freigeister

You mean other than the fact that every single word of the New Testament was written by, for, and about Jews?

Wallener

Feel free to explain. I'm Jewish and don't feel the least bit threatened by the "mythicist enterprise". In fact, I find the entire enterprise is shedding all sorts of light on material that holds strong meaning for me.

Julian

Which is, of course, not at all true. Or would you care to back that up with some kind of evidence?

Julian

Ted Hoffman

I have found Celsus' comments very useful in the past. I hope he will comment here especially since tha names of Frazer and Cumont have popped up and since works on comparative religions have emerged. There is a wooly, cross-disciplinary area between anthropology/literary theory/semiotics and NT criticism that is, well, often wooly and has not been given a rigorous treatment that factors in semiotics and the concepts derived therefrom.

Celsus' rigorous and uncompromising view often cuts through this wooly region like a steel blade through the umblical cord leaving the mythicist baby deprived of a channel to draw nutrients.
Then mythicists, like yours truly, almost inexorably, rush forward to save the bleeding baby...and they snatch the cord and attempt to plug it back...

But there are unresolved problems in this conflict. Like the "difference without a distinction fallacy" Price notes in his review of Drudgery Divine. On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity

• And here he seems to me to approach the apologetical strategy of, e.g., Raymond E. Brown in The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, where Brown dismisses the truckload of Religionsgeschichtliche parallels to the miraculous birth of Jesus. This one is not strictly speaking a virgin birth, since a god fathered the divine child on a married woman. That one involved physical intercourse with the deity, not the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. But, we have to ask, how close does a parallel have to be to count as a parallel? Does the divine mother have to be named Mary? Does the divine child have to be called Jesus? Here is the old "difference without a distinction" fallacy. And it is strange to see Smith committing it. He becomes an improbable but real ally of the apologists he criticizes.

Celsus criticizes Price, Doherty and other mythicists of comitting similar mistakes to the one Straus comitted in attempting to develop mythemes. But Straus went further than Price and Doherty have gone: Straus held that it is the mind that is the ultimate reality or prime configuration in the development of mythemes. And based on this concept he attempted to identify analogues between different myths. And foundationally, he believed that myths had no meaning in themselves, but only in relation with each other, just like words. He broke down myths to individual units called mythemes, just like words in linguistics. He attributed mythemes unique characteristics with rules for combination, like in language. In summary his theory was that myths codify human behaviour/beliefs and when myths are decoded, they reveal themselves as attempted solutions to universal human dilemmas. Human dilemmas, of course involve contradictions like good and evil, pain and pleasure, life/death and these binary assumptions were smashed by deconstructionism which was a post-structuralist entity.

Strauss held that one myth decodes another myth in the same way words only have meaning in relation to other words. In a nutshell, he came up with a structure. There are those who argue that myths have a life of their own. There are those that argue that meaning of myths (and ultimately, of riruals) depends on who is interpreting.

Now, whereas Strauss argued that myths emanated from universal human dilemmas, the mythicists are arguing borrowing of Hellenistic concepts into Christianity. Strauss structure of myths was a linguistic one (or a semiotic one). Mythicists do not attempt to develop any structure - I pointed out in Ebla that the dichotomy between kata sarka and kata pneuma was not Doherty's creation but Paul's and therefore deconstructing it does not entail deconstructing a mythicist concept and so on.

Regarding borrowing and the process involved, Price writes:

• It is wise to seek to explain any religion, whether ancient Christianity or Mithraism or the Attis religion, on its own terms and not simply as a function of another religion it may have borrowed from; but in the case of significant similarities it is not unreasonable to suggest borrowing. Is it problematic to suggest, for instance, that Mithraism borrowed the representation of Mithras wearing the Phrygian cap, or accompanied by a divine consort, from the Attis cult; or that the Attis cult borrowed the Taurobolium from Mithraism? Certainly not. Why then should one avoid the possible conclusion that Christianity borrowed from its competitors as well? One fears that Smith, having rejected the polemics of an earlier generation, fears too much being found guilty of being "ecumenically incorrect."
  
