:rolleyes:

I remember telling that joke to little friends in 1963. I was 8. I also told one where I would stand as if on the cross and then begin tilting over, saying "Damn beavers!"

triadboy

6th July 2005, 10:40 PM

JJramsey

I understand your opinion that Jesus was a normal run-of-the-mill sage running around like everyone else - and then his life became mythologized after his death. I applaud this theory. It is much better than: "The bible says so - so it's true". (You leave open the possibility that he performed miracles though - which is disturbing to me)

But to really understand your position, I would love for you to answer a question Diogenes posed:

If there was a resurrection, what was it's purpose ?

Kitty Chan

6th July 2005, 10:57 PM

I havent had time to read this entire thread, I will eventually but I do have a question, that has crossed my mind.

What evidence is there for my grandmother once Im dead? My son has not seen her, only in a couple pictures. What if they are lost? there is not many.

She was born somewhere in Poland she claimed. As near as we can understand she was a peasant. When she came to Canada their name was changed as were alot of names in those days. So the records are weak at best.

So 200 years from now, no one will know she existed. So I guess she was not real.

How will it be proved she was here?? The records were lousy.

Dr Adequate

7th July 2005, 12:04 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
I havent had time to read this entire thread, I will eventually but I do have a question, that has crossed my mind.

What evidence is there for my grandmother once Im dead?

How will it be proved she was here?? Your analogy is the wrong way round.

It would be against the laws of nature for a man to come back from the dead after three days.

It would also be against the laws of nature for you not to have a grandmother.

The burden of proof therefore rests on the person who claims that Jesus rose from the dead or that you have no grandmother, since these claims are dubious for exactly the same reason.

That is the correct analogy.

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 06:06 AM

Originally posted by triadboy
I would love for you to answer a question Diogenes posed:

Originally posted by Diogenes
If there was a resurrection, what was it's purpose ?

This one is easy, actually. Resurrection is vindication. It counters the shame of the crucifixion.

RamblingOnwards

7th July 2005, 07:56 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
What evidence is there for my grandmother once Im dead? My son has not seen her, only in a couple pictures. What if they are lost? there is not many.

A few photos on your side, any letter in which you have ever mentioned her, this post. Letters your parents wrote. Diaries of childhood friends not known to you. Polish baptismal certificates. Her marriage certificate. Tax records. Employment records. Any contract she ever signed. Any census she was present for. Your relavent parent's birth certificate. Obituries. The membership records of her church. The lay-away or credit book of the local store-keeper. Not all will still exist in 200 years, but many will.

Of course, these are record keeping times and yes, 200 years from now, because of the name change, it might be very hard to determine if this *name here* is the same person as the *name here* who is your grandmother.

Importantly, though, Jesus isn't comparable to your grandmother in terms of putative fame. According to bible record, he's comparable to Ghandi or Osama Bin Laden. No-one in 200 years will have any trouble in finding written records both pro and anti, as well as popular jokes, incidental references, and so on.

If Jesus really existed, then a rational way to explain the lack of non-Christian records is to assume he was a very minor figure who was too insignificant to have been mentioned by any historians or religious scholars at the time, and for unknown reasons (perhaps as a result of a name change) does not appear in any Roman or Jewish birth, death, census, or legal records. In which case, he has about as much relevance to the gospel teachings as the literal existence of William Robehod has to Robin Hood.

triadboy

7th July 2005, 08:14 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
This one is easy, actually. Resurrection is vindication. It counters the shame of the crucifixion.

But not everyone can be released from the "shame of the crucifixion" through resurrection. Does this mean you believe Jesus was a god?

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 08:21 AM

bruto

7th July 2005, 08:22 AM

Originally posted by Dr Adequate
Your analogy is the wrong way round.

It would be against the laws of nature for a man to come back from the dead after three days.

It would also be against the laws of nature for you not to have a grandmother.

The burden of proof therefore rests on the person who claims that Jesus rose from the dead or that you have no grandmother, since these claims are dubious for exactly the same reason.

That is the correct analogy.

In the context of this thread, I don't think Kitty's analogy is so out of place, since some here seem to have assumed that doubt of the resurrection casts doubt on Jesus' existence, owing to its unlikelihood. I agree that the two questions are separate, but I'm not sure everyone here agrees. Some would assert, I think, that since there is an element of fiction and distortion in the story, it can be assumed that there is no basis for it in fact.

Of course it would be against the laws of nature for Kitty not to have a grandmother at all, but the question is whether any details of the existence of that particular grandmother can be assumed. It would not be against the laws of nature for there NOT to have been a Jesus of Nazareth, but it certainly would be consistent with those laws if there had been, and given that a number of people within a short time of his lifetime collected stories of his supposed life, it seems more likely that he did exist than that he did not.

I think that unless there's a good reason to believe otherwise, we can trust that Kitty's grandmother existed, in the sense that that particular described, Polish grandmother existed, not just that somewhere on earth her parents had parents. If Kitty writes reminiscences now about that grandmother, we would have no particular reason to doubt either her existence or the fact that she was Polish, a peasant, came to Canada, etc., since such details are reasonable and beleivable by themselves, even if Kitty were some woo-woo nutcase who also believed that her grandmother could fly or bend spoons with her eyes.

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 08:33 AM

Originally posted by triadboy
But not everyone can be released from the "shame of the crucifixion" through resurrection. Does this mean you believe Jesus was a god?

What I mean is that without the resurrection (or at least belief in same), Jesus would have been just another would-be messiah killed by the Romans. He might have been pitied, but he would have been regarded as a failure. Resurrection would be God's way of saying that, no, he had not failed, in spite of the crucifixion. If you like, you can view it as a counter-spin to the negative publicity that the crucifixion makes.

Let me make clear that when I write "shame of the crucifixion," I mean something concrete. Crucifixion was a way of discrediting and making an example of enemies of the state.

Skeptical Greg

7th July 2005, 09:10 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
This one is easy, actually. Resurrection is vindication. It counters the shame of the crucifixion. I can appreciate the metaphor, but it is rather weak, in that hardly anyone at the time made note of it.

It certainly didn't make those nasty Romans feel like they had made a mistake, or that anyone had been vindicated.

If Jesus had come back with guns ( Or would that be swords ?) blazing and sacked Pilates office building, you might have a point. As it was, he showed himself to a few close friends, ( who notably weren't interested in spreading the good news either ) and quickly got the hell out of Dodge.. And we ain't seen him since.

7th July 2005, 09:26 AM

Originally posted by RamblingOnwards
... and for unknown reasons (perhaps as a result of a name change) does not appear in any Roman or Jewish birth, death, census, or legal records.

