Go to the website for The Infidel Guy to learn how to listen live (I believe only subscribers can listen to archived shows after that). I think you can also listen live through iTunes (just search Infidel Guy in the podcasts section to find the feed). His website also has a phone number for calling questions in as the show airs.Monday, April 20, 2009
Infidel Guy Casuale
On Thursday April 30 (2009) at 5pm PST (8pm EST) I will be the guest on The Infidel Guy (a godless internet radio show, for those not in the know), for about an hour. It will be by phonecon, which I hate, but it will be casual and informal, and topical. We might wander over many subjects, but the big three will be my thoughts on The Jesus Project, my recent debate with William Lane Craig, and my new book Not the Impossible Faith.
Go to the website for The Infidel Guy to learn how to listen live (I believe only subscribers can listen to archived shows after that). I think you can also listen live through iTunes (just search Infidel Guy in the podcasts section to find the feed). His website also has a phone number for calling questions in as the show airs.
Go to the website for The Infidel Guy to learn how to listen live (I believe only subscribers can listen to archived shows after that). I think you can also listen live through iTunes (just search Infidel Guy in the podcasts section to find the feed). His website also has a phone number for calling questions in as the show airs.
Cool. I recommended Reggie to have you on his show a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad you guys were able to work out a time.
ReplyDeleteJust can't say "no" can you? hehe
ReplyDeleteBen
For a second there, I thought the post read 'Infidel Guy Asshole' and got really excited.
ReplyDeleteI have severely mixed feelings now.
War_on_Error said... Just can't say "no" can you?
ReplyDeleteActually, truth be told, I've turned him down several times before this, as well as numerous other "radio" interview requests from others. As I typically will. I'm very averse to phoned-in interviews.
LA: I have no idea what to make of your remarks. :-)
hehe, I was just teasing.
ReplyDeleteI called in and asked about your bob price criticism. Any chance you can elaborate in detail on a blog post one day?
ReplyDeleteI was caller number three. In follow up to the Jacob Kremer issue, you didn't appear to know (apart from the methodological errors you pointed out on air) that Kremer actually now agrees with your basic position on the empty tomb:
ReplyDelete(link) Mulder: If somebody would ask you, let say, you do an interview on the radio and somebody asks you the question: prof Kremer, did Jesus rise with a body, and does it mean that the grave is empty? What would your answer be?
Kremer: Ahh, maybe possible that the grave was deserted, but it is no proof, no proof. Because when Jesus resurrected, he was resurrected with His body, and the distinction between soul and body is a distinction out of the Greek philosophy, and in the Holy Scripture nothing is written about it. For instance, a critic of mine professor ‘Schubracht’, he is very against me, because I said ‘I don’t know if the grave was empty .. it is not important, no’. And then he had the interesting problem too .. years ago Ratzinger had written an article about the distinction between ‘leichaam’, body und libe. The leichaam isn’t the same as the body. Because ‘lichaam’, that is a symbol of the dead .. I think it’s in the Protestant churches too .. the dead are in the grave untill the last day of the resurrection, no. In the grave the lichaam, but it is a symbol of the dead. And therefore we say in German ‘das lere Grab’ .. the grave are without body, it’s looking for the resurrection.
Mulder: So the empty grave is not that important?
Kremer: No, no, it’s got nothing to do.
Mulder: OK.
Kremer: Probably it is an expression of the church, but we know nothing” (Kremer, J. 2006. Interview with Mulder, F. Evangelische Fakultät, Vienna, 5 July 2006).
Gee, that sounds a lot like this:
Richard Carrier (The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave, pg. 157): "...on my theory the empty tomb story originated as a symbol, not a historical fact. It then became the subject of legendary embellishment over the ensuing generations, eventually becoming an essential element in the doctrine of a particular sect of Christians..."
