Laying cards on the table...

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Ulan
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Ulan »

I lean towards "Yes", but I don't see how anyone could tell for sure.
ficino
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by ficino »

In the words of your OP, Sheshbazzar, I am not thoroughly convinced. At this point I have no idea whether there was a flesh-and-blood itinerant preacher Jesus as basis of the gospel stories.
bcedaifu
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by bcedaifu »

No.
junego wrote:Agnostic. There is not enough surviving evidence to draw a firm conclusion.
And others believe the same, e.g. ficino, Ulan, cienfuegos....

Do these fence sitters possess sufficient "evidence to draw a firm conclusion", for Herakles? Superman? Mr. Spock? Lassie? Flash Gordon? The Korean moon goddess of Goguryeo?

People didn't just wake up one day and decide to invent apple computers, as evidence of some kind of enormous evolutionary advance, in human creativity. Smart people have been living on this planet for thousands of years. Some of them have been writing, carving, and painting, during that long interval. We are not the first clever folks who could invent a religion.
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Leucius Charinus
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Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Greetings Shesh,

The south of the planet has the sun for a few months.
Enjoy the winter. I will do the same for summer here.

IMO the best explanation of all (meaning all, not just a little bit with a second century cut-off date a la Carrier) the available evidence and its nature (eg: the corrupt "church organisation") suggests that - as a worst case scenario - Jesus and the Jesus Story are very late literary fabrications. I would ordinarily dismiss worst case scenarios as boundary conditions, but in the study of this history from the emergence of the "Church Organisation" in the 4th century to its position in the world today, it is completely impossible, unless one is unaware of the historical evidence of exile, imprisonment, torture, execution, inquisitions and other attrocities, and of fraud, of fabrication, of the forgery of so-called historical documents and narratives (etc etc etc), to dismiss a worst case scenario in this instance.

Here we are arguing in the 21st century about the "essence" of Jesus. Is his essence historical or mythical or literary? What was the historical reaction when the Bible was first published widely in the 4th century? Well, there was a massive controversy over the "essence" of Jesus. At least that's what the 5th century "ecclesiastical histories", preserved by the "Church Organisation", tell us about this epoch. The controversy over the "essence" of Jesus was quelled by the sword and kept under wraps of Heresy and Blasphemy Laws until the 18th century. History may be "best case", "middle of the road" or "worst case", and in this instance my counsel is to NOT disregard the worst case scenario. Jesus, as used by the "Church Organisation", has an Orwellian nature.

  • "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."




Be well,



LC
Last edited by Leucius Charinus on Sat Nov 15, 2014 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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MrMacSon
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by MrMacSon »

Leucius Charinus wrote: - Jesus and the Jesus Story are very late literary fabrications.
I'm not sure this should be described as "a worst case scenario" - perhaps 'an extremely late' one.

It would be supported by argument that the texts that are assumed to be late 1st C or 2nd C are likely to be later; or have been redacted later to be about a single character .
Sheshbazzar
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Sheshbazzar »

Looks most of our VIP 'Big Guns' have thus far avoided, or simply missed this invitation to flat state their views.
The more that respond the accurately representative the result.
Clive
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Clive »

Literary mythical ritual architectural psychological sociological construction. My thinking is not coherent or complete, I am rearranging the bits of this jigsaw.

If there were a piece of grit that led to the pearl in this oyster it is not obvious how someone - if there were someone I would argue for educated upper class near to levers of power - not unknown nutter of some sort - connects with this existing international religion now.

I see it all as far more likely to do with human emotions - expressions in Paul give this away - world groaning - of hope, of a new world, a new heaven and earth. The cross is actually a geometric symbol of god and man, earth and the heavens meeting, Jesus Christ is another symbol of this - fully god fully man.

So we have various attempts to bring together the heavens and the earth brought together in the same story, with a whole set of rituals that actually are believed to make this new heaven and earth happen. Extremely powerful stuff but still an oriental cult as very well described by Gore Vidal in Julian.

The classic church structure, for example as at Florence of baptistry, main body of church and campanile is precisely about this, as is the eucharist.

It is all a machine to put into practice the phrase "death where is thy sting".


Why do churches face East?
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Clive
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Clive »

This “Jesus” would most likely have been the same archangel identified by Philo of Alexandria as already extant in Jewish theology.[6] Philo knew this figure by all of the attributes Paul already knew Jesus by: the firstborn son of God (Rom. 8:29), the celestial “image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4), and God’s agent of creation (1 Cor. 8:6). He was also God’s celestial high priest (Heb. 2:17, 4:14, etc.) and God’s “Logos.” And Philo says this being was identified as the figure named “Jesus” in Zechariah 6. So it would appear that already before Christianity there were Jews aware of a celestial being named Jesus who had all of the attributes the earliest Christians were associating with their celestial being named Jesus. They therefore had no need of a historical man named Jesus. All they needed was to imagine this celestial Jesus undergoing a heavenly incarnation and atoning death, in order to accomplish soteriologically what they needed, in order to no longer rely upon the Jewish temple authorities for their salvation.[7]


....Jesus belongs to a fraternity of worshipped demigods peculiar to the Greco-Roman era and region. All were “savior gods” (literally so called). They were all the “son” of God (occasionally his “daughter”). They all undergo a “passion” (literally the same word in the Greek, patheôn), which was some suffering or struggle (sometimes even resulting in death), through which they all obtain victory over death, which they share in some fashion with their followers. They all had stories about them set in human history on earth. Yet none of them ever actually existed. Jesus can be shown to belong to several other typically mythical classes of person as well, unlike almost every other figure of antiquity (even the greatest of emperors and kings). These people were, more often than not, not historical. Yet all were depicted as such in stories written by their believers. We cannot therefore simply declare Jesus the unusual exception. We need a reason. We need evidence. And when we look for it, it dissolves


http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/201 ... 8028.shtml

The usp of xianity is that it built up an interlocking and co-ordinated machine to deliver and reinforce its beliefs and rituals. No human starter needed , priest engineers definitely needed!
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
outhouse
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by outhouse »

bcedaifu wrote: Do these fence sitters possess sufficient "evidence to draw a firm conclusion", for Herakles? Superman? Mr. Spock? Lassie? Flash Gordon? The Korean moon goddess of Goguryeo?

.

Weak.

No true Scotsman.
Sheshbazzar
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Re: Laying cards on the table...

Post by Sheshbazzar »

I notice that our Forums most prolific contributors, Stephan H. (2032 posts), stephan h h (1480 posts), Peter (1451 posts), and spin (1117 posts) are those whose 'cards' (opinions) still remain most conspicuously absent from our table.

Vigorously presented and argued positions on myriad obscure subjects, but on this most basic of questions, still holding their cards tightly concealed and remaining strangely silent.
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