Richard Carrier on gMark parallel with Jesus ben Ananias

[Clive]

But we don't need to add all this stupidity. It distracts us from finding the right answer. What is often overlooked is that modern Protestants (perhaps 'neo-Protestants is a better description) want Jesus to be a historical man. Fine. But this represents a reduction from the original idea of the early orthodox Christians that Jesus was BOTH God and man by means of the Virgin Birth. No one (or no one whose literature survives) ever believed that Jesus was JUST a man. So we still have this odd paradigm - a guy who looks like a man, who had a virgin mother (no human father) but still in some way God who walked and talked with men. I happen to think that the Marcionites and their wholly divine man was earlier than this. There are a variety of reasons for this (it is simpler, less convoluted). But the point is that 'man-shaped' being Jesus was still God. So the earliest belief has everything to do with God tabernacling with men.

I was brought up pentecostal. I attended various tabernacles! Sometimes nutty sects are useful because they repeat older stuff the newer lot have rejected! One of the critical beliefs is that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So no tattoos, cigarettes....

The other part of this are the creeds - fully god fully man.

I will say this again. If someone says they are a Christian they do not believe in a historical Jesus but in someone whose dad is a god!

And that is a very honourable tradition - in Genesis and in Greece.

Genesis 6:4English Standard Version (ESV)

4 The Nephilim[a] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=ESV

I am not sure there needs to be an earlier divine only stage.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

http://biblehub.com/genesis/3-8.htm

body temple Holy Spirit

Question: "What does it mean that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?"

Answer: Instructing the Christians in Corinth to flee from sexual immorality, the apostle Paul exhorted, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Indeed, God the Father created our bodies, God the Son redeemed them, and God the Holy Spirit indwells them. This makes our body the very temple of the Holy Spirit of God.

Those who do not belong to Christ do not have the Spirit of Christ residing in them (Romans 8:9). Thus, their bodies are not a temple of the Holy Spirit. Clearly, then, the greatest thing we can do for our bodies is to make them into a temple for God’s Spirit. And we do this by placing our trust and faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior. The moment we do this, the indwelling of God’s Spirit takes place (1 Corinthians 12:13). Our salvation is then sealed and guaranteed (Ephesians 1:13-14). The Holy Spirit will then be with us forever (John 14:16), given by God as His pledge of the believer’s future inheritance in glory (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).

As the Holy Spirit resides in us, therefore, we are to honor God with our bodies as they “are not [our] own,” as Paul said. We have indeed been bought with a price. And it was not gold or silver or other perishable things by which we were redeemed; it was with the precious, unblemished blood of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). Ordained by God before the foundation of the world (Acts 2:23), Christ’s blood purchased us out of the slavery of sin and set us free forever. And as Christian’s bodies are God’s temple, we are to use them to glorify God.

If God meant simply to convey the idea that the Spirit lives within the believer, He could well have used words such as “home,” “house,” or “residence.” But by choosing the word “temple” to describe the Spirit’s dwelling, He conveys the idea that our bodies are the shrine, or the sacred place, in which the Spirit not only lives, but is worshiped, revered, and honored. Therefore, how we behave, think and speak, and what we let into the temple through our eyes and ears becomes critically important as well, for every thought, word and deed is in His view. Even though He will never leave us, it is entirely possible to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4: 30). Instructing the Ephesians to not grieve the Spirit, Paul told them to “get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:31-32). When we live by the Spirit, we will no longer gratify the desires of the sinful nature (Galatians 5:16).


Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/body-temple ... z3Bz3ogxtE

[Clive]

Is this the christian answer to the question where is the temple? You are?

Does this mean it is all post destruction of Temple or there had been a tradition of asking do we need a temple?

I thought the Battle of Marathon was really about does everyone worship their own gods or are told to worship one god in a specific way?

[Clive]

Emmanuel?

[Stephan Huller]

Of course there was an earlier "divine only" stage = Marcionism. And the Marcionites were first in many people's understanding.

[Charles Wilson]

Is this the christian answer to the question where is the temple? You are?

