mountainman

In the 20th century palaeographers were able to contribute to the Great Commission by managing to convince themselves and others that they had found 2nd and 3rd century papryi rubbish in the rubbish dumps of the city of Oxyrynchus which experienced a massive population explosition in the mid 4th century. Logically we would expect mid 4th century rubbish to comprise the greater percentage of the Oxyrynchus rubbish. Just how lucky were these people to find earlier rubbish, before the massive population explosion?

lpetrich

Will Wiley, reread the Gospels. Look at what a big celebrity Jesus Christ was supposed to have been, with big crowds following him around. Look at how he attracted the attention of the authorities. Look at how there was soon a big lynch mob who wanted him dead.

That seems like very lurid drama, and I'm sure that Philo and Josephus would have written about it if they had known about it and if it had happened as described.

Philo had been interested in eccentric Jewish sects, so he would no doubt have been interested in Jesus Christ's sect.

Solo

I read Mark as an extremely clever therapeutic manual of a community, along the lines of Gospel of Thomas but more group oriented. The story of Jesus is an allegorical rendering of the progress of a typical episode of intoxication by the Spirit (which today would be most likely diagnosed as hypermanic episode in bipolar disorder) which the core members of the group experience. As the cycle of the spirit is predictable, the gospel seems to have a magical quality of predicting "the witness" of Christ's rising and empowerment turning into paschal suffering and finally expiring in excruciatingly painful psychosis, with a catastrophic feeling of perdition.

Mark was not a modern psychiatrist but he had an uncanny insight into the illness and its phases. Jesus roaming aimlessly in Galilee is a beautifully rendered report of a manic fugue. In the initial stage of the manic excitement, the subjecrt experiences him/herself as having limitless source of energy, endowment of knowledge and power to do fantastic things. Manics believe themselves connected to the symbols of absolute power, secular or spiritual, and act on its behest. This initial euphoric intoxication however turns into a mess of self-doubt and ideas of persecution. The spirit turns against itself, as it were. Physiologically, the organism is looking to re-establish a balanced relationship between the cognitive and conative parts of personality. In phase II. (Goodwin-Jamison, Manic Depressive Illness, 1990, p.77) the subject becomes increasingly dysphoric and mentally disorganized. Emil Kraepelin - the German psychiatrist who described diagnostically, bipolar illness, schizophrenia and paranoia - wrote that agitated manics are prone to violent outbursts, wont to disrupt consecrated areas or services and seek access to restricted places. Jesus outburst at Peter at C.P., the damning of the fig tree and the temple tantrum belong to this phase. Finally, in phase III. the subject becomes "clearly dysphoric, panic-stricken and hopeless." This would be Jesus' night trial, the scourging and crucifixion. Kraepelin wrote he heard often that 'the disease is a greater torture than any other and that the patient’ would far, far rather endure any bodily pain than the disorder of the mind'. In a typical outcome of a hypermanic episode, the agitated state subsides, often abruptly, as if the spirit/daemon etc. suddenly took leave.

Mark evidently worked with the great insights of Paul, and the therapeutic strategy of 'sufficient grace' (2 Cr 12:7-9) in creating his magical gospel cycle. Those who were fairly new to the bipolar cycle would have been greatly impressed by their own spirit visitations confoming to the pattern. This would reduce the great fear of the "unpredictable end" that the illness generates. The ability to narrate their experience as part of a community witness of Christ, i.e. in having a community endorse them and accept them as bona-fide members of a group of the elect, had considerable therapeutic potential. Mark portrayed Jesus as resembling in behaviour the community mystics (cum demoniacs). By ordering "the unclean spirits" to shut up, Mark's Jesus motivated the bright psychotics to clean up their act and become the group's respected sages.

Those who observed the therapeutic success of the treatment would have become convinced in: 1) the divine provenance of the gospel, 2) in the power of the name Jesus to effect cures of demon possession.

Best,
Jiri

Will Wiley

But these stories were wriiten long afterwards, and we don't have much clue as to who wrote them. We can't just assume that if there was a Jesus that he was such a superstar.
This is the point I was getting at here.

Kapyong on the one hand says here that the jesus of marks gospel is not history, but then wants to use this kind of Jesus as the one Philo should have mentioned!
We can't on the one hand say the gospels are late and dont contain an accurate picture of jesus and then use that same jesus, and say Philo should have mentioned him.
Kapyong has Philo dying in 50 CE so we need to make some assumptions about what he might have been aware of up before that point, years before. What size was the jesus sect supposed to have been in 30 CE or 40 CE that Philo would have been so moved by it?

Will Wiley

My assumptions? I don't think we can assume anything much. Is that the question you wanted to ask?

Diogenes the Cynic

I would submit that there is not a single contemporary historian who "should" have mentioned Jesus. On the contrary, I think it's implausible that they ever would have heard of him. Why would they? Can you name all the homeless guys that are in your local drunk tank right now? That's all Jesus really would have been. The celebrity Jesus was made up later.

spin

But had anyone heard of him before Paul introduced his gospel?

outhouse

why wouldnt they?

unless you think paul fabricated everything, which would basically be a unknown scribe inventing paul and the theology.


in that culture that was that illiterate, it would make sense that oral tradition preceded the legend before a scribe inked anything.


had it all been mythology you would think they wouldnt have had a central story about a man who spends alot of time in roman prisons, who was a leather salesman who's dad was a tentmaker.

Diogenes the Cynic

Paul says there was, and there's no special reason to suggest that he completely made up the Jerusalem Pillars. If he was going to make them up, then why would he say he fought with them? Why the snarking about Peter eating with Gentiles, then scooting away when "certain ones from James," showed up.

Why would he take such pains to claim he did not get his Gospel from them, but from Jesus?

What would have been the ostensible function for Paul to fabricate "apostles" who never existed?

I think it's a virtual certainty that there was some kind of pre-Pauline Jesus sect in Jerusalem, and I think its entirely plausible, at least, that this original group was fixated on the crucifixion of some genuine person (probably named Yeshu or Yeshua).

But I also think that this real, crucified Jesus had little or nothing to do with Pauline Christianity - that Paul had no interest in the person, only in the perceived "raising," and that after 70, any access to information about the life of the real person was lost, and they had to start making stuff up, using the OT mostly.

They probably had a CST, as well, that could plausibly have contained some authentic sayings.

Bear in mind, I'm only saying it's plausible," not saying it's necessarily what happened.

A myth inspired by a real personality cult sound more plausible to me than a myth created from whole cloth.

I would put myself somewhere in the GA Wells range of belief that A real Jesus could have existed (and I think some of the Galilean material in Mark and some of the sayings could map all the way back to a real preacher), but real, verifiable information about what he really said and did is basically irrecoverable, and that his identification with Bible Jesus is almost more conceptual than anything else.

I might draw an analogy to the Chuck Norris internet meme. There's really a Chuck Norris, but the internet character is not Chuck Norris, nor can you really learn anything about the real Chuck Norris from reading those things other than a general, consistent theme that he is a badass.

I think the Gospels are ancient equivalents of that. All we have left is the "Jesus doesn't sleep, he waits," stuff.

Duvduv

That would only work if the original story didn't have the Great Commission in the 4th century. You of course ignore the possibility that the manuscripts that lacked those last verses simply lost the pages since other manuscripts did have it.

I still have not found any information regarding any non-Christian Roman historians in the 4th or 5th centuries to describe events of the Constantine period.