Toto

Not automatically. It would depend on what he said.

blastula

For HJ, imo it's all inconclusive

Of course not.

First, that's not all the relevant evidence, so even if that evidence were conclusively mythic, it doesn't make MJ conclusive. Second, the mythical elements of those passages don't refute a historical person behind the passage anymore than the mythical elements of stories of Alexander refute his historicity.

Of course, if HJ were true, the abundance of mythical elements does make it hard to say what can be meant by "HJ." If all you know about a guy is he was crucified, does that identify that person uniquely?

And vice versa.
It's also expected that innumerable actual historical persons would have left behind inconclusive evidence of their existence.

Inconclusive evidence for HJ does not prove MJ.

mountainman

In the sense that they are free from the clutching correctors of the 4th century state Roman christian church regime, have a long read through as many of the Nag Hammadi texts that you can. These things have essentially come straight out of the ground of the 4th century c.1945.

Hope for more manuscript discoveries. Read the gJudas. What is it?

Nothing is trustworthy, the church has been protecting its interests ever since it was created = whenever that may have been. Most certainly from Constantine's time, via imperial support, it had the army on its side.

Its a mapping exercise. We are mapping evidence, and its vacuum. Dont give up. The answer to the conundrum of christian origins is "out there". The biggest clue is that we have ONE SIDE of the story. We expect at least two sides. We need to understand what happened to the "pagans"

Doug Shaver

If all he had said was "he was baptized," we'd probably treat it the same way we treat "he was crucified."

Atheos

Glad to see some of us getting back to discussing the original topic of this thread: The baptism of Jesus and its implications WRT the HJ/MJ debate.

For the record I'll reiterate that I really don't care if there was a HJ. Just about everyone in the room seems to be in agreement that nobody walked on the water in a storm, nobody healed blindness / leprosy / palsy, nobody resurrected from the dead and nobody floated off into the sky to disappear into the clouds.

So we seem to be down to discussing what's left of a possible kernel of actual historical events wrapped up in a voluminous candy coating of myth.

Abe is zooming in on "embarrassing" parts of the stories, suggesting that if it would be embarrassing to the main character it was probably true.

My problem with the criterion of embarrassment is that it's so subjective as to be virtually useless. You have to begin by making an assumption about what agenda the writer had. You then have to determine whether or not the included anecdote was indeed "embarrassing" and counter-productive to this alleged agenda. All this is predicated on the assumption that the writer wasn't writing for pure entertainment purposes and included the naughty bits for the same reason Tom Sawyer is a better seller than Goody Two Shoes.

My point is that "embarrassing" parts would fit nicely into a work of pure fiction just as they fit into a historical record. All that the criterion of embarrassment evidences is that either the writings were fictional or they were non fictional.

avi

"possible kernel of actual historical events"

To what exactly are you referring? Birth of a man, fathered by a ghost?

Denouncing the gathering of money speculators-->overturning their tables, spilling the coins on the ground, while concurrently chastising the slave for burying the 10,000 talents of silver, instead of investing the silver with the same gathering of money speculators?

Feeding thousands from a handful of loaves of bread?

Curing epilepsy by waving a hand?

Converting a glass of wine into his own blood?

Historical events? What in the world are you describing here?
So far as I am aware, there is not even agreement among historians whether or not Herod murdered the children.....

THERE IS NO HISTORICAL RECORD. All that exists is simply wishful thinking....

How, Atheos, how do you separate the supernatural nonsense of the gospels from the non-supernatural vignettes? John lived in the wilderness eating locusts and honey????? Ya think?

Ever try living on a diet of locusts and honey? Hint: Pellagra would be the least of your worries. You suppose the desert there, East of Lake Galilee and the adjacent Decapolis, offered a bountiful supply of honeybees and locusts?

Honey bees and locusts both require WATER, friend, even if John did not.

avi

Atheos

Avi,

I appreciate your position, I really do.

As I see it, however, we do have the emergence of a cult that appears to have centered around a leader figure (Jesus).

It is entirely possible that the figure was invented from whole cloth by "Paul" and the historical context filled in later by legend building.