This is A Christian answer, but one that was grafted onto the Construction. Consider:

John 2: 18 - 22 (RSV):

[18] The Jews then said to him, "What sign have you to show us for doing this?"
[19] Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
[20] The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?"
[21] But he spoke of the temple of his body.
[22] When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

Our Poster Adam may need to step in here and give Teeple's listings of Redactors and Editors here but, in any event, this passage gives GREAT evidence of a Redactor who is nervous over the "Real Meaning" of "46 years". It was, at the time, evidently easy enough to figure out what "46 years" referred to and decode the Charade that was being Constructed.

It's not enough that "46 years" stands there, uninterpreted. Our Redactor MUST give a meaning to it, so he refers to "Jesus" referring to his body. One correction should lead to another but time ran out on this one. It stands by itself. "OH...So that means that Jesus was 46 years old when he was crucified?..."

"But that cannot be...Jesus must have meant that..." and so on. Apologetix is very messy business...

"46 years" is a time marker and it marks the ascension of Herod and the death of some Hasmoneans, especially...Ummm...Ummm...Well, Maryhelena knows. What was his name again? Why was his death important? Maryhelena...?
In time, in sometimes very excruciating analysis, the Temple in Jerusalem is replaced by the personal Temple of your body. Remember that there is no Temple in the Romanized section on Godly worship in Revelation.

The results of this "Temple of the Body" are necessarily derivative. "He was referring to the Temple of his body" is more than a redaction, it is a gaffe and a very plain indication of redaction for effect.

Does this mean it is all post destruction of Temple or there had been a tradition of asking do we need a temple?

YES! Exactly! It is post destruction of the Temple and the Flavian's fingerprints are all over this! Correct, correct, correct!!!

CW

[ghost]

Does this mean it is all post destruction of Temple or there had been a tradition of asking do we need a temple?

YES! Exactly! It is post destruction of the Temple and the Flavian's fingerprints are all over this! Correct, correct, correct!!!

I see Justin is from a Roman colony founded by Vespasian in 72:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nablus#Cl ... _antiquity

[Stephan Huller]

"The Flavian fingerprints" - like that's discernible

[MrMacSon]

Of course there was an earlier "divine only" stage = Marcionism. And the Marcionites were first in many people's understanding.

That raises what I think is a significant factor - the primacy or grandiosity of religious leadership: wanting to be the first or the most heard - including having a new doctrine, or a new. leading interpretation.

We see evidence of it before and after the development of christianity, and today; and in-between eg. the development of protestant traditions, and the way ppl revere those developments today; how they have their 'take' on those developments, and what they "*really* mean".

[Clive]

Of course there was an earlier "divine only" stage = Marcionism. And the Marcionites were first in many people's understanding.

I understand this is a much later medieval idea.

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/su ... iddle-ages

How did people of the medieval period explain physical phenomena, such as eclipses or the distribution of land and water on the globe?

What creatures did they think they might encounter: angels, devils, witches, dogheaded people?

This fascinating book explores the ways in which medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural and showing how the idea of the supernatural came to be invented in the Middle Ages.

Robert Bartlett examines how theologians and others sought to draw lines between the natural, the miraculous, the marvelous and the monstrous, and the many conceptual problems they encountered as they did so. The final chapter explores the extraordinary thought-world of Roger Bacon as a case study exemplifying these issues. By recovering the mentalities of medieval writers and thinkers the book raises the critical question of how we deal with beliefs we no longer share.

I thought the categories used before this were always related to earth air fire and water in some permutation, with many people putting the gods in the land of story.

[DCHindley]

"The Flavian fingerprints" - like that's discernible

Yes, I demand to know whether these Flavian fingerprints are Loop, Whorl or Arch patterns. The first two can be identified by the presence of "deltas" (only one per fingerprint on a loop pattern, two for whorl pattern), or lack thereof (arch patterns have no delta).

Once we have descriptions of our recovered patterns (types of loop patterns include ulnar and radial; types of whorls include plain, central pocket loop, double loop and accidental; types of arches are plain & tented; and ridge lines themselves have minutiae, or ridge characteristics, that make them unique from those of any other fingerprint) then we can compare to known Flavian fingerprints.

Without the ability to compare the fingerprints recovered from the NT with known Flavian fingerprints, the process will become tediously speculative and essentially moot.

DCH