TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
You just said that these sources only at best refer to a historical jesus, not a magical one.
This thread here is specifically about a magical jesus. Specifically one that defies death.
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Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
- Thread starter Apologes
- Start date
This thread here is specifically about a magical jesus. Specifically one that defies death.
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
No, I didn't say that.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Unless they are naive gullible people and believe the person in question is god or the son of god or whatever, even more so in cultures where superstition is the natural order of the day.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
All this time I thought you were the one I initially replied to, but it was @Eli G 's post.
Sorry for the misunderstanding
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
No problem.
joelr
Well-Known Member
It literally is Hellenism combined with Jewish theology.
For starters this is an overview of what Hellenism brought to religions (like Judaism)
Hellenistic religion | Ancient Greek Gods, Rituals & Beliefs | Britannica
Hellenistic religion, any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of eastern Mediterranean peoples from 300 bc to ad 300. The period of Hellenistic influence, when taken as a whole, constitutes one of the most creative periods in the history of religions. It was a time of spiritual
-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.
-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.
-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.
-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme
-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.
-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)
-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century
- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.
-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.
-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)
-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)
- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries
Here is Dr Carrier talking about the subject:
“What traits did Christianity share with other mystery religions or cults of the first century?”
At the time that Christianity began you have to understand that the whole Mediterranean was being influenced by Hellenism. A lot of Hellenistic ideas going through all the cultures - Syrians, Anatolians, Jews, Egyptians….
Trends are going around, one particular trend was the mystery religions that spread. There was a variety of these religions. Every national culture that came under the influence of Hellenism developed their own version of the mystery religion. Every one is different because you take the local religion and combine it with Hellenism. Osiris and Isis in Egypt, Adonis in Syria, Thracians has Zalmoxis cult, all these different religions, you see Savior Gods, they are not the Supreme God, they are a demigod/child of God. They are savior figures and undergo some sort of struggle or suffering, sometimes a death and resurrection. Through that Passion they gain victory over death and share that with their followers.
This is done through the followers sharing communion, common meals and baptism.
These religions are very cosmopolitan - uniting all races and genders, everyone is part of a fictive kin group. Syncretism is another feature, you have a core model and each religion creates something new. Individualism -original pagan cults were communal for the benefit of crops or people as a collective. The mystery cults were all about personal salvation - getting a good place in the afterlife.
They are also Henotheistic. One supreme God and all other Gods are subordinate and created by him. Judaism is henotheism, lesser deities not called Gods but has angels, demons, devil and hierarchy of deities.
Judea was the latecomer of this religion. Consciously or unconsciously they are influenced by this model and trend. They develop their own version of this mystery religion, it’s very Jewish but conforms to the new trends. They make them Jewish and sell them as Jewish “this has always been Gods plan”.
Christianity starts out as this Hellenized Jewish offshoot sect. Originally you had to become a Jew to join. Paul comes along and realizes he could be a big figure in this cult and realizes it could be more popular if the Jewish requirements were lowered. This led to the shift into a more Gentile religion.
Judaism in the 1st century had about 9 known sects so they were already experimenting with changes, no surprise that Christianity pops up.
Christianity uses common Essenes Jewish wisdom. Hillite wisdom also shows up in Christianity so there are fragments of many Jewish sects written into the Gospels. We cannot say for sure if Christianity was an offshoot of Essenes or combinations of sects.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Also nowdays modern apologists just use denial, like you are using. Yet 1st century apologists admitted Jesus was like Greek demigods, they just claimed that Satan made those other religions to fool Christians into thinking Jesus was a copy-cat myth.
Justin Martyr, The Dialogue with Trypho,
Chapter 69. The devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and Æsculapius
Justin: Be well assured, then, Trypho, that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah's days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by [Jupiter's] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that [the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, 'strong as a giant to run his race,' has been in like manner imitated? And when he [the devil] brings forward Æsculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ? But since I have not quoted to you such Scripture as tells that Christ will do these things, I must necessarily remind you of one such: from which you can understand, how that to those destitute of a knowledge of God, I mean the Gentiles, who, 'having eyes, saw not, and having a heart, understood not,' worshipping the images of wood, [how even to them] Scripture prophesied that they would renounce these [vanities], and hope in this Christ. It is thus written:
.....
And when I hear, Trypho, that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Because the concept of a general resurrection has made it's way into Jewish theology from the 2nd Temple Period and Hellenistic saviors was currently being adopted into a Jewish version of the popular Mystery religion. You need a passion.
Paul didn't need mental illness he just repeated the folk tales and added visions.
