Frank 013 wrote:(March 8 ) you seem to miss the “levels of the heavens” idea present in Paul’s writings, all of the above can still have happened up there, just like the cross. In fact Doherty did comment on those very passages…
Christ's self-sacrificing death was located "in times eternal," or "before the beginning of time" (pro chronon aionion). This is the second key phrase in 2 Timothy 1:9 and elsewhere. What is presently being revealed is something that had already taken place outside the normal realm of time and space. This could be envisioned as either in the primordial time of myth, or, as current Platonic philosophy would have put it, in the higher eternal world of ideas, of which this earthly world, with its ever-changing matter and evolving time, is only a transient, imperfect copy (more on this later). The benefits of Christ's redemptive act lay in the present, through God's revelation of it in the new missionary movement, but the act itself had taken place in a higher world of divine realities, in a timeless order, not on earth or in history. It had all happened in the sphere of God, it was all part of his "mystery." The blood sacrifice, even seeming biographical details like Romans 1:3-4, belong in this dimension.
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/parttwo.htm Also, because in order for Christ Jesus to be the prophesized messiah he had to be in David’s line, even Paul knew that from the Torah, so it is no surprise that he would have added it… even if just in the spiritual realm.
Hi Frank, thanks for these comments. I read this point you cite, and found it at the weak end of Doherty’s argument. The Letter to Timothy is not by Paul, and in any case the line Doherty quotes does not say what he says it says. Rather, 2 Tim 1:9 says “God... has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.” The Letter to Timothy is just saying the gift of grace from God comes through the divine eternal Christ, not that “Christ's self-sacrificing death was located in times eternal”. Christianity argues this grace was fully manifest in the man Jesus, which Doherty disputes, but his twisting of the Bible to say Christ died before the beginning of time is wrong. The whole point of Christology is that Jesus Christ has two natures, the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth and the divine nature of the eternal Christ, united in the second person of the Trinity. Doherty has got carried away with his theory of the metaphysical Christ, and ignores those points which directly contradict it, notably Romans 1:3, where ‘descended from David according to the flesh’ is most definitely not ‘just in the spiritual realm’. For Paul the cross is material, even while the event is primarily spiritual.
I think where Doherty is confused is that he makes too much of the fact that Paul saw the metaphysical ransom through the blood sacrifice as the real achievement of Christ, with any ethical teachings secondary. Hence Paul instituted a framework suitable for popular belief - ‘Christ died for our sins’ - which deliberately ignored the complexity in the message in favour of a lowest common denominator of belief. My interest is to replace this belief framework with a knowledge framework, and I recognise in doing this that Doherty may well be correct in his claim that Jesus did not exist, as the “fictional invention theory by Mark” looks hard to refute.
RT: “Reading Doherty, I get the impression there may have been a complete disjunct between Paul and the Apostolic community of Jesus. Paul was such a powerful and lucid writer that people assumed he was connected to the Jesus movement, but as Doherty points out, Paul's ideas seem to come from his own imagination rather than any tradition. So any discrepancy between the Epistles and the Gospels can be explained away by Paul's complete ignorance of and indifference to the historical story.
This is complete speculation with absolutely zero bases in evidence.
You are reading too much in to what I said here. Doherty uses Paul’s apparent ignorance of the Gospel story as evidence that the Gospels are false. My point is that the splintering of various ‘inspired’ groups soon after the time of Christ is not evidence that all of those groups were fantasists. Doherty makes his critique of Paul carry too much weight of argument. He can’t validly infer general ignorance from Paul’s ignorance of Jesus.
I also happen to see a pattern forming here… you will entertain any possibility (no matter how remote) in order to keep your precious Jesus alive… I think you might be doing the same thing with your Astro-Christianity proposition making leaps based more on your desire than on any concrete connection.
Good one Frank. Yes the thread is slender, and it is rather like the image in
Paradise Lost where our universe is connected to heaven by a thin chain and to hell by a wide road. I am presenting my vision as a possible explanation of the eternal cosmic Christ through physical astronomical cycles. How far this actually equates to historical events of the Gospel age is secondary. When I said my commitment to the Gospel mythic narrative is more emotional than rational, I meant that I accept the evidence is weak, but the Easter Passion story and the parables have such archetypal power and beauty that I prefer to act as though they are true. It may well be that Mark made up the Gospel story in a sort of ‘Lord of the Rings’ fantasy epic of his day, but there is more to it than groundless fantasy. Mark is saying, ‘if the eternal Christ walked and talked on this earth, what would he have been like?’ The fantastic elements in the story of Jesus do not diminish the ethical meaning in Mark’s basic question of how we can conceptualise the eternal Christ through the imagery of incarnation.
Don’t get me wrong your version is infinitively superior to the claims of current Christianity, but I still do not see you making the distinction between what is provable and the way you want it to be. For example you need the time of the Christian movement to have been inspired by someone or something special or your Astro-Christianity proposition loses substance.
Yes, but if ‘the way I want it to be’ is possible and plausible, I will explore that until it is proven to be implausible. What I am claiming is special is that the idea of the cosmic Christ within the Bible has a hidden astronomical ground. Just last night at a Bible study group I came across another passage which underlines this agenda. In
Mark 8:19-21 Jesus said “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" "Twelve," they replied. "And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?" They answered, "Seven." He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
Interpreting this cryptic passage against my cosmic claim that the loaves are the sign of Virgo and the fishes are the sign of Pisces, marking the new Pisces-Virgo precessional age, the twelve baskets correlate to the twelve signs and the seven baskets to the seven visible planets. The blindness of those around him is a blindness to the cosmic story.
The facts of the matter seem to bother you because there really was nothing special about those times, or the many people and cultures that contributed to the core beliefs in the biblical text.
Just the fact that those times established our calendar and our dominant world cultural institutions justifies exploration of a possibility of something special. If that exploration coheres with an empirical cosmic observation then it is worth exploring further.
The ideas presented in the biblical texts were not original or fresh even then, the many people involved in the early Christian writings were (In all likelihood) very normal and not super geniuses, the stories formed over hundreds of years and were (most likely) compiled from many separate areas and people, funneled down to what exists today, this makes a central story and teacher named Jesus nearly impossible and nothing special...
Even if Mark is ordinary on the scale of Tolkien, the sense that the mythic narrative is grounded in a cosmic reality makes it something special
New evidence may shed more light on the subject and we all should be willing to accept it as it comes, we should not solidify ostentatious beliefs based on what little we actually know. Later
Fully agreed Frank, and I appreciate your reality check.
RT