RE: How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?
December 15, 2013 at 10:52 am
(This post was last modified: December 15, 2013 at 11:16 am by rightcoaster.)
quote='rightcoaster' pid='563260' dateline='1387050437']
[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']
I tried to reply yesterday, but the post shows no text. Maybe this will work better. I apologize for any duplication, it's unintended:
To Medi: Your assessment seems very good. A big concern of the Jews is that a living person would be interred, given that the obligation is to bury quickly. That's why there are "shomrim" in Judaism, who watch over the body to make sure it is really dead.
Now, as to whether Jesus was actually dead when removed (some here argue nothing at all of this happened, but that does not lead to any discussion, and what is life without a good argument?), he was also scourged beforehand. As I understand that process, the person is pretty well flayed open. Seems to me one could lose a lot of blood if an artery were nicked in the process, maybe bleed to death in well under six hours.
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[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']
[quote='Aractus' pid='562374' dateline='1386921848']
RC: I tried to reply yesterday but the posting does not show any text I can see, so I am re-posting in hopes this is not a duplication. If so,I apologize. Still new to the forum -- I can probably whine that excuse for a while longer yet. And I now see that both attempts to re-reply, the above to Medi and the below to Aractus, have been consolidated into one. I must be techno-incompetent!
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AR: It's not "way wrong". Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census … This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it …
RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. “Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_of_Galilee
AR: Luke 2:1-2 “ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.
RC: Where is the external evidence of a Quirinius census in Judea prior to 6 CE, and even before Herod’s death in 4 BCE so that Herod had time to meet with the Magi? The context for the Lukan invention is to set the stage for a ridiculous, unnecessary-anyway Bethlehem trip and a birth in the city of David, to justify a baloney prediction. Your “internal evidence” is not proven to be other than a fiction. See also next, which you ignored.
RC: Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea {that is, before 4 BCE}? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?
AR: The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.
RC: I left my whole argument in place (the "RC:" just above) since you failed to comment on it. As for the Magi, who cares in which gospel they only appear? You posit the truth of said text. My view is that they are there for the same fictional literary purpose as the census and the trip to Bethlehem: To help with the other, a-historical silly story of Pharaoh Herod wanting to kill off all the newborn Jewish males so there would not arise a new Moses. Of course the Magi didn’t come to the fictional birthplace-in-manger, they came to the fictional house. So, how can the two fictions be reconciled as truth? Is Luke’s contrived Bethlehem/manger story true, or is Matt’s contrived Magi/house story true, or are neither true? Sort of like the two genealogies, in that both cannot be true, at least one is false. What does this say about the truthiness of the gospels?
RC: As for Is 7:14, .. in “Search for the Septuagint”, … you know the NT text to be quite wrong… .
AR: Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. … Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible … refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin. … focus of the meaning… I argue that [it is] on youth … only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.
RC: You are wrong for the most part. There is a male version of almah, “elem” = "young man", which appears at least twice in Samuel. There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. That alone should be conclusive. The translation “young woman” proves the only defensible one anyway, see next.
AR: … MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
RC: This is text-mining, taking snippets out of context. Also shows that you apparently do not know Hebrew. The context is clear if you read the whole section, not just your snippet. The prophet is talking about an upcoming invasion, doom, to the king. The transliteration of the mistranslated Hebrew is “hineh ha’almah harah”. The translation unquestionably (given the context) is “Here is a young woman, [she is] pregnant”. If it were future tense, “she will become pregnant”, the Hebrew should be something like “ye’hareh”.
RC: …The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …
AR: … I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.
RC: Now you do: [David’s] reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David
RC: Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary … ; they are just written in reverse order.
AR: … It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.
RC: It is impossible, if 2 billion to one is close enough to “impossible” for you, regardless of whose genealogy is it, because the two samples do not come from the same human race.
