Clivedurdle

I would argue any church service, especially the Eucharist or holy communion, - do this in remembrance of me, the Lord be with you, and many many many more phrases are living fossils and evidence that we are looking at a religious play.

Is not the purpose of the Eucharist - literally eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ according to a major group - a classic example of assimilating the vision? Does one get to eat your god in many religions?

Student of Sophia

Agreed.

Yes and yes. I think we see much evidence that early planting mythologies influenced many later mythologies...including Christianity. The trees in the garden of eden for instance...well, Jesus Christ is symbolically the fruit of the tree of eternal life. Eat it to get back into the garden...

And cannibalism...it seems that whenever one hears about primitive mythologies utilizing that, it's an instance of ritualistically eating the god.

Clivedurdle

Soon the skies should open with poo pooing of this Dyonisian, Fraser type stuff. Never mind the evidence for it anthropologically, psychologically, linguistically and actually in ritual. Don't get me started about fish!

Much more sensible that some form of credal statement is the true version!

Toto

I'm not sure why you think this needs to be explained. People write stories all the time, for entertainment, edification, or for no reason at all. Story telling is part of our genetic makeup, evidently. (Producing acccurate historical records is not.)

Even most historicists concede that there is not a lot of reliable information about a human Jesus in the gospels. This is why there are so many different theories of who this Jesus was and his role in history.

For example, you cannot reliably figure out the date of Jesus' birth, the date of his death, his profession (carpenter, or son of a carpenter, or was that a metaphor for a skilled rhetorician?) We don't know if he was ever married or not. We don't know who his teachers were, what languages he spoke, the state of his mental health. We don't know what he looked like, how tall he was, etc.

Johnny Skeptic

"Entertainment, edification, and storytelling" are reasonable assessments. Following is a return e-mail sent to me a couple of years ago by Dr. Jonathan Roth, a professor at San Jose State University in California. Dr. Roth’s comments are in within quotation marks.

You told me that you have a Ph.D. in ancient history. What are your main areas of expertise?

“Military history, Judea in the first century CE, ancient race and ethnicity.”

Does the so-called Tacitus Fragment 2 give any indication that Severus was quoting Tacitus or anyone else?

“No. The introduction "it is reported" could refer to anyone or even simply be a rhetorical device for Severus to introduce his own story. Since we are missing the last part of Tacitus' description of the siege, it was natural to look to this as a source, but we know that there were other descriptions of the siege.”

Among scholars who believe that the fragment is Tacitean, will they state that the fragment mentions anything that would come anywhere near agreeing with James Holding's unsupported estimate of from 100,000 - 250,000 Christians in the Roman Empire in 70 A.D.?

“There is nothing in the fragment to suggest this number. There is no way to estimate the number of Christians at this time, but the number that Holding suggests seems much too high. If we add up all the Christian churches that we know of from the New Testament, I doubt there would be more than 25, even assuming all existed in 70. (Try doing this - I frankly guessed at the number, it may be too high). This would mean that each of these churches had 10,000 members! Even though Rome had (perhaps) a million people, and there were some cities, like Alexandria and Antioch that had over 100,000, most Roman major cities had only 10,000 to 30,000 people. This would mean dozens had majority Christian populations forty years after Christ's death. How likely is this?”

Is there any evidence that Titus had a policy of persecuting and/or killing Christians whenever he got the opportunity to do so?

“Absolutely none. Josephus mentions nothing even remotely suggesting that Titus had even heard of the Christians.”

Regarding Tactitus' statement that Nero persecuted "vast multitudes" of Christians, does the statement provide any indication of how many Christians are implied?

“It does mean that more than a handful were involved, but says nothing other than that. If you read the passage, however, it can be construed to mean that some Christians were arrested and tortured into confessing that they set the fires. Then they gave the names of others Christians ‘a large number of whom’ (another way of translating this) were executed not for arson, but simply for being Christians. In other words, the expression refers to the percentage of the number killed, rather than a total number.”

Is it reasonably possible that Tacitus was using hyperbole?

