Adam Beaven said
Doctor Ehrman

paul says

It comes from Galatians 1:6-9

6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him, that called you into the grace of Christ, for another gospel.
7 For this is not another; but there are some who trouble you and would pervert the Gospel of Christ.
8 But should we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.
9 As we said before, so say I now again: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which ye have received, let him be accursed!

And 2 Corinthians 11:3-4

3 But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
4 For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit which ye have not received, or another gospel which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.

question

1. pauls has the crucified jesus. what other jesus’ were people preaching ? “the jesus who got away from crucifixion” ?

 

Ehrman replied

 

 

** you do not have permission to see this link **  December 8, 2015

The other jesuses are the ones that say you have to follow the law.

 

comment: i remember Mary Helena saying on another forum that pauls jesus is the CRUCIFIED one. if the crucified one nailed the laws to the cross, then how is the one which promotes the LAW also nailed to the cross? 

Just happened to notice this post……would be great if you remembered what I said and in what context….

For the apostle Paul it is Christ crucified that is at the center of his ideas  – i.e. Paul has a crucifixion theology. A crucifixion theology that is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. Yep, Paul shows no interest in the gospel crucifixion story about Jesus being betrayed by Judas….

The gospel Jesus crucifixion story is a political allegory that is reflecting the Roman execution/crucifixion of the last King and High Priest of the Jews. (Antigonus in 37 b.c.e.). That event, as recorded in Josephus, came about when King Herod I paid the Roman Marc Antony a great deal of money to have Antigonus killed. It was Herod that was the betrayer  –  the Herodian Jew that wanted to end the Hasmonean Dynasty. 

Crucifixion, the hanging on a tree/pole/stake was viewed as a curse by the Jews. Paul did not do some magic trick that turned this curse into a blessing; turned this curse into an instrument of salvation. Paul is not dealing with a flesh and blood earthly crucifixion. Human blood sacrifice is anti-humanitarian. What did Paul do? He changed the context. The Jerusalem above would mirror the Jerusalem below  –  albeit with symbolism. What is valueless in a humanitarian context would find value in a theological/spiritual/philosophical context. Sure, there is no blood in heaven  – however, in a symbolic sense death would have value in Paul’s new spiritual world view. All of which means that the NT contains two Jesus stories. 1) the historical reflection of the Roman execution of the last King of the Jews in the gospel story. 2) Paul’s Jerusalem above story; a story about crucifixion having a salvation value within an intellectual context. There is no Judas in this story because each and everyone of us becomes Judas when we betray, let go of, kill off, crucify, old ideas that are hampering our intellectual growth. 

The gospel Jesus crucifixion story reflects the historical execution/crucifixion of the last King of the Jews. That’s the Jerusalem below. Paul’s crucified Jesus belongs to the Jerusalem above, the spiritual Jesus, the intellectual Jesus, the Jesus of ‘faith’. Not a resurrected human Jesus transformed into a spiritual entity (whatever that might mean…) but a rebirth, as it were, in intellectual comprehension: Intellectual values are independent of physical values. Death, in an intellectual context, death of ideas, has supreme, salvation value. Yes, Paul, whoever he was, was ‘one born prematurely’  –  born before modern psychology learned how the workings of the human mind impact upon behavior. His Christ crucified story had to make do with the language and ideas of his time. Today, we can appreciate that his crucifixion theology makes more sense, humanitarian sense, within a philosophical context. 

Adam Beaven said

Just happened to notice this post……would be great if you remembered what I said and in what context….

 

 

** you do not have permission to see this link **

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mary , the 3 links above have your posts. do you know how to retrieve the posts?

Yep, I know how to retrieve my old posts on the FRDB archive.

However, your three links don’t take me to anything to do with FRDB….

Anyway, whatever…..

If you have copies of my posts and want to quote from them   –  then go ahead……anyone who is not a member of the new version of FRDB can’t access the old FRDB archives.

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gmatthews said
At least I know what Garcinia Cambogia is now.

…and the relevance to the OP?

gmatthews said
When you click his links it goes to a health page and one of the top articles talked about it.  I didn’t see anything remotely related to religion on that site.

I know  –  I don’t know the ins and outs of what happened re the loss of the freeratio domain name for FRDB. That forum has a new domain  –  ** you do not have permission to see this link **.  –  albeit a forum that the owners no longer desire to give space for discussion re the historicist vs ahistoricist arguments….The FRDB archives have to be accessed through the new forum….

However, Peter Kirby took up the slack with his new forum. 

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Stephen said
OMG I just ten minutes of my life never to be reclaimed browsing through the thread at the Peter Kirby link called Jesus Wars go Thermonuclear.  What can I say but…Jesus! 

I guess I admire someone who is willing to slog through the arguments post by post but I am not one such.  I can understand why Prof Ehrman has refused to respond to the mythicists who attacked his book.  Surely the most bottomless of bottomless pits! Of course now he mentioned he’s going to debate Robert Price in the spring.  Mixed emotions.

