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Monday, May 20, 2019
The poached egg argument
“A
man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic–on a level with the man who says he is a poached
egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either
this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse… But
let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human
teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
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48 comments:
People in those days were becoming gods pretty frequently, you may recall. Even Caligula was insisting his statue should be set up in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. Palestine was crawling with these charismatic preachers like John the Baptist and a hundred others, each with their crowds of adoring followers.
If Jesus claimed to be the son of God, it was just more of the same. It was the trendy thing to do back then.
There are many more possibilities than just the ones mentioned. All that this argument shows is that apologists have an outstanding lack of imagination.
There are many more possibilities than just the ones mentioned.
Interesting. Can you list the "many more possibilities" for us to see? Possibilites that do not fall under Jesus being a liar, insane, or telling the truth?
Blogger John B. Moore said...
People in those days were becoming gods pretty frequently, you may recall. Even Caligula was insisting his statue should be set up in the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem. Palestine was crawling with these charismatic preachers like John the Baptist and a hundred others, each with their crowds of adoring followers.
If Jesus claimed to be the son of God, it was just more of the same. It was the trendy thing to do back then.
That doesn't wash. You say that on the strength of one guy.The one guy is Cesar, so no one is going to stone him for blasphemy. They would have stoned Jesus and did try to.
Blogger jdhuey said...
There are many more possibilities than just the ones mentioned. All that this argument shows is that apologists have an outstanding lack of imagination.
C.S. Lewis' argument not all apologists. There is one rebuttal to your argument that there are so many possibilities. Really there are not, not if you are in Palestine of the first century. All we need to know is did Jesus claim to be God? If he did then he risked being killed for it.
WE can rule out any confusing eastern sense of of deity (all things are one or anything) not going to impress the pharisees.
a line from PBS I Claudius. Herod is visiting Cesar in Rome. Cesar says "I understand your little desert people only have one God? How Extraordinary." Herod says "we find the one is all we can handle."
Legion of Logic said...
Interesting. Can you list the "many more possibilities" for us to see? Possibilites that do not fall under Jesus being a liar, insane, or telling the truth?
He was claiming a more limited role that our current interpretation.
He was speaking of another person, and misquoted.
He intended those parts of his talks to be allegorical.
One Brow,
Pretty sure the exercise rests on the premise that Jesus did in fact say those things, per the first line in the OP. Thus, the question is how we should regard him for having said them.
"the question is how we should regard him for having said them."
I agree. It does not occur to most people that, other than in but a very few instances (such as Mark 5:41, Matthew 27:46, or John 18:23-19:11), we do not have a record of Christ's actual words. The Gospels are written in Greek, and Jesus surely did not use that language to speak to the people of Galilee. (It is probable, if not likely, that His conversation with Pilate was conducted in Greek, so we may indeed have His exact words in John's trial scene.)
As a professional translator for more than 40 years, I know all too well how impossible it is to convey the precise meaning of a sentence in one language into another. Can't be done.
That said... I have every confidence that the translations that we do have are reasonably faithful renderings of Christ's original words. Just not an exact transcript.
I agree. It does not occur to most people that, other than in but a very few instances (such as Mark 5:41, Matthew 27:46, or John 18:23-19:11), we do not have a record of Christ's actual words. The Gospels are written in Greek, and Jesus surely did not use that language to speak to the people of Galilee. (It is probable, if not likely, that His conversation with Pilate was conducted in Greek, so we may indeed have His exact words in John's trial scene.)
I think the common Jew of Jesus' day spoke Greek more than Hebrew, That's why they made the LXX.
Joe,
You are correct that Hebrew was pretty much a "dead" language in the 1st Century, known only to the Scribes and the Sadducees. As for Greek, I would imagine that most educated Jews knew at least some of it, and the merchant class (read: the wealthy) were likely fluent in Greek. But as for the Great Masses (the people who crowded around Jesus, bringing their sick to be healed), I doubt they could speak ten words of Greek with understanding.
