Run the most racist state on the planet. India. Some example.

place where class-warfare is a religiously inspired commandment.

^{"All men's gains are the fruit of venturing."}

-Herodotus

an interesting story, that inspired some of the most popular (and long-running) animation in the history of Japanese and American television.

add to this all the movie fun from Hong Kong based on Chinese mythology, and yes, I agree--definitely the East has a rich and varied history and mythology, that is a diverting alternative to Judeo-Xtian-Muslim....

-5.75,-4.05
"God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams

I always thought he was the most important person in the New Testament, more so than Jesus. Roman regulations regarding the disposition of remains of capital punishment victims were very specific. Especially for crucifixion victims, the body remained on the cross for months as the bones bleached in the sun and eventually fell to the ground. The execution ground, usually a large expanse located outside the city, was littered with bones. Hence the name Golgotha in the Bible, or "place of the skull".

As this practice was not always practical, victim's bodies were sometimes thrown in a ditch and eaten by wolves and other wild animals. Sometimes as an act of compassion lime would be thrown on the bodies to prevent this and hasten decomposition. The "compassionate" part of this is consistent with the written discussions in the contemporary Roman record about crucifixion. No one talked about what a painful way it was to die. The discussion focused on what a shameful way it was to die: exposure to mockery, nudity, and the ultimate disgrace, no proper burial. Under Roman and Greek beliefs, the worst thing that could happen to you was death without a proper burial, because the dead lost any chance to reach Elysium.

In Hebrew practice at the time, the body of any deceased person would be wrapped in a shroud and put in a cool place - a cave for example - for three days, after which it would be anointed and placed in a more permanent spot to allow for decomposition. Eventually the bones were then placed in an ossuary - a marble or stone box set in a columbarium. The three day initial period was carefully prescribed by ritual law and was entirely to allow for the possibility that the deceased was still alive. Apparently there were enough cases of people in shallow comas who were thought to be dead, and there was great fear of being buried alive. By three days, though, skin would started to turn blue/black and fall off, so there was no chance then for a mistake.

Enter Joseph of Aramathea, a mysterious follower of Jesus from a town not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible or in any historical record of the area. He petitions Pilate for the body of Jesus and, miraculously, receives it. It is placed in a cave and, yet another miracle, disappears at the end of the three day shelf burial (consider it like a morgue). Without Joseph of Aramathea, there is no burial for Jesus, and no resurrection, and no Christianity as we know it.

It is interesting your writer recognizes the importance of Joseph of Aramathea. You don't have to subscribe to the drugged Jesus theory to still come up with a probable reason why the Joseph story leads then to a resurrected Jesus myth. The theory that Jesus was rescued from the cross having been drugged, is too fanciful anyway. Every Roman legion had an engineering corps attached, which had responsibility for executions since there were mechanical and practical details involved. Not only would it have been worth their lives to abandon their post until crucified prisoners died (which could take days), but they patrolled the execution grounds in major cities to ensure bodies weren't taken down. The doppelganger Jesus story has more credibility, as far-fetched as it is.

don't think God could have beamed him up from the cross? He had already taken up Elijah(2 Kings 2:8) and Enoch(Gen 5:24).

"Without Joseph of Aramathea, there is no burial for Jesus, and no resurrection, and no Christianity as we know it."

There is still a resurrection if he appears to the disciples and they then carry on with the Holy Spirit in Acts. So there is still Christianity pretty much as we know it.

You need a resurrection of the dead, irrespective of Joseph's tomb.

You overrate Joseph of Arimathaea, although you can see why he was sanctified. He is however not the central figure of the New Testament.

Or anywhere close.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

All of the speculation about Joseph of Aramathea is, of course, speculation. As I read it, I do not see any of it through the eyes of a supernaturalist, being like Adams, Jefferson and Franklin, a Deist who sees "God" as a force beyond human reckoning and all religious explanations as being failed human attempts to describe the nature and functions of the higher power inherent in the nature of universe. The phenomenon of someone claiming to understand God and laying down rules and regs seems a bit absurd and I marvel that great hordes of people believe them and follow them. But most of it begins at some time of crisis with people longing for answers and direction. Someone feels inspired, speaks it out or writes it down and religious doctrine in born.

Jefferson had the right idea by editing out the New Testament so that all of the supernatural stuff was removed and we get the foundation principles of Jesus' philosophy.

