Thread: The historicity of the resurrection Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
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"A quarter of people who describe themselves as Christians in Great Britain do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, a survey commissioned by the BBC suggests."
There are lots of potential points of discussion here, not least the open questions about what one means by "word-for-word" or "active Christians".
I thought it might be good to focus on the central issue: what do Shipmates understand by term "resurrection of Jesus"?
On this matter, I veer towards the more orthodox view, looking primarily around the resurrection and seeing some pretty clear evidence that something happened that caused a sea-change between the contemporary Jewish views of resurrection and the proclamation of the early church.
So what was that something? Trying to understand resurrection as some kind of "spiritual experience" is a neat way of avoiding the question of historicity, yet I can't find myself persuaded by it. It seems like an easy kop out that avoids the very difficult conclusion that Jesus, who was dead, became alive again, walking and talking with various people for a few weeks afterwards.
It's a conclusion that I'm not convinced people should jump to with great ease. The ramifications are certainly profound and the evidence is, admittedly, far from clear cut.
If Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead, then Jesus is still dead and has been for two millenia. If that is the case, then where is the source of Christian hope?
Posted by betjemaniac (# 17618) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
I thought it might be good to focus on the central issue: what do Shipmates understand by term "resurrection of Jesus"?
Pretty straightforward for me - for us men and for our salvation he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again, in accordance with the scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
I believe all of that to be literally true.
Otherwise, what's the point?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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A man was dead and buried. Then some 40-48 hours later he was alive again. If Christ is not risen then we are of all men most to be pitied.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
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The late Marcus Borg, for whom I usually have some time, is unconvincing on the Resurrection. While saying that many of the resurrection appearances were merely visions, he then agrees that there were indeed “non-visionary experiences – of the same presence and power that his followers had known in Jesus during his historical life”, experiences which convinced his followers that Jesus was Lord: “a divine reality, one with God and having the qualities of God”.
So far so good; but Borg then asks whether Jesus had a physical or bodily resurrection. In his opinion, the NT “makes it clear” that Jesus was not “restored to his previous life as a physical being” – in Borg’s view, this would resuscitation rather than resurrection.
Borg then turns to a “mystical/spiritual” approach, which he also rejects because, he feels, it makes the resurrection sound unimportant, something which needn’t be taken seriously. He feels this is due to the modern meanings attached to the words “mystical” and “spiritual”; in older times, he avers, they suggested “a reality that is more important, more significant, than the space-time world of our ordinary everyday experience”.
Borg concludes that “the central meaning of Easter is not about whether something happened to the corpse of Jesus [but] that Jesus continues to be known and that he is Lord, ... loose in the world [and] still recruiting for the kingdom of God".
Now I’m sorry, but this seems to be a prime example of trying to have one’s cake and eating it, a play on words that fails to convince, a “fudge” of monstrous proportions. Surely there can only be two ways of considering the Resurrection: either by subjecting it to the tools of rationalism and thus denying its very possibility, or by saying that Jesus, as God, was not subject to these constraints.
To me, the whole point of the literal Resurrection is that it was a unique and active intervention by God into the affairs of this world.
Posted by bib (# 13074) on
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'And if Christ is not risen then our preaching is in vain and our faith is also in vain'. This I believe sincerely and it is a cornerstone of my faith. People have become so sceptical, partly because so much emphasis is put on scientific proof. However, we can't prove everything and must take some things on trust. I cannot see the wind,but I acknowledge its existence. I cannot see God, but I know He is present.
Posted by Snags (# 15351) on
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What They Said.
I think if you take a literal, physical, resurrection out of the equation then what you're left with isn't much more than some nice ideas and wishful thinking. At which point, there's nothing much to elevate Christ/Christianity above any other moral philosophy.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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He died, he rose, he ascended. Without that, there's no Christ.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
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I'm agnostic. I really don't know. I'd like to think so.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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If you are going to believe in a God who is the creator of the universe, then it is silly to deny the resurrection.
Like going into Greggs and denying pastry.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Like going into Greggs and denying pastry.
Perhaps not the best pastry, mind you! ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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May I sing out of tune with this choir, at the bare least that confirmatory sawdust trail harmony is a feature in country gospel about which no discussion is possible ?
Come, follow me. Come believe in this. Which must come first? (I wrote them in my order)
If the OT may be read as allegory (creation, sun standing still examples), why not the NT?
If you're going to insist on literality, how might you minister to the quarter who flee this?
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
So far so good; but Borg then asks whether Jesus had a physical or bodily resurrection. In his opinion, the NT “makes it clear” that Jesus was not “restored to his previous life as a physical being” – in Borg’s view, this would resuscitation rather than resurrection.
To be fair, Paul is trying to address the same problem by talking about a 'spiritual body'. He wants to say that it's on the body side of the body/soul divide, but it's changed from the physical body that Jesus died as.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If you are going to believe in a God who is the creator of the universe, then it is silly to deny the resurrection.
Is it? Why?
It seems perfectly reasonable to me to have a picture of the deity whose actions are geologically slow, who genetically modifies creation over millions of years and who does not get involved in affairs of men.
It is reasonable to believe that that God who does get involved with the affairs of men, but, as it happened had nothing particular to do with this guy Jesus of Nazareth.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe that there is a creator God, that he does get involved in the affairs of men, that he was somehow speaking through the man called Jesus of Nazareth - but that the resurrection was a fabrication based on wishful thinking.
I don't think any of those options are "silly" and I can't see that they are really a contradiction.
I'm not even sure it is a contradiction to believe in the Trinity and to believe that the Christ died. It takes a bit of mental gymnastics, but I don't think that's silly either.
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
So far so good; but Borg then asks whether Jesus had a physical or bodily resurrection. In his opinion, the NT “makes it clear” that Jesus was not “restored to his previous life as a physical being” – in Borg’s view, this would resuscitation rather than resurrection.
To be fair, Paul is trying to address the same problem by talking about a 'spiritual body'. He wants to say that it's on the body side of the body/soul divide, but it's changed from the physical body that Jesus died as.
The big difference is that after you remove all the theological pleading that Borg does that his conclusion is simply that God did nothing to the physical body of the historical Jesus. He says it plainly, the Jesus of the past is dead and gone.
What remains is the Christ of Faith, which for Borg, is the Christ of Christian imagination and faith. Borg believes at the end of the day, that the Church thought up this Jesus and his belief is that this is ok.
Paul may be pondering and wrestling with the precise nature of the resurrection body, but when he speaks of Christ rising again, I believe he means that the dead Jesus came back to life.
I believe that there must be continuity between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. This continuity is simply this, God raised Jesus, physically and spiritually into new life, the fact that Borg doesn't entertain this, speaks to his discomfort with the miraculous.
[ 10. April 2017, 13:48: Message edited by: Anglican_Brat ]
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
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I have no problem believing in a physical resurrection -- a Jesus body that you can touch, and pass a piece of bread to, and sit at table with. Nor do I have problems believing that He has a larger level of reality, of which that physical body is only a piece. People do this all the time. Theologians should read more Marvel Comics.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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As far as I am concerned, I accept that it all happened more or less as described. The tomb was and is empty because the person who was inside it has risen from the dead. So I agree with what most people have already said.
Three extra thoughts though.
First, clearly Christ's risen body had certain properties that were different from those ours have and it had before he was crucified. I've often wondered whether the reason why the risen Christ could come through closed doors was not because he was spectral in some way but because he was more solid than the door, from everlasting rather than just temporal.
Second, if one is going to say scriptural events don't need to have happened because they speak of some higher truth hidden within them, that's a non sequitur. There aren't two separate category of event, those that speak of some higher hidden truth, symbolical, mythical or allegorical if you like, and those in a more mundane category because they actually happened. Unlike the events of my day today, which fall only in the second category, the events in the New Testament fall simultaneously into both categories. Indeed, what they have to say about their first category meaning is all the greater because they are not just symbolical, mythical, allegorical or whatever events, but because they didn't just happen on some symbolical, mythical or allegorical plane, but in history. That is why the gospels are so keen to date things, 'when Quirinius was Governor of Syria' or when Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea.
Third, why does it seem to matter so much to some people that they can come up with a reason, an explanation, which they hope will let them off believing the New Testament version of what happened? Why would people prefer to believe less rather than believe more?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Why would people prefer to believe less rather than believe more?
Well, I suppose because generally simpler explanations are more beautiful and more satisfying than complex ones. That doesn't mean complex explanations are wrong, but if the question is why do people "prefer" a simple explanation, it is because simpler things have more power.
Someone dies when a building falls on them. An explanation that says they were bad, they did something bad in a past life or that they're unlucky or fated to die is something that many would choose to believe because it is so simple.
An explanation that talks about geological faults, building materials, weather conditions etc might be true, but far less believable - to the extent that one might believe these things as second-tier explanations as to how exactly the former ideas played out in the world.
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
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The question boils down to your understanding of narrative. Do you view the resurrection narratives as myths which have no connection to actual, lived history, or do you view the resurrection narratives as describing something that happened?
Or to be fair to Borg and Crossan, is the resurrection about Jesus rising in the hearts of his disciples, or did Jesus actually rise from the dead?
Borg got some flack for his views of the resurrection because he tried to insist that his theology was not that the disciples had a warm and fuzzy feeling after Jesus died.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
There are lots of potential points of discussion here, not least the open questions about what one means by "word-for-word" or "active Christians".
To go back to the OP I think a lot of the subsequent posts are referring back to these points perhaps unintentionally, and by it's very nature the Ship is likely to contain a greater percentage of people who believe in a literal resurrection (at least)
Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on
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Enoch said:
I've often wondered whether the reason why the risen Christ could come through closed doors was not because he was spectral in some way but because he was more solid than the door, from everlasting rather than just temporal.
What a wonderful thought - I can feel a sermon coming on!
IJ
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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As writ. As we declare.
@mr cheesy: no Christ, no God.
As for those who identify as no more than culturally Christian, God bless 'em!
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I've often wondered whether the reason why the risen Christ could come through closed doors was not because he was spectral in some way but because he was more solid than the door, from everlasting rather than just temporal.
This is a thought with many antecedent, probably most popularly expressed in "The Great Divorce"
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
The question boils down to your understanding of narrative. Do you view the resurrection narratives as myths which have no connection to actual, lived history, or do you view the resurrection narratives as describing something that happened?
It's not either/or for me. I view the resurrection narratives (and for that matter, the Incarnation narratives and the passion narratives) as describing something that happened and that is, at the same time, myth. Or to put it another way, myth with a firm connection to actual, lived history—the intersection of myth and history.
Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on
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Thanks, chris - I had forgotten about The Great Divorce, and will now seek out my copy (it's around here somewhere...). I think I must have last read it not that long after it was published!
IJ
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
As far as I am concerned, I accept that it all happened more or less as described. The tomb was and is empty because the person who was inside it has risen from the dead. So I agree with what most people have already said.
Having just read Borg and Crossan's The Last Week, I have to ask, by whom? Obviously this isn't a particularly deep question- we have four gospels that sometimes tell different versions of events, and we have gotten along with them for 1900 years. But one of Borg and Crossan's points that I had never noticed is that none of the resurrection stores is the same. No single appearance story appears in more than one gospel. If they are describing a historical event where the body of Jesus actually appeared to folks, why such inconsistency?
Our rector's go-to Easter sermon acknowledges that people want to know if the story is true. She says that the best she can tell you is that if you let it be true for you, it has the power to change your life and the world. That is kind of where I am. I don't know if the stories related in the Gospels happened as told. But I attempt to live a life in which I acknowledge that the way of Jesus is more powerful than death, that death imposed by the temporal lords of the Earth could not contain him, and that Jesus is therefor Lord.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
If the OT may be read as allegory (creation, sun standing still examples), why not the NT?
Mind, I am not arguing that any of it is true, just about internal consistency. The OT is obviously, and logically, a mix of history and allegory. The NT less so.
My objection was based on the notion that opposition to the idea of resurrection was on possibility, not theology.
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
we have four gospels that sometimes tell different versions of events, and we have gotten along with them for 1900 years. But one of Borg and Crossan's points that I had never noticed is that none of the resurrection stores is the same. No single appearance story appears in more than one gospel. If they are describing a historical event where the body of Jesus actually appeared to folks, why such inconsistency?
Eyewitness are notoriously inconsistent with each other and often with themselves. Inconsistency in itself is not proof of veracity, mind, but too much consistency would likely be proof against it.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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I can see that. But it's also important to keep in mind that each Gospel isn't just an attempt to tell us what happened. These are interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus. They each come with their own agenda and voice. To pick the obvious example, Matthew goes out of his way to point out how the life of Jesus is fulfillment of old testament scripture, to the point that he seems to shoehorn in entire episodes (e.g., the flight into Egypt) that are not mentioned in the other Gospels.
It could be that the eyewitnesses were no longer entirely clear about where exactly everyone was when Jesus showed up, Jerusalem or Galilee. But from a critical perspective, it seems important to consider the ways that the differences in the Gospels can often come down to the Author's broader message.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Third, why does it seem to matter so much to some people that they can come up with a reason, an explanation, which they hope will let them off believing the New Testament version of what happened? Why would people prefer to believe less rather than believe more?
Speaking in general term and not of this particular topic, believing "more" isn't better unless it's also true.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If you are going to believe in a God who is the creator of the universe, then it is silly to deny the resurrection.
Like going into Greggs and denying pastry.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
If you're going to insist on literality, how might you minister to the quarter who flee this?
Um, we'll love you all the same?
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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Please forgive triple post. Somebody somewhere said (was it D. Sayers?) that most of the difficulties reconciling events in the resurrection accounts vanish as soon as you stop to imagine the predictable behavior of a lot of freaked-out people running around in the early morning twilight.
Posted by andras (# 2065) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
I've often wondered whether the reason why the risen Christ could come through closed doors was not because he was spectral in some way but because he was more solid than the door, from everlasting rather than just temporal.
This is a thought with many antecedent, probably most popularly expressed in "The Great Divorce"
And by dear Terry Pratchett, especially in Mort but also elsewhere.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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All it requires is a fourth spatial dimension. No poetry.
Posted by Al Eluia (# 864) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
If they are describing a historical event where the body of Jesus actually appeared to folks, why such inconsistency?
My take on that is that, although the reality behind the resurrection narratives is the same, each author had his own (and his community's) theological perspective shaping how the story is told. That, plus varying eyewitness accounts of an event several decades in the past, accounts for the differences. But I firmly believe that, though we can't know exactly what happened down to the last detail, something real happened that convinced that demoralized, scared band of disciples that Jesus had risen and that transformed them into bold proclaimers of the Good News.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Al Eluia:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
If they are describing a historical event where the body of Jesus actually appeared to folks, why such inconsistency?
My take on that is that, although the reality behind the resurrection narratives is the same, each author had his own (and his community's) theological perspective shaping how the story is told.
I love Sayers, but this is, to me, a much more honest response to the different narratives.
quote:
Originally posted by Al Eluia:
That, plus varying eyewitness accounts of an event several decades in the past, accounts for the differences. But I firmly believe that, though we can't know exactly what happened down to the last detail, something real happened that convinced that demoralized, scared band of disciples that Jesus had risen and that transformed them into bold proclaimers of the Good News.
This is about where I fall as well.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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I have a problem with the term 'historicity' in the title of this thread.
The resurrection is beyond history.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Al Eluia:
But I firmly believe that, though we can't know exactly what happened down to the last detail, something real happened that convinced that demoralized, scared band of disciples that Jesus had risen and that transformed them into bold proclaimers of the Good News.
I'm not sure I buy "proof by narrative necessity". Belief that a leader has somehow escaped a grisly end is a (relatively) common phenomenon in history. Sebastião I of Portugal comes to mind. A less pleasant example is Emperor Nero. Such beliefs do not necessarily require a real event to inspire them.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
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We're all in a post-resurrection reality, or a post-delusion one. We won't know until time ends.
So, historicity? No, or at least not in the way described. Those are not scientific descriptions; they are ways of describing the post-resurrection reality they were experiencing and ascribe them an origin. Nor are the post-resurrection encounters with the risen Christ accounts of a relationship which takes up where it was broken off at the crucifixion; if they were, the confusion/terror/grief in the garden, on the road to Emmaus and when he appeared through a closed door would not have happened.
We can't know; we won't know. All we can do is experience the cosmic Christ until we are part of his kingdom at the end of time.
But I'm not wedded to the historicity of anything in the Bible, because it's accidental even if it is present.
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
I have a problem with the term 'historicity' in the title of this thread.
The resurrection is beyond history.
This, of course, depends on your philosophy of history. I intended 'historicity' to be understood in its everyday usage, meaning "was it an event that actually happened?"
I know there are some (e.g. Meier) for whom the idea of studying the resurrection is deemed beyond the realm of possible historical inquiry and for whom the term 'historicity' has a much narrower focus than would be understood by the person on the Clapham Omnibus.
Taking such an approach to the question of the resurrection is something that seems self-defeating and is actually a bit cowardly. It's saying "we can't know" as a pre-emptive and then not trying to investigate.
Now, "we can't know" might be a perfectly valid conclusion, but a conclusion can only be reached after investigation.
If you said that the resurrection transcends history, then I'd certainly agree with you. To use a mathematical analogy (with due credit to Edwin Abbott [edit: and to Martin60 - saw your reply after posting]), a sphere may intersect with a plain and that intersection will have an effect on the world of those living on the plain. Likewise, the resurrection, if it was a real event that took place in the past, then it will have had an effect that was observable to those in the time and place it took place in.
[ 10. April 2017, 17:37: Message edited by: Sipech ]
Posted by Garden Hermit (# 109) on
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A little bit of a Tangent but - In Oxford Castle/Prison there is a story of a young woman unjustly hung for a miscarriage (but accused of an Abortion). She was pronounced dead and taken to the local Hospital for dissection for Medical Purposes. When the Doctor got to the heart he found it still beating so he sewed her up, put a nurse in bed with her to keep her warm, and she eventually recovered and went on to have 2 more children. There are many stories of people who should be dead, have been pronounced dead but have recovered even whilst being lowered into the Grave. The story of Jesus from a theoretical viewpoint is perfectly reasonable. Fit young man who somehow managed to survive a nasty attempt to kill him.
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
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I think I get the idea of dear old David Jenkins, that something extraordinary happened resulting in the birth of the Church, based on the testimony of witnesses that Christ was alive. So call that the resurrection. And don't fret over the details.
Whether you can live with this depends on how important it is to you that the body was raised? To me, the worth of christianity does not vanish with this, although I think I can see why some people think differently.
What most people are really unhappy with is the idea that the accounts are not based on confusion (such as where is Galillee - see the interesting book by Pinchas Lapide) but actual porkies (as per Colm Tobin's (not all that good) novel.
And it is true that most deniers of the bodily resurrection will go further. Most will deny the whole story of the burial, and explain the absence of the body from the fact it went into a communal criminals grave. And I can see why this really grates, because it becomes harder and harder to reconcile with even basic ideas of truthfulness, not just about accuracy of reportage.
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on
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Not a tangent at all Garden Hermit - in fact completely relevant to the topic at hand. The point is, though, that the events you describe would not constitute a resurrection!
The empty tomb is important because it means that Jesus defeated death. If he wasn't really dead in the first place... not so much.
With regard to leo's point, I agree that the Resurrection is "beyond history". But shouldn't this mean that it includes and adds to history - "the empty tomb" if you like - rather than excluding it? Anything else seems rather un-Incarnational...
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
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Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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If you could prove it (obviously near impossible, how does one identify bones of that time?), then yes.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Garden Hermit:
The story of Jesus from a theoretical viewpoint is perfectly reasonable. Fit young man who somehow managed to survive a nasty attempt to kill him.
I attended a youth group meeting one Easter season where the teaching portion was about how Jesus must have been raised from the dead because any other historical explanation would be infeasible. I have since heard snippets of the same sermon while scanning past Christian radio. This theory gets a lot of treatment in that talk. They will tell you that Roman legionnaires were professional killers, who would not have committed this kind of malpractice, and even if they had, Jesus would have been so bloodied and weakened that he could not have rolled back the stone, or overcome the armed guards who were stationed outside.
Is any of this proof that it didn't happen this way? Absolutely not. But when examining the alternatives to Jesus actually coming back from the dead and occupying his body, it seems far less likely than the empty tomb being a lie or a metaphor.
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
In short, yes. Something else would probably come along which tries to pick up the pieces of what's left of Christianity, repackaged as a school of ethics & philosophy that might have parallels with Buddhism. But I don't think it could be called Christianity.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
They will tell you that Roman legionnaires were professional killers, . . .
All professional soldiers are professional killers. It's kind of in the job description. That doesn't make them infallible in their trade.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
Not to my mind. But then, to my mind it has never been based on the physical fate of the bones of the person who was crucified.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
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Apologetics are useful if you have a person who is willing to consider the faith, but has one (or several) niggling doubts and would like to know what the evidence says. In that case you can use evidence from history/archaeology/ anthropology/whatever, and sort of clear the ground for faith to be born (or not).
But apologetics on its own will never argue anybody into the kingdom of God. Giving faith is the Holy Spirit's work, and trying force faith is basically a disaster.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
The thing is that not every Christian or denomination would believe such a finding. There's no authoritative body today that could demand that we all accept such information.
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
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And by definition (son of God, you know) DNA analysis will be difficult.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
They will tell you that Roman legionnaires were professional killers, . . .
All professional soldiers are professional killers. It's kind of in the job description. That doesn't make them infallible in their trade.
Are you saying that it is more plausible that (a) Jesus survived the whole ordeal rather than (b) the empty tomb is a metaphor or a lie? Because that's a cute linguistic point, but otherwise not really relevant to the point I was making with that post.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Garden Hermit:
A little bit of a Tangent but - In Oxford Castle/Prison there is a story of a young woman unjustly hung for a miscarriage (but accused of an Abortion). She was pronounced dead and taken to the local Hospital for dissection for Medical Purposes. When the Doctor got to the heart he found it still beating so he sewed her up, put a nurse in bed with her to keep her warm, and she eventually recovered and went on to have 2 more children. There are many stories of people who should be dead, have been pronounced dead but have recovered even whilst being lowered into the Grave. The story of Jesus from a theoretical viewpoint is perfectly reasonable. Fit young man who somehow managed to survive a nasty attempt to kill him.
Bollocks.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
They will tell you that Roman legionnaires were professional killers, . . .
All professional soldiers are professional killers. It's kind of in the job description. That doesn't make them infallible in their trade.
Are you saying that it is more plausible that (a) Jesus survived the whole ordeal rather than (b) the empty tomb is a metaphor or a lie? Because that's a cute linguistic point, but otherwise not really relevant to the point I was making with that post.
I'm making the point that Jesus surviving the ordeal is more plausible than the idea that Roman legionnaires were infallible killing machines who never screwed up even once. Given the other irregularities in the crucifixion of Jesus (e.g. post-crucifixion burial is extremely non-standard. Part of the point of the procedure is to leave the rotting corpse on display as a warning) appealing to Roman standardization and efficiency is problematic.
On the other hand, given that his longtime companions didn't recognize Jesus after His resurrection, there's only one explanation that truly accounts for all the factors. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
A good scourging alone was lethal. Follow that with crucifixion and a speared flank, rupturing multiple abdominal organs - you know bowel, liver, spleen, stomach, kidney, even bladder (the 'water') - a nice lie down in a cool cave for three days isn't going to fix that.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Given the other irregularities in the crucifixion of Jesus (e.g. post-crucifixion burial is extremely non-standard. Part of the point of the procedure is to leave the rotting corpse on display as a warning) appealing to Roman standardization and efficiency is problematic.
Agreed. If it wasn't clear from my original post, I find entire genre of sermon where I drew the line about Roman efficiency from to be rather odd.
Posted by Oscar the Grouch (# 1916) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
A good scourging alone was lethal. Follow that with crucifixion and a speared flank, rupturing multiple abdominal organs - you know bowel, liver, spleen, stomach, kidney, even bladder (the 'water') - a nice lie down in a cool cave for three days isn't going to fix that.
I agree. The resuscitation theory is almost as improbable as the idea of resurrection! And it is quite clear that whatever the disciples experienced, it wasn't a resuscitated Jesus back to how he had been before.
Something happened. Something that turned the world of all the disciples upside down. Something that was clearly beyond their ability to describe or theorize about. It was something that sent them all off on journeys of sharing the good news in all parts of the known world. Something happened.
This is the heart of the Christian faith. Not the incarnation. Not the crucifixion. The resurrection. Without it, Christianity makes no sense. But I'm buggered if I know how to explain it!
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
:
In answer to Martin
.....Let alone flitting around here there and everywhere enjoying fish suppers.
There are several things about the Resurrection that just won't stack up for me, my problem. Still quite happy to stand up and recite the Creed.
[ 10. April 2017, 20:56: Message edited by: rolyn ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Aye, a good chipper will raise the dead downwind it's true.
[ 10. April 2017, 21:21: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
If it were possible to produce Jesus' bones it would have been done. Both the Jewish and Roman authorities had a vested interest in the executed being dead. If there had been any remains then when the disciples sarted saying, 'Jesus has been raised from the dead,' then why did no one say, 'No he isn't, here he is.'
Posted by Moo (# 107) on
:
When I taught a high school Sunday School class, we did an interesting exercise. I printed out the four resurrection accounts and gave a copy to each student. We then listed all the points on which all accounts agreed.
Many of the points on which they did not agree involved information given in some accounts but not others. If you read various accounts of historical events, you find the same kind of discrepancies.
I have been told that if witnesses at a trial agree in all the details, there is a strong suspicion of collusion.
Moo
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by balaam:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
If it were possible to produce Jesus' bones it would have been done. Both the Jewish and Roman authorities had a vested interest in the executed being dead. If there had been any remains then when the disciples sarted saying, 'Jesus has been raised from the dead,' then why did no one say, 'No he isn't, here he is.'
