Toto

I think that there are several subthemes here that deserve their own thread, and that this thread could be split. I don't have time now to figure out how, but if you have ideas, PM me.

I think this is the most thorough thread on the origins of Nazareth, with spin's linguistic comments:

A few questions on Nazareth starting with post 10

spin

The issue doesn't depend solely on the presence or non-presence in the current text of Mark. There are a number of other issues involved.

1. This is the only use of the town name in Mark.
2. In the other verses usually translated with Nazareth, we find nazarhnos, whose relationship with Nazareth is not transparent.
3. One editor of Matt. has removed all those references to nazarhnos in his original source. This is usually done when terms were found to be obscure.
4. If Mark did mention nazaret at 1:9, would the editor of Matt. have removed the references to nazarhnos from his source?
5. Mark shows that its writer/redactor believed that Capernaum was the home of Jesus, 2:1. Wouldn't the writer need to justify this if he'd already written Nazareth in 1:9 (as Matt. had to)?
6. Matt. acknowledges that Capernaum was Jesus's hometown in his source by moving him from Nazareth to Capernaum.
7. Nazareth is not a part of the synoptic tradition.

One usually attributes a person to a town, not a region, so "Jesus came from Galilee" as a reduction of "Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee" is anomalous. Matt. has already mentioned Galilee in 2:22, why would it need to be mentioned again?

There is no grammatical change between the two versions; Mark simply has one extra word, so its insertion would cause no change. Why choose Galilee in preference to Nazareth to reduce the phrase in Matt.? Nazareth does seem more important to the writer of Matt.

Luke in 3:21 shows no sign of following the tradition found in either Mark or Matt, whereas the material in 3:13a is directly related to Mark 1:9, the only difference being the one word, missing from Matt.

If you check out the difference between nazaret and nazareth it is often at a manuscript level.

The formation of a gentilic in Greek is usually through the addition of a suffix such as -aios or -hnos (note "h" is eta -- normal ASCII transliteration). From the place name nazaret we add the commonly used suffix and derive nazarethnos, ie "Nazaretene".

They aren't gentilics at all; they're place names.

I don't understand why you earlier talked about a theta in nazarethnos, when you correctly give hellhnos. But...

hell- is clearly to be assumed as the stem. This is a red herring. You need to show this reduction to a hypothesized stem. I haven't as yet found any place names ending with /t/, though lots with theta: Beeroth in the LXX being bhrwQaios (2 Sam 23:37), or then again Nazareth as often found in the nt should be similar. Hebrew final taw normally ends up a theta in Greek and there are very many examples of this along with gentilics formed with additives after the theta.

??

This is merely your assumption of such a "noun terminator".

Contemplate the place name Jebus, in LXX iebous, and a person from Jebus is a Jebusite, jebousaios. If it isn't even done with a final "s", why should you contemplate it with a final "t"? (The best you could hope for is the long vowel changing things somehow.)

All indications are that the Greeks working with Hebrew didn't see the language as containing declensional elements as found in Greek, so all suffixes seem to have been simply additive. Hence, one should expect nazarethnos rather than nazarhnos.

The Greeks contradict your hypothesis.

("-ianos" is a Latin structure. The choices are -aios, -hnos, -iths, etc.)

What's interesting is your restriction of your argument to the form principally found in Mark of the so-called gentilic, nazarhnos, whereas the most common form, nazwraios, with its long "stem" vowel, should be clear to you as not derivable with any subterfuge from Nazareth.


spin

Ted Hoffman

Lovely . Lovely. Thanks spin for that exposition on Nazareth :notworthy - it clarified several issues even for me.

Carrier had written earlier:
I think that you making the same mistakes CX made in the link I provided (probably his was worse because you readily recognized Cephas and Peter as not cognates).
The argument is that Paul only uses Cephas in Corinthians and does not interchange it with Peter. Cephas is a nickname, not a name. Same to Peter as we see in "Simon called Peter" (now, how did someone called Simon get to be called "the rock"?).
Gal 2:7-8 is an interpolation. The bottom line is that Cephas and Peter refer to two different people and all appearances to the contrary can be argued as interpolations (because it was assumed that Cephas automatically referred to Peter). Common sense also dictates that nick-names do not get interchanged.

This is how spin presented the argument:
You can follow the arguments here in case you have time.

