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Goodbye Jesus

Why Do You Remain A Christian?


Antlerman

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Citsonga - when the NIV became well-known in my area when I was fundie, our pastor told us not to use it because of issues like that. KJV or nothing for us apparently. My Evil Ex and his buddies called it the New International Perversion.

 

Unless someone's a literalist, though, or otherwise puts serious faith in what something says, I'm not sure it even matters what exactly the verb form was. To us, knowing it's myth, reading it as myth, we can take contradictions like that and shrug. If anything they illustrate the diversity of the people who wrote the myths and believed them once. I loved finding out yesterday in research that the father of Romulus and Remus might have been Mars, but then again it might have been Hercules. Aphrodite's husband might have been Ares/Mars, but other myths say he was Hephaestus. A people changes a myth as it needs to so it serves them better as a cultural tapestry. But to someone like Jay, these sorts of contradictions are hurdles that must be leaped and neatly explained away somehow. And leap he does.

 

I'm so much more at peace since realizing the Bible is nothing more than myths, the same as those of other cultures. It was tearing me apart mentally to try to force the Bible to make coherent, logical sense. Once I realized that it makes no sense because it simply isn't true, everything else fell into place. There are a lot of shitty writers in our modern age, but even that Twilight hack could at least keep her story straight through most of her book.

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I voted "troll" some time ago. Nobody can be that stupid or that incapable of using ration and logic.

 

Ficino: I'm not sure there could be any other explanation for "who moved the stone" than what you describe. When I was fundie, I bought into that because I literally didn't know there is absolutely no evidence for a single part of the crucifixion/resurrection story. I thought there was but I was just young and didn't know it yet. Well, I'm not-so-young now and there still isn't any proof of it. Blew my mind when I found out way back when, though. I was shocked, genuinely shocked. What the fuck do they MEAN, no proof of any of it, not to mention there was actually proof against it? Nobody moved the stone until someone can show evidence of there being a stone, a body, a trial, a death, etc. There were no 12 Apostles, no boy-wonder Kodak moment at the temple, no baptism by John, no rock-star-level miracles all over the region, no sermon on the mount, no triumphant ride into Jerusalem, no parables, no mystery convocation of Sanhedrin, no trial, no release of a condemned murderer in exchange for a mere Jewish rabble-raiser, no zombie uprising after the crucifixion, no resurrection, no stone to be moved, no speaking in tongues, no miracles. Every one of these things would have left behind evidence. I perceive that the evidence *does* support this hypothesis: the story of the resurrection got spun some time after the time of "Jesus" by conflating the stories of various god-men running around Judea at the time and those of other pagan religions' saviors (is Jay so recklessly and willfully ignorant that he imagines Jesus was the *only* such pagan god-man-savior in that age?). My hypothesis makes the fewest assumptions, and is the simplest explanation that *does* fit available facts.

 

Who knows what goes into creating a religious myth? Surely the first person to put pen to paper has some inkling of the proof or non-proof of the matter. Nowadays I'd say that people who do that, like Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard, are evil con men. Back then though humanity had different standards for judging facts and evaluating claims. Once the story was loose, then people bought into it like crazy. One can be very sincere, yet very sincerely wrong. Nowadays we inflate intention to the point where it outweighs truth or results. Just trying hard means more than actually succeeding. Just putting forth minimal effort invalidates whether or not you actually accomplished anything. Plenty of people believe things very sincerely that are completely erroneous, if Fox News' comments pages are anything to go by.

 

thanks for your thoughts on the "Who Moved the Stone?" argument, Akheia, and yours, McDaddy and mymistake. As I think about it, it seems to me that the resurrectionist's supply of evidence pretty much boils down to Paul's enumeration in I Corinthians 15 of the stuff that he "received" and handed over to them: Christ (interesting there's no "the") died... was buried, was raised on the third day... was seen by/appeared to Cephas, then the twelve, then appeared to over 500 brothers at one time, of whom the majority are still alive... then to James, then to all the apostles... then to me. Add to that the refs. in Galatians to his meeting with Cephas et al. three years after his conversion and you get the resurrectionist's claim that those epistles attest to existence of communal belief in a resurrection only a few years after the event supposedly took place. was it a bodily resurrection? That seems to me implied by "he was buried" - "etaphe" (I forget how to write Greek on here). You can't bury a spiritual body, can you - unless the tomb is spiritual, too. I haven't read Earl Doherty on this. It sounds as though Paul is saying he was told about a bodily death,burial and then a resurrection. And that he is citing as his sources word of mouth within a few years of the event.

