Meta =>I quoted some of it.The Elder John,in his Epistle says "what we felt with our hands, what we saw with our eyes, we heard declaired, the word of glory" he's saying "we saw it, we were there." He's saying "this is not something we made up."

Peter says "we did not invent clever stories" so they are flatly denying that this is the case. The epistle 1 Clement, he says Peter lived and died among us, many are still here who knew him...and most think he was including himself. Now why would Peter die for something he knew wasn't ture, and if it was just mythology why wouldn't he make that clear to them, since they lived in a Myth freindly culture? Why woulnd't he say "this didn't really happen, I didn't really deny Christ." And Papias says he knew several deciples and Apostoles. Why wouldn't they make it clear to him "this didn't really happen." All of it includes real people who did live. Peter was a real guy.

There is a big level of sociability among all of these people. so we know this is all histoircally grounded.

And moreover, it's your burden to prove that it is becuse it has been understood as an histoircal claim all these centuries, so you are making the change. you are saying 'we should change the way we understand this.' IN debate the one who argues for the change has the burden of proof.


What about all of the texts that didn't make it into the canon, with their differing stories, like the gospel of Andrew?


Meta=>1) did you read my thread on "NO Alternate endings?" I went to a lot of trouble to quote form many of these sources to show that they agree with and do not change those basic 11 points which include all the basic points of the Jesus' story.

2) None of those had Apostolic authority. They could not be traced to the backing of an Apostle so why should be value them as part of the deposit of faith? The Apostles were intrusted with spreading the word and keeping he teachings pure, Jesus trained them for this purpose. So if a text can't be backed by an Apostle there is no reason to consider it as part of the real deposit of teaching.

If they were just reporting the facts, why couldn't they get them straight, so that later people could figure out when Jesus was born?


Meta =>obvioulsy they did. That's why there aren't any versions where Jesus is stoned or hanged or stabbed or where he was born in athens or Turkey or alexandria, no verions where his mother is named Jannett or Esmerelda or whatever. There is bascially one Jesus story and all the differences are little bitty details that don't matter. Are you actually reading these posts?


Why are so many of those geographical references wrong?


Meta =>They are not. Most of that is disproven. Those are old old old theories from way back in the 19th century and most of that has been knocked in the head.

What about Mark's Jesus fitting the mold of the suffering savior?


Meta =>I have already demonstrated in another therad that there were no dying rising savior gods of pagan mythology who come anywhere close to being like Jesus in any substantial way. The mold that Jesus fits is that of Messianich expectation form Judaism. that is all.

Are you saying that being almost illiterate is a bar to being a literary genius?


Meta =>Duh! what are the odds that a literary genius would just happen to compose the Gospels?

Could a serious scholar write something as dumb as this?

MEta =>That just proves to me that you are an idiot. First you don't know it, so you know nothing about a word that throw around all the time. You try to imply that you have this big knowledge of the field and you don't even know the basics of the field and i bet you didn't even know that it is a field. Secondly, you are too stupid to get the book. Thridly, what you are calling "dumb" i will wager is some little misunderstanding based upon the fact that you have not a background in understand what is being said.

Or have you misinterpreted him?

MEta =>The lie that I have ever misrepresented anything was started by very stupid people who can't cope with real thought and who don't have the background to understand the proper use of evidence in debate. You misrepresent everything you say. Every time you have tried to use any principles of textual criticism you abuse them becasue you know nothing about them.


Meta =>Obiously I'm not defining it "any way I like" I'm taking the basic qualities of it that Elliade and company lay down as universal to mythology and comparing that with folklore, which is what others do. And it is not artifical, the differenceis very imporatant. It is crucial that a folklore does not have its own mythos. The mythos of the NT is the OT not paganism. That makes a big difference because it organizes the whay that the Jesus story woudl be interprited by those who first told the stories about him.

Please stop trying to play shcolar. You don't understand any of it. learn something first!


Meta =>Yea that's what I said. There's not just one Arthirian legond. It's got layers. It begins in the Celtic mythos but by the time we get to the English it is placed under that realm of Christian mythos. So then they start doing folk lore. The same thing happned with fairies. The elaborate Fiar world in English lit comes form an ealrier mythos that was part of real religion, but by the time the English start making up names like Oberon and talking about the Fiarylore as part of English letters it has degenertaed into folklore.


MEta =>True, and I quoted Whiteley as saying that there is cross fertilization between Egypt, the Feritle Cresent, Greace, Asia Minor and Palestine. But he also turns and dneies that Paul is indebted in any way to the Mytery cults. What you are taking as "barrowing" is really just the argument that there is a cultural background that forms the symbolic universe in which people speak. But that in no way means that whole myths are just lifted out of one culture and trasnplanted to another. The fertilization is a long process that goes way back. It's not like Mark said "O I think I'll copy Osiris and say that Jesus is a dying rising saviour god like all those neato pagans get to have." No it's much more subjtle than that and only affects symbolic universe not acutal story line.

I don't understand how anyone define "myth" in such an impoverished and artificial way.....

MEta ->Well you are very ignroant. Just get a copy of Joseph Cambell's Hero with a Thousand FAces. It's not improverished. If you think that you are dense. It's very rich. It's deep, rich. almost religion in its own right. I would be willing to be that you still don't understand what is being said.


