tsig;9640816 said:
Well, yeah. That's your explanation, but I wanted to know what IanS and Dejudge thought. Both have avoided the question, leading me to conclude that they have no idea how the religion could have started, and are not basing their conclusions on evidence or lack thereof.
However, the rest of your post doesn't go into detail as to how Christianity began, which is what I was interested about. "John Frum" is not a sufficient answer, for me. Of course, you can expect me to call the pro-HJ crowd on their own claims, as I've done numerous times in the past.
So when you actually get an answer you just cavalierly brush it aside?
You didn't just move the goalposts, you nuked the field.
From now on we can all say "not a sufficient answer for me" and happily ignore any bits of data we want to ignore.
No. It's just that saying "John Frum" doesn't answer my question any more than saying "Darth Vader" (in addition to be less cool of an answer.) What I'm looking for is something along the lines of a timeline of event for Jesus, not some other character. I understand what Maxi is saying, but I'm looking for something more specific. There's no reason for you to be snarky about it.
Belz …. how many times? You have had a very direct, detailed and full answer from me on precisely that question at least half a dozen times here.
You don’t think it might be asking a little to much for you to demand that I/anyone should claim to know a “timeline” and a “more specific” description within that timeline of how Christianity had actually begun prior to what we have in Paul? This is 2000 years ago, where all we have as the only primary source is some obviously fallacious biblical writing of beliefs in supernatural gods, and you are saying we have to provide you with specific timeline detail of exactly how Paul and earlier Christians got their version of the same old messiah story they had all believed in since at least 600BC !
?
You think it’s reasonable for you to keep chasing people around making that demand, after people have already told you numerous times that (a) we are not proposing a mythical Jesus, and not supporting any particular myth theory, and (b) have in any case offered you a perfectly plausible and simple observation on how, why, and where Paul or any earlier Christians might easily have got their messiah beliefs about anyone called Yehoshua (or any other such name)?
OK then, to repeat - all ancient religions which believed in supernatural gods, and that’s probably every single one of them, must have got those god beliefs from somewhere, right? OK, so where do you think their beliefs came from?
I’ve already offered you what I think is the likely, and very simple, answer to that. Which is - afaik, all those beliefs arose from superstitious people gossiping to one-another about stories of entirely fictional gods who they swore to have been witnessed. Can you think of another way that any such religion could have started? Because off the top of my head, I can’t.
In which case, it seems inevitably likely to me that Christian belief in Yehoshua began exactly the same way. Namely - before the time of Paul, since at least 600BC, people had been certain that God’s messiah would come amongst the people.
For much of that time it seems they believed the messiah would be a human leader who would simply lead the nation to great victory over it’s oppressors. However, by about 170BC, when no such messiah had appeared for over 400 years, we know from the Dead Sea scrolls that preaching became more diverse and some began to preach that the messiah would be, or already was (or even had been!), an apocalyptic messenger of God who came to warn the faithful to adhere very closely now to the preached faith, because the day of final judgement was about to dawn very soon.
That in itself is already very close to the similarly apocalyptic preaching of Paul as much as 200 years after what had been written in the DSS.
If you check in the OT, and I have already said that off-hand I don’t have specific quotes for the following, but perhaps someone else knows them - iirc, there are passages in the OT which talk of the messiah being persecuted and rejected by his own people, passing almost unrecognised and unappreciated, and even I think an obscure passage which talks of someone being “hung on a tree” and where it’s not clear whether that might apply to the messiah or not. And there is of course also the famous and well known passage variously translated as something like “like a Lion they pierce my hands and feet” .
So if Paul was consulting the OT for all his Messiah beliefs, as he indeed repeatedly tells us he was, and if as seems most likely to me, a wandering street preacher would not have available to him all the various versions of the most ancient OT Hebrew texts, but more likely would only know what was said about the OT as passed down by word of mouth, and at that date mostly taken from a Greek translated Septuagint (complete with all sorts of translation errors), then I think it’s perfectly easy to see that Paul may have decided that the OT meant the messiah had already appeared, had passed persecuted and unrecognised at some unknown earlier time, and been “hung on a tree” or “pierced hand and foot” (ie, "crucified").
If earlier Christians before Paul believed that same thing, then that same logic applies to the question of where they may have got their messiah ideas … it’s from the OT!
If you want an idea as to the final remaining, and likely quite trivial, question of why they choose the name Yehoshua, then see my post above quoting wiki on the theophoric nature and origin of that name.
Please don’t tell me you want it spelled out more clearly than that.