Toto, I would request that you do not split this thread. There are a number of interested lurkers (who may find it hard to follow the branches) and since all these issues (sub-themes) impinge on Doherty's thesis in one way or another, I would suggest you leave them here (Doherty's theory covers many areas).
IMO, Carrier is the most significant critic of the mythicist hypothesis and since he is willing to tackle the matters arising, please let him tackle them here. I am sure interested people will plod through the large tracts of text and glean whatever is presented.

Ted Hoffman

Carrier:
What do you mean when you call Nazareth a town? It had no permanent structures, "no paved streets, no large permanent buildings, no synagogues. No evidence of public structures from the early Roman period" Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus, p.131-132

Archaeology and the majority of NT scholarship says Nazareth was at best a village with around 200 people in the first century - at least they (Crossan, Reed, Meier, M. Goguel, Wellhausen etc) argue that that is why its name doesn't appear in the OT, in Josephus and in the Talmud and is not heard of outside the gospels until the 3rd or fourth century. The putative Nazareth covered at most 4 hectares.

Luke of course claims Nazareth was a city. It is important to note that you have shown us where Nazareth is today - it has of course spread wide to the hills. What is pertinent is where Nazareth was in the first century. Franciscan fathers, who have inhabited the small putative area, indicate that it was in a sort of a basin surrounded by hills.

Meier writes that "Nazareth is situated in a basin within the hills of lower Galilee" (J.P. Meier, Marginal Jew, Vol I, p.301). Reed and Crossan state that Nazareth is “nestled in a bowl atop the Nazareth range.� (Reed Crossan, Excavating Jesus, p.32)

Btw, the second part of the response to Muller's critique is ready.

Ted Hoffman

My response comprises Carrier's core position, the ideas or assumptions that surround that position, the problems with Carrier's position wrt BBC, and then some specific responses to points made.

Carrier's formulation of Big Bang Christianity

1. An single event (E) took place in a specific place and time. This event could have been a revelation as we see in Romans 16:25-26 or an actual death of a man. This event lead to the belief that a saviour had recently died in a salvific act.

2. After event E, Christianity "begins with appearances of a risen Jesus [who died] under Pilate to Peter and (later) Paul". Christianity entailed belief that Christ died for the sins of believers and was buried and rose on the third day (1 Cor 15:3-5) and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve.*

3. All deviations from the basic tenets in (2) above occur after the start of Christianity (after a gap of as many as two whole generations) and are therefore branches of Christianity, or sects that adopted certain Christian beliefs and are thus dependent of Christianity. Those that do not adopt the elements of the basic creed in (2) above are not Christian.

IMO, the above formulates the key issues wrt Carrier's formulation of the BBC. The rest of the surrounding issues are not that important.

* I beg for Carrier's pardon in case his position is that Peter/Cephas started Christianity, and not Paul - my knowledge that Pauline epistles are the earliest Christian documents heavily influences my thinking here. Also, Carrier himself severally mentions Paul alongside Peter/Cephas thus I also treat them as tandem leaders of the newfangled movement. In succeeding posts, if he chooses, Carrier can choose to argue that Paul did not start Christianity.
But as we learn below, Luke's intention in Acts 18 for example, was to establish Paul as the sole founder of Christianity in Corinth and Ephesus. And Carrier argues that Acts contains some history. So maybe I should drop the apologetic nonsense and rip apart the argument

Related ideas

a) "Doherty's mystical thesis is not inconsistent with Big Bang Christianity"
b) Acts contains some historical information. The author of Luke-Acts appears to have intended it to be treated as a historical source, as opposed to the gospel of Luke. Reason being, among other things, where Acts has miraculous accounts, they can be attributed to naturalistic causes.
c) The singularity of BBC must be considered "because it is possible, because it fits all earlier evidence, because we have no clear evidence against it, because historical founders are the most common cause of historical movements (thus, qualified historicity at least of Cephas-as-founder has a higher prior probability)".
d) Documents like Odes of Solomon and Shepherd of Hermas do not contain historical references to Jesus/Christ because "that is not what" hymns do: they are not historical documents.
e) Documents like Ascension of Isaiah do not challenge BB Christianity because they do not assert that the predicted plan of God has already taken place and are therefore comparable to Daniel.
f) Since the author of Odes alludes to aa saviour who carried his cross, died, rose, and now forgives sins, the document was influenced by Christianity.
g) Acts precedes all other documents outside the NT except 1 Clement.
h) How Theophilus changed the meaning of Christian is irrelevant since he was fully aware of the movement began by Paul and Cephas. Because he is writing far too late, we can show that he knew Pauline Christianity "regardless of what he thought of it or did with it"
i) Most major movements typically begin with charismatic founders. This favours BB Christianity.

