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Did Christianity Start with Jesus?

joelr

Well-Known Member
You then quote Dever and Thompson as reflecting this consensus. :D

I suspect that you've never actually read a book by either. Am I right?

No you are wrong.

No problem; the same can be said of most people. But, since you like Wikipedia (as do I) you might wish to browse the Wikipedia: Thompson entry, particularly:

Thompson is a part of the minimalist movement known as the Copenhagen School, a group of
Thompson's arguments were criticized by many biblical scholars, prominent among them William G. Dever in his book What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, which has been described as "a very polemic and partly vehement attack not least against Professor Thomas L. Thompson".​


Thompson's initial book in the 1970's caused him much grief and he had to go to Canada to work.
Now his views are consensus among biblical historians regarding the mythical nature of Moses and the Patrairchs. Pr Francesca Stavrakopoulou speaks often on this topic.

"Jonah was *not* swallowed by a fish, there was *never* an exodus, and Moses *never* existed, according to atheist and biblical scholar Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou (a Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion in the Theology and Religion department at Exeter University"​

In fact, much of Dever's popularity (or, perhaps, notoriety) stems largely from his polemics against biblical minimalism. He, at least, might be seen as a champion of the consensus.

Regarding Moses, Dever's 2017 Beyond the Texts is worthy of note.

The first thing one finds is that the name "Moses" is absent from the subject index. As for the Exodus:

The biblical portrait of Sinai and Transjordan at the time of any exodus (now clearly thirteenth century) is unrealistic. Apart from a few possible memories in oral tradition, the writers are obviously viewing the region from their point of view in the seventh century or later. Again, the biblical texts are a secondary source; archaeology, the primary source, is largely silent. To be sure, recent studies by archaeologists (as well as most biblical scholars) have suggested that behind these stories there may be authentic memories of a small "exodus group," essentially the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin. Sometimes designated significantly "the house of Joseph," these groups were the principal authors of the traditions as we now have them. [pg. 124]​

.
Yes there are always some truth to a myth. Some people may have been in slavery and came over to Israel. These are the stories of a people. Not literal stories but stories that gave them an identity.

Carol Meyers, an archeologist and professor of religion at Duke University, -

"
We can see the Moses narratives as the products of a period of trauma. We see this at other times and places. Think about our own American history. In the difficult period of the Revolutionary War, there's a lot of trauma and turmoil. Should people fight for freedom and risk losing everything? Or should they remain dominated by European colonial powers? And one man, George Washington, emerges as a superhero, the one in whom people could put their faith, who would take them to new terrain, who would lead them to independence. If you look at the biographies of George Washington that were written before 1855, you would think he was a demigod. The mythology about him is incredible.

In some ways, we have that kind of material about Moses. The hype about him is a way of expressing the fact that people could trust his judgment. They could trust that there would be success in this highly risky venture of leaving a place where they at least had food and water and going to a place where they might not have enough food and water. But they were apparently convinced it was worth the risk, if they might eventually be able to determine the course of their own lives and to escape the tyranny of Egyptian control."



NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets | Moses and the Exodus | PBS

William Denver is very clear here, the OT is more of a myth than historical. The stories and places have been enlarged and there is no evidence for most of the main characters and t's not even written to be a historical record.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Of course, there were other forms of Christianity. I have been pointing are there being forms of Jesus followers prior to Paul that disagreed with things Paul said, such as the crucifixion being some kind of sacrifice, the reality of the resurrection, observance of Jewish Law. Although there was a Jesus movement(s) before Paul, it does not appear that there were any mythical elements to it. All of that got added on later.

A savior who dies and resurrected is a highly mythical element.




As I have shown, Carrier’s interpretation of Romans 1:3 is incorrect in terms of the word used – not ‘made’ but ‘became’, the Greek grammar – an active voice as suits ‘became’ when ‘made; would require-a passive voice, the context of the expectation of the audience – that the messiah would come from the House of David, and even the sense of the very next verse.

As I have said several times now, ‘born’ would focus on the mother but the intent is to focus in the whole lineage. Nowhere in the Jewish scriptures is the word ‘born’ ever used with respect to the messiah. Carrier’s argument is wrong.
Paul uses the word for birthed bodies - having been born - in Romans9:11.
We cannot know exactly what Paul meant. Carrier was correct in that.


‘Made’ and ‘became’ are two different words with different meanings requiring different voices. We can know for sure that Paul used the word ‘became’ in the active voice (even Carrier admits it now) and that Paul’s usage is in line with all the other references to the messiah coming from the lineage of David and that his usage of the word ‘seed’ is in line with all other references to the seed of a person being that person’s descendants in the Jewish scriptures and the NT. There is no reason whatsoever for thinking that Paul means anything else than Jesus being of the lineage of David, which is exactly how his audience would understand it.

For Carrier’s interpretation to possibly be the case would require that the well-known Jewish expectation then and now that the messiah would come from the House of David in the normal sense of being a descendent in the usual way, that this expectation had been so completely supplanted throughout all of Judaism by the belief that the messiah would be literally manufactured from the literal preserved sperm of David that the Jews in Rome would instantly recognize that this is what Paul meant despite him having used the wrong word in the wrong voice. And then that literal sperm belief, despite its total replacement of the House of David expectation, would vanish from history without a trace and the House of David belief magically reappear.

It is 100% certain that Carrier made up a whopper of a story to go along with the mistranslation in the KJV which he used because he does not know Greek. If you think that the above two total replacements of belief really happened with no trace of the manufacture from sperm belief ever existed, please provide strong supporting evidence for that claim, not from


Carrier.What Did Paul Mean in Romans 1:3? • Richard Carrier

Carrier makes the logic for people understanding what was meant in the article which you have never read. Jesus would be from the lineage?



Where is the part about Osiris being a savior? The idea of resurrection at the end of days already appeared in Jewish thought in 1 Enoch long before Paul. Paul uses the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus story to ‘prove’ the reality of that popular hopeful expectation. It is not rising and dying that is the issue but being a savior god who rises and dies.
You are resorting to boring apologetics. The Persian world savior already pre-dates Christainity. Source material on papryus shows resurrected cult members being judged by Osirus. These demigods were all savior gods. The fact that Judaism was obsessed with blood magic atonement is one reason why the "savior" aspect in this religion is so prominent. You need a sacrifice for everything to please this God.

These were all personal savior gods. They got you into the afterlife.

There is no dying/rising god in Zoroastrianism. As I have previously documented, the savior Saoshyant who will be born near the end of the world does not appear until the Denkard text that is definitely dated to after the Muslim invasion of Iran. The reason for the appearance of the savior Saoshyant is the long history of oppression in Iran which is detailed in that book. It all sounds suspiciously like the Zoroastrians copied Christianity on this one. This idea would not have been a part of the Zoroastrian religion during the Persian era in Israel. Although Judaism definitely integrated a number of Persian beleifs.

I don't think Carrier mentions a Zoroastrian dying/rising demigod.


There were definitely differing opinions about key points about Paul’s Christology and the others do not consider him an apostle because he came along after them. Paul jumps through hoops in 1 Cor 15 to try to demonstrate that he should be considered an apostle even though he admits he came along after the real apostles. And as we see above, the points of disagreement with the earlier Jesus followers are exactly over the mythicist elements that Paul introduced. The original Jesus followers did not buy into the various things that the mythicists criticize. Sure sounds like there was a real Jesus but not the supernatural kind as later portrayed.

Now you are way out on a limb. There is a gigantic BLACK zone where any gainsaying, criticizing, disagreeing with what eventually became doctrine is wiped off the face of the earth.

Paul says this and that and yet never mentions an earthly Jesus. This is highly suspect and completely dominates any point you have here. The fact remains Paul may have been speaking of a celestal Jesus. Your point is resting on "it sure sounds like..."
Ok, whatever.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
I have previously criticized this in great detail. Please respond to those criticisms in detail before you post this again.



