Bingo the Clown-O

“Paul” said his very source was “the scriptures.” He didn’t say “the Hebrew scriptures.” He just said “the scriptures.”

It seems likely that his very source was Christian scriptures.

Specifically, it seems likely that his very source was Acts 10:39-41.

Also - the appearance to Simon can be found in Luke 24:34, the appearance to Paul can be found in in Acts 22:6-9, and the appearance to James can be found in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

It seems likely that “Paul” was telling the truth - at least as far as his very source was concerned.

It certainly makes a little more sense that way.

Doesn’t it.

gurugeorge

Sorry, missed this, I'm only offhandedly browsing BC&H atm.

All of it. My basic sketch is as follows. Unfortunately, it's really hard to make it "snappy"

The roots of the whole thing are in a short window of Jewish optimism following the death of Caligula before his threatened destruction of the temple was realized.

Some person or persons at that time revised the very concept of the Messiah myth, from an entity to come, to one who had been; from a victory to come, to a victory that had been won (i.e. they thought the foiling of Caligula's plans was the beginnings of the tide turning), and from a victory that had been won with great fanfare, to a victory that had been won in great obscurity (hence the baffling sudden success of the Jews in avoiding what might have been a horrific event). Nobody knew the Messiah personally, but he was hypothesized as an explanation for the good turn of luck. Possibly this person or persons were more political, more towards the line of Zealotry, but there's also a somewhat mystical tinge to the idea - it hearkens back to the older idea of "Messiah" (Anointed) that was related to Near Eastern god-kings generally (divine Son).

At the same time, or shortly after, but independently, another person, X had a mystical vision of a conceptually very similar value-revalued, value-inverted Messiah, but even more spiritual, and less connected with the strictly Jewish concept of the Messiah, but more of a universal saviour, whose victory wasn't just over the Romans but over death itself, by means of a kind of mystical self-sacrifice, somewhat reminiscent of pagan mystery cults, on a tree or cross. This person may not have been Jewish at all, but was familiar with Judaism to some extent.

X spreads his "message" - more or less in the manner of a touring New Age mystic of today. To maybe a few hundred people total. Very small beer, but quite widely scattered across the world at that time (the person may have had employment reasons to travel so widely). Quite middle class too.

The former lot mostly die out. Especially after 70 CE.

After 70 CE the "seeds" X spread are still germinating, and as a generally mystical tradition will, they accrue elements from religions around them and start to diversify. It's mostly about personal salvation, mystical ascent, etc.

At some point, a literary follower of this mystical cult ("Mark") fleshes out the formerly sketchy biography of the Messiah's earthly doings, and uses it to browbeat the Jews - the destruction of the Temple happened because the Jews didn't recognize the Messiah. Note the difference between this and the earlier idea - formerly they didn't recognize him simply because he came in obscurity, he was supposed to be not recognized In Mark's version, he's not recognized because his fellow Jews were dumb, so they brought their destruction on themselves. He pins down the time of the advent to what we now know as 0 CE. The fleshed-out biography becomes quite popular in the cult - both amongst the minority remnants of the original version of the cult, and the majority remnants of the mystical version (now starting to become quite florid, and proto-gnostic).

Some stuff about eschatology gets mixed in - some people go off on tangents like Montanism, etc.

Towards the end of the century, some remnants of the original tradition, possibly in collusion with Roman authorities, try to muscle in on the Roman version of the mystical cult, take it over, and using the literary guy's product, make out that they are descended from the people mentioned in that literary product, who knew the cult deity personally.

Their purpose is to unify the disparate strands of the cult. They face the problem that the majority of "Christians" at this time follow someone who's inspiration was wholly visionary and mystical - and the interpretations are getting more and more divergent, more and more florid by the year. By making their earliest bishops have a personal relation to their cult deity while he was on earth, they have something that trumps X's mere visionary inspiration. They produce a more apostle-friendly version of GMark (GMatthew), and that becomes the foundation text of this newest version of the cult - proto-orthodoxy.

Some of the disparate majority go with the plan, others hold out and stick to their own founder, and to a vaguer, more mystical concept of the cult deity. Proto-orthodoxy responds with several attempts to bring them on board - a pseudo-history (Acts - perhaps containing some tidbits of actual history, but heavily slanted) that makes out that their guy ("Peter" - a totally made up person) knew "Paul" (the real guy, X), and that "Paul" while a good fellow and all, and an inspired guy, deferred to "Peter", the chief guy who'd supposedly actually known the cult deity personally (loosely based on "Paul"'s character Cephas).

The same person who wrote Acts ("Luke") also writes another gospel that's less pro-Jewish than GMatthew, more "Catholic" - GLuke. GLuke backpedals on the pro-Jewishness to accommodate Marcionism, another and suddenly very popular version of the cult.

This still doesn't work to bring the (now) "heretics" on board. The last ditch attempt is GJohn. After that, it's all out war.

At the same time as these proto-orthodox books are being produced, a whole slew of stuff has been produced by other strands of Christianity - everyone has their own take on "what Jesus did", and once everyone had accepted GMark's basic outline (after all, it's a great story), most of them were loosely based around that, and the characters in it.

Eventually proto-orthodoxy becomes Catholicism, and by dint of a mixture of skulduggery, good works financed by Roman wealth, and the good luck to have some extremely clever rhetoricians on their side, eventually take over the whole movement. The divergent strands are eventually marginalized, and the Catholic Church presents itself to the Roman authorities as a potentially useful tool to unify the empire.

Monies flow, and everyone is happy.

Catholic Christianity becomes the official state religion. All other aspects of what was once a variegated, New-Agey sort of movement, are totally wiped out.

aa5874

In the NT Canon, gMark does NOT pin down the advent of Jesus to 0 CE.

