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5th December 2017, 04:59 PM | #41 |
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I'm not sure that Paul suggests this. But Paul would have been literate and it's highly doubtful the apostles were.
My guess has always been that Paul was extremely charismatic with a gift for languages and storytelling. And that got people to trust him enough to house him and donate to the cause. The number 1 cause was always himself. While the historicity of Jesus seems questionable to me, I find it difficult to believe that Paul didn't exist. I don't believe the words he uttered but it makes sense that someone like Paul certainly did...So why not Paul? Also why would there be other letters that historians don't believe we're written by Paul proclaim that they were? In a sense, this is why I believe there was Jesus. Why make up a story about a Jewish Messiah from Nazareth and then create the Bethlehem story? |
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5th December 2017, 05:11 PM | #42 |
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5th December 2017, 05:29 PM | #43 |
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5th December 2017, 05:53 PM | #44 |
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5th December 2017, 05:58 PM | #45 |
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5th December 2017, 06:05 PM | #46 |
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That's Gamaliel. He taught at the Temple which was not just a Temple, but a sort of University and also a bank. Paul's use of language and rhetorical tricks in his letters argue that he was well educated, whether or not he was taught by Gamaliel is uncertain, but not impossible.
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Originally Posted by Acts
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There is also a possibility that "Nazarene" was a title having to do with a certain type of Jewish Holy Man and had nothing to do with the town in Galilee. Here's what Wiki says about "Nazarene":
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5th December 2017, 06:08 PM | #47 |
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Last edited by Rougarou; 5th December 2017 at 06:15 PM. Reason: clarified my point about illiterate reading and writing |
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5th December 2017, 06:25 PM | #48 |
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5th December 2017, 07:14 PM | #49 |
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That might be the case, if he only said it once or twice, but it is throughout the
Pauline corpus. I can't remember who it was, but someone in one of the Historical Jesus threads posted the full number of times Paul says some variation of "I'm not lying" and it was a lot. Can't find it now. But here are a few samples: http://biblehub.com/romans/9-1.htm http://biblehub.com/2_corinthians/11-31.htm http://biblehub.com/galatians/1-20.htm But he says it's true, so it must be. Just like Trump: "Believe me"... |
5th December 2017, 07:27 PM | #50 |
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5th December 2017, 10:55 PM | #51 |
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The earliest extent copies of the new testament are later. Fragment P52 believed to be a part of a copy of John is usually dated 125-175 but according Wikipedia it could be later. If you meant when the texts were originally written the earliest is usually believed to be Paul and if the Paul story is roughly correct they were probably written about 60. The dating of the Gospels is all over the place. But Mark the Gospel generally believed (but not by everybody) the first one written is dated somewhere around 70 to much later. Marcion might be a hard point on the oldest possible date. He had a collection of the Pauline epistles and some version of Luke and he is generally dated to 130 and it is usually believed that Mark preceded Luke.
As an aside: Marcionism had an interesting take on God. There were at least two of them, the old Testament God and the New Testament God. That seems like a pretty good idea to me because there isn't much apparent connection between the Old Testament God and the New Testament God. Alas, Marcion might have founded a major Christian sect but the Catholic leadership wasn't happy with his ideas and he was kicked out but Mariconism went on for quite awhile after that. Marcion is relevant to this discussion because there is a common theory that he wrote or in some way was responsible for Paul's epistles. I don't think there's a lot of scholarly support for that idea but it is possible that all the Pauline epistles known were collected by him. It seems at least possible that Acts was written in response to Marcionism. Marcion was attracting followers because he had a backstory for the creation of Christianity based on his ownership of the Pauline epistles and the group that included the author of Luke thought they needed their own Paul literature and they commissioned Luke to write a good Paul yarn to compete with what the Marcionites had. But he only had the gist of the Paul story available to him so he made most of his story up and he did a good job. Acts is the most entertaining part of the New Testament. The lack of an ending is strange. Did the author die before he could finish it? Why didn't anybody else finish it? |
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6th December 2017, 10:50 AM | #52 |
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6th December 2017, 11:44 AM | #53 |
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6th December 2017, 11:53 AM | #54 |
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And how do you come to that conclusion? Keep in mind that we don't actually know who wrote Luke. Even the first account that Paul was executed didn't appear until 320 AD.
