LegionOnomaMoi

I'm hurt. Really. Such biting wit, "writing" daggers while using none (hint: brains usually work better here).


Oh...my...GOD!! A title of a sensationalist book can mislead! What is one to do? Oh...wait. He wrote a fucking introduction explaining exactly what he intended the book to be.

Again, where's the outrage over just about every single other book of this type? Proving History, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? (that one was especially disappointing, as they never said whether the real Jesus DID stand up, leaving readers across the galaxy furious for having been misled), What Have They Done With Jesus? (and he never answered this, just went on about various people writing books, but not one even KNEW Jesus, let alone did anything with him), Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (well at least this one was hones...wait...Crossan basically just distilled his much larger volume! That LIAR!), Soul Dust: The Magic of Consiousness (this one was particularly dispicable, as it was neither about the soul nor magic, but stuff on neurons and AI and so forth). I could go on (and on and on) but hopefully this short list is enough for you to stop whining about a title.

Did you skip the introduction? He sort of lays it out there. Of course, I would expect someone who has read actual scholarship to take this stuff for what it is worth: at best, it a simplified introduction to a given topic, and at worst it's a scholar who wants to make money by writing something as close to Holy Blood, Holy Grail as possible without being laughed at by her or his colleagues.

Yes. The question as posed to him by people who write to him and others like them. Not his question. Not even "the question" but "the question non-specialists who haven't already made up their minds have about whether or not Jesus existed". From his title through his intro he explains that the book is meant to explain to "seekers" that "Jesus certainly did exist." Of course, even if he didn't state quite clearly in the intro, and even if he had said "this book is a serious, scholarly attempt to address the question of Jesus' historicity" then the fact that you can buy it a bookstore for less than $30 should give you a clue to ignore it completely or take it for the work that it is. I don't sit around wondering why Ehrman says one thing in Misquoting Jesus and something qualitatively different in his various academic works on textual criticism. I know the answer: one is simplified and designed to sell, and the others are not.


We can have that debate elsewhere. As I said earlier, while Jesus studies is (like so much else I study) merely a hobby, I actually have a degree in sociology (well, technically a joint Psych/Soc major), and so in addition to the studying I do on this subject as a hobby, I had to do quite a bit for that degree. So if you want to rehash your little attempt to rip Gramsci's updated version of Marxist theory from politics into an academic pursuit spanning generations and continents, feel free. But it is so utterly irrelevant here.

Again, so what? What did I say that sounded like "Ehrman nicely wrapped up all historical Jesus scholarship here, solving once and for all the questions about Jesus' historicity"? And why are you so insistent on first ignoring what he says his book is for, and second ignoring the type of publication it is? Is this the first time you've noticed that "popular" works by scholars frequently leave a lot to be desired if you are familiar with the field?

I must have missed the part in the introduction where Ehrman explains what his book is intended to be which states "this is an analysis of the existence of Jesus". Was it before he states "And so, with this book, I do not expect to convince anyone in that boat [conspiracy theorists who won't be convinced, according to Ehrman]. What I do hope is to convince genuine seekers who really want to know how we know that Jesus did exist..."? Because there it seems like he is quite explicit that his point isn't an analysis at all, but an explanation for the non-specialist who is unfamiliar with just about any substantial scholarship on the subject.

I could do that. But then I'd have to do the same for just about every academic on the planet who has written a popular book. Some are better, some worse, but they are all designed at least in part to sell, and they all sacrifice objectivity, accuracy, in-depth treatment, and so forth in favor of simplicity, quips, simplified answers conveniently packaged, and misrepresenations (hopefully minor, and hopefully more for simplification than for "sound bites" to capture the interest of the reader) of the actual state subject, among other frequent problems. Instead, I don't buy these books at all unless I am interested in what others are reading about a particular subject so I know where they are coming from.


Not exactly sure what the second sentence means (is it missing a word?). However, I think the "ultimate goal" is (apart from money) the same behind Ehrman's book on the Da Vinci Code. Explain to the person who doesn't tend to read much in the way of academic books, even those which are accessible to the non-specialist but can be quite dense if one isn't accustomed to reading such works, why mythicists aren't taken seriously. I seriously doubt Ehrman expected someone like Price to change his mind because of Ehrman's penetrating analysis (among other reasons because, as he well knows, he doesn't give one). Most scholars simply write off these works, although a few have given actual rebuttals (there's a reason Wells switched his position). Right or wrong, they think the issue settled, and couldn't care less that there are a whole lot of amateurs who disagree. They're not quaking in their boots worrying about what Carrier might reveal to the world in the sequal to Proving History, or what will happen if more and more forum members and bloggers accept the mythicist case.


