The Myth of The Jesus Myth

[Dirty Penguin]

According to legend, Helena entered the temple with Bishop Macarius, ordered the temple torn down and chose a site to begin excavating, which led to the recovery of three different crosses. Refused to be swayed by anything but solid proof, a woman from Jerusalem, who was already at the point of death from a certain disease, was brought; when the woman touched the first and second crosses, her condition did not change, but when she touched the third and final cross she suddenly recovered and Helena declared the cross with which the woman had been touched to be the True Cross. On the site of discovery, she built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while she continued building churches on every Holy site.

She also found the nails of the crucifixion. wiki


I once doubted, but now I believe.


.

Keep doubting my friend. This, in short, sounds like GoldiLocks and the Three Bears.......

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Oberon, you're barking up the wrong tree, man.

Begin with Bultmann.

 

[Oberon]

and you are still not paying attention..
Or perhaps you are intentionally avoiding the actual question?

Why has there been no evidence found of a synagogue there?

You realize that things get destroyed right? And that a synagogue in Jesus' day was not a temple. Synagogues were simply gathering places of worship. The central temple was very different. A house could be a synagogue. It is very different to tell by archaeology, especially in a site that hasn't been so well preserved, just what was and was not a synagogue. The central place of jewish worship was still the temple.

 

[dogsgod]

Keep doubting my friend. This, in short, sounds like GoldiLocks and the Three Bears.......

You are forgetting about oral tradition and how these sites were known by the people that passed on these traditions for generations. These people knew where to build the Church of the Annunciation because of the traditions they inherited. If Helena could find Nazareth she could easily find the place where the annunciation took place. She found the True Cross and the nails so we know she was an expert archeologist.

 

[Oberon]

Oberon, you're barking up the wrong tree, man.

Begin with Bultmann.

I think Bultmann employed a faulty model of orality with which to analayze the gospel. He treated them too much like written texts, using formgeschichteto determine which passages were earlier.

Have you read Kelber's The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q?

Or better yet, Dunn's Jesus Remembered and Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospel's as Eye Witnesses Testimony.(although Bauckham goes overboard with his theories).

Gerhardsson was the first to show problems with Bultmann's methodology, because rather than looking at orality in folklore he studied transmission in Rabbinic circles as a better model of how transmission of the Jesus tradition may have occured. Plenty of other work on orality has been done since then.

Bultmann assumed an informal and uncontrolled transmission of the Jesus tradition. I don't think the evidence shows this however. From Paul, Papias, Polycarp, Luke, and even John, there are indications all over the place that SPECIFIC people took a hand in making sure the traditions were passed on, and controlled to a degree.

I think the best one line criticism of Bultmann is Taylor's "If the Form-Critics are right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the Resurrection."

 

[angellous_evangellous]

I think Bultmann employed a faulty model of orality with which to analayze the gospel. He treated them too much like written texts, using formgeschichteto determine which passages were earlier.

This seems anachronistic to me...

But all I'm saying is that Bultmann's notion of and approach to myth and the historical / mythical elements in the Gospels is a better place to start than the garbage pawned by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy's book "The Jesus Mysteries."

 

[blueman]

wow.
Seeing as you are unable to keep up with our own little tangent, I do not expect much of anything useful from you on the main topic.

You have a nice day now.

Another rant on your part with absolutely no substance.

 

[blueman]

No it's not, considering that it's been shown that the city/town wasn't that big. It's been estimated 300 to 600 people. So it wasn't a "heavily populated" city. Additionally I've found no archeological data confirming the existence of a synagogue....A well, yes, tombs, yes, some pottery, yes......a synagogue....no......



No it wouldn't....

This is a fairly lame place to be laying your hat on in light of all of the other aruguments laid out earlier.

 

[MSizer]

Look, if you are foolish enough to believe that some person was born of a virgin, walked on water, raised a few people from the dead and then after being crucified got up to stretch his legs, no amount of logic is useful to you, as you are not rational. This is a futile argument. I've learned that I can't use reason to explain something to an unreasonable person, and a person who believes any of that is unreasonable. Faith trumps everything.

 

[blueman]

Look, if you are foolish enough to believe that some person was born of a virgin, walked on water, raised a few people from the dead and then after being crucified got up to stretch his legs, no amount of logic is useful to you, as you are not rational. This is a futile argument. I've learned that I can't use reason to explain something to an unreasonable person, and a person who believes any of that is unreasonable. Faith trumps everything.

Nice try, but the old tired argument is underscores a naturalistic lens. If you do not believe in God, you will never accept the possibility of a supernatural being intervening in a natural world. You will continue to beat this drum, even in light of an intellectual argument that challenges your thinking, but does nothing to pierce the hardness of your heart.

http://www.evidenceandanswers.org/articles/Historical Reliability of the Gospels.pdf

 

[blueman]

No it's not, considering that it's been shown that the city/town wasn't that big. It's been estimated 300 to 600 people. So it wasn't a "heavily populated" city. Additionally I've found no archeological data confirming the existence of a synagogue....A well, yes, tombs, yes, some pottery, yes......a synagogue....no......



No it wouldn't....