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A few years? Or several decades? The NT itself wasn't written until considerably after Jesus' putative death. And Paul is hardly a disinterested bystander recounting this second-hand tale. No more reason to trust anything Paul says about anything any more than one might trust a modern-day evangelist claiming he saw someone healed of deafness at one of his revival meetings.

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Guest Valk0010

A few years? Or several decades? The NT itself wasn't written until considerably after Jesus' putative death. And Paul is hardly a disinterested bystander recounting this second-hand tale. No more reason to trust anything Paul says about anything any more than one might trust a modern-day evangelist claiming he saw someone healed of deafness at one of his revival meetings.

Or people like Howard Murphet reporting on the godly miracles of sai baba.
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A few years? Or several decades? The NT itself wasn't written until considerably after Jesus' putative death. And Paul is hardly a disinterested bystander recounting this second-hand tale. No more reason to trust anything Paul says about anything any more than one might trust a modern-day evangelist claiming he saw someone healed of deafness at one of his revival meetings.

Well people cross reference paul, by pauls own accounts. They usually refer to references in galatians and say that is when paul would have learned of the information from 1 cor 15. I would by that arguement, but the reasoning of it fails cause of how paul's 1 cor 15 passage contradicts the the gospels. 1 cor 15 was written about 50 ad, and I am drawing a blank of galatians atm.
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It all boils down to one little thing: If Paul knew of an EARTHLY JESUS, or if the information gathered from Cephas/Peter (and they're not necessarily the same person), James, or anyone else involved in early Christology was about AN EARTHLY JESUS, why does he mention NOTHING AT ALL about Jesus' purported life? No miracles. No wise sayings. No parables. No mention of Nazareth/Galilee. No Virgin birth. No JERUSALEM crucifixion.

 

Just "he was crucified, raised up, and is in heaven this was predicted by the scriptures". That's basically IT.

 

This is enough alone for me to think no real Jesus ever existed.

 

And don't tell me Paul just wasnt concerned with earthly details. He would have at some point mentioned SOMETHING. This is supposedly the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He saw alleged prophecies that were already being propounded by Philo and thought this Christ character was killed by who knows what, who knows where. Probably in some lower level of heaven. He doesn't mention Romans killing him, or the Sanhedrin. Its all a myth that evolved over time and took on a life of its own when Mark was written.

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It all boils down to one little thing: If Paul knew of an EARTHLY JESUS, or if the information gathered from Cephas/Peter (and they're not necessarily the same person), James, or anyone else involved in early Christology was about AN EARTHLY JESUS, why does he mention NOTHING AT ALL about Jesus' purported life? No miracles. No wise sayings. No parables. No mention of Nazareth/Galilee. No Virgin birth. No JERUSALEM crucifixion.

 

Just "he was crucified, raised up, and is in heaven this was predicted by the scriptures". That's basically IT.

 

This is enough alone for me to think no real Jesus ever existed.

 

And don't tell me Paul just wasnt concerned with earthly details. He would have at some point mentioned SOMETHING. This is supposedly the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He saw alleged prophecies that were already being propounded by Philo and thought this Christ character was killed by who knows what, who knows where. Probably in some lower level of heaven. He doesn't mention Romans killing him, or the Sanhedrin. Its all a myth that evolved over time and took on a life of its own when Mark was written.

Arguements from silence usually only work when there is a good reason that something should be mentioned if it is actually true. Its why Paul not mentioning a empty tomb is a strong arguement against its existence. Buuuuuut you would have to establish why there should have been a reason for him to mention something for yours to work.
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Jesus intentionally taught in a way that would obscure knowledge of what he really meant.