This is where JD Crossan comes in, with his hypothesis that the body was eaten by dogs and the bones thrown into a pit, along with many others.
It's a point Bart Ehrman picks up on, by noting how curious it is that the idea of Jesus' burial is so prominent in creedal formulae. His idea is that the burial was used as a defence against the accusation of a disposed-of body. I.e. that Joseph of Arimathea was the key fabrication in the gospel narratives.
Coming back to the "not really dead" hypothesis, it's been noted here that one of the common defences is that the Romans were trained and professional killers. Yet the argument is constructed as [this is what we know is usually true, so we may safely assume it]. Yet arguments for the resurrection go against this. If one applied it, one would be led to saying that we know dead people don't rise and live again, so therefore Jesus couldn't have risen. There certainly can be some muddled apologetics.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
:
In response to Balaam, I guess it depends on how much of a fuss was made in the days following the crucifixion about Jesus being raised from the dead. At what point did people start proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead? And how widespread was that proclamation? When did the temple authorities and Roman government become aware of these claims? Maybe they thought it was a small movement that would die away quickly if they just ignored it. And as has been said above, perhaps Jesus was actually placed in a group tomb, or left on the cross to be picked apart by carrion and dogs, as would have been typical for victims of crucifixion.
Because the aftermath has become such a huge part of our history, it is easy to assume that it seemed like a big deal to all but Jesus' most dedicated followers at the time that whatever happened was happening.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm making the point that Jesus surviving the ordeal is more plausible...
In addition to the forensic questions already raised, there is a much harder problem of why the Early Church started with the beliefs it did.
In brief, there was a well trodden path in C1 Judaism that God was going to act to redeem His people, declare them forgiven, boot out His enemies (esp the Romans), establish His Kingdom, inaugurate the New and Final Age, and would return in awesome glory to His Temple. His Messiah would be key to all this. It's not something you'd miss, even without 24 hour news and Twitter.
Oh, and some people thought there might be some kind of resurrection thingy. But it was all a bit uncertain.
Instead, the disciples believed- passionately enough to die for it- that all this was done by Jesus dying on a cross (!!!).
Whatever they saw, repeatedly, was compelling enough to 180 their views on the most important happening in Judaism, stick resurrection at the centre of belief as a non-negotiable, and declare a dead wannabe Messiah as the Son of God.
A battered, half dead, near corpse won't do that for you.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
In response to Balaam, I guess it depends on how much of a fuss was made in the days following the crucifixion about Jesus being raised from the dead. At what point did people start proclaiming that Jesus had risen from the dead? And how widespread was that proclamation? When did the temple authorities and Roman government become aware of these claims? Maybe they thought it was a small movement that would die away quickly if they just ignored it. And as has been said above, perhaps Jesus was actually placed in a group tomb, or left on the cross to be picked apart by carrion and dogs, as would have been typical for victims of crucifixion.
Because the aftermath has become such a huge part of our history, it is easy to assume that it seemed like a big deal to all but Jesus' most dedicated followers at the time that whatever happened was happening.
No it isn't.
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
The trouble with this is that all our ideas and hopes and beliefs jam up against reality. We have all these ideals of love and truth and beauty and this is all very fine but ultimately there is the Second Law, there is the darkness, there is death coming to wipe all these sandcastles away, as though they had never been. That's the ultimate reality.
Unless... unless it really happened. Not just "in a very real sense".
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
Because the aftermath has become such a huge part of our history, it is easy to assume that it seemed like a big deal to all but Jesus' most dedicated followers at the time that whatever happened was happening.
No it isn't.
But isn't that assumption a necessary part of Balaam's assertion that if the body were not gone, the Romans or Temple authority would have found it? Is such a search even mentioned in Acts? It would seem a pretty solid talking point if it happened.
Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on
:
Perhaps I should clarify, upon further review. I'm trying to say that we need to be careful not to assume that the Romans and Temple authorities thought that the first claims that Jesus had risen were a serious threat. It may be that we see a threat they never saw, because we know what happened in the next few decades.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
I'm trying to say that we need to be careful not to assume that the Romans and Temple authorities thought that the first claims that Jesus had risen were a serious threat. It may be that we see a threat they never saw, because we know what happened in the next few decades.
ISTM, the whole thing* was a minor, local affair that barely registered in the Roman world.
It is, ironically, pride that suggests otherwise.
*Assuming it happened, of course.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
:
Perhaps there is too much talk of the religion of another American president to consider the cut and paste Thomas Jefferson Bible?
quote:
[In leaving out all the miracles, the resurrection, and other "nonsense"].... There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.
This is apparently enough for many, including Nietzsche "To reduce being a Christian, Christianness to a holding something to be true, to a mere phenomenality of consciousness**, means to negate Christianness....Only Christian practice, a life such as he who died on the Cross lived, is Christian" (from Nietzsche- "AntiChrist"). To which we might add the rebuke "by their fruits you shall know them" (Mat 7:16).
**I take "consciousness" to mean belief.
(I will confess to holding extreme religious views, though I hold them moderately.)
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
The trouble with this is that all our ideas and hopes and beliefs jam up against reality. We have all these ideals of love and truth and beauty and this is all very fine but ultimately there is the Second Law, there is the darkness, there is death coming to wipe all these sandcastles away, as though they had never been. That's the ultimate reality.
Unless... unless it really happened. Not just "in a very real sense".
I agree - but that still leaves us with hope and faith. We can not say 'it really happened'. We can have hope and faith that it really happened.
Faith is not certainty.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Can anyone spell out what a hard, real, historically factual resurrection of Jesus would be?
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
It's both, all or neither, nothing. The ethics are divine. Transcendent. They tower impossibly above the time. They intrude, miraculously, in to evolution. THIS is ID. Intelligent design. They were so threatening to power in this remote province they had to be extinguished at source. And that failed. Up against utterly minimal divine insistence.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Boogie, I don't agree. I don't think that goes far enough. Nor is it a convenient way of smoothing over the raw difference between those who say they do believe and those who say it's all too much for them to believe.
If the resurrection is no more than an idea, however beautiful or inspirational, then there is nothing to hope in or have faith in. It is no more than the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, both of which are lovely ideas and wouldn't it be lovely if they were true?
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Can anyone spell out what a hard, real, historically factual resurrection of Jesus would be?
A webcam in the tomb, perhaps?
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Boogie, I don't agree. I don't think that goes far enough. Nor is it a convenient way of smoothing over the raw difference between those who say they do believe and those who say it's all too much for them to believe.
If the resurrection is no more than an idea, however beautiful or inspirational, then there is nothing to hope in or have faith in. It is no more than the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, both of which are lovely ideas and wouldn't it be lovely if they were true?
But there's a false dichotomy there. For me the resurrection is not something that I know definitely happened, not in a literal sense at any rate, but it's more than an idea. It's a hope. A hope that it did. But I can't say I know it did; I can't even say I think it did (which is the same to me as "I believe it did"). All I can say is I hope it did.
I'm neither in the "I believe" camp, nor the "It's too much for me to believe" camp. I'm in the "I really, really don't know" camp.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
But there's a false dichotomy there. For me the resurrection is not something that I know definitely happened, not in a literal sense at any rate, but it's more than an idea. It's a hope. A hope that it did. But I can't say I know it did;
I don't think Enoch is saying something fundamentally much different though? At the end of the day we don't *know* in the forensic sense of having sufficient evidence in front of us to know beyond all reasonable doubt.
I suspect what Enoch is trying to preserve, is that that ultimately the hope he has is in what he hopes is a real historical event that - in theory - could also be disproved.
Now not everyone will take that angle - but Christianity itself is defined by the fact that a large number of of its adherents over the centuries have believe in just that.
So yeah, perhaps the resuscitation theory is the correct one - or perhaps resurrection is to be taken in a very non-literal sense. But as a whole Christianity is defined by the fact that a large number of Christians have taken the resurrection literally (even the parts of Christianity that don't, define themselves largely by their counter-reaction to this belief).
[ 11. April 2017, 09:24: Message edited by: chris stiles ]
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
For me the resurrection is not something that I know definitely happened, not in a literal sense at any rate, but it's more than an idea. It's a hope. A hope that it did. But I can't say I know it did; I can't even say I think it did (which is the same to me as "I believe it did"). All I can say is I hope it did.
But that is surely true of all history: unless we witness an event for ourselves (and even that may raise questions about the accuracy of our perceptions), we are bound to be dependent on the testimony of others and the interpretation of consequences and artifacts, which we then need to assess. What is interesting is the way in which "true history" can change.
So, for instance, I have every good reason to believe that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066: I trust my history teachers and I've seen the Bayeux Tapestry, But the assessment of the factors which led to that battle may change as the academics discuss them.
I also believe that ancient people erected Stonehenge - although I still can't be sure of how they did it, nor of what it means. The stones are indisputably "there"; the reasons for them being there can be debated.
And what about the "Antiques Roadshow"? A person may bring in a monogrammed handkerchief which, she claims, was given to her great-grandmother by Queen Victoria as a gesture to reward her long years of service at Osborne House. Now I can get an expert to look at the handkerchief and decide that it is indeed of the period rather than a modern Chinese copy. But I need to think very carefully as to whether I believe in the provenance - which, as we know, can have a great effect on an item's value.
What I'm saying is that we have to take ALL history on trust. The question with the resurrection is not to decide whether it could have happened, but whether the evidence behind it is strong enough to attest that it did - however improbable or irrational that may seem. My belief is that it is, but I can't force others to agree with me.
(Cross-posted with Chris Stiles).
[ 11. April 2017, 09:35: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Can anyone spell out what a hard, real, historically factual resurrection of Jesus would be?
This is the question I've been waiting for on this thread, and I have absolutely no idea of the answer. The only written accounts we have speak of a person, assumed to be dead, who now appears alive, and is "solid" enough to pass for the real thing. But they also speak of someone who can appear and disappear apparently at will and who, seven weeks later according to one account, vanished upwards into the clouds.
This is not history. It doesn't read like history. I honestly don't think it's meant to be history in the sense that the 21st century understands the word. I'm tempted to call it myth-making, but I'm not sure it's that either. I'm tempted, also, to fall back on the 1960s cop-out and talk about the disciples "trying to find language to come to terms with the extraordinary... yadda, yadda...", but I don't think that works either.
I've long believed that you can't look at the resurrection directly. The written accounts are feeble. I think you have to look at it from the angle of how it seems to have made people behave afterwards. And if you do that, I think you have to acknowledge that something happened around that time that was so extraordinarily powerful that it transformed the lives of thousands, if not millions, of people, even in the 300 years before the Roman Empire co-opted the whole thing. What that extraordinarily powerful thing was, I truly believe it is now impossible to say.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Boogie, I don't agree. I don't think that goes far enough. Nor is it a convenient way of smoothing over the raw difference between those who say they do believe and those who say it's all too much for them to believe.
If the resurrection is no more than an idea, however beautiful or inspirational, then there is nothing to hope in or have faith in. It is no more than the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, both of which are lovely ideas and wouldn't it be lovely if they were true?
No, we don't have faith in the tooth fairy.
Faith is about hope and trust - but it's not about certain knowledge. We wouldn't need faith if we were certain.
[ 11. April 2017, 10:27: Message edited by: Boogie ]
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Boogie, I don't agree. I don't think that goes far enough. Nor is it a convenient way of smoothing over the raw difference between those who say they do believe and those who say it's all too much for them to believe.
If the resurrection is no more than an idea, however beautiful or inspirational, then there is nothing to hope in or have faith in. It is no more than the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, both of which are lovely ideas and wouldn't it be lovely if they were true?
What's the problem with ideas? Ideas are powerful. Human consciousness seems to be the place where ideas and matter interact, so ideas as much as stone and energy are the world we inhabit and deal with.
The tooth fairy isn't an idea, but a modern, shallow children's fiction. Father Christmas has a little more depth, but again, it's not a good example for thinking about the power of ideas.
What about honour, justice, self-sacrifice, human rights, true love, race, nation, freedom, community? These are ideas and their power is undeniable. They rise and fall in relative popularity, but they can motivate extraordinary actions and determine the policies of governments.
A much smaller example is the story of the ugly duckling. It even has a death and resurrection vibe to it. It's about self-image, beauty, community and its power to limit, the freedom that understanding can bring and the joy of realisation, and being a story, much more as well. I knew it as a child from a great picture book, and the story is embedded in me now and helps shape my understanding of life and therefore my living of it. There are biblical stories that are embedded far, far more deeply in me, and which have still greater power over me and through me.
Ideas like resurrection or forgiveness or that kenotic identification which is an aspect of incarnation, not only affect the lives of those who know them and allow themselves to be shaped by them, I think they also have a life of their own in the world. Their 'truthfulness' gives them an appeal and we can see them appearing in the plots of films, books of management theory, song lyrics, the way the news is reported and so on, often without those who speak them being aware.
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Posted by Anselmina (# 3032) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
No, not in the least. The resurrection is an idea, a hope, a faith - not a point of fact imo
Boogie, I don't agree. I don't think that goes far enough. Nor is it a convenient way of smoothing over the raw difference between those who say they do believe and those who say it's all too much for them to believe.
If the resurrection is no more than an idea, however beautiful or inspirational, then there is nothing to hope in or have faith in. It is no more than the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, both of which are lovely ideas and wouldn't it be lovely if they were true?
No, we don't have faith in the tooth fairy.
Faith is about hope and trust - but it's not about certain knowledge. We wouldn't need faith if we were certain.
Actually, that's a good point. We all know the Tooth Fairy is really mum or dad. Of that we can be certain. But we're still trying to figure out who Jesus is, all this time later.
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
:
Karl: quote:
But I can't say I know it did; I can't even say I think it did (which is the same to me as "I believe it did"). All I can say is I hope it did
Well I read a definition of what it means to live by the Christian faith which I used to look down on but can see the value of - I believe is was Alistair McIntyre but don't quote me.
In this view a Christian is one who lives on the basis that certain stories, particularly about Jesus, are true.
Is that belief? I think it's more than hope.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
True in what sense?
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
I do hope you don't think that 65kg of organic matter in the present day is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
Well for me true in this sense. If I had been there at the time, I would have found the tomb know to have been occupied to be empty instead. True in the sense that the person I had seen definitively put to death two days previously was now alive still bearing the wounds of crucifixion, but alive and vibrant and not living with the harm that such wounds imply. True in the sense that it was identifiably the same person, able to speak with me, share food with me, touch and be touched by me, and even invite me to put my hands in the marks of the wounds. True in the same sense that it is true that Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55 BCE, or that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066 AD.
I do also believe that the resurrection announces truths on another level, but it is true on this basic everyday level as well. It is, I would say, more true, not differently true.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
I'm content with this statement. The resurrection created the church, not vice versa. The extent to which the created church mythologised the resurrection event is a question to which I don't have definitive answers, and don't find I need them.
As a much admired vicar friend once said, in a brief impromptu sermon (his curate left the service to handle an emergency). "The fascination with what actually happened is understandable, but I'm more interested in what difference Jesus makes in my life, our lives, today".
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
I do hope you don't think that 65kg of organic matter in the present day is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Why not?
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Karl: quote:
But I can't say I know it did; I can't even say I think it did (which is the same to me as "I believe it did"). All I can say is I hope it did
Well I read a definition of what it means to live by the Christian faith which I used to look down on but can see the value of - I believe is was Alistair McIntyre but don't quote me.
In this view a Christian is one who lives on the basis that certain stories, particularly about Jesus, are true.
Is that belief? I think it's more than hope.
Provisional belief perhaps - "I don't know if this is true or not, I can't even put a guestimate on how likely it is, but for now I'm working on the provisional assumption that it is."
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
This is where JD Crossan comes in, with his hypothesis that the body was eaten by dogs and the bones thrown into a pit, along with many others.
A theory which has the advantage of being, as near as we know, standard practice for Roman crucifixions. It's notable that there is, to date (at least the last time I checked), only one definitive example of crucified human remains (a lower calf and ankle bone with a nail through it) that has been found in what was Roman Judea. Given the restiveness of the province and that crucifixion was the standard Roman punishment for seditionists this absence of physical evidence is a pretty strong indicator that any kind of preservation of the body was definitely not the norm.
In other words, if someone had been able to produce the body of Jesus it might be construed as evidence that he wasn't crucified, rather than that he'd been crucified and not risen.
quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
Perhaps I should clarify, upon further review. I'm trying to say that we need to be careful not to assume that the Romans and Temple authorities thought that the first claims that Jesus had risen were a serious threat. It may be that we see a threat they never saw, because we know what happened in the next few decades.
It wasn't until the second century that Romans started regularly viewing Christians as their own thing, rather than as some offshoot of Judaism. (Christians themselves were in dispute on this point in the first century, so Roman confusion on the matter was understandable.) Anyway, from the Roman perspective the leader of a subversive group was executed and his followers had scattered. As far as they were concerned that was the end of it. Even when Christians started proclaiming their gospel the Romans didn't seem to take it too seriously, compared with their attention to other groups of Judean zealots. Given Christians' relative non-participation in the Great Revolt this seems to have been the correct assessment, at least from a security standpoint.
I'm less familiar with the records of the Jewish authorities of the day, but I imagine that their concerns mirrored those of the Romans; that once Jesus was out of the way there were other fringe groups more worrisome than the Christians.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
I do hope you don't think that 65kg of organic matter in the present day is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Is personhood a property of the body?
In relation to Jesus, I meant important to us 2000 years later, but a contemporary body, alive or dead, has a worth that is more than the old 'enough iron to make a two inch nail, enough lime to whitewash a dog kennel' or 'future earning potential'.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
KLB (for some reason I've initialized you to KLS before now, I probably falsely recall, KLB is the correct TLA, forgive me) and all the other don't-knows, agnostics, whatever.
I admire the hell out of you.
But I don't understand you at all.
I look out my window at infinity between eternities and to invoke anything, anyone, necessarily infinitely more complex, of which there is not a trace, feels utterly absurd.
But for William Lane Craig and Jesus. He is the one and only instance of the fingerpost. The signature of God. And He's simpler, sharper, inarguable compared with WLC and his KCA. There's no yeah-but to Jesus, the historicity of Whom is dependent on the fact that you couldn't make Him up.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm content with this statement. The resurrection created the church, not vice versa. The extent to which the created church mythologised the resurrection event is a question to which I don't have definitive answers, and don't find I need them.
As a much admired vicar friend once said, in a brief impromptu sermon (his curate left the service to handle an emergency). "The fascination with what actually happened is understandable, but I'm more interested in what difference Jesus makes in my life, our lives, today".
Yes. When the Gestapo came to collect Bonhoeffer he said "This is the end, for me the beginning of life'.
In what sense can this be true? In what way was Bonhoeffer able to know that it was true?
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
True in the same sense that it is true that Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55 BCE, or that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066 AD.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
History can have some accuracy issues, but Caesar¹ and Jesus² are not in the same category and neither are Roman invasion¹ and the crucifixion.²
¹ definitelyᵃ existed/happened
² mightᵇ have existed/happened
ᵃ multiple sources, archaeological evidence
ᵇ few sources, no physical evidence
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
I do hope you don't think that 65kg of organic matter in the present day is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Is personhood a property of the body?
Yes.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I agree - but that still leaves us with hope and faith. We can not say 'it really happened'. We can have hope and faith that it really happened.
Faith is not certainty.
Can you fill this out a bit, please?
I agree with you that we can't be certain it happened, but I think we can make a positive assertion. i.e. the epistemology isn't watertight, but IMHO the best evidence available to us supports what could be referred as a "creedal hypothesis". I think you differ from me on this latter point.
Where I struggle is the idea that we still have hope and faith if Jesus wasn't resurrected. If Jesus is, and has remained dead, where is the hope? How can we declare Jesus to be Lord and the Son of God if his corpse lay mangled, rotting, etc?
For me, reading the Easter narratives, all hope was lost with the crucifixion. The disciples ran away and went into hiding. Everything was gone; the hope of the coming of kingdom of God/heaven was dashed. Only if the resurrection happened could that hope be revived. So in your view, Boogie, how does that hope come back if Jesus didn't rise? What is the source of your hope and faith?
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
A monastic archæological team in Israel uncovers an ossuary, the inscription on which reads "Yeshua bin Yusuf, crucified under Pontius Pilate".
After verifying the dating of the artifact, the Benedictine says "We must preserve and venerate these holy relics!"
The Dominican wails in despair "Of all men we are the most deceived. All is vanity!"
The Jesuit simply rubs his chin and says "Hmmm, so he really existed after all!"
[musical sting]
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Only if the resurrection happened could that hope be revived. So in your view, Boogie, how does that hope come back if Jesus didn't rise? What is the source of your hope and faith?
God.
That God exists, is good and loves us.
I can't be certain about that either, but I continue to have a tiny seed of faith that it's true.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
True in the same sense that it is true that Julius Caesar first invaded Britain in 55 BCE, or that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066 AD.
History can have some accuracy issues, but Caesar¹ and Jesus² are not in the same category and neither are Roman invasion¹ and the crucifixion.²
¹ definitelyᵃ existed/happened
² mightᵇ have existed/happened
ᵃ multiple sources, archaeological evidence
ᵇ few sources, no physical evidence
Beg pardon, but you've got a distorted idea of what historical sources look like. We actually have amazingly few written sources for people and events that everybody accepts as real (e.g. Greek and Roman history stuff), and those often very late copies of copies of copies. I'm fairly sure the only way Jesus and his church can't compete is if you arbitrarily rule out noticing any documents written by people who believe in him.
The mere fact that the documents exist (NT, patristic documents, graffiti, references by haters) is enough to tell you some facts about him; you need not take every assertion in a text as Gospel truth to learn something from that text considered as a historical artifact.
Seriously, I rather suspect that if you put Jesus and Augustus head to head, Jesus would win in terms of sheer amount of historical documentation, much of that right early. And that's even if you consider monumental inscriptions etc.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Seriously, I rather suspect that if you put Jesus and Augustus head to head, Jesus would win in terms of sheer amount of historical documentation, much of that right early. And that's even if you consider monumental inscriptions etc.
This seems like a dubious assertion, given that numerous Augustan temples still dot various locations around the Mediterranean, many dating from shortly after the Emperor's death. Plus there's all those coins. Sure, they're not "monumental" inscriptions, but I see no reason not to count them as evidence of Augustus' existence.
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
Plus we've got an account of Augustus' life in his own words*, something we don't have from Jesus.
--------------------
*It's possible that The Deeds of the Divine Augustus was ghost-written, but even so the Emperor would have reviewed and approved its message.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
[ 11. April 2017, 18:39: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Beg pardon, but you've got a distorted idea of what historical sources look like. We actually have amazingly few written sources for people and events that everybody accepts as real
For some people and events. Bro James picked the wrong examples. Had he mentioned Socrates, he'd have a better example. Still wrong in principle, though.*
The evidence for Jesus is essentially an inverted pyramid. It might end up balancing well, but you are taking that on faith.
*That the evidence for Socrates being real is not appreciably greater doesn't mean Jesus is therefore real, but that Socrates mightn't be.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
I'm sorry, I've been through the thread and can't find anything by Bro. James. Could you link me?
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
*That the evidence for Socrates being real is not appreciably greater doesn't mean Jesus is therefore real, but that Socrates mightn't be.
I'd say the evidence on Socrates existing is slightly better than Jesus since in Socrates' case we have a non-posthumous attestation of his existence. It's not biographical and in a literary form given to exaggeration, but in terms of Socrates' existence I'd say it counts.
Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on
:
A complication I have with the Resurrection being physical comes in 1 Cor 15, where Paul writes:
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. It's generally accepted that the appearances were all within the 40 days before the Ascension. While Paul had an "encounter" with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, it's never claimed that this is a resurrection experience of the same order as the appearances to the disciples after Easter. In Paul's case, it was the first of many deeply profound mystical experiences, which included being carried to the seventh heaven.
Yet the way in which Paul adds his experience on to the experiences of the others suggests that, to him, the experiences were of the same order, ie mystical, rather than physical appearances. But I don't trust mystical experience to the extent of building a religion around it, because such experiences are, by their very nature, subjective. The transformation of the disciples from a bunch of cowering wrecks, whose grasp of what Jesus taught was, to say the least, obtuse, into a fearless group who proclaimed the Risen Lord and all died brutal martyr's deaths, can't be explained otherwise than that they had a totally life changing experience.
So I have to claim to be somewhat agnostic on whether or not the resurrection experience of the Apostles was of a physical or mystical nature. But whatever it was, it changed them and all subsequent human history.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
Or that Spong is right and he's not. I.e. that Jesus is divine according to His ethics only, by some ineffable mechanism. No other miracles allowed. Bollocks.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm sorry, I've been through the thread and can't find anything by Bro. James. Could you link me?
Here it is. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
Got it. Though I don't think he was choosing events with an eye to their documentation, but rather to the general acceptance as "something that happened." If he had been American no doubt one of those references would have been to 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue--a typical primary school factoid.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
My point still stands, regardless of the examples chosen.
History should be approached with more caution than is typical, but it does not follow that it is all at the same level of evidence.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
Yes. You read me rightly. I was responding to the question posed by hatless. Anteater had said quote:
In this view a Christian is one who lives on the basis that certain stories, particularly about Jesus are true
to which hatless replied quote:
True in what sense?
I was attempting to answer that, not to talk about levels of attestation.
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
That God exists, is good and loves us.
I can't be certain about that either, but I continue to have a tiny seed of faith that it's true.
Which is pretty much what The Son of man Himself said loudly and clearly before the Authorities of that day silenced Him.
Well... tried to silence Him.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
My point still stands, regardless of the examples chosen.
