As I said, dejudge, if you choose to read the baptism scene as a voice actually speaking, then that's up to you. But since I know that's impossible, and I have no reason whatsoever to think that the author didn't know that that's impossible, then I read it as something else that is possible. That is, a man heard a voice when nobody was speaking. That happens all the time. Assuming the man was Jesus, what an amzing coincidence that the voice he heard had such nice things to say about him. That happens all the time, too.
I read the rest of your post. We disagree about each of the points, just as you say. So, I'll just leave it there.
As I said, dejudge, if you choose to read the baptism scene as a voice actually speaking, then that's up to you. But since I know that's impossible, and I have no reason whatsoever to think that the author didn't know that that's impossible, then I read it as something else that is possible. That is, a man heard a voice when nobody was speaking. That happens all the time. Assuming the man was Jesus, what an amzing coincidence that the voice he heard had such nice things to say about him. That happens all the time, too.
I read the rest of your post. We disagree about each of the points, just as you say. So, I'll just leave it there.
Again, you do not understand gMark. In antiquity people believed that with God nothing is impossible. Once the authors of the Jesus story claimed Jesus was God then they could write anything.
Mark 10:27 NAS
Looking at them, Jesus said, "With people it is impossible, but not with God ; for all things are possible with God."
Hearing that from you is confidence inspiring. Thank you. However, you might consider discussing the topic rather than the other posters. Think of all the wear and tear you'll save on your typing fingers.
In antiquity people believed that with God nothing is impossible.
As some people do today, and have at all times in between.
The cool thing about the hypothesis is that power derives from being with God... you don't have to be God, you just need God on your side. That's all that's on the page in Mark, Jesus had God on his side during his natural life. That story will get better in later tellings, and later-still readers will fill in what they imagine are "gaps" in the Marcan narrative.
We see that gap-filling directly in the canonical text of Mark. Everything after 16:8 is from years later. It's all exuberant BS recycled from later Gospels, material not even hinted at in the Marcan text to which it has been glued, a text which shows an earlier version of the ever-improving Jesus story.
Once the authors of the Jesus story claimed Jesus was God then they could write anything.
Yeah, but by the time John got around to doing that (sort of), the big-hats closed the canon to further biogarphies, so all the really aromatic stuff got relegated to Tradition. Party poopers.
gMark's Jesus must be or was most likely a figure of mythology.
As so many men and women become after a passage of years. People like to make myths. That's interesting behavior, but unnformative about what they've made any particular myth from.
The cool thing about the hypothesis is that power derives from being with God... you don't have to be God, you just need God on your side. That's all that's on the page in Mark, Jesus had God on his side during his natural life. That story will get better in later tellings, and later-still readers will fill in what they imagine are "gaps" in the Marcan narrative.
The problem with your theory is that Jesus was described as God's Son in gMark. A real human being cannot get power from a non-existing God.
Please explain how a real person by being on the side of a God can get power to walk on the sea and instantly transfigure with the resurrected Moses and Elijah?
Please explain how a natural person can get power to feed thousands of people with a few fish and bread by being on the side of a God?
It must now be obvious that your theory makes very little sense if Jesus was a human being.
In gMark, Jesus claimed he was the Son of God. Jesus sat on the right hand of power in heaven when he ascended.
Mark 14
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? 62 And Jesus said , I am : and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
I'm unsure what you think "my theory" is. I'm talking about what's in a text, which is a fact, and what readers do with the text, which is just about anything they like.
Mark provided an excellent example of how a phrase changes meaning depending on conext. For the Jewish characters "a son of God" was pretty much synonymous with "really good Jew," although not all the Jewish characters think that Jesus is a good Jew. For the centurion, "a son of a god" is a man who died well, like Hercules, without complaint despite the agony. Centuries later, Nicene readers will take it as meaning that Jesus' father was the incorporeal Jewish God. Centuries later still, Muslim readers will take the phrase as blapshemy, and point to it as a blatant example of how both Jews and Christians have managed to mangle the teachings of the prophets Allah sent to them. Cenutries later still, Mormons will imagine that Elohim visited Earth and boffed a Jewish girl, ... and I have left several out.
Stick to the text, and don't assume that the author even knows what Mattie or Luke's religious opinions will turn out to be, much less that he would agree with them. There are already enough fanciful readings of Mark.
A real human being cannot get power from a non-existing God.
Nobody walks on the sea in Mark. If you want an explanation of how somebody might see somebody else walking on the sea, in bad light after hauling nets for a few hours, then take an introductory psychology course. Or just read the ghost sighting reports that are all over the web.
and instantly transfigure with the resurrected Moses and Elijah?
You mean be seen that way by some of the people we were just discussing, the ones who saw a ghost on the water, now seeing this after being marched up a hill in the desert sun. You have an odd notion of what "instantly" means. This probably took days to make it work, even for a talented perfomance artist like Jesus.
Please explain how a natural person can get power to feed thousands of people with a few fish and bread by being on the side of a God?
