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I'm not a biblical scholar, like at all, but isn't that exactly the sort of thing he'd say/ do?
Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about
Like yeah I don't, but didn't he curse a fig tree for not having fruit, while it wasn't fig season?
Didn't he get himself executed for like being offended that people were doing business at the temple?
How is that not taking shit personally and arguing with strangers?
You don't think he'd be like coming in hot on a comment chain?
The cursing of the fig tree has echos in other Jewish literature best example is Moses hitting a rock to get it to send out water.
The temple had to do business. It wasn't practical for everyone to bring their own animals and the coinage issue wasn't considered a big deal. If there has been a historical Jesus (again there wasn't) he most likely started the assault on the temple because he was trying to fulfill the OT prophecy of its destruction. Kinda like when you want sex so you give your partner a back rub.
You got to understand all the accounts of man were written multiple decades later by liars.
I'm not sure what to do with this information.
I imagine they want you to be convinced and become a Christian.
Please don't spread misinformation .
Please don't spread cognitive biases
Please don't commit link dump articles you didn't read advocating for a viewpoint that is not supported by evidence.
Jesus didn't exist. No one can keep their story straight about events in his life. Everyone who spoke about his life was lying and we can identify the lines via basic textual criticism. Evidence of his existence that should be here is missing.
I am sorry your Messiah was just a grift by James and Cephus but it is better to hear it late than never. Happy Saturnalia maybe spend this evening trying to find the nativity scene in the Bible, and not building a hybrid one off Matthew and Luke.
Bruh I'm not even Christian. All of the events in his life don't have to be corroborated for him to be a real person. You for example probably haven't had everything you've done recorded but you are certainly a person because there are contemporary accounts of your existence. Jesus from Nazareth didn't have to be proven to have risen from the dead to be a real man who existed.
Having a combative attitude isn't gonna make your point dude.
If Jebus isn’t real, how did she make that meme? Checkmate Atheists!
I am an ordinary person so any claims about my existence are ordinary. Even a minimum historical Jesus (I am sure you know that term without looking it up ;)) would be extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. The very first writer of the man described a celestial being, not a human, the second writer of the man recycled Elijiah.
Why don't you tell me which part of the claim you have evidence for? So far you have listed his name and village of birth. There were other Messiah figures named Jesus both from birth and as a title. Since it means saviour. As for Nazareth, historians can't find it. Josphius names ten towns right around it and doesn't mention it. After hundreds of archeological digs they found a barn, a barn that they can't even prove was standing 0 AD, only around that time period. Could easily have been built in 50AD.
Oh ok
Extra-canonically he was certainly talking a lot about dank images:
Jesus said, "When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!"
- Gospel of Thomas saying 84
[...] Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, [...] an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."
- Gospel of Thomas saying 22
(This was more relating to Plato's concept of eikon and what was effectively a version of the simulation hypothesis in antiquity, but if we throw out the context it could potentially be talking about making memes.)
potentially?
It was definitely about memes. It's why the Gospel of Thomas is heresy.
The Tank? That was a canon event.
See I like your work. I don't get why you buy into Bible Literalism. Go ahead and publish already something already on the Gospel of Thomas. I will buy it if you do.
I don't get why you buy into Bible Literalism.
I don't, and I'm not sure where you get the sense that I do.
There's a very wide gulf between thinking that a historical person named Jesus existed and that the New Testament depiction of that person is accurate.
There's a ton of things in there that are pretty clearly BS, but the way in which they are BS seems much more like an attempt to spin historical events than to invent them from scratch.
For example, Peter's denials.
Dude is nicknamed after a "hollow rock" which is actually a terrible thing to try to use as a foundation, but it's an incredible nickname for someone regularly missing the point and arguing with you.
Then around the time Jesus is being tried approximately three times Cephas is also denying Jesus three times, even seen going back into a guarded area where a trial is taking place to do so.
But it's all okay because a rooster crowed?
That sounds a lot more like there had been earlier eyewitness testimony or rumors about "hollow rock" having had a more prominent role in testifying against a historical figure which needed to be spun to be a lesser offense which was explained away as acceptable than it sounds like a fabrication originated by a religious organization owing itself to "hollow rock."
There's many places where the earliest layers of the NT are sort of engaged with a phantom tradition we can no longer see directly, and only in reflection of its opposition. Things like Mark pointing out that the women saw the empty tomb but didn't tell anyone or that Thomas doubted the resurrection but then changed his mind. Given Paul was combating the disbelief in physical resurrection in Corinth in 1 Cor 15 among what was a community following some version of Jesus, maybe traditions later on that owed themselves to female teachers, prominently had females receiving sayings from Jesus separate from the other disciples, and had an over-realized eschatology such that it rejected physical resurrection like the proto-Thomasine group were a bigger deal earlier on than the church would like to let on?
My point is that this kind of undermining and spin - "yes Cephas denied him but it was prophesied" or "no, the women actually saw the empty tomb they just didn't tell anyone, we pinky swear" - is the kind of thing we should expect from a very early split around a cultush origin and not something like Mithraism where a mythologized narrative is adapted and embellished from purely fictional origins.
