Amaleq13

Q is arguably an exception to this.

I agree and a credible answer will, IMO, help make an HJ the more likely explanation.

Amaleq13

The ones that immediately come to mind:

1) Given a layered Q, it may have originally existed as nothing but an anonymous collection of Cynic-style sayings that were later attributed to Jesus.

2) The whole text was about another guy, entirely. He may have had the rather ubiquitous name of "Jesus" and been used as a template for how Christians of the Gospel era believed their Jesus would have behaved.

3) There is no Q. (I'm not sure how that accounts for the Didache, though, since its Jesus appears to have more in common with that text than the Gospel depiction)

I would too but that isn't what is being suggested. Would you be as skeptical of the notion of people applying widely diverse interpretations of an idea or collection of pre-existing and somewhat related ideas (eg Son of God, dying/rising Savior, God's Wisdom, Suffering Servant, The Just Man)? After several decades, somebody decided to depict this Son in a narrative so as to better communicate his faith.

Amaleq13

Thanks for the clarification, Andrew.

ichabod crane

But there was no one "Jewish" reading of the Tanakh; but still it is true that *regardless* of the reading of the Tanakh, every other non-Christian Jewish messianic movement centred around a real human individual.

Furthermore, we don't even have to confine ourselves to early Christianity. Do you concede that there were Jews who believed that Christ was the messiah say, in the early 2nd century (the Ebionites for example)? If so, we have a Jewish messianic movement. So the argument still holds as follows:

(Q) How many Jewish messianic movements, by whatever route they came into being, came into existence without a real human figure as their inspiration? (A) None.

Assuming we can know intention, I don't see how that affects historicity. Shakespeare is a good example. His intention was not historical; but that doesn't make his writing entirely un-historical or contrived. Mark's intention was, I think, essentially to create propaganda that would persuade people to become Christians. But that doesn't mean it is devoid of history, and in fact, inclusion of some historical content might serve that purpose far better than mere invention. It also argues against an allegorical intent; if Mark is trying to persuade people to become Christians, surely he is going to write in a plain manner that they can understand, not demand some hidden meaning from his reader. Propaganda is not known for its allegory!

Clever point. I would have to check, but I'd be suprised if there were no messianic references in Q. Are you perhaps referring to a sub-component of Q or an "original" Q as distinct from, say, Q as found in the "Critical Edition"? But even if true, it doesn't escape the argument, for reasons I've outlined above. As long as later Christians did constitute a Jewish messianic movement, the argument still holds.

Vorkosigan

Yes, but Christianity was a syncretic movement based on a heavily Hellenized Judaism that incorporated elements of mystery cults, including a sacred meal, cultic narratives, and so on. In other words, it wasn't a Jewish" messianic movement any more than the Taipings or Wovoka were "Christian."

In any case, were the objects of Jewish cults in the Second Temple period, such as Melchizeldek or Enoch or Moses, historical persons? Weren't they Divine mediator figures with cultic titles and divine powers? In other words, even taken as a purely "Jewish" phenomenon, there's plenty of precedent in the "Two Powers in Heaven" beliefs that the Jesus cult tapped into (and maybe even grew out of).

Vorkosigan

Ted Hoffman

I had no idea this thread was growing. Lets see...
AC,
What is your basis for beleiving that there was "an original form of 6-11"?
Why is it missing in the Latin and Slavonic texts?

At what point does AoI say that "Christ takes on outward human appearance to live among humans on earth"?
Reasons?
Its is because of this inconsistency that AoI was amended to give us the present form of AoI. I am glad you got it. Why interpolate a text if it is consistent with your theological understanding?
So, now AoI becomes useless now because it is inconsistent with modern Christian Chistology?
KM,
In other words, you cannot locate any passage that has Wells stating that there was a HJ. Thank you.
What suits your personal taste is worthless to us. What we are interested in is evidence. Evidence. Evidence.

Why hasn't the HJ theory by the "mainstream of Bible scholarship" taken hold within Doherty, Bob Price, Tim Freke, Michael Turton, Thomas L. Thompson, Richard Carrier, Jacob Aliet...?
I mean why has not the Thomas L. Thompsons and Bob Prices of the world openly endorsed the purely Historical idea?

IC
Search on kata sarka in this board please. It is a tired topic and even ardent critics like Rick Sumner no longer battle it. The reading you are giving has been characterized by Carrier, who has translated ancient texts, as "barely intelligible".

AC,
I thought you knew Bede better than that. Relying on an anecdotal story from him - without any supporting evidence, is stone crazy. Have you read about his alleged encounter with the author of The Jesus Mysteries? Hold your hat as you read his account in Holding's site. Search under Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Vork asked:
IC responded:
What are these earlist Christian writings?

