Ben C Smith

Hi again, Kevin.

I have read your essay through in its entirety once now, and some parts several times. I found your discussion of 1 John tight and compelling. I really think Doherty will have to revise what he is after in that epistle in order to make a clearer separation between the kinds of language used for a mythical Christ and the kinds used for an historical Christ.

Some of the other parts, however, seemed looser to me. Maybe that is simply because I tend to find most arguments from silence loose. Your exercise, of course, is not simply an argument from silence, but rather a tacit comparison of two different arguments from silence (silence on the HJ, as Doherty would have it, versus silence on the MJ congregations).

Nevertheless, I wonder what you would say if Doherty or his advocates should come back and say that the change from MJ to HJ was nonconfrontational, for the most part, and that the acid tests proposed by 1 John and by Ignatius were actually exceptions that allow us to peek behind the scenes. What if the MJ congregations changed over to an HJ model in the same way Christians eventually accepted the virgin birth across the board? That Jesus was not originally held to be born of a virgin, but was eventually given a virgin birth to the point that it became an acid test of its own, is a (the?) mainstream view, right? How would you respond to a comparison of MJ changing to HJ developing along lines similar to an ordinary birth changing to a virgin birth?

Thanks.

Ben.

krosero

These are good questions, Ben. I’ll see what I can do with this comparison with the virgin birth. I did weigh the possibility of a non-confrontational evolution, but the doctrine of the virgin birth gives us a specific way to look at it.

The first difference I see is that those who dissented from the virgin birth were mentioned, and called heretics – e.g., the Ebionites, or Cerinthus.

Let’s picture how it happened. The belief in the ordinary birth was first. A doctrine of the virgin birth developed. Some embraced it. Others, from the same group, did not embrace it. Some of these, not necessarily for this reason as much as for any number of reasons, became other sects or joined sects that perhaps had begun with the idea of an ordinary birth and always stuck to it. The conflict is recorded; the denial of the virgin birth is called a heretical belief.

Heresies, of course, are not always named as entirely separate sects or churches. Marcion had his own church, but many of the Gnostics attended the same services as the proto-orthodox, and as the heresiologists put it, mouthed the orthodox confessions while interpreting them in their own way. I am not saying this specifically about the virgin birth or for any reason except to highlight that we do not necessarily have to think of MJ and HJ beliefs as corresponding to entirely separate sects. It was a point that Gregg asserted in his first post; and in my own OP, I pictured Ignatius’ churches as experiencing both conflict and conversion when the HJ beliefs first appeared. That such a situation was messy and complex is only to be expected.

On that point, however, note that Doherty has decided that the opponents in chapter 4 of 1 John were a set of competitors – a group across the way, so to speak. He has even carefully decided that the opponents were not the secessionists of chapter 2, so that in his model, we don’t actually have any clear example of HJ and MJ Christians ever mixing. They must have mixed, though. The HJ Christians did not come out of nowhere. Does anyone think that they came entirely out of pagan converts? No, undoubtedly, some MJ Christians converted to the HJ belief. To follow Doherty’s model very closely, they started simply by bringing Jesus down to earth, without a wholesale transformation to Gospel-form Christianity. Some went along with the new idea. Others, naturally, would not have gone along with the idea.

I say this not only because it sounds reasonable, and seems to reflect human nature, but because the historical record gives us a parallel: some went along with the virgin birth; others didn’t.

And you don’t need to wait for the full-blown separation of sects to have conflicts. All you need is for the idea to be embraced by someone and for someone else in the congregation to resist it. In some ways, if the differing ideas stay together under the same roof, the conflict can be worse. Or so a case can be made. The heresiologists seem as vexed about Marcion, who was separate, as they do about those gnostic Christians who remained in their own ranks but held to gnostic interpretations of scripture.

So what I want to know is, if a group survived that did not take on the virgin birth; if groups survived which did not embrace any number of key orthodox beliefs; then why don’t we see a group surviving which did not accept that Jesus was seen on the earth? Why does it appear as if HJ Christians know of no such group, or even any such idea?

It could be supposed, against common observation, that the MJ Christians quickly converted wholesale to the new belief without any holdouts; but that would surely be a new thing in the historical record. Christianity was eventually set upon universally accepted beliefs, but only after conflict and struggle with differing beliefs.