The Canonised gMark has ZERO about the advent of Jesus.

DCHindley

George,

Very nice, indeed! Thanks for that. It's nice to know that at least one other person out there recognizes the complexity of the transformation of Jesus from a preacher about the messianic kingdom, to the messiah himself in heaven who will return to inaugurate it, to a divine savior, even if you are on a different continent. :wave:

DCH

And you even spell check!

archibald

George, I cannot tell you where I would begin to query your scenario. There are so many places where it appears to either lack any textual evidence or go against the texts that we do have. Furthermore, it involves an unusual series of circumstances, starting with 'nobody knew him personally but they were happy to go on the idea that he might have been an explanation'.

Having said that, I do not begrudge you (or D C Hindley) having an alternative hypothesis, which, on it's own speculative terms, does seem to be quite coherent, but seems, to me, to be involve a bit too much conspiracy theorizing. I hope you are not offended at me saying that I can't, in all honesty, see it as more likely than the mundane idea that there was a dud prophet at the core of the whole shebang. Y'know, the scenario which does not need to postulate an unevidenced and very unusual switch from myth to real within a short space of time. :]

I am stuck for time at the moment, but I am not averse to responding in more detail, if you want me to? Please just say.

DCHindley

Arch,

A theory like George described wouldn't necessarily require any conspirators working in the background to produce propaganda to pull the wool over the eyes of "believers". Even my oh-so-wrong hypothesis doesn't require any sort of conspiracy, as the Pauline letters were published as either commentaries on the teaching of Paul about gentile justification before God (the letters to churches, with commentary showing the better way of the Christ redeemer) or tributes to Paul (the pastorals, sprinkled with short phrases to show how he could have just as easily been casually referring to Jesus Christ the redeemer whenever he seems to be referring to good news or God).

This kind of synthesis takes place all the time when major religious or cultural messages come into contact, and it is called syncretism. It is just hard for those of us brought up in any sort of Christian dominated society to imagine that Christianity itself could be the product of syncretism.

DCH

archibald

DC,

Yes, the phrase 'conspiracy theory' may or may not be the best way of putting it. Personally, I am not really concerned as to whether it was a deliberate thing (and there are several here who would use that word, in relation to texts having been reworked for example) or syncretism. Either is possible. Both are very speculative in this case, IMO (well, the idea that texts have been reworked in order to be more orthodox is not very speculative in principle, but the idea that they have been reworked to cover up a non-existent Jesus is, IMO) The texts we have appear to lean in a different direction. As a pattern, there are so many indicators of the character and the setting for events as earthly that it's hard to come to a different conclusion, simply from an open-minded, rationally sceptical standpoint, and leaning towards (that is to say, seeing as more likely compared to other explanations) what appears to be the better evidenced, less unusual, more parsimonious explanation, in overall terms. And I am still happy to run with that preference, until someone persuades me otherwize.

Obviously, events and characters being thought of as earthly doesn't mean they were. :]

A.

aa5874

Well, you post is CONTRADICTORY.

If it is OBVIOUS that Jesus may have NOT existed on earth then it is NOT a "conspiracy theory" that he did NOT exist at all.

It is an OBVIOUS REASONABLE theory that Jesus did NOT exist once it is OBVIOUS that "events and characters being thought of as earthly doesn't mean they were".

gurugeorge

The book to start with, the over-arching context for my theory is Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. If Bauer's investigations hold (and according to Ehrman, they are, with some qualifications, generally accepted amongst "liberal" biblical scholars, at least) then there's something very curious about the early history of the Church, something that goes totally against the Church's own self-image. (Only those who are priorly committed to a human Jesus can't "go there", as it were - whereas us atheists and agnostics can.)

The curiosity is that what we know of as "orthodoxy" (the stream of the church that became the Catholic Church - Roman/Alexandrinian, let's say) is a relative latecomer on the scene - i.e. that its very own texts, if looked at closely, give the game away that wherever it arrived, "heresy" was already established.

Now, "heresy" in orthodox terms means "whatever doesn't accept the Apostolic Succession" - heresy is precisely the kind of religion where the person forms their own personal relationship with the divine, without the need for human intermediaries.

The rest follows pretty much from "Paul" and Hebrews, in view of the fact that there's no independent evidence for a human being Jesus, and not much that's internal in "Paul" that could point to an actual human being, whereas there's an awful lot that's about forming a personal relationship with the divine - and that it was doctrinally tricky is shown by the fact that it had to be hedged about with forgeries that more clearly toe the party line (and that there are, as has been shown, many interpolations in the "genuine" letters themselves). Why were the doctrinally tricky writings of this "apostle of the heretics" included in the Canon - and in such a prominent place?

Other important documents for my position are the "Pseudo-Clementines". There's a very important argument in there, to the effect that eyeballing trumps hallucination. It almost seems like the "Pseudo-Clementines" (or the originals on which they're based, rather) were a sort of early, abortive, and probably too pro-Jewish attempt to do what Acts more successfully, and more Catholicly did.

So it's all backed in one way or another by fairly orthodox scholarship - I'm just putting the pieces together (totally amateurly of course) in a way that orthodox scholarship wouldn't.

archibald

That sounds like a very interesting book, George, and I intend to read it, because I do agree there is a very fertile area there, in the early heresies.

Good question. What would be your answer?

I am not familiar with those. Where would I find them?

Well, yes, but I'm guessing you come to one basic, different hypothetical conclusion regarding whether Jesus existed.

That's the one I have trouble finding good reason to accept.

You see, I have this worry that saying, 'there may have been interpolations before the ms tradition' can give carte blanche to say, well, almost anything.

And any responses to heresies that I have seen so far give no clear indication that any of the heretics were mythicists, or didn't believe Jesus hadn't at least appeared to take on human form?