I argue that we have evidence that there were pre-Markan traditions about a historical Jesus. This argues against the idea that the author of Mark intended to create a symbolic or allegorical tale from scratch--an idea, by the way, that Doherty never really defends but rather seems to take for granted at the get-go (p. 223).

Nineham writes (_Saint Mark_, p. 40): "Certainly, as the commentary will
show, the general picture in the Gospel is remarkably true to the conditions
of Palestine in Jesus' day, and from time to time Aramaic expressions are
quoted in the original; but it is not clear how far all this is due to the
Evangelist and how far to the tradition; and numerous vaguenesses and
inaccuracies are most naturally explained if the Evangelist was /not/
directly acquainted with Palestine."

Nineham refers to his commentaries on 5:1, 6:45, 7:2-4, 7:31, 8:22, 10:1,
and 11:1. In these passages, the author of Mark provides evidence through
geographical errors and such that the author doesn't know Palestine
first-hand.

Yet, on the other hand, the author has managed to tell his story with
particular geographical markers from Galilee. Indeed, the places that the
author portrays Jesus as visiting are the lesser-known villages -- the big
cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris are nowhere to be found.

This suggests that the author's knowledge of Palestinian geography is
second-hand and has been filtered to him through the pre-Markan Jesus
traditions. This suggests that the author of Mark is not writing what is
called "historical fiction" but that the author was reshaping traditions
existing before him.

Why is it
that Mark includes any involvement of Pilate in the crucifixion of Jesus at
all? The tendency of the tradition was to minimize the role of Pilate and
blame the Jews for the crucifixion. This was especially the case in the
period after the First Jewish Revolt, when the Christians wanted to distance
themselves from the Jews who rebelled and get in the good graces of the
Roman Empire. This strongly urges us to accept that the tradition that
Pilate had executed Jesus was already firmly in place before the outbreak of
the First Jewish Revolt.

In the passage 7:1-13, Jesus is portrayed as criticizing the Pharisees' oral
Torah in a way that shows that the group who transmitted this tradition
upheld the written Torah. Then in the verses 14-23, there is a speech about
what defiles, and Mark stresses that Jesus annuls the food laws, which are
part of the written Torah, and declares all food to be clean. This makes
sense if the author of Mark has made a somewhat hasty adaptation of an
existing tradition: he has culled material from a group of Torah-observant
Jesus people and re-written it for his own non-observant audience. The idea
that Mark was making it all up as he went along doesn't provide a similarly
satisfactory explanation.

There's "the father of Alexander and Rufus" in the Gospel of Mark 15:21: "A
man named Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was coming in
from the fields, and they pressed him into service to carry the cross."
People usually identify a character by the father and not their sons. It
has been supposed that these people were known in the community of Mark and
that, then, Simon the Cyrene was a historical personage. In any case, there
is no pressing theological reason for the invention of this bit about Simon.

In Mt 17:24-27, we have a story about the stance of Jesus with relation to
the temple tax. Obviously, after the destruction of the temple in the year
70 CE, the temple tax was no longer collected. Therefore, the original Sitz
im Leben of this story about Jesus must have been in the Second Temple
period among Palestinian Jews. These Jewish Christians came to the
conclusion that they were under no obligation to pay the temple tax but
would do so anyway in order to avoid offending their fellow Jews. Probably
they invented this story about the confrontation of Peter and the collector
of the temple tax and the solution of Jesus. Nevertheless, this shows that
there were persons in the period before the destruction of the temple who
were already telling stories about a 1st c. historical Jesus and his
disciples. Although the story may have relevance to post-70 Christians as well, it is most likely that its original Sitz im Leben is in pre-70 Jewish Palestinian Christianity.

lines of argumentation to suggest that the
pre-Markan tradition is a "throw back" to the Jesus movements before and
concurrent with Paul. The content and concerns found in Mark and his
tradition do not seem to be the kind to be expected in a monochromatic view
of early Christianity, as if the dating of the Pauline correspondence c.
50-60 and of the Gospel of Mark c. 70-80 demonstrates that Markan ideas are
a simple metamorphasis of Pauline ideas into concrete form.