So...your analysis of 200+ years of historical Jesus scholarship is based on not reading it? Well, that explains a lot. Out of curiousity, how on earth do you judge the massive amount of secondary scholarship on this question when you "don't usually read secondary sources"?

Also, FYI, I don't get books from the library with very few exceptions. I buy them. It's one of two "luxuries" I spend my money on. Journal articles I can download through electronic access or request if I need to, but I don't like having to return my reading material.

How is it pedantry to point out that whether or not one wishes to divide the "quest" into 3 stages or 40, each "stage" contained a diverse number of "attempts" and that the "process" which according to many hasn't "got anywhere" is the process of going beyond the question of mere historicity.

Of course he is. But that's not what you said. You went off about "asking a question" and answering it. And as Ehrman points out, he isn't "answering a question" because (and he says this over an over again in his intro) the question is answered. He wishes to explain the reason why all the specialists think this to those who don't know.

No, just something which is either lunacy, pettiness, or some strange combination. You take his title as some kind of indication that this is a serious analysis which will address this question, rather than a simplistic explanation of "why we know" (we being scholars) that Jesus existed. It doesn't ask the question, nor answer it, but provide the gist of the reasons the question is already "answered" as far as Ehrman (and virtually every other academic on the planet) is concerned. And again, it's totally irrelevant if they are all brainwashed, mindless drones under the control of a hegemonic paradigm sponsered by the catholic church. I didn't defend the work, and Ehrman doesn't claim to do what you stated in your first response. And even if he did, why waste your time worrying about this kind of crap?

Which, this one or the one on "Jesus, apocalyptic prophet of Schweitzer" (in which he talks about how people have been talking about the end of the world for centuries, citing Norman Cohn, and ignoring the fact that Cohn's work describes how this "apocalyptic" tendency is based on christianity, and thus makes Ehrman's point moot)? I've read both. I stopped reading Ehrman after Misquoting Jesus, but as his latest book and Carrier's are the talk of the interwebs, I bought and read them.

Exactly. So why read it? You're capable of reading Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in the Early Christian Tradition. Seems pretty foolish to rant about the "money-maker" when even Ehrman admits (indirectly through his admission about these being for mass consumption) that such books are exactly that, and to be understood as such.

aa5874

Again, you provide propaganda. Ehrman stated that mythicists' "claims are seeping into the popular consciousness at an alarming rate". See "Did Jesus Exist ?" page 6-7

And earlier Ehrman declared the mythicist position "has infiltrated parts of the thinking world". See "Did Jesus Exist?" page 6.

Ehrman wrote "Did Jesus Exist?" in an attempt to stop the infiltration rate.

Ehrman was a Total Faliure as PREDICTED by Mythicist.

The very INFILTRATION of the Mythicist position will NOW INCREASE at a most alarming rate because Ehrman was a predicted FAILURE.

Not even HJers use Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist?" in their HJ arguments. It is as if the book does NOT exist in the thinking world.

spin

You usually write the introduction last, to clean up any mess.

As a coupla forums couldn't talka nothing else but outrage re: Ehrman for a while, we were stuck with it.

When you get some historians into the field, then you can get specialists.

You could be right. But does that somehow pardon the enterprise of merely rehearsing a version of the status quo? I don't really care that Ehrman is trying to make money. It's the fact that it is the rehearsal of a position that is overtly unsubstantiated and, from my understanding, substantiatable.

Perhaps if you don't mention something we can debate elsewhere, ya don't get slapped.

Hegemony has little if not nothing to do with Marxist theory per se. It was developed by a Marxist theorist who was trying to understand why Marxist theory couldn't model the observed events.

You're trying to take this personally. Not everything is about you. I'm interested in the empty triumphalism behind Ehrman's position on the historical Jesus... but then it may be that you also sponsor the same triumphalism.

That just means that one can preach to the choir without doing the actual work, doesn't it.

You'd probably be correct to say that it isn't an analysis. It is a rehearsal.

Goobboy.

Umm, "of".

I'd have expected a hitherto respectable scholar to be respectful of his peers.

You're right, I'm sure. That's why I have no respect for the relevant academics. But then, they don't care, so it makes no difference. We can debate that elsewhere.

You're abusing "usually" again.

Various universities have different subscriptions. And I've got a wall covered with dead trees, but there are always needed tomes or inaccessible ones or over-the-top priced ones. The print business is dying and stuff that is printed is often priced to go directly to university libraries.

