aa5874

Jesus was presented basically in two fundamental ways, either as a god that was born of woman, through the holy ghost, or a god unborn, that is, a god that came to earth directly from some heavenly place. See Against Heresies by Irenaeus.


Both of these figures, the god born and unborn, were claimed by Christian to have actually lived during the days of Pilate. Both had physical features and were generally indistinguishable from human beings. These beings, according to Christians writings, interacted with the people in and around the Jewish region. They preached in the synagogues, healed the sick miraculously, could change their appearances at will, were at variance with the chief priests, Pharisees and Sadducees, who eventually had at least one of the them, the god born, crucified. Eventually both gods returned to heaven through some miraculous means.


The Christians of antiquity essentially believed or presented Jesus as a figure of history, a god that actually lived on earth, regardless of the means of arriving there.

The MJer regard these gods, as presented by Christians of antiquity, as mythical figures from their inception, and this position is not 'time sensitive', that is, it not of much concern when these figures were thought to have physically walked the earth, but to declare that they are mythical regardless of the Christian's timeline.

The non-god HJ is a recent theory that cannot unearth any credible information that such a figure lived during the time of Pontius Pilate. All information, almost entirely Christian or biblical related, declare an HJ as a god. These Christians further state that this god figure of history either had no earthly father or earthly parent.

The timeline is critically significant to the Hjer, since they must show with reasonable certainty that a human being was born, lived, preached in the synagogues was crucified under Pilate and buried, even though his body disappeared.

Magdlyn

So there you go. One is made to wonder, the writings that included the descriptions of Jesus waving a wand to demonstrate his signs of divine favour, when were they destroyed? We still have him spitting in dirt to make magic mud, and we have the abracadabras, but we've lost the wand usage descriptions, which must have likened him to Moses with his magic "staff."

youngalexander

GDon, apo-poly-logies for my tardiness in reply. Have in fact had it available for some days. However, I can see from subsequent posts (eg. wand) that a proper reply will require a good deal of explanatory background.

Was essentially just testing the waters and would prefer to start a new thread to give a proper exposition. That will be some time away yet. Also I think that there is an undue emphasis at BC&H on literature with an almost total neglect of the archaeological evidence. The MJ case would be greatly enhanced by more members being better acquainted with it.
However, here is a short summary.

MJ perspective:
There are no historical events circa 30 CE. The early epistle writers have scant HJ details because there are none. Evangelists write say 90-110 C.E. Prior to that and subsequently the growing but quite diverse Christ movement, a syncretism of Jewish messianaic & Hellenistic saviour mysticism, have as their main sacred book the Septuagint. The Gospels circulate slowly thru the tiny minority of literate Christians who discuss these new ideas amongst themselves with very little perculating down to the illiterate Christians of the popular church. Apart from illiteracy and geographic dispersion, this is largely because there is no oral/folk tradition of a HJ.

The HJ traditions must begin and be generated by these new gospel writings. By the late 2ndC the literary elite are accepting the HJ story more readily, the great unwashed have barely heard of them and have instead a rich christology developed and derived from the OT and epistolic writings. This remains the case until about 250 C.E. by which time the new HJ ideas begin to be manifest at the popular level. Subsequently this trend continues and strengthens, but it takes at least another century before orthodoxy really wins out.

The archaelogical evidence (which I have not referenced here) supports this 'timeline'. I leave it to others to explain the evidence with a HJ theory.

However, the more I look at this, the more untenable the HJ seems. Try this one for instance. Produce a consistent HJ answer to Q1 & Q3. Hint, where did the evangelist Mark get his info from? It certainly was not the epistle writers. Oral tradition perhaps? Thus why is it that 200 years after the Easter event only about 15% of Christian art (commissioned by the wealthy unwashed) is identifiably HJ? What happened to the oral tradition?

For those interested, here is a short bibliography:
Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine by Graydon Snyder
Understanding Early Christian Art by Robin Margarat Jensen
Face to Face: Portaits of the Divine in Early Christianity by Robin Margarat Jensen
The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art by Paul Corby Finney
The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F Mathews

The first four are really essential to the topic. And GDon, Jensen & Finney have extensive quotes and frequent references to 2nd C apologists who are critical to the issue. You'd love it!:wave: