TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Any of the options (legend, mistake, hallucination, lies, embellishments, exaggerations, myth, allegory,...) is more likely then "the laws of nature were suspended"
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Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
- Thread starter Apologes
- Start date
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
The only one attempting to shift the burden of proof, is you.
Correct. And I explained why. That you continue to ignore the explanation is on you, not us.
And I replied with saying that it's upto the people who claim the supernatural exists, to define it.
I also explained that because those people fail to do exactly that is exactly the reason why I say it doesn't have evidence.
You CAN NOT have evidence for things that are ill-defined in untestable ways.
So, YOUR failure to properly define what the "supernatural" is in testable ways, is the reason why I say it has no evidence. Because it CAN NOT have evidence for the reason of being ill-defined.
It's not upto me to define your terms for you.
If you disagree, then please tell me if you have evidence of gooblydockbloblo. Do you think gooblydockbloblo is real? Not real?
No. I'm not the one who claims the supernatural is a thing.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Now is a good moment for you to define what YOU mean by faith then.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Chemistry exists that makes complex biological compounds (the building blocks of life) form.
At bottom, life is just the extreme expression of complex carbon chemistry.
Life is made from the most common materials available in the universe.
All of these support a natural origin.
Evidence for Abiogenesis | Biology Dictionary
Abiogenesis is the theory that life comes from non-living things. Spontaneous generation was an early model for abiogenesis developed by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) which said that flies formed directly from decaying material and logs gave rise to crocodiles.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
And evidence that you take care of someone else's dog.
And evidence that you like to eat dogfood yourself.
And evidence that you manage a dog-hotel for people who go on vacation.
...
There are a multitude of reasons for why you might want to buy dogfood.
You buying dogfood is consistent with any one of these options.
Yes.
I don't see it.
It is accurate.
Now you answer my question.
You're doing a murder investigation. 2 suspects. One of them is the murderer.
Both drive the same pink mercedes.
Security footage shows the murderer drives that model pink mercedes.
Will you waste time with that footage? Or will you rather look for evidence that points exclusively to one suspect over the other?
My definition of faith is the strong conviction in the belief of something.
Myself I don't have faith in anything as even something with strong evidence for I always leave room for doubt.
The greater faith you have the less room you leave for doubt.
I find this position unreasonable because of the limits of human knowledge.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
It is not.
Plenty of people claim to have seen Elvis, Tupac, Bruce Lee, Michael Jackson, etc long after they died. Even Hitler.
There's nothing extra-ordinary about people claiming to see people that were already died for quite some time.
Also, ancient cultures have PLENTY of resurrection myths. The Jesus myth is far from the only one.
Hearsay
The James story is also not proven. It is CLAIMED. And not even by himself....
Once more: in order for the "natural law was suspended" to become more likely, you are going to need a wee bit more then mere unverifiable claims and hearsay.
Mere claims and hearsay is NEVER going to be enough to even consider such extra-ordinary events.
Not even when the people who make the claims are still alive - which is why generally people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are laughed out by most people. Likely, including you. And they are still alive. They even pass lie detector tests - that's how sure they are of their own claims. Yet, they aren't believed.... and their claims don't even require the suspension of natural law on principle....
Yet, you want us to believe natural laws were suspended based on ancient claims which aren't even first hand, written down by anonymous authors and passed on to us through copies of copies of translations of copies of translations of copies ...?
Just how gullible do you think we are?
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joelr
Well-Known Member
No, all historical sources need multiple independent sources first of all. But beyond that your anti-supernatural bias is old, debunked and makes you sound like a flat earther at this point. It's been explained in many ways to you, this is a work. You do not really believe this.
Otherwise the Quran, which is original source material could just be considered to be the true updates to Christianity and the true word from God. Mormon updates as well are far newer as well as Bahai scripture. All of those doctrines you would believe or could be considered the offical religions of the world because they are more modern and have original sources.
There is no demonstration EVER that anything supernatural is real so they cannot be taken serious without evidence to match th eclaims.
With Christianity we have all of the evidence we need to understand where this theology is coming from. The Mesopotmian origins of the OT and the massive amounts of evidence for Persian/Greek trends which influenced Judaism to form Christianity. It even began in Antioch, the hub of Hellenism. The fist Gospel is creating a story from Paul, Elija, Psalms, Romulus and other fiction. All fictive literary devices are used and the story is historical fiction, a popular Greek style at the time.
