Freethought Nation

I have read Lost Christianities, and I can tell you that Bart Ehrman's conception of early Christianity matches my own. And he agrees that all relevant evidence we have indicates that Christians stopped being imminently apocalyptic only after the composition of the gospel of John (90-100 CE), albeit there is some hedging starting to take place in the gospel of Luke. Ehrman uses John 21:20-23 and 2 Peter 3:3-8 to help build his case, in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. I am sorry, but preterism is not on the table to explain those passages, because John 21:20-23 interprets the eschatological prophecy as a mere rumor, not as prophecies, let alone prophecies that were fulfilled in the past, and 2 Peter 3:3-8 reinterprets the prophecies by removing the deadline, as though the fulfillment is yet to come, in the face of mockers who ridiculed the Christians because the prophecy was left unfulfilled. I am not using my imagination to arrive at these conclusions. I am not speculating. These conclusions are seen directly on the face of these passages. It cannot possibly be any plainer. The only reason to reject such an explanation is to maintain a hold on a sexy but improbable theory. I think it is time to let it go.

Abe, my posts were very clear, so I am quite taken aback that you have confused yourself. I NEVER, once, even so much as alluded to John 21 & 2 Peter 3 being preterist passages.

I explicitly, unambiguously affirmed THE OPPOSITE.

The texts I DID suspect as having a preterist perspective were the SYNOPTICS.

Not John.

Not Peter.

Not Paul.

Not James.

I mean, really? This comment of yours shows to me that you aren't even paying attention to what I'm saying.

So as concerns John 21 & 2 Peter 3, the only two passages cited in your above statement, I absolutely agree with you that "preterism is not on the table to explain those passages", and I always have agreed with that, throughout this entire thread, I've never contradicted that.
So once again... I state, in clear, unambiguous terms...

"So to sum up what I'm saying, it doesn't need to be the case that THE SYNOPTICS were written prior to the failure of the prophecies and then John & Peter were written after the failure and offer apologies for it on behalf of the synoptics. It may very well be the case that THE SYNOPTICS were likewise written after the failure, but THE AUTHORS simply accounted for the failure in A DIFFERENT WAY than John & Peter, by WAY of the preterist perspective of eschatology."

Describing the preterist perspective as "A DIFFERENT way" than John & Peter cannot "possibly be any plainer".

You confusing yourself on this matter is all on you.





I co-sign all of that in regards to my own position as well.
I for one haven't accused you of imagining this or pulling it out of your ass or anything of that sort. I've read Ehrman and other scholars as well, and hell, I was a Christian for most of my life, so I believed that Jesus was a literal doomsday prophet once upon a time myself.

What I HAVE done is point out weaknesses in the argumentation you have tried to use to support said conclusions, such as your failed attempts to take hyperbole & post-hoc fulfillment off the table.



Nah, the other reason to reject it is because the person putting it forward has thus far presented inadequate argumentation in support of it.

So now that we're back to square one and your confusion cited above has been straightened out,
what else you got?

I am sorry I got the wrong idea. You said, "There doesn't need to be a LATER apologetic excuse offered on their behalf by John & Peter if they themselves had their own apologetic rationale to explain away the failure by way of preterism." I took that to mean you believed that the authors of the gospel of John and the second epistle of Peter were preterists. I am still a little unclear about what you take their apocalyptic beliefs to be. What were their eschatologies, if not preterists like the synoptics according to you? I ask because it wouldn't seem to make sense for them to shift to a new eschatology that forces them to make bad apologetic excuses. For example, why not just stay preterist?

Right, well, obviously the pronoun "they" in "they themselves" was in reference to the synoptics. And even if it wasn't as obvious as I think, just corroborating that with the other statements I cited in my previous post would've reconciled that for the reader. But no matter, seems like water under the bridge now.

Well, because of problems, such as what you've pointed out in this thread, and others. Seems difficult to reconcile those with preterism, at least, more difficult than with the synoptics, though there are preterists today who sure as hell try their damndest to, lol. Though it may also simply be that the specific verses you've cited were later interpolations, but I wouldn't know about that.

