Ben C Smith

What exactly, in your judgment, does Irenaeus say that shows he actually has no clue who John was or who wrote the works he attributed to him?

Thanks.

Ben.

Chili

I would guess that Cephas was the little rock that is only known in Aramaic while Peter was the big rock for Jesus to built his church on among the gentiles. Cephas and James were like two of a kind and they returned to preach among the Jews while Paul and Peter went to preach a different Gospel that was based on the keen insight of Peter to recognize Jesus as the messiah among the Jews.

So Peter and Cephas are similar just a above and below are similar and the difference between Peter and Cephas amounts to the difference between above and below which in turn is the basis for the two different Gospels they preached among the gentiles and the Jews wherein James was the brother of Jesus but not the real Jesus that Peter recognized as meassiah.

Duke Leto

There were no clear methodological problems that I could see. I'd defer to Richard Carrier on the reviews because I don't have any kind of background in mystery religions and comparative neo-platonism.

Toto

If you check Joe Wallack's recent thread, you might get the idea that Cephas was an existing leader in a faction of the church, who was incorporated in fictional form as Peter into Mark to demonstrate what a rock-headed loser he was.

aa5874

Paul knew fictitious people? I think Saul/Paul was an invention like Peter/Cephas.

Chili

You mean like a modern day charismatic preacher who is bewitched by that little rock?

pbethala

Well, personally, I don't buy the Jesus-myth hypothesis namely because there is too much evidence that he at one time existed (although one can find an uncannily high number of similarities with pagan myths and the Gospel of John...). Anyway, even if Jesus did exist, none of this means that he was the Son of God.

Chili

That will just depend on your idea of God. If man is in the image of God, God is also in the image of man and from here on all Jesus has to be is the image of man and that he was long before he realized that. So now the name Jesus was given to represent a certain stage in this realization process and the rest of the story is penciled imagery.

dog-on

What evidence would that be, exactly?

spin

Around here I am trying to make clear that Jesus myth doesn't cover the spectrum of a non-existent Jesus. Those people who argue the case for a mythical Jesus see that the believers didn't see Jesus as a real person in this world, but an entity whose actions on the divine plane bring about human salvation. Another approach that people employ regarding Jesus is that he has been actively made up, as a fictional character, usually as a means of control gullible masses.

I don't find appeal in either of these scenarios. I propose the possibility of a third option. First I bring people's attention to a figure against whom Tertullian argues, a figure known as Ebion, the founder of the Ebionite movement. However, Ebion didn't exist, though Tertullian and other church fathers are blissfully unaware of his non-existence. Ebion is not a mythical figure, nor is he fictional, yet he did not exist. Once such a figure enters a tradition, the nature of the tradition allows contemplation and elaboration and by the fifth century there are more facts about Ebion, including his hometown.

Paul's gospel is a divine revelation. He expressly says in Gal 1:11 that what he proclaims is not from learnt from humans. Paul had no first hand experience of an earthly Jesus, yet he taught his proselytes that Jesus existed. Paul of course wouldn't know about any real earthly appearance as he didn't see Jesus and his gospel wasn't taught to him, so we have a figure entering a tradition and people believing that the figure was real.

Everything that we have about Jesus was written long after the time of Paul, long enough for the tradition which may have started with Paul to have developed to such an extent as to produce a gospel such as Thomas and then Mark.

As to the notion that "there is too much evidence that he at one time existed", I don't think there is any evidence that Jesus existed. He may have existed, but where is this evidence? The gospels? We have the sanitizing efforts of the Jesus Forum to get rid of unacceptable bits of the gospels on the assumption that there is good clean stuff there to start with that one will get to by removing the bad bits. Where do you stop? That's the problem there are no guidelines, no points of reference, no commonly available historical markers, nothing that allows you to apply historical methodology to say that here is a chunk of solid evidence for a real Jesus. We simply start with the assumption that there is one, then apply the naive literalist understanding that a text must have a historical core. You can understand why this assumption is naive and literalist. There are always some historical reasons for things appearing in literature. The gospels are evidence for something because they were written at a (unknown) time, in a (unknown) location, in a (unknown) cultural millieu, to which their contents had significance, but beyond that how can you say more?


spin