Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[Free]

And you still won't answer the question.

What is so special about those particular pieces of bullshit in the story ( which you otherwise dismiss as fiction ) which makes them so special?


I've got all fucking day to keep asking.

There's only one thing we find in the gospels that is corroborated by numerous other sources.

The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Everything else can be taken with a grain of salt or rejected by choice.

[Minimalist]

There's only one thing we find in the gospels that is corroborated by numerous other sources.

WHAT OTHER FUCKING SOURCES? {And...if you say "Josephus" I shall fart in your general direction and taunt you a second time!" }

The story originates in one place - the so-called gospel of mark.  All the rest of it is fanfics or re-writes dating from a later time.

If you write 1+1 = 3 on a piece of paper and then make 500 Xerox copies of that paper you have not made your "original" 500 times more correct.


Don't keep forgetting this bit of reality.

[Bucky Ball]

Respectfully, as we have discussed many times,
IMHO, what I think we know, is that communities of believers arose who believed that a Jesus of Nazareth was crucified,
and that historical situation was reported by historians, as Pliny reported to Rome, and repeated in the "Carmen Christi" in Paul.

[Minimalist]

Which Pliny?

[Bucky Ball]

From my "resurrection" paper

There is a a rather strange "hymn" or poem which we see placed in the beginning of the 2nd chapter of Philippians. Just as in the Old Testament, a "hymn" may be the oldest fragment, placed into another text. In Philippians 2: 6-11, there is a poem called the "Carmen Christi". The name comes from a letter of Pliny the Younger, in which he tells the Emperor Trajan, about (111-112 CE) what he found in the Provinces of Pontus and Bithynia, in Asia Minor. The Christian sect was being accused of various crimes, and he could find nothing especially seriously wrong about them. He didn't really know what to do. He says in Latin, "carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum invicem"..or "they chant verses alternately among themselves, in honor of the Christ, as if to a god". That's all he could find. Nothing especially bad. But that's why the hymn is called the "Carmen" Christi.. it's a (probably) chanted hymn. This hymn has been studied to death, by scholars. By the 1990's the "hymn" status was even being questioned, but whatever it is, ( a Greek "encomion" ? ), it doesn't really fit with Paul's known writing style. So he got it from somewhere.

We know Philippians was a combo job, because, among other things, the author says "finally" more than once, (3:1, 4:8), and more importantly, the tone of the text does not match the surrounding text. Some think from 4:10 on, is yet a third author. Some think the hymn may have come from inside the community at Phillipi, and Paul approved of it, so he included it. In any case, the hymn says Jesus was "super-exalted", after being humbled. What does that mean, exactly ? The academic examination of this poem is extensive, but an interesting part, is in the Greek, the form of preposition and verb compounding, called a "hyperypsosen". It's a linguistic element used which intensifies the verb. "super-exalted", or "extra-exalted" are just made-up English words which attempt to translate the meaning, as there is not an English equivalent.

Anyway, the "high" position is used to intensify the difference from the "humbled" of the low position. Anyway, Paul KNEW the context, and that the Romans would hear of this, and/or, it would be "heard" in a cognitive sense, as a shocking insult. A pathetic criminal, whom the Romans had executed, now was "raised" to a very high position. It was the equivalent to a (political) "obscenity". It would be the same as an American "wacko-preacher" telling HIS audience, in a US military setting, that Osama bin Laden had been raised to the highest place in heaven. There is a VERY strong anti-Imperial "ring" to the last part of the poem. So the first citing of the resurrection theme, can be seen in a striking political context. If you wanted to get the Romans mad at the Christians, or justify Roman anger toward Christians, you would use such a poem.

[Minimalist]

Okay - but Pliny never mentions anything about anyone getting crucified.

In fact, it seems highly unlikely that two Roman aristocrats would discuss xtian beliefs - if they existed at the time which I doubt - without mentioning that they worshiped a criminal who got his ass nailed to a cross and then were dumb enough to think he came back to life.  Somehow...Pliny never mentioned that scenario.  Perhaps he never heard about it?

[Bucky Ball]

Okay - but Pliny never mentions anything about anyone getting crucified.

In fact, it seems highly unlikely that two Roman aristocrats would discuss xtian beliefs - if they existed at the time which I doubt - without mentioning that they worshiped a criminal who got his ass nailed to a cross and then were dumb enough to think he came back to life.  Somehow...Pliny never mentioned that scenario.  Perhaps he never heard about it?

I could agree with that ...
... I don't actually remember what I was thinking at the time, ... other than the Pliny letter supports the fact that there were
communities of believers called "Christians" which the Romans were aware of.
That's the only point I think I was trying to make, not the specific exact content of the beliefs.