Problems with Carrier's Position

Post Hoc Framework

Carrier's position is one smartly presented and sweet-tasting post hoc fallacy. The post hoc fallacy entails assuming something to be the cause of an event merely because it happened before that event. Carrier's position can be summarized thus: "after the movement of Paul and gang, therefore because of the movement of Paul and gang". This is how Carrier interprets every available evidence after the putative event (E). If it refuses to dovetail with his set requirements, he declares it as non-Christian (thus Ascension of Isaiah is rendered non-Christian). He examines every text and every sect through this framework. And he drags the theoretical baggage like a parachute behind most of his interpretations of second century documents and sects.

To be sure, let me cite a glowing instance of this post hoc fallacy:
In short, Paul and gang had the monopoly of the idea that there was a man who died and resurrected and nobody else in early Palestine did. Those that did, and post-dated Paul and gang, are ipso facto, Christians or non-Christians influenced by the movement of Paul and gang.

But Carrier's idea, besides being nested in a post hoc fallacy, suffers several difficulties as I show below.

Carrier's Definition of Christianity is flawed because Paul *joined* and did not *start* Christianity

Carrier, quite unjustifiably, defines Christianity under the narrow confines of Romans 16:25-26 and 1 Cor 15:3-5. I argue that this is both arbitrary and inconsistent with what we know. Carrier's definition of Christianity appears consistent with Jewish Christianity, (which included sects like Ebionites, Elchasites, and Nazarenes) and Gnostic Christianity. Not (a) Marcionism (who believed Jesus' presence on earth was an illusion) and other sects I mention below. Lets look at the sects Carrier leaves out, who are not inspired by an event, a salvific death, or who believed Jesus had died and risen. But who, are still regarded by scholarship as early Christian sects.

Below, I show other cults that existed side by side with Paul's cult, or at least preceded it, or were independent of it.

Christian Cults Before Paul or Contemporaneous to Paul and gang

b) Preachers in Q

The preachers in the sayings source (Q) never refer to Jesus as "Christ" and there is no reference to any salvific act, death or resurrection. They have therefore been excluded by Carrier in his definition. He may argue that this is therefore not a Christian document, but the fact is that the Lost Sayings Gospel Q was used by the evangelists - at least (Matthew and Luke). And presumably contained sayings by a certain "teacher". The compilers of Q are regarded to have themselves been wandering apostles who existed side by side with early Christians like Paul and are deemed to have been the "super apostles" who confronted Paul in 2 Cor (11:1-6,12-15) or the apostles portrayed in Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Price calls them "a group of wandering apostles" (Deconstructing Jesus, p.49)

Both Price and Burton Mack agree that the resurrection may have been "a myth that fit the interests of some early Jesus groups but not others. It was the product of one faction of early Christianity, not the foundation of any sort of Christianity at all...The Jesus movement was already on the scene in another form, several other forms. And not only were those forms not resurrection-centered; they may not even have been all that Jesus-centered" ibid, p.56.

What this means is that Carrier needs to justify his idea that Christianity was necessarily Jesus-centered from the get go.

Carrier had said that the resurrection may have been a "novel idea of one sect and not something independently arrived at several times". But then, this is against his BBC because other forms of Christianity (non-Jesus centered, or with Jesus but no salvific acts in the past) preceded Paul, or at least existed contamporaneously to the Pauline sect.

This would push this putative "event"(E) further back before the times of Paul (Eisenmann, in James The Brother of Jesus pushed it (Essenism) back to the 3-4 cent BCE! [though Eisenmann's interpretation of the teacher of righteousness in the DSS has been challenged]). But where does this leave Carrier's BBC singularity?

c) Paul Joined an already existing Christian sect
It throws BBC into great jeopardy. Worse still, is the fact that Paul himself allegedly persecuted Christians before he converted to Christianity (Carrier has allowed in Acts as an exhibit). Paul joined an *existing* cult of Christians. He never *started* it as Carrier implies. This nullifies Carrier's definition of Christianity and also renders his argument of its inception incorrect.


