Robert Tulip

Hello again Horation, and thank you for continuing this discussion on the philosophical issues arising from Doherty's analysis in Jesus Neither God Nor Man.

No, I did not say there is no intelligible universe. My view is that there is one universe, and it is intelligible to science. This is an idea at the foundation of Western logic that goes back to the Pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides of Elea. It is an obvious axiom, but Parmenides observed that understanding it becomes difficult as soon as we try to explain the distinction between appearance and reality.

Some readers may see this material as tangential, but in fact the relation between the intelligible and the sensible is central to the debate over Christ as myth. Mythicist writers including Earl Doherty, Freke and Gandy, and Acharya S, show that the idea of Christ as Logos was originally purely intelligible, but the ignorant public were only able to cope with the sensible, ie with things that could be explained in material historical terms, so the intelligible essence steadily evolved a 'sensible' myth which subsequently took over and suppressed its logical origin.

The technical terms 'intelligible' and 'sensible' have strong cultural loading. Modern empirical assumptions equate them with each other, for example in the idea that unintelligible views are nonsensical. This cultural debate about the meaning of ideas was already strong in Plato's day.

In his dialogue The Sophist, Plato compares the effort to make sense of the world to a battle between giants and Gods, in which the difficulties of philosophy are discussed in terms of the quarrel between materialism and idealism. The giants "define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word", while on the other side the Gods "are very wary in defending their position somewhere in the heights of the unseen, maintaining with all their force that true reality consists in certain intelligible and bodiless Ideas" (246b). What the giants "allege to be true reality, the Gods do not call real being, but a sort of moving process of becoming" (246c).

Plato believed that both these ways of thought - the idealism of logic and the materialism of observable appearance - had something important to offer, but he attacked the materialists for being violent and uncivilised (246d) and for thinking that "whatever they cannot squeeze between their hands is just nothing at all" (247c). He says, "it is quite enough for our purposes if they consent to admit that even a small part of reality is bodiless", arguing that this must be admitted in the case of qualities of the soul like "justice and wisdom or any other sort of goodness or badness" (247b).
Lets not get into a debate here on the reality of numbers, an enormous and old central problem in philosophy. I would simply refer you to the book Is God a Mathematician by Mario Livio which explores the debate between Platonists who consider mathematics is discovered and non-Platonists who argue numbers are invented. What is relevant here is that the Platonic view that numbers are real is not comprehended by non-Platonists, just as the view that Christ is pure idea is not comprehended by the ignorant multitude.Your phrases "dual nature" and "higher, more profound reality" again bring a chink of ambiguity. Modern science holds there is one natural reality which is comprehended by intelligence. The physical world is intelligible. It is epistemically wrong to imagine a separate "intelligible" world, as in the degraded Aristotelian critique of Platonic idealism as the 'theory of forms'. There is one reality, which can be accurately comprehended by intelligent logic or uncertainly apprehended by sensible perception. Plato's eye metaphor recognises that people have immense difficulty with logic, and have to assimilate it to everyday sensation.Lets check what I actually said. My paragraph about parables which Horatio has helpfully quoted above does not include the statement Horatio has attributed to me, which is just his paraphrase, and which I agree makes no sense. I would prefer to respond to comments about what I actually said, rather than a paraphrase. I do not contend that scriptural description "somehow removes archetypes from a wholly intelligible existence." Apologies if I gave that impression. It is understandable, since the traditional Christological agenda of hypostatic union between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history has the objective of showing that the eternal archetype is incarnate in the world as a single kenotic reality. Classical thought is diverse, as Earl has also noted. The fact is we have one universe, and it is physical. Appearances conflict, but reality is one. Your statement about chaos is highly cryptic, and conflicts with many classical views, not least John's claim that in the beginning was the word.Thanks again Horatio for responding on this material, which I think is rarely discussed. There is a Wittgensteinian agenda here of clearing away the underbrush to enable clarity. I find that people often leap to assumptions in discussing such topics, so it is valuable to have courteous, patient and forgiving effort to approach mutual understanding.

Your definition of myths and parables as dramatic representations of abstract ideas is helpful. However, considering it against the definition I gave above of myths as stories that give meaning to our lives, we can see that the path from abstract idea (eg the sun gives life) to dramatic representation (Christ gives life) has memetic twists that are lost in the mists of cultural evolution. There is not a simple direct mapping between idea and representation. The Christ Myth is polyvalent and slippery. Getting a handle on its intelligible essence requires careful analysis.

mountainman

The Christ myth is entangled with the Chrest myth. The archaeology seems to suggest that the Chrestians evolved into Christians. Careful analysis of this aspect is also required.

mountainman

Well I did state "appears to see" and that this apparent inflexibility may change. I am guided by this feedback but I remain wary of the historical J dogma, especially when it is coupled with scathing attacks on MJ positions. The question whether GDon actually understands Earl's (or for that matter Acharya S etc) position remains for me open but doubtful.