It's also possible that there was an obscure cult leader who happened to be named Jesus who galvanized a few disciples, vandalized some booths at the temple and got his ass crucified for his efforts. Maybe one or more of his former disciples were chewing on some mushrooms and thought they saw him after his crucifixion and one thing led to another. Who knows.

There's little doubt that most of what is written about this figure was entirely mythical. What is written has very little (if any) historical value.

The only thing left is the cult itself. Was there an actual (very human) street preacher around which the cult galvanized at first, or did Paul (or someone else) invent the figure entirely?

I honestly don't know. Frankly I have a hard time really caring. Does it even matter whether there was a nugget of historical "Jesus" underneath that massive cloud of myth? What difference would it make? The character is a myth whether it was inspired by an actual individual or not.

JoeWallack

JW:
Apparently AA is going after my own record for consecutive posts that do not deal directly with his own OP. I've laid it all out here AA:

http://www.freeratio.org/showpost.ph...&postcount=257

Let's get this over with. I've presented your Methodology and mine. Your methodology is to look for evidence that the baptism was historical and you claim:

1) Criterion of embarrassment.

2) Criterion of multiple attestation.

My methodology is to look for evidence of historicity and fiction. You need to defend your methodology and attack mine. Here are the problems with your methodology:

1) You lack criteria to look for and weigh evidence of fiction.

1 - Is there general evidence of fiction? How much general evidence starts to effect the historicity of individual statements?

2 - How many known/likely specific fictional statements about the subject does the author have to make before it affects the historicity of a possible statement?

3 - How much known/likely fiction can you accept in an individual story and still think some part of it is historical?

2) You have not demonstrated that the criterion of embarrassment is applicable here. You do not who the author was and have not considered literary reasons for the baptism.

3) You have not demonstrated multiple attestation because you lack Paul and the Synoptics are not independent and "John" exorcised the baptism.

You have confessed that you are just looking for the best explanation for the baptism. To the extent there is uncertainty though about any explanation, history could be the best explanation based on the evidence, but not necessarily likely. The most likely explanation could be that we lack the information needed to determine likelihood. Yet your OP states that you think the likely historicity of the baptism is a key piece of evidence which converted you to HJ.

You are not getting anywhere dealing with other posts here that cherry pick points. You need to deal with Methodology. If you do not do this soon, Stephen Colbert will assume it is because you can not.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

ApostateAbe

Those are good points. I certainly wouldn't claim that it is impossible that it could have been all just fiction from the very beginning. Anything could have been a work of fiction, right? On the other hand, I really don't think we should conclude that it in any way follows that the explanation of fiction is just as good as the explanation of a historical baptism.

I think the explanation of a fictional baptism would hold water if the baptism really had the same level of drama as an embarrassing thing happening to a fictional hero. As it stands, I don't see how the baptism could have been so exciting to a reader. Well, maybe if it were originally like a comedic thing.

"Hey, Jesus, come here, I dropped a denarius in the river, and I need your help finding it."

"Sure, John, I am on my way... There it is, I think I see it." (goes underwater)

"Haha, Jesus, I fooled you! That was a BAPTISM!"

The proposition may also hold weight if John the Baptism were shown to be merely fictional. That is an expectation that would follow from the belief that Jesus is fiction and the baptism account is fiction. But, no, John the Baptist is attested by Josephus, and he is a character that ties into the political history of the time.

The embarrassment of the baptism event among Christians is not just an assumption. It is an inference that very directly follows from the Christian myths. I already gave the quote from Matthew as an example:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ (Matthew 3:13-14)

Another very powerful point, which I overlooked before, is in the gospel of John. The gospel of John goes as far as to quote John the Baptist as saying that the Holy Spirit really did alight on Jesus in the form of a dove, along with saying that God spoke from the heavens, but John the Baptist and the rest of the account in the gospel of John completely omits any mention of the baptism itself! Here it is:

This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” (John 1:30-33)

What do you make of this?

Toto

There is still no hint that the baptism was embarrassing to Mark. Matthew rewrote Mark; Matthew was different.