Gamera

But hanging on a tree ISN'T crucifixion. That's the problem with mythicist analysis. They find parallels between two elements of a story (which can be done with any two stories) and fit the one story into the other by tweaking it.

Hanging on a tree is hanging. It isn't crucifixion. So the JM should have Jesus hung on a tree, not crucified. Unless of course it's not a myth!

Gamera

This takes the figurative exegesis of the patristic writers seriously when it's about as obvious as you can get that they are desperately trying to relate the crucifixion to some OT passages with little success. It just doesn't fit, so they cobble it together as best they can. It's somewhat ironic that I as a Christain don't accept their ridiculous exegesis, but mythicists do!

mountainman

MJ = Jesus "mythical" and the problem term is "M".
The M represents an ambiguity in determination.

On the other hand, there is little ambiguity about FJ.
My recommendation is to remain unambiguous.

With reference to the diagram below:


Region (1): Purely Historical

The region marked (1) above, totally in red depicts those theories
which consider themselves to be wholly based on an historical Jesus.
No element of myth is considered existent in this segment of theory space.
Examples of this class of theories are represented on the Early Christian
Writings website, on the page Historical Jesus Theories.

It is notable that all theories in this category will generally accept
the historical core postulate.


Region (2): Mixture - Both Historical and Mythical

The region marked (2) above, totally in yellow/orange depicts those theories
which consider themselves to be a mixture of both history and myth. The
images of Sol Invictus, and the Helios-Christ depictions will find themselves
in this second category.
Examples of this class of theories are also represented on the Early Christian
Writings website, on the same page, prefaced Jesus the Myth.

It is notable that all theories in this category do not generally accept
the historical core postulate, and that their basic postulate is somewhere
between the core historical (unexamined) postulate, and the core mythical postulate.

It should be stated at this point that practically all theories advanced
to date will fall into either Region (1) or Region (2). Those in Region (1)
think of themselves as supporting the unexamined postulate of an historical
jesus, while those in Region (2) depend at least to some degree upon the
notion that there may have been some element of truth to an historical jesus.

These two parties consider themselves to be the two exchange participants
in all dialogue to date. An excellent summary of many positions, theories,
and use of hypotheses in contemporary Biblical Criticism and History is
presented on this Matrix of Scholars' Views on Historical Jesus and
Pauline Authenticity.


Region (3): Purely Mythical or Fictional

The region marked (3) above, totally in green depicts those theories
which consider themselves to be wholly based on a mythical Jesus.
No element of history is considered existent in this segment of theory space.
The entire class of theories involving fiction and/or fraud are in this segment.
It is notable that all theories in this category do not at all accept
the (unexamined) postulate of the historical core, and may in fact have
some other corresponding postulate for the mythical core, such as for example, the Eusebian Fiction Postulate.

Many of these theories remain entirely unexamined, despite the need to be
thorough in the analysis of all possibilities concerning the history of
antiquity.

Chris Weimer

By all means, continue examining conspiracy theories. Evidence? Who needs it! We have imagination!

jgibson000

Umm... what? Would you kindly provide some evidence beyond Josephus JA 3:249-- which is an allusion to the hatta't (cleansing, purging, purification) offerings prescribed in Num 28:19 that were made for unintentional sins (cf. Lev. 4:1–5:13, Num 15:22–31) and doesn't say what you think it says -- that the passover lamb, the one to be consumed by Jews at the passover meal, was ever thought of as sacrifice that annulled sin, especially sins with a high hand?

Jeffrey Gibson

Malachi151

Hmm... seems that all the Jews are confused and wrongly think that Passover is about redemption.....

http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=75241

http://www.scheinerman.net/judaism/pesach/index.html

http://livelyseders.com/_wsn/page14.html

http://www.jewishamerica.com/ja/features/arndyr.cfm

maybe they don't know what they are talking about??

jgibson000

No, it's more likely that you are the one who doesn't know and is confused. Redemption is not atonement.

Moreover, there is no mention of a "ewe lamb" in the text of Josephus that you quote (JA 3:249). The animal "which is added to all the rest" is a goat, which is wholly burned up, not given to families or groups to be eaten as was the Passover lamb. And the "lambs" that are mentioned in JA 3:246 are also part of whole burnt offering sacrifices that Josephus tells us were prescribed for offering at Sukkah and Pentecost (cf. JA 3:246; 253). They are not "passover lambs".