He didn't speak openly or frankly with the public.

His goal was to hide the meaning from them.

That's the problem.

He taught things in private that he did not teach to the public.

Then he denied teaching privately.

 

 

 

 

You repeated that same point, how many times?? Wow.

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It all boils down to one little thing: If Paul knew of an EARTHLY JESUS, or if the information gathered from Cephas/Peter (and they're not necessarily the same person), James, or anyone else involved in early Christology was about AN EARTHLY JESUS, why does he mention NOTHING AT ALL about Jesus' purported life? No miracles. No wise sayings. No parables. No mention of Nazareth/Galilee. No Virgin birth. No JERUSALEM crucifixion.

 

Just "he was crucified, raised up, and is in heaven this was predicted by the scriptures". That's basically IT.

 

This is enough alone for me to think no real Jesus ever existed.

 

And don't tell me Paul just wasnt concerned with earthly details. He would have at some point mentioned SOMETHING. This is supposedly the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He saw alleged prophecies that were already being propounded by Philo and thought this Christ character was killed by who knows what, who knows where. Probably in some lower level of heaven. He doesn't mention Romans killing him, or the Sanhedrin. Its all a myth that evolved over time and took on a life of its own when Mark was written.

Arguements from silence usually only work when there is a good reason that something should be mentioned if it is actually true. Its why Paul not mentioning a empty tomb is a strong arguement against its existence. Buuuuuut you would have to establish why there should have been a reason for him to mention something for yours to work.

 

If you wrote lots of letters to people talking about a human who was your master, but never mentioned a detail of his actual life, that would be the most strange collection of letters in history.

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During a previous debate with The Stranger on these boards, I dug into the Hebrew and found out that the NIV did indeed clearly mistranslate the Hebrew where it says "had formed." It appears to be a deliberate attempt to smooth over the creation order contradiction with Genesis 1. However, not only does the Hebrew word's tense clearly mean "formed" at that point in the narrative, but also in the context of the flow of events in this portion of the second creation account it clearly has to mean that the animals were created at that point. The NIV translators were being deceptive here.

 

 

I am glad that you are digging into sources. But I'd rather go with NIV translators for the moment. However people should use multiple translations to assure accuracy.

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Of course, we know that the "dual prophecy" or "dual meaning" argument is nothing more than a flimsy attempt to rescue the Bible from contextual flaws like these. There is nothing in the original quotes to suggest double meanings. No Christian would accept the double meaning argument from any other religion, because it's a piss-poor argument. The only reason they accept it with Christianity is because they have presupposed that Christianity is true. It's driven by an emotional attachment rather than logical assessment.

 

I should quote Johnny Carson from the old days..... " I did not know that... "

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Interestingly enough, the history repeated. After the ministry of Jesus ( and once again the dull spiritual condition of Jews ) even a bigger exile happened - as the Second Temple got destroyed, the city of Jerusalem in total ruin, and the land of Judea uninhabited after the Jewish War by Romans. Exactly as predicted by the prophesy.

 

No, that is NOT "exactly as predicted by the prophecy." Read the Isaiah passage again. It clearly states that the quote in question was something that ISAIAH HIMSELF was supposed to PROCLAIM UNTIL the exile. Isaiah was DEAD HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE the 70AD destruction of the temple. You are ignoring the clear truth right in front of your eyes.

Well said.

Isa 6 was fulfilled long before Jesus appeared.

I'm waiting for the dual prophecy rationalization on this one just as Christians rationalize Isa 7:14 into two prophecies.

 

 

I believe Isaiah was DEAD hundreds years before the first exile. ( But I have to do more research. ) He was also dead some 800 years before Christ.

 

Anyhow there is no way he kept on preaching until the first exile. I believe he was long dead.