As I have said earlier, in the Jewish scriptures, the word ‘born’ is never used about the messiah. It would focus on the mother. Instead he is always portrayed as a descendent of David which is what matters. And once more, as I have said multiple times now, the word seed referring to the seed of a persons is very clearly always referring to the descendants of that person.

And as I have said earlier, since the descendent of David who would sit upon the throne sometime in the future after the throne has been created sometime in the future, later Jews were free to say this future king was the future messiah who would oust the foreigners and establish an everlasting kingdom. All that is required is that the messiah be descended from David, which was as I have documented was the belief at the time. That is by far the simplest and most reasonable re-casting of the meaning of 2 Samuel 7:13

As I believe I may have said earlier, Philippians 2 definitely means ‘becoming’. Paul is urging the Philippians to imitate Jesus in humbling himself. Phil 2:7 uses two forms of the word ginomai.

The first is in Jesus emptying himself of the divine identity (from verse 6) and becoming human. The active sense of emptying himself goes with the active sense of becoming human (Middle Deponent = active voice as usual. If Jesus was made to do those things, where is the voluntary humility?

The second is in Jesus becoming obedient, Middle Deponent again. Are we supposed to believe Jesus was manufactured obedient? Obedience is an attribute of the mind not the body. Was the mind of Jesus also manufactured at the time he became human? Where is the voluntary humility in that?

But the KJV mistranslates the word as ‘made’ and that is good enough for Carrier, who does not know Greek. Or apparently have much reading comprehension.
I have already provided links to Carrier teaching classes using the original Greek. This lie you insist on continuing shows you are not serious.
Like other savior Gods Jesus was not "made" but was an arcangel. If you feel like reading Cariers article you will see we cannot establish exactly what Paul meant in Romans 1:3 but he counts it for historicity anyways.


What happened to Jesus not being born as Carrier claimed? Looks like he was born out of a woman after all instead of Carrier’s song and dance about Galatians 4:4 not meaning what it straightforwardly does mean. Carrier cannot link his ideas about Paul to the Gospels. They are contradicting Carrier.

I have no idea what you are talking about? In Paul Jesus may be a celestial being who was resurrected in the celestial realms. Later in the gospels a bunch of fiction was written where Mary was impregnated with the seed of David which is just as strange.




The portrayal of Jesus in the Gospels is not at all like an Essene. They lived in tightly knit communities and even in physically isolated ones. They avoided public interaction. There is no way that an Essene would have gotten into arguments with Pharisees about interpretation of the Oral Torah, and most definitely not quoted Isaiah in that argument since the Essenes did not accept the Prophets.

It is these stories about arguing with the Pharisees that contain details pointing to genuine clashes decades before Mark wrote that (minus miracles) are the most authentic sounding. One can see the ultrastrict Shammai Pharisees being parodied at one point. The Shammai Pharisees claimed that the Sabbath is the World to Come in miniature, which in Judaism is true to a considerable extent. For example, one does not do ordinary work on the Sabbath because in the World to Come one will not need to. The Shammai Pharisees to an extreme. Anything that will not need to be done in the World to Come is forbidden on the Sabbath. One cannot visit the sick on the Sabbath because in the World to Come no one will be sick.

Mark’s story about the Pharisees wanting to kill Jesus for performing a miracle on the Sabbath and healing a man with a crippled hand has got to be aimed at Shammai Pharisees. In the World to Come no one will have a crippled hand so a miracle will not be necessary. Satirical to be sure, but clearly aimed at the Shammai crowd. They just saw a miracle performed and want to kill the miracle worker for breaking their super strict rules. A Hillel Pharisee would not react that way.

The Shammai Pharisees were mostly wiped out in the Jewish War, being Roman hating participants. Today’s Judaism is descended mostly from the Hillel Pharisees who were not involved in the war. When Mark wrote there were no longer any Shammai Pharisees to speak of, This and other parts of Mark sound very much like legitimate early traditions. We might mention that in Mark’s Gospel there is only an Empty Tomb at the end. Tradition has it that Mark got much of his Gospel from Peter in prison. In 1 Corinthians there are people who do not accept the idea of resurrection. One of the proponents of an unspecified different gospel mentioned is Cephas (Peter). A long chain to connect but an interesting notion.[/QUOTE]

At 20:08 Carrier mentions that some in scholarship believe the Essene point of view is given by whoever was writing the Jesus character:
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
If Romans 1:3 is not literal, then ‘seed’ does NOT mean ‘sperm’? Which way is it, literal or non-literal? In actuality the seed of David is another figure of speech, a euphemism. Seed of David means descendants of David. In the Jewish scriptures when a name of a generic person is mentioned in conjunction with his seed, it is always clearly about descendants of that person. This would instantly be understood by Paul’s Jewish audience in Rome.

He's saying it could be allegorically, figuratively or literally.

"We cannot answer the question with the data available whether Paul meant “sperm” (i.e. seed) allegorically (as he does mean elsewhere when he speaks of seeds and births, such as of Gentiles becoming the seed of Abraham by God’s declaration), or literally (God manufacturing a body for Jesus from the actual sperm of David), or figuratively (as a claim of biological descent—-even though Paul’s vocabulary does not match such an assertion, but that of direct manufacture). At best it’s equal odds. We can’t tell."
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/16065



As I will later be discussing in detail in a later post, the earliest mention of pregnancy by swimming in a lake is in a work not considered scripture and refers to the bad things that have happened to the Persian people at the hands of foreigners beginning with Alexander and continuing up to the Muslim invasion in the 7th century CE. Not a possible influence on Christianity and quite possibly the other way around.

The main tenants of what the Jewish religion took from the Persians has already been discussed and sourced.



I discuss this at greater length below. We have been through this already. At one point, Carrier did say that Ignatius wanted to change the scriptures when, as I have documented, Ignatius was clearly responding to Docetists that claimed that Jesus was only a spirit after all, despite what the scriptures actually indicate in many places.

If Carrier really said at some point that the scriptures were changed – and as I said I cannot find that – that could explain the convoluted logic in trying to portray Ignatius as claiming that.

Carrier is using Ignatius to show there was definitely a movement of Christians who were not literalists:
Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians • Richard Carrier

There is also the problem that Carrier claims that Paul always means manufactured and not became. But in Galatians 4:4 that would mean that Jesus was manufactured out of a woman. I thought it was sperm. Oh, this one is not literal but an ‘allegory’? Became out of a woman sounds pretty clear to me. Also that he would become under the law at his bris 8 days later. And that is very obviously how Paul’s readers would understand it.

Yes that is an allegorical passage. Carrier shows this here:
Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegorical • Richard Carrier

A number of translations render the word γενομένου in Romans 1:3 as ‘born’. The KJV translates it as ‘made’ wrong. Both if these is incorrect. Carrier claims that manuscripts were doctored. Let us look at that in detail.

Here is Romans 1:3 in the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus, beginning with the word outlined in red. While earlier manuscripts of parts of Romans have been found, this is the earliest of Romans 1.

@@@View attachment 45631

At that early date, Greek was written in majuscule (upper case only) uncial (square letters) scriptio continua (no space between words).

This is a clearer rendering
ΠΕΡΙΤΟΥΥΙΟΥΑΥΤΟΥΤΟΥΓΕΝΟΜΕΝΟΥΕΚΣΠΕΡΜΑΤΟΣΔΑΥΙΔΚΑΤΑΣΑΡΚΑ

Later on, Greek would be written in miniscule (upper and lower case) with spaces between words and diacritical marks like this
περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα,

The root of the underlined word is γίνομαι (ginomai) which means ‘become’. It does not means ‘made’.