A better reason for that failure is that no Roman official archive survived. There are no official records of any person living under Roman rule in existence.

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 09:35 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
This one is easy, actually. Resurrection is vindication. It counters the shame of the crucifixion.

Originally posted by Diogenes
It certainly didn't make those nasty Romans feel like they had made a mistake, or that anyone had been vindicated.

No, but it (either resurrection or belief in same) made the disciples feel that they had not made a mistake in following Jesus, made them feel vindicated. It also was a reason that they could give to others to explain why they still believed that Jesus was the Messiah, in spite of him being crucified.

You do understand that in the first century, a crucified Messiah would normally have been regarded as an oxymoron, right?

RamblingOnwards

7th July 2005, 09:54 AM

Originally posted by LW
A better reason for that failure is that no Roman official archive survived. There are no official records of any person living under Roman rule in existence.

You're right, I should have made clear I was talking about the informal records that make the existence of say, Titus Annius Milo (a bit player in the Julius Caesar story) almost certain, rather than a formal database of indivuals we would associate with the terms.

Skeptical Greg

7th July 2005, 10:09 AM

P.S.

Something else that doesn't make sense..

If Jesus was / is the son of the one true God, the resurrection is no big deal. We should expect no less..

Christians suggest the resurrection, of which they have no proof, is the proof he was the son of God. Totally circular and without merit.

Ossai

7th July 2005, 11:53 AM

Diogenes

There you go, pointing out the obviousness again.

:D

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by Diogenes

Christians suggest the resurrection, of which they have no proof, is the proof he was the son of God.

Careful here. I hope that you are not presuming that "Messiah" is necessarily meant to be understood as "son of God" in the classical trinitarian sense.

(Let me put on my heathen hat here.)

The evolution of Jesus' deification probably went something like this:

Jesus starts out his ministry probably understanding himself to be the Messiah and making veiled claims to that effect.

He gets crucified as a troublemaker. If the story ended here, he would be considered no more of a messiah than Judas the Galilean, Theudas, or (much later) Simon bar Kochba.

The disciples somehow get it into their heads that Jesus was resurrected by God, which in their minds vindicates all the claims that he made.

As Messiah, Jesus is God's viceregent, a king answerable only to God. Since he is in heaven, he becomes, well, a heavenly king. Technically, he is not God, but he's as close to being God as someone who isn't God can be.

In the minds of Christians, Jesus goes from being someone who might as well be God to someone who flat out is God.

Lord Emsworth

7th July 2005, 12:29 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
The thing is that the Gospels don't read like whole-cloth fiction. They have little tells that suggest a working around of embarassments. I already pointed out that the infancy narratives look like they were trying to "force" Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. In Mark 6:5, it reads "And he could do no deed of power there, . . . " Mark follows that up with a mention that he did cure a few sick people, but the Freudian slip, so to speak, has already been made. As I pointed out before, it looks like a case of him being able to awe strangers into believing that they are healed, but not people who know him. The excuse about Nazareth's unbelief is inconsistent with some of the other miracle stories that don't require belief on the part of those healed.

The easiest way to work around the embarassment in Mark 6 would simply be not to mention it. Or to hopelessly exaggerate on the few people who were healed. I do not think that there is a problem with any of that. No, I just do not think that Mark 6:5 is there by accident, or a Freudian slip or anything like that. It is there to make a point, and in conjunction with Mark 6:6 it becomes clear what it is.

It is a stab against apistis which is rendered as unbelief in that verse. And apistis is a negation of pistis, which is not merely belief but faith. And along with faith you get trust, allegiance and a willingness to obey. And this is what the people are clearly not exhibiting. Depending on how you read 6:2 you might even say that the villagers know very well that Jesus can work miracles and teach wonderful things (of course you could read it as sarcasm also) but they lack the proper attitude.

You may think that Jesus failure is embarassing, but I do not think that the author of mark would agree with you. He would rather put the blame on the people of the village. And an approach like that is certainly not unheard of in Christianity.

As for the other people who do not believe and yet have miracles performed on, do you have an example? I think that they will show not yet belief on the part of the person involved but definitely a willingness.

Originally posted by jjramsey
He also refuses to do miracles for those wanting to test him, suggesting that opponents (understandably) challenged Jesus to give a sign, and he had to make an excuse as to why he could not make good.

Of course, the same point as above. If somebody wants a test only he is not exhibiting the proper trust.

Originally posted by jjramsey
His cursing the fig tree when it had no reason to have fruit looks downright petty. These look like bits of reality poking through the embellishment.

The cursing of the fig tree is I believe an analogy.

bruto

7th July 2005, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth

Of course, the same point as above. If somebody wants a test only he is not exhibiting the proper trust.

Isn't that pretty much the same excuse used by psychics and others who either fail or decline scientific proof? Sorry, much as I like Jesus as a character, a miracle that requires a payment of faith in advance is pretty thin gruel.

Skeptical Greg

7th July 2005, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by Ossai
Diogenes

There you go, pointing out the obviousness again.

:D It beats genuine scholarship, and I'm lazy.:D

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 02:09 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
The thing is that the Gospels don't read like whole-cloth fiction. They have little tells that suggest a working around of embarassments. I already pointed out that the infancy narratives look like they were trying to "force" Jesus to be born in Bethlehem. In Mark 6:5, it reads "And he could do no deed of power there, . . . " Mark follows that up with a mention that he did cure a few sick people, but the Freudian slip, so to speak, has already been made. As I pointed out before, it looks like a case of him being able to awe strangers into believing that they are healed, but not people who know him. The excuse about Nazareth's unbelief is inconsistent with some of the other miracle stories that don't require belief on the part of those healed.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
The easiest way to work around the embarassment in Mark 6 would simply be not to mention it. Or to hopelessly exaggerate on the few people who were healed. I do not think that there is a problem with any of that. No, I just do not think that Mark 6:5 is there by accident, or a Freudian slip or anything like that. It is there to make a point, and in conjunction with Mark 6:6 it becomes clear what it is.

It is a stab against apistis which is rendered as unbelief in that verse. And apistis is a negation of pistis, which is not merely belief but faith. And along with faith you get trust, allegiance and a willingness to obey.

But there are ways of doing this without opening Jesus up to the charge that he could do no deed of power. If you look at the parallel account Matthew, it is softened to read that he merely did few works of power there, and if you look at Luke 4:16-30, the account is so heavily massaged that there is not even a hint of failure on Jesus' part, so it is clear that later writers noticed that Mark wrote something embarassing.

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth

You may think that Jesus failure is embarassing, but I do not think that the author of mark would agree with you. He would rather put the blame on the people of the village.

