Roland

I understand why Bbile literalists accept the fact of an historic Jesus. But what compels skeptics and unbelievers to do so?

Every single account we have of the man's life - starting with GMark - includes all the fantastic details that common sense would tell us didn't happen. It isn't as if we have earlier stories of some itinerant Galilean preacher named Jesus sans all the miracles and fantastic accounts. My question, then, is on what basis can we accept any of this as fact when all the accounts we have are already so littered with obviously fictional elements? Isn't it more logical to assume that perhaps the whole thing were fiction to begin with?

Toto

I agree with you. But the Historical Jesus was a construction largely of Deists and Freethinkers (like Thomas Jefferson) who took the gospels and pared away the supernatural aspects. They apparently wanted to create a rational religion, and felt some need for historical and cultural continuity - as if without some tie to their past, they would be lost.

If you are interested in how it all happened, I recommend The Human Christ by Charlotte Allen. The book is marred somewhat by her neo-conservative Catholic biases, but contains a wealth of material. I reveiwed it here

WinAce

Historical methodology?

So throw those out or explain them away if you want. Lots of other historical people have myths surrounding them. The Roman emperor Vespassian once cured a blind man with his spit, if we're to believe three independent historians.

Nevertheless, it's fairly obvious they grew in the retelling when one compares Mark to latter sources. Why not extrapolate that process of myth-building backwards until you hit rock bottom?

Crucifixion was a horrific embarrasment in the Roman world. Given that, does Christianity make more sense as (1) something one would actually go and invent or (2) a plausible ad hoc rationalization for the embarrasing death of a real cult leader?

How many examples of mythic gods being mistaken for historical figures do we have, anyway? We have lots of demonstrable examples of historical figures starting cults, on the other hand. That alone should give a mythicist pause.

capnkirk

Perhaps I can begin to answer your question.

First we need to define what we mean by "historical Jesus". There is such a tradition conjoining Jesus and Christ as the same entity that most people today from Xtian scholars to laymen use the term interchangeably. This is the source of much confusion. Worse, it tends to blind theist and atheist alike to any separation of the two. So, for argument's sake, let's arbitrarily separate the two; let's refer to the Historical Jesus as "HJ" and to the historical Christ as "HC".

Your arguments above refer to the existence of HC. I wholehartedly agree with your conclusion that the HC of the gospels is a "redactive fiction" (I will explain that term momentarily.).

Does the fiction of an HC preclude the existence of a HJ? Not necessarily. Hyam Maccoby's book, The Mythmaker, Paul and the Invention of Christianity presents a compelling case for a HJ who was a conventional (i.e. exclusively human) Jesus messianic candidate. Maccoby is a Jewish Talmudic scholar, so there is no Xtian apologism to get in the way here. In the Jewish lexicon, the promised messiah was a human claimant to a throne, not a divine world savior. His exegesis of the gospels demonstrates both the existence of a HJ that has been systematically (but imperfectly) buried under the pens of later Xtian editors, and the chronological context of the editorial process.

There is a theological chasm between Pharisaic Judaism and Xtianity. So, how did the two become conjoined? Maccoby points to Saul/Paul. He lays his foundation by clarifying just who the Pharisees and Sadducees actually were, and they are quite different from their depiction in the NT. He identifies the Pharisees as the antecedents of contemporary rabbis; as the local judges, teachers, and interpreters of scripture, and generally biased in favor of the middle and peasant classes. The Sadducees, OTOH, were the wealthy Priests, the Sons of Aaron, who ran the Temple in Jerusalem. From the time of (the decidedly pro-Roman) Herod the Great onward, The Priests were appointed by Herod and were hired and fired like administrative assistants. As such they were Roman quislings, required to protect the interests of the Roman occupation. They were to squelch any perceived threat to Roman (or Herodian) interests. Any Jewish messiah candidate definitely fit this description.

Now comes Saul, a Gentile (god-fearer) from pagan Tarsus. The High Priest hires him to persecute the followers of HJ because they were perceived as just such a political threat. The reason that HJ was not included was because by the time Saul arrives, HJ has already been executed. Saul pursues his assigned work with a zeal for several years. But, because of his pagan upbringing, the stories he hears of a resurrected Jesus have resonances that are completely alien to Judaism. Finally, on the road to Damascus to kidnap and return certain unnamed Nazarenes, Saul's internal conflict is "resolved" in a cathartic visionary episode wherein he "recognizes" this resurrected Jesus as an incarnation of the divine, dying-and-resurrected, sacrificial savior figures of his childhood!! At this instant Xtianity is born.