Mulder (pg. 180): "...it is significant that he [Jacob Kremer], generally known for his staunch defense of the empty tomb, revised his position on the empty tomb and resurrection of late. This is significant as Craig and Habermas continue to use Kremer to support their belief in the empty tomb."
Apparently William Lane Craig needs to reevaluate some of his sales pitch. I suppose they could say that Kremer's opinion at the time was still an accurate assessment of the scholarly circles and they could merely cite him as a reluctant or "hostile witness" these days. hehe
Ben
Very interesting interview Richard. I would be curious to know if you think it would ever even be possible to prove the occurance of a supernatural event via critical historical inquiry. With a claimed supernatural occurance that we might study by direct observation, it seems, the best we could do is determine that no known explantion exists for this phenomenon at present. With events claimed to have occured, say, hundreds or thousands of years ago the only data we have is that a few or several people came to believe that something supernatural occured. They may have been honest observers witnessing a heretofore unknown, put naturalistic nonetheless event, or they may have come about there beliefs in the same way so many other people come to fantastical beliefs, or they may have simply made it up. There would seem to me, in cases like these, in cases like the claimed resurrection of jesus, no way of moving past the simple fact that some people claimed it happened and the belief spread.
ReplyDeleteHow to prove the resurrection never happened?
ReplyDeleteOne main argument has been about the Resurrection being the big bang which propelled Christianity by Jesus’ eyewitnesses, who would have seen the resurrected Jesus and got from that the 200% motivation they needed to send them on the roads, and far away.
Not so fast:
a) gMark has the disciples not aware of the resurrection (at the end of the Empty Tomb passage - And Mk16:9-20, with 1 Cor15:3-11 can be easily proven to be later interpolations)
b) The different stories about the reappearances in the canonical gospels (& 1Cor15) are different of each other, and timewise & sequencewise, the last one in gMatthew cannot be fitted with the others. It is obvious then each gospeller was creating fiction in order to “prove” Jesus’ resurrection. Even the same one, “Luke”, proposed very different versions in his/her gospel and ‘Acts’ (also “Luke” has three different renditions about Jesus appearing to Paul on the road to Damascus, which are also different of Paul’s account in ‘Galatians’).
c) It is obvious, through gMark interpolation at its end, Aristides’ apology and Justin Martyr, that the Christians in the 2nd century would have greatly preferred that Jesus’ disciples themselves went all over the known world to preach Christianity right after they witness the resurrection (or/& the ascension). However ‘Acts’, written earlier, has the same disciples staying in Jerusalem. Peter can be evidenced (from Paul’s letters) to go to Antioch and Corinth but that was after Paul &/or others went there. Actually ‘Acts’ says Paul was leading the way for conversions outside of Palestine, which is partly corroborated by Paul himself. Furthermore, ‘Acts’ describes the advance of Christianity in the Roman world as rather slow (decades, not months) and mostly due to new converts (Diaspora Jews), not people who had the opportunity to witness the alleged resurrection &/or ascension.
d) The critical Empty Tomb passage, which appears first in gMark (15:40-16:8), can be argued to have been added to the gospel, because of many discontinuities. For example:
- Why does “(resurrection) after three days” become less than 40 hours?
- Why does the body of Jesus need another anointment for burial, when one has been done earlier (Mk14:8)?
- Mk15:39 (the (Gentile/Roman) Centurion declaring that Jesus was the Son of God) is an ideal gospel ending for a Gentile audience under Roman rule. But 16:8 (the women being scared and not telling about the empty tomb, which they found opened) invites doubts and questions such as:
Who opened the tomb?
How did “Mark” know about the women visiting the empty tomb?