[no one]

Historical jebus was equally talented at choking the chicken with either hand, biblical jebus said it was a sin.

Fact!

[Minimalist]

Okay - but Pliny never mentions anything about anyone getting crucified.

In fact, it seems highly unlikely that two Roman aristocrats would discuss xtian beliefs - if they existed at the time which I doubt - without mentioning that they worshiped a criminal who got his ass nailed to a cross and then were dumb enough to think he came back to life.  Somehow...Pliny never mentioned that scenario.  Perhaps he never heard about it?

I could agree with that ...
... I don't actually remember what I was thinking at the time, ... other than the Pliny letter supports the fact that there were
communities of believers called "Christians" which the Romans were aware of.
That's the only point I think I was trying to make, not the specific exact content of the beliefs.

Okay, got it.  Yeah, Pliny's commentary back to Trajan does not match up to any of the happy horseshit that later xtians put forward.

I always found it interesting that Pliny wrote ( and Pliny died c 112 CE ) that these xtians sang a hymn to him "quasi deo"  ( as if he was a god ).

"As if?"  So it sounds to me as if the cake that the christard morons were cooking up was still in the process of rising in Pliny's time.

That is, of course, if he did not really write "Chrestians" as his subordinate Suetonius wrote in his Life of Claudius a little later.  One can always count on some later xhristard scribe to come along and correct some spelling when needed, you know.

[Minimalist]

Historical jebus was equally talented at choking the chicken with either hand, biblical jebus said it was a sin.

Fact!

Ambidextrous.

[Cavebear]

Historical jebus was equally talented at choking the chicken with either hand, biblical jebus said it was a sin.

Fact!

Ambidextrous.

I hesitate to get involved in biblical details, but this really cracked me up!

Jesus strangled chickens with either hand? I'm not sure whether to admire the talent (never having attempted to strangle a chicken in my life) or laugh at the image of it. First, I gotta ask WHY Jesus was strangling a chicken. Second, WHY Jesus did it (apparently a 2nd time) with the other hand. Was he just showing off or was he acknowledging left-handers in order to be socially-correct?

Further, was the chicken an atheist? It matters in a symbolic sense, I suppose. Or perhaps God and by extension Jesus himself just wanted a chicken dinner. I wonder whether he fried it, simmered it, or baked it.

Actually, I suppose he didn't have to. Jesus/God could eat it raw without harm of course, or just "make" it suddenly cooked to perfection. Hmmm, I wonder why Jesus/God needed to eat anything at all. Like, could HE/SHE/THEY/IT actually starve? That boggles the imagination.

[Bucky Ball]

Ambidextrous.

I hesitate to get involved in biblical details, but this really cracked me up!

Jesus strangled chickens with either hand?  I'm not sure whether to admire the talent (never having attempted to strangle a chicken in my life) or laugh at the image of it.  First, I gotta ask WHY Jesus was strangling a chicken.  Second, WHY Jesus did it (apparently a 2nd time) with the other hand.  Was he just showing off or was he acknowledging left-handers in order to be socially-correct?  

Further, was the chicken an atheist?  It matters in a symbolic sense, I suppose.  Or perhaps God and by extension Jesus himself just wanted a chicken dinner.  I wonder whether he fried it, simmered it, or baked it.  

Actually, I suppose he didn't have to.  Jesus/God could eat it raw without harm of course, or just "make" it suddenly cooked to perfection.  Hmmm, I wonder why Jesus/God needed to eat anything at all.  Like, could HE/SHE/THEY/IT actually starve?   That boggles the imagination.

... as sheltered a life as I had, even the likes of me think I recognized this.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/choke_the_chicken
Not to embarrass you ...

[Cavebear]

I hesitate to get involved in biblical details, but this really cracked me up!

Jesus strangled chickens with either hand?  I'm not sure whether to admire the talent (never having attempted to strangle a chicken in my life) or laugh at the image of it.  First, I gotta ask WHY Jesus was strangling a chicken.  Second, WHY Jesus did it (apparently a 2nd time) with the other hand.  Was he just showing off or was he acknowledging left-handers in order to be socially-correct?  

Further, was the chicken an atheist?  It matters in a symbolic sense, I suppose.  Or perhaps God and by extension Jesus himself just wanted a chicken dinner.  I wonder whether he fried it, simmered it, or baked it.  

Actually, I suppose he didn't have to.  Jesus/God could eat it raw without harm of course, or just "make" it suddenly cooked to perfection.  Hmmm, I wonder why Jesus/God needed to eat anything at all.  Like, could HE/SHE/THEY/IT actually starve?   That boggles the imagination.

... as sheltered a life as I had, even the likes of me think I recognized this.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/choke_the_chicken
Not to embarrass you ...

