Monotheism of christianity might have slowed that project down.
I don't think he meant name that after a different set of gods, name them after saints or virtues or something.
Monotheism of christianity might have slowed that project down.
How so?Monotheism of christianity might have slowed that project down.
This is a contentious issue on which, as far as I know, there's no great consensus. There was a time when some scholars thought that Paul basically re-invented Christianity, and that Christianity as we know it was a matter of Paul's version wiping out its rivals to become the only form that survived. I don't think many scholars today would defend such a view, although it's one you hear all the time at the popular (ie, ignorant) level. It's important to remember that Paul was just one missionary among many in his lifetime, and arguably not the most important one. It's only because his letters were preserved that he came to be so enormously influential. It's also important to remember that there are plenty of New Testament texts that have got nothing to do with Paul, primarily the Gospels, including John, not to mention others such as the letter to the Hebrews. These not only testify to non-pauline Christianity in the first century but have been enormously influential themselves. So I would say that there are many key points on which Paul's influence is immense, but the notion that Christianity as we know it was basically his invention is taking things much too far.
It isn't me that's arguing, but if you feel that strongly join a philosophy forum and put them in their place. There are a great deal of non professional scholars who are highly educated if not formally about the subject. I have never bought this nonsense that only theologians have any right to the text any more than a historian has the right to determine the accuracy of Herodotus more than a history buff who's spent his life researching the subject. This smacks of closing ranks to me. You do know as well that theologians and theological scholars frequent philosophy forums, at least the larger ones. Some are like you agnostic or atheist as well believe it or not.
As for there being good evidence of much, I'm not that sure, I don't doubt he existed but what legitimate evidence there is outside of the Gospels (which lets face it are a bit rich) are few and far between and often come long, long after the fact. If you think the Gospels are gospel - which I seriously doubt - perhaps you should seek better sources for corroboration than The Gospels?
After all the Gospel of Thomas (not the Acts of Thomas I hasten to add, which are Eastern and ME mythology with a touch of pseudohistory) could have been written much closer to Jesus life and that contains none of the mythology of the latter stuff which goes from perhaps 80AD to 200AD +, and is thus removed by some margin from the actual life of Jesus.
Ok. I'm embarassed to admit that I don't know the Bible very well. I once begun to read it, but got bored pretty quickly. Hence another question: What parts of the Bible would you recommendd for people to gain general knowledge of it? (Considering that the reader knows something about it, but isn't interested to read the most boring or irrelevant passages).
What do you think of Otto's idea of the religious experience (The Holy)? Are we just trying to put an answer to a question we cannot know the answer to?
How so? Wasn't Saul/Paul the one who "invented" converting gentiles? That would make the stance that he invented Christianity not really that far from the truth, as without gentile conversions Christianity today might be just a judaic rival. (A big What if? there though, I'd agree.) I also don't see how this amounts to "ignorant" if your explanation lacks substantiation.
As for the historicity of Jesus: with all the theological humbug developed after his death, there's precious little else we know apart from the fact that he lived, preached for a few years and died. The gospels provide little accuracy about Jesus' actual message, with the obvious result of endless theological debate and schisms likely never to heal. Whatever Jesus' original message, "the church" today is far removed from that.
I you. Seriously, though, that's one of the main things that ticks me off. It's almost as though people don't know that the field of historiography exists.That is not a rational approach - no historian normally rejects as worthless documents that cannot be shown to be 100% reliable.
I you. Seriously, though, that's one of the main things that ticks me off. It's almost as though people don't know that the field of historiography exists.
Being on topic, are the silver scrolls still the oldest bits of Tanakh text extant or is there anything that's been found that is of more ancient origin?
I didn't say that non-theologians shouldn't discuss or investigate such matters. I just said that philosophers, qua philosophers, are not experts on it, so I couldn't understand why you cited their opinions as if they were especially significant. If I said that many mathematicians have doubts about the theory of evolution by natural selection, that might be of interest to anyone investigating scientific knowledge among mathematicians, but it wouldn't be particularly relevant to a discussion about Darwin, would it?
