RE: How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?
December 20, 2013 at 1:12 am
(This post was last modified: December 20, 2013 at 1:16 am by rightcoaster.)
First of all, Aractus, we are way off-topic with this whole notion of spermless conception; we should be staying on resurrection-story notions. But to continue along this wrong track for what I hope is the last time …..
RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. …
AR: …but I do discount the two possibilities that: 1. Luke was referring to the 6AD census, and 2. that Luke invented the story.
RC: Mini massacred you on this one, so I needn’t.
RC : …. As for the Magi, who cares in which gospel they only appear? … Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?
AR: …[ I] care [how many gospel stories the Magi are in] because you got your facts wrong. It makes no difference where they visit Jesus because they do not go to the birthplace. They could have visited him on the road to Domascus, they could have visited him at the temple at the time of his anointing, they could have visited him anywhere, at any time, it makes no difference. … Why do you keep saying "manger", and why do you claim that they stayed in a "manger"?? … Why would someone invent the birth being in a feeding trough?
RC: Matt 2:8 et seq. says the Magi went to Bethlehem, and to a house. But Luke 2:7 says “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn”. I actually have been to the Church of the Nativity, and there on the floor (I have a photo somewhere) is a silver(ish) medallion marking THE EXACT SPOT where Jesus was born. Never mind that the said church was only established some hundreds of years later. I think that’s the one where the mother of Constantine went souvenir shopping, and a local said “You want beerte’place, I got beerte’-place, for good price, best price for you”. (My accent mimics with fondness that of our Egyptian Nile-River tourguide, Amr, who charmingly told us about “eerte’-quacks” -- you know, those shakings that cause buildings to collapse).
AR: For a start, they probably only stayed in the barn for a single day. That's right, they stayed in the barn, that had a feeding trough inside it, they didn't stay in the trough!!
RC: Inns (or caravanserais) at the time (and inns for many centuries thereafter and everywhere) had stables for the animals. You may call it a barn, but it was a stable, animals stayed there, and they were fed, and Luke has Jesus put (not born) in a manger, a feeding trough. I didn’t write the NT. If I had, I’d have hired an editor – he’d have corrected my irrelevant mis-statement that they all stayed in a manger; it was in the stable of an inn. The main point is that the Magi went to a house in Bethlehem, not on the road to anywhere; and Luke says nothing about a house, just an inn and a manger. "They probably stayed just a day"? So, Mary who is about 12 years old gets to the inn, 10 cm dilated already no doubt, has a first baby after a very short labor, baby gets wrapped and put into a manger, the shepherds and angels come, do their adorations and all of that baloney, it all takes only one day, and then they went to their house that was also in Bethlehem? Never mind that your version will make any woman laugh and sneer -- Luke 2:6 et seq. utterly demolish your impossible fabrication, since he says there that Joe and Mary were there for days before the birth, and the rest of his story also takes time to play out.
RC: … male version of almah, “elem” = "young man" … There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. {That definite statement seems less strong than I asserted – I can’t follow the argument I read, but even “betulah” or “parthenos” may be a metaphor for just a young woman in those cultures then – since how would anyone know the state of her hymen, and that is not dispositive anyway? I have also since seen the assertion that “b’khor”, בחור, is the male equivalent of “betulah”, but that’s too sophisticated for me, getting into ancient Akkadian and such, I’m just a country boy; and there is anyway a female version, הבחור, that is nothing like “betulah”. } The translation “young woman” proves the only contextually defensible one anyway, see next.
AR: Are you a Hebrew scholar? {Following was Aractus’ strained, elaborate justification for the un-justifiable re almah v betulah} … Thus, the literal meaning is "young maiden" but the meaning of virginity is implied. …
RC: By what imaginative device is this implied meaning discovered, uncovered, exposed? Wishful thinking? Certainly not from the context of Is 7:14, my negation further supported from Genesis.