Robert Tulip

My view is that there is a steady slow perceptible evolution towards the full incarnate deal.

Early indications include the Indian Krishna, the Egyptian term Karast for anointing the mummy, and the abundant mentions of anoint (Christ) and Saviour (Joshua) in the Septuagint to socialise the concept of Jesus Christ as anointed saviour. We also have the early Gnostic idea from Numbers of the snake on a pole, origin of the Mithraic God Aion and the cosmic symbol of Christ on the cross as noted just before John 3:16.

By the time of Philo, the Greek idea of Logos (cosmic reason) from Heraclitus and Plato is more developed as an ordering principle for the world. Serapis had deliberately combined Egyptian and Greek Gods, and all that was still needed was to add the Mosaic story into the mix.

This syncretism was expanded by Paul. My view is that Paul wrote in the first century. I agree with Elaine Pagels' argument in The Gnostic Paul that the Epistles were created to be read at two levels, by initiates and newcomers. I don't think the Epistles reference a historical Jesus. I see them as a syncretic cultic expression dating from before the Roman destruction of the temple.

The real invention point of the historical Jesus comes with the Gospel of Mark, which I see as a fictional response to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem written by Jewish refugees living in Alexandria, piling midrash upon Serapis. The point, paraphrasing Voltaire, was that Jesus Christ did not exist so it was necessary to invent him.

Returning to the theme of psychology, the Jews had been defeated by Rome, and could see that military methods were pointless. The trauma of crucifixion required sublimation and transference into a 'one for all', so that the extreme violence of the Roman attack could be converted into a message that offered some hope. So they invented Jesus Christ as a hidden syncretic king to subvert the moral legitimacy of empire. Initially, the invention was understood as pure fiction, but it was so emotionally compelling that it spread like wildfire.

As Paul Simon put it in The Boxer, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. The Jesus story was persuasive and comforting as a promise of eventual moral triumph. The anthropomorphisation of the sun in the story of Jesus extended the Greek myths through the realization that claiming a story is true makes it far more believable than accepting it is imaginary.

neilgodfrey

If you resort to Jung to claim your argument is scientific then you are isolating yourself from the mainstream of scientific psychology. I certainly know about Jungian archetypes but I chose not to mention the J word in hope that you weren't really going down that arcane route.

mountainman

It's probably a combination of rhetorical tricks and dogmatic exclusion of 'other'. Their use and reliance of illogical criteria, such as "The Criteria of Embarrassment" etc can probably be seen as the rhetorical tricks of those who are unaware that their logic is faulty.


Any paths that lead people from religious suffering and bullying towards their own personal freedom and peace of mind are of great value in this world, and its great to see that Earl's ideas are helping people ....

Robert Tulip

Perhaps Jung’s concept of archetypes is too Platonic for these anti-Platonic times? If discussion of Jung is infra dig for psychology, it seems whole realms of thought are stumbling blocks, for example the theology of the cross. Mainstream cognitive psychology seems to be all about neuroscience and measurement and nothing about spirituality, which it rejects as inherently unscientific. Cognitive methods do not engage with Jungian ideas such as the collective unconscious. While this rejection of Jung may seem defensible in terms of evidence, I do wonder if hostility to talk of spirituality may be connected to the modern epidemic of depression, with modern scientific prejudices preventing us from connecting to big symbolic ideas. As Aristotle argued, metaphysics explains physics, it does not contradict it.

What I like about Earl Doherty’s work is that he places theology within an empirical framework. But this empirical starting point, with its shocking conclusions about the scale of error in traditional religion, opens the path for a re-evaluation of traditional theological concepts. It does not make those concepts inherently obsolete, although that may be what atheists assume. Like Virgil accompanying Dante, perhaps we should ask Carl Jung to guide us into these fearful psychological realms before we abandon all hope.

Jung had his flaws, but his interest in the analysis of myth really should be considered central to the scientific study of religion. Scientific does not simply mean measurable, but can be extended to research that is logically coherent in topics where measurement is difficult, such as myth. If we restrict our interest to matters that can be quantified, we will never understand the emotional drivers of religion, such as how the meaning of archetypal symbols speaks to the soul, and how religion has a necessary redemptive social function of connecting earth and the cosmos. Admittedly, these are topics at great risk of speculative wool, but that risk does not justify the academic fatwa against Jung. Archetypal theories of myth are important, for example for the arts in their efforts to touch universal cultural nerves.

Another great philosopher I like is Martin Heidegger (the H word?). My MA Honours thesis was on The Place of Ethics in Heidegger’s Ontology, and a key issue here is how ideas can be analysed against a rigorous phenomenal framework. Like Jung, Heidegger also fell foul of the arid reductionism by which Popperian positivism has blighted thought into fear of any systematic vision. A central claim in H’s philosophy was that anxiety opens us to the core idea of fundamental ontology, that care is the meaning of being. This led to the existential psychology movement with its phenomenological analysis of moods. I can well imagine cognitive psychologists tearing out their hair in dismissal of such vague language. But this sort of talk got H described as the best and worst philosopher of the modern era.