Robert Price makes the following comments in _Deconstructing Jesus_, p. 51:

"I believe we can find in this conflict [between community authorities and
itinerants] the implicit point of the story of Peter's confession in Mark
8:27-29, a story Mark himself created. Jesus asks what the common people
think of him. And the answers are wrong. What are those wrong answers?
They all boil down to the notion that Jesus was a wandering prophet, a man
with no possessions or home, like the Cynics, Elijah, or John the Baptist.
But not for Mark, who refers to Jesus' "home" (Mark 2:15; 3:19b). Mark had
no way of knowing what people thought of Jesus in Jesus' day; his story is
not a historical report of a conversation between Jesus and Peter. But he
did know that in his own day some made Jesus an itinerant prophet like the
Cynics, and he didn't much like it. He has Jesus condemn it. . . Jesus is
made to condemn heretical goings-on in the writer's own time."

Of course, that makes perfect sense. What is a story doing here in which
some are saying that Jesus is "the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one
of the prophets" when everyone knows that Jesus is the name of the purely
heavenly intermediary figure? While I suppose some kind of symbolic spin
can be put on everything, the most natural reading of this evidence is that
others before Mark had actually believed such a thing about Jesus.

Price also argues the following in (ibid., pp. 53-4):

"James shared the mantle of Jesus with John and Peter as Primus Inter Pares
(first among equals) as a sort of compromise with these two others who had
been close associates of Jesus during his ministry and whose claims to
leadership were not to be easily set aside. But after the fall of Jerusalem
and the death of Peter some ten years earlier (or so tradition tells us),
the only authority claim that still commanded any credibility was that of
James, or rather the other surviving brothers of James and Jesus, since
James, too, had been martyred. As the younger Hasmonean brothers took over
leadership when Judas or Simon would fall in battle, and the descendence of
Judas of Galilee took turns leading the revolution in succeeding decades, so
did the brothers of Jesus and James take their turn at the helm. Simeon
succeeded James. Collectively they were known as the Heirs. The desultory
references to the mother and brothers of Jesus in the gospels (Mark 3:20-21,
31-35; John 7:1-7) must originally have been polemical shots aimed at this
faction by rival factions who supported other apostolic leaders."

Note particularly that last line. The reason for the polemic is because
some people had claimed authority based on their familial relationship to
Jesus prior to the first evangelist setting pen to paper. This makes the
most sense on some form of a Historical-Jesus hypothesis.

Gerd Theissen provides an
extensive discussion of Mt 11:7-10 in his book _The Gospels in Context_, pp.
26-42. Herod Antipas chose a reed as an emblem for the foundation coin of
Tiberias. Theissen argues that the saying about the reed shaken by the wind
is a reference to Herod Antipas and his coinage on the basis of numismatic,
literary, and historical evidence.

On the numismatic evidence, which is discussed on pp. 33-34, Theissen
states: "If a personal attribute can replace a portrait, then conversely
everything that appears in place of the usual portrait can be regarded as a
personal attribute, even if it is otherwise intended by the coining monarch.
People would have bestowed minute scrutiny and comment on the first coins of
Antipas to appear in the country. There were enough reasons to ridicule
Antipas. The founding of this capital city, Tiberias, was not
uncontroversial. It was laid on unclean ground. (Ant. 18.36-38). The city
remained a foreign body within Galilee. The Jesus traditions have nothing
to say about it. Therefore, it would be understandable if the foundation
coins of the city were the subject of critical comment."