I absolutely love how this religion uses writings 30 to 250 years AFTER the lives of these people as proof of how they lived their lives. |
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6th December 2017, 12:19 PM | #55 |
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That seems very unlikely. In what has to be one of the most compelling single passages for the historicity of Jesus, in Romans, Paul makes the point that he received his knowledge of Christ through revelation, not through Peter or James (Jesus' brother), despite the fact that he had met them briefly.
Moreover, the Gospels are obviously composed from a multitude of interrelated but distinct, sometimes competing, oral and literary traditions. There just isn't a plausible timeframe for them to emerge if Paul just made everything up. With the sheer wealth of literary and epistolary records around, in such a brief timespan, it remains quite amazing to me that anyone would draw the conclusion that Jesus didn't exist. It is in most cases I think hyperskepticism related to a lack of familiarity with how ancient historical inquiry occurs. There is simply no historical figure with the kind of corpus we have for Jesus that anyone would posit did not exist. |
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6th December 2017, 12:44 PM | #56 |
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Absolute and utter nonsense. There are no CONTEMPORARY records of Jesus. The first stories begin to appear around and after Paul is said to have had his epiphany. 30 years AFTER the crucifixion. The idea That Paul himself could have created the original story himself is certainly possible and I would argue probable. Paul traveled from Palestine to Egypt to Greece to Rome founding churches and spinning his yarn. He clearly was a prolific writer. Why couldn't he have been a good con man creating a backstory and why wouldn't those that heard his stories try and write his stories down later adding their own takes on what he said? And those people had people who heard the stories and they created their own variations. I think there are around 3 dozen apocryphal gospels. How can anyone say that just the four are correct? How can anyone say that any of them are correct?
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6th December 2017, 01:03 PM | #57 |
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There are countless figures for whom there are no contemporary records. 20-30 years is a VERY good timeframe for a first written reference in ancient, and even in later history. Sources written HUNDREDS of years after the fact are routinely used by historians.
I don't think any apocryphal gospel is remotely as close in time as the original four, but certainly some of them might contain true attributions. It seems less likely, though, as they tend to be more homogenized and confined to a single tradition, as far as I recall. As for it all being the work of a con artist: There simply is no textual evidence for this. On the contrary, the Gospels contain all sorts of tensions that suggest early diversity in the traditions surrounding Jesus. They're written largely in a common Greek moral-biography style that values "the moral of the story" over the literal truthfulness of every account (similar to Plutarch's "Lives"). That Jesus existed is a very straightforward explanation of the historical record and the emergence of Chrisitanity that explains the available evidence perfectly and meshes well with how we understand the society he is supposed to have lived in. There is simply nothing that suggests that we need to resort to some conspiracy theory that there exists no evidence for. Really, name one other historical figure that you would invoke this sort of skepticism for. |
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6th December 2017, 01:17 PM | #58 |
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6th December 2017, 01:24 PM | #59 |
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We don't know of any originals. The four canonical gospels have contemporaneous gospels that were in and out of favor for 2-300 years before being declared apocryphal. The earliest copies we have of any of the synoptic gospels & Acts date from mid-3rd Century with the exception of John which may be early 3rd Century. And Paul was writing in mid- to late 1st Century, before any of the canonical or apocryphal gospels was written yet the earliest known Pauline writings we have are from nearly 100 years later. Further, all the manuscripts we have, early & late contain numerous errors; the earliest known manuscripts are incomplete. You might wish to consult Bruce M. Metzger, The Text Of The New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration, 1968, Oxford University Press, New York. Also the Ehrman works cited earlier in this thread.
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6th December 2017, 01:24 PM | #60 |
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Well try this one on for size: I think that even if Jesus existed he wasn't real.
As in, I think any historical figure would have little enough in common with the character in the Bible that it would be misleading to suggest they are one and the same. We know the census thing isn't true. We know he wasn't the son of god and didn't really perform miracles. Continue on in that manner and look at what you have left - it's not a lot. If someone told the police to be on the lookout for a white male who was also half alien, could control dogs with his mind, was born at the deepest point in the ocean and escorted to land by Poseidon, and once turned an entire factory into honey (sorry, no evidence!) then all they would really have to go on is "white male" and they would, reasonably, be skeptical of even that. The tiny bit of Jesus' history that is plausible probably applies to any number of people from that time. It may have been a reference to one person in particular, but I don't see that it really matters. |
6th December 2017, 01:32 PM | #61 |
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What conspiracy theory? It simply is a game of telephone.