How was he sure the women did not tell anybody about it?
e) ‘Acts’ has the passage about the first Pentecost. There are many dubious elements in it and Peter’s speech, with its long OT quotes, is rather unconvincing. Regardless, that converts 3000 Diaspora Jews in a flash (putting the Galileans in a small minority!). And then, those 3000 did not need to witness a Jesus resurrected to get converted! Furthermore there are many signs at the beginning of ‘Acts’ indicating the author went through a lot of trouble in order to “correct”, expand_on and harmonize_with the ending of his/her gospel, because that ending was not “anticipating” the beginning of ‘Acts’ (the disciples receiving (again! see Lk24:49 with its present tense) the Holy Spirit and becoming the leaders of the (instantly populated!) Church of Jerusalem, right after the alleged ascension).
Therefore the Resurrection, as the Christian Big Bang, can be easily discarded.
A general comment: if Jesus had resurrected, then according to the Synoptic gospels (more so gMatthew) and Paul’s epistles, he should have manifested himself during the Day of the Lord and the advent of the Kingdom of God (which Jesus himself is said to have predicted to happen soon) when there were still some survivors of Jesus’ or Paul’s generations. He did not, the Day did not, which is to be expected from a forever dead false prophet.
Please note, I do not necessarily consider (partly of fully) genuine any NT book, story or passage I mentioned. At times I am just playing the NT against itself for argument sake.
Best regards, Bernard
Lenny said... I called in and asked about your bob price criticism. Any chance you can elaborate in detail on a blog post one day?
ReplyDeleteI'll either give some examples in On the Historicity of Jesus Christ or blog them, but I'm not going to do anything like a comprehensive critique of his work. That would be a waste of time, IMO. I'm more interested in moving forward with the best possible theory, and convincing Price of that along with everyone else, rather than trying to deconstruct everyone else's theories.
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War_on_Error said... ...you didn't appear to know (apart from the methodological errors you pointed out on air) that Kremer actually now agrees with your basic position on the empty tomb:
You're right, I didn't know that.
Thanks for that link.
Though I can understand why Craig wouldn't know about this, either.
Invictus said... I would be curious to know if you think it would ever even be possible to prove the occurance of a supernatural event via critical historical inquiry.
ReplyDeleteI've replied to you under the Craig Debate Wrap.
--
Bernard said... How to prove the resurrection never happened?
Just to be clear, no one needed to. All I had to argue was that we can't know whether it did, which is the argument I made. That is logically sufficient to rebut Craig's affirmative position in the debate.
Mark has the disciples not aware of the resurrection (at the end of the Empty Tomb passage - And Mk16:9-20, with 1 Cor15:3-11 can be easily proven to be later interpolations)
See my reply to you on the latter point in my Craig Debate Wrap blog.
Even without 1 Cor. 15 Paul amply attests that the earliest Christians were preaching Jesus was raised and were motivated by Jesus revealing that very fact (it just happens that Paul heard Jesus convince him of this in a hallucination, but nevertheless, this is what impelled Paul to launch his sect of Christianity, and he shows no signs of Peter or James having thought this was novel, and elsewhere says they taught the same gospel as he, so I don't think we can credit Christianity with any other originating impetus than the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead--as well, of course, as the belief that he died for all sins, etc.).
It is obvious then each gospeller was creating fiction in order to “prove” Jesus’ resurrection.
True. And a point I made in the debate. But it does not follow from this that Jesus was not raised. It only follows that we can't know if he was.
Only when we add in the fact that natural explanations of the belief that he was (and even the evidence supposedly inspiring that belief) are more frequently the case than unnatural explanations, do we have the conclusion that Jesus probably was not raised. Not a certainty, but it's still very improbable.
Peter can be evidenced (from Paul’s letters) to go to Antioch and Corinth but that was after Paul &/or others went there.
Others...like other Disciples and Apostles? You won't get much traction out of this, for precisely that reason: we don't know the actual order of events.
Furthermore, ‘Acts’ describes the advance of Christianity in the Roman world as rather slow (decades, not months) and mostly due to new converts (Diaspora Jews), not people who had the opportunity to witness the alleged resurrection &/or ascension.
Precisely the argument of my book Not the Impossible Faith. But it's very hard to make and defend the evidence of this, along with everything else, in forty minutes.