There are no better sources for Jesus than the canonical gospels, or more specifically, the synoptic gospels. Dismissing them because they're "a bit rich" is like choosing to ignore Plato as a source for Socrates on the basis that he's a bit biased. The fact that the gospels were written by Christians for the purpose of glorifying Jesus doesn't make them worthless as historical sources. It just makes them biased in a certain way. All historical sources are biased or partial in one way or another. In fact, with the gospels it could be argued that we're in a better position to evaluate them, because at least we know what the bias is.
You present a false dichotomy between "gospel truth" and worthlessness. You seem to assume that because the gospels are not 100% reliable, they must be 100% unreliable, and of no worth as historical documents. That is not a rational approach - no historian normally rejects as worthless documents that cannot be shown to be 100% reliable.
The Gospel of Thomas is not a superior source to the synoptic gospels. No-one knows where or when it was written, but Antioch at the end of the first century is a good estimate. That would make it later than the synoptic gospels. Not that earliness or lateness are the be-all and end-all. Any good historian knows that a later source may contain more information, or provide a more balanced viewpoint, than an earlier source; being earlier does not make a source more authentic or reliable. Nevertheless, in the case of the Gospel of Thomas, being later doesn't seem to help much. It may well be based, to some extent, upon Matthew's Gospel or upon some of Matthew's sources, since it contains a lot of similar material. It also shows clear signs of incipient gnosticism, indicating that the material has been considerably reworked to support a gnostic version of Christianity, or something similar.
That doesn't make it worthless, any more than the Christian conviction of the authors of the canonical gospels makes them worthless, but it seems to me that holding up Thomas as some kind of authentic record of Jesus while denigrating the canonical gospels is going to require a lot of argument to support. Thomas is probably the only non-canonical source that contains any useful information about the real Jesus, but it still pales in comparison to the canonical gospels.
I probably can't help you much there, because I think the Bible is incredibly dull as well. I've never found anything in the Old Testament to be remotely interesting. I suppose I'd recommend that you try the New Testament, perhaps the Gospel of Matthew, and see what you think. It's still pretty tedious stuff though, to be honest.
Maybe. I don't know much about this sort of thing. I think that the notion that religious experience always involves the "numinous" makes a lot of sense, although personally I would be wary of over-stressing the similarities between different kinds of religious experiences. I suspect that they are more varied than Otto's analysis would suggest, especially between different religions.
I don't think there's any reason to suppose that Paul invented the notion of converting gentiles. After all, the first gentile to be converted in the New Testament is the eunuch from Ethiopia (actually Nubia) whom Philip converts in Acts 8, which is set before Paul's conversion. Paul simply believed that his mission was to gentiles. In fact there's considerable controversy over what that meant and how Paul went about his mission - did he try to convert gentiles who were already hanging around synagogues, or did he ignore synagogues and go for other gentiles? And how successful was he? Some have thought that Paul's gentile mission was enormously successful and swamped the church with gentiles, while others have thought that it was mostly very unsuccessful, and that the church remained overwhelmingly Jewish until after the time of Constantine. If that's the case then Paul's conversion of gentiles made little or no difference to Christianity. The point here is that our lack of knowledge means it's unwise to make such strong claims as that Paul effectively re-invented Christianity or anything like that. I'm not saying that Paul wasn't enormously influential, because obviously he was. The point is simply that that doesn't mean he completely transformed the religion.
I don't know quite what you mean by "theological humbug", but still: as I said before, the fact that the gospels (may) distort Jesus' message doesn't make them worthless as sources for reconstructing that message. Also, of course, Jesus' message is only one aspect of the historical Jesus; indeed, if one assumes that the main task of Jesus scholarship is to recover what he said, one is already prejudging the results of that scholarship, because it might turn out that what he did was actually more significant at the time. Perhaps Jesus was basically a healer with a little sideline in preaching, in which case perhaps the early Christians were not so off-message as you suggest in making Jesus' person, rather than Jesus' teaching, the main content of their own preaching. In any case, the point here is that the gospels' lack of accuracy doesn't translate into a lack of content. Plato isn't very accurate in his portrayal of Socrates, but that doesn't make Plato worthless as a source for the historical Socrates, and neither does it mean that we know nothing about Socrates. The situation with Jesus is pretty similar. In fact it's arguably better, because we have more sources for Jesus than we do for Socrates.