Pilate, as did the entire Roman ruling class, was undoubtedly fluent in Greek. Any conversation he had with Jesus would have been in that language. John mentions no interpreter, and since he goes into insane detail everywhere else in his Gospel, if an interpreter was present, he would have made mention of it.
"Interesting. Can you list the "many more possibilities" for us to see? Possibilites that do not fall under Jesus being a liar, insane, or telling the truth?"
Along with the possibilities that One Brow mentioned there is the possibility that what he actually said was simply lost to history and then people, in telling Jesus stories, just put their own ideas and beliefs into his mouth. Think of the Bible as fan-fiction (with subsequent heavy editing.)
But, surely, your imagination is not so limited that you can not come up with your own alternate possibility. Remember, a possibility does not have to be plausible, just possible.
your imagination is not so limited that you can not come up with your own alternate possibility
As I said to One Brow, the whole argument rests on the premise that Jesus actually said those things. The things you and One Brow suggested fall outside the purpose of the OP.
For an absolute boatload of reasons, I cannot accept the "fan fiction" hypothesis. What always strikes me about the Gospels is how resolutely the Early Church rejected all embellishments, additions, and "heavy editing". In stark contrast to how myths and legends develop over time (think Arthurian Legend, which grew ever more complex and elaborate with each passing year), the Gospel narratives were lovingly preserved in their original form, to the extent that awkward passages (such as John 8:2-11) were retained in place. And although "fan fiction" did abound (e.g., the apocryphal gospels, The Shepherd of Hermas, all the pious stories about the 3 Wise Men, Pilate, Barabbas, etc.), none of them made their way into the canon.
No, what we do have is demonstrably authentic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78bsM7RbK0A&t=706s
The consensus of historical Jesus scholars affirm that Jesus portrayed himself as the God of Israel. This would include the idea that he was the creator of the universe, was self-existent, was the ground of morality, etc. You can deny this of course -- scholars are often wrong and the consensus of scholars is often wrong. But if you just reject it without addressing their reasons it's an act of blind faith.
Legion of Logic said...
Pretty sure the exercise rests on the premise that Jesus did in fact say those things, per the first line in the OP. Thus, the question is how we should regard him for having said them.
Great moral teachers can be misquoted.
Starhopper said...
For an absolute boatload of reasons, I cannot accept the "fan fiction" hypothesis. What always strikes me about the Gospels is how resolutely the Early Church rejected all embellishments, additions, and "heavy editing".
When it was discovered. There a reason we have so many textual variants.
In stark contrast to how myths and legends develop over time (think Arthurian Legend, which grew ever more complex and elaborate with each passing year), the Gospel narratives were lovingly preserved in their original form, to the extent that awkward passages (such as John 8:2-11) were retained in place.
There are already 40 years between the life of Jesus and the earliest Gospel narrative.
No, what we do have is demonstrably authentic.
I agree what we have is relatively close to what was written.
Blogger Starhopper said...
Joe,
You are correct that Hebrew was pretty much a "dead" language in the 1st Century, known only to the Scribes and the Sadducees. As for Greek, I would imagine that most educated Jews knew at least some of it, and the merchant class (read: the wealthy) were likely fluent in Greek. But as for the Great Masses (the people who crowded around Jesus, bringing their sick to be healed), I doubt they could speak ten words of Greek with understanding.
I think thinking on that changes at different times,when I was in seminary they were saying Greek was the common lanague of the comman man ,
Jim S. said...
The consensus of historical Jesus scholars affirm that Jesus portrayed himself as the God of Israel.
Actually, it's not. From my understanding, that's a minority position taken primarily among Evangelical literalists.
I don't know if it is a majority opinion, but a more common opinion would be Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet.
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/12/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet/
In eighth grade (1971)I was taught that God sent Christ at the time he did because Greek furnished a common luggage for the "known world"(short changing the Americas)
There are already 40 years between the life of Jesus and the earliest Gospel narrative.
now we know there was a pre Mark passion narrative pitting the early writing of the Gospel around 50 AD
My arguments backing pre Mark passion narrative
part 1
paert 2
One Brow said...