The critical Empty Tomb passage, which appears first in gMark (15:40-16:8), can be argued to have been added to the gospel, because of many discontinuities.
See my reply to you on this point in my Craig Debate Wrap blog
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRC: ... this is what impelled Paul to launch his sect of Christianity, and he shows no signs of Peter or James having thought this was novel, and elsewhere says they taught the same gospel as he, so I don't think we can credit Christianity with any other originating impetus than the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead--as well, of course, as the belief that he died for all sins, etc.).
ReplyDeleteBM: I disagree about Peter or James approving warmly Paul’s gospel. Galatians2:6-10 just indicates the few pillars at the meeting tolerated Paul’s gospel and nothing more (and Paul avoided to present his gospel to the full Church). And the reason of their tolerance was mainly due because they expected money collections by Paul from his Christians (Gal2:10) (and also the presence of Barnabas). Also Paul did not think the pillars knew his gospel, according to Gal2:2. What about Gal2:7-8 (except “on the contrary”) where Paul and Peter are good pal, preaching in harmony? An interpolation again: see
http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/barnikol.htm . The smocking gun? This is only here, in all Paul’s letters, that Peter is called by his Greek name (twice). Everywhere else, Paul called him Cephas, including in Gal1:18, Gal2:9 & Gal2:11. According to my study, at the time of the meeting, Paul had not adopted yet the pre-existence of Jesus, “died for all sins” and Son of God. So there were less contentious things to disagree upon. About the Resurrection? Well, the pillars got used to it through the beliefs of the Jewish Christians. So the same thing coming from Paul was not novel.
There are many clues in the NT suggesting the “Nazarenes” (Peter, John, James, etc.) never became Christians, despite the best efforts from gospellers and other early Christian writers. I got some of my reasons on that page, about the beginning of Christianity:
http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/hjes3x.html
From the same page, I extract:
”a) Paul never had, in his letters, the later members of the church of Jerusalem (led by the "Nazarenes") as being "in Christ" or "in the Lord" or "brother(s)", even if he mentioned them several times (1Co16:1,3; 2Co8:4,13-15;9:1,12-15; Gal2:1-10; Ro15:25-26,31) and acknowledged them as "saints" (1Co16:1,2; Co8:4;9:1,12; Ro15:25,26,31).
b) Mk8:29-30: "He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ". Then He strictly warned them [the disciples] that they should tell no one about Him."
That would explain why Peter & other disciples never said Jesus is/was Christ, for the remainder of their lives!
c) As explained in HJ-3a:
- According to Mk8:31-33,9:31-32, Peter & disciples have no Christian understanding of Jesus' Passion.
- According to Mk9:9-10, the disciples do not know "what "rising from the dead" meant" and are not asking Jesus for explanations (see also Mk9:31).
-Furthermore, at the initial ending of GMark (at 16:8), the disciples are not made aware of Jesus' resurrection.”
There are a lot more. Unfortunately they are spread all over my website, as I bumped into them, one by one. BTW, this “finding” is not new: I know that some scholars proposed the same, but I do not have names.
Finally, on that very short page, I put together a table describing the beliefs of the different Jesus’ groups, early on, as I saw it through my studies (but in some cases I am not so sure how to appraise the data):
http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/t58.html
RC quoting me: Peter can be evidenced (from Paul’s letters) to go to Antioch and Corinth but that was after Paul &/or others went there.
RC: Others...like other Disciples and Apostles? You won't get much traction out of this, for precisely that reason: we don't know the actual order of events.