You are focused too much on the one word, when the context is dispositive. I’m not fluent, but enough of a “Hebrew scholar” to be able to read from the Tanakh (the Hebrew, not the Aramaic bits) and understand it, with some help from a parallel English translation. At least, I can reasonably assert the contextual accuracy of the translation. That “hineh ha’almah harah” refers to a woman who is nearby the speaker and his audience and who is already pregnant is clear in the context of the rest of Is 7. The full text of the sentence is: “hineh ha‘almah harah veyoledet ben; vekarat shemo Immanuel”. "Here is the young woman, pregnant; she will bear a son and call his name Immanuel". Compare this with when Hagar was already pregnant with Ishmael by Abraham (the old goat), and the exact same form is used. In Gen 16:4 she conceives, she is pregnant; then in Gen 16:11 an angel tells her she will give birth to a son and will call him Ishmael (God listens). “Hinokh harah veyoledet ben; vekarat shemo Yishmael …”. “Harah” in the Hagar case is unambiguously present tense-pregnant because seven sentences before we learned she had conceived. In the Isaiah case, it is unambiguously present-tense because of the context. In neither case is the “imperfect” or future tense implied, in both cases the woman is already preggers. Such pregnancies can be of young women or old women; but they cannot be of virgins. Note also the conflation of the angelic annunciation to Hagar with that to Mary. Literary stuff. Forget just "almah", it is a trap for the credulous; do the context.
AR: Matthew [uses “virgin” for “almah”} … and whoever wrote the LXX translation of Isaiah. Both were done independently to each other!!
RC: That the two translations were independent is unproven, nonsense on its face: LXX was from about 2nd C. BCE, thus available to the author of Matt.
AR: … David lived at least 1,000 years prior to Christ.
RC: I’m puzzled at the stubbornness of your refusal to get the drift of this straightforward argument. If you really don’t follow it, you are regrettably innumerate and might do well to consult with a statistician or mathematician at the University. Let me try one last time: David lived 1000 years or so before Jesus. Count the numbers of names in each “set”, i.e., each genealogy list, Matthew and Luke. Each begat is one generation, can you agree to that? Divide the numbers of names in the Lukan genealogy into 1000 years to get the average length of a generation for the Lukan example. This figure we call the “sample average” or “sample mean” for the Lukan genealogy. Then do the same counting for the Matthean genealogy, you will get another figure for the count and then do the division of that number into 1000. That gives a second sample average, for the sample comprised of the Matthean genealogy. Got it? Two examples of average generational length, one for each of two samplings from the universe of (human) generational lengths. The problem is that those two genealogies are of such differing average lengths as-“reported”, that the odds of their being samples from the same population (i.e., the set of all humans or even the set of all Israelites who lived during the 1000-year interval) are two billion to one against. To do the calculation is beyond you, but at one time it was not beyond me: I did it. QED, one or both are false. Got that? I can’t make it clearer.
AR: Because Matthew organizes his into categories. Therefore, he had to have skipped generations. Also, from Abraham to David both are identical.
RC: I will point out the obvious to you, although why it escaped you is a mystery to me: From Abraham to David you have the OT, and whether that list is historically true or not, there is only the need to copy from the former to the NT from the texts that would have been available. There is no corresponding set of texts going all the way from David to Joseph, 1000 years, such that the other two groups of 14 generations can likewise be just copied. The very fact, by the way, of 14 generations are claimed to be in each group argues AGAINST the notion of skipping generations in a genealogy: it either is a magical set of 3 groups of 14 generations as asserted by Matthew, or it is not. Skipping defeats Matt’s purpose, dontcha think, if the records were available to all, as you insist? He’d surely be caught fudging the numbers. Also, since Matt says there were 2x14=28 generations from David to Jesus, and the other genealogy lists more than 28, both cannot be true. Got it? (I didn’t re-count the lists, I’m taking your word).
AR: you are assuming that neither could represent Mary. …
RC: I am not assuming anything of the kind. Both are said to be of Joseph, neither is said to be of Mary; it’s your “gospel truth”, not mine. Luke: 3:23 “…Jesus …being … the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,” 3:24 “Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi…” Matthew: 1:15 “…and Eleazar begat ; and Matthan begat Jacob;” 1:16 “And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary….”
AR: Even if neither represents Mary, the two different genealogies are still possible. It would simply mean that given the correct time-frame, say 2,000 years not 1,000, that Matthew and Luke skipped over generations that the other didn't, and one of them may have done so intentionally to make theirs different. Eg, Luke may have researched it himself, written it down differently to prove that he didn't simply copy from Matthew.
RC: This above of yours is beyond confoundedly stupid, AR – I can’t begin to disentangle such convoluted speculation. But I leave it untouched, for the ages.