History should be approached with more caution than is typical, but it does not follow that it is all at the same level of evidence.
Certainly. No anything is at the same level of evidence--but some things carry such a preponderance of evidence that it would be basically ridiculous to deny them. The existence of Jesus Christ is one of them. I'd as soon deny the existence of Buddha or Mohammed. Such massive movements do not arise out of nothing.
Note that this is not a statement about precisely who or what Jesus is. It's just saying that he existed, and I know of no reputable historian who would deny it.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else. Because human. Because free will. Which means the freedom to make choices. Which then makes for a whole lot more provocative possibilities. If God did not require at the level of an offer Jesus couldn't refuse, but allowed whatever free human choice to be made, what does this mean for what we have. I think it is an expansive and grand vision myself.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Such massive movements do not arise out of nothing.
Not out of nothing, but perhaps not out of what is purported. I am not saying Jesus didn't exist, just that it is not as concrete a thing as is often implied. Hinduism has no apparent founder and managed to get fairly large.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Why would people prefer to believe less rather than believe more?
Well, I suppose because generally simpler explanations are more beautiful and more satisfying than complex ones. That doesn't mean complex explanations are wrong, but if the question is why do people "prefer" a simple explanation, it is because simpler things have more power.
Thing to be explained: People saw a man who three days prior was dead.
Easy explanation: They saw that man.
More complex explanation: This was a psychological spiritual manifestation of the blah blah blah.
Even less simple explanation: They all felt a certain something and met together and decided to say it was due to a dead man coming back to life, and stuck with that story.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
All it requires is a fourth spatial dimension. No poetry.
It's all in Flatland. All in Flatland. What do they teach them in these schools?
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
Yes.
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
And by definition (son of God, you know) DNA analysis will be difficult.
This is Docetism. He was a human being and had human DNA.
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
It's a point Bart Ehrman picks up on, by noting how curious it is that the idea of Jesus' burial is so prominent in creedal formulae. His idea is that the burial was used as a defence against the accusation of a disposed-of body. I.e. that Joseph of Arimathea was the key fabrication in the gospel narratives.
This smells of desperation.
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Ideas are very powerful. The fate of 65kg of organic matter 2000 years ago is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
I do hope you don't think that 65kg of organic matter in the present day is only important because of the ideas it interlocks with.
Why not?
Before I could answer why or why not, I'd have to know what the hell it means. How does 65kg of organic matter interlock with ideas? WTF does that even mean?
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else.
Do you mean you think God would have done something else had he not resurrected Christ, or do you mean you think God did something else?
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on
:
I believe that on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Such massive movements do not arise out of nothing.
Not out of nothing, but perhaps not out of what is purported. I am not saying Jesus didn't exist, just that it is not as concrete a thing as is often implied. Hinduism has no apparent founder and managed to get fairly large.
We're sort of talking at cross purposes here. I wasn't making a statement about all religions starting from individual founders. I was saying that any large religion which claims to have a human founder and gives details of his life in ordinary space/time (e.g. not off in the heavens or something) is therefore evidence for the existence of said person, though not necessarily that he/she was in all respects as described. I'd say the same about any political movement ditto.
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else.
Do you mean you think God would have done something else had he not resurrected Christ, or do you mean you think God did something else? [/QB]
Either. I don't actually find I need to determine this any more. I used to think I had to have the answers, and then realized I didn't, and it didn't destroy anything for me. If there wasn't a resurrection then it is okay, if there was, it is also okay. The point is to follow and do, with much less emphasis on believing something.
I quoted Nietzsche above, whom I will put in my own words here (perhaps too opaque there for discussion). 'If we reduce being a Christian to holding a belief negates Christianity. It's only when we live like the guy they killed that we actually are Christian.' And I'd add that much of Christianity makes me agree with Gandhi's formula about liking Christ but not Christians. The world needs more Christian behaviour and conduct, not more belief, with the heaven promise a terrible distraction and something that can make Christians thoroughly detestable.
Still working through it, in the context of difficult life experiences (a measure of them is known on these boards, I will simply say life traumas repeated ~35 years apart accompanied by a tremendous God vacuum, but also by an understanding that this offended Christians of several decades of close friendship and presumed support).
So I consider that we may reject the statement that without the resurrection there is no point to Christianity, and sometimes think very seriously that we do not have to decide to emphasize it, believe it, or otherwise be rigid about it. We may allow it is a nice idea, but not insist that it is essential. I have come to the point of wavering, continually, for several years now, sometimes considering for and against several times in a day. Learning to tolerate the ambiguity and not deciding, and tonight as most of this current Holy Week, being on the rejection of resurrection side.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else. Because human. Because free will. Which means the freedom to make choices. Which then makes for a whole lot more provocative possibilities. If God did not require at the level of an offer Jesus couldn't refuse, but allowed whatever free human choice to be made, what does this mean for what we have. I think it is an expansive and grand vision myself.
Christianity hinges on the Resurrection not because there is some logical necessity to it, but because of God's choice. Certainly he could have done something else, though I'm not going there because it is total speculation and we don't know at all what we're talking about, or what is even possible as opposed to being nonsense. My point is that God did not choose to do something else. He chose to do this, and to make it the center of the whole complex of his saving actions toward us. His choice becomes the foundation of our subsequent choices.
One thing you might want to watch out for is the tendency in PSA thinking to act as if Jesus and God are two separate people, the one making impossible and horrible demands on the other. That gets you into a mares' nest of "what if he had done this instead?" and "Would God have rearranged his plan?" Nope. Christ IS God. God the Son and God the Father (and God the Spirit, too) did this together, in unity, as one God--not as three people with separate conflicting agendas.
What we're looking at in the whole Passion/Resurrection event is rather like a grand work of art, in which all of the parts form a unity and each glorifies the rest--nothing can be taken away. God could have chosen to make a different piece of art, sure--but this is the one he settled on, and it's pretty awesome.
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
There's a Kathy Reichs book Cross Bones that riffs on this idea as a side plot and suggests how dangerous it would be to be an archaeologist who found those bones, particularly in the Middle East.
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech
There are lots of potential points of discussion here, not least the open questions about what one means by "word-for-word" or "active Christians".
Not sure what the authors of the report meant by "word-for-word", but they did have a way of defining "active Christians". Participants in the research self-identified as Christian, if they also said they'd attended church at least twice in the last month they were identified as "active Christians".
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm agnostic. I really don't know. I'd like to think so.
Can you say whether your agnosticism about the physical resurrection is 50/50 believe/not believe? Or is it more like 99/1believe/not believe, or vice versa?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
This project is a dumb one.
The problem with claiming x y and z about the historicity of Jesus is that exactly the same case can be made about Mohammed and probably Joseph Smith and the Buddha.
The fact that religious figures have a lot written about them is just a reflection of the fact that they're religious figures - people write a lot of stuff about them, they copy each other and (I'm sure we'd agree) tend to exaggerate stories about them.
Could this weight of material be created about a figure who never really existed? Well sure. Is there any independent evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed? Nope.
This is in marked contrast to Roman emperors. The comparison is nonsense. The imperial civil service was massive, there are official documents recording the facts. Why would anyone make it up?
Socrates is a different case, but there is very good evidence that he existed. There is detailed public evidence from detractors, why would they do that for a figure who didn't exist? The water is muddied by Plato who clearly wanted to make Socrates his mouthpiece, but IMO the curmudgeon street-philosopher who was executed by the state is beyond doubt.
In contrast, thousands of political and religious prisoners were executed by the Romans, many by crucifixion. It isn't hard to see how various messiahs might have been amalgamated into one, with a dose of exaggeration and an association with execution to quickly form a folk religion.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm agnostic. I really don't know. I'd like to think so.
Can you say whether your agnosticism about the physical resurrection is 50/50 believe/not believe? Or is it more like 99/1believe/not believe, or vice versa?
You are using the word 'believe' to try and quantify something which is unquantifiable.
I hope and trust that there is a God who loves humankind. I hope there was a resurrection of Jesus and will be for the rest of us.
I know it can't be a bodily thing as atoms are shared and have been shared for millennia - who would claim which atoms? Lol
But I don't 'know' or even 'believe' either. A lot depends on my feelings at the time - which are usually positive and optimistic. But my questions are always far bigger than my answers.
When I'm completely alone and lonely the 'presence' of some 'other' is always there and I simply hope it's God.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
What an interesting thread.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
As so often on these threads, Lamb Chopped strikes me as talking a lot of sense.
Boogie, it's because my own feelings are so changeable and unreliable that I'm so glad I can trust in external things, events that happened irrespective of how I feel about them.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm content with this statement. The resurrection created the church, not vice versa. The extent to which the created church mythologised the resurrection event is a question to which I don't have definitive answers, and don't find I need them.
As a much admired vicar friend once said, in a brief impromptu sermon (his curate left the service to handle an emergency). "The fascination with what actually happened is understandable, but I'm more interested in what difference Jesus makes in my life, our lives, today".
Yes. When the Gestapo came to collect Bonhoeffer he said "This is the end, for me the beginning of life'.
In what sense can this be true? In what way was Bonhoeffer able to know that it was true?
My wife uses the phrase, "I know in my knower", which strikes me as very good. My conviction that the resurrection created the church was a significant factor in my conversion, and I still think it very reasonable. But my conviction that Jesus lives goes much deeper now than that personal conviction about an asserted historical event. It has been fuelled by almost half a century of the adventure of faithful following. It has been a well spent journey.
I agree also with the observation re Christian behaviour. There is nothing to said against the practice of unselfish love, the agape that represents the essence of the best Christian behaviour.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else. Because human. Because free will. Which means the freedom to make choices. Which then makes for a whole lot more provocative possibilities. If God did not require at the level of an offer Jesus couldn't refuse, but allowed whatever free human choice to be made, what does this mean for what we have. I think it is an expansive and grand vision myself.
Christianity hinges on the Resurrection not because there is some logical necessity to it, but because of God's choice. Certainly he could have done something else, though I'm not going there because it is total speculation and we don't know at all what we're talking about, or what is even possible as opposed to being nonsense. My point is that God did not choose to do something else. He chose to do this, and to make it the center of the whole complex of his saving actions toward us. His choice becomes the foundation of our subsequent choices.
One thing you might want to watch out for is the tendency in PSA thinking to act as if Jesus and God are two separate people, the one making impossible and horrible demands on the other. That gets you into a mares' nest of "what if he had done this instead?" and "Would God have rearranged his plan?" Nope. Christ IS God. God the Son and God the Father (and God the Spirit, too) did this together, in unity, as one God--not as three people with separate conflicting agendas.
What we're looking at in the whole Passion/Resurrection event is rather like a grand work of art, in which all of the parts form a unity and each glorifies the rest--nothing can be taken away. God could have chosen to make a different piece of art, sure--but this is the one he settled on, and it's pretty awesome.
So the Son of Man was God the Son?
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
...In contrast, thousands of political and religious prisoners were executed by the Romans, many by crucifixion. It isn't hard to see how various messiahs might have been amalgamated into one, with a dose of exaggeration and an association with execution to quickly form a folk religion.
It is extremely difficult, virtually impossible. The Messiah was the one who was going to inaugurate the glorious New Age of God's Kingdom, show God's forgiveness to His people and bring God's awesome presence back to the Temple. This obviously included sending the Romans packing.
If you got killed then by definition you weren't the Messiah, simple as, and we know from C1 writers that this is how it worked both in theory and in practice.
Those who wish to say the Resurrection isn't a thing need to provide a better explanation for the emergence of the Early Church with the set of beliefs it had about Jesus' status as Messiah, bearing in mind the helpful Mousethief Simplicity Criteria above.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
It is extremely difficult, virtually impossible. The Messiah was the one who was going to inaugurate the glorious New Age of God's Kingdom, show God's forgiveness to His people and bring God's awesome presence back to the Temple. This obviously included sending the Romans packing.
If you got killed then by definition you weren't the Messiah, simple as, and we know from C1 writers that this is how it worked both in theory and in practice.
I don't understand the point you are making. Christianity, like many other religions before and since, subverted the previous understanding and definitions to create something new. Almost nothing is ever created out of new cloth.
I don't understand what you mean by "almost impossible". Take a near-contemporary example like Mormonism, which managed to riff on the theme offered by orthodox Christianity.
quote:
Those who wish to say the Resurrection isn't a thing need to provide a better explanation for the emergence of the Early Church with the set of beliefs it had about Jesus' status as Messiah, bearing in mind the helpful Mousethief Simplicity Criteria above.
Why do they? A small bunch of Jews came to believe in unorthodox ideas. For various reasons these ideas spread quickly outside of the initial believers. As the ideas spread the stories became morphed and with sufficient time it became difficult to separate what was the original story from the morphing.
I can't see that it is any kind of knock-out blow to suggest that Jews Didn't Believe in That Kind of Thing.
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
Isn't this all the Prosecutor's Fallacy? Option X is very unlikely, so it must be option Y, even if Option Y is also very unlikely.
In this case, something unlikely happened. Either the development of an unorthodox Jewish sect out of nothing, or a resurrection. Both are very unlikely. One might as well say that resurrection is so unlikely that it must have been a weird unorthodox Jewish sect starting up from the ancient equivalent of a fake news Facebook meme, as the other way around.
And this is the fundamental problem; the basic extraordinary nature of the claim of resurrection. Roman Emperors came and went; it doesn't strain credulity to learn there was one called Augustus. Nothing apparently impossible is being claimed about Socrates. Resurrections, though, don't happen. And that's why I find it very hard to commit myself to saying that one occurred.
In answer to SD further up, no, I can't put figures on it. I think I said as much in another reply elsewhere.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Boogie, it's because my own feelings are so changeable and unreliable that I'm so glad I can trust in external things, events that happened irrespective of how I feel about them.
I know, my feelings are just as changeable, but - as the replies here show, there is no certainty that those events did happen. We rely on many external things which can be snatched away in an instant, do we not?
The only certain thing is uncertainty - and learning to live with that is a lifelong process imo.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Also, it is surely possible that the Jewish people were believing something within the parameters of acceptable Jewish belief at the time, and that later non-Jewish redactors amalgamated stories - creating a Christ figure, centralising the cross, theologising a resurrection.
I'm not even sure this process had to be deliberate, it seems to me that there is a natural evolutionary process that could have happened:
1. Stories emerge about a local preacher or possibly various local characters
2. These are superimposed onto contemporary events - such as Roman crucifixions
3. At some point the stories are repeated so many times that it is impossible to separate the events from the person.
4. Hundreds of years later when "the truth" is attempted to be gotten at by consensus, this proves to be impossible to do on a historical basis. Instead the decisions are made on a theological basis.
Nothing malicious is needed, no need for people believing unlikely things - just the natural processes of fable, myth and evolution of beliefs.
Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
But does your Christianity hinge on the resurrection?
I don't think it has to. I think that God would have done something else. Because human. Because free will. Which means the freedom to make choices. Which then makes for a whole lot more provocative possibilities. If God did not require at the level of an offer Jesus couldn't refuse, but allowed whatever free human choice to be made, what does this mean for what we have. I think it is an expansive and grand vision myself.
Christianity hinges on the Resurrection not because there is some logical necessity to it, but because of God's choice. Certainly he could have done something else, though I'm not going there because it is total speculation and we don't know at all what we're talking about, or what is even possible as opposed to being nonsense. My point is that God did not choose to do something else. He chose to do this, and to make it the center of the whole complex of his saving actions toward us. His choice becomes the foundation of our subsequent choices.
One thing you might want to watch out for is the tendency in PSA thinking to act as if Jesus and God are two separate people, the one making impossible and horrible demands on the other. That gets you into a mares' nest of "what if he had done this instead?" and "Would God have rearranged his plan?" Nope. Christ IS God. God the Son and God the Father (and God the Spirit, too) did this together, in unity, as one God--not as three people with separate conflicting agendas.
What we're looking at in the whole Passion/Resurrection event is rather like a grand work of art, in which all of the parts form a unity and each glorifies the rest--nothing can be taken away. God could have chosen to make a different piece of art, sure--but this is the one he settled on, and it's pretty awesome.
This.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Nothing malicious is needed, no need for people believing unlikely things - just the natural processes of fable, myth and evolution of beliefs.
Possibly. There is however nothing inherently incredible in thinking that a religious movement was founded by a religious teacher who gathered a group of disciples. Founder figures of Christianity should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Possibly. There is however nothing inherently incredible in thinking that a religious movement was founded by a religious teacher who gathered a group of disciples. Founder figures of Christianity should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Not sure why. Seems as reasonable as any other explanation.
Not saying this is what happened, just saying that dismissing it isn't as easy as waving a hand and saying "that's impossible".
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
<snip> there is a natural evolutionary process that could have happened:
1. Stories emerge about a local preacher or possibly various local characters
2. These are superimposed onto contemporary events - such as Roman crucifixions
3. At some point the stories are repeated so many times that it is impossible to separate the events from the person.
4. Hundreds of years later when "the truth" is attempted to be gotten at by consensus, this proves to be impossible to do on a historical basis. Instead the decisions are made on a theological basis.
The thing about this "natural evolutionary process" is that the time scale is insufficient. The Pauline Epistles (in which the main lines of the Jesus story is already clear) date from 20-30 years after the death of Jesus. With the exception of John, the gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, are generally agreed to have been in existence by about AD 90, and to have been drawn from pre-existing material. Even John's gospel may have been in existence by this time. The account of Jesus achieves its final form within 60 years of his death.
There isn't a process where hundreds of years later decisions need to be made about the truth of the accounts, and a theological basis has to be adopted. In so far as there was any process at all, it appears to have been one which rejected later material in favour of the earlier material which had been widely accepted from very early times.
I agree that a process such as you describe is possible, it's just that the evidence quite strongly tends to suggest that that is not how it happened.
[ 12. April 2017, 14:47: Message edited by: BroJames ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
50 years isn't long enough to create a complex myth about something? How do you know?
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
50 years isn't long enough to create a complex myth about something? How do you know?
Especially given the amount of apocalyptic material from other sources that there is to work with - the Essenes and their extended sets of scriptures and groups like the Mandeans and Ebionites.
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
50 years isn't long enough to create a complex myth about something? How do you know?
Tch. We do it every day. It doesn't take any fifty years. Three, tops. Don't believe me? Put 'Obama birth Kenya' or '9-11 Truth' or 'Sandy Hook conspiracy' into your search window. And then stand back. You might want to wear a raincoat and galoshes.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't understand the point you are making. <snip> Take a near-contemporary example like Mormonism, which managed to riff on the theme offered by orthodox Christianity.
Early Christianity was not a riff on a theme. It was a claim that the most important thing in History, ever, ever, had happened.
That the long promised Kingdom of God had arrived, that the promise to Abraham had been fulfilled, that death itself had been overcome and God had acted to redeem Israel.
The Kingdom of God arriving event would, it was assumed universally in C1 Israel, be a military victory in the usual OT way.
This was what Messiahs such as Bar-Kokhba did. If some followers had suggested, after Bar-Kokhba's death, that he really was the Messiah, they would have been laughed at. If you failed to liberate Israel, you failed. After a Messiah died- their followers moved on. They didn't discuss alternative ways of liberating Israel, because there were none.
The idea that the Kingdom of God could be achieved by the Messiah getting killed is not a subversion, it's an inversion. How does a dead Messiah do this (and there's so much more where this came from...)?
In fact in C1 Judaism it's a contradiction. Nearly.
quote:
Why do they? A small bunch of Jews came to believe in unorthodox ideas. <snip> I can't see that it is any kind of knock-out blow to suggest that Jews Didn't Believe in That Kind of Thing.
This leaves unanswered the question of where those ideas came from. We know what the Early Church believed because we have a number of different writers, one writing a mere 20/25 years after the events. They believed Jesus had been resurrected in a completely unique and unpredictable fashion, and that's what compelled them to totally rethink their expectations.
Posted by Garden Hermit (# 109) on
:
I have always wondered why Jesus relied on Human Memory to spread his Gospel, and not had a scribe with him to write it all down as he went along. Total opposite to Mohammed.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
There is however nothing inherently incredible in thinking that a religious movement was founded by a religious teacher who gathered a group of disciples. Founder figures of Christianity should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Not sure why. Seems as reasonable as any other explanation.
You're not sure why Occam's razor should be adopted in this case?
(As always with Occam's razor the argument isn't that the alternatives are impossible. The argument is not to look for a complex explanation when a straightforward one is available.)
[ 12. April 2017, 15:44: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
This leaves unanswered the question of where those ideas came from. We know what the Early Church believed because we have a number of different writers, one writing a mere 20/25 years after the events. They believed Jesus had been resurrected in a completely unique and unpredictable fashion, and that's what compelled them to totally rethink their expectations.
You seem to be thinking that Christianity was unique in believing in a resurrected Gods.
So the answer may be as simple as that the idea came from other religions.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You're not sure why Occam's razor should be adopted in this case?
(As always with Occam's razor the argument isn't that the alternatives are impossible. The argument is not to look for a complex explanation when a straightforward one is available.)
I'm sorry, you've got a pretty strangely sharpened Razor if you think it is a simpler explanation to believe in something impossible (ie resurrection) rather than that the story is an amalgam of various different stories.
This is one of the reasons that Occam's Razor is almost useless; a lot of the time definitions of what is actually "simple" and "more complex" are in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
cough Mormons cough Scientology cough
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
You seem to be thinking that Christianity was unique in believing in a resurrected Gods.
So the answer may be as simple as that the idea came from other religions.
You seem to be unaware of how very different the Christian idea of resurrection (and indeed the Jewish idea at that time) is from other stories of resurrected gods in the ancient world of the Mediterranean.
So the answer may be as simple as that it happened. (Unless of course you have an a priori belief that resurrection is impossible.)
[ 12. April 2017, 16:12: Message edited by: BroJames ]
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Garden Hermit:
I have always wondered why Jesus relied on Human Memory to spread his Gospel, and not had a scribe with him to write it all down as he went along. Total opposite to Mohammed.
You know, I love this. I think it's because God has incredibly more willingness to rely on us than we have to rely on ourselves. I mean, it's kind of scary. I was freaked out when they actually let me take a baby home from the hospital (where are the adults? Oh yeah) and be responsible for it. And here's Jesus letting the disciples etc. be responsible for basically his whole mission as soon as the cross/resurrection bit is complete.
to be sure, he did promise them his Holy Spirit's help. But I can't help thinking that cutting humanity out of it altogether would have been more efficient. God doesn't seem to value efficiency very much. ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif)
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
You seem to be unaware of how very different the Christian idea of resurrection (and indeed the Jewish idea at that time) is from other stories of resurrected gods in the ancient world of the Mediterranean.
Apparently Justin Martyr said "when we say ... Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." Apology, Chapter 21 and 22
quote:
So the answer may be as simple as that it happened. (Unless of course you have an a priori belief that resurrection is impossible.)
Almost everyone has an a priori belief that resurrection is impossible. That's kinda the whole point of the story.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Unless you belong to the school of thought which sees all Pauline letters as late creations by another hand, those letters (and particularly Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians, all of which come from the same hand and mind - strong textual analysis for this) provide evidence of a community which believed Christ rose from the dead. And they are generally dated to the 50's AD.
Now of course it is perfectly possible to believe that community believed in and fostered the myth. But such evolution of the myth would have pre-dated the four foundational Pauline letters, originally written within about a quarter of a century of the death of Christ. And in one of them, Galatians, the incidental chronology takes us back at least 14 years before the date of that letter.
Not conclusive of course, from an historian's viewpoint, but the letters are evidence that the belief in Christ's resurrection was fully in play (even if not fully formed), in the 30's AD.
So if it's a myth, it formed very early and had extraordinary staying power.
[ 12. April 2017, 16:40: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
Not if resurrection is spiritual rather than physical.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
mr cheesy
Hear, hear! to your posts.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
mr cheesy
Hear, hear! to your posts.
FWIW I believe in the resurrection, I just don't hold much truck with the common apologetical rhetoric that says that orthodox Christian beliefs are the only historical or logical explanation as to how the thing developed.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
Not if resurrection is spiritual rather than physical.
Which is meaningless.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You're not sure why Occam's razor should be adopted in this case?
I'm sorry, you've got a pretty strangely sharpened Razor if you think it is a simpler explanation to believe in something impossible (ie resurrection) rather than that the story is an amalgam of various different stories.
I was referring to the question of whether Jesus existed. I apologise if you weren't.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I was referring to the question of whether Jesus existed. I apologise if you weren't.
OK, fair enough. So do you also think it is more likely that Robin of Sherwood existed or that the stories of Robin Hood are an amalgamation of various myths of outlaws?
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I was referring to the question of whether Jesus existed. I apologise if you weren't.
The problem for Occam's razor here is that there is nothing to shave.
Occam's razor is a beginning, not a conclusion. A discovery tool, not a proof.
Here is the problem: the simplest explanation is that Jesus existed. But one cannot test from there, nothing exists beyond repetitions of a few posthumous,and biased, accounts which may or may not have independent sources.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I was referring to the question of whether Jesus existed. I apologise if you weren't.
OK, fair enough. So do you also think it is more likely that Robin of Sherwood existed or that the stories of Robin Hood are an amalgamation of various myths of outlaws?
Robin Hood is a) overtly fictional; b) not the founder of any extant movement (there have never I think been any indisputable references to Merrymenians outside the Robin Hood stories); c) the stories about him are first attested three centuries after his supposed lifetime. B) is quite important here. If we had letters from Allan-a-Dale talking about how Will Scarlett has misunderstood Robin Hood's message then the historicity of Robin Hood would really be the simpler explanation.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Robin Hood is a) overtly fictional; b) not the founder of any extant movement (there have never I think been any indisputable references to Merrymenians outside the Robin Hood stories); c) the stories about him are first attested three centuries after his supposed lifetime. B) is quite important here. If we had letters from Allan-a-Dale talking about how Will Scarlett has misunderstood Robin Hood's message then the historicity of Robin Hood would really be the simpler explanation.
