Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Free]

I expected nothing more from a moron like you because you remind me of Ken Ham in many ways.

I doubt that you could debate a fence post.

I find it interesting that you can't refute my points. Seems to me I am doing pretty well against you.

Refute your points?  You arrogant fuck.  Who died and appointed you arbiter of what is or isn't "real scholarship."

No one has to be an arbiter to know what qualifies anyone to be a scholar. You just need to be both educated, which I am, and also have some very keen investigative abilities, which I do. But even that is not necessary because anyone can easily determine whether or not specific people are qualified to render a qualified credible opinion.

It isn't me who makes the determination, but rather it's your sources themselves. If they don't have the required qualifications, it has nothing to do with me. Also, even if they do have even some degree of qualifications, you are still scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Your problem is obvious. Mythicism is just an internet fad and you got sucked in by it because of your extreme and unbalanced prejudice against Christianity. You are just as much a radical for Mythicism as a Christian is for Jesus. When it comes to this topic you throw reason out the window and start grabbing at straws with piss poor sources, logical fallacies, easy to destroy arguments, and improbable and sometimes impossible presumptions.

You constantly assert I am some kind of a Christian, when the truth is your radicalization is far more of a comparison to Christian radicalization than anything I am doing here. I am merely arguing that the argument for a real person at the heart of Christianity is a better argument than Mythicism, and it is by a long shot.

Hey just because people with actual PH Ds in the relevant fields disagree with YOU says far more about you than them.

Neither Doherty or Brodie have any relevant degrees, and the others do not disagree with me. In fact, if you knew their work you would know that for the most part their positions agree with mine.

It's hilarious.

So anyone with an opinion on any issue has to pass the Free test, huh?  Fuck you.

Not a "free test."

The test of reason, which anyone can apply.

[Minimalist]

Except you who decides what is and what is not relevant based on your own prejudices.

Like I said, Fuck Off, you arrogant ass.  You really do seem to think like theists though.

[mordant]

Let me know when you find the original documents.

This isn't a hill I'd suggest choosing to die on.

When we have plenty of copies from different eras and don't see massive changes between them, and we understand the scribal tradition that produced them, then we can have a fair amount of confidence that the originals weren't vastly altered. While it's possible the originals aren't as old as claimed, and just possible that suddenly back at, say, AD 140 there was a massive rewrite and a successful destruction of the old version such that zero evidence of it survived to today, this isn't very likely.

What is certain is the numerous inconsistencies in even the "official" accounts, the fabulist nature of them, etc. Basically, we don't come anywhere close to needing to discredit the provenance of the original documents, to declare them not credible. Doing so, in my view, looks kind of desperate. And we're anything but desperate.

Well, New Testament scholars are pretty consistant in the dating of the first gospel, Mark, to around 70 AD and the last gospel, John, at the earliest to around 90 AD.   It's interesting to note how the legend grows from one gospel to the next.  Mark doesn't have a virgin birth, Joseph is not mentioned and a resurrected Jesus had to be written and tacked onto the end of Mark sometime in the 4th century so it would match the other gospels written later.  

The Codex Vaticanus is dated to around 300 AD and it's online.  It's the oldest complete New Testament manuscript. It's in Greek but one can see some of the missing elements that were added later.  The woman taken into adultery is missing, the ending of Mark isn't there.  Several other items are not in the text. 

From what I can tell, this is the cleaned up version with nicer script: 

http://www.csntm.org/Manuscript/View/GA_03  

This seems to be the original text but maybe I'm wrong:

https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1209

The Codex Sinaiticus is also online.  Dated to around 330 to 360 AD and I don't believe the ending of Mark is in this copy either.  Not sure about the woman taken into adultery.   

http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript...omSlider=0

Yes there are "pious frauds" that were clearly added later. Even fundagelicals admit, for example, that the last part of Mark's final "chapter" is a later addition and they (mostly) don't accept it as inspired.

This is my very point, though. For every clearly visible alteration there are far more clearly visible non-alterations. It isn't as if we discovered the tip of some iceberg. Textual criticism shows that for the most part, the best modern manuscripts, and even the less-than-best Textus Receptus on which KVJ-era translations are based, is actually a pretty good basis and likely substantially correct.

The "pious frauds" are evidence against some sort of divine protection and preservation of the texts, so there's that.

