Did Jesus Die in Outer Space?

[cienfuegos]

You are very sure of it and I, myself, would like to be equally as sure of this proposition. So enlighten me, outhouse.


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Most of my position is based on context of the history of this time. His writings speak for themselves of a specific time period in early Christianity in which differences in the movement are popping up and he is addressing.


To deviate from traditional Pauline scholarships and their dating, requires mental gymnastics and imagination. It requires conspiracy minded mentality and methodology that carries no credibility. There is no reason for anyone to create such a character and theology.

There is nothing to cover up here. If you have ever read Paul, the temple is still standing.

I hold to a first century Paul, while acknowledging that the position, in the absence of undeniable evidence, is tenuous

It is not tenuous. The man has historicity.

Everything about this is tenuous. Our evidence is late and tampered with, Paul being the earliest (we assume), but there's obviously room for questions even there. My reasons for accepting early Paul are almost identical to your's. I don't think there is anything in your recitation of that evidence to make the argument any more secure. I do believe it is the best explanation, I do not agree that it is beyond doubting.

One thing that rankles me about descriptions of "mythicism" (and I just finished watching the Richard Carrier-Trent Horn debate, so maybe you all will indulge my diversion) is the lack of understanding that early Christians did not believe they worshipped a "mythical Jesus." They believed they worshiped a REAL Jesus, one that had been sacrificed by demons (in outer space? In the lower heavens? On earth in a mythical past?) who did not recognize him as the Savior. These Christians believed Jesus was REAL, they did not need to believe he had recently been killed by Pontius Pilate. My feeling is that those Christians viewed Jesus as acting in their daily lives much the same as modern Christians do. For today's Christians, the main point is that Jesus provides the pathway to heaven and acts as an intercessor from heaven. It does't so much matter that he was killed by Pilate in May of 29 AD (or whenever). Heavenly Jesus was just as real to Paul, and maybe more so due to the fact that he reports having received revelations, as the Logos was to Philo. So one of the arguments that "martyrs died for a myth" or "martyrs died for a falsehood" is fatally flawed just from the outset. Martyrs died for Jesus. They don't die for the idea that Jesus died outside the gates of Jerusalem. They die for the heavenly Jesus who they believe is the savior of the world. I don't see how this is a difficult concept to understand. Unless explained by me, because then it becomes very convoluted.

[Leucius Charinus]

One thing that rankles me about descriptions of "mythicism" (and I just finished watching the Richard Carrier-Trent Horn debate, so maybe you all will indulge my diversion) is the lack of understanding that early Christians did not believe they worshipped a "mythical Jesus." They believed they worshiped a REAL Jesus, one that had been sacrificed by demons (in outer space? In the lower heavens? On earth in a mythical past?) who did not recognize him as the Savior. These Christians believed Jesus was REAL, they did not need to believe he had recently been killed by Pontius Pilate. My feeling is that those Christians viewed Jesus as acting in their daily lives much the same as modern Christians do. For today's Christians, the main point is that Jesus provides the pathway to heaven and acts as an intercessor from heaven. It does't so much matter that he was killed by Pilate in May of 29 AD (or whenever). Heavenly Jesus was just as real to Paul, and maybe more so due to the fact that he reports having received revelations, as the Logos was to Philo. So one of the arguments that "martyrs died for a myth" or "martyrs died for a falsehood" is fatally flawed just from the outset. Martyrs died for Jesus. They don't die for the idea that Jesus died outside the gates of Jerusalem. They die for the heavenly Jesus who they believe is the savior of the world. I don't see how this is a difficult concept to understand. Unless explained by me, because then it becomes very convoluted.

But were the stories of the Christian Martyrs also a myth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Persecution

• The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Moss's thesis is that the traditional idea of the "Age of Martyrdom", when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional. There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church's history. Most of the stories of individual martyrs are pure invention, and even the oldest and most historically accurate stories of martyrs and their sufferings have been altered and re-written by later editors, so that it is impossible to know for sure what any of the martyrs actually thought, did or said.

