Except there was no "Herod king of the Jews" in Tiberius time.
Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus
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Except there was no "Herod king of the Jews" in Tiberius time.
My Hovercraft is full of eels.
Well, if the Gospels make him a resident of Galilee and also claimed he was born in Bethlehem what is your problem?
Obama the president was born in Hawaii but was a resident of Chicago.
John McCain was born in a Naval base in Panama but resided in Virginia.
There are millions of people who reside in the USA who were not born there.
Now, even if you don't believe the story you cannot change it just like you cannot alter the story of Romulus the Myth founder of Rome.
In the NT, Jesus was a Myth--the Son of God, Creator and born in Bethlehem.
Exactly right! At last, we've got a point of intellectual contact! Now follow this with me, very carefully. Suppose there was a prophecy that said the anointed leader of the United States had to come from Hawaii. And an entirely mythical person was totally invented out of nothing by fabricators as fulfilling this prophecy. Now - this is the bit you have to follow very carefully; are you ready? - why would these fabricators also invent a story that the person lived in Chicago? That simply makes their fabricated story more complicated.
Why is there a story that Obama lived in Chicago? Now this is the essence of my argument, so please keep following me. The reason why there's a story that Obama lived in Chicago is twofold: a) Obama exists, and b) Obama really did live in Chicago.
Now do you see what I'm getting at? The story that Jesus lived in Galilee does nothing for the Messianic myth, so the probability is that Jesus really did live in Galilee. That bit may not be a myth, but like Obama in Chicago (thanks again for raising that) may be part of the authentic biography of a real living person.
On the other hand the Bethlehem story (from MT Micah) does do something for the myth. It is unknown to Mark and rejected by John, as we have seen; and the Matthew and Luke versions are incompatible, so at least one of them is false. Also the stories are supernatural, so the other one must be false too.
Bethlehem as birthplace is not in Paul, not in Mark, not in John, not in the non-Pauline epistles, not in Revelation. It is found only in two contradictory forms in the later Synoptics. The NT is not a single unitary work created en bloc by nefarious fabricators. You think it was, so you are impressed by your own infinitely repeated arguments (I should really say unsupported assertions and disparaging comments) which depend on that false idea; but others are not, and they will not be swayed even if you utter them a million more times.
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Belz...
Fiend God
I think this sentence is the shortest and most succint illustration of your shortcomings.
Belz...
Fiend God
All you've managed to do is expose the weakness of your arguments.
Belz...
Fiend God
Grade school arguments again. "You're the poopy head !"
Not convincing. You're doing a fine job demolishing the MJ side.
H'ethetheth
fishy rocket scientist
I disagree. His Mythical Jesus theory is but one of many. Whether his particular theory is convincing does not necessarily affect anything else.
eight bits
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Craig B
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Luke does his "orderly" thing, and loses all of the most aromatic business, but then imagines that Jospeh and Mary must both register in person in Bethlehem. They travel together, although they are not yet living together, and suprise, Mary is delivered of Jesus right there. Thus does Luke throw a sop to the Matthew branch of storytelling, with only a little bit of violence to the facts about the census in question.
The other half of the Gospels either neglect the matter altogether or frankly accept that Jesus was Galiliean, plain and simple.
The "Bible" or "New Testament" cannot be said to assert things like this - each author in the anthology tells his story, meeting one another only after somebody binds their various tales into one volume. Two of the stories feature Bethlehem, but without otherwise matching each other. The analogy would be a predction that some President would have a remote ancestor from Hawaii, or be Hawaiian himself, or at least be rumored to have Hawaiian roots. There was a time when Obama's birth certificate was a lot like Jesus'.
As to the Galilean matter, you assume a purpose for the Gospels which is not in evidence. We don't why the authors wrote what they did. Some of the Gospels may have been written to enhance the credentials of the inner trio of the James gang within the church, Peter, James and John. They are Galileans, reason enough for Jesus to be from Galilee. And if Jesus is made up, then that's a great thing about make believe, four authors can make the same fictional character be from two different places, no sweat.
Disclaimer: it sometimes happens that I misspell a username. If that is the case, then it is unintentional and accidental, even if the misspelling is itself a possibly meaningful string.
That's not the problem, though. There was, in Matthew's opinion, a prophecy that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. As usual with Mattie, when we go back to the Jewish scripture, we see some vague thing... Jesse and David come from there, supposedly, so any descendant would "come from there," too. Only in Matthew is there scholarly and physical support for Mattie's interpretation (Herod checks with his crack team of religious advisors, and of course, there is the indisputable sighting of the star sitting atop the very building in Bethlehem.)