Thank you for the link. I am hard to embarrass, but I need a jaw-drop emoticon! Seriously, I never heard that phrase in all my days and I thought that, by now, I had heard them all. I had a roommate who said "I have to go drain the lizard" when he needed to pee. But never "choke the chicken". I'm cracking up about that one now.

When I was attending University Of Maryland, a big football rival was the University of South Carolina. Our mascot was a terrapin (fear the turtle). Theirs was a "gamecock". A popular banner at home games with them was a scrawny chicken with a hand held on the elongated neck.

Now I wonder if I just didn't "quite" get the full meaning of that. LOL!

[Minimalist]

How about "jerkin' the gherkin?"

[Aractus]

That's your problem right there. Where you, an inexperienced layperson, claim there's no evidence, a very large worldwide consensus of experts in the field says there's plenty to justify historicity.

To be fair Free some of the claims out of scholarship are deluded in the extreme. Joel Baden has this interesting Twitter thread:



Not only is he wrong, but he's badly wrong and so is every other bible scholar who attempts to ascribe meaning to Leviticus 18:22. He's also most certainly not a religious fundamentalist or anything like that, so how is it that he's gotten this so badly wrong?

Well what he failed to understand there is that Leviticus 18:22 is a written law - it forms part of the Law of Moses, and written laws on their own have no meaning. It's up to the correct legal authority, usually the courts, to ascribe them meaning. The court system is described in Deuteronomy 17 and some other places in the Hebrew Bible. Josephus also talks about the different approaches in his day by different Jewish sects as to how Jewish laws are interpreted. Wildly different approaches. The thing is this can tell you nothing about when this law was written - let's take a guess at 6th or 5th century BCE. Most scholars think this verse was the work of a later scribe as it's in different language to the rest of the Leviticus 18 laws. Did the Jewish courts in the 5th century BCE recognise scribes as legitimate lawmakers? If not they could have struck down the law right away with a decision of “this was added by a scribe who has no authority as a lawmaker, so ignore it”. Every lawbook on the planet whether religious or secular has written laws in it that the courts have struck down as invalid for whatever reasons they choose - you should be well aware of this because the US recently saw their highest court establish a new legal principle in the decision of Dobbs that overturned Roe v Wade which created a legal context previously invalid written laws to become real court-enforceable laws... and while the focus in the media has been on the US States rushing to create oppressive restrictions to terminations, what also happened was some States had previously invalid laws in their lawbooks that would suddenly become real laws limiting termination access and they rushed to remove them. So when you're talking about written laws it's not correct to assume they have meaning because of how they read or how they are interpreted - even with a completely plain reading (which Lev 18:22 doesn't have and some scholars have even suggested it's deliberately written in a way to make the authorities apply their own meaning to it) we do not know how the courts originally contextualised it because that's how laws get their meaning. I can quite literally think of dozens of valid questions a court would need to decide. Does it apply to sex acts committed in privacy, or just those in the public view? Are warriors who are at war and away from their families permitted to engage in anal sex with each other in order to relive their sexual tensions if it's mutual and consensual? These may sound like dumb questions, but they're not! And even after all of this it could still be Levitical legalise which we don't understand.

As Sabine Hossenfelder says of her fellow physicists - some of them come the believe in the reality of mathematics and that leads them into the delusion that they're pursuing an absolute truth in physics, whereas it may be that mathematics may be fundamentally inadequate to describe reality and we just don't know this. Scholars that try to ascribe an original meaning to biblical laws must recognise that they're trying to solve a legal question by literary interpretation. Thomas Hieke has by far the best scholarship attempting to do this; and even states correctly that the text is meaningless without its correct context. But scholars cannot recover that context now, they can only offer a humble suggestion for what the context may have been. Also note that Joel Baden calls the scholarship of Hieke and others “pink-washing” lol. He's wrong though because this is a genuine chicken-and-egg question and we really don't know which came first here - the chicken or the egg!

So they do have shared delusions that form part of their majority opinions... yes there's still a historical Jesus of Nazareth - only loyal disciples of Richard Carrier think otherwise, and that argument does not have academic merit.

[Bucky Ball]

From a previous past, a number of years ago :

"Homosexuality as an "orientation" was unknown in the history of human ideas until the late Nineteenth Century. Science AND Psychology invented (orientation) "homosexuality".
The very use of that word implies knowledge of and acceptance of the MODERN concept of "orientation". The ancients knew nothing about "orientation".
There was no, (supposed), "lifestyle" or "orientation" until the Nineteenth/Twentieth Century. The idea of "orientation" arose when Psychology began to develop as a science. Until that, all men were assumed to be straight, and only straight, all women straight, and only straight by virtue of birth gender. Of course, "deviants" being rare, they knew nothing about. Orientation was simply something the ancients knew NOTHING about. Neither did their gods. What ancient literature says about what is now known about human sexuality
is totally irrelevant, as is their rules and laws about what was unknown at the time. Almost all ancient cultures, for sure Semitic cultures, forbade same-sex activity, but it was NEVER thought of in terms of "homosexuality" or "homosexual". That's nothing but ignorant "presentism" by ignorant fundamentalists. Funny that such ignorance can be found both on Ehrman's blog, and at Harvard.