BM: Good point. For Corinth, Peter might have been second after Paul. For Antioch, through ‘Galatians’, fairly late, after the Church was well established, but Peter may have gone to Antioch before. But not too early: according to ‘Acts’, when it looked many Gentiles wanted to convert, the Nazarenes sent Barnabas, not Peter. And at that time, early Jewish Christians were already established in Antioch through the great dispersion of Greek-speaking proto-Christian from Jerusalem (around 35, according to my study), because of persecutions in which Paul participated. I confess I mostly trust that part of ‘Acts’. But I suspect the conversions were already in the book before Barnabas (& Paul) arrived there. As far as the actual order of events, I have a good idea about the timing of Paul’s second and third journey and all of that is well explained and documented on a few of my webpages, mostly these two ones:
http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/appb.html
http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/appp.html
Best regards, Bernard
The Jesus project...can there be any doubt what the conclusions will be?
ReplyDeleteFor a hundred bucks I will tell you in advance, with certainty, what the conclusions of the "project" will be and thus save you a lot of time and trouble!
LOL!
Bernard said... I disagree about Peter or James approving warmly Paul’s gospel. Galatians2:6-10 just indicates the few pillars at the meeting tolerated Paul’s gospel and nothing more (and Paul avoided to present his gospel to the full Church).
ReplyDeleteThe only issue in contention was whether Gentiles had to convert to Judaism to join the Church. That would not have been the only issue if James and John had never even heard of Jesus being raised from the dead or dying for our sins. Galatians would have been about that debate. Instead, all that's debated is the technicality of admission standards.
Of course that assumes Paul didn't radically change his entire theology between writing Galatians and his other letters. Hence...
Bernard said... According to my study, at the time of the meeting, Paul had not adopted yet the pre-existence of Jesus, “died for all sins” and Son of God.
Then get your study published in a peer reviewed journal. Otherwise you're just another loner with a radical theory. We already have too many of those.
Problem #1: Paul's reason for excusing Gentiles from the first covenant was the idea that Jesus replaced the temple which entails he died for our sins.
Problem #2: Paul adamantly condemns any changing of the Gospel even by himself (Gal 1:8) so how could he have gotten away with radically changing it?
Bernard said... According to Mk8:31-33,9:31-32, Peter & disciples have no Christian understanding of Jesus' Passion.
Mark is a Pauline, so he already has ample motives to diss Peter and gang, and their ignorance and stupidity is a regular theme throughout the entire Gospel. Hence he has other literary-symbolic motives for this case, same as the others, per the MacDonald thesis, and the reversal-of-expectation theme I discuss in Empty Tomb.
Bernard said... I know that some scholars proposed the same, but I do not have names.
I would be most keen for citations.
Andrew said... The Jesus project...can there be any doubt what the conclusions will be? For a hundred bucks I will tell you in advance, with certainty, what the conclusions of the "project" will be and thus save you a lot of time and trouble! LOL!
ReplyDeleteWait a minute. Didn't you say this before? Didn't you get bitch slapped for its stupidity the last time? Or was that someone else?
RC quoting BM: Bernard said... I disagree about Peter or James approving warmly Paul’s gospel. Galatians2:6-10 just indicates the few pillars at the meeting tolerated Paul’s gospel and nothing more (and Paul avoided to present his gospel to the full Church).
ReplyDeleteRC: The only issue in contention was whether Gentiles had to convert to Judaism to join the Church. That would not have been the only issue if James and John had never even heard of Jesus being raised from the dead or dying for our sins. Galatians would have been about that debate. Instead, all that's debated is the technicality of admission standards. Of course that assumes Paul didn't radically change his entire theology between writing Galatians and his other letters. Hence...
BM: About Galatians2:6-10:
A) Gal2:7-8 (except “on the contrary”) is an interpolation (not only by me, but with scholarly back up), as I explained in my previous post on this passage. That takes a lot of fuzz out of Gal2:6-10.
B) The event is told by Paul, who obviously would try to put the his spin on it. Even so, and without 2:7-8, the meeting seems to be very icy.