Luke does his "orderly" thing, and loses all of the most aromatic business, but then imagines that Jospeh and Mary must both register in person in Bethlehem. They travel together, although they are not yet living together, and suprise, Mary is delivered of Jesus right there. Thus does Luke throw a sop to the Matthew branch of storytelling, with only a little bit of violence to the facts about the census in question.
The other half of the Gospels either neglect the matter altogether or frankly accept that Jesus was Galiliean, plain and simple.
The "Bible" or "New Testament" cannot be said to assert things like this - each author in the anthology tells his story, meeting one another only after somebody binds their various tales into one volume. Two of the stories feature Bethlehem, but without otherwise matching each other. The analogy would be a predction that some President would have a remote ancestor from Hawaii, or be Hawaiian himself, or at least be rumored to have Hawaiian roots. There was a time when Obama's birth certificate was a lot like Jesus'.
As to the Galilean matter, you assume a purpose for the Gospels which is not in evidence. We don't why the authors wrote what they did. Some of the Gospels may have been written to enhance the credentials of the inner trio of the James gang within the church, Peter, James and John. They are Galileans, reason enough for Jesus to be from Galilee. And if Jesus is made up, then that's a great thing about make believe, four authors can make the same fictional character be from two different places, no sweat.
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Even if he's not made up its a good reason, too. If that trio existed and were from Galilee and claimed to be disciples of the late Yeshua from Galilee, then the supposition that Yeshua was from Galilee is not outlandish.
Agreed. My argument simply is that they had a better "messianic" motive for saying he was born in Bethlehem even if in fact he was born in Galilee, than vice versa.
Or early founders did know them in the form in which Marcion presented them but did not refer to them until they were appropriately edited to meet the criteria of orthodoxy.
"Amsterdam theologian, A. D. Loman, in his, "Quaestiones Paulinae", had come to the result that the existence of Pauline Epistles before the middle of the second century could not be proven. This excited Leiden scholar Willem Christiaan van Manen's (1842-1905), interest in the first unquestionable witness of the Pauline Epistles, the arch-heretic Marcion, who was excommunicated in Rome in 144 C.E., accused by the Fathers of the Church of tampering not only with the Gospel of Luke, but also with the Pauline Epistles in the interest of his dualistic-gnostic theology. With the help of the Epistle to the Galatians Van Manen wanted to look into this reproach ventilated by the Fathers of the Church and repeated by the theologians ever since. Could the accusations leveled by the Fathers of the Church be verified? Or was it rather the Marcionites who were right in returning the reproach, accusing the Catholics themselves of falsifying the Pauline Epistles?
The result gained by Van Manen in his study was startling: contrary to the opinion of the Fathers of the Church and contrary to the consensus of theologians still today, he upheld the greater originality of the Marcionite recension of the Epistle to the Galatians. After a careful review of the textual findings, it became evident to Van Manen that neither Marcion nor the Marcionites had shortened the Epistle, but that Catholic editors had added or changed passages in the text. Marcion's edition of the Epistle was in any case older and more original than the canonical version. What lies here before us is a Catholic revision of the Marcionite text.
At the outset of his investigation Van Manen warned that nothing less than the larger question of the authenticity of the Principal Epistles was at issue. The result of the investigation could not but have consequences for the problem of the authenticity of the Corpus as a whole. If Marcion was not only the first witness for the existence of Pauline Epistles, but, moreover, was simultaneously in possession of the oldest and original text of the Epistles, this could easily be regarded as a further argument for Loman's supposition that the Pauline Epistles were altogether falsifications coming from Marcionite circles, which became a possession of the Catholic Church at a later date after being suitably tailored. Once one arrived at this conclusion, the way was opened for further questions and speculations in the same direction. One might consider, with some radical critics, whether the relationship "From Paul to Marcion" should not be reversed. In that case, Marcion would not be a pupil of Paul, but the figure of "Paul" would in reality be a creation of Marcionism, by means of which the Marcionites retrojected their theology into the apostolic past, in order to provide themselves with a pedigree and a precedent for their doctrines in the theological conflicts of the second century."
- Hermann Detering, The Dutch Radical Approach to the Pauline Epistles
link: http : // depts . drew . edu / jhc / detering . html
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Do you know of any other earlier mention of "Jesus" as the messiah earlier than the writing of Paul and the gospel authors of the NT bible?
Or do all the mentions of Jesus actually stem, as far as we can honestly tell, from what was written in the bible?
Because a significant part of all this discussion and dispute, is that it appears there is actually no other earlier independent source on Jesus except for that NT bible itself.
Your posts directly refer to you "I'm not the one who has been boasting of their own dishonesty in these threads. That's you."