But that's my point. It looks like he is shifting the blame away from Jesus. So how did blame get onto Jesus in the first place?

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
As for the other people who do not believe and yet have miracles performed on, do you have an example? I think that they will show not yet belief on the part of the person involved but definitely a willingness.

When Jesus casts out the demon in the synagogue at Capernaum (Mark 1:21-28), or when Jesus walks on the sea, gets back in the boat and rebukes the wind (Mark 6:47-52), or when he feeds the five thousand, faith simply isn't an issue at all. Certainly the wind and the sea aren't expected to have faith. So why is faith an issue with some miracles and not others?

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Of course, the same point as above. If somebody wants a test only he is not exhibiting the proper trust.

Yet Moses is willing to do miraculous demonstrations before Pharoah (Exodus 7:8-8:19), and Elijah is willing to let God miraculously burn his sacrifice before the priests of Baal in a "whose God is better competition" (1 Kings 18:20-40). If these prophets were supposedly willing to prove themselves with miracles before their adversaries, then why shouldn't Jesus, if he has got the goods?

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth

The cursing of the fig tree is I believe an analogy.

The cursing of the fig tree certainly gets used as an object lesson. What's odd is that the object lesson comes from an act so petty.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 04:52 PM

Originally posted by Diogenes
It certainly didn't make those nasty Romans feel like they had made a mistake, or that anyone had been vindicated.

If Jesus had come back with guns ( Or would that be swords ?) blazing and sacked Pilates office building, you might have a point. As it was, he showed himself to a few close friends, ( who notably weren't interested in spreading the good news either ) and quickly got the hell out of Dodge.. And we ain't seen him since.

As a note re romans; the roman centurian did say there was a mistake and Christ was who He said He was. As well the little incident of letting Barabas go, was to avoid killing Christ, because of a suspicion of who He was.

Jesus ate with, spoke with, the close friends and varoius others over if I remember correct 40 days or so. He addressed a large crowd as well. He gave instruction to spread the good news as you say. They were interested and they did do so.

As for guns or swords blazing thats one of the things that picked off some of the people back in the day. They wanted Jesus to come in and take care of everything while they sat lazy back.

When He said love your ememies it picked them all off. It was asked of Jesus if He was going to restore Israel but He said it was not the time. The time is to come, it wasnt then.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 05:07 PM

Originally posted by bruto
In the context of this thread, I don't think Kitty's analogy is so out of place, since some here seem to have assumed that doubt of the resurrection casts doubt on Jesus' existence, owing to its unlikelihood. I agree that the two questions are separate, but I'm not sure everyone here agrees. Some would assert, I think, that since there is an element of fiction and distortion in the story, it can be assumed that there is no basis for it in fact.

Of course it would be against the laws of nature for Kitty not to have a grandmother at all, but the question is whether any details of the existence of that particular grandmother can be assumed. It would not be against the laws of nature for there NOT to have been a Jesus of Nazareth, but it certainly would be consistent with those laws if there had been, and given that a number of people within a short time of his lifetime collected stories of his supposed life, it seems more likely that he did exist than that he did not.

I think that unless there's a good reason to believe otherwise, we can trust that Kitty's grandmother existed, in the sense that that particular described, Polish grandmother existed, not just that somewhere on earth her parents had parents. If Kitty writes reminiscences now about that grandmother, we would have no particular reason to doubt either her existence or the fact that she was Polish, a peasant, came to Canada, etc., since such details are reasonable and beleivable by themselves, even if Kitty were some woo-woo nutcase who also believed that her grandmother could fly or bend spoons with her eyes.

Thank you

Like I said just before you earlier, "Seems to me we trust alot of old history with the exception of if a person named Jesus walked the earth. Doesnt seem to be a problem with other historical figures, alot of whom have less written about them."

I believe someone who simply says they dont believe Jesus raised up in 3 days, fine their choice.

Im entirely suspcious when its claimed He didnt even exist at all, theres no logic in that. Too much conspirary theory even for me. And smacks of erasing the issue so one doesnt have to deal with it. Kind of like holocast denyers.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 05:25 PM

PS

The Fig Tree was never going to have figs. If it had leaves, it should have had fruit.

A object lesson, yea Jesus taught through parables and it was a opportunity.

Note He had to look at it to see if it had fruit (had leaves so should have) but He didnt know. So reveals a human side.

Then He cursed it and it withered, revealing a God side.

Lots of stuff to think about with that tree.

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 06:48 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan

The Fig Tree was never going to have figs. If it had leaves, it should have had fruit.

With all due respect, that's a rationalization not even justified by the text. Mark pointed out that it simply was not the season for figs, and a fig tree would need leaves to have the energy to make flowers and fruit.

BTW, this looks like another Marcan passage where its parallel in Matthew was massaged to make it less embarassing. In Matthew 21:18-22, there is no mention of it not being the season for figs.

triadboy

7th July 2005, 07:42 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
As a note re romans; the roman centurian did say there was a mistake and Christ was who He said He was. As well the little incident of letting Barabas go, was to avoid killing Christ, because of a suspicion of who He was.

So they let Jesus Barabas go - "Bar" meaing "son of" and "Abas" meaing "Father". So they let Jesus Son of the Father go. Weird.

As for guns or swords blazing thats one of the things that picked off some of the people back in the day. They wanted Jesus to come in and take care of everything while they sat lazy back.

The messiah was supposed to be a political leader - Jesus was never a political leader. Perhaps they didn't think he was the messiah.

When He said love your ememies it picked them all off.

You underestimate people - don't forget Buddha had already lived and taught.

Robin

7th July 2005, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Im entirely suspcious when its claimed He didnt even exist at all, theres no logic in that. Too much conspirary theory even for me. And smacks of erasing the issue so one doesnt have to deal with it. Kind of like holocast denyers. [/B]
That is a kind of nasty thing to say.

Why is a historical Jesus an issue to deal with? The fact that he existed does not make him God. After all I have good evidence that the Rev. Moon really exists but that does not mean I have to entertain any of his claims of divinity.

Evidence for Jesus' divinity cannot rest on scriptural or historical sources.

JAR

7th July 2005, 07:58 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
The key to the whole stupid xian mess is Paul. He is not speaking of a real person in time and history - he is speaking of a spirit.

Pauls knows nothing of an earthly Jesus.

Think about it.
In "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans" it says in 1:1-3:

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,/(Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,)/Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;"

One might take note of the appearance in the epistle of the phrase "made of the seed of David according to the flesh".

jjramsey

7th July 2005, 07:59 PM

Originally posted by triadboy

The messiah was supposed to be a political leader

This is actually only part of the story. Many did expect a political leader, and supported a military uprising. Others, such as those of the Qumran community, passively waited for a messiah to come. Messianic expectations were not uniform.

