Craigart14

I met a woman a couple of weeks ago who claimed that people are being raised from the dead by the dozens in Africa, where "they have to be certified dead for 24 hours." In researching her claim, I found a Christian website advertising a speaker who has seen "over 200 people raised from the dead in Guatemala." People can be just as gullible now as they were then. Then of course there are the exploits of Smith Wigglesworth, who raised 14 people from the dead just prior to WWI, including his wife, who had "died" of a heart attack. She died again a few minutes later, but Wigglesworth and his followers were convinced the episode proved they could raise people from the dead even against God's will.

Craig

GakuseiDon

They DID question that. Celsus, one of the earliest pagan critics we know, attacked Christainity on that very point.

Why are you ignoring the Caesars? Julius Caesar was deified by Augustus, a comet being the basis for the claim that Caesar was ascending to heaven to become a god.

No, it isn't unbelievable. I've answered this question from you before. But if that idea existed, why did Christianity become historical, if the cultural background supported Paul? What caused them to misunderstand Paul?

Yes. But I'd like to see some examples in both categories from you from the literature of the time if this is not a rhetorical question. What gods, what sacrifices, and where?

Someone who was "born of a woman", "in the flesh", a descendent of a historical person, who was crucified, buried and resurrected up in the sky -- yes, they would have regarded this as very strange, as far as I can tell from the literature.

They DID. Celsus, as per above. Which detractor before Celsus didn't attack Christianity on this basis?

Yes, it isn't enough. Not because the people of Paul's time couldn't have believed it -- of course they could have. It's that there are counter-examples against such a position, and no examples for such a position.

I'm not ruling it out because it is impossible to believe, but because the evidence is against it. Do you understand the difference here? Once you actually start going through the references yourself, you will see what I mean. If you feel that you don't need to investigate this, then fair enough.

I agree, we shouldn't rule out Doherty's view out-of-hand.

Well, I repeat my earlier offer: state what you regard is Doherty's strongest piece of evidence, and let's investigate it together. What could be fairer than that?

Someone who was "born of a woman", "in the flesh", a descendent of David and Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, but who never appeared on earth -- yes, they would have regarded this as strange.

Gregg

You know, I was about to do a very long post discussing the Ascension of Isaiah. I knew Doherty had discussed the question of whether the 11th chapter with its spare gospel-like narrative was a later addition, so I went to his site. There I found his very, very long exchange with G'Don regarding the Ascension. Doherty pretty much covered all the points I was intending to make with my post and then some, and none of his arguments made the slightest impression on G'Don. So, I'm glad I didn't waste my time!

Clivedurdle

In fact we have Martin Luther in the sixteenth century saying identical stuff, I referenced Dake because that is a twentieth century Christian American example of this, any basic anthropology course discusses how humans react to day and night.

I get the impression GDon that you are saying the ancients did not believe this. They did not ALL believe it - there were some atheists around then.

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/.../luthframe.htm

Gamera

[QUOTE=LGM;4143913]Using this argument nobody in the ancient world has any historicity, because all we know of them are from texts that make all kinds of remarkable claims about them.


The teachings of the NT are pretty darn unique. So we ask what was their origin. The texts explain that -- they were taught by this guy named Jesus, who was killed by the Romans, etc. Seems like a very simple explanation, unlike the ponderous claim that they arose out of theologians mind and than retrojected onto somebody who didn't exist.

May have, but we're talking about these texts and their description of this man.

So if you don't accept all the nonsense about Socrates in the few texts we have about him, then Socrates didn't exist. You are committing the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Nope, both can be true. Jesus can be an historical figure, and the gospel accounts could have added matter, exaggerated matter, or got some stuff wrong. Happens nowadays too.

You mean like Alexander and Socrates and Richard III?

Yep, he'd be historical. And we learn what little we know about him through the texts that preserved (and exaggerated his story)

By this I take it you accept Paul's espistles as earliest, but you are removing any references to Jesus' biography as a latter interpolation. A perfectly circular argument.

And the answer is yes, since they clearly are aware of his biography. Indeed, if you take your reliance on Paul seriously, he would have known some of the apostles, who would have told him about Jesus, since this is a point he emphasizes (that he got his knowledge of Jesus before talking to them) -- but again, I assume you'll just wiped those references out of the text so that your theory applies.

