Why can't Christians Verify Exactly Where Jesus Was Buried?

[Minimalist]

The proto-orthodox bullshit story of their triumph over "heresy" does not allow for this paul fellow to have been anything other than what later writers claimed him to be.  Hence, when one lie is detected a thousand are suspected.  As late as 160, Justin Martyr has never heard of him or his miraculous deeds.  These were invented later.

Next we can discuss the actual history of the Roman town of Corinth in the first century..But not tonight.  It's midnight here not the middle of the afternoon tomorrow as it is in Australia.

[Aractus]

The proto-orthodox bullshit story of their triumph over "heresy" does not allow for this paul fellow to have been anything other than what later writers claimed him to be.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/newtestame...ion8.rhtml

Most scholars agree that 2 Corinthians is a combination of several letters written by Paul to the community of Christian believers in the Greek city of Corinth. These letters would have been written at intervals of several months.

Which is it?

[Minimalist]

It's a later editor's version.  That's what is important.

[Minimalist]

Corinth - what we know from history..... which is to say without the bible bullshit story.

In 146 BC the ancient Greek city of Corinth was captured, sacked, burned and leveled by Lucius Mummius on orders of the Senate.  This ended the illusion of Greek independence which the Romans had fostered for 50 years.  Tired of their endless squabbling and treachery the Senate sent a message to all of Greece.  Basically that message was:  "Fuck you, we're in charge.  If you doubt it, look at where Corinth used to be!"

The site remained vacant until 44 BC when Gaius Julius Caesar decided that Corinth ( and Carthage - which had gotten the same treatment in the same year) were simply too valuable sites to be left vacant.  He determined to set up colonies there but of course the plans could not have been too far advanced as Caesar was murdered in March of 44. 
From then to 31 BC the region was wracked by the civil wars between (first) Antony/Octavian v Cassius/Brutus and slightly later between Octavian/Agrippa v Antony/Cleopatra.  Greece was a prime battleground in both wars a situation certain to slow down growth.

Finally by 30 BC things had settled down to the Pax Romana and in 27 Octavian, now Augustus,  revised the provincial roster making Achaea ( including Corinth ) a senatorial province meaning that the senate got to appoint the officials who would rob the province blind.  Still, Greece slowly recovered.  Under Augustus the theaters of military action shifted to the borders and for that reason there is not a lot of history written about Corinth at this time.  Archaeology is a different story and we'll get to that in a moment.

One thing we know is that the original colony was not a rousing success.  In 67 AD, Nero determined to dig a canal through the Isthmus to facilitate ship traffic.  Titus Flavius Vespasianus sent him 6,000 slaves that he had taken as a result of his successful campaign in Galilee against Josephus' jewish rebel army to do the work.  A year or so later when Nero died his successor, Galba, decided the project was too expensive and scrapped it.  Presumably given the longevity of slaves doing manual labor a minimal percentage would have still been alive and could have been re-purposed to other tasks.  But these are slaves.... not wealthy merchants!

Eventually, the aforementioned Vespasian was the winner in the struggle called The Year of the Four Emperors and one of the things he decided to do was re-found the colony at Corinth.

http://corinth.sas.upenn.edu/vesp.html

A comparison of the Caesarian and the Flavian planning systems seems to indicate that the Caesarian plan for the urban area of Corinth was reduced in size in the latter plan. Evidence on both the east and west sides of the city suggest that there was a reduction in the size of the Caesarian colony in the first century A.D. This reduced form shows some correspondence with what has been identified as the Late Roman city (Fig. 17). Apparently, some of the land at the eastern and western extremities of what had been originally planned, as well as some land in the southern urban area, was not being utilized and therefore was reallocated for agricultural use. The city as planned for in the Caesarian colony appears to have been reduced by about 40 percent. One implication of this contraction is that the population of the original Roman colony never became as large as originally anticipated.

So it seems that far from being the thriving community that xtians love to postulate, mid-first century Corinth was something of a flop.  However, Vespasian's re-founding in the 70's seems to have worked.  Of course, that is a little too late to save the pauline fairy tale.

