Biblical Texts: explication & discussion

@KaseiJin,

An element of the discussion that had transpired on the Gospel of Thomas I will bring here, since it is a biblical textual matter.

In post number 33, I had pointed out a commonly known element of late first and early second century document development--a kind of pick and choose, and add as you go kind of process. For that reason, and along with the understanding behind it, we can best see some of the Coptic Thomas' sayings as older (due to less frill) than the same things in the gospel narratives, and some newer, due to added frill.

Here, however, I'd like to touch on a few related points to that, and the lesser reliability of the intention of the source (speaker) of the sayings--and how that affects interpretation validity. The following is from Coptic Thomas:

[indent]7 Jesus said,"Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man," 8 And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."

9 Jesus said," Now the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds) and scattered them. Some fell on the road, the birds came and gather them up. Other fell on rock, did not take root in the soil, and did not produce ears. And others fell on thorns; they choked the seed and worms ate them. And others fell on the good soil and it produced good fruit; it bore sixty per measure and a hundred and twenty per measure."

10 Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes." 11 Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"

12 The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?" Jesus said to them, "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous*, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being." 13 Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like." . . .

* James the righteous is reported on by Josephus, and could be the brother of that Yeshua . . . perhaps. (also see Eusebius Ecc. Hist. II.XXIII.1~4)[/indent]

The text just goes on and on, saying after saying, with extremely little context at all. If we take verse 9 above, and compare that to what is given at Matthew 12:46~13:34; Mark 3:31~4:35a; Luke 8:1~21, we can see how not only the gospel narratives give us misinformation on the specifc setting (since the context given by the several narratives do not allow for this specific report to have happend more than once) but how they agree on the gist of the meaning of the intended communication said to have been demonstrated by the source of the saying--Yeshua.

Some of the sayings in Thomas will more easily be seen as presupposing a gnostic view, it has been argued (as in verse 11, above) but such are very few. The sayings were surely collected through the oral tradition period, and compiled in random order, and used by any number of authors who put together documents of 'sayings' documents.

The argument for Mark, or at least a 'proto-Mark' being the earliest written work of our present canonical narratives is strong enough, and that it is very thinkable that there was some form of Matthew out at a rather early time, is also thinkable. (Ecc. Hist. XV.1,2; XVI. 1,2; V.X.3; etc.) The most acceptable conclusion, taking all reports into consideration, and giving fair room for margin of error, is that no document gives us a fully original format, and no autographs; therefore, it would be impossible to place any greater importance of one over the other.

Also, regarding efforts to understand intented communication, we will be at a loss without context and the narratives give us more to go on there, thus any take on the Coptic Thomas should be weighed in with them, rather than in absence of their input.

In summary, therefore, extremely little could be said about the historical Yeshua from looking at the Coptic Thomas alone, but in looking at the overall picture painted by the several works, and the historical and cultural setting, some can be gleaned.

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin

Respectfully what is your point , are you trying to debunk the scriptures? Remember I said , in a longwinded way that the description of any event will always depend on the observer. Thus it is always subjective

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;73583 wrote:

KaseiJin

Respectfully what is your point , are you trying to debunk the scriptures? Remember I said , in a longwinded way that the description of any event will always depend on the observer. Thus it is always subjective

One point for all this has been stated in the thread, Alan, so it might be good to go back and review that, I guess. Another point, however, is to provide information for those who have not dug in as deeply, or do not have the materials available, to help give them a broader view and more information.

What you had said, Alan, was in error because it had not taken in some important considerations; which I'll outline more specifically, below:

[indent]1. We have the reports that have been handed down to us from way back, about the Yeshua story--the gospel accounts (canonical and non-~) other documents. For that reason, we can look at the cross comparisons of all the fragments, papyri, and skins and so on, and do the work at trying to get to an autograph. We will get to a fairly agreed on bulk of text form for each one, so there is no real problem in accepting them--while understanding spurious lines are to be ruled out.

So, we have the narratives, and we can look at them. There is no reason to have to lean on analogies for trying to understand what a text says...it says it.

2. We are looking at a single block of time--a rather narrow one--in the life's activities of one person and the group that often hung out with him. This is the Yeshua figure. We have what are claimed to be eye-witness reports, or data accumulated from said eye-witness reports (or maybe reports from reports of said eye-witnesses.

