It is the MT Greene version of Falangist politics.

I understand that perspective. I grew up in it.

It does suggest to me that I was not wrong saying that you have no interest in a "historical" Jesus.

Hey, my comments were intelligent.
But yes, 180 Proof's was more intelligent.

In order for you to be able to discern such a shallow level of scholarship, you would need to have spent some time and effort reading the sources you believe some forum participants are ripping off.

A number of your statements lead me to think that you think there is something wrong with the historical approach altogether. That suggests you have no interest in such studies.

I hear that. Fair enough.

It is only a rejoinder if it was pointing to a primary condition influencing what was possible.
Otherwise, carry on as you like.

I don't know, it seems like the author of this article never heard about nuclear weapons.
Maybe it was a typo.

Paul certainly did, and that’s the most important point. But you won’t hear that from the modern “scholars” you’re plagiarising. — Joe Mello

What is the basis of this "plagiarizing" charge? Who is being copied here?

Yes, we don't know what will happen.
I do think that how we think about it is important.

And there is no proof whatsoever that the words and deeds of Jesus were influenced by Paul. — Joe Mello

Paul was not an actual witness of Jesus. Nor was he a contemporary. He acknowledged that in the texts we have to read about it.

If such an agreement was made on the basis that Russia otherwise would have destroyed the world, it negates the purpose of what NATO could secure as a threat to Russia. NATO is meaningless in a nuclear war. It is meaningful as a barrier to territorial expansion. It is a security agreement. To promise Russia that a certain nation could not apply for membership has no bearing on whether nations support them or not when they are attacked. Membership in NATO was meant to make the response automatic, if you will.

Russia is holding a people hostage and daring anybody to do something about it.

And who could stand as the arbiters of such a deal? There is no tribunal set up to accept promises on this basis. I would rather count on the desire to live as a countervailing force.

I think it has been taken seriously for many years.

Let me put it another way. After decades of brinkmanship and the political formations made as a consequence, what is left to do when Putin threatens us with the reality of it? Prepare more ICBMs?

If the message is that he is willing to use a strategic weapon for tactical goals, it does not change the standoff. Once you have a little bit of nuclear war, there is no limit to the response.

We do not have access to his decision tree. But the only reason other powers have been staying out of Ukraine so far is because of the presence of MAD. For Putin to wave it around like a stick is odd. It does not change the calculations of his oppositions.

I think the likelihood of nuclear deployment is small. But if Putin didn't think it would be considered even remotely as a serious threat, then why would he bother issuing it? — Janus

Because of the inexorable logic of Mutually Assured Destruction, bringing it up is equivalent to signaling a willingness to destroy oneself if it will attain a certain end.
That is what the Ukraine ambassador to the U.N. was referring to by suggesting Putin cut to the chase and shoot himself like "that guy in Berlin, you know, in 45."

You view the matter as a game of Risk. I look at it more as what justifies killing populations. A lot of states justify violence on the basis of playing a game. East, West, North, and South, whatever.

Electing to go to war can be a decision to fight an enemy who is about to kick your ass or a phantasy like Hitler dreamed.

Compared to the deadliness of Russian tactics in Syria and Chechnya, the attack on Ukraine is, so far, relatively restrained. The Russians could simply level the place, if they wished.

I am not sure about this 'friend' business.
Paul did say himself that he persecuted Christians before he did not. I characterized that as being an enforcer of the law.
I regret that making that point insulted you.
I will try to avoid doing that.

I take schopenhauer1's point that Paul must have been educated for us to have any trace of his presence.
The point I tried to make that Paul was involved in resisting Christians and then became a voice for them is right there in the text of the New Testament.
Make of that what you will.

True, the idea was not a new one.

But Paul conceived of the process as happening outside of what was happening in Judaism. The need to believe in order for the change to happen becomes integral to the vision. I don't know if there is a version of that kind of agency in 1st Century Judaism.

But it is that sense of a vanguard that Augustine amplifies in the City of God. The order of heaven has not been established yet, but the agent of change is here.

Yeah, Chuck Berry was the full package, ridiculous in his excellence. In the best possible sense.

Paul also should be recognized as departing from '2nd Temple Judaism' when he said this world would be replaced by another one. Connecting a personal conviction to a change in the grounds of our existence is different than hoping the Creator will help you overcome suffering and oppression in this one.

In that way, one can see Job as the antithesis of Paul. Certainty of righteousness is no guarantee of outcomes. Job had to fend off his 'friends' who insisted that such an algorithm was in place.

Your question is worthy; It makes me nervous to venture a reply, but I will try.

I take your point that invoking a single creator is to locate the source of evil within the creation. One big difference between the story of Genesis and Timaeus is that the Creator and Man have a direct interaction with each other that changes over time in the first story while the Craftsman of the Timaeus brings all the components of the world into the realm of Becoming and that structure does not change even though our experience within it does.