It doesn't really matter how the thing is articulated: it could have three segments or fourteen. The going beyond mere historicity is overstepping, when it hasn't been dealt with. Normally things get dealt with again and again as a new generation comes to the issue afresh. The issue of mere historicity in this case gets swept under the carpet and left there, rather than dealt with afresh. "Ohh, we already dealt with that!" I'm proofreading a book at the moment that deals with a historical context (not in this field) that has been dealt with several times before. What is notable is how each iteration so represents the mores of its era while trying to analyze an earlier one. It would make a fascinating study in its own right, explaining the need to continue the iterative process of reanalysis. But here we are in r.s. and the basic issue is eschewed. Mere historicity is accepted as axiomatic. No iterations here, boyo. The conclusion is god given. "What, me worry?"

:realitycheck:

It's an r.s. ponzi scheme. As long as it keeps going forward, you don't have to pay the piper.

I didn't say you were defending it when I made my first post in this thread. Did you see anything that specifically alluded to you? Perhaps the 'impersonal "you"' was not impersonal enough. :huh:

That doesn't change the complaint. With regard to the historicity of Jesus the burden falls on the shoulders of those who purvey the notion. Mythicism is a red herring. It has its own burden that is just as insurmountable. While it is easy to point out the speck in the mythicist's eye, anyone who sustains the historicity of Jesus has three options, cough up the goods, admit lack of evidence or waffle. Every fish in the sea knows that it is the belief that Jesus exists that keeps them afloat. You (impersonal)'re not going to stop believing and end up on the bottom.

Eminently understandable.

I didn't. The title. You know.

LegionOnomaMoi

Right. Which is why Carrier's dissertation committee was composed of so many people with a degree in history. Oh wait. It wasn't. In fact, if you take the time to look at the few "history" departments which offer doctorate degrees with a focus on ancient history, you are usually hard pressed to find either classes in ancient history taught by people with degrees in history or (often enough) who even work in the damn department. How many academic papers and books on ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Sumeria, Persia, Babylon, or related topics do you think are written by people with degrees which contain the word "history"? And why do you suppose that such a degree is necessary? It's like refusing to read a book on latin written by a linguist because their degree isn't in classical languages. Not that the increase in specialization is always (or even mostly) a good thing, but then time was a doctorate in philosophy really meant studying philosophy, no matter what the area of interest. But insisting that historiography requires a degree in "history" rather than any number of the countless other graduate degrees/doctorates from classics to musicology which are intended to qualifiy their recipients to produce historical scholarship, which are treated as qualifications in history by other historians, and which make up a rather large portion of authorship of historical scholarship, is a position I'm at a loss to explain. Particularly in areas where other specialities have a longer pedigree than just "history".


Yes, as much as there is any pardon for scholars writing popular books. If you have a problem with someone like Ehrman rehashing simplified arguments for those who are curious about what someone in his position thinks, then you must really despise about 99.9% of everything published. What isn't a simplified argument promoting the status quo is usually worse. From climate science to cognitive science to psychology to history, what isn't a rehearsal of the status quo is either a fringe academic position offering nothing better or is simply utterly bereft of anything remotely resembling accuracy.




Who the hell do you think Gramsci based so much of his theory on? Groucho? I would suggest you read Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism & Post-Modernism or Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony, and Marxism but these might belong to the category(?) of secondary scholarship you don't read. In that case, have you read Gramsci's notebooks?

Right. The proletariat never rose up, so Marxist theory needed tweaking. But arguing that this means it has little to do with Marxist theory is like saying early post-Freudian psychoanalysis has little to do with Freud.


His "peers" would all produce something similar. But "hitherto"? Why do you say that? You consider his other similar books something his peers would respect? Considering that his own academic works contradict these? They either don't respect them (usually conservative christian scholars) or they don't care about them. Nobody cites Misquoting Jesus instead of Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament or some similar work he's written on the subject. Not in a work of scholarship anyway.


Maybe, but you could have explained. "Usually" to me implies more often than not. And as we're talking about a field where even a fairly cursory examination of scholarship consists of thousands of papers and an enormous number of volumes just in the past 50 years.

Those "over-the-top priced ones" make up the bulk of scholarship. Nobody except universities is expected to buy them. But I have the choice of either shelling out the ~200 or more bucks for a monograph in some series or checking out the book. And as I don't spend money on much else, I choose the former.

