Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Didymus · 05-20-2006, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

He's saying that if we proceed from the premise that the mythicists are correct, then we still have to explain the historical phenomenon of this myth's impact.

I agree. Mythicists are morally and intellectually obligated to formulate and present a "theory of the case" that can be supported with available evidence.

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When do so, we are confronted at every turn by the image of the man. There is simply no escape.

Rubbish.

Some of the best minds in Western Civilization have spent 2000 years trying to build an airtight case for a historical Jesus. It's probably the most highly developed and explicated myth the world has ever seen, but it still doesn't withstand close scrutiny. The "escape," of course, is a hypothesis that really does fit the evidence. MJ theory seems to fill the bill.

Didymus

GakuseiDon · 05-20-2006, 12:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didymus

Not all mythicists think alike, i.e., there are differing views on whether Paul's Jesus existed purely in a spiritual or quasi-spiritual realm, or in "the mists of history." But it would be entertaining to learn what you consider to be "fallacious and inconsistent."

What is a "spiritual or quasi-spiritual realm", in terms of 1st C beliefs? Can you give some examples from the literature, please? It would be good if the examples could include something like crucifixion or similar "fleshy activities" as well.

Didymus · 05-20-2006, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Sumner

What are your references for this? More specifically, which primary sources are you familiar with in which either a) A Cynic speaks in the third-person or b) Someone attributes this tendency to them?

I don't recall the source, and I don't insist that speakers referring to themselves in the third-person are "definably Cynic." I stand by other references and my statement that such discourse is not in conflict with the OT messianic tradition.

The Bishop made the assertion that speaking in that way is "not something a fictional Christ is ever likely to do." He offered no evidence to support that argument. I think the burden is on him at this point.

Didymus

Rick Sumner · 05-20-2006, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didymus

The Bishop made the assertion that speaking in that way is "not something a fictional Christ is ever likely to do." He offered no evidence to support that argument. I think the burden is on him at this point.

In your exchange with him it is, to be sure. But my interaction with you has nothing to do with that--I in fact agree with your assertion that it is not inherently unlikely that a fictional Christ would do so. In your exchange with me there is no burden, per se. Simply my wondering what your source for a rather unusual statement was. Again, since dialogue recounted in the third person can be found across a great wealth of philosophies.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Didymus · 05-20-2006, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

What is a "spiritual or quasi-spiritual realm", in terms of 1st C beliefs? Can you give some examples from the literature, please? It would be good if the examples could include something like crucifixion or similar "fleshy activities" as well.

I not inclined to defend or document a position that's not my own. As I said earlier in this thread, Doherty's Jesus Puzzle is the best resource. His website, also called the Jesus Puzzle, is at http://home.ca.inter.net/oblio/home.htm.

Didymus

Didymus · 05-20-2006, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Sumner

Simply my wondering what your source for a rather unusual statement was. Again, since dialogue recounted in the third person can be found across a great wealth of philosophies.

Apologies for taking your message other than as intended.

As you mentioned, Timon of Philius was apparently an example of this approach. I'll try to find the reference to the Cynics; that's all I can say at the moment.

Didymus

aa5874 · 05-20-2006, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

I have a feeling that the Gospels may contain very strong direct evidence for a mythical Christ! Has anyone attempted looking at the gospels from that perspective?

If they are an attempt to humanise the Christ concept, there is no reason the attempt would be without flaw. There are very likely to be odd comments that make sense from a mythical perspective - like the bit above from Matthew where Jesus is talking as if Christ is someone else! I vaguely remember loads more examples of this, but the quiet squeals of the fault in the axle have been drowned out by the overwhelming noise of the apologists!

I would encourage you to read the Christian Bible. It is evident that the Christian Bible clearly details that Jesus is not myth but a deception. The Christian Bible never attempts to present Jesus as mythological but as historical and in doing so destroys it's own credibilty.

The Christian Bible claims Jesus lived as a child with a man named Joseph and his wife , Mary. However, from the Bible itself we know that the Joseph mentioned in Matthew is totally different to the Joseph in Luke. From that finding, we know that there are two totally different Marys and alas more than one Jesus.

The entire Christian Bible is irreconcilable. Jesus is neither mythological nor historical. Jesus was fabricated to decieve.

Clivedurdle · 05-20-2006, 05:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

I would encourage you to read the Christian Bible. It is evident that the Christian Bible clearly details that Jesus is not myth but a deception. The Christian Bible never attempts to present Jesus as mythological but as historical and in doing so destroys it's own credibilty.