2) Set in mythological time. Myth is neve rooted in concrete terms.

Yes, as we have seen, the gospels are rooted the way Robin Hood is rooted in concrete time, by reference to a specific reign (crucified under Pontius Pilate)


Meta =>Robin Hood is not mythology, it's folk lore. Now it probably grew out of mythology, but it isn't.


and to a census that never happened.

MEta >ahahahahaha, no the census did happen! that is proven conclusively and undeniably and it was proven so by Sir William Ramsay, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. It's been reconfirimed several times. Try getting your facts for a change.


MEta ->You are probably confussing myth with folk lore again. But you admit yiouirself that some were real people, so when you start to get concrete settings that's usually a tip off that there is a core of history somewhere down there. Jesus was real too btw!

I am sorry you chose a scholar whose views of mythology are so artificial.

Meta =->That's just stupid. That's like saying "I'm sorry you choose this guy Newton he just didn't know anything about science." That shows right there that you know nothing about it. Those are the three giants in the field. They are to the study of mythology (history of religion its called Chiacgo school) what Freud was to psychotherapy and what Wellhausen was to Biblical criticism. See Cambell, Transofmation of Myth Through time, he agrees with them. Elliade is the giant in the field.

3) Mythological place; myth is usually not very specific about where things happen. Usually a country or a general region is named but that's pretty much it. Some towns have mythological reputations, but when that happens anthropologists usually assume there is some basis in history. That's why Herclues is assumed to be based upon a real person.

I know you only have a paragraph to present these ideas, but again a little broader perspective than the Mediterranean littoral in antiquity is required. Geographic concreteness is part of many myths in China.... The god of the Kikuyus resides on top of Mt. Kenya (I looked for him when I was up there, but somehow missed him)....


Meta =->That's not a concrete setting. Zeus was on Mt. Olympus too, but see above where I said a region or sometimes towns have significance? The Illiad mentions many places. But the point is the main action of the story in a myth is usually not a place that can be found and seen. Just the top of a moutin isn't accessable and so that's not a concete setting. The NT has a route you could trace, all the places are historical and they all are specific; Nazerath existed and was inhabited in the first century, Jerusalem, Canna, Capernium, and so on.


MEta =>That's not mythology. It's based upon an historical event and person. Now there is a folklore that goes with it. But the basic events really happened and the person really existed, like Jesus.

Meta ->Moses was probably based upon a real guy. I said occasionally towns have some mythical reputation or importance, but in general myth is set in inexact mythical place. Most of what you quote to counter that is folklore or legond. Moses probably existed, and the children of Israel existed.

4) Hieraphany and Theophanie. These are manifestations of sacred place and sacred time. They are disruption, the overlap between the higher realm and the mundane. Jacobs ladder in Genesis for example is a hiearphony, an object that emerges out of sacred space and marks the overlapping area in the mundane world as a sacred place.

You mean like a Cross at Golgotha?


Meta ->The cross is not a hieraphony. It dosen't appear out of another world, it doesn't mark the gateway into another world. In the text as we read it in the Gospels its just a real peocie of wood and has no supernatural singificnace of its own. Golgotha refurs to a mystic grotto which were used all over that region. The Kabalaistic association is the trape door in the base of the skull which is the conduit to the ideal human Adman Kadman. But it probably had that name because the real life cave was probably associated with the Kabalistic idealization due to the mystical rites that were probably associated with the grotto.

5) Use of Archetypes. Mythology is based upon the transmission of archetypes. Mythological symbols are archetypical in many ways and can be seen to be so easily in many cases. The Krone, the maiden, the journey of the hero are just some of the archetypes that are important.

Pretty much agreed here.....

Meta =>yea, you know a little bit about it. You've never any of the shcolarhsip, you don't know whose big in the field or even how the field got going but you have a smattering of things you've heard about it.

[snipped remarks on OT, agree totally]

This is also how we know the NT is not mythology. Because it has none of the archetypes. Some lit crit people have tired to say that Jesus' family fleeing to Egypt in his infancy is the journey of the hero, but this cannot be. It may be embellished based upon it, but it is more likely that it is the fulfillment of Midrash based upon JOel and thus is not mythological but a hebrew thing. It can't be the journey of the hero because that is a coming of age initation thing, it is undertaken when the hero is ready to venture forth and learn about life, and it is taken alone; one is not spirited off as an infant by one's parents in the journey of the hero. Now you might say that Jesus' going out to fast in the desert for 40 days was the journey. That would be more like it, but it can't be either because there is no initiation to send him out, (usually initated by a Krone (an old woman) or an old man). And it didn' last long enough, there weren't enough adventures. But clealry it does mirror the archetype that heros are tested alone in the desert or in some remote area away from society.

I'm confused. Jesus is not an archetypal hero?

Meta =>Well, to some extent anything is archetypical if you look at it right. But no, he was a real guy.

But so what? We can expect to find some mythical elements in the NT because they are everywhere. They are part of our psyche and we cannot get away form them. We can find the journey of the hero in scientific labratories in Boyle's construction of paraganda to promote his experimental method.

Aha! So you read Shaeffer and Shapin.

Meta =>ahahahahah, read it? It inspired my dissertation!


So we should find some elements of mythology, but the basic structure over all is devoid of any of the major ear marks of mythology.