It's not just the dying print business, as the price difference has been true of most such books for some time. Speciality publishing companies, which publish the bulk of monographs and edited book series, never made money except by selling their books to universities at extraordinarily high prices. Who the hell else is going to read From Case to Adposition: The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages or Politics in Orality or Multidimensional Scaling (2nd Ed.) apart from grad students or professors or researchers whose work is related to one of these fields? Even outside of monographs like these (all of which cost me well over $100), the "cheap" ones aren't much better.

It has. At least until someone comes up with a plausible alternative to the nature of our evidence such that doesn't involve a historical person and which deals with the arguments against mythicism offered at least since Schweitzer made his.

Interesting, considering that Dunn (the one whose rebuttal of Wells made him change his theory) said much the same about mythicism: every generation or so someone comes along suggesting that Jesus never existed. Also interesting was a recent and rather comical treatment of Carrier using Bayes' Theorem to "prove" Carrier doesn't exist. It was comical mainly because (if memory serves) a similar method of using then-current skeptical/mythicist positions was used by Whately to refute the existence of Napoleon.

Again interesting, considering how many works on the subject (including, increasingly, papers which are normally to brief to delve into the issue) look at the history of "quest" and the iterations and whether the current one is any better, not to mention the question of historicity. And if historical Jesus studies disappoint you, I would avoid scholarship on ancient Greece and Rome. A description here and a name there, and your average historian can build a biography of the individual on that and fantasy. At least with Jesus, it's mainly methodological problems rather than a lack of material.


It keeps going forward in spite of how many people during each iteration argue it's impossible. This is true of similar figures in history where the sources are problematic but we have more than we do for Homer or King Arthur. The difference is that at least with Jesus, one doesn't find an edited volume where one author ignores the past 200 years of scholarship and decides to proceed by taking the sources as credible without bothering to explain why, while another takes for granted that all we have is a literary creation utterly shrouding the historical figure. This happens may happen here and there independently in Jesus studies, but even a conservative christian scholar like Wright who goes well beyond history spends chapters going over the previous attempts, their failures and successes, and the same with the current ones. The past several volumes of The Journal for the study of the historical Jesus have typically contained at least one paper one the problems which beset the field.

spin

Not much that needs response. Name dropping, naa. The LOM shuffle, naa. Mythicism bashing, naa.
See next comment...

...This is typical. After your previous kneejerk you discover that your comment was lame and superfluous, but you don't even both to cancel it. You just change horse in mid stream. It certainly isn't graceful, boyo. Then, I describe something in a neutral manner and you regurgitate it, all chewed up and swimming in bile.

Your umm, "analogy" with Freud is sadly inappropriate. I doubt you would say the treatment of psychiatric issues using drugs has much to do with Freud. Hegemony has been found useful in various scholarly disciplines without the need of any Marxist baggage. You really need to step up from Hegemony for Duffers.

You've only got new books in mind. Try to get a copy of Tcherikower (Hellenistic Civilizations...") or Grayson (Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles) or any of those texts that reside only in semi-inaccessible libraries.

It has.
It hasn't!
Yes, it has.
No...



The "nature of our evidence" has continued to become seen as more difficult to evaluate as time goes by. The assumption of historicity is maintained as the material becomes recognized more as tenuous. The source material cannot be separated from its maintainers. That makes the material liable to reflect the views of the maintainers and whaddaya know! it does reflect those views. If you can find a way of separating it, you might help the cause, but that doesn't seem likely, does it?

It's never been lack of material. It's always been the uselessness of the stuff.

(Nothing would stop this scheme from going forward. It'd be like asking the pope to get a pang of reality and resign.)

I don't know about them, but I've seen the veiled naive literalism purveyed as substance for the particular inherited tradition.

And wouldn't you know... no access to that one.

(And I'm back to what I need to do... :wave: )

LegionOnomaMoi

Needs? No. Needs for you to have a leg to stand on? Well, the claim about historians certainly does.

You should have seen what I cut out. I still don't get how you could claim that hegemony had "little to do with Marxist theory per se" unless you have next to no understanding of Gramsci and those like him. A re-evaluation of marxism such that they could keep the core components by re-classifying a few things isn't "little to do with Marxist" it's neo-marxist theory at best and Marx with a bit of make-up and some new clothing at worst.