Jim S. said...
The consensus of historical Jesus scholars affirm that Jesus portrayed himself as the God of Israel.
Actually, it's not. From my understanding, that's a minority position taken primarily among Evangelical literalists.
I don't know if it is a majority opinion, but a more common opinion would be Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet.
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/12/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet/
Most Bible scholars are not atheists, your sources are atheist spruces they are not dealing with the majority of scholars
from the unbiased source "history for atheists" one Brow's link
"for over a century, scholarship on the origins of Christianity has been dealing with a fundamental issue – the Jesus in the earliest Christian texts is presented as preaching an eschatological message about an imminent apocalypse. Despite ongoing rearguard actions, the idea that the historical Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet remains the most likely interpretation of the evidence."
Atheists apparent need their history filtered so as not to shock their readership with uncomfortable facts.
Jesus cold be an apocalyptic prophet and the son of God at the same time.
My words
What all of this means is, that there were independent traditions of the same stories, the same documents, used by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which were still alive and circulating even when these canonical gospels were written. They represent much older sources and the basic work which all of these others use, goes back to the middle of the first century. It definitely posited Jesus as a flesh and blood man, living in historical context with other humans, and dying on the cross in historical context with other humans, and raising from the dead in historical context, not in some ethereal realm or in outer space. He was not the airy fairy Gnostic redeemer of Doherty, but the living flesh and blood "Son of Man."
Moreover, since the breakdown of Ur gospel and epiphany sources (independent of each other) demands the logical necessity of still other sources, and since the other material described above amounts to the same thing, we can push the envelope even further and say that at the very latest there were independent gospel source circulating in the 40s, well within the life span of eye witnesses, which were based upon the assumption that Jesus was a flesh and blood man, that he had an historical existence. Note: all these "other Gospels" are not merely oriented around the same stories, events, or ideas, but basically they are oriented around the same sentences. There is very little actual new material in any of them, and no new stories. They all essentially assume the same sayings. There is some new material in Thomas, and others, but essentially they are all about the same things. Even the Gospel of Mary which creates a new setting, Mary discussing with the Apostles after Jesus has returned to heaven, but the words are basically patterned after the canonical. It is as though there is an original repository of the words and events and all other versions follow that repository. This repository is most logically explained as the original events! Jesus actual teachings!
Great moral teachers can be misquoted
Yes. But that has nothing to do with the OP, which is asking what we should think of a man who did say those things. He would either be insane, a liar, or the son of God. What other options are there for someone saying those things?
"Well he wasn't actually the son of God, but he was a great moral teacher" would not be an option for a liar or a lunatic going around claiming to be the son of God when he actually wasn't.
"There are already 40 years between the life of Jesus and the earliest Gospel narrative."
What "biblical scholars" have to say on the matters of dating and authorship is the furthest thing from being definitive. There is very little agreement amongst them, and what they do agree on quite often boils down to begging the question. A prime example is the idea that the Gospels must have been written after A.D. 70, because they refer to the destruction of Jerusalem. Huh? Such a conclusion is based on an unjustified presumption that Jesus is not who He says He is (i.e., God, Who would presumably know what is going to happen beforehand).
I personally believe that the references to the destruction of Jerusalem are evidence that the Gospels preceded the events described. Why? Because they are described in highly symbolic, apocalyptic language, with the details not always literally matching up with recorded history (nor were they meant to). If the Gospels were written post-destruction, don't you think the authors would have made an effort to make the details match up?
Although I do not agree with all his conclusions, a most thought provoking book is Redating the New Testament by John A.T. Robinson. (The link provided is to a free online copy.) Well worth a read, if only to encourage a healthy skepticism about "the consensus".
What "biblical scholars" have to say on the matters of dating and authorship is the furthest thing from being definitive.
Agreed. In fact a significant drawback to the historical-critical method has been the assumption of a secular viewpoint of some of its' practitioners. For instance if you start with the assumption there can be no miracles, guess what? Your explanation will attempt to explain away the miracles.
