gurugeorge

I posted the below in response to Krosero in the midst of his argument with Ted on the "smoking gun" thread, and understandably KR declined to respond as he had enough on his plate at the time, and this outline of mine below is perhaps too different from Earls for KR to have dealt with at the time in the context of the thread. But I'd like to put my theory (which is mine )forward for general consideration. As an interested amateur with no academic experience in the field and no knowledge of the languages, the only claim I'd make for it is that it's consistent with a certain mixture of orthodox and radical scholarship as I understand it, which isn't to say much; but I offer it more in the spirit of an alternative overview that might make sense of what happened. It's an attempt to "think outside the box", so to speak, something to toy with. (I'm aware that this is a somewhat partial overview tracing only a couple of the threads of what was probably even more complex, but I think these are the main operative threads that made Christianity and the Christian myth what it became by about the time of St. Augustine).

I think the mystery of "whatever happened to "mythicist" Christianity" is easily solved by thinking of Paul as actually a Jewish (or more likely Samaritan) proto-gnostic and taking seriously the Valentinian version of apostolic succession.

Consider: the Valentinians clearly believed they had an apostolic succession back to the "great apostle" Paul (I recently read Ptolemy's letter to Flora, and it's there in his summing up at the end of that part of the letter that we have through Epiphanius). Eusebius (was it?) reports that the Valentinians believed their teacher was taught by one "Theudas", who was a disciple of Paul. Is there any reason not to take that seriously? If you believe Acts is history, of course there isn't, but there's sufficient doubt about Acts that not taking Acts seriously as history is a reasonable route to take, just to see what shakes out. Let's see what shakes out:

If we don't take Acts seriously as history, then the true history of early Christianity is more like the Walter Bauer/Radikalkritik outline: no HJ, myth all the way down, early "apostles" were messengers of a new version of the Messiah to the Jews, just as essentially mythical as the old (or if we go the full radical direction, it's a Hellenistic "riff" off of the Jewish Messiah idea, without much actual Jewish influence at the roots). Paul, probably a Samaritan and probably the "Simon Magus" of later writings, takes that message to the Gentiles, spreads his Samaritan/Hellenistic proto-gnosticism (probably derived from disappointed apocalypticism as Ehrman outlines in his Lost Christianities) over some of of Asia Minor, and to Rome and a few other places. (Meanwhile the older Jewish "apostles" are also spreading their restricted Jewish version of the Christ myth too, but not with as much success, because it requires cutting your winkie.)

In Rome (and possibly Alexandria), and after the diaspora, Paul's proto-gnosticism develops into proto-orthodoxy. The Christians there aim to take control of what they see is an unruly movement (all from the best intentions no doubt). They invent a concept of "apostolic succession" that's meant to trump the standard apostolic succession of other, proto-Gnostic (and by that time turning into Gnostic) Christian movements descended from Paul. They go one better than the mere visionary Paul. While they admit that Paul was part of their foundation, they also (through the fabrication of Acts) try and reconcile him with Peter (partly through making Paul as Jewish as Peter, by making him originally a "Saul" and originally a persecutor of the Jewish version), who they also claim in their lineage, who represents (to them) a direct lineage connection to The Man Himself. (It's even quite plausible that the Roman Christian community did have apostles from both the Jewish and Pauline communities.) Common sense says that this is a better lineage connection than a lineage connection to a mere visionary like Paul, which is all the Gnostics have to show for themselves. And this is why "The Man Himself" is invented, this is why a spiritual myth with a few fleshly aspects is gradually hardened into a god-man living in Palestine round 0-30 CE.

However, while they have to alter Paul to make him look proto-orthodox and a believer in their strongly historical Jesus, the proto-orthodox can't over-egg the pudding, because the Epistles are already familiar to large swathes of Chrisitanity - in their proto-gnostic form. So he's just "tweaked" a bit, and the main job of making Paul a closet proto-orthodox Christian is left to Acts.

Meanwhile the Jewish Christians aren't totally fooled. They are flattered by this version of "apostolic succession", they like the idea, and they may even believe it themselves because the true roots of their Jewish Christian faith may by that time have been hidden from them after 70 CE. But they twit the proto-orthodox because they KNOW that Roman proto-orthodoxy only came from a visionary - hence the Kerygmata Petrou and the pseudo-Clementines. Their naming of what is obviously "Paul" as "Simon Magus", and their critique of him as having his apostleship from mere visionary experience is nothing but the plain truth. (Of course this is a critique from the point of view touted by the proto-orthodox, and by this time accepted by the Jewish Christians, of a strongly historicised Jesus. In fact, visionary experience is all that Christianity started with!)

