JoeWallack

The Failure Of Christian Bible Scholarship To Objectively Consider Pagan Influence On The Conception (pun intended) of "God's Son"


JW:
The Purpose of this Thread is to consider a Parallel in Christian Bible Scholarship to Earl Doherty's argument for Mythical Jesus. Factors to consider in comparison are:

1) The Extent to which the Arguer is acting as Advocate instead of Judge.

2) The Practical problem that 1) creates.


Some Christians and Christian familiars here lately, such as Ben, G-D and Jeff, have successfully demonstrated to the Unfaithful here that Mr. Doherty sometimes, possibly, has a slight tendency to barely overstate his position. Maybe. These Grand Inquisitors are welcome to do so here, it's what these Boards are for, they are improving the level of scholarship here and I congratulate them on their efforts.

My guess is that if Jobar did one of his polls now, a majority of Skeptics here would agree that Mr. Doherty sometimes overstates his position. I do think that Christians are praying on Mr. Doherty disproportionately here though because in a Biblical Criticism forum, what else here can they Defend against? Are they going to argue with me about the Dating error of Jesus' supposed birth?:

Carrier's Luke vs. Matthew on the Year of Christ's Birth Now Up At ErrancyWiki

Apparently not. No, I think the Christians here are ganging up on Mr. Doherty for the simplest reason of all. Because they can. They have an actual Argument. Let's try to put this Christicism in Perspective though. Even though I think that some of the Christicism given to Mr. Doherty here is Theoretically correct, what is the Practical effect?

The United States primarily consists of Christians and the average Christian has never heard of Earl Doherty. The average Christian scholar and clergy never mentions Doherty and on rare occasion, when Doherty is mentioned it would be a Lord Voldemore Type reference, "He whose name and theory shall not be mentioned."

As a contrast to Doherty's scholarship and its Practical effect let's Compare to one of the greatest Christian Bible scholars of our genea, the late Raymond Brown and his classic work, The Birth of the Messiah (or via: amazon.co.uk). Let's specifically consider how Brown dealt with the issue of possible Pagan influence on the Christian development of Jesus being (really) God's son. After we look at How Brown dealt with the issue we can consider the practical effect.

Brown has an Appendix where he considers the Conception of the Virginal Conception and evaluates possible Sources for the Christian Virgin Birth story. On page 522 Brown lists what he considers to be 3 key questions regarding possible Pagan influence:

1) Would such legends or traditions have been known to Christians...

2) How attractive or acceptable would these pagan legends have been to Greek-speaking Jewish Christians?

3) Are any of these divinely engendered births really parallel to the non-sexual virginal conception of Jesus...

Consider that Brown's entire book is 752 pages of small print and his discussion above is the only part of his book devoting significant attention to any kind of possible Pagan influence on the Infancy Narratives. Could a case be made that Brown is guilty here of Selective questioning, missed readings, and misrepresentations of priorities? Would Jeff Gibson's massive idol time be better spent critiquing Brown here and communicating the results to hundreds of millions of Christians in the United States who have no Conception of possible Pagan influence on the Christian conception of "God's son" possibly actually affecting how our Country is run as well as its future?

So, my question to the Unfaithful here as well as Christians is, does Brown Objectively consider possible Pagan influence on the Formation (pun intended) of the Christian concept of "God's son" by focusing on Pagan parallels to the "Virgin Birth"?



Joseph

SCRIPTURES, n.
The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

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GakuseiDon

IMHO the Virgin Birth was inspired by the tales of the Roman Emperors being fathered by the gods. The Emperors weren't virgin-born, but that was an add-in by Christians from the passage in the Septuagint.

No Robots

The supernatural birth from the Virgin is the most profound poetic-symbolic truth about the sublime Genius.... After God had created man, Satan pricked man with his fork and pierced him with these three holes of religion, metaphysics and moralism, and that is why, now, God has continually to bring forth the undamaged man, the Genius, by way of exception. The Virgin Mother and much else is poetry—but we cannot do without it; there are things which can only be expressed poetically and which can only be assimilated into the consciousness through poetry.—Brunner, Our Christ.

Loomis

Sorry Joe. I haven’t read it.

What did Raymond Brown say about the parallels between Exodus 1:15-22 (Pharaoh gives the command to kill every male Hebrew) with Matthew 2:16-18 (Herod orders the slaughter of the babies in Bethlehem)?

Did he blame that on the pagans?

You can’t fool us! You want to blame everything on the pagans because you believe that Yahweh is a real god.

Right?

It’s unfathomable to you that the myth of Yahweh grew out of the myths surrounding El and Baal.

Right?

It’s unfathomable to you that the Israelites were bunch of polytheists who had plenty of ‘sons of God’ stories.

Right?

How many Columbo jokes does it take before the myth of Jesus isn’t a Jewish invention?

andrewcriddle

Brown discussed pagan parallels to the Virginal Conception in The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) 1973

He chose to refer to that book for some points in Appendix IV of The Birth of the Messiah rather than repeat the discussion.

Andrew Criddle

JoeWallack

Like A Virgin?


JW:
For the benefit of those who need points sharply explained (like Jeff) let me try to make it clearer:

A priMary objective of Brown's book is to examine possible influence on the Christian Infancy Narratives. Now Brown wasn't just some Nudnick slumming through II ruffling Fhearasers, he was Mainstream Christian Bible scholarship. Brown confesses to us that orthodox Christianity began with a Belief in resurrected Jesus and than worked its Way backwards (a sign of Satan?). Subsequent Christianity asked the question:

Who was Jesus?

Theses are Brown's words. "Who was Jesus"? The answer for the Infancy Narratives was:

The son of God, no tricks.

Now, getting back to possible Influence on the Formation of this answer, Brown's Implication is that we can rule out History. He can't say this Explicitly cuz he was a Priest. Since we can rule out History, what does that leave an Author living in a Greek/Jewish world?

Where are there better Parallels to The son of God, no tricks? In the Greek or in the Jewish? Brown doesn't give this question any Play. The question he analyzes is Where are the parallels to the Virgin Birth story? This does attempt to answer the How aspect of the most important question but How can this be a Substitute for the Entire question of:

Who was Jesus?

We therefore have the following related questions regarding Brown and mainstream Christian Bible scholarship:

1) Why do they avoid the Larger question of Who was Jesus?
considering possible Greek vs. Jewish influence?

2) Why do they Substitute for 1) with the Smaller question of possible influence on the Virgin Birth?

I have also Witnessed this Questionable behaviour here at II with Christians and Christian Familiars.

Why are they/you doing this G-D?



Joseph

MAGDALENE, n.
An inhabitant of Magdala. Popularly, a woman found out. This definition of the word has the authority of ignorance, Mary of Magdala being another person than the penitent woman mentioned by St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may justly boast themselves the greatest of revisers.

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