The NT is preserved about as well as any such text would be over the centuries, given the primacy assigned to its importance and the attention it got from scribes who made and preserved copies. My intuition is that most of the "later additions" were not from some rogue scribe but were introduced by deliberate and official intervention to provide additional support for some flavor of orthodoxy or to solve some vexing inconvenient theological questions.

One other aspect of this "the text isn't reliable" argument is that I see unbelievers raise a related specious / embarrassing objection to holy writ all the time -- the notion that what we have isn't just "copies of copies" but "translations of translations". This is manifestly untrue and simply reveals ignorance of the actual process of manuscript transmission to the modern reader.

As I said ... the scriptures are so self-contradictory and fabulist and manifestly ideological that we don't have to resort to the uphill technical battle of undermining the received text -- a battle which most of us aren't fully informed concerning anyway, given the arcane nature of the beast.

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

I found this gem, left by the person who started the myth predating all the other bullshit
Galatians 1:11-12

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

[jerry mcmasters]

I found this gem, left by the person who started the myth predating all the other bullshit
Galatians 1:11-12

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Isn't Galatians about him telling the peeps about his disagreements with the "real" disciples?  Peter and such, who allegedly did know of and follow a dude named Jesus?

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

Do you mean Christ was wheeling him about in a stroller?

[jerry mcmasters]

you mean christ was wheeling him about in a stroller?

I think I understand what you mean but could you spell it out for me?

[Minimalist]

I found this gem, left by the person who started the myth predating all the other bullshit
Galatians 1:11-12

11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Isn't Galatians about him telling the peeps about his disagreements with the "real" disciples?  Peter and such, who allegedly did know of and follow a dude named Jesus?

It's usually cited as evidence that "Paul" hallucinated the whole fucking thing..... unless you are inclined to believe in "revelations from some god."

[jerry mcmasters]

I found this gem, left by the person who started the myth predating all the other bullshit
Galatians 1:11-12

Isn't Galatians about him telling the peeps about his disagreements with the "real" disciples?  Peter and such, who allegedly did know of and follow a dude named Jesus?

It's usually cited as evidence that "Paul" hallucinated the whole fucking thing..... unless you are inclined to believe in "revelations from some god."

I get that part, that Paul is explaining that he didn't get his info from a real Jesus, but isn't the circumstance of the situation that he is arguing about circumcision and stuff with others like Peter (Peter at least, I don't remember if he was arguing with other disciples).

[Minimalist]

Yes.  Absolutely.

And sometime later on the church bullshitters found it necessary to write Acts to smooth over the differences after "Paul" had been rehabilitated from his Marcionite beginnings.

[jerry mcmasters]

Yes.  Absolutely.

And sometime later on the church bullshitters found it necessary to write Acts to smooth over the differences after "Paul" had been rehabilitated from his Marcionite beginnings.

It seems like it adds somewhat to the plausibility that there was a Peter, who was working off memory of an actual "Jesus" (usual disclaimer: dime a dozen deluded first century apocalyptic cult leader).

[Minimalist]

But Marcion considered "Paul" to be the only true apostle of jesus.  

The whole point is that we have lots of people insisting that "Paul" wrote his epistles in the mid-first century.  But we have no evidence of them from that time.  We don't even have any contemporary references to them.  Justin, writing to Emperor Antoninus Pius c 160 knows of Marcion - as an enemy - but says nothing of paul or any epistles.  Paul emerges later but we have no idea if he wrote anything at all or if he even existed.

The proto-orthodox position is that Marcion edited Paul's letters and Luke's gospel to remove any positive references to the hebrew god.
Proto-orthodox writers tell us that Marcion produced the first xtian canon, of the Gospel of the Lord and 10 epistles of Paul's.  They do not produce such documents on their own until later in the 2d century about the same time as Irenaeus names the other 3 gospels.

So here we sit.  We have no documentary evidence of paul's writing in the first century.  We have church traditions centered around legendary figures such as Clement of Rome. 

We do not know if Marcion himself wrote, or at least collected these epistles, as well as the gospel of the lord.  All we know is what his opponents said and why would we assume that they are giving a truthful account?

What emerges from the dimness of history is what we have now under the guise of paul's authorship..... except for those obvious forgeries inserted into them as church doctrine evolved or the blatant forgeries of entire letters which far post-date his age.

You have touched on an insoluble problem which cannot be reconciled.  We simply do not know what is real and what is phony with any of this shit.

