aa5874

You need evidence of the historicity of Arthur before such scenario can be considered.

As it stands today, information about the character called King Arthur in no way can possibly the question as to how much of the tradition of an historical figure can be wrong without the figure becoming in sffect non-historical.

David Hillman

There were historical characters about whom legendary cycles developed - Dietrich von Bern for example- but Arthur wasn't one of them. The earliest stories about Arthur have him as a timeless figure harrowing Hell, fighting monsters witches and giants. He was historicised at various times -as an enemy of the Saxons, or of the Vikings, or of the prehistoric giants. The later historicisation included in Nennius then in Annales Cambriae reflect political agendas by different Welsh kingdoms, but written narratives derive a spurious authority merely by being written - so the stories were followed literally by later writers - unless they felt like the neeeded to change them

Clivedurdle

Hmm. Don't the earliest writings of Paul discuss a heavenly timless Christ and how he conquers hell by death on a tree in the heavens?

ApostateAbe

"Why has Jesus got a get out of jail free card? Is it because the myth and the dream is so powerful - everlasting life, the conjoining of heaven and earth, the lion laying down with the lamb?"

No. Jesus gets a get-out-of-jail-free card because religiously-independent scholars are unified in accepting the historical existence of Jesus. And that is because of the evidence. The evidence for Jesus' existence is in the early Christian documents that give details of the associations and social environment of Jesus, details that are independently corroborated. The mythical embellishments can be parsed from the genuine history. We have no such thing for King Arthur.

show_no_mercy

What are these independent corroborations? The first Christian writing to give any details about this Jesus character is the gospel of Mark written at the earliest 40 years after the events and at the latest 100 years after the events... and we don't even know if his intent was writing pious fiction, hero biography, satire, objective history, or any other myriad of genres written in the first century. Matthew and Luke are simply heavily edited versions of Mark, and John is at least aware of Mark. So at the most you could say that there are "two" independent corroborations of the Jesus story (but really only one).

All of the Christian writings prior to Mark have absolutely no details about the life of Jesus, other than his crucifixion.

Granted, this assumes that all of the Christian writings about Jesus are all of the ones we have today; there could have been other writings by the "Jesus movement" that wasn't seen as favorable by the emerging Catholic church and thus destroyed.

What exactly is the genuine history? At the most we can simply say that a person named Jesus was crucified. Other than that, you have to assume what kind of Jesus you're looking for and then look for evidence that confirms your presupposition. That will only lead to people finding the Jesus they want to find. Jesus wasn't even thought to have been a wandering, healing preacher until Mark was written.

ApostateAbe

The earliest writings that give details about Jesus is NOT the gospel of Mark, but it is the writings of the apostle Paul. One of those writings is the Epistle to the Galations, written in the early 50's CE. In it, he writes in passing of meeting James, the brother of Jesus:

"Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."

James is given as a name of one of the brothers of Jesus in both Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3. Also, "Cephas" is the Aramaic translation of "Peter."

Paul also recounts having doctrinal conflicts with the apostle Peter, in Galatians 2. Of course Peter was a close associate of Jesus.

Paul was a Christian, but the claims in question are neutral or opposite to his religious bias. Therefore, the implication that Jesus existed in the synoptic gospels are corroborated, and this evidence is enough to establish the existence of Jesus.

The social environment of Jesus given in the synoptic gospels includes Pontius Pilate, the temple of Jerusalem, the Pharisees, the Samaritans, crucifixions, the Passover celebration, the Jewish laws, John the Baptist, circumcisions, and so on. These things are corroborated by authors close to the time and place, such as Hillel the Elder, Josephus, and Philo of Alexandria.

You ask, "What exactly is the genuine history?" Claims within Christian writings that are aligned with the religious interests of Christians can generally be discarded, especially if they are unlikely (such as miracles and prophecy fulfillments), but claims that are neutral or contrary to the bias as well as probable can be trusted as authentic. The character of Jesus can be reconstructed as an apocalyptic prophet who believed that God would storm the existing kingdoms with an army of angels led by the "Son of Man," the existing order would end, and a new Kingdom of Heaven would be established. He believed this would happen within the generation and lifetimes of his immediate listeners. See Matthew 24:34, Mark 13:30, Luke 21:32, Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27. It is a failed prophecy that had to be reinterpreted with later Christian ad hoc justifications, such as John 21:20-23 and 2 Peter 3:3-9. Apocalyptic prophets were a common profession in the time and place, and they are still are common everywhere.

The hypothesis that Jesus began as a myth is very thoroughly trounced by the difference in weight of the evidence. The mythical Jesus hypothesis has almost no evidence, and the historical Jesus hypothesis has much more. But people like me and you believe it because at first blush it makes Christianity look more ridiculous. In reality it only makes ourselves look ridiculous, and it is damning enough if the evidence shows that Jesus was really an end-times cult leader.

mountainman

Dear Clivedurdle,

We are after all dealing with an "Early Christian Board Game".
It is a plain and simple game which comes with a free set
of "christian glasses". When you put them on, anything with
two sides, such as history, appears one-sided.



