Clivedurdle

CS Lewis - Myth became Fact - seems to be a mythicist! The becoming fact bit is the very human struggle between our animal and existential parts. CS Lewis doesn't seem to have understood Jung, but I love having CS Lewis in the mythicist camp, which as an English lit prof - makes a lot more sense!

What about a new category - closet mythicist?

Vorkosigan

There's a reply on Doherty's website. Carrier and Doherty rip Muller for his ignorance, illogic, and confusion. Muller is simply incapable of refuting Doherty because, as I point out on the third page of that, he doesn't even get Doherty.

Michael

Clivedurdle

Thinking about my turning point, literature has been very important.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/...nourtime.shtml

today discussed faeries. These are creatures that are between the gods and men, isn't Christ seen as a faerie from some perspectives?

Did you know Disney's Tinkerbell was modelled on Marilyn Monroe?

RPS

I generally agree with your assessment (except as it relates to my treatment).

I don't offer them as inferences into Paul's thinking, but merely to reference the view of Jesus having siblings being "around." That being so provides more support for the idea that the burden of producing evidences (much less proof) rests with one seeking to undercut the common reading of the phrase at issue.

Rick Sumner

It came out a lot earlier than that. The "History of Religions School" was probably the first to bring such issues up. Its most notable champion is Rudolf Bultmann, who is one of the--if not the--academic figure attacked most vigorously by proponents of the New Perspective, beginning with Sanders (who cites--and criticizes--Bultmann no less than 70 times in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (or via: amazon.co.uk), and probably quite a few more than that).

The Bultmannian interpretation of the NT in general was largely buried by the publication of the DSS, coupled with increased efforts to understand first century Judaism for it's own sake, rather than as a foil to Christianity.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Doug Shaver

Because the gospels are not about Paul or what he knew or how he knew it.

Obviously, if Paul knew anything about a man called Jesus or any siblings he might have had, he must have gotten such knowledge independently of the gospels, since they did not exist in his lifetime.

Some of the stories on which the gospels were based might have been circulating in Paul's lifetime. In fact, they must have been, if we assume Jesus' historicity. But if he don't assume it, then Paul might or might not have heard such stories. As evidence that he did hear them, an ambiguous throwaway line like "brother of the lord" is entirely too weak. Without the question-begging assumption of historicity, it cannot be cogently argued that the only reasonable construal of that line is "male sibling of Jesus of Nazareth."

Doug Shaver

Nope.
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglasof...tor/muller.htm

Doug Shaver

The question under debate is whether that view was around during Paul's lifetime. More specifically, the question is whether Paul's referring to someone as "brother of the lord" is evidence that is was.[/QUOTE]

Here is my hypothesis. When Paul referred to James as "brother of the lord," he was using an honorific that precise meaning of which is no longer known but would have been known to Paul's readers. I think it likely that the honorific was applied to several people besides James, but I don't think I need to assume that it was. Perhaps only one person at a time could be called that, but it doesn't matter for my hypothesis.

Years later, when the gospel stories started circulating widely among Christians, many (at first not all) Christians supposed that they were about a a real man, and at least some of those Christians would have supposed that Paul's Christ Jesus was that man. It would then have been natural for them infer that Paul's reference was to the same James identified in the gospels as one of Jesus' siblings.

Insofar as it goes, that looks pretty parsimonious to me. There might be all manner of other problems with mythicism. There might be other very good evidence for Jesus' historicity. But I cannot for the life of me see "brother of the lord" as a killer argument for Jesus' real existence. If that is the best argument that historicists can muster, their case is hopeless.

No Robots

Nobody said it was a "killer argument." RPS didn't even present it as an argument at all. He just said that a straightforward reading is simplest in lieu of evidence to read it otherwise. You provide no evidence to read it otherwise, only your own hypothesis.

The fact is that the phrase "brother of the Lord" is evidence for the historicity of Christ, and your hypothesis is simply an attempt to shore up a damaged position.

I don't see what you want. Do you want a world free of Christ? Why? Why such strenous effort to disprove this man's existence?

Sparrow

How about a world free of superstition? How about a world free of opression? How about a world free of imaginary friends and sky daddies? The strenuous effort, on my part, is simply to understand how a religion can grow from such flimsy evidence. I don't know if there was a man named Jesus almost 2000 years ago who was a preacher, but I'm fairly certain that the miracle stories are much more story than miracle. It makes more sense to me if the whole thing is myth than if it were in some sense history.