I believe Jesus was a historical figure because of Occam’s Razor. If you are clever enough and imaginative enough you can provide an alternative explanation for anything.  Yes, anything is possible.  But is anything probable? Of all the explanations I have heard the simplest one that accounts for all we do know and begs the least number of questions and makes the least number of assumptions is that there was a first century historical Jewish apocalyptic prophet who preached the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God and got creamed for it.  Some of his later disciples left literary remains that became the source of a major world religion.  Unsexy perhaps but there it is.

Did you read my comment on that thread?

—————————

”Putting all the allegations aside in this Carrier/McGrath debacle – I’m wondering if the above quote from McGrath’s article is perhaps at the root of Carrier’s attitude. He has, with his mythicist theory, dug a hole for himself. He has created a mythicism that cannot be disproved. It’s an idea without any roots in physical, historical, realities. It’s all pie-in-the-sky stuff. Easy for anyone, scholar or non-scholar, to dismiss as irrelevant to a historical search for early christian origins. Ideas, even crazy ideas, need to be tested by their usefulness to actually living on tera-firma. What difference does Carrier’s mythicism achieve when lined up against belief in a heavenly hereafter? The heavenly afterlife scenario can inhibit care for the world we live in. Carrier’s mythicism closes down a historical search for early christian origins. Doherty closed the door – Carrier has locked the door and thrown away the key….

Methinks Carrier needs to face McGrath’ criticism of his mythicism: ”…Carrier has made it impossible for anything at all to contradict his viewpoint”.

——————————-

What would be your position if Bart Ehrman had a ‘Damascus Road’ experience? If, like the NT Paul, Bart, instead of ‘persecuting’ the mythicists, actually found some value in the ahistoricist position. What if Bart came to the conclusion that Jesus was a literary creation and not a historical figure? What then for you, and for all those who look up to Bart for his scholarship? All the ‘noise’ that Bart generates against the mythicists might just be part and parcel of the sort of ”kicking and screaming” that he says he did prior to changing his views on the infallibility of the Bible.

Changing ones ideas is never an easy thing to do for many people. Ideas become us. Ideas let people know where we stand. They can become as comfortable as an old pair of slippers  –  whereas those new shoes might just give us corns on our toes….However, the very nature of ideas is that they do get old  –  and not gracefully. They do their utmost to hang on to the glory days of their youth.

The simple answer is that there was a historical Jesus? Simple answers to complex questions are not the correct approach to anything to do with ‘salvation history’, apocalyptic, allegory, mythology or theology. We are not dealing with science here. We are dealing with interpretation, with meaning that the NT writers found in their living experience. In other words; we are dealing with subjectivity from the gospel writers not objectivity. It’s not simplicity these writers were after…

I believe the Jesus of the gospel story is a literary construct, a composite literary construct. (just as Fleming created James Bond) I believe the gospel story is a political allegory that reflects Jewish history. Jewish history that was important for the gospel writers. Jewish history from which the gospel writers found some meaning, some relevance, for their lives.

As to the historicist vs ahistoricist debate  –  here is another link for you:

Ehrman and Brodie on Whether Jesus Existed: A Cautionary Tale about the State of Biblical Scholarship

Journal of the Orthodox Center for the Advancement of Biblical Studies

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After reading that, take a look at this link  –  especially the comments. Methinks that the ahistoricist genie is out of the bottle and no amount of condemnation from NT scholars will be able to curtail it’s impact upon a generation that is not satisfied by simple answers to the gospel story. Biblical simplicity is for the kindergarten not for Academia.

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spiker said
Methinks that the ahistoricist genie is out of the bottle and no amount of condemnation from NT scholars will be able to curtail it’s impact upon a generation that is not satisfied by simple answers to the gospel story.

 

And yet bad ideas, poor logic and pet theories have always bedazzled  generations. Marxism for example enthralled a few generations, but it still is an unmitgiated disasater, it’s contribution to economics is still 0 and its contribution to the betterment of mankind is abysmal, but at least it is not a simple answer.

Sure, there are bad ideas in Biblical studies  –  as there are bad in economic studies. However, I very much doubt that those at the bottom of todays economic system are ready with their praise of it. Free-market economics, whatever the ‘logic’ behind it, has failed to deliver an economic system which offers value to all people. 

Similarly, the simple approach to the gospel story i.e. a historical Jesus of some variant, has failed to offer value to a growing number of people. If one is interested in, for it’s own sake, early christian origins, then a historical Jesus is a dead end. There is nowhere to go. The gospel story remains an illogical, contradictory account of the origins of Christianity. There is no rhyme or reason to it. A story about an illiterate wandering carpenter preacher might give fuel to the romantics among us  –  but break that spell  –  and let history have it’s say  –  and we might well find that reality offers more in the way of value in understanding Christian origins.

spiker said
maryhelena said

Sure, there are bad ideas in Biblical studies  –  as there are bad in economic studies. However, I very much doubt that those at the bottom of todays economic system are ready with their praise of it. Free-market economics, whatever the ‘logic’ behind it, has failed to deliver an economic system which offers value to all people. 