That's in John, about a generation later. In Mark, Jesus and his handsome assistants mime sharing the food you brought with you with your neighbors. People catch on, and everybody eats. Jesus apparently didn't bring any food himself personally, although as you say, the boys did, and thus they had props for the mime.
It must now be obvious that your theory makes very little sense if Jesus was a human being
As opposed to what? The story is he's a Jewish man. It's a tzedek story. The hero of a tzedek story is a Jewish man. How would all the things you mentioned, even if they were in the text as you have spun them, which they are not, but if they were, how would they promote a human miracle worker to the rank of a god walking the Earth? They don't. Stories about gods walking the Earth feature the god doing niftier things than these. Crap, even God's staff can gnosh with Abraham and then blow up Sodom. WTF does Jesus do, in Mark or any other synoptic Gospel, that begins to compare with that? - and those dudes weren't even God.
In gMark, Jesus claimed he was the Son of God. Jesus sat on the right hand of power in heaven when he ascended.
And yes, once again, what's discussed is what somebody else will see. Not what happens, just what people see. Except, of course, he couldn't make those guys see it. Bad light didn't help this time.
They tossed him over to the Romans, who nailed him up and hung him out to dry. That's the end of Jesus in the story. The wrap-up? You guessed it, what somebody else saw. A man in the tomb who tells some women that Jesus doesn't live there anymore, so get lost. They got lost.. The End.
Edited to correct member's user name. Do not change another member's user name in order to insult.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: LashL
I will say that there's one pleasant difference between this thread and the monster in RatSkep. There are at least one or two a-historicists here who can still distinguish between serious discussion and hysterical diatribes like the one duly challenged by Belz here. At RatSkep, not only do diatribes like that get a free pass; they are routinely given a pro-active thumbs-up again and again. It's strictly a Pavlovian circle-the-wagons response from everyone who has swallowed the least bit of myther woo. There are no individuals left among the mythers there; they are all drones in tandem, and the more irrational and hardline the message, the more approval it gains from the myther cultists.
No indeed, but a real human being can be described as a son of god. Here's 2 Sam 7: 13-14. God is telling Nathan about his intentions regarding King David:
13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever. 14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men.
so the expression "son of god" is a title of the kings of the House of David. To those who believe Jesus to be of the house of David it is self evident that he is a son of god.
Notice that this is not a mark of supernatural status. David might still commit iniquity (as he did) and in that event god will use the "rod of men" to punish him.
Now, David may not have existed. He may be mythical. But the fact that the scriptures call him the son of god doesn't in itself mean that he never existed because god doesn't exist, so David can't really be his son.
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed [ie Messiah] saying,
3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
These things are kingly pretensions of the House of David. They were automatically applied to Jesus as soon as he was identified as the messiah, the anointed of the Lord.
In fact, my memory is that 'son of God' could be used to describe a pious Jew, at a certain point in ancient Judaism, but I would have to check when this was, and what the contexts are.
Same with 'son of Man' and 'messiah', isn't it? In fact, Jews are appalled at the idea of a divine messiah, then and now. Some of them use the term 'mashiach' in order to separate it from the Christianized 'messiah', since the 'mashiach' could be a military leader, but certainly a human one.
I think this is where anachronism comes in, since we are so used to the Christian senses of these terms, that we may incorrectly retro-fit them to ancient Jewish texts, or indeed early Christian texts.
In fact, my memory is that 'son of God' could be used to describe a pious Jew, at a certain point in ancient Judaism, but I would have to check when this was, and what the contexts are.
Same with 'son of Man' and 'messiah', isn't it? In fact, Jews are appalled at the idea of a divine messiah, then and now. Some of them use the term 'mashiach' in order to separate it from the Christianized 'messiah', since the 'mashiach' could be a military leader, but certainly a human one.
I think this is where anachronism comes in, since we are so used to the Christian senses of these terms, that we may incorrectly retro-fit them to ancient Jewish texts, or indeed early Christian texts.
I will say that there's one pleasant difference between this thread and the monster in RatSkep. There are at least one or two a-historicists here who can still distinguish between serious discussion and hysterical diatribes like the one duly challenged by Belz here. At RatSkep, not only do diatribes like that get a free pass; they are routinely given a pro-active thumbs-up again and again. It's strictly a Pavlovian circle-the-wagons response from everyone who has swallowed the least bit of myther woo. There are no individuals left among the mythers there; they are all drones in tandem, and the more irrational and hardline the message, the more approval it gains from the myther cultists.
But the curious thing as well, is that generally there are not that many arguments for mythicism, are there? There is a lot of nit-picking about various HJ arguments, and a lot of assertive stuff, as dejudge seems to do here, e.g. 'Jesus is born of a ghost and a virgin, now don't you dare to contradict that!', but not a lot of solid building up a case for a mythic Jesus. I suppose Earl Doherty would be a prime candidate here, but then the evidence for the sub-lunar realm seems thin on the ground.
Jesus was crucified in the air, in the realms of the heavenly pleroma! OK, but where are the citations for that?
....Mark provided an excellent example of how a phrase changes meaning depending on conext. For the Jewish characters "a son of God" was pretty much synonymous with "really good Jew," although not all the Jewish characters think that Jesus is a good Jew. For the centurion, "a son of a god" is a man who died well, like Hercules, without complaint despite the agony...
