My bad. I made the assumption that when you stress that the texts of the gospels that we know about are from 4th-6th centuries, that they orginated from shorter oral tradition going back to centuries BC, and that the existing fragments don't tell us anything about the contents of the gospels at the time the manuscripts were written, you would also think the contents have changed. But again, scholars have identified that Isaiah was written over two centuries by analysing its text. If something like that happened to gospels, too, there should be evidence in the surviving text for that. .
I don't think that is a true representation of what I said either. If you are going to try correct what you think I have written then it's better if you quote the offending parts from my earlier posts.
You have said that we can't know whether the text of Luke that we have is different from the original text. And I'm saying that the affair of Marcion pushes the date for complete Luke from the 4th-6th century that you stress so strongly to the early 3rd century the latest.
If you do know what was said in the earliest now missing copies of g-Luke, or any supposed original missing early gospels, then (a)please tell us how you know that, and (b)please post the contents of the unknown missing work so we can see if you are right.
Also, there is no point at all in you going on about Marcion or Tertullian unless you have original copies of what they wrote, unless the dates for those copies are crucial to the date at which Luke was known to have written specific sentences about Jesus, and so on. E.g. you are talking about g-Luke being known in 140AD, but I am not disputing anything about such dates ... what I am pointing out is that we do not actually know what, if anything, g-Luke said about Jesus at such a date ... or more precisely - even though we may have fragments and damaged partly legible sections of gospels from earlier dates than 4th-6th century, we cannot be confident that the extensive missing parts said precisely the same about Jesus as we find in the later more complete versions ...
.... does it have to be "precisely" the same? Well it does if a few tiny changes to just a few words could entirely change to concept of Jesus as portrayed in the proposed missing originals ... and a few tiny changes is all it would take to change entirely the presentation of their Jesus/Messiah belief.
That, or you do a full dejudge and claim that Tertullian's writings are forged. (If he hasn't claimed that yet, he will claim so in the response to this post since Tertullian claims that Marcion used Pauline epistles as source, and Marcion wrote before that magical AD 180). .
Well that is something you will have to argue with
dejudge. It's not something that I've ever claimed here.
In short, there are two options for Luke:
* Tertullian had essentially the current Luke in the early 3rd century.
* Tertullian's Against Marcion is a later forgery.
Tertullian's writing also provides evidence that Luke was already existing in 140 as he claims that Marcion modified it.
Tertullian may have had “essentially the current Luke in the early 3rd century“ (I have no idea if he did or not), but that says nothing at all about what was supposedly written as “original” g-Luke around the end of the 1st century does it?
Can you tell us what was in any original 1st century g-Luke? Or just tell us of any significant words changed in later 3rd, 4th-6th century copies?
Also - what date is the earliest extant copy of either Marcion or Tertullian? The copies that we actually have, and that are fully readable in the relevant passages, what is the date of those extant copies?
Again - how was any of this dated? and who dated it? Who decided that Marcion or Tertullian wrote certain things about Jesus or g-Luke at any early date such as the 3rd century?
You do know that the first source that we know of that explicitly connects Pythagoras with the theorem comes from the first century AD, don't you? Half a millennium after his death. The oldest extant manuscripts for that come from the 10th century. Well, earliest extant manuscripts containing parts of Morals of Plutarch, I don't know whether they contain the parts mentioning the theorem. Plutarch also tells us that Pythagoras had a golden thigh, which isn't too common feature among entirely factual human beings around where I live.
Well you are now making my case for me. What I have said to you about Pythagoras is that he is not a valid comparison to Jesus for, amongst other reasons, the precise reason that it does not actually matter whether he was real or not or whether he was the actual originator of Pythagoras Theorem or Pythagorean Philosophy.
What matters is only that some human person did produce those ideas at what is said to be an early date pre-BC.
What matters is only the legacy of those ideas as coming from ancient times.
That is not the case for Jesus. What is crucial for Jesus, is that he was a real person ... not that people merely preached ideas of Christianity from around the 1st century.