 HUH!?

Like I said bad ideas poor logic, pet theories etc. There is no “logic”  or “delivery” of an economic system. The comment about Marxism was about the affect of bad ideas, poor logic and pet theories on the intellectual life of a generation; that mythicism would have a similar affect on historians as Marxism had on previous generations, doesn’t bode well for their intellectual well being.

What those at the bottom think, might be different if they were choosing to weather to live in the United States or Mexico. In fact, “those at the bottom of todays [sic] economic system” in Mexico seem to have quite a bit of praise for it when they risk life and limb to get here.  

Similarly, the simple approach to the gospel story i.e. a historical Jesus of some variant, has failed to offer value to a growing number of people. If one is interested in, for it’s own sake, early christian origins, then a historical Jesus is a dead end. There is nowhere to go. The gospel story remains an illogical, contradictory account of the origins of Christianity. There is no rhyme or reason to it. A story about an illiterate wandering carpenter preacher might give fuel to the romantics among us  –  but break that spell  –  and let history have it’s say  –  and we might well find that reality offers more in the way of value in understanding Christian origins.

“Give fuel to!?” Why is  a historical approach supposed  “to offer value to a growing number of people”.   As if that is an appropriate gauge of value. “Jesus of some variant?” What the heck is that!? Do you really think the historical approach is designed to give fuel to people.? Spell!?  What spell? T According to “ahistoricists” there are endless stories about illiterate wandering  preachers  throughout the region. The idea that there’s some spell at work is utterly amazing. But the stories in question aren’t about illiteracy, carpentry or even necessarily about wandering preachers. I suppose I could cast Einstein’s biography as being about a patent clerk who moved around alot and had problems in school, but that would be a gross oversimplification. Certainly, his accomplishments shouldn’t be evaluated in those terms. More importantly, anyone who wanted to figure out what Einstein did or said, certainly wouldn’t get much help from such an oversimplification.

The historical approach is precisely about  letting “history have it’s say”  hence the name and it is exactly about offering “more in the way of value in understanding Christian origins.” but here’s the odd part, You argue that the historical approach doesn’t offer “a growing number of people more in the way of value” but then conclude that if historicists get what they want, they willl offer “more in the way of value”!?  

And why don’t historicists offer more in the way of chocolate iced cream?

The ‘historical’ approach of Jesus historicists is not a historical approach at all. History, Jewish history, does not support historicity for the Jesus of the gospel story. Full stop. All the Jesus historicists have is an assumption of historicity. That’s all   –  an assumption of historicity. You can’t change that by however crazy you might think some ahistoricit/mythicist theories might be. Even if, for the sake of argument, various ahistoricist/mythicist theories can be debunked  –  this would not give the arguments of the Jesus historicists any credibility. The arguments of the Jesus historicists have to stand or fall on their own merit. And fall they do because there is no historical evidence to support their assumption.

The Jesus story is, for many people, spellbinding. A nobody, from nowhere, becomes the man to save the world by shedding his blood. That is the Jesus story. On a logical level, let alone a moral level, the story is fantasy. It’s a story that strikes a blow to the very notion of a humanitarian world. Take away all the theological or philosophical dressing and what is left  –  a nobody from nowhere. How does one go about finding a man who is a nobody from nowhere? Searching for a needle in a haystack comes to mind. Impossible task. And that is the state of ‘historical’ Jesus research. Dead End going nowhere  –  but kept going on hope, faith and wishful thinking…

In contrast, the ahistoricist approach to the gospel story opens up a wide vista of historical persons and events. Historical persons and events that shaped the historical canvas. A historical canvas from which the gospel writers were able to draw material for their literary Jesus figure and the story they created. A story not of the inhumanity of human blood sacrifice but a story of the power of the human intellect. 

A Jesus story based on real historical people, a Jesus story that reflects humanitarian concerns  –  I’d opt for that Jesus story any day over the anti-humanitarian fantasy that is reflected in the assumptions of the Jesus fundamentalists   –  or the wishful thinking of the Jesus historicists that they can find a historical Jesus minus the theological and philosophical dressing.  In the context of the gospel story  – no theological or philosophical clothes and Jesus becomes meaningless. The gospel Jesus is the clothes he wears  –  remove the clothes and there is no Jesus.

spiker said

Debunking mythicism? Well we’ve already determined that it is bunk so to de-bunk it, would require a lobotomy, but no one pretends

that doing so means anything other than disconnecting the mythicist frontal lobes from its thalamus. 

So….the spirit of the Inquisition lives on Bart Ehrman’s forum these days….

My goodness me  –  the ahistoricist ideas must be so dangerous to a historicist that a lobotomy is considered as a final solution. Heavens alive, spiker, shades of Nazism here…

spiker, stop and think before you post your mockery and ridicule….