The Christian Bible claims Jesus lived as a child with a man named Joseph and his wife , Mary. However, from the Bible itself we know that the Joseph mentioned in Matthew is totally different to the Joseph in Luke. From that finding, we know that there are two totally different Marys and alas more than one Jesus.

The entire Christian Bible is irreconcilable. Jesus is neither mythological nor historical. Jesus was fabricated to decieve.

I do know the New Testament very well! First point is that it is a collection so it is very likely to contain inconsistencies. I think Paul is definitely describing a mystical gnostic Christ.

The Gospels feel to me like a play with Jesus as the lead character. I would rather give the benefit of the doubt about fraud in terms of attempts to tell a story about how we may be reconciled with god - very heavy psychological stuff.

There are other hypothesis of fraud by Eusebius or Titus and these seem to have some validity - there are very strong political reasons for the Roman Empire to social engineer religious beliefs, but the jury is out on these.

A jesusdiddit hypothesis is very unlikely. I do see all sorts of vectors, which definitely include a huge chunk of myth, and may include deliberate editing and at least pious fraud.

The Bishop · 05-20-2006, 07:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didymus

Not all mythicists think alike, i.e., there are differing views on whether Paul's Jesus existed purely in a spiritual or quasi-spiritual realm, or in "the mists of history." But it would be entertaining to learn what you consider to be "fallacious and inconsistent."

Glad to.

Quote:

In several letters Paul deals with accusations by certain unnamed rivals that he is not a legitimate apostle. Even Peter and James dispute his authority to do certain things. Can we believe that in such situations no one would ever have used the argument that Paul had not been an actual follower of Jesus, whereas others had? Paul never discusses the point. In fact, he claims (1 Cor. 9:1 and 15:8) that he has "seen" the Lord, just as Peter and everyone else have. This is an obvious reference to visions, one of the standard modes of religious revelation in this period. And as Paul's "seeing" of the Lord is acknowledged to have been a visionary one, his comparison of himself with the other apostles suggests that their contact with Jesus was of the same nature: through visions.

I'll leave that one without comment.

Compare:

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Christ's self-sacrificing death was located "in times eternal," or "before the beginning of time" (pro chronon aionion). This is the second key phrase in 2 Timothy 1:9 and elsewhere. What is presently being revealed is something that had already taken place outside the normal realm of time and space.

with:

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The reference to Pontius Pilate in 1 Timothy 6:13 comes in a set of "Pastoral" epistles which are almost universally judged by critical scholars to be a product of the second century, and not by Paul. Mention of Pilate could therefore be a reflection of the developing idea of an historical Jesus.

Here Doherty makes a crucial point about attestation of the Gospels, which in its way is another argument from silence:

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When were the Gospels—or their earliest versions—written? Mark is usually dated by its "Little Apocalypse" in Chapter 13, which tells of great upheavals and the destruction of the Temple, spoken as a prophecy by Jesus. This must, it is claimed, refer to the first Jewish War (66-70); thus Mark wrote in its midst or shortly after. But even Mark is presumed to have drawn on source elements, and some think this Little Apocalypse could originally have been a Jewish composition (with no reference to Jesus), one that Mark later borrowed and adapted. Or, if Chapter 13 is by Mark, it could well have grown out of a later period, for other documents, like Revelation and some Jewish apocalypses, show that vivid apocalyptic expectations persisted until at least the end of the century. In fact, 13:7 has Jesus warning his listeners not to regard the End as imminent even when the winds of war arrive. Nothing in Mark should force us to date him before the 90s.

The dates assigned to Matthew and Luke (and even John) are influenced by the picture they present of "the parting of the ways" between Christianity and the wider Jewish establishment. This is recognized as a later development following the Jewish War, one which the Gospels read back anachronistically into the supposed time of Jesus. Luke has also abandoned the expectation of an imminent end of the world, placing him even later. None of these factors are inconsistent with dates around the turn of the second century or somewhat later.

But equally important is attestation. When do the Gospels start to show up in the wider record of Christian writings? If Mark is as early as 70, and all four had been written by 100, why do none of the early Fathers—the author of 1 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas— writing between 90 and 130, quote or refer to any of them? How could Ignatius (around 107), so eager to convince his readers that Jesus had indeed been born of Mary and died under Pilate, that he had truly been a human man who suffered, how could he have failed to appeal to some Gospel account as verification of all this if he had known one?