This particular instance is γενομένου (genomenou) which is a participle (‘ing’ word) aorist tense (happened in past) middle deponent voice (active). The preceding definite article τοῦ (the) makes this into a substantive (noun equivalent). Therefore ‘one-becoming’.

The KJV was based on the Textus Receptus, presumably the ‘received text’ Carrier refers to. Here is Romans 1:3 from that.

περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος δαβὶδ κατὰ σάρκα

It is clear that the word was always ‘one-becoming’ in case anyone wants to argue that this got changed.

Although it is the word that means ‘one-becoming’, the KJV incorrectly translates it as ‘made’. But Carrier did not know Greek so he thought it really meant ‘made’ and came up with this wacko idea about sperm.

Your bizarre accusation that Carrier doesn't understand and read the original Greek is delusional. His PhD includes original NT sources and he's done a historicity study? Write a paper on the argument and submit it.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
The Saoshyant born of a virgin idea does not appear at all in Zoroastrianism until Book 10 of the Denkard. See verses 15-18. Book 7 of the Denkard refers to historical events in the history of the Persian people including
the 7th century invasion of Persia by the Muslims See item 7 in the list.

It is far easier to believe that Zoroastrianism copied from Christianity than the other way around.

Now I suspect you have some apologetics agenda here. I presented clear evidence of scholarship explaining where early Judaism came from and you have ignored it all because of 1 point you think you've made.

The Ancient Persian Doctrine of a Future Life
The Ancient Persian Doctrine of a Future Life on JSTOR

"Zoroaster, the prophet who spoke at least 6 centuries before Jesus. The good will be rewarded, the wicked punished, the dead shall rise and live again, the world shall be restored to joy....this strain runs through Zoroastrianism from a time before the Jews were carried up to captivity at Babylon. ...This doctrine of bodily resurrection formed a cardinal tenant in the Magian faith. This is from the 4th century BC.

30:10
more PhD on what the Jews took from the Persians.

Considering that the Gospels use the phrase Son of David 15 times in referring to Jesus, I think that is pretty obvious.

Ephesians was not written by Paul. It starts off with lots of snippets from earlier Pauline works then slides into a discussion of church issues and situations that did not exist until well after Paul. Regardless of where you stand on authorship, we can see what was meant by the original use of the terms involved.


Ephesians 1:3, 1:20-21 and 2:5-7 all use ‘on-heavenlies’. As we have just seen, Carrier’s rule about that does not work.



In his book, Carrier uses the Ascension of Isaiah as the basis of his claim for stacked heavens. In that work there are seven heavens. In 2 Enoch there are ten heavens. Carrier says Paul has three. Which is the Jewish cosmology Paul would have been aware of?

In his book that you have Carrier shows Paul would have ben familiar with the Jewish cosmolohy of the day which included the 3 heavens. Look that up.




ZOMG what a brilliant comeback! I love the way you addressed my argument in such great detail and with such finely tuned counter-arguments!

NOT!

I provided good reasons why Paul would not provide much detail about the life of Jesus. He never knew Jesus and knew only what others might have told him plus whatever details he would have gotten from the Apostles would have portrayed Jesus as an observant Jew, screwing up Paul’s anti-Law mission. If you can address why this cannot be the case, provide your reasons now.

uh, it might not be the case because it's speculation. Paul knows of a Jesus who dies and rose possibly in a celestial realm. You provided apologetics. What Paul did know had nothing to do with observing Judaism or laws, it has details about a completely fictional demigod who came back from the dead!? Paul knew about something that was clearly a myth. If there was an actual person behind this myth Paul forgot to give any details.

Paul probably didn't know about the life of Jesus because the gospel narratives are wildly fictious, written like fiction and incredible improbable. They had not yet been created.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
“Scholarly estimates regarding the date of the Ascension of Isaiah range anywhere between the final decades of the first century to the early decades of the third century, though scholars prefer some time in the early 2nd century. The reason for this large range in dating is due to the fact that there is virtually no information that allows for a confident dating into any specific period.

The earliest section, regarding chapters 3:13-4:22, was composed at about the end of the first century AD or perhaps early second century and is believed to be a text of Jewish origins which was later on redacted by Christian scribes”
Ascension of Isaiah - Wikipedia

If this started out as a Jewish work in the late 1st century or early 2nd century then any mention of Jesus, as in the second section, would have to come later. No support for it being written contemporaneously with the Gospels.

Except I posted a video of a PhD explaining that we now believe the earliest form of AI is around the time of the gospels. You provide the Wiki version. Hmmm, who wins??
Oh and in his book he provides a detailed reason on the early dating - the text of Martyrdom assumes the legend of Nero's Return is an imagined threat and is unaware of any other Emperor having persecuted Christians, two facts that place it near the time of Revelations........and so on......



I have OHJ online in a searchable form. I can find nothing in there that stands up to scrutiny and definitely nothing that demonstrates that he knows Greek.

Oh, whoops. Did you miss the hundreds of Greek words in () next to english words, ALL OVER THE BOOK?


[/QUOTE]Rise of Popular Belief in a Personal Messiah.

Not until after the fall of the Maccabean dynasty, when the despotic government of Herod the Great and his family, and the increasing tyranny of the Roman empire had made their condition ever more unbearable, did the Jews seek refuge in the hope of a personal Messiah. They yearned for the promised deliverer of the house of David, who would free them from the yoke of the hated foreign usurper, would put an end to the impious Roman rule, and would establish His own reign of peace and justice in its place. In this way their hopes became gradually centered in the Messiah.
MESSIAH - JewishEncyclopedia.com

The idea is that the messiah would come from the House of David not manufactured from his literal sperm. I previously posted from the Aramaic Pe****ta whose translators from the Greek also took it as totally obvious that Paul the House of David to be understood.

For ‘seed’ in Romans 1:3 to mean literal would require that the Jewish Christians in Rome to be so familiar with the idea that literal sperm was meant that it would instantly and totally replace the well-known idea of the messiah coming from the House of David, that is being a descendant of David in the perfectly ordinary sense. Where is there any evidence of that? Without convincing evidence that this sperm idea was so widely known that Paul could count on Jewish strangers in Rome to instantly understand it, Carrier’s claim is dead in the water. “Carrier says so” is not evidence.



Of course I have. I have been quoting from them and criticizing them all along. I also read OHJ and criticized it. Try providing counter-arguments beyond throwing at me exactly the things I just severely criticized. [/QUOTE]

Thank you for ending that with a direct lie, So that's a bunch of nonsense. You continuse to demonstrate you did not read anything by Carrier. The link to a Jewish encyclopedia is hilarious? Of course they are not going to acknowledge any religious syncretism? Are you serious with that? I posted a modern Professor of Old Testament studies literally saying what was taken from the Persians and when? Talk about ignoring evidence?



IIt is not merely weird. It is not merely improbable. It requires gigantic ad hoc assumptions for which there is no support whatsoever and which run contrary to what we do know of beliefs in that era. I have already addressed the Zoroastrianism virgin story in a previous post. It is absolutely of much later provenance than Paul and cannot have been an influence on Paul or his predecessors, which makes it irrelevant. In any case, Carrier’s argument is nonsense as I have repeatedly shown. Maybe Carrier invented his story after reading about the Denkard, which would totally remove it from any consideration.

No, you added the word "virgin"? I already debunked that. The world savior is from at least 4th century BC?
I showed Professor FS saying the same thing.
The world's leading schholar on the Persian religion, same thing?
Richard Carrier, same thing?
Doesn't matter, it's been shown there were at least 7 pre-Christian dying/rising savior gods in teh area before Christianity. Clealry the writers of the gospels were looking to update the religion with more popular ideas and re-work old ideas. I've already given examples of OT narratives transformed into NT stories which are clearly fiction. So without writing history they were updating myths to reflect changing ideas.