C'mon? The hero dies, visits hell,


Meta =>The hero's journey to the underworld is a poetic vision, it's the journey of the poet. Jesus was not a poet. But I'll admit that is probably archetypical.


is raised,

Meta =>see my thread on no dyin rsiing savior gods. No others are raised in the way Jesus was. Only crop cycle and seasonally related fertility gods. Death and res are associated with Messiah in OT and at Qumran see Esinseman and wise.

redeems his world by his death,


MEta =>I've proven that none of the pagan gods did that.

has a magical birth,


Meta =>Midrashically related to OT prophesy not to pagan myth.


is descended from gods/heroes,

Meta => Jesus is not "decended" form any gods. The point of his linage is not to identify him with heroes but wtih DAvid for the royal linage. Messianich exepctation not pagan myth. foretold.


crosses magically between worlds (the Transfiguration)...as Campbell says.

Meta =>so what? that alone is not enough to jusfiy it as myth.

Meta =>That is totally dishonest. It's merely cultural imperialism. First, Van Winkel is not mythology but folk lore. Anyone can see that. Secondly, that is just your igorant opinion that "we dont' care" if Jesus lived. Yea we do care. 2 billion of us care and you have no right to speak so pretenciously when you don't even know who Karl Karenye is! That is total ignorance. that's like pretending to know all about American literature and not have read Mark Twain.


and these stories are so widely distributed over the world -- attached to various heroes in various lands --

Meta =>IN my thread No dyin rising savior gods, I show that all of the suppossed similarities with Jesus between Buddah, Tamuz, Mithra, Herclules, Krishna, Orsiris and many others are just plian lies. Mithra did not die, was not raised was born of a rock not a virigin, and so forth. all of that is over blowen and made up.


that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment.


MEta =>It's not secondry at all. There is not the slightest implication in the NT or the Gospels that it doesnt' matter, no hint is given that it doesnt' matter or that Jesus didn't really live. The Doherty thing about Romans 1:3 is stupid, Paul clealry beleived that he had a human linage and it mattered a lot because they understood him as Messiah a real liberator who awas really suppossed to come not as some air fair etherial "mythical archetype" who might just as well not have lived. all of those alledged simiarites are made up and they are lies. and I've proven that by quoting the actual myths form the books, not form little Christ myther books, but from real mythogrophers.

(Hero with a thousand faces, p. 230-1)

Campbell also writes, on p 30 of the same book, the "nuclear unit" of the hero myth:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Meta =>Cambell agrees with what I've said about myth, becasue a lot of my views on it come from him. He respected Karanye and Karenye is one of the scholars behind Cambell's work. Now as to what you quote above, that is just slippery slope reasoning. He doesnt' try to say that it applies to Jesus, but you are assuming that anyone who has a supernatural expernice fits that mold. that is a silly assumption.


This is another way we can know that there is an historical core. The text itself is communicated in such a way as to impart histoircal information. Now some of you will no doubt say "O Hemingway used real places in his writting so they could do that" but you are missing the point if you say that. First, they didn't have novels back then and no one thought about realitstic settings for stories.

Sweeping statements....

MEta =>yea look whose taling--blck is white side.

A five minute web search produced a number of novels from this period...

• The Golden Ass -- the tale begins with
  Socrates being robbed on a business trip to Macedonia. Escaping to an inn run by a woman named Meroe.....Lucius stops at an inn near Hypata, a town in Thessaly.
• Joseph and Asenath -- a JEWISH novel, for Pete's sake, dated 200BC to 200AD
• The Satyricon -- "Unconventional and unique, the Satyricon stands almost alone in literature. It touches on everything,
  especially small-town life and ordinary people. Its characters are mostly of Greek or Near Eastern origin and are probably based on real people; Trimalchio's house has a lot in common with Nero's court."

I could list even more novels, from Greek Romantic novels to the biography of Apolloniu s of Tyana -- there are many, with real places, real people, and real events mixed in with fiction, religion, fantasy and magic. This is more of the insulting, ethnocentric horse manure one hears from apologists, another variation on the eternal theme of "those first-century gospel writers were too dumb to invent anything."


Meta =>So now you are gonig to be a lit crit guy too? I have 26 hours in literary criticism at the doctoral level. None of those are really novels. They don't fit the modern notion of a novel. The novel is a modern form that began in Itally around the 1500s. But that may be a pedantic point, none of them actually create a historical world with people who really lived. They may include a glimpse into the real world as with Socrates, but none of them create a whole world out of a social network. Peter and James Knew Paul, they knew Clment and John, John knwe Igatius, Papaias and Polycap, Ignatius knew Paul I believe. They all knew each other they all had a big network and all the places are real, the events are real even minor officials named in Acts are real. STephen NEil comments on the absurdity of Luke running all over ancient Plaestine trying to invent a world to document in the Gospel. It' clealry real world.


The Golden Ass is not at all like the Gospels. If you have ever read it, it's not the least bit like them. They are tyring to communicate the history of a movment, the real actual evens of this guy they were following and what he did and what he said. That is not at all the intetion of the Golden ASs.

If it is grounded in concete place and time than it is communicating that this really happened.


Meta =>Robinhood was a real guy and hte core of his story is probably based upon real events. And that is not an attempt to transmitt a belief system to anyone and it's not mythology.