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Of course, we know that the "dual prophecy" or "dual meaning" argument is nothing more than a flimsy attempt to rescue the Bible from contextual flaws like these. There is nothing in the original quotes to suggest double meanings. No Christian would accept the double meaning argument from any other religion, because it's a piss-poor argument. The only reason they accept it with Christianity is because they have presupposed that Christianity is true. It's driven by an emotional attachment rather than logical assessment.

 

I should quote Johnny Carson from the old days..... " I did not know that... "

 

It doesn't surprise me that you didn't know that. I was responding to centauri when I said that "we know," meaning that centauri and I know. Of course, there are plenty others on these boards who also know it, including mcdaddy, who indicated such in a reply.

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Guest Valk0010

Interestingly enough, the history repeated. After the ministry of Jesus ( and once again the dull spiritual condition of Jews ) even a bigger exile happened - as the Second Temple got destroyed, the city of Jerusalem in total ruin, and the land of Judea uninhabited after the Jewish War by Romans. Exactly as predicted by the prophesy.

 

No, that is NOT "exactly as predicted by the prophecy." Read the Isaiah passage again. It clearly states that the quote in question was something that ISAIAH HIMSELF was supposed to PROCLAIM UNTIL the exile. Isaiah was DEAD HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE the 70AD destruction of the temple. You are ignoring the clear truth right in front of your eyes.

Well said.

Isa 6 was fulfilled long before Jesus appeared.

I'm waiting for the dual prophecy rationalization on this one just as Christians rationalize Isa 7:14 into two prophecies.

 

 

I believe Isaiah was DEAD hundreds years before the first exile. ( But I have to do more research. ) He was also dead some 800 years before Christ.

 

Anyhow there is no way he kept on preaching until the first exile. I believe he was long dead.

Ever thought Isaiah may have got it wrong but died, and people couldn't stand the idea of there judaism and by proxy there christianity being wrong?
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Interestingly enough, the history repeated. After the ministry of Jesus ( and once again the dull spiritual condition of Jews ) even a bigger exile happened - as the Second Temple got destroyed, the city of Jerusalem in total ruin, and the land of Judea uninhabited after the Jewish War by Romans. Exactly as predicted by the prophesy.

 

No, that is NOT "exactly as predicted by the prophecy." Read the Isaiah passage again. It clearly states that the quote in question was something that ISAIAH HIMSELF was supposed to PROCLAIM UNTIL the exile. Isaiah was DEAD HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE the 70AD destruction of the temple. You are ignoring the clear truth right in front of your eyes.

Well said.

Isa 6 was fulfilled long before Jesus appeared.

I'm waiting for the dual prophecy rationalization on this one just as Christians rationalize Isa 7:14 into two prophecies.

 

 

I believe Isaiah was DEAD hundreds years before the first exile. ( But I have to do more research. ) He was also dead some 800 years before Christ.

 

Anyhow there is no way he kept on preaching until the first exile. I believe he was long dead.

 

I don't know offhand either about the exact timeline between Isaiah and the exile, but if he was gone by then, then the "prophecy" failed. The text of Isaiah 6 specifically spells out what it's talking about, and it absolutely cannot be about the time of Jesus, because, as we both agree, Isaiah would have been dead for hundreds of years. (Besides that, the quote was reworded by the gospel writers in order to try to force it to apply to Jesus' era, and such rewording wouldn't be necessary if the original really meant what the gospels made it out to mean.)

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It amazes me how many people continue to be willfully duped by Christianity. Im not saying its for suckers....but it's for suckers.

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It amazes me how many people continue to be willfully duped by Christianity. Im not saying its for suckers....but it's for suckers.

Its training.

 

For example I find myself reading say Robert Ingersoll. No fundementalist today would take him seriously cause of how indoctrinated they are, but he is right on the money.

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I also lean toward the idea of Paul not seriously thinking that the Jesus myth was true--namely because it hadn't been written or promulgated by the time he got converted. When we look at the myth as a force that grew over time from practically no kernel, we see exactly what we expect to see: that as the NT got developed and the church got more established, the myths got more and more complex and miracle-studded to look more like the myths of the prominent religions of the day. Reminds one of that scene with the Grail from the 3rd Indiana Jones movie.

