archibald

I'm not quite with you here, Avi. You seem to be saying it may not have been incongrous to Paul, but.....you wouldn't be saying that? Probably it's my not understanding.

Well, yes, it could, if it was a name change, be more than just a name change. But it could be just a name change. Or no name change (the less likely option, I suppose, since I'm not averse to considering it possible that Paul may not originally have used 'Christou', though I'm unsure as to how to measure likliehood on this item).

OK, but as I have said on many occasions, to many other posters, 'not impossible' is a low grade standard. :]

I imagine he easily could have. Almost certainly, I imagine. I am still thinking it easily possible he thought of Jesus as the messiah. Because, he surely thinks of him as some sort of rescuer, and cites scriptures?

Which I take as a 'don't know', so I remain unsure as to how you have any great confidence in thinking what you do.

So you keep saying...and yet, despite all this, the titles were given to him, and we don't know when, in either case, so I don't know why you feel certain which term was originally used, never mind whether there were longer interpolations. What term do you think was originally used, btw, by Paul? You've suggested Yeshua. But, I'm puzzled, why would Paul just use a regular name? Didn't he see the character as truly extraordinary? And, given that Yeshua is (I think) not in there any more, does this mean that every reference to the character in question is an interpolation?

Regarding one thing which came up, about which I am not clear. I said that 'Christou' was used in LXX. I think, if I recall correctly, that you said this may not have been the original term. I'm assuming that in that case you're allowing for the possibility of a name change only, or am I picking something up wrong?

Btw, I'm aware that the two scenarios (LXX and NT) are not equivalent, so I'm not equating them. I'm comparing them. :]

And finally, can I just reiterate, to you and to anyone else who is still bothering to read my posts and/or exchange with me, that I am not averse to addressing any aspect of the topic. To a large extent, that is why I am here, because I had the impression, before coming that I would hear more, er, non-orthodox views. In one sense, as an atheist, I would very much love to be persuaded, of several things, and I don't exclude mythicism from being one of those. But, at the end of the day, I strongly prefer as much 'evidence' as possible. Otherwize, my default is agnosticism, tinged with a leaning towards what I still see as the more likely explanation, in overall terms (I mean in relation to MJ). Regarding other, less contrioversial 'non-orthodox' things, I am have less leanings, and am warming to the possibility that much of what is in the texts may not be what was originally in them. I already had this view, in principle, but I am thinking of it as, perhaps, being more of a phenomenon than I had previously estimated.

Incidentally, I do often ponder why I am so interested. In fact, I was thinking of starting a thread on it, to see if thee are any other atheists out there willing to admit that it's somewhat....irrational of us. :] I'm not fully aware who is and who isn't an atheist, a theist or an agnostic, and in many cases (including yours, incidentally) I don't even assume one or the other, since it's not strictly speaking relevant to the arguments.

Btw, if I did seem to ignore any of your posts when I was a member at ratskep, I apologize. I don't recall doing it. It's true that there did seem to be a different flavour to that forum, and many knowledeable posters there who wielded impressive HJ arguments, so perhaps I was not getting both sides of the coin.

Having said that, I am not going to lie and say that I am not still leaning towards HJ, when that is the topic. Which it isn't necessarily, as Toto has usefully reminded, because it's a controversial topic, and there seem to be many valid issues which can be better examined if that hot potato is left to the side. :]

GakuseiDon

And again, I open up the same question for those who have read any of Doherty's books or website: do you get the impression that there is ANYTHING controversial on the pagan side of Doherty's theories?

If we are comparing Wells with Doherty, then this is one big difference between them. If you read Wells, you can see where he is bringing up a controversial view. Because he TELLS you. But with Doherty, there are no signs. Controversial statements are made in a matter-of-fact manner, and the undiscerning reader has no ability to understand when they are made. Thus my question above to Doherty and also to his readers. Where is Doherty being controversial in his claims on pagan thinking? Does ANYONE know? Can Doherty himself tell us?

Anyway, back to the Enoch and the Ascension of Isaiah.

The issue here is that Enoch is referring to the Supra-lunar realm (or above the firmament; or 'the true heavens'; various terms are possible, but in short it is the domain of God). Here anything is possible: cities, thrones, waterfalls, demons being punished by angels, etc. So if that is the case above the firmament, why not below the firmament?