Such grounding is seen in Lukes Record of the census, Quarias being govener and so on. And place names are abundant in the Gospels.

And they are abundant in Genesis too. But you said that was myth. Augustus censused property, not people, and nobody was required to go to their home villages. So much for concreteness.

MEta =>of course myth can use names, that' stupid. I really said that myth dosnt' have names. I said that historical wirtting is grounded in history. That means names AND DATES YOU IDOT@ DONT FORGET DATES AND EVENTS!!!!!! yes you are wrong. you are ignroant, the census did include people and that is proven! It was an on going thing. It wasn't just a one time deal one year, it was a process and it was still going in the time of Clement of Alexandria.

The Gospels are not mythology and the people who wrote them celary thought of them as reflecting real events.


MEta ->You have never even heard of the two major figures in the study of mythology; Elliade and Karanye so you have no right to pretend that you know anything about it. You are just begging the question. I just got through showing how none of those characteristics even fit myth. you dont' know what you are talking about.

They would not lace the accounts with historical palces and concrete names to foament the impression that it was real, but really made up, because no one thought like that back than and they would have to be major literary geniuses to think of doing that in a sustained narrative.


MEta ->Now did I say that no one every made things up? Is that really what I said? NOw burn the wood, get the little wheels turning, I said something about lacing it with realt and making a big world grounded in history, I didn't say that no one ever made things up did i? That's just typical of your hackned distoritions.


Actually, nobody is saying that they deliberately set out to create a fiction utilizing a skeleton of real things. Nobody is accusing them of being malicious, just creative.

Meta =>I know you talk through both sides of your mouth. When it suits you its all just mythology borrowed from paganism and when you are caught in a corner than no one really meant to barrow. But the fact is that is a meaningless calim without the barrowing. Because than it just comes down to a meaningless similairity that can be read into anything in life so it doesnt' impendge upon it being a real event! Get it stupid? If you take out the intesional barrowing it's no longer a negation of the hsotirical essence of the story!!!!!!!!!


Further, we know they actually made up stories using real places to convey meaning or fulfill prophecy.

You assume they did, you have no proof.

The census requirement to return to one's place of birth did not exist, and was made up to get the Holy family back to Bethlehem. So yes, MC, it is easy to see that the gospelers invented
stories using real places.

Nope that is proven it was really histoircal. William Ramsay was a big named archaeologist in his day he proved it.

But clearly they weren't literary geniniuses, since Mark and Matt and almost lilliterate.

Yes, they were so illiterate that they learned to read and write in a second language....Greek was probably Mark's second language.


MEta =>did they? Hardly. they learned badly. it wasn't just a second language it was very common steet langauge. It's not like going to France and learning French it's like living in south Texas and speaking Spanish and English, no big deal doesnt' make them Shakespire.


Do you actually function in a second language?

Meta =>they didn't. My Greek prof argued that Matt really was actually illiterate it's so badly written. You dont' know any greek, if you did you would know that. a Fist year student can spot that.


Could you write a narrative in it?

Meta =>yea with really bad grammar and lots of mistakes.

My Chinese is fabulous, my accent so good that over the phone I cannot be differentiated from a native speaker, but I would never compose a narrative in Chinese, because I'd sound like an idiot.


MEta ->Ooooooo such an obvious stairght line I wont even touch it. think how you sound in english.


Written language is ten times as hard as spoken. That was Mark's problem (and Josephus' too, he's a bit apologetic for his awful Greek, and did the first manuscript in Aramaic).

MEta =->If Mark was a literary Genius he would be a much better writter. It's absurd to try and claim that he was, espeicially since with Q and the signs Gospel we know there were prior sources. That argument wont get you far at all. It's totally unlikely that a literary genius on the oder of Faulkner was among them. And he woudl have to be even greater to make up the personality of Jesus, he would also have to be an ehticial genius to make up the ethical teachings, it's just obvious a real guy who really had something going for him is at the center of it all.

Here we have another version of the ridiculous argument: the gospelers were too dumb to invent anything.

Meta =>It's not that they were too dumb, but look what they would have to invent, one of the great personalities of hitory at a time when charactorization was really undeveloped, one of the greatest ethical teachings, ect ect. It's toally absurd.

So, it's just not mythology.

Nbdy said it was mythology .....it is myth, though, on its way to mythology.

You said it twice.

I may be embellished, some aspecs may be legondary, and that legond clearly has a basis in historical fact. Jesus may not have healed the leppers we read about in Mark, but he probably did heal some leppers, or someone at some time and his followers probably claimed that he did from the begining because all of that is set in a concete framework which is cleary told in such a way as to convey the truth of the events.

It takes awhile to figure out your posts.

Metacrock:

1. If you start a debate, you should finish it. The finish could be an offer to agree to disagree. Or an offer to let the other person have the last word. You might even consider conceding sometimes. Just disappearing from your own party, though, is rude.

2. If you are prevented from finishing a debate, common courtesy requires that you at least tell your correspondents and undertake to return to the discussion when you have time.

3. My point is that you keep disappearing when losing or caught in a distortion, fabrication or silly argument. That is a matter entirely worthy of comment.

4. Still waiting, tough guy.

Sorry, Meta, I've had to ration my time on BC&A....

Mike, commenting on the four item definition supplied by Metacrock. Could a serious scholar write something as dumb as this?