In the CST (Common Sayings Tradition), there is no Jewish voice.
How do we know a Jewish voice?
N. T. Wright writes in The New Testament and the People of God: "Far more important to the first-century Jew than questions of space, time and literal cosmology were the key issues of Temple, Land, and Torah, of race, economy and justice. When Israel's God acted, Jews would be restored to their ancestral rights and would practice their ancestral religion, with the rest of the world looking on in awe, and/or making pilgrimages to Zion, and/or being ground to powder under Jewish feet."
Doherty writes:
http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/crossbr.htm
KMIt was not a single divide. There was a "riotous diversity" of Christian cults and doctrine. From docetism, gnostic cults, cult of Naasenes (Hippolytus), the Nazarenes, the Ebionites, mythicist cults who believed in the son - an intermediary figure (shepherd of Hermas, Odes of Solomon) and so on. What we find in the Didache, the Epistle to Diognetus etc, are different Christological movements without a central HJ figure.

The HJ movement was orchestrated to beat all these other cults to one shape: a HJ. I believe Eusebius lists 19 cults. I am sure PhiloJay probably has them memorized...

The very fact that we had a 'seething mass of sects and salvation cults,' speaks against the existence of a central figure of Christianity.

No, there was no great divide. They were many. Dozens.

Amaleq13

Based on a previous post, I think Vorkosigan agrees with you on this point. I asked about it then but I suspect my question got buried by subsequent posts (surely he wouldn't have ignored me. )so I'll repeat my question to both of you:

What is the basis for this conclusion? I see no evidence that Mark's story was intended to obtain converts. It seems to me to have been originally written, perhaps exclusively, for his fellow believers.

Prepare to be surprised. You will find a Wisdom Teacher, God's Wisdom Incarnate (implied), Apocalyptic Prophet and Son of God. Assuming a layered Q, this can be seen as a progressive development over time.

Not if "a Jewish messianic movement" is an oversimplification of Christianity and I think it is no matter when in its history you are considering it. The evidence suggests it was never just "a Jewish messianic movement".

andrewcriddle

The Latin and Slavonic texts to which I'm referring are 6-11 without 1-5 they are mostly the same as Ethiopic 6-11 but with some important differences. One of which is the absence of the words Christ and Jesus. If this is the original then Christ and Jesus were probably omitted as being names that no-one not even Isaiah were to know in advance. (see various references in AoI to names not to be revealed).

There was certainly an original form of AoI 6-11 in the sense of the archetype to which the Ethiopic Slavonic and Latin all go back. How far this is a rewrite of an earlier version cannot really be determined.
Ethiopic AoI has in section 11 a long passage about Christ's life on earth including 'And I saw how as a babe at Nazareth he sucked the breast like any other babe in order not to be recognized' Slavonic and Latin AoI lack almost entirely this passage but do have 'And I saw one like a son of man and he lived with men in the world and they did not recognize him.'
I gave my resons why Inanna is not a good parallel in my previous post, basically it is not a story about incarnation at all.
Texts are interpolated for all kinds of reasons. IF the explicit references in AoI 11 to Christ's life on earth were missing in the original version of AoI 6-11, (they are present in a very abbreviated sense in the Slavonic and Latin and in an expanded form in the Ethiopic hence all our surviving sources have at least some reference to Christ's life on earth), then this probably implies some important difference in doctrine.

However it is methodologically unsound to propose that the original doctrine is one which is neither found explicitly in any plausible reconstructed form of the original text nor explicitly anywhere else.
No I said that if it originally meant something very different from Paul
(ie that Christ never took on human form at all but was killed in angelic form) then it would give little help in understanding Paul.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

On reflection, I think I was rather negative in the above post, attacking proposals about what AoI is about without providing a better alternative.

So I'm going to say what I think happened during the development and rewriting of AoI.

Although I think the long section in Ethiopic AoI 11 about Christ's life on Earth is not original in its present form I doubt if the very brief passage in the Latin and Slavonic is the original form either.

a/ there seems to be a reference to the verses about the death of Christ in Ethiopic AoI 11 in the Greek Legend of Isaiah which appears to have used an early form of AoI as one of its sources. The Greek Legend also seems to refer to the Latin and Slavonic AoI 11 'and he lived with men'

b/ The passage in Latin and Slavonic AoI 11 'and he lived with men in the world and they did not recognize him' 'and they did not recognize him' seems to have come originally from a passage in Ethiopic AoI 11 about the crucifixion 'the adversary envied him and roused the children of Israel against him not knowing who he was and they delivered him to the king and crucified him'

Hence I think that the original form of AoI 11 had Christ crucified in human form on earth.

What I think is much more doubtful is the long previous section in Ethiopic AoI about Christ's birth and childhood.

a/ This long section interrupts the flow, has no parallel in the rest of AoI and no support outside the Ethiopic.

b/ This passage is almost certainly based partly on the late 2nd century Protevangelium of James whereas the original version of 6-11 is unlikely to be after 150 CE.

Therefore I think that the original AoI had a reference to Christ's death on earth but no reference whatever to any sort of human birth or childhood. It may have explicitly had Christ descending to earth and immediately taking on adult human form. (As in say Marcion's teaching)

In our present AoI this has been rewritten in the interests of orthodoxy to provide Christ with a human birth and childhood.

This is obviously speculation but hopefully constructive speculation.

Andrew Criddle

Ted Hoffman

Muller's critique will be handled in three parts. Part One is ready.

Riveting. Enrapturing. I am yet to read it thoroughly.

Comments?