C) I accept that the pillars heard about Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection, but not from Paul first, but from Jewish Christians before Paul’s time as an apostle. As far as soul/spirit of a dead person rising after death, that was well accepted among Pharisees and Philo of Alexandria (and from those, many Diaspora Jews). So these pillars were used to that belief before Paul’s visit. That does not mean they accepted the concept, they just tolerated it. And why would they not openly reject it? Well, they were depending on money collections from Christians. And whenever money is involved, we have politics and compromises. So it’s time to get off that very limited view that scholars have and see the real life conditions.
D) I agree that the ‘Jews and Gentiles’ issue was the main one at the meeting. But Paul, according to Gal2:2, Paul felt he had to “set before” them his gospel, which he did according to 2:6b. That makes sense because Paul said he got his gospel NOT from men (as the pillars and anybody they knew among their following and Jewish Christians). So the pillars had no way to know what Paul was preaching, except through spies. That also means the preaching of Paul could have been very different of the ones of the pillars & associates, and not only about the issue of Judaizing the Gentile Christians.
E) I repeat “dying for our sins” was still not in Paul’s repertoire then (I put the meeting in 52 and, besides contested 1Co15:3-11, the first mention of “d...sins” in Paul’s epistles is in 2Co5:19a & 2Co:21a which I put written in 55). Even if it was, I do not see it as a big point of contention. The same has been said (by a prophet (not God!), and as wishful thinking) for the suffering servant of Isaiah, described as a human who died. And there is no evidence in Galatians2:6-10 the subject was discussed.
F) I do not think there was any significant debate; none is stated in Gal2:6:10. After Paul (with Barnabas) exposed his message (likely well rehearsed!), nothing was added except the reminder about raising money for the Church of Jerusalem.
G) The theology/christology of Paul was not changed between the Jerusalem meeting and the writing of ‘Galatians’ (which I put, together with ‘Romans’, as written in the winter of 57-58) but it was enhanced (with pre-existence, Son of God and atonement for sins).
To be continued ...
Best regards, Bernard
RC quoting BM: Bernard said... According to my study, at the time of the meeting, Paul had not adopted yet the pre-existence of Jesus, “died for all sins” and Son of God.
ReplyDeleteRC: Problem #1: Paul's reason for excusing Gentiles from the first covenant was the idea that Jesus replaced the temple which entails he died for our sins.
Problem #2: Paul adamantly condemns any changing of the Gospel even by himself (Gal 1:8) so how could he have gotten away with radically changing it?
BM: Where did you read in Paul’s epistles about Jesus replacing the temple? Instead, Paul wrote the Christians are the temple of God (1Co3:16, 2Co6:16). And even if Paul did, replacement of the temple does not entail Jesus died for our sins.
Change is one thing, additions another. Enhancements can be considered not a change.
RC quoting BM: Bernard said... According to Mk8:31-33,9:31-32, Peter & disciples have no Christian understanding of Jesus' Passion.
RC: Mark is a Pauline, so he already has ample motives to diss Peter and gang, and their ignorance and stupidity is a regular theme throughout the entire Gospel. Hence he has other literary-symbolic motives for this case, same as the others, per the MacDonald thesis, and the reversal-of-expectation theme I discuss in Empty Tomb.
BM: Mark is only Pauline in a small part:
a) pre-existence of Christ: no mention in gMark
b) death for atonement of sins: no mention in gMark. Instead we have “[Jesus] to give his life as a ransom for many” 10:45
c) Jesus as Son of God: yes for both (but not dared as said by disciples)
d) Jesus as Son of Man: many times in gMark (but not dared as said by disciples), none in Paul’s epistles
e) Jesus as “king of the Jews”: not in Paul’s epistles, not even as only “king”
f) Paul put little importance to the earthly Jesus (except as Christ crucified) but Mark based his gospel on that human Jesus (but here greatly enhanced) that Paul avoided.
g) Mark told a story that would make Paul mad (Mk7:24-29).