Whether the church today teaches the same message as Jesus or not is obviously a completely different issue. The church today and the authors of the gospels are not the same thing, although no doubt the former is enormously influenced by the latter.
Well that answers nothing, so when Herodotus says that he was way layed by Satyrs on his way to Athens or that the Persian army numbered a million we should just believe it.
And the godpel of Thomas isn't dated to the end of the first century that's your opinion as you well know the date is contested.
See I think your problem is your slumming it with people here who have no real knowledge of the subject? I think if you had any balls you'd take all this stuff that is mostly your opinion of history to people who know a great deal, like theologians on philosophy forums, instead of ruling over the kingdom of the blind. But then I doubt you would survive to be frank.
Perhaps you didn't read what I said. I said we don't have to choose between (a) believing everything we read, and (b) rejecting it completely. There is also (c) reading it critically. That is the sensible approach which historians normally use when reading ancient sources. There's no reason why the gospels shouldn't be treated in the same way.
I said myself that its date is uncertain, but the specialist literature which I've read on the subject suggests that the end of the first century is a reasonable conjecture. It doesn't really matter, though. Your claim was that it's actually a better source for the historical Jesus than the canonical gospels. My point was that I don't see any reason to suppose that.
Believe me, I deal with both theologians and philosophers at a far more professional level than that of discussions on internet forums. I have this quaint faith in the published, peer-reviewed word. My purpose in this thread is not to try to impose my own opinions on other people but to state as honestly as I can what I think is the case, in the light of my own research and experience, with regard to the various topics that are raised. I've indicated what's my own opinion and tried to give a sense of the range of opinions that exist. If that still seems too biased for you then feel free to ask other people for their views too.
Being on topic, are the silver scrolls still the oldest bits of Tanakh text extant or is there anything that's been found that is of more ancient origin?
That I definitely don't know. Perhaps Maimonides knows more about this sort of thing.
I probably can't help you much there, because I think the Bible is incredibly dull as well. I've never found anything in the Old Testament to be remotely interesting. I suppose I'd recommend that you try the New Testament, perhaps the Gospel of Matthew, and see what you think. It's still pretty tedious stuff though, to be honest.
I don't think there's any reason to suppose that Paul invented the notion of converting gentiles. After all, the first gentile to be converted in the New Testament is the eunuch from Ethiopia (actually Nubia) whom Philip converts in Acts 8, which is set before Paul's conversion. Paul simply believed that his mission was to gentiles. ...The point is simply that that doesn't mean he completely transformed the religion.
I don't know quite what you mean by "theological humbug", but still: as I said before, the fact that the gospels (may) distort Jesus' message doesn't make them worthless as sources for reconstructing that message. Also, of course, Jesus' message is only one aspect of the historical Jesus; indeed, if one assumes that the main task of Jesus scholarship is to recover what he said, one is already prejudging the results of that scholarship, because it might turn out that what he did was actually more significant at the time. Perhaps Jesus was basically a healer with a little sideline in preaching, in which case perhaps the early Christians were not so off-message as you suggest in making Jesus' person, rather than Jesus' teaching, the main content of their own preaching. In any case, the point here is that the gospels' lack of accuracy doesn't translate into a lack of content. Plato isn't very accurate in his portrayal of Socrates, but that doesn't make Plato worthless as a source for the historical Socrates, and neither does it mean that we know nothing about Socrates. The situation with Jesus is pretty similar. In fact it's arguably better, because we have more sources for Jesus than we do for Socrates.
Fair enough but these contentions aren't as clear cut as you make out, you say end of the second century but it's hardly a consensus at all.
I also think that any academic who wants to write challenging professional material should brush up his skills in places where heavyweights congregate, if you do that then I have no problem.