As for publishing - I'd like to and plan to one day probably at least do a video series on the topic. But this is a hobby and people take religion very seriously to an irrational degree so I'm probably not going to be comfortable linking my real world self to a counter-cannonical Christian public stance until I'm retired. On the upside that gives me many more years to continue to find out more nuances.
Come on man. We have been over this. You can't dump all this at once.
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Peter denying Jesus comes from Mark and Mark was advocating against the apostles pushing for Paul being the leader of the church. The central message of the story is the apostles didn't get it. Heck Jesus is basically a stand in for Mark. All the interesting stuff happens on the non-jewish side of the Sea of Gallie. Which isn't even a sea. He was trying to make Jesus in the image of Paul.
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As for the earlier layers we know what they were. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Elijiah mostly. Almost everything Mark says is right from there or the letters. For the very few things that aren't I have no problem with an oral tradition but that doesn't mean the oral tradition was accurate.
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As for why Mark ended the way it did (originally) I admit I am not sure. I can speculate that he was trying to diminish Mary but again this doesn't matter. We know Paul was in Jerusalem and makes no mention of the tomb additionally he does say buried.
I am sorry but the evidence just isn't there, which is why all 4 quests have failed.
Also yeah I get your hesitation. Do what you got to do. I am just saying I do respect your work on the Gospel of Thomas and would love if you put something out there. Help you as well, you can deal with actual scholars not amateurs like me who suck at Greek.
(1) You'd have a difficult time showing the dependence of John on Mark, and John also has Peter's denials. That work claims to be based on an earlier work by the beloved disciple who is depicted as separate from the later apostle tradition within the work, so there may have been an earlier narrative work both John and Mark share, absent the sayings work Mark would have been relying on which is one of the places it differs noticably from John. I agree that Mark is largely written to set up Paul (if you haven't, check out Dykstra's Mark, Canonizer of Paul), but given Paul's claims are that Peter directed him to the areas he was active in and that he had studied under Peter (but no one saw him except James) in Gal, the work still needs to prop up Peter as the successor who then passed things on to Paul.
(2) Where is Mark 4:3-9 in Elijah? Or Mark 13:1-2? Both public statements that are expanded upon in private instructions in the text. These were very likely known to the audience Mark was being written for and proceeded the work in saying form, which is why it characterized them as being said in public while trying to spin them with the private parts (which it should be noted may well be a later reactive layer to Mark anyways). You might find it interesting to reread Mark closely paying attention to when it breaks off for private instructions or secret disclosures (such as the secrecy around Messianic claims - claims completely absent in something like Thomas).
(3) Correct, the empty tomb was likely a later embellishment, which would make sense given Paul himself likely developed a lot of the eschatology around resurrection and a sin sacrifice. The Corinthian Creed did possibly predate him, but even then it would have only been a core part of it, and Paul expanded on the mythos quite extensively. It's not that Mark is introducing the empty tomb that's remarkable, it's that he's having his only witnesses not tell anyone about it. You see something similar in John where Peter and the unnamed beloved disciple race to the tomb, Peter loses the race, but then the other disciple doesn't go in. There was clearly an effort to try to fit figures like the women or the unnamed beloved disciple (who takes the women into his household at the end of John) into an empty tomb narrative as silent or reluctant witnesses, which would make sense if a competing tradition connected to such 'superapostles' wasn't saying anything about the tomb or resurrection.
all 4 quests have failed
Quests? Like Arthur and the holy grail?
you can deal with actual scholars not amateurs like me who suck at Greek.
It was pretty awesome spending nearly every day for years participating in /r/AcademicBiblical alongside PhDs and very knowledgeable fellow contributors. I definitely learned a lot, and was honored to be labeled as one of the sub's Quality Contributors (their label for a handful of participants without a Master's or PhD who had high quality comments or posts). But unfortunately Reddit administration killed a good thing with their greed, and now I'm on Lemmy and probably won't be back to Reddit again.
If I do get around to a video series one day, the network of some of the people I befriended in that sub who produce the same kinds of material will be a good sounding board though - it's one of the things motivating the eventual effort.
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No difficulty at all. John borrowed from Mark and altered the text. All of them did things like that. None of them were historians and all of them lied
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I didn't say all of it. The public denials were a Mark invention to downplay Cephus.
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Glad you agree that the tomb narrative never happened. You are nearly there btw. Only 1% more and Jesus is gone completely.
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Quests for the historical Jesus. There have been 4.
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He is a fictional. The question is if the writer needs him to do it or not.
He was almost certainly not fictional.
Fictional constructs don't end up having bitterly opposed factions splintering off within decades of their supposed death, but that's an extremely common feature of nearly every cult organized around a historical central figure.
The specific depiction of Jesus canonized likely has many fictional elements, but the idea that there was no historical figure in the first place is pretty ludicrous.
