mountainman

The smoking gun for mythicism (the definition of which covers
fiction, fraud and fabrication) sits with the nature of the
assessment one places in the integrity of Eusebius of Caesarea,
who delivered to everyone in BC&H without exception, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth about the "ecclesiastic
history of christianity" before the rise of Constantine.

Without Eusebius precisely what little would be known?
He is the smoking gun, or rather, the smoking gun rests
in Eusebius' lack of integrity in representing "christian
history".

Nevertheless, my thesis (which has yet to be refuted)
is that Jesus was a fictive character created in the
fourth century, during the rise of Constantine, and
had no earthly existence whatsoever. Hundreds of
thousands of good men, with families and fig trees
were crucified in Briton and Judea and across the
empire by the Romans. But none of them were the
one written about in "the new and strange religion".

While I will allow you to continue uninterrupted in your
belief that no mythicist is making the claim that there
is a 100% probability that Jesus did not exist,
you should be aware that to me the probability looks
like 95% that he was a 4th century fabricated Galilaean.

Ben C Smith

Yes, you got me, Earl. I have not given any thought at all to the argument from silence. This was just a kneejerk reaction with no substance whatsoever behind it.

This is the bankruptcy of the argument from silence as it is so often presented. (I am not against using the argument from silence; it can be useful. But this is a case when it is being used badly.)

A Jesus minimalist, for example, has no trouble with this Christ hymn on these terms (the terms I have presented from Couchoud may be a different matter). Your silence here, as elsewhere, even pressed to its fullest, does nothing to prove Jesus mythicism over Jesus minimalism.

These smoking guns of yours are of such a different quality than the one from Philippians. You and I went a couple of rounds about Hebrews 8.4, an exchange which I printed out and have reviewed several times since, and I do not recall you having any answer for my arguments on the present contrary-to-fact condition in that verse.

You are absolutely right. I wrote before I thought it all through. Hymns beginning with who may be a natural phenomenon. (This would work far better in Greek, in fact, than in English, since Greek often uses the relative pronoun basically as a resumptive subject for a new sentence.) I would have to consider the matter further, of course, but it would be a worthy investigation.

Some of these hymns (if such they are) seem to me to breathe the atmosphere of some of the mystery cults; perhaps you can tell me whether we have any hymns beginning with who extant from the mysteries.

Please understand that, in order to rid the Philippians hymn of all activities on earth you have to subject taking human form and dying to a very controversial interpretation, one well beyond docetism.

Ben.

gurugeorge

Well I think he's already shown something tangible - the fact that some later Christians - i.e. the "proto-orthodox" - made great use of what they believed to be the historical nature of Christ in their arguments against various kinds of "heretics", and most especially, made great use of the idea of "apostolic succession" going back to that person. If that was a much-used later trope, why wasn't it used right from the beginning?

Following W Bauer's picture of early Christianity, it seems to me to go roughly like this:

1) sketchy myth, more or less visionary/mystical, majority of Christians in small, "charismatic" communities, either Jewish apocalyptic, or Jewish proto-Gnostic (Cephas v Paul), or Hellenistic proto-gnostic (Paul and his gentile students who go on to found Gnostic creeds). Religion spreads quickly thanks to the incredible efforts of Paul and the other apostles - still a small affair, but getting noticed.

2) some attempts to flesh out the myth, there's a profusion of attempts, but one particular story line has a strong appeal to all Christians (Mark's story, in Luke's/Matthew's dress), but at this stage only some (i.e. precisely the proto-orthodox) take it as strongly historical (i.e. the proto-orthodox are just those Christians who take the strong historicist view).

3) there's a drawing apart of proto-orthodoxy from the rest of Christianity (which, while it accepts the good story, still has a mythical/mystical/visionary understanding of it, and of the Christ). At this point (a bit before Ignatius?) proto-orthodoxy invents the trump card of the "apostolic succession". This is the point at which the proto-orthodox Christians start doing the thing we would have expected all Christians to do right from the beginning, had Christ been historical right form the start - at this point we start to get the familiar picture of Christians referencing Christ's life and doings in more detail in their arguments.

4) proto-orthodoxy being better organised, and having invented its trump card, has a bigger and bigger influence on other Christians. Even though at this point the majority of Christians are still of all sorts of varieties, the strong historicisation touted by the proto-orthodox starts to change the original myth/vision into strongly historicised myth.

5) proto-orthodoxy becomes orthodoxy with Constantine's adoption of Christianity. "Docetic" is a cover for all the older mythic forms of Christianity, most of which by this stage have taken the blue pill of proto-orthodoxy's strong historicisation.

Gamera

As always, we must read Paul in context. This is particularly so in passages that begin with "therefore," dio, since he is inviting us to think back on what he just wrote and relate it to what he is about to write.

Paul has just enjoined the Phillipians to show selfless love, to put aside ego and consider the "things of others." And that entails suffering. So Phillipians is an epistle about otherness and our relationship to it as Christians. Here and elsewhere Paul calls this loving relation to the Other "the mind of Christ," phronema, and having identified the mind of Christ, he launches into a description of it.

That description is the very gospel Paul preached, namely the biography of Jesus in which he plays the role of both God and not God ("in the form of God and equal to God"), who took on the form of a man and a "servant." Why a servant? Because he "humbled" himself -- literally "listened to attentively" (hupekoos) -- to a storyline in which he would be crucified, i.e. treated as a criminal (thus showing God's love in allowing his own self/son to perish). Paul is saying Jesus played his role as if the storyline was read to him in advance and he knew the horrible outcome.