Also "it's weird" isn't a criticism?
“It’s weird, therefore improbable” is not a scholarly but in fact an anachronistic and thus amateurish response to this. Even the Zoroastrians had similarly imagined their messiahs to be born from the ancient stored semen of their religion’s founder; and as I note in OHJ, Jewish lore about the powers of demons implied something akin had even already been done to David, in order to sire sons by him through foreign mothers to fight him on the battlefield. God’s powers as described throughout Jewish and Christian lore were clearly capable of even weirder things than this. So no one would have deemed it odd or implausible that he could do this too. We only think it’s weird because we live in a different culture that finds everything Christians believed their God could or did do was weird (like storing empty resurrection bodies for us in outer space, or placing the Garden of Eden in outer space—two things Paul expressly believed and took for granted no one would question). But they didn’t think those things were weird. So they wouldn’t think this thing was either.

The only way to escape this conclusion is to argue it’s more likely that someone who came to believe in a celestial Christ narrative would abandon that belief as soon as they were confronted with Nathan’s Davidic seed prophecy, than that such a person would simply reinterpret that Davidic seed prophecy to match their celestial Christ narrative. And there is simply no plausible way to argue that. Even the authors of Matthew and Luke didn’t see it that way: both adopted either the cosmic seed or allegorical reading of Nathan’s prophecy, and expressly depicted Jesus’s origin that way.

Hence it does not matter how “weird” their reinterpretation is. Christianity and Judaism are full of weird reinterpretations of prophecy when confronted with prophecies they can’t otherwise make fit the facts or their most cherished beliefs. In fact, that’s just about the only way they ever dealt with refuted or contradictory prophecies. As even Gospels’ nativity narratives exemplify: they don’t even try to depict biological Davidic descent; they instead choose the far weirder solution of direct divine manufacture of the body of Jesus. Which nevertheless is therefore still declared to be Davidic. If that’s not weird, then neither is a cosmic version of the very same thing, nor any allegorical understanding they also could have imagined.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
T
Carrier is wrong. If Matthew and Luke did not want to present Jesus as a descendant of David, why do they call him Son of David multiple times? Why would Matthew even bother with an elaborate genealogy if he is going to deny Davidic descent? Matthew needs to have Jesus be of Davidic descent in order to claim Jesus to be the messiah, which his Rabbinic Judaism rival denies. At the same time, he needs to remove the taint of polytheism from Paul’s divine Son of God by making Jesus a human person blessed by God to be the messiah as his Jewish Christian audience requires.

Just as Paul used Philo to make Jesus divine, Matthew uses Philo to make Jesus human. Philo writes of multiple pregnancies inspired by God with no human involvement and even states that virgins are the most proper recipient. However because God needs nothing (a big point with Philo), the nominal father is in fact the true father and the offspring is his legitimate child. In short the child is not divine but human and a proper member of the house from which his nominal father descended.

For more details
If you wish to argue with this, do so in that thread.

There is no way that Matthew would want to use anything from Paul, his other rival who wants Jewish Christians to stop being Jews.

Matthew’s story (and Luke’s) are made up to sell their individual agendas. They don’t agree on any NT Big Picture. Oh and BTW, since both Matthew and Luke have Jesus born from a mother, aren’t they contradicting Paul on that point? [URL='https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/explaining-the-virgin-birth.239038/page-3#post-6895873[/url'].
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He is the son of David and he isn't:
Yes.
He was the son and seed of David, the fruit of his loins his according to the flesh. Therefore being a prophet [David], and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. [URL='https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/acts/2.html#30']Acts 2:30

Of this man's seed [David's] hath God, according to his promise, raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus. Acts 13:23

Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. Romans 1:3

Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David. 2 Timothy 2:8

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David. Revelation 22:16

No.
He is not the son of David. (How could David call him "Lord" if he was his son?) Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? Matthew 22:45
And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The LORD said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son? Mark 12:35-37
[/URL]


Carrier is a con artist out to sell books. He says the wildest and totally unsupported things to generate controversy and trap Bible believers into saying unsupported things that he can criticize and generate publicity.

I have not speculated anything. I have presented detailed arguments that not only have you never addressed but even denied that I made any arguments by claiming I never even read Carrier’s blogs.

You have to do better than that.


Nice how you changed that to "blogs" when you first lied and aid you read and laughed at his book. A lie.
Do better.



Of course, there were other forms of Christianity. I have been pointing are there being forms of Jesus followers prior to Paul that disagreed with things Paul said, such as the crucifixion being some kind of sacrifice, the reality of the resurrection, observance of Jewish Law. Although there was a Jesus movement(s) before Paul, it does not appear that there were any mythical elements to it. All of that got added on later.

With the exception of some early traditions found in Mark and probably in Matthew, the Gospel stories are made up for particular purposes. It is not even certain that the Docetists Ignatius is arguing against gave any credence at all to the Gospels much less considered them allegories.


A dying/rising demigod is mythical.






As I have shown, Carrier’s interpretation of Romans 1:3 is incorrect in terms of the word used – not ‘made’ but ‘became’, the Greek grammar – an active voice as suits ‘became’ when ‘made; would require-a passive voice, the context of the expectation of the audience – that the messiah would come from the House of David, and even the sense of the very next verse.

Like I keep saying we cannot know exactly what Paul meant. We can specuate.


[URL='https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/explaining-the-virgin-birth.239038/page-3#post-6895873[/url']
Where is the part about Osiris being a savior? The idea of resurrection at the end of days already appeared in Jewish thought in 1 Enoch long before Paul. Paul uses the ‘resurrection’ of Jesus story to ‘prove’ the reality of that popular hopeful expectation. It is not rising and dying that is the issue but being a savior god who rises and dies.

In his book Carrier cites which dying/rising god are personal savior gods (they grant entry into an afterlife, eternal life or some other feature and other resurrecting gods who are not personal savior gods. They all pre-date Christianity.[/URL]
There is a sub-group of just savior gods however:
The Savior-God Mytheme
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
  • They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
  • They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
  • They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
  • They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
  • They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
  • They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
  • They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
  • They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
  • They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
  • They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
  • And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).
You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

  • They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
  • They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
  • They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
  • That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
  • By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
  • Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
  • They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
  • Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.
This is sounding even more like Christianity, isn’t it? Odd that. Just mix in the culturally distinct features of Judaism that it was syncretized with, such as messianism, apocalypticism, scripturalism, and the particularly Jewish ideas about resurrection—as well as Jewish soteriology, cosmology, and rituals, and other things peculiar to Judaism, such as an abhorrence of sexuality and an obsession with blood atonement and substitutionary sacrifice—and you literally have Christianity fully spelled out. Before it even existed.

You can find all the evidence and scholarship establishing these facts in Elements 11 and 31 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 96-108; 168-73). This “common package” was indeed simply “syncretized” with Jewish elements, ideas, requirements, and sensitivities (e.g. Element 17, ibid., pp. 141-43). The mytheme was simply Judaized. And thence Christianity was born. The “differences” are the Jewish element. The similarities are what were adopted from the widespread mythemes raging with popularity everywhere around them.
https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/explaining-the-virgin-birth.239038/page-3#post-6895873[/url
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
There is no dying/rising god in Zoroastrianism. As I have previously documented, the savior Saoshyant who will be born near the end of the world does not appear until the Denkard text that is definitely dated to after the Muslim invasion of Iran. The reason for the appearance of the savior Saoshyant is the long history of oppression in Iran which is detailed in that book. It all sounds suspiciously like the Zoroastrians copied Christianity on this one. This idea would not have been a part of the Zoroastrian religion during the Persian era in Israel. Although Judaism definitely integrated a number of Persian beleifs.