And Jesus performed different roles depending on the faction. For example, in Jewish Christianity, JBap was subordinated to Jesus. Other sects that favored James the Just relegated Jesus to the status of James' forerunner. Origen had read a version of Josephus in which he said the people ascribed the fall of the city to punishment for the death of James the Just.

Price writes in his review of Robert Eisenman's James The Brother of Jesus: "Jesus would not have occupied a Christological centrality in the original context of an "Essenism" which eventually fragmented along the lines of factional loyalties to Jesus (Ebionite Christianity), John the Baptist (the Mandaean sect), and James the Just (the Qumran sect). For a similar scenario on Gentile soil see 1 Cor 1:12."

d) The sect of John
But lets go on with cults/ sects that Carrier excludes. Price, in Decon, writes regarding the Sect of John the Baptist: "a sect of John, attributing fasting and prayer customs to him, survived for many decades alongside Christianity, at least into the time of Matt and Luke". Mark 2:18 and Luke 3:15 allude to this sect. Mark 2:18 "And the disciples of John and those of the Pharisees were fasting, and they come and say to him, `Wherefore do the disciples of John and those of the Pharisees fast, and thy disciples do not fast?'" Other passages that show us that this cult existed alongside Christianity are Luke 11:1; John 1:6-7; 3:28-30; also Clem. Recog, 1.60.1.

e) Gnostic Christ cult
We also had the Gnostic Christ cult, who can be traced to Syrian gnosticism. Darrel Doughty writes this about them:
Thus we see movements whose start or mainstay was not triggered, or based on any specific event in local time or geographical region.

Until this point, I think I have falsified, or seriously challenged Carrier's central claim, which he also phrased as:
Since I believe that this post hoc rationalization is the linchpin of Carrier's challenge, I believe 90% of my work is therefore done.

Internal Inconsistency

It is important to note that Paul preached a risen Christ and used the OT and revelatory sources for his kerygma. He never mentioned Pilate or any local geographical event that compelled him to start preaching. Instead, we see an urgent sense of eschatology as in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. He never said Jesus taught anyone anything anywhere on earth. No miracles on earth, no Jerusalem incidents. Just sublunar death under the hands of the archotons and resurrection.

Carrier's hypothesis, would render Matt, Mk, and Lk (which come more than a decade after Pauline epistles) as branching factions from this original quasi-gnostic Christ cult started by Paul. Matt, Lk, and Mark would be factions of Pauline Christianity that fabriated historical events in Galilee and added them to Paul's ideas to create their own rich brand of Christology spiced with virgin birth, hydropatesis, and other Hellenistically appealing motifs. (Indeed Carrier makes an argument very much like this).

The problem with this is that it goes against NT scholarship that believe that the gospels are independent of Paul. Carrier would therefore have to jump over the hurdle he set, which was:
Does Carrier have evidence that the gospels are dependent on Paul? I doubt it. Carrier needs to decide on whether Paul started Christianity, or whether he found Cephas and gang had things rolling when he stumbled from his blinding epiphany.

Who were Cephas and Peter (conflate them at will), who allegedly preceded Paul in this movement?

Were they the Jerusalem Pillars? The only evidence we have of such a movement is from Acts.

How much can we rely on Acts? Is the reliability of Acts crucial to BBC?

Carrier claims that because miracles in Acts have been patted down and given a haircut, we should give Acts a break and treat it as having a historical core. Are understandable fabrications acceptable when juxtaposed with a baffling fabrications? Should an author be relied on when he only tells us "acceptable" miracles?

I maintain that the only sections of Acts that are to be accepted as historical are those that have been corroborated with external, independent sources. Doughty points out that "we can only perceive the historical significance of what Luke tells us when we understand what Luke is doing, and why". We cannot assume, on the basis of degree of supernaturalism of the events, that Luke is attempting to write history.


Darrel Doughty writes in his conclusion of Luke's Story of Paul in Corinth: Fictional History in Acts 18:
Fabricated history is still fiction as much as fabricated miracles. If we are to maintain that there must be a historical core because a story looks historical, then in the same way, the withered hands that get healed may be containing a historical core.