The layers of parables and non-sources, improbable events, use of Greek theology not at all in the OT. No chance this is real, not one shred of a chance this isn't just another mystery religion. Justin Martyr even admitted it.
There is no history here.
The writings demonstrate a high level of skill, comprable to a PHD in modern times,. The writers were not illiterate.
The people who made up the words are mostly using older fiction. "My God my God......" Psalms.
Unlike historians even of his own era, Luke never names his sources or explains why we are to truest them (or why he did), or how he chose what to include or exclude. In fact Luke does not even declare any critical method at all, but rather insists he slavishly followed what was handed to him - yet another claim we know to be a lie (since we have 2 of his sources and can confirm he freely altered them to suit his own agenda).
John is a free redaction of the previous gospels. There is no evidence he is independent of them. The evidence is abundant that John knew all 3 previous Gospels and used them as sources. HE simply redacted them more freely, rewriting everything in his own words, whichwas the more common way ancient writers used sources. L. Michael White (From Jesus to Christianity)
"John's many changes to the Synoptics may well have been made intentionally and with full awareness of the Synoptic tradition. Several features of the Johannine narrative seem to reflect such an awareness and use of the Synoptic tradition, including direct verbal similarities with distinctive linguistic formulations or narrative elements in Mark and Luke respectively"
Again, this fiction about supernatural denial. The text is not reliable, anonymous, a Hellenistic trend, and do you suddenly believe all religious text and supernatural folklore as historically true? No, you bought into one story and want everyone to take it serious. Not only do you not actually care about what is actually true, you want everyone else to hold such delusions?
Also these breakdowns have nothing to do with the supernatural events, you are so caught up in that one thing you don't even know what is being said.
Just like you don't worship the updates from the angels Moroni or Gabrielle, despite witnesses and original documents. YOu also don't accept supernatural claims far better than the Gospels. YOur confirmation bias is really showing here. But the Gospels don't even have authors we know and you thing it's evidence for something never seen since?
The standard naming convention for ancient literary works was to place the author’s name in the genitive case (indicating personal possession), followed by the title of the work.
Here, we already have a problem with the traditional authors of the Gospels. The titles that come down in our manuscripts of the Gospels do not even explicitly claim Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John as their authors. Instead, the Gospels have an abnormal title convention, where they instead use the Greek preposition κατα, meaning “according to” or “handed down from,” followed by the traditional names. For example, the Gospel of Matthew is titled ευαγγελιον κατα Μαθθαιον (“The Gospel according to Matthew”). This is problematic, from the beginning, in that the earliest title traditions already use a grammatical construction to distance themselves from an explicit claim to authorship. Instead, the titles operate more as placeholder names, where the Gospels have been “handed down” by church traditions affixed to names of figures in the early church, rather than the author being clearly identified.
urthermore, it is not even clear that the Gospels’ abnormal titles were originally placed in the first manuscript copies. We do not have the autograph manuscript (i.e., the first manuscript written) of any literary work from antiquity, but for the Gospels, the earliest manuscripts that we possess have grammatical variations in their title conventions. This divergence in form suggests that, unlike the body of the text (which mostly remains consistent in transmission), the Gospels’ manuscript titles were not a fixed or original feature of the text itself.[4] As textual criticism expert Bart Ehrman (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, pp. 249-250) points out:
Because our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different) titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar names do not go back to a single ‘original’ title, but were added by later scribes.
The specific wording of the Gospel titles also suggests that the portion bearing their names was a later addition. The κατα (“according to”) preposition supplements the word ευαγγελιον (“gospel”). This word for “gospel” was implicitly connected with Jesus, meaning that the full title was το ευαγγελιον Ιησου Χριστου (“The Gospel of Jesus Christ”), with the additional preposition κατα (“according to”) used to distinguish specific gospels by their individual names. Before there were multiple gospels written, however, this addition would have been unnecessary. In fact, many scholars argue that the opening line of the Gospel of Mark (1:1) probably functioned as the original title of the text:
The evidence shows the stories began as a Jewish version of Hellenism and is a complete myth.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
When all else fails, let's go for the good ol' ad hominem
joelr
Well-Known Member
It takes no presumptions. It's Hellenism combined with Judaism, originatating at the center of Hellenistic culture.
Hellenistic religion
The apotheosis of rulers also brought the idea of divinity down to earth.
Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in the ancient world that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture.
The decline of Hellenistic Judaism started in the 2nd century AD, and its causes are still not fully understood. It may be that it was eventually marginalized by, partially absorbed into or became progressively the Koiné-speaking core of Early Christianity centered on Antioch and its traditions, such as the Melkite Catholic Church, and the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.