JAR

7th July 2005, 08:50 PM

Originally posted by KelvinG
Can't you point us in the direction of the smoking gun evidence that proves Jesus' existence.
I'm not saying he didn't exist, but the research I've done (admittedly, it hasn't been extensive) certainly raises doubts on both sides of the issue.
But, I'm more than willing to be proven wrong if you feel there is sufficient historical data to prove definitely that Jesus actually existed.
There is evidence of Jesus' existence, and it comes in the form of prophecies of when the end of the world will come.

In Mark 13:30-31, it says:

"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done./ Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away."

In Matthew 24:34-35, it says:

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled./ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

In this prophecy, Jesus predicts that the end of the world will come within the lifetime of at least a portion of those who lived during the life of Jesus. If Jesus never existed, then such a prophecy would be pointless to make because it would have failed to come true right from the moment it was made.

triadboy

7th July 2005, 08:54 PM

Originally posted by JAR
In "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans" it says in 1:1-3:

One might take note of the appearance in the epistle of the phrase "made of the seed of David according to the flesh".

He knows nothing about Joseph and Mary. He is regurgitating OT predictions, because he is pushing a Jewish Mystery Religion.

If Joseph (seed of David) was Jesus' father - we have another problem.

triadboy

7th July 2005, 08:57 PM

triadboy

7th July 2005, 09:01 PM

Originally posted by JAR
If Jesus never existed, then such a prophecy would be pointless to make because it would have failed to come true right from the moment it was made.

WHAT?! ....are you joking? You're trying to make a sig line right?

Skeptical Greg

7th July 2005, 09:09 PM

Originally posted by JAR
There is evidence of Jesus' existence, and it comes in the form of prophecies of when the end of the world will come.

In Mark 13:30-31, it says:

"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done./ Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away."

In Matthew 24:34-35, it says:

"Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled./ Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

In this prophecy, Jesus predicts that the end of the world will come within the lifetime of at least a portion of those who lived during the life of Jesus. If Jesus never existed, then such a prophecy would be pointless to make because it would have failed to come true right from the moment it was made. A phrophecy that failed to come true, is proof that Jesus existed ?:confused:

I think you got some 'splainin to do.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by jjramsey
With all due respect, that's a rationalization not even justified by the text. Mark pointed out that it simply was not the season for figs, and a fig tree would need leaves to have the energy to make flowers and fruit.

BTW, this looks like another Marcan passage where its parallel in Matthew was massaged to make it less embarassing. In Matthew 21:18-22, there is no mention of it not being the season for figs.

I just read up on fig trees, when they have leaves they should have fruit.

So becomes a object lesson, the tree looked good from afar, but when examinined it was empty of fruit.

So, some people look good but their hearts are . . .

Also isnt it said elsewhere that you will know someone by their fruit.

teaching opportunity, to those that want to hear, thats all.

Robin

7th July 2005, 10:02 PM

I suppose this will be argued forever, but it has a ring of truth to me that this is simply a retelling of a story that has been around in one form or another for as long as people have planted and harvested grain. The events of the story follow the sow/harvest cycle.

The grain is personified as a bringer of life, but who is betrayed and brutally murdered (ie the harvest and milling). The figure is put in the ground and is raised up again (ie is planted and regrows). This makes sense of the rather grisly symbolism of the eucharist - 'this bread is my body, this wine is my blood'.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 11:10 PM

triadboy

Barabas was also one who wanted to overthrow Rome. Did Jesus? No He said give Ceasar what is his due. Besides Barabas was his name not Jesus. And Barabas did not fullfill the requirements of prophecy that Jesus did.

No, they wanted a political leader to kick out Rome. They were not expecting the suffering Messiah who would call them to give of themselves. They wanted a concouring Messiah but the time was not then, it is to come.

Kitty Chan

7th July 2005, 11:16 PM

Originally posted by Robin
That is a kind of nasty thing to say.

Why is a historical Jesus an issue to deal with? The fact that he existed does not make him God. After all I have good evidence that the Rev. Moon really exists but that does not mean I have to entertain any of his claims of divinity.

Evidence for Jesus' divinity cannot rest on scriptural or historical sources.

Didnt say it did, was commenting on that some say Jesus didnt exist at all. Never said just because He did He was God.

Started with my Grandma a few posts back, I agree with you about Rev. Moon, if you look back about my grandma you will see why.

So since were saying the same thing is it still nasty?? ;)

Robin

7th July 2005, 11:20 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Didnt say it did, was commenting on that some say Jesus didnt exist at all. Never said just because He did He was God.

Started with my Grandma a few posts back, I agree with you about Rev. Moon, if you look back about my grandma you will see why.

So since were saying the same thing is it still nasty?? ;)
Actually I was referring to the comparison between people that suggest that Jesus might not have existed and holocaust deniers.

Lord Emsworth

8th July 2005, 12:57 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Besides Barabas was his name not Jesus.

Matthew 27
16 At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Jesus Barabbas.

Translation from the NRSV. (http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=?passage=Matt+27%3A16) A footnote points out that "[o]ther ancient authorities lack Jesus"

RamblingOnwards

8th July 2005, 03:03 AM

I think there are three positions here which are getting somewhat confused:

1. Jesus existed, pretty much as described in the bible, and it is mere happenstance that no record written during his lifetime has survived to the current day.

2. Jesus probably existed as a minor figure on whom the gospels were loosely based. We wouldn't take 'Ying xiong/Hero' literally, but we don't doubt the existence of the historical ruler of Qin.

3. Since Jesus is only initially mentioned in a clearly fictional religious documents, it seems unreasonable to assume he existed.

I take it no one is claiming that the evidence for a historical Jesus is particularly impressive?

Ossai

8th July 2005, 06:29 AM

Kitty Chan
Barabas was also one who wanted to overthrow Rome. Did Jesus? No He said give Ceasar what is his due. Besides Barabas was his name not Jesus. And Barabas did not fullfill the requirements of prophecy that Jesus did.
Jesus said give Caesar what is due Caesar but doesnâ€™t actually define what is Caesars.
Jesus did not fulfill the requirements of prophecy. Go look them up yourself â€“ theyâ€™re all listed in Genesis. The thing that people claim Jesus fulfilled arenâ€™t actually prophecies concerning him, they are out of context bits of text.

Ossai

jjramsey

8th July 2005, 06:39 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
I just read up on fig trees, when they have leaves they should have fruit.

From where did you read it?

jjramsey

8th July 2005, 06:47 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
This is actually only part of the story. Many did expect a political leader, and supported a military uprising. Others, such as those of the Qumran community, passively waited for a messiah to come. Messianic expectations were not uniform.

