Toto

Euhemerus

I'm not sure what the disagreement is about. Euhemerus started with a myth, and explained it with a historical antecedent, much as HJ scholars start with the Bible and think there was a rational history behind it, or second century Christians started with their gospel stories and assumed that there was an actual history behind them.

gurugeorge

What on earth could that mean, "make a myth historical"? I think you're the one who's confused here. There's no necessary implication of conscious calculation here (as if someone was "manipulating the myth" so to speak).

OK GDon, you tell me: if "euhemerization" isn't the right word for taking a story about a celestial super-powered being, and assuming, explaining, or believing that it's REALLY ABOUT some historical being in a historical time and place, or that it STARTED with some historical being or historical time and place, what the hell should that process be called then?

The proposal is: that's what happened then (and probably more than once, in stages, and in different respects and aspects) and that's what's happening now (ditto).

To put it another way: the story of the woo-woo celestial being would have been RE-WRITTEN as a story about a more down-to-earth bloke in a specific time and place. That's not an attempt to "make" something into something else, it's the result of a belief that it was something else.

Just like with Euhemerus.

gurugeorge

Again, as with GDon, I don't see where the "veneer" comes in.

In antiquity: some people didn't dig the pure celestial being story: for whatever reason, they assumed, or believed, or preferred to believe, that the celestial being story was really about a more down-to-earth divinely imbued superhero in their recent-ish past.

In modern times: same thing. Only: it's six and a half dozen for a modern day rationalist whether one is starting with a pure celestial being story or what looks more like a superhero story. In either case, moderns will tend to seek an euhemeristic explanation - i.e. "euhemerize" the myth. (Sometimes appropriate, but not always - and probably not in the case of Jesus, who's more likely to be an entity seen in visions by the original founders.)

GakuseiDon

How about just "historicized"?

aa5874

If Jesus was celestial BEFORE the Gospels then how can a story which claimed Mary was With Child of a Holy Ghost "historicise" Jesus???

If Jesus was Celestial BEFORE the Gospel then how can a story which claimed Jesus was the Word and God the Creator "historicise" Jesus???

It is clear that the Jesus character was NOT historcise at all. the Jesus character was Publicly declared to be the Son of God, born of a Holy Ghost, God the Creator.

The Jesus character cannot be euhemerized because unlike other myths the authors of the Myth character called Jesus TOLD us he was from the Hebrew Bible.

gurugeorge

I used to think the correct term would be "historicization", but it's not.

Why? Because that could refer to the historicization of a celestial being - e.g. having the mythical being (with his full panoply of divinity) intervening in history in some way (within a real historical context). The J layer in the Bible could be said to be historicization (e.g. Yahweh appearing no different from an ordinary man sometimes); Greek gods hobnobbing with believed-to-be historical Greek personages, that's historicization.

The correct term for what's going on with the Jesus myth is "euhemerization" because it's the belief (amongst some of the early Christians) that the divine being myth is really about a historical human being.

And that's precisely what some early Christians were doing, and what people do today.

Btw when I say "layered" above, it's like a to and fro situation - proto-orthodoxy is trying to keep everyone happy. So on one extreme you have the Ebionites who are fully euhemerizing the Joshua archetype (really just an inspired man), and on the other hand you have the Gnostics for whom the entity barely has any historical context or referent at all (for them, the earthly story of Jesus meek and mild is to be interpreted, and the Jesus figure has a deeper meaning, which is the "celestial being" meaning - i.e. they are retaining the original meaning, and use the earthly story as allegory). The resultant orthodox picture is a blend of these extremes.

So, to be clear, the general hypothesis would be:-

1) stories are told about what is in reality a hallucinated entity ("God X spoke to me and told me to tell you to keep your noses clean", "Deity X tells me he drove the demons before him up there in outer space", "Spirit Z tells me he started our culture way back in the past, by raising the stones of our city overnight" - note that this last is "historicization" proper)

2) a later interpretation of the entity as having really been a historical person ("No no, God X was a bloke who lived in x at time t; demons are an allegory for A and B; Spirit Z was really the man who founded our city").

This is the basic model of myth and religion. It starts with the powerful woo-woo experiences of "sensitive" types - or mentally ill people as Jiri would have it - who "multiply entities beyond necessity", which entities then get rationalized.

Generally speaking 1) comes before 2), the latter is an attempt by rational people who don't have the "communication skills", to make rational, naturalistic sense of the first story - i.e., it is euhemerization.

aa5874

Again, when did the Ebionites do such a thing??? If you want to reconstruct the past properly you simply cannot just PRESUME unreliable sources are Magically accurate.

Please, Apologetic sources that mentioned the Ebionites did NOT even realise that Ebion was NOT a Human being---Ebion was an ADJECTIVE.

Tertullian had NO idea what he was talking about when he mentioned Ebion.

"On the Flesh of Christ" attributed to TertullianCan you understand your serious error when you ASSUME the veracity and historical accuracy of Apologetic sources without even attempting to corroborate them???

You seem to have become a victim of a vicious tight circle of assumptions like a tornado on a destructive path.

Please, if you want to do history then simply DUMP your assumptions.

The Pauline writings do NOT reflect history at all.

gurugeorge

Origen speaks of the derivation as from "the poor ones", nothing about an Ebion guy, that seems to be widely recognized as a later error of Tertullian.

At any rate, they're not supposed to pre-Diaspora Christians, they're second century on, so you should have no problem with them.

Not much is known about them, but they seem to have existed, and so far as we can tell they seem to be Jewish Christians who took a very earthly view of the Messiah - i.e. in terms of the argument I'm outlining (I'm trying to see if I'm understanding Carrier right in all this), they're euhemerizers of an earlier more celestial/divine myth idea that pre-existed Christianity as we know it.

(And incidentally, it's true that an early Paul isn't strictly necessary for mythicism. Robert Price has an interesting and challenging essay in The Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems (or via: amazon.co.uk), outlining how it's the form that should tell you the mythical stuff is earlier becuase it's simpler. IOW, even if the Paul writings are as you suggest - and I think Price is leaning that way too - second century - or even just straight out by Marcion, for example - that just pushes the fully-developed gospel stuff - particularly GMatthew and GLuke - to later still. One way or another the gospel stuff has to be after the Paul material, because it's more convoluted and elaborate, full of bet-hedging and traces of obvious attempts to create a Frankenstein's Soter, something to please everyone.)

aa5874

It is you who have problems. You have NO 1st century sources for your pre-Diaspora Christian but continue to imagine and rely on sources that are NOT reliable at all.

The same Tertullian and Origen attributed FAKE 1st century authors to the Jesus stories and relied on Acts for the history of the Pauline writers.

You are inundated by worthless sources for your pre-Diaspora Christians.