And if you start with the assumption that you have to ignore what the actual practitioners of the faith believed and wrote, you end up with an explanation like "The Motel of the Mysteries"
starhopper, John A.T. Robinson. one of the greats,(not everyone would agree)I'm impressed that you have read him.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...
Most Bible scholars are not atheists, your sources are atheist spruces they are not dealing with the majority of scholars
Perhaps I should have specified professional historians who specialize in Biblical times.
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...
Atheists apparent need their history filtered so as not to shock their readership with uncomfortable facts.
Tim O'Neil is well known for presenting the consensus opinion, which includes the Christian historians as well. His website is devoted to corrected the bad history promulgated by various atheists.
Jesus cold be an apocalyptic prophet and the son of God at the same time.
He could also have been a politician, rabbi, Pharisee, fisherman, etc. at the same time. The question is where the evidence leads.
Legion of Logic said...
Yes. But that has nothing to do with the OP, which is asking what we should think of a man who did say those things. He would either be insane, a liar, or the son of God. What other options are there for someone saying those things?
"Well he wasn't actually the son of God, but he was a great moral teacher" would not be an option for a liar or a lunatic going around claiming to be the son of God when he actually wasn't.
Are we assuming Biblical literalism as a part of this discussion? If so, Jesus can't be a liar or a lunatic; the Bible says otherwise.
However, if we are not assuming literalism, but rather a general accuracy, then one of the possibilities is that his moral teachings were preserved but not necessarily precisely quoted, and his comments about the Son of God were preserved but also not necessarily precisely quoted.
I think we're talking past each other, but I'm not sure how to resolve it.
"However, if we are not assuming literalism, but rather a general accuracy, then one of the possibilities is that his [...] comments about the Son of God were preserved but also not necessarily precisely quoted."
"Possibile" is a word which can cover a multitude of sins. Certainly it is possible (as in, no laws of physics would be violated) for me to win the Republican Party's nomination for president next year. But the probability of my doing so is vanishingly small.
In the same manner, yes, it is possible that Christ's self declarations concerning His divinity were exaggerations or even inventions. But the likelihood of their being so is too small to be measured. Keep in mind the iron monotheism that characterized Jewish thought at the time (and, for that matter, still does). Indeed, a chief reason the Temple authorities were so keen on killing Jesus was that He insisted on identifying Himself with Yahweh. Blasphemy!
(The other reason was, of course, their fear that Jesus would bring down the wrath of the Roman occupiers upon the Temple.)
There is simply no way that the writers of the New Testament would invent out of whole cloth something so radically opposed to their most fundamental beliefs. In fact, one could view the entire Gospel of Matthew as a narrative of Christ hammering home this vital fact about His identity, that he is God in the flesh. That's the sense I get when I read the thing straight through in one sitting. Try it sometime. You get a very different impression than just reading little snippets of it at a time.
(By the way, contra the "experts", I still believe, along with St. Jerome, that the four Gospels were written in the order we have them in our Bibles today.)
Legion of Logic said...
I think we're talking past each other, but I'm not sure how to resolve it.
I'm OK if you accept the Trilemma is valid. I see other positions as more more likely than any of the three offered, but we all ultimately have to decide for ourselves.
Starhopper,
Calling oneself Son of Man or Son of God is not akin to claiming divinity. I don't see a claim of divinity for Jesus in any of the gospels besides John, and even there not an equality with God.
I see a fairly natural course of increasingly miraculous claims for Jesus over the 80 or so years between the life of Jesus and the writings of John.
However, I'm not going to try to convince you that my position is better than yours.
Christ emphasizes His divinity multiple times in the synoptics, not just in John. I will list only a few such instances here, but there are many more:
- He says "There is something (i.e. Himself) greater than the Temple here." To the Jews, the only thing greater than the Temple was God Himself.
- He says "The Son of Man is master of the Sabbath." Only God is master of the Sabbath.