The great argument of our time regarding religious matters is over the question of whether humans are at the top of the animal kingdom, with an animal nature, or somehow above the animals with a "divine" nature. That is rendered a rather ridiculous argument in light of all of the new data emerging from ongoing research demonstrating that so many of our "logical" responses are emotional and connected to areas of the brain that we have in common with many other animals, and not just primates. We are learning more about our animal nature with each passing day, week, or month that new research data emerges. It is only through such understanding that we can hope to understand our animal nature to enhance civilization and advance our humanity.

Channing
Ventura CA USA

get religion, I'll worry about the argument.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

if I get there and I find out there's no lambs frolicking with lions, hell with it, I'm turning atheist.

:)

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Very interesting accounting of the practices of Roman crucifixion. The only way to intervene, then, would have been for there to have some kind of major bribery of Roman authorities to turn their attention away from the site at, say, 4am while rescuers removed the crucifixee. Some say that Joseph of A. would have been on the level of a multimillionaire by today's standards, but I suspect that is speculation. Regardless, I find your response illuminating and I appreciate it.

Channing
Ventura CA USA

This is for Mauberly: like Channing, I am assuming nothing supernatural occurred, including no resurrection of the dead, Lazarus, Jesus or anyone else. If we were to assume God intervened in human history, then of course your assumption about Jesus being spirited up to heaven during or after the crucifixion is certainly tenable and you are entitled to believe it.

While Channing and I disregard supernatural intervention, I don't see the need for Jesus to be drugged and rescued. You can still have Jesus die, have his body thrown to wild dogs and boars, and yet have a myth of resurrection develop over time. Nor do you have to posit as some do that Jesus never existed. There is a massive amount written about him compared to any other person of antiquity, and the synoptic gospels at least, notwithstanding their contradictions and disagreements, have so much peculiar and unnecessary detail about Jesus that it adds verisimilitude to the concept that this was a real man who existed.

I have always been particularly struck by Mark, generally thought to be the earliest gospel writer from around 60, who probably knew Jesus' followers, and who certainly has some unflattering and myth-busting things to say about him and his very poor family relations (especially with his mother). I don't think he would put in all these references to Jesus being crazy if he was working only from fiction.

As my wife is the one who first developed an interest in early Christianity, we have over 400 volumes on this topic, including a useful encyclopedia devoted to scholarship on each book of the Bible. In this mass of material I have come across these references to Roman punishment practices, in particular the emphasis on disgracing the victim by not allowing a proper burial. From this I learned that the odds of the Romans allowing Joseph to arrange a proper Jewish burial are quite slim, especially considering Pilate's reputation for cruelty, which cost him his job around 30.

This makes the name of the execution grounds - Golgotha or place of bones or skulls - highly suggestive because it describes exactly what stood out most about the place to writers at that time: human remains scattered around and probably piled up over time in one section. I am always surprised that Christian believers do not spend a moment contemplating what this name means and implies about the unlikelihood of a resurrection.

Finally, even though I think Joseph is fictional, which means we have the nice symmetry of a fictional Joseph bookend on Jesus' beginning and end, let us assume he was real and obtained the body for burial. Here again we come up against the Jewish tradition, strongly enforced, of three days of waiting before formal burial, while the body rests in a cool dark place to ensure the person truly is dead. This tradition could easily morph into a myth of the body disappearing or Jesus not really being dead. Gentiles not necessarily understanding the Jewish burial traditions could confuse and conflate this practice into a resurrection and et voila! - Christianity.

before Mark there was a Jew Saul/Paul who certainly had some concept of resurrection and wrote at least seven letters that have been seriously edited and redacted to conform to the later gospel accounts.

He was convinced he had experienced the risen Jesus, epileptic, neurotic or brain tumour induced notwithstanding, and made his mission to go out and tell the gentile world about the Jesus who had transformed his Jewish pov into a pov that could be accepted by all peoples.

Acts of the Apostles is certainly pro-Roman, yet maintains the resurrection story. Something happened 1970 odd years ago that changed western history, our modern mindset does not like the miraculous or supernatural.

Yet the human brain is hardwired to ponder the mysterious - the capacity to appreciate and participate in a relationship with the transcendent which primarily "functions before and beneath the advent of meanings that has become foreign due to the long metaphysical and technical tradition of the critical ‘inspection’ of the real." - Chauvet.

I note that Paul's authentic letters pre-date the destruction of the temple, and thus the argument that the resurrection in the gospels made sense of the temple destruction is negated.

Saint Saul is worth reading: debunking much modern 'Jesus scholarship' and not promoting any denominational agenda.