The true irony in this is that the Valentinian apostolic succession is real (only it's not to a HJ, but to the visionary Paul, and to the earliest idea of the Christ), whereas the proto-orthodox one is made up, and has to invent a "hardened" historical Christ to make it stick. The "hardening" takes some time, but eventually everyone buys into it (partly because proto-orthodoxy is rich and buys trust, partly because the proto-orthodox are lucky to have a few exceptionally sharp thinkers and writers on their side).

By the time of Constantine, all that's left of what was initially Paul's proto-Gnosticism, and what became a variegated Gnostic movement, is docetism. Docetism is what happens when Gnostics thoroughly buy into the proto-orthodox hardened HJ, and the proto-orthodox lineage, but retain the highly spiritualised nature of the original Christ idea. (At the same time, in a parallel movement, the Jewish Christians who bought into the hardened HJ idea eventually lose the spiritual half of the proto-orthodox story altogether, and make of the hardened HJ invented by the proto-orthodox a mere prophet, becoming Ebionites.)

I must emphasise, for this to make sense one has to somehow ditch the idea from one's mind that Acts is history (which may be difficult for someone steeped in the idea that it is historical, and who believes in the "apostolic succession" outlined there). It may use bits of history, but it distorts them and makes lots of stuff up. The real history is behind the significance of Acts as proving a proto-orthodox replacement for the apostolic succession of the majority of Christian churches going back to the proto-gnostic Paul.

So that's what happened to the original, mythical Jesus. He started off life as a Jewish/Samaritan proto-gnostic entity (shading into Middle-Neoplatonic/Mysteries-influenced Logos in some of the more strongly Hellenized communities), became Gnostic, then docetist.

Meanwhile, the history of proto-orthodoxy, then orthodoxy, is characterised by its constant theological balancing act between its fondness for the highly spiritualised Christ of its original proto-Gnostic (Pauline) roots, and its necessity to keep "Jesus"' feet on the ground in order to validate its bishops' falsified, HJ-dependent "apostolic succession".

Chris Weimer

There's little to wonder why no one has responded.

Non sequitur.

Unsupported assertions prefaced with "probably" hurt, especially when the entire case is not only built upon it, but goes against the reigning evidence.

Actually, the rest of the rambling is all assertion, no evidence. Where is the evidence for your reconstruction?

gurugeorge

As I said, it comes from a mixture of orthodox and radical scholarship. For example Ehrman's Lost Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk) (especially the brief discussion of how Jewish proto-Gnosticism may have arisen out of disappointed Jewish apocalypticism), combined with a few scholarly odds and ends online (particularly this interesting little essay on possible pre-Christian Joshua Messiah ideas, which may have originated in Samaria; and a few of the essays on the Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism website, particularly this one). A really major influence has been Walter Bauer's Orthodoxy & Heresy, and a lot of the Dutch Radical stuff, particularly Detering's The Falsified Paul. Also influential in this are some of the essays at the Journal of Higher Criticism, particularly Price's The Evolution of the Pauline Canon. Also formative have been Thomas L. Thompson's the Messiah Myth, Helmut Koester's Paul and His World, Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels (I really need to get her Gnostic Paul book because it would seem to be partly about the very kind of Gnostic sense of apostolic succession I'm talking about). Also Wells' books (which I first read many years ago) and Freke & Gandy.

The main thing is just to see what happens if you ditch Acts as history, look at the history of EC in a more W Bauer fashion, and take the Gnostic self-belief of their apostolic succession to Paul seriously. Then there's no mystery of how a supposed mythicist Christianity "disappeared". It was the original version (proto-Gnostic) which became Gnosticism, then docetism. I know, I know, it's a neat, coherent picture (thank you ) - but is it true? If there are problems, I'd like to know.

Chris Weimer

Hi! I don't take Acts seriously, and I think there is some validity to Gnostic ideas going back to Paul. I outlined that before here somewhere.

Alan Segal's paper doesn't support your argument at all, and Robert Kraft's is badly abused by you if you think you can use it the way you do. Notice the conclusions...

The rest of your "evidence" seems to be pulling the entire fringe scholarship into one hold.

gurugeorge

And what do you think about taking the Gnostic self-belief in an apostolic succession back to Paul seriously?