Originally posted by triadboy
The Messiah was to rule like a King - just like David.

But people varied in how they expected this Messiah to come. See here:

http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messiah00.html

stamenflicker

8th July 2005, 07:52 AM

Diogenes,

If Jesus was / is the son of the one true God, the resurrection is no big deal. We should expect no less..

In response to some of his Jewish critics for his claim of being God's son, Jesus quoted a Psalm stating (my paraphrase), "Why are you so ticked off that I say I'm God's Son, doesn't David say, 'You are gods?' So if David can say, 'you are gods' why get mad at me for saying I'm God's son?"

I think its in John 8. Point being, at least to me, it is of greater consequence that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, predicted by Isaiah and the prophets, expected to be born about the time Jesus was born based on a prophecy in Daniel, sought after by wise men and Herod who knew the prophecy, etc. At whatever point the divine conception and origination entered into the equation is of little consequence to many believers.

Flick

pgwenthold

8th July 2005, 08:01 AM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Translation from the NRSV. (http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=?passage=Matt+27%3A16) A footnote points out that "[o]ther ancient authorities lack Jesus"

And an excellent example of how sometimes, your favorite church doesn't always teach you the full story.

I spent a lot of time serving mass growing up catholic, so I was right there up front and have heard all of the catholic readings countless number of times. I've been there through all the passions, and heard the Barabbas story over and over again.

When I heard that Barabbas meant "son of the Father", it really got me thinking. When I further heard that the actual name was Jesus Barabbas, I realized there was a heck of a lot more to it than the Gospels let on. All of a sudden, you get the impression of "dueling messiahs," and you wonder, are the gospels just a result of history being written by the winners?

Also, growing up catholic, you didn't hear much about James the brother of Jesus. But boy, that is described as explicitly as you can get in the gospels.

Things are not always what they seem.

Kitty Chan

8th July 2005, 08:09 AM

Originally posted by Robin
Actually I was referring to the comparison between people that suggest that Jesus might not have existed and holocaust deniers.

ok I didnt get that, but ok, its still denying something happened. Thats all I meant. Something like the holocasut happened but people still insist it didnt. Nothing sinister just that. :)

Kitty Chan

8th July 2005, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by Lord Emsworth
Translation from the NRSV. (http://bible.oremus.org/browser.cgi?passage=?passage=Matt+27%3A16) A footnote points out that "[o]ther ancient authorities lack Jesus"

Ok didnt know that, guess I was wrong. So now there is 2 guys called Jesus

Ok which one fullfills the prophecies better than the other? There is a warning that there will be false Christs. Interesting and even more signaficat that the crowd chose Barabas. Theres always another nugget to dig out of those pages. :D

pgwenthold

8th July 2005, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Ok didnt know that, guess I was wrong. So now there is 2 guys called Jesus

Dang, I wish I could remember where I saw the link before (maybe even earilier in this thread).

This link describes something like a half a dozen OTHER Jesi from that era that are mentioned in the historical record (maybe even Josephus).

This is one of the problems with the "historical evidence for Jesus" issue. A common retort is, why would have anyone bothered to mention him at the time? Well, I don't know, but people did find reasons to talk about other supposed Jesuses. Odd that they missed the big INRI.

ETA: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm

Kitty Chan

8th July 2005, 09:43 AM

Originally posted by Ossai
Kitty Chan

Jesus said give Caesar what is due Caesar but doesnâ€™t actually define what is Caesars.
Jesus did not fulfill the requirements of prophecy. Go look them up yourself â€“ theyâ€™re all listed in Genesis. The thing that people claim Jesus fulfilled arenâ€™t actually prophecies concerning him, they are out of context bits of text.

Ossai

They were testing Christ by asking Him about a coin and who to pay, God or Ceasar.

Jesus did fullfill the requirements, there is volumes written about it. I have looked at what they had to say and do agree. You would have to dispute the theoligians. The church leaders in the day didnt think He fullfilled the prophecy either, but they had something to lose called power. The common man was more concerned about truth then power so he could honestly look at the prophecies.

There is no conspiracy, someone eventually had to fullfill the prophecy and Jesus does. If you want to know more then you can look up a book called the Case for Christ, written by another skeptic. Its a good nutshell of the longer books. Then if you need more info that book supplies all his sources so you can check them out.

jjramsey

8th July 2005, 10:36 AM

Originally posted by pgwenthold

ETA: http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm

I noticed on the side of this page was a quote by A. N. Wilson:

The Jesus of the Gospels is an artificial creation, a collective work of art who evolved through the combined consciousness of two generations of Christian worship

However, I found an interview that indicates that the above quote must have been quoted out of context:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/april97/wilson_4-18.html

From this interview:

A.N. WILSON: Well, Jesus, like Paul, was a Jew. And I donâ€™t think either of them had the smallest intention of founding a religion which a breakaway movement from Judaism. I donâ€™t think even Paul did. Jesus is a Palestinian Jew. Heâ€™s not merely limited to Palestine, the present day land of Israel, but to rural Galilee, and as far as we know, he had no interest whatsoever in the gentiles. A few fragmentary bits of Jesusâ€™s actual conversation which we have recorded in the synoptic gospels suggest that he had an absolute contempt for the gentiles. He called them "dogs" and "pigs." I mean, "Why cast your pearls before swine," he said when somebody asked him heâ€™d preach in gentile city.

Clearly, Wilson believes that Jesus existed, so the quote from the "Jesus Never Existed" site is, to put it politely, cooked. That should raise suspicions right there.

pgwenthold

8th July 2005, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Jesus did fullfill the requirements, there is volumes written about it. I have looked at what they had to say and do agree. You would have to dispute the theoligians.

One thing I don't understand: if it is so bloody obvious that Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah, why do we still have Jews and Muslims still waiting for the Messiah to come? Are so many people that stupid?

This has nothing to do with "church leaders of the day" worrying about power.

pgwenthold

8th July 2005, 10:57 AM

Originally posted by jjramsey
Clearly, Wilson believes that Jesus existed, so the quote from the "Jesus Never Existed" site is, to put it politely, cooked. That should raise suspicions right there.

You don't have to accept the premise of the website to believe the statements that there were other Jesuses mentioned in the ancient literature. That is the context in which I provided the link: there were other Jesuses besides just the big JC.

I don't have access to Josephus, but the comment "Josephus, the first century Jewish historian mentions no fewer than nineteen different Yeshuas/Jesii, about half of them contemporaries of the supposed Christ! In his Antiquities, of the twenty-eight high priests who held office from the reign of Herod the Great to the fall of the Temple, no fewer than four bore the name Jesus:" is a simple statement of fact that can easily be checked.