Like I say, from this it's clear you don't like the stories if anybody takes them seriously.

Bottom line, you aren't using the texts we have to deconstruct the historical Jesus, you're simply crafting new texts that fit your conclusion. Bad form.

Gamera

As opposed to Socrates and Pericles, about whom we have reams of physical evidence. Wait a minute! All we have are texts that claim to be historical -- just like the gospels!

It's almost as if what we mean by historical is texts about people that claim to be historical.

aa5874

The story of Santa Claus is extremely unique, flying reindeers, the north pole, the elves, the sleigh, the chimney and all those gifts on Christmas day. The story is very simple and was told by Santa, unlike those ridiculous claims that Santa was fabricated.

Gregg

Gamera, I can only speak for myself here. I'm going to try to explain to you why the mythicist case makes sense to me.

I started out as a believer, albeit a "New Thought" Christian rather than an orthodox Christian. I accepted not only that Jesus had existed but that he had performed miracles, although I believed that science would one day explain how these miracles happened (and by that I mean not that the miracles would have prosaic scientific explanations, but that science would figure out how Spirit interacts with the mind and the physical body). See, although I'd always believed in God, I had been a fan of science before I became interested in religion--Carl Sagan was my biggest hero.

I never developed any bitterness or hostility toward religion in general. The orthodox Christian teachings of substitutionary atonement had never made any sense to me, in fact I found them repugnant from an early age, but since I never belonged to an orthodox Christian church or subscribed to the theology, it didn’t cause any negative psychological effects that I had to overcome. I was still fascinated by Jesus and his teachings and for a while, the New Thought explanation of Jesus made sense to me.

However I was constantly inquiring into, and learning more about, science, religion, and philosophy, and my views and beliefs were changing over time. At some point I got interested in the works of John Shelby Spong and the Jesus Seminar, and (along with other things) this led me to abandon the view that Jesus had performed actual "miracles" and to adopt the historicist viewpoint that Jesus was a charismatic and original teacher or rabbi, who may have performed some ultimately psychosomatic healings, ran afoul of the Roman authorities either for his "revolutionary" teachings, or for inciting rebellion at the Temple, or both. He was caught, summarily executed, and buried in a shallow grave. Like the historicists I'd strip away the major miracles including the birth narratives as later embellishments, I'd strip away the "vast crowds" that followed Jesus everywhere, I'd strip away everything except the bare bones of the story. I'd reduce the "appearances" to visions or realizations experienced by heartbroken followers struggling to make sense of their beloved rabbi's sudden and rather shameful and embarrassing death. Afterwards they'd read the Scriptures trying to make sense of what had happened and decided that the Messiah/Son of God was in fact supposed to live a humble life, suffer, and die a lonely, humiliating death. Everything else was then built on this foundational experience.

I held this view for quite some time, although I was always a little uncomfortable with it for reasons I didn’t really understand (more on this later).

Then I read John Shelby Spong's "Liberating the Gospels" in which he discusses the argument of a British Bible scholar that the first gospel, Mark, is structured on the Torah ... presenting Jesus as a greater Moses, a better Elijah, an improved David, a greater Joshua, and so on. Furthermore, the details of the passion and the crucifixion, even the words of Jesus, were taken from the Jewish scriptures. It was a compelling case and even though Spong (and I at that time) did not conclude from it that time that Jesus was non-historical, it further reduced the already very limited amount of gospel material that I could confidently consider historical.

Nevertheless, at that time I still regarded the idea that Jesus did not exist historically as pure quackery. I encountered Robert M. Price's case and, although it appeared to be lucidly argued, I dismissed it out of hand without reading the entire book. A bit after this, though, I discovered Earl Doherty's Web site. Again, my initial response was skepticism and even exasperation. At this time I considered myself an agnostic, and I felt claims that Jesus was mythical were actually damaging to the "cause" of agnosticism and atheism--making "us" look like we disliked Christianity and Jesus' teachings so much we would do anything to discredit them, including declaring the whole thing a myth and a fiction, with no real evidence to support this claim.