Christians were later forging stuff like crazy - Gospels, Acts, Epistles, doctored passages, all have versions accepted as fake by mainstream scholarship. 40 Gospels in total.
2:55:58 (Hellenistic syncretism was adopted)….much the same way that Judaism adopted the idea of the apocalypse and a general resurrection from Zoroastrians during the exile “this Zorastrian God can resurrect all the people at the end of times and solve all these problems, well if their God can do that our God can also do that….” The ideas were probably imported sincerely. Christianity was another attempt at this syncretic phenomenon.
20:29 Osiris, Bacchus, Adonis, Mithras, Hercules, Zalmoxis, Dolichenus, Demeter & Persephone
All savior Gods
All sons/daughters of God
All undergo a passion (patheon)
All obtain victory over death, which they share with their followers…
Often with baptism and communion
Their stories are set in human history
None of them really existed
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Irrelevant. Concluding resurrection doesn't make the likelihood of it having occurred any more likely. You keep ignoring that.
An important difference between your thinking and that of the empiricists and critical thinkers is that you have decided that resurrection is a realistic possibility and they disagree. What you call evidence of a historical resurrection is just words in an ancient holy book, one that also contains stories of talking snakes, one from a people whose neighbors also revered resurrected demigods, some born to virgins. But that's all you have to point to your faith-based conclusion is those words, and so present them as your evidence. Others, who aren't trying to defend faith-based beliefs, tell you that that evidence doesn't imply that a resurrection occurred, that your faith-based belief is not a sound conclusion derived from the application of valid reasoning to that evidence. That's the difference between going where the evidence leads one and trying to retrofit an argument to support a belief not arrived at using that evidence. One generates sound conclusions, and the other doesn't.
So what? No specific conclusion about a hallucination is likely. It's a kind of Rorschach test. Picking resurrection as an explanation doesn't makes that possibility more likely, just as if they said he disappeared into the distant future or past wouldn't make either of those one iota more likely to have actually occurred.
Same problem for you. Naturalistic explanations are orders of magnitude more likely to be correct. That never changes whatever people say they saw or however many died for believing otherwise.
Inventing excuses? Then you don't believe me that what's preventing you from getting what you want is that you refuse to try to find it yourself and as a result, I refuse to help you any further. That's fine.
I don't need to show I'm not lying. I've posted my response regarding the possible explanations for the biblical report of a witnessed resurrection and their relative likelihood ordered by relative parsimony. It's there for you to find and I've showed you how to find it.
And who do I need to show my response to convince them that I'm not lying apart from you? Some may remember what I wrote, some may remember that I answered but not how, and others will have no recollection of anything, but will conclude that I am likely correct and you are likely not based in their prior experience of us both.
Here's a question I'd love to see an answer for but know I never will. Why didn't you do the search? I showed you how to insert your search parameters and generate a list of posts by author containing your search keyword. I showed you a screen shot of what that generated for me, which contained what you were looking for. If they were live links rather than pictures of links, you could have found it then and there. But you didn't. You still haven't mentioned seeing those directions, so there is no evidence you did, or if you did, that it entered your awareness rather than being deleted immediately by a faith-based confirmation bias a la Morton, who you also failed to comment on.
Here's my hypothesis to explain that ordered by decreasing parsimony:
- Some version of you don't what I'm referring to - most likely; you've shown the thread that you have a kind of blindness to text
- Some version of you do know what I mean but are now too embarrassed to say so - less likely but still a common human response
- Some version of you trolling - even less likely; I just don't get that vibe from you and this explanation requires that I misjudged you a lot
- Something supernatural occurred - least likely; always at the bottom of every list that contains naturalistic alternatives
You have the power to answer that question. You can write, "The reason I didn't do the search is ..." or "I tried the search but couldn't make it work" or "What search?" But you don't. I can't think of an acceptable answer except the last one, and I don't expect you to have the integrity to identify that as your position if that's indeed where you're at. I expect more of your silence. You complain about what you perceive others hold back from you, but this one is an ethos killer. Should you be trusted if you won't be honest about what's going on in your head?
But dishonesty is what characterizes creationist apologetics. Once one has accepted a false idea as correct, he has the unenviable task of defending that belief in his head from the contradictory evidence he inevitably encounters, and that makes him lie to himself and then to others, which does violence to the spirit, by which I mean the sum of one's virtues and vices that define his values, methods, and agenda. Defending a lie does this damage. Covering up for a friend's affair does this to you.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
That's because when we ask for it, we don't get any evidence. Instead we get faith-based proclamations.
Heck, we can't even get a definition of the thing(s) we're supposed to be provided evidence of.
