Ted Hoffman

Gerard, that is a brilliant analysis you did up there. I found it very helpful.

Solitary Man

But all that is quite simply wrong. If you were to read Hesiod, in his Five Ages of Man, you'll see quite clearly that as early as the seventh/sixth century BCE the fall of Troy was placed Heroic age, and even the Romans in the first century BCE traced their ancestry back to a human temporality, as Julius Caesar traced his ancestry to Venus, whose son was Aeneas, who was present at the Fall of Troy, and a clear line had been established down through the ages, here on earth, within human time.

gstafleu

The world wasn't just young, it was in its beginning. This means that the judgment of Paris is being depicted as the mother of all judgments, so to speak, the judgment where all judgments began. Apuleius had a bone to pick with the judicial system of the time and is saying: "Given that the very first, original judgment already was a mess, what can one expect?" That means, as Ben puts it, that the historicity of the judgment of Paris was "of a different historical quality" than we normally think of for "real" historical events like the battle of Marathon. The concept of "mythological time" is quite usual in mythology, I think (Campbell uses it all the time e.g.), I was using the Paris judgment as described by Apuleius as an example.

Gerard Stafleu

gurugeorge

It seems to me that there's still a lot of cross-purposes in the ways different people are using the term "historical". Mainly there's the distinction "historical from our modern rationalist point of view" and "historical from the point of view of the ancients". These may be two different things.

There seem to be all sorts of ways in which human, divine, semi-divine, mixed human and divine entities, with or without superhero-like powers, with or without the ability to exist in "dimensions" other than the fleshly, with or without an archetypal existence of which the fleshly aspect is just a pale one-shot copy, were believed by the ancients to have existed.

But for the rationalist historian, there can be only one sense of "historical", i.e. of existence, that's allowable: a human being.

So the rationalist historian must understand ancient references to marvellous entities as either:

1) deliberately referring to a real human being, more or less exaggerated and/or mythologised;

2) inadvertenty referring to a real human being, more or less exaggerated and/or mythologised; or

3) inadvertently (or for that matter deliberately) not referring to a real human being at all (i.e. referring to an entirely imaginary or fictitious entity - of a human, divine, semi-divine, etc., type, with no historical "kernel" at all).

The kicker is, 3) could still look like a historical reference in modern, rationalist terms - i.e. it could still look like it's talking about someone who could have been a real human being. There might well be historical references, references to real times and places.

So how are we to know, how to distinguish? The only way, it seem to me, in the case of the Joshua Messiah myth (for it is already a myth, it starts as a myth, it comes down to us as a myth, let's agree on that) is to check if there are any reasonably unambiguous linkages between any of the earliest people known as Christians, and some human being known to them personally: i.e. is there anywhere in the early Christian materials, the slightest hint that Cephas, James, "the twelve", the "500", etc., knew a human being who they were thinking of as "Joshua Messiah"?

To my mind, that would be the only basis on which a historical Joshua Messiah hypothesis could have a (reasonably) secure foundation. Otherwise there's simply no reason to believe it (apart from later tradition), and either agnosticism (about a human being) or 3) are rationally preferable.

And so far as I can see, there's nothing in the entirety of early Christian writing that can pin down some actual historical link between any of those people and a human being known to them personally, called Joshua, who they thought was the Messiah.

In the absence of such positive evidence for the existence of a proposed entity (burden of proof, remember), why does anyone even think there might have been such a fellow at all? (Apart from long-standing tradition?)

IOW, here's the thought experiment: imagine an alternative universe in which, for whatever reason, Christianity as we know it didn't come to exist. Imagine, in that alternative universe, discovering the gospels, the early letters, in a jar in the desert. Try to look at those texts with a totally fresh eye: do they still seem like they contain historical proof (within reasonable historical limits) of the existence of a human being circa 0-30 CE, called Joshua, who some people thought was the Jewish Messiah and who then went on and tried to (but in this instance failed to) start a religion about him?

I can't see it: they look like a bunch of fairy stories, almost like superhero comics about a Jewish spiritual Superman. I can't see anything that collapses the inherent ambiguity of 3) down to either 1) or 2).

Ben C Smith

It is this hypothesis that I would say is in question. If all the fleshy language used of Jesus is just as at home in a non-earthly-phase sort of way as in a human-being-on-earth sort of way, then of course the two hypotheses are of equal merit so far. If.

Richard Carrier challenged Doherty (in a largely favorable review) to give examples of this fleshly sort of language being used as Doherty claims it is used. Doherty has since admitted that there are no real analogies.

