Why Wells had read P.-L. Couchoud better than Doherty and Carrier

[ABuddhist]

"fundamentally supernatural" means 100% MYTHICAL.

With all due respect, you are wrong. To say that a person is "fundamentally supernatural" is not the same as asserting that the person is mythical. Rather, categorizing a person as "fundamentally supernatural" is a claim which may be made about people who are undeniably real people. Leaders of religious cults, for example, are often claimed by their followers (and may claim to be) "fundamentally supernatural", but they are often documented by other, reputable, sources as historical figures. A recent (and still living) example of this is Bentinho Massaro.

having the book Cutting Jesus Down to Size: What Higher Criticism Has Achieved and Where It Leaves Christianity, where Wells abandons officially 'pure' mythicism, I will quote from it the point where Wells appears to think clearly that Paul (and the Pillars before him) believed in a Jesus lived in a remote past (definition, for me, of a mythical Jesus, in alternative to a outer space Jesus). Later, the members of the community behind Q identified their own founder (historically existed, according to Wells) with the mythical Jesus adored by Paul and the Pillars. (Obviously that identification was made in a time when Paul couldn't reply because he was dead, by then).

Beings in outer space and in the remote past can be mythical, though. Inachos of Argos, from the remote past of Earth, is mythical, and Amitabha Buddha, from contemporary outer space, is also mythical.

[Giuseppe]

So Wells (ibid.):

And I am certainly not among those who suppose that Paul says nothing at all of a human Jesus, or that he viewed him as “a mythic deity”, who “performed his saving work . . . in the heavenly realm” (p. 201). On the contrary, I have repeatedly stated that, for Paul, this pre-existent supernatural personage was incarnated as a descendant of David (Rom. 1:3), was born of a woman under the Jewish law (Gal. 4:4) and ministered to the Jews (Rom. 15:8) prior to his crucifixion on Earth. Hence I have no quarrel with Eddy and Boyd’s statement that “the claim that there are no clear and specific references to the Jesus of history in Paul’s writings . . . is simply incorrect” (p. 200)— although they of course mean by ‘the Jesus of history’ Jesus as depicted in the gospels, whereas, as they are well aware, I do not suppose that Paul’s incarnated Jesus was a contemporary of Paul himself, nor that the James with whom Paul was personally acquainted was Jesus’s brother, nor that Paul’s colleague Cephas was the Simon Peter of the gospels and therefore known personally to Jesus as well as to Paul (cf. my detailed discussion, above, pp. 138ff).

(my bold)

I think that "historicist" has to be identified solely with a person who thinks/believes that the historical Jesus lived sub Pontio Pilato.

ADDENDA: I remember that Chris Hansen conied a better term for the historicists who place Jesus not under Pilate.

[Giuseppe]

Inachos of Argos, from the remote past of Earth, is mythical,

curiously, even if mythical and in a distant past, we know about Inachos the connection with Argos, a real place. In Paul and Hebrews Jesus is not even connected with Jerusalem or Nazareth, for that matter.

[ABuddhist]

ADDENDA: I remember that Chris Hansen conied a better term for the historicists who place Jesus not under Pilate.

Indeed. I think that his term was "time shift", but I could be wrong.

[John T]

Of course mythicists don't believe Wells own words but for those who do care, here is Wells expressing his frustration that others claim he concluded that Jesus did not exist.

you are an idiot insofar the same your quote goes to confute directly your point:

Although I have always allowed that Paul believed in a Jesus who, fundamentally supernatural, had nevertheless been incarnated on Earth as a man."

"fundamentally supernatural" means 100% MYTHICAL.

For Wells, the origin of the Gospel tradition was historical. The historical Jesus of Q was later identified with the independent 100% mythical Jesus of Paul.

Learn the difference and stop your ignorance that is only identical to your arrogance.

Forgive me for being so bold as to repeat my question (yet again) to the august body of this thread which I have profound respect for and who I hope think my question is pertinent to this thread: Did Wells ever factor in the demonology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?

https://youtu.be/yUjhSBjxuXA

[ABuddhist]

Of course mythicists don't believe Wells own words but for those who do care, here is Wells expressing his frustration that others claim he concluded that Jesus did not exist.

you are an idiot insofar the same your quote goes to confute directly your point:

Although I have always allowed that Paul believed in a Jesus who, fundamentally supernatural, had nevertheless been incarnated on Earth as a man."

"fundamentally supernatural" means 100% MYTHICAL.

For Wells, the origin of the Gospel tradition was historical. The historical Jesus of Q was later identified with the independent 100% mythical Jesus of Paul.

Learn the difference and stop your ignorance that is only identical to your arrogance.

Forgive me for being so bold as to repeat my question (yet again) to the august body of this thread which I have profound respect for and who I hope think my question is pertinent to this thread: Did Wells ever factor in the demonology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller?

https://youtu.be/yUjhSBjxuXA

If no person answers your question here, would you stir yourself to read about the matter yourself?

[Giuseppe]

Did Wells ever factor in the demonology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

from what I read, he mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls but not in reference to demonology. It is infortunate, since, if I remember well, Richard Carrier remembers that Melkizedek was adored as an archangel and as Messiah in Qumran, so confuting the implication "being a Messiah" --> historicity.

[ABuddhist]

Did Wells ever factor in the demonology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

from what I read, he mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls but not in reference to demonology. It is infortunate, since, if I remember well, Richard Carrier remembers that Melkizedek was adored as an archangel and as Messiah in Qumran, so confuting the implication "being a Messiah" --> historicity.

What book would that have been, precisely? Wells wrote several, and maybe his dicussion invoked demonology.

[John T]

Did Wells ever factor in the demonology found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

from what I read, he mentioned the Dead Sea Scrolls but not in reference to demonology. It is infortunate, since, if I remember well, Richard Carrier remembers that Melkizedek was adored as an archangel and as Messiah in Qumran, so confuting the implication "being a Messiah" --> historicity.

Putting aside all your previous insults and ad hominem attacks. Do you think Wells would have written another book/essay revising his theory of "Q" even further, if he knew? Of course Couchoud could not have known about the Dead Sea Scrolls because he died well before Robert Eisenman freed them to the public.

I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as a rectifier for most of the perceived discrepancies in early Christianity, including Gnosticism and Marcionism.
If Carrier thinks mythicism gets a bad rap he should see what happens when someone tries to inject Enoch Judaism into the equation.

[ABuddhist]

I see the Dead Sea Scrolls as a rectifier for most of the perceived discrepancies in early Christianity, including Gnosticism and Marcionism.
If Carrier thinks mythicism gets a bad rap he should see what happens when someone tries to inject Enoch Judaism into the equation.

Would you be kind enough to elaborate upon how the Dead Sea Scrolls resolve such issues?