 

Some omni-max god. Either he was powerless to leave an accurate account of a single particular of his life and sayings for the world to see and have, or he didn't want to do so. It's not as thorny of an issue as, say, the Problem of Evil, but it's pretty bad. But as Jay has demonstrated through his relentless parroting of apologists' ideas, people can twist and rationalize just about anything when the stakes are as high as Christianity's claim they are.

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Jesus intentionally taught in a way that would obscure knowledge of what he really meant.

He didn't speak openly or frankly with the public.

His goal was to hide the meaning from them.

That's the problem.

He taught things in private that he did not teach to the public.

Then he denied teaching privately.

 

 

You repeated that same point, how many times?? Wow.

Now you know how people here feel.

Christians specialize in repeating the same things over and over again, even when shown evidence that contradicts their claims.

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Interestingly enough, the history repeated. After the ministry of Jesus ( and once again the dull spiritual condition of Jews ) even a bigger exile happened - as the Second Temple got destroyed, the city of Jerusalem in total ruin, and the land of Judea uninhabited after the Jewish War by Romans. Exactly as predicted by the prophesy.

 

No, that is NOT "exactly as predicted by the prophecy." Read the Isaiah passage again. It clearly states that the quote in question was something that ISAIAH HIMSELF was supposed to PROCLAIM UNTIL the exile. Isaiah was DEAD HUNDREDS OF YEARS BEFORE the 70AD destruction of the temple. You are ignoring the clear truth right in front of your eyes.

Well said.

Isa 6 was fulfilled long before Jesus appeared.

I'm waiting for the dual prophecy rationalization on this one just as Christians rationalize Isa 7:14 into two prophecies.

 

 

I believe Isaiah was DEAD hundreds years before the first exile. ( But I have to do more research. ) He was also dead some 800 years before Christ.

 

Anyhow there is no way he kept on preaching until the first exile. I believe he was long dead.

Isaiah asked how long he was supposed do this and God answered in verse 11.

 

Isa 6:9-11

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

 

The key is that this all transpired long before Jesus appeared and claimed to have fulfilled it.

The New Testament writers, particularly the author of Matthew, loved to rip Old Testament verses out of context and apply them to Jesus.

It was a way to sell Jesus to people as being legitimate.

 

As I wrote before, the author of Matthew misquoted verse 10, where he changed the wording.

The messenger in Isa 6 has a mission to make people spiritually dull.

It's intentional.

The exile of Israel and subsequent restoration would bring glory to God.

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It all boils down to one little thing: If Paul knew of an EARTHLY JESUS, or if the information gathered from Cephas/Peter (and they're not necessarily the same person), James, or anyone else involved in early Christology was about AN EARTHLY JESUS, why does he mention NOTHING AT ALL about Jesus' purported life? No miracles. No wise sayings. No parables. No mention of Nazareth/Galilee. No Virgin birth. No JERUSALEM crucifixion.

 

Just "he was crucified, raised up, and is in heaven this was predicted by the scriptures". That's basically IT.

 

This is enough alone for me to think no real Jesus ever existed.

 

And don't tell me Paul just wasnt concerned with earthly details. He would have at some point mentioned SOMETHING. This is supposedly the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He saw alleged prophecies that were already being propounded by Philo and thought this Christ character was killed by who knows what, who knows where. Probably in some lower level of heaven. He doesn't mention Romans killing him, or the Sanhedrin. Its all a myth that evolved over time and took on a life of its own when Mark was written.

Arguements from silence usually only work when there is a good reason that something should be mentioned if it is actually true. Its why Paul not mentioning a empty tomb is a strong arguement against its existence. Buuuuuut you would have to establish why there should have been a reason for him to mention something for yours to work.

 

Well... when Paul writes "he was buried" and then "he was raised" that seems to imply a tomb and that later he wasn't in the tomb anymore.

 

Valk, you said that Paul contradicts the gospels on the resurrection story. Do you mean that the gospels don't mention the 500 at one time detail?