3. In looking at a singe event, or occurance, we can be assured of a few things here. In a situation where we have two or more, but less than 20, human beings of a single cultural in-group, a single mother tongue, experiencing an event or occurance within the compounds and limits of that same cultural in-group and the natural and social settings it encompasses, there is no reason to naturally expect much difference in reporting at all. Especially would this be true when a said in-group of such size has the time and opportunity to discuss what has been experienced, and the story ironed out, so to speak. [/indent]

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin

Have you ever heard about the mysterious "Q Document", it is believed by many as a source to the Gospels?

@KaseiJin,

Alan, Alan, . . . Alan, my dear fellow poster on these great forums. Oh how I truly wish I could reach out beyond the substance of the screen which is in front of me, and which divides our other realities, and offer you a pat on the shoulder, at times.

You may not have caught it, or, may have forgotten it, but I have given evidence for such a number of places in this thread. Yes, I have heard of Q, and read some on it, and have read some arguments that are kind of against the importance that some put on it. It has been very accurately pointed out, however, that the oral tradition was in place even before any Q document would have been.

But yes, I am fairly acquainted with Q. Thanks.

KJ

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin;73863 wrote:

Alan, Alan, . . . Alan, my dear fellow poster on these great forums. Oh how I truly wish I could reach out beyond the substance of the screen which is in front of me, and which divides our other realities, and offer you a pat on the shoulder, at times.

You may not have caught it, or, may have forgotten it, but I have given evidence for such a number of places in this thread. Yes, I have heard Q, and read some on it, and have read some arguments that are kind of against the importance that some put on it. It has been very accurately pointed out, however, that the oral tradition was in place even before any Q document would have been.

But yes, I am fairly acquainted with Q. Thanks.

KJ

But this document was supposedly lost I will check my facts on that and return comment later
The Mysterious Case of the Missing Q, The Passantinos discuss the Q documentary hypothesis as used by Earl Doherty in an attempt to discredit the authenticity of the New Testament Gospels during a debate with Lee Stobel, author of <I>The Case for Chr

If Q exists, according to its most popular form, it would be a document that (1) predates all the gospels; (2) is the source from which the gospels derive; and (3) makes no presumptions about Jesus (the Messiah, the Son of God, a miracle worker, God manifest in the flesh, the Savior of the world, one who was killed and then resurrected).[8]

@KaseiJin,

The link did a fairly well balanced take on it, but leaving out some details which may not be so easily overidden, otherwise, a good link. I did notice one error in my earlier post. . . I'll correct that now. Yes, I have heard Q, should have read, "Yes, I have heard of Q".

My take on the whole matter is that a document like Q is quite thinkable of having existed, however, they may well have been a number of documents which would have been pre-canonical gospel narrative. It is true that nothing remains, and it is also true that we have no first or even early second century writers on documents of that age, so to say that none of the ancient writers talk about it, is not really saying much at all.

Even so, Q or no Q, other earlier documents or no other earlier documents, there would definitely have been an oral tradition, and maybe some notes of some sort passing around in the earlier third quarter of the first century. The chances that 'sayings'-like documents were more common, are there, and are fair to assume. (Thomas fragments, Didache)

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin

If God had anything to do with the scriptural cannon, then what is not included in the "Bible is his will and intention"

On the other hand if the bible is just the work and compilation of mortal man, anything could and would be including maybe "The Gospel of Alan"?

@Alan McDougall,

Having gotten over a slinging, throwing, knock-down-drag-out bout of being overly busy, I find that I do have time to pick up on this thread once again. I'll take up, basically, from post #100.

From a point in time of an event/occurrence one witnesses, going outward, one can find descriptive reports of that event/occurrence and relatively test their accuracy somewhat objectively. From a descriptive report of an event/occurrence, that one has not witnessed, one can trace back to that event/occurrence, to learn of it--and by extension, experience it. In the event that several descriptive reports used to trace back to any single and same event/occurrence do not all arrive at the same scene, doubt is inevitably cast on claims to being witness by any number of them.

We do have the author of Luke claiming to have done research on the events reported on within that text, and we also have the (in this case second hands) trying to reassure the reader that the first hand (or John, as in apostle) was a true witness of the events reported on in that text. It must be kept in mind, however, that all this lineage would go back to an oral tradition by the original group, which we have nothing of, basically, therefore it is most understandable that the descriptive story within that in-group would likely not have been so scattered.