On the literary evidence, which is discussed on pp. 34-37, Theissen states:
"If the 'shaken reed' is a reference to Herod Antipas, we can explain some
of the formal oddities of the pericope. It would certainly not have been
opportune to mention the powerful ruler of the country by name. Therefore,
the first rhetorical question, in contrast to the two that follow, remains
unanswered. The hearers filled it in for themselves: 'Did you go out into
the wilderness to see a reed shaken by the wind?'--'Of course not: we were
not seeking Herod Antipas, but his prophetic opponent!' The shift from
singular to plural between the second rhetorical question and its answer can
be similarly motivated: the question is about a person (singular!) in soft
robes, but the answer speaks in the plural of those who wear soft raiment in
royal palaces. Here again it would not be opportune to give a direct name
to the one who is being ironically attacked. The plural answer clouds the
reference to a particular person."

On the historical evidence, which is discussed on pp. 37-38, Theissen
states: "Therefore, it is historically quite conceivable that Herod Antipas,
on the basis of his first coinage, got the name 'wavering reed' or 'shaken
reed'--a title of ridicule and recognition. Both attributes point in the
same direction. Possibly it was that kind of slander--started by the first
coin--that caused Antipas to change the emblem. On his later coins, the
reed has vanished. In place of the 'shaken reed' appears the sturdy palm
tree!"

It is unlikely that an author near the end of the first century would have
been able to construct this pun on the emblem of Antipas, and it is
certainly inexplicable why such an author would have been motivated to do
so, given that Antipas had been out of power for so long. Instead, this
saying evidently goes back to the 20s of the first century, when Antipas
issued the coinage. The explanation for why this peculiar saying is
preserved by our Christian authors is that it is an authentic saying of
Jesus about John the Baptist. The high praise of the Baptizer in this
saying, in which John is exalted above all prophets, also speaks against a
false attribution of this saying to Jesus by Christians.

The argument about Alexander and Rufus was made by H. G. Wood in 1938 (_Did Christ Really Live?_, p. 122):

"/Such a reference to two living men could only have been made by a copyist who was writing for people who knew them./ It has no point otherwise. Moreover, it presupposes that Simon of Cyrene was known to the copyist and his readers as a historic person and that the events, real or supposed, took place when he could have taken part in them, i.e. within living memory. Incidentally we may observe that Matthew and Luke, writing for other circles, not interested in Alexander and Rufus, naturally omit the reference. But if this be not the explanation of their silence, if the interpolation-theory give a better explanation, the interpolation-theory itself requires a historic Simon of Cyrene with two sons, i.e. it requires all that we need to interpret the incident as history." [emphasis original]

I recommend that you read the book _The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide_ by Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz. Besides general interest and edification, the book has considerable overlap with the debate over the historicity of Jesus. Chapter 4 is entirely dedicated to a discussion of the radical skepticism of the gospels as maintained by e.g. Wells.

Theissen and Merz provide arguments for regarding the following as historical traditions about Jesus:

1. Jesus was from Galilee (p. 164).
2. Jesus was baptized by John (p. 207).
3. Jesus performed exorcisms and healings (p. 301, p. 304).
4. Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil (p. 76, p. 297).
5. His family thought him to be mad (p. 570, p. 582).
6. Jesus rejected an overestimation of himself as 'good teacher' (p. 558).
7. Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God; e.g., the logion concerning
'Taking the kingdom by storm' (p. 580).
8. Jesus spoke most of the parables that have been preserved (p. 338).
9. Jesus said something against the Temple cult (p. 432).
10. The disciples of Jesus fled at his arrest (p. 428).
11. Jesus was crucified with the titulus 'The King of the Jews' (p. 458).
12. The disciples were disappointed that Jesus did not 'redeem Israel' (p.
428).

On the simple bare fact that there was a historical Jesus present in Galilee (fact 1 above), see also Meier, _A Marginal Jew_, pp. 214-6 and Mack, _A Myth of Innocence_, p. 63. It meets the criteria of embarassment (Galilee is a backwater, the Messiah is from Bethlehem) as well as multiple attestation and coheres well with the content of the teachings of Jesus (Kingdom of God).