Seems like you are using a whole load of special pleading here. I agree the narrative style is different, but I wouldn't say it is "overtly fictional". I don't think the lack of an extant movement really has any bearing on this historicity of the person.
It seems to me that the only real difference between Robin Hood and Jesus Christ - in terms of whether they existed - is that belief in the latter exploded and the events depicted were much longer ago.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Robin Hood is a) overtly fictional; b) not the founder of any extant movement (there have never I think been any indisputable references to Merrymenians outside the Robin Hood stories); c) the stories about him are first attested three centuries after his supposed lifetime. B) is quite important here. If we had letters from Allan-a-Dale talking about how Will Scarlett has misunderstood Robin Hood's message then the historicity of Robin Hood would really be the simpler explanation.
Seems like you are using a whole load of special pleading here. I agree the narrative style is different, but I wouldn't say it is "overtly fictional". I don't think the lack of an extant movement really has any bearing on this historicity of the person.
In what way do my arguments amount to special pleading?
The extant movement is important because it's something that requires a causal explanation and for which Jesus is the simplest causal explanation.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Robin Hood is a) overtly fictional; b) not the founder of any extant movement (there have never I think been any indisputable references to Merrymenians outside the Robin Hood stories); c) the stories about him are first attested three centuries after his supposed lifetime. B) is quite important here. If we had letters from Allan-a-Dale talking about how Will Scarlett has misunderstood Robin Hood's message then the historicity of Robin Hood would really be the simpler explanation.
Seems like you are using a whole load of special pleading here. I agree the narrative style is different, but I wouldn't say it is "overtly fictional". I don't think the lack of an extant movement really has any bearing on this historicity of the person.
It seems to me that the only real difference between Robin Hood and Jesus Christ - in terms of whether they existed - is that belief in the latter exploded and the events depicted were much longer ago.
So where are the eight first and second circle accounts of Robin Hood?
[ 12. April 2017, 20:58: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
The big difference between Jesus and
a. records of Julius Caesar, who almost certainly did exist, and
b. records of Robin Hood, who probably didn't,
is that it doesn't really all that matter whether Julius Caesar or Robin Hood are true or not.
Christians, obviously, have a vested interest in the message being true. What's less often admitted to, is that the majority of non-believers and partial-believers have a vested interest in there being an explanation that might let them off believing the traditional explanation is true.
That is why there is so much argument about the historicity of the resurrection. It matters, for those who'd rather it isn't history just as much for those for whom it is.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
Wow! That right there is the hubris that annoys non-Christians.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
I can see why you're put off by the tone. But what he's saying is just the same thing as if I said, "Whether Muhammad really was the prophet of God is a matter of just as much importance to nonbelievers as it is to believers." Because logically this is true. If the Muslims turn out to be right, and I wrong, I'm screwed. So I do have a vested interest in the question of whether the statement is a fact or not.
TLDR version: I think all he's saying is that there are bound to be wishes on both sides, nobody's truly objective, and we have to all watch ourselves.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I can see why you're put off by the tone. But what he's saying is just the same thing as if I said, "Whether Muhammad really was the prophet of God is a matter of just as much importance to nonbelievers as it is to believers." Because logically this is true. If the Muslims turn out to be right, and I wrong, I'm screwed. So I do have a vested interest in the question of whether the statement is a fact or not.
The very statement has to presuppose the importance of the question.
Most atheists will not be bothered. If some sort of petulant God who demands recognition turns out to be real, then those who do not believe might suffer. But then, I can hardly see how hanging out with such a deity being heaven regardless.
quote:
TLDR version: I think all he's saying is that there are bound to be wishes on both sides, nobody's truly objective, and we have to all watch ourselves.
It is the very lack of objectivity that I am commenting on.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
You might want to confine yourself to the point a bit more strictly. If we are to discuss the petulance (or not) of a Muslim (or no) God (who might o might not exist) and whether the question is going to appeal to the attention of people who dislike it, we shall be here all month.
Anyway, the TLDR bit was what he was saying. Nobody is going to be truly objective on the subject, because the subject is one that has the strongest ramifications for everyone, whether it is true or not. And what I was saying is that this situation is not unique to the historicity of the Resurrection; it applies to a great many other statements as well.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Possibly. There is however nothing inherently incredible in thinking that a religious movement was founded by a religious teacher who gathered a group of disciples. Founder figures of Christianity should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
Not sure why. Seems as reasonable as any other explanation.
Not saying this is what happened, just saying that dismissing it isn't as easy as waving a hand and saying "that's impossible".
I would dismiss it with, "come back when you have some evidence."
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Anyway, the TLDR bit was what he was saying. Nobody is going to be truly objective on the subject,
I do not think this is accurate. It is certainly possible to be objective on the subject. It just isn't possible to know who is correct.
quote:
because the subject is one that has the strongest ramifications for everyone, whether it is true or not.
Not exactly. It is only has ramifications if you picked the wrong religion and the correct religion has a god(s) who gets all het up about that. So, a narrower set of circumstances than you are presenting.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
50 years isn't long enough to create a complex myth about something? How do you know?
Tch. We do it every day. It doesn't take any fifty years. Three, tops. Don't believe me? Put 'Obama birth Kenya' or '9-11 Truth' or 'Sandy Hook conspiracy' into your search window. And then stand back. You might want to wear a raincoat and galoshes.
This is disingenuous. The time scale of such evolution in the internet age is completely different than it would have been in the first century.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Here is the problem: the simplest explanation is that Jesus existed. But one cannot test from there, nothing exists beyond repetitions of a few posthumous,and biased, accounts which may or may not have independent sources.
I'm not sure Josephus* can accurately called biased in favor of the existence of Jesus.
* Yes, I know Josephus came some decades later, and there are disputes as to how much of what he is recorded as having written about Jesus he really did write. But my understanding is that the majority consensus is that at least some of what he's recorded as writing about Jesus probably was actually written by him, as was most of what he's recorded as writing about James and John the Baptist.
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Here is the problem: the simplest explanation is that Jesus existed. But one cannot test from there, nothing exists beyond repetitions of a few posthumous,and biased, accounts which may or may not have independent sources.
I'm not sure Josephus* can accurately called biased in favor of the existence of Jesus.
* Yes, I know Josephus came some decades later, and there are disputes as to how much of what he is recorded as having written about Jesus he really did write. But my understanding is that the majority consensus is that at least some of what he's recorded as writing about Jesus probably was actually written by him, as was most of what he's recorded as writing about James and John the Baptist.
Josephus is problematic in more than just his accounts of Jesus. His accounts of Masada have several key things incorrect. Probably because, here too, he was using second hand accounts
Josephus, likely drawing from the same sources, does no necessarily corroborate as much as repeat.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
I acknowledged there are issues with Josephus. But you said nothing exists other than biased accounts or reputations o biased accounts, and that's what I was responding to. My point was that I don't think bias, at least a bias toward Jesus or toward the Christian understanding of him, can be considered one of the problematic issues with Josephus' accounts.
[ 13. April 2017, 02:40: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
I acknowledged there are issues with Josephus. But you said nothing exists other than biased accounts or reputations o biased accounts, and that's what I was responding to. My point was that I don't think bias, at least a bias toward Jesus or toward the Christian understanding of him, can be considered one of the problematic issues with Josephus' accounts.
What I am saying is that he is likely repeating those biased accounts,* not that he is himself biased.
*For what might actually be his words.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
Not all the accounts were biased in Jesus' favor. Some were severely the other way.
Just for grins, though, I'm going to list a few things I think we can be fairly sure of, whether we possess Christian faith or not--purely on the historical evidence.
1. Jesus existed.
2. He was a Jew living in an occupied country under Roman rule.
2a. He was not a Roman citizen.
2b. He was not particularly wealthy.
2c. He was most likely not well connected within the local religious or political hierarchies (i.e. not a priest or a high ranking Pharisee, nor yet Pontius Pilate's brother-in-law)
3. He had a strong personality with a lot of charisma and a tendency to say things that got him into trouble. (Evidence: the myriad haters and worshippers, but rarely anyone whose attitude was "meh")
4. He was executed under extremely controversial circumstances.
4a. This happened after he had reached full adulthood but before old age.
5. There was something odd about his post-death arrangements-and-or-behavior (pick the theory you like here).
5. He was the proximate cause of a new world religion.
6. He had a transformative effect on the lives of an astonishing number of individuals, some of them formerly his enemies.
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on
:
What a lot of words! And I'm about to add a whole lot more.
What is this god that you all keep talking about?
A being with human-type attributes who caused the ‘big bang’ or was intensively involved with it from the word go?
Who intended this world to function with a system of non-violent distributive justice but couldn’t make it happen, so had to fall back on permeating creation as a spirit of love.
Or who tried to put it right by creating a perfect man and sacrificing him him in a particularly nasty fashion in order that we might be acceptable into ‘heaven’? PSA – go away.
So a man is born who understands from his people’s faith literature what creation could be like, and that the religious hierarchy are getting it all wrong, and has to be publicly removed because of his threat to the honour/mana of the establishment.
Whereupon the myths that arise around his story become amalgamated into a more and more complex theological system which people are expected to ‘believe’ in order to arrive at a perfect after-life.
I stumble at the the beginning of the Lord’s prayer:
‘Our Father’ – this locks me into an ancient system of patriarchal culture and
‘In Heaven’ – where is this supposed to be? Heaven is wherever I am, or you are, where the being that some call god is right there, supporting us in our trials and joys but not manipulating events.
I am a passionate Christian but not a Trinitarian, and I’m probably so way out that my theology isn’t worth commenting on. But I will say ‘Hi!’ to Boogie, with whom I always agree – except for the afterlife. We are supposed to be creating God’s world right here on this earth.
GG
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Wow! That right there is the hubris that annoys non-Christians.
Why do you think it annoys non-Christians?! It certainly doesn't annoy me! I think Enoch makes a very good point.
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
I am a passionate Christian but not a Trinitarian, and I’m probably so way out that my theology isn’t worth commenting on. But I will say ‘Hi!’ to Boogie, with whom I always agree – except for the afterlife. We are supposed to be creating God’s world right here on this earth.
GG
Super post!
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
lilBuddha
There are well-established critical techniques used by historians for tackling subjectivity, bias if you like, in ancient records. That applies to records of all kinds, including records from religions.
Historical critical techniques have been in the toolbags of mainstream theologians for getting on for a couple of centuries now. Of course they give rise to a variety of views about the influence of bias or preconceptions on any particular writing. A factor which applies not just to theological work. For example, it is very well understood that records from any author living under a powerful autocratic government will be influenced by what that author could have been expected to get away with. Freedom of expression as we have it was not very common in previous ages.
I'm not saying that bias and prior conceptions weren't a factor in the New Testament documents, rather that such factors were common to a very large percentage of all documents from that era. Teasing out fact from supposition is a common challenge.
One of the techniques involves incidental detail, for example the time periods quoted in the first chapter of the letter to the Galatians. Given that the clear purpose of the early part of the letter is to establish credentials for the author, it's hard to find a good reason for him to invent a chronology and a long apprenticeship. Or a record of his prior persecution of Christians. These things were easily checked out with the critics the letter was designed to combat. Indeed, the whole letter is an embarrassing record of early conflicts of understanding and authority within the first quarter of a century of the life of the church. If invention, including the chronological details, in support of theology, it would indeed be very remarkable invention. The general view is that it is a genuine very early record. You don't have to have faith in order to be able to see that.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
lilBuddha
There are well-established critical techniques used by historians for tackling subjectivity, bias if you like, in ancient records. That applies to records of all kinds, including records from religions.
Historical critical techniques have been in the toolbags of mainstream theologians for getting on for a couple of centuries now. Of course they give rise to a variety of views about the influence of bias or preconceptions on any particular writing. A factor which applies not just to theological work. For example, it is very well understood that records from any author living under a powerful autocratic government will be influenced by what that author could have been expected to get away with. Freedom of expression as we have it was not very common in previous ages.
I'm not saying that bias and prior conceptions weren't a factor in the New Testament documents, rather that such factors were common to a very large percentage of all documents from that era. Teasing out fact from supposition is a common challenge.
One of the techniques involves incidental detail, for example the time periods quoted in the first chapter of the letter to the Galatians. Given that the clear purpose of the early part of the letter is to establish credentials for the author, it's hard to find a good reason for him to invent a chronology and a long apprenticeship. Or a record of his prior persecution of Christians. These things were easily checked out with the critics the letter was designed to combat. Indeed, the whole letter is an embarrassing record of early conflicts of understanding and authority within the first quarter of a century of the life of the church. If invention, including the chronological details, in support of theology, it would indeed be very remarkable invention. The general view is that it is a genuine very early record. You don't have to have faith in order to be able to see that.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
The problem is that theologians usually want the text to be a true record. Historians generally are a lot more sanguine about making historicity claims about the New Testament.
It is quite true that the epistle text says negative things about the protagonists. But that - in itself - is not evidence of the existence of the founder of the religion. It is entirely possible that the growing sect had morality qualms and that someone decided to write about them for teaching purposes. In and of itself, that's not evidence of the historicity of the founder myth.
Consider what we know (or don't know) about Qumran. They might or might not have been Essene. They might or might not have something to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls. They might or might not have one - or more - leaders called the Teacher of Righteousness. Even with contemporary, archeology and written documents, it still isn't clear what was going on there.
If some or all of the information from Qumran somehow managed to transplant into a new community geographically distant and with leaders who had never actually been to Qumran, it is entirely conceivable that they'd believe things that are different to the original community. Or that generations later they've received documents from other groups that they believe are originals from Qumran and which change the new group's beliefs.
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
:
Have I just read the first Trinitarian post?
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Have I just read the first Trinitarian post?
I was wondering whether I'd cursored back up again by mistake! ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
But I will say ‘Hi!’ to Boogie, with whom I always agree – except for the afterlife. We are supposed to be creating God’s world right here on this earth.
Hi GG! We have a Church of two - hurrah ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
My vague hope for an afterlife comes from my upbringing. I was brought up in the New Church which is all about the afterlife. Lovely, compassionate people in the here and now too. It's almost completely disappeared in the UK. My Dad's old Church in Burnley has just had its final service. A sad, poignant occasion - of course the Church was full for the first time in years ![[Tear]](graemlins/tear.gif)
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
:
quote:
What's less often admitted to, is that the majority of non-believers and partial-believers have a vested interest in there being an explanation that might let them off believing the traditional explanation is true.
Whilst I don't agree with that, I do think there is a strong desire on the part of some to discredit the traditional teaching.
Not because they're worried it may be true, any more than I'm worried that Islam might be true.
Rather it's because they are worried about non-rationalist approaches to belief, which includes a rather uncritical acceptance of a tradition, mediated by church organisations and an emotional commitment to the belief.
That can get you to where silly things and quite nasty things can happen, like believing that The Return of Jesus will probably triggered by a Nuclear War started in the Middle East and that's a Jolly Good Thing.
OK nobody actually believes this in full but some are close and influential. And it all comes down to basing belief on things that cannot be proved according to normal standards.
I'm also quite interested in the phenomenon of Selective Skepticism. For instance I was for a while in Banner of Truth Calvinist circles, where any doubt about biblical miracles was viewed as sinful, but when it came to examining claims of the RCC or Charismatic claims they morphed immediately into James Randi.
Having said that, I am not totally rationalist, but I do see the dangers in emotionally held beliefs.
[ 13. April 2017, 08:18: Message edited by: anteater ]
Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
What's less often admitted to, is that the majority of non-believers and partial-believers have a vested interest in there being an explanation that might let them off believing the traditional explanation is true.
[/QB]
Not in my case. I want it to be true. I long to know that it is true. That doesn't make it true, and it doesn't make me believe it's true.
I get a bit fed up - no, scratch that - bloody livid - with people telling me what my motives and "vested interests" are. You do not have a window into my soul.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
The problem is that theologians usually want the text to be a true record.
Aha! Bulverism! "You say that because you are a theologian!"
I suppose it is possible to read Galatians and not see the passion and the importance the author attaches to it. See with what large letters he writes the finale! After wishing those who saw things differently should be castrated. Whatever else it is, it is an intensely human letter from an intense human being. Which is one of the reasons why it is so generally seen as a genuine illustration of the beliefs of a major mover and shaker in the early church.
I'm not arguing that you need to more than treat the document as genuine and very early evidence of the beliefs and motivations of a couple of sections of early believers, together with some chronological insights into the times at which such beliefs were held. In the terms you were using earlier, the letter is evidence that the "myth" of the resurrected man was a belief held in the 30s AD. Not conclusive, of course, but at least persuasive.
It doesn't in itself prove Jesus rose from the dead. It does provide a major insight into original beliefs.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Aha! Bulverism! "You say that because you are a theologian!"
Sigh. No, it isn't Bulverism if the theologians are using categories for assessing the scriptures which wouldn't be used by historians assessing other writing.
quote:
I suppose it is possible to read Galatians and not see the passion and the importance the author attaches to it. See with what large letters he writes the finale! After wishing those who saw things differently should be castrated. Whatever else it is, it is an intensely human letter from an intense human being. Which is one of the reasons why it is so generally seen as a genuine illustration of the beliefs of a major mover and shaker in the early church.
Well, there speaks the eyes of faith. That's not answering the question of historicity whatsoever. The text is powerful, that doesn't mean it hasn't somehow been inherited, that it isn't somehow an amalgamation of previous writing, that is wasn't somehow written for one purpose and taken for another.
Nobody is denying that the church existed. Nobody is saying that these ancient documents are not part of the faith. But neither of those things mean that the subject of the writing actually existed. That is a matter of faith, not history. Because at this distance it is impossible to tell.
quote:
I'm not arguing that you need to more than treat the document as genuine and very early evidence of the beliefs and motivations of a couple of sections of early believers, together with some chronological insights into the times at which such beliefs were held. In the terms you were using earlier, the letter is evidence that the "myth" of the resurrected man was a belief held in the 30s AD. Not conclusive, of course, but at least persuasive.
Only persuasive if it persuades you. The fact is that even if it was from 30 AD (which we can't possibly know), it wasn't kept in aspic. We have faith that it reflects the faith of the early disciples, but there is no way to actually know that historically.
quote:
It doesn't in itself prove Jesus rose from the dead. It does provide a major insight into original beliefs.
It really doesn't.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Well, that's a level of scepticism that I can't achieve in real life. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck ..
Speaking from personal history, my take on Galatians actually pre-dated my conversion. It didn't seem at all far-fetched to me then, nor does it now. But as in all matters historical and theological, YMMV.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
That is why there is so much argument about the historicity of the resurrection. It matters, for those who'd rather it isn't history just as much for those for whom it is.
I'd much rather it was history. How simple life would be for us Christians!
But, say it were indisputed fact, would that not preclude the need for faith? Would any other religion exist?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Well, that's a level of scepticism that I can't achieve in real life. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck ..
I bet you can if you try. Do you believe in Muhammed's night flight from Jerusalem?
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
Actually, the likely date range of the letter to the Galatians is well-established on historical grounds.
Evidentially its value is that it shows that within the Christian community the basic lines of the account still adhered to by Christians of Jesus death and resurrection were taken for granted within about 30 years of the death of Jesus, indeed, on the evidence of the letter, much earlier than that. It isn't that the letter advances any information about those things, it simply takes them for granted in its argument.
The challenge with this whole issue of whether Jesus existed is that for the very very large majority of professional historians (let alone theologians and biblical scholars) it is simply a non-question, so it's hard to find any making a case either for or against it.
It is also rathe easy to raise airy questions and ideas about what might have happened for which there is no evidence - only speculation "Maybe it happened like this…". Marshalling evidence to counter that sort of thing takes more time than is merited, and more space than is appropriate on a forum like this.
The atheist history blogger Tim O'Neill tackles the idea that Jesus was not a historical person in two parts here and here
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Don't really know enough about that background to the story to comment, mr cheesy. I appreciate it has significance for many Muslims, whether one sees it as a miraculous physical journey or a journey of the mind and imagination of the Prophet. Apparently, not all Muslims take it literally, but whether they do or not, the story explains the significance of Jerusalem as a place of pilgrimages for Muslims.
Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Well, that's a level of scepticism that I can't achieve in real life. If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck ..
I bet you can if you try. Do you believe in Muhammed's night flight from Jerusalem?
I would draw a distinction between an event based on a record of the testimony of a single witness and an event based on records of the testimony of a great number of witnesses.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Don't really know enough about that background to the story to comment, mr cheesy. I appreciate it has significance for many Muslims
Okay, but presumably you don't believe that Mohammed was the final prophet and flew around on a magic horse.
And presumably you are aware that Muslims claim that this was attested by reliable witnesses since the earliest days.
According to your reasoning, you ought to be believing it despite it having fundamental things to say about your theology and despite it apparently being impossible.
I'm not asking you how varied Muslims understand this event, I'm trying to establish if there is anything else to which you apply your idiosyncratic historicity criteria. It would appear not.
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
Karl hit a really important point about the vested interest thing. There is fearful thinking as well as wishful thinking. I should have remembered this, since I naturally tend to believe the opposite of what I want to be true, being a pessimist by nature.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
So far as the credibility of the witnesses to the literal truth of the Jerusalem journey is concerned, they seem to me to have some difficulty in explaining a visit during Muhammad's lifetime to a mosque which did not exist in Muhammad's lifetime.
Which I would reckon may be one of the reasons why some Muslims prefer to see the journey as a matter of the mind and imagination.
Do I see the story as far-fetched? Sure. A lot more far-fetched than seeing Galatians as a genuine document providing evidence of very early beliefs in the infant church.
What criteria do I apply? Pretty normal historical critical criteria so far as I can see. A process which is understandably sceptical about accounts of the miraculous. Which is hardly the substance of Galatians, compared with the Jerusalem journey.
[ 13. April 2017, 13:02: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm not asking you how varied Muslims understand this event, I'm trying to establish if there is anything else to which you apply your idiosyncratic historicity criteria. It would appear not.
I think, mr cheesy, you are misunderstanding the claim Barnabas62 is making for Galatians. He is not arguing that it proves that Jesus existed. He is arguing that the incidental detail in the letter which is not central to the argument will be regarded as more credible because it is not being shaped to make the writer's case for him. He is also arguing, correctly in my view, that the letter is evidence that within the Christian community it was already uncontroversially accepted that Jesus was a real person who had really been born, lived, died, and (Christians believed) raised again.
You're correct that it does not prove that Jesus existed. It does, however, strongly suggest that if there was a myth-making process which led to the belief in Jesus it had fully completed its work and disappeared without trace by the time the letter to the Galatians came to be written.
After that there is a 'faith' question, namely which of these two possible explanations does one believe better fits the evidence? A real person whose existence lay at the heart of these writings, or a myth-making process, which thirty years after the supposed death of the mythical figure had led to a settled, uncontroversial belief that the person was real. And this within the lifetime of someone who had been in the city where the events took place only weeks after the mythical person's supposed execution, and maybe actually at the time of the execution.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
After that there is a 'faith' question, namely which of these two possible explanations does one believe better fits the evidence? A real person whose existence lay at the heart of these writings, or a myth-making process, which thirty years after the supposed death of the mythical figure had led to a settled, uncontroversial belief that the person was real. And this within the lifetime of someone who had been in the city where the events took place only weeks after the mythical person's supposed execution, and maybe actually at the time of the execution.
I don't know and you don't know either. It seems to me that it is entirely debatable as to the age of this document; it is therefore entirely debatable as to exactly what it is talking about; it is therefore entirely debatable as to whether the story that those who wrote the document is the same as the one from the gospels.
30 years ago something happened. A bunch of people wrote about it. Today, 30 years later, I have a collection of contradictory writings.
If I now choose a particular account and add it together with other accounts that agree with it, that self-evidently is not an indication of historicity of the event.
At best it might be an indication of what the people in the document believed. At worse, we could be interpreting the events depicted through the lens of the other documents - which simply add together to create a story that is nothing at all like the reality. How can we possibly know?
Now add in 2000 years, the fact that we don't know an awful lot about those who determined which accounts survived and so on - and we clearly can't be sure about any of the historicity. Claiming otherwise is disingenuous.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
<snip>At best it might be an indication of what the people in the document believed.<snip>
Which is what Barnabas62 (I believe) and I are arguing.
I am then saying, if that is what they believed, what best accounts for it? A myth-making process which strings a variety of stories about different real or imaginary people together and generates a belief that one real person lies behind those stories? A process which leads people to believe that the person at the centre of it died only 30 years ago, and where the process itself has completely disappeared from view. Or alternatively that a person actually existed around whom these stories (true or false) were told?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
That's what walks and quacks like a duck ...
Thanks BroJames. You read me right.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
I am then saying, if that is what they believed, what best accounts for it? A myth-making process which strings a variety of stories about different real or imaginary people together and generates a belief that one real person lies behind those stories? A process which leads people to believe that the person at the centre of it died only 30 years ago, and where the process itself has completely disappeared from view. Or alternatively that a person actually existed around whom these stories (true or false) were told?
That's where the faith comes in. If you don't think that there were other theories floating around 30 years after the events, never mind hundreds of years later when those writings were collected, then I have a bridge to sell you.
The epistles themselves speak of other views of the Christ.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
You seem to be thinking that Christianity was unique in believing in a resurrected Gods.
So the answer may be as simple as that the idea came from other religions.
Perhaps I can explain my reasoning this way:
Imagine you are one of Jesus' disciples a couple of weeks after his death. You've grown up with this, this and this as to what the Kingdom of God will be like when it arrives.