Carrier does not list a Persian resurrecting demigod. The 7 listed are from other cultures. It's clear what Judaism picked up from the Persians and I've already posed scholarship from several sources.

There were definitely differing opinions about key points about Paul’s Christology and the others do not consider him an apostle because he came along after them. Paul jumps through hoops in 1 Cor 15 to try to demonstrate that he should be considered an apostle even though he admits he came along after the real apostles. And as we see above, the points of disagreement with the earlier Jesus followers are exactly over the mythicist elements that Paul introduced. The original Jesus followers did not buy into the various things that the mythicists criticize. Sure sounds like there was a real Jesus but not the supernatural kind as later portrayed.

Yeah a real Jesus who dies and resurrects like a mythical demigod in what was super popular around that time and already prophecized after Jewish prophets learned of it from the Persians. Myth.




What happened to Jesus not being born as Carrier claimed? Looks like he was born out of a woman after all instead of Carrier’s song and dance about Galatians 4:4 not meaning what it straightforwardly does mean. Carrier cannot link his ideas about Paul to the Gospels. They are contradicting Carrier.

Read what I previously said about Matthew and respond to that in the linked thread, please.

Well you should have read the entire argument the first time instaesd of reading nothing and pretending you read the entire book then hand waving another book (you called "nonsense) that you also didn't read regarding Bayes Theorem.
Lies catch up to you.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]
 
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joelr

Well-Known Member
In the section of the book immediately prior to page 41 you will see a discussion of the evolution of Zoroastrianism over time. Zoroastrianism today has all those beliefs but they were not all present when Israel was under Persian rule. The Yasht is part of the Younger Avesta, not written down until the 5th century and known from comparing different versions to have undergone changes by different oral sources along the way. That Yasht 19 has been changed considerably can be seen that although nominally dedicated to the earth, it has virtually nothing to do with that dedication. Other Yasht do follow the topic of their dedication. A really telling feature is that the evolution of Jewish thought in the post-Persian era starts from only those Jews left alive when God comes to fix everything will participate in the renewed world to a human messiah will accomplish the renewal and that the dead will also be resurrected. Yet Yasht 19 has all of those at once.

Yasht 19:89. That will cleave unto the victorious Saoshyant and his helpers, when he shall restore the world, which will (thenceforth) never grow old and never die, never decaying and never rotting, ever living and ever increasing, and master of its wish, when the dead will rise, when life and immortality will come, and the world will be restored at its wish;

The Saoshyant story in the Denkard, which elaborates on this including for the first time in Zoroastrian literature that the mother of the Saoshyant will be a virgin, definitely came about after the Islamic invasion since it refers to that. We can see the reuse and extensive elaboration of Yasht 19 story coming about as the result of the long sufferings of the Persians under foreign rule, which did not even start until Alexander and continuing in identifiable phases until the Muslims. It is this same history of oppression that the Jews suffered that led to a personal messiah idea being developed and the detail parallels with much older Christianity in the Denkard suggest that this was the direct inspiration for that later Zoroastrian idea.
This is all wrong. When the Yash came out wasn't when the concept was invented? This is more apologetics?

Mary Boyce, an authority on Zoroastrianism, writes:

Zoroaster was thus the first to teach the doctrines of an individual judgment, Heaven and Hell, the future resurrection of the body, the general Last Judgment, and life everlasting for the reunited soul and body. These doctrines were to become familiar articles of faith to much of mankind, through borrowings by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[30]



More MB:

Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.


influence on Satan:
During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[27][8][28] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu,[8][29] the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignorance.[8] In the Septuagint, the Hebrew ha-Satan in Job and Zechariah is translated by the Greek word diabolos (slanderer), the same word in the Greek New Testament from which the English word "devil" is derived.[30] Where satan is used to refer to human enemies in the Hebrew Bible, such as Hadad the Edomite and Rezon the Syrian, the word is left untranslated but transliterated in the Greek as satan, a neologism in Greek.[30]

The idea of Satan as an opponent of God and a purely evil figure seems to have taken root in Jewish pseudepigrapha during the Second Temple Period,


30:00


All of the things you source are not the beginnings of the concepts but a time when they were written down. In her book Boyce explains these statements above as accurate.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Professor Stravopolou says nothing about Zoroastrianism. She talks about Persian influence on the evolution of Judaism which is certainly the case. Keep in mind that there were Persian religions older than Zoroastrianism, which was not yet dominant. T

Persian influences on Judaism, including very possibly ones unique to Zoroastrian. Definitely.
Judaism and Christianity deriving from Zoroastrian writings from centuries after the advent of Christianity as Carrier wants. No.
Persians influenced Jews. Like I said.



If 6 or 7 dying/rising savior demigods are so agreed on by the historicity field, it should be a cinch to name them. Remember that they have to be dying/rising savior demigods with definite pre-Christian stories that would be accessible to people in the general mid-East / Mediterranean world.

In particular please reference a dying/rising god that was part of Zoroastrianism before 332 BCE when the Jews were no longer in contact with Persia.


Here is some fun reading.


Dying and Rising Gods | Encyclopedia.com

That is just the intro.
Oh my god you sourced an online enyc with an article from 1987 (no qualifications)and they sourced books from the early 1900's??
Yet you claimed to have/laughed at Carriers book? A HA HA HA HA HA
Carrier details 7 of then in his book and gives sources all. Stone tablets.
Osiris
Not only does Plutarch say Osiris returned to life and was recreated, exact terms for resurrection (anabiôsis and paliggenesia: On Isis and Osiris 35; see my discussion in The Empty Tomb, pp. 154-55), and also describe his physically returning to earth after his death (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 19), but the physical resurrection of Osiris’s corpse is explicitly described in pre-Christian pyramid inscriptions!

Plutarch writes that “Osiris came to Horus from the other world and exercised and trained him for the battle,” and taught him lessons, and then “Osiris consorted with Isis after his death and she became the mother of Harpocrates.” It’s hard to get more explicit than that. Contrary to Ehrman, there is no mention of Osiris not being in his resurrected body at that point. To the contrary, every version of his myth has him revive only after Isis reassembles and reanimates his corpse. As Plutarch says, “the soul of Osiris is everlasting and imperishable, but his body Typhon oftentimes dismembers and causes to disappear, and that Isis wanders hither and yon in her search for it, and fits it together again” (On Isis and Osiris 54).

And indeed, carved on the walls of the pyramids centuries before Christianity began were the declarations of the goddess Isis (or Horus, or their agents), “I have come to thee…that I may revivify thee, that I may assemble for thee thy bones, that I may collect for thee thy flesh, that I may assemble for thee thy dismembered limbs…raise thyself up, king, [as for] Osiris; thou livest!” (Pyramid Texts 1684a-1685a and 1700, = Utterance 606; cf. Utterance 670); “Raise thyself up; shake off thy dust; remove the dirt which is on thy face; loose thy bandages!” (Pyramid Texts 1363a-b, = Utterance 553); “[As for] Osiris, collect thy bones; arrange thy limbs; shake off thy dust; untie thy bandages; the tomb is open for thee; the double doors of the coffin are undone for thee; the double doors of heaven are open for thee…thy soul is in thy body…raise thyself up!” (Pyramid Texts 207b-209a and 2010b-2011a, = Utterance 676). That sure sounds like a physical resurrection of Osiris’s body to me. (As even confirmed by the most recent translation of James P. Allen, cf. pp. 190, 224-25, 272. The spells he clarifies are sung to and about the resident Pharaoh, but in the role of Osiris, receiving the same resurrection as Osiris, e.g. “there has been done for me what was done for my father Osiris on the day of tying bones together, of making functional the feet,” “do for him that which you did for his brother Osiris on the day,” etc.)

