GakuseiDon

The problem is that lots of people DON'T ignore Acharya and F&G. This board, and more specifically yourself and Vork, are about the only ones that point out the problems with their work. On other atheist boards, there is a real reluctance to criticizing even Acharya too much. Those who know that their work is bad scholarship are generally silent. Those are the boards that still think the Remsberg list is a slam-dunk argument against historicity.

When you see the word "mythicist", you think of the respectable side like Doherty and Wells only, but others see the whole range. Reread jjramsey's comment with Acharya in mind. It might be better to use a separate descriptor perhaps for those mythers who use primary sources. Perhaps "primary sources mythicists"?

AFAIK Carrier hasn't actually presented a case, just an opinion. I look forward to reading his case. I comment on his opinion below.

On Doherty: do YOU understand his case, Toto? I've gone through his book a few times, and tried to track down as many of his sources as possible, so I understand it as well as anyone, and I think a lot better than most Doherty supporters. Would you be able to summarize Doherty's view of the sub-lunar realm/"world of myth"/"fleshy dimension overlapping our own"? And the sources that support his idea? Does Plutarch support it, in your opinion?

On Wells: he no longer regards himself as a mythicist AFAIK. From my article here:

In the 1990s however, Wells moved away from a "pure mythicist" stance. As he says here:

"Recent work on Q led me to accept that the gospels (unlike the Pauline and the other early epistles) may include traditions about a truly historical itinerant preacher of the early first century".

As Wells goes on to explain here:

"I have argued that the disparity between the early documents and the gospels is explicable if the Jesus of the former is not the same person as the Jesus of the latter... In the gospels, the two Jesus figures -- the human preacher of Q and the supernatural personage of the early epistles who sojourned briefly on Earth as a man, and then, rejected, returned to heaven -- have been fused into one. The Galilean preacher of Q has been given a salvivic death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the Pauline and other early letters), but in a historical context consonant with the date of the Galilean preaching.

Now that I have allowed this in my two most recent relevant books... it will not do to dub me a "mythicist" tout court."

True. The problem here is that Carrier misunderstood Muller's argument on the sub-lunar realm.

This is what Carrier says:

Carrier: Muller is wrong to imply there is no evidence the "higher and lower worlds" view "was believed by anyone in the first three centuries." The evidence for that is solid....

But Muller was talking about "higher and lower worlds" in the sub-lunar realm., "the higher world" being where Christ was crucified according to Doherty. Muller is right here -- there is absolutely no evidence for this, and even Doherty has backed away from talking about different "dimensions" in the sub-lunar realm, using instead "different locales".

Carrier misunderstood Muller on this, and I think that he is still formulating his views on the subject, since according to Ted Hoffman says later: "Carrier has noted that the "sublunary sphere" was a catch-all phrase referring to the realm of the earth, everything below the orbit of the moon". Thus, no higher or lower world. That's why I think he is heading down the same path as I did with regards to mythicism.

GakuseiDon

Let's see what your MJ position is, then we can determine the levels of irrationality and speculation. Didn't you say recently that "Doherty said that Christ was crucified in the Third Heaven"?

That makes no sense at all in terms of Platonism. Can you back your statement? Or can you summarize Doherty's position on the location of Christ's crucifixion and the evidence (rather than speculation) for placing it there?

Ted Hoffman

The HJ sympathizers need to explain the following:

1. Why Paul used the peculiar expression kata sarka instead of en sarki if he meant earthly incarnation.
2. The silence that pervades the writings of the second century apologists. [GDon attempted to explain the silence but I dismembered his arguments and he has never been able to muster a defense].
3. Why Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Calvary, Pilate, Herod and other earthly beings that, per the gospels, allegedly interacted with Jesus.
4. Why Paul and Mark rely on the OT to construct a "life" for Jesus. If Jesus was historical, Paul would have relied on eyewitness accounts.
5. Why Paul says archontes/archotons [demons] killed Jesus, and not Pilate, or the Roman authorities.
6. Why the entire "ministry" of Jesus is found only in fictional/religious sources and no historical ones [Josephus' Antiquities passage, critical scholars agree, is an interpolation].
7. Why not even *one* event in Mark can be regarded as historical based on rhetorical, source, narrative and form critical analysis.
8. Why we have so many Jesuses, a miracle worker, marginal Jew and all other brands of Jesus conservative scholars churn out every day, depending on how they (the scholars), wake up.
9. Why no conservative scholar has undertaken the task to use historico-critical methodology to dismember Doherty's thesis and demonstrate that Doherty's thesis is ill-founded and incorrect as some claim
10. Why Nazareth is not mentioned in the earlier (Alexandrian) texts of Mark.
11. The (geographical) errors in Mark.

