mountainman

The physically reality of publishing books is amenable to historical research. The two books "Harry Potter" and "The Hobbit" are fiction books which entered the history of the world in the 20th century. The question to be asked by anyone willing to abide by the logical, scientific and evidentiary-driven principles of doing history is "When does the EVIDENCE suggest that the New Testament, Jesus and the Christian religion first appear"?

Eusebius, who edited the New Testament and who provides the only available "history of the pre-Nicene Christians" and other literary "packaging" asserts that the NT was authored by a tetrarchy of boneheads in the first century. These assertions by Eusebius have no corroborating evidence.

The evidence outside of Eusebius suggests the New Testament, Jesus and the Christian religion first appear in the 4th century.

RE: 100% Mythical impies 100% Fictional

There is a vast difference between ZERO historicity and NULL historicity.
Posters and readers of this forum must understand the difference.
ZERO implies that there may indeed be a small (perhaps neglible) value to be associated with the historicity, and a remnant may in fact exist.

However NULL implies that the result set is EMPTY.
It is a void. It is not a number very very close to zero.
It is of NO VALUE WHATSOEVER - EMPTY - NOTHING.
ZERO historicity is not the same as NULL historicity.

For example fictional characters such as Harry Potter and Biblo Baggins have NULL historicity not zero historicity since they never lived or breathed in any historical sense..... they were created in the mind of an author.

Jesus, Paul, the 12 Boneheads, Papias, Hegessipus, Tertullian, Justin, Marcion, Ireneus, the Christian Origen and a host of other literary fabrications are quite possibly in the same sense FICTIONAL beings who have NULL historicity.

Chili

You could very well be rigt in all you write but for me anybody who calls it a Christian religion is already a bonehead for the simple reason that Christianity is the end of reigion in the same was as it was the end of Judaism for Joseph after [what has become known as] Christ was born unto him.

I then go one step further to say that it is not possible for Christians to go to heaven because they already are in heaven in the same way as Jesus was never addressed as Christ until after his assention into heaven . . . which then also means that heaven is for Catholics only but not to say that all Catholics go to heaven. The argument does continue to say that it is not possible for Catholics to go to hell as Catholic, but that sure is not part of your argument here.

The point here is that the event happened in real life but much more in secret and not in a flamboyant way as the Gospels describe it did. Yet it did happen because all we are dealing with here is metamorphosis. . . . and yes, Eusebius did it right because he made it work for him and even for for us tday who are still sweetened by the later part of entropy for which he got thw wheels in motion. The story itself is needed only because it testifies to truth (John 5:39) and if you are going to be a shepherd you better have a calling voice so the sheep will reconginize you when you call.

spin

I wrote a response to this some days ago and pressed Submit and it showed me the post, but I come back and find it's not there. This has happened to me a few times and the only thing I can think of is that I'd pressed Preview Post instead of Submit.
I've beaten my head over this slack use of "myth" numerous times.

Let's just omit #3 as not relevant to history in that its implications are outside what history deals with. It is sufficient to deal with either Jesus existed or he didn't. The christian paraphernalia is built on his existence. So down to two: either he existed or he didn't.

Nice hard evidence there. We get our first knowledge for a historical context from the hard evidence. Our literary histories aren't worth anything without sufficient hard evidence to show that the main figures dealt with have real world support. That way we can develop some confidence in using the literary history. From the hard evidence we build up a knowledge base in the historical context introducing what we learn from the literary history.

When we come to a body of literature, such as the gospel material. We start by looking for the hard evidence for its payload content, but there is nothing, no way to substantiate any claims at all of the central material. We look at the texts and we find them unprovenaced, undated and anonymous. We have no way to tie them down to a historical context. These are texts that just don't make it to the starting blocks. I don't know how you can do history with them. There is no way to know if it is like working with an obscure historian or an obscure set of folk traditions that bear no direct relation to history.

We cannot assume anything about these texts. They may, or may not, contain historical information for the period they purport to represent and there is no way to get past not knowing.

You have no way of knowing. Your thinking here isn't based on evidence.


spin

lpetrich

What would you consider a legitimate use of that word?

Except for those Xian apologists who seem to think that we could have gone back in time in a time machine and watched Jesus Christ walk on water, turn water into wine, multiply bread and fish, drive out demons, and rise from the dead.

They also whine that ruling out possibility 3 is a result of "materialistic presuppositions", though they dismiss out of hand possibility 3 for any other legendary god-man.