Paul and Silas Pray, an earthquake takes place. Prison doors open for them. Is this naturalistic enough?
A viper bites Paul and injects a whole fangful of venom. Paul shakes it off uselessly. This naturalistic enough?
A man who never walked since birth (thus atrophied limbs) suddenly develops muscles in his legs and walks. No therapy, no excercise. Very naturalistic.
Peter's mere shadow makes the lame walk, the demon posessed become sanitized etc. People bring out their sick to the streets and line them up so that Peter's shadow can fall on them. Acts 5:15-16. Very naturalistic.

I would like to ask Carrier, Is the reliability of Acts crucial to BBC?

After reading MacDonald's Luke's Eutychus and Homer's Elpenor: Acts 20:7-12 and Odyssey 10-12 , the conflicts between Paul's epistles and Acts and the we passages (in Pauline epistles, we see a prolific writer struggling to unify a divided Church. In Acts, the Church is not divided and no mention is made os Paul's letters), I am not persuaded that Acts was written to narrate history, but to create a history that served certain agendas. Doherty argues that Acts was fabricated to create an apostolic chain of authority frowing from Jesus, to the Apostles and to the early Church fathers.

Other than the clean-shaven, blue-eyed miracle argument that Carrier talks of, I would be glad if he could provide cogent reasons why Acts should be treated as having a historical core.

Other issues

Carrier appears to uncritically rely on Hippolytus as if he were a neutral source and not an apologist. Salmon Stahlin, for example, often found Hippolytus' arguments fanciful and overdone. If we are to accept Hippolytus as an authority on the source of doctrine of the Naasene sect, we may not reject Tertullian's diabolical mimicry without good reason. Hippolytus had an axe to grind and therefore we cannot just take his arguments as he presents them.

Argument (h) above flies in the face of logic. Theophilus was a Christian. I find it invalid to dismiss his beliefs regarding what it means to be a Christian so casually yet we have all those centuries between us and Theophilus. If that is how being Christian was defined, we have to accept that Theophilus' understanding differed from ours regarding what a Christian was. There is no known first or second century document that defines Christianity the way Carrier does. The bottom line is that, as opposed to what Carrier has argued, we had Christians who did not have belief in the salvific death of Jesus as central to their beliefs. Theophilus' exposition of resurrection without mentioning Jesus' alleged resurrection as an example of the phenomena he was talking about argues against the idea that being Christian entailed belief that Jesus died and resurrected.

Further, it defies logic to assume that Theophilus knew Pauline Christianity yet he doesn't mention ideas therefrom where expected. His presumed "knowledge" is trivial if he has a different, non-Pauline brand of Christianity.

Didache, Barnabas, the Egerton Gospel, Sophia of Jesus Christ and the Epistle of James do not appear to have been preceded by Acts as Carrier argues when he writes "Acts precedes all our other documents outside the NT, except perhaps 1 Clement, who also cites Paul and Peter as the movement's primary leaders and even refers to the letters of Paul".

Carrier writes regarding the Apocalypse of Adam : About the sect of Naaseni, he writes:
Similar sentiments are echoed wrt the other documents I cited.

Note that Carrier assumes that the sect he refers to as "Christians" (Paul, Peter and gang) had monopoly (or copyright) over the use of "Jesus" and the earthly salvific act and therefore, all other sects that clearly use the same ideas have ipso facto borrowed those ideas from Christianity.

This is an assumption. It is possible but it is not proven and we have no reason to believe it.

This is the logic he employs:
If it preceded Peter Paul and gang, it is not Christian. It may have inspired Christianity, but it is not Christian.
If it is post Peter Paul and gang, and contains ideas of a saviour dying on earth, it is Christian (influenced by Christianity) even if it does not say so.
If it post-dates Peter Paul and is being used by Christians, but doesn't contain ideas of a saviour dying on earth for salvific purposes, it is still not Christian for example Odes of Solomon and Ascension of Isaiah which, Carrier writes "the Ascension of Isaiah, which is again just a prophetic vision of the future. So these things could and probably did pre-date Christianity"

I think Carrier needs to remove Pilate from the requirement because Paul doesn't mention Pilate in his epistles. Carrier also needs to decide what and where this event (E) was, so that the argument can be adequately examined. Otherwise, it is like arguing against a hypothetical.

