You may not like his style Tat,but what particular points can you refute? Take the extremely late dates given in "The Christ Conspiracy" for the gospels for instance.Can you name a single qualified N.T. scholar and textual critic that remotely agrees with these late dates?tat tvam asi wrote:Did you really just post a link to Tecktonics to try and refute the mythicist material? That's got to be lowest of the low concerning apologetics.....
Not even skeptical textual critics like Ehrman would agree with these and for obvious scholarly reasons like the dating of papyri fragments among others. Early church fathers like Ignatius and others quote from the gospels so they must have existed at that time for them to be able to quote from them.
The reality is that the astrological interpretations given are both absurd and contradictory. Christ was not crucified at the Winter solstice but at Passover which is in the Spring so all these parallels about the 'crucifixion' of the sun at the winter solstice,which is itself nonsense, can't match even on this one point.
There is no biblical justification for dating Christ's birth on December 25th which has been pointed out even by other mythicists like Carrier.
What was introduced later by the Catholic church is irrelevant to the primary documents.
I appreciate you may find the style annoying but mythicists should address the substantial arguments and references. Scholars of Tacitus don't agree with your conspiracy theory either.
Tacitus confirms both Christianity's origin in Jerusalem and Christ's crucifixion by Pilate.
The idea that Christianity originated in Alexandria in the second century is supported by no reputable historian or scholar.
There was obviously a Christian church in Rome at the time Paul wrote his letter to them which is dated around 60 A.D. if memory serves, so it was already well established at the time it was written.
Whether the Roman Christians had a written copy of a gospel at that time is debatable but they clearly knew the gospel message as Paul makes clear in his letter. That's how they became Christians,by believing this message.
To suggest that Paul is writing in Romans about the sun and zodiac is nonsense,and in terms of justification by faith in the sun's alleged 'death and resurrection' ,not to mention his clear dismissal of pagan religious concepts in chapter one, which on mythicism he's supposed to be advocating!
No, Romans is clearly dealing with man's moral standing before God and the need for righteousness and reconciliation which can not be achieved by keeping the moral law. It could be achieved by keeping the moral law perfectly, but we don't so we have a problem.
To posit on astrotheology, that Paul is saying that believing in the physical sun's 'death and resurrection' would confer moral righteousness is to spectacularly misunderstand all of these concepts of morality,law, righteousness and justification.
I've been over Doherty's arguments about Paul's supposed "non historical sub lunar Christ" and these do not stand up to textual scrutiny of these letters including Hebrews.
So you dislike criticism of mythicism and astrotheology, but there are good and substantial reasons for why they are false.
No one disputes that paganism included worship of the sun, moon,stars and the natural cycles,or that there was an astrological element to this in paganism,but to suggest that this or anything like this,is what Paul and the apostles were teaching is ridiculous.