Zeichman

Burton Mack, iirc, is non-religious, and I think I remember reading that Fredriksen was Jewish, though I could be wrong. William Arnal is an atheist.

mens_sana

William E. Arnal's Jesus and the Village Scribes: Galilean Conflicts and the Setting of Q (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Fortress Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8006-3260-5, paper) is a very interesting and cogently argued book. Arnal traces the origins of the Sayings Gospel Q to the local scribes in the Galilean villages, basing this in the socioeconomic displacement of local farmers, and hence of the scribes themselves, and connecting this displacement to a "rhetoric of uprootedness" in Q. He finds big problems with the long-accepted notion of "itinerant preachers" as the source of Q. If one accepts a Sayings Gospel Q with a local scribal source, it would be impossible to posit other than a physical Jesus of Nazareth.

I think Arnal is probably right about this source of Q — at Q's earliest level. How later levels/revisions/etc. of Q are handled can be posed as a different argument. Full-blown Kloppenborg doesn't have to be dragged in at this point. And that the Sayings Gospel Q did have a written document form is born out (I think) by James M. Robinson's "A Written Greek Sayings Cluster Older Than Q" (Harvard Theological Review 92:1, 1999, pp.61-77).

gurugeorge

I doubt it, but if so they are negligible in the history of Christianity. And if they existed, they obviously hadn't read the Gospels, nor believed them to be evidence of a moment in time when God was made flesh and dwelt amongst us and died for our sins, like 99% of Christians throughout history have done.

Whether one plumps for scholarly HJ or MJ, either is actually effectively a debunking of Christianity as most people have known it throughout the centuries.

Chris Weimer

<< excessive rant about how people need to read a bit about history before making themselves look like ignorant fools deleted >>

Roger Pearse

I think that people should remember that this is what the Ignore list is for. Anyone who makes me cross goes on mine, for instance -- if reading someone's posts makes me angry or upset, do I need that? The answer is no, and on the list they go.

As a rule my list is coterminous with the fools, trolls and liars, but that's just me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gurugeorge

Instead of an excessive rant, how about a bit of argument. This is the second time you've done this Chris, people will be beginning to think you don't engage because you don't actually have anything relevant to say. It's easy to hide behind high dudgeon.

So what, in what I said, demonstrates ignorance about history?

And do you agree or disagree that whether one goes for the either the scholarly HJ or MJ, that is effectively a debunking of Christianity as most people have known it throughout the centuries?

In case anyone's wondering, the relevance of this to the OP is this: one often hears the OP kind of question from Christians who (quite reasonably) want to see what sort of historical backup they can have, and perhaps get some handle on the Mythical Jesus kerfuffle, maybe get some "ammunition" against it.

The main point of what I've been circling around in my last few posts is the above though: it actually makes no difference whether one follows the scholarly view of HJ or goes for MJ idea. Christianity as most people have known it throughout the centuries is a now a walking corpse, because the only "historical Jesus" for which there is even the slightest shred of (highly debatable) evidence is quite irrelevant to the kind of Christianity that people shed blood sweat and tears over for nearly 2,000 years. So there's no "comfort" to be found in that historical investigation whatsoever.

But by the same token, it then becomes quite strange that intelligent people still wish to associate themselves with something called "Christianity". Which "Christianity" are they associating themselves with? The one that has all those fine old traditions, cute churches, lots of art and stuff associated with it? That's a tradition that has lots of nice things attached to it that one might quite reasonably want to associate oneself with. But unfortunately, if the only Jesus that can be found is the historical Jesus of scholarship, then that Christianity is bunk. On the other hand, if one wants to associate oneself with a kind of Christianity that stems from an obscure preacher, and maybe had a bit of representation in history, then that Christianity, while it might be authentic, has very little to do with the majority Christianity of history and tradition in the West, the Christianity that built those cute churches, has all that fine art, and grand traditions, and tremendous, important influence in the history of the West.

Doug Shaver

Chrisianity is whatever people who call themselves Christians say it is. That they don't agree among themselves is of course inconvenient for the rest of us, but that doesn't give us any authority to issue any rulings on the matter. If nobody within the Christian community has that authority, then certainly nobody outside the community can have it.

gurugeorge

Well, quibbles with your philosophical interpretation aside, I'm sure you'll agree that most Christians throughout history, and most Christians today who are committed to Christianity, have believed and believe in the Jesus of the Gospels, who was God incarnate, who came to earth to show us the way/deliver us from sins.

In fact, as I'm sure you'll agree, most Christians who have never investigated biblical scholarship will pretty much view the NT as actually being the proof of the historical existence of this God-man.

I venture to suggest that they would not be happy with some obscure Jewish preacher/apocalyptic/revolutionary who happened to get bumped up a few ranks in the celestial heirarchy through a combination of happy accidents and misunderstanding.

Indeed, I think it would I think be six and a half dozen whether you told them about the anaemic historical Jesus of the scholars, or that Jesus didn't exist at all and was originally a mythic/mystical/spiritual/philosophical archetype. Neither would be very good news.

~M~

bah- I need to change my minor to classics or something. I want to participate but....

driver8

gurugeorge, I think you're pretty much right on, and since this thread is directed at the layman, its one of the few that I feel even remotely qualified to comment on.

This site seems to focus a lot on the HJ and MJ hypotheses, but I've seen elsewhere a third, that of the Mystical Jesus (MsJ?), and really there is probably a continuum of possibilities. I would equate the Mystical Jesus with the traditional layman's viewpoint of Christianity, i.e. it needs nothing other than the Bible for reference and explanation. It seems that the Vatican recently even issued a statement to the effect that it serves little purpose to seek out the HJ and recommended against doing so.

At any rate, I found the OP question a bit problematic, perhaps argumentive in nature, but I've enjoyed this discussion and it points out the great differences in knowledge and perspective. The appeal to scholarly authority is an understandable one, but this subject is so different than most any other pursuit of knowledge that it must be approached with caution.

I appreciate the scholarly knowledge and discussion that does take place here, but as a layman with many interests and limited time for this, I can't help but notice that scholarly pursuits tend to focus on minutiae while ignoring the "elephant in the room." Here's my summary of the Jesus story, and if half of it is from the OT, I'm sorry, its not my doing that Christians tied themselves to that document or claimed that Jesus was the "son of god." I'm afraid at this point you can't separate the two.

So, here's the elephant as I see it :

Now, if I offended anyone with my tongue-in-cheek story I apologize, but the basic premise of this story is illogical from the get go and it only goes downhill from there. Everything about it screams that is the product of men's wishful thinking (and worse), not a god. The appearance of a savior sent by a god really makes no sense at all. What kind of god runs things so poorly that a savior is even part of the equation? As Woody Allen said, "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

To me it's obvious that there is no Mystical Jesus, and that being said, the presence of an HJ is almost irrelevant, other than as an intellectual and social concept. I AM curious about what really happened to get us where we are today, where no man in the USA at least has the courage to stand up and run for president while saying he doesn't believe this curious little story.

So, when ~M~ appeals to scholarly authority, my take is that you do so in an attempt to unlock this mystery. You have to break it down one issue at a time. Scholarly authority can somewhat help you understand where this story came from and how it was spread, but it really cannot decide for you if there was an HJ or just an MJ, at least not without more evidence than what we seem to have at hand. Now, if we only knew what the Vatican has in its vaults...