The MJ hypothesis can explain all the above. Easily and painlessly.
The HJ hypothesis, OTOH, will bleed, bury its head in the sand, frown, twiddle its fingers, huff and puff, scream and kick, attempt special pleading, beg the question or, at best, provide answers that cannot fit in one consistent framework.

It is important to note that the Platonic worldview was nonsensical and constructed from incomplete and erroneous knowledge. To expect Doherty to explain someone elses nonsense logically, is to shift the burden of proof and raise a red herring.

Doug Shaver

I think it is by far his weakest argument, and I wish he wouldn't make so much of it. But it's hardly bogus.

andrewcriddle

IIUC All extant texts of Mark have Nazareth in Mark 1:9 (Some spell it Nazaret some Nazareth some Nazarat but I don't think the differences in spelling of Nazareth amount to a failure to mention it)
The Platonic worldview is erroneous it was not IMO inconsistent or incoherent.

(Specific Platonists certainly held views inconsistent with other Platonists but that is different from claiming that a specific Platonist position is radically inconsistent or incoherent.)

Andrew Criddle

jjramsey

Judging from Muller's work, Paul used both, and neither was peculiar. More to the point, it really doesn't help the mythicist case, since Doherty's translation of kata sarka as "in the Middle Platontic realm of the fleshly spirits" doesn't work.

I'll let GDon do most of the answering on this, but I noticed that in the arguments that Tertullian made defending the Christian worship of the cross, he made several (rather dubious) comparisons between pagan and Christian practice, in an attempt to argue that the pagans "really" worshipped crosses and so had no reason to criticize the Christians for doing so as well. Of course, if he is arguing from pagan practice, there isn't much room to mention Pilate, etc.

This is a pseudoproblem. Again, Paul is addressing the problems of the churches with which he is corresponding, not giving pious history lessons. Yes, it would be nice for us if he gave details, but hardly necessary for his original audience.

The answer to this is simple: They don't necessarily. Matthew and Luke certainly historicize prophecy, most notably in the birth narratives. Paul doesn't give much in the way of details to start with, but the bits like Jesus' crucifixion look more like they were justified by the OT after the fact. With Mark, some events are a toss-up. The triumphal entry is certainly derived from prophecy, but it is not clear whether it is Jesus deliberately acting out prophecy to make a statement, or Mark making it up.

Big problem: archontes can mean earthly authorities, and Paul used it that way himself, i.e. in Romans 13:3-6. It is at least questionable to read Paul's use of archontes in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8 as "demons."

Think about it this way. Who would think it was worthwhile to write accounts of Jesus' ministry, the Christians who respected him, or the non-Christians who regarded Christianity as a pernicious superstition?

That is a loaded question with a dubious premise. I also note a bit of fudging there: "based on rhetorical, source, narrative and form critical analysis." I noticed that issues of whether the event described in Mark has incidental or embarassing information are left out. The question appears to be implying that no one event in Mark is thought of as historical, which is false. For example, the crucifixion itself is generally agreed to be historical by all but the MJers.

Conservative scholars, such as N.T. Wright, have pretty much just one Jesus: Jesus Christ, the son of the living God. The liberal and moderate scholars are more fractured, but even here, most of these Jesuses fall in two general categories: Jesus as a essentially a sage or moral teacher, and Jesus as the apocalpytic prophet. IMHO, the former is mostly an image of what liberal Christians want Jesus to be, but the latter actually does a pretty good job of explaining why the NT has the content that it has.

