guy_683930

I was wondering, for Jesus Mythers (and also for Jesus Historicists), what was there a specific piece of evidence that made you favor the MJ or the HJ. As a mythicist, I would say for me it was Hebrews 8:4 combined with the fact that the term "disciple" is NEVER used in any of the epistles but used heavily in the gospels and Acts. Or was there no one or two pieces of evidence, was it merely considering the evidence as a whole?

jeffevnz

There is no turning point for me. I see no good reason to favor one side over the other. You might as well flip a coin.

Doug Shaver

I was a historicist for most of my life because I noticed that practically all historians, skeptics no less than believers, seemed convinced that the man was real. I assumed that if even most atheists had no problem with his historicity, then there was probably a good reason for it.

Soon after first venturing into cyberspace about seven years ago, I discovered how really flimsy that hard evidence for his existence was. At that point I had no firm opinion one way or the other. Then I found Doherty's Jesus Puzzle. I found it persuasive, and the few years of followup study I've done since then, I have found nothing to change my mind.

I don't think there is a single killer argument one way or the other. What persuades me is the totality of evidence about Christianity's origins. I think that when all the undisputed facts are taken into account, mythicism explains them more parsimoniously than historicity.

Sparrow

I suppose it depends on what portion of the story you want to believe is myth. I knew enough science by the time I was 13 to know thtat ther never was anyone who could feed 5000 with a couple of fish sandwiches, so the miracles evaporated for me then. I hesitate to say how long ago that was, but we could measure it in decades. At that point it sort of ceased to matter whether there was an actual human at the root of the movement or just a fanciful invention.

It’s only been since I’ve been here at IIDB that I’ve come to realize how little evidence survives that supports any part of the story at all. There’s no physical fragment of a document as close as 100 years to the purported life of Jesus as I understand it. That’s as if the earliest copy of the US Constitution hailed from 1889 instead of 1789. It might be accurate to the text of the original or it might not. It was learning of this crashing silence, the amazing vacuum of evidence for anyone performing astounding feats 2000 years ago that led me to lean to the mythical side. If Jesus had been even a popular preacher, it seems there would have been something written about him that would have survived.

james-2-24

An Apocolyptic Jewish prophet living in 1st century Palestine seems very probable to me. I favour an HJ due to 'embarrassing' details in the gospels (baptism, family rejection, lack of miracles in home town), and the references in the letter of Galatians (born of a woman, lords brother).

james-2-24

One (anonymous) writer of a book may (and only in a minority translation) have a MJ belief. Seems an extremely weak case. If you grant any value to that line of evidence then wouldn't you find the gnostic gospels an open and shut case for a MJ? What is so special about Hebrews?

Vorkosigan

When I discovered that the writer of Mark had used Paul as his historical source. That meant that there was little likelihood of independent transmission of history, and thus the only history was what was in Paul. And we know that there is no history there.

Vorkosigan

mountainman

So that leaves one with no theory of history, or leastways for some
a theory of history of antiquity in which there is little, if any, integrity
if we are to form a historical account from the literature of christianity.

Within a generation of Nicaea the supreme emperor Julian had no
problem summarising the literature of christianity as:
"a fiction of men composed by wickedness" (362 CE)

If you have satisfied yourself that there is no history there
are you equivalently satisfied that there is no calumny of the
(real) literature of antiquity by means of the perpetration of
a massive generation of fictitious literature, described by
Julian further as:

"Though it has in it nothing divine,
by making full use of that part of the soul
which loves fable and is childish and foolish,
it has induced men to believe
that the monstrous tale is truth."

To be very specific, do you think it possible that Julian's
"wretched Eusebius" could have written Paul & Mark c.324
CE, and if not, what (real) historical evidence can be
brought to bear against such a hypothesis?



Best wishes,



Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm
NAMASTE: "The spirit in me honours the spirit in you."

Chili

You must be careful in denying the historic aspect of the story that must manifest the myth before it becomes real. To me, the myth is real but it had to become flesh in history. It was prophetic in the OT and became real in the NT while the entire Gospels are the mental journey of one man who told us about it in such a way that we can relate to it and perhaps identify with it in the same way as he did.

Would a mathematician agree with this?

God Fearing Atheist

In many ways my experience has been the opposite of Doug and Sparrow's. I was first exposed to HJ/MJ issues via the internet, and having no particular interest in the field, uncritically swallowed the most base sort of Jesus Mysteries pagan-shoplifting thesis. In my naiveté I just assumed it was a legitimate historical contender which, in any case, helped me "score points" against (most) Christians.

Like every internet-enabled atheist it seems, I would eventually stumble onto Doherty. I was (and still am) impressed by his forthrightness in offering an explicitly formulated mythicist hypothesis. Unlike the others, Doherty had an idea of what Paul and other early Christians might have actually believed; Jesus is mythical not because every early Christian document was just "made up" or because Christians had somehow hodge-podged pagan religions together, but because their own writings betray an understanding of Jesus as an unworldly denizen of the contemporary Middle Platonic cosmos.

My recently renewed interest in the subject has lead to alot of reading. Though the great majority has obviously been in the form of primary texts, books and scholarly journals, poking through BC&H has only helped to cement my position strongly in favor of HJ and against MJ (contra Sparrow). This is due in no small part to the penetrating analyses of guys like my ol' pal Rick, Kevin Rosero, Ben Smith, GDon, and (once you get past the invective evident from both sides) Jeff Gibson. The inadequacy of MJer response, where there is any, hasnt hurt either.

So it wasnt any one thing, really. I've just come to accept that HJ (HJ as prophet of the Jewish eschaton) makes the best sense of the data as we have it.