jules?

OK, I am not looking for debate about some of the finer details or core arguments. I chatted with a good friend the other day who is also a theologian and historian and is a cultural Cof E/Buddhist/Taoist/confused. He accepted that a mythical Christ makes for a very powerful/logical argument but he just could not shake off the human Jesus. I sympathise with him in that there is still a thought process that does not exclude a historical Jesus. I mentioned this site and how many here consider Jc to be [in all probability] historical.

so the question is not, what is wrong with the other side of the argument but why do you, a logical aware person with an enquiring mind that you have, accommodate a historical Jesus?

Is it an almost religious acceptance?:devil:

mg01

The entire issue over Jesus and the roots of Christianity falls into one of several possibilities:

1. The supernatural is real, miracles happen, the gospels are true, and Jesus really was the son of God who took earthly form and was sacrificed in the flesh to atone for the sins of man.
2. There is no such thing as supernatural occurrences and miracles, Jesus was a wise man who preached of personal salvation based on an alternative interpretation of scripture and was killed as a revolutionary. After his death his life events were exaggerated, legends grew, and mythical components accumulated. However a historical kernel can be revealed by removing the obviously fantastic elements.
3. The figure of Jesus (the) Christ was conceived as the result of an alternative interpretation of scriptures which regarded him as spiritual being sent by God as sacrificial substitution to relieve us from the conceptual burdon of sin. This new message was the "good news" of Christ. Rituals practiced by followers were given credence by attributing them to deeds of Christ which was transferred to an earthly appearance. Legends based on myth developed and were later taken as historical.

As a broad categorization, this basically covers it. You could also however throw in the idea that Jesus was simply made up based on the claims of similarity to other deities/figures. At issue with this line of thought is 1) thanks to basic concepts of comparative mythology and religion it could just as easily be used to claim any deity or hero was based off any other deity or hero and 2) the claim provides no value in attempting to explain Christian origins to anyone other than conspiracy theorists.

These three categories show why the HJ position is the default one as the best explanation for how the Christian movement began. That is, even though the reasons for regarding the gospels as having any historical value in any sense of the word are thin (primarily due to its heavy reliance on scripture), the HJ position is still perceived as superior since all support for the alternative positions is regarded as subjective. This is despite the fact that 1) all presumed historical gospel episodes can be shown to have been derived from Mark which are in turn based on scripture, 2) outside these stories, there is no other support for them as historical, and 3) the earlier "foundational" material of Paul (and/or his pseudonyms) not only fails to support the gospel tales, actually alludes to a completely different understanding as to the nature of Christ. In actuality, these facts render the HJ evidence just as subjective as the alternatives.

However, at least as far as hypotheses go, on the surface, the third option may very well better explain not only the origin of the movement itself, but also the numerous divergent positions that followed. The position is actually not as radical as the HJ camp might suppose as there are many conceptual similarities. Both see Christianity as emerging from an alternate interpretation of scriptures, only the HJ camp claims Jesus was part of this early movement and the gospels contain his deeds, while the alternative suggests the figure of Jesus (the) Christ forms the basis for and is the result of the alternative interpretation and the preaching of this that lead to the idea that he was a once historical figure. The fundamentally conceptual premises with regard to a “new covenant” relating to God work out to be exactly the same whether if delivered by Jesus himself or a group of mystics preaching of him. However working against the HJ position is again, the requirement to explain not only the fantastical elements that are selectively dismissed, but also the correlation to the deeds to the scriptures which would indicate a literary rather than historical origin.

It is in that exact sense, one has to wonder why we might recognize figures such as Moses, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, etc… as invented “historical figureheads” by foundational religious groups in order to give divine authority to their positions, yet we would regard Jesus and the message regarding him any different.

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mrunicycler

Jesus was not an historical figure (at least not as given in the new testaments, ie, there may have been people named jesus, but not one who carried out the actions described in the bible).

Romans (among others) kept good logs. Jesus fails to appear in them. End of story.

What is interesting is to note the similarities between the jesus of the bible and Bacchus (dionysis) of mythology:

-They were both regarded as being both mortal and immortal at the same time.

-They both died and were returned to life. Bacchus was associated with the grape vine, and his death was supposed to be painful and tragic, much as jesus's was said to have been. This rebirth for both faiths gave people the hope that death isn't the end of life (for the ancients, Persephone's story did this, as well, but her connection with Hades was too strong to make the thought of eternal life in a hell any better than the fear of oblivion), and it made the deities seem more human than others, and more easily associated with than others.

-Wine was an important symbol for both.

-They both willingly surrendered to the guards of a human king figure, and both answered questions in a peaceful, philosophical manner (bacchus before the king Pentheus).

-Both empowered women (at least to a greater degree than religions before them had, though not nearly what we would consider empowered today). In christianity, the figures of the dual Mary's are among the most important in the myth, and Bacchus's main followers were women (and pans and such...).