One pragmatic conclusion for the 'morning at the tomb' scene would be, then, that the women of the group had gone to the tomb to grease and spice the body for long-term burial, and had either not been able to get in (it's being sealed) or had not found the body, and with that, those of Galilee returned home for some while (with maybe others lingering in Jerusulem) and that afterwards, the story slowly became embellished with emotional desires.

While there will surely be other propositions (conclusions), the main focus here is that our reports are most evidently of human origin on this point because they very materially lack the ability to arrive at a single, same scene, thus lacking knowledge of any actual historical event/occurrence.

There are other points which back up this conclusion as well, I will next touch on some of them.

@xris,

Is it possible the Book of Revelation has been misinterpreted all these centuries? As it is John's vision of his adventure through Awakening to Christ Consciousness maybe it is not about the end of the world but the end of his world as he knew it. In general, the Book of Revelation is (according to Cayce) about the psycho-physiological changes John went through as he awoke to Christ Consciousness. Anyone who is now or has gone through this process can relate to the changes that happen. Your body changes and your ideas you grew up with are all transformed. Edgar Cayce, the Sleeping Prophet, gave a series of readings on the Book of Revelation revealing it as a process involving the actions of the mind and endocrine system and its seven (seals, angels, etc.) major glands.

SVPwiki : Revelation

As individuals across the globe are indeed awaking up there will be seeming chaos in their lives as they go through this process. Thus humanity as a whole is waking up and the chaos we see is the throwing off of the old ideas and false belief systems as individuals move into Higher Consciousness and awareness. So in a way this time is a time of the old falling away as the new takes a foothold.

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin;81518 wrote:

Having gotten over a slinging, throwing, knock-down-drag-out bout of being overly busy, I find that I do have time to pick up on this thread once again. I'll take up, basically, from post #100.

From a point in time of an event/occurrence one witnesses, going outward, one One pragmatic conclusion for the 'morning at the tomb' scene would be, then, that the women of the group had gone to the tomb to grease and spice the body for long-term burial, and had either not been able to get in (it's being sealed) or had not found the body, and with that, those of Galilee returned home for some while (with maybe others lingering in Jerusulem) and that afterwards, the story slowly became embellished with emotional desires.

Hi KaseiJin;

Christianityis based on the fact that "Jesus rose from the dead", if someone could prove in the absolute that this event did not happen (The Resurrection) and was just a fabricated story Christianity would collapse as a major religion

Because if Jesus did not rise from the dead neither will we!!!!

Scripture states if Jesus did not rise from the dead then our belief is in vain

@KaseiJin,

In your assertion, however, you are making a fallacy which is common among those of more than just the Christian belief-system, namely, that you are taking for granted points which others in the past have stated in written format (regardless of their having been in any oral format beforehand or not) as being completely factual in nature (thus absolute truths) without allowing concerns for statements made by the same authors which are clearly not factual in nature at all (thus totally non-truths) to temper the degree of plausibility attached to any assertion or statement made by that same author (or others of that author's contemporary group).

If you wish to demonstrate that all elements of all of the several reports that we have on that morning at the tomb are historically accurate, and did, in absolute fact occur just as have been reported on, then please go back through my evaluation of that and clearly demonstrate how the conclusions and points I have presented are in error. In the event that you cannot do that, then you are most certainly left with having to at least admit that one cannot say that 'it is a fact' that one Yeshua who had lived in the first century C.E. had actually died, as all life forms die, and then had actually lived again exactly as that personality, brain build/state, and total physical body, but is only a belief.

Also, along with that, you have to argue against the more modern, and greater in influence Christian thinking that upon death, one goes to some 'heaven' or 'hell' (in other words, there is no need for ressurection, it's a straight flow from being alive, alive, to being alive, dead)--which is most evidently not nearly so close to the evident early Christian thought. The early second temple Jewish thought seems to have been mostly leaning towards the resurrection, and the earliest of Christian doctrine strongly evidences having been right in line with the Jewish nephesh, and nephesh-khiya line of thinking. What that entails, is that one would die, and be dead...not alive somewhere...and then be 're-constituted' again, as was at the point of having died.

