Comments on Kurtharsis: Blasphemy Week: Reading List

Not all of them did. There were a number of conte...

2009-06-23T20:45:44.492-05:00

Not all of them did. There were a number of contemporary equivalents to Christianity that involved some sort of intercessor between man and god, and that intercessor took a number of forms from cult to cult to cult. Abby knows substantially more about this than I do (her undergrad is in archaeology), but I'm brushing up, so I should be able to elucidate at more length in the near future.

Perhaps, but the other religions revolved around m...

2009-06-23T20:37:11.604-05:00

Perhaps, but the other religions revolved around mythical characters from the ancient past. Inventing Jesus so close to Paul's time and place would have added a pretty significant complication, since people could easily check on the facts of his writings. As you've mentioned, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I assume Doherty will address this concern in

Having not read the Doherty book, I'm not 100% fam...

2009-06-22T23:07:29.450-05:00

Having not read the Doherty book, I'm not 100% familiar with his argument for Paul's motivations (I'm seen derivative works, as for Doherty's book, it's been ordered, so I'll get to it presently), but an off-the-cuff answer would be this: early Christianity was very similar to a number of other mystery cults going on at that time. If you assume that at least some of them

Ah, David Mills. That guy could make Mother There...

2009-06-22T21:48:05.244-05:00

Ah, David Mills. That guy could make Mother Theresa sound like a money-grubbing whore. I had a hard time with his writing because it struck me as overly arrogant, so I didn't get past the first chapter.

I do enjoy Ehrman, I have several of his books.

I'm curious as to what Earl Doherty asserts as being Paul's motivation for inventing a religion around a