Still, something about Doherty’s thesis caught my attention, so I decided to give it a fair shot. I started reading … and kept reading, and reading, and reading. Suddenly, things were falling into place, making sense. I began to understand why I was never really satisfied with the historicist arguments for human Jesus who was mythologized over time. Doherty’s thesis, far from being complicated or convoluted or “ponderous” as it is so often described by detractors, was for me very simple, straightforward, and elegant. It answered all the questions that always bothered me about the historicist case.

What Doherty presents is a powerful circumstantial evidence case. Each piece supports every other piece. With historicism, on the other hand, you basically get a lot of inconsistent, even contradictory, ad hoc arguments that are not really supported by the evidence once you take the time to dig into it. Historicism seems like the simpler explanation at first glance, but when you take all the evidence into account, Occam’s Razor actually favors the mythicist explanation.

So what are those things that always bugged me about the historicist case?

1. The record does not support the gradual mythologizing of Jesus.

The hymn in Philippians, the picture of the heavenly blood offering Hebrews, other language throughout the epistles, indicates a full-blown, elaborate Christology existing within just a few years of Jesus’ supposed death. This is the earliest record we have of the Christian movement, and it gives us no sign whatsoever of a gradually developing mythology. Jesus is already the divine Son, pre-existent with the Father from before the beginning of time, the creative power of the universe.

If the gospels represent developing oral traditions about Jesus, why does nothing of this rich dialogue make it into writing prior to Mark? We are to believe that in their “occasional” correspondence, first century Christian writers saw absolutely no reason to refer to eyewitness accounts or traditions about Jesus? That there was one dialogue going on in writing and an entirely separate dialogue going on by word of mouth, which culminated in Mark? Do Paul and the other epistle writers know nothing of Jesus’ kingdom message, supposedly passed along orally and later written down in the “Q” document?

2. The record does not support a Christianity spread by eyewitness apostles working out of Jerusalem.

By Paul’s time there are already churches all over the Empire, and several competing versions of Christianity. Paul must contend with other apostles who preach “different Christs,” including Christs that were not crucified. This is very odd. If Christianity begin with the testimony of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry, how did some of them get the “good news” so very wrong? If they did all testify correctly, why did so many of those who heard the message immediately discard the central element of the faith? One historicist explanation I’ve seen is that people responded in a multitude of ways to Jesus and his ministry and teachings. But again, this explanation is not supported by the record. If Paul felt that Christians were interpreting Jesus and his message incorrectly, then it’s logical to expect him to remind them of what Jesus himself said and did, according to those who witnessed his ministry first-hand, many of whom were still alive.

We could argue that Paul and a few other apostles were the ones who got it wrong, and those “other” apostles, now lost to us, had it right. But despite his disagreements with Peter and James, they all seem to agree that Jesus was crucified. Is the historicist prepared to discard the view that Peter and James were disciples of Jesus? And if he isn’t, how does he explain Paul having the, well, cajones to lay the smack down on James over the issue of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles? James, he says, is insincere. Dishonest! He doesn’t understand the gospel. Wow. This guy was with Jesus practically every day for one to three years, and Paul, who never met Jesus, knows what Jesus wanted better than him.

3. Why would anyone else believe that an obscure rabbi, executed as a rebel by the Roman state after a brief and unspectacular career, was actually the Word incarnate, the savior of the world?

Historicists have a real Catch-22 here. On the one hand, they argue that Jesus was very humble, very devout, that his brief career went largely unnoticed. Surely he could not have gone to and fro all over Palestine with “huge crowds” trailing him and hanging on his every seditious word (the mighty will be humbled, the poor lifted up) without being immediately arrested by the Romans, especially if he really was a descendant of David. Yet, they say, Jesus’ teachings must have had a certain profundity, a certain mass appeal; the man himself must have had a certain charisma that caused both his immediate followers, and then people who never met him, to respond with overwhelming love and devotion. Yet Paul and the other epistle writers never have anything to say about the character of the man or about his teachings.

These were the initial problems I had with historicism. After I read “Liberating the Gospels,” of course, I had more problems. Where exactly WAS Jesus’ historical ministry in all that midrash? Did he deliberately structure his ministry to parallel the Torah, did he somehow stage-manage his trial and crucifixion to match certain verses in the Jewish scriptures? If we dismiss that as unrealistic, what’s left? What historical data can we mine from the gospels?