It is beyond ludicrous that you would think that Jesus' vicious, humiliating, common criminal death is what the writings are referring to. It's like ordering a pizza, and having a dead badger delivered. In what way is Jesus' bloody corpse the glorious Kingdom of God?
And why would you want to say it? The message of a new Temple, a new King, a true God, a new People would make you a target for the Jewish authorities, Romans, gentiles and all Jewish people. This and this were utterly predictable.
That the Early Church declaring the arrival of the Kingdom of God had its origins in a series of events, (real or imagined,) is supported extensively by multiple sources and multiple forms. Any theory it had its origins in a discussion group on failed Messiahs, or on pagan religions, comes without evidence.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I don't know and you don't know either. It seems to me that it is entirely debatable as to the age of this document; it is therefore entirely debatable as to exactly what it is talking about; it is therefore entirely debatable as to whether the story that those who wrote the document is the same as the one from the gospels.
This looks to me like a case of 'Is the Earth Flat? Opinions differ.'
I think you can dismiss almost any position using these methods.
quote:
Nobody is denying that the church existed.
Why not? By the criteria that you're using there is no evidence for it.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
This looks to me like a case of 'Is the Earth Flat? Opinions differ.'
I think you can dismiss almost any position using these methods.
No. We can test whether the earth is flat. We can't test whether an event in an ancient document is real or imaginary.
quote:
Why not? By the criteria that you're using there is no evidence for it.
Because there are plenty of writings that showed they existed. Including from those who tried to destroy it.
[ 13. April 2017, 14:33: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
That's where the faith comes in. If you don't think that there were other theories floating around 30 years after the events, never mind hundreds of years later when those writings were collected, then I have a bridge to sell you.
The epistles themselves speak of other views of the Christ.
Do they? Where?
Have you any evidence about the "other theories floating around"? Or any evidence that the date of Galatians is "entirely debatable" (the only debate I can see is precisely when within a c.10-year timeframe the letter was written), or that the text was substantially amended/altered in the following centuries to incorporate the 'officially accepted' view of the resurrection? Because all you seem to be putting on here is "it could've happened", without any real evidence to back that up.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
That the Early Church declaring the arrival of the Kingdom of God had its origins in a series of events, (real or imagined,) is supported extensively by multiple sources and multiple forms. Any theory it had its origins in a discussion group on failed Messiahs, or on pagan religions, comes without evidence.
Yeah, that wasn't at all what I was talking about.
Let's imagine that you meet someone who tells you that something happened 30 years ago. Something that until this point you'd never heard of before.
Now let's imagine that you're not from the cultural group that they're from, you don't actually know whether they're talking about something they experienced first hand or passing on a story they heard from someone else.
Whilst you are mulling over this, you hear a load of other reports which are swilling about which some associate with the events that you've heard about. In time, the contact with the original group becomes distant and there are efforts to write down the story that you know, including what you can remember from the person who told you.
This is how rumour and myth work. They're constantly evolving and gaining bits of extra information, bringing in other stories from elsewhere until it becomes hard to establish what came from where.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
This looks to me like a case of 'Is the Earth Flat? Opinions differ.'
I think you can dismiss almost any position using these methods.
No. We can test whether the earth is flat. We can't test whether an event in an ancient document is real or imaginary.
I can't test it and you can't either, not without using mathematical techniques with which we've been indoctrinated by the Round Earthists. It's all entirely debateable.
More to the point: Barack Obama's place of birth? How would one test that?
quote:
quote:
Why not? By the criteria that you're using there is no evidence for it.
Because there are plenty of writings that showed they existed. Including from those who tried to destroy it.
You've said you don't know the date of those writings and nor does anyone else. You've said that it is therefore entirely debateable what they're talking about: you therefore can't say that they're talking about the same church or indeed anything we'd call a church at all.
And you definitely can't test any of that. (Well, you can carbon date the extant physical copies but that just tells you when the papyrus or parchment or paper was made.)
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
Do they? Where?
Have you any evidence about the "other theories floating around"?
How do you understand Galations 1 if it doesn't refer to other gospels? Other understandings of what the story was? What is the point of asserting his credentials in Galations 2 if it wasn't because there were other stories about what happened?
There are of course many other points in the epistles which talk of people preaching alternative gospels and with alternative messages.
quote:
Or any evidence that the date of Galatians is "entirely debatable" (the only debate I can see is precisely when within a c.10-year timeframe the letter was written), or that the text was substantially amended/altered in the following centuries to incorporate the 'officially accepted' view of the resurrection? Because all you seem to be putting on here is "it could've happened", without any real evidence to back that up.
Explain to me exactly what else one can do except come to a view on ancient documents and how they came together? There is no evidence. There is only supposition and faith.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
:
There were plenty of written alternative gospels before the horse trading that arrived at the present canon.
Some very mythical.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I can't test it and you can't either, not without using mathematical techniques with which we've been indoctrinated by the Round Earthists. It's all entirely debateable.
More to the point: Barack Obama's place of birth? How would one test that?
Yeah, ok whatever. There is no sense whatsoever that a scientific principle is the same as the historicity of the gospels. That's plain ridiculous.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
I am then saying, if that is what they believed, what best accounts for it? A myth-making process which strings a variety of stories about different real or imaginary people together and generates a belief that one real person lies behind those stories? A process which leads people to believe that the person at the centre of it died only 30 years ago, and where the process itself has completely disappeared from view. Or alternatively that a person actually existed around whom these stories (true or false) were told?
That's where the faith comes in. If you don't think that there were other theories floating around 30 years after the events, never mind hundreds of years later when those writings were collected, then I have a bridge to sell you.
The epistles themselves speak of other views of the Christ.
At the moment I am just focussing on the existence of a real individual Jesus of Nazareth. You say there were other theories floating around in AD 60 or thereabouts. Please direct me to the evidence. You say that there were other views of Christ in the epistles. I'm not aware of any view in the Epistles that does not assume that he was alive as a human being in first century Palestine (or alternatively deny that or assert something contrary to that).
If you are aware of alternative views expressed in the Epistles i.e. that he was not a real person who lived in first century Palestine, then please post me to the evidence you are relying on.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I can't test it and you can't either, not without using mathematical techniques with which we've been indoctrinated by the Round Earthists. It's all entirely debateable.
More to the point: Barack Obama's place of birth? How would one test that?
Yeah, ok whatever. There is no sense whatsoever that a scientific principle is the same as the historicity of the gospels. That's plain ridiculous.
They are clearly in some senses the same. For example, they are statements whose truth or falsity is dependent on states of affairs outside our heads.
It appears to me that your position has contracted an advanced case of false dichotomy. A statement is either as certainly known as the securest scientific fact or else it is a matter of faith that cannot be known one way or another. And there is no sense in which the two kinds of statement are the same and there is no room in between.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
Not if resurrection is spiritual rather than physical.
Which is meaningless.
Not according to 1 Cor 15
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
At the moment I am just focussing on the existence of a real individual Jesus of Nazareth. You say there were other theories floating around in AD 60 or thereabouts. Please direct me to the evidence. You say that there were other views of Christ in the epistles. I'm not aware of any view in the Epistles that does not assume that he was alive as a human being in first century Palestine (or alternatively deny that or assert something contrary to that).
Show me something from Galatians, since we're talking about it, which talks unambiguously about Jesus Christ being a specific human being.
Show me anything from outwith of the NT which unambiguously and without question talks of Jesus Christ being a person rather than an apparent instigator of a new religious sect.
It isn't down to me to prove a negative, it is down to you to show why these things go beyond faith and are historical proofs.
quote:
If you are aware of alternative views expressed in the Epistles i.e. that he was not a real person who lived in first century Palestine, then please post me to the evidence you are relying on.
Well for a start if you read Galations in isolation, there is nothing specific that says the Christ spoken of was a specific human being.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglican_Brat:
Let me be as frank as possible,
If we found Jesus' bones, then is Christianity dead?
No - it would prove that Jesus existed!
And that it's all a crock.
Not if resurrection is spiritual rather than physical.
Which is meaningless.
Not according to 1 Cor 15
Riiiiiight. Meaningful in the sense of substance, not metaphor or virtual. More real than physical and including it obviously.
[ 13. April 2017, 17:11: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Show me something from Galatians, since we're talking about it, which talks unambiguously about Jesus Christ being a specific human being.
<snip>It isn't down to me to prove a negative, it is down to you to show why these things go beyond faith and are historical proofs
In Galatians it states or presumes that Jesus Christ was a human being in Galatians 2.21, Galatians 3.13, and Galatians 4.4. There are other places where Jesus crucifixion is explicitly assumed as the background to the argument.
I am not asking you to prove a negative, I am asking you to justify with evidence, your positive assertion that there were other views around in about AD 60 about Jesus. Other views than that he was a person who had lived, and who had died about 30 years before the date of Galatians.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Within the spectrum of gnostic views, there were some who believed that Jesus was an 'aeon', a divine being who took on human appearance. But those who believed that still believed Jesus was real, even though his exact nature was a mystery.
There is no doubt that there were a variety of very early views trying to answer the question 'who was Jesus?' The general view is not that there was no real person behind these various views, myths about him if you like, but that at this distance, the quest for the historical Jesus can only be partially successful at best. He cannot be disentangled with historical certainty from the various Christs of faith.
What we have are the accounts his life inspired. Nevertheless we can still subject those accounts to critical examination. Galatians, being early, happens to be a document of some historical value from what can be gleaned from its contents. Views may vary on the value of that enterprise.
[ 13. April 2017, 19:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Show me something from Galatians, since we're talking about it, which talks unambiguously about Jesus Christ being a specific human being.
Show me anything from outwith of the NT which unambiguously and without question talks of Jesus Christ being a person rather than an apparent instigator of a new religious sect.
On the whole I believe instigators of new religious sects are persons. I think someone who claimed that a religious sect was instigated by someone who wasn't a person would have some explaining to do, for all that it is a negative.
(See also the discussion of Josephus in the link to the atheist historian posted earlier in the thread.)
Asking for an explicit statement that Jesus is a specific human being is special pleading. Mostly we take it as read that names refer to specific human beings except where context suggests it might be otherwise.
quote:
It isn't down to me to prove a negative, it is down to you to show why these things go beyond faith and are historical proofs.
This is an abuse of the principle. It doesn't license unlimited skepticism.
Besides which what standards do you think are reasonable for 'historical proof'? Is most reasonable explanation sufficient? Establishment beyond reasonable doubt? Mathematical standards such that the evidence necessitates the conclusion?
Posted by Stejjie (# 13941) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Stejjie:
Do they? Where?
Have you any evidence about the "other theories floating around"?
How do you understand Galations 1 if it doesn't refer to other gospels? Other understandings of what the story was? What is the point of asserting his credentials in Galations 2 if it wasn't because there were other stories about what happened?
There are of course many other points in the epistles which talk of people preaching alternative gospels and with alternative messages.
The goalposts feel like they're shifting all over the place here; but be that as it may, "other gospels" doesn't necessarily equate to "other views of whether Jesus existed as a human being" (which is one of the things I thought we were debating), or other beliefs about the cross/resurrection (which is the other). As I understand it, the main point of argument in Galatians is whether observance of the Jewish Law is necessary for Gentiles coming to Christ: that doesn't necessarily need to say anything about the other issues.
And the existence of other "gospels" doesn't suggest that they were accepted by the main body of believers; I realise you probably won't accept this, but 1 Corinthians 15, especially v3, suggests to me that the death and resurrection of Jesus was a core, perhaps the core teaching of the early church.
quote:
quote:
Or any evidence that the date of Galatians is "entirely debatable" (the only debate I can see is precisely when within a c.10-year timeframe the letter was written), or that the text was substantially amended/altered in the following centuries to incorporate the 'officially accepted' view of the resurrection? Because all you seem to be putting on here is "it could've happened", without any real evidence to back that up.
Explain to me exactly what else one can do except come to a view on ancient documents and how they came together? There is no evidence. There is only supposition and faith.
I'm not an expert on this, I rely on those who have done the work on this; there may well be other Shippies who have more knowledge of this. All I can say is I can't find any evidence among scholars that there's any reason to doubt that Galatians is a genuine 1st century document, that most scholars accept that Paul wrote it (there appears to be some debate about this, but it's not one of the most contested letters) and that the date it was written is somewhere in the mid 40s-late 50s AD.
As far as I can tell, there is simply no debate about the authenticity of there having been such a letter written in the 1st century. It's not stated as a "faith position", it's not supposition, it's not even a debate. It's just accepted that somebody, most likely Paul, wrote this. No one who has the knowledge of how these documents came together seems to question the authenticity of Galatians as a 1st century epistle.
This is my whole problem with your argument here; it seems to boil down to "but something else" without any evidence whatsoever that "something else" actually happened. And as BroJames says, no one's asking you to prove a negative: just some evidence either of the fallibility of the dating of the NT texts, of other ideas floating around the early church about the existence or otherwise of Jesus of Nazareth and so on. Otherwise it's just a bunch of "yeah buts" and suppositions without anything to back them up.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
In defence of mr cheesy, there are various Christ myth theories, as you can see here.
My biggest problem with the theories is found in this quotation in the article.
quote:
The Pauline epistles are dismissed because, aside from a few passages which may have been interpolations, they contain no references to an earthly Jesus who lived in the flesh.
Wandering back into Galatians for a moment, there is this verse
quote:
4.4 But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.
A strange interpolation indeed, if indeed it is one. Since it does not say "born of a virgin", (which you would have thought would be the case in any late interpolation) simply that Jesus was born in the same way as every other human being.
And there is of course this
quote:
3.1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.
That's not an interpolation, it is a reprise on these very well known verses from Chapter 2.
quote:
19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
I don't know how the Christ-myth argument (which of necessity must debunk the Pauline letters) gets round content like that. I'm sure they must, somehow, but it looks like an a priori judgment to insist on all such texts being interpolations, rather than relating to the life of a real person.
[ 14. April 2017, 10:58: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
Actually, the likely date range of the letter to the Galatians is well-established on historical grounds.
Evidentially its value is that it shows that within the Christian community the basic lines of the account still adhered to by Christians of Jesus death and resurrection were taken for granted within about 30 years of the death of Jesus, indeed, on the evidence of the letter, much earlier than that. It isn't that the letter advances any information about those things, it simply takes them for granted in its argument.
The challenge with this whole issue of whether Jesus existed is that for the very very large majority of professional historians (let alone theologians and biblical scholars) it is simply a non-question, so it's hard to find any making a case either for or against it.
It is also rathe easy to raise airy questions and ideas about what might have happened for which there is no evidence - only speculation "Maybe it happened like this…". Marshalling evidence to counter that sort of thing takes more time than is merited, and more space than is appropriate on a forum like this.
The atheist history blogger Tim O'Neill tackles the idea that Jesus was not a historical person in two parts here and here
Excellent post. Some historians seem to accept historic Jesus, that is, without the miracles. This is partly on the grounds of parsimony - it explains the various texts economically, whereas the various 'myther' theories involve complicated explanations, as to why a purely spiritual being was then humanized in texts.
But I think historians would tend to shrink from the resurrection, and other miracles, not because they are anti-Christian, but because the supernatural cannot be examined via historical method, which is naturalistic. In fact, I think Tim explains this in the articles you cite (used to be an avid reader of his stuff, but he is writing a book at present I think, so pretty quiet on the internet).
This also suggests that notions of probability don't work with the supernatural, since there are no measurable or calculable outcomes.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Yeah, that wasn't at all what I was talking about.
Let's imagine that you meet someone who tells you that something happened 30 years ago.
....<snip>...
They're constantly evolving and gaining bits of extra information, bringing in other stories from elsewhere until it becomes hard to establish what came from where.
I may have misunderstood your construction of those first 30 years, but there are problems with what I suspect it is:
A discussion group talking about nothing much of significance expands to different parts of the Middle East (Why?). Along the way, someone who knew about Adonis etc managed to persuade all these groups who were in in very different geographical and theological places that the cycle of dying and rising in agriculture could be applied to whatever the groups were about; and that someone originally not important saved humanity by dying and rising.
Despite that dying and rising cults are generally cyclical, not once forever, and that harvesting crops has little to do with dying on a cross, the groups adopted this, still remaining emphatically Jewish, indeed anti- gentile cult. Pagan influences left no other discernible trace.
If I'm wrong on what you're saying, what then is your hypothesis on those first 30 years?
And to repeat: there is no evidence at all for this, and indeed Harrods level evidence against.
So rather than losing touch with the roots of the movement; as Paul writes, at the end of the 1 Cor 15 resurrection list After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living. We know that there was a constant flow between the churches and Jerusalem, dodgy doctrine was challenged, and that it was those who actually witnessed the Jesus events who were in leadership.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quetzalcoatl's quotation from Galatians above sets out our fundamental dilemma. Either we are living after the resurrection, or we are living in a delusion. We simply can't know either way.
The resurrection is standing here as a shorthand for the experience or series of experiences that turned a group of people of (really) unknown number and makeup from confused, scared disciples gathering behind closed doors out of grief and/or fear, from equally puzzled people having random encounters with a figure they erratically recognise, into apostles able to found and sustain a movement through its early phases of finding its identity, boundaries and teaching.
Otherwise, it's just a collective delusion of that same group of grief-stricken, scared people, who were so totally unable to face reality that they poured all of their energy into an enterprise which took off because of their sheer fanaticism and has been sustained by more or less alternating waves of fanaticism and scepticism ever since.
I simply don't see how we choose between those explanations, other than by faith. I choose to invest my faith in the proposition that the first is true. Others don't.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
Not my quote, bruv.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Not my quote, bruv.
Oops.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Not my quote, bruv.
Oops.
Erratum: Barnabas62 provided the quotation in question.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quetzalcoatl's quotation from Galatians above sets out our fundamental dilemma. Either we are living after the resurrection, or we are living in a delusion. We simply can't know either way.
It's not a new dilemma. Just the old dilemma expressed in the context of a more modern argument.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:
Originally posted by ThunderBunk:
quetzalcoatl's quotation from Galatians above sets out our fundamental dilemma. Either we are living after the resurrection, or we are living in a delusion. We simply can't know either way.
It's not a new dilemma. Just the old dilemma expressed in the context of a more modern argument.
My point was more that the experiences which define the experience of the resurrection and test its reality are the disciples', not Jesus's.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
quetzalcoatl wrote:
quote:
...In fact, I think Tim explains this in the articles you cite (used to be an avid reader of his stuff, but he is writing a book at present I think, so pretty quiet on the internet)...
Not sure I would want to be a retailer of pseudo-historical yarns if I thought he was around!
As a matter of fact, he's still firing on all eight cylinders over on
his newer blog.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
I did have a little preen when I read this by Tim O'Neill.
Particularly this re Galatians 4:4 et al
quote:
So Mythicist theorists then have to tie themselves in knots to "explain" how, in fact, a clear reference to Jesus being "born of a woman" actually means he wasn't born of a woman and how when Paul says Jesus was "according to the flesh, a descendant of King David" this doesn't mean he was a human and the human descendant of a human king. These contrived arguments are so weak they tend to only convince the already convinced. It's this kind of contrivance that consigns this thesis to the fringe.
[ 15. April 2017, 09:16: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quetzalcoatl wrote:
quote:
...In fact, I think Tim explains this in the articles you cite (used to be an avid reader of his stuff, but he is writing a book at present I think, so pretty quiet on the internet)...
Not sure I would want to be a retailer of pseudo-historical yarns if I thought he was around!
As a matter of fact, he's still firing on all eight cylinders over on
his newer blog.
Cheers. Yes, he is rather scathing, especially about atheists who accept all kind of dross as long as it shafts religion.
I remember a huge thread on another forum, which is still going after 7 years, and is now at 2000 pages, and 40, 000 posts, and Tim started off on that, refuting various mythers, but eventually he got fed up with the sheer idiocy, or more properly, the ahistorical comments. The commonest one was that the gospels could not be accepted as historical evidence, for some mysterious reason.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/historical-jesus-t219.html
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
I don't mean that the gospels are historically accurate, but that they can be part of the argument from parsimony, that the simplest explanation of various texts and stories is that Jesus actually existed as a human being, and as a Jewish preacher/healer or whatever. This excludes the miraculous stuff, which historians normally don't touch.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Talk about smiting "hip and thigh"! I read the first few pages of that link and enjoyed Tim's boisterous approach to bullshit. Quite Hellish, by Ship standards.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Talk about smiting "hip and thigh"! I read the first few pages of that link and enjoyed Tim's boisterous approach to bullshit. Quite Hellish, by Ship standards.
I note that whilst he is absolutely scathing about those who are talking about the Jesus Myth, you might want to hold on before giggling like a schoolgirl as he lays into them.
First he says
quote:
Anyone who knows me, has read my stuff online or has simply just read this far in this article will know that I hold the idea that there was no historical Jesus in low regard, but I am more than happy to accept that it is at least possible - to use Fitzgerald's language, it at least "could" be true. I just find it very unlikely.
From his other blogs we see that his main reason for dismissing the Christ myth is a lack of evidence. Which is interesting, given that the opposite argument is also that there is a lack of evidence.
He also says:
quote:
Many Christian apologists vastly overstate the number of ancient non-Christian writers who attest to the existence of Jesus. This is partly because they are not simply showing that a mere Jewish preacher existed, but are arguing for the existence of the "Jesus Christ" of Christian doctrine: a supposedly supernatural figure who allegedly performed amazing public miracles in front of audiences of thousands of witnesses. It could certainly be argued that such a wondrous figure would have been noticed outside of Galilee and Judea and so should have been widely noted as well. So Christian apologists often cite a long list of writers who mention Jesus, usually including Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Lucian, Thallus and several others. But of these only Tacitus and Josephus actually mention Jesus as a historical person - the others are all simply references to early Christianity, some of which mention the "Christ" that was the focus of its worship.
OK, so this guy believes it is a slam-dunk that Jesus Christ existed and that he was crucified. But that's not a particularly big deal given that he dismisses almost everything else said about him in the New Testament. He says - in as many words - that the stuff attributed to Jesus Christ are made up.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
<snip>From his other blogs we see that his main reason for dismissing the Christ myth is a lack of evidence. Which is interesting, given that the opposite argument is also that there is a lack of evidence.
<snip>But that's not a particularly big deal given that he dismisses almost everything else said about him in the New Testament. He says - in as many words - that the stuff attributed to Jesus Christ are made up.
I'm not quite sure what you are saying in the second sentence here (which I have italicised). There certainly is less evidence for the existence of a historical person called Jesus the Christ than some Christian apologists have suggests, but enough to make the idea that no such historical person existed unlikely.
I expect he does believe that much of the stuff attributed to Jesus in the New Testament is made up - he is after all a signed-up atheist, but can you give me a link to where he says that "in as many words".
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
I'm not quite sure what you are saying in the second sentence here (which I have italicised). There certainly is less evidence for the existence of a historical person called Jesus the Christ than some Christian apologists have suggests, but enough to make the idea that no such historical person existed unlikely.
He says there would be written evidence of some "cosmic Christ" that he says the mythicists posit instead of a human person. One of the reasons they have for rejecting that there was a person is the lack of written evidence, or even of written evidence that has been lost. I'm just commenting that this seems to cut both ways in this argument.
quote:
I expect he does believe that much of the stuff attributed to Jesus in the New Testament is made up - he is after all a signed-up atheist, but can you give me a link to where he says that "in as many words".
Nope, I can't be bothered - read his blog for yourself.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
He thinks Bart Ehrman has the best take on the historic Jesus i.e. that he was an apocalyptic prophet. Here's a quote from the rational sceptic website (p4)
quote:
A Jesus who was an apocalyptic Jewish prophet who predicted the immanent end of the world and was clearly wrong doesn't fit anyones' prejudices. Yet it fits the evidence perfectly.
This seems to be who and what he was
That's the theme of this book by Ehrman.
It's not a new take on Jesus. Albert Schweitzer was teaching that at the turn of the 20th Century.
[ 15. April 2017, 17:57: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
Intersectionality.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
For BroJames, from p7 of the sceptic website, here is another quote which gives some insight into what Tim O'Neill accepts and doesn't accept about the words and life of Jesus.
quote:
Question to Tim:
My question is this, how much of his life as written in the sources do you, personally, believe to be true? What parts are real and what parts are mythology, according to what you've read, learned and personally believe?
Answer by Tim
I've answered this many times. The things in the story which don't fit Messianic expectations are the bits most likely to be historical: (i) his origin in Nazareth, (ii) his baptism by John, (iii) his crucifixion. There are other things which are also likely to be historical, especially his apocalyptic teaching, because it fits the context of his times better than it fits the ideas and context of the early Christian movement.
[ 15. April 2017, 18:31: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
He thinks Bart Ehrman has the best take on the historic Jesus i.e. that he was an apocalyptic prophet. Here's a quote from the rational sceptic website (p4)
quote:
A Jesus who was an apocalyptic Jewish prophet who predicted the immanent end of the world and was clearly wrong doesn't fit anyones' prejudices. Yet it fits the evidence perfectly.
This seems to be who and what he was
That's the theme of this book by Ehrman.
It's not a new take on Jesus. Albert Schweitzer was teaching that at the turn of the 20th Century.
Yes, I picked that up too. I haven't read Ehrman's book, so take the following comments bearing that in mind. But isn't there a problem with that formulation?
That seems to be the popular understanding of the word apocalypse (as in "Zombie Apocalypse"). But that's not what it means - an apocalypse is an unveiling or revealing, most usually as a written exposition though I guess it could equally be spoken. It is not an event in time.
So Jesus was undoubtedly a Jewish prophet. And judging by passages such as the Olivet discourse, he certainly used apocalyptic language. So I am comfortable with the term "Apocalyptic Jewish Prophet". But to say that he predicted the imminent end of the world and was wrong makes no sense.
