Rick Sumner

Writes Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, p75):

I must wonder whether Doherty might be guilty of some anachronism--it would be worthy of veneration in today's world, I'm not sure it would be then.

The closest parallel to Jesus in this regard that I can think of is the Teacher of Righteousness. Nobody saw artifacts linked to him as worthy of veneration either. But, if Doherty is correct, they certainly should have.

Are there any roughly parallel characters--Holy men or great leaders--roughly contemporary in time and place to Jesus whose artifacts *did* become venerated?

In either event--whether there were or not--the complete absence of veneration for artifacts linked to the Teacher of Righteousness among his followers renders the argument moot--utilizing it leads to false conclusions. People could and did neglect to venerate historical figures.

Regards,
Rick

Toto

I think a better analogy would be Apollonious of Tyana.

Carrier on Kooks and Quacks

And there are certainly relics of the Buddha

edited to add: The Teacher of Righteousness is a shadowing figure from our standpoint, only known through some recently discovered documents. Do you actually know that there were no relics that his followers venerated?

And why do you think that Christians suddenly started venerating relics in the 4th century? Was there a substantial change in Christianity at that point?

Rick Sumner

Why is he better? The Teacher is 1) Jewish 2) Deified by Jews 3) Had a Jewish movement carry on after his death.

That's not to say that Appolonius isn't a good analogy, just that he's not a better one than the ToR.

But it doesn't matter. The method only needs to lead to one false conclusion to be a questionable approach. It has led to a false conclusion regarding the Teacher. Once it has led to a false conclusion, there is no reason to believe it won't do so again.

Besides which, the example you gave isn't what I asked for. It's not a question of whether shrines were built, it's a question of whether artifacts he touched, places he visited, were venerated. Appolonyus argues for me, not against. There doesn't appear to be any competing among his sects for a cup he drank from, or clothes he wore, or a fervor to see places he visited either.

The Buddha doesn't work, because it's not contemporary in time and place, which is what I asked for.

The same way Doherty actually knows that no Christians venerated objects linked to Jesus--nobody writes of any. The same standard needs to be applied in both cases.

I don't propose to know.

Regards,
Rick

[Ed. to fix HTML]

Layman

I do not know how sudden it was, but I suspect Constantine and the arrival of Christianity as a state sponsored religion might have had something to do with it.

Also, perhaps a shift from the expectant end of the world to a hope for establishing a kingdom on Earth might have played a related factor.

I've always thought that this line of Doherty's argument is just silly.

Vorkosigan

I never thought it was a silly argument. When you think of the pilgrammages to places like Graceland. Look how quickly Lourdes became a pilgramage site after the alleged visions of the Virgin there. The Shroud of Turin has been the object of an uninterrupted flow of marks -- er-- believers, since it appeared. It isn't his strongest argument, but nevertheless, it is an interesting and suggestive one.

Well, three times a year, Jews made pilgrimages to Jerusalem for festivals there. It is hard to imagine that if the site of Jesus' execution was known, it would not have become a major place of veneration.

Vorkosigan

Rick Sumner

And this is tough to refute--Jews did venerate tombs. But that just indicates, as Kirby notes in his article, that they didn't know where he was buried.

Doherty takes it a step farther than that, and indicates that we should expect people to venerate artifacts, to lay their head where Jesus did, to stand where Jesus stood.

But Jews didn't do that for anyone else--at least not on record. So why would Jesus be the exception? In fact, as near as I can discern, nobody in the region did that for anyone else. It would seem, thus, that placing that expectation on Jesus is an anachronism. Kinda like your Graceland analogy. People do that now--by all appearances, they didn't then.

The point is that the argument places an expectation that, at the very least, frequently isn't met in other, similar circimstances. The expectation, thus, is unreasonable.

Regards,
Rick

Vorkosigan

Quite. But what are the implications of that?

Hmm... tell me about the original Tomb of David. Doesn't Peter mention it in Acts? I would say that implies something....Dio Cassius says the Jews venerated the Tomb of Solomon.

"early the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities?(Dio Cassius, Annals 5.69.14.2)."

Case closed, Rick.

>shrug< Obviously not.

Vorkosigan

Toto

Relics

This source claims that The early exception being the Ark of the Covenant. But this neglects the current Jewish attention to the Wailing Wall, the last remnant of the Temple.

I think that the tendency to collect mementos and souvenirs is so ingrained in humans that its absense must be explained. Perhaps the early Christians were so convinced of the immanent end of the world that they didn't collect relics, and any hope of finding them was lost in 70 CE or at least after the Bar Kochba rebellion. Perhaps they inherited the Jewish aversion to relics (but not the Jewish attention to tombs.)

The argument is not completely convincing by itself, but it is part of a pattern of missing evidence.

Rick Sumner

If it's such an ingrained notion, we should expect to see other people of the era doing so. If it's part of "a pattern of missing evidence," you should have no problem showing me why we should be surprised that it's not there, by referring to patterns of behavior from that era and location.

If there are other, similar figures for whom such evidence is non-existent, then the evidence isn't missing--there's no reason to set the bar higher for Jesus, particularly on this point, where we do have reasonable points of comparison.

It is certainly not, as Doherty contends, "perhaps the single strongest argument." In fact, I'd venture it's not an argument at all--Jesus is in good company. More than enough good company that any such demand for venerated artifacts is wholly unjustified.

Regards,
Rick

Rick Sumner

The implications of them not knowing where the tomb is? There are none. Odds are good that there was no tomb in the first place, the entire story is an apologetic--the rise of which is easily explainable with an historical Jesus. It really doesn't lend credence one way or the other.

I just said they venerated tombs. Doherty's case, however, is not built on tombs. Re-read the quote. It's built on the absence of venerated artifacts. Here's the full list:

The other point Doherty neglects to mention is that, even if we allow Doherty's conclusion--that there was no Jesus--using the same logic we should still expect to see fake venerated objects appearing well before the fourth century. But we don't. It doesn't do anything to help his case.

Regards,
Rick