Ben.

gstafleu

This is taking us a bit outside the scope of this thread, but there is a connection, so here goes. You are right in pointing out that in many places in mythology you find things that look an awful lot like a historical narrative. That is because there are two fundamental streams one can discern within mythology: the metaphorical one and the historicist one. The metaphorical stream is the one created and followed by poets and artists, including the mythopoets (people who come up with the original mythic ideas). The historicist stream is usually followed by everybody else, emphatically including priests and theologians.

Let me quote a bit Joseph Campbell said in one of his lectures. He was explaining what metaphor is. "You run like a deer" is not metaphor, it is simile. "You are a deer" is metaphor. This can lead to confusion. Consider the devoted husband who adoringly says to his wife "You are a swan, a rose." "OK," says the wife, "which is it going to be, a swan or a rose? Make up your mind." The wife, concludes Campbell, must have been a theologian. (And please feel free to switch genders here!)

The road from metaphor to history is not taken in a single step. So we see e.g. Ovid painting something that looks a lot like history in the beginning of his metamorphoses: first the golden age, followed by the silver one, and so on. Was this taken as depicting literal battle-of-Marathon-like history by his readers? That no doubt depends on the reader. Did Ovid take it as such? Probably not, but poetry being poetry, we should not expect to find any explicit statements about the matter in the metamorphoses. Life is a bit easier here when dealing with more modern poets. For example, T.S Eliot, in The Waste Land thoughtfully provides footnotes explaining the mythical derivation of some of his ideas. Maybe somebody could email Ovid?

So here is the problem. When dealing with myth, one is in the realm of art and poetry, in the realm in other words of metaphor. But metaphor, by its very nature, can be taken as literal ("I am a swan? Hey, wait a minute, are you saying my hair looks like a bunch of feathers?"). And, given that the literal meaning is right on the surface, that is much the easier route to take. Please have a look at Similes, metaphors and pre-marital sex for another look at this issue. You'll notice that nobody responded to that thread. Not surprising, since this forum is called Biblical History and Criticism, so guess which road most historians here prefer to walk .

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

There are two possibilities here: (1) the fleshy hypothesis is sui generis to Hebrews, or (2) we've seen something like that before. Correct? Now, does which is the case make a material difference to the methodology followed? If it is sui generis that means we have to adduce evidence solely from Hebrews. If we've seen it before we can throw in these kitchen sinks as well. But this does not, I think, affect the position of the flesh phrase, it still fits in with both hypotheses. We still have to make the case for MJ, in other words, without reference to the phrase. It is just that in case (1) we only have Hebrews to look at while in case (2) we have some more arrows on our bow.

One could try to argue that either of the hypotheses is a priori more likely than the other, but that seems a methodologically dubious route: any evidence adduced to shore up that position should be part of the evidence adduced for the hypotheses per se. So we still end up where we started: adduce evidence for your favorite hypothesis, and the position of the flesh phrase will follow.

Now, as a bit of an aside, are there examples of this flesh business elsewhere? As always in mythology, this depends on how large a correspondence one demands. If one only accepts cases where a phrase like "in his flesh days" is used then, as you already indicated, the answer is No. But in mythology one always finds basic ideas expressed in forms particular to the time and culture. So with this in mind, consider Zeus and Semele. Hera, in her usual fit of Jealousy, gets Semele to demand of Zeus that he shows his real form. He does so, and Semele dies, because humans cannot look upon the gods in their real form. Nevertheless, before that Zeus had managed to carry on with Semele in a quite satisfactory manner. While doing so he must have taken on a form of "flesh" that was more compatible with human interaction than whatever his native substance is. As another example, consider the Pharaoh, who was an incarnation of Ra. So I don't think the concept as such is sui generis to the epistles, although you can make it so by sufficiently narrowing it down.

Gerard Stafleueu

Solitary Man

You're still factually wrong, since Hesiod was a poet, Vergil was a poet, and Apuleius wasn't.

The rest of it is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand. You've taken your gibberish to a level even mountainman would be envious of.

andrewcriddle

The impregnation of Semele by Zeus and Ra taking the form of the Pharaoh both seem clearly to be events upon earth rather than in some non-earthly realm.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

From an internal perspective, Gerard, I would like to see how you treat Hebrews 2.14-17:

Since, then, the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. For assuredly he does not give help to angels, but he gives help to the seed of Abraham. Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things....

How does being made to partake of the same stuff as human beings and being made like his brethren (presumably the seed of Abraham, or Jews) in all things fit into the myth case we are discussing, IYO?

Ben.