AR : … you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations … [removed for sake of propriety of AR’s nasty crack about RC pulling numbers from his rectum]
RC: I got numbers only from external, independent history and the phony NT genealogies as-written, not from any bodily orifice of mine. I did have to infer a value for standard deviation, but it seems reasonable; if you don’t like it, choose another when you calculate your own t-statistic and refer to your own table of t-values. I am proving the NT is not reliable as a source of the genealogical information that you insist elsewhere (without proof, as always) was readily available. The gospeler’s fact-checker went to sleep? That’s not a way to gain credence if the other story can recall and relate 50 generations.
What benefit is there to relating but 25 of 50? If skipping is allowed, why did he not simply say, “David begat Solomon, and then there were a bunch of others, and then somebody begat Joseph, the father of Jesus”? Skipping a few or skipping all have exactly the same value in conveying the story, and the latter wastes less parchment.
RC: 1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers [who] had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems … nonsensical … : Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans,… that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal [the] large stone …? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. …[I]t can’t take long to chop a hole … in … limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, … plenty of time [to dig it] … Too early? Torchlight existed … My version is [far less] nonsensical than resurrection, … no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles [and a-historicity] … , mine doesn’t.
AR: You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.
RC: Please tell me which “key facts” I needed to ignore. Your reply is void of specifics.
RC: [Wouldn’t a lamb-less seder be heretical, highly offensive to the religious Jews who were the disciples]?
AR: Because it's not heretical … Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.
RC: What is your source for the above? I have participated in seders (pl. sedarim), as you might imagine. Have you ever read through a Hagadah? For centuries, if not millennia, there has been a great deal more to the seder than lamb. Seder means “order”, and it is a ceremonial comprised of symbols/meal/prayer/Exodus-story-relating. I’d be curious to know where you obtained accurate information about the seder meal and related activities at the time of Jesus or close to it. For one thing, I’m not aware that blood was put on any doorpost then; rather, the mezuzah with its Torah quotes is the symbolic replacement of that blood, still used today. The NT is of course not acceptable as such a source. And as far as I caninfer, the “unleavened period” you use either refers only to the seven days after the aforesaid seder, which occurred (in Judea then as in Israel today) only on 15th Nisan eve, or else the "unleavened period" refers to the whole eight days of the holiday. Where do you get the notion that every meal during the “unleavened period” is “special”, in any sense whatsoever the way the seder is special? The only "Passover" meal during the eight-day holiday is the seder, and no other (ignore for this discussion that outside Israel there are sedarim on the first two nights for reasons completely unrelated to this discussion either in time or in substance); and "Passover meal sans-lamb" is an oxymoron.
RC: A further theological-contrivance note: … [U]nder Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus … The sin-atonement with which this [was] conflated was at the Day of Atonement, … one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.
AR: Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.
RC: Tell, me, Rabbi Aractus – what are your authorities for this innovative halakhic interpretation? I am utterly ignorant of the notion that matzah represents atonement for sin. As seems quite clear from a hagadah, or even from Wikipedia, you do not seem to know whereof you speak. I apologize for the length of the following clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo, but will explain it to you, since you seem not to know it at all; emphasis mine:
“There are numerous explanations behind the symbolism of matzah. One is historical: Passover is a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt. The biblical narrative relates that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste they could not wait for their bread dough to rise; the bread, when baked, was matzah. (Exodus 12:39). The other reason for eating matza is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also lechem oni, "poor man's bread". Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances the appreciation of freedom.
Another explanation is that matza has been used to replace the pesach, or the traditional Passover offering that was made before the destruction of the Temple. During the Seder the third time the matza is eaten it is preceded with the Sefardic rite, "zekher l’korban pesach hane’ekhal al hasova". This means "remembrance of the Passover offering, eaten while full" …”
Thus the reference to the korban pesach is 1) only at the third ritual eating of the matzah during the seder, as an aggregation of symbols – and 2) as I already pointed out and you agree, the korban pesakh had zilch to do with sin. Thus matzah has nothing to do with atonement for anything, either at the seder, or for the whole week. You make it up as you go along, Aractus!