Well duh, neither does Ehrman's book as a whole, but I'm still using a bit of Ehrman to support my position, same as with these essays. Segal's supports my general mystical/visionary idea of Paul and the connection with Samaria, which is also supported in Kraft's essay, and both these tie in with the Tubingen-Dutch Radical - Detering line of thought about Paul (that he was the Samaritan "Simon Magus", aka Josephus' Simon Atomos - Acts simply splits him into "good guy" (Saul=Paul) and "bad guy" (Simon Magus) versions).

Not really. I don't go as far in the Hellenistic direction as some of the Radicals - I still see a fair amount of Jewishness at the root of the whole thing (I'm more in line with orthodox scholarship on that), and I think the Mysteries influence is very small, and comes later. There's a similarity of ideas because that mystical intermediary (God in you) type of idea was in the air in several forms at the time (I'd also cite Neopythagoreanism and Middle to Neoplatonism here, as well as the Hermetica). Again, with the Radicals I'm only using the bits of them that are consistent with my idea.

Look, I admit this is covering a lot of ground in very few words. Any of the main points in my sketch could be made into a book in itself, and would have to be if one were being rigorous (and I'm not the person for that anyway, I fully admit). But that's not the point, the point is just to mull it over.

So do you have any reasons, based on your deeper scholarly study, why this way of looking at things might be wrong (as opposed to these generalised imputations of know-nothing idiocy)?

Chris Weimer

Well, I don't know if I'd affirm "apostolic succession" for the Gnostics. I think rather that Gnostics went even more Gnostic than Paul, and by Valentinus, they were rather developed.

You're not merely "using" them - you're abusing their ideas and warping the evidence to fit your theory. Samaria, for example, can only be added as a candidate for the Joshuan Messiah theory if you ignore the multitude of evidence that affirms it goes back to the Old Testament itself!

I won't even touch Detering or Dutch Radicalism - I find both are out of touch with reality. How you get "Saul/Paul" (and with no reason for name change) and Simon Magus from Simon Magus is beyond me. Serious stretching bound to leave marks.

How about picking just one point and working at that? Or are all mythicists just content to "mull" over their theories? Reminds me of Earl and his reluctance to publish anything in mainstream journals regarding his theory.

Yes - when you stretch the evidence too far, it collapses in on itself. I pointed out a couple of things - the whole thing with Simon Magus and Paul is absurd - there isn't even an argument, and the evidence for such is speculative at best, fraudulent at worst.

We also have an exclusion bias - why take the story of Theudas seriously but not Acts? You've merely chosen one ancient source and declared it supreme over another without evaluation. The obscurantist position should be that both are equally unreliable, or the affirmatists position should be that both have truth to it. I'm sort of in between.

And none of this, none of it, directly contradicts an HJ.

If only I had some real evidence to argue with, then maybe I'd be able to give you a rebuttal, but you've done nothing but speculative fantasy, and such is yours to believe. :huh:

gurugeorge

Why not? They clearly believed themselves that they had an authentic lineage to the "great apostle" (cf. e.g. Ptolemy's letter to Flora). If Walter Bauer's picture of early Christianity is near correct (or at least, as near correct as someone like Ehrman accepts), then what you've got is a rich but relative minority proto-orthodoxy in Rome/Alexandria trying to corral an unruly majority of (proto-Gnostic and Gnostic) Christians (and other types of Christians too, but the Gnostics are the main problem in view of their relative popularity) with all their variegated spiritual "riffing" off of Paul. Acts as a fabrication to create an alternative "apostolic succession" to a strongly historicised Jesus makes perfect sense in this context. (Remember, there are already varying degrees of doubt about Acts on scholarly grounds - so, this would give a reason why Acts might be a falsification, and as a hypothesis, would feed back into that scholarly study and suggest a way of looking at and for falsifications.)

Yeah, for sure they went further in that direction - but this is the point of the gradual proto-orthodox de-emphasis on spiritual revelation and concomitant stronger and stronger emphasis on canonicity. (That's why eventually even Origen became suspect - because of his from-revelation Montanism that goes against the by-then definite need to stick to an established canon that supports the alternative, proto-orthodox "apostolic succession".) But if you have the end of a trajectory or tendency like that, that in itself suggest a beginning to that tendency, and a reason for that beginning, and that reason can itself feed back into the more detailed scholarly approach.