I was going to comment on St. Paul in the previous post but thought that would make it too long. But now that you've mentioned him:

Whilst I think it is right to say, in a somewhat whimsical way, that Joseph of Aramathea is the most important person in the New Testament because he explains away the retrieval by Jesus' followers of his body out of the hands of the Romans who would otherwise not bury it, it is equally correct to say that no one is more important to the development of Christianity as we know it than St. Paul. The only dispute is whether he is more important than Jesus.

If I want to stay grounded in the non-supernatural world, I would point out what you already did, which is that St. Paul's writings have been edited substantially over the years, to the point where at the end we get letters to Timothy written around 110 that are likely forgeries (unfortunately many Christian sects accept these letters, which have done quite a lot of damage). We can interpret Paul's conversion as an epileptic event, as you also mention, without suggesting God talked to him about Christianity or sent him specifically to see Ananias in Damascus.

However, none of this undermines Paul's complete faith in the resurrection or his evangelism in favor of same. So how to reconcile this with a non-supernatural explanation?

I wandered around Damascus and elsewhere in Syria a few years ago looking at the sites Paul visited, such as the house of Ananias, and was struck by a room at the National Museum devoted to the oldest known synagogue. It is atypical of any other synagogue because it has murals depicting the human form, such as Moses and Abraham and Isaac. It dates to around 135 and was part of the exodus of the Jews following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Titus. Syria also has the earliest known Christian church, also a result of the Diaspora, which essentially destroyed the first Christian community in Jerusalem, led by James who was Jesus' brother. This also ended the chief rival to Paul's mission. Paul was of the Roman world and able to evangelize within it, while James's church was not and could not survive the collapse of Jerusalem.

Recent scholarship has shown that the theme of the Messiah who would be resurrected after three days was common in the Jewish world 100 years before Christ, and that Jesus may well have known of the prophecy and used it in a self-referencing way. Similarly, once the Romans destroyed the Jewish nation and culture, what was left fled to other parts of the empire, including Rome of all places. With it went that same longing and prophecy for a Messiah, and the Christian sects already had in place a theology of fulfillment. The theology didn't need an actual resurrected Christ - just a possible one grounded in some form of reality, because the fervor of wanting to believe was there for the taking. The spread of this form of Christianity then needed an evangelist, and there was Paul ready to fill this role.

That is my non-supernatural explanation for Paul's mission and its success. It cannot properly challenge an explanation that accepts God's intervention, at this one place and time henceforth and forevermore, into man's affair so that a divine plan could be fulfilled. This is certainly a valid explanation for those who choose to believe in such intervention. It also satisfies yet another deep human longing for a loving creator who helps us and guides us - a longing not too dissimilar from the old Jewish dream of a Messiah. Maybe they are one and the same, and cannot be argued away with reason and logic.

Thank you Numerian, and others, for a fascinating discussion.

I would posit that Paul and Thecla are more important than Jesus or James.

Paul incorporated the best of Jewish, Roman and Greek thought in his letters, and created a 'religious experience' that was accepted by those in urban centres, a far cry from the galilean wanderer with no place to lay his head.

Thecla empowered women providing the basics of monasticism, for at least 15,000 women, and her cult endured for 400 years

Romans 7, shows a marked similiarity with Horace "I pursue the things that have done me harm; I shun the things I believe will do me good" (Epistles 1.8.11) and Ovid's Metamorphoses : Medea: "I see the right, and I approve it too."

I still don't think the temple destruction facilitated the growth of christianity, as the Roman and Greek cities could not care less about what happenned down in asia minor but it is certainly attested to in the gospels.

Of course noting Pauls importance, and Jesus travelling to India, then did Paul actually make it to Spain/France/England? Dying somewhere along the way, and being remembered through the death of another Paul in Rome.

Answers, we can never really establish.

All I have gained from four months academic study on the Pauline corpus is that it represents the work of many, it established norms for urban christianity and incorporated many cultural resources of the day in a grand theory of everything.

I watched Leonard Krauss explain the universe recently - Krauss wants the answer to life, and his God is the language of science explaining a grand theory of everything today.

and not enlightened, so his opinions should count about as much as mine. Xtian fundies are his disciples, not Jesus's. By their fruits shall we know them.

the imagination of the urban population, synthesised a range of hebrew and graeco-roman source materials to produce an integrated theory of everything that engaged Augustine, Martin Luther and many others down through the centuries.

Maybe we are in need of a jackass today to redeem modern times.

the symbol of the Democratic party.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Eph. 6:5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free.