Finally, I encountered Doherty’s thesis. I was already aware that the dying/rising god was a quite common motif in near-eastern religion (and, of course, just about any region that has distinct seasons), but I knew nothing about neo-Platonist philosophy and cosmology or about works such as the Ascension of Isaiah. I was unaware of just how profound the silence on a historical Jesus is in the epistles and just how strange it is; how many instances there are that practically scream for Paul to make some mention of Jesus’ earthly ministry to make or prove a point, to chastise or inspire, or especially to rebut those who preached an uncrucified Christ. Not to mention those instances when Paul declares that now is the time of salvation, now is the time that God is revealing the mystery of the Son to humankind through himself and apostles like him, leaving no room for the recent revealing by the Son himself on Earth. I had not really considered the importance of the timeline of Christian writings, and immediately noticed how so many historicists overlooked this crucial element as well, writing and speaking as if the first-century correspondence, the gospels from the end of the first century through the early years of the second, and the writings of the second-century apologists all existed at the same time. And, perhaps the most important element of all: the way almost everyone reads Paul and the rest of the New Testament corpus through gospel-colored glasses.

After I finished with Doherty, the historicist case lay in tatters. At the very most, I might agree that various Jewish rabbis and revolutionaries crucified by the Romans served as models for Mark. I might allow for a kingdom-preaching movement centered in Galilee, not focused on any single person (these teachings were actually not that new or unique), which provided the material that formed the foundation of “Q.” But as far as a single man and his ministry, teachings, and crucifixion being the foundation of Christianity, as far as all this vast elaborate mythology and cosmic significance (dwarfing anything ever applied to Socrates or Augustus) being applied almost immediately to some unknown humble Jewish rabbi, I no longer consider this the “simplest” explanation. When one really looks at the big picture, it is the mythicist explanation that passes the test of Occam’s Razor.

spin

This simplistic view is what it seems you have always held. And if you can't have it your way, you start throwing your alphabet blocks.

And I note you've surreptitiously dropped Alexander, but then we knew, when that one fizzled out, you could always try some other more obscure figure to beat your drum about, saying "if Jesus goes, so does he".


spin

Gregg

Addendum to my post above:

After reading my previous post again I realized it wasn't complete. I haven't addressed the final part of the mythicist case; the writing and historicization of the gospels and the bringing of Christ to Earth.

Let me first say I am highly skeptical of arguments that assign a farsighted "agenda," or, for that matter, underhanded intentions, to "Mark." I think it's more likely Mark hadn't the slightest idea what an impact his writing would have. I also don't believe he set out to write a "fiction" with the intent of fooling people. His motives may not have been totally "pure," perhaps some politics with other Christian communities with which he disagreed were involved. But, given the way the remaining gospels were written, I think it's evident few if any people took Mark literally at first and that he did not intend to be taken literally.

Think about it. If other Christians had believed "Mark's" gospel was his biased version of a real historical event, and they wanted to write their own version to "set the record straight" (in other words, to bring the weight of the "historical" record behind their version of the gospel) then is it not likely they would have written their own original version, and not copied and pasted large sections of Mark? (From what I understand, textual and structural analysis has demonstrated that even John is heavily dependent on Mark.) Redacting Mark, in my view, shows that while they found his concept useful (providing a framework which could be adapted to their own needs and their own situations, to promote their specific doctrinal views and their own opinions on moral and ethical matters, etc.), they did NOT feel a need to counter it with their own "historical record." Seems to me that if Mark was claiming his gospel was history, the reaction of those who disagreed would be to dismiss it as rubbish and say, "No, here's what REALLY happened" and tell their own version of the story from scratch, not take Mark's story and rework and add to it.

But I've gotten off track. My point is I think "Mark" was probably just a creative guy who came up with a bright concept that had an impact far beyond anything he envisioned. He had some ideas about the Christ he wanted to get across and he had some needs to meet. His Christian community needed a liturgy and a teaching tool. It needed its own "scripture." He wanted to encourage those in his community that had been persecuted or were facing persecution, and so on. So, since the Jewish liturgical calendar is based on the Torah, he decided to write a Christian version of the Torah; a Torah in which the works of the Christ are made explicit instead of being implied, a Torah read through Christian eyes. The Christ would be shown to be the new Adam, the greater Moses, the mightier Joshua, better than Elijah, higher than David.