“Tacitus frequently uses such hyperbole. A good example is in his description of various emperors killing members of the Senatorial opposition. He implies that large numbers are involved, but when one counts up the numbers, they are only a few dozen at most. All ancient writers use exaggeration and hyperbole.”

Is it true that the use of hyperbole can vary greatly depending upon who is using it and that there is no way of knowing to what extent Tacitus might have used hyperbole?

“Yes. We seldom have a source other than Tacitus, so it is difficult to check his statements.”

Is it true that Tacitus' use of the words "vast multitudes" did no favors for future historians?

“True, but remember that history was considered LITERATURE AND MEANT FOR ENTERTAINMENT [emphasis mine]. Tacitus is always thinking about making his stories more interesting and readable.”

Are there any reputable ancient sources regarding Nero's persecution of Christians other than Tacitus?

“Yes, Dio Cassius, Suetonius and others, but no one other than Tacitus refers to the arson charges."

Does Suetonius offer anything of value regarding the size of the Christian
Church in 70 A.D.?

“No.”

Does Josephus give any indication how many Christians there were in the
Roman Empire in 70 A.D.?

“No.”

What are the best means of determining the size of the Christian Church in 70 A.D.?

“The only means I can think of is the one I discussed above. One can glean from the literary sources (the NT basically) where there were Christian communities. The problem is that the size of the communities would be simply a guess.”

TedM

The thead is not focused, and that is my fault because I asked a number of questions in the beginning--leaving the door open to discussions in multiple directions. I appreciate the answers here to some of them.




One question I had was in addition to what I came up with in the OP, what arguments are given for the viewpiont that the gospels are all fiction pertaining to Jesus? Additional answers provided here:

Cliverdurdle suggests that the gospel story has the sophistication of a well-written religious play:

Ray Moscow suggests that they helped initiate new Christians, and were known to not be referring to a real historical Jesus by them

Philospher Jay suggests a more down-to earth version of Jesus as a universal savior appealed to the audience better than Doherty's version in Paul


Toto suggests they are stories for various reason, and that storytelling is simply natural.


What I find most intriguing about this concept is that at some point Christians came to believe that the authors were NOT writing about a fictional character, but an actual person. How that could have happened is what what I prefer to focus on in the rest of this thread.

Therefore, this is the real question I have:

Assuming early Christians believed in a non-historical "Doherty Jesus", what do you think would have been necessary for fictional gospels to have become accepted not as fiction but as historical records of a historical Jesus in favor of the prior acceptance of a "Doherty Jesus"?

How did the latter group win out without any manuscript record in the first 2 centuries of writings either by Paul, his followers, the gospels, the rest of the NT, gnostic writings, docetic writings, or the early Church Fathers, writings of those who discussed Church history, of so-called heretics, and of apologies that refer to opposing beliefs, to the following things that must have occured for Doherty to be right:?

1. Dying out of "Doherty Jesus" Christian belief
2. Popularity of a "play Jesus" with knowledge that he really hadn't been historical
3. Metamophisis from knowledge that "play Jesus" was just popular fiction to belief that it represented an actual "real historical Jesus"
4. Any clash between groups 1,2, and 3


List everything you think would be necessary--ie . manuscript survival, dating of the gospels, number of Christians, location of Christians, Tacitus, Josephus, Christian tradition geographically at the time of the gospels, dispersion, whatever else..

Some answers already given:

Clivedurdle suggests that no one would have known that Jesus wasn't really a "Doherty Jesus" by the time the gospels were written as plays, implying that they also didn't know that the gospels were actually just plays.

I think the answer is "yes" many people would have known and it would have generated tremendous turmoil within the Christian community. Yet we have no record of it. Why not?


Johnny Skeptic suggests, I think, that there just weren't that many Christians around. Perhaps he implies that the "Doherty Jesus" was easily overtaken by the "play" Jesus for this reason?