[Dancefortwo]

It's usually cited as evidence that "Paul" hallucinated the whole fucking thing..... unless you are inclined to believe in "revelations from some god."

Neuroscience caused a big ol stir a few years ago when it made a correlation between Paul's hallucination and his possible epilepsy.  Needless to say, it didn't go ever very well in the Christian community.   

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/...s-BBC.html

It suggests that the apostle's reference to an ailment which he described as "a thorn in the flesh, which acts as Satan's messenger to beat me, and keep me from being proud" could be the condition.

The "keep me from being proud" meant it kept him from standing up.    Julius Caesar was said to have had epilepsy.  It was referred to as the "falling down sickness" in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.  In ancient Babylonian cuniform medical tablets it's called "the falling down disease".   

Anyway, there is a form of epilepsy called "temporal lobe epilepsy"  which causes mystical visions and religious experiences so it's been speculated that Paul was a victim of this type of epilepsy.  

 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1032067/ 

https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/jnnp/50/6/659.full.pdf

It's also thought that Joan of Arc may have had this as well.   Christians have a hissy fit when this topic is brought up but for centuries epilepsy was frequently called "St Paul's disease". 

Isn't it super funny to think that Christianity might have begun because some guy had an epileptic fit walking down a country road?

[jerry mcmasters]

But Marcion considered "Paul" to be the only true apostle of jesus.  

The whole point is that we have lots of people insisting that "Paul" wrote his epistles in the mid-first century.  But we have no evidence of them from that time.  We don't even have any contemporary references to them.  Justin, writing to Emperor Antoninus Pius c 160 knows of Marcion - as an enemy - but says nothing of paul or any epistles.  Paul emerges later but we have no idea if he wrote anything at all or if he even existed.

The proto-orthodox position is that Marcion edited Paul's letters and Luke's gospel to remove any positive references to the hebrew god.
Proto-orthodox writers tell us that Marcion produced the first xtian canon, of the Gospel of the Lord and 10 epistles of Paul's.  They do not produce such documents on their own until later in the 2d century about the same time as Irenaeus names the other 3 gospels.

So here we sit.  We have no documentary evidence of paul's writing in the first century.  We have church traditions centered around legendary figures such as Clement of Rome. 

We do not know if Marcion himself wrote, or at least collected these epistles, as well as the gospel of the lord.  All we know is what his opponents said and why would we assume that they are giving a truthful account?

What emerges from the dimness of history is what we have now under the guise of paul's authorship..... except for those obvious forgeries inserted into them as church doctrine evolved or the blatant forgeries of entire letters which far post-date his age.

You have touched on an insoluble problem which cannot be reconciled.  We simply do not know what is real and what is phony with any of this shit.

I totally accept that!  I think S Outlaw just likes to crank these threads back up so he can sit back and laugh while we curse each other out.

[Minimalist]

Have we been doing that?  You are not Free.  I thought this discussion was fairly civil by my standards.

[jerry mcmasters]

Have we been doing that?  You are not Free.  I thought this discussion was fairly civil by my standards.

Me too.  Yeah it's when you and Free get at it that it becomes a black hole of unpleasantness that sucks everything into it.

[Minimalist]

What can I say?

Some people just piss me off.

Free's one.

Trump is another!

[Old Man Marsh]

Chicken Jesus? Platypus Jesus? Endoplasmic reticulated Jesus? Follicle mite Jesus?

[Schrodinger's Outlaw]

yeah it arbitrary, ask @EvieTheAvocado

[Old Man Marsh]

Love me or I'll set you on fire.

[Minimalist]

For eternity.

Jesus freaks love to speak about eternity.

[Bucky Ball]

No one has to be an arbiter to know what qualifies anyone to be a scholar. You just need to be both educated, 

Wrong. You need to be educated in the FIELD being discussed. 

which I am, and also have some very keen investigative abilities, which I do. 

Snort. If you don't say so yourself. LOLOL
Did you pick up the virus for Dunning-Krueger from all that pontificating ?

[Minimalist]

I think he sprained an elbow patting himself on the back.

[Free]

What can I say?

Some people just piss me off.

Free's one.

Trump is another!

The only reason I piss you off is because my arguments bend you over and force you to answer the question of "Who's your daddy?"

[Bucky Ball]

People who have to declare how "keen" they are, you know are not so "keen" at all.