The only way it makes sense is if you disregard the whole purpose of the genre (which does what it says on the tin) and take it literally. If you do that, you immediately land in new trouble, which is that Jews did not believe in the coming of the end of the world, but in the imminence of the age to come (ha-olam haba). That is entirely what the coming of the messiah, the anointed one, the Christ was all about. Indeed we still proclaim it ourselves in the words the Gloria Patri ("...world without end - or literally "unto the age of ages"). Not "unto the end of the world". So problems all round with that one.
[ 15. April 2017, 18:42: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
The only way it makes sense is if you disregard the whole purpose of the genre (which does what it says on the tin) and take it literally. If you do that, you immediately land in new trouble, which is that Jews did not believe in the coming of the end of the world, but in the imminence of the age to come (ha-olam haba). That is entirely what the coming of the messiah, the anointed one, the Christ was all about.
I believe that's N T Wright's take on the matter. I find it persuasive, but I doubt it's the universal opinion in the academy: I should suppose the older Schweitzer view still has traction.
O'Neill's view seems to be based largely on the double-discontinuity line of reason. I gather that has come under criticism. But as a way of establishing a minimal content it seems to me sound.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
O'Neill's view seems to be based largely on the double-discontinuity line of reason. I gather that has come under criticism. But as a way of establishing a minimal content it seems to me sound.
I think I understand double discontinuity but would be grateful for an explanation.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
Double discontinuity - a criterion formulated by Ernst Kaesemann to determine the authenticity of Jesus' reported sayings. If what he is reported to have said represents a discontinuity from what contemporary Judaism taught and what the early church taught, then it scores as "likely authentic".
I can see how it appealed in the first place, but I think it is problematic if used to determine understanding of content. Its application requires us to have an understanding of meaning before we can apply the criterion. The problem here is that right from the start we have flagged up an issue as to genre and meaning. Get that wrong and the application of the criterion becomes meaningless.
(I think the scholarly objection is along other lines - more that it presupposes that there actually was a discontinuity between teachings within 1st C Judaism which was far from monolithic, Jesus' teachings, and the very early church. The first and third of these have been very active areas of research in the twentieth century, and the general complaint is that as more is known about them, the more the "Real Jesus" seems to recede - by this criterion at least.)
Dafyd - I take it this is what you meant, but correct me if I misunderstand you. I agree that the legacy of Schweitzer is probably in view here.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
From his other blogs we see that his main reason for dismissing the Christ myth is a lack of evidence. Which is interesting, given that the opposite argument is also that there is a lack of evidence.
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
He says there would be written evidence of some "cosmic Christ" that he says the mythicists posit instead of a human person. One of the reasons they have for rejecting that there was a person is the lack of written evidence, or even of written evidence that has been lost. I'm just commenting that this seems to cut both ways in this argument.
No, it doesn't. Arguments from silence can be made effectively, but they need to be argued properly. The attempt by the Mythicists to do so fail. They claim "There are no contemporary references to Jesus. There should be if he existed. So he didn't exist." The flaw in this argument lies in its second premise. There "should" be? This claim needs to be supported by the evidence, but it isn't. Why "should" we expect contemporary references to Jesus? We don't have contemporary references for about 90% of ancient figures. And we have none at all for any of the other early first century Jewish preachers, prophets or Messianic claimants we know about - like Jesus, they are all only attested by later mentions. So there is no reason there "should" be references to a Jewish preacher at all. Therefore the argument fails.
My argument from silence regarding the lack of any references to a mythic/celestial Jesus form of proto-Christianity, on the other hand, is solid. We have an extensive early patristic that contains references to a wide variety of rival variant forms of Christianity that it condemns as "heresies". These works mention a range of such variants and sometimes even talk about ones that are long since vanished, just in case they arise again. Nowhere in this corpus is there so much as a hint about a form of Christianity that taught Jesus had never existed on earth at all and was purely celestial. We also have a corpus of Christian apologetic responses to Jewish and pagan critics. These critics are depicted as marshalling a range of problems or issues with Christian ideas and claims. Yet nowhere in this corpus is there any sign that these critics were aware of a variant form of Christianity that didn't even believe Jesus existed on earth. This is despite the fact noting this variant would be a useful argument against Christian claims, especially for Jewish critics like Justin Martyr's "Trypho". So we should find at least some mention or even hint about this supposed mythic/celestial Jesus form of proto-Christianity, especially since it would have a good claim to being the original form of the faith and so be a particular threat to developing orthodoxy. But we get absolute silence from the sources.
Mythicists have to resort to weak tactics to "explain" this silence. Either they twist the text of Justin Martyr's Dialogue VIII to try to pretend Trypho is alluding to an invented Jesus. Or they invoke the old fall back of the conspiracy theorist - "they destroyed all the evidence which supports my theory!" - out of desperation. Then they wonder why no-one takes their junk thesis seriously.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Yes, I picked that up too. I haven't read Ehrman's book, so take the following comments bearing that in mind. But isn't there a problem with that formulation?
That seems to be the popular understanding of the word apocalypse (as in "Zombie Apocalypse"). But that's not what it means - an apocalypse is an unveiling or revealing, most usually as a written exposition though I guess it could equally be spoken. It is not an event in time.
"Apocalyptic" refers to the genre of prophetic works in which the nature of the coming event in time is "revealed" or "uncovered" for the seer. What was said to be coming, however, WAS to be an event in time.
quote:
So Jesus was undoubtedly a Jewish prophet. And judging by passages such as the Olivet discourse, he certainly used apocalyptic language. So I am comfortable with the term "Apocalyptic Jewish Prophet". But to say that he predicted the imminent end of the world and was wrong makes no sense.
That is exactly what he is depicted as predicting. Though it was more "the end of the world as we know it", followed by its renewal, with Yahweh reasserting his direct rule over it through his Messiah.
quote:
The only way it makes sense is if you disregard the whole purpose of the genre (which does what it says on the tin) and take it literally. If you do that, you immediately land in new trouble, which is that Jews did not believe in the coming of the end of the world, but in the imminence of the age to come (ha-olam haba).
Wrong. Many Jews believed in both - one following the other. This is the consistent message in the mouth of Jesus in the synoptics. Some of the language used to describe the coming apocalyptic renewal is not to be taken literally but that this apocalypse was not going to be happy fun times is absolutely part of what was in the tin.
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Dafyd - I take it this is what you meant, but correct me if I misunderstand you. I agree that the legacy of Schweitzer is probably in view here.
I think that's what you meant. I can see that it has somewhat less application if you don't consider 'Judaism' or 'Christianity' as monolithic entities.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I believe that's N T Wright's take on the matter. I find it persuasive
I don't. I find it tendentious.
quote:
but I doubt it's the universal opinion in the academy: I should suppose the older Schweitzer view still has traction.
It has more than "traction". It's very much the majority view of almost all of the non-Christian scholars in the field and a number of the liberal Christian ones as well (e.g. James F. McGrath and Dale C. Allison).
quote:
O'Neill's view seems to be based largely on the double-discontinuity line of reason.
No, it isn't. Jesus' apocalyptic theology is not out of step with contemporary Jewish theology but very much part of a branch of it. But we see a drift away from it in the later New Testament texts as (i) the expectations of a imminent arrival of the apocalypse are disappointed and (ii) the Jesus sect drifts from its Jewish roots and becomes a Gentile saviour cult.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
I was just composing a reply to mr cheesy, and re-checking his post when I saw Tim O'Neill had joined the thread. Welcome back to your second visit to the ship Tim.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
From me too. Far better than me looking up quotes which I think may be representative.
(PS - I did enjoy this your first post from a thread now in Oblivion. Seemed spot on
quote:
Yes, I've just come aboard after traffic to my blog alerted me to this thread. Though I have lurked on and off in the past. I am at work at the moment, so will respond to several things in this thread when I get home.
I found the claim above that I "stuggle with basic politeness" pretty amusing. Most people who read what I had to endure on that RatSkep thread say I actually have the patience of a saint. Suffice it to say I give back what I get, though not always in equal measure.
[ 15. April 2017, 20:53: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Jesus' apocalyptic theology is not out of step with contemporary Jewish theology but very much part of a branch of it. But we see a drift away from it in the later New Testament texts as (i) the expectations of a imminent arrival of the apocalypse are disappointed and (ii) the Jesus sect drifts from its Jewish roots and becomes a Gentile saviour cult.
(Italics are mine) I believe you are right about apocalyptic pronouncements in the gospels and the letters.
But isn't there evidence for "the Gentile Saviour cult" - or at the very least its beginnings - in the epistle to the Galatians? Which I think is generally accepted to pre-date the written gospels and most - if not all - of the Pauline letters.
Maybe I'm confused by the terminology? Wouldn't be the first time.
[ 15. April 2017, 23:30: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Jesus' apocalyptic theology is not out of step with contemporary Jewish theology but very much part of a branch of it. But we see a drift away from it in the later New Testament texts as (i) the expectations of a imminent arrival of the apocalypse are disappointed and (ii) the Jesus sect drifts from its Jewish roots and becomes a Gentile saviour cult.
(Italics are mine) I believe you are right about apocalyptic pronouncements in the gospels and the letters.
But isn't there evidence for "the Gentile Saviour cult" - or at the very least its beginnings - in the epistle to the Galatians? Which I think is generally accepted to pre-date the written gospels and most - if not all - of the Pauline letters.
Maybe I'm confused by the terminology? Wouldn't be the first time.
The key word there is "Gentile". Paul's epistles present a Jewish apocalyptic theology, where Jesus is a pre-existant angelic being who takes on human form and becomes the Messiah with his death and so is raised by Yahweh and exalted. Paul believes that Jesus will return when the apocalyptic kingdom of God comes and is sure this will be very soon (see 1 Thess. 4:15-17). So Paul's Messiah is a "saviour", but very much a Jewish one.
I would argue that in much of the later NT material the emphasis on the coming apocalyptic kingdom recedes and the emphasis on the redemptive death of Jesus as a saviour figure becomes increasingly prominent.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
The argument that Jesus never existed at all is quite different from argument about which bits happened as described and which bits were read back into the story by the first generation of Christians.
It is on a par with those that claim that a birth that happened in Honolulu on 4th August 1961, didn't. I.e. there are some opinions that the only people that hold them are those that are determined to hold them because it desperately suits them to do so.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
@ TimO'Neill
I think that by "Paul's epistles" you mean the undisputed ones - and therefore exclude Colossians and Ephesians? What cannot be disputed is that those two epistles show distinct linguistic and theological differences from Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians. That is I think common ground for serious students, whether or not they are people of faith. So on those grounds, I think your argument is very plausible. What gives me a little pause for thought is that the Marcionite scriptures (early 2nd century) did include Colossians and Ephesians as a part of the Pauline collection. That does allow plenty of time for pseudopigraphical letters to have been added to the collection and attained some measure of acceptance in various Christian communities (whether or not they became regarded as heretical).
So what I'm not so sure of, not having studied the point in any detail, is the evidence for these epistles being significantly later than the undisputed ones. An argument can no doubt be made on the grounds that the theology has developed within the community to meet post-AD 70 needs, following the destruction of the Jerusalem community. Views would be appreciated from better scholars than me.
I appreciate also that this is a tangent from the main topic (albeit a very interesting one).
Back on the main topic, given that Galatians and 1 Corinthians are generally accepted (by both Christian and non-Christian scholars) as both contemporary and early (50's AD), I think the tangent has helped to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection already existed for some time prior to those two letters. That strikes me as a minimal belief, based on such evidence as we have. There is still room for argument about that of course. But it seems very reasonable to claim it. The resurrection can not be proven by historical-critical examination, of course. It is a matter of faith.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[QB] @ TimO'Neill
I think that by "Paul's epistles" you mean the undisputed ones - and therefore exclude Colossians and Ephesians?
Yes. We find a consistent theology and Christology in the seven epistles that are generally accepted as genuinely by Paul: First Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon, First Corinthians, Galatians, Second Corinthians and Romans. Even Carrier and most of the less-crazy Mythers accept that.
quote:
So what I'm not so sure of, not having studied the point in any detail, is the evidence for these epistles being significantly later than the undisputed ones.
I certainly wouldn't say "significantly later", just several decades later than the 50s AD. As such, they reflect a later stratum. I'd put both somewhere in the last two decades of the first century, but most likely closer to c. 100 AD.
quote:
Back on the main topic, given that Galatians and 1 Corinthians are generally accepted (by both Christian and non-Christian scholars) as both contemporary and early (50's AD), I think the tangent has helped to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection already existed for some time prior to those two letters. That strikes me as a minimal belief, based on such evidence as we have. There is still room for argument about that of course. But it seems very reasonable to claim it. The resurrection can not be proven by historical-critical examination, of course. It is a matter of faith.
That Paul believed in a resurrection of Jesus in some sense is pretty clear from 1 Corinthians on its own. Whether what he believed the resurrection to be conforms to what a modern orthodox Christian believes, on the other hand, is another issue entirely.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
History doesn't do proof, in any case, does it? In fact, neither does science. Both are probabilistic.
The problem with the resurrection is that it's supernatural, so does not conform with naturalistic reality, or whatever you call it. Therefore you wuoldn't expect either history or science to look at it - how do you look at something not in nature?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
That Paul believed in a resurrection of Jesus in some sense is pretty clear from 1 Corinthians on its own. Whether what he believed the resurrection to be conforms to what a modern orthodox Christian believes, on the other hand, is another issue entirely.
Indeed. That is a big issue about which much has been written. Oversimplifying madly, the gospel accounts major on the physical, 1 Cor 15 is more metaphysical, more about significance both for faith today and the (imminently expected) general resurrection. It also seems clear (from Romans 6V9) that Paul saw a distinction between resuscitation and resurrection, both for Jesus as first-fruit and for the general resurrection.
One of the major challenges in understanding 1 Cor 15 is that the mixture of Jews and Gentiles to whom the letter was addressed were likely to have very different prior conceptions about life after death. I think some of the language reflects that.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
The other point that occurs to me is that, depending on which translation and which scholars one reads, a lot of such passages in both Acts and the epistles seem to be liturgical, and thus to be recitations and/or records of forms of words pre-established in their own communities. It may be, for example, that Paul is quoting the community back to itself to reinforce its faith and unity at a time of weakness. Is this interpretation generally held, and what (if anything) does it do to the place of those passages in the historicisation (horrible word, but I'm sure you see what I mean) of the resurrection, and indeed the life of Jesus itself (cf. the "form of a servant" passage from Ephesians)
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
I'm sure your hand slipped - "form of a servant" is Phil 2:7 - though you are right that folks have claimed that the passage containing it was an early liturgy (cf 1 Cor 13).
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm sure your hand slipped - "form of a servant" is Phil 2:7 - though you are right that folks have claimed that the passage containing it was an early liturgy (cf 1 Cor 13).
It did indeed. Mea culpa (what is that in NT Greek, btw?) (tr. I am guilty)
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
The key word there is "Gentile". Paul's epistles present a Jewish apocalyptic theology, where Jesus is a pre-existant angelic being who takes on human form and becomes the Messiah with his death and so is raised by Yahweh and exalted. Paul believes that Jesus will return when the apocalyptic kingdom of God comes and is sure this will be very soon (see 1 Thess. 4:15-17). So Paul's Messiah is a "saviour", but very much a Jewish one.
I think the problem may be resolved by close definition of terms, but surely Paul's writings present Jesus as the one God of Israel doing what God said He would do? As such, he was never angelic, but was always the anointed one/Messiah.
Indeed, a lot of Paul's language describes the Kingdom as present in some sense (e.g. 2 Cor 6:1-2, ) although clearly there is to be a 'Kingdom comes part 2'. Granted that when Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians, he is talking about the Second Coming in his lifetime, but by the time of e.g. Philippians 1 and 2 Cor 4 he realises that may well be at an unknown time after his death.
Posted by ThunderBunk (# 15579) on
:
The effect I see on the historicity is that liturgical use means that the statements do not originate with their apparent author, and that they are not "natively" of the same genre as the rest of the text. In both senses, they are interpellations: into the writings of the author and into the letters as texts. Presumably, this means that they have been incorporated from an earlier, anonymous source of unknown location.
In summary, from being a statement from an identified author at a theoretically identifiable time to an identified audience, to an earlier statement by a community to itself. A very different contribution to proving anything.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
I don't really understand this use of the term 'historicity'. What does it mean here?
A supernatural occurrence cannot be historic. In fact, to call it an event seems erroneous, since events are part of nature.
The more brutal atheists would call it a guess - well, that's brutal.
Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on
:
I think what Barnabas62 and ThunderBunk are discussing is the suggestion that certain parts of the Pauline epistles are 'recycled' liturgical texts. If so, their existence demonstrates that what they state had become established Christian belief some time prior to their appearance in the epistles.
For me historicity in the context of this thread is simply 'did it happen?' One of the features of Christian belief in the supernatural actions of God is that they impinge on history. While the supernatural or divine action may be outwith historical investigation, its impact on the natural world is open to investigation in the usual way. We can't historically investigate whether Jesus was God incarnate, but we can investigate whether he existed or not. We can't historically investigate whether God raised Jesus from the dead, but we can consider the evidence for the tomb being empty, or for Jesus having appeared to his followers after his execution.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
A supernatural occurrence cannot be historic. In fact, to call it an event seems erroneous, since events are part of nature.
This is circular. What part of "event" means "can't be supernatural"?
Posted by Alisdair (# 15837) on
:
Also, it presumes a very particular understanding of 'supernatural'.
As far as I can see there is no particular reason why a 'supernatural event' cannot impinge on, and be addressed, historically, and for that matter scientifically, since the 'event', however caused, must have some impact/presence in time and space or it would have no effect.
Presumably, as we are in no position to say that we are anywhere near having a complete understanding of 'reality', let alone simply the material 'universe', we are in no position to pass any final judgement on the probability or actuality of events we have no current explanation for. The best we can say is that, with our present level of understanding we have no definitive explanation, and must do the best we can with context and outcome.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
I think the problem may be resolved by close definition of terms, but surely Paul's writings present Jesus as the one God of Israel doing what God said He would do?
Nowhere does Paul say Jesus was Yahweh. Throughout his letters he distinguishes Yahweh from his Messiah Jesus:
- Romans 1:7, 'Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!'
- I Corinthians 1:1, '...called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God'
- I Corinthians 1:4, '...the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus'
- II Corinthians 1:2, 'Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!'
- Galatians 1:3, 'Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ'
- Philippians 1:2, 'Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!'
- I Thessalonians 1:1, '... to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace to you!'
Paul also consistently talks about how Yahweh raised Jesus from the dead. Nowhere in the Pauline material or in Acts do we find references to Jesus "rising" from the dead by his agency or "raising himself" from the dead. E.g. see Galatians 1:1 where Paul calls himself "an apostle--sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead" (actually the key verb is ἐγείραντος which is "having raised [him]" - the active aorist participle). It's only thanks to centuries of reading these texts through a Trinitarian filter that people can somehow still maintain the doublethink of Jesus being Yahweh.
quote:
As such, he was never angelic, but was always the anointed one/Messiah.
Philippians 2:6 says that Jesus did not consider equality with Yahweh "something to be seized/taken/plundered in war". You can't seize, take or plunder something you already have, so orthodox translators have to fiddle with the meaning of ἁρπαγμὸν to somehow make it mean "grasped, retained", which is not what the word means. This is a classic case of the translation being driven by an assumed theology and then being used to prop up the original theology.
quote:
Indeed, a lot of Paul's language describes the Kingdom as present in some sense (e.g. 2 Cor 6:1-2, ) although clearly there is to be a 'Kingdom comes part 2'.
Yes. And I think saying 2 Cor 6:1-2 is talking about the kingdom being already present is stretching the text. Of course he considered the death and resurrection of Jesus to be the first step in salvation - he uses the image of the "first fruits of the harvest" in 1 Cor. - but he was still looking forward to the coming apocalyptic kingdom.
[ 16. April 2017, 19:57: Message edited by: TimONeill ]
Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on
:
An event may be supernatural, meaning that some of its input (cause, whatever) comes from outside the normal natural chains of causation already existing; but once it has occurred within the setting of nature/history, it's going to have natural and historical consequences. It joins the other chains of causation as they all go on flowing and recombining to the end of ages.
For example, one consequence of the resurrection is that we are all here discussing this. (If you think it a non-event, you would say "one consequence of the hoax" or whatever, and count all of its antecedents as wholly natural. Regardless, in either case the consequences would join the rest of nature.)
[ 16. April 2017, 19:59: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Ahhhhhhh Tim. And I had such high hopes.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Tim's right, Martin; this famous Philippian passage (whether or not it is a lift from a very early liturgy or hymn) is actually a pretty good support for a form of adoptionism (which of course was later classified as a heresy).
In general, the undisputed Pauline epistles demonstrate a pretty low Christology. By sharp contrast, Colossians demonstrates a high Christology (Col 1:15 ff). Those who still hold on to Pauline authorship (despite the linguistic and theological differences with the undisputed letters) don't in my mind have a very good case.
But as Tim says, these later epistles, whether Pauline or not, are not a lot later than the undisputed epistles. Suffice to say that a church becoming increasingly refocused towards Gentiles and less influenced by traditional monotheistic Judaism may have found it easier to speak of Jesus "the image of the invisible God" etc than they would have before AD70.
I'm not a fundamentalist and have no problems with folks detecting theological movements and developments within the NT text, as the early church expanded, dispersed, and evolved.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Ahhhhhhh Tim. And I had such high hopes.
Of what? I go where the evidence leads. If that doesn't stroke some orthodoxy of yours any more than it strokes the orthodoxies of the Mythicists, I really don't care.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
TimO'Neil
This may become more appropriate for our Kerygmania section, but I'm interested in your take on μορφή morphē in the context of Philippians 2 v 6. That might be seen as as much of a key to meaning as ἁρπαγμός harpagmos, about which you have made, in my mind anyway, a very sound point.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
TimO'Neil
This may become more appropriate for our Kerygmania section, but I'm interested in your take on μορφή morphē in the context of Philippians 2 v 6. That might be seen as as much of a key to meaning as ἁρπαγμός harpagmos, about which you have made, in my mind anyway, a very sound point.
μορφή (morphē) often gets the theological twisting treatment in translations so that it comes out as "nature". But it means "shape". It's hard for us to to work out, at a distance of 2000 years, what Paul meant by "being in shape divine" or "being God-like in shape", but that the fact that ἁρπαγμός (harpagmos) in the next part of the sentence strongly indicates he did not consider the pre-existent Messiah to be Yahweh or even be equal to Yahweh, my feeling is that he is indicating something close to words like "being celestial (as opposed to earthly)" or, given the context of what he says next, "being angelic (as opposed to human)".
Like most of Paul's stuff, it can be read all kinds of ways. But I find the attempts to read this passage in a Nicean and Trinitarian way highly unconvincing. And without this one passage in all of the seven Pauline those who want to argue this devout Jew thought Jesus was God don't have much to hang their hats on.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Alisdair:
Also, it presumes a very particular understanding of 'supernatural'.
As far as I can see there is no particular reason why a 'supernatural event' cannot impinge on, and be addressed, historically, and for that matter scientifically, since the 'event', however caused, must have some impact/presence in time and space or it would have no effect.
Presumably, as we are in no position to say that we are anywhere near having a complete understanding of 'reality', let alone simply the material 'universe', we are in no position to pass any final judgement on the probability or actuality of events we have no current explanation for. The best we can say is that, with our present level of understanding we have no definitive explanation, and must do the best we can with context and outcome.
Well, fair enough about not understanding reality, but I would take an event normally to be an occurrence in time and space, involving mass/energy.
One might say that that's a fairly arbitrary distinction, but I could go on and demonstrate events to you, e.g. by blowing my nose, or throwing a ball in the air. Can you demonstrate a supernatural event to me?
Well, let's call it a guess. After all, angels (or devils) might well be helping me with my post this morning, which is nice, or not. Or I suppose the sun may be a chariot driven across the sky each day, why not?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
@ TimO'Neill
Another issue is that both of these Greek words are very little used in the NT. Harpagmos occurs only in Phil 2:6, morphe only in Phil 2:6 and 7, and in Mark 16 (in the disputed ending). So it may not be sound to make too much of either in context.
The more powerful argument for your viewpoint may be the ending of the passage. Jesus is pictured as being rewarded by being exalted, not being restored to previous fullness after self-emptying and self-sacrifice. That was my adoptionist-like point.
But I remain cautious, simply because the real purpose of the passage is to exhort human humility. In that sense it bears some resemblance to Paul's personal identification with the crucifixion of Christ in Gal 2.
I do accept your general argument that there is nothing apart from this in the Pauline undisputed letters to suggest that Paul saw Jesus as a pre-existent person of the Godhead, rather than in some way God-like. For that you have to look at Colossians and of course John 1. Where the Word was what God was, and became flesh.
[ 17. April 2017, 09:32: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Yeah G. Paul was making it up as he went along of course. His utter acceptance on his knees of the divinity of Christ starts on the road to Damascus of course. None of us have worked that greatest of mysteries out yet. The legalistic interpretation of words doesn't make them evidentiary.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Martin60
Acts 9 and Paul's own testimony tell us that Paul had a massive change of heart and mind following the Damascus Road encounter. Floored he was. Dumb and blind, he was. The text indicates that he did not know what to make of it, until Ananias called him brother. By his own testimony it was an encounter with the risen, ascended, glorified Lord; indeed that was the basis for his claim to be an apostle, even if "the least of them".
But it doesn't tell you anything about his personal understanding of the divinity of Jesus; rather that the experience in some way vindicated the "risen Messiah" claims of those he was persecuting.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
[QB] @ TimO'Neill
Another issue is that both of these Greek words are very little used in the NT. Harpagmos occurs only in Phil 2:6, morphe only in Phil 2:6 and 7, and in Mark 16 (in the disputed ending). So it may not be sound to make too much of either in context.