Eh? Is there any contradiction? The Samaritans are Torah followers who are close enough to Judaism for jazz. (Don't forget I've cited Thompson's book too, which goes into the Jewishness of the Messiah idea in great depth.) The multitude of Old Testament stuff doesn't go against the Samaritan connection at all, but on the other hand, it doesn't make the Acts Saul=Paul thing any more likely than the Simon Magus idea.

Albert Schweitzer didn't - even though he ultimately disagreed with them. You don't seem smarter enough than him for your contempt to be trustworthy to me

Read Detering's essay and you will find out how the connection is gotten. (Have you actually read any Dutch Radical stuff, or have you just read one-liner dismissals of it in your favourite authors?) Detering's ideas are meant as an outline of a programme of research as an alternative way of solving the problems with Paul - again it's suggestive, not conclusive. But orthodox scholarship is itself hardly conclusive about much, even when it takes HJ for granted.

Cheap shot. And the 19th century stuff and Earl's stuff has the kind of detail you want. If I had another dozen lifetimes I might get round to learning the languages and producing the same degree of detail in my version for your reading pleasure. As it is I'm not a scholar, I'm an interested amateur, so can only mull. You're the scholar, you pick the holes if you want.

I haven't "declared supreme" anything. I'm looking at an alternative.
And I don't see why an absolute either/or is necessary. Everybody lied at one time or another to suit their purposes (this is one of Ehrman's messages in Lost Christianities after all).

Of course not, that's not the point here, the point here is to give a plausible outline account of why a "mythicist" Christianity might appear to have disappeared. (And may I remind you of where the burden of proof for the proposed existence of an entity lies. And in terms of that, HJ is independently dubious because the evidence offered for his existence is so thin, ambiguous and unreliable. To an unbiassed historian a historical Joshua Messiah would be a possibility, but it woudn't be a very strong one, any more than a historical Hermes or a historical Dionysus.)

There's real evidence in the stuff I've cited - argue with the portions of Walter Bauer, Price and Detering that support my idea if you want. What I'm producing isn't sheer "speculative fantasy", but a story that connects the dots in a particular way - that makes sense of the evidence in a particular way, and that could feed back into scholarly research to suggest different ways of looking at the evidence.

Chris Weimer

But then so did the Orthodox. Why choose one over the other?

I doubt this. If we had more Gnostics earlier, than why did none of the early Gnostic stuff not survive? Unless you're abusing the term Gnosticism? For example, I don't think that Oxyrhynchus Thomas is Gnostic.

But so it does the other way around. Which is right, if either?

But Gnosticism can so much more easily be explained by actual Paul than adrift Messianism.

Then why bother with the Samaritans at all? It seems like you're just pulling it out for fun. It serves no purpose, and nothing can be located there as a beginning point. It all comes from the Scriptures, not via the Samaritans.


Some people are nicer than others.

In fact, I've never read any dismissals of the Dutch Radicals in the works of Catullus or John Donne.

Maybe.

Not Earl's, not from what I read. Too much gloss. Perhaps I didn't read it enough, though.

Like I said, I would if I had anything to pick holes in. But you haven't really offered anything substantial.

Right, everyone lied, but in your proposed reconstruction, you dismissed Acts en masse and favored without any scruple that you've shown that I've seen the Gnostic version of the same story. Suspect.

Than why do historian after historian disagree with you? Neither Hermes nor Dionysus has anything like what Jesus has for him. Jesus actually has more evidence for him than does Judas of Galilee.

Where do you want me to start? I'm sure I can find people who've already tackled all of your sources, even the ones I agree with.

gurugeorge

Because the context of this discussion is "if there was a mythical Christianity what happened to it?"

Why don't we have more early Christian material in general? (Oops!)

Re. Thomas: it's a live topic (I also find the "Syrian original" idea interesting) but even without the textual analysis I think you're referring to (which I'm aware of - my spies are everywhere ) I never thought Thomas was fully Gnostic. Heavily mystical, but not necessarily a product of full-blown Gnosticism. But how about "proto-Gnostic"? - as proto-Gnostic as the Paul we have that has survived?