AR: Where in the Gospels does it say that Jesus had a Lamb at their "passover" meal? It also doesn't say that he didn't - so either is possible,
RC: Where did you get the bit about the blood on the doorpost, Aractus? You asserted it last post, but slide past my questioning of it. And it is not possible to have a Passover seder without a lamb (symbolic today, actual then). There is also no basis for a “seder”, the only “Passover meal”, on any date but the evening of 15th Nisan. The religious Jews who were Jesus’ disciples would have been at the very least puzzled at such a notion. So, either it was a Passover seder on the 15th, or a non-seder, non-Passover meal on the 14th. Mutually exclusive concepts to Jews. The Torah and the Mishnah are quite clear about this all, and they were written by Jews, as were the relevant actors in these gospel stories, all Jews. “John” was not a Jew, and he was a fabulist.
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 [by Christology] 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: You're only half-right about that, and I don't have time to explain it to you. There were two sacrificial lambs - one that each family would sacrifice, and then the one that would be the atonement and sent to the wilderness for the whole of Israel.
RC: Two sacrificial lambs per family at Passover, one for sin and one for korban pesakh? My late parents spent far too much money on my defective Jewish education, if your assertion has any truth value. I will appreciate it if you will cite an authoritative Jewish source for your remarkable assertion; no need to explain, just cite so I can check. NT source does not count.
AR: The unleavened bread represents both the freedom from slavery and atonement for sin during the period.
RC: Another fascinating idea I’ve not heard before: unleavened bread, eating matzah (that’s the requirement, to eat it), represents, either during the eight days of Passover, or ever, an atonement for sin. Again, you needn’t explain it to me, just give me the authoritative Jewish source from which it comes, so I can check. NT source does not count.
I’m about done with chasing you on this subject. While I was learning some stuff for a while, you have gone ‘round the bend. If there’s anything you can contribute about the myth of the resurrection, at least that would get back on topic. The closest you come to the topic is your 14th-15th stuff, and even that distraction does not refute my assertion that it was three days, because of the Friday crucifixion/death, Shabbat, and early Sunday; then out of the temporary entombment for a pauper's grave. Whether Friday was the Holy Day (Yom Tov, "Good Day", Good Friday); or was the day of preparation, you still get three days in, and then out.
RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. …
AR: …but I do discount the two possibilities that: 1. Luke was referring to the 6AD census, and 2. that Luke invented the story.
RC: Mini massacred you on this one, so I needn’t.
RC : …. As for the Magi, who cares in which gospel they only appear? … Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?
AR: …[ I] care [how many gospel stories the Magi are in] because you got your facts wrong. It makes no difference where they visit Jesus because they do not go to the birthplace. They could have visited him on the road to Domascus, they could have visited him at the temple at the time of his anointing, they could have visited him anywhere, at any time, it makes no difference. … Why do you keep saying "manger", and why do you claim that they stayed in a "manger"?? … Why would someone invent the birth being in a feeding trough?
RC: Matt 2:8 et seq. says the Magi went to Bethlehem, and to a house. But Luke 2:7 says “wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn”. I actually have been to the Church of the Nativity, and there on the floor (I have a photo somewhere) is a silver(ish) medallion marking THE EXACT SPOT where Jesus was born. Never mind that the said church was only established some hundreds of years later. I think that’s the one where the mother of Constantine went souvenir shopping, and a local said “You want beerte’place, I got beerte’-place, for good price, best price for you”. (My accent mimics with fondness that of our Egyptian Nile-River tourguide, Amr, who charmingly told us about “eerte’-quacks” -- you know, those shakings that cause buildings to collapse).
AR: For a start, they probably only stayed in the barn for a single day. That's right, they stayed in the barn, that had a feeding trough inside it, they didn't stay in the trough!!