- He does not contradict the Pharisees when they say, "Only God can forgive sins" (implying that Jesus cannot do so, unless He is claiming to be Himself God) and then goes on to forgive the paralytic's sins.
- At the last supper, He says "This chalice is the New Covenant in my blood." Only God may establish a covenant with Mankind.
- He says that at the end of days, the Son of Man will come with his angels. The only one who may claim "ownership" of the angels is God.
There are literally hundreds of such professions of divinity throughout the Gospels (especially in Matthew). Sometimes they are blatantly obvious, as in John's "Before Abraham was, I am" and sometimes they are the logical conclusion to a parable or an episode in the narrative itself.
One Brow said...
Starhopper,
Calling oneself Son of Man or Son of God is not akin to claiming divinity. I don't see a claim of divinity for Jesus in any of the gospels besides John, and even there not an equality with God.
I see a fairly natural course of increasingly miraculous claims for Jesus over the 80 or so years between the life of Jesus and the writings of John.
However, I'm not going to try to convince you that my position is better than yours.
May 24, 2019 4:47 AM
Daniel 7 tells of a vision given to Daniel in which four "beasts," representing pagan nations, oppress the people of Israel until judged by God. Daniel 7:13-14 describes how the "Ancient of Days" (God) gives dominion over the earth to "one like a man (כבר אנש [kibar 'anash]).
clearly reference to deity
There's another way of approaching the trilemma issue, and that's to assume (for the sake of argument) that Jesus was indeed nothing more than a Great Moral Teacher. You're then compelled to ask, "What, exactly, did He teach, and what was so special about it?" And it is here that the skeptic has an even greater problem than those problems usually associated with this line of thinking.
Firstly, when it comes to "Great Moral Teaching", Jesus apparently never had an original thought in his life. Everything He ever said can be found in what we call the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and the Book of Sirach. C'mon, I challenge you. Name something, anything, that can be attributed to Christ as the first person to have ever said it (as far as moral or ethical teaching is concerned).
So secondly, why has Jesus been remembered (indeed, worshiped) for 2000 years, when He is far from being the most inspiring, or even the most interesting "moral teacher" around?
The fact is that the most important things Jesus ever said were about His own identity, who He is. All the "I am the..." statements in John, all the "identification" miracles (those revealing who He is) such as the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the turning of water into wine, the calming of the sea, the walking on water, the transfiguration, His insistence on "following' (and not just listening to) Him.
So what is important is the identity of Jesus, not what did He say.
Starhopper,
While I appreciate the effort, I have seen those verses as interpreted by Trinitarians and non-Trinitarians. At different times in my life, I accept either side of that dispute. Both interpretations seem equally valid to me. Again, I don't have an interest in persuading you in either direction.
Part of my point comes from my (very personal and idiosyncratic) interpretation of the temptation narratives. As you probably have guessed, I have, after a lifetime of considering this, concluded that the Gospels are (within limits) factually accurate, reliable historical documents. So yes, I do regard the temptations in the wilderness to have actually, literally occurred, pretty much as described in the text.
So how is this relevant here? Well, once you believe the temptations to be actual events, then you have to either regard them as a kind of Kabuki Theater (highly symbolic actions put on for show, but not really happening) or as genuine temptations. (Hebrews says that they were. "[Jesus] has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.") If so, then you have to ask yourself, "Now what could possibly tempt God?" Just asking the question sounds strange, but consider Christ's humanity. He has just been baptised, and is starting out on His mission to redeem the world. The devil shows Him three ways in which that could be done oh, so easily (but at the cost of draining that redemption of all meaning and effectiveness).
The first way: remove all evil, pain and suffering from the world, all hunger and want, all illness and infirmity. ("Tell these stones to become loaves of bread.")
The second way: overwhelm all reason and all inquiry with indisputable miracles, that no one could possibly deny. ("Throw yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple.")
The final way: simply eliminate free will, and compel all people to believe. (The devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.")
