Toto

I suggest that people stop trying to reason by analogy. Creationism is a unique American phenomenon based on an overly literal reading of scripture. I am only creating the HJ analogy to try to get you to realize that.

The saviors all seem to have the name of Jesus. Does the Jesus of Revelation bear any relation to the Jesus of Mark?

The gnostics taught that everyone could find their own truth. It's hard to build an organization around that. But if you have a founder figure who said X, you can persecute all those who claim "Not X."

Sorry - not widespread. They were just appearing.

I don't think that you have actually looked at the matter if you think that MJ'ers in general haven't provided answers. And there is no reason to accept a simplistic "Jesus did it" answer.

robto

I asked for specifics, and all I get is evasions. Refusal to engage with the evidence.... hmm, who does that remind me of?

Here's another point: how do Q and the Gospel of Thomas fit in with the MJ? Doherty doesn't say, Price doesn't say, Wells doesn't say. What about Q/Thomas overlaps? Why would two groups with totally different theological agendas invent the same sayings?

robto

According to Pliny, Christians were so numerous that the pagan priests were having trouble finding buyers for meat sacrificed to the gods.

youngalexander

I must say that you have hit upon a troublesome point.
According to Stark, X pops at 113 C.E. would have been < 0.02% & it is difficult to disagree with the order of mag. On the other hand, there were obviously severe lumps here and there, notably Rome eg.. Yet, wherever it was, between Amisus and Amastris there seems to have been a sizeable X pop! Disrupting commerce? And in such a peculiarly negative manner, by refusing to buy sacrificial animals?

Something more to it? Yet that is what Pliny reports!
Still, nothing for HJ there.

Brother Daniel

Keep in mind that this thread is primarily about the (alleged) analogy between MJ-ers and creationists. It is not about having a full-fledged MJ/HJ debate. So your responders, naturally, have not tried to be thorough.

Vorkosigan

robto, one reason MJers get so testy sometimes is because it seems like HJers are referring to writers who live in an alternate universe. I don't know what the copy of Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle looks like in your universe, but in mine it has about forty pages on Q and the MJ.

Weimer's analogy between Creationists and MJers is false because the marginalization of MJers is for social, not scholarly, reasons. Creationists are marginalized because they do not do science, and are without methodological support. In the HJ/MJ case, the two sides are engaged to a very great extent in a clash of interpretive frameworks. I hope that people who explore the MJ/HJ issue put some time into studying the methodologies, instead of wasting time on the "evidence" since evidence does not exist independent of methodologies for producing it.

Indeed, in the NT studies camp it is possible to hold that science is false and still be regarded as a scholar -- see the positions of innumerable NT scholars on the possibility of the Resurrection, for example. Who is the Creationist here?

Vorkosigan

Brother Daniel

Who says that there was anything to “abandon”?

Early Christians believed in a “Jesus” character who was crucified for some salvific purpose. The MJ position states that this saviour-god “Jesus” cannot properly be identified with a real, historical, human individual. The MJ position does not imply that the earliest Christians were dogmatic mythicists (although if some of them were, that would be a boost to the MJ position).

The idea that Jesus was crucified was important to the early Christians (as it is to Christians today). The idea that the crucifixion of Jesus was not a part of human history need not have been important to the early Christians, even under MJ assumptions.

So – still working with MJ assumptions for the sake of argument – if a proto-HJ Christian preacher came along to an early Christian congregation and started teaching that there was a known time and place for the crucifixion of Jesus, and that many other things were known about his life, the congregation would have no reason to object. On the contrary, they would love it. They would lap it up. They would see the HJ ideas as confirming what they already believe – that their saviour-god was crucified. There’s no reason to imagine a conflict between the earliest historicist Christians and their pre-historicist brethren.

Eventually (late second century), it was inevitable that some Christians (e.g. Irenaeus) would start claiming a chain of acquaintance linking themselves to Jesus. (Funny how you never see personal acquaintance with Jesus being used as a way of asserting authority in earlier theological debates.)

So when HJ-ers challenge MJ-ers to point out some ancient writings that describe some early Christians as mythicists, the HJ-ers are just missing the point.

Chris Weimer

Oh noes! It's a conspiracy!!111!11one1eleventyone!!1~~

Toto

Not creationists, surely. They have an answer for everything and engage with the evidence all the time.

Mythicists do not uniformly believe in the existence of Q, or date it to an early period, or think that it reflects the sayings of a person who was crucified under Pilate. or . . .I'm not actually sure what your point it here.

Toto

Notes from Darrell Doughty's course BIBST 702S: Persecution and Martyrdom in Early Christianity: Doughty clearly implies that this letter is lacking in authenticity, since it neatly fits into the later Christian narrative.