Plutarch goes on to explicitly state that this resurrection on earth (set in actual earth history) in the same body he died in (reassembled and restored to life) was the popular belief, promoted in allegorical tales by the priesthood—as was also the god’s later descent to rule Hades. But the secret “true” belief taught among the initiated priesthood was that Osiris becomes incarnate, dies, and rises back to life every year in a secret cosmic battle in the sublunar heavens. So in fact, contrary to Ehrman (who evidently never actually read any of the sources on this point), Plutarch says the belief that Osiris went to Hades was false (On Isis and Osiris 78); and yet even in that “public” tale, Osiris rules in Hades in his old body of flesh, restored to life. Hence still plainly resurrected. But as Plutarch explains (On Isis and Osiris 25-27 & 54 and 58), the esoteric truth was that the god’s death and resurrection occurs in sublunar space, after each year descending and taking on a mortal body to die in; and that event definitely involved coming back to life in a new superior body, in which Osiris ascends to a higher realm to rule from above, all exactly as was said of the risen Jesus (who no more remained on earth than Osiris did). The only difference is that when importing this into Judaism, which had not a cyclical-eternal but a linear-apocalyptic conception of theological history, they converted the god’s dying-and-rising to a singular apocalyptic event.

And that’s just Osiris. Clearly raised from the dead in his original, deceased body, restored to life; visiting people on earth in his risen body; and then ruling from heaven above. And that directly adjacent to Judea, amidst a major Jewish population in Alexandria, and popular across the whole empire. But as Plutarch said in On the E at Delphi 9, many religions of his day “narrate deaths and vanishings, followed by returns to life and resurrections.” Not just that one. Plutarch names Dionysus as but an example (and by other names “Zagreus, Nyctelius, and Isodaetes“). And we know for a fact this Dionysus wasn’t the only example Plutarch would have known. Plutarch only names him because he was so closely associated with Osiris, and the most famous.

then
Dionysus
Zalmoxis
Inanna
Adonis

do you want more?


Show me anywhere in the Bible where it says the world will end in fire. If you cannot do that, admit it.
See this is apologetic now and completely uninteresting. You want to raise minor point and quibble as if the general meaning is wrong. This is what apologetics do "oh Osius wasn't like Jesus she was hung on a branch..."

The Sun scorches the Earth with intense heat and even burns some people with fire. (16:8–9)
the wicked, along with Death and Hades, are cast into the Lake of Fire, which is the second death. (20:11–15)
"smoke [rises] from [the Abyss] like smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky [are] darkened by the smoke from the Abyss" (9:2).

This is apocalyptic literature, obviously taken from the Persians (or some other myth).
Actually does have a considerable amount of fire yet you want to waste time on complete BS. Meanwhile everything I've said is true. Persian influence, other myths incorporated, savior gods incorporated into Judaism equals Christianity. This is still the most likely senario.
Yeah, not completely fire, dragons, human locusts, asteroid strikes, lightning, earthquakes.
I think we got Carriers' point "world ends in fire" actually sums it up pretty nice.






The quotes from Campbell do not mention anything about linear time. It is also found in the Akkadian myths from before 2000 BCE that Genesis 2-4. What constitutes linear time is a matter of definition, What definition are we using? And the creation stories (2 of them) in Genesis are related to really old Sumerian or Akkadian myths, not Persian.

Campbell explained, as did Boyce in another quote that the Jews took concepts of linear time from the Persians.
You haven't debunked one single thing. But are just throwing out "what about this....." Genealogies are NOT THE ASPECT OF LINEAR TIME he was speaking about. He actually explained it in the quote. Are the creation stories related to Akkadian myths, WOW I don't care which myth they took crap from?
My point is IT's ALL MYTH. The end. And it is. You have not demonstrated even a little these ridiculous stories are anything but made up stories.


[/QUOTE]Judaism at that time had many different forms of sin atonement. Only sometimes was blood involved. It was connected with blood as atonement for the sins of the people only on Yom Kippur. o no, Yom Kippur does not work.[/QUOTE]

Magic blood atonement. Yahweh needs blood. Sacrifice. It's archaic. Jesus replaces the annual temple sacrifice with a one-time blood of a demigod sacrifice. I do not care how Paul framed it that does not change the fact that this is a Jewish version of the dying/rising savior cult.

[/QUOTE]All forms of literature – histories, biographies, in addition to religious works – used these literary techniques. Not at all unique to myth.[/QUOTE]

But the myth ones take OT stories and transform them into new stories as I demonstrated in the video. This religion, as all are myths.
 
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joelr

Well-Known Member
Carrier’s presentation is about proving that the Gospels are not literally true in every word. That’s right. They are all about pushing individual agendas sometimes in opposition with each other. They use some really great techniques and imagery in that pursuit. But what has this to do with Jesus being mythical? The Gospels were written 40 and more years after Jesus. What they say has no bearing on what really happened. They did not invent Jesus as we can see from Paul and from Paul’s predecessors who had other ideas about Jesus before Paul and from Mark’s use of clearly old stories. Who is going to understand the arguments between Shammai Pharisees and Hillel Pharisees when there are no more Shammai Pharisees?

They invented a fictional story about a demigod. You ask how this isn't mythical? It's a myth? Full of improbable events, magic and it was prophecied from the Persian myths, Paul knew of nothing but a dying/rising demigod.
The gospels are complete fiction. In fact Carrier demonstrated OT narratives were used in part to construct someof the gospels?

Mary Boyce agrees that the elements I posted earier were taken from Zorastrianism.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Referring to existing scriptures was common. Paul also indulged in it as did Luke. Matthew went over the top with it. We can see the Jewish Mishnah and Gemara written years later doing it very often. So?


So it's all made up, myth. Not real. From Paul to the gospels.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Persian influences on Judaism, including very possibly ones unique to Zoroastrian. Definitely.
Judaism and Christianity deriving from Zoroastrian writings from centuries after the advent of Christianity as Carrier wants. No.
The Ancient Persian Doctrine of a Future Life on JSTOR


page 158:


no doubt on one point, the Sayoshant (savior) doctrine is pre-Christian

"conceived by virgin bathing...the Avestan text shows connection with the resurrection..
 

Miken

Active Member
A savior who dies and resurrected is a highly mythical element.

As I have addressed several times at length, there was an earlier Jesus movement that did not believe in the resurrection. Paul was considered to be a johnny come lately upstart trying to introduce strange new ideas by trying to weasel himself in as an Apostle. It sounds like this movement included Peter. Recall that Mark, in possession of some very legitimate sounding early stories about Jesus, and who tradition says got his stories from Peter, ends his Gospel with an empty tomb and no risen Jesus in sight.

Carrier claims that there were lots of savior dying/rising demigods, all of them named Savior (which I have shown is not what Jesus means) yet never names a single one. Paul wanted the death of Jesus and the claim of resurrection to be the guarantee of a future resurrection, a popular notion then going around. He made the story up on that basis. No need for prior myths.

Paul uses the word for birthed bodies - having been born - in Romans9:11.
We cannot know exactly what Paul meant. Carrier was correct in that.

In Romans 9:11, Paul is referring to the story of Jacob and Esau. That story is not about the lineage from which the fraternal twins came. Romans 9:11 is about the actual birth of the twins which is very important to the story.

Genesis 25 (Tanach)
21 And Isaac prayed to the Lord opposite his wife because she was barren, and the Lord accepted his prayer, and Rebecca his wife conceived.
22 And the children struggled within her, and she said, "If [it be] so, why am I [like] this?" And she went to inquire of the Lord.
23 And the Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two kingdoms will separate from your innards, and one kingdom will become mightier than the other kingdom, and the elder will serve the younger.
24 And her days to give birth were completed, and behold, there were twins in her womb.
25 And the first one emerged ruddy; he was completely like a coat of hair, and they named him Esau.
26 And afterwards, his brother emerged, and his hand was grasping Esau's heel, and he named him Jacob. Now Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them.
27 And the youths grew up, and Esau was a man who understood hunting, a man of the field, whereas Jacob was an innocent man, dwelling in tents.
28 And Isaac loved Esau because [his] game was in his mouth, but Rebecca loved Jacob.