That gets us to the passage in question. Because of that (Jesus submission to the gospel narrative, the storyline that meant his death), God exalted him and gave him a name above every other name. But "name" is a bland translation. Name "onoma" means more here and in Paul's epistles generally. It means one's entire persona, and in particular, one's authority. Thus, 1Co 1:13 -Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (i.e., under Paul's onoma, authority).

This might be paraphrased: Jesus accepted the role in one narrative, a bad role that involved his death when he was in fact immune from death, being in the form of God, and for that (playing what amounts to a bit part in the human drama in some third rate conquered nation with fishermen as sidekicks), God gave him the most exalted role in another narrative, the narrative of the savior messiah: the soteriological, escatological Christ.

Then Paul adds one more "therefore" after this passage, which acts as a bookend. Therefore, he says, the Phillipians ought to "work out their salvation (soteria) in fear and trembling." What's the connection? How does this follow? It has to mean this: Just as Jesus submitted himself to a narrative that involved suffering that led to exaltation, so too, as Christians the Phillipians must submit themselves to the sufferings of leading a Christian life, in denying self for the benefit of others. And that will lead to their "exaltation" in the form of their salvation, which circles back to Phillipians 1:29, For unto you it is given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

The topology is something like this:

1. Christians exist in history and suffer for their "belief" (the mind of Christ, the love of others).

2. The mind of Christ is exemplified by (and arises out of) Christ playing the role of a servant in history, following a storyline that leads to his execution (as a criminal -- hence crucifixion), which results in his exaltation.

3. Therefore, Christians should suffer cheerfully, for like Christ they will be exalted because of the mind of Christ.

In short, not only is this passage consistent with a historical Jesus in Paul's mind, but it requires it. It's whole topology is to compare Jesus' earthly life, suffering, death, and ultimate exaltation with the Phillilpians' "working out their salvation" -- i.e., suffering for the sake of the "mind of Christ," of loving and serving others.

A mythical Christ that is outside of history simply does not fit the topology of the comparison Paul is making.

So much for a smoking gun.

Rick Sumner

If you'd like to take up the gauntlet on "apostolic succession," (which I also don't find terribly compelling, and which I think we can come up with some objective stats on), then by all means start another thread. It's not pertinent to my question here, however, because I didn't ask if he had other arguments (I'm aware that he does, I've read the book, same as you). I asked if he had a scale for probability for this argument. The answer, of course, is "no."

Let's take a look at an example that might clarify the nature of this caveat. Earl thinks Jam.5.15 should include a mention of Jesus. But why? What does he know about James that tells us James should mention this? The short answer is nothing, and therein lay the problem. What it ultimately comes down to is that "If I was James, I would have mentioned. . ." That is what it has to come down to--there is no other method available.

The silence has no significance beyond what we attribute to it, and we have no way to attribute significance except by virtue of our own preconceptions about what we expect to find. How compelling one finds Earl's argument from silence comes down to the whim of the exegete--there is no other tool at our disposal.

So if Earl says "Surely we should expect James to mention Jesus because. . ." and I say "Surely we shouldn't because. . ." what then?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

You've unwittingly argued against yourself. You and I are apparently in agreement that the likelihood that OJ did it seems to be incredibly high. 12 people disagreed. But, ironically enough, you also never answered your own question, which just compounds the problem, rather than clarifying it. What is the likelihood OJ did it? Can you give me a number? And how does that scale of probability correlate to the present question?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

dog-on

25Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— 27to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

...and why isn't this a "smoking gun"?

Why doesn't it say somthing like:

25Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings, and by the fact that Pilate and the Jews crucified him in Jersusalem some twenty years past, by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— 27to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.

gurugeorge

"Apostolic succession" I merely used as an example that necessarily presupposes a historical Christ (as we mean the term). It's one of a bunch of examples where the proto-orthodoxy later uses historicalness as a trump card. For instance one general form of heresiological argument seems to be: "we have the whole thing written down in scripture, so any weird and wonderful ideas these guys have must be wilful choice - heresy - deviation from that historical record."

We don't see anything like this presupposition of historicity in the earlier writings. It appears slightly later with one stream, precisely the proto-orthodox stream, of Christianity, i.e. precisely those who have a strongly historical interpretation of what looks, from the very earliest texts like Paul and Hebrews, like a peculiar interpretation of the Messiah concept, a peculiar interpretation that we have no reason to think is any less mythical than the Jewish Messiah, only with his advent switched from future to past.

But as I said, the expectation we have about what Christians would have said, comes from the fact that later Christians are only too eager to seek and use historical examples, etc., to prove points. So why aren't the earlier ones just as eager? Is it that somehow they mysteriously forgot all about the historical figure and immediately leapt to a mythical interpretation? That just seems unlikely. The best explanation seems to be that it was mythical from the start, and that the historical interpretation was initially just one among many (just as some ancients interpreted their gods euhemeristically), but that it eventually came to predominate.

Jehanne

I can't give you "a number" per se, but the probability that OJ "did it" is not 50/50. I would say that, for me, OJ's guilt is "beyond a reasonable doubt." As for the existence of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, I would say that there is reasonable doubt (less than 50% probability) as to his historical existence. If you want a number, I would say that there is a 30% chance that he existed as a historical person. Of course, this is a subjective probability and not an objective one. I am fully persuadable either way if new evidence should come to light.

Spanky

The New Testament, the smoking gun for an historical Jesus. Indeed, if THIS is the strongest evidence for an historical Jesus, no wonder I am not buying into the fact that this person was historical.
You want a smoking gun? Just read the New Testament. He was born of myth and not of women. If you want to try to find someone historical within that mess than be my guest. I personally would not waste my time nor my life grasping for straws!