It is simply a fallacy that son of God means a really good Jew. There is no statement in gMark that Jesus was a Jew. Plus, a "really good Jew" cannot walk on the sea, instantly transfigure with the resurrected Moses and Elijah.
In all versions of gMark, Jesus was the son of God--a figure of mythology.
Mark 1:1 KJV----The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God;
Mark 3:11 KJV----And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried , saying , Thou art the Son of God.
Mark 5:7 KJV----And cried with a loud voice, and said , What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
Mark 15:39 KJV----And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out , and gave up the ghost , he said , Truly this man was the Son of God.
[quote="eight bits]Nobody walks on the sea in Mark. If you want an explanation of how somebody might see somebody else walking on the sea, in bad light after hauling nets for a few hours, then take an introductory psychology course. Or just read the ghost sighting reports that are all over the web.[/quote]
If you read gMark then you would have known that the author's fable was not a mere hallucination. Jesus, the Son of God identified himself as he was walking on the sea and then entered the boat
Mark 6
.... about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them, walking upon the sea, and would have passed by them. 49 But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out : 50 For they all saw him, and were troubled . And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer : it is I; be not afraid . 51 And he went up unto them into the ship.
... But the curious thing as well, is that generally there are not that many arguments for mythicism, are there? ( ... ) Jesus was crucified in the air, in the realms of the heavenly pleroma! OK, but where are the citations for that?
... Some plausible things are stated about Jesus, as well as some fantastic things. Can some criteria be devised to separate legend from reality?
The people who have a real problem are the "strong" mythicists who state that Jesus was never believed by Paul and others to have existed as a human being, and that he was thought of as a purely spiritual entity residing in a non-physical dimension.
Yes, I remember that GDon once said on Ratskep that mythicism requires a very high Christology from the beginning through to the end. I found this to be illuminating, since there seem to be bits in the gospels that are not very high Christology. Well, the mythicists can get round this by arguing that the original mythic Jesus was humanized, (i.e. low Christology), in order to make him palatable and more credible. But this is becoming very complicated and conspiratorial, isn't it?
Yes. As I have argued in post #61 above. Because there is no good evidence for that. Paul seems to have believed - rightly or wrongly - that Jesus lived on earth in the recent past.
There is no evidence at all that any Pauline writer mentioned the date when Jesus was born or crucified so it makes no sense to assume the Pauline resurrected Jesus lived in the recent past.
1. When did the Pauline resurrected Jesus live based on the Pauline Epistles?
After he was dead.
Colossians 1:18 KJV-----And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
The Pauline Corpus is just a compilation of myth fables about Jesus, the Firstborn of the dead.
You cannot look in the Bible for your HJ---Bible Jesus was a myth like Romulus and Perseus.
There is no evidence at all that any Pauline writer mentioned the date when Jesus was born or crucified so it makes no sense to assume the Pauline resurrected Jesus lived in the recent past.
1. When did the Pauline resurrected Jesus live based on the Pauline Epistles?
After he was dead.
Colossians 1:18 KJV-----And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.
The Pauline Corpus is just a compilation of myth fables about Jesus, the Firstborn of the dead.
You cannot look in the Bible for your HJ---Bible Jesus was a myth like Romulus and Perseus.
He means something like the opposite of what you suggest. Jesus had recently been executed, but he had manifested himself alive after his death. This was a sign of a general resurrection of the dead, of which Jesus was the first example. Paul thought all this was just about to happen, which is a good refutation of your preposterous chronology.
Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus shall we always be with the Lord. Therefore, comfort one another with these words.
See 1 Thess 4:13-18. This is written to reassure people who have experienced the death of some of the faithful prior to the immediately-awaited return of the Lord. Paul is telling them it's OK; these people will come out of their graves when Jesus returns. The rest of us, including me, will still be alive. This argues against your absurd thesis that the Pauline corpus was concocted in the late second century.
He means something like the opposite of what you suggest. Jesus had recently been executed, but he had manifested himself alive after his death. This was a sign of a general resurrection of the dead, of which Jesus was the first example. Paul thought all this was just about to happen, which is a good refutation of your preposterous chronology. See 1 Thess 4:13-18. This is written to reassure people who have experienced the death of some of the faithful prior to the immediately-awaited return of the Lord. Paul is telling them it's OK; these people will come out of their graves when Jesus returns. The rest of us, including me, will still be alive. This argues against your absurd thesis that the Pauline corpus was concocted in the late second century.
It is your use of the Pauline Corpus for an historical Jesus that is preposterous.
The Pauline Jesus was as fiction character--one who was raised from the dead. The resurrection could not have happened at all in the distant or recent past
In fact, in Galatians Paul claimed he was seen of the resurrected Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received , how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried , and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep . 7 After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. 8 And last of all he was seen of me also.......
This is an obvious fable and has virtually no historical value.
The Pauline writers saw and heard the resurrected Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15:15 KJV
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up , if so be that the dead rise not..
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