RC: Inns (or caravanserais) at the time (and inns for many centuries thereafter and everywhere) had stables for the animals. You may call it a barn, but it was a stable, animals stayed there, and they were fed, and Luke has Jesus put (not born) in a manger, a feeding trough. I didn’t write the NT. If I had, I’d have hired an editor – he’d have corrected my irrelevant mis-statement that they all stayed in a manger; it was in the stable of an inn. The main point is that the Magi went to a house in Bethlehem, not on the road to anywhere; and Luke says nothing about a house, just an inn and a manger. "They probably stayed just a day"? So, Mary who is about 12 years old gets to the inn, 10 cm dilated already no doubt, has a first baby after a very short labor, baby gets wrapped and put into a manger, the shepherds and angels come, do their adorations and all of that baloney, it all takes only one day, and then they went to their house that was also in Bethlehem? Never mind that your version will make any woman laugh and sneer -- Luke 2:6 et seq. utterly demolish your impossible fabrication, since he says there that Joe and Mary were there for days before the birth, and the rest of his story also takes time to play out.
RC: … male version of almah, “elem” = "young man" … There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. {That definite statement seems less strong than I asserted – I can’t follow the argument I read, but even “betulah” or “parthenos” may be a metaphor for just a young woman in those cultures then – since how would anyone know the state of her hymen, and that is not dispositive anyway? I have also since seen the assertion that “b’khor”, בחור, is the male equivalent of “betulah”, but that’s too sophisticated for me, getting into ancient Akkadian and such, I’m just a country boy; and there is anyway a female version, הבחור, that is nothing like “betulah”. } The translation “young woman” proves the only contextually defensible one anyway, see next.
AR: Are you a Hebrew scholar? {Following was Aractus’ strained, elaborate justification for the un-justifiable re almah v betulah} … Thus, the literal meaning is "young maiden" but the meaning of virginity is implied. …
RC: By what imaginative device is this implied meaning discovered, uncovered, exposed? Wishful thinking? Certainly not from the context of Is 7:14, my negation further supported from Genesis.
You are focused too much on the one word, when the context is dispositive. I’m not fluent, but enough of a “Hebrew scholar” to be able to read from the Tanakh (the Hebrew, not the Aramaic bits) and understand it, with some help from a parallel English translation. At least, I can reasonably assert the contextual accuracy of the translation. That “hineh ha’almah harah” refers to a woman who is nearby the speaker and his audience and who is already pregnant is clear in the context of the rest of Is 7. The full text of the sentence is: “hineh ha‘almah harah veyoledet ben; vekarat shemo Immanuel”. "Here is the young woman, pregnant; she will bear a son and call his name Immanuel". Compare this with when Hagar was already pregnant with Ishmael by Abraham (the old goat), and the exact same form is used. In Gen 16:4 she conceives, she is pregnant; then in Gen 16:11 an angel tells her she will give birth to a son and will call him Ishmael (God listens). “Hinokh harah veyoledet ben; vekarat shemo Yishmael …”. “Harah” in the Hagar case is unambiguously present tense-pregnant because seven sentences before we learned she had conceived. In the Isaiah case, it is unambiguously present-tense because of the context. In neither case is the “imperfect” or future tense implied, in both cases the woman is already preggers. Such pregnancies can be of young women or old women; but they cannot be of virgins. Note also the conflation of the angelic annunciation to Hagar with that to Mary. Literary stuff. Forget just "almah", it is a trap for the credulous; do the context.
AR: Matthew [uses “virgin” for “almah”} … and whoever wrote the LXX translation of Isaiah. Both were done independently to each other!!
RC: That the two translations were independent is unproven, nonsense on its face: LXX was from about 2nd C. BCE, thus available to the author of Matt.
AR: … David lived at least 1,000 years prior to Christ.
RC: I’m puzzled at the stubbornness of your refusal to get the drift of this straightforward argument. If you really don’t follow it, you are regrettably innumerate and might do well to consult with a statistician or mathematician at the University. Let me try one last time: David lived 1000 years or so before Jesus. Count the numbers of names in each “set”, i.e., each genealogy list, Matthew and Luke. Each begat is one generation, can you agree to that? Divide the numbers of names in the Lukan genealogy into 1000 years to get the average length of a generation for the Lukan example. This figure we call the “sample average” or “sample mean” for the Lukan genealogy. Then do the same counting for the Matthean genealogy, you will get another figure for the count and then do the division of that number into 1000. That gives a second sample average, for the sample comprised of the Matthean genealogy. Got it? Two examples of average generational length, one for each of two samplings from the universe of (human) generational lengths. The problem is that those two genealogies are of such differing average lengths as-“reported”, that the odds of their being samples from the same population (i.e., the set of all humans or even the set of all Israelites who lived during the 1000-year interval) are two billion to one against. To do the calculation is beyond you, but at one time it was not beyond me: I did it. QED, one or both are false. Got that? I can’t make it clearer.