LC

[cienfuegos]

One thing that rankles me about descriptions of "mythicism" (and I just finished watching the Richard Carrier-Trent Horn debate, so maybe you all will indulge my diversion) is the lack of understanding that early Christians did not believe they worshipped a "mythical Jesus." They believed they worshiped a REAL Jesus, one that had been sacrificed by demons (in outer space? In the lower heavens? On earth in a mythical past?) who did not recognize him as the Savior. These Christians believed Jesus was REAL, they did not need to believe he had recently been killed by Pontius Pilate. My feeling is that those Christians viewed Jesus as acting in their daily lives much the same as modern Christians do. For today's Christians, the main point is that Jesus provides the pathway to heaven and acts as an intercessor from heaven. It does't so much matter that he was killed by Pilate in May of 29 AD (or whenever). Heavenly Jesus was just as real to Paul, and maybe more so due to the fact that he reports having received revelations, as the Logos was to Philo. So one of the arguments that "martyrs died for a myth" or "martyrs died for a falsehood" is fatally flawed just from the outset. Martyrs died for Jesus. They don't die for the idea that Jesus died outside the gates of Jerusalem. They die for the heavenly Jesus who they believe is the savior of the world. I don't see how this is a difficult concept to understand. Unless explained by me, because then it becomes very convoluted.

But were the stories of the Christian Martyrs also a myth? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Persecution

• The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a 2013 book by Candida Moss, a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Moss's thesis is that the traditional idea of the "Age of Martyrdom", when Christians suffered persecution from the Roman authorities and lived in fear of being thrown to the lions, is largely fictional. There was never sustained, targeted persecution of Christians by Imperial Roman authorities. Official persecution of Christians by order of the Roman Emperor lasted for at most twelve years of the first three hundred of the Church's history. Most of the stories of individual martyrs are pure invention, and even the oldest and most historically accurate stories of martyrs and their sufferings have been altered and re-written by later editors, so that it is impossible to know for sure what any of the martyrs actually thought, did or said.

LC

Yeah, I am not so much saying that the martyrdoms actually happened, just that the logic that such martyrdoms demonstrate that Jesus was known to have lived on earth is flawed.

[manoj]

This is just circular logic which starts and ends with the UNEVIDENCED claim that Pauls accounts and the gospel accounts are genuine products of the 1st century.

What if they are from the 2nd century or even later? Oh, they are from the 1st century? One could easily train a parrot (or even a graduate from a Theological Institute) to say that.

I thought, it would be interesting to note what Carrier has to say about the dating of the Pauline epistles.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-31401

Isn’t it a problem that by considering the Pauline epistles to be one of the earliest Christian writings, your argument needs the Pauline epistles to be early?

This question was specifically answered by Robert Price in Is This Not the Carpenter?. If you are really curious, you should read that.
But mathematically, P(myth|e.b) = [P(myth|e.b.letters late) x P(letters late)] + [P(myth|e.b.letters early) x P(letters early)]. So if P(letters late) is low, it doesn’t matter whether I rely on the letters being early. Not only can I get a high enough probability on that (the tiny probability of the evidence being radically different than we think, like all Cartesian Demon arguments, becomes moot), but the probability of “A or B” is always higher than the probability of A or the probability of B. Therefore, at worst, “letters late” can shrink P(myth|e.b.letters late), but it’s still always above zero, and thus still always adds to P(myth|e.b.letters early) and thus always increases P(myth|e.b), no matter how low P(myth|e.b.letters late) is.
A problem for me only arises if P(letters late) is high. But there is no way to argue that it is on present evidence. I could be wrong about that, but it’s someone else’s job to prove it (the burden is always on the claimant; and an effective consensus constitutes meeting a prima facie burden: Proving History, pp. 29-30).

For arguments sake, if the Pauline epistles are from the 2nd century, can’t the cosmic Christ that is seen in it be one of the many variants of Christ that people believed in, in the 2nd century and can not be used to argue the Christ myth theory?