Antioch on the Orontes
The city was also the main center of Hellenistic Judaism at the end of the Second Temple period. Antioch was part of the pentarchy and was called "the cradle of Christianity" as a result of its longevity and the pivotal role that it played in the emergence of early Christianity.[5] The Christian New Testament asserts that the name "Christian" first emerged in Antioch.[6]
[5] "The mixture of Roman, Greek, and Jewish elements admirably adapted Antioch for the great part it played in the early history of Christianity. The city was the cradle of the church." — "Antioch," Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. I, p. 186
- [6] "Acts 11:26 and when he found him, he brought him back to Antioch. So for a full year they met together with the church and taught large numbers of people. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch". biblehub.com.
Christianity[edit]
Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity during Roman times.[26] The city had a large population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the Kerateion, and so attracted the earliest missionaries.[27] Evangelized by, among others, Peter himself, according to the tradition upon which the Patriarchate of Antioch[28] still rests its claim for primacy,[29] and later (according to the Acts of the Apostles) by Barnabas and Paul[30][clarification needed], its converts were the first to be called Christians.
In Mark, the source, Jesus just re-does narratives from Kings, Pauls Letters, follows 20 exact points from Romulus, same from Jesus Ben Ananius, Homer and Psams. Verbatim. There is literally no actual Jesus story left that isn't copied.
Savior demigods are Greek. The baptism in the NT is Greek not Jewish. Logos, is Greek, Communal meal is Greek. Cosmopolitinism, individualism, all from Greek mystery religions. Souls, not in OT, in Greek religion. Redeemed souls going to Heaven, not in OT. In Greek religions. It's a Jewish mystery religion. As mythical as any other folk tale.
They don't have "skeptical "presumptions. They do history the same with everything. For the 100th time. See if you can get it this time. Focus.
The Quran is not the word of God, accepted by all humanity, even thought it has witnesses, even though it has original documents. You need evidence to match such a claim.
SAME goes for Mormonism, Moroni gave important updates, in NY. We have original documents. Witnesses. Bahai also has direct contact with God, original documents, witnesses.
You do not believe any of those . You don't believe in Krishna. You need actual evidence to demonstrate beyond any doubt. The Gospels DO NOT have any such thing. The writing is myth. The theology is a trend. The religion it's from is made up from Mesopotamian and Egyptian myth.
NO historian even saw Jesus. One said he investigated and it's a harmless superstition. You choose to throw away an empirical methodology but there is no actual reason to do this. You do it with Jesus, billions do it with Muhammad, billions do it with Krishna, None of you have real evidence or any probability of it being real. This weird game you play with yourself if anything it's just keeping you from discovering truth.
Truth isn't for everyone.
Maybe God likes to play games and inserts himself into a situation where the evidence is so vast that not one historian finds this to be anything but a folk tale. Probably not.
Ehrman, who spends his life working on learning Christianity and the evidence, in original languages has a far far greater chance of being correct than someone who just bought into a belief, reads english rewrites and speaks with other uneducated people who buy into apologetics demonstrated to be wrong. Or who has to invent a bias that you use freely on every other supernatural folk tale
Why, the Gospel does away with presuppositions on page 1 and you still ignore them?
The specific wording of the Gospel titles also suggests that the portion bearing their names was a later addition. The κατα (“according to”) preposition supplements the word ευαγγελιον (“gospel”). This word for “gospel” was implicitly connected with Jesus, meaning that the full title was το ευαγγελιον Ιησου Χριστου (“The Gospel of Jesus Christ”), with the additional preposition κατα (“according to”) used to distinguish specific gospels by their individual names. Before there were multiple gospels written, however, this addition would have been unnecessary. In fact, many scholars argue that the opening line of the Gospel of Mark (1:1) probably functioned as the original title of the text:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…
This original title of Mark can be compared with those of other ancient texts in which the opening lines served as titles. Herodotus’ Histories (1.1), for example, begins with the following line which probably served as the title of the text:
This is the exposition of the history of Herodotus…
A major difference between the Gospel of Mark and Herodotus’ Histories, however, is that opening line of Mark does not name the text’s author, but instead attributes the gospel to Jesus Christ. This title became insufficient, however, when there were multiple “gospels of Jesus” in circulation, and so, the additional κατα (“according to”) formula was used to distinguish specific gospels by their individual names. This circumstance, however, suggests that the names themselves were a later addition, as there would have been no need for such a distinction before multiple gospels were in circulation.