There was no notion of a wide continuum of sexual behaviors, ("bisexuality"), as science recognizes and knows about today.
Any "different" behavior was seen as "deviancy" from an absolute inherent norm, which the person was assumed to inherently possess, completely by virtue of their birth gender.

In Ancient Israel class and status distinctions were extremely important.

The injunction in Biblical times, (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13), was against (assumed), STRAIGHT men, (and only men), (as they ALL were assumed to be "naturally straight"), engaging in same-sex behaviors. It's not "homosexual" behavior ... the correct term is "same-sex" behavior. "Homosexuality implies FAR more than was known or forbidden.

Why ?

It had to do with class structure and male status. A male, who held the highest position in society, and held the highest class status, was seen to be "feminized" by penetration, and designated as a social inferior, (female), by a male of lower class status, and thus his status was lowered, to that of a woman.

It's amazing than Joel Baden, doesn't know that, with a PhD from Harvard. Of course Aractus also knows NOTHING about the OT or the Bible or any ancient culture, or how their judicial system actually worked, in general, and ancient cultures, and in fact thinks he is qualified to even discuss the matter. LOL

THAT is the reason the culture forbade it. It had NOTHING to do with sex, (or "orientation") It was status, and only status. This concept remains very much, (subliminally and overtly), in place today. This law code, in Leviticus, (the latest law code to be written), is the ONLY place this appears in the Old Testament. The author of Leviticus was very interested in the "equality of all" before God. It was that author's main agenda. He also said strangers, and others from outside Israel were all to be treated with equal rights and dignity, which was a departure, from other texts and codes. It is ironic, indeed, this equality has been turned on it's head, to treat gay people, less equality. The author of Leviticus WANTED all people treated equally, and that is why he wrote the injunction into the text, in the first place, to PREVENT inequality. The ideal society for this author was classless, and that could not happen if a male penetrates a male, and makes him thereby, a lower class. It's all about class, NOT sex. "Homosexuality" is a modern (ie PRESENTIST) concept that DID NOT exist in the ancient Levant. Baden AND Aractus are both wrong. Both Baden AND Aractus are committing presentism, ... using modern concepts and words to think about ancient values and acts. Aractus can be excused, as he's totally untrained in the subject, and is a total amateur, Baden is not, and it's inexcusable.

All the Aractus bullshit about "courts" is also nothing but presentism, and the way PRESENT day courts operate.

This cultural origin was true in the Old Testament culture, as well as the New. That is the reason it ended up in the Bible, and the ONLY reason it was there.

The law in the Old Testament : "You shall not lay a male as with the laying of a woman, it is an offensive thing". (note: the correct translation is NOT, "it is an abomination"). (The word "toi-va" is used, and in archaic Hebrew, EVERYWHERE else is translated, "an offensive thing"). Aractus knows nothing about Archaic Hebrew. We were obligated to know it in my program. I'm shocked Baden says nothing about it ... it's almost like he knows nothing about it.

Why is this important ? Because there are levels of "offensive things", and levels of meanings of "offensive things".

There were a number of levels of offensive things in the Old Testament.

#1. was something which was offensive to God, and this was the worst.
#2. was something which was offensive to other peoples and cultures, (for example the same word is used with reference to some foods being "offensive" to other cultures, (as hagas might be to Americans), or for example the Egyptians didn't eat, with non-Egyptians, as that was "offensive", or in today's language, "very bad manners".
#3. was something which was just generally "offensive", with no further relational attribution.

So it can be "offensive" to some people, but not everyone, and is relative to the situation, or to god, or just in general.

The injunction against male same sex behavior is the third kind of offensive. It's not related to either God or anything, or anyone else.
(There are other verses around it that are stated to be offensive to God, but not this one).
So in this text, it is offensive to the authors of the text, and that specific culture, (only). Baden should get that.

Same-sex behaviors (upper class man penetrated by same class or lower class men), was forbidden, for class reasons.
Equal class men, doing non-penetrating activity, or women together was not forbidden.
(Woman with woman, in general, was not addressed, and the class issue was not important.)