Do you doubt that Josephus mentions many different Yeshuas/Jesii? If not, then your objections are irrelevent.

Skeptical Greg

8th July 2005, 11:28 AM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
......
There is no conspiracy, someone eventually had to fullfill the prophecy and Jesus does. If you want to know more then you can look up a book called the Case for Christ, written by another skeptic. Its a good nutshell of the longer books. Then if you need more info that book supplies all his sources so you can check them out. What prophecy did Jesus fullfill?

Give us one and we will take a look at it. It should clearly show that the jesus in the NT was the only person the prophecy could be referring to.

jjramsey

8th July 2005, 11:42 AM

Originally posted by pgwenthold
You don't have to accept the premise of the website (http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/surfeit.htm) to believe the statements that there were other Jesuses mentioned in the ancient literature.

Indeed. And I had already pointed out that "Jesus" was a common name. But you could have used a web page from a site that wasn't village atheist woo-woo.

bruto

8th July 2005, 03:54 PM

Originally posted by Ossai
Kitty Chan

Jesus said give Caesar what is due Caesar but doesnâ€™t actually define what is Caesars.

Ossai

I thought he did that pretty explicitly: Caesar's face and name on the coin defined it as his.

triadboy

8th July 2005, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan
Ok didnt know that, guess I was wrong. So now there is 2 guys called Jesus

There were a lot more than 2.

Ok which one fullfills the prophecies better than the other? There is a warning that there will be false Christs. Interesting and even more signaficat that the crowd chose Barabas. Theres always another nugget to dig out of those pages.

That's the point - he didn't fulfil the prophecies of a Jewish messiah.

Ossai

11th July 2005, 01:10 PM

Kitty Chan
Jesus did fullfill the requirements, there is volumes written about it. I have looked at what they had to say and do agree. You would have to dispute the theoligians. The church leaders in the day didnt think He fullfilled the prophecy either, but they had something to lose called power. The common man was more concerned about truth then power so he could honestly look at the prophecies.
Nope, youâ€™re getting your information from a biased source there as well.
The church leaders in this day and age think he fulfilled the prophecy, and say as much, because they have something to lose called power.

Sorry but Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies listed in Genesis. Or did world wide peace break out and no one told me?

There is no conspiracy, someone eventually had to fullfill the prophecy and Jesus does. Ok, itâ€™ll be fulfilled â€“ fine. However Jesus did not do so. Actually go back through Genesis and write them down. Then cross them off as Jesus fulfills them. Once youâ€™ve composed your list of prophecies and fulfillments post it. Iâ€™ll gladly reconsider my position, however having done as I recommend I can definitely say that Jesus does not fulfill the OT prophecies.

bruto
I thought he did that pretty explicitly: Caesar's face and name on the coin defined it as his. So are you saying that all money is the governmentâ€™s (Caesarâ€™s)? Or are you just saying that hard currency belongs to the government? What about civic duty and required military service? Is that Caesarâ€™s? Can a Christian be a conscientious objector if military service is required?

Ossai

Kitty Chan

12th July 2005, 11:22 PM

Originally posted by pgwenthold
[B]Dang, I wish I could remember where I saw the link before (maybe even earilier in this thread).

This link describes something like a half a dozen OTHER Jesi from that era that are mentioned in the historical record (maybe even Josephus).

This is one of the problems with the "historical evidence for Jesus" issue. A common retort is, why would have anyone bothered to mention him at the time? Well, I don't know, but people did find reasons to talk about other supposed Jesuses. Odd that they missed the big INRI.

Yea there is definetely other christs who had easier messages to follow, and not forgetting the anti christ. (All false christs are a lead in to the anti christ).

Like said none fullfill the prophecies like Jesus Christ.

Now, the anti christ will appear to fullfill the prophecies and everyone will say finally here is the christ. But Jesus Christ already warned about that saying that some will say He is in the field. Not to believe it.

The anti christ will heal, perform wonders and be a really good show. But like I said he will appear to fullfill in actuallity he wont and his true colours will show as well.

This is why although healings, signs and wonders are great they shouldnt be the basis of ones belief. These wonderous things can be faked, belief cannot. (true belief of the followers I may add) Leaders can fake and drag people along with them (which is the basis of anti christ like btw)

kuroyume0161

13th July 2005, 02:39 AM

What prophecies did Jesus fulfill?

The lineage of David is blatantly stupid, in the least. Since Joseph had no part in the conception (i.e.: squirting of sperm to impregnate the egg) by biblical accounts, any references to a lineage to David through Joseph are ridiculous. And a lineage to David through Mary are suspect at best. Same level of believability as the San Graal (Holy Grail as the blood-line of Jesus' descendants, for those who don't know).

Jesus was not a king. Although appropriate references were made in attempts to justify the term, they fail, let's say, in the basic definition of 'king'. Christianity redefined the definition to retrofit into the prophecies (kingdom of heaven - the Jews were expecting a saviour warrior king on Earth to save them from their oppressors in the 'here and now' - oh well).

Nazareth, by all scholarly studies, did not exist in the time of Jesus. Jesus the Nazarene is a reference to the Nazarenes (a sect) not Nazareth.

Amos 8:9 is taken out of context with respect to the darkening of the sky when Jesus dies on the crucifix (as there is more said that has no relation).

Even Jesus' own prophecy in Matt. 16:28 seems to be still on hold (and way long past its efficacy). A God that cannot predict the future properly is not a god at all.

The problem with prophecies and their fulfillment is that slight problem of quality control. When the prophecies are there for all to see, it is easy to make claims and self-fulfill to justify the requirements. When they fail, it is easy to find rationalizations to circumvent the obvious flaws (see each and every and all predictions of the 'End of the World' that failed each and every and all times).

I'd say that prophecies be damned. If Jesus were the "Son of God" or "God incarnate", the so-called miraculous events of his life would be justification enough. Yet again, these miracles are uncorroborated, unevidenced, and improbable. Sorry, the basis of ones belief should be irrefutable evidence. There is none for Jesus (or any other deity). Prophecy fulfilling has no place in the determination of realization since retrofitting, staging, and all manner of canard can be employed in order to fit the data to the equation.

And you, Kitty Chan, fall into the sand pit as easily as an autumn leaf sways to the ground. What discernment distinguishes the 'anti-christ' from the 'christ'? Was Jesus the Anointed One the anti-christ? Prove the assumption incorrect. Just by the stupidity of proposing a deceiver who can work 'for' or 'with similar predilections of' God, the entire enterprise of distinguishing acts of God and acts of Deceiver become impossible. Thus we remind you of the Grand Inquisition and witch burnings and other atrocities upon innocent human beings in the guise of certainty and unambigousness as to who were valid believers and were not.

