Jesus is the reason baby

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huckelberry
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by huckelberry »

Stem, You might consider the book "The Book of Q and Christian Origins" by Burton Mack. You might find its views not entirely different than yours though he does think there was a Jesus who was interesting.
Ill quote some of the epilogue in the book.

"Q's challenge strikes to the heart of the traditional understanding of Christian origins. Lying at the bedrock of the earliest traditions about Jesus and his first followers, q documents a Jesus movement that was not Christian. The Jesus movement that produced Q cannot be shunted aside as a group of people who missed the dramatic events portrayed in the narrative gospels. They cannot be dismissed as those who mistook Jesus,failed to understand his message, or misunderstood their mission to found the church. The reason they cannot be dismissed is because they were there at the beginning. Q reveals what Jesus people thought about Jesus before there was a christian congregation of the type reflected in the letters of Paul and before the idea of a narrative gospel was even dared. When that thought did occur, it was Q that the authors of the narrative gospels used as a foundation upon which to build their own novel myths of origin.

Q is the best record we have for the first forty years of the Jesus movements. There are other snippets of early tradition about Jesus, but they are all generally agree with the evidence from Q. As remembered by the Jesus people, Jesus was much more like a Cynic teacher than either a Christ savior or a messiah with a program for the reormation of second temple Jewish society and religion. ...."
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

Manetho wrote:
Tue Dec 13, 2022 6:01 pm
dastardly stem wrote:
Mon Dec 12, 2022 2:37 pm
As it turns out, the growing number of qualified scholars turning to mythicism is interesting.
Which scholars are you referring to? The only mythicists with scholarly credentials that I'm aware of are Carrier and Robert M. Price, both of whom have been at it for years.
This list its a list of scholars who are agnostic or question the historicity of Jesus. I'd say I misworded that. Should have said, "qualified scholars turning towards mythicism", assuming a doubting in his historicity is a moving towards mythicism. That is what this thread is about--the lack of reasoning and evidence for historicity.
dastardly stem wrote:
Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:00 pm
Reasoning that "no Jews would have expected a crucified messiah" is just silly, since that is exactly what would be expected.
Why is it "exactly what would be expected"?
[/quote]
Either way, the idea of a personal savior god dying and rising from the dead to live again was not original to Christianity. It was, in fact, fashionable. Many cultures all around the borders of, and traveling and trading through Judea, had one. It was all the rage. It was thus not surprising in that context, that some fringe Jews decided to invent one of their own. And they may have done so deliberately, in a bid to reform what they believed was a corrupt religious system; or they have done so unconsciously, their subconscious minds “reading into” the scriptures ideas they had unthinkingly absorbed from all these foreign cultures and fads, and then “convincing” their conscious minds it was true by conjuring visions confirming their subtly-influenced intuitions. Either way, Jesus is just a late comer to the party. Yet one more dying-and-rising personal savior god. Only this time, Jewish.
https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/13890
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

Gadianton wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 7:04 pm
What I want to know is if the mystical religion that Paul and allegedly a handful of others believed in based on the inferences mentioned by stem fits in with other mystery movements at the time.

For instance, in our day, we have Q, who doesn't exist but people believe Q exists and his mythology is partially driven by the more formal "baker" conspiracy theorists, and part by crowd fantasy.

Jesus could have been the Q of that day. But, while it's possible such inventions could exist back then, it would help credibility in my mind if there were other movements of the same kind that are better established from that time. For Jesus to be part of a wholly original kind of movement of which absolutely no evidence for such a kinds of movements exist save the inferences about Jesus, you're positing the existence of both a new class and the one and only member of the class all at the same time.
Uniqueness is the essence of one's story. Not one mystery religion is a complete copy of another, we can assume. Not one dying and rising character of the past need be a duplicate of another. On the theory of mythicism, which admittedly I'm wanting to steer clear from, Jesus was but one of many mystery cults found in the region. I just quoted a line from Richard Carrier above, but it's relevant here too:
Either way, the idea of a personal savior god dying and rising from the dead to live again was not original to Christianity. It was, in fact, fashionable. Many cultures all around the borders of, and traveling and trading through Judea, had one. It was all the rage. It was thus not surprising in that context, that some fringe Jews decided to invent one of their own. And they may have done so deliberately, in a bid to reform what they believed was a corrupt religious system; or they have done so unconsciously, their subconscious minds “reading into” the scriptures ideas they had unthinkingly absorbed from all these foreign cultures and fads, and then “convincing” their conscious minds it was true by conjuring visions confirming their subtly-influenced intuitions. Either way, Jesus is just a late comer to the party. Yet one more dying-and-rising personal savior god. Only this time, Jewish.
https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/13890
So again, for me, it would help a lot to first establish the class: there existed mystery religions in that era based purely on personal revelatory authority. Here are examples. Then establish a new member: Look, Paul and these other guys seem to fit this other established model.