MEta =>That just proves to me that you are an idiot. First you don't know it, so you know nothing about a word that throw around all the time. You try to imply that you have this big knowledge of the field and you don't even know the basics of the field and i bet you didn't even know that it is a field. Secondly, you are too stupid to get the book. Thridly, what you are calling "dumb" i will wager is some little misunderstanding based upon the fact that you have not a background in understand what is being said.

Hmm, lots of insults, not much here to go on. You have no idea what my background is. In any case, I demolished your definition point by point, and there is simply no response to that here. I hope there is one further down….and there is. BTW, you should at least become a little familiar with Campbell before you try to draw on him for support. Later we'll see who knows what.

Or have you misinterpreted him?

MEta =>The lie that I have ever misrepresented anything ….

I didn't say "misrepresented." I said "misinterpreted."

Obiously I'm not defining it "any way I like" I'm taking the basic qualities of it that Elliade and company lay down as universal to mythology and comparing that with folklore, which is what others do. And it is not artifical, the differenceis very imporatant. It is crucial that a folklore does not have its own mythos.

Hmm…well, as the quote from the African oral lit expert I put up in the other thread noted, the distinction between "folklore" and "myth" is a purely artificial one liked by certain western scholars. I suppose, under this rubric you've laid down, that folklore about Hercules would be independent of myths about Hercules. How are myth and folklore related in this system of yours?

MEta ->Well you are very ignroant. Just get a copy of Joseph Cambell's Hero with a Thousand FAces. It's not improverished. If you think that you are dense. It's very rich. It's deep, rich. almost religion in its own right. I would be willing to be that you still don't understand what is being said.

My dear MC, I own two copies of it! And I quoted it twice in the last post of mine, in case you hadn't noticed. Here is one quote again:

We do not particularly care whether Rip Van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what concern us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the world -- attached to various heroes in various lands -- that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment. (Hero with a thousand faces, p. 230-1)

Now it is obvious from this quote that Campbell totally supports my case that the gospels are largely myth, for he firmly places Jesus in the traditional of universal heroes.

On to our discussion
That's not a concrete setting. Zeus was on Mt. Olympus too, but see above where I said a region or sometimes towns have significance? The Illiad mentions many places. But the point is the main action of the story in a myth is usually not a place that can be found and seen.

You're just plain wrong, here Metacrock. The main action in a myth is often a place that can found and seen; I gave several examples in the last post, and am loathe to repeat them again and again. Your response was:

That's not mythology. It's based upon an historical event and person. Now there is a folklore that goes with it. But the basic events really happened and the person really existed, like Jesus.

I understand. Any time a story has real people interacting with a god in a concrete location, it is folklore and not mythology. I don't understand where you get that idea -- but if you want to call the gospels "folklore" more power to ya. I don't think we are any closer to getting down to the history that way.

Timely reminder in case you have forgotten, I suspect there is a figure under the gospels somewhere, but the particular have been lost in the gospel myths (or folklore) and the history cannot now be recovered. I don't think there is hardly any history left in the gospels.

Mike: I'm confused. Jesus is not an archetypal hero?

Meta =>Well, to some extent anything is archetypical if you look at it right. But no, he was a real guy.

We're talking about two different things. The Jesus of the gospels is an archetypal hero, from his miraculous birth to his redemptive death. Whoever the real guy was, he didn't rise from the dead, walk on water or pop out of a virgin.


Meta =>see my thread on no dyin rsiing savior gods. No others are raised in the way Jesus was. Only crop cycle and seasonally related fertility gods. Death and res are associated with Messiah in OT and at Qumran see Esinseman and wise.

MC, they are all unique in some way. That doesn't mean that they are not archetypal. Do you think if you prove Jesus competely unique, that will make him true?

Mike: redeems his world by his death,
MEta =>I've proven that none of the pagan gods did that.

Oh please, even if that were true -- and it is not -- as I said, uniqueness is not proof of anything, except fertile imagination.

Mike: has a magical birth,
Meta =>Midrashically related to OT prophesy not to pagan myth.

Again, even if it isn't related to pagan myth -- and it almost certainly is, Campbell derives it from the Persian side of Christian roots -- it hardly matters. The point is that the archetypal hero has a miraculous birth. That's all. The origin of the idea is not relevant.

Mike: is descended from gods/heroes,
Meta => Jesus is not "decended" form any gods. The point of his linage is not to identify him with heroes but wtih DAvid for the royal linage. Messianich exepctation not pagan myth. foretold.

Again, the desperate attempt to keep Jesus unique. So far you have three arguments. (1) Mike doesn't know anything. (2) Jesus is unique. (3) The gospelers were too dumb to invent anything. These are not really solid arguments, MC, and you have already admitted that there are obvious archetypes in the gospels. As Campbell notes, locating Jesus firmly in the archetypal tradition:

Tribal or local heroes, such as emperor Huang Ti, Moses or the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, commit their boons to a single folk; universal heroes -- Mohammed, Jesus, Gautama Buddha -- bring a message for the entire world.
Hero with a Thousand Faces

Given comments like this, I find it hard to credit that you believe Campbell can support your argument that Jesus is somehow not archetypal. Even you admit that it is archetypal in many ways.

I have no trouble agreeing that something underlies the gospel myth-constructions. But we can't know what it is. The tools we have are too blunt to tell us what is down there.