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It all boils down to one little thing: If Paul knew of an EARTHLY JESUS, or if the information gathered from Cephas/Peter (and they're not necessarily the same person), James, or anyone else involved in early Christology was about AN EARTHLY JESUS, why does he mention NOTHING AT ALL about Jesus' purported life? No miracles. No wise sayings. No parables. No mention of Nazareth/Galilee. No Virgin birth. No JERUSALEM crucifixion.

 

Just "he was crucified, raised up, and is in heaven this was predicted by the scriptures". That's basically IT.

 

This is enough alone for me to think no real Jesus ever existed.

 

And don't tell me Paul just wasnt concerned with earthly details. He would have at some point mentioned SOMETHING. This is supposedly the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He saw alleged prophecies that were already being propounded by Philo and thought this Christ character was killed by who knows what, who knows where. Probably in some lower level of heaven. He doesn't mention Romans killing him, or the Sanhedrin. Its all a myth that evolved over time and took on a life of its own when Mark was written.

Arguements from silence usually only work when there is a good reason that something should be mentioned if it is actually true. Its why Paul not mentioning a empty tomb is a strong arguement against its existence. Buuuuuut you would have to establish why there should have been a reason for him to mention something for yours to work.

 

Well... when Paul writes "he was buried" and then "he was raised" that seems to imply a tomb and that later he wasn't in the tomb anymore.

 

 

Right, Paul definitely thought he was buried. But isn't that very different than being placed in a hewn out tomb? Or is it? Either way, he never signifies WHERE. Just that it happened. And IIRC he never says who killed him, except maybe one place where he mentions "powers" or something, and that could be evil powers, as he definitely believed in demons and angels and shit.

 

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I don't think the difference between burial in a ditch and in a hewn-out tomb is signficant in this connection, since the Greek "etaphe" can cover both. A tomb hewn from rock could be called a "taphos."

 

Like Valk, I'm not sure how much weight we can put on an argument from Paul's silence about events of Jesus' life. After all, his letters were "occasional" writings, many of them prompted by particular situations and addressing those problems. We don't have his full preaching. True, the Book of Acts represents Paul as making reference to details about Jesus' last days in chapter 13 and elsewhere. I think R. Carrier dates it possibly to early 2nd century or late 1st century, so there was plenty of time for sermons of Paul to be invented. So if we scrap Acts and just focus on the epistles, it's still not clear that Paul should be expected to put in more biographical details about Jesus. Consider, too, that Paul wants his ministry to be accepted as apostolic. He doesn't have expertise in the life of Jesus - everyone knows that. His claim to authority comes from his claims to spiritual experiences (incl. Jesus telling him stuff) and his exegesis of the OT. So it's consistent with what we might attribute to him as motives for him to go easy on details about Jesus' life, where he has to rely on others' testimony, and go into depth in areas where he claims direct authority. Anyway, his silence is consistent with more than one hypothesis.

 

If I Corinth. is dated c. 55 AD, that makes the earliest ref. to the resurrection a generation later than the purported event. I know that many scholars claim that the beginning of I Cor. 15 represents or transmits an already-formulated creed because of its style and meter. I don't think that can be proved. Paul surely could have come up with his own formulation and put it in a style that would be easy to remember or whatever. He introduces that material as what he teaches, so I don't think we have warrant to conclude that it came to him in the form in which we find it. The propositional content, on the other hand, he claims came to him from others. It seems clear that the propositions about jesus' dying, burial, rising and appearances predate 55 AD. I agree that we can't be sure that Paul heard them in or near Jerusalem from Cephas and James in c. 36 AD, as people infer from Galatians. But either he's lying about that meeting or he must have gotten some material from those guys that early.

 

I think I Cor actually raises difficulties for people who hold that Paul taught that Jesus was killed, buried, rose for our sins all in the "sublunary realm" i.e. not in our historical world but in some alternate space-time frame. I think the difficulties come from Paul's argument that believers will be resurrected, as Christ was. Paul speaks as though believers and Christ undergo/will undergo resurrection. Since believers have to be resurrected after their fleshly deaths, it seems "off" to suppose that Paul doesn't believe that Christ died the same kind of fleshly death and was resurrected analogously to the way believers will be resurrected.