With one Eusebian twist in history - behold!
Two sides become one.
Who was the Good God?

Chrestian History tells us that the three hundred and eighteen fathers
testified by their written signatures that Jesus was the
man of the moment. Arius for some reason appears to have
objected to stories in which [Platonic] God was made the subject of a
crufixion, and so invented his own stories.

History gives us the Visible books of the NT.
Now history is delivering up the Hidden Books of the NT.
That is, need I say it again, the NT apocrypha.
These visible and hidden books are two sides
of the one "early christian coin". Think about it.

Those vile anti-apostolic greek gnostic heretics!
Why did they author Anti-Christian propaganda?
Out of LOVE FOR PAUL (says Tertullian).

Anyone who believes this IMO needs a
'get-out-of-reality' free card. We need
to lay down the "christian glasses".

Alexandria the center of the Hellenic civilisation
since Alexander was Hellenistic until the 4th
century, at which time it was destroyed by
the power of the authority invested in the
visible books of the NT.

Where is the story of the pagan Hellenic
academics and the lineage of Plotinus to
Porphyry and that horrible contraversial
Porphyrian Arius of Alexandria. We
all know that Sopater. whom C executed,
was the head of the Platonic colleges.

The OTHER SIDE is out there!
Hidden because we are wearing these
abysmal standard issued "christian glasses".

Joan of Bark

I agree with ApostateAbe's analysis for the evidence for an HJ. I would add that from my readings in both the NT and myth the contradictions about Jesus in the gospels speaks for a real person, not a myth. Myths tend to be more internally consistent -- they build on each other, making the character more and more fantastic without introducing contradictions. Fiction is more consistent than fact, especially in biographies. The diverse views given of Jesus by the synoptic authors, gJohn, and the gnostics all call out for a real character.

show_no_mercy

All this says is that Jesus had a brother. And "Cephas" is mentioned apart from "the twelve" in 1 Cor 15:5; however in the gospels "Peter" is part of the Twelve (or "the Eleven" after Judas betrays Jesus). Assuming that Cephas and Peter are the same people is reading into Paul's letters with the gospels in mind.

Peter is a "close associate" of Jesus only in the gospels. Paul relates nothing about any "close associates" of Jesus; Jesus wasn't thought to have had "students" until the gospels were written.

I'm not arguing for the MJ theory, so this is all moot.

Pontius Pilate is presented in the gospels as the total opposite of how he's depicted in Josephus' and Philo's writings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius...ish_Literature

So the Pilate in the gospels is more than likely a fictional depiction.

In the gospels, Jesus was supposed to have cleansed the Temple of the "money changers"; the Temple wasn't just some run-of-the-mill synagoge, it also was a military fortress. How could Jesus have caused such a ruckus kicking out people and keeping them outside a Temple the size of a football field? By himself??

So Jesus "clearing the temple" is also probably a ficticious event.

The Pharisees in the gospels are depicted as being "legalistic", whereas the Pharisees were actually about the spirit of the law and not its literal adherence. The Sadducees were actually the legalistic ones since their power base came from strict adherence to the law.

So any historical Jesus would have been antagonistic towards the Sadducees and not the Pharisees; his problems with the Pharisees is also probably fiction.

According to the gospel of John, Samaritans accepted Jesus as the Christ in droves. How can that possibly be when the Samaritans didn't and don't accept any Davidic lineage for their Messiah? Also fiction.

Josephus says that John the Baptizer dunked people in water not to cleanse people of sins, but to purify the body. However in the gospels, he's described as baptizing specifically to remove sins. This is a complete contradiction; however it's only a contradiction between Josephus and the gospel writers so who knows who's telling the truth.

This is the Jesus according to the gospels, not the Jesus according to the epistles in the first century. Again, the Jesus in the writings of Paul, James, 1 Peter, Jude, and John don't mention any apocalyptic "sayings" of Jesus - he seems to function more like Philo's "logos" instead of a doomsday prophet.

I'm not arguing for a mythical Jesus, I'm saying that there were many ideas about "Jesus" in the first century and they're all contradictory. In order to get some sort of "historical Jesus" out of the early Christian writings you have to assume the Jesus you're looking for. That is circular. We really have no idea what any sort of historical Jesus was like.

Assuming a Pharisee Jesus, Christianity should have been more like the Ebionites; but since Christianity spread among Gentiles - who were already accustomed to worshipping humans as gods - we get the Christianity that is practiced today.

Doug Shaver

And we know for a fact, do we, that the James to whom Paul referred was the same person to whom the authors of Matthew and Mark referred? And that Paul never used the word "brother" except to mean "male sibling"?