Meta =>IN my thread No dyin rising savior gods, I show that all of the suppossed similarities with Jesus between Buddah, Tamuz, Mithra, Herclules, Krishna, Orsiris and many others are just plian lies. Mithra did not die, was not raised was born of a rock not a virigin, and so forth. all of that is over blowen and made up.

MC, the whole story doesn't have to be parallel. No one hero point-by-point parallels any other, but as a general rule, the birth of heroes is wonderful, and often is virgin. Campbell gives some examples in both his Masks of God series and in Hero with a Thousand Faces. It would seem from your unfamiliarity with this book, you yourself have not read it. It doesn't mean that the gospelers didn't think of that idea on their own, but just that it is a common theme and an obvious way to make the hero's birth miraculous.

This desperation to make Jesus unique won't fly. Even if the gospelers thought of an entirely new spin on the death of god -- which they did not, as the redemption myths in Zoroastrianism which predate Christianity show -- it still doesn't make it true.

that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment.
MEta =>It's not secondry at all. There is not the slightest implication in the NT or the Gospels

This is a quote from Campbell, MC.

Meta =>Cambell agrees with what I've said about myth, becasue a lot of my views on it come from him. He respected Karanye and Karenye is one of the scholars behind Cambell's work. Now as to what you quote above, that is just slippery slope reasoning. He doesnt' try to say that it applies to Jesus, but you are assuming that anyone who has a supernatural expernice fits that mold. that is a silly assumption

Campbell doesn't say it applies to Jesus?


We're talking about Joseph Campbell, right? The famous mythographer? What earth do you live on, MC? Here are some quotes from Masks of God: Occidental Mythology:

…God the Father of the Christian Trinity, the father-creator of Mary, God the Holy Ghost, her spouse, and God the son, her slain and resurrected child, REPRODUCE for a later age the orphic mystery of Zeus in the form of a serpent begetting on his own daughter Persephone his incarnate son Dionysus p. 27-28

Thus a fundamental distinction emerges, which throughout the history of Judaism has remained its second point of high distinction among the religions of the world; namely, that whereas elsewhere the principle of divine life is symbolized as a divine individual (Dumuzi-Adonis-Attis-Dionysus-Christ),… p. 138

…the Zoroastrian perfect man, he appears in these in clearest light, in what is obviously not the chronicle but the myth of his career -- like the lives of Buddha and Christ; that is to say, as a revelation or symbolization of the truth in which he lived, whose glory cleaved to him, and which he taught. p. 209

emphasis in first is mine, quotes are IN CONTEXT (so don't accuse me of lifting stuff out of context). I could multiply this by the hundred from his writings. Note that in the last one Campbell regards the gospels as myths, constructed accounts of Jesus' career.

In short, MC, your misunderstanding of Campbell is so profound as to cast doubt on your ever having read him at all.

My Chinese is fabulous, my accent so good that over the phone I cannot be differentiated from a native speaker, but I would never compose a narrative in Chinese, because I'd sound like an idiot.
MEta ->Ooooooo such an obvious stairght line I wont even touch it. think how you sound in english.

You know, I don't mind playing straight man. But if you are going to imply that people are idiots, at least learn to spell "straight" first. Why don't you type your long posts in Word or WP with a correction function on?

Finally, we've arrived at point 3, that Mark was too dumb to make up the gospels….

If Mark was a literary Genius….

I never said he was.

he would be a much better writter.

In his second language?

It's absurd to try and claim that he was, espeicially since with Q and the signs Gospel we know there were prior sources. That argument wont get you far at all. It's totally unlikely that a literary genius on the oder of Faulkner was among them. And he woudl have to be even greater to make up the personality of Jesus, he would also have to be an ehticial genius to make up the ethical teachings,

Alas, Jesus was, as Buddhists are wont to point out ethically shallow. And as others are wont to point out, much of what Jesus said can be found in earlier Jewish thought. And yes, the existence of Q and other sources implies that Mark didn't have to do that much inventing. In short, no genius required, just genuine human creativity and understanding.

it's just obvious a real guy who really had something going for him is at the center of it all.

We're not disagreeing on this. The issue is whether we can get back to this person using the gospels.

Meta =>It's not that they were too dumb, but look what they would have to invent, one of the great personalities of hitory at a time when charactorization was really undeveloped, one of the greatest ethical teachings, ect ect. It's toally absurd.

Yes, look at what they had to invent -- the major miracles (Cana, water walk, resurrection, virgin birth….) built around the framework of sayings and oral legends. Not much inventiveness required. What is great about the ethical teachings of Jesus? (let's start another thread). They are not original even in his own culture -- let alone other cultures.

In short, the scope for mythic invention is great. Mark may or may not have been a literary genius, but MC, here's a news flash: illiterate does not mean stupid. It does not mean uncreative. It does not mean less than human. I spent three years in Kenya among largely illiterates, and was not convinced that they were incapable of crafting complex and interesting stories. As Ruth Finnegan notes, in her first oral legend collection among the Limba, she talked to an old man and got a whole bunch of really interesting and deep myths. Only many months later, when she had gotten the myths from others, did she come to realize that the illiterate old man had given her his own take on his people's legends, as well as some stories he had crafted out of them. To sum up, the argument that Mark was illiterate and therefore unable to invent the gospels is ethnocentric and class-ist. Illiterate ONLY means "unable to read and write." That's all.