Doherty holds that the docetists (including docetic Gnostics) first appeared as a reaction to the HJ. He holds that docetists refused to reconcile the divine nature of Christ with the idea that he incarnated into real flesh. The docetists, in Doherty’s own model, serve as a prominent witness that not everyone was happy with orthodox beliefs about Christ. What you would expect, then, is for the idea of a purely celestial Christ – especially if it had such deep roots in Christianity and in the culture at large, as Doherty insists – to survive, and to push back.

Doherty often emphasizes himself that early Christianity was a vast soup of diverse beliefs. He proposes that the MJ beliefs be included in the mix. But he makes an exception for them, in that the other beliefs participated in conflict while his proposed beliefs either participated in a very, very low-key conflict or did participate in conflict that was, for whatever reason, not recorded.

I could write more, but that should be enough for now, especially since you asked just one question.

Kevin

Ben C Smith

You know, you are absolutely right. The dissent was recorded.

For me, the virgin birth comparison cautions us against assuming that the orthodox (or proto-orthodox) always identified the original belief correctly (that is, just because some fine father says that doctrine X has always been taught since apostolic times does not make it so), but even here at least the heresiologists let us know where they stand on the issue. They never seem to let us know how they feel about Christ mythers, do they?

I am intrigued by the picture you paint of Ignatius on the one hand and Pliny on the other. I shall have to reread Doherty on Pliny. Is it true that he imagines Pliny as having encountered only Christ mythers? Pliny writes:

I therefore adjourned the proceedings, and betook myself at once to your counsel. For the matter seemed to me well worth referring to you, especially considering the numbers endangered. Persons of all ranks and ages, and of both sexes are and will be involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread through the villages and rural districts; it seems possible, however, to check and cure it.

So Pliny is aware that this Christ myth is all over the place, at least in Bithynia of Asia Minor. Yet, almost contemporaneously, the historicist Ignatius writes to four Asian churches and commends them all. I guess we can pinpoint a pretty solid geographical dividing line between mythicists and historicists at this time, eh?

Ben.

krosero

I used his statements from this page.


It does appear that way. Call me a docetist on the matter.

krosero

That's quite true, though I'm beginning to think of what I'm doing as something that should have been integral to Doherty's own efforts. A work arguing that Jesus probably did not exist should approach the subject like this, in my opinion:

I intend to show in this book how removing one entity, Jesus himself, is the best solution. In doing so, we will be creating new entities -- heretofore unacknowledged beliefs [or sects/Christianities, whatever the appropriate term might be]. I intend to show that these new entities do not cause a net increase in problems, and that they are (a) mentioned in the historical record, or (b) not mentioned, but with good reason, or (c) some combination of the above.

Now, I'm not comparing Doherty to any other author, because surely there are a lot of authors who do not go through this trouble. I'm just remarking, for now, that The Jesus Puzzle addresses 1 John and Ignatius' witnesses to Doherty's proposed beliefs only in the appendices. And the discussion of the issues does not go very far.

Kevin

mens_sana

I really don't see any firm evidence that Pliny has encountered mythers here. "Contagious superstitution" could as easily reflect an upper class Roman's arrogant characterization of what he sees as an upstart religion, in a culture that values antique origins.

Chris Weimer

Superstitio was, in fact, what the Romans called upstart religions, as opposed to the religio which meant sacrifices to the Roman Gods.

krosero

Not that you’re suggesting an exclusive division of the HJ and MJ Christians, but here’s how I picture the situation geographically. In Doherty’s model, the HJ is spreading westward from Asia to Rome, but is not yet in Bithynia. The MJ is everywhere, from Palestine to Rome, Crete (per Titus) and Bithynia.

Which just accents the problem: what happened to this widespread MJ community?

For the Logos-followers, we can place Theophilus in Antioch, Athenagoras in Athens, Minucius Felix in Rome or North Africa, and Tatian in Rome as well. Justin’s conversion (to the Logos-religion, per Doherty) is supposed to have taken place near Ephesus, which doesn’t really change the geographical distribution of the group. We can put one more pushpin on the map, at Alexandria, since Doherty has the roots of the Logos-religion there; perhaps we can picture Logos-followers in that vicinity too.

So the second group, like the first, traces an arc around the Mediterranean. Does not sound like a small group, although of course putting mental pushpins on the map does not tell us much about actual population sizes.

Kevin

mens_sana

Thank you for that info. Do you see Pliny as referring to Xmythers?

Chris Weimer

No. In fact, I think the evidence points to the opposite. For Pliny doesn't call Christ a god, but he says they sing songs to him as if he were a god.