I do think though that the gospels are little more than "propaganda" and the accuracy of anything in them needs to be questioned, but then it has and is by people who know what they are talking about, so you don't need me. Historical scholars are so divided on the authenticity of the Bible in many senses as to make much of the subject of contention, lacking as it does so often validation from other sources. I mean does anyone actually believe Moses wrote the first five books any more? Do people think Jericho's walls fell when someone blew on a trumpet, or that the 40 cities of Ai were slaughtered in some cases totally, and why don't the Egyptians mention the Jewish exodus and or their period of servitude, for that matter why isn't the prophecy of the second coming fulfilled already post Babylon?
I seriously doubt if anyone outside of the faithful is really reading them with more than a cursory idea that it is historically accurate. Let's face it it probably was never meant to be in many cases, and the Gospels as a single source are no exception. Especially when you refuse to copy any alternative views and enforce your will on what is cannon with a matter of opinion.
There was a reason I put "invented" in quotation marks; indeed, I do not think Saul/Paul invented Christianity. But there's an essential difference between preaching within the community and preaching to gentiles. (The fact that a single non-Jewish conversion occurred before Paul made his appearance can hardly be significant here: there was a real controversy as to the question if and what kind of missionary activity - to call it that - should be considered Christian - to use that term.
Interesting analogy here: just as Plato's initial dialogues may portray a more or less accurate description of Socrates himself, which is gradually replaced by the mere use of Socrates as a character to illustrate Plato's own views, so the initial gospels get corrupted, intrapolated - in short: falsified - to comply with developing Christian doctrines that didn't exist yet at the time they were originally written.
Theological humbug:
- the gradual exclusion of women from the priesthood
- the development of doctrines (and assertion of these as canonical) which have no bearing on Jesus' original teaching (priests blessing weapons and wars, the "Holy Trinity", the "community of saints")
- the development from a (potentially) revolutionary movement into an all-pervasive state church
- the establishment of the papacy (on the pretense no less that Peter was the first pope)
- "the church" itself (there isn't any one church and from Jesus activities it is very clear he never intended to found a new religion, let alone one based upon himself as a deity)
- "intelligent design"
- "rehabilitating" Gaileo Galilei after 400 years...
Well, I could go on, but I'm no student of theology.
I don't think that's right. There were controversies in the first century relating to Judaism and Jewish practices, of course. Acts and Galatians both describe them. But these were about whether Christians are required to follow the Law. They weren't about whether it was OK to preach to gentiles. In fact even Paul doesn't give any suggestion that Peter or James, or anyone else, had a problem with that. The implication is that they all agreed without much difficulty that Paul would preach to gentiles and the others preach to Jews.
Well, if you can criticise me for not citing sources or giving clear examples I think I can do the same to you here. Are you saying that the church tampered with the text of the gospels to support doctrines that it later developed? Because if so, I don't think that such a claim could be substantiated at all. The text of the gospels is very well established. Now some Christians did tamper with their text later on, such as Marcion, who accepted only a version of Luke's Gospel with all the Jewish bits cut out. But Marcion was regarded as a heretic; the mainstream church did not do this. Compare, for example, Tatian of Syria, who in the second century wrote a book known as the Diatessaron which was a harmony of all four gospels into a single text. He didn't add any material at all to what he took from the gospels. So he, at least, resisted the temptation to alter the text even when he was writing a new book based on it. We have the text of the Diatessaron, incidentally, which is another witness to the text of the gospels as Tatian had them.
The only example of tampering with the text for doctrinal reasons that I can think of is 1 John 5:7, which contains a statement of the Trinity and is not found in reliable manuscripts. It is a later interpolation. But this isn't in the gospels, of course. More importantly, scholars know it's an interpolation, partly because the doctrine it contains is anachronistic, and partly because it's not present in all manuscripts. As this indicates, where interpolations exist, they are fairly easy to spot. If the gospels were full of them we'd know about it.
(See here for an earlier and much more in-depth discussion of this issue.)
If, on the other hand, you're making the weaker claim that the church later interpreted the gospels in line with doctrines that developed later, then that's obviously true, but not very relevant to the question whether the gospels are reliable sources for the historical Jesus. How people in the fourth or fifth centuries interpreted the gospels makes no difference to their status as historical sources.