AR: Because Matthew organizes his into categories. Therefore, he had to have skipped generations. Also, from Abraham to David both are identical.
RC: I will point out the obvious to you, although why it escaped you is a mystery to me: From Abraham to David you have the OT, and whether that list is historically true or not, there is only the need to copy from the former to the NT from the texts that would have been available. There is no corresponding set of texts going all the way from David to Joseph, 1000 years, such that the other two groups of 14 generations can likewise be just copied. The very fact, by the way, of 14 generations are claimed to be in each group argues AGAINST the notion of skipping generations in a genealogy: it either is a magical set of 3 groups of 14 generations as asserted by Matthew, or it is not. Skipping defeats Matt’s purpose, dontcha think, if the records were available to all, as you insist? He’d surely be caught fudging the numbers. Also, since Matt says there were 2x14=28 generations from David to Jesus, and the other genealogy lists more than 28, both cannot be true. Got it? (I didn’t re-count the lists, I’m taking your word).
AR: you are assuming that neither could represent Mary. …
RC: I am not assuming anything of the kind. Both are said to be of Joseph, neither is said to be of Mary; it’s your “gospel truth”, not mine. Luke: 3:23 “…Jesus …being … the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,” 3:24 “Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi…” Matthew: 1:15 “…and Eleazar begat ; and Matthan begat Jacob;” 1:16 “And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary….”
AR: Even if neither represents Mary, the two different genealogies are still possible. It would simply mean that given the correct time-frame, say 2,000 years not 1,000, that Matthew and Luke skipped over generations that the other didn't, and one of them may have done so intentionally to make theirs different. Eg, Luke may have researched it himself, written it down differently to prove that he didn't simply copy from Matthew.
RC: This above of yours is beyond confoundedly stupid, AR – I can’t begin to disentangle such convoluted speculation. But I leave it untouched, for the ages.
AR: Where in the Gospels does it say that Jesus had a Lamb at their "passover" meal? It also doesn't say that he didn't - so either is possible,
RC: Where did you get the bit about the blood on the doorpost, Aractus? You asserted it last post, but slide past my questioning of it. And it is not possible to have a Passover seder without a lamb (symbolic today, actual then). There is also no basis for a “seder”, the only “Passover meal”, on any date but the evening of 15th Nisan. The religious Jews who were Jesus’ disciples would have been at the very least puzzled at such a notion. So, either it was a Passover seder on the 15th, or a non-seder, non-Passover meal on the 14th. Mutually exclusive concepts to Jews. The Torah and the Mishnah are quite clear about this all, and they were written by Jews, as were the relevant actors in these gospel stories, all Jews. “John” was not a Jew, and he was a fabulist.
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 [by Christology] 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: You're only half-right about that, and I don't have time to explain it to you. There were two sacrificial lambs - one that each family would sacrifice, and then the one that would be the atonement and sent to the wilderness for the whole of Israel.
RC: Two sacrificial lambs per family at Passover, one for sin and one for korban pesakh? My late parents spent far too much money on my defective Jewish education, if your assertion has any truth value. I will appreciate it if you will cite an authoritative Jewish source for your remarkable assertion; no need to explain, just cite so I can check. NT source does not count.
AR: The unleavened bread represents both the freedom from slavery and atonement for sin during the period.
RC: Another fascinating idea I’ve not heard before: unleavened bread, eating matzah (that’s the requirement, to eat it), represents, either during the eight days of Passover, or ever, an atonement for sin. Again, you needn’t explain it to me, just give me the authoritative Jewish source from which it comes, so I can check. NT source does not count.
I’m about done with chasing you on this subject. While I was learning some stuff for a while, you have gone ‘round the bend. If there’s anything you can contribute about the myth of the resurrection, at least that would get back on topic. The closest you come to the topic is your 14th-15th stuff, and even that distraction does not refute my assertion that it was three days, because of the Friday crucifixion/death, Shabbat, and early Sunday; then out of the temporary entombment for a pauper's grave. Whether Friday was the Holy Day (Yom Tov, "Good Day", Good Friday); or was the day of preparation, you still get three days in, and then out.