You would be completely wrong, however. The reason for the treatment of psychiatric issues with drugs stems largely from the movement of medicine into a diagonstic model, the insurance companies who needed diseases not freudian theory, and other therapists who claimed that as the psychoanalytic framework of psychiatry wasn't medical, psychiatrists had no claim over them. Enter the DSM-III and a brand new diagnostic model to replace the psycho-analytic. In this case, the freudian based model was utterly rejected (not redefined, not dressed up, or in any way remotely similar to those like Gramsci who studied Marx and tried to fit his framework into reality). It was replaced by something which didn't seek to build on the psychoanalytic or psychodynamic model, but sought to destroy it and rid psychiatry of anything Freudian to 1) gain back respect in the medical community 2) provide a clear template for insurance companies and 3) maintain supremacy over psychologists, social workers, and other therapists.

You should probably stop confusing it with Kuhnian models or similar theories. Maybe re-read (or read) Gramsci and the others. Of course, if you're no longer touting Gramsci as your defining, shining hero of hegemony, then there are so many uses within everything from literary theory to social psychological micro-level analysis of cultural units that it is all but meaningless.


Well, that's because for a lot of what I study (computer science, computational neuroscience, linguistics, statistics, etc.) things become outdated anywhere between a decade or so to maybe 40-50 years (for a few classics). Additionally, as my grandfather was a professor of classics and linguistics, I had a lot classic older books before most of my library.

Harvard has a pretty good library.



Incommesurability in historiography. Thank god for theories of epistemic justification, otherwise your semi-developed application of who-knows-what post-colonial, neo-marxist, "laterally-based" epistemology might matter.

That's what scholars have said about Socrates from Dupréel and Joël all the way to Dorion. The great thing is, even if these guys and their Jesus studies equivalents are correct, and the sources are useless to understand the figures they depict because any historicity they may have is buried by fiction, Dichtung, or myth, we don't need to "recover" anything from them other than what caused these to appear in the first place (at least as far as historicity is concerned). If there exists no methods capable of excracting historical information from the gospels and other sources, we're still left with the existence of the sources to explain. And the only plausible way to do this is by positing a historical Jesus at the base.

Toto

Finally you write about the subject matter of this forum.

But this statement seems just - false, wrong, clueless - how else can I say it.

Are you saying that first or second century Christians did not have the imagination to make things up? or to borrow mythic or religious themes from others and adapt them?

Why is a historical Jesus the only plausible explanation of the sources?

LegionOnomaMoi

You could shoot for accuracy.

Hardly. And they did. They clearly searched through scriptures, they told stories (and depending on the oral model one thinks is most aptly applied here, this could mean anything from the fast and loose transmission akin to Bultmann's model or a rabbinic/teacher type found in both Jewish and Greco-roman circles), and they borrowed from other sources (the miraculous birth is a little too close to that found in the accounts of emperors).

But it's one thing to make up elements and stories, turn already sketchy accounts into mythics, and so forth, and quite another for what are akin to ancient biographies (a very loose genre) to spring out of almost nowhere. The achilles heal of mythicism isn't casting doubt on the validity or veracity of the gospels and the Pauline corpus. That's easy: of course they are filled with myth. They may even be so filled with myth, legends, rumors, and so forth that no methods could sort out what goes back in some form to Jesus.

But the attempts to construct the gospels out of the Jewish writings are almost as desperate as the methods christians used to get their failed leader to conform with prophecy. It's two sides of the same coin: early christians had a leader who was executed and sought to make him in to the messiah and hope of Israel by cutting and pasting. Mythicist do this (and about as adeptly) only in reverse: put the cutting and pasting back, and then cut out the rest and voila! It's all "midrash" or some equally unbelievable crap.

Similarly problematic are the treatments of Paul (the side-stepping over the different uses of "brother" to make James into a member of some special group and similar solutions), the magician sleight of hand treatment of clear references within Paul to a Jesus who lived on earth.

We have a group within Judaism proclaiming their leader as the risen messiah. Not an angelic or demigod (or actual god) who visited followers solely in visions, but a full account of his ministry anchoring him to a time and region while there were still people alive who were there. Religious movements don't simply start without a nexus, a point of origin. Mithras, Attis, and similar saviour gods were simply the next evolution of deities that had been around for a long, long time. The stories of them were clearly identifiable as mythics because they lacked the socio-cultural, temporal, and regional markers found in the gospels, and distinctly lacking in myth. Nor do any of these figures have for full-fledged biographical/narrative accounts within a few generations of each other, let alone so close to the time period the figure is supposed to have lived. The only precedents for this type of treatment is found in legendary accounts of historical people, from emperors to philosophers. How many mythic accounts suddenly appear written close in form to greco-roman lives within a few generations of the events and person they describe? None.

