Celsus

Well it's no worse than JBS Haldane's quip that finding rabbits in the pre-Cambrian would be the sort of thing that falsified evolution
I agree entirely actually. That was what I was trying to raise when you state that Acts is all tradition - by that measure Josephus is too because he doesn't ever rely on physical sources, only literary; then we are left hoping that they make big enough claims that can be verified archaeologically (fortunately for us, Josephus does make several such claims, whereas Acts does not).
Agreed, of course.
It was intentional. By what standard do we consider Herodotus' Histories as "history"? It seems to have been to him. Is Josephus substantially a different genre (fiction is anachronistic, myth?)? Of course they fail in a modern definition, but this was as much (or as little) as they had.
Heh I know that it was very uneven and we can't assume one standard passed to another. I'm only suggesting that they were aware that differences in reliability existed, which counts for something.
Agreed and worth repeating

Celsus

Really? Can they clearly delineate what sets Thucydides and the gospel authors apart? I am as I stated earlier, only interested in the methodological questions, not the actual facts (or lack thereof) in gospel writing. I entered this conversation intentionally on the side of asking how far we dispense with 'facts' in Acts, and then how far we'd dispense with 'facts' in Josephus or Herodotus by those same standards - because I think we end up throwing pretty much everything out.
The problem is that empire-wide claims are much easier to verify than local ones. If I say I went to the store yesterday, a hundred years from now, maybe no one would ever be able to verify such a claim. But if I said Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, that would be trivial to verify. Now with Herodotus and Josephus to a lesser extent, claims are verifiable and therefore we are able to set our skeptical-gauge accordingly for the claims made elsewhere. Whereas with Acts we have absolutely nothing to go on, so MJers set their skepticism to "Reject Everything" while Christians set their skepticism to "Bog-standard Naivete" while reading Acts. I don't think either is correct but there's no way to callibrate it.
I'm aware of apocryphal acts of various other apostles. Maybe they were wholly invented or not. But do we conclude the figures behind them did not exist?

Fiction is an anachronism. I really think you are treading on dangerous ground to use it, because you would see Josephus and Herodotus as fiction by the same standards.

Celsus

Oh yes, and one last thing that I wanted to ask a strong-MJer (because I know spin and I actually share pretty similar views on the extent to which a Jesus of any sort can be extricated from the texts):

Having dispensed with Acts (and the gospels) as a source of reliable information, how then do you determine the Pauline corpus is a source of reliable information about your mythic Jesus? By what criteria do you treat Acts and gospels one way, and the Pauline corpus another?

The question I've been getting at, if it's not apparent by now, is: How do you establish a demarcation criteria for reliable or unreliable information in the NT, in which to establish a mythic Jesus?

dog-on

From my position, I simply see the following:

A cosmic Christ is described in the epistles.

The gospels read like fiction and the sources for the storyline are easily identifiable, the LXX, Josephus, etc.

The attested fights between the vaious proto christian groups in the second century provide more than enough evidence to account for Acts and the pastorals.

Bottom line being that, from my perspective as a mythicist, there is no need to invent a Jesus for which I have no supporting evidence, in order to explain the Jesus that is clearly and fairly consistantly portrayed in the NT, who of course, is quite unlikely, to say the least.

Toto

I don't see your problem here.

I think that the Pauline corpus is a source of information about Paul's mind. That is why the debate is framed as to whether Paul believed in a historical Jesus or a mythic Jesus.

There is no inconsistency here. All documents reflect something about the person who wrote them. The problem with the gospels and Acts is that we don't even know the author's intent.

gdeering

Perhaps this is too simple an answer, and falls on the Lit Crit side of the investigation?

The question for me is what devices are used to win the “hearts and minds” or the NT contemporary audience (1-4 century you pick one) and how they are sold (currently) as observation. The amount of Midrash and supernatural elements need to make the story believable to this audience indicates to me the greater likelihood that there is no access to an original source, just accumulations of folk tales. And beyond those folk tales lie more folk tales..... Ah the irony that it should be just those elements that throws off the modern reader, or at least, the rational modern reader. There is so little behind these devices that MJ seems a safer bet than HJ - even allowing for the nagging doubt of dismissing a minor philosopher or priest.