An argument that Jesus preached the Kingdom of God is made by the criterion of dissimilarity: while Mark says that the gospel that Jesus preached was the Kingdom of God (Mk 1:15), the gospel preached by the early Christians was that Jesus died and rose from the dead (1Cor 15:1).

Theissen & Merz note that there was no concept of a suffering Messiah in Judaism (p. 540); therefore, the concept of the suffering Messiah was developed by the disciples of Jesus who had messianic expectations during his lifetime and were disappointed by his death (p. 540). The idea that the companions of Jesus saw him as messianic before his death and had to do a scriptural spin-job to explain away his crucifixion does seem to makes good sense.

Finally, it is observed that we have no known parallels in the history of religions of an entity being believed at first to be spiritual only and subsequently being interpreted as a fairly recent historical figure. The presentation of such examples from the history of religions would give Doherty's hypothesis a much better anthropological context.

Once again, I hope this helps.

best,
Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/writings/

I suppose that all of the material above falls under the category of facts wrong or omitted.

Here is a criticism of method. Doherty presents an argument from silence; Paul and other writers do not mention facts in their extant writings about the life of Jesus, and so Paul and other writers do not believe in the historicity of Jesus.

One problem with this is very simple. Consider that modern Christians produce volumes of theological correspondence without the slightest reference to the historical incidents of the life of Jesus. You may want to find an appropriate encyclical letter or Protestant author in order to demonstrate this point.

best,
Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/writings/

I don't know if I agree with this. Doherty's argument is two-pronged. One prong is that in the theological discussions of Paul there doesn't seem to be much recognition of the historical Jesus.

But also, in what seems to be another kind of silence, Paul does not mention that he went to any Jesus sites around the region of Jerusalem when he was there. This would see to be an "interactionary" silence -- not only does Paul not mention details of Jesus' life, he does not seem interested in the concrete historic places of his career when in close proximity to them. I've always felt that that aspect of Doherty's argument had a certain >oomph<.

Michael

I suppose I ought to feel flattered that Richard is devoting this much time and attention to reviewing my book, The Jesus Puzzle, but I wonder if his approach isn’t a little disconcerting. If he is soliciting only _negative_ "critical direction", opinions as to flaws, inconsistencies, methodology, etc. (in any degree, real or imagined), he may be in danger of ending up with a stacked deck. This is a field where personal judgment and disposition, balance of probability rather than mathematical certainty, play a substantial role in determining the ‘conclusions’ adopted.

I’m not going to defend my position or arguments here (something Richard has forbidden on this thread) but simply make an observation. It’s a little like receiving a group of applicants for immigration, soliciting from all and sundry only negative viewpoints and objections that could be applied to each individual, and on that basis end up rejecting most or all of them—to the country’s loss. Focus on possible imperfections in every tree and you may end up cutting down the forest.

Someone put forward a ‘nuanced’ interpretation of Hebrews 8:4, for example, to discredit my observations on this verse. Technically possible, but an obscure grammatical usage. I’m sure every point I or any other mythicist could advance in this field is amenable to some remote objection or alternate understanding. This is often the approach, I find, of those who seek to discredit the mythicist position. This atomistic method often ignores other considerations and arguments, especially collective and cumulative ones.

Perhaps Richard is approaching this like the company that hires hackers to try to break into the security system as the best way of testing its reliability. Would that the field of historical research were so cut and dried! Anyway, I trust that all these factors will be balanced in an unbiased review. Still, I would have felt better if he had solicited positive comments as well, which might include arguments and considerations that might otherwise be overlooked. Peter Kirby, for example, quoted a posting by Ed Tyler from the Jesus Mysteries group on the nature of the savior god myths, without quoting my replies on such matters, or pointing to the very relevant Appendix 6 in my book. When one solicits negative considerations only, the other side of the coin may not get looked at.

In any case, the merit of The Jesus Puzzle (or the mythicist position in general) is not confined to the strict mathematical or 'laboratory' results that can be reached on the question of Jesus' existence, something that is unachievable anyway. This is, after all, the Secular Web.