As a tangential digression, I checked again to see what the earliest source about Pythagoras says about him. Not much. Herodotus says that "he was not the least philosopher" and that Greeks living around the Black Sea tell hos former slave was worshipped by the Getai as a major god. Which is surprisingly quick development, given that Herodotus was born about 10 years after Pythagoras died. Herodotus writes that he himself didn't believe the tale of the slave, but it's still impressive that less than 50 years after Pythagoras's death he had a large enough fame that some people were willing to believe that his slave would have enough magical mojo to establish himself as a god among barbarians. The specific feat that the slave supposedly did was to live for three years buried underground before emerging alive. Hmm... someone being buried for three something something and then emerging from the grave. Sounds curiously familiar, I wonder where I have heard something like that before.
I don't know what you think any of that has to do with the claim that we should believe Jesus is real because nobody doubts the reality of Pythagoras. Seems to be just a load of waffle about something else entirely.
The sayings attributed to Jesus include things that aren't particularly prophetic, for example, stuff like ethical teachings. You don't need to be a god to say these. You don't even have to be a god to say that our generation will see the coming of the kingdom of god. Or else I walked past two gods today when coming home from work. Not to mention that it would take a great amount of boneheadedness to put a prophesy that's already failed into the mouth of an invented god-man. The kingdom of god didn't come before Jesus's generation was gone. But, Jesus-mythers insist that early Christians were that bone-headed.
Iirc, in the gospels, when Jesus is not performing miracles of some kind, the setting is either something which leads up to a miracle, or else he is delivering various insightful or prophetic sayings which his dumbfounded disciples frequently cannot appreciate ... these are supposed to be special powers that Jesus showed whereby the mere mortals around him are amazed by his divinely inspired insight. Practically everything said about Jesus is either a miracle, or else something of special wondrous insight. There are few if any entirely mundane details of his life as an ordinary human person afaik.
In short:
* both Pythagoras and Jesus were sons of gods and have also other supernatural things attributed to them.
- Was Pythagoras only famous for, and known only for, his constant miracles? -
* both Pythagoras and Jesus have humanely possible things attributed to them.
- what human actions are attributed to Jesus without being part of Jesus delivering some special insight and knowledge not seen by those around him?
* neither left any physical evidence for their existence.
- we are not interested in the existence of Pythagoras, only in the legacy of the ideas left in his name
* neither is mentioned in surviving contemporary texts.
- what has that to do with it? If you check back, you will never find any post from me anywhere, saying that Jesus is to be doubted as a result simply of their being no texts about him dated from his actual supposed lifetime .... so that’s not an argument you should be levelling at anything I’ve said at all. Pythagoras was also supposed to have been 500 years before Jesus, so it’s even more unlikely that any extant texts would now survive from 500BC.
* both had followers who founded new religions based on their teachings.
- was Pythagorean philosophy supposed to be a religion in the same sense as Christianity? .... or was it just that case that in the 5th cent. BC everyone believed in all sorts of mystical ideas, gods and heavenly explanations for all sorts of things. And that most, if not all, philosophers of the time were also “mystics” to some degree.
* and, the thing that you for some reason hold critically important: no writer ever claimed to meet either one in person.
- it does not matter whether anyone met a human Pythagoras or whether he lived at all, all that matters are the ideas left in his name. That is the opposite case for Jesus - in his case what matters is his existence.
Goose. Gander.
The existence of Christianity today is completely irrelevant to the question whether historical Jesus existed or not. It doesn't matter the slightest bit. And conversely, the nature of Jesus is mostly irrelevant to the actual practice of Christianity today.
And an existing Jesus who got executed and didn't raise from the grave renders Christianity just as invalid.
I disagree, I think it's obvious and quite certain that the leaders of the Christian church and most devout Christians would be extremely upset to discover that Jesus was a myth (if indeed he was). You can hardly keep preaching the truth of a religion whilst admitting that what you say is fiction. That’s just not a credible position which any religion could sustain.