Anyway, as I've stated here before, I'm not so sure there was a uniform view of eschatology among Christians in the early years.

For instance, concerning premillenialism/chiliasm, our earliest source for that outside of Revelation is the church father Papias, whose writings are typically dated to around 110-120 CE, in most stuff I've read about him. Yet his works are not extant except in quotes from later church fathers, fathers who definitely wrote after Revelation was written, such as Eusebius. And yet, when quoting Papias, Eusebus offered this curious commentary on Papias' doctrines, including some of his eschatology(i.e., his premillenial chiliasm):
"It may also be worth while to add to the statements of Papias already given, other passages of his in which he relates some miraculous deeds, stating that he acquired the knowledge of them from tradition.
...
The same person, moreover, has set down other things as coming to him from unwritten tradition, amongst these some strange parables and instructions of the Saviour, and some other things of a more fabulous nature. Amongst these he says that there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead, when the personal reign of Christ will be established on this earth."

It is interesting that Eusebius was writing in the 4th century and yet even by his time he still says this doctrine was strange and fabulous and appears to be unaccounted for prior to Papias, which Papias in turn had cited as unwritten tradition.

So here Eusebius clearly reflects one tradition of eschatological views, while Papias represents another. One might even say Eusebius reflects the textual traditions while Papias represents oral variants.

The point is, as per Eusebius, even in Papias' day there were variances in eschatological doctrines, so the Christian community at that time was hardly uniform in its views on the matter. And remember that Papias was another one whose life allegedly overlapped with the apostle John and claimed to have been a student of John. So it seems the case that variances already existed early on.

Hey, Apostate,

There is a major misunderstanding swirling around in a post such as yours. Nearly everyone is of the same persuasion, so don't count yourself as singled out. The "kingdom" is always 'here'. It is here for those who are taken there by their Master. All these things that signify immanence are pertaining to specific disciples who INDIVIDUALLY will experience the "second coming" when the Master deems them ready. In John 21, the beloved disciple (JAMES) is ready while living, as he is the successor to "Jesus". (I think it is John the B, not Jesus here, as John fits the timeline and events as well as Jesus does and exhibits historical attributes that Jesus does not.) Once you see that Masters are always here, and disciples are always becoming ready to go within to the kingdom, it all makes sense. That's the teachings (Sant Mat, "Saints' Teachings") of the current line of mystic Masters at Beas, India (www.RSSB.org). Gurinder Singh is the current Master, or 'Guru', 'Sat Guru' if you will (true Teacher). Hebrew Matthew shows a number of deleted phrases that demonstrate John the B as the true Master of his time: 11:11: "among those born of women none has risen greater than John the B" is not followed by the qualifier, "but he that is least in the kingdom is greater than he", because it was a gloss (interpolation). 11:13: "For all the Law and the prophets spoke concerning John", not "until" John, which is nonsense. 17:11: "Indeed Elijah will come and will save all the world" not "restore all things", more gibberish, obviously interpolated. And 21:32, where Jesus is speaking to the disciples, not the priests and elders, rebuking them for not believing in him [John]". These show an elevated John, so there are others saviors besides Jesus (I think they are the same, "Jesus" being a title, given after resurrection and retrojected into the life of John). James is routinely minimized in the gospels/Acts as Robert Eisenman has so masterfully shown. These things occurred so that early church elders could control the masses.

The "moon and stars falling" and the "sun not giving her light" are INNER experiences of the disciple just before the appearance WITHIN THEMSELVES of the inner Master (astral form). That's why they will "still be standing", some of them. ("Standing" is a common mystic term at Qumran. It is nearly ubiquitous in the gospels' resurrection passages when you know it has mystic significance.) The "coming on the clouds of heaven and in great glory" was spoken by James, not "Jesus", and is likewise an inner experience. These things are not collective visions, but individual events at the end of one's life ('Last Days', 'End of the world').

The whole Bible is mystic teaching, which is why it fits so well to the Dead Sea Scrolls and gnostic gospels. I have myself determined that the Gospel Of Judas shows "Judas" as James, the one who "sacrifices the man that bears me". See my topic elsewhere here "Judas and Lazarus as James".