I do not think Mark is dissing Peter & gang as much as you suggest. At times, he even had the disciples look smart (6:35,37b, 14:12,16) And he made also Jesus look stupid (6:37, 11:13-14, 14:8). And, for all that, I explained why in a previous post.
Best regards, Bernard
Bernard, get your radical theories published in a peer reviewed journal. Until then, you're just one of hundreds like you, each with his own oddball anti-consensus hypothesis. I can't waste my time examining bizarre fringe arguments like this. I would never live long enough to examine even a fraction of them, and that's assuming I had the time and concern even to bother trying.
ReplyDeleteBernard said... Where did you read in Paul’s epistles about Jesus replacing the temple?
You must not understand ancient Judaism. The very statement that Jesus died for our sins is a statement that he has replaced the temple (in which sacrifices had to be performed to atone for our sins, a fundamental component in Torah law--as fundamental as circumcision). Of course this is explicitly stated in Hebrews, but that's moot to you I assume, since its date is up for grabs.
That circumcision (and Torah law) was the only point of contention is attested in Acts of course (though I suppose you would argue the author of Acts is ignorant or whitewashing the truth), but it is explicitly revealed in Gal. 2:3-5 (esp. since the bondage element ties in to his Romans declaration that it is joining the Torah covenant through circumcision that sets us in bondage, a theme echoed in his other letters, e.g. Philippians). Gal. 2:9 repeats what 2:7-8 says, so even if you think the latter is an interpolation, that gets you nowhere (and in any case, usually only 2:8 is challenged, not 2:7). Then 2:11-20 clearly establishes their dispute was over observance of Torah, not the bizarre notion that the messiah had actually been raised from the dead in advance of all and now replaced the whole Torah by having died for our sins (actually stranger innovations than rejecting Torah, which surely would have raised as large a dispute).
RC: Bernard, get your radical theories published in a peer reviewed journal. Until then, you're just one of hundreds like you, each with his own oddball anti-consensus hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteBM: Why are you trying to make me a champion of anti-consensus? More so, when on almost every point, there is no consensus (as you discovered yourself for “Ignatius”). And my so-called hypotheses are always justified by the available evidence, and, I’ll say it, a lot more directly & abundantly that whatever a mythicist can use to “prove” his/her speculations. I do not think your (new) ideas are consensus material either, even if you may have the backing, on specific points, from a few scholars (but who does not?). But if you read my whole website, you would understand there is nothing oddball about me tackling some misconceptions, making sense of confusions and presenting a comprehensive view of the origin of Christianity. And certainly, attacking any consensus was never one of my goal. More, on many critical points, I am agreeing, even justifying, some near-consensus (such as dating of the gospels & Acts (70-100) and, as you eloquently wrote “But the point is: a mythic Jesus could still also be a historic Jesus, i.e. the myth would be layered on top, possibly obscuring most of the truth, just as most scholars today believe to be the case ...”).
RC quoting me: Bernard said... Where did you read in Paul’s epistles about Jesus replacing the temple?
RC: You must not understand ancient Judaism.
BM: My question was not about ancient Judaism, but about Paul’s epistles. And the answer is clear: Paul never wrote about Jesus replacing the temple. However you make it an important point in order to prove that Paul wrote/believed in atonement of sins prior to the Jerusalem council. And there is no evidence whatsoever that was an issue at the meeting.
Best regards, Bernard
Bernard said... And the answer is clear: Paul never wrote about Jesus replacing the temple.
ReplyDeleteThis is a paradigmatic of the nonsense I keep getting from you, and why I see no point in conversing with you. Pay attention to what I said. Paul wrote about Jesus dying for our sins. That necessarily entails the belief that Jesus had replaced the temple.
Indeed, Paul even says those who join Christ are the temple (1 Cor. 3:16-17, 2 Cor. 6:16; and post-Pauline: Eph. 2:19-22), and are at the same time the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27; and post-Pauline: Eph. 4:12). Do the math.
That's just an example, and it's enough to prove the futility of continuing with you.