Showing a complete lack of knowledge of any historical information or traditions surrounding Jesus' passion and crucifixion, Mark constructed the entire scene out of Jewish scriptural passages. Par for the course for anyone who, like Paul, believed that those passages were, in themselves, the revelation of the Christ's suffering and crucifixion.

But why did Mark place his allegorical tale in a recognizable time and location? Well, consider that he was writing to to parallel the Jewish scriptures. The events of the Torah supposedly unfolded in history. So, it made sense to give his story a semblance of historicity as well. Later, of course, as Christianity moved away in time and space from Greek Platonist and Jewish influence (and their resistance to identifying a human being with God) and anyone who could have said with any certainty what "really" happened in Palestine eighty, a hundred, an hundred and fifty years ago died off, the seeming plausibility of the story (certainly to many second-century minds, and obviously to plenty of minds clear up to the 21st century as well) led to it and the various redacted versions of it gradually being accepted as history.

It might be asked, why didn't any of the mystery cults think to write stories locating their gods on Earth in the recent past, interacting with recognizable historical figures? (Of course, we know that the Romans, Greeks, Jews, and others wrote stories in which likely historical figures dealt with real (more or less) historical events while interacting with gods and witnessing or performing miracles.) Probably because no one, at the time Mark was written could have anticipated the impact it would eventually have; and in any case, it probably would have been far harder to fit the ancient gods of ancient mystery cults into any recent historical period. Christianity was still very new by comparison.

So, is this too complicated, convoluted, and "ponderous" to be believed, that someone wrote an allegory in which they brought a descending redeemer god all the way to Earth in a semi-historical setting, and that this story later came to be seen as being about an actual historical event? Is it more likely that the gospels were the result of a lot of traditions and legends and mythology building up around some actual historical figure? At first glance the latter may apear more likely ... but, on the other hand, while we do have stories of people being given miraculous births, performing miracles, or being elevated to godhood, these are typically famous and highly accomplished individuals like Socrates, Alexander, and Augustus whose historical existence and deeds are well-attested to, and not just in the writings of some small cult. You can say, "So what? Maybe Jesus wasn't famous or important to anyone else, but he was important to his followers." But that begs the question of why anyone but his immediate followers would have been persuaded of his importance. Clearly, most Jews were not.

What we also have plenty of examples of is people creating gods wholly from their imaginations and then writing stories about them visiting Earth and interacting with people. We know that people created gods in their likeness, usually idealistic versions of the warrior, the wise king, the nurturing mother, and so on. We know they personified the seasons and the elements and the sun, moon, and planets and projected them on the heavens. We know they also projected their dreams and nightmares on the heavens, inventing bloodthirsty gods who demanded sacrifice. Who is going to claim that every single one of these gods was originally based on an actual person, even those who were written about as doing humanlike things or interacting with known human beings in known earthly locations during known periods of human history?

Yes, Mark's gospel is a bit different from typical stories of this type. If you take out the miracles and the "huge crowds" and such, the basic story sounds somewhat plausible, even to the modern mind. But then you must deal with the issue of early Christian correspondence saying nothing about this earthly ministry, with Mark writing his story to parallel the Torah and taking the details of the passion and crucifixion from scripture, Christians not emphasizing Jesus' recent historical incarnation and crucifixion earlier or, alternatively, Christian detractors not pointing out earlier that Christians worshiped a crucified criminal, and so on. The mythicist explanation neatly eliminates these problems without the need for the ad hoc arguments of the historicists.

The importance of Mark is certainly undeniable. With a god who people came to believe had incarnated and been crucified relatively recently in human history by a real Roman governor, compared to ones that had performed their salvation act in some distant, mythical past, Christianity gained an edge over the mystery cults and eventually became popular enough among the masses (and the soldiers) that Constantine was forced to recognize it. Mark presented the Christ story in a manner that more people could connect with it in one way or another; the humble and weak being exalted over the powerful and strong, the kingdom preachings, the teachings about love, compassion, and forgiveness, the promise of salvation. The notion of a god "humbling himself" and suffering and dying like a human being was not unknown, but as the pagan mysteries faded from the collective memory and the historicity of Jesus became more and more accepted, this aspect of the story would grow even more in importance and "uniqueness." ("Maybe others had stories of gods sacrificing themselves for mankind, but ours was really real!")