[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']
I tried to reply yesterday, but the post shows no text. Maybe this will work better. I apologize for any duplication, it's unintended:
To Medi: Your assessment seems very good. A big concern of the Jews is that a living person would be interred, given that the obligation is to bury quickly. That's why there are "shomrim" in Judaism, who watch over the body to make sure it is really dead.
Now, as to whether Jesus was actually dead when removed (some here argue nothing at all of this happened, but that does not lead to any discussion, and what is life without a good argument?), he was also scourged beforehand. As I understand that process, the person is pretty well flayed open. Seems to me one could lose a lot of blood if an artery were nicked in the process, maybe bleed to death in well under six hours.
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[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']
[quote='Aractus' pid='562374' dateline='1386921848']
RC: I tried to reply yesterday but the posting does not show any text I can see, so I am re-posting in hopes this is not a duplication. If so,I apologize. Still new to the forum -- I can probably whine that excuse for a while longer yet. And I now see that both attempts to re-reply, the above to Medi and the below to Aractus, have been consolidated into one. I must be techno-incompetent!
..................
AR: It's not "way wrong". Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census … This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it …
RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. “Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_of_Galilee
AR: Luke 2:1-2 “ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.
RC: Where is the external evidence of a Quirinius census in Judea prior to 6 CE, and even before Herod’s death in 4 BCE so that Herod had time to meet with the Magi? The context for the Lukan invention is to set the stage for a ridiculous, unnecessary-anyway Bethlehem trip and a birth in the city of David, to justify a baloney prediction. Your “internal evidence” is not proven to be other than a fiction. See also next, which you ignored.
RC: Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea {that is, before 4 BCE}? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?
AR: The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.
RC: I left my whole argument in place (the "RC:" just above) since you failed to comment on it. As for the Magi, who cares in which gospel they only appear? You posit the truth of said text. My view is that they are there for the same fictional literary purpose as the census and the trip to Bethlehem: To help with the other, a-historical silly story of Pharaoh Herod wanting to kill off all the newborn Jewish males so there would not arise a new Moses. Of course the Magi didn’t come to the fictional birthplace-in-manger, they came to the fictional house. So, how can the two fictions be reconciled as truth? Is Luke’s contrived Bethlehem/manger story true, or is Matt’s contrived Magi/house story true, or are neither true? Sort of like the two genealogies, in that both cannot be true, at least one is false. What does this say about the truthiness of the gospels?
RC: As for Is 7:14, .. in “Search for the Septuagint”, … you know the NT text to be quite wrong… .
AR: Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. … Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible … refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin. … focus of the meaning… I argue that [it is] on youth … only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.
RC: You are wrong for the most part. There is a male version of almah, “elem” = "young man", which appears at least twice in Samuel. There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. That alone should be conclusive. The translation “young woman” proves the only defensible one anyway, see next.
AR: … MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
RC: This is text-mining, taking snippets out of context. Also shows that you apparently do not know Hebrew. The context is clear if you read the whole section, not just your snippet. The prophet is talking about an upcoming invasion, doom, to the king. The transliteration of the mistranslated Hebrew is “hineh ha’almah harah”. The translation unquestionably (given the context) is “Here is a young woman, [she is] pregnant”. If it were future tense, “she will become pregnant”, the Hebrew should be something like “ye’hareh”.
RC: …The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …
AR: … I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.
RC: Now you do: [David’s] reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David
RC: Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary … ; they are just written in reverse order.
AR: … It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.
RC: It is impossible, if 2 billion to one is close enough to “impossible” for you, regardless of whose genealogy is it, because the two samples do not come from the same human race.