He is almost certainly is fictional. I don't see at all why you think it matters what people did after his supposed existence. Also not sure where you are getting bitterly opposed. Paul was sending money to the Church of Jerusalem. He argued but you don't give free money to people you bitterly oppose. You also don't write a letter saying how the leaders were good people. The fighting really started as Christianity moved into power and little spats made a difference. Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death and the Mormons didn't break out into civil war after Smith died. Scientologists are also doing fine.
Every detail of his supposed life was pulled from literature available and was to generate a specific result. We can also see where they were taking "known" facts at the time and misrepresenting them to try to get what they want.
For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles.
- 2 Cor 11:4-5
Corinth then later on full on deposed Rome's appointees which led to the letter from the bishop of Rome, 1 Clement that's almost entirely devoted to trying to damage control the schism.
And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”? Their judgment is deserved!
- Romans 3:8
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!
- Galatians 1:6-9
You can even see some of the specific concepts that there was a schism about, such as whether there was an over-realized eschatology:
As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 (likely a bit later than Paul)
Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying resurrection has already occurred. They are upsetting the faith of some.
- 2 Timothy 2:16-18
So I'm not sure where you get the notion there was one big happy family of Christian thought in Paul's time and the later 1st century CE when literally the earliest records of Christianity we have are so concerned with competing traditions and ideas. You may be mistaking the survivorship bias of cannonical Christianity eradicating most competing thought later on for a picture of unity (as that's what they try to project) which is why a closer read is warranted.
Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death
It had that fighting even before Siddhartha's death when his brother in law Devadatta broke away to form his own group.
Mormons didn't break out into civil war after Smith died.
You might want to read up on the succession crisis
Scientologists are also doing fine.
You might want to look into the Free Zone schisms from Scientology near and after L Ron's death.
Again. Having small disagreements a generation after the fake death of Jesus doesn't prove that Jesus existed. You are goalpost moving now. You went from bitterly opposed to having literal anything but perfect harmony.
Now do you have anything better than Paul sounded a bit peeved in a letter and your claim with no evidence whatsoever that religious shishms are required for unknown reasons? Got to give you credit this is by far the worst argument I have heard for your Messiah existing. Because people argued he couldn't be real. I am glad no one ever argues about fiction and toxic fanbases don't exist.
Oh and for the record he didn't write Timothy. I am sure a biblical scholar such as yourself knew that already.
"Everything is permissible for me" is a small disagreement with canonical Christianity?
Oh and for the record he didn't write Timothy. I am sure a biblical scholar such as yourself knew that already.
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
It's largely based on outdated tautology dating anything with a whiff of Gnosticism to the 2nd century which only changed up around the turn of the 21st century.
I'd happily wager with you that attitudes around 2 Timothy's grouping with 1 Timothy and Titus (which are forgeries) won't last another 15 years.
P.S. How many of those scholars think there was no historical Jesus?
He was still sending them money and I am not going into the Duetropaul argument since it proves nothing.
P.S. do you know what an argument from authority logical fallacy is? Especially since you are going against the grain with your dating of the Gospel of Thomas. Did you know that around 60% of polled Bible scholars believe the resurrection is a true literal historical event?
Duetropaul, like the drag race? Holy Ghost, it’s real.
Huh? There are 13 letters in the NT that are ascribed to Paul. Of them 7 modern scholarship thinks he wrote and the others are forgeries. It was a rampant problem in the Roman Empire people would write books under a different person's name for revenge or other reasons. Some people believe however that there are still elements of Paul spoken word in the fake letters, I am on the fence about that.
It is kinda interesting to consider it. There are 27 books in the NT, and of them only 8 are written by the person who was ascribed as the author traditionally. So much for the Bible being a good source of knowledge about what was going on.
Thanks. I did not know this. Guess I have to get back to watching the Gnostic Informant.
He was still sending them money
How do you know? Because he says so in the letters?
It's worth looking a bit closer at the fine details...
For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.
- Philippians 4:16-18
Interesting. Paul is getting fancy fragrances sent to him?
Should we be upset about this?
Well wait a second, what do those later cannonical gospels say?
While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.
- Mark 14:3-6
Pretty weird how Paul accepting an expensive fragrance is paralleled in the gospels with Jesus being gifted an expensive fragrance as being a good thing.
I'd be very skeptical of just how much of the money Paul was collecting was being used for its stated purposes.
How much would be enough money to no longer be bitterly opposed? Be exact. The exact coinage needed.
Or you know you can drop this indefensible position that if there is a schism it means there was founder. Since again you have zero evidence of this theorem. I promise to let it die.
Thanks you for admitting the Mark was not writing the history of Jesus, he was writing the history of Paul. I am glad we agree that Mark said nothing about the historical Jesus.
Thanks you for admitting the Mark was not writing the history of Jesus, he was writing the history of Paul. I am glad we agree that Mark said nothing about the historical Jesus.
That's not what I said and you know it.
You seem in this reply and your others to be much more interested in debating a strawman than actual nuance around textual criticism.
That's arguably even easier to do without me replying at all where you would need to twist what I was saying to do so.
If you are ever interested in actually discussing the material seriously, I'll be around.
Jebus never condemned Hummus. Look it up in the Bibble. It’s not there.
Source? /s