I would tend to disagree on the point about Christianity, per se, collapsing upon knowledge of a great lack of thinkability of any Yeshua's never having been resurrected, because there are religious belief-system tenets which persist in spite of the fact that such has well been demonstrated to be nonsense--such as all the fuss about saving the world from that solar eclipse that some Buddhist-based monks and crowds had been frenzying over back a couple of years (and maybe this past solar eclipse too). [although I could be in error on their having been Buddhist-based, the article is a bit unclear in my mind, and I'd have to run it down again to check]

@KaseiJin,

Without the resurrection there would be no Christianity, If the resurrection did not happen then the religion we call Christianity would have remained a tiny offshoot of Judaism.

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;84645 wrote:

Without the resurrection there would be no Christianity, If the resurrection did not happen then the religion we call Christianity would have remained a tiny offshoot of Judaism.

Do you believe in the resurrection Alan and does your belief depend on it? thanks xris..

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;84645 wrote:

Without the resurrection there would be no Christianity, If the resurrection did not happen then the religion we call Christianity would have remained a tiny offshoot of Judaism.

Which, quite ironically, supports the more likely scenario, namely that even though the resurrection event more likely resulted in misinformation leading to exaggerated reporting, leading, in turn, to embellished story telling, Christianity as we have it today (not necessarily what it had been in the mid first century C.E.) happened. That's because that's just the way religious belief-system oral tradition develops into system supporting tenet.

Here, I'd like to make a little 'out of outline' presentation to show a earlier Jewish presentation which seems to very much be a forerunner to a concept that Pathfinder entertains. (whether he got that from here, or not, I have no idea, though) This is here (rather on other threads such as Consciousness is a Biological Problem [e.g. #362 (see last sentence), #377; cf. #531 (note second paragraph), and Thought and Self-Awareness #1 (note esp. paragraphs 3rd~6th from bottom)) to maintain 'on topicness' to a better degree.

At Genesis 2:7 we find the following:

[indent]wa-iezar YHWH elohiym eth'ha-adham aphar min-ha-dhamah wa-yipah be'apaiyah nishimath khayam wai'hay' ha-adham li-nephesh khaiy': (bold & transliteration style basically mine)[/indent]

Here, the NRSV (with Apocrypha; Oxford Press) renders this as:

[indent]then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. (bold mine to match the Hebrew bold respectively, above)[/indent]

The ASV (the American translation + retake on the KJV (1901)) translates this as:

[indent]And Je-ho'vah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (bold as per just above rendering)[/indent]

We will find that the LXX gives us psykhen zosan for 'nephesh khaiy'' (and please do note here, that the li- which prefixes that is the preposition 'to,' or 'into') and the Vugate gives us 'animam viventem.'

The Hebrew word 'nephesh' is usually rendered 'soul' in English versions and translations, but in some contexts, more modern versions tend to want not to use that in order to distinguish a H. sapien from a non-H. sapien--the Hebrew allows no such distinction. One important concept in the earlier Jewish system's nephesh was that the nephesh can be destroyed...it dies and that's the end of it. A careful look over the details and flow of Gen 3:19; 6:17; 7:21, 22; Lev 21:1, 11; Josh 2:13, 14; 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 40; 11:11; Ps 89:48; 103:15,16; 146:2~4; Ecc 9:5, 10; Isa 38:17~19; etc., will make that plain enough.

What is being expressed, is that YHWH formed all souls--animal forms including human--(see Gen 1:20, 21, 24, 30 [nephesh khaiy' used here]; 2:19) from earth (as in soil/dirt), breathed the 'force of life' ['ruach'] into them, and at that point, they had become living souls--otherwise, without that 'force of life' they were simply non-living, thus dead souls, which turn back into soil material. Therefore according to that view, the 'spark of life' (if one so wishes to use that style) would be ruach, which is like wind, or motion of air, sometimes signifying vivacity, or vigor, in a number of places used as a symbol of ones life as an intelligent creature in opposition to non-humans. The Greek rendering is pneuma, and the Latin spiritus.

@xris,

xris;84677 wrote:

Do you believe in the resurrection Alan and does your belief depend on it? thanks xris..

Hi xris yes I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, but nevertheless I distance myself from any church organisation be it Christian or any other religious order

I find hope through Jesus, both his example of life and the words and actions-he did during that one remarkable beautiful life,

"Never a man did the things he did, never a man spoke the words this man spoke"

I dismiss KaseiJin long post as irrelevant , in addressing the truth or non-truth of the Resurrection

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin;69359 wrote:

In picking up from post #79 (second from bottom on page 8), we can see Luke tells us that after the incident at the tomb, . . .

