gurugeorge

I think on a forum like this you'd have to give some kind evidence for the extraordinary claim re. hallucinogenic oil. I mean, it sounds "cool", but it seems a bit unlikely to me.

Anyway, I wouldn't lay too much stress on "Christos" as (AFAIK) Christians were also at times called and/or called themselves "Chrestians" ("good", "kind natured", etc.).

There's an old discussion from the IIDB archive about this subject of "Chrestus", "Christos", etc., here. I still think it bears more investigation, it's a murky area that really should be cleared up (especially considering the famous Seutonius quote). There are hints of some connection between the both terms and the Mysteries from Theosophy-influenced writers in the 19th century (Mead, Massey), but I don't know how reliable they are. I think this might be quite an important piece of the puzzle, if all these sub-pieces were gathered together in a scholarly fashion, as I hope will be done one day.

The key being: what "resonance" did these terms have for the Greeks? What associations would have come up in their mind, on hearing of someone called "Christ" or "Chreist" or "Chrestus" as a Jewish prophet?

jjramsey

Which hardly contradicts Kirby's point that no messianic pretender had ever been called "Christ" in the literature that we have.

Cite your references, please.

Toto

From the archives: Jesus used cannabis

gurugeorge

Hehe, now that is cool.

I'd just say though that it's unlikely that cannabis oil absorbed through the skin would give rise to hallucinations. It would make people feel a bit weird and receptive to ideas.

Also, I'd be wary of this because I'd think people in that region of the world (hello, Lebanon? ) would be familiar with cannabis as drug anyway, with the symptoms, etc., and not necessarily think them special or holy.

However, if they didn't know cannabis was in the oil, they might attribute their weird feeling to holiness.

At the end of the day, I think by far the bigger influence on the actual content of religion is through "visions" - what Occultists call "astral travel", which is like "lucid dreaming" (which most people have had I think), but done while awake. There's a hyper-real-seeming quality to the visions you get from this kind of practice, and a kind of coherence you don't get in dreams - entities seem to talk to you (literally it seems like you are having conversations with beings who pass the Turing Test, so to speak, so far as you can tell, and you have odd conversations with them, in which they tell you odd things usually involving symbols and numbers).

Interestingly, I was just glancing through a translation of Macrobius' commentary on The Dream of Scipio the other day, where he talks about the kinds of visions you get on the borderline between sleep and waking being the main source of religious visions. (There are mentions of this in a lot of the neo-Platonists, tucked away in obscure corners of their writings.) I think students of ancient religions and history need to re-jig the way they look at this business to take this into account, it's a real biggie, and I believe the number one source of religious matter from China to the Americas. Everything else - literature per se, philosophy per se, even mysticism per se (in the sense of Unitary visions, non-dual mysticism, oceanic feelings) is secondary, ancillary or supportive of this "fuel" of religion, which, wherever you find it, nine times out of ten, is about human beings purporting to communicate with discarnate intelligences of greater wisdom or power than themselves. Either they are lying, or fooling themselves and others (both possibilities, of course), or more charitably (at the very least) they seem to themselves to be having these conversations. (Note how a lot of ancient religious argument, even Christian vs. pagan, is "our spirits are good, truth-telling spirits, your lot are lying, deceptive spirits" - but they all accept the existence of "spirits".)

Cannabis might help jog that sort of thing along a bit, but it can be done perfectly sober too.

Zeichman

Ugh. It hasn't been subjected to peer review in established journals. There have been a few book reviews of the books by Price and Wells, mostly negative, very few positive. Anyone with access to the ATLA database could tell you this. I'm not including the now-defunct Journal of Higher Criticism since (a) it is hardly an established journal, (b) it is explicitly for the purposes of radical thinking, and (c) I'm fairly sure that they would have been hesitant to publish "mainstream" writings in their journal. I think it was peer-reviewed, but I'm not sure. I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for JM advocates on ATLA and other databases last semester, and I can assure that they have published nothing via established journals.

Can you let it die now?

Ted Hoffman

Two things Zeichman,
1. Define what you mean by an "established journal."
2. How you know JHC is not an established Journal.

Zeichman

1) Here are some of my personal criteria, not all are required, but at least a very good majority of these points: most importantly, individual articles would have to be searchable in databases like ATLA and WorldCat; it would have to be open to all perspectives, regardless of creed, political views, congeniality (or lack thereof) of conclusions to orthodoxy, location of minimalistic-maximalistic continuum, etc.; generally (though not always) avoids agenda-driven articles; it would be fairly well-known outside of those who have an immediate-personal-interest (as distinct from personally-interested) in its contents; at least moderately-sized academic readership; its articles would have to be cited with at least moderate frequency by non-contributors; more than 15 issues published; noteworthy scholars would have to contribute and be on the editorial board... do you want me to continue, or is this sufficient?

2) Because it filled only the last two of these criteria. I'm not saying that JHC was an illegitimate or poorly-conceived enterprise. I'm just saying it was not established. I personally would have liked to see it stay around and contribute to it, since I have a bit of an affinity for non-traditional thought, though it doesn't come out strongly on this board.

Jedi Mind Trick

I think this is an excellent answer to achristianbeliever, all except the last paragraph. Shall we discount the existence of Alexander The Great because he was claimed to be a son of Zeus? Just because there are supernatural events attached to the alleged historical figure is that enough to totally discount the existence of the person? I don’t think that is necessarily reasonable.

I really have no problem accepting either mythical Jesus or historical Jesus positions. I am agnostic regarding the issue, but I lean toward there having been some historical Jew named Jesus who either started a movement or for whom a movement was begun after his death. In fact I go so far as to favor the idea that Jesus’ original teachings were correctly understood by a group known as the Ebionites who were declared heretics and wiped out by the orthodox movement.

But I could be wrong…

Amaleq13

Jacob,

Do you think it accurate to characterize mythicism as part of mainstream scholarship?


Doug

Ted Hoffman

No. Mythicism is not dominant so by it cannot be regarded as part of mainstream scholarship. Of course, there are mainstream scholars that favor it like Price and Thompson (yes he is mainly an OT scholar but a Biblical Scholar nonetheless) but the stance the majority of the scholars adopt toward mythicism make it appear like a private project some of its membership entertain for their own private amusement: they have never paid attention to it or discussed it in seminars and the like (But Doherty's book is in bookshelfs of main libraries - just the other day, Ben Smith got it through an interlibrary loan).
So wheras some mainstram scholars sympathize with it, it is not a mainstream theory regarding the identity of Jesus.