Brainache said:
"Don't expect serious responses from anyone"
You seem not to understand that mythological characters can be described as human.
The claim that Jesus lived in Galilee is no different to the story that Romulus was the founder of Rome.
There were hundreds of Greek/Roman myths described with human characteristics in antiquity.
Romulus was a Roman, pure a simple.
Two sentences are not enough details.
What other versions of Jesus are there?
When and where did those version originate?
There is simply no known evidence of an actual Jesus as a human being in the 1st century pre 70 CE.
The earliest recovered evidence of Jesus stories is the 2nd century.
JaysonR
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True, there is that option as well.
No, it wasn't an indication of earlier texts, nor evidence for an historical Jesus.
There were other strands of the legend which surfaced, at least in texts which survived either long enough to be mentioned, or survived in some manner through to us today.
Not all forms held to the idea of a cosmic deity Jesus; though the primary amount appear to have done so.
Some appear to have attempted to counter that idea directly.
It's not just the subsequent orthodoxy traditions and their legend of Jesus which greatly arrives in verifiable mass volume during the 2nd c CE; this is also the time where competing (what would become) heretical traditions arrived as well.
My comment hadn't anything to do with an historical Jesus.
The summary which you outlined in the post I responded to was an example of only one myth built up around the figure of this Jesus.
Around the same time frame, multiple other traditions and views are evident; many are mentioned in the texts you continue to refer to by the early Church Fathers - typically as part of those groupings in which they deny authenticity or validity.
Honestly; I wouldn't be terribly surprised by most traditions beginning in this period (regardless of the historicity of this Jesus figure or not), since the main ignition point for the cultural thrust would be the destruction of the Temple and subsequent diaspora.
This is when either Hebrew peoples who believed in these tales would have moved out on mass and conveyed their factional beliefs, even those who followed other alleged messiahs, or this would have been when all of the Hebrew peoples spread out with their stories of what had happened in Judah in the past few decades and aided in inspiring such legendary stories like these.
70 CE is only a few decades away from the 2nd c CE, so it strikes me as not at all surprising that this is when the largest amount of material surfaces.
It would be amazing to find something from Judah in the 1st c BCE to 1st c CE regarding any messianic groups as the entire cultural tradition of this era is mostly handed to us second hand by other commentators from what they either experienced, or gathered from surveying.
I think there is plenty to learn yet about this era's messianic traditions, and not just "Jesus", but the entire zeitgeist of the culture in this tradition during that time period between 1st c BCE to 1st c CE.
eight bits
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dejudge
That's a yes-or-no question, so "I don't know" is responsive. Yes, no or "I don't know," did John the Baptist have any real life disciples, in your opinion?
Rumor has it that there were several real-life Jews whom the Romans or Roman client-rulers dispatched, too. Some for posing not much threat at all. John the Baptist, for instance, if Josephus can be trusted. Did John have any disciples do you think?
That's a yes-or-no question, so "I don't know" is responsive. Yes, no or "I don't know," did John the Baptist have any real life disciples, in your opinion?
I sense you meant to type something else.
TimCallahan
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Well, I said I was going. However, as I noted on another thread on this forum, I do seem to have an attraction to those things that negatively buzz me. I probably will regret wasting time. However, let me respond to this list below:
Mark does acknowledge that Jesus had a brother named James. As to the 500, that may well be an interpolation. Look at the passage as it now stands (1 Cor. 15:4 - 7):
And that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures: And he appeared to Cephus, then to the twelve. After that he was seem by more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are alive today, though some have fallen asleep, after that, he appeared to James, then all of the apostles.
At first we have a widening circle of appearances, fist to one person, then to the 12, then to the 500+ brethren. Then James is stuck at the end of all this, except for Jesus then appearing to "all the apostles." Yet, in Galatians, it's quite clear that James outranks Peter (Cephas), who was after all, one of the 12. I suspect the original version went like this:
And that he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the scriptures: And he appeared to James, then to the twelve. after that, he appeared to all of the apostles.
In any case, each of the gospel writers made up his own story of the passion and resurrection. And this means absolutely nothing.
See my comment above.
And you're taking Acts as historical? It was clearly made up to paint a rosy picture of the early church. If the Pauline epistles used Luke and Acts as a source, why would the author of Galatians go out of his way to paint a fractious picture of the conflict between Paul and James?
We've gone over this ground before.
Yeah, right, illiterates from Judea spread gospels written in Greek. Justin, as I said in an earlier post, conflated John of Patmos with a, most likely mythical, apostle by that a name who was supposed to have also written a gospel. Again, we've already argued this into the ground.
Okay, I just read that document. Theophilus of Antioch doesn't mention anyone involved with what eventually became the Christian canon.
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