AR : … you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations … [removed for sake of propriety of AR’s nasty crack about RC pulling numbers from his rectum]
RC: I got numbers only from external, independent history and the phony NT genealogies as-written, not from any bodily orifice of mine. I did have to infer a value for standard deviation, but it seems reasonable; if you don’t like it, choose another when you calculate your own t-statistic and refer to your own table of t-values. I am proving the NT is not reliable as a source of the genealogical information that you insist elsewhere (without proof, as always) was readily available. The gospeler’s fact-checker went to sleep? That’s not a way to gain credence if the other story can recall and relate 50 generations.
What benefit is there to relating but 25 of 50? If skipping is allowed, why did he not simply say, “David begat Solomon, and then there were a bunch of others, and then somebody begat Joseph, the father of Jesus”? Skipping a few or skipping all have exactly the same value in conveying the story, and the latter wastes less parchment.
RC: 1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers [who] had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems … nonsensical … : Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans,… that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal [the] large stone …? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. …[I]t can’t take long to chop a hole … in … limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, … plenty of time [to dig it] … Too early? Torchlight existed … My version is [far less] nonsensical than resurrection, … no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles [and a-historicity] … , mine doesn’t.
AR: You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.
RC: Please tell me which “key facts” I needed to ignore. Your reply is void of specifics.
RC: [Wouldn’t a lamb-less seder be heretical, highly offensive to the religious Jews who were the disciples]?
AR: Because it's not heretical … Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.
RC: What is your source for the above? I have participated in seders (pl. sedarim), as you might imagine. Have you ever read through a Hagadah? For centuries, if not millennia, there has been a great deal more to the seder than lamb. Seder means “order”, and it is a ceremonial comprised of symbols/meal/prayer/Exodus-story-relating. I’d be curious to know where you obtained accurate information about the seder meal and related activities at the time of Jesus or close to it. For one thing, I’m not aware that blood was put on any doorpost then; rather, the mezuzah with its Torah quotes is the symbolic replacement of that blood, still used today. The NT is of course not acceptable as such a source. And as far as I caninfer, the “unleavened period” you use either refers only to the seven days after the aforesaid seder, which occurred (in Judea then as in Israel today) only on 15th Nisan eve, or else the "unleavened period" refers to the whole eight days of the holiday. Where do you get the notion that every meal during the “unleavened period” is “special”, in any sense whatsoever the way the seder is special? The only "Passover" meal during the eight-day holiday is the seder, and no other (ignore for this discussion that outside Israel there are sedarim on the first two nights for reasons completely unrelated to this discussion either in time or in substance); and "Passover meal sans-lamb" is an oxymoron.
RC: A further theological-contrivance note: … [U]nder Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus … The sin-atonement with which this [was] conflated was at the Day of Atonement, … one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.
AR: Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.
RC: Tell, me, Rabbi Aractus – what are your authorities for this innovative halakhic interpretation? I am utterly ignorant of the notion that matzah represents atonement for sin. As seems quite clear from a hagadah, or even from Wikipedia, you do not seem to know whereof you speak. I apologize for the length of the following clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo, but will explain it to you, since you seem not to know it at all; emphasis mine:
“There are numerous explanations behind the symbolism of matzah. One is historical: Passover is a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt. The biblical narrative relates that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste they could not wait for their bread dough to rise; the bread, when baked, was matzah. (Exodus 12:39). The other reason for eating matza is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also lechem oni, "poor man's bread". Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances the appreciation of freedom.
Another explanation is that matza has been used to replace the pesach, or the traditional Passover offering that was made before the destruction of the Temple. During the Seder the third time the matza is eaten it is preceded with the Sefardic rite, "zekher l’korban pesach hane’ekhal al hasova". This means "remembrance of the Passover offering, eaten while full" …”
Thus the reference to the korban pesach is 1) only at the third ritual eating of the matzah during the seder, as an aggregation of symbols – and 2) as I already pointed out and you agree, the korban pesakh had zilch to do with sin. Thus matzah has nothing to do with atonement for anything, either at the seder, or for the whole week. You make it up as you go along, Aractus!