Now, I have written my fingers off. Each of your points has been demolished and your three arguments, (1) that I am clueless (2) that Jesus is not myth; and (3) that the gospelers were too dumb to invent this stuff, have all been shown to be wrong. We have already seen, whether you call them "novels" or not, that ancient people concieved complex stories using real places. You claim Campbell does not think Jesus is a myth. On the contrary, MC, do you know how I found all those quotes so fast showing that he does, in fact, place him firmly in the archetypal tradition? Campbell has a helpful index with an entry: Christ -- as myth……….

Michael

[This message has been edited by turtonm (edited June 01, 2001).]

[This message has been edited by turtonm (edited June 01, 2001).]

There is nothing to contribute to that thred. Your alledged "debate" is not about anyhting. I want to debate you 1x1 on the speicial board. Do you argree or not? The only thing to add to that thread is more name calling and discussion of personalities and I don't care to do that.

Don't care to or are scared to do it with JubalH? You seemed willing to engage in that sort of thing elsewhere...

MEta =>It always facinates me how you suckers, I mean "sketpics" are able to deny your own actions so completely. You make the above statement calling one of the greatest scholars of mythology "dumb" and than when I respond by pointing out that this is like saying "what did Motzart know about Music?" you say "O you are insulting me." Well what do you think it is to call my guys "dumb?"


In any case, I demolished your definition point by point, and there is simply no response to that here.

MEta =>Chhhssss! How childish can you get? I can go through Campbell and show point for point where he says exactly the same things. You are a fake, you know nothing about it if you thik that archetypes and sor forth are not the basic definition. I document Toward a Science of mythology, which is Forwarded by Jung himself, and if you don't see the connection between Ellidade, Jung, and Cambell you are indeed ignorant of the subject. You are a fony. You don't know the field you are trying to pretend that you have great deal of knoweldge when you only know the most shallow aspects of the surface! You didn't touch any of the points and you probably know that.

I hope there is one further down….and there is. BTW, you should at least become a little familiar with Campbell before you try to draw on him for support. Later we'll see who knows what.

Meta =>You could not possibly read The Hero With a Thousand Faces and miss the points I've made about the nature of mythology! That is just silly.

Or have you misinterpreted him?

Meta =>You have, because you don't even understand what he's saying. He took it all seriously. He thought that there is true behind all the myths, some slight historical truth, but more importanlty, spiritucal truth. So he would say to you, "if you don't like Christianity that is ok but you need to learn some tradition." And if you do that, you have no write to be bashing that of of others.

MEta =>The lie that I have ever misrepresented anything ….

I didn't say "misrepresented." I said "misinterpreted."

Meta =>Sorry.

Obiously I'm not defining it "any way I like" I'm taking the basic qualities of it that Elliade and company lay down as universal to mythology and comparing that with folklore, which is what others do. And it is not artifical, the differenceis very imporatant. It is crucial that a folklore does not have its own mythos.

Hmm…well, as the quote from the African oral lit expert I put up in the other thread noted, the distinction between "folklore" and "myth" is a purely artificial one liked by certain western scholars. I suppose, under this rubric you've laid down, that folklore about Hercules would be independent of myths about Hercules. How are myth and folklore related in this system of yours?

Meta =>I see the aspect of having an original mythos as very crucial. MOst of the examples of floklore which you take for mythology are based upon histoircal cores of fact. So that ought to tell us something. No Hercules is fussed with Greek myth but he may have a core of historical fact, is that not what we are discussing? Hercules was a real guy, Jesus was a real guy.That' the point isn't it?

MEta ->Well you are very ignroant. Just get a copy of Joseph Cambell's Hero with a Thousand FAces. It's not improverished. If you think that you are dense. It's very rich. It's deep, rich. almost religion in its own right. I would be willing to be that you still don't understand what is being said.

My dear MC, I own two copies of it! And I quoted it twice in the last post of mine, in case you hadn't noticed. Here is one quote again:

We do not particularly care whether Rip Van Winkle, Kamar al-Zaman or Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Their stories are what concern us: and these stories are so widely distributed over the world -- attached to various heroes in various lands -- that the question of whether this or that local carrier of the universal theme may or may not have been a historical, living man can be of only secondary moment. (Hero with a thousand faces, p. 230-1)

Meta =>When he says "we do not care" he is not saying that "Jesus didn't exist" he's saying that in his scheme of things that is a secondary concern. I knew that he thought that. I didn't say that it was real crucial to him to beleive that Jesus existed I said that he doesn't calim that he didn't! But I don't care if own a library full of Campbell books you aren't reading them apparently because there is nothing I've argued above in the description of mythology that is not in line with Cambell.

Now it is obvious from this quote that Campbell totally supports my case that the gospels are largely myth, for he firmly places Jesus in the traditional of universal heroes.


Meta =>He places him in that vien becasue of the archetypes in the Gospels. But look at what an archetype is. This is what he means when he says "we don't care if he really existed." It doesnt' matter from the eastern/myth oriented standpoint of Campbell's spiritual system because the important thing is the archetype and that is found even in real life. So that's not important, but he never says that means that Jesus really didn't live, he says only that he refuses to consider that question.

