archibald wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2018 2:14 am
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2018 1:48 am
You are placing
falsely on the mouth of Doherty words that he
never said.
Rubbish.
The author of your favorite theory made a significant concession about the reading of one of the theory's important texts, which text Carrier had called 'a template for a celestial Jesus' (paraphrased). Accept it and move on, or don't. It's up to you. I'm not having (another) stupid discussion about it.
The author of my favorite theory didn
't make the concession you mean.
Unless you would call a 'concession' merely to say (the part in
red):
One assumes (insofar as we can pinpoint meanings imbedded in a document full of editings and amendments that are very hard to pin down in any exact way) that 'in your form' was indeed, in the mind of that particular editor (probably one subscribing to docetism, as in the nearby phrase 'they will think that he is flesh and a man'), a reference to human form and probably a reference to earth. However, not even this is secure, since certain gnostic documents like the Apocalypse of Adam contain descriptions of redeemer figures and their activities which are so fantastic that they seem to inhabit some other kind of reality, one reminiscent of some of the sources I've quoted in my 'World of Myth' chapter in JNGNM, rather than anything down-to-earth. And look at Revelation 12. Virgins giving birth in the heavens, where they are pursued by dragons. Hardly a simple earthly scene, what?
In any case, the 'in your form' tells us nothing about what the rest of the document and its prior states envisioned for the death of the Son.
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/CritiquesDonJNGNM.htm
Doherty isn't conceding just nothing to a historicist reading of AoI. In the parts in
red he points out the risk of making the following
fallacious implication:
Jesus is described as one ''in human form'' -------> ''therefore'' he is probably on the earth.
This is simply wrong. Carrier and Doherty have explained again and again that the
''humanoid'' body of Jesus didn't make him a historical man, more than the humanoid body of the archangelic Logos of Philo didn't make the Logos real.
Please read here how Carrier explains the concept:
Can Paul’s Human Jesus Not Be a Celestial Jesus?
So GakuseiDon is particularly
liar when he writes:
Doherty goes on to refer to other texts, though how that impacts on the implications of "probably a reference to earth" is not clear to me. The problem is that Doherty (and also Dr Carrier, who seems to be working from Doherty's analysis) missed that the Latin and Slavonic versions of AoI had "in your form" in it.
(my bold)
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3769&start=10#p80395
I can accept that for a historicist
apologist (like GakuseiDon and/or Archibald) it is 'extremely' difficult to deny the implication:
''to have a humanoid body ---> being on the earth''.
...What I can
't accept (as something of basically
dishonest) is that
in the same quote (!) GakuseiDon writes:
The problem is that Doherty (and also Dr Carrier, who seems to be working from Doherty's analysis) missed that the Latin and Slavonic versions of AoI had "in your form" in it
If Doherty has
just explained why for him a humanoid body (
''in your form'') does
n't make Jesus a historical man,
then he doesn't need a reading of the costruct
''in your form'' in the Latin and Slavonic versions of AoI to be persuaded by a historicist reading of AoI.
So there is no way to interpret these Doherty's words as a presumed
historicist concession.
@archibald
You can still say, as Doherty did (after accepting the point) that you then view the text as having been interpolated.
Doherty has no need of considering the costruct ''in your form'' as an interpolation, since for him (and for Carrier)
a humanoid body (the meaning of
''in your form'')
doesn't make Jesus a real human being.
What you miss
evidently is that for me (and for Carrier, and for Doherty), the Ascension of Isaiah is no a mythicist ''smoking gun'' considered alone as evidence.
Bt when I consider as evidence:
1) the
fact that Osiris died in the 'outermost areas' of the sublunar realm (meaning: the region of the 'air')
2) the
fact that Attis died in the 'outermost areas' of the sublunar realm (meaning: the region of the 'air')
3) the
fact that the pauline author of Ephesians says that Jesus descended in the 'outermost areas' of the sublunar realm (meaning: the region of the 'air') and
nec plus ultra,
4) the fact that in the
Ascension of Isaiah there is written:
You shall descend through the firmament and through that world as far as the angel who (is) in Sheol, but you shall not go as far as Perdition
, therefore meaning, in virtue of the point 1, 2 and 3 above, that the
''world as far as the angel who (is) in Sheol'' is placed in the region of ''air''
...then there are no more doubts that Paul believed that the death of Jesus happened in the 'outermost areas' of the sublunar realm. Period.