Well, it has been a while . . . let me pull this old book down off the shelf, dust it off a little, and then continue writing it.

This particular post quoted above, is in the general order of (and there's a good degree of 'non-flow insertion along the way, so a kind of pruning might prove an increase in efficiency) the general flow that follows, if one would wish to check it from here:

[indent][indent]post number 45

post number 65

post number 70

post number 78

THEN . . . post number 79 and the one quoted above, post number 95 on page ten. [/indent][/indent]

I'll then pick up from there (although probably not today), but will give some time (since I need it too) for those to whom this is new, to catch up on and think over, before following and discussing along with me as I go.

I hope to soon, after finishing up the present line of argumentation, go into the YHWH god-model so as to provide further lines of argument on how the Christian movement was build on a false notion.

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;85282 wrote:

"Never a man did the things he did, never a man spoke the words this man spoke"

I am not surprised to hear you say this because when you haven't studied any other philosophies, this of course would be your outlook.

However; it is incorrect, I have read philosophies that are not only as good but in some cases far better than anything Jesus had supposedly said.

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;84645 wrote:

Without the resurrection there would be no Christianity, If the resurrection did not happen then the religion we call Christianity would have remained a tiny offshoot of Judaism.

Well of course there are any number of modern day "Christians" who question the resurrection as a "physical resurrection of the body" as opposed to a "persistance or resurrection of the spirit". Even the gospel biblical accounts (which do not agree of the details) and (which were recorded years after the facts) state that jesus was not recognized, walked through walls, vanished, etc. I would say many "Christians" consider Jesus life, teachings and example and his impact on world history to be more significant than the historical factuality of a physical bodily resurrection.

For some Christians orthopraxy (right action) is more important orthodoxy (right belief). For even many of those who believe in "life after death" it is a spiritual realm not a realm of matter and the physical material body. Yes, I know what Paul had to say. Jesus has a continuing presence with the disciples and according to church doctrine in the world and in the church and in his believers. That presence may be "spiritual" not "material".

@prothero,

prothero;171343 wrote:

Well of course there are any number of modern day "Christians" who question the resurrection as a "physical resurrection of the body" as opposed to a "persistance or resurrection of the spirit". Even the gospel biblical accounts (which do not agree of the details) and (which were recorded years after the facts) state that jesus was not recognized, walked through walls, vanished, etc. I would say many "Christians" consider Jesus life, teachings and example and his impact on world history to be more significant than the historical factuality of a physical bodily resurrection.

I have heard some Christians say that if we ever had the technology to travel through time and went back to the time of the supposed resurrection and did not witness the events as they are "inconsistently" recorded they would still believe in the resurrection.

So even if there was evidence that it did not happen, they would still believe that it did. That to me proves many things about the christian mode of thinking. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality but instead it has everything to do about make believe.

prothero;171343 wrote:

For some Christians orthopraxy (right action) is more important orthodoxy (right belief). For even many of those who believe in "life after death" it is a spiritual realm not a realm of matter and the physical material body. Yes, I know what Paul had to say. Jesus has a continuing presence with the disciples and according to church doctrine in the world and in the church and in his believers. That presence may be "spiritual" not "material".

Well I think we also need to focus more on the fact that it is recorded both ways in the bible. In some cases jesus was still in the physical body which some of the apostles could touch, see and hear as if he had never died. In other accounts it is completely the opposite. That Jesus appeared as either just a voice, or an aged ethereal image surrounded in bright light. Obviously these both accounts are not consistent and they can't both be correct. It doesn't make any sense to be physical and then all of a sudden not.

That is only one inconsistency with the resurrection story. There are dozens and dozens of other details that are recorded that are not consistent with each other. If these events were true, you would have far more consistency with the details, especially if it was documented for the purpose of salvation. These inconsitencies should only happen if the witnesses were not really caring about what they were seeing. So even this part is inconsistent. You just witnessed someone return to life and you can't even document what happened? It is not realistic. Which begs the question, did it actually happen or were these stories just made up and passed down through generations before a few people decided to record them? If it happened this way, it would make sense why the stories are inconsistent.

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