The arguments that Paul's letter do not reference a historical Jesus of Nazareth can be found here. The basic premise is that Paul considered Jesus/Christ to be divine, with the stories of death and resurrection being symbolic more than real. Paul does not reference Pontius Pilate, Mary, Joseph, Jesus as a teacher, Jesus as the Son of Man, Jesus miracles, Jesus' baptism , John the Baptist, holy places like Calvary, etc.
No Worries: It took me about 5 seconds to find this: Romans 1 1Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God-- 2the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4and who through the Spirit[1] of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God[2] by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 7To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition...you are aware that Paul did not live or study with Jesus, right? The Gospels are the accounts of those who did. Paul spends most of his time writing to the early church in its various locations about living the Christian life. He deals with worship, inter-church relationships, obeying christ's commands, etc. Perhaps his summary phrase was, "follow me as I follow the example of Jesus Christ." They are not intended for the purpose you are claiming they are set out to be. I'm curious what you think of the Book of Acts...
I am and have been arguing another man's argument, the author of The Jesus Puzzle. I have found his writings very compelling. (Many of his arguments I have not made here. If you want to know more, there is always the website.) This author, Earl Dohery, gives a very lengthy discussion on why he thinks Paul's Christ was not earthly. Here , you can here read precisely who/what Mr. Doherty thinks Paul's Christ was. (For me to summerize what not do the matter justice.) BTW, I would posit that Mr Doherty would consider the above verses more symbolic than literal.
I don't know why we'd want to argue with Mr. Doherty, who doesn't even post on this BBS. No Worries, what do you think? Was Jesus a living man? You said there was no evidence he did exist and I won't quibble about that anymore -- maybe there is no evidence in the way you would define it. But, what do you actually think is the case? Was he alive or not?
That too is critical to proliferation of your genes. One can depend on your family *unit* to support each other. If you read the book, you wouldn't make this specious argument, it's a really good read. One would willingly sacrifice oneself for close relatives - (apply this to your relatives in reciprocal manner ) because one shares so much genetic heritage. The logic and data is hard to resist, and I am not nearly so eloquent as the original writer. Robert Wright has written some extensions on this to contemporary life and situations which are very thought provoking, even if you believe in the Christian God or the Muslim Allah or the Jewish Yahweh.
I am not really sure. Before I stumbled onto the "No Historical Jesus" websites, I believed that Jesus was a man. I thought that he was a great religious teacher of his time. I did not believe that he was borned a virgin, walked on water, or was resurrected. I figured that the Romans made him a matyr and that his legend grew from there. So you can see that I was definitely in the Unitarian wing of the Christian Churches. After reading through a handful of the sites, I am now not convinced that Jesus even lived. The arguments from very scholarly minds (who are not generally Christian religion haters) are very compelling. It appears that many Christ/Messiah sects merged in the last half of the second centruy CE/AD. The Pauline sect did not have a historical leader as its founder. The Galilee sect created their historical leader (Jesus of Nazareth) in retrospect to explain why God had let the Romans run the table with the Jews in the First and Second Jewish Wars. The two sects merged at some point and a historical Jesus became canonical.
again it strikes me...then why did these men suffer so for a lie? why would they do that? it's one thing to be deceived and die, like a follower of Koresh...quite another to witness an event, and then go from there.
NW, It's obvious that you are going to gravitate toward a certain point of view over others. If you take one thing out of this discussion, make it this: You are taking just as big of a step of faith as those who confess Jesus Christ is Lord. You are trusting that the information you have found is definitive, complete, without subjectivity or error, and interpreted in the correct frame of reference. If the information and its interpretation could be described as such, wouldn't it be a bigger news item? The world has been influenced by Jesus, so such findings would have a major impact. Instead, this "truth" is only known to some of the "elite". Also consider the fact of where this conclusion leaves you. If Jesus wasn't speaking for God, what happens at death is still unkown to you. That, sir, cannot be described as No Worries. Whereas in the opposing conclusion, one knows if he/she is going to heaven or hell. Knowing more to know less, or knowing more to worry no more. postscript - John Mark not being taught directly by Jesus Christ is an assumption. He was definitely alive pre-crucifixion. Some think Mark 14:51,52 is the naked him since it can relate to Mark abandoning Paul and Barnabas. Irregardless (heh) Crucifixtion at 30ad, Mark's writing down of Peter's gospel 50ad, Matthew and John, both apostles, writing after Mark but still not disagreeing and even copying him.
Didn't you read the thread? This started with astronomers pinpointing the exact year, day and time of the crucifixion -- in 33 AD.