Just because dominant academic canons of psychology suggest that what cannot be measured can be ignored (or am I being too uncharitable?), we have no grounds to dismiss the archetypal psychology pioneered by Jung. If we wish to understand how the myth of Jesus Christ originated and grew, we simply must enter these archetypal questions – such as Heidegger’s repetition of Plato’s enquiry into the meaning of being – for which the answers are broadly intelligible rather than narrowly sensible.

The modern scientific method rejects the imaginative tradition which sees Christ the eternal logos as a framework of universal meaning. But the contrasting theories of meaning at work here, as in Snow’s two cultures, are part of cultural traditions that have their own legitimacy and logic. Broad scholarly enquiry – such as you might see in Pannenberg’s Jesus God and Man – builds a frame of reference which modern atheist scientific methods tend to ignore. So people speak past each other with incomprehension.

Earl Doherty has opened paths to explore how ancient cosmologies enabled the emergence of the Christ Myth. But this is such a thorny topic, beset by types, antitypes and archetypes, that quite a bit of scrub clearing is needed to establish any sound method. For example if we wish to expand upon Christian typology to see the archetypes of fertility gods in other previous religions, eg Krishna and Osiris, there will inevitably be gaps in the forensic record that critics will be able to use to express valid doubt. That is why we need a phenomenology of messianism, to see how saviour figures are central to human concepts of identity and direction.

An example of a traditional concept that is incomprehensible to science is the fall from grace. I would say, partly echoing Calvin, that we cannot hope to understand Christian theology and the evolution of the Christ Myth unless we have some sense of how the bleak vision of absence of any messianic hope is rejected by the emotional desire to stand in a state of grace. Grace is one of those archetypal ideas that Jung gives us tools to analyse. The fact that we cannot measure grace does not detract from its importance in culture and psychology.

Bernard Muller

All,

I've asked Bernard to post this for me as I am currently on self-ban,
which I've been on for the last two months. Apologies to those who have
sent me PMs in that period who didn't get a response.

Two things:

1. This is my last post on Earl Doherty's theories, in any forum on the
Internet. (I may mention Doherty's theories in passing, but that's about
all. I don't plan to spend any more time raising, responding or debating
on the topic.) I believe that Doherty's theories are now irrelevant;
Carrier will be the standard bearer for the best mythicist case, and I'm
looking forward to that. I expect his case to be a lot tighter, with
much less reliance on speculation, than Doherty's. I'm hoping that
Carrier's book will get attention from scholars in the field, so that an
amateur like myself can sit back, popcorn in hand, and enjoy the fun
without getting involved. I expect Carrier's book to be a game changer,
for both the mythicist and historicist sides. At the least, the
historicist side will be forced to re-examine assumptions and (finally)
come up with a case that doesn't presume historicism in the first place.
At most, it will provoke lots of discussion around early Christian and
pagan beliefs/worldviews, a fascinating topic in itself. It will be GDon
Disneyland!

2. I don't plan to post on FRDB again, so I'll continue on self-ban for
the immediate future.

Thanks everyone. Sayonara!
GakuseiDon

EarlDoherty

Well, I hope that Don will have a chance to enjoy his popcorn. I think he believed about a year ago that he was going to retire and enjoy the fun that was going to be produced by Bart Ehrman. That plan went wrong somewhere.

I have no doubt that Carrier's book will be a good one and will advance the mythicist case. Whether it will provoke the kind of discussion in mainstream academia that Don looks forward to I rather doubt. In any case, it will hardly render myself "irrelevant." After all, Carrier wouldn't be where he is today without The Jesus Puzzle, and he apparently subscribes to my celestial Christ theory, which makes one wonder why Don is throwing his support behind Carrier's upcoming book when the celestial Christ is the thing which Don has been heaping shit on for years. If Carrier will be the "standard bearer", whose standard is he bearing? We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors.

Could it be that no matter what the position Don has to take and who he has to support, as long as it gives him an avenue to dump on me, it's acceptable? And while he vows never to discuss my theories again, he has apparently not set any closure on attacking or putting me down personally. This Muller-channeled posting is simply more of the same.

On the other hand, I don't for a minute believe that Don will be able to resist reviewing Carrier's book, and an integral part of that review will no doubt be a denigration of my own views in comparison with Carrier's superior standard. And considering that Don is no mythicist, that will be a dance worth watching. I may even get out my own popcorn.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

Richard Carrier has a relevant education and Doherty does not, but I don't expect Carrier's case to be much better than Doherty's. Building a tight case for mythicism would be like building a tight case for young-Earth creationism or anything else improbable on the surface and subsurface of all evidence. There have been plenty of attempts over the course of a hundred years, some by scholars with plenty more qualifications and time in the debate than Carrier. I would love to know what Richard Carrier will bring to the table. Bayes' Theorem? I would think that would mean bringing in uselessly snarled algorithms, but maybe GakuseiDon thinks otherwise.