JG

Gregg

You shouldn't overlook the defeat of the evil angels of the firmament, and the rescue of the dead from SheolThe early Christians did not set the crucifixion of Jesus at any particular time. None of the epistle writers say anything about the crucifixion occurring at Passover.

Having Jesus' death occur on Passover was solely the invention of "Mark." Mark may have placed the crucifixion at Passover because he was structuring his story on the Jewish liturgical calendar. You might want to read Doherty's review of John Shelby Spong's "Liberating the Gospels" at www.jesuspuzzle.org.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that you didn't have a bunch of Jewish mystics coming together, deciding to "invent" or "fabricate" a messiah out of thin air, and deciding that this messiah would be crucified during Passover. That was, as far as we can tell, Mark's invention and Mark's alone, decades after Jesus was supposedly crucified. Before that nobody says anything about Jesus being crucified on Passover.The JM thesis holds that Paul and many other (but not all) early Christians believed Jesus was put to death by the evil angels of the firmament, who in some versions (but not all) did not know who he was. They believed that clues to the activities of the Christ, the "mystery" of Christ, were hidden the Jewish scriptures. It could be that the passages about burnt offerings weren't sufficiently cryptic enough to be seen as talking about the Christ's activities. Also, while the early Christians saw Jesus ending the need for burnt or blood offerings, I don't think they regarded the Temple cult, the priests, the offerings, etc. as evil. Having Jesus burnt then offered up in the heavenly sanctuary by the evil angels of the firmament wouldn't make much sense, and it also doesn't seem to allow for a decent into Sheol, a resurrection and ascension back into the firmament as the glorified Christ, and putting of Satan and his angels underfoot.But the line about "hanging on a tree" plays into the "Suffering Servant" theme. The Christ takes the sin and the punishment upon himself, as one accursed.I think you're playing up the "fabricating" aspect a bit too much. It's like you have Jewish mystics gathering in rooms dreaming up a new religion in some sort of systematic fashion. Actually you had mystics like Paul being influenced and inspired from a wide variety of sources, and it was all pretty disorganized and chaotic for a long time, with no long-term goal in mind (remember, the end was nigh), and whatever versions of the new faith survived probably did so largely through accident and circumstance. Christianity "as we know it" didn't really emerge until the 4th and 5th centuries and a lot of councils, a lot of suppression of "heretics" and who knows how much destruction or neglect of early Christian documents that did not appear to support the Paul/Markan version. So whether all early Christians who believed the Christ had been killed believed he'd been crucified, we don't really know. We do know that there were some Christians who did NOT believe Christ was crucified, which, in my view, poses a serious problem for historicists.

You make some good points and present an interesting counter to the mythicist case, one that I haven't seen before. At least you show a somewhat better understanding of the MJ thesis than some other posters. If you don't mind I think I will e-mail your post to Doherty and see what he thinks about it.

Now I'd like to go back to the matter of Paul having to contend with other apostles, trying to woo away his newly minted congregations with a gospel of a Christ who was NOT crucified. Let's agree for a moment that Christianity ultimately originated not in Judaism but in Hellenistic philosophy, with some sort of Logos figure, worshipped as a redeemer who saved by imparting spiritual knowledge (how appropriate that your handle is gnosis). Then certain Jews began connecting their recently crucified teacher/revolutionary leader with messianic prophecy, with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, with personified Wisdom, and so on, and then all this got connected with a Hellenistic ascending/descending Logos/Christ figure.

Ok, so that seems to explain why there are Christians out there who don't believe in a crucified Christ, because they've never made this connection between a recently crucified man in Jerusalem and their cosmic Christ figure; in fact, they've never even heard of this recently crucified man.

Now, if there was in fact a recently crucified man, and Paul wanted to convince people that they should, in fact, believe that this recently crucified man was more or less the same cosmic Christ that other "Christians" believed in, except one that took the added step of descending beyond the firmament to the Earth itself, being born as a flesh-and-blood human being out of the womb of a human woman, walked and talked among men, and was recently put to death on a cross at the order of Pontius Pilate, but then rose from the dead and ascended in glory back into the heavens, one would think that Paul, whether he liked it or not, would be forced to explain why, exactly, people should believe that this particular crucified Jewish man was the Christ (not to mention a lot of other things).