There is a myth of the age of man's innocence in Plato's Statesman. It consits of the Pilot reversing the motion of the entire cosmos when disorder threatened its existence. Time and growth go backwards in the repair sessions. Once the place is reset, time runs forward again, and the Pilot lets go of the tiller. Our age is described as such:

For men, deprived of the care of the deity who had possessed and tended us, since most of the beasts who were by nature unfriendly had grown fierce, and they themselves were feeble and unprotected, were ravaged by the beasts [274c] and were in the first ages still without resources or skill; the food which had formerly offered itself freely had failed them, and they did not yet know how to provide for themselves, because no necessity had hitherto compelled them. On all these accounts they were in great straits; and that is the reason why the gifts of the gods that are told of in the old traditions were given us with the needful information and instruction,—fire by Prometheus, the arts by Hephaestus and the goddess who is his fellow-artisan, seeds and plants by other deities.1 [274d] And from these has arisen all that constitutes human life, since, as I said a moment ago, the care of the gods had failed men and they had to direct their own lives and take care of themselves, like the whole universe, which we imitate and follow through all time, being born and living now in our present manner and in that other epoch in the other manner. — Plato, Statesman, 274b, translated by Fowler

To see our condition in that way is sharply different from the story of our relation to a Creator who can spare us from evil if he wills it. We are given the choice to follow the way of the righteous and that is the possibility of our happiness as expressed in Psalm 1. But we need more help than that to overcome what confronts us. It is in that register I hear Paul saying that he needs help in his struggle with sin. The Creator as a participant in our person.

I could say more but figure I shouldn't bring too many points forward at a time.

No argument with your description.

The story of his conversion and the subsequent interchanges with Christians in Jerusalem suggests the 'co-option" was not only a narrative made after the fact but an attempt to marginalize some people in real time.

Paul was the academic mostly responsible for Greek Philosophy influencing Christianity at its very beginning. — Joe Mello

You need to read the texts more closely. Saul was a cop hunting down Christians for committing heresy according to his form of Jewish Law. He changed teams on the way to Damascus to punish Christians there. He didn't get a Master's degree before he assumed the role of Paul the Apostle.

Apart from Paul, apostles referred to the direct witnesses and disciples of Jesus. He hacked himself into a time he had not personally experienced. Let's call whatever that might be something different than an academy.

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of the ultimate source for the idea of Monotheism.

Platonism and Neo-Platonism do make references to Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries but both of those are firmly ensconced in the Homeric theogony. The dominant theme of Platonism in the first three Centuries, however, was the unity of a cosmic whole whose nature is ordered by the same agency that permits us to understand it.

That is radically different from the talk of one cosmic order being replaced by a new one in the immediate future. Plotinus railed against those who said the cosmos needed to be saved from the evil that ruled it. He directed this rebuke toward the Gnostics: Paul could have taken their place in the penalty box.

So it's an attempt to arianize Jesus. To un-Jew him. — Olivier5

That is the context of what I was asking schopenhauer1 about upthread. Is the emphasis upon Hellenization an evolved development of the replacement theology advanced by Paul and company?

Grimes, for example, says the prophetic tradition brought nothing to the party. That approach is more honest than saying the tradition was actually different than what most historical accounts record. In both cases, however, the view directly challenges Augustine placing the revelation of the 'Israelites' above the fruits of Athens.

Of course I can say what a Christian is for myself. — Apollodorus

Then do it.

I was not testifying to an unshakeable belief in scholarship. You questioned the results of certain studies. You have not presented the standard you measure them by.

Of course I can say what a Christian is for myself — Apollodorus

Then go for it.

It does have something to do with this thread since you have been saying the scholarship is tainted in the context of it.

I was not making a claim about the 'Hellenistic influence on Jesus', you were, sort of, in a vague and fuzzy fashion.

You seem to want to make a claim upon what is Christian or not but cannot say what it is for yourself.

One common element between the experiences of the Jews and Christians, under the rule of alien empires, is the refusal to swear or submit to gods other than what they actually believed. The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple because of this refusal. Christians were fed to lions for the same reason.
Those are examples of testimony, when people don't surrender their convictions in the face of terrible consequences.

I am a Christian by my understanding of it. I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the texts and my own experience in that light. I don't need to google it. From my point of view, saying what something is against, is a testimony. You wear the garment too lightly.

So, you treat the matter as something that is common knowledge while unable to give your own testimony. In my congregation, we refer to that as cowardice.

What is a Christian?

That statement does not fit in with you saying to Fooloso4:

"anti-Christian activists like yourself cite other anti-Christian activists like Ehrman as their "eminent authority." You aren't fooling anyone."

They are doing a good job of fooling me. I don't see how the differences of opinion about historical conditions are attempts to establish a nefarious narrative in this matter. What part of it is anti-Christian?

What I wonder is how these disputes about Hellenization relate to theological views on the Christan side. There are many texts in early Christianity that see the new world as the replacement of the old in regard to what was practiced and believed by the Jews.

Against that background, is the desire to amplify the importance of Hellenization reinforce the replacement idea or under-cut it?

Your account discounts the role of the Essenes and Enoch groups in viewing the matter beyond the sweaty business of winning wars. The notion expressed in Isaiah that the 'rivers would reverse flow' to Zion is not simply a claim upon real estate but concerned the rest of the world.