The problem is, we have the literature from the day to build a picture about what they believed in those days, and the picture excludes cities, thrones, waterfalls, etc, below the firmament and above the ground. Quite typically, the area is referred to as air, clouds, fire and water. There are demons there -- made of fire and water -- and there are actions there where fiery creatures contend with each other and punish airy spirits as they rise from the earth, looking to ascend and enter the true heavens.

COULD they have thought the way Doherty proposes, with flesh and blood and tears and crosses and burial, etc? Sure, I agree with the principle that we shouldn't rule anything out a priori. DID they think that way? There is no evidence for it, and the evidence we do have goes against it. This can be most clearly seen in the Ascension of Isaiah, which I look at below.

Let me state that my objections to Doherty here is based upon testing his theory against the literature of the day. If Doherty wants to propose that Paul had a unique cosmology, and used terms with a different meaning to the terms used before and afterwards, then my objections are irrelevant. My objections are only as strong as can be shown to be consistent with the literature of the day.

Over the years I've noticed Doherty getting more and more vague about locations and the metaphysical differences between supralunar and sublunar realms; to the point where he uses texts like 2 Enoch describing supra-lunar activities as support for his sub-lunar heavenly crucifixion concept. Anyone without knowledge about the literature would probably not be too fussed by this lack of distinction; and yet the concept is important, as highlighted by Carrier's review of The Jesus Puzzle. Carrier devotes a section to this idea, entitled "The Sublunar Incarnation Theory".

Carrier writes (emphasis in the original):
http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...suspuzzle.html

However, his theory actually entails that Jesus did undergo incarnation--just not on earth. So though you might get the opposite impression from Doherty 's rhetoric (and he needs to reword several passages to remove the confusion), his theory is entirely compatible with Jesus "becoming a man of flesh and blood," that is, in the sublunar sphere of heaven, since, as Doherty explains several times, he had to in order to die and fulfill the law (only flesh can die, and be subject to the law, and blood was necessary for atonement).

Neil Godfrey also defends Doherty's "Sublunar Incarnation Theory" on his blog. He wrote a blog post called "Doherty, the sublunar realm, and Paul: correcting some disinformation", where he quotes Doherty from "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man".

Neil writes:
http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/08/...isinformation/

...on the first page Doherty where speaks of the place of demons in ancient thought in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man, he writes of the demons inhabiting the area below the moon and extending their activities to earth itself:

But even the spiritual dimension has its denizens of evil and less-than-perfect elements: subordinate spirits, lesser and fallen angels, even inhospitable landscapes; in a layered universe, gradations can be accommodated. Still, the boundary between incorruptibility and corruptibility was generally placed at the lowest division between the spheres, namely the orbit of the moon. The term “firmament” is sometimes applied to that point of delineation, but it can also refer to the area immediately below the moon which is not part of the earth itself. . . [There are various other terminologies of "firmament" not discussed here.] . . . In this system, the demon spirits, part of the realm of incorruptibility, were located in the area below the moon, although their activities extended down to earth as well. (p. 112)

And also, from the same blog post Neil writes (my emphasis below):

The “realm of the flesh” as extending to the area of corruptibility even a way above the earth is described with reference to a standard reference work:

As a deity descended from the higher levels of pure spirit, he passed through ever degenerating spheres of the heavens, and could take on an increasing likeness to lower, material forms as well as an ability to suffer fleshly fates, such as pain and death. The lowest level of the spirit realm was the firmament below the moon and above the earth. This was the domain of the demon spirits — in Jewish parlance, of Satan and his evil angels — and it was regarded as closely connected to the material earthly world; together, as falling within the sphere of corruptibility, they could be thought of as the “realm of the flesh”. As the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament puts it (vol. VII, p. 128), the demonic spiritual powers belonged to this realm of flesh and were thought of as in some way corporeal, though they possessed ‘heavenly’ versions of earthly bodies. Even the angels “have flesh or at least appear to have it” (op. cit., p. 143), though it is a different “corporeality” between humans and angels. (See the reference to the “different flesh” of angels in Jude 7.) (pp. 114-115)

Now, what Neil DIDN'T do is check the reference to angels having flesh in the "Theological Dictionary of the New Testament". If he had, he would have found that the reference referred TO THOSE ANGELS VISITING LOT. In other words, they took on flesh to visit the earth.

Once we have built a picture of what they believed about the heavens, the issue then becomes trying to reconcile Paul's "flesh" and "earthly" statements to similar references to other literature of the time. There are many examples where we see similar statements referring to earthly beings; Doherty struggles to come up with any to support a non-earthly reading. Now, if that statement is true, I think most people would grant that it is a problem for Doherty. As far as I've determined, my statement is true. But maybe I'm wrong, or lying, or misrepresenting the Modern Day Galileo. This is something the individual needs to investigate for themselves.