I was reading an article on dating the gospels, and much weight was given to the fact that the gospels never mentioned the destruction of Jerusalem. The argument was that they surely would have included such an apparent fulfillment of jesus' prophecies, so the absence of such mention clearly places their writing before it. Despite the existence of reasons why they would have left it out (it was 35 or so years after jesus' death), I'll grant them their argument.

This argument is essentially an argument from silence. What's interesting about this is that theistic scholars have been exceedingly hard when mythicists use such arguments. It seems a perfectly analogous argument to question the authenticity of Tacitus and Josephus in their accounts of jesus as no one mentions them until many years later, when contemporary writers would have surely referenced them. I find it interesting that a style of argument is deemed worthwhile when it suits their position.


The more I read theists the more it is obvious that their first principle is assuming the historicity. Bart ehrman is particularly guilty of this.

^Anyone advocating that position is obstinate and going against Occam's Razor. The "prophecies" themselves ARE the mention of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, thus the gospels post-date those events. They are being anachronistic. The only way to get away with advocating a pre-70 date is to appeal to the supernatural, i.e., they got the details so accurate not because that are writing post hoc but because they were divinely revealed ahead of time. But to invoke the supernatural in order to date a text is not scholarly. It's just idiotic.

i understand that. their point is that a writer after the fall would have mentioned it as the fulfillment of the prophecy. i will admit that writers had a tendency to explain to their stupid readers when prophecies were fulfilled.

my guess is that they wanted to capitalize on the ambiguity of it all. they are playing on the equivocation between jerusalem ending and the world ending. to explicitly state that the prophecies referred to the former would kill the art of it.

Yeah, the argument for writing before AD 70 requires faith in supernatural prophecy. How would the writers putting words in Jesus' mouth or a historical Jesus know how the future would unfold in AD 70 from the perspective of before it happened?

That leaves only one other option, the writers post date AD 70 and have the hero character making a prophecy about how the future did unfold by the time of their writing efforts, which, don't appear into the literary or historical record until the mid 2nd century.

So that leaves two ways of referring to prophecy fulfillment from within the context of the myths. One way is according to what they are suggesting was fulfilled from the OT as of the early first century.

The other way is alluding to prophecy made during the early first century by the hero which everyone would see as fulfilled looking at the story from the diaspora era after the destruction of the temple. They didn't have to claim fulfillment because the fulfillment is self apparent to the reader. People reading along would be like, "wow, Jesus fulfilled all these old testament prophecies during his life time and then predicted the future fall of the temple too, he must be the messiah." I think it's fairly obvious and pretty straight forward as to what the writers were attempting to do.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

i think it is very telling about theists that when it comes to their conclusions, instead of letting the evidence speak for itself, they pick the conclusion that is only supported by their presupposition (that it was in fact supernatural) and which is supported by no other evidence.

as a scientist i have to say i find it offensive that they sully the word "science" in associating it with what they do.


ps. what makes this especially farcical is that we have plenty of examples in the old testament of prophecies being written well after the fulfillment of their "prophecies" solely in order to give the illusion of prophetic power when it claims to come before it.

the prophecies of daniel come to mind. these were proven to be all much later written then claimed because of all the historical errors that were in it. in other words it is problematic that a prophet would know so much about the future when the prophecies are to be realized yet know so little about the time he supposedly made the prophecies. looking at the gospels we find the same phenomena. errors abound concerning the geography, birth of jesus, character of jesus, death of jesus, and resurrection of jesus. analyzing the gospels under the same lens as the old testament forces us to conclude that they were written well after AD 70. there is just no other way around it...unless you believe a priori that jesus was the son of god of course.

Ah, okay, I gotcha. But again, in using that excuse they reveal their ignorance of the culture and literature of those times and times prior. Would they accept that excuse for any of the pagan prophecies that scholarship has determined were likewise written after the fact, and yet likewise do not include explicit acknowledgment of the historical "fulfillment" but rather, like the gospels, are written as though prior to the "prophesied" events? Such as the Sibylline Oracles or Zoroastrian eschatology?