Jesus was Myth

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

I think the point of scholars is that todays context of the crucifixion is night and day different from the time period it happened in.

What they posit is that if you were going to create a mythical character, one could still achieve your goals in mythology by death, without such a embarressing and humiliating death.

being kiled by a Roman guard in a battle for the common man, or even a mythical battle, or simply beheaded by herod.


What we do see is a punishement and crime that fits perfectly with the cultural anthropology of the time period which isnt needed for mythology, but its there.

Depends on what the goal is. I see it in two folds, the crucifixion as embarrassing can be resolved historically by linking the death to prophecies. Mythologically if the goal is to show that the death was for our sins the more embarrassing the better

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The "He died for our sins" narrative then becomes, either, etiology or crass fabrication, thereby reducing the mythicist stance vis a vis this criterion to an ad hominem.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

The "He died for our sins" narrative then becomes, either, etiology or crass fabrication, thereby reducing the mythicist stance vis a vis this criterion to an ad hominem.

Well died for our sins and was resurrected. Not to mention inberween that descends to hell, shuts the gates and open the gates of heaven. Also some dead people came back to life.

 

[nash8]

*edit*

He's a neuroscientist so I can tell you the answer is no lol.

The point he is trying to make, at least in my opinion, is that the author/authors of gmark, most likely, compiled gmark off of previous writings, which would most likely have been composed themselves off previous writings, which most likely would have been composed off previous writings. So no, you can't equate a particular text and attribute it to just one person because the text was probably written by numerous people, and the text that the writing was based upon was probably written by numerous people.

With the John Smith thing we still have primary sources and references, and can say with much more assurance that Mormon texts were actually written directly by him, and even with that, we can't be totally certain.

Legion, I expect some frubals for translating your incorrigible rants, that you try to pass as logical posts, into something that everyone can understand.

And if I totally missed the point of what you were trying to say, I still expect some frubals for my attempt to do so.

 

[outhouse]

Well died for our sins and was resurrected. Not to mention inberween that descends to hell, shuts the gates and open the gates of heaven. Also some dead people came back to life.

Your saying mythology cannot ever be applied to theology surrounding a real event, no historical core can exist ???

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Your saying mythology cannot ever be applied to theology surrounding a real event, no historical core can exist ???

I'm saying both are equally possible.

 

[outhouse]

the whole point is all the people writing about the Jesus character believed him to be a man who lived just a few decades prior, within 1 generation and no one was colling these authors out to be mistaken. Any other issues was questioned but not that he was a man who lived and died.

No one claimed Paul was wrong about this man who died.

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

Maybe you fail to understand how prevelant oral traditions were during this time.

Which cannot be applied to Smith

I suspect that I'm quite a bit more familiar with 'oral tradtions' than you are, linguistics being my field of study and all. But I have no idea what you are talking about here. How is oral tradition relevant to what I said?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

The point he is trying to make, at least in my opinion, is that the author/authors of gmark, most likely, compiled gmark off of previous writings, which would most likely have been composed themselves off previous writings, which most likely would have been composed off previous writings. So no, you can't equate a particular text and attribute it to just one person because the text was probably written by numerous people, and the text that the writing was based upon was probably written by numerous people.

That's a fine guess, I guess, but it has no relevance at all to the argument I was making. Whether gMark was written by one person, one time, or by a committee various times... that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue we were discussing.

So even if you are right, it means that Legion got lost in the logic somehow or else just decided he didn't want to follow it. I don't know.

By the way, why do you think that gMark was based on previous proto-gospels? What evidence or reasoning do you have for that?

 

[AmbiguousGuy]

the whole point is all the people writing about the Jesus character believed him to be a man who lived just a few decades prior, within 1 generation and no one was colling these authors out to be mistaken. Any other issues was questioned but not that he was a man who lived and died.

I suspect you're mistaken about that. I'm guessing that all four gospelers were called out continually about the non-existant Jesus. Just my guess.

Who do you think wrote 2nd John and when? It contains an admission that Jesus deniers were out and about, doesn't it?