Ever play it? Would you trust an eyewitness in a trial who came forward 30 to 60 years later? I wouldn't. How about if it was an anonymous writing? That's what we have with the Gospels. Hell, that's what we have with the whole NT. And what difference does it make that the apocryphal Gospels aren't like the other 4? There is no doubt in my mind that 3 of Gospels used 1 of the 3 as a template for the other 2. It's pretty obvious why they are similar. What you have is 3 dozen variations of a story written about a man who lived decades to a century earlier and you think that 4 are reliable when in fact 2 of them are basic plagiarisms? Do you have any idea just how stupid that sounds? People today have different stories about 9-11 and many of them false. How many people in the day of no internet, no telephone, no newspapers, no radio, no tv could have possibly heard the sermons of JC? How many could have heard more than a couple? How many could attest to where he was born and died? How many could accurately and honestly write about a good section of his life 3 to 7 decades later? Seems far more likely to me that it was a yarn told over and over again and then people started to write it down. The idea that people take this as truth seems stark raving mad. |
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6th December 2017, 01:34 PM | #62 |
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6th December 2017, 01:37 PM | #63 |
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6th December 2017, 01:41 PM | #64 |
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OK. Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, grandfather of Scipio Africanus. I don't know if Polybius mentions him at all; he might since he wrote a good deal on Sc. Africanus; in that case the mentions date from 150 years after his death, otherwise it's closer to 250.
Titus Manlius Torquatus, Roman Consul of 299 BC, member of the prestigious Manlia gens. First mentioned by Livy, nearly 300 years after his consulship. Bardylis, Illyrian king, who reigned 393–358 BC. AFAIK first mentioned by Diodorus Siculus about 350 years later. And so on. There are also many, many important figures like say, Dionysius I, where we have a coin or two that may be contemporary, but where everything we know about them comes from works written 300-500 years later or more by the usual host of authors. Probably the most extreme example of a character thought to have existed despite vast temporal separation would be Zoroaster. Though the Gathas (supposed to have been composed by him) were only written down about 400 AD, whereas Zoroaster would have lived around 1300 BC, the handful of biographical and contemporary details, long tradition, and linguistic considerations leads scholars to generally accept that he probably did exist, living in a pastoral society in Bronze Age Afghanistan or eastern Iran. |
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6th December 2017, 01:43 PM | #65 |
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6th December 2017, 01:46 PM | #66 |
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So if there was a Jewish man called Jesus, with a mother named Mary, and brohters called Joses and James and Jude and Simon, baptised by John the Baptist, who preached apocalyptic teachings and was eventually crucified by Pontius Pilatius, you don't think that would matter? What matters, then? Isn't it interesting to understand how Christianity originated?
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6th December 2017, 01:55 PM | #67 |
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Not really, because what seems to matter to Christians are the many sayings attributed to him, or things like the sermon on the mount for which there is no way of actually knowing that they happened at all, let alone as presented in the stories. To say nothing of the critical piece of the equation, the resurrection. If that didn’t happen, what’s the point? Christianity revolves around beliefs, not facts, and whatever the original cult had to say was quickly superseded by Paul (whose existence or lack thereof) is the topic of this thread.
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6th December 2017, 02:00 PM | #68 |
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Depends on which portions you mean. There are all kinds of incorporations in the gospels.
As for why they differ on some important events (E.g. birth account) that's mostly down to the different focuses/motivations of the different authors (or maybe we should say compilers) of the gospels. Where Matthew looks in Jewish tradition, Luke might be more inclined to consider more Graeco-Roman narratives. By the time they're writing, there appears to have been a wealth of sources and accounts, probably only a portion of which were accessible to any one author and presumably they're making some judgment calls about which to incorporate, which gaps to fill in themselves to make a rhetorically compelling story, etc. I think Mark's writing style is very instructive. Much of his gospel consists of long or pithy quotes by Jesus, frame by a narrative that seems to have been devised to explain or contextualized it, sometimes followed by an elaboration or explanation presumably inserted by Mark ("He said this because..."). I don't think he concerned himself with whether those narratives were true as much as relaying the teachings conveyed in the quotes he attributes to Jesus. Yeah, he would be the one possibility. Of course, the source situation is far worse with him than with Jesus. |
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6th December 2017, 02:01 PM | #69 |
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6th December 2017, 02:03 PM | #70 |
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6th December 2017, 02:04 PM | #71 |
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6th December 2017, 02:06 PM | #72 |
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6th December 2017, 02:13 PM | #73 |
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Consider what I responded to:
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6th December 2017, 02:15 PM | #74 |
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You can't prove Jesus lived, let alone his brothers and his mother. All you can prove is that a story was written with those characters. That one could weave true people from history in the story doesn't make it true.