So what does this tell us ?
It tells us the laws were written into the Bible by HUMANS, for human culturally relative, and internally referenced reasons.
The laws in the Bible REFLECTED their OWN culture, of the times, and did not "inform" the culture. The Bible is not "special", except to "believers".
The direction of information flow is crucial. Every Biblical scholar knows this. The Bible was informed by the culture, NOT the other way around.
There are no "ultimate" claims possible from culturally relative, historically rooted, human local customs.

The other main text used to justify the fundamentalist nonsense about "same-sex" activity is the Sodom and Gomorrah myth in Genesis.

Hospitality of Abraham : In Genesis 18, there is a myth about the hospitality of Abraham, (he welcomes two strangers, who turn out to be angels), as that was an important cultural value, in a society where a wandering desert dweller could get lost, and die.

The myth is followed closely by it's counter example of in-hospitality in the Lot myth, (Sodom and Gomorrah). It is not about sex. It's a counter example to the hospitality story, of in-hospitality. The context is important.

The great irony is that some religious fundies use the Bible to keep gay people away from their "table", and feasts, using the very texts that the Bible intended to teach hospitality, to do the opposite.

ref : Drs. Shawna Dolansky, and Richard Elliott Friedman, "The Bible Now", and "Who Wrote the Bible"
Both write extensively about this very subject.
I'm very happy I was never exposed to this sort of (Baden) bullshit when I was in Divinity School. I had scholars who actually knew what they were talking about.

[Free]

That's your problem right there. Where you, an inexperienced layperson, claim there's no evidence, a very large worldwide consensus of experts in the field says there's plenty to justify historicity.

To be fair Free some of the claims out of scholarship are deluded in the extreme. Joel Baden has this interesting Twitter thread:



Not only is he wrong, but he's badly wrong and so is every other bible scholar who attempts to ascribe meaning to Leviticus 18:22. He's also most certainly not a religious fundamentalist or anything like that, so how is it that he's gotten this so badly wrong?

Well what he failed to understand there is that Leviticus 18:22 is a written law - it forms part of the Law of Moses, and written laws on their own have no meaning. It's up to the correct legal authority, usually the courts, to ascribe them meaning. The court system is described in Deuteronomy 17 and some other places in the Hebrew Bible. Josephus also talks about the different approaches in his day by different Jewish sects as to how Jewish laws are interpreted. Wildly different approaches. The thing is this can tell you nothing about when this law was written - let's take a guess at 6th or 5th century BCE. Most scholars think this verse was the work of a later scribe as it's in different language to the rest of the Leviticus 18 laws. Did the Jewish courts in the 5th century BCE recognise scribes as legitimate lawmakers? If not they could have struck down the law right away with a decision of “this was added by a scribe who has no authority as a lawmaker, so ignore it”. Every lawbook on the planet whether religious or secular has written laws in it that the courts have struck down as invalid for whatever reasons they choose - you should be well aware of this because the US recently saw their highest court establish a new legal principle in the decision of Dobbs that overturned Roe v Wade which created a legal context previously invalid written laws to become real court-enforceable laws... and while the focus in the media has been on the US States rushing to create oppressive restrictions to terminations, what also happened was some States had previously invalid laws in their lawbooks that would suddenly become real laws limiting termination access and they rushed to remove them. So when you're talking about written laws it's not correct to assume they have meaning because of how they read or how they are interpreted - even with a completely plain reading (which Lev 18:22 doesn't have and some scholars have even suggested it's deliberately written in a way to make the authorities apply their own meaning to it) we do not know how the courts originally contextualised it because that's how laws get their meaning. I can quite literally think of dozens of valid questions a court would need to decide. Does it apply to sex acts committed in privacy, or just those in the public view? Are warriors who are at war and away from their families permitted to engage in anal sex with each other in order to relive their sexual tensions if it's mutual and consensual? These may sound like dumb questions, but they're not! And even after all of this it could still be Levitical legalise which we don't understand.

As Sabine Hossenfelder says of her fellow physicists - some of them come the believe in the reality of mathematics and that leads them into the delusion that they're pursuing an absolute truth in physics, whereas it may be that mathematics may be fundamentally inadequate to describe reality and we just don't know this. Scholars that try to ascribe an original meaning to biblical laws must recognise that they're trying to solve a legal question by literary interpretation. Thomas Hieke has by far the best scholarship attempting to do this; and even states correctly that the text is meaningless without its correct context. But scholars cannot recover that context now, they can only offer a humble suggestion for what the context may have been. Also note that Joel Baden calls the scholarship of Hieke and others “pink-washing” lol. He's wrong though because this is a genuine chicken-and-egg question and we really don't know which came first here - the chicken or the egg!

So they do have shared delusions that form part of their majority opinions... yes there's still a historical Jesus of Nazareth - only loyal disciples of Richard Carrier think otherwise, and that argument does not have academic merit.

