gstafleu

I would agree that there was a lot of outside influence after the adoption by the Romans. But as for the dying and rising gods, I wouldn't dismiss that out of hand. First, the theme of a dying and rising god is a wide spread one across mythologies, and in that sense Christianity is indeed "just another" of this type of mythology. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a lot of stuff that derives from the Hebrews, obviously it does. But the Jesus story has too much in common with these other gods to ignore.

While I agree that much of Christian mythology can be derived from Judaism, I wonder if that is specifically the case for the central element: that the god would sacrifice himself, or at least a member of the inner god family, for the good of the people. I have no doubt that the details of the crucifixion are derived from the OT. What I'm less sure about is that the idea itself that god (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) should be sacrificed can be found in the OT. Note that I'm not talking about a random messiah here, Christ in the gospels claims a much closer relations ship. And Paul also sees him as the son of god. Sure you can find sacrificed messiahs in the OT, but sacrificed gods?

I have similar doubts about the Eucharist. Sure, there are lots of ways to derive the common meal part from the OT. But I have my doubts about the idea that bread turns into (a representation of) the god's body and should then be eaten. I wouldn't be surprised if both these ideas (sacrifice god and bread=body, eat it) were imported from sources other than the OT.

When you saythere is a reason to look at these. Here comes a speculative bit, which I think nevertheless gives us reason to look at the early origins of the OT.

The creation myth as presented in Gen 2 is quite standard, up to a point, but that is an important point. Many myths have the creation of man and woman from a common source. Many myths also see sex (procreation) and death as complementary and postulate that death came into the world with the advent of sex. What is different in the Judeo-Christian myth though, is the idea that the discovery of sex, and hence the introduction of death, is a bad, sinful thing. Most mythologies, afaik, see the discovery of sex as a good thing to be celebrated, inspite of its inevitable companion death. This "fall of man" idea instigated the very negative world view we see in the OT, where the god is constantly threating his people and inflicting all kinds of mayhem on them and on the world in general. That such a world view can lead to bad results for the people that hold it is unfortunately not all that surprising. This is a bit of a circular argument of course, in the sense that the negative world view may well have come from the misfortunes that befell the Hebrews (basically being everybody's doormat). But I would suggest that understanding this variation in origin myth and its negative consequences is important. If you look at the bible, Christianity, and certainly Judaism, isn't exactly a "let's celebrate life" kind of religion. It is more of a death cult (think Mel Gibson here), or at least a cult of "lets feel guilty about life." And we can see the origin of that in the idea of the fall of man that was incorporated into an otherwise not unusual creation myth.

Gerard Stafleu

Gamera

But I think this exposes the methodological problem of structuralism (which is all JM analysis is). The differences between the Jonah narrative and the NT storm narrative are no greater or less than the differences between the Odysseus storm narrative and the NT storm narrative. You must first assume that one or the other is more related to the NT narrative in order to decide what details to ignore and hence make the structures "fit."

Every text is different. So if undertaking a structural analysis, depending on your initial assumptions, you can make any two texts parallel by deciding what difference you want to ignore.

My view (and the veiw of the post-structuralists who have written massively on this topic) is that this entire method is faulty.

Malachi151

Ahh yes, but was the early Jesus "God"? I think not.

Early Jesus was a messenger, then son of God, then God only much later, arguably even after the Gospels.

The son of God imagery can be derived from the story of Abraham quite easily. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son for him to show love of God, now God is sacrificing his son for people to show his love of the people.

We know that certain of the titles also precede the Jesus story as well, "Son of Man", "Prince of Peace", "the Word", all are a part of apocalyptic messianic stories before the Jesus story comes along.

This I agree on. I think that the eucharist probably did derive from existing mystery cult practices, but this is ritual, not story. It got integrated into the story, but at base its ritual, and I think that yes, the ritual of the early religion is probably where the greatest outside influence came from, which also makes sense, this is what one would expect in cross-cultural issues.

People more often adopts foreign rituals and preserve their own stories. They took "Gentile" ritual and made it their own by wrapping it in their own stories. This is just another example of something like Christmas. The practice was adopted, but the meaning was altered.

Gamera

Bingo. Or as I would put it: they have an agenda (and don't we all), and the agenda drives the conclusion. Ironically then, the paraphrase Roland Barthes, their discouse about the pagan/Jesus parallels is itself "mythic," because what is really happening is not an academic inquiry seeking the truth, but a polemic against Christianity that pretends to be an academic inquiry.

gstafleu

I am reasonably sure that so far nobody has advanced the theme of sleeping through a storm as a major element of mythology . This as opposed to e.g. the serpent as a symbol of immortality.

Gerard Stafleu

Toto

There may be people like this, but you don't need to find pagan parallels to the early Christian myth to discredit or embarrass Christianity, and not all mythicists are anti-religion. There are even some mythicists who still consider themselves Christian (Tom Harpur, and Robert Price calls himself a Christian by his own definition.)

aa5874

There are many versions of the early Jesus, see 'Against Heresies' by Irenaeus. Your version is just as speculative as any other, since there is no corroboration of the historicity of Jesus.

Can you demonstrate that this imagery was not derived from paganism. How was the the God of the OT developed?

Ben C Smith

The differences mean nothing. They are like that old joke about the man convicted of robbery because three witnesses saw him do it. His response: But judge, I can bring 50 people in here who didn't see me do it!

Plagiarism in one paragraph out of a hundred is still plagiarism, and the 99 innocent paragraphs do nothing to nullify the one that sticks out.

If there are enough similarities between two texts, the likelihood exists that one text is borrowing from or alluding to another. Where this line is crossed is, of course, a matter for debate. But that such a line exists is beyond dispute.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

Or, as Judge Learned Hand, Sheldon v. Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 81 F.2d 49, 56 (2d Cir. 1936), once put it: "... no plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate."

Stephen

Gamera

Textual analysis is not structural analysis. The Q thesis makes sense because it is actually talking about textual identities that cannot be explained any other way. I.e., that the authors of the synoptics had in front of them a ms or a derivative of a ms or one or the other synoptics which explains the similarity in the very passages they wrote down.

Now, that's simply not what JM theorists are doing. They are purporting to find thematic (i.e., perceived structural) similarities, which elicited by ignoring the very differences you have discounted. Only by having a thematic template that ignores the differences, does the template fit. A perfect circular argument.