Jacob Aliet

Amaleq13

I believe Mr. Carrier does not assume a recent death but only recent appearances per Paul's testimony in 1Cor 15.

[added later]

"...the movement that became the modern Church is clearly an evolution of the movement that began with the appearances under Pilate to Peter and Paul and gang. It began with a singular event, in a singular place, within a singular sect."

Ted Hoffman

This is for Amaleq
Carrier:
It is not about what Carrier believes, but his arguments wrt Christians. As you can see, Mr. Carrier does assume a recent death but also recent appearances. Remember Carrier's BBC allows both mythicism and a HJ. But he faults Doherty's many-to-one and argues instead for a BBC - whether it is mythicist or historical Jesus is secondary to the issue. (Carrier also argues sometimes that we cannot know - but thinks BBC is more likely)

What is at issue is whether many-to-one or BBC is more correct.

Amaleq13

I'm sure he will clarify but nothing in your quote seems to me to require the death to be recent. The claims of Peter are recent and the appearances are recent but, if I'm understanding Mr. Carrier correctly, nothing in Paul's letters requires an assumption that the death was either recent or even on earth. That is why he finds Doherty's thesis to be consistent with the evidence but not necessarily required to explain it.

Ted Hoffman

I was also just thinking: Christianity is a composite movement whose direction was determined by the political powers in the third century (Constantine, Eusebius etc). It was not the creation of a single cult out of a multiplicity of cults.

Carrier's reductionist and selective approach, which narrows down Christianity to a few beliefs at the exclusion of all others, both diminishes Christianity's heritage, while at the same time fails to recognize that the cult that won, won not because it was the genuine Christian cult, or the only cult, but because it found favour in the eyes of political powers at the time, at the exclusion of the rest.

Once that cult became orthodox, it branded the rest heresies and they were decisively stamped out as Marcion was, or simply engulfed.

Ted Hoffman

I was reading Christopher Tuckett, Q and Early Christianity, 1996, and found the following which I found relevant to the discussion, especially with respect to Carrier's definition of "Christians". What is notable in scholarly trends is that there is consensus that early Christianity was characterised by a rich diversity (Tuckett). Doherty uses the expression "riotous diversity". Indeed, Theissen and Merz (The Historical Jesus) characterize Jesus as one of the wandering Charismatics. Tuckett writes that Burton Mack and Jacobson have questioned the notion of Q being called 'Christian'and have argued that Q is not a Christian document. (Jacobson, First Gospel,2,32, Mack, Lost Gospel, 4f.,48,245.)

But the argument depends on the definition of 'Christian'.

Tuckett notes: "As is recognized now as standard critical orthodoxy, first-century Christianity was characterized by a rich diversity. Precisely what constitutes the essential nature of the unity in that diversity which qualifies one part as clearly 'Christian' is by no means clear. Jacobson gives no definition. Mack implies one negatively by clarifying the assertion that 'the people of Q were not Christians' as follows:
Lost Gospel,4-5

But on this basis, several NT figures may fail the test as well! How far does Matthew think of Jesus as an indictment of Judaism (as opposed to some Jews?) Does Luke regard Jesus' death as a 'saving event'? How many early Christians 'honoured[Jesus] as a god'?"

Tuckett himself defines Christians as "the group of people who regarded Jesus positively". A group that can be regarded as "Jesus Followers". He deems it as reasonable to assume that, "at least for some Christians, the content of Jesus-tradition in Q was regarded as still valid" p.108

Based on Tuckett's assesment therefore, the Q community can be regarded as Christians even though they do not conform to Carrier's definition.

Carrier's definition of Christianity, which is quintessentially orthodox (confined to the canon), and his acceptance of the historical facade of Acts, IMO, is contrary to what I have in the past perceived as the historian's approach. Acts was an effort "to define an orthodoxy" as Fredricksen puts it. Clearly, with the miracles in Acts and the unity portrayed between Paul and the rest of the apostles, Acts can be seen as a document that was meant to lend legitimacy to the flavour of Christianity propounded by Paul and the other nick-named individuals. In essence, Acts conflated Pauline Christianity and the NT and at the same time fabricated an apostolic chain of authority. This is not just Doherty's idea. Fredricksen echoed these same notions.

Fredricksen writes:
From Jesus to Christ,1988, p.6-7