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Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 1:49 pm
by andrewcriddle
stevencarrwork wrote:andrewcriddle wrote:
There is a good argument that Paul is deriving teaching about divorce from Jesus and that Paul received his account of the Last Supper from other Christians.
That's strange. I thought 1 Corinthians 15 said Paul's account came from the Lord. According to Casey, that is a sure-fire clue that it came from the earthly Jesus (see Casey on divorce sayings....)
I think you mean 1 Corinthians 11. Casey claims on the basis of Jewish evidence that Paul's terminology implies that Jesus is the ultimate sources but that Paul's immediate source was other Christians. (Assuming that Paul was not personally told this by the earthly Jesus.)
stevencarrwork wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:
Casey goes on to criticise Doherty's ideas about the death of Jesus having occurred in the sublunar realm. Casey shows that Doherty is depending on a small group of problematic texts.
Did Casey explain where the 'Jerusalem above us' (Galatians 4) was located?
Wherever the Jerusalem above was located it definitely was not the sublunar realm.
Andrew Criddle
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 1:55 pm
by stephan happy huller
I think it is funny the way that people latch on to a stupid suggestion merely because it serves their interests. How many of these people even knew what a 'sublunar realm' was before this book (I know it from Aristotle, but who was really even read Aristotle here)? Now suddenly it's obvious! It has to be. No 'maybe,' no 'perhaps' - all these people just nod their heads in approval - 'of course it's true!' It's really funny.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:01 pm
by stevencarrwork
andrewcriddle wrote:I think you mean 1 Corinthians 11. Casey claims on the basis of Jewish evidence that Paul's terminology implies that Jesus is the ultimate sources but that Paul's immediate source was other Christians. (Assuming that Paul was not personally told this by the earthly Jesus.)
Even Bart Ehrman realised that the statements in 1 Corinthians 11 were not historical.
Why should the earthly Jesus have instituted a meal of remembrance? Did he know he was going to be betrayed? Did he know his followers would be untouched?
If Casey thinks that a ritual meal where the body and blood of the founder of a cult are summoned up does not reek of mythicism, then there is no hope for him.
Perhaps if Paul had written about people producing the body and blood of Satan in a ritual meal, then Casey would be claiming this came from the historical Satan.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:03 pm
by stevencarrwork
stephan happy huller wrote:I think it is funny the way that people latch on to a stupid suggestion merely because it serves their interests. How many of these people even knew what a 'sublunar realm' was before this book (I know it from Aristotle, but who was really even read Aristotle here)? Now suddenly it's obvious! It has to be. No 'maybe,' no 'perhaps' - all these people just nod their heads in approval - 'of course it's true!' It's really funny.
I'm not saying it's true or false. I'm just wondering where Paul thought the Jerusalem above us was, and where the author of Hebrews thought was kept the various items that he said had earthly copies.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:05 pm
by stephan happy huller
So if I understand your logic correctly, the fact that it is said that Jesus instituted a ritual mean can only mean that he never existed? Really? So the fact that George Washington only chopped down a cherry tree in folklore proves that he never existed? If I ever saw an example of putting the cart before the horse this is it.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:08 pm
by stephan happy huller
I'm not saying it's true or false.
I was talking about people in general. I don't know that Jesus existed, I don't know that he didn't exist. I just don't see a way of proving it either way. Nor do I think it matters. I read Carlos Castenada when I was growing up. I know people who claim they can perform 'lucid dreaming.' Does it matter that the source of their learning was fiction? It's disappointing in a way but they claim they can control their dreams. Never worked for me.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:22 pm
by andrewcriddle
stevencarrwork wrote:andrewcriddle wrote:I think you mean 1 Corinthians 11. Casey claims on the basis of Jewish evidence that Paul's terminology implies that Jesus is the ultimate sources but that Paul's immediate source was other Christians. (Assuming that Paul was not personally told this by the earthly Jesus.)
Even Bart Ehrman realised that the statements in 1 Corinthians 11 were not historical.
Why should the earthly Jesus have instituted a meal of remembrance? Did he know he was going to be betrayed? Did he know his followers would be untouched?
If Casey thinks that a ritual meal where the body and blood of the founder of a cult are summoned up does not reek of mythicism, then there is no hope for him.
In Mark which Casey believes to be closest to what Jesus actually said the meal is meal is not ordained as a meal of remembrance.
In Paul's version Paul carefully avoids the suggestion of drinking blood. (Casey argues that Paul would have felt entitled to paraphrase a tradition he had received.)
Andrew Criddle
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:36 pm
by stevencarrwork
stephan happy huller wrote:So if I understand your logic correctly, the fact that it is said that Jesus instituted a ritual mean can only mean that he never existed? Really? So the fact that George Washington only chopped down a cherry tree in folklore proves that he never existed? If I ever saw an example of putting the cart before the horse this is it.
Uh?
Bart Ehrman said (in a private email to me) that the words allegedly spoken by the Lord in 1 Corinthians 11are not historical.
That means it is not historical, even to some ardent anti-mythicists.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:41 pm
by stevencarrwork
andrewcriddle wrote:In Mark which Casey believes to be closest to what Jesus actually said the meal is meal is not ordained as a meal of remembrance.
In Paul's version Paul carefully avoids the suggestion of drinking blood. (Casey argues that Paul would have felt entitled to paraphrase a tradition he had received.)
Andrew Criddle
I forgot.
Casey was there, and so knows what Jesus really said.(Casey has just as many psychic powers as Jesus, who knew he was about to be betrayed).
So now all Casey has to do is produce evidence that Mark was not making it up.
Tricky, when Casey claims that it was Paul who passed on what he received from the Lord (ie from other Christians) in a version which Casey claims is substantially different from Mark.
Re: Thoughts on Maurice Casey's new book
Posted: Thu Jan 16, 2014 2:20 am
by maryhelena
Oh, nice start to Casey's book (received via Kindle for PC this morning).......It seems, according to Casey, that in the internet "both groups consists largely of people with closed minds who are impervious to evidence and argument,..." (groups being the christian apologists and atheists). Oh, well - will be interesting to read further to see if Casey himself is not guilty of the closed mind that he is so quick to label others with.
In Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, Earl Doherty, perhaps the most influential of all the mythicists, commented:
"The advent of the Internet has introduced an unprecedented “lay” element of scholarship to the field … the absence of peer pressure and constraints of academic tenure, has meant that the study of Christian origins is undergoing a quantum leap in the hands of a much wider constituency than traditional academia…"
Commenting further on his website and his previous book, he added,
"The primary purpose of both site and book was to reach the open-minded “lay” audience… "
We shall see that this is as inaccurate as possible. The internet audience is ‘lay’, but most of it is not open-minded. It has both the ‘Christian apologists’ whom mythicists love to hate, and atheists who are determinedly anti-Christian. Both groups consist largely of people with closed minds who are impervious to evidence and argument,
Casey, Maurice (2014-01-16). Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? (Kindle Locations 172-173). BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING. Kindle Edition.