I say that Jesus Christ performed well as the 'Son of the Deceiver'. How does it feel to be in a religion that worships Satan's (the Devil, rebellious angel) deceptive messiah?

jjramsey

13th July 2005, 06:16 AM

Originally posted by kuroyume0161

The lineage of David is blatantly stupid, in the least. Since Joseph had no part in the conception (i.e.: squirting of sperm to impregnate the egg) by biblical accounts, any references to a lineage to David through Joseph are ridiculous.

-- snip --

Nazareth, by all scholarly studies, did not exist in the time of Jesus. Jesus the Nazarene is a reference to the Nazarenes (a sect) not Nazareth.

With all due respect, these two points are your weakest.

You assume that it would not have been acceptable for Joseph to have been anything but the biological father. This is an iffy claim at best, especially since there was no nice neat checklist for messianic qualifications.

Saying that "Nazareth, by all scholarly studies, did not exist in the time of Jesus" is completely wrong. The only "scholars" who say this are partisans trying to prove that Jesus never existed. The idea that Nazareth wasn't around in the first century is not taken seriously even on the liberal side of mainstream New Testament scholarship.

A point that is more of a quibble:

Originally posted by kuroyume0161

the Jews were expecting a saviour warrior king on Earth to save them from their oppressors in the 'here and now'

The "here and now" part was, AFAIK, a universal messianic expection, but on the "warrior" issue, there was quite a bit of spread of views. See http://www.livius.org/men-mh/messiah/messiah00.html.

Originally posted by kuroyume0161

The problem with prophecies and their fulfillment is that slight problem of quality control. When the prophecies are there for all to see, it is easy to make claims and self-fulfill to justify the requirements. When they fail, it is easy to find rationalizations to circumvent the obvious flaws

This is true.

Ossai

13th July 2005, 07:02 AM

jjramsey
You assume that it would not have been acceptable for Joseph to have been anything but the biological father. This is an iffy claim at best, especially since there was no nice neat checklist for messianic qualifications. Actually there is a nice neat checklist for messianic qualifications. Itâ€™s in Genesis. Go look it up.

Ossai

Kitty Chan

13th July 2005, 07:17 PM

Originally posted by pgwenthold
One thing I don't understand: if it is so bloody obvious that Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah, why do we still have Jews and Muslims still waiting for the Messiah to come? Are so many people that stupid?

This has nothing to do with "church leaders of the day" worrying about power.

Great question! Back in the day there were those who didnt believe Jesus was the Messiah as well, its not new. Church leaders of the day didnt like to lose out on the money and power. Same with some leaders today. Note I say some not all are crooked.

I understand that Jews while Messiah is important its not as important as rebuilding the Temple. That is what the Jews are looking to do. Muslims are still looking for Messiah because they didnt recognize Jesus (as Messiah, just another prophet) but did recognize Muhammad as the last prophet.

Now having said that there is Jews who believe Jesus was Messiah and Muslims who do as well.

So errr, leads it all back and forth, right. Its said of me by kuroyume Im like a autum leaf swaying to the ground. A question is put of me stating What discernment distinguishes the 'anti-christ' from the 'christ'?

You say if its obvoius then why. Why back in the day did people see miracles, healings, hear the teachings and still not believe?

They had what was described as hard hearts, money and power for the leaders like I said and others. There was the rich man who said what do I need to do and couldnt leave his money.

There were those who wanted healing and sin was forgiven because thats what they truly needed, not another bandaid. If my company hires someone we can hire a person without skills if their heart is there to try. Someone with skills and no heart is unuseable.

This is where the discernment comes in Christ knew the heart and wants the best for that individual. Christ had a heart for his friends and followers, would walk along with His friends and be with them through thick and thin. He gave 100% all the time.

Where the anti christ will not walk step by step. He will say he cares but in reality wont. Friends are only a means to get what he wants then they are crushed. He would not walk along with friends he will lead them. At first he will seem to have all the answers but it will unravel in the end.

Kitty Chan

13th July 2005, 07:39 PM

"A few fragmentary bits of Jesusâ€™s actual conversation which we have recorded in the synoptic gospels suggest that he had an absolute contempt for the gentiles. He called them "dogs" and "pigs." I mean, "Why cast your pearls before swine," he said when somebody asked him heâ€™d preach in gentile city."

PS
I dont know maybe Wilson can point it out but I cannot see where this was a question about preaching in a gentile city and Jesus saying ack they are pig dogs I wouldnt talk to them.

It sorta goes against the great commission of preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth. It didnt mention the ends without gentiles. :)

Kopji

13th July 2005, 10:49 PM

He called them "dogs" and "pigs." I mean, "Why cast your pearls before swine," he said when somebody asked him heâ€™d preach in gentile city."

In the interest of truth I am inclined to descend into a little village atheist apologetics. :D

The passage in question is from Matthew 7 in the sermon on the mount. Taken in context it is simply part of a discussion about using clear judgment. To use it as a reference to people, even the popular Christian notion of 'godless people', is using the passage out of context.

The Context:
Sermon on the Mount

Matthew
7:1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

7:2
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

7:3
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

7:4
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

7:5
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

7:6
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

7:7
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

So in context, it is an exhortation to use clear judgment. It is unneeded to attribute 'dogs' or 'pigs' to people. Dogs can be dogs and pigs can be pigs in a literal sense without losing any meaning.

It does make for one of the best Pink Floyd songs.

kuroyume0161

13th July 2005, 11:33 PM

You forget the sheep! :)

Kopji

14th July 2005, 01:13 AM

gawd that was a great album. :D

EdipisReks

14th July 2005, 06:56 AM

Originally posted by zaayrdragon
While we're asking, was the Worm-Man who ruled the galaxy actually a God-Emperor, or merely a mutant freak?
Leto was close enough to being a God-Emperor for me, man. he was basically immortal and could see basically the future, afterall ;)

jjramsey

14th July 2005, 08:35 AM

Originally posted by Kopji
In the interest of truth I am inclined to descend into a little village atheist apologetics. :D

The passage in question is from Matthew 7 in the sermon on the mount. Taken in context it is simply part of a discussion about using clear judgment. To use it as a reference to people, even the popular Christian notion of 'godless people', is using the passage out of context.

Naah, this isn't the stuff of village atheism. :)

(The whole point of "village atheism," BTW, is that it is careless about the truth.)

Hope12

14th July 2005, 10:22 AM

:) This one is for all you who gave sarcastic remarks and unitelligent replies.