But it gets worse.  Because c 145 the Greek geographer Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece and Volume II deals with Corinth.  Alas, even in the mid 2d century he fails to mention jews or xtians despite literally wandering around and recording all sorts of shrines visible in the city.

So here you have the dilemma.  The descriptions of Corinth contained in the paul tales do not match what we find on the ground from archaeology nor from the writings of Pausanias.  We do know that Corinth finally did begin growing into a decent sized city after Vespasian gave it an infusion of new colonists.  But here is the problem, Danny.  And I'd really like you to think it over.

On the one hand we have hard evidence and on the other we have xtian propaganda.  Guess which I consider more valuable?

[Aractus]

It's a later editor's version.  That's what is important.

It's still by Paul though, isn't it? And we're only talking about 1 of his 7 undisputed letters, and it's one of the less significant ones anyway. 1 Cor is a single letter, so is Romans, so is Galatians. Your argument is a clear fallacy: 1. because Paul still wrote it even if it is an amalgamation of his letters, and 2. because it has no significance to the more important letters he wrote anyway. By your standard of evidence that we know that 2 Cor is an amalgamation, we know that 1 Cor, Romans, and Galatians were not.

[Firefighter01]

From one of the 3 Pastoral epistles: (Titus 2:13)

You and I both agree that isn't by Paul, so what's the point?

I don't believe that Paul wrote most, if not anything at all in the Bible, but for the sake of argument there is plenty of instances in there about Paul writing of the divinity of Jesus, for example Romans 8:3.  Just because you can find passages to the contrary just means that the book is a mess of contradictions as you know.

Paul never mentions Jesus being somewhere at a time or date.  It's all spiritual for him, that's why he didn't confirm what he had experienced with the disciples, his "revelation" and the scriptures were all he needed. Which is crazy if he really wanted to learn more about Jesus, why not validate everything in the apparition with the guys that actually walked with Jesus to find out if the Jesus that he saw looked like and acted like the guy that the disciples knew? More likely is that the disciples didn't exist either, so it was useless going back to Jerusalem.

Nonsense, he wasn't writing a bibliography, he was preaching.

C'mon Aractus, what would a real person do in that situation?  Imagine that you were a travelling priest and had a vision of Jesus that was so awesome it blinded you for 3 days.  You instantly know that you have been wrong and Jesus is the real deal. You are cured after a magic incantation and know that you can go back and chat to the guys that walked with JC back in Jerusalem.  Do you go back to strengthen your knowledge so you have the very best information of the ministry of Jesus, the miracles and his followers to spread to the world and convert others, or do you ignore all that rich information and go preach the old info from the Hebrew Bible?

Do you mean stoning wasn't allowed?  How about the stoning of Stephen? Scholarships are paid for and awarded aren't they? I know that there are supposedly secular colleges around, but I'm deeply suspicious of secular Bible colleges. They would hardly promote atheism IMO. It's obvious that you are still indoctrinated by your belief in the historicity of the Bible which is clearly a mess. Our whole society is indoctrinated by the stupid Bible stories and the media propagation of Christmas and Easter. I don't know enough about Finkelstein to comment

I'm not sure where you got this from. All I said is that the Jews had no sway over Roman law. They could perform stonings, but they couldn't take someone to the governor and say "crucify him". Jesus didn't commit a crime, at least not one recorded in the gospels anyway, that would warrant stoning though...

Blasphemy was what I was thinking of, Jesus claimed he was the son of God.  The Jews could have done that without approval from the Romans.

No Bible college would promote atheism, true, but you have plenty like St Mark's that are pretty neutral on belief. I know Christians that will refuse to listen to anyone educated in such an establishment!

St Marks Mission:
Anglican in foundation and ecumenical in ethos, St Mark’s pursues a mission which, in the words of its founder, Bishop Ernest Burgmann, is to engage the people of God with Australian society.

We believe that a mission statement describes what an organisation should be striving to practise in its own affairs and to promote in its dealings with the world. The Council of St Mark’s National Theological Centre has articulated its mission as:

Transforming lives and communities for Jesus Christ through excellence in public theology, theological education, vocational training and national and international scholarly engagement.