But this is neither the time nor place to become embroiled in defending myself in these matters, and I await with great interest the results of the exercise.

PS. Yes, I am on 'vacation', though still working on further projects, including the publication in book form of my Lee Strobel critique.

Best wishes,

Earl Doherty

PS. Yes, I am on 'vacation', though still working on further projects, including the publication in book form of my Lee Strobel critique.

Too late Earl. J.P Holding already has 2 articles on his site that blow your critique of Lee Strobel's book right out of the water!!

LOL, well at least the legend-in-his-own-mind Holding would like his readers to believe he has anyhow.

[QUOTE]Doherty
I?m not going to defend my position or arguments here (something Richard has forbidden on this thread) but simply make an observation. It?s a little like receiving a group of applicants for immigration, soliciting from all and sundry only negative viewpoints and objections that could be applied to each individual, and on that basis end up rejecting most or all of them?to the country?s loss. Focus on possible imperfections in every tree and you may end up cutting down the forest.

Funny, one could say the same thing about Doherty's treatment of Jesus and the New Testament.

Ish

[quote]<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Ish:

Quote:

Doherty I?m not going to defend my position or arguments here (something Richard has forbidden on this thread) but simply make an observation. It?s a little like receiving a group of applicants for immigration, soliciting from all and sundry only negative viewpoints and objections that could be applied to each individual, and on that basis end up rejecting most or all of them?to the country?s loss. Focus on possible imperfections in every tree and you may end up cutting down the forest. Funny, one could say the same thing about Doherty's treatment of Jesus and the New Testament. Ish

It is "funny" that Ish has nothing substantive to post. Surely, if he had a point, he would have made it.

It's probably too much to ask of Ish to read The Jesus Puzzle and comment on arguments in the book.

rodahi

Doherty is correct that many of these issues have been discussed on the JesusMysteries list at YahooGroups. I suggest that Mr. Carrier may wish to get a subscription in order to browse the archives.

On pp. 219-222, Doherty points out what may be a "Lost Reference" to James the Just, so dubbed because if it existed it has subsequently fallen out of our copies of Josephus. I am now of the opinion that it is an error to assume the existence of this third or lost reference in the writings of Josephus, even though it is an error that I myself made formerly. See the excursus at the beginning of the discussion of Ant. 20.9.1 here in which it is demonstrated that the "lost reference" is most likely a patristic rumor.

http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/wri...stimonium.html

As always, I hope this helps you to write a fair and balanced review.

best,
Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/writings/

One interesting problem with Ed Tyler's critique is that his view of Greco-Roman religious events was not universal, at least among those who liked to write books, such as ET's sources. In fact, ET's sources were often simply reporting on others' beliefs; beliefs that they sometimes did not share. Consider Lucian of Samosata -- he would have made a good Internet Infidel :-)

And while ED is almost certainly correct about some such highbrow people, that they believed that religious history takes place in some celestial/spiritual realm, there were others with different views:

* Euhemerism, the view that the Gods had once been human heroes. This is much like the literal-history view, but with the Gods demoted to ordinary humanity. Thus, Zeus could have once been a king noted for womanizing.

* The view that the Gods are personified forces of nature. For example, Zeus is likely a personification of the sky, complete with his fertilization of the ground. A fancier version of this view is expressed by Euripides in one of his plays, where a character wonders if Zeus is just another name for fate. This theory does not work well for some other deities, however.

* The view that the Gods are essentially fictional beings; consider Xenophanes's famous comment that people make gods in their likeness, complete with similar sorts of clothing.

ED's hypothesis can be salvaged if one supposes that Paul and his friends had been influenced by some heavenly-realm pagan sect. It is unlikely that Paul would have cared for popular religion; it would have seemed grossly idolatrous to him, as Acts hints. And he would not have had much taste for the more skeptical schools of thought; Xenophanes's famous comments may also apply to the Biblical God also.