spin

Self-accreditation doesn't have much impact on anyone except the self.

You don't have direct access to the significance of these texts, so you are liable to sailing too far -- on a flight of fancy.


spin

dog-on

I do not disagree with you regarding the significance of the texts. As I said earlier, I have no idea what Mark's actual intent, nor purpose was for writing hs gospel. I do know that the character described in his gospel seems mythical and, again, I hold Mark's character to the same standard I hold Zeus and friends.

If we can call Zeus a myth, then categorically the same understanding applies to Jesus Christ.

gurugeorge

Then this is incomplete. You need to add "... and experiences" otherwise you're missing out on a huge swathe of it.

gurugeorge

Well, it depends on how far down the timeline you accept the evidence as "contemporary", I suppose.

It's just that I find no evidence of a human-being-Jesus being known personally to any of the people Paul talks about, in Paul (as I say, apart from that one dubious "brother of the Lord" reference). So to me, there's no reason to choose that hypothesis.

i.e., if there were no Christianity, and Paul's Epistles were dug up out of the desert tomorrow, would the natural hypothesis be that he's talking about a human being that any of the other people he's talking about (the Jerusalem people) knew personally? The indications from his own words (bracketing later traditions) seem to be that his Jesus was a visionary entity that gave him a story about being on earth in the not too distant past, and that the Jerusalem people believed in what he believed to be the same entity.

Also, since it's easy to see how a later tradition might get confused about the issue, and how politically advantageous it would be to take that position (i.e. if you could make out that you had a lineage connection going back to people who knew the cult entity personally), I'm not overly impressed by the later tradition.

spin

Let's call your "augmented" definition of myth "myth2", so that when you say "myth", I'll remember that you actually mean "myth2", ie myth "... and experiences".


spin

Solo

Sounds like you are suffering from the poverty of options. There are guys that Paul knows who associate in some manner with his visions of Jesus Christ. He does not say they knew him personally - he says he does not want to talk about Jesus while he was alive (1 Cr 2:2). Therefore their relationship to Jesus personally would not matter, only their relationship to Paul, and their acceptance of his gospel.

But shortly after Paul, Mark writes his gospel in which he asserts that Peter and the Zebedee brothers were a historical witness of Jesus. Even though the gospel is largely allegorical it fashions itself as a narration of historical events. It agrees with Paul that Jesus was crucified. It agrees with Paul that the "pillars" (Peter and John, at any rate) were afraid to be persecuted for the cross.

I see no point in Mark - whatever his theological purposes -to assert the crucifixion as an historical event, if there was none. I see no point in Mark - given his scathing critique of the disciples - to make them historical witness and Jesus' intimates, if they were not.

Funny that you should ask what I would think of Paul, if there was no Christianity. But that's exactly what I am doing. I am ignoring the 'Christ persona' that was created after, and largely out of, Paul. That's how I found to my astonishment that Paul after his conversion actually never changed his mind on the legality of Jesus' crucifixion !

So, it is obvious to me - on cognitive grounds - that if the figure of Jesus or Jesus Christ was a wholly mythical Godhead, that Paul would have not proscribed in his church the traditions about him relating to his earthly career. After all, if he was a Promethean hero, destined to sacrifice himself for the common good of man, the deed(s) for which he was killed would have been celebrated, not tabooed. There is no myth that I know in which a hero is killed legally for a crime that the myther refuses to name because it is unedifying. It's stranger than fiction - it is likely something that happened.

I am surprised, gg, that you don't argue the obvious 'mythical' scenario for Mark. Mark would be wholly Pauline allegory, with Peter & co walking with Jesus, simply for Mark to show that the idolatry of any man in the flesh gets nothing in the end. Their messianic phantasies of God's kingdom on earth die with their idol on the cross. There is no kindom of God except in the spirit.

Jiri

dog-on

What if Marcion wrote Galatians?

gurugeorge

Ok, and I'll bear in mind that you have that "truncated" definition

gurugeorge

Interesting - who?

Gotcha. OK, I see it a bit differently. I think Mark pulled the idea out of his ass. Why do I say that? Precisely because, as I said, the idea doesn't exist in the earlier texts. Take Paul and Hebrews as the earliest things we have, and conceptually isolate them from later writings: in neither text is there the kind of evidence we would need that would suggest to us that behind this evident myth there was a human being (i.e. that would necessarily make the Jesus myth euhemeristic, that would make that explanation a live option, our first port of call).

This is a good argument, I have to admit. The other option is that there was not much earthly historical detail in the "gospel" (good news of a victory won ) given by the visionary entity, just edited highlights of "what I did when I wuz on Earth". I'm not sure that "but Jesus Christ, and him crucified" bears the weight of the interpreation, "Oh I'm not going to talk about any of the details of Jesus' life while he was on earth, only the juicy bit about his crucifixion"!

Yeah, it's just that the "Peter & Co walking with Jesus" bit is the bit he pulled out of his ass (or was in the air roundabout his time). Hypothetically, in my scenario, the "recent time" when Jesus was, for the earliest Christians, is vague (e.g. as in both Paul and Hebrews) - after all, it comes initially from some zany interpretation of Scripture (probably some gematria-like, qabalah-like interpretation we will never know, plus the bits we do know that could be interpreted as Messianic prophecies), plus visionary experiences of the entity so distinguished in Scripture, so that's unlikely to have much detail; and the Jersualem people in Paul have no especial connection with the cult figure (that's remarked on by Paul) other than the mere fact that they, like him, are promoting Him.

So yes, Mark is probably still writing pissed-off allegory at that stage, not necessarily Pauline, but coming from a parallel and analogous camp (i.e., probably a lineage stemming originally from the Jerusalem people, only several decades and a Diaspora, possibly even a Diaspora and a Bar Kochba down the line), so sounding somewhat similar - i.e. basically proto-Gnostic.

Mark sure believes something happened historically, he's filling in details as he thinks it happened, in a way he thinks will teach his fellow Jews a lesson, but he's making up the idea that the Jersualem apostles actually knew the Jesus personally (or, more likely, this was an idea that was being mooted at the time, in view of loss of contact between the originators and Mark's contemporaries, and the fading-out of the true origins of the movement - it's precisely the origin of proto-orthodoxy).

It probably fits the timeline of his ideas better to have the original apostles of the Christ myth be people who knew the Christ personally.

Clivedurdle

Except in the Geological Museum here they have a statue of cyclops with a fossilised elephant/mammoth skull next to it and they are identical!