But he doesn't do this. Ben C. in another post on this thread says he does, but actually, he doesn't. He has to defend the crucifixion against those who call it "folly," but he doesn't have to justify or defend his belief that a certain recently crucified human being was the Christ. He just has to defend his belief that the Christ was crucified. Does this make sense? Why would people challenge Paul on the crucifixion ("We believe in Christ, we don't believe in a crucified Christ") but not challenge him on why he thinks Jesus is the Christ in the first place?

Yet I really can't think of any passages where Paul is at pains to explain to anyone why they should believe the man Jesus is the Christ. He makes claims and assertions about Christ, he quotes from scripture to prove the Christ, but he never says in so many words, "here is why you should believe that this particular historical man WAS the Christ."

Is it really reasonable to assume that nobody was asking questions like this of Paul? Even if we allow for an age in which an Augustus could be seen as an incarnate god, it's quite a different matter to propose that some relatively unknown man was the Word incarnate and the savior of all creation. Did everyone Paul wrote to, and just about everyone they had to deal with, already know everything about Jesus and why he was regarded in this way and more or less accept it without argument, just disagreeing about the importance of that crucifixion thing? If everyone already knew all about Jesus and agreed that he could have been the Christ, one would think we'd see references to him in non-Christian literature. How could such a man have escaped anyone's notice? Yet it's not until some time after Mark is written that we even see Christian detractors using the claim that Christians worship a crucified criminal to attack the faith, and they clearly have no idea who this crucified person was.

In other words, Paul's arguments are exactly what we should expect to see if both he and the "other" Christians believe in a heavenly Christ, but Paul believes this Christ was crucified in the firmament and brings salvation in this manner. It's when we add the idea that Paul was talking about a historical man that we begin to run into problems. No matter what way you look at it after that, it makes little sense.

Gregg

Are you certain of this? That this means being hung by a noose, and not tied or affixed to the tree?

But we don't know that all early Christians believed Christ was crucified. There are hints that there were Christians who DID believe Christ was hung on a tree. But what we have is what survived, Pauline/Markan Christianity. Mark fixed Paul's crucifixion scenario in the Christian mind. There are certainly reasons Paul might have chosen crucifixion as the means by which his Christ was killed other than that the Christ was literally crucified by the Romans in Jerusalem. Crucifixion was a familiar and dramatic means of execution. Crucifixion was more familiar to Gentile audiences than esoteric Jewish practices.

Now, it's true that Paul worked with the Jerusalem apostles, that these apostles apparently shared his belief that the Christ was crucified, and that Paul had sharp disagreements with them as to whether the gospel was for Jews only or for gentiles as well. So, admittedly, that undercuts my argument , but I don't think fatally by any means. We really don't know why some of the early Christians believed in a crucified Christ or why they didn't make the Christ's death more "Jewish." One thing to consider is that the faith of Paul and the Jerusalem apostles was a Jewish expression of an originally non-Jewish phenomenon, so the marriage of Judaism and proto-Christianity was in itself forced. We don't know that people were starting with mystical Judaism and trying to build the most logical "Jewish" form of Christianity out of it. They may well have been trying to fit a more developed version of Christianity, one in which the concept of a crucified Christ was already present, into Judaism.

When this issue is viewed in isolation, the simplest explanation does seem to be that they were talking about an actual crucified man and trying to make a fit between scripture and "reality." But when viewed in the context of all the information available to us, it is no longer so simple. If you assume Christ is historical, while this may seem to answer one question, it leaves you with many more. Whereas the JM thesis answers more questions than it creates.

The question of why some early Christians, being Jews, saw crucifixion and not some more Jewish-like means of execution as the way the Christ was killed is certainly an interesting one, but not, in my view. an insurmountable problem for the JM thesis. We may never be able to absolutely determine why Paul and apparently the Jerusalem apostles believed in a crucified Christ, but that there was a literal crucifixion is not the only possible explanation.

Asha'man

"Hanged from a tree" is the 2nd part of a Jewish death sentence. First, you are stoned to death. Then, the corpse is displayed by hanging it from a tree. (I'm not sure, but this hanging may be done by looping a rope around the feet, not the neck.) Finally, the law requires that the corpse is removed from the tree before nightfall, or it becomes a curse upon the land.

There is a mention in Jewish writings of a blasphemer who was stoned and hanged on the eve of passover. My guess is that this is the closest we will ever get to a historical Jesus.