Jesus Christ is called â€œthe firstborn from the dead.â€ (Col 1:18) He was the first ever to be resurrected to everlasting life. And his resurrection was â€œin the spirit,â€ to life in heaven. (1Pe 3:18) Moreover, he was raised to a higher form of life and a higher position than that which he had held in the heavens prior to coming to earth. He was granted immortality and incorruption, which no creature in the flesh can have, and was made â€œhigher than the heavens,â€ second only to God in the universe. (Heb 7:26; 1Ti 6:14-16; Php 2:9-11; Ac 2:34; 1Co 15:27) His resurrection was performed by Jehovah God himself.â€”Ac 3:15; 5:30; Ro 4:24; 10:9

Jesusâ€™ resurrection involved many impressive aspects of Jehovahâ€™s unsearchable greatness. God undoubtedly restored Jesusâ€™ memory regarding the work involved in the creation of both invisible and visible things. (Colossians 1:15,Â_16) These include other spirit creatures, the universe, the productive earth, and all forms of physical life on our globe. In addition to restoring his Sonâ€™s knowledge of the complete history of heavenly and earthly life witnessed during the Sonâ€™s prehuman existence, Jehovah added what Jesus had experienced as a perfect human. Yes, Jehovahâ€™s unsearchable greatness is evident in Jesusâ€™ resurrection. Moreover, that great act is a guarantee that the resurrection of others is possible. It should strengthen our faith that God can bring back to life the millions of dead people he holds within his perfect memory.â€”John 5:28,Â_29; Acts 17:31.

BTW: Next time for those who can not answer intellegently, without sarcasim, just don't bother to answer at all. You waste my time in reading it, and your time in writting such garbage.
Thanks,
Hope12:)

jjramsey

14th July 2005, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by Hope12

Jesus Christ is called â€œthe firstborn from the dead.â€ (Col 1:18) He was the first ever to be resurrected to everlasting life. And his resurrection was â€œin the spirit,â€ to life in heaven. (1Pe 3:18) Moreover, he was raised to a higher form of life and a higher position than that which he had held in the heavens prior to coming to earth. He was granted immortality and incorruption, which no creature in the flesh can have, and was made â€œhigher than the heavens,â€ second only to God in the universe. (Heb 7:26; 1Ti 6:14-16; Php 2:9-11; Ac 2:34; 1Co 15:27) His resurrection was performed by Jehovah God himself.â€”Ac 3:15; 5:30; Ro 4:24; 10:9

On the Ship of Fools forums (http://forum.ship-of-fools.com), it has been said that "The Bible says" is the beginning of a discussion, not its ending. You can't just quote proof-texts and say QED. That goes double in these forums.

Steve

14th July 2005, 11:06 AM

Originally posted by Kopji
gawd that was a great album. :D

IS a great album. It still exists, you know - I have a copy.

Steve

14th July 2005, 11:41 AM

Originally posted by Kopji
gawd that was a great album. :D

IS a great album. It still exists, you know - I have a copy.

RamblingOnwards

14th July 2005, 12:23 PM

Originally posted by Hope12
:) This one is for all you who gave sarcastic remarks and unitelligent replies.

I'm sorry, I can't figure out your point, would you mind expanding on it?

It sounds like you hold to an Arianist-type position (Jesus was human at death, and then became divine), but it's a little hard to tell. What influenced you towards this, rather than some of the other options (Docetism - Jesus had no physical form in a meaningful sense of the word before or after death , Nestorianism - Jesus's human self died, but his immortal self didn't, etc.)

Even considering only the internal consistency of the bible, there is quite a bit to debate here - Is Jesus fully human, Fully Gos, both, a mixture, neither? Can the 'god-ness' of Jesus meaningfully be said to die? Can the 'human-ness' of Jesus meaningfully be said to live after death? If the resurrrection was bodily, was the decomposition of his dead body halted, reversed, left to continue? If it was spiritual, was it some sort of tangible ghost, or was it visions implanted in the minds of the viewers?

If you wish to return the debate to your OP, please, give us something to work with!

Skeptical Greg

14th July 2005, 01:06 PM

Originally posted by Kitty Chan

It sorta goes against the great commission of preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth. It didnt mention the ends without gentiles. :)

Matt 10
5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:

6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Matt 15
22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Kopji

14th July 2005, 09:59 PM

Originally posted by dogguy
IS a great album. It still exists, you know - I have a copy.

Sorry, I must be tense. :p

My copy is on vinyl so I speak of it as if dead.

Ossai

15th July 2005, 06:42 AM

Hope12
Jesus Christ is called â€œthe firstborn from the dead.â€ (Col 1:18) If youâ€™re saying that Jesus was the first to come back from the dead, youâ€™re wrong. Lazarus was called back.

He was the first ever to be resurrected to everlasting life. And his resurrection was â€œin the spirit,â€ to life in heaven. (1Pe 3:18) Here you state that Jesus was not resurrected â€˜in the fleshâ€™ but â€˜in the spiritâ€™. Up until that point, did spirits die? Was there a limited amount of time one got to spend in heaven?
What about hell and the everlasting punishment, or did god not make hell till after Jesus?

Moreover, he was raised to a higher form of life and a higher position than that which he had held in the heavens prior to coming to earth.
What exactly was his position in heaven before coming to earth?

He was granted immortality and incorruption, which no creature in the flesh can have, and was made â€œhigher than the heavens,â€ second only to God in the universe. (Heb 7:26; 1Ti 6:14-16; Php 2:9-11; Ac 2:34; 1Co 15:27) You just stated that Jesus wasnâ€™t raised â€˜in the fleshâ€™ so what does it matter if he was granted immortality of spirit? Again, youâ€™re stating that spirits/souls die either at the time the body dies or soon thereafter.
The Christian pantheon goes something like this then:
YHWH
Jesus
Holy Spirit/Ghost
Angels
Saints
Is this correct of have I left out a few layers?

His resurrection was performed by Jehovah God himself.â€”Ac 3:15; 5:30; Ro 4:24; 10:9 Youâ€™re saying that other being have the power to bring people back from the dead. Who/what would these be? What about Jesus before the resurrection? Was Lazarus not really brought back from the dead? What about Elijah?

Yes, Jehovahâ€™s unsearchable greatness is evident in Jesusâ€™ resurrection. Moreover, that great act is a guarantee that the resurrection of others is possible. What about all the dead that were brought back before the resurrection of Jesus? The tombs opened and the saints walked about at the death of Jesus.

BTW: Next time for those who can not answer intellegently, without sarcasim, just don't bother to answer at all. You waste my time in reading it, and your time in writting such garbage. Seeing as how you still havenâ€™t answered anything, is your reply even lower than garbage?

Ossai