Perhaps the numbers of Christians were too small to have records of such a shift, but wouldn't we expect SOMETHING in all of the records that still do exist, since we have records presumably by "both groups" (ie pro-Paul (Doherty) and pro-gospels)?


This could become a very convoluted discussion. To simplify, please write EVERYTHING that you think would have been necessary for a "play" Jesus--originally introduced in a popular passion play or religious fantasy ritual readings to have become believed as historical given a pre-existing Christian church that believed in the "Doherty Jesus".

I"m going to try and not argue with your viewpoints (at least for now) and let you make the most coherent, comprehensive case possible to support what appears to be Doherty's thesis about the evolution of belief about who Jesus was.

Thanks,

ted

Doug Shaver

I think it would have been necessary only for early Christians to have been ordinary human beings.

It is not exactly unheard-of for lots of people to think a work of fiction is a work of history. It has happened many times. And if the fiction just happens to be (or seem to be) about the origins of one's religion, then the notion that it is a true story, or at least a story based on some facts, will be particularly attractive and, somewhat more to the point, extremely tenacious.

Toto

I think you are making this too complicated. You are assuming that the issue of whether Jesus was originally a human was an important one in the early church. We have no evidence of that. The early church was based around a particular interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, fellowship, singing hymns, and eating and drinking wine together. So add to this a story about how the Savior came down to earth and healed people and played a part in a drama. Now wait a generation. Who is going to know or care if the drama was based on a real person?

Which of the following were real people: William Tell, Zorba the Greek, Scarlet O'Hara? How do you know?

Nothing ever died out. Early Christians believed in a Spiritual Jesus. Later early Christains believed in a spiritual Jesus who became human. Later church fathers decided that a human Jesus (as opposed to one who lives in your heart) was an important part of dogma because they needed to ground their authority on a tranmission of power from Jesus to his disciples to their followers, and they added that claim to the Nicene Creed.

You don't find debates in early Christianity on the issue of whether Jesus was real. You do find debates on whether he was flesh or only seemingly flesh, but our historicists resist the idea that the doecetists were in any way related to mythicists. But I can't imagine having that debate if Jesus had been a real person who lived not that long ago.

karlmarx

In fact, it seems to be a common mistake nowadays to attribute contemporary attitudes to ancient authors. Herodotus is sometimes called "the father of lies" for writing hearsay. However, when placed in his proper context, he was no such thing. History, as a discipline, did not exist at the time - he was merely writing everything he had heard about his subject matter. Our criticisms are a result of applying modern standards to a different time.

There is no evidence that the HJ / MJ debate was significant in the 3rd/4th centuries except in questions of theology. Note that the debates at the time on whether Jesus was a historical being or a purely spiritual being were phrased in terms of theology. The HJ apologists at the time did not argue that Jesus must have existed because they had this-and-that evidence. They argued that Jesus must have existed because otherwise "his sacrifice would not have had any meaning".

This shows that the actual history per se did not matter to them - they were only concerned with theological questions. In such a cultural environment, what difference would historical evidence make? If they wanted to believe that a play was history, they could do so on theological grounds alone.

TedM

I don't want to argue with you, but let me give you some examples of how your answer requires some assumptions which you aren't giving any weight to in your answer to me.

What if all early Christians were "Doherty Jesus" followers? They already had a paradigm that said

Jesus was real originally with God, was written about in scriptures, came down from heaven to a parallel universe, was crucified by demons, rose from the dead, appeared at the right time to specific people who began the religion, and went back to heaven where he now lives and can bring about salvation to believers in him. Their paradigm is one in which the "secret" of Jesus was "revealed" to those lucky enough to receive it--not one in which it was blatantly revealed through a human being who did all sorts of miracles and had huge crowds following him.

Your explanation doesn't explain whether Doherty Christians "converted" over to a completely contradictory paradigm, or whether they were simply overrun by another group that preferred the play approach yet didn't realize it was written as fiction.

IF they converted, it leaves many questions unanswered by you. And, if they were overrun it leaves the issue of how that could happen without a trace being left in the manuscript evidence.

ted