Now on to the Ascension of Isaiah. The good thing about this text is that it EXPLICITLY gives the form of the Beloved (Christ) as he descends down each level. He has the form of firmament creatures in the firmament; he has the form of airy creatures in the air. At some point he has the form of a man. Where does he have that form? I go into details in my review of his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", where I discuss his "World of Myth" concept: http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...view4.html#4.2

The AoI is powerful evidence against Doherty, in my view. But again, I'm only an amateur in this field, so I would encourage people to investigate the points in my review, and the points raised by Doherty in his book, to make the determination for themselves.

archibald

I'm going to have a look at that later, when I'm less busy. It is interesting that you are both citing A of I. :]

I just had what my teenage daughter would call a really random thought. I've decided to air it, even it if makes me seem uninformed. It's either interesting or irrelevant.

Presumably these guys must have looked up and seen birds doing something quite amazing really high up. What realm did they think that was happening in, I wonder? Or, alternatively, what realm were clouds in?

What I'm wondering is, if (if) this was not envisaged as an earthly realm, then the concept of fleshly/corporeal would have had to extend up into it, since....birds landed, and clouds could be climbed above.

gurugeorge

For a human Jesus, we need more than mere references to an earthly figure in the sense of an entity that walked and talked upon earth. Lots of mythical entities have done that.

What we need, from a modern, scientific point of view, is some causal line of contact between a warm human body and somebody's eyeballs, or between a warm human body's vocal cords and somebody's ears, etc.

That is to say, in order to distinguish between evidence for a mythical (or philosophical, or mystical, or mystico-philosophical) entity that merely has fleshly aspects to its biography, and evidence for a hypothetical ordinary human being who might plausibly be construed as the basis of the Christ myth we know and love (for the god-man Christ of Christianity is obviously a myth in the first place), what we desperately need is some sense of the witnessing of an ordinary human being by another ordinary human being, or a chain of such events, in said evidence.

My paradigm example of this has always been, for example, something like, if "Paul" had said something like "Cephas told me that Jesus once said to him ...". THAT, however tenuous, would be the kind of link that would be needed to show a human Jesus.

Mere references to earthly events and places and doings in the biography of the entity are not enough, for a) the entity could still be mythical, and b) in "Paul" WE ALREADY KNOW that the entity is AT LEAST mystical (i.e. mythical in a broad sense). (i.e. the earliest evidence we have shows Jesus as at least a mystical vision - this might be because he was a human being who was subsequently mythified and mystically observed, but until that casual-chain-evidence comes in, the only positive evidence we have is of the mystical-vision-Jesus.)

That clarity of distinction has to be made, that kind of evidence is needed to make a distinction between man and myth.

Now, I'm not saying there isn't anything like that in "Paul" or Hebrews (the earliest known texts as I understand it) - but if there is, it would have to be damn subtle (subtler than my example), because there really doesn't seem to be any at first, second, third, or umpteenth glance. (A subtler version that might just about pass muster is something like "Cephas told me that the apostles x when they visited Christ's burial tomb" )

Without any other, particular knowledge about "Paul" (forget Acts, it's far too late and "party-line"-toeing as I understand it), all you can go on is a general idea of what a religious human being might be interested in. To claim that this "Paul" must have been singularly uninterested in the human Jesus is to take for granted what has yet to be proved, in the act of trying to prove it (I think there's a latin term for that kind of mistake ).

dog-on

Paul might disagree:

archibald

George,

I'm not sure if I would agree with your concerns, or your distinction. But I think perhaps we are asking different questions and making equally valid distinctions.

1. Personally, I'm not trying to figure out, at this point, whether Jesus was mythical or real, only whether Paul seems to be describing him (and by extension, thinking of him) as earthly, or in an upper realm. Robin Hood may not have existed, but he wasn't concieved of as being sub-lunar, if you see my point of enquiry.

In that sense, and not relying on one piece of text, but looking at the overall pattern, we have:

(a) Numerous 'earthly-seeming' references (some more ambiguous than others)

(b) No clear references to Jesus being in an upper realm (pre or during crucifixion), which strikes me as not very 'world of myth'.

(c) Scriptures being repeatedly cited as central precedents, when said scriptures seem also to describe a figure who came to earth.

