Malachi151

Oh please, the case is not closed at all. Yeah, most scholars do assume a human Jesus at the core, but why? The evidence doesn't support it. Cultural weight supports it, yes we know that.

The evidence rests on favored readings of a handful of bits, while ignoring many more pieces of information that contradict.

I think that this from me works to support some of Earl's claims:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...h_followup.htm

(still rough draft)

As I say there, of the three main possibilities:

1) Jesus was the Son of God and did what the Gospels say he did
2) Jesus was a mortal man, "marginal Jew"
3) Jesus was a preexisting Jewish myth that got historicized,

Option 2 actually makes the least sense and fits the evidence the least.

Toto

I don't get this. Mythicism is one way of looking at the evidence. One competing theory in the early 20th century was that Jesus was the son of a Roman Soldier, therefore part "Aryan." Everyone who reads the gospels has always known that Jesus was Jewish, but the current emphasis on Jesus as a Jew is, I think, at least in part a reaction to the Holocaust.

Some Mythicists emphasize the pagan roots of Christianity, some take into account the Jewish background. I don't see how you can claim that Mythicism is a reaction against the idea that Jesus was Jewish.

GakuseiDon

Really? Can you explain why Option 1 is stronger than Option 2?

No Robots

The affirmation of Christ's Jewishness began long before the Holocaust. In my view, the case presented by people like Klausner and Brunner was so inescapable that scholars had no option but to accept it.

As for the anti-semitic motivation behind the mythicism of a century ago, here is what Brunner has to say:

So long as Christ signified God, one could take a certain amount of comfort; for God's ways are marvellous, and if he actually wanted to go through the ultimate in terms of human suffering and humiliation, it was understandable that he descended to the level of the most despised and despicable people, the Jews, who, after all, had also been made by him. (For at that time people failed to notice that it was the Jews, too, who had made this God; because of their own belief in God, people were not able to hold the Jews guilty here. They only begin to become aware of it as a result of the tremendous progress of the Enlightenment, which brings the full malice toward Jews to light for the first time). Now, however, the more Christ stands recognized in general terms as a man, the more ill-starred the Jew Christ becomes. Christ a Jew?! In that case—given the undoubtedly true racial theory—how could the Jewish race be inferior? Then we, who have not produced such a genius, would be the inferior race! This is nonsense, since we are the highest race, as the scientific truth of the racial theory proves, and this in turn demonstrates the indubitable scientific integrity and truth of the theory itself. This Christ is ruining the whole racial theory!

I would say that in our day of radical egalitarianism, Christ is ruining our whole egalitarian ethic; and that this is the underlying motivation for people like Earl Doherty.

Toto

How does Christ ruin our whole egalitarian ethic? This makes no sense. We have moved beyond the pseudoscientific racialism that sees Jews as a separate race.

And in fact, the Nazis did not adopt mythicism. They believed in a historical Jesus who was an Aryan (because everyone can imagine Jesus as an ideal version of their own people.)

And it is generally a bad thing to speculate on others motives. Especially when you have no evidence.

Johann_Kaspar

Can you support those two assertions with evidence, please? Whe? Who? etc.

Johann_Kaspar

Question to Earl :

Did you read Dupuis?

No Robots

I have already quoted this passage from Doherty:

So long as we cease to search for meaning in the sphere of fantasy, or extrapolate the best in ourselves onto an idealized, larger-than-life individual or heavenly force (which the Jesus Seminar is still trying to do). Instead, we need only find it in the earth-based capacity of every human individual.

By the time the Nazis came to power, mythicism had been destroyed through the work of people like Klausner and Brunner. Ditto for the Aryan Christ. On the spiritual plane, so to speak (don't get excited, Earl), the Nazis lost to the Jews before they ever came to power.

Camio

Sidenote:

Dupuis is online for free in English here.

Concerning specifically the Christ myth business, this page is more reader-friendly IMO.

mountainman

[Nit pick]

My argument makes reference to Julian
not as a lawyer but a barrister.

Mistaking Julian as a lawyer and not one of the best barristers in the world
at that time is an error of judgement IMO, with many commentators,
and fatal to logical consequences and understandings.

The barrister who's task it is to expose a work of fiction to the populace
is obliged to make mention of the fictional characters which are contained
and appear in the literary work of fiction.

And in the court of law (specifically relevant in this case because Julian
states that his writing is to be taken and approached as if he is in a
Roman court of law) every single witness in the court room is unambiguously
aware that from the barrister's frame of reference, the characters referenced
in the charge, are characters who have been fabricated, by the wicked men
who were the authors of this specifically arraigned FICTION.

It is certainly not impossible to consider that Julian names Constantine as
the fabricator and promoter of Jesus (see Julian's Caesares), but that
Cyril censored this vital bit of information.

Now we do know that Cyril admits that there were indeed certain
things (and invectives) that he could not bring himself to refute.
We are already aware Julian speaks of Eusebius as wretched.
(Although of course I would appreciate other translations of the
greek word being translated in "Against the Galilaeans"!)

The question is did Cyril censor Constantine's involvement.


[/nit pick]