The more Jesus fulfills the less likely he existed, in my nutshell.

By the same token, somewhere in Africa there may have been a very smart spider that caused all those folk tales to start too, but we can never be sure.

aa5874

Personally, I do not get involved with an "MJ hypothesis" just as I would not get involved with a "Mythical Achilles Hypothesis" since it is written already that both Achilles and Jesus were presented as the offsprings of Gods. And further with respect to Jesus, it is written in the NT and Church writings, that he was the Creator, the Son of God who existed before anything was made, and that he was transfigured, resurrected and ascended.

Jesus was presented as a myth by the Church, Jesus must be or can be considered a myth until HJers can show, using sources external of apologetics, that everybody, including his supposed mother, GNOSTICS, HERETICS and SKEPTICS either lied, embellished or honestly forgot that Jesus was only human.

Achilles is accepted as a myth without any hypothesis, Jesus can be accepted as a myth in like manner.

It is the HJ that needs an hypothesis, JUST like the historical Achilles would need a theory.

Jesus was ALREADY presented as a God, a mythical entity, I have no obligation to reject the myth from the Church and then fabricate another one.

MJers already have the facts as recorded. These facts of the MYTHICAL GOD/MAN are ACTUALLY in the Bible, we don't need any hypothesis.

We have facts, we have Mark 16.6 and Romans 1.4, with the NT and the Church writings.

HJers have nothing but fiction.

Celsus

So ultimately even if Paul believed in the mythic version, you are agnostic on the idea of a real person behind the mythic accoutrement?
I've noticed this trend to attempt to harness Occam's Razor to the MJ's position, but what actually happens is that the MJ position first has to dismiss all available texts as unreliable/"tradition" then assert that there is no evidence. But you're still begging the question of how texts come to be reliable or unreliable, other than the fact that there's no evidence to support mundane details (just like there's no evidence I went to the shops yesterday).
So I pose the same question to you: Even if Paul believed in the mythic version, you are agnostic on the idea of a real person behind the mythic accoutrement? Whether Paul may or may not have believed a mythic Christ does not get us closer to proving or debunking a HJ - it only is that one man's opinion is mythic, correct?

Everyone appears to be engaging in lit crit, which surprises me given how hostile people on this forum generally are to modern literary criticism (because it's oh-so-pomo).
Why? In Apocalyptic writing, you have fantastic claims about real (and glorified but potentially non-existent) figures, why does exaggeration in their traditions lessen the likelihood of someone existing (especially in Jewish writing)?

Toto

There's no big mystery here. We use normal common sense and a skeptical eye to decide if a text is reliable. Christian apologists have tried to invent a rule that all ancient texts must be accepted as prima facie reliable, but this is not the criterion that historians use. Historians feel that they can differentiate among texts without throwing up their hands and saying we can't know anything.

The only position that can be absolutely defended is to be agnostic on the idea of a real man at the historical core. But at a certain point, absense of evidence becomes evidence of absense. Paul is generally felt to be the earliest source of Christian tradition. If he didn't think there was a historical Jesus, this is more than one man's opinion - it tends to tip the scales toward the probability that Christianity did not start around a historical Jesus.

NT studies are basically literary criticism. The texts exist and can be discussed; the history behind them is speculative.

I was not aware of any hostility on this forum to literary criticism, properly used.

Celsus

Great. So by what standard do you throw out Acts but accept a specific reading of the Pauline epistles? (this was the question I asked earlier but no clear answer was forthcoming)
But you don't seem to get the point I've been making about going to the store. It's verifiable in principle, but not likely to be verified, ever. And the same goes with most of the early Christian claims - in which their likelihood of being verified is slim, but that doesn't mean the likelihood that these things never happened is equally slim.
Even internal evidence states Paul is not the earliest source of Christian tradition. It is only that he was the earliest surviving, written source. If Christianity arose as a heterodoxy of traditions as Price has attempted to argue, then it follows that Paul's view is hardly special in this milieu. It appears the MJ position assumes Pauline authority, the same position as the Church...
What do you mean by 'properly used'?