So, in addition to the problem that the Gospel titles do not even explicitly claim authors, we likewise have strong reason to suspect that these named titles were not even affixed to the first manuscript copies. This absence is important, since (as will be discussed under the “External Evidence” section below) the first church fathers who alluded to or quoted passages from the Gospels, for nearly a century after their composition, did so anonymously. Since these sources do not refer to the Gospels by their traditional names, this adds further evidence that the titles bearing those names were not added until a later period (probably in the latter half of the 2nd century CE), after these church fathers were writing.[5] And, if the manuscript titles were added later, and the Gospels themselves were quoted without names, this means that there is no evidence that the Gospels were referred to by their traditional names during the earliest period of their circulation. Instead, the Gospels would have more likely circulated anonymously.
Shows people made stories up about Jesus.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Classic case of
No. All we need to do to reject the OP, is point out the flaws in it.
Which all of us have done multiple times.
We don't need an "alternative" explanation for it any more then we need to have one to explain the alien abductees' experience that made them believe they were abducted by aliens to reject their abduction claim.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
As a hypothesis, it is a lot more likely then "the laws of nature were suspended".
In this hypothesis, it seems Paul is suffering from psychosis. That's quite likely as on average about 3 in 100 people go through a psychosis once in their life.
So as a hypothesis, it is quite plausible.
As for the "laws of nature were suspended" idea, we have zero precedents of that and by any and all accounts that is defined as being impossible.
So as a hypothesis, it is not only implausible, it is actually more like impossible.
So which is more likely if the options on the table are:
"paul suffered from psychosis, like 3 in 100 people do at least once in their life"
or
"the laws of nature were suspended".
I'll go for the first every day of the week...
But note that all this is just to humor you. I don't care for "alternative" explanations. I don't think they are needed.
I reject the entire bible story at face value, simply based on "it requires the laws of nature to be suspended" and the only "evidence" for it, are the claims themselves.
My standards of evidence are a wee bit higher then "just believe" claims.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
And you are the one who insists on ignoring the basis for saying that.
I'm not going to repeat it a 27th time.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
joelr
Well-Known Member
Abiogenesis resulted in life which we see all around us which supports the theory.
What you should compare resurrections to are resurrections of Osiris, Dionysus (also popularly known as Bacchus), Zalmoxis was also a resurrected savior, Inanna is the earliest known resurrected god.
BEfore Jesus where were the resurrections? In Greek influenced mystery religions. In 169 BC the Hellenistic Greeks invaded Judea. Would you look at what Encyclopaedia Biblica, from the 1800s has to say about early Christianity?
"We feel that we have moved more out of a Hebrew into a Greek atmosphere
in the Pastoral Kpistles, in Hebrews— which is beyond doubt dependent both in form and in contents on the Alexandrians (Hellenism) (e.g. , 131814) — and in the Catholic Epistles ; the Epistle of James, even if, with Spitta, we should class it with the Jewish writings, must have had for its author a man with a Greek education. Tt was a born Greek that wrote Acts. If his Hellenic character does not find very marked expression it is merely due to the nature of his work ; no pure Jew would have uttered the almost pantheistic -sounding sentence, ' in God we live and move and have our being' (1723). In the Fourth Gospel, finally, the influence of Greek philosophy is incontestable. Not only is the Logos, which plays so important a part in the prologue (Ii-i8), of Greek origin ; the gnosticising tendency of John, his enthusiasm for ' the truth ' (svithout genitive), his dualism (God and the world almost treated as absolute antithesis), his predilection for abstractions, compel us to regard the author, Jew by birth as he certainly was, as strongly under the influence of Hellenic ideas. Here again, however, we must leave open the possibility that these Greek elements reached him through the Jewish Alexandrian philosophy ; just as little can his Logos theory have originated independently of Philo, as the figure of the Paraclete in chaps. 14-16 (see J. ReVille, La doctrine du Logos dans le quatrieme Evangile,. Paris, '81). Cp JOHN [SON OK ZKBEDEE], § 31.
We must conclude with the following guarded thesis. There is in the circle of ideas in the NT, in addition to what is new, and what is taken over from Judaism, much that is Greek ; but whether this is adopted directly from the Greek or borrowed from the Alexandrians, who indeed aimed at a complete fusion of Hellenism and Judaism, is, in the most important cases, not to be determined ; and primitive Christianity as a whole stands considerably nearer to the Hebrew world than to the Greek.
Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible
by Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915; Black, J. Sutherland (John Sutherland), 1846-1923
Even in 1800. They determined it was more Hebrew but MUCH about Greek religion was not yet discovered. Now, it's total consensus in historical studies. Jesus is a Greek demigod. His resurrection, like all Greek demigods, is a folk tale.
How Hellenized was the Jewish religious culture of the time?
Jewish culture and civilization during the Hellenistic period was in intense dialogue with Hellenistic culture and civilization, beginning with the translation of Hebrew scriptures into Greek, a translation which survives and which we know as the Septuagint. That's certainly an example of the way in which Greek literary forms and Greek language impacted Jewish civilization and literary traditions. That impact extends far beyond scripture, and we see during the Hellenistic period Jews adopting literary forms of the Greek tradition, and writing plays, epic poems, lyric poems, all in the Greek language. Much of this activity would have centered in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, but there was similar activity going on in Palestine, and some of these literary products that survive in some cases only in fragments, were probably written in Palestine, by Jews who were adopting these Hellenistic literary modes.
Yes, there are experiments, breakthroughs every year written about in journals. It's only a matter of time.
The Miller-Urey Experiment
In 1953, chemists Harold Urey and Stanley Miller designed an experimental apparatus which duplicated the atmospheric conditions on Earth proposed by Oparin and Haldane. Urey and Miller filled a chamber with warm water, water vapor, methane, ammonia and molecular hydrogen and then introduced pulses of electrical sparks into the chamber. After one week, they analyzed the material in the chamber and found a variety or organic molecules including amino acids, verifying this aspect of the Primordial Soup theory.The current research and debate about abiogenesis now centers around how and why organic molecules may have accumulated in certain areas on the early Earth and how these molecules increased in complexity and eventually became self-replicating life. Astrobiology, the scientific field that looks for extraterrestrial life, has provided an additional information that supports abiogenesis. For example, studies on Saturn’s moon Titan have shown that its’ atmosphere has no oxygen and that there are organic molecules present.
Self-replicating molecules show signs of metabolism for the first time
Although self-replication is usually associated with DNA, the behaviour has been seen in very different looking chemical systems – for example in rotaxanes. This raises the intriguing possibility of creating completely synthetic lifeforms that tick all three boxes for life: replication, the use and storage of energy to perform energetically unfavourable, or endergonic, reactions, and keeping all of these functions contained to protect them from parasitic lifeforms.
For the first time, large self-replicating molecules win evolution
The group of Sijbren Otto from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands previously found a special kind of molecule that can self-replicate by self-assembling. These simple molecules are composed of rings of carbon and hydrogen, called benzenes, along with two “arms” and a “tail”. The arms are thiol groups (molecules containing sulfur) that can form a type of bond called a “disulfide bond” with other thiol arms under regular laboratory conditions. The “tails” are extremely short strings of amino acids, like a simple protein.
These building blocks form a “ring of rings,” typically composed of three to six benzene units connected by those disulfide arms. Rings of all sizes are dynamically interconverting by exchanging building blocks, in a disulfide exchange reaction. It was found that a particular ring size can self-assemble when rings of identical size stack on top of each other to form fibers. As more and more of those rings stack onto the fibers, the fibers become longer and longer.
This process is actually catalyzed by the fiber’s edges themselves. You can see this for yourself with this animation. Under mechanical agitation, such as stirring, long fibers tend to break and produce more fibers which further drives the stacking of more rings onto fibers, until eventually all the molecules of the particular size are converted into fibers. All of this means that the rings are self-replicators — they can make copies of themselves without the help of other enzymes.
Next, they discovered that two replicators with different ring sizes (such as rings of three and rings of six) can both replicate in a specific environment. Not surprisingly, the simpler three-ring replicators have an advantage over the complex six-ring replicators during the replication process. This is because the smaller rings are easier to make. Is there a way to propagate the slow and complex six-ring replicators? In other words, can we beat the Spiegelman’s Monster?
It turned out the answer has to do with a basic principle of biology called “equilibrium.” The three-ring replicators indeed replicate faster because they are structurally simpler, but it also means they would be destroyed faster. If the system is continuously undergoing replication and destruction processes, then the complex six-ring replicator may have a chance to win.