Well, you can call them all "humbug"; that's a matter of opinion. Others might say that these were legitimate developments of Jesus' teachings that were in line with his intentions. Whether that's a viable position is another matter, although one could at least make a case for some of these. For example, I don't see that it's "very clear" that Jesus never intended to found a new religion. Are you so sure? Might one not interpret many of his sayings about the kingdom of God, spreading and growing quietly in the here and now, as statements about a society of believers existing within mainstream society? That's how the church has traditionally interpreted them anyway, and while I'm not saying that that interpretation is right (I don't think it is), I equally don't think it's obviously wrong.
But that's not to the point. The important point is that all of the developments you mention occurred long after the gospels were written. So I don't see why they are relevant to an assessment of the historical value of the gospels as sources for the historical Jesus. They'd only be relevant if they led people at those times to rewrite the gospels and eradicate all copies of earlier versions, but that didn't happen.
You are suggesting that early Christianity did not have a controversy over whether or not to preach to gentiles? The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews - and very religious ones. Jews today still argue about religious detail and have done so since Judaism evolved; are we to believe that in Jesus' days this was different?
Secondly, I did not say the church (there's no such thing as the church, and every Christian church uses its own particular version of the bible - a case in point, by the way) altered gospel texts, I said it was done for doctrinal reasons, in order to have older texts be in accordance with later doctrines.
Also, when speaking of the gospels I include the letters and deeds of the "New Testament", for the simple reason that the "Old" Testament isn't altered or succeeded by any "New" Testament in the gospels.
The gospel of Mark refers to Jesus most often as teacher (11 x) and rabbi (3 x); there are 5 references to him as Son of God, but twice this is said by a voice from heaven, twice by evil spirits, and the 5th is uttered by the Roman soldier at the cross: "Truly, this man was a son of God." The conversion of the executioner being a Jewish literary theme, that leaves factual doubtful sources for the title "son of God". Besides this, Mark, being the oldest gospel, if I'm not mistaken, has no mention of the later dogma of Jesus being God. For comparison: Mark dates Jesus as Son of God from his baptism on wards. Matthew lets him be born as a divine child from a virgin, and Luke lets John the Baptist hail him as an unborn child. (The latter points to an interesting twist of reality: John baptizing Jesus suggests that Jesus - at one time - was a follower of John, not the other way around.)
To begin with the last: I made no connection between alterations in the gospel texts and their value of source material for Jesus' life.
Matthew 16, 28: There are those among you standing here, who shall surely not taste death, before they will have seen the Son of man coming in his royal dignity.
Just one reference by Jesus to to the immanent Kingdom of Heaven - to which you have yourself referred to recently. Now would a man expecting the end of the world as we know it be interested in founding a new religion?
As for humbug: I consider humbug things unproven - whether theological or not. "Legimtimate developments of Jesus teachings"? I think not. They are legitimate only because they are/were the teachings of the ruling church. The teachings of dissidents or minorities were equally "legitimate", but were ruled heretic.
I don't think you can just categorise "Jews" that broadly. Judaism in Jesus' day was (a) very different from Judaism today, and (b) very diverse. Pharisees spent lots of time arguing about religious details, and one of the reasons why Jews in later times have had a strong tradition of this is that Pharisaism was a major influence upon rabbinic Judaism. Paul was a Pharisee, but as far as I know there's no reason to think that Peter or James or the others were. They were not religious scholars, they were rural fishermen and artisans who had become followers of a charismatic preacher. Why should that have turned them into polemicists?
I take the point about the different churches. When I say "the church" in general I mean all of them, which is a usual way of using the term. I don't understand your other point at all though. First you say that they didn't alter the texts, then you say that they did alter the texts, for doctrinal reasons. I cannot make sense of that - surely, either you think they did or you think they didn't.