Not to get into this, but it wouldn't have been seen as a lie. Origin was a big believer in Christianity and he thought there was no historical Jesus, not that it was a lie, just that it was symbolic. Kepp in mind this was a time when many religions did not have living gods, so it really would not have been an issue as it is now. Many followers outright said "there was no Jesus" but generally followed it up with "but that does not matter" and, ultimately, I don't think it does.
i would disagree..i think it does matter. however...it would be a lie if you were to go and spread the word saying, "hey..i walked around with the guy...i saw what he did!" and then tell people that he actually lived...that he actually walked the earth. that's what the gospels do. now we can argue whether or not they were actually written by those men...but outside of that, the gospels are an outright lie if jesus never lived.
Most Bible Scholars (i.e. not necessarily secular historians) believe that Mark was the first Gospel written. Most date it after 65 CE/AD. Most Bible Scholars also believe that Matthew and Luke independent of each other used Mark as a source for their Gospel. Both Matthew and Luke added additional Wisdom teachings and miracles, which it is now believed came from another source, the Q Gospel. The followers of the Q Gospel were another first cenury religious sect. Some of the Wisdom sayings in the Q Gospels originated from the Greek Cynic teachings. The Q Gospel is considered to gnostic, which means that the reader gains enlightened and a closer relationship to God through reading the Q Gospel word. These three Gospels (ie not including John) are called the Synoptic Gospels. To say that they are in total agreement would not be factual. One of the many disagreements is that Matthew and Luke disagree on the genealogy of Jesus: Matthew 1:16 vs. Luke 3:23). As an aside, the Synoptic writers attempted to link Jesus back to David, as a fulfillment of OT prophecy. The only problem is that the link is made through Joseph who was not a blood relative of Jesus. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more problems in the Synoptics. Nazareth, Jesus' home town, did not exist prior to the middle of the second century. Matthew misattributes fulfilled prophecy (Matthew 27:9) to Jeremy instead of Zechariah (Zechariah 11:12). There is almost no agreement in the four Gospels about how the resurrection was discovered. And so on and so on.
I'm not doubting you, I'm sure you're right (I think the Bible's a nice fairy tale), but wouldn't any true believer would simply say these were written by men who made mistakes in transcribing Yahweh's words?
actually the kind of concerns he's talking about wouldn't be transcribing words...but would be recounting events that happened 30 years or so prior. by 4 separate individuals...at different times..and in different places.
Couldn't these be explained by mistakes by mortals? I guess this makes fundamentalism require some kind of 1984 type newspeak thinking, but other readers of the Bible could overlook this stuff.
I thought I would handle these one at a time: 1. most?? no most don't think that. big problem with that theory is that they written close together. there was no printing press back then. it was hard to get your hands on any such "sources." particularly considering how far these men were apart at these times. 2. I have never, ever read this argument, and I've read a ton of criticism ofthe reliability of the gospels. Jennings, maybe the most noted critic of our day, even acknowledges the existence of Nazareth at the time, saying that augustus would have never forced men from Nazareth to make a journey all the way to Rome for a census and for taxation purposes. Do you have any sources for this argument...I'd be interested in reading them. 3. Matthew was a human being...again, to me this denotes more reliability than less. If you were concoting some sort of scheme to convince people your religion was true, you'd dot the i's and cross the t's...Matthew may have just made a harmless error...a typo you don't correct on precious few scrolls with precious little ink...or he might not have known...or might not have remembered. But Matthew's mistake casts zero doubt on the validity of his story. 4. Matthew 28 The Resurrection 1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. Mark 16 The Resurrection 1When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Luke 24 The Resurrection 1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. I'm not sure what's inconsistent...in each story the empty tomb was discovered by women...they ran back and told what they saw (or didn't see)...but keep in mind, these stories are third-person accounts. The women never authored any books we know of regarding their discovery. Given the place of women at the time, that's hardly surprising. Where do you see notable inconsistencies in the discovery of the resurrection? Please understand that people much smarter than us have been studying this story, trying to poke holes in it for centuries. It's stood for 2,000 years. C.S. Lewis approached it as an unbeliever trying to disprove it. He ultimately became the premier Christian apologist of the modern day. Certainly a bright man. He would do a far better job supporting the scriptures than I ever could!
i think you're exactly right. you can't say there are no inconsistencies in the way the stories are presented...there absolutely are. but does that detract from the validity of the stories presented?? to me it doesn't...i suppose to a skeptical eye it does. but if you and i were to go eat dinner together tonight...and maybe catch a movie...and then thirty years later, we were to write down the events of the night...do you think they'd be exactly the same? what if we had more people with us? think we might leave someone out? think i might write that my wife went with us, even if she didn't, just because that's the way i remember it?
Here is the deal. Most of what is in Mark is also in Matthew and Luke. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/matthew.html It is the near-universal position of scholarship that the Gospel of Matthew is dependent upon the Gospel of Mark. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/luke.html Furthermore, the dependence of Luke upon the Gospel of Mark rules out such an early dating for Luke-Acts.