Paul begins his missionary outside Judea in the very Hellenized Jewish enclaves in (modern day) Greece and Turkey. Some of these enclaves had been separated from Jerusalem for 500+ years and were very familiar with the abovementioned "mystery god cults" and welcomed Paul's JC as both the fulfillment of OT prophesy and reconciliation with the individual salvation motif of the mystery gods. Soon cross pollination with Gentile neighbors swelled the ranks of Pauline followers.

Meanwhile back in Jerusalem, HJ's disciples had formed a synagogue where they (while maintaining a low-profile) and their followers waited for HJ's return. When Paul finally returns to Jerusalem, there begins an ever-escalating quarrel with the leaders of this group (somewhat inaccurately referred to in Acts as The Jerusalem 'Church' (TJC)). The quarrel comes to a head when Paul returns a second time and is accused of "abrogating the Torah" (i.e. preaching a NEW religion separate from and largely anththetical to Judaism). The rupture is complete when they find that Paul is a Roman citizen!

Somewhere between 20 and 70 years later Paulist Xtian leaders begin to write/rewrite the first of the Synoptic gospels GMark, revising the surviving oral tradition of HJ into HC. By this time, the second Jewish war is over, the Temple has been destroyed, and most of the Jerusalem hierarchy killed or exiled, including TJC. About ten years later, GMatt and GLuke are similarly redacted, only more radically. Still later, another Paulist writes the book of Acts, where he presents a pretty tendentious version of Paul's quarrel with TJC and its aftermath. Finally, after the third and final Jewish war, GJohn is written, by this time the deification of HJ is so well established that HJ is completely unrecognizable.

This is the briefest synopsis of the thesis of Mythmaker demonstrating how the life of a plain ol' human Jewish messiah candidate was usurped and used to create a new religion by deification after the fact, how the gospels were redacted to give a different foundation for Paul's epiphany, and how two redically different religious traditions became conjoined.

I hope you find this helpful.

Gawen

...If this is so, why would they kill a potential king? It doesn't matter if his name was Jesus, Christ Jesus or Frank. If the man existed, most Jews of the time would have been looking forward to the prophecy fulfilled. If the Sadducees (backed by Herod and the Romans) are the answer to this, this is quite a conspiracy. And yet, maybe not. A no-name Jewish Rabbi gets crucified. Big deal. There was no real threat to Herod or the Sadducees anyway, and what little threat there may have been is now gone. But enter Paul...who suddenly sees a prophetic claimant to a throne as a redeemer of sins?...a saviour? That sounds as if his conscience finally got the best of him. But why Jesus? If it is in fact the same Rabbi of no repute crucified years ago.
The Essene version is rather different. I wonder how Maccoby deals with this?
...This part I do not understand. Are you saying that Paul comes back and argues with those that saw the 'resurrected' Jesus and are waiting for his return? If so, how could Paul have a leg to stand on when he fights with those that SAW rather than were given a revelation?

capnkirk

One of the redactive requirements of transforming a HJ into JC is to change HJ from a political threat to the Romans into a religious threat to the Jewish status quo (as Paul's JC certainly was). This in turn requires that the responsibility for his execution is likewise shifted from the Romans to the Jewish religious leaders. When you identify "they" in light of this, I think that the answer becomes clear. The Romans executed HJ.

Quote:

It doesn't matter if his name was Jesus, Christ Jesus or Frank. If the man existed, most Jews of the time would have been looking forward to the prophecy fulfilled.

You are absolutely correct; the Jewish "underclasses" desperately wanted and needed a messiah. It was the upper classes that would lose their power.

Quote:

If the Sadducees (backed by Herod and the Romans) are the answer to this, this is quite a conspiracy. And yet, maybe not. A no-name Jewish Rabbi gets crucified. Big deal. There was no real threat to Herod or the Sadducees anyway, and what little threat there may have been is now gone.

There are several points to clarify here. First, you are on the right track. Jesus was not the only messianic candidate to come along. There were no less than five others between 4 BCE and 135 CE. Some led military insurgencies, and they got not only themselves, but hundreds (or thousands) killed with them. THEY made the history books. At least one other was non-violent, like HJ, who took very few with him. HJ's non-violent motif (He anticipated a miracle from God to defeat the Romans.) is what most likely kept his disciples from also being executed with him. This is also why he didn't make any particular splash in the record either. So, no conspiracy; to the Romans and the Sadducees the potential threat was sufficient. Just another insurgent executed by Rome.

Quote:

But enter Paul...who suddenly sees a prophetic claimant to a throne as a redeemer of sins?...a saviour? That sounds as if his conscience finally got the best of him. But why Jesus? If it is in fact the same Rabbi of no repute crucified years ago.