Even if he existed, he could have been someone other than traditional Xianity depicts him as being. Like possibilities between 1 and 2 including 2, where he is 100% human and 0% god.

spin

A myth in a stricter sense is a story that conveys religious truth.

It's still a special case of #2. If he existed, he may have been more than just a man...


spin

Clivedurdle

Isn't it mythical turtles all the way down?

Might 1 Corinthians 10 be describing a ritual? Gore Vidal in Julian describes Julian's initiation ceremony into Sol Invictus - and I Corinthians 10 sounds very similar.

We also have the comment "oriental cult".

So maybe we can find something in these documents - evidence of rituals and myth.


The New Testament is the story of the reconciliation of God and Man and the creation of a new heaven and earth through a ritual of a sacrifice and a resurrection of a god.

Chili

Myth in the strict sense of the word points at truth and therefore is real. I am not sure if they are religious truths but it is certainly true that religions do share the same truths and therefore can be compared with each other. For example, compare "the sign of Jonah" and "the entombment of Jesus." These are two metaphors used in a parable to describe the same thing and so it is by looking from these truths that religions are transparent.

mountainman

The 2010 Mythicist Prize Results

ApostateAbe

Looks like I was right.

ApostateAbe

David Fitzgerald, one of the two runners-up, is the same guy who is producing yet another documentary, according to his blog, on the mythical Jesus (10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus), which was reportedly very well received at the American Atheists convention. His article was put online by René Salm here (PDF): Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus. I bet he feels cheated. It looks like he put a lot of work into it.

~ David Fitzgerald (San Francisco): Ten beautiful lies about Jesus. “Fitzgerald’s is possibly the best ‘capsule summary’ of the mythicist case I’ve ever encountered …within an interesting and accessible approach.”
—Earl Doherty

...interesting and accessible approach. Looks like a back-handed compliment, because the article reads more like an opinion/editorial, or maybe a very long blog post with footnotes, than a scholarly case, which is more honest, but I get the feeling that the judges were looking for something that could at least appear scholarly.

Fitzgerald conflates his opposition--secular Jesus historicists with Christian apologists--and he does so explicitly right from the beginning.

"It’s true enough that the majority of Biblical historians do not question the historicity of Jesus - but then again, the majority of Biblical historians have always been Christian preachers, so what else could we expect them to say?"

It is a good rhetorical strategy (the Christian religion is an easier target), but, it is sort of missing the point of the criticism, considering that the type of historian, the non-religious type, who we may otherwise expect to agree with the Jesus-myth proposition, are instead nearly unanimous in their opposition to it all the same.

But, I figure that the biggest weakness of the article is that it does little if anything to fulfill the given requirement: "...sheds light on the origins of Christianity and, at the same time, supports the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist." This article seems to do neither. Instead, it only pokes holes in the historicist case, the strategy of so many mythical Jesus proponents, offering no plausible alternative for the beginnings of Christianity.

The other runner-up was also given what seems to be a back-handed compliment.

~ Peter McKenna (Liverpool, England): Jesus Nazoraios: hidden truths revealed? This short essay reviews the linguistic issues surrounding the cognates Nazareth/Nazoraios/Nazarene. It attempts to show how the title ‘Nazoraion’ led to the name of Jesus’ New Testament hometown. McKenna touches upon lesser-known aspects of the problem including possible Mandaic and Gnostic roots, and offers an excellent bibliography.
—René Salm

...short essay. Whoops. It needed to be at least 30 pages, Mr. McKenna. Too bad. On the plus side, maybe you were on track to providing part of a mythicist explanation for the beginnings of Christianity.

The requirement of the judges--"sheds light on the origins of Christianity"--was a good one. They knew the vulnerability of their own position, so they hoped to solve the problem with a cash incentive. Didn't work, obviously, but maybe $1000 is not enough. A good 30-100 page paper on a topic like this takes a lot of work, not to mention innovation. Maybe they can find the budget for a bigger cash prize. Maybe they can find a sponsor. I know there was one guy out there who was willing to pay $5000 to make space for the mythicist-vs-historicist debate in a religious-studies journal.

They are repeating this same contest for 2011, with the same rules and the same prize. But, it is still just $1000. Good luck with that.

I encourage all of you mythicists and pseudo-mythicists in this forum to fulfill this challenge. Collaborate! Come up with an idea about how Christianity may have originated, develop it with details and evidence, compare it with a popular secular historicist version of early Christianity (apocalyptic prophet Jesus would be best), write your article, edit it as a collective, send it in, and split the prize money.