avi

1. of course, no one knows the answer.
2. Is it useful (perhaps not!) to compare the earliest Christian documents with other early Greek mythological accounts: Homer's Trojan war chronicles, and various stories about ancient Greek Gods?
3. Is it useful to examine the earliest docs from another semitic religion--Islam?
4. Is it useful to assess the earliest docs/carvings from three Eastern traditions:
a. Buddhism--Siddhartha, b. Daoism -- Lao Zi, c. Confucianism -- KongZi

In other words, there is nothing unique about the myth of Christianity. Its origins are likely due to the same confluence of factors which have affected/created a host of other belief systems. Even the corruptions and forgeries in the Bible are not unique. Ditto for the splintering into multiple sects. The extant written record undoubtedly was influenced by oral tradition, as well as by political upheaval, overt fraud, scribal fatigue, and natural disasters.

avi

Doug Shaver

Sure. Assuming Jesus' historicity, it's certainly reasonable to suppose that the stories at least began as eyewitness accounts. It's a separate question how much fact was left in the stories by the time the gospel authors got hold of them.

Of course, being an ahistoricist, I had to vote for literary creation.

spin

While I was only asking what people thought (including what they assume), I'd think that one could be ahistorical with both literary creation and developing traditions!


spin

grog225

I think there were many Jesus notions floating in the air from the first century on. At some point, someone decided to create a story about "Jesus", possibly based on vignettes that started circulating, sort of like the Coyote myths in the Southwest. I think primitive "Jesus Christ" beliefs emerged out of logos-thought like that of Philo. These ideas of a "logos", a son of god dwelling alongside God in heaven, were eventually personified.

Chili

I voted for "None of the above" mainly to point out that there is truth behind myth which really points at the first choice that "It was based on first hand accounts of real events" but wherein the word "real" is more real than just historical and so really has nothing to do with history.

I suspect that we are dealing with metamorphosis here that so is the primary source of knowledge for the writer who gives us a first hand account of what happened to him. Of course it is "based on the developing oral traditions of the nascent religion" to make it topical instead of foreign that so can be said is "God breathed" and close to home to make us the audience in 'our mythology' wherein it potentially can happen to us and at least we can relate to it because 'it deals with the stuff we are made of" (what fills our minds fills our limbs in the thousand year reign).

Then I would say that the four Gospels are used to make the difference known between right and wrong, which is not to say that Judaism was wrong but that there is a need to explain the difference between right and wong so that we do not all end up in hell and there say 'what went wrong with us.'

Doug Shaver

That's true.

Chili

One must be careful with 'ahistorical' in 'literary creation' because it is in history that the same old story was retold by the artist and it is important to recognize that the new version of the old story was born out of the tradition of those days.

I have no problem with denying the historical Jesus as presented in the Gospels but the time was right for the story to be told the way it was. I hold here that the story takes place in the mind of one man much like Goldings "Spire" and Hardy's "Lines on the Titanic" which could not have been written without the Titanic collision to have happened first. As for the Spire, people are still wondering which steeple Golding was writing about which in reality was his own ego . . . and nicely done.

bacht

I've seen it suggested that the gospel story was written down at the transition from the first generation of believers to later converts.

Maybe Mark or its model signal the changeover to a predominantly gentile organization, or maybe the movement had become large enough to require some sort of written authority. By coincidence, the first gentile bishop of Jerusalem was supposedly a Marcus, after the bar-Kochba revolt.

Then there's the theory that gnostics produced the first written gospel, which were re-worked later as Catholic material. Thus Mark would be the product of someone like Marcion, and the text was revised to eliminate the anti-Jewish theology.

spamandham

Here's my guess as to how it happened. As a result of the fall of the temple, or perhaps Hadrian's actions, a pre-existing Hellenized Jewish sect which favored a mystical new age view of the scriptures rose in relevance.

As a mystery cult, early Christianity obsessed over the same symbolism Greek mystery cults obsessed over. The solar cross, a common symbol of new life, became the center of this religion.

The passion play is supposed to symbolize the death of the ego of the followers, who are then given new life as spiritually oriented new creations. My guess is that the passion play itself was the original gospel, and was combined with baptism to symbolize descent into the underworld and revival of spirit. "Jesus Christ" represented the initiates. Over time, more and more mystery symbolism got tacked onto the story, drawn from Jewish scriptures and with an eye on the various Jesuses in Josephus as Jesus became more and more historicized.

By the time Mark wrote, the cult had spread and the story had started to take on a life of its own, incorporating historical figures such as Herod and Pilate. By the time we get to Luke, people had completely forgotten the origin of all this and had thought of Jesus as an actual godman of history.

spin

I don't see the connection between the title "literary" and your first statement. If "there were many Jesus notions floating" around wouldn't that suggest the existence of an oral dissemination of tradition?


spin