 

[steeltoes]

Sure you do. You're just another fundamentalist Christian relying on Christian scholars with Christian biases to understand this clearly mythical Jesus. The fact that one can peruse your thousands of posts, or merely look at your stated religion in each and every post, is clearly part of the vast "historicist" conspiracy. You're probably one of the programmers of Bart Erhman v 2.0 (author of that latest piece of trash on the historical Jesus, and just when I thought he couldn't produce something poorer than his first work on the historical Jesus years ago).

I mean, if you really weren't Christian, then clearly you'd be a mythicist. It's, like, totally obvious. Just observe people for a while, and when you reach professional-level observation abilities. you'll totally understand how things worked in a variety of cultures 2 millennia ago.

If you had any comprehension skills at all you would have read "the" church fathers when I referenced them, not "your" church fathers. That neither you or Jayhawker picked that up only goes to show.

It's too bad that the only thing that exceeds your vast amount of research is your confirmation bias and eargerness to ridicule those that don't share in your biased opinions. I don't think any amount of biased research is of much value, but you certainly do, you relish in it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

*edit*

But you make no mention of this person, and you can't. Because nobody has more than quite unreliable information on the author. What you do instead is treat the author and the text as equivalent to Smith and the Book of Mormon, when
1) There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Book of Mormon would have inspired a following without the movement's leader (and everything we know about such movements tells us it wouldn't have)
2) We know how influential Smith's actions were in not only establishing the movement but in maintaining it and doing so in such a way that it still exists
3) We know that the Jesus cult existed before Mark was written and we know from a contemporary of Jesus who tells us of things this Jesus did (such as eating with his followers, being betrayed by one, etc.)
4) We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the author of Mark was at all influential other than as an author (i.e., he is not comparable to Smith except via a faulty and illogical analogy)
5) We have plenty of evidence that no author of any text was equivalent to Smith, because (among other things) we find two other authors using Mark and another source, a fourth set of authors (disciples of a disciple) producing another one, and all in the first century.


There is no author equivalent to Smith, and the only comparable documents to the Book of Mormon began to be written before Mark was. Also, we know that around the beginning of the first century the earliest canon we have knowledge of was formed by Marcion, who rejected all the NT except Luke and Paul. We know of a certain Papias who tells us that around this time he would try to learn from people about the Jesus tradition, not texts.

In fact, everything we know points to your analogy as completely and utterly flawed as you point to a sectarian leader who authored (according to non-Mormons) a text, founded a movement, and as both leader an sole author was able to sustain this movement. Yet you point to this while comparing it to an unknown author of a text which sometimes formed part of a series of texts considered to be authoritative, and no leader of a movement at all. Furthermore, the earliest texts which became canonical pre-date Mark.

So we have a Jesus cult/movement before Mark (we don't with Smith), we have multiple texts including those that predate Mark (we don't with Smith), and we have no Smith (movement founder or leader).

*edit*

I did understand it, but apparently the fact that I was arguing your analogy was illogical seems to have slipped past you. Hopefully the above clears that up for you.

*edit*

Well, let's see. I have a background in discrete mathematics (i.e., various logic systems), I use formal languages for programming (again, logic), and I use mathematics for modelling systems among other uses (again, an extension of logic), and not only do I have a background in languages and linguistics, it was a central focus of the lab I worked at (i.e., the neural processing of concepts, words, language, etc.). So, although physics is merely a hobby (like history), the rest is not just something I have studied but something I work with in numerous ways constantly.

You, on the other hand, are a self-proclaimed scholar of the heart trained through observation. So, while it is possible that I am unable to process as you say, perhaps your belief in your own rationality is faulty. There are a number of easily readable non-technical books like You're Not That Smart, Predictably Irrational, and a few others I know of that you could read to understand what real researchers of human cognition have discovered about the ways in which humans are fairly consistent in the ways that we simultaneously affirm our rationality and use faulty reasoning (often to do so).

It's helpful to know these things because as we've shown, understanding how the brain works illogically helps one to realize when one is being "predictably irrational".

 

[steeltoes]

the whole point is all the people writing about the Jesus character believed him to be a man who lived just a few decades prior, within 1 generation and no one was colling these authors out to be mistaken. Any other issues was questioned but not that he was a man who lived and died.