Remember, there was a variety of things called Gnostic by the Fathers, the main unifying factor being the idea of a "democratic" individual relationship to and understanding of the divine unmediated by bishops with a line of supposed "apostolic succession" back to the cultic avatar. IOW, we don't require the presence of the full panoply of Valentinian cosmology in order to recognise something as belonging to a family of stuff to which (proto-)orthodoxy is intrinsically opposed, do we? My line of thought posits a development which culminates in "baroque" Gnosticism (and decays into docetism), but it all starts fairly simply, with the kind of Jewish-based visionary/mystical experiences evidenced in Paul. This all makes smooth sense if the origins are in an idea (a revision of the Messiah concept) rather than a person. Whereas if there was a person, you have the "lumpiness" of questions like what happened to his teachings - i.e. why does "Jesus" not say anything that doesn't look like it could have been derived from other sources - why is there no hard evidence of him if he was all that, etc., etc. IOW, again, the HJ is a possible idea, but it's more "epicyclic" than the MJ idea (but I digress again).

You make me feel like poor old Ben Smith, with his constant pained reminders to people to check the OP We're positing MJ here.

The Samaritan connection ties in with the "Simon Magus" of Acts being a Samaritan, and the Simon Atomos mentioned by Josephus being a Samaritan.

The idea of Acts is to split their actual founder into two fantasy founders - a Judaised Paul who could feasibly make up with the Jewish Christian Peter-who-knew-Jesus-as-a-person, and a supposed nasty magician founder of their repressed visionary-originated "dark side" - their sister proto-gnostic movements that are developing into Gnosticism.

While a Samaritan Paul is (for historians now) Jewish enough to be a suitable proto-Gnostic founder for the movement (and for him to be, e.g., in a camp of hypothetical Joshua Messiah believers), he wasn't Jewish enough for the purposes of Acts, the purpose of which was to keep on board and together under one umbrella whichever Jewish Christians and Gnostics were willing to kowtow to the proto-orthodox version of the "apostolic succession", which required a strongly historicized proto-orthodox Jesus.



Perhaps you didn't. How about the 19th century stuff, how about Wells, none of that detailed enough for you? Or perhaps you haven't read them enough either.

But come on, joshing aside, I think you're being a bit unfair here. The mythicist idea is a revision of the whole shebang, so you're matching a settled field in which there are hordes of scholars doing minute analyses of details within that paradigm, against an alternative paradigm with only a few champions. It's too early for you to expect what you seem to want in order to convince you. At this stage, it's a question of "which overarching story makes sense of the evidence more cleanly, less epicyclically"?

I think enough detailed work has been done by all these MJ-ers to make a plausible "proof of concept", to make the idea not quite as ridiculous as you seem to think.

As I've said, the idea is to propose that we take the Gnostic self-description seriously and see what happens if we do - see if it gets rid of the qualm of "if there was a mythicist Christianity what happened to it?" If you're unwilling to entertain the idea, fair enough, but there's no particular reason why you shouldn't.

It's really not that different from what you're positing re. proto-Gnosticism in Paul, barring your commitment to HJ.

Does he have more going for him than Paul?

I don't know why the mass of biblical scholarship sticks to HJ, it's probably because the field of biblical studies is an ongoing academic discourse that originates in a religious tradition that takes the existence of a historical Jesus for granted, and that still has a lot of Jesus freaks in it (or at least, still has many highbrows who think something about the tradition is worth keeping alive). In reality there's no actual justification for a separate academic field of biblical studies, as opposed to specialist sub-fields within the study of ancient history and religion.

Put it this way: if the scholars and academics who studied the Bible were merely specialists in the broader fields of the the study of ancient history and religion (like academics who study Zoroastrianism or Buddhism), I very much doubt the HJ position would be strongly represented. It might have a few adherents, but they'd probably be the ones considered the cranks.

In the broad view, it seems to me that, sensing its doom, what is essentially the crank field of biblical scholarship merely retreated, amoeba-like, from the implications of the real digging that was starting to happen towards the end of the 19th century, and regrouped for much of the 20th. It won't be able to keep the lid on the fragility of the HJ idea much longer.

How about you tackle my sources, since you're so all-fired keen on nitty-gritty work? Read Detering's essay for a start.

DramaQ

The earliest “biographical” version we have of a live HJ is Mark. Mark, one might say, set the stage for all subsequent biographies.

Mark is ANTI-Peter. And, as read by some, is Pauline in its theology.

How does this fit with your reconstruction?

To create what you’re calling a “hardened historical Christ” as a means of solidifying apostolic succession to the Peterines, one would expect exactly the opposite of what we find in Mark.

Mark snubs the human Christ’s followers, not glorifies them.

DQ