Board index ‹ Paul the Apostle

[bloglogician]

OK funny debate. Neither has convinced me.
I suggest a 3rd answer at the risk of offending all!....
The Christos tradition common to almost all religions [of a horus sun deity being nailed to wood or a cross and resurrecting after 3 days] was separate to Yeshua the man who overturned tables. Then the two were merged to implement a new religion and bring in all the other pagans that observed some of the same feast days and traditions. So:
*perhaps Paul was too early,
*perhaps Paul saw the christ/savior tradition and the great spiritual leader/king as separate, and they were at the time.
*perhaps Paul did no miracles, Yeshua did none (but perhaps converting the entire roman world to his new way of thinking was a feat/miracle and causing political upheaval too) but some miracles were later attributed to them to fit-out the new christos religion
*and perhaps Paul referred to the tradition of the christ saviour figure raising from the dead and at other times referred to the man [relabelled as christ] and it was lost in translation and 2000years of dust?
Now that is plausible to a materialist. No divine magics required here. Can I prove it? not a chance. If I spent a lifetime reading this stuff and learnt greek then maybe. Try archaix.com for more evidence since J.Breshears is a chronologist and scholar.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for your contribution to the discussion, but I don't find your explanations plausible, either. Let's go over your ideas.

> The Christos tradition common to almost all religions [of a horus sun deity being nailed to wood or a cross and resurrecting after 3 days] was separate to Yeshua the man who overturned tables. Then the two were merged to implement a new religion

It's unarguably true that the death and resurrection motif is common in other religions: Tammuz, Baal, Osiris, Horus, Dionysus, Adonis, Persephone, Attis, and Krishna. It's a long list, so one might assume Christianity is just one of many or even a copy-cat theology.

The problem with the theory is that there is no reasonable way to conclude that the central truth of the gospel is derived from them.

• The deaths involved battles among the gods, not the death of God Incarnate at the hands of His creatures. The example that comes closest is that of Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, who is killed in battle but experiences no comparable resurrection.
• All except Krishna are associated with the agricultural cycle, thus the gods and goddesses in question are seen to die and rise again every year. This is a far cry from the death of Christ once for all and His resurrection and ascension into heaven, never to die again, all of which have nothing to do with the life cycles of an agrarian economy.
• All fall clearly into the realm of myth rather than history. The Bible treats Jesus as an historical figure, as did His followers from the very beginning. No such continuity of historical verification exists for any of the gods, goddesses, or demigods listed above.
• While many of the accounts above can demonstrably be tied to one another, as their obvious similarities indicate, no such connections exist between the biblical narrative and any of these stories.
• Critics who list similarities between these narratives and the biblical account tend to take isolated pieces from different narratives having their sources in different times and places. This is particularly true with the Egyptian myths (you mentioned Horus in particular as an example in your post).
• Despite the claims of skeptics, many of the ancient narratives would not even have been known by the Christians of the first century. The sources in which the stories are found were buried long before the New Testament era and were only uncovered by archaeologists in the last 150 years.
• Baal, Tammuz (Ezekiel 8:14), and the Egyptian gods, though not by name, are pointedly rejected in Scripture rather than being imitated or adapted.

Contrary to these examples, the death of Jesus as an historical reality is well-attested, both in the Bible and in extrabiblical sources.

The other piece, of course, is that there is no evidence that what you call "the Christos tradition common to all religions" was merged to the (prophet) Yeshua in syncretism.

> perhaps Paul was too early,

Except, as I've mentioned in previous posts, Paul often and repeatedly mentions Jesus's miracles. It is thought by many that Paul's reference to the resurrection in the early verses of 1 Corinthians 15 is a belief that goes back to within 2-5 years of Jesus's death.

The idea that maybe "Paul is too early" doesn't hold water.

> perhaps Paul saw the christ/savior tradition and the great spiritual leader/king as separate, and they were at the time.

Again, there is no evidence that "they were at the time" separate traditions. If you have a reference to verify this theory of yours, I'd be glad to read it and discuss it further.

> perhaps Paul did no miracles, Yeshua did none

The evidence we have is that both Paul and Yeshua did miracles. If we are following the evidence where it leads, the reality of miracles from both of them is the hypothesis that stronger evidence must disprove. You can theorize all you want to bring about the conclusion you want to generate, but I believe that the reality of their miracles is the stronger case unless you presuppose the impossibility of miracles, but if that is the case, you have sacrificed objectivity for bias.

> perhaps Paul referred to the tradition of the christ saviour figure raising from the dead and at other times referred to the man [relabelled as christ] and it was lost in translation and 2000years of dust?

This theory isn't plausible because of the abundance of manuscripts and fragments that are available, showing us that nothing was "lost in translation and 2000years of dust." Since we have close to 6000 such pieces of evidence, some of them quite early, as well as very early references to them by the Apostolic Father and Church Fathers, the "we screwed it all up; he never meant that at all" approach is not convincing.

> Now that is plausible to a materialist.

Of course it is. If you ignore the evidence at hand to follow an opinion that suits your worldview, of course it's both consistent and plausible.

> Can I prove it? not a chance.

And this is the rub. But we are not looking for proof. In historical pursuits like this, proof is not the issue. What we are looking for is the preponderance of evidence and the weight of evidence to infer the most reasonable conclusion based on the evidence we have.

I'm glad to talk some more with you. There are a lot of subjects on the table here.