  Here and elsewhere Smith declares the famous "dying and rising god" mytheme a modern myth, one concocted by scholars, not an ancient one. If there was no such myth it would obviously be vain to claim that Christians had borrowed it for their own mythos. He seems to admit that Attis was eventually regarded as a resurrected deity, though he will not grant that Attis was thus pictured in the first century. It is certainly true that Attis was not always and everywhere regarded as a risen savior. Many variants have him die and remain dead, or simply survive his wounds. And much of the clear evidence of a cult of a resurrected Attis comes from the fourth century (e.g., Firmicus Maternus).

Vork, Kirby, Celsus, what do you think?

PS: Please do not criticise the comments on Taurobolium and Mithraism. We know Price is wrong. Comment on the concept he is propounding.

Wallener

And here I was under the impression Paul was the "apostle to the Gentiles". If I thought about it in those terms, what I would find far more "anti-semitic" is the false claim of many Christians that Christianity is firmly based on Jewish prophecy and/or Jewish teaching.

freigeister

Paul was bringing Gentiles into Judaism, the authentic Judaism preached by Christ.

Here are some Jews on Christ's Judaism.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Doherty:

"As Price has said, New Testament scholarship has done it's best over the last 60 years or so to completely skewer the mainstream 'take' on the origins of Christianity *away from* its non-Jewish roots and precedents."

Hello, Freigeister,

Yes, I see what you're saying.

This would be my other challenge to the mythicists...

What we see in the above quote from Doherty is a variation of the theme that "the Jews hijacked Christianity". To be sure, this theme is not often spelled out explicitly by our modern NT scholars, but it's present nevertheless in various studies. (The idea is completely absurd, of course, that the Jews could have somehow managed to hijack Christianity in ancient times, and get away with it.)

This theme that "the Jews hijacked Christianity" happens to be a curious reversal of yet another widespread idea, i.e. that it was _Paul_ who hijacked Christianity.

Well, it looks like now Doherty is saying that it was the _modern scholars_ who have been hijacking Christianity "over the last 60 years or so"! And apparently they've been hijacking it... in favour of Judaism!

All this is complete and utter nonsense, of course. All three of these theories are absurd. (Except that "Paul as a hijacker" theme may perhaps have at least _some_ basis in reality, if we replace "Paul" with "some later followers of Paul", i.e. if we recognise that the real Paul actually wrote none of these epistles.)

The real story is obvious. Christianity was originally a Jewish religion, that was hijacked by the Gentiles. When did this happen? Most likely sometime in the 2c, and the gospels had been rewritten accordingly in the process.

All the best,

Yuri.

Amaleq13

Even if this were accepted as true (and I really don't think you can support such a broad claim), it still doesn't make an argument that Christianity had non-Jewish roots and precedents necessarily anti-semitic. Such an argument also doesn't require an assumption that the "Jews hijacked Christianity".

For example, the statement is entirely consistent with the notion of Christianity developing in the setting of an existing mixture of Hellenism and Judaism.

How about less hyperbole and more substantive comments, folks?

freigeister

Doherty doesn't speak about "an existing mixture of Hellenism and Judaism", but about Christianity's "non-Jewish roots". Imagine if someone started talking about the "non-English roots" of Shakespeare, or the "non-American roots" of Faulkner. Would not any fair-minded person view such claims as, respectively, anti-English and anti-American? What is hyperbolic about speaking out against the misappropriation of a nation's literary heritage?

Julian

The prefixes 'non-' and 'anti-' mean two different things. It is true that they can, sometimes, be construed as interchangable but I suspect that that lies more with the reader than the content of the text. It is possible to make an argument showing more hellenistic influence than Jewish. An MJ position is far more hellenistic than Jewish, certainly.

Julian

ETA: Besides, non-Jewish roots doesn't necessarily exclude Jewish roots in christianity. Nobody, even Doherty, denies that Judaism has had much influence on christianity.