No one claimed Paul was wrong about this man who died.

Who would have preserved the writings of those accusers and of the non believers? Christian monks? I don't think so.

Celcus' writings were destroyed. Do you know who Celcus was and how it is that some of his words survived?

Do you know why writings that would have called the gospel writers out could not have survived?

Do you understand how it is that the writings that we do have survived?

You claim mythicists have bad arguments, look in the mirror.

 

[Katzpur]

With the John Smith thing we still have primary sources and references, and can say with much more assurance that Mormon texts were actually written directly by him, and even with that, we can't be totally certain.

1. It's Joseph Smith, not John Smith.
2. Wordprint analysis strongly indicate that the Book of Mormon was penned by a number of different individuals.

 

[Katzpur]

1) There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Book of Mormon would have inspired a following without the movement's leader (and everything we know about such movements tells us it wouldn't have)

Within thirteen years of the publication of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith was dead at the hands of a mob. His followers were being driven out of their homes whererever they settled. For several years prior to Brigham Young succeeding Joseph Smith as President of the LDS Church, no single individual was in a position of leadership. Yet the Church, even in those difficult early days, continued to grow. One would think that, with everything the Church had working against it, it would have simply died out with the death of Joseph Smith. How do you explain that it didn't even come close to doing so?

 

[outhouse]

Who would have preserved the writings of those accusers and of the non believers? Christian monks? I don't think so. .

Who cares, we dont have but a fraction of even the popular scripture. Most didnt survive no matter what side of the coin they were on.

Celcus' writings were destroyed. Do you know who Celcus was and how it is that some of his words survived?

A lot of Christian text and previous gospels were destroyed, your not gaininhg ground here.


Celsus even thought Jesus was a man, Origen is a reliable source.

Do you know why writings that would have called the gospel writers out could not have survived?

Do you know why many popular gospels cannot be found?

Do you understand how it is that the writings that we do have survived?

Popularity


But if you want to go off on a conspiracy tangent, dont. If you would like to bring something to the table and share, please do.

You claim mythicists have bad arguments, look in the mirror

Did I say I placed any weight on such????? not a word I stated was a bad arguement



What you fail to realize is that people who had different views were saved because of al the Christians telling us how much they stood a part from their view. Marcion in point. While not a bit of writing exist, we know much about him by those that opposed his view.

If there were arguements that Jesus was just a mythical character, there would have been people claiming such and those reporting how they found the view faulty. We dont even get that.

 

[outhouse]

I suspect you're mistaken about that. I'm guessing that all four gospelers were called out continually about the non-existant Jesus. Just my guess.

atleast you admit its a guess, no harm there.

Who do you think wrote 2nd John and when? It contains an admission that Jesus deniers were out and about, doesn't it

Are you not mistaken that this deals with jesus divinity more so then his physical existance.


We already know many claimed he was only man, without divinity. No one disputes that.

Its all context my brother.

 

[steeltoes]

If there were arguements that Jesus was just a mythical character, there would have been people claiming such and those reporting how they found the view faulty. We dont even get that.

Sure we do.


2 John 1:7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

 

[Crazyflight]

Sure we do.


2 John 1:7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

I've read and reread and reread this quote, and I still don't understand how it's relevant. If you'd care to translate into a way that makes sense with the current argument, that would be great. :help:

 

[outhouse]

Sure we do.


2 John 1:7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Context is key

2 John 1:7 Bible Commentary

Who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh - Who maintain that he assumed only the appearance of a man, and was not really incarnate. See the notes at 1 John 4:2-3.




Its all context brother.

2 John 1:7 « Bible Exposition Commentary

There were few suitable motels in the first century so traveling teachers stayed in homes of the locality where they ministered. Many of these teachers were imposters. Some of them taught Gnosticism which held that, since matter is evil, God could not dwell in human flesh.
The presence of false teachers proves damaging to the exercise of mutual love because their teaching negates the essence of Christianity, the incarnation. The false teacher, Cerinthus, preyed not on pagans but on true Christians.


There were many beliefs of all varieties regarding Jesus, from fully man to fully god like Marcion who claimed a spiritual only Jesus, and the above commentary on that scripture.