(d) The seeming temporal proximity between Paul's 'eschatological figure' and the apparently imminent eschatological events. This would seem to suggest that if he was writing about such a figure, it might be more likely to have been a recent one, which 'recentness' would be unusual for myth figures. Alternately, there could have been a very long or undetermined time gap between the prophecy and its fulfilment, but this again seems a more unusual combination for 'end of the world is nigh' type ideas. Another possibility which has been floated is that events in an upper realm were deemed timeless, but I'm having difficulty seeing this as the best option. Would a timeless sacrifice be likely to have been seen as having an immediate (or imminent) effect ?

(e) The whole idea seems to be that the resurrection is meant as some sort of model for earthlings to base hopeful anticipations on, in relation to their bodies. It doesn't seem such a convincing template if a ghostie just moved about between upper levels, especially if they were timeless. What would fit better, and be more of a potent reason for preaching, is a sort of 'if he could do it, so can you' argument, which does in fact appear to be the suggestion put to followers.

I am having trouble adding these up (and I do think they should be seen as a set, not individually) to come to a conclusion that Paul was setting J. in an upper realm, especially a timeless one, even though it is possible.

I might add a related item (f) to that list, in that Paul does not seem to be doing an upper-realm myth, since there is not very much myth narrative, aka myth bio, which, as I see it, puts any 'odd silence' into a different light, in that it seems to apply equally to earthly or sublunar explanations, thereby rendering it not so significant as an indicator for one or the other.

Add to all of that the fact that Paul is not the only account. There is 'Q', though I note that Earl D. now says he has clearly demonstrated that there was no historical figure involved (and wonder whether this is as conclusive as he says) and that quite soon after, many other writers appear to have adopted an HJ view. I do not yet know of any texts from any group which clearly show anyone thought of him as non-earthly. So not only would a relatively fast (ie decades only) switch to 'earthly' have been necessary (and how many precedents for this sort of thing are there in history?) but there is no evidence of anybody having made it. Not conclusive either, I know, but does seem to involve a few extra hoops to be jumped through.

2. While I take your point about how much better it would have been if Paul had actually said that someone he had met had met and spoken with Jesus, (a) the absence of this may not be particularly indicative one way or the other and (b) would it make things so much clearer? I'm thinking that if you went to a certain Pacific Island, you might have been able to speak to someone who could have said that about John Frum.

A lot of this does hinge on what Paul originally said, and in other threads I am reading of things which might make any assumptions on this front a bit more murky, but as yet, I can't see how it would have been likely to change the overall pattern, without a complete rewrite or a transformation so radical that the original would have been almost unrecognizable. Which of course is not impossible either, and I think there is a thread here somewhere which alleges just that hypothesis. :]


Sure. I'm assuming you don't think I personally was claiming that.

GakuseiDon

I'm not sure what you mean by "fleshly/corporeal". Flesh = sarx, body = soma. They were two different things.

Birds and demons had bodies. All things were made up of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. "Fleshly" creatures were made up of mainly earth and water; thus they were earth-bound (with even birds needing to return to earth eventually). Demons were made of air and fire, and so could float in the air. Earth-bound spirits had a little earth or water in them, which is why they hovered around grave sites. Having "earthly" thoughts (sexual, pertaining to the flesh) could also bind a spirit to earth.

People were able to look up and see the firmament. But they couldn't look past it. Thus their daemons were air or fire (flames always ascending -- in fact, ancient Greeks used to think the heavens were filled with fire for that reason). Things containing earth and water were naturally attracted to the ground.

GakuseiDon

Paul might disagree with what?

Doug Shaver

No, but neither did I get the impression that there was nothing controversial about that side of his theories.

When I read Doherty, as when I read any other advocate for some side in any controversy, I assume that anything he says might be disputed by competent authorities, unless I know antecedently that what he says is the consensus of authorities.

I found his argument plausible from the first time I read his Web site because his description of pagan thinking was consistent with the little bit I already knew about it. Much of the personal research I have done since that time has been to find out whether this perceived consistency was due merely to my own relative ignorance about hellenistic philosophy of that period. So far, after more than a decade of looking, I have found nothing to contradict Doherty. Positive confirmation remains elusive. No fire yet, but there's a gawdawful lot of smoke.

GakuseiDon

So, when Doherty writes the following in "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man":

Some of these circles--though again not all--envisioned this Jesus as having undergone self-sacrifice in the supernatural world, the same realm where the activities of other savior gods of the era were now seen as having taken place. (Page 85)

Did that match with what you understood the pagans believed before you read his book? It didn't take you by surprise?