Now let’s see how Paul uses this. Recall that he is speaking to Jewish Christians, arguing that Gentile Christians are not obliged to follow the Law, and in fact that Jewish Christians should abandon it.

Romans 9
6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, 7 and not all are the seed of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your seed be named.” 8 This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed. 9 For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” 10 And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls— 12 she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

Israel is a name later given to Jacob. But not everyone descended from Jacob is a child of the promise. The two children were born out of order, with Esau first and Jacob second. And although Isaac, the child the promise to Sarah, loved Esau, it would be Jacob who would become Israel. And salvation does not come about through the Law (acts of the Law as Paul says earlier),

The quote - “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” – is from Malachi 1:2. Malachi says that the Jewish people have come to despise the Lord by giving hollow lip service to worship and by neglecting justice and charity. The children of Jacob have screwed up. The Lord will come and straighten everything out.

When Paul is talking about a real instance of physical pregnancy and birth he uses γεννάω (born) but when talking about a line of children in this same passage he uses the word σπέρμα (seed). Everywhere in the NT and the Jewish scriptures when lineage is intended, the word ‘seed’ is used, including in Paul.

But Carrier never wants to understand actual context. He just wants to quote mine individual words to support crazy ideas, which derive from him taking the KJV mistranslation as accurate because he did not know Greek.

The truth is that the messiah being a descendant of David is exactly what the Jews in Rome would expect to hear and definitely how they would understand Paul to be saying. All of Carrier’s arguments fail big time as I have repeatedly shown. It is perfectly clear what Paul meant. But Carrier, not knowing Greek, thought that when the KJV said ‘made’ it was the real meaning. When it was made very clear to him that this was not the case, he jumped over to ‘but when Paul says it, it means manufactured’, which as I have repeatedly shown and continue to show below is simply not the case. But admitting he was wrong would mean not selling his books anymore, so it HAS to mean that.

Carrier.What Did Paul Mean in Romans 1:3? • Richard Carrier

Carrier makes the logic for people understanding what was meant in the article which you have never read. Jesus would be from the lineage?

Not only have I read it, I have quoted from it and criticized it. But you not only ignored that but you deny that I even did that. After all, how can anyone doubt the Gospel according to St. Carrier?

In Romans 1:3, Paul literally writes “concerning His Son, who came to be from the sperm of David according to the flesh.”

As I have repeatedly shown, every single use of the term ‘the seed of so and so’ in the NT and in the Jewish scriptures very plainly refers to descendants. There are only 8 uses of many hundreds in the Jewish scriptures and none at all in the NT of the word to mean ‘sperm’ and they all refer to ritual purity after ejaculation and to putting your sperm in the wrong person. The Jewish Christians Paul is talking to would know perfectly well that the messiah will be a descendant of David and I have documented that this is definitely the case. There is no way the Jews Paul is writing to would take it any other way.

But Carrier did not know Greek and took the KJV incorrect translation of ‘became’ into ‘made’ and came up with his crazy word game idea for selling books. Notice that in the article you linked, Carrier finally admits that the word does not mean ‘manufactured’ as he originally claimed but ‘became’.

It is an indisputable fact that when Paul says this, he uses a word he only uses of manufactured, not birthed bodies (ginomai, referring to Adam’s body: 1 Corinthians 15:45, in the very context of describing Adam’s body; and our future resurrection bodies: 1 Corinthians 15:37, which, as for Adam, God will manufacture for us).

I have answered this several times but since it contradicts Carrier you have to say I never read it. I will repeat my most recent argument.

1 Corinthians 15:37

καὶ ὃ σπείρεις, οὐ τὸ σῶμα τὸ γενησόμενον σπείρεις ἀλλὰ γυμνὸν κόκκον

and what you-are-sowing not the body the shall-be-becoming you-are-sowing only bare kernel

Paul is using the image of sowing plant seeds as a metaphor for burying a dead body. He is giving the Corinthians who are doubting the idea of resurrection something familiar to relate to. The kernel will in fact become a plant. The plant will not be manufactured (passive voice). It will grow (active voice). To think Paul meant ‘made’ would turn this familiar image into something odd and unfamiliar and lose the appeal. Paul would lose the doubting Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 15:45

οὕτως καὶ γέγραπται, Ἐγένετο ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος Ἀδὰμ εἰς ψυχὴν ζῶσαν: ὁ ἔσχατος Ἀδὰμ εἰς πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν

this and it-has-been-written became the first human Adam into soul living the last Adam into spirit giving-life

The word ψυχὴν (translated ‘soul’) does not refer to the body (which could be dead) but to the breath of life. Adam became alive.

When did Jesus become a spirit that gives life? At his resurrection, which is the guarantee of the promise of resurrection.

It is not manufactured bodies that are being discussed, it is that mortal life is not the only life and Jesus is the way to eternal life.

Paul NEVER used the word for manufactured. But Carrier only quote mines words way out of context and applies his crazy ideas to them to try to wiggle out of getting it totally wrong in the first place because the KJV said ‘made’ and Carrier did not know Greek.


It is an indisputable fact that Paul uses a different word every time he refers to birthed bodies (gennaô, e.g. Romans 9:11, Galatians 4:23 and 4:29).

Paul uses the word for birth when he is talking about specific physical births. But he uses the word for seed when he is talking about lineage just as he does in Romans 9 when you do not ignore context as Carrier is so fond of doing. In Galatians, Paul is also talking about specific births, not lineage.

Elsewhere Carrier argues that Jesus was born after all by referring to Matthew and Luke. So which one is it? But when you paint yourself into a corner you are going to get paint on your shoes trying to get out

It is an indisputable fact that subsequent Christian scribes were so bothered by the above two facts that they tried to doctor the manuscripts of Paul to change his word for “made” into his word for “born” (and did this in both places where Paul alludes to Jesus’s origin: Romans 1:3 and Galatians 4:4).

Carrier first says that modern translators are using the wrong word. Now he tries to claim that Christian scribes tried to change the manuscripts themselves. There is absolutely no evidence for that anywhere and as I have shown, the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus, the earliest copy of Romans 1 in existence, definitely says ‘become’ not ‘make’. Not does any Greek manuscript I can find use the word for ‘born’. This is just Carrier flimflamming (aka lying).
 

Miken

Active Member
You are resorting to boring apologetics. The Persian world savior already pre-dates Christainity. Source material on papryus shows resurrected cult members being judged by Osirus. These demigods were all savior gods. The fact that Judaism was obsessed with blood magic atonement is one reason why the "savior" aspect in this religion is so prominent. You need a sacrifice for everything to please this God.

These were all personal savior gods. They got you into the afterlife.

Apologetics? You still have not figured out that I having been arguing against the Christian perspective and not just Carrier

Concerning the word Saoshyant

“In the Gathas, the most sacred hymns of Zoroastrianism, believed to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, the term is used as a common noun to refer to the prophet's own mission and to his community of followers, who "bring benefit" to humanity. The common noun also appears in the Younger Avesta (e.g. Yasna 61.5), where it generically denotes religious leaders, including Zoroaster (e.g. Yasna 46.3)[1] Another common noun airyaman "member of community" is an epithet of these saoshyants. In contrast, the standing epithet of the saviour figure(s) is astvat-әrәta "embodying righteousness,"[2] which has arta/asha "Truth" as an element of the name.[3] These saviours are those who follow Ahura Mazda's teaching "with acts inspired by asha" (Yasna 48.12).”
Saoshyant - Wikipedia

The word Saoshyant does not mean ‘savior’. It means the mission of Zoroaster, or his followers, or religious leaders, or members of the community. Saoshyants are never called saviors. BTW the reference for that is Boyce.

