Amaleq13

One doesn't have to believe the risen Christ actually appeared to them. It is sufficient to accept that they believed he appeared.

Amaleq13

I tend to assume that it would have started with the reported experience of a single member of an existing group of Messiah-seekers subsequent to much Scripture studying (and fasting?) and that the experience spread by way of the psychological phenomenon referred to as "group think" or "mass hysteria".

Sparrow

But what do we know of what those other, earlier people believed? There are apparently no surviving writings. The difference in your anaolgy between Catholocism and Protestantism is that both survived the spilt. Is there any surviving group from Christian peoples prior to Paul? Do we even know if they all believed the same things or whether ther may have been multiple competing Christianities prior to Paul (I can see there are now).

You seem to be assuming there was a shared experinence. I'm not sure that is supported by the evidence. I think all we can say is that after the fact, some people believed there was a shared experience.

So if there was a live leader, what can we accurately say we know about his life?

The Bishop

Please, please, somebody understand what I'm saying! It is just as mad to believe a lot of people thought they had a vision of the same thing, as it is to believe they were justified in their belief! People do not share dreams or visions!!

Amaleq, my previous post (the one before my last one) was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I'm aware that MJers are not really Gnostic Christians in disguise. It would be nice if once in a while they stopped talking as if they believe that people do have common visions and that people who suffered from "visions" came together somehow, compared notes and discovered that those visions were of the same thing - called Jesus Christ.

I don't really mind if people continue to believe there never was a historical Jesus, but please please tell me you don't say this is on the basis that the Apostles all dreamt of the same person!

Amaleq13

You are simply wrong. People claim to share visions and dreams all the time. It is a psychological phenomenon that is entirely explicable without appeal to a belief in the impossible.

Was there some part of my subsequent expansion that you did not understand?

Sparrow

You're using quite a broad brush to paint your scene, and seem to be mixing in a bit of straw as well. There are nuances in MJ positions which you seem to miss. I have no idea whether any alleged apostles had a vision or not, much less if they were identical experiences. All the evidence available was recorded significantly after the events.

We don't really know what parts of these documents are reliable. Certainly some of them are fiction if you subscribe to naturalism. And since they weren't written by one person and at one time, there should be no surprise that some would contradict others, despite their attribution.


I thank you for your intent to save rationality and history, but I think your actions are somewhat misplaced. The 'lots of people' you fear would have to be erased from history, if the threshold for historicity is raised above the available attributions for Jesus, are of no consequence. None of them is offered as a savior of humanity. None of them is alleged to have performed miracles. None of their sayings or actions is offered as a means to live your life or enact public policy. Whether they stay or go is of no import.

The same is true for me regarding a human Jesus living 2000 years ago. I can see how he would need to be invented to bolster the case for a fledgling religion, founded on a mystical vision, when that religion started facing difficulties converting new members. I can also see how even if there was an original preacher 2000 years ago, fully human and not divine, that details would need to be invented to bolster the case later. I have a great deal of difficulty taking the gospels at face value. Either the miracles are a later invention or they really happened. If they really happened, how is it that no one of the time found them worthy of written record? If there were lots of people running around performing such feats, then Jesus is hardly the unique figure often claimed. For all the abundance of evidence you claim after 50CE, why is there nothing whatsoever before? As I've said earlier, the MJ case seems a better explanation to me of why this would be what we have today than the HJ case, simply because the entire religion seems to require Paul's conversion. Perhaps it should really be called Paulinity.

If you say my treatment above is superficial or shallow or not thoroughly researched, well you're right. As a biblical scholar I'm not qualified to carry the luggage of many of the posters here. I do try to follow the discussion within the limits of my interest and ability. Thank all of you for your insights.

The Bishop

Yes, Amaleq. I fail to understand why a mass hysteria is a better explanation than the simple idea that they all knew a bloke named Jesus.

I understood from people's references to Doherty and Carrier's endorsement thereof that the idea that there never was a Jesus was watertight. Somebody please demonstrate how there is a watertight case that is a simpler explanation for every word of the New Testament and the subsequent church fathers, than, there was a bloke named Jesus who influenced apostles. Mass hysteria is not a simpler explanation. Paul making it up, but claiming other people to be closer apostles than he himself, is not a simpler explanation. Hypothetical ideas about the nature of divine actions as seen by the Hellenistic world, yet expressing it in terms of concepts like crucifixion, bodily resurrection, blood and a whole other bunch of concrete conceptions, is not a simpler explanation. Where the hell did Occam go?

Yes, here we have it. The only important thing to do is to prove that an important religious figure never existed. Whether he did or did not is irrelevant. Other historical figures who we have learned great things from - are irrelevant. Just as long as we can stick it to this one guy.