But further down the same page, Doherty discusses Q:

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The core of the historical Jesus precedes the Gospels and was born in the community or circles which produced the document now called "Q" (for the German "Quelle," meaning "source"). No copy of Q has survived, but while a minority disagree, the majority of New Testament scholars today are convinced that Q did exist, and that it can be reconstructed from the common material found in Matthew and Luke which they did not get from Mark.
Q was not a narrative Gospel, but an organized collection of sayings which included moral teachings, prophetic admonitions and controversy stories, plus a few miracles and other anecdotes. It was the product of a Jewish (or Jewish imitating) sectarian movement located in Galilee which preached a coming Kingdom of God. Scholars have concluded that Q was put together over time and in distinct stages. They have identified the earliest stratum (calling it Q1) as a set of sayings on ethics and discipleship; these contained notably unconventional ideas. Many are found in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount: the Beatitudes, turn the other cheek, love your enemies. A close similarity has been noted (see F. Gerald Downing, "Cynics and Christians," NTS 1984, p.584-93; Burton Mack, A Myth of Innocence, p.67-9, 73-4) between these maxims and those of the Greek philosophical school known as Cynicism, a counterculture movement of the time spread by wandering Cynic preachers. (Mack has declared that Jesus was a Cynic-style sage, whose connection with things Jewish was rather tenuous.) Perhaps the Q sect at its beginnings adopted a Greek source, with some recasting, one they saw as a suitable ethic for the kingdom they were preaching. In any case, there is no need to impute such sayings to a Jesus; they seem more the product of a school or lifestyle, formulated over time and hardly the sudden invention of a single mind.

This formative stage of Q scholars call "sapiential," for it is essentially an instructional collection of the same genre as traditional "wisdom" books like Proverbs, though in this case with a radical, counterculture content. Later indications (as in Luke 11:49) suggest that the words may have been regarded as spoken by the personified Wisdom of God (see Part Two), and that the Q preachers saw themselves as her spokespersons.

The next stratum of Q (labeled Q2) has been styled "prophetic," apocalyptic. In these sayings the community is lashing out against the hostility and rejection it has received from the wider establishment. In contrast to the mild, tolerant tone of Q1, Q2 contains vitriolic railings against the Pharisees, a calling of heaven's judgment down on whole towns. The figure of the Son of Man enters, one who will arrive at the End-time to judge the world in fire; he is probably the result of reflection on the figure in Daniel 7. Here we first find John the Baptist, a kind of mentor or forerunner to the Q preachers. Dating the strata of Q is difficult, but I would suggest that this second stage falls a little before the Jewish War.

There is good reason to conclude that even at this stage there was no Jesus in the Q community's thinking. That is, the wisdom and prophetic sayings in their original form would have contained no mention of a Jesus as speaker or source. They were pronouncements of the community itself and its traditional teachings, seen as inspired by the Wisdom of God. For while Matthew and Luke often show a common wording or idea in a given saying core, when they surround this with set-up lines and contexts involving Jesus, each evangelist offers something very different. (Compare Luke 17:5-6 with Matthew 17:19-20). This indicates that Q had preserved nothing which associated the sayings with a ministry of Jesus, a lack of interest in the source of the teaching which would be unusual and perplexing.

Doherty is not very inclined to accept the Gospels at either face value, nor at the estimation of the majority of NT scholarship. He destroys their credibility by referring to their lack of attestation prior to 107 at the earliest. On the other hand, he's more than happy to make large scale deductions and arguments propping up his theory about a document which has no attestation whatsoever - a work about which the Church fathers are not merely silent about prior to some late date, but whose silence is absolute, it would seem. And these deductions are based on the NT scholastic work which has brought Q to light. Unfortunately, the copy of Q which I have, Burton Mack's Q: The Lost Gospel puts in "Jesus said" before every logion. This obviously contradicts Doherty's idea that there was a historical Jesus, so he states that "there is no reason that the sayings in Q need be associated with somebody called Jesus." I'm not saying he's wrong, but he has failed if he hopes to be seen as someone who does not cherry pick the evidence he has, and the validity of the scholarship that has been done, in order to make his point.

I had some things to say about the Five Fallacies, but it's 3:20am.

Vorkosigan · 05-20-2006, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Unfortunately, the copy of Q which I have, Burton Mack's Q: The Lost Gospel puts in "Jesus said" before every logion. This obviously contradicts Doherty's idea that there was a historical Jesus, so he states that "there is no reason that the sayings in Q need be associated with somebody called Jesus."

Mine doesn't. It simply says "there are the teachings of Jesus" as its first lne.

Michael

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