Alf

Why is that? Many groups at that time and earlier believed in a "son of god" who was sacrificed in a spiritual realm so as to pay for man's sins or crimes agains a deity.

In particular, Paul/Saul came from Tarsus where there was a large group of followers who subscribed to exactly that line of thinking.

So, why exactly would that be so hard to believe?

Alf

dog-on

Alf, are you referring to Dionysus?

gstafleu

I think that may point up the main snag in the hypothesis: why would (a rumour of) a particular crucifiction--of an apparently rather unkown person at that--all of a sudden precipitate such a reaction? Given that crucifictions were nothing special, there is a hidden assumption here of a precipitating mechanism.

That is not just a matter of plausibility either. There is the issue of positing an unknown mechanism of unknown complexity to explain the complexity of the origins of Christianity. That goes to the question of parsimony as well. But that can be solved if someone can show how and why such a reaction to a crucifiction would all of a sudden arise. Any candidates for that?

jakejonesiv

crucixion??? ARGGGHHH!
(Sorry, I couldn't help myself). :redface:

Jake Jones IV

andrewcriddle

It was the woman's daughter whom Jesus initially refused to heal, and he relented and healed her after the woman argued with him.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

The paragraph presumably involved someone active in Palestine in the governorship of Pontius Pilate.

Apollonius of Tyana is unlikely to qualify

gstafleu

Thinking some more about it, doesn't the "crucificion panic" theory (CP, for lack of a better word, please feel free to suggest improvements) suffer from the same 1->Many->1 problems that an HJ does?

Going by what I read in Doherty (and others), Christianity did not start monolithically. Rather there were a lot of different starts simultaneously. Even if you don't subscribe to that, you then still have the problem that the creed spread like wild fire, from one person (HJ) or event (CP). It is already difficult to see either that wild fire or all these simultaneous starts begin at one person (HJ). Let alone at one event (CP).

Wouldn't we, similar as with an HJ, expect more extra biblical attestation for such an influential event as a CP? And given that we don't have that, shouldn't the CP theory be rejected via an AFS?

Didymus

Well, I have yet to see evidence of that. While it can't be ruled out, there is certainly nothing to rule it in.

It is my contention that they did not subscribe to "exactly that line of thinking," but believed that Jesus was a Jew who died on the cross. Now that's pretty easy to believe, especially if you can dismiss all the derivative, unhistorical stories as scripture-based inventions, and simply posit that nobody knew or cared who Jesus was until he got himself crucified. At that point, crucifixion became the mother of invention.

Some of us are born skeptics.

Didymus

Didymus

:notworthy: :redface: I'll try not to make it a habit, like some people.

Didyus

Didymus

I've been calling it VMJ, for "Virtual Mythical Jesus." Sparrow calls it "PJ," for "Physical Jesus." I think both are pretty good. (I suggest reviewing the last few pages of the "Turning Point" thread. Some of the arguments are there.)

HJ has two major problems. It presumes that Paul knew about Jesus' life but for some reason ignored it. And it presumes that the gospels contain a more-or-less historical account of the life of a real person. (Whether he performed miracles etc. is not the issue here.) VMJ makes neither of those presumptions, and rejects them both as utterly unfounded.

Think of it this way: There was gasoline spilled everywhere: Messianism, social discontent, Hellenism, a foreign occupation of the homeland, the Wisdom stories. As we see in GThomas and hypothetically in Q, there also seems to have been a fairly extensive sayings tradition, with aphorisms attributed to a preacher named Jesus.

Then, to top it off, a wandering homeless man, possibly with the same very common name, is unjustly executed for disturbing the peace. In that combustible atmosphere, his crucifixion was the lighted match.

There are 22 books in the NT. Eighteen or so of them mention the crucifixion. Using OT scripture, each of the gospel writers concocted a somewhat different version of the event, and Luke, in Acts, invented an aftermath with mass conversions, martyrdoms, and the like. What more could you want?

Keep in mind that all the stuff about Pilate, trials etc. was kludged up from scripture, with a little history thrown in for versimilitude. VMJ claims only that a notorious crucifixion took place and that it was the spark for belief in a crucified savior.

AFS? I think you mean argument from silence. If historians rejected all arguments from silence, they'd publish but one dissertation per decade.

What "silence" are you referring to? It's hard to refute such a vague charge.

HJ and MJ both use arguments from silence. Paul was silent with regard to almost everything about Jesus' life. HJ proponents explain that by insisting that he "wasn't concerned" with Jesus' life and that his congregations "knew everything they needed to know" about Jesus' acts. But they can offer no evidence to prove either proposition. They are making an argument from silence.

MJ advocates claim the opposite, that Paul's glaring omission of virtually all information about Jesus' demonstrates that Paul knew nothing about the crucified man named Jesus. That's also an argument from silence, and one that embrace for a number of what I believe are very good reasons.

MJ people also think that Paul regarded Jesus as having existed only in a spiritual, "sublunar" realm (an undefined dimension somewhere between the earth and the moon), but Paul never explicitly stated that Jesus existed only in a such a realm. Paul never ruled out such a possibility, and he used language that some believe is ambiguous, e.g., kata sarka. So MJ proponents claim that a spiritual Jesus can't be ruled out, and that Paul's use of such ambiguity suggests that MJ should be ruled in. But at the "end of the day," it's an argument from silence.

There's nothing inherently fallacious about an argument from silence, but like any proposition it must be well-supported with evidence.

Didymus