I don't give a shit about any of that. We all know the OT is full of bullshit.

[Minimalist]

But so is the NT.... except, apparently... for the parts that you consider "real."

[TinyDave]

And you still won't answer the question.

What is so special about those particular pieces of bullshit in the story ( which you otherwise dismiss as fiction ) which makes them so special?


I've got all fucking day to keep asking.

There's only one thing we find in the gospels that is corroborated by numerous other sources.

The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Everything else can be taken with a grain of salt or rejected by choice.

That claim is just BS. 

corroborated by numerous other sources?

which contemporary ones?

Which historian mentions the zombie uprising after the crucifixion?

[Aractus]

All the Aractus bullshit about "courts" is also nothing but presentism, and the way PRESENT day courts operate.

No it isn't presentism, it can't be further from presentism. You clearly did not read what I wrote.

Jan Joosten has the most recent work on re-interpreting the passage - and even that is not “presentism”. The re-interpretation scholars suggest this reading is intelligible:

“You shall not lie with a male on the beds of a woman; it is an abomination.”

And Joosten improves upon with “on the bed of a woman”. Joosten was a highly respected top Hebrew scholar, but now he's a convicted child sex offender I might add - so the next improvement in that line of research will probably come again from Bruce Wells or possibly David Stewart. The work of these scholars isn't “pink-washing” or “presentism” it simply establishes quite firmly now that the so-called traditional reading is not secure. Why does it say “with a male”? Why does it say “like a woman”? The traditional reading assumes that it's grammatical nonsense in Hebrew and you have to give it some help to read it ... if there's one thing redaction criticism has taught us it's that assuming something is a mistake just because you don't understand its unusual grammar or sentence structure is not a secure way of looking at the text. There's other scholars who have suggested that because it's a law in a lawbook the scribe that wrote it may have been deliberately obscure in order to allow the courts to interpret his law how they wished. Presentism would be to assume that ancient Jewish lawmaking looked anything like modern secular democracies: no one is arguing that it did. For a start - their lawbooks are not just lawbooks: they're scipture, they contain prose and other forms of guidance, and they were read to the public in the synagogue where rabbis taught about what they meant: that's VERY different to our secular lawbooks that sit on a table in Parliament that nobody ever reads, and only the courts are allowed to tell you what the laws in them actually mean. Even Lawyers are only allowed to offer suggestions to the court as to what a law means if they're arguing over what a law means, and then the court decides for themselves.

Thomas Hieke doesn't take that approach, here's his chapter from the English translation along with the introduction Stephan Goertz. Hieke takes the reading/interpretation as plain, that is he takes it to read exactly as it is translated by the NRSV:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

But he goes on (correctly) to note that one still does not understand its meaning without its context. The problem is that the context is now lost to time. The so-called traditional meaning ascribed to this verse only goes back to the 2nd century BCE at the earliest (it could actually be later - as late as the 1st century CE) - and we know by then that different Jewish sects were already disagreeing what different laws in their lawbooks meant. By this time that law was already ancient. It would have been re-interpreted several times over with different sects probably coming to different conclusions. The first lawbook was Deuteronomy and it was presented to king Josiah by the high priest Hilkiah who was probably the author (2 Kings 22:8). We don't know how the first courts were set up and we don't have that context - we don't know what they decided. The courts were set up before Leviticus was written, headed by wise Rabbis. At some point Leviticus was first introduced into the legal system, and them sometime after that a scribe has added Lev 18:22/20:13 to it. We do not know that the scribe that wrote it was recognised by the religious courts of his day as a legitimate lawmaker. He could have been, he may not have been. This is why you can't just ascribe meaning to things without a context.

There's a historical context you're ignoring here - a historical problem, which is why this a true chicken-and-egg question. Ancient Judaism is alone in completely prohibiting male-male anal intercourse in the ancient world. Why is that? There's two plausible answers - the traditional one being that they really did take that view from the start of biblical authorship. The second one is that the formed the view based on the law that was written in Leviticus. The problem with the first solution is that this theme is never carried forward in the rest of Torah or the remainder of the Hebrew Bible. If the biblical authors were culturally against male-male anal intercourse, why is there pretty much nothing else said about it? They seem to express greater disgust towards prostitution, yet there's no actual Jewish law against prostitution (certainly not against all prostitution - there's a law against selling your daughter into prostitution in Lev 19:29 and that's about it). If the second answer is correct it means that Lev 18:22/20:13 wasn't necessarily based on their cultural-religious beliefs at the time, but was rather attained a meaning through legal interpretation by Rabbis in charge of Jewish courts.

[Aractus]

corroborated by numerous other sources?

which contemporary ones?