Sure, it's possible that this was a one-off kind of religion and the only example ever of it from that time, and if it is it is, but it's establishing a whole heck of a lot from very little.
I would recommend reading the book On the Historicity of Jesus, and maybe Proving History before that. Honestly its very interesting. I'm not the biggest advocate for mythicism because to me it all comes down to a distinction without a difference. I'm more interested here in pointing out how bad supplies of evidence get used to make a case of dogmatism forwarded by historicists.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

huckelberry wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 8:07 pm
Huckelberry wonders,
I find Mr Ehrmans comments to be reasonable . I do not see why Stem is waving his arms about dismissing Q.
I'm simply dismissing the notion that we have Q. We don't. That is all. Ehrman claims we have Q, I say we do not. He can't show me we have Q, so it appears I am right, right?
Stem, what does a book have to do to qualify as argument for Jesus existence.
At minimum the claimed book would have to exist, wherein we can read it, and examine it. We don't have Q. We have hypothetical renditions of what a Q might look like if it ever was. But we also have strong cases made to show there is no need to posit a Q at all.
There have been numerous scholarly books about the historical Jesus making analysis of evidence.
Which books are you referring to? I don't think there is a single book written in the past 100 years that qualifies as a good study into the question and then concluding Jesus lived or it's more likley he lived. Bart's book has too many flaws, it seems to me, was never sent to pass scholarly muster.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

huckelberry wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 11:05 pm
Stem, You might consider the book "The Book of Q and Christian Origins" by Burton Mack. You might find its views not entirely different than yours though he does think there was a Jesus who was interesting.
Ill quote some of the epilogue in the book.


"Q is the best record we have for the first forty years of the Jesus movements."
Yes...the hypothetical Q is the best we have, but...we don't have it. There's better reasoning on the side saying it never existed then on the side saying it did exist. But yes, if there were a Q it would be the best record we have. Since there is not, the best we have is a hypothetical Q. And that's simply not evidence. Not good evidence, surely, and not even supportive of the claim Jesus lived.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Philo Sofee
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by Philo Sofee »

dastardly stem wrote:
Fri Dec 16, 2022 3:05 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 8:07 pm
Huckelberry wonders,
I find Mr Ehrmans comments to be reasonable . I do not see why Stem is waving his arms about dismissing Q.
I'm simply dismissing the notion that we have Q. We don't. That is all. Ehrman claims we have Q, I say we do not. He can't show me we have Q, so it appears I am right, right?
Stem, what does a book have to do to qualify as argument for Jesus existence.
At minimum the claimed book would have to exist, wherein we can read it, and examine it. We don't have Q. We have hypothetical renditions of what a Q might look like if it ever was. But we also have strong cases made to show there is no need to posit a Q at all.
There have been numerous scholarly books about the historical Jesus making analysis of evidence.
Which books are you referring to? I don't think there is a single book written in the past 100 years that qualifies as a good study into the question and then concluding Jesus lived or it's more likley he lived. Bart's book has too many flaws, it seems to me, was never sent to pass scholarly muster.
Have you read Dale C. Allision, Jr., Constructing Jesus?
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus?
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered?