Saoshyans were not demigods but people. And they did not die and rise.


Osiris did not rise from the dead. After he was killed, he became the lord of the underworld and judge of the dead.

“According to the form of the myth reported by the Greek author Plutarch, Osiris was slain or drowned by Seth, who tore the corpse into 14 pieces and flung them over Egypt. Eventually, Isis and her sister Nephthys found and buried all the pieces, except the phallus, thereby giving new life to Osiris, who thenceforth remained in the underworld as ruler and judge.

From about 2000 bce onward it was believed that every man, not just the deceased kings, became associated with Osiris at death. This identification with Osiris, however, did not imply resurrection, for even Osiris did not rise from the dead. Instead, it signified the renewal of life both in the next world and through one’s descendants on Earth.”
Osiris | Description, Myth, Symbols, & Facts

The Jews were not obsessed with blood magic atonement. There were lots of ways of atoning that did not involve blood. It was Yom Kippur that associated atonement with blood sacrifice. Yet it is not the Day of Atonement that Paul refers to.

1 Corinthians 5
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover (lamb), has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The Passover sacrifice is not about sin atonement. Passover is about Jews being rescued from Egyptian slavery. The blood of a sacrificed lamb was sprinkled on the doorposts of Jewish homes to mark them as safe from the killing of the firstborn, the final sign that convinced Pharaoh to let them leave Egypt. The reference to cleaning out the chametz definitely points to Pesach. (We may note here that Paul is talking to Jews in Corinth, yet he has trouble with people (even Jewish Christians who consider it a stumbling block!) accepting Paul’s idea of the meaning of the crucifixion, and big time problems with getting his resurrection story accepted.

I don't think Carrier mentions a Zoroastrian dying/rising demigod.

Carrier never identifies any dying/rising savior demigods. He just says there are lots if them and they are all named Savior. You are the one who brought in Zoroastrianism.

Now you are way out on a limb. There is a gigantic BLACK zone where any gainsaying, criticizing, disagreeing with what eventually became doctrine is wiped off the face of the earth.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Paul himself in 1 and 2 Corinthians and in Galatians and in Romans said that there were others who were teaching things contrary to Paul. The gainsaying, criticizing and disagreeing did not go down any black hole. Paul admits it was there. But Christians always come up with a million reasons why the scriptures do not mean what they mean. So do mythicists.

Paul says this and that and yet never mentions an earthly Jesus. This is highly suspect and completely dominates any point you have here. The fact remains Paul may have been speaking of a celestal Jesus. Your point is resting on "it sure sounds like..."
Ok, whatever.

Paul does mention an earthly Jesus as I have already shown. He is descended from David according to the flesh. Or if you insist he was manufactured out of the sperm of David it is still according to the flesh. How can that not be earthly? Jesus gets killed and buried and raised from the dead. How can that not be earthly? As I have shown, there are good reasons why Paul did not want to say anymore. He never knew Jesus and whatever else he got from the Apostles would point to a Law observant person, which is the last thing Paul would want.

We do not see anything about a non-earthly Jesus until in 2 Cor 12 when Paul tries for the second time to slither away from getting called out for claiming to be an Apostle.



My Thanksgiving dinner will be delivered to my door soon and I have solid commitments for the entire weekend. I will not be bothering to reply to any more of your posts until sometime after that. With you it is all just ‘but Carrier says…’ You even insist that I have never even read Carrier’s blogs. Not only have I read Carrier’s blogs but I have addressed them with detailed counter-arguments that you never respond to.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
I believe you could add to that the concept that Jesus , as God is the word of God as stated in John 1:1.
Oh this is possibly going to be a long and technical discussion as to what the word God (or god) means, how it is applied, what Bible translators and commentators say about this, and last but certainly not least, whether "God" is a trinity combination of sorts. Plus this may not be the right thread for your point there and discussion. So I'm going to suggest you start a thread about the trinity if that's what you want to discuss. Let me know so we can go into detail. Thanks.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
As I have addressed several times at length, there was an earlier Jesus movement that did not believe in the resurrection. Paul was considered to be a johnny come lately upstart trying to introduce strange new ideas by trying to weasel himself in as an Apostle. It sounds like this movement included Peter. Recall that Mark, in possession of some very legitimate sounding early stories about Jesus, and who tradition says got his stories from Peter, ends his Gospel with an empty tomb and no risen Jesus in sight.

Carrier claims that there were lots of savior dying/rising demigods, all of them named Savior (which I have shown is not what Jesus means) yet never names a single one. Paul wanted the death of Jesus and the claim of resurrection to be the guarantee of a future resurrection, a popular notion then going around. He made the story up on that basis. No need for prior myths...
Ok, well you bring up many points. I am not that smart and can only handle one or two at a time, so an early point you brought up caught my interest. So here it is...(I might like to go over some of your other points later, they're interesting, but here is my impression at the start...)
Who do we we believe? Paul? Or those he contradicted or tried to straighten out?
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
No you are wrong.



Thompson's initial book in the 1970's caused him much grief and he had to go to Canada to work.
Now his views are consensus among biblical historians regarding the mythical nature of Moses and the Patrairchs. Pr Francesca Stavrakopoulou speaks often on this topic.

"Jonah was *not* swallowed by a fish, there was *never* an exodus, and Moses *never* existed, according to atheist and biblical scholar Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou (a Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion in the Theology and Religion department at Exeter University"​


Yes there are always some truth to a myth. Some people may have been in slavery and came over to Israel. These are the stories of a people. Not literal stories but stories that gave them an identity.

Carol Meyers, an archeologist and professor of religion at Duke University, -

"
We can see the Moses narratives as the products of a period of trauma. We see this at other times and places. Think about our own American history. In the difficult period of the Revolutionary War, there's a lot of trauma and turmoil. Should people fight for freedom and risk losing everything? Or should they remain dominated by European colonial powers? And one man, George Washington, emerges as a superhero, the one in whom people could put their faith, who would take them to new terrain, who would lead them to independence. If you look at the biographies of George Washington that were written before 1855, you would think he was a demigod. The mythology about him is incredible.

In some ways, we have that kind of material about Moses. The hype about him is a way of expressing the fact that people could trust his judgment. They could trust that there would be success in this highly risky venture of leaving a place where they at least had food and water and going to a place where they might not have enough food and water. But they were apparently convinced it was worth the risk, if they might eventually be able to determine the course of their own lives and to escape the tyranny of Egyptian control."



NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets | Moses and the Exodus | PBS

William Denver is very clear here, the OT is more of a myth than historical. The stories and places have been enlarged and there is no evidence for most of the main characters and t's not even written to be a historical record.
Ya know..I was just reading about the collapse of an ancient dam in Yemen. There was a prosperous city built in the desert there thriving before the dam collapsed. Marib. The buildings are still standing. But! If they were not there due to erosion, windstorms, and other things, we might figure it was never really there.
 

IndigoChild5559

Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Ok, well you bring up many points. I am not that smart and can only handle one or two at a time, so an early point you brought up caught my interest. So here it is...(I might like to go over some of your other points later, they're interesting, but here is my impression at the start...)
Who do we we believe? Paul? Or those he contradicted or tried to straighten out?
Paul contradicted the Tanakh (OT). The Tanakh stresses over and over from start to finish the importance of obedience. Paul says the law brings a curse, that it's belief that matters and only belief.

Now the way I see it, we all agree that the Torah and Tanakh are God's word, that they are the oracles of God. So if something contradicts the Tanakh, we know it to NOT be of God. My advice to you is to ditch Paul.
 
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