No he's correct there are multiple distinct Passion traditions prior to Mark starting with 1 Cor 15:3-8 and then these Acts ones. For example Acts 4:27-30:

27 “For in this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. 29 And now, Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

That looks completely different to Mark's Passion, completely different to 1 Cor 15:3-8, and completely different to Acts 13:27-31 which may be related to Mark's passion narrative but as an earlier tradition. Also notice that Luke has put Herod into his version of Mark's Passion narrative (Lk 23:6-12), it would appear that he's taken Herod from this other independent Passion tradition and put a narrative around him and inserted him into his Passion narrative. Of course you can't prove that the traditions in Luke all go back to the first century or that they all go back to before Mark was written - after all Luke-Acts is written about 50 years give or take after Mark, and they may not look exactly the same after potentially 90 years of being shared as tradition, but it's not plausible to think that he came up with an array of completely different non-narrative Passion traditions all on his own either. Especially as they look so different to Mark and to Paul's one cited in Corinthians. You have to takes Acts for what it is in that instances, which is that it's witnessing to several Passion traditions not attested to by either Paul, Mark, or Matthew.

Here's an exercise for you. Read Mark 14-16 and remove absolutely everything you see as narrative, and especially if it has a parallel with the death of Hector. If you do that you will notice that there's still a tradition underneath all this narrative.

Which historian mentions the zombie uprising after the crucifixion?

That's only in Matthew and Matthew's only source for his Passion it would seem is Mark 14-16. So it's just redaction nothing more. You can almost ignore Matthew entirely, except for the fact that Luke has probably used Matthew (I'm fairly convinced about this - but I'm not convinced that means there's no Q as Goodacre is), and John has based his entire gospel on the Synoptics. You won't learn anything historical from the prose-writers beyond noticing what they may have used. For Mark the only two Passion traditions he would have needed to create his narrative are 1 Cor 15:3-8 and Acts 13:27-31. If he knows those two traditions, and he knows about Paul's Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11), and he knows about the baptism ritual, and has read the Iliad - then that material forms almost all of his entire Passion narrative source material. He uses the LXX for Jewish flair, and of course he's ideas from the Odyssey as well in there.

[Minimalist]

No he's correct there are multiple distinct Passion traditions prior to Mark starting with 1 Cor 15:3-8 and then these Acts ones. For example Acts 4:27-30:

Oh, Danny, where is the ORIGINAL of 1 Cor?  Where is the original of Acts?

We have zip from the first century.  What you are citing is the later blather of xhristard writers from the 2d and 3d centuries and beyond.   That means nothing.  We know there were xhristards by then...at least a few of them scattered in various enclaves throughout (mainly) the Eastern Roman Empire.  

William O. Walker, Jr. - one of those theology types that Free seems to love - notes:

the surviving text of the Pauline letters is the text promoted by the historical winners in the theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the second and third centuries... In short, it appears likely that the emerging Catholic leadership in the churches 'standardized' the text of the Pauline corpus in the light of 'orthodox' views and practices, suppressing and even destroying all deviant texts and manuscripts. Thus it is that we have no manuscripts dating from earlier than the third century; thus it is that all of the extant manuscripts are remarkably similar in most of their significant features; and thus it is that the manuscript evidence can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline literature prior to the third century.

https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html

The first step in trying to figure this holy horseshit out is to dismiss the propaganda of the early church writers.

[Minimalist]

Timely.


https://www.rawstory.com/world-religions/

Buddha, Abraham, Jesus and Muhammed: Larger-than-life historic figures or largely legends?

But one key piece of the pattern is this: Most major religions have founders who are wrapped in layers and layers of obvious mythology—to the point that little of interest remains when the myths are peeled away. Christianity is far from unique when it comes to sketchy evidence about an ostensible founder who is now heralded as a prophet, god or demi-god. For centuries—or even millennia—religious teachings have pointed to great individuals, prophets, demi-gods, or supernatural beings as the source of divine revelation. But looking closely at these claims can be rather like holding cotton candy in the rain.

As Fitzgerald began to write and speak publicly about his doubts regarding Jesus, he was surprised to be contacted by Buddhists and former Muslims who informed him that they were having similar debates in their respective circles—arguments over whether the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha Gautama, or the Prophet Muhammad, actually existed! As with Jesus, the vast majority of relevant experts assume that the stories of Muhammad are rooted in a real person. But even assuming these larger-than-life figures did once exist in the flesh, the doubts reflect how remarkably little about their lives or any direct roles they (rather than their legends) may have played in history.

Bullshit makes the flowers grow!

[Aractus]

Oh, Danny, where is the ORIGINAL of 1 Cor?  Where is the original of Acts?