I think your claim is wildly weird. Nothing in the last 100 years? Am I to take it that you have read all the books on Jesus during that time and you can logically make the claim, or is this outrageously wild hyperbole on your part?
If you have read just these 3 books you would see how ridiculous your 100 years claim is. You are dismissing, not learning which books are valid and which ones aren't. That takes years and years to do and hundreds of books read, all of which no one of us here have actually done yet.
huckelberry
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by huckelberry »

dastardly stem wrote:
Fri Dec 16, 2022 3:08 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Wed Dec 14, 2022 11:05 pm
Stem, You might consider the book "The Book of Q and Christian Origins" by Burton Mack. You might find its views not entirely different than yours though he does think there was a Jesus who was interesting.
Ill quote some of the epilogue in the book.


"Q is the best record we have for the first forty years of the Jesus movements."
Yes...the hypothetical Q is the best we have, but...we don't have it. There's better reasoning on the side saying it never existed then on the side saying it did exist. But yes, if there were a Q it would be the best record we have. Since there is not, the best we have is a hypothetical Q. And that's simply not evidence. Not good evidence, surely, and not even supportive of the claim Jesus lived.
Stem, you state this is not evidence Jesus lived. If you read the quote I provided you might notice that it does not say evidence Jesus lived.It is speaking about what people said and thought about the Jesus story. To fill that role what we have for q is quite real. It is portions of Matthew and Luke. That is quite real we just do not know what might have been included that did not get adopted.
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Fri Dec 16, 2022 9:57 pm
Have you read Dale C. Allision, Jr., Constructing Jesus?
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus?
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered?

I think your claim is wildly weird. Nothing in the last 100 years? Am I to take it that you have read all the books on Jesus during that time and you can logically make the claim, or is this outrageously wild hyperbole on your part?
If you have read just these 3 books you would see how ridiculous your 100 years claim is. You are dismissing, not learning which books are valid and which ones aren't. That takes years and years to do and hundreds of books read, all of which no one of us here have actually done yet.
It’s not my claim. I’m repeating a claim made by many before me, and I think it’s correct.
There has, by contrast, been no peer reviewed monograph in defense of the assumption of historicity for over a hundred years—not since Shirley Jackson Case published a now-deeply-outdated treatment for the University of Chicago in 1912 (a second edition released in 1928 isn’t substantially different). Which is so old, even mainstream scholars reject most of Case’s assumptions now (see OHJ, pp. 592-93).
https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/16763

I’ve read Allison’s book you mention. It assumes a Jesus and argues for what he likely would be. I think I’ve heard enough about Crossan’s book and position to say the same. I’d guess that’d be Carrier’s contention as well. I’m following his lead on that since as you point out I wouldn’t know. I’ve seen a number of people make this point without much dispute so I figured it’s a safe bet.

Thanks for chiming in Philo. Always a pleasure.
Last edited by dastardly stem on Sat Dec 17, 2022 3:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
dastardly stem
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by dastardly stem »

huckelberry wrote:
Fri Dec 16, 2022 10:30 pm

Stem, you state this is not evidence Jesus lived. If you read the quote I provided you might notice that it does not say evidence Jesus lived.It is speaking about what people said and thought about the Jesus story. To fill that role what we have for q is quite real. It is portions of Matthew and Luke. That is quite real we just do not know what might have been included that did not get adopted.

I read the quote and commented on it, drawing us back to the topic at the end of my comment. I did not suggest burton Mack’s quote was about Jesus’ historicity. But surely he’s wrong in suggesting we have Q. We don’t. It’s speculative. It’s a hypothetical source used to attempt to explain things like the synoptic problem and other such things. I get the feeling people get in wishing it into existence or supposing since we speculate on it so much we basically have it. But we don’t. I linked Goodacre’s take called The Case Against Q. Excellent refutation I’d say.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Philo Sofee
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Re: Jesus is the reason baby

Post by Philo Sofee »

Dastardly Stem
It’s not my claim. I’m repeating a claim made by many before me, and I think it’s correct.
Gossip isn't evidence. Repeating what others say doesn't make a thing true, as we all grasp. Would it matter if 15,000,000 make a claim? Say, the Book of Mormon is true? Would you accept that just because it's a claim made by many? I'm just askin... It too is always a pleasure to converse here with you as well.
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