One would then be burdened with explaining how or why Christ would become de-historicized that way. It is actually historically easier to see a mythical person historicized than a historical person removed from history and placed in outer space (in fact I cannot think of a single precedent for that, although if anyone knows one I’m interested in seeing it). But more problematic is the fact that Paul’s letters show no awareness of the alternative, e.g. they never once struggle to argue against a prevailing historicizing view, contain no reference to anyone believing or preaching such a thing, and so on (and indeed no knowledge of the Gospels or anything in them, with the possible exception of the eucharist, which one could argue reverse causation for), which is always improbable unless there was none. Thus even late letters would not entail a low P(myth).
This is all academic, however, since I have yet to see any sound argument that P(letters late) is anywhere high enough to matter.

“the fact is that Paul’s own letters firmly establish him as writing in the 50s”
Could you explain this dating?

Paul wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters (yet both, and their consequences, would have been too huge not to affect anything he said, esp. in Romans); and he wrote well after Aretas assumed control of Damascus (which he mentions in 2 Corinthians 11:32), which was between the years of 37 and 40; and most (if not all) of his literary activity came 14 to 17 years after his conversion (Galatians 1:15-18, 2:1; possibly also 2 Corinthians 12:2); all of which argues for his letters being written in the 50s.
For a detailed analysis: Gerd Lüdemann, Paul, The Founder of Christianity (2002), which also details why we should trust a chronology derived only from Paul’s letters and not from Acts.
One can avoid this conclusion only by assuming these are all lies and the letters are fabricated to look like they were written in the 50s. That’s an enormous ad hoc assumption, which has no inherent probability (even out of the gate, much less after considering how little the forgers even bothered to polemicize against the Gospel version of Jesus etc., or do or say anything distinctive of the second century or even intelligible in that context–as opposed to, for example, the Pastorals).

[Peter Kirby]

I thought, it would be interesting to note what Carrier has to say about the dating of the Pauline epistles.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-31401

Thanks! Good find.

[Leucius Charinus]

I thought, it would be interesting to note what Carrier has to say about the dating of the Pauline epistles.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/arc ... ment-31401

One can avoid this conclusion only by assuming these are all lies and the letters are fabricated to look like they were written in the 50s. That’s an enormous ad hoc assumption, which has no inherent probability (even out of the gate, much less after considering how little the forgers even bothered to polemicize against the Gospel version of Jesus etc., or do or say anything distinctive of the second century or even intelligible in that context–as opposed to, for example, the Pastorals).

It is not an ad hoc assumption at all. Neither is it without any inherent probability. A number of academics have already proposed the case. (Detering, Brodie, Bruno Bauer). Carrier must be well aware of the letters of Pseudo-Paul. The church organisation is well known for its forgeries. The letter exchange between Paul and Seneca was accepted by officials in the 4th century church. There is so much forgery between the 4th century and the 16th century by the church that the situation is a bit like looking down through the historical (literary) layers of a barrel of rotten apples, expecting that the apples at the bottom of the barrel are not also rotten but in some perfect pristine uncorrupted state. It's some sort of collective 'pipe dream' which is not based on any evidence, but completely upon the authority of the "Received Tradition" which has been bashed into the heads of children for centuries.

Of course the letters written by Paul (not Pseudo-Paul) are genuine!! Everything is rotten in Christendom as soon as it turned political, but everyone knows that Christendom is based on unimpeachable and "very early" facts. FFS.



LC

[Blood]

"Paul wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters..."

Nor are such things mentioned in the inauthentic Pauline epistles. Using Carrier's own logic, that means they pre-date 64 as well.

[cienfuegos]

"Paul wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters..."

Nor are such things mentioned in the inauthentic Pauline epistles. Using Carrier's own logic, that means they pre-date 64 as well.

Except that if one were forging letters in Paul's name it would make sense to avoid giving the game away by mentioning events he wouldn't have written about.

[Leucius Charinus]

"Paul wrote before the Jewish War, which began in 66, and probably before the Neronian persecution of 64 (if such there was), as neither are ever mentioned in his letters..."

Nor are such things mentioned in the inauthentic Pauline epistles. Using Carrier's own logic, that means they pre-date 64 as well.

A valid point.




LC

[Sheshbazzar]

Jesus the 'Christ' died first in contrived Hellenistic theological philosophy ....and then in an imaginative religious Story.

END of STORY