Chris Weimer

Critically analyzing what I believe? Tell me, Spanky, what do I believe? How do you know I haven't critically analyzed it?

Toto

Sorry to say that I also do not have the time to read the entire post. IIRC Doherty thinks that the docetists were half way between mythicism and historicism. If that is so, attacks on docetism could be viewed as attacks on mythcism, or what remained of it in the second century.

Layman

This is rather circular and fails to meet, seriously, any point made by Kevin's article.

Toto

Still without having read and digested this entire article -

Is it correct to say that this is an argument from silence? That Kevin Rosero assumes that if there had been a belief in a celestial Jesus, that it would have been attacked vehemently as a heresy, and that we would have some evidence of that in surviving manuscripts?

Do we have evidence of all heresies? More importantly, do we have accurate representations of them in surviving manuscripts?

Chris Weimer

...around we go. There's no evidence for Jesus mythicism, except for docetism, which only in the light of Jesus mythicism it is mythicistic. Around and...

Toto

So is there more evidence for Jesus or for Jesus mythicism?

Clivedurdle

Excuse me, but is not Ignatius clearly showing here that he believes in ghosts, but this time a fleshy ghost? I think until the enlightenment all that happened was that this god Jesus was accepted to be fleshy, and he was only historicised quite recently - when we stopped believing in ghosts and spirits and daimons. Martin Luther quite clearly believed in this spiritual world interacting with this one, all the stories of zeus etc are about interactions between gods and man - a change of scene from the heavens to the earth was never a problem, in fact everyone probably saw it as a good idea - snag is that was all it was. The fact that there are clear symbols pf theatre all over the place makes this Chinese whisper process even more plausible, as the lead character in some mystery plays is thought to be representing someone real - like Hercules.

krosero

I'm still feeling poorly but I'm going to try to say something.

It is correct to say that this is an argument from silence. The argument that I'm making, I made in embryonic form in my review of the Jesus Puzzle at Amazon, and that is what I called it there. I also said in that review, as I do in my OP here, that Doherty's arguments from silence are not invalid simply for being arguments from silence; they're valid.

You ask whether I assume that the heresy will appear in the historical record. I don't. I may have expectations, one way or another, about what should be mentioned in the historical record, and how it should be mentioned -- but I am prompted by the record itself. Other heresies are mentioned, which makes it very valid to ask, If this is mentioned, why not this?

You ask if we have evidence of all heresies, and whether they're accurately described. Well, Doherty himself holds that the celestial Christ was correctly identified by 1 John and Ignatius (inevitably, since they were contemporary opponents of the original Christians). That is not what prompts me, of course, to say that the heresy should have been identified, but it is Doherty's model we are testing.

No doubt, the proto-orthodox and the later heresiologists got many things wrong about their opponents, but no one doubts today that there really were people who claimed that Jesus was not made of real flesh; or that he was not the same being as Christ; or that he was not divine and merely adopted; etc. Again, that is my standard: if something is described and accepted widely as actually existing, then why is the other thing not described (for 1 John and Ignatius do not positively describe the celestial Christ at all, as Doherty himself would acknowledge), but still asserted as actually existing?

Now it's possible to say that the orthodox got everything wrong. In that case, all things are possible, and any doctrine could have existed in the past, without any ability on our part to test claims (I'm not saying that this is your position, Toto, just thinking out loud).

You ask whether there is more evidence for Jesus or for Jesus mythicism, but I cannot properly compare the two arguments from silence with someone who is not yet fully familiar with the the current argument from silence in the OP.

In fact, I know that I can't direct the conversation; and anyone can insist on any issue they like; but I really would prefer to see this argument from silence discussed thoroughly (and for people to get a chance to read and digest the OP) before any comparison is made. Doherty's argument from silence has been discussed endlessly, and many answers have been given in response to it; now this one needs to be discussed thoroughly, and answers given and tested, before an effective comparison can be made.

I am going to insist on that.

Here's some questions to get the ball rolling, for both TOTO and Gregg.

What is the difference between:

suffered in the flesh
died in the flesh
came in the flesh

How does Doherty know that the last one is the expression of a community that believed Jesus to have come down to earth, while the others are the expression of a community that believed that Jesus never came to earth? I mean, specifically, what tells us that?

Kevin

Ben C Smith

One may also ask, I think, where we should have the greater expectation that the silence would have been broken. Should we expect the silence on an historical Jesus to be broken in occasional writings such as the Pauline epistles (for example)? Or should we rather expect the silence on a mythical-Christ cult to be broken in the extensive and ordered catalogues assembled by the heresiologists? Which set of writings was more clearly intended to be exhaustive, at least to some extent?

And it turns out that silence on an historical Jesus is broken now and then in the Pauline epistles. Is silence on the Christ myth broken in the heresiologies?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

That is a very, very good question. I for one would like to know the answer, if anyone has it.

Ben.