Thank you for wiping out all historical narrative on the basis that "nobody is important except the one guy whose so important it's really important to me that he never existed" I'm sorry, Sparrow. I'm not a Christian, and I find your dismissal of all history as "unimportant" an appalling attitude.

Every person normal historical method can tell us something about, is important to a historian, and I would hope, to modern day people as a whole. Nobody here has any problem with Paul being a real person, but there is no non-biblical citation of him whatsoever!

Strangely, I have no difficulty whatsoever not taking the Gospels at face value, and yet still seeing a real person as more likely starting point than a fictional creation. I'm sorry, but that's what I think is the rational viewpoint.

EDIT:The miracles are little more than conjuring tricks. Despite your difficulties in "taking the Gospels at face value", you still seem to see the miracles through Gospel-shaped glasses. I believe too many people dismiss the entire miracle narrative without considering that ordinary common-or-garden people make very poor witnesses to any kind of miracle, intended or not. And what is made to sound the ultimate evidence of God's power from the Gospel point of view could easily be the every day occurrence of magicians as far as any other history is concerned. Even the Gospels don't blow up the narrative to more than it was - an itenerant preacher wandering around little-regarded areas of Judaea.

Clivedurdle

Is there a difference in background between people favouring an MJ and those an HJ that is significant for the turning point?

I have had significant experience of psychology, sociology and literature, as well as science. The discussion of visions above to me does seem very incomplete. Every night people go to sleep and wake up the next morning believing they have been abducted by aliens.

This is in fact a well known physiological reaction - our muscles switch off when we are asleep, if we half wake up we can feel we are not in control of our bodies.

During the fifties mad people reported fears of ufos, later x-rays - delusions go in fashions!

Many people all primed with messianic expectations and believing in the end of the world would have no problem seeing a Christ together. It is in fact basic to how we co-operate with each other, and are able to see things from another's perspective. Add in some ritual with people mimicking each other and almost definitely some hallucenogens mass delusions are easy!

We work by constantly iterating the other's perspective and socially construct together realities - a common vision is an example of this.

Our brains also do not take in much detail. In an experiment someone started talking to someone, they were interrupted by someone carrying a large board - hiding the interviewer, they swapped the interviewer and interviewees rarely noticed it was a different person!

Didymus

In fact, you had said virtually nothing as of my posting.

And you have the nerve to call that an "analysis"? Come on! To think you can refute a scholar like Doherty simply by quoting a couple of his paragraphs is breathtakingly arrogant!

Notwithstanding your implicit lack of regard for him, Doherty is a widely read writer and an undeniably intelligent man. He knows a contradiction when he sees one, and he would not have written those paragraphs if he found them to be contradictory. Many thousands of smart people have read "The Jesus Puzzle" and have not found those paragraphs contradictory. You seem to think the contradictions would have just JUMPED off the page. But they didn't when the book was published, and they don't when they are quoted in your post.

Why is that? In more recent postings, you've accused us of being irrational. Do you also think we are idiots? Or could it be that your understanding of Doherty's work is superficial and misconstrued? (In fact, your subsequent postings reveal as much.)

Perhaps. But that's not the problem.

Then don't try to foist a couple of quoted paragraphs on us as an "analysis" to support your accusations that a brilliant scholar "cherry picks the facts" and that his work is fallacious and inconsistent. Show respect and you will receive it.

Didymus

Sparrow

I don’t think I ever offered such an impression. You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. Even Doherty himself suggests more research and discussion is warranted. Carrier is not in complete agreement with Doherty either. How did you get watertight from this?

More evidence of a reading comprehension problem. I did not dismiss all of history as you suggest. I did point out that whether or not there was a particular king 5000 years ago is not used as justification for public policy. So whether or not such a king existed isn’t so important. It doesn’t inform modern common man about his life. Millions think that they have a personal relationship today with just such a figure from 2000 years ago who was purported to have performed miracles including his own resurrection (which wasn’t the first he pulled off supposedly). They use this relationship to argue public policy and to denounce disbelievers. Somehow getting that one right seems more important to me.

And Paul doesn’t claim to be god either. At least Paul wrote something. Got anything Jesus wrote?

You’re just claiming that anyone who disagrees with you is irrational. Not conducive to good discussion. I’m not claiming you’re irrational. I see your interpretation of the evidence. I just don’t agree. It’s like claiming that all theists are irrational. That’s just false.

Maybe the miracles were conjuring tricks. Even if they were, they seem pretty amazing if they happened. Jesus seemed to get much less press than Copperfield, Houdini or Penn & Teller. Of course God has always seemed to have a PR problem.

What I think you need to do if you really want to posit a real person at the root of the Christian myth is explain how either nothing was written about him from 0 - ~50CE or how nothing that was written has survived.