RE: Why are Paul's writings in the Bible?
October 7, 2023 at 2:17 pm
(This post was last modified: October 7, 2023 at 2:33 pm by Bucky Ball.)
(October 7, 2023 at 2:02 pm)GrandizerII Wrote:(October 7, 2023 at 12:19 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: If you want to know what mythicists tell us about TF2 it is that Paul did mention James brother of the Lord, but that seemed to be a title as he ascribes to other characters to be the brother of the Lord as well. Josephus did mention James brother of Jesus, but in the continuation says it is "Jesus, the son of Damneus." The fragment “who was called Christ” was inserted into the text very clumsily since it is different Jesus, and a jew, Josephus, would not call someone messiah (Christ).
Ok, I'll comment only on what Paul said here, leaving Josephus for another time:
This is good, FM, because this is specific enough for us to analyse and see where we can go with this. Now, as I've stated more than once before, I'm all about parsimony here (and also about what scholars themselves say, but we can put that aside). For me, parsimony isn't just simply simplicity perse. It's about what is the "cleanest" account here, given what we can observe in the texts.
If we look at where Paul talks about the brothers of the Lord (in 1 Corinthians), he makes a distinction between them on one hand and Peter, Barnabas, and himself (and also Apostles in general) on the other hand. If "brothers of the Lord" is meant to be a title referring to a specific subgroup of Christ-believers, rather than literal siblings of Jesus, then what passage/document can we refer to to support this interpretation? Without that support, we probably don't have any good grounds to reject the literal interpretation that coheres with a passage in another early and plausibly independent source (independent from Paul) that lists James as one of Jesus' brothers (i.e., Mark). And there is something about the special status of a subgroup of Christ-believers that demands some support for it. And even if there was some remote/obscure support for the idea that there was indeed a special subgroup of Christ-believers called "brothers of the Lord" that had nothing to do with a flesh-and-blood relationship with the Lord, then does it lead to a "cleaner" account? Or is it rather "ad-hocy" relative to this historicist Jesus account?
I find no reason to buy anything that any of them said about anything to be credible.
These are people that bought into someone saying 500 people rose with Jesus, and walked around Jerusalem, on Easter Sunday. Yet no Roman or Jewish source said one thing about the split rocks, and all the open graves.
There's also another interesting observation. If you read the Jewish rabbis from the late First Century, the things they were discussing (regarding how to remain "faithful" after the temple destruction), ... they are suspiciously similar to the content of the gospels. "Love god and love your neighbor". They were attempting to simplify the Jewish "law" for the diaspora.
If that's when they were making up Jesus, it's pretty suspicious. (I also don't buy that ... not a mythicist). There is a reason that the "Way sect" in Judaism, rapidly expanded in the mid first century, and we don't know what that was.
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. - Joseph Campbell
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist
Militant Atheist Commie Evolutionist