At some time soon after the execution, the High Priest hired Saul and others to continue to persecute HJ's followers, some of which were pretty activist (like the group led by (the martyred) Stephen). This puts Saul in direct contact with HJ's followers. I think that the impetus of Paul's "rconversion" was his conscience, at least partly. I would speculate that Saul came to Jerusalem with the dream of becoming a Pharisee, but lacked the necessary foundational training. Rather like the proverbial 20 year old girl that leaves Smalltown, KS for Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star, only to end up a hooker or a porn queen, Saul ended up a hired thug doing essentially police work for the High Priest. By virtue of his 'Damascus road experience', instead of being a hireling of a quisling High Priest, he now saw himself as a historically significant person – he who had persecuted the dying and resurrected god and who, by his very guilt could switch to the antithetical role of that god’s chief acolyte. This sudden change from utter sinfulness to utter release and sinlessness became the motif of the new religion which he began to develop from the vision which had marked him out from all mankind (see Galatians 1:10-17).

Quote:

The Essene version is rather different. I wonder how Maccoby deals with this?

Clues from their writings identify the Essenes as a Sadducee faction that had removed themselves from the mainstream of society because their conviction that the Temple had been corrupted by the practices of the preceding 150-200 years. They formed their own hermetic community where they lived by the old purity laws, and waited for "the messiah" and the apocalypse that would follow. They apparently considered HJ to be just another "failed" claimant.

Quote:

...This part I do not understand. Are you saying that Paul comes back and argues with those that saw the 'resurrected' Jesus and are waiting for his return? If so, how could Paul have a leg to stand on when he fights with those that SAW rather than were given a revelation?

Paul claimed that his personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus, gained through visions and transports, was actually superior to acquaintance during his lifetime when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes, thus giving himself higher authority than the Apostles. He didn't argue with them, he conned them...for a while. The underlying fact is that Paul doesn't want to supersede Judaism, he wants to transform it. He NEEDS the tacit approval of TJC, and is willing to misrepresent himself to them to do it. Though he succeeds for a while, he ultimately fails. Unfortunately there isn't space here to provide the details.

GakuseiDon

I'd always thought that Paul was a Jew. I've never heard of anyone suggesting he was a God-fearer. Is there any hard evidence for that? It would certainly explain a lot.

capnkirk

The answer to your question requires some exegesis, which I will relate to you briefly.

Paul makes a number of claims at different times. In his letters, he claims to be a Pharisee and to have been born a Jew, but Maccoby asserts that these are claims Paul made to increase his stature and improve his credibility with those he was trying to convert. In Acts, Paul is described as being from Tarsus (a Pagan city), and later to having been "born a Roman citizen".

Some of these claims are mutually exclusive, like being born a Jew and being born a Roman citizen, or being a Pharisee and being a Roman citizen. The latter is undoubtedly closer to the truth, because Paul is able to convince the Roman authorities that he is in fact "now" a Roman citizen (his citizenship was most likely 'bought'), and to convince them sufficiently to grant him his right as a Roman citizen to have a trial before Caesar.

His claim to be a Pharisee taught by Gamaliel (the Chief Pharisee) is equally suspect because Pharisee training begins during youth, and there were almost certainly no Pharisee teachers in Tarsus. If Saul was a Jew growing up in Tarsus, then he was an extremely Hellenized one. And most importantly, Pharisees did not work as hired thugs for the High Priest. About the only thing left is that Saul was the son of "god-fearing" parents in Tarsus, and that he went to Jerusalem as a grown man.

Amaleq13

capnkirk,


As you know, I've just started reading Maccoby but it seems to me that the most crucial point as far as HJ vs MJ is concerned, is the claim that TJC held such different beliefs than Pauls. I agree that, if one can make a conclusive or at least compelling argument that they believed Jesus to have been the "standard" Messiah, the mythical argument loses credibility. My understanding is that Maccoby relies heavily on the GEbionites for this claim. I'll have to read his justification for considering that to be such a reliable source.

If an "extremely Hellenized" Jew might be capable of developing Paul's expressed beliefs, why not a group of Jews originally from rural Galilee? Would not Sepphoris (sp?) have represented as much a Hellenistic influence as Tarsus?

capnkirk

Tarsus was a city in far southeastern Turkey where temples had been erected to pagan gods (the ones I described) and where majestic pageants were celebrated in the streets worshipping them. No one (not even Crossan in Excavating Jesus) which describes the archaeology done in Sepphoris, Tiberius, Nazareth, Capernaum, and other northern Galilee sites makes any mention of finding even one site of pagan worship there. The dominant Jewish majority would not have tolerated it.

When I speak of Hellenization, I speak of the influences that Jews abroad in places like Corinth, were subjected to by virtue of being a tiny minority, generations removed from their ethnic homeland, in a culture saturated with Greek mysticism and Neo-Platonism. A reasonable metaphorical equivalent would be like saying, for them Judaism had become a second language, and they 'spoke' it with a pronounced accent.