Invention and imagination only get you so far. They don't explain an unprecedented creation of myth within the very circles we would least expect this, and unbelievable explosion of literature all centered around a person whose historical existence is placed in a clearly identifiable region and time.

The word "christian" wasn't used by Paul, Mark, Luke (excepting acts) or other gospels, and reflects and outsider classification. These were intially still Jews, however nebulous that category was. All of their literature is centered on Jesus, especially his death and resurrection.

We do see parallels of this throughout history: an enigmatic figure gathers followers, dies, an his followers turn his life and ministry into a cult, which may form into a religion. What we don't see is this paradigm without enigmatic figure at the origin.
Because either we have an unprecedented type of cultic expansion and tradition centered around a sole figure anchored to a real time and place but which happens to be unlike every other similar religion or cult with similar origins and is instead some bizarre combination of a nonsensical reading of Paul (who receives teaching from a divine Jesus, except when the divine hotline goes dead for no apparent reason, and who oddly makes explicit references to the previous earthly existence of this Jesus) and the invention not just of a Christ-myth story but an entirely new genre, seemingly the product of a literary innovator who somehow can barely construct a flowing narrative but whose work catches on like wildfire because everybody realizes it is great fiction (except the quality is poor) or a new myth for their Christ (like Euripides' innovation with Medea, only he had talent), so a few others copy it and then for no apparent reason everybody forgets the whole thing was supposed to be fiction. Or a type of midrash only found here.

The literature, genre, sociological analyses, literary analysis, and more make this about as plausble as the gospels being written by eyewitnesses. However, if we look at how sects and cults typically grow and form around a figure of import, and how the teachings and legends likewise grow and form after the individual, all of the sudden we have a perfect fit.

ADDENDUM: I haven't slept in a few days, and I'm way too braindead to go over this to proofread it. And it's off topic anyway. So I'm afraid whatever typos, missing clauses, etc., are present are there to stay.

Toto

Like this: pretentious, long winded, verbose, and just plain wrong.

It is? Who said the gospels sprang up from almost nowhere? And even if they did, why is that so improbable?

I accept your concession that you have no case here.

The gospels are not unbelievable crap to start out with?? You have just admitted that the gospels were constructed of myth and other non-historical elements, so that the original Jesus at the core could not be found. So why was there an original Jesus at the core? And why are you so sure of that that you can vilify mythicism so casually?

Are you prepared to admit the obvious - that we don't have Paul's originals, and the best scholarly guess is that there are interpolations in Paul's letters?

Back up - you have already conceded that full account of his ministry is full of myth so much that you can't find the original Jesus, and we know the gospels were not written until at least a generation after the alleged crucifixion.

And how would we know? We do know of examples of complete biographies written of legendary figures in more recent times where we are able to trace the actually history.

It looks like you have just picked out a few allegedly distinguishing characteristics of the gospels vs. Hercules and proclaimed them pivotal. But it comes down the the argument that early Christians didn't have the imagination to make stuff up.

Imagination and myth are very powerful, and much more a documented part of human culture and practice than accurate historical records.

So there must have been a historical Hercules? A historical Mithras?

We do see instances of cults built around the followers of charismatic individuals. But we usually see those fail based on the human foibles of the founder. (Watch what happens to Scientology.) A mythic founder has a lot of advantages.

Plus, you seem to have an exaggerated sense of the importance of the issue of genre, although you admit that the bios was not a fixed form, and you know that bioi were written about mythic, nonexistent figures.


Yikes. If I understand that sentence, you think Christianity is just too unprecedented, in spite of its obvious similarities with a lot of other religious cults of the time. :huh:

This is an argument from personal incredulity.

So is this admission. When your mind clears, perhaps you can take the time for a well thought out response.

stephan huller

The difficulty here is that most people naively assume that there is no alternative to the inherited 'set' of writings that have come down to us. In the same way as our Catholic collection reinforces a strange understanding of what 'Christ' is (in some sense 'according to the Jewish prophets but where Moses, Isaiah and the gang somehow understood the messiah to also be born from a virgin, supernatural etc.) there was also a much cleaner interpretation from the Marcionites from their set of scriptures. If people were only aware of this rival tradition in all its subtleties the idea of a supernatural Jesus wouldn't seem so strange.

The chicken or the egg question of course is whether Jesus was a man adapted to a God or a God adapted to a man or a little of both (a continual reshaping and reforming along these two lines). The point here is that if we had the Marcionite NT the supernatural Jesus would be an acknowledged 'tradition.' We wouldn't have to argue whether or not it was 'possible.'