 

So far, then, I think the hypothesis that there was a historical Jesus who his followers thought rose from the dead explains Paul's stuff better than the hypothesis that Jesus never existed and that Paul preached a savior whose career was carried out wholly on an alternative spiritual plane.

 

JayL, in case you're still here, I don't think this proves that Jesus rose from the dead. I also don't think that EVEN IF Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity as we know it is proved. I was raised in Self-Realization Fellowship, which claims that Jesus was a great, ascended yoga master who controlled his own death and resurrection as many other yoga masters have done. There are stories of many figures through history who were believed to be founders or leaders of cultic groups, and such stories include accounts of rising from the dead. Fundamentalist Christianity can't be true, for even between Paul and Luke/Acts there are differences that undermine the claim that scripture is inerrant.

 

Akheia, McDaddy, Valk and others (Centauri, BAA Citsonga et al) I'd love to see flaws pointed out in what I've said above. Cheers

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Well, first off, I dont see any solid evidence Paul thought either Jesus or believers were to be resurrected in flesh and bone bodies - Spirit bodies is what he viewed the resurrection in terms of IIRC. Christ's body was glorified, so it wasn't the same as those we have now. Believers were to be raised in the same manner.

 

We could get in a long drawn out debate over it, but the thing is, we dont know for sure what are interpolations, deletions, etc., so any of us could be using a verse that wasn't really there, or has been changed in some way, to make the text read different. If we had the original autographs we could maybe make some sense of it. BUUUUT we dont. So, its almost in exercise in futility IMO.

 

From what I've read, anything talking about a resurrecton "in the flesh" is an interpolation, a non-pauline (authentic) letter, or both. That's pretty much irrelevant to the topic at hand though I guess. What we're trying to get to is, was the ORIGINAL body flesh or spirit? Well, Paul said that the only ways he learned ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING about Jesus was from scripture and "revelation". He received nothing from any man. So either he's lying (a distinct possibility) or he basically got it all out of the hebrew bible. I think if he discovered prophecies relating to Jesus, then found out someone really named Jesus was roaming around Israel, he would have said something, SOMETHING about that. But we're left with the 'argument from silence'. Which is a BITCH. It just comes down to, "what does that say to you"? To me, if I was writing letters about some guy who did lots of awesome stuff while on earth, why would i go out of my way NOT to mention ANY of it? Thats why I lean mythicist. but, i could be very wrong.

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I agree about the glorified body. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" - this is probably meant literally and not as a metaphor about morality.

 

I brought up this stuff because when I was a Christian, in those moments of doubt, one of the arguments I'd fall back on was the Who Moved the Stone? argument. By that I mean the claim that the apostles were martyred (w/ exception of John), and they wouldn't have been tortured or put to death for what they believed was a lie. So they must have believed Jesus rose from the dead. And the only thing that could have convinced them of that, after the shock and disillusionment of their teacher's crucifixion, would have been the resurrection itself. And a mass hallucination is not possible.

 

Since then I don't subscribe to the above claims, of course. Some reasons:

1. we don't have evidence for the martyrdom of the apostles except for the bible itself (e.g. Stephen) and later traditions that presuppose its truth

2. groups of people in heightened states of religious fervor or what have you (let's just say, religious tension) can claim to have witnessed something that was not there. And the claim can grow over subsequent days and weeks. Just as what we see if we look back on the NT accounts.

3. of course the improbability of someone's rising from the dead, so REALLY GOOD proof is required

 

But the stuff in I Cor bothers me. Normally in handling texts historians are slow to conclude that the writer is lying unless there's counterevidence that shows up the lie. It's a hypothesis but not the first one the researcher usually makes. I looked on Richard Carrier earlier today and somewhere on his site he says that he doesn't think the beginning of I Cor 15 is an interpolation, though he says some critics maintain that it is. That passage doesn't claim that the resurrection is to be in the flesh, in any case.

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