The fact that he didn't use the words much isn't too significant, though it's true it gives us fewer anchor points for how Paul meant them. But that still leaves us (i) how others used them and (ii) the context of what he's saying. As you note, that supports the reading that he is not saying the pre-existent Messiah was equal to God.
quote:
The more powerful argument for your viewpoint may be the ending of the passage. Jesus is pictured as being rewarded by being exalted, not being restored to previous fullness after self-emptying and self-sacrifice.
Yes.
quote:
But I remain cautious, simply because the real purpose of the passage is to exhort human humility. In that sense it bears some resemblance to Paul's personal identification with the crucifixion of Christ in Gal 2.
I cant' see who Paul can't exhort human humility by pointing to the far greater humility of a pre-existent angelic being who humbled himself, took on human form and died.
quote:
I do accept your general argument that there is nothing apart from this in the Pauline undisputed letters to suggest that Paul saw Jesus as a pre-existent person of the Godhead, rather than in some way God-like. For that you have to look at Colossians and of course John 1. Where the Word was what God was, and became flesh.
Which indicates to me these ideas developed later. Those who want to stick with an orthodox Trinitarian Christology can, I'm sure, find ways to accommodate that later development with their theology, but to me it's pretty clearly a Jewish idea developing in new and unJewish ways. And ultimately becoming a new religion entirely.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
[QB His utter acceptance on his knees of the divinity of Christ starts on the road to Damascus of course.
Please show from the writings of Paul that he made this "utter acceptance on his knees of the divinity of Christ". Try doing it without reading in your beliefs or later story elements from the author of Acts. Good luck.
Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on
:
Philippians 2 v 6 as a starter for 10?
AFZ
Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on
:
I realise if we get into a proper discussion about the Greek and the translations, I will be seriously out-gunned.
Flicking back through the thread you dealt with the potential understanding of the second part of verse 6. Of course Pauline theology runs through all of his work and one should look for consistency and themes (if they are present) but in the first part of v6 it simply says "Being in very nature God" how is that anything other than a claim that Jesus was/is divine?
AFZ
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by alienfromzog:
I realise if we get into a proper discussion about the Greek and the translations, I will be seriously out-gunned.
Flicking back through the thread you dealt with the potential understanding of the second part of verse 6. Of course Pauline theology runs through all of his work and one should look for consistency and themes (if they are present) but in the first part of v6 it simply says "Being in very nature God" how is that anything other than a claim that Jesus was/is divine?
AFZ
No, the theologically skewed translation says that. What Paul actually says is something like "being God-like in shape" or perhaps "being in shape divine". Exactly what that means is not clear, but the next part of the sentence indicates that it does not mean he was God or was somehow equal to God.
As for the rest of his Christology, there is nothing else in his epistles to indicate equality with God or Godhood of his own in any clear way. And many verses, as I note above, where Paul is differentiating between Jesus and God and attributing all the power to God in things like Jesus' resurrection and his subsequent exaltation.
Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on
:
As I said, when it comes to arguments about the Greek, I'm going to be seriously out-gunned. However, how do you think it should be translated? and I would be interested to know how you approach Romans 3: 21-26? This is what I mean about the overall themes. I think it's easy to argue that Paul is very implicitly trinitarian in this passage.
AFZ
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
μορφή (morphē) often gets the theological twisting treatment in translations so that it comes out as "nature". But it means "shape". It's hard for us to to work out, at a distance of 2000 years, what Paul meant by "being in shape divine" or "being God-like in shape", but that the fact that ἁρπαγμός (harpagmos) in the next part of the sentence strongly indicates he did not consider the pre-existent Messiah to be Yahweh or even be equal to Yahweh, my feeling is that he is indicating something close to words like "being celestial (as opposed to earthly)" or, given the context of what he says next, "being angelic (as opposed to human)".
I know little Greek but does morphe naturally take the sense 'shape-as-opposed-to-nature'? Changing from a man to a donkey and back is a change of morphe (Lucian), as is changing from a goddess to a tree (Ovid).
It doesn't appear to me that many Christians were much bothered to address the question, Jesus as celestial being vs Jesus as aspect of YHWH until the Arian controversy. But I do think that a monotheistic system has problems accommodating celestial and angelic beings if those beings have any substantive part to play in the metaphysical or salvific economy. The question isn't so much what precisely Paul thought about Jesus' divinity (assuming he expended much intellectual energy on the question) as whether how what he thought about Jesus could be reconciled with a commitment to monotheism. If you're going to accommodate a celestial being in the shape of God that is higher than the angels in your monotheistic system you're going to end up performing manoeuvres along the lines of multiple persons in one substance.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Originally posted by Barnabas62: quote:
But I remain cautious, simply because the real purpose of the passage is to exhort human humility. In that sense it bears some resemblance to Paul's personal identification with the crucifixion of Christ in Gal 2.
I cant' see who Paul can't exhort human humility by pointing to the far greater humility of a pre-existent angelic being who humbled himself, took on human form and died.
Oh I agree; my point was that the humility argument works regardless of how Paul saw the person of Jesus.
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Originally posted by Barnabas62: quote:
I do accept your general argument that there is nothing apart from this in the Pauline undisputed letters to suggest that Paul saw Jesus as a pre-existent person of the Godhead, rather than in some way God-like. For that you have to look at Colossians and of course John 1. Where the Word was what God was, and became flesh.
Which indicates to me these ideas developed later. Those who want to stick with an orthodox Trinitarian Christology can, I'm sure, find ways to accommodate that later development with their theology, but to me it's pretty clearly a Jewish idea developing in new and unJewish ways. And ultimately becoming a new religion entirely.
I adhere to an orthodox Trinitarian theology - and that's not always easy - but I do try to be honest about where the evidence leads. And I do think the Western Church has often ignored the Jewishness of Jesus and the very early kerygma, often at its cost. Something of the heritage has been lost that way. And I find something quite horrifying about the way the church, historically, gave aid and comfort to anti-Semitism.
Did Christianity in its development become a new religion entirely? Or did it find an escape from a relatively ethnic "chosen people" view of God's revelation to humanity? In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. And how do these thoughts connect with understandings about the nature of God? These questions are very much alive in my mind.
It may be a bit mystical for you, but I am impressed with the following saying by Evagrius of Pontus. "God cannot be grasped by the mind. If he could, he would not be God." That seems to me to be a humble, rather than an evasive view. Regardless of future Western developments, the musings of the Cappadocean fathers were not initially intended to be turned into a rigid theory; they were "theoria" (humble contemplation of the ineffable) rather than "theory".
[ 17. April 2017, 11:31: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on
:
Tim O'Neil:
IMO Philippians gives more support for the divinity of Christ than you allow. My thoughts on this passage and others in Romans are honed by hours of discussion with Jehovah's witnesses.
And my argument tends to be about how Jesus functions in Paul and the NT generally. So when he writes:
quote:
so that at the name of Jesusvevery knee will bow – in heaven and on earth and under the earth – and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
I would say that he is strongly implying the legitimacy of acts of worship to Jesus.
I would not press the fact with you that kyrios is the regular LXX translation of Jehovah, (though I might with JWs due to their dodgy practice of selectively taking advantage of that in their translation of the bible). But my own personal take on that is that is it close enough to saying that Jesus Christ is Jehovah that if that was totally against what Paul believed, he would have found other words.
Now you can debate whether the expressions imply worship (I would say they do) and you can debated whether Paul would allow worship to any being other than God (I would say not).
But I do not for a moment believe that Paul believed the Trinity as we now define it in our creeds. Any more than I believe he advocated the right of all men to be free. But I would see the seeds of both in his writings.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Perfick anteater.
Language eh?
◾Romans 1:7, 'Grace and peace to you from God (our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!)'
◾I Corinthians 1:1, '...called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God'
◾I Corinthians 1:4, '...the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus'
◾II Corinthians 1:2, 'Grace and peace to you from God (our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!)'
◾Galatians 1:3, 'Grace and peace to you from God (the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ)'
◾Philippians 1:2, 'Grace and peace to you from God (our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!)'
◾I Thessalonians 1:1, '... to the church of the Thessalonians in God (the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ). Grace and peace to you!'
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
[QB His utter acceptance on his knees of the divinity of Christ starts on the road to Damascus of course.
Please show from the writings of Paul that he made this "utter acceptance on his knees of the divinity of Christ". Try doing it without reading in your beliefs or later story elements from the author of Acts. Good luck.
Hyperbole TimONeill (or should it be Tim O'Neill?). But true nonetheless. Saul would have known Jesus' claim to divinity which is why He was killed after all. According to the gospels written a generation after the event of Paul's Christologically inferior letters? The moment he was blinded ... he knew. Wouldn't you? Or is that me being led astray by 'Luke'?
Did it take Paul 20-30 years to get to the divinity of Christ?
Romans 9:5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
Colossians 1:15–20
The Supremacy of the Son of God
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form
1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Titus 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
Or the blink of an eye?
And we mustn't attribute Hebrews to Paul must we?
Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on
:
Regarding the earliest Christian witness that Jesus is divine, my view is that we have to allow for a bit of theological fuzziness with our early apostolic forebears.
Pliny the Younger I believe, records Christians singing to Christ "as to a god." Now does this mean, that early Christians equated Jesus with YHWH, or does it mean that early Christians acted like modern RCs with the Blessed Virgin Mary, singing hymns to Mary, but insisting that she is not the same as God?
We don't know and we must leave room for the doctrinal development of the church, that Nicaea and Chalcedon was simply cleaning up the fuzziness of the apostolic witness concerning the divinity of Jesus.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Titus 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
Or the blink of an eye?
And we mustn't attribute Hebrews to Paul must we?
Nor the pastorals
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Martin60
Romans is not disputed as a Pauline writing, but the others are. So Romans 9:5 is interesting, but the Nearly Infallible Version may have caught you out.
Blue Letter Bible Link
Although it isn't completely clear, the following translation is probably better " ....the Messiah, who is over all, God be forever blessed".
As a Trinitarian, I would be happy to be wrong! But I think the NIV translation is not the best, since it associates the Messiah with God (Theos) whereas the Greek associates God with blessed (eulogētos). So I think God is being praised for sending the Messiah.
[ 17. April 2017, 17:27: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Romans 1:7, 'Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!'...Paul also consistently talks about how Yahweh raised Jesus from the dead...reading these texts through a Trinitarian filter... Philippians 2:6..talking about the kingdom being already present is stretching the text
I agree that putting on Trinitarian glasses tends to make things blurry, However...
If Christianity today can work with the idea Romans 1:7 et al represents a message from the one God, and John can talk about the creator of the universe as being “with God”, I see no reason to suppose that Paul couldn't talk about 'from YHWH-and-Jesus', and God raising Jesus.
Indeed, in the context of adapting the Shema, we see Paul does two names again. Which makes a massive point. You absolutely don't mess around with that prayer, in that way, unless you're including Jesus in with the one God.
This idea wasn't new in Judaism- the Burning Bush, the Pillar of Cloud and Fire, and the Shekinah in the Tabernacle and Temple. We see God's presence. For Paul, Jesus follows in that tradition, but Paul is pushing eschatological monotheism. Jesus did what YHWH had long said He would do. He's brought forgiveness of sins, fulfilled the promise to Abraham and sent God's Spirit to be with His people. These all say that the Kingdom of God (KoG) has been inaugurated, by God.
That Philippians 2, all of it.
Firstly, because of the lack of use of harpagmos in Greek, it's really very hard to know what it means, but 'did not regard being God as something owned to be exploited, but instead used as a vocation to obedient death' seems the best meaning.
Secondly, it's a statement about God's triumph (KoG).
Thirdly, 'the name above all names' must be the divine name.
Fourthly, verse 10 has a straightforward reference to Isaiah 45:23, and Paul is clearly applying that to Jesus as kyrios/Septuagint YHWH.
Fifthly, the knee bowing is a snub to Caesar, referencing 'No king but God'.
Sixthly, confessing Jesus as kyrios/Septuagint YHWH is bringing glory to God the Father. Also note, no problems with two names, one God.
Seventhly...enough. I'll stop there.
Those who have yet to develop the habit of scrolling past my hard-to-read posts will have noticed that parts of this covers very similar ground to earlier in the thread, when I was actually talking about the resurrection, why it best explains the beliefs of the Early Church. So to return on topic, I submit that the best explanation for Paul being able to write about Jesus this way was that the resurrection actually happened.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Titus 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
Or the blink of an eye?
And we mustn't attribute Hebrews to Paul must we?
Nor the pastorals
If not, then whom? Junia again?
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Martin60
Romans is not disputed as a Pauline writing, but the others are. So Romans 9:5 is interesting, but the Nearly Infallible Version may have caught you out.
Blue Letter Bible Link
Although it isn't completely clear, the following translation is probably better " ....the Messiah, who is over all, God be forever blessed".
As a Trinitarian, I would be happy to be wrong! But I think the NIV translation is not the best, since it associates the Messiah with God (Theos) whereas the Greek associates God with blessed (eulogētos). So I think God is being praised for sending the Messiah.
I sit corrected. So a non-divine being can be over all.
And what is the first word of Colossians?
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
@Sarah G. Not a habit I intend to start.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Martin60, I think the argument is about whether the undisputed 7 Pauline letters show that Paul believed in the Divine, pre-existent, second person of the Trinity.
Messianic belief (1st century Jewish standard) did see the Messiah as king overall in the restored kingdom, and so entitled to the title Lord. But it did not see him as the Divine Logos, the Word made flesh and dwelling amongst us.
The victorious Messiah did not contradict Jewish monotheism, even if, like Elijah, he was "taken up" into the very presence of God.
Tim O'Neill is well able to speak for himself, as you will have seen, but I think this is his point.
From my point of view, it isn't a very big journey from the risen Messiah to an adoptionist view of his relationship with God. But that isn't orthodox Trinitarian belief.
As Anglican_Brat put it, nicely, there may well have been a certain "fuzziness" in apostolic belief about the divinity of Christ. Indeed, being Jewish monotheists, they might very well have thought such an idea blasphemous, no matter how much they loved and venerated Jesus.
What Jesus would have thought (or thinks) about this shift in understanding really depends on the answer to the basic question; who do we say that he is?
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
And my argument tends to be about how Jesus functions in Paul and the NT generally. So when he writes:
quote:
so that at the name of Jesusvevery knee will bow – in heaven and on earth and under the earth – and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
I would say that he is strongly implying the legitimacy of acts of worship to Jesus.
I'd would say it's strongly stating that Yahweh's Messiah has a unique status and must be honoured. As James D. G. Dunn notes in his excellent Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? "... the hymn does not actually say that Jesus as Lord is to be worshipped as the one God is to be worshipped. The hymn could simply be saying that the worship of the one God is now to be expressed by confessing Jesus as Lord. Here, the final line of the hymn should not be forgotten. The obeisance and acclamation will be 'to the glory of God the Father'" (Dunn, p. 106)
quote:
I would not press the fact with you that kyrios is the regular LXX translation of Jehovah, (though I might with JWs due to their dodgy practice of selectively taking advantage of that in their translation of the bible). But my own personal take on that is that is it close enough to saying that Jesus Christ is Jehovah that if that was totally against what Paul believed, he would have found other words.
I don't think that is clear at all. Vermes has shown that the Aramaic term "'mar' (lord) was applied by disciples to a teacher they considered preeminent, so we can see how this title attached itself to Jesus very early on without conflating it with the LXX usage.
quote:
Now you can debate whether the expressions imply worship (I would say they do) ...
Dunn doesn't. Or at least, he doesn't believe it does so with any lack of ambiguity. And he's hardly some radical agnostic loon. This stuff is not as clear as many try to pretend and a solid case can be made for Paul regarding Jesus as a Jewish-style exalted Messiah who takes on a new preeminent status after his resurrection, but who Paul did not regard as equal with God, let alone one and the same being.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Hyperbole TimONeill (or should it be Tim O'Neill?). But true nonetheless. Saul would have known Jesus' claim to divinity which is why He was killed after all. According to the gospels written a generation after the event of Paul's Christologically inferior letters? The moment he was blinded ... he knew. Wouldn't you? Or is that me being led astray by 'Luke'?
Ummm, no - that's that you assuming your conclusion and then circling back and triumphantly concluding it. And the claim that Jesus was executed for claiming divinity can only be based on gJohn, which is too late to help you here. There is nothing in Paul's material to indicate he believed any such thing.
quote:
Did it take Paul 20-30 years to get to the divinity of Christ?
You need to actually show that Paul believed in any "divinity of Christ", not just assume it.
quote:
Romans 9:5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
Barnabas62 has already been kind enough to explain to you the problem with the translation you're using here.
quote:
Colossians 1:15–20 ... Colossians 2:9 ... 1 Timothy 1:17 ... Titus 2:13 ... Hebrews
Those texts are generally agreed to be non-Pauline and later in date. So it seems you have nothing but your a priori assumptions. You can take your theology on faith if you like - I really don't care. But unless you've got something Pauline that unambiguously indicates he considered Jesus to be God, you can colour me deeply unconvinced.
Posted by TimONeill (# 17746) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
Indeed, in the context of adapting the Shema, we see Paul does two names again. Which makes a massive point. You absolutely don't mess around with that prayer, in that way, unless you're including Jesus in with the one God.
Sorry? You know this how, exactly? Whatever we believe about Paul's Christology and theology generally, he was in uncharted territory. Regardless of whether he believed in a full Nicean Trinitarianism, some half-understood approximation of it or (as I would argue) a Jewish conception of the Messiah as exalted to a position second only to Yahweh, there were no rules as what he could or could not do. So I'm afraid your very emphatic statement above is more rhetorical than authoritative.
quote:
That Philippians 2, all of it.
Firstly, because of the lack of use of harpagmos in Greek, it's really very hard to know what it means, but 'did not regard being God as something owned to be exploited, but instead used as a vocation to obedient death' seems the best meaning.
Really? Seems best on some objective grounds? Because I can't see that at all. There is a lack of use of harpagmos in New Testament Greek, but my understanding of the use of the word outside the NT is that it supports my reading. Here's Ehrman on the subject:
"(I)n reality, the word (and words related to it in Greek) is almost always used to refer to something a person doesn't have but grasps for - like a thief who snatches someone's purse. The German scholar Samuel Vollenweider has shown that the word is used this way widely in a range of Jewish authors; moreover, it is the word used of human rulers who become arrogant and so try to make themselves more high and mighty (divine) than they really are. This seems, then, to be what is meant here in the Philippians poem." (Ehrman, How Jesus Became God p.263)
So it may seem "the best reading" to preserve an a priori theological position, but as a reading of what Paul actually says, it is not so clear as a "best reading" at all.
quote:
Secondly, it's a statement about God's triumph (KoG).
Fine.
quote:
Thirdly, 'the name above all names' must be the divine name.
Or a name above all names other than Yahweh's.
quote:
Fourthly, verse 10 has a straightforward reference to Isaiah 45:23, and Paul is clearly applying that to Jesus as kyrios/Septuagint YHWH.
This is not "clear" at all. Paul, as a Jew, would be reading Isaiah 45:23 as being about the Jewish Messiah - exalted, but subordinate to Yahweh.
quote:
Fifthly, the knee bowing is a snub to Caesar, referencing 'No king but God'.
That's a lot of eisegesis to put on three words about knees bending.
quote:
Sixthly, confessing Jesus as kyrios/Septuagint YHWH is bringing glory to God the Father. Also note, no problems with two names, one God.
And that's just assuming your conclusion as well. As I quote James Dunn noting above, the fact that the "obeisance and acclamation will be 'to the glory of God the Father'" actually subordinates Jesus to Yahweh.
quote:
Seventhly...enough. I'll stop there.
"Enough"? Not much, actually.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
B62. The penny dropped pretty quick for some ordinary, ancient Jewish guys: John 20:28
And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”. They correctly concluded on what they had seen and heard over nearly 1300 days. Helped a little by the Holy Spirit. Where's the adoptionism? You're all too clever for them and me.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
And Tim, I don't care that you don't care. 'Paul' wrote them. 'Paul' knew. You're too clever to. Unlike the apostles.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Oh, you don't need to go to Thomas, Martin. John 1 will do nicely. But I don't think too many commentators claim that John's gospel was written earlier than the undisputed Pauline letters. Or deny that it is distinctly different from the synoptic gospels. There probably is history in the fourth gospel, but it is pretty hard to tease it out from its devotional portrait painting.
And this thread is primarily about historical perspective. A perspective which is pretty low on trust, and high on verification needs. A relatively faithless perspective. There is no need to play on that playing field if you don't want to. But if you do, there are rules of engagement.
I'm not trying to be clever at all. But I am trying to honour the rules of engagement, as best I understand them.
[ 18. April 2017, 01:49: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Well isn't this fun - academic claims that there is no possible way to understand something other than the edifice he was erected.
I return to the point that these things are about faith not historicity. We can't know for sure what was in Paul's mind (or whoever the epistle writer actually was) when he wrote the passages; it is possible to read them with a Trinitarian understanding, it is possible to read them as suggesting that he was a believer in adoptionism. That's stating the obvious, given that we know various writers were believers in adoptionism and saw support for their position from the scriptures.
Of course it is possible to erect a theory that says the early church believed something which was completely different to those agreed by the Church Councils. Ehrman writes interesting books.
But all of this depends on some level of reading backwards; it depends on the idea that one can get a full understanding of a position from a few words recorded in the apostles, it depends on the idea that one can get an idea of an intention based on the way that words have been changed over time as they were transcribed.
Maybe Paul (or whoever) didn't spell out his Trinitarian beliefs because he thought that was obvious to the readers. Maybe someone dropped coffee on the section of the letter where he did that. Maybe a whole load of things.
Personally, I'm not so keen on the idea that someone can sum up my entire beliefs based on a single post out of everything I've ever written on these boards. Someone reading anything I've written could only make sense of it within the context of the discussion we were having at the time.
The scriptures can only be understood within the faith and context of the church - which I appreciate might be completely wrong - because it is not possible to look backwards at historical evidence and be completely impartial. Everything else is guesswork.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Personally, I'm not so keen on the idea that someone can sum up my entire beliefs based on a single post out of everything I've ever written on these boards. Someone reading anything I've written could only make sense of it within the context of the discussion we were having at the time.
Absolutely agree. But discussions on Pauline beliefs and theology have a lot more to go on than a single post.
The linguistic and theological analyses of the disputed letters does have a value from that POV. It's drawing boundaries around texts which seem to have come from the same pen and saying "we can be pretty sure these represent the thoughts and ideas of one man which he thought sufficiently important to record". What these analyses also do is to provide reasons why it doesn't seem very likely that he wrote "this" if he also wrote "that". It's a pretty forensic process.
Of course such a process doesn't give us access to all his thoughts, his changes of mind and understanding or the reasons why his thinking might have developed. He's an important figure in the development of the early church, so there seems some value in trying to get at where he was coming from.
I don't think it's all guesswork. People need to document their premises and their means of analysis - and the best ones always do that. So we can check their workings, and make of them whatever we like. An open process which seems absolutely fine to me.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Barnabas62. Beautifully put. My apologies to you and even to Tim for failing to engage with the rules of engagement: So, we can only use the all but undisputed Pauline epistles? Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon? And we must divide the bone from the marrow of the Greek to establish Paul's Christology which predates all others?
P.S. mr cheesy, perfick.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Martin, sorry for any confusion as a result of my post. As usual, anyone can post anything in accordance with the 10Cs and the Purg Guidelines. I was outlining my personal approach, basically because I think it leads to constructive dialogue. There are other ways of posting on the thread.
It's probably worth adding that Tim has made his premises very clear so if we want to engage we can work within those premises or challenge them. But that's common to all threads. It's part of sticking to the point.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Absolutely agree. But discussions on Pauline beliefs and theology have a lot more to go on than a single post.
The linguistic and theological analyses of the disputed letters does have a value from that POV. It's drawing boundaries around texts which seem to have come from the same pen and saying "we can be pretty sure these represent the thoughts and ideas of one man which he thought sufficiently important to record". What these analyses also do is to provide reasons why it doesn't seem very likely that he wrote "this" if he also wrote "that". It's a pretty forensic process.
No. It's a process that works in its own terms but doesn't make any sense in any other way.
For example the dating of NT books is based on the idea that the writer could not have known about certain events before they happened. Because the supernatural doesn't exist and prophesy doesn't happen.
Now, it stands to reason that if you do have faith and do believe that the supernatural exists and prophesy is possible then you've got no particular reason to accept that way of dating things.
Whilst it is comforting to believe that it is possible to be objective and that the irreligious are more likely to be clear-sighted than those who invest the text with religious meaning, the reality is that nobody - believer or unbeliever - is able to see the texts without some kind of bias, which is going to affect the way they understand the dating and is going to have other effects on the way they understand the text.
quote:
Of course such a process doesn't give us access to all his thoughts, his changes of mind and understanding or the reasons why his thinking might have developed. He's an important figure in the development of the early church, so there seems some value in trying to get at where he was coming from.
I'm absolutely not trying to pretend that people who are doing this stuff are blasphemous or poor scholars or doing something which isn't worthwhile in the sense of an academic pursuit. The text is an old text and like many old texts there are people who are fascinated by the way the words are arranged, the old parchments, the different ways that the letters can be read and then the additional layer of scholarship which takes this and seeks to form a theory which explains them.
What I am saying is that there is no way of knowing absolutely any of this stuff, that everyone is working on various assumptions and are building their own towers of theory which are essentially untestable outwith of the parameters they've already set themselves.