On to our discussion
That's not a concrete setting. Zeus was on Mt. Olympus too, but see above where I said a region or sometimes towns have significance? The Illiad mentions many places. But the point is the main action of the story in a myth is usually not a place that can be found and seen.

You're just plain wrong, here Metacrock. The main action in a myth is often a place that can found and seen; I gave several examples in the last post, and am loathe to repeat them again and again. Your response was:

That's not mythology. It's based upon an historical event and person. Now there is a folklore that goes with it. But the basic events really happened and the person really existed, like Jesus.

I understand. Any time a story has real people interacting with a god in a concrete location, it is folklore and not mythology. I don't understand where you get that idea -- but if you want to call the gospels "folklore" more power to ya. I don't think we are any closer to getting down to the history that way.


Meta =>I didn't say "anytime" you are difting away from the original concept. I have to re-cap.

1) Historical writing is grounded in historical times and places, concete facts that one could go a look up and excavate. Just having real people in it or real palces is not the point. It's dated to a speicific time where a real group of people were living and they can be traced and demonstated to really be there doing the things in the narrative, that is less likely to be mythology. It doesn't mean that it can't be mytholgoically oriented. It doesn't mean that it can't contain aspects of myth but it is not mythology proper.

2) Folklore is the legondary content of a myth that is placed under a "foreign" mythos. Like the way spirit lore became fairy lore under Christian soceity. The gods of the past became a small corner of the Chrisitan world becasue they were removed from their own mythos. A mythos is a more general stucuture, it's a world view, a complete symbolic universe.

Timely reminder in case you have forgotten, I suspect there is a figure under the gospels somewhere, but the particular have been lost in the gospel myths (or folklore) and the history cannot now be recovered. I don't think there is hardly any history left in the gospels.

Meta =>Ok now we are getting somewhere. Now that you have rehabilitated your vocabulary, we can talk. yes, I agree, there is some fokloric content in the Gospels. So we are really arguing about the degree.

Mike: I'm confused. Jesus is not an archetypal hero?

Meta =>Well, to some extent anything is archetypical if you look at it right. But no, he was a real guy.

We're talking about two different things. The Jesus of the gospels is an archetypal hero, from his miraculous birth to his redemptive death. Whoever the real guy was, he didn't rise from the dead, walk on water or pop out of a virgin.


Meta =>How do you know? That's just an ideological assumption. He is an archetuypical hero in some respects, in others those paralells have been toally conjured up out of dishonest imaginantions like that of Achyra S and Doherty.. Archetypical patterning does not diminish the truth of the Gospels.


Meta =>see my thread on no dyin rsiing savior gods. No others are raised in the way Jesus was. Only crop cycle and seasonally related fertility gods. Death and res are associated with Messiah in OT and at Qumran see Esinseman and wise.

MC, they are all unique in some way. That doesn't mean that they are not archetypal. Do you think if you prove Jesus competely unique, that will make him true?


Meta =>They are archetypical. you are archetypical, as am I, in some respects. That is not a means determining historical content. The point is that there are no close paralells between Mithra or Osiris and Jesus. And the more I demonstrate that the more you back off and try to make it more genreal. But it's so general that it is meaningless. There is no conscious copying they did not make up the story.So they interpirted real life by means of psychological archetypes, because we all do that and its' natural process. So what? Doesn't even mean they aren't right about it.

Mike: redeems his world by his death,
MEta =>I've proven that none of the pagan gods did that.

Oh please, even if that were true -- and it is not -- as I said, uniqueness is not proof of anything, except fertile imagination.

Meta =>The death of a fine assertion is a thousand qualifications. You haven't even showen me a single of example of any mythical character that did die for the sins of his world. So just saying Jesus has archetypical aspects, and so does everyone else is as meaningless as saying "Jesus had hair and so does everyone else."

Mike: has a magical birth,
Meta =>Midrashically related to OT prophesy not to pagan myth.

Again, even if it isn't related to pagan myth -- and it almost certainly is, Campbell derives it from the Persian side of Christian roots -- it hardly matters.


Meta =>It matters a lot, for those who try to argue that they made it up pattenred after pagan gods, it is a total dispoof. And you can't show any others who did. Bron of a rock is not the same thing. Being bron of a woman who was raped by a god is not the same thing. Mary was not raped by God. the virginal conception is not a sexual encoutner. But the point is, it was already part of Hebrew Mythos so it's not an original mythos that they mad up.


The point is that the archetypal hero has a miraculous birth. That's all. The origin of the idea is not relevant.


Meta =>The messiah was exected to have a miraculous birth, so it's not related to pagan myth.


Mike: is descended from gods/heroes,


Meta => Jesus is not "decended" form any gods. The point of his linage is not to identify him with heroes but wtih DAvid for the royal linage. Messianich exepctation not pagan myth. foretold.

Again, the desperate attempt to keep Jesus unique. So far you have three arguments. (1) Mike doesn't know anything. (2) Jesus is unique. (3) The gospelers were too dumb to invent anything. These are not really solid arguments, MC, and you have already admitted that there are obvious archetypes in the gospels.


Meta =>That is more of your typical distortion of the other guy's arguments. You reduce all my points to your own absurdity and than answer your straw man. Why don't you try answering the argument I make rather than your gumed up version of them? ARchetype is not a lie, archetype is not a gaurontee of being false or unhistoical.