GakuseiDon

Thanks Ben. Yes, I remembered Doherty's controversial comment on "born of woman", but didn't realise that it extended to the "in the flesh" comments as well. If jakejones is correct about "in the flesh" as indications of proto-orthodox insertions, then I would say that that's about it for Doherty's "dimension in the sphere of flesh". All that is left is special pleading.

Jakejones, would you say then that the Pauline letters as we have them today show a belief in a Jesus who existed on earth as a human being?

Ben C Smith

He was not entirely clear on exactly which comments he had in mind, IIRC, but he was certainly referring to more than born of a woman by itself.

Ben.

Brother Daniel

You’re saying, I think, that if D is false, then C is more likely to be false. So what? I’ve been arguing that if D is false, then C is irrelevant.
Yes, his case for C is affected. (And again, I’m not defending his assertion of C.) But you’ll notice that I referred to his “overall” case. Doherty doesn’t’ need C (IMO), unless D is true (which, as you say, it probably isn’t). An MJ works very well on earth. Not so well, perhaps, if you give an exact street address and a specific time period (although even then one can argue the point), but very well if you don’t get any more specific than “earth”.
You’ve given us quite a mishmash of different pagan gods in your list of examples. For convenience, I’ve pulled out Jupiter and the Caesars to highlight the variance.

I know very little about the Caesar cult. I don’t know, for example, how many of the Caesars were ever thought of as gods. I don’t know whether people really thought of them as gods at all: If there were legal penalties for denying their divinity, then affirmations of their divinity can hardly be taken at face value.

But no matter. The point is that those “divine” Caesars were humans first, gods second. And when I say “first” and “second”, I’m talking about the chronology of how they were recognised. Real, flesh-and-blood humans are recognised as humans because they are experienced as humans. A human may then be elevated to godhood in the eyes of some, but surely that is not the only way for a god to be added to a pagan’s god-list. (If you are saying that that IS the only way for a pagan pantheon to expand, then you are making a HUGE claim, needing a great deal of support.)

I strongly doubt, for example, that Jupiter originated as a historical man, who somehow became recognised as a god, and was given credit for control over the weather. More likely he originated as a primitive explanation for thunderstorms.

So you’re obscuring the point by throwing all of these pagan gods together. Was Paul’s Jesus a known human to whom divine attributes were ascribed (like the Caesars)? Or was he a god who was somehow “revealed” to Paul and his ilk (as Jupiter was presumably “revealed” to someone long forgotten), and then re-interpreted as (also) human and written into history? In the latter case, the key events about Jesus, according to the original revelation, could well have been set on earth.
Based on this discussion so far, I would hesitate to guess what you mean by Doherty’s “case”. If you’re just focusing on whether Paul’s Jesus was or was not on earth, then I have no further comment (I hope). But if you are talking about the overall MJ case, then of course the pagan witness is relevant.

IMO (FWIW), Paul is the easy part of an MJ case. (Or at least he should be. Doherty has complicated matters by going off on an unnecessary tangent, which is the topic of the present thread.) Accounting for the Gospels, though: That’s the hard part.

GakuseiDon

Fair enough.

As I said, Doherty being wrong doesn't rule out that some other mythicism is correct. But what you outlined above would be the end of Doherty's case.

Perhaps, but the question is how pagans around Paul's time saw things. And they thought that Jupiter was probably a human being, located in an actual time in the past.

Tacitus:
http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/histories.5.v.html

"Some say that the Jews were fugitives from the island of Crete, who settled on the nearest coast of Africa about the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the power of Jupiter. Evidence of this is sought in the name. There is a famous mountain in Crete called Ida; the neighbouring tribe, the Idaei, came to be called Judaei by a barbarous lengthening of the national name."

Lactantius Epitome of the Divine Institutes:
http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/euhemerus.html

"The same Euhemerus therefore relates that Jupiter, when he had five times gone round the world, and had distributed governments to his friends and relatives, and had given laws to men, and had wrought many other benefits, being endowed with immortal glory and everlasting remembrance, ended his life in Crete, and departed to the gods, and that his sepulchre is in Crete, in the town of Gnossus [Knossos], and that upon it is engraved in ancient Greek letters Zankronou, which is Jupiter the son of Saturnus. It is plain, therefore, from the things which I have related, that he was a man, and reigned on the earth."

True enough.

Ben C Smith

This seems to be the theme of this thread. I do not recall a single poster on it defending the basic assertion that GDon has questioned.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Ok, you have asked for my opinion, so here it is.

The Pauline letters as we have them today are the result of extensive catholic redactions in the second half of the second century. The Marcionite recension, which IMO is more original, depicts a Docetic Jesus. Awareness of gospel material is scant, if any.

Almost all of the pitifully few texts that are used to "prove" a human Jesus (born of a woman, according to the flesh, line of David, etc) are absent from the Marcionite version. The question of whether the catholic redactors actually believed in a human Jesus is impossible to answer, there are also political motivations to consider, but my guess would be yes. That means nothing, they were relying on gospel material for fleshly Jesus, not eye witness accounts of a historical person.

Jake Jones IV

jgibson000

But what does his expurgated Gospel of Luke depict?

In any case, you are confusing a "non human" (or only "apparently" human) Jesus" with a "non historic Jesus".

So far as I know, no docetist ever thought that this "apparently" human Jesus didn't appear "on earth", let alone at a particular place and time, or was not actually and historically seen, heard, snf accompanied in journeys through Palestine, by real live human beings, or was not actually and historically condemend to death by an historic Pilate in Jerusalem, during an actual Passover celebration, etc. etc.

But why then would the catholic redactors use phrases which, if E.D. is corrrect, do not and would not and were known not to prove a human Jesus to do so?

You are not only misinformed about Marcion and Docetism, but you are trying (whether consciously or not) to have your cake and to eat it too.

Jeffrey Gibson

GakuseiDon

If there were "extensive catholic redactions in the second half of the second century", why is gospel material scant in Paul? It seems to be that the only reason would be "they had no reason to put it in" -- but if that is the case, can't we say that Paul also would have had no reason to put it in, had he actually written the letters traditionally ascribed to him?

Since Doherty and other mythicists stress Paul's lack of use of gospel material, having extensive catholic redactions in the second half of the second century which also lack gospel material seems an oddity. Can you suggest a reason for this?

Brother Daniel

I won't defend Jake's suggestion of extensive catholic redactions (since I simply don't know enough to agree or disagree), but this objection is off the mark:
In short: Different times, different contexts, different needs.

A few observations:

(1) The argument about Paul's lack of use of gospel material is not simply "Paul was writing about Jesus, therefore he should have used more biographical material." Rather, the context of what Paul does say often demands gospel-story references that are absent. And Paul says things that require ad hoc explanations in order to square them with the gospel story. An example is in your OP, where you brush aside Paul's reference to demons as the culprits in the crucifixion of Jesus. (Let's not go out on a tangent now: This thread isn't the place to wrangle over whether such an argument is any good. I'm only pointing out that what people call Doherty's "argument from silence" is not merely about "silence".)

(2) (Given MJ assumptions for the sake of argument:...) By the last couple of decades of the 2nd century, orthodox redactors could take the historicity of Jesus for granted, and easily fail to notice the problems of Paul, just as most readers of Paul do today. If the "heretics" being targeted were historicists as well, then of course those redactors wouldn't have felt any need to plug a mythicist gap.

Brother Daniel

Fine -- as long as we're clear that by "Doherty's case" you're talking specifically about the case for Paul's Jesus being (purely) heavenly.