It sounds like they have a pre-supposition that God and Jesus exist, so yes, they have a strong belief and would be extremely biased like most.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's still by Paul though, isn't it? And we're only talking about 1 of his 7 undisputed letters, and it's one of the less significant ones anyway. 1 Cor is a single letter, so is Romans, so is Galatians. Your argument is a clear fallacy: 1. because Paul still wrote it even if it is an amalgamation of his letters, and 2. because it has no significance to the more important letters he wrote anyway. By your standard of evidence that we know that 2 Cor is an amalgamation, we know that 1 Cor, Romans, and Galatians were not.

I think it's amusing that, as a historical jesus begins to unravel we desperately seek something written by a "Paul", lol.

[Firefighter01]

It's still by Paul though, isn't it? And we're only talking about 1 of his 7 undisputed letters, and it's one of the less significant ones anyway. 1 Cor is a single letter, so is Romans, so is Galatians. Your argument is a clear fallacy: 1. because Paul still wrote it even if it is an amalgamation of his letters, and 2. because it has no significance to the more important letters he wrote anyway. By your standard of evidence that we know that 2 Cor is an amalgamation, we know that 1 Cor, Romans, and Galatians were not.

Rhythm
I think it's amusing that, as a historical jesus begins to unravel we desperately seek something written by a "Paul", lol.

Zactly.  What a guy.  Paul, a penniless preacher wanders all over the place, convincing strangers to forget their beliefs and put in place his stories of a Jesus that he never met except in a dream. He establishes all these churches leaving no proof that he founded any of them.  This superman even survives a stoning in Acts 14:19

Then some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead.
20But after the disciples had gathered round him, he got up and went back into the city. The next day he and Barnabas left for Derbe.

What a guy.

[Aractus]

I don't believe that Paul wrote most, if not anything at all in the Bible, but for the sake of argument there is plenty of instances in there about Paul writing of the divinity of Jesus, for example Romans 8:3.  Just because you can find passages to the contrary just means that the book is a mess of contradictions as you know.

The author of Luke-Acts wrote more (by volume) than Paul. But Paul's writings are more original and earlier (Paul is writing before the fall of Jerusalem, and doesn't copy in the way the gospel writers do).

C'mon Aractus, what would a real person do in that situation?  Imagine that you were a travelling priest and had a vision of Jesus that was so awesome it blinded you for 3 days.

Paul never claims that happened.

Blasphemy was what I was thinking of, Jesus claimed he was the son of God.  The Jews could have done that without approval from the Romans.

I'm not convinced that Jesus made that claim. It is plausible, however it is not what got him executed, he was executed for being a threat to the public peace.

It sounds like they have a pre-supposition that God and Jesus exist, so yes, they have a strong belief and would be extremely biased like most.

Everyone has biases. Scholars - the respected ones anyway - are not those who have simply done a course. It's those who are actively engaged in the area. Good scholars are ones that keep their preconceived beliefs in check, just as any good doctor would do as well. The difference though is that doctors have a much more difficult time getting educated in the first place, and the standards set at the point of education is what ensures that we are left with competent people to go into practise.

[Minimalist]

It's still by Paul though, isn't it?

Is it?  Or is it by Marcion?  Or did Marcion edit existing letters?  Or did proto-orthodox writers take whatever Marcion had put in his canon and re-work it to fit their pro-jewish doctrine?

Danny, you think you know what happened because you believe the story put out by the eventual winners but there is a tremendous gap between believing and knowing. 

You see, there is no way that Marcion's "paul" would say this,

1 Corinthians 1:31 (NASB95)

31 so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.”


which is a rip off of OT references to yahweh in

Jeremiah 9:24 (NASB95)
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24 but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the Lord.

Marcion had nothing good to say about yhwh.  So someone concocted this to put into "paul's name."  Most likely this extensive re-write was not completed when Justin Martyr wrote his apologia to Antoninus Pius hence he never mentions him because he had not be rehabilitated as yet.