It seems that the conservative scholars are happy to let the online Christian apologists deal with him. As for the moderates and liberals, there already is stuff on that forum to that effect, such as the thread Romans 1.3, κατα σαϿκα, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Origen, and other stuff online, such as Bernard Muller's work.

From Googling around, it isn't too clear whether you mean that Mark uses "Nazara" rather than "Nazareth," or if you mean that the Alexandrian texts do not have Mark 1:9 say, "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan," leaving only references to Jesus being a Nazarene.

I can't say it is a big problem. If one is trying to argue that "Nazarene" wasn't a reference to "Nazareth," but the name of a member of a sect, then it is a rather peculiar coincidence that the name of this sect sounds like the name of an actual place. If you want to argue that Nazareth didn't exist in the first century, and that references to it are anachronisms penned by second-century writers, then you will have to explain why a second-century writer would put in Jesus' mouth a prediction that by that time would be obviously false, such as Mark 9:1, "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power."

This is a problem for inerrantists, not historicists.

Yet the idea that all change, motion, corruption, demons, etc. takes place below the firmament is a straightforward concept, even if it is wrong.

It is not a red herring to expect Doherty to deal with Middle Platonism as it actually was.

gstafleu

I wonder if the list shouldn't start with a point 0: why do the MJ'ers have to prove anything? There are lots of stories about heroes doing wonders with divine aid. These are normally seen to be fictional. Why would the Jesus story be different? The burden of proof as far as I can tell is on the HJers, not the MJers.

Another question is, exactly which Jesus is supposed to be historical? I take it that the Sunday school version (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection) is not seriously considered as a candidate for historicity (am I wrong here?). If we are not looking for a "fully loaded" historical Jesus, isn't the debate, as far as Christianity is concerned, pretty academic? I think that is what the OP was getting at. Any light weight Jesus (cynic, teacher, prophet, cult leader, general itinerant,...) cannot bear the weight of Christianity. So without a full fledged Jesus the cathedral of Christianity collapses anyway. And in that case the whole MJ vs HJ debate is of historical but not much religious interest.

Zeichman

This is wrong, from what I can tell. What scholars believe that it is wholly an interpolation. I don't even think Mack goes that far. Many think its original wording is forever lost, but that Josephus probably said something about him.
The real question is why Doherty insists on writing all of his works for a popular audience before getting scholarly acceptence and then marvelling at the lack of scholarly response.
Assuming you're merely making a gross generalization by calling all HJers "conservatives", one could ask the same about mythicists. Doherty praises all MJers, regardless of how obviously their work is garbage and differs from his own. Even Price and Doherty have notable differences in their own conclusions, particularly the importance of the "history of religions" thought.

Malachi151

IMO the Jesus debate is a no-win for Christians, which is EXACTLY why they seek so hard to simply dismiss the MJ claims, because they don't want to get into the details of supporting claims for HJ.

The only way to even try to defend HJ is bascially to completely strip Jesus of all his myster and power, reducing him to an unknown, obscure man.

If you actually get into it, then in order to defend HJ you have to claim that:

God choose to come to earth to make things right by going to a small town, taking the form of an illiterate man, and having a small band of followers, while leaving no personal written record or any first hand accounts of him during the height of the Roman Empire, when the population of Rome was mostly literate, and Rome had many capability to spreading news and information across Europe.

The only way to defend HJ is to claim that he was obscure and not well known, and admit that "Christianity" didn't really spread until well after his death, by people who had never seen Jesus.

The Jeuss debate is a lose-lose for Christians, so they continue to say that "there is no debate".

Chris Weimer

You're are absolutely right. However, just because Christians lose doesn't mean MJers win. This isn't a Christian v. non-Christian debate.

Very true. I'd also like to add "relatively insignificant" to that as well.

No you don't. You can be atheist and still think the evidence points to an HJ.

Yep. I thought this was a given.

And what of the non-Christians who say there is no debate?