This study solved a fundamental question in science. How are complex molecules retained during the replication process? Indeed, life is not in equilibrium, so the key here is in the out-of-equilibrium state. Life is in a dynamic state where energy is constantly being consumed to build or break down molecules. In some cases, there is more destruction and in other cases there is more construction. No sub-system of life is ever in equilibrium, as equilibrium means death. Now that the Spiegelman’s Monster has been defeated, chemists who study the origin of life are on to other challenges!
joelr
Well-Known Member
Cool, you enjoy the consensus of most historical scholars? Let's use them!
Professor of Jewish Studies
Kipp Davis - reviewing
Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy
"Within modern, critical biblical scholarship it has become widely accepted that the god of the ancient Israelites was no different from gods of ancient near East: he was physically embodied, and active in all of the same respects as human beings."
So What About Hannibal, Then? • Richard Carrier Blogs
This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for [x]. P3. The same standards of evidence...
www.richardcarrier.info
All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed.
Consensus on Gospels
1:05:35. Mainstream consensus, the Gospel Jesus did not exist.
Carl A. P. Ruck (born December 8, 1935, Bridgeport, Connecticut), is a professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. He received his B.A. at Yale University, his M.A. at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. at Harvard University.
“Christianity is not a Jewish religion, it’s a Hellenistic religion.”
"
The Gospels are re-tellings of the sacred myths in mystery religions"
“Jesus is of Jewish ethnicity but is telling the story of a Hellenistic deity”
Colt
Well-Known Member
* People didn't claim to see Elvis, Michael or Typac resurrected from the dead, they don't believe they died! Like people believed Hitler didn't die rather a decoy was burned, that Hitler was living in South America or something. None of them said they would return from death or that they had the power to do so like Jesus.
Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Today disciples of Jesus benefit from the spirit of truth that is the conviction of truth that Jesus poured out upon all flesh. That accounts for the inexplicable faith that we have in Jesus. He is literally a spiritual presence.
The enemies of God, defiant anti-christs are clueless and dumfounded, being unaware of the presence of God.
I consider Christianity an evolved Hellenist Roman religion. I believe the Gospels evolved from two sources" A simple shorter biography Q, and a compilation of 'Sayings of Jesus' which many do not originate with Jesus. Paul is primarily responsible for Christianity becoming Hellenist and then influenced by Roman beliefs and traditions forming the foundation of the Roman Church.Cool, you enjoy the consensus of most historical scholars? Let's use them!
Professor of Jewish Studies
Kipp Davis - reviewing
Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy
"Within modern, critical biblical scholarship it has become widely accepted that the god of the ancient Israelites was no different from gods of ancient near East: he was physically embodied, and active in all of the same respects as human beings."
So What About Hannibal, Then? • Richard Carrier Blogs
This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for [x]. P3. The same standards of evidence...
All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed.
Consensus on Gospels
1:05:35. Mainstream consensus, the Gospel Jesus did not exist.
Carl A. P. Ruck (born December 8, 1935, Bridgeport, Connecticut), is a professor in the Classical Studies department at Boston University. He received his B.A. at Yale University, his M.A. at the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. at Harvard University.
“Christianity is not a Jewish religion, it’s a Hellenistic religion.”
"
The Gospels are re-tellings of the sacred myths in mystery religions"
“Jesus is of Jewish ethnicity but is telling the story of a Hellenistic deity”
I believe that educated literate Hellenist Jews and Gentiles of Asia Minor converted by Paul heavily influenced and embellished the final compilation of the gospels. The final compilation of the gospels and letters, some written by Paul show a great deal of knowledge and literacy from the Hellenic perspective,
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TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Does that matter?
The point is these are all people who claim to have seen a person after the person is supposed to have been dead.
What they conclude from that sighting, or how they explain it, seems irrelevant to the fact that they claim to have seen them.
Muslims also don't believe that jesus resurrected and in fact believe he didn't die in the first place.
The actual question here, is why do you dismiss these people's claims at face value? Why don't you follow their conclusion that these people didn't die?
What's the difference between their claim and the claim of those in the bible?
Both have seen a person after they were supposedly dead...
Yet you believe one and not the other.
Which is kind of strange to me, because the one you choose to believe is the extra ordinary one that requires the suspension of natural law, while the other doesn't.
I don't care for your preaching.
Try to address the point instead.
Colt
Well-Known Member
I have addressed the point and it DOES matter and we have to endure your preaching as well! Sightings of dead celebrities are based on a refusal to believe they died. Many people witnessed the death of Jesus and even when he returned, they refused to believe it until they saw him and talked with him with their own eyes.
Jesus is a spiritual presence for believers today.
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