In any case, as I said, while there is evidence that some churches, namely the Marcionites, altered already-existing texts to suit their doctrinal views, I don't know of any evidence that other churches did this. And in the case of the Marcionites, we have the original, pre-altered texts anyway. As I said before, the text of the New Testament is very well attested, more so than most ancient texts. If the various churches had indeed been in the habit of tampering with texts to match their doctrinal views, then there would be a vast array of wildly variant readings of the texts in question. Every church would have its own version of the New Testament. Manuscripts from different locations and different periods would disagree massively with each other. But in fact we do not find this. There are variant readings between different manuscripts, of course, but nothing major or doctrinally significant (other than the aforementioned verse from 1 John) of the kind that you hint at, and nothing more than one normally finds with ancient texts. This is very strong evidence that the churches did not tamper with texts to bring them into conformity with changing doctrines. They didn't need to, anyway. Early Christians were adept at reading their own views into texts that don't seem to be even relevant to the views in question. Why alter the words of a text when you can just interpret them allegorically?
Finally, it would be intrinsically surprising anyway if Christians altered texts in the way that you imply. Christians believed that the New Testament writings were by the apostles and contained the "rule of faith" in written form. They also believed that God had inspired their authors. It would be odd for people who genuinely believed that to rewrite the texts in such a cynical fashion. And the evidence confirms that they didn't.
I don't think that either Matthew or Luke suggests that Jesus was divine either. And yes, you're right that Jesus evidently started his career as a follower of John the Baptist. This was a little embarrassing for later Christians, and you can see how John's Gospel, in particular, goes out of its way to try to make it clear that Jesus was greater than John. This is one of the reasons we can be confident that John baptised Jesus, because not only would the Christians not have made it up, they were a bit embarrassed by it. But all of this merely indicates how theological beliefs influenced the way that the gospel authors wrote. Obviously I wouldn't dispute that. It's not evidence that the text of the gospels was altered by Christians in later centuries.
I suppose you didn't explicitly, but given that you made this claim about the texts being corrupted and falsified in the context of a discussion about the value of the gospels as historical sources for Jesus, it seemed that you were making a connection. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted you.
That's a good reason for supposing that he didn't. But one could equally well say that someone who spoked about his followers as spreading and growing slowly throughout society, and who called his best friend a "rock" on whom he would build his church, couldn't have really thought that the end of the world was imminent. It's a question of which texts you think are the authentic ones. If you think Jesus really said X then you'll say he couldn't have said Y. And if you think that he really said Y then you'll say he could have said X. But which way round is it? It's not obvious. Let me be clear here: I think you're right to suggest that Jesus was an eschatological prophet who did not set out to found a church. What I object to is the insistence that interpretations like this are "very clear", as you put it. You said yourself that the gospels must be read critically and carefully, because they are not straightforward, 100% reliable accounts. That's absolutely right. And that's why nothing about Jesus is "very clear". People who say that something is "very clear", whether they are arguing that for or against a traditional Christian interpretation, are simply choosing to favour one set of texts over another. There may be a good reason to do that, but the existence of alternative texts and alternative ways to weight them means that no interpretation can be so clear.
And that's assuming that Jesus couldn't have said apparently contradictory things anyway. Are you so sure that he couldn't have sought to found a church and believed that the world was ending soon? Must Jesus have been completely consistent in his views and actions? Couldn't he have changed his mind about things over time? Couldn't he even have believed or done contradictory things at the same time? People do that all the time. They're particularly prone to do so in a context of extreme religious and emotional intensity. Paul seems to have believed all sorts of inconsistent things at once, and he was a highly trained Pharisee. Jesus was an itinerant charismatic preacher from Galilee, who lived two thousand years ago. Can any of us even begin to understand or imagine how someone like that would have thought?
I'm not sure what period you're talking about here; there was no "ruling church" until perhaps the fifth century, at which point it splintered anyway. Besides, it could just as well be the other way around: the "ruling church" adopted certain interpretations as its teachings because they were the legitimate developments of Jesus' teachings, not vice versa. The point I'm trying to make here is that in rejecting one interpretation of the nature of doctrinal change, you're just assuming a contrary interpretation. It's not that simple. Personally I suspect that it's a combination of the two, and that some later developments were in line with Jesus' teachings or the teachings of the first Christians, and that others were not. I don't see any reason to dogmatically assume that they must all have been one or the other.