You don't believe that Jack and Rose were on the Titanic do you? Yet pretty much everything and everyone in that movie were accurate. Historical fiction is not new. So why would you believe a story written 2,000 years ago? How about the story of Moses? Do you believe that Moses really delivered the Jews out of Egypt? I tend to think there was probably a rabbi named Jesus that preached and maybe was executed and the story was embellished later by Paul and others. But it just as easily could have been an entire fabrication of Paul's and his stories were the stories that evolved. |
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6th December 2017, 02:26 PM | #75 |
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Genre analysis is a key aspect of any ancient source. Just look at the difficulties associated with Plutarch's "Lives" or the still-contentious matter of whether Herodotus of Halicarnassus invented the Median Empire for rhetorical purposes. Or look at the approach to medieval records of Irish oral traditions as it evolved in the 20th century.
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6th December 2017, 02:35 PM | #76 |
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If you could confirm all of that it would be academically interesting to me, sure. But I still wouldn't say that that person is the Jesus from the Bible. Clearly if all of that was true of one person (which I can't imagine we could ever know) you'd have an extremely compelling case for saying that this one guy was the primary inspiration for the character of Jesus and that would be neat.
But the thing is, if I could point to someone and say that they were the inspiration for Superman - sure, they didn't have any powers and didn't come from space and didn't fight supervillains but they were named Clark and they came from Kansas and they worked at a newspaper for a while... would you say that person was Superman? Of course not. You would acknowledge that it's possible or even likely he was one source of inspiration for Superman, and we still wouldn't know a lot about who this guy was and what he did or didn't do, historically. And Superman would still be fictional, and would still have other influences for other aspects of his character. So it's not something where I think it would ever make sense to say *this* is the historical Jesus. And I think in that context the Paul question is a whole lot more interesting. For Jesus, I don't think the historical source - if there even was one, as opposed to none or seven or whatever - is all that important because the more relevant thing is the made up parts of the story. Why did they include a virgin birth? What was the inspiration for the story where he cursed a fig tree? Was there a political commentary hidden in there that we don't understand anymore? When he walks on water, was that taken from another myth or was it common symbolism at the time or was it an original story? But since the hypothetical "real" Jesus didn't do ANY of that stuff I don't see him as all that relevant. Don't get me wrong, if you can prove he existed that's pretty cool. I just don't think it's likely we'll ever know and I don't see that as being a big deal since the gap between any possible historical person and the fictional character of Jesus is so massive. |
6th December 2017, 02:39 PM | #77 |
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Honestly, this is all really more of a meta-discussion concerning historiography, what we mean by "history" vs. "the past", what it means to say we "know" something, what perspectives we use, what purpose we have, and so forth. I don't really think it's directly relevant to the evaluation of the sources, which is far more straightforward. Frankly, I think it's quite intuitive what it means when we say there was a "historical Jesus" and elementary genre analysis reveals how that is different from an "inspiration for Superman". Just because "the Divine" Caesar wasn't divine doesn't mean there wasn't a Caesar.
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6th December 2017, 03:11 PM | #78 |
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6th December 2017, 03:45 PM | #79 |
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6th December 2017, 03:57 PM | #80 |
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That's not quite correct. Paul uses 'in the flesh' and 'flesh' and 'blood' when describing Jesus. He also calls Jesus a 'man' (anthropos), a Jew (descended from Jews). Doherty and Carrier propose that Jesus was a man who took on flesh and was crucified in the lower heavens.
In his letters, Paul refers to Caesar and Aretas, which seems to place him somewhere in the first half of the First Century CE. So, if the letters are forgeries, they seem to be based on the idea that Paul lived around that time, or intended to give the impression that Paul did. (And if they were forgeries for that reason, why didn't the forger be clear about the time he was trying to place Paul? Why place him in the First Century at all?) |
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