...etc, etc.

It's always seemed to me that christianity started in much the same it continued.

It started with the believers 'borrowing' from the religions of those around them (ie, taking the idea for jesus from the Eleusian mysteries and the older stories of greek mythology, etc).

It continued and expanded by 'borrowing' from the religions of those around them (ie, easter, xmas, etc, which are known to have been pagan rituals incorporated into xianity to make the conversion of the pagan's easier).

jules?

As interest as the posts are what is more relevant to me is the nature of acceptance. Why is a HJ more acceptable to most people to the extent that anyone who takes [the logical conclusion in my opinion] the MJ approach considered to be taking a leftfield stance.

And with the exception of Mohammed I think other founders including Buddha are more likely to be mythical. from a faith point of view i do understand that it is essential to have a historical Jesus but for the unbelievers the acceptance of a historical basis for the story requires understanding something else about the human mind.

Solitary Man

What logs are you talking about? This is nonsense. And Jesus did appear in Roman historians - Tacitus mentions him.

The similarities between the Jesus found in our extent sources or the ones imagined by mythicists?

Source?

As it was for everyone in those days, wine being the primary drink.

This has never been done before.

Bacchus' devotees, the Bacchanals, were all women. Jesus' closest followers were all men, save one.

Solitary Man

Have you done critical work on Buddha? What excepts Mohammed? What real study have you taken of the subjects? Are you familiar with modern cults? Ancient ones? Modern primitive ones? Why should anyone take your opinion as the defining matter?

Malachi151

My arguments are here: http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

The core of any true Mythical Jesus argument has to be that there is much evidence which contradicts the existence of a human Jesus. If all we had was lack of evidence then there wouldn't be a very sound argument. All you could argue there would be that we don't have reliable accounts of this person. But that's not what we have. What we have, at least in terms of some of these arguments, is evidence that CONTRADICTS the existence of a human Jesus.

These would be things like:

1) Paul's writings where he says things that don't make any sense if Jesus had been a real person, such as when Paul describes Jesus as a mystery that is being revealed by prophecy and scripture, such as the fact that Paul never talks about a return of Jesus, just a future coming of Jesus, such as when Paul says in Romans 10 that we the Jews still need to be held accountable for not honing Jesus, even though they have never heard of him, etc.

2) Contradictory early traditions, all of which are based on scritpures, such as how Jesus is described as a high priest and Yom Kippur sacrifice in Hebrews, how Paul never says anything about Jesus having been killed during Passover in all of his letters, how Paul only calls Jesus a "Passover Lamb" one time when he is obviously addressing people's actions on Passover, and like the case of Jesus being said to have been both crucified on a cross and hung from a tree (the hanging from a tree being a idea coming from scripture).

3) The fact that none of the earliest apologists had one single shred of information about Jesus outside of the Gospel stories. All of their defense of a human Jesus relied on their references to the Gospels, they themselves, even only some 100 years after his supposed death, had no other evidence for his existence than the Gospels, which they clearly didn't understand the true origins of and which they fully trusted despite the fact that much of the Gospel narratives now are provably unhistorical.

4) The fact that virally every detail of the Gospels can be shown to be based on scripture or other sources, not on real events, i.e. the scenes are based on things that relly happened, they are based on creating scenes from earlier scritpures. Even every detail of the crucifixion in the Gospels comes from prior scritpures, there is no real historical information there. Had there been a real event this is not what one would expect.

etc.

ernestombayo

And did you did mention to him that most/90% of biblical scholars atheists/agnostics/theists believe in the Historical Jesus?

mrunicycler

Tacitus is questionable at best. From wikipedia:
Someone writing a hundred years after the fact isn't writing about what he saw, he's writing about what he's been told. Meaning, he isn't writing about christ's historocity, he's already writing about the myth.

This isn't even calling into account the accusations of forgeries.

There are none other than those imagined by mythicists.

Take your pick. My best advice is to read something for yourself, but if you're too lazy for that there's a nice few pages on Bacchus in Edith Hamilton's "Mythology (or via: amazon.co.uk)", starting on page 55 or so and going on for maybe ten pages. You can check the glossary to get the exact pages, if you ever bother to check this as a source.

Everyone drank it.

It wasn't used as a powerful symbol for every god.


By a being who was being accused of thinking itself a god while being human?

Show me that it has.

Wrong.

Men followed Bacchus. The myths were that only women followed him. In real life, men thought him a deity worth following, as well.

And, in the same way, women followed jesus. The mythical figures were all men (save two, the two mary's), but the real followers included women.

And this is even going into the idea that the writer of the book of John was actually a woman...

jules?

sometime ago i did a poll on this site with the top result being Jesus was probably a end-time preacher which I mentioned. Is it some kind of group illusion, is it simply that a historical Jesus is more human, and therefore more acceptable than a cosmic one? Is it years of indoctrination? group think perhaps?