Your in a minority.

http://www.evidenceandanswers.org/articles/Historical Reliability of the Gospels.pdf

 

[Dirty Penguin]

This is a fairly lame place to be laying your hat on in light of all of the other aruguments laid out earlier.

Ok...so you're not refuting what's been discovered but instead point me back to the same circular arguments that's been going on throughout this thread. Priceless. Oh, and I saw your pdf. There is counter opinion for pretty much everything contained in it. I did get a kick out of;

"The time gap between the original writings and the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament is twenty-five years. With this small passage of time and the numerous manuscripts available, we can be assured that we have a copy that is accurate to the originals."

:biglaugh:

 

[blueman]

Ok...so you're not refuting what's been discovered but instead point me back to the same circular arguments that's been going on throughout this thread. Priceless. Oh, and I saw your pdf. There is counter opinion for pretty much everything contained in it. I did get a kick out of;

:biglaugh:

The arguments referenced earlier provide the basis for Christian belief, not whether you can find any evidence that a synagogue or place of worship existed in Nazareth. The counter opinion to the argument for the reliability of the New Testament Gospels is extremely weak overall. So you mean to tell me a 25 year gap is enough time for legend to evolve? The majority of historians would laugh at you. Don't you think witnesess who had access to the original text and the oral tradition of the early church would dispute any deviation from the central doctrine?

 

[EtuMalku]

So you mean to tell me a 25 year gap is enough time for legend to evolve? The majority of historians would laugh at you.

The Christ 'Legend' (I prefer the word myth) was in formation for thousands of years prior to His time, plenty of time to proof read and tie up any loose ends that older 'legends' might have displayed.

 

[McBell]

The arguments referenced earlier provide the basis for Christian belief, not whether you can find any evidence that a synagogue or place of worship existed in Nazareth. The counter opinion to the argument for the reliability of the New Testament Gospels is extremely weak overall. So you mean to tell me a 25 year gap is enough time for legend to evolve? The majority of historians would laugh at you. Don't you think witnesess who had access to the original text and the oral tradition of the early church would dispute any deviation from the central doctrine?

:biglaugh:

 

[Dirty Penguin]

The arguments referenced earlier provide the basis for Christian belief, not whether you can find any evidence that a synagogue or place of worship existed in Nazareth.

I have never said or been of the opinion that the biblical Yeshua is a "carbon copy" of gods or god/men before. I think there are characteristics of the biblical Yeshua that were around in other god/men before him. I even think some of the things he supposedly said can be found in other writings before him by other god/men. "Personally" I don't believe in a biblical Yeshua. I think a Yeshua (could have) existed who may have been a highly opinionated outspoken person but was nothing like the bible portrays him. That's just my personal opinion.

So you mean to tell me a 25 year gap is enough time for legend to evolve?

The legend was around before the man. And it's certainly enough time for a re-write and reworking of the myth. Ever wonder why we now have to scrutinize more diligently those scriptures? It's because if we take them as they are then we would be ignoring the fact that some of the "copies" we do have, have been tampered with and the translations are no better. No wonder why 50 cooperating (Christian) denominations went over the beloved KJV and found that it contained some "serious" errors and interpolations that they didn't find in the earliest of manuscripts. Now this may just be me but the Epic of Gilgamesh is a prelude to the Bible Flood story. Now for how grand that story is and it's contained in your "history" book.....There is NO evidence whatsoever that the story has any basis in reality. No geologist or palentologist, that I know of, has ever confirmed a worlwide flood as the bible says happened. It's not even enough water on the planet to cover the whole planet...and yet there it is..The story is in your history book. Guess what...? It's a legend. Unfortunately the ospel writers thought (believed) the story to be true enough to coonect the biblical Yeshua to the bloodline going all the way back to the fiticious Noah.....

The majority of historians would laugh at you.

They'd laugh at you for suggesting the bible is some wonderful work worthy of respect by others simply because the believers believe in it. This is why we don't use it as a "primary source" for history in our schools and universities....unless, in college, it is related to that particular field of study.

Don't you think witnesess who had access to the original text and the oral tradition of the early church would dispute any deviation from the central doctrine?

Ahh, yea....That was one of the main points of contention and why the Council Of Nicea met a few times. This is one of the reasons the church, later, compiled the scriptures, the ones they felt deserved to be included, into what we know as the bible. There were plenty of manuscripts. Some they thought were legit and others they thought were heretical or some sort of forgery.

 

[blueman]

The Christ 'Legend' (I prefer the word myth) was in formation for thousands of years prior to His time, plenty of time to proof read and tie up any loose ends that older 'legends' might have displayed.

The Christ legend (I prefer prophecy) was foretold thousands of years prior to His time. It just so happened that the messianic blueprint fit Christ to a tee. That's a heck of a hoax if you ask me. Fortunately for you and I, it's not a hoax.

 

[EtuMalku]

You mean the writers of the Gospels 'twisted' everything to fit Yeshua to a tee?

 

[Oberon]

There was a very small inhabitants but no remnants of a synagogue was found.

How exactly can you tell what a synagogue in a town like nazareth was? Synagogues weren't temples. We could very well have found what was a synagogue and not know it.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

How exactly can you tell what a synagogue in a town like nazareth was? Synagogues weren't temples. We could very well have found what was a synagogue and not know it.

I believe the designating factor is a place for a Torah.