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Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
He can’t exist outside time. He wouldn’t be able to do or think anything because that requires time.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Yes those hypothesis have strong explanatory power.My hypothesis: big foot exists. if my hypothesis is true, does it make sense that countless people concluded to have spotted bigfoot? ........yes......(for obvious reasons).
My hypothesis: aliens abduct humans. if my hypothesis is true, does it make sense that countless people concluded to have been abducted by aliens? ........yes......(for obvious reasons).
Here's another obvious thing: when you assume a claim is true, then is that consistent with people making the claim?
Great "explanatory power" you have there.
They might faill for other reasons, but they do have explanatory power.
Yes that is how explanatory power works.
First you assume that the hypotheis is true
Then you determine if the truth of that hypothesis successfully explains the fact to be explained.
So now that you seem to understand the concept of explanatory power, are you ready to grant that resurrection hypothesis has better explanatory power than psychosis?
leroy
Well-Known Member
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Most people would simply rather to show that he is not lying.
I mean if a coworker is wrongly accusing you for not sending the information on time, the most reasonable think to do is to resend the email, with the original date and time, so that your coworker can see that you did send the information on time.
If instead of sending that email as proof that you delivered the information on time, and you simple claim “yes I did send the information on time” but I will not prove it because of some stupid reasons concerning that you are not going to do his job, …………. Your coworker would justifiable conclude that you are lying that that such information was not send on time.
Yes, as a theist I think there are good arguments for the existence of God, which is why I think miracles and resurrections are realistic possibilities.
But even assuming agnosticism (I don’t know if God exists or not, probability arround 50% / 50% ) the resurrection would still be realistic.
Only form the point of view of a strong atheist who claims to have conclusive evidence against the existence of God, the resurrection becomes non-realistic
Any disagreement form your part?
The fact that you asre still making long and tedious post explaining why you shouldn’t show that you are not lying is telling.
Most people would simply rather to show that he is not lying.
I mean if a coworker is wrongly accusing you for not sending the information on time, the most reasonable think to do is to resend the email, with the original date and time, so that your coworker can see that you did send the information on time.
If instead of sending that email as proof that you delivered the information on time, and you simple claim “yes I did send the information on time” but I will not prove it because of some stupid reasons concerning that you are not going to do his job, …………. Your coworker would justifiable conclude that you are lying that that such information was not send on time.
Yes, as a theist I think there are good arguments for the existence of God, which is why I think miracles and resurrections are realistic possibilities.
But even assuming agnosticism (I don’t know if God exists or not, probability arround 50% / 50% ) the resurrection would still be realistic.
Only form the point of view of a strong atheist who claims to have conclusive evidence against the existence of God, the resurrection becomes non-realistic
Any disagreement form your part?
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Prove he is lying. I don't see it. We're tired of your games that you claim we're the ones playing. Let's stick to the topic at hand, okay?
Have you made a single post yet, where you weren't trying to shift your burden of proof onto others?
This is a repeat post again. You are not making a 50/50 proposition for God here, as you already know.
leroy
Well-Known Member
ok but why didnt you answer?
"es, as a theist I think there are good arguments for the existence of God, which is why I think miracles and resurrections are realistic possibilities.
But even assuming agnosticism (I don’t know if God exists or not, probability arround 50% / 50% ) the resurrection would still be realistic.
Only form the point of view of a strong atheist who claims to have conclusive evidence against the existence of God, the resurrection becomes non-realistic
Any disagreement form your part?????????????
My intent, (and the intent of the OP) is that you propose a naturalistic hypothesis and then we debate on which hypothesis is better.
So yes, the intent is that the burden proof is shared.
If you have problems with proposing and developing a hypothesis or if you have problems with accepting your part of the burden proof, then I am not interested in a conversation with you
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Brian2
Veteran Member
It certainly is part of the record.
If people these days what to define the historical record as being only those parts that do not contain any supernatural elements, that is their prerogative but has no bearing on what the actual record tells us.
Brian2
Veteran Member
If I work with the gospel story as telling the truth about the death of Jesus, then He died.
With Isa 53 there seems to be more than one way to understand the text and those 2 ways might be both correct.
God made the Jewish suffering, a guilt offering and made Jesus offering a sin offering. He who was without sin, bore the sins of others on Himself.
Ebionite
Well-Known Member
There are more than 2 ways of interpreting Isaiah 53. Bearing the sin of others relates to Psalm 35 as well:
| 16 | With hypocritical mockers in feasts (מעוג), they gnashed upon me with their teeth. |
The Hebrew word maowg (מעוג) can be translated as 'cake'.