1 Cor 15:3-8 is the original. Paul did not come up with it, he was taught it by the Jerusalem apostles.

It's not a “creed” as the fundamentalists claim - they didn't have any creeds, but it's a tradition.

Luke-Acts is second century, fairly firmly second century. So of course those traditions have been filtered through decades of being shared and used in religious customs/rites/whatever. That doesn't mean though that they're completely different to how they looked back in Paul's day.

We have zip from the first century.  What you are citing is the later blather of xhristard writers from the 2d and 3d centuries and beyond.   That means nothing.  We know there were xhristards by then...at least a few of them scattered in various enclaves throughout (mainly) the Eastern Roman Empire.

Not correct, the genuine letters of Paul are first century, and the gospel of Mark is almost certainly first century. I wouldn't rule out a date in the early 2nd century for Mark, but even so it's prose anyway so it's mostly useless for historical purposes.

William O. Walker, Jr. - one of those theology types that Free seems to love - notes:

the surviving text of the Pauline letters is the text promoted by the historical winners in the theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the second and third centuries... In short, it appears likely that the emerging Catholic leadership in the churches 'standardized' the text of the Pauline corpus in the light of 'orthodox' views and practices, suppressing and even destroying all deviant texts and manuscripts. Thus it is that we have no manuscripts dating from earlier than the third century; thus it is that all of the extant manuscripts are remarkably similar in most of their significant features; and thus it is that the manuscript evidence can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline literature prior to the third century.

https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html

The first step in trying to figure this holy horseshit out is to dismiss the propaganda of the early church writers.

You're putting too much emphasis on Paul. Paul wasn't important in the first nor second century - he became important later on only because he left behind many letters (hundreds, probably) from which a few were selected to be codified with the canonical gospels (and, unfortunately for Paul, alongside fraudulent Pauline epistles). So by the third century and the fourth century if you're asking “hey what do we know about the first apostles” - what you have is a set of letters from one of the first apostles, and if there were really only 12 apostles in the first generation of apostles (I'm sceptical of that and I think they could have even been fewer than 12) then quite possibly he was the only one literate in Greek.

How I know that Paul was not important in his own lifetime is that he diametrically opposed to the teachings of the historical Jesus. He contradicts the real Jesus every chance he gets. Jesus was anti-Roman, Paul is pro-Roman. Jesus was a zealous highly devout Jew with an incredibly high view of the Law of Moses, and Paul is the opposite. Jesus came for the Jews not the gentiles, and Paul goes to the gentiles and not the Jews. The way that Robin Faith Walsh (an absolutely amazing scholar) puts it is that the Jerusalem apostles didn't like Paul, and they didn't want him interfering in their affairs so to them they would have been happy for Paul to go out and play apostleship with the gentiles, as long as he didn't interfere with their messianic message to the Jewish Christ followers.

I'd point this out to you: the are no Jewish Christians in the world today. They don't exist. Why do you think that is the case? It's because Christianity as we have it today in all of its forms is incompatible with Judaism. So-called “Messianic Jews” are just Evangelical Christians playing dress-up and pretending to be Jewish (that's the universal view of Jews and the majority one of other Evangelicals).

Paul's weird views are a reason why this is the case now, however he wasn't all that important in the first century or the second century as they had started with evangelising the Jews to their movement: it was a messianic movement. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah - that was the claim. It's rejected now by Jews just as it was back then rejected by a majority of Jews because the Messiah had to fulfil all the Hebrew Bible prophecies about him, not just one or two. For example, the Messiah comes from Bethlehem not from Nazareth or from anywhere else (Micah 5:2). For all we know the Jerusalem apostles may have simply avoided telling their convertees where Jesus really came from, it doesn't matter to Paul though because he's not evangelising Jews he's evangelising people that don't know what the messianic prophecies are.

Anyway times moves on, by the third and fourth centuries they would have so much written material they had to cull it down and select what they wanted to codify into their book of scriptures. Paul was now valuable because he was of the first generation of apostles - you can't get any earlier than that without having material written by Jesus himself, and Jesus certainly didn't write in Greek (even if he was literate in Hebrew/Aramaic which is plausible).

[Bucky Ball]

1 Cor 15:3-8 is the original. Paul did not come up with it, he was taught it by the Jerusalem apostles.

Impossible. The business of "dying for sin" had not developed yet, ... that was absolutely NOT the role of the messiah, (if one is going to date this early to mid 1st Century, and the quote has fully developed theology from decades if not centuries). They were Jews, and the sins of the Jews were taken care of by their ritual sacrifices. They needed no one to "die for their sins". Jesus did not preach it.

Paul directly contradicts you. There's that minor inconvenience. Galatians 1:11 - 1:12 : "I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ."