Crowley

There is a large body of works that began roughly late first century or early second century concerning Jesus Christ. The Chrisitian stance is obviously Christ's ministry, death and subsequent resurrection spawned these works.

What are the non-Christian theories that explain why a diverse group of authors wrote somewhat varied (and at times very different) accounts of the life and death of Jesus? Is there a primary theory that is generally accepted in scholarly circles?

Thanks in advance for the information.

schilling.klaus

No, there isn't. There's only a bunch of fraudulent forgeries falsely dated around then.

Klaus Schilling

Crowley

That is certainly one theory that I have heard: That Constantine (The Boss) et al created the Jesus story. You, however, state it as a fact. What is your evidence to substantiate the claim that no written stories of Jesus exist until the third century or later?

spin

One of the greatest problems one has in dealing with christian origins is the difficulty of dating texts. There has been christian research in past centuries which tended to take a literal approach to the issues, predominantly trusting that authors were being honest, knew what they were talking about, reconstructing the past correctly, not inadvertantly retrojecting ideas. If you cannot date the texts on which you date issues correctly, then you cannot know what happened or when.

Dating the gospels tends to be based on the assumption that the prediction regarding the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in Mk 13:2 could only have been made before the destruction of the temple, hence Mark must predate the temple's fall, while the other gospels were written within a few decades of Mark. Yet Mark contains the symbolic destruction of the temple in 15:38 with the tearing asunder of the temple curtain and thus the overthrow of priestly control of the temple. This leaves us with the earliest clear reference to a written gospel attributed to the time of Marcion in circa 140 CE for Irenaeus accuses Marcion of having bowdlerized the gospel of Luke, which indicates that both gospels existed for Irenaeus and that Marcion's gospel existed for Marcion. So, gospel dating is a complex issue.

Dating Paul is just as complex. The only specific indication of dating for Paul, once one realizes that Acts is not dependable, is a reference to him being lowered from the wall of Damascus during the time of Aretas the king of the Nabataeans. Yet the only time the Nabataeans had control of Damascus was around 65 BCE, so apologists have tried to open the possibility that Aretas IV briefly had control of Damascus, which was ostensibly in the hands of Roman Syria, based on no evidence whatsoever, other than the desire to make kosher the reference to Aretas in Damascus despite the fact that the Nabataeans were outside Roman control. The early date (65 BCE) seems out of the question, while date of circa 40 CE also seems unjustified, so we are left with no solid dating indications for Paul either.

To complicate issues the texts were not the work of single authors writing in single writing phases. The synoptic gospels were clearly amplifications of earlier efforts. Pauline letters such as 2 Corinthians and Philippians were at least composite letters, perhaps from materials written by Paul, but they may have been heterogeneous. Few if any scholars these believe that the pastoral letters, 1 Tim, 2 Tim and Titus, were written by Paul. Most think Colossians and Ephesians weren't either. This means that any historical indications within the texts may have been added later, perhaps correcting earlier problems. This complicates the dating issues further.

With a tendency of christian writers to correct and amplify earlier texts we come to face non-christian references to Jesus/christ/christians and we find for example that the Testimentum Flavium found in Josephus's Antiquities Bk 18 was for a long time thought to have been an interpolation, though more recently there has been a tendency to attempt to reclaim parts of it as original to Josephus. I doubt the seriousness of such attempts, but there is still the tacit admission that Josephus has been tampered with. This knowledge allows us to confront other references to Jesus/christ as possibly being in the same vein, especially considering that most pagan texts were preserved by the same scribes who were responsible for the changing christian traditions.

Putting aside the christian explanation for the origin of the religion, we come to numerous non-christian explanations. The three basic categories for these are:

1. the Jesus myth -- a cosmic understanding of salvation, which needed no real Jesus;
2. the Jesus fraud -- a fictional Jesus, usually invented by the Romans (!?), as a manipulative tool; and
3. the developmental Jesus -- a figure (real or not in origin) around whom traditions of the faithful accreted. (Jesus may have been real person, just as Robin Hood may have been, or he may have been the creation of the mind of someone like Paul whose conviction was sufficient to make acolytes based on his personal revelation.)

There will be arguments about these categories. Some strong feelings are involved, but they are the fundamental range as I see them. Some accretion will have happened in all three categories, but accretion is the fundamental process of the third: communities hold the knowledge of the religion which gets picked at by wandering preachers who bring new ideas from elsewhere and who inadvertantly add new ideas in the successful telling of the gospel, so that each community's knowledge grew until some of them felt the need to write down what they knew or correct the circulating written versions of the gospel. The non-christian historical Jesus is a major variant of the third category.


spin

Toto

There is no generally accepted primary theory. Current scholarship shies away from big questions like that.

Are you familiar with Earl Doherty's explanation? www.jesuspuzzle.com

Or join the Jesus Mysteries list on yahoogroups.

mountainman

The primary theory today as taught in christian theological breeding grounds the planet over is that we are dealing with a thing called an HJ (an historical jesus). As far as I can make out, the thing called an HJ is treated as an unexamined postulate with respect to the theory of biblical history for the period in question. It is an unexamined postulate because we have no evidence by which a process of examination can occur.

This basis separates the field of Biblical History from the field of Ancient History, in which the existence of Jesus is not treated as a postulate. SO the first question for you, is which field are you interested in.

Academic here often argue over the status of competing theories. The next in line to be considered is the MJ theories (Mythical). Some academics even refuse to countenance the academic acceptance of anything but HJ theorising and conjecture. The open market of course allows greater toleration.

Analysis of the HJ/MJ (Historical Jesus vs Mythical Jesus) Dichotomy

At the end of this classification system we have fiction:
Theories of the History Christianity involving Fraud & Fiction

A further class identified by discussions here is sometimes put forward, and termed TJ (or Traditional Jesus). The explication of this class of theory is often coupled with the historical examination of Ebion and the Ebionites. Unfortunately, as yet, I do not have a summary of the TJ arguments in any succinct form.

So there you have it digger.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

InnocentSmith

That's going to require some strong citations, friend.

That seems somewhat unlikely, though, since the Armenian Christian church was established before Constantine's official conversion.

Acetylhexene

You could ask the same thing of ANY mythological text from history.

What are you trying to "prove"?

Toto

The history of the Armenian Church is anchored on a miraculous cure and 40 beautiful chaste nuns who were willing to be tortured for their faith rather than marry the evil King.

While I do not think that Constantine invented Christianity, I am a little skeptical of the details of Armenia's conversion.

A slightly more skeptical history dates the conversion to possibly 314.

schilling.klaus

no, it doesn't, as the Dutch Radical group already proved all that over 50 years ago.

Klaus Schilling