Col. 3:18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.

20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

Me: Fuck that noise.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

"represents the work of many"

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

including co-workers in direct contact and writing with Paul; those who wrote the later letters, those who wrote in the style of Paul, and the various pseudo-pauline in the canon, the various Pauline apocrophyal and pro and anti Pauline apocrophya...

commonly known as the Paulusbild

authorship here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Paul

Paul's letters are largely written to churches which he had visited; he was a great traveler, visiting Cyprus, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), mainland Greece, Crete, and Rome bringing the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth with him. His letters are full of expositions of what Christians should believe and how they should live. He does not tell his correspondents (or the modern reader) much about the life of Jesus; his most explicit references are to the Last Supper[1 Cor. 11:17-34] and the crucifixion and resurrection.[1 Cor. 15] His specific references to Jesus' teaching are likewise sparse,[1 Cor. 7:10-11] [9:14] raising the question, still disputed, as to how consistent his account of the faith is with that of the four canonical Gospels, Acts, and the Epistle of James. The view that Paul's Christ is very different from the historical Jesus has been expounded by Adolf Harnack among many others. Nevertheless, he provides the first written account of what it is to be a Christian and thus of Christian spirituality.

Of the thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul and included in the Western New Testament canon, there is little or no dispute that Paul actually wrote at least seven, those being Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon. Hebrews, which was ascribed to him in antiquity, was questioned even then, never having an ancient attribution, and in modern times is considered by most experts as not by Paul (see also Antilegomena). The authorship of the remaining six Pauline epistles is disputed to varying degrees.

The authenticity of Colossians has been questioned on the grounds that it contains an otherwise unparalleled description (among his writings) of Jesus as 'the image of the invisible God,' a Christology found elsewhere only in St. John's gospel. On the other hand, the personal notes in the letter connect it to Philemon, unquestionably the work of Paul. More problematic is Ephesians, a very similar letter to Colossians, but which reads more like a manifesto than a letter. It is almost entirely lacking in personal reminiscences. Its style is unique. It lacks the emphasis on the cross to be found in other Pauline writings, reference to the Second Coming is missing, and Christian marriage is exalted in a way which contrasts with the reference in 1 Cor. 7:8-9. Finally, it exalts the Church in a way suggestive of a second generation of Christians, 'built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets' now past.[39] The defenders of its Pauline authorship argue that it was intended to be read by a number of different churches and that it marks the final stage of the development of Paul of Tarsus's thinking.

The Pastoral Epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus have likewise been put in question as Pauline works. Three main reasons are advanced: first, their difference in vocabulary, style and theology from Paul's acknowledged writings; secondly, the difficulty in fitting them into Paul's biography as we have it.[40] They, like Colossians and Ephesians, were written from prison but suppose Paul's release and travel thereafter. Finally, the concerns expressed are very much the practical ones as to how a church should function. They are more about maintenance than about mission.

2 Thessalonians, like Colossians, is questioned on stylistic grounds, with scholars noting, among other peculiarities, a dependence on 1 Thessalonians yet a distinctiveness in language from the Pauline corpus.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

into the composition of the letters, there are interpolations and editing by others, as well as accidental insertion and misplacement of text over time.

The more I learn about the pauline corpus the more complicated it gets.

/same as everything I guess.

Except as it led to a magnificent parade of triumph for Titus in the Forum, showing off all the gold and other treasures he purloined.

The point, however, was that the destruction of Jerusalem was a traumatic event for the Jewish and nascent Christian community, plus any other sects like the gnostic Christians. The longing for a savior became stronger still, and if a savior in the real world was obviously no longer practical in the face of Roman might, why not adopt a savior in the supernatural world? He would grant you eternal life, He had experienced the bodily resurrection, and His young church would provide you a community of spiritual, mental and physical support. Not a bad deal when there was no social security or retirement programs, no hospitals, no nursing homes or retirement communities, and the pagan gods were anathema to Jews who believed in one unseen God.

over the stoning of Stephen in Acts 8 and was a learned Jew and a Pharisee, Paul also should have made much of the burial practices that Numerian refers to, had they been relevant to the instant case.

But he never raises the issue.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

While the cute teddy bear with the Psalm reference won't be sold at Cafe Press, it isn't going to go away. Someone is going to buy billboard space in the South to spread this message, which ultimately is one of violence against Obama and his family. The bumper stickers I am sure will remain in print, and anybody can print up a T-shirt.

Obama hatred is well-entrenched in the right wing.