As we've seen above, the best we can do is to make claims about what is or isn't likely, and then decide whose argument we attach more weight to, depending on various factors.
quote:
I don't think it's all guesswork. People need to document their premises and their means of analysis - and the best ones always do that. So we can check their workings, and make of them whatever we like. An open process which seems absolutely fine to me.
Well I think you're wrong. Without a way to test if theory A is correct and theory B is wrong, then it is guesswork based on the prior knowledge of the person putting forward the theory.
It might be clever guesswork and certain ideas might appear to better explain the evidence than another idea, but it is still guesswork - which the person of faith has no obligation to accept whatsoever.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
mr cheesy
Happy to agree to disagree. Probably best if I quote myself here.
quote:
And this thread is primarily about historical perspective. A perspective which is pretty low on trust, and high on verification needs. A relatively faithless perspective. There is no need to play on that playing field if you don't want to. But if you do, there are rules of engagement.
Of course you are right; one can work on different premises and come to different conclusions as a result. That would not be historical-critical examination, but that doesn't make it wrong.
The real question is whether there is any value at all in historical-critical examination of faith documents. Since one of its techniques includes form criticism of old documents, and one of its successes has been the illumination of the synoptic problem, I think it's been shown to have some value and use. But YMMV.
[ 18. April 2017, 15:36: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
Sheesh! I take a couple of days off for R&R over Easter, and come back to find this has taken off!
Tim - welcome back. I had entirely forgotten you were a registered shipmate, so it's good to be reminded and to get your contribution on this subject. You were good enough to engage with something I said earlier, so I'd like to get your views on an extension of that, and a couple of other things peripheral to it. But I'll need to get my thoughts together first.
I used to enjoy reading your book reviews on your old blog and still miss them!
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Titus 2:13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
Or the blink of an eye?
And we mustn't attribute Hebrews to Paul must we?
Nor the pastorals
If not, then whom? Junia again?
The Pastor
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by TimONeill:
Sorry? You know this how, exactly?...So I'm afraid your very emphatic statement above is more rhetorical than authoritative.
We're talking about the Shema, Tim. The very statement of Judaism. The core of Jewish belief. The prayer that Akiba repeated over and again during his torture to death. The heart of daily prayer for all observant Jews. Gamaliel II, challenged by his students for not using the legal permission to not say the Shema on his wedding night, replies he will not remove the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, even for a moment. If you stick Jesus in the middle of the ultimate statement of Jewish monotheism, you're making a massive statement yourself.
(History doesn't record what Mrs Akiba thought about being kept waiting in her knickers.)
Philippians 2 for ease of reference
quote:
Really?...There is a lack of use of harpagmos in New Testament Greek, but my understanding of the use of the word outside the NT is that it supports my reading...but as a reading of what Paul actually says, it is not so clear as a "best reading" at all.
Harpagmos is only used in Phil 2:6 in the NT, never in the LXX, and only rarely in extra-biblical Greek, with most instances being patristic quotations of Phil 2:6. That's why there's problems translating it, with a wide range of meanings possible. There's no way to start with 'the meaning of the word' here; in order to work out what Paul is saying you have to work with the context of the passage. For a full (mind-numbingly tedious and detailed) analysis of how that would go, I recommend chapter 4 of (my fan club can guess the author).
quote:
Or a name above all names other than Yahweh's.
You can't just add words to something, and say 'Look, it means something else'. Jesus was given the name above all names, period. That means YHWH.
quote:
This is not "clear" at all. Paul, as a Jew, would be reading Isaiah 45:23 as being about the Jewish Messiah - exalted, but subordinate to Yahweh.
Here's the link again for your careful perusal. It's kinda obviously God speaking about Himself from 18 through to 24.
quote:
That's a lot of eisegesis to put on three words about knees bending.
If you make it four words, you get 'every knee shall bow', which includes Caesar and all other Romans. Although it seems pretty meh now, at the time having a king other than Caesar tended to lead to A Lot Of Pain. Given that in the KoG there was no King but God, and Paul thinks he's in the KoG, it all follows.
quote:
...the fact that the "obeisance and acclamation will be 'to the glory of God the Father'" actually subordinates Jesus to Yahweh.
I don't see that at all. What I do see is that to declare Jesus as kyrios (the Septuagint term for YHWH) is something that itself glorifies YHWH. In other words, the act of acknowledging that Jesus is Lord God is an act of worship to God the Father. What is clear is that the route is via declaring Jesus as kyrios, which is back to the Shema as declaring him to be God.
(I love an inclusio.)
quote:
"Enough"? Not much, actually.
I meant enough for the poor hosts, who actually have to read my sad posts all the way through.
I did think it was going rather well, but I'm now starting to think you might not be about to bow the knee to Jesus before the end of the thread. If you do change your mind, I promise we can sing Meekness and Majesty together.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
My ignorance runneth over. I'll stick to any rules you clever boys make up.
How do we get from the ancient and Conservative Jewish (human) Messiah to an angel in Paul? ... Join KER-CHINGGGG! Ehrman's forum? Nope. Buy KER-CHINGGGG! 'How Jesus Became God'? Nope.
Can anyone show me in Paul? The 7 minimally maximally allowable epistles of course? You know a finger paint job for the kiddies? Back of a fag packet proof texts? A decent blog?
I AM fascinated in the evolution of Christology. Which of course has a LONG way to go yet. Especially as nobody will ever discuss that here.
But being in the wee-wee end of the pool, I don't understand how the 'red-letter' Christology of the decades later written gospels, can't have been known before Paul's early epistles. By Paul. Pathetically naïve of me I'm sure.
Unless 'Matthew', 'Mark', 'Luke' and 'John' anachronistically turned their telescopes round and projected Jesus' made up divinity back.
Is there a, how can I put it, faithful story of the evolution of Christology, deduced from the chronological order of NT writings determined most scholarlarlily authored by whomsoever? By faithful I mean one that accepts the premiss, the conclusion prior to all else, of the Incarnation.
Does Tom Wright do that? If anyone he, surely?
Or must we stick to the 'rules'? I.e. pure, forensic, physicalist rationalism.
[ 18. April 2017, 22:32: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
But being in the wee-wee end of the pool, I don't understand how the 'red-letter' Christology of the decades later written gospels, can't have been known before Paul's early epistles. By Paul. Pathetically naïve of me I'm sure.
It could have been, or something very like it. Elaine Pagels is hardly seen as orthodox, and not everyone sees much of value in her writings on the early church, but I am pretty sure she argued that there were "John Christians" from early on, for whom the Word had become flesh. This as part of the many variations in understanding "who was Jesus?" in the infant church communities. One might call it incarnational belief as opposed to cross and resurrection centred belief. I don't find that unlikely.
I think Pagels also argued that the "triumph of John" (i.e. the centrality of "God became man") was one of the 2nd century consequences of the battles with Gnosticism, in which Irenaeus played a key part. Can't remember the details of the argument, I'll look them up.
A lot of this is about timing. Was the marriage between incarnational belief and cross-resurrection redemption a matter purely of later reflection, or did both sets of beliefs exist from very early on? There is a kind of skewed relationship to Gnostic Christianity as well, since Jesus coming to earth as an "aeon" is sort of incarnational as well, but more the incarnation of an angelic being as divine teacher of vital knowledge.
Short hand, Martin. There were probably a lot of ideas floating around from very early on.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Or must we stick to the 'rules'? I.e. pure, forensic, physicalist rationalism.
The 10Cs and Purg Guidelines are the only minimal you need to observe!
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Oh, you don't need to go to Thomas, Martin. John 1 will do nicely. But I don't think too many commentators claim that John's gospel was written earlier than the undisputed Pauline letters. Or deny that it is distinctly different from the synoptic gospels. There probably is history in the fourth gospel, but it is pretty hard to tease it out from its devotional portrait painting.
And this thread is primarily about historical perspective. A perspective which is pretty low on trust, and high on verification needs. A relatively faithless perspective. There is no need to play on that playing field if you don't want to. But if you do, there are rules of engagement.
I'm not trying to be clever at all. But I am trying to honour the rules of engagement, as best I understand them.
Ah, but 'John' 1 was written 90 AD at the earliest and Thomas, only quoted by John, would have purportedly declared Jesus divine in 31. So John made it up? They were such liars these guys!
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
So John made it up? They were such liars these guys!
I thought the discussion was about the assessment of Pauline thought re resurrection and the Godhead. I'm not accusing anyone of making up things, or lying.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
I know you're not! So, if that's where we're at now, the 7 epistles with no support from the gospels, fine.
If the apostles 'misremembered' then it's all a crock.
If they didn't, then Sarah G has match point on Philippians 2:5-11, which could easily indicate that 25+/- years after Jesus' ministry Paul believed He was divine and may well have done so for most of that time. Since he fell blind off his horse.
I accept that we are here too:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Martin60, I think the argument is about whether the undisputed 7 Pauline letters show that Paul believed in the Divine, pre-existent, second person of the Trinity.
I can't see how he could as the concept is late C3rd Roman.
quote:
Messianic belief (1st century Jewish standard) did see the Messiah as king overall in the restored kingdom, and so entitled to the title Lord. But it did not see him as the Divine Logos, the Word made flesh and dwelling amongst us.
Agreed.
quote:
The victorious Messiah did not contradict Jewish monotheism, even if, like Elijah, he was "taken up" into the very presence of God.
Agreed.
quote:
Tim O'Neill is well able to speak for himself, as you will have seen, but I think this is his point.
Agreed.
quote:
From my point of view, it isn't a very big journey from the risen Messiah to an adoptionist view of his relationship with God. But that isn't orthodox Trinitarian belief.
Agreed.
quote:
As Anglican_Brat put it, nicely, there may well have been a certain "fuzziness" in apostolic belief about the divinity of Christ. Indeed, being Jewish monotheists, they might very well have thought such an idea blasphemous, no matter how much they loved and venerated Jesus.
Agreed. BUT, it would have been in their face. Adoptionism be damned.
quote:
What Jesus would have thought (or thinks) about this shift in understanding really depends on the answer to the basic question; who do we say that he is?
What Peter said. As Paul knew. I find it absurd to exclude what the late writers knew two generations before they wrote. They believed everything without integrating it. Because it can't be done. The way we STILL all do, ALL do, re the hypostatic union.
The greatest mystery of all.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
I'm not sure if Sarah G has "match point" quite yet on the linkage between Phil 2:10-11 and Isaiah 45:18-23, but it looks like a pretty good argument to me. Paul might indeed have believed that Jesus had in some way been taken up into the Godhead and become the one to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess. Let's see what Tim has to say.
Here's what I say
The seven undisputed Pauline letters show virtually no interest in Jesus birth and no indication of miraculous conception. "Born of a woman" in Galatians is about as much as you get.
And the metaphorical argument re the Great Stoop (in Phil 2) does actually depend on what sense you make of harpagmos. On that point, I've got Tim ahead on points.
So that does begin to look like a means of arguing that Paul might have had an adoptionist-type view of how Jesus got taken up into the Godhead, not restored to his former pre-eminence.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Oh, you don't need to go to Thomas, Martin. John 1 will do nicely. But I don't think too many commentators claim that John's gospel was written earlier than the undisputed Pauline letters. Or deny that it is distinctly different from the synoptic gospels. There probably is history in the fourth gospel, but it is pretty hard to tease it out from its devotional portrait painting.
And this thread is primarily about historical perspective. A perspective which is pretty low on trust, and high on verification needs. A relatively faithless perspective. There is no need to play on that playing field if you don't want to. But if you do, there are rules of engagement.
I'm not trying to be clever at all. But I am trying to honour the rules of engagement, as best I understand them.
Ah, but 'John' 1 was written 90 AD at the earliest and Thomas, only quoted by John, would have purportedly declared Jesus divine in 31. So John made it up? They were such liars these guys!
John Robinson dated the johannine epistles between 60 and 65 CE
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
And the metaphorical argument re the Great Stoop (in Phil 2) does actually depend on what sense you make of harpagmos.
I suppose it also depends on how much stress you place on the 'although'. If you start clause A with 'although' that implies that clause B could reasonably be expected to follow on from clause A but doesn't.
In addition it seems to me that the primary intention of the clause is not to assert anything in regards of Christ's status but to assert a contrast between Christ and some entities or other who do regard equality with God as something to be seized. (Who might be earthly emperors, or Satan, or Adam - we can't tell.) The contrast is between those who oughtn't try to seize it but do and Christ who has the opportunity but doesn't.
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
The problem with that line of argument, B62, is that: quote:
... The seven undisputed Pauline letters show virtually no interest in Jesus birth and no indication of miraculous conception. "Born of a woman" in Galatians is about as much as you get...
- is true, but means next to nothing, as the epistles are not the sort of documents where you would expect to find such data routinely. They are written for purposes various, but they are not intended to be his "gospel". That may never have been written down. We don't know what his proclamation involved unless bits of it float into view for other reasons entirely. So I honestly don't think you can draw any conclusions from that.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Dafyd
The other way of looking at that "although" (and you make a good point) is that Jesus did not put himself forward with any such claim (unlike others) but in fact assumed the opposite role, that of an obedient servant. Which is why God exalted him. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed in these things.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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Honest Ron
Cross post of course. Fair point. I still think the natural reading of the text is more redolent of Jesus being rewarded by God for his humility and self-sacrifice, than the traditional Great Stoop interpretation. But I wouldn't want to make too much of silence.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Is there a, how can I put it, faithful story of the evolution of Christology, deduced from the chronological order of NT writings determined most scholarlarlily authored by whomsoever? By faithful I mean one that accepts the premiss, the conclusion prior to all else, of the Incarnation.
Does Tom Wright do that? If anyone he, surely?
As if I'm going to pass up the invitation.
NTW is not totally impressed by Jesus proof texts, although “without the personal impact of Jesus himself it is impossible seriously to imagine anyone inventing the christology which was already in place by the mid-50s”.
The main driver for the Early Church was that God had promised to do certain things- return to Zion, save His people, get the world to join in Abraham's blessing etc etc.
The Early Church/Paul realised that Jesus had done the things that God had always said he would do. The monotheism was non-negotiable, but they rethought what that monotheism meant. NTWs insight here deserves a lot of attention.
Further, given the Messiah was exalted to heaven and enthroned as 'lord', and was in a real sense present with them in power (see John 14), “Jesus first followers found themselves not only permitted to use God-language for Jesus, but compelled to use Jesus-language for the one God. All this seems to have taken place before Paul ever put pen to paper.”
NTW points out that, unlike the furious debate over the need to follow Torah, what Paul is saying about Jesus is uncontroversial- accepted by the everyone from Peter to Paul's opponents. Paul is writing about Jesus' role as being the bit of God that sorted it all out as being settled shared belief.
Richard Bauckham: “The highest possible Christology- the inclusion of Jesus in the divine identity-was central to the faith of the early church even before any of the NT writings were written, since it occurs in all of them”.
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I'm not sure if Sarah G has "match point" quite yet on the linkage between Phil 2:10-11 and Isaiah 45:18-23, but it looks like a pretty good argument to me.
I would regard the Shema/1 Cor 8:6 argument as even stronger. Sticking a non-God person into the middle of the most holy prayer in Judaism, the ultimate affirmation of Jewish monotheism, is like asking the Queen to write a rap to go after the third line of the National Anthem, or putting a pork pie as the second tier of Pippa Middleton's wedding cake. Actually, far worse.
quote:
And the metaphorical argument re the Great Stoop (in Phil 2) does actually depend on what sense you make of harpagmos. On that point, I've got Tim ahead on points.
So that does begin to look like a means of arguing that Paul might have had an adoptionist-type view of how Jesus got taken up into the Godhead, not restored to his former pre-eminence.
I'd like to know how you're scoring. Harpagmos is such an obscure word that it's quite impossible to place any weight on what it might mean. Furthermore, the idea that Jesus decided that stealing God's divinity wasn't an option, so better go and die a very nasty death on earth instead, is a rather bizarre thing for Paul to write, and fits with nothing else anywhere.
Jimmy Dunn's whole approach to Phil 2 is something called Adam Christology, which has had about as much impact on theology as a slug on a brick.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
@leo. Thanks. What a blindingly obvious point! Why is it ignored?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
@ Sarah G
1 Cor 8:6 isn't as clear cut as you say. The Nearly Infallible Version at work again (cf Romans 9:5). The connection with the Shema is very powerful however; there is a pattern in the Greek text which does indeed suggest divinising of the Messiah. I'm doing some more research into that and will post again after detailed digging. It's an open issue for me and you may be right. I don't have the same reservations about the Phil 2 and Isaiah connection, as I've explained. For Paul, the risen exalted Messiah has clearly been given Divine authority which Deutero-Isaiah clearly asserts is God's. For me the only issue is whether Paul saw that as being conveyed to Jesus by God as reward for his humble servanthood, rather than a pre-existent authority he laid aside in earthly life and was taking up again.
Harpagmos. Tim O'Neill quoted Ehrman on extra-biblical use of the word in a response to you. I haven't checked that out in detail but Ehrman's quote does give support to Tim's view.
ETA -here's the excerpt from Tim's post on the previous page.
quote:
Really? Seems best on some objective grounds? Because I can't see that at all. There is a lack of use of harpagmos in New Testament Greek, but my understanding of the use of the word outside the NT is that it supports my reading. Here's Ehrman on the subject:
"(I)n reality, the word (and words related to it in Greek) is almost always used to refer to something a person doesn't have but grasps for - like a thief who snatches someone's purse. The German scholar Samuel Vollenweider has shown that the word is used this way widely in a range of Jewish authors; moreover, it is the word used of human rulers who become arrogant and so try to make themselves more high and mighty (divine) than they really are. This seems, then, to be what is meant here in the Philippians poem." (Ehrman, How Jesus Became God p.263)
So it may seem "the best reading" to preserve an a priori theological position, but as a reading of what Paul actually says, it is not so clear as a "best reading" at all.
[ 20. April 2017, 08:32: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
This is all excellent. My bloke on the bus response: despite the apostles realising "This bloke's God." after the Resurrection and doing the lurching approach-avoidance dance, a fast elliptical orbit with it, "Nah, CAN'T be!", "... this bloke's ...", let's posit that Paul, although fully aware of what these peasants thought, took the adoptionist view of the fully human Messiah.
This takes a LOW view of divinity. A very low view. Any one random bloke (including Ehrman's angel) can become the most powerful entity in creation if he's good enough. Which I don't see Paul as having. It's graceless and otherwise heretical. And just my straw man?
Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on
:
Martin -
Larry Hurtado - one of the other regular writers on the early church would agree with you about adoptionism, but points out that the issues in later disputes over adoptionism are not what Paul is addressing in these texts. As always, it's too tempting to unconsciously pick up on later manifestations such as disputes and formulations, and anachronistically apply them to earlier texts. Tim has already pointed out the risks of doing that with the later trinitarian disputes.
Incidentally, I meant to mention at an earlier stage that Larry Hurtado is one of the other authors worth looking out for in this area of very early church development. He has a pretty active blog which is worth a visit. Indeed there is a recent post on the passages we have just been discussing, but looking instead at the use of morphe (shape or form) in the context of shape/form of a god. There's an interesting dialogue to be had between the observations Tim made and Hurtado's comments which might serve to clarify things a bit more.
It's over here.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Thanks Ron. Hurtado does look good. I didn't think I was engaging in post hoc reasoning from anti-adoptionism, but it's impossible not to emotionally. Soooo ... Psalm 2:7 DOES lend itself to adoptionism. And MUST have occurred to the apostles including Paul. They will have been fuzzy.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Anglican_Brat's use of "fuzzy" was one of a number of comments in this thread I found helpful. Being quite fuzzy myself, no doubt because of both my adherence to Trinitarian understanding and my desire to be honest about the text. No harm in a bit of cognitive dissonance, but too much can do your head in!
[ 20. April 2017, 12:23: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on
:
Harpagmos:
It's hardly as clear cut as Tim makes it out to be!
Here's a detailed analysis from a grammatical POV, vs NTW. Note particularly the conclusion at the end- even if one goes with the sorts of translation Ehrmann suggests, Trinitarian interpretations are still perfectly valid.
Here's another analysis, again hostile to NTWs work, which again makes the point that even accepting Ehrmanns approach gives a range of Trinitarian interpretations. The alternative passive interpretation is favoured by a number of scholars.
Finally, here's an interesting discussion- the quote from the NIV translation team is especially worth noting.
The gist of all this is that we don't know what Paul meant, and it's quite impossible to assert that the only sensible reading of the text is that Paul didn't think Jesus was divine.
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Thanks Sarah G. Fascinating links.
Following the insights you provided re the Isaiah 45 connection to Phil 2:10-11, there is a strong case for arguing that Paul saw the risen exalted Jesus as Divine. He is "at the right hand of God". And that is consistent with what I think is orthodox Trinitarianism that God the Father is pre-eminent in the Godhead.
So far as the Incarnation is concerned, I'm inclined to think we need to look outside the 7 undisputed Pauline letters for clearer indications. I'm not sure how 'fuzzy' Paul really was. The clear emphasis in those 7 letters is that he 'preached Christ crucified'. I take him at his word that he saw the resurrection as 'of first importance'. But based on those 7 letters I remain unclear about what he believed about the Incarnation, or how important it was to him.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
So far as the Incarnation is concerned, I'm inclined to think we need to look outside the 7 undisputed Pauline letters for clearer indications.
I admit to not following this disucssion closely, but the passage that springs immediately to my mind in this respect is Galatians 4:4-7: quote:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
It might not make Paul's thinking explicit but I note that:
- I read the phrase "born of a woman, born under the law" as suggesting this is to be understood as "surprisingly enough": "born of a woman!1!! born under the law!!11!" - which in turn suggests this is no ordinary birth.
- the Trinity is all over this passage, especially that bit about "the Spirit of his Son crying Father"
- the whole of this process is described as being "through God".
Just my €0.02.
[ 21. April 2017, 06:24: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Sarah G:
Here's another analysis, again hostile to NTWs work, which again makes the point that even accepting Ehrmanns approach gives a range of Trinitarian interpretations. The alternative passive interpretation is favoured by a number of scholars.
Hard to give that link a whole lot of credit given it appears on a website that declares "The King James Version is Demonstrably Inerrant".
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
If Colossians has a sufficiently high Christology to keep a full on Trinitarian happy, why does it matter what we find in the seven primary Pauline epistles? If scripture supports divinity, why is what Paul thinks important?
Is the issue whether or not there is diversity within scripture?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
hatless
I think it's about what is generally judged to be the earliest written evidence of Christian beliefs. So far as this part of the thread is concerned, it's been an excursion into what might be learned from that, initially about the resurrection, but now on a broader canvas.
That's my take, anyway.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
hatless
I think it's about what is generally judged to be the earliest written evidence of Christian beliefs. So far as this part of the thread is concerned, it's been an excursion into what might be learned from that, initially about the resurrection, but now on a broader canvas.
That's my take, anyway.
So is earlier more important?
I think there is a real value in being able to point to different Christologies (and ecclesiologies and what have you) in scripture, because it writes diversity into the Church. 'Your position, though unlike mine, is also supported in scripture' we can say.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
Thinking about it I see that earlier is more important if you're looking for evidence for the resurrection. But in that context, Paul offers us a more spiritual, less physical take on the resurrection than the gospels do.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Nice one Eutychus. I'm doing the classic thing of agreeing with the last speaker if their rhetoric is good enough. Paul doesn't make a big deal of the Incarnation of God in Christ. He unquestioningly accepts it, paradoxes and all, since he fell blind off his horse. And well done Sarah. Projecting back on the apostles including Paul from our end of the forensic telescope is not exactly postmodern is it?
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
I suppose another way of looking at it is that the understanding of Messiah may have been different at the start, may well have evolved. If so, why did it evolve?
The argument is, I also suppose, that the Jewish monotheists of the early church would have found it much easier to accept Jesus as fulfilment of Jewish Messianic expectations (the resurrection turning defeat into victory) then seeing him as fully divine. Paul, because of the Damascus Road vision which turned his thinking upside down, not only saw the ascended Jesus "at the right hand of God" (Romans 8:34) but also given Divine Authority (Phil 2:10-12). His experiences were not the same as the earliest apostles. I think we can argue safely that his earliest letters show him at the very least well on his way to seeing Jesus as Divine.
Once the church became predominantly Gentile (after AD 70, and after the martyrdom of Paul) then it's reasonable to argue that there was more scope for revised ideas about who Jesus was.
But mr cheesy had a point earlier. Depending on premises, there is much more room for speculation about what really happened than any kind of historical certainty.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
Aye. Just thought that the ancient Jewish response to Jesus' claims to divinity in everything except the utterly unambiguously explicit, including in the apostles, is obviously mirrored in the Islamic. Paul seems to be on the same cusp as Jesus' claims; everything but the utterly unambiguously explicit. He knew. He just couldn't bring himself to say what he knew.
It's the key claim. There are no others worth the candle.
Back to the OP. To the apostles, including Paul, there was no doubt of the Resurrection, the later history, including the gospels and all the epistles, validates that historicity.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
:
I like the point about the gentiles not having unitarian hangups.
Posted by hatless (# 3365) on
:
The scope for speculation seems a very good thing to me. There is also the scope for reinterpretation - speculation about what happened, interpretation about what it means.
We've been doing this forever. Our scriptures are a landscape which we mine for the resources we need today, and about which we make many maps and tell many stories.
There is another way, which is to say there is one meaning, one correct reading, one unchanging God. And generally to add 'and this is it'.
I think reinterpretation is actually in the DNA of Christianity. "You have heard it said, but .." I think it's as we should expect that the NT contains not only various Christologies, but evidence of reinterpretation during the time of its creation, and during the ministry of Paul. 1 Thessalonians to Romans 8 is quite a journey.
Resurrection itself is faith in a God who breathes new life into the dead.
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