To declare clearly, unambiguously, and incontrovertibly that He was God incarnate would be to surrender to the second temptation (thus allowing the devil to win). Thus, we often have to tease this conclusion out of the text - by design.
It's fine to start with Enlightenment era assumptions that miracles can't happen, but one must keep in mind those original assumptions. That is one main reason why the Higher Criticism scholars needed to date the Gospel stories later than any living eyewitnesses and create an entirely new narrative that the Gospel stories were corrupted over time.
It's not as if there were not existing historical accounts of say, Mark recording Peter's testimony, or Luke carefully collecting eyewitness accounts or Matthew writing first to and for a Jewish audience. One has to ignore the historical accounts of the Early Church Fathers and question the motives of early Christian authors in order to generate a narrative that fits Enlightenment axioms. But it's really the motives of certain Higher Critics that need to be kept in mind because although we can speculate about the motives of the early Christian authors we factually know the reason for bias of the modern skeptics.
So I place the burden of proof on those who dispute the accuracy of the cannonical scriptures since we have historical figures testifying to the unanimous belief in the proto-cannonical books as well as the divinity of Christ. Paul, who's letters are dated the earliest, testifies that he was persecuting the very first Christians who he considered herertics. But if the first generation Christians only thought Jesus as a great rabbi, then what was their heresy?
Paul's letters tell us the belief he persecuted and later the belief that he converted to. As you can see from St. Paul and the Divinity of Jesus.
But if the first generation Christians only thought Jesus as a great rabbi, then what was their heresy?
Exactly. Those who insist that the letters of Paul predate the Gospels by decades always seem to forget that the most radical Christology is in those very letters.
"He [Jesus] was in the form of God."
"He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God ... All things were created through him and for him, and in him all things hold together."
etc.
All things were created through him and for him, and in him all things hold together.
That last phrase "in him all things hold together" is important to note for several reasons.
First, it shows that Jews and Christians both believe that God did not just create the universe and walked away (per Deism), but holds it in existence moment to moment. Second, because Aristotle, the Gentile philosopher, came the same conclusion independently reasoning philosophically from nature (known as The Second Way according to Aquinas). So it is not just Divine relevation that states that there must be a Divine sustaining cause, but it is a philosophical necessity. Third, because this Divine activity is attributed by Paul to Christ, Christ must be God.
Had to get my Aristotle-Thomist plug in there :-)
the limits of science in the search for God part 2
The dispute between theists and atheists is, in large part, a squabble over epistemology. Atheists tend to be empiricists, as famous atheist blogger Austin Cline puts it:
Atheists tend to be either exclusively or primarily empiricists: they insist that truth-claims be accompanied by clear and convincing evidence which can be studied and tested. Theists tend to be much more wiling to accept rationalism, believing that "truth" can be attained through revelations, mysticism, faith, etc. This is consistent with how atheists tend to place primacy on the existence of matter and argue that the universe is material in nature whereas theists tend to place primacy on the existence of mind (specifically: the mind of God) and
Blogger bmiller said...
All things were created through him and for him, and in him all things hold together.
That last phrase "in him all things hold together" is important to note for several reasons.
First, it shows that Jews and Christians both believe that God did not just create the universe and walked away (per Deism), but holds it in existence moment to moment. Second, because Aristotle, the Gentile philosopher, came the same conclusion independently reasoning philosophically from nature (known as The Second Way according to Aquinas). So it is not just Divine relevation that states that there must be a Divine sustaining cause, but it is a philosophical necessity. Third, because this Divine activity is attributed by Paul to Christ, Christ must be God.
Had to get my Aristotle-Thomist plug in there :-)
That's a good one bmiller. Gilson has some things to say on that. For the Thomists.
things fall through the cracks
The Question of other realms is a good test for the limits of science. Up to this point in human history science had no way to tell if there were other realms or not. For most of the life of modern science the idea of other realms, conjuring in the popular mind images of heaven, hell, Dante’s Inferno, and Superman’s Phantom zone were a laughing stock. With the advent of the twentieth century, relativity,
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