lpetrich

I found this in Brian Flemming's blog: Jesus Never Lived, Speaker Says

His case closely followed Earl Doherty's, though with the addition of Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile. Paul says very little about Jesus Christ's purported earthly career; RC proposes that Paul had believed that JC was a heavenly sort-of god. Some of his followers then reinterpreted JC as having an earthly career, and fleshed it out in the Gospels. This process is sometimes called euhemerization, after a certain Euhemerus, who around 300 BCE claimed that the Greek gods were really human heroes.

It's been pointed out elsewhere that something similar had happened with the early Xian sect of Ebionites; they were imagined to have a founder named Ebion.

RC shows commendable humility in refusing to claim that Jesus mythicism is well-established:

Malachi151

I don't believe that Jesus ever existed, however I also don't buy Doherty's argument at all. When I read Paul it seems pretty clear to me that he thought he was talking about someone who existed on earth.

jgibson000

How can the process that Carrier describes be called Euhemerization since it is the exact opposite of what Euhemerus spoke of when dealing with the question of the origin of the gods?


But even accepting this sprurious account (from Tertullian) of the origin of the name of the Ebionites (see below), this purported Ebion was not made into, or was ever assumed to have been, a god. So nothing at all "similar" happened, with the early Christian sect of the Ebionites even if this claim about the origin of this group's name was true.

However, the term Ebionite is not taken from the name of this group's founder -- which the Ebionites thought was ultimately Jesus.

The group's name is derived from the Hebrew word for "poor" and Ebyonim (Ebionites) = "the poor ones".


From the ABD:

EBIONITES. An early Christian sect known for its observance of some form of the Jewish law. Its members were regarded as heretical by the Church Fathers. The earliest undisputed use of the term Ebionites (usually Ebioµnaioi in Gk, Ebionaei or Ebionitae in Lat) appeared in the 2d century in the Contra Haereses of Irenaeus of Lyon, who recorded it as the name of a Christian group he considered heretical because they lived according to Jewish law. However, the term has an earlier history, having evolved into a sectarian name from the generic biblical Hebrew word <ebyoÆnéÆm, meaning “the poor.” The significance of this earlier evolution has long been a subject of dispute.

The beginning of publication of the Qumran scrolls renewed an old debate on the question whether various NT references to “the poor” (ptoµchoi) could help in retracing the history of the Ebionite heresy. The Qumran manuscripts include references to “the poor” which can be seen as semitechnical terms, midway between the generic biblical Hebrew use (e.g., in Psalms) and the use by Irenaeus. For example, in a commentary on Psalm 37, the Qumran writer describes his group as >aádat haµ-<ebyoÆnéÆm, “the congregation of the poor” (4QpPs37 III.10). Such references were noted by Teicher (1951), who proposed that the Qumran texts were written by Christian Ebionites; his proposal is emphatically rejected by most scholars, who find no evidence at all of Christianity at Qumran. At the other end of the spectrum, Keck (1965, 1966) essentially denies that Qumran, NT, and patristic references to “the poor” can help illuminate one another. The question as to whether the data from Qumran and the NT are useful for understanding Ebionite origins and history depends on what varieties of Jewish sectarianism and of early Christianity influenced the group.

Paul referred to certain early Christians in Jerusalem as “the poor” (Rom 15:26; Gal 2:10; Fitzmyer 1955). There is insufficient evidence to determine whether some of the Jewish law-observant Christians around James in Jerusalem designated themselves “the poor,” though Jas 2:1–7, referring to the poor man in the synagogue, suggests such a term would not have been offensive. What can be asserted on the basis of patristic literature is that the Ebionites associated themselves with early Christians who observed Jewish law. They rejected Paul’s view of Jewish law (Irenaeus, Haer. I 26.2) and possibly encouraged the view that they were represented among the Jerusalem Christians who supposedly fled Jerusalem before 70 c.e. for Pella (as suggested by Epiphanius’ account in Haer. 30.2).

All patristic accounts agree that Ebionites observed some version of Jewish law (including, e.g., circumcision). In addition, according to Irenaeus, Ebionites used only the Gospel of Matthew, venerated Jerusalem, and regarded Jesus’ birth as natural (the patristic references are conveniently gathered in Kiljn and Reinink 1973). Tertullian repeats the complaints that Ebionites observed Jewish law and denied the Virgin Birth, regarding Jesus as merely a prophet, but adds that their founder was a person named Ebion (Hebion), presumably on the false assumption that all heresies can be traced to an eponymous founder. According to Hippolytus, Ebionites claimed that Jesus became Christ as a result of observing the law. Origen dismisses Ebionites as “poor in understanding” for insisting that Jesus was sent only to the Jews. By the 4th century, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome repeated familiar criticisms, but added some uncertainty as to which apocryphal gospels were used by Ebionites and other Jewish-Christian groups (see EBIONITES, GOSPEL OF THE); also, they allowed that some Ebionites may have accepted the Virgin Birth.

Epiphanius’ long account of Ebionites (Haer. 30; see Koch 1976) assigns some portions of the pseudo-Clementine literature to them; this literature, which has a complex composition history (see CLEMENTINES, PSEUDO-), includes strongly dualistic theology, speaks of a reincarnated true prophet, and has Peter speak against Paul’s view of law. Other innovations include vegetarianism and the rejection of portions of Hebrew scripture. Additionally, Epiphanius asserts that Ebionites had come under the influence of the revelation of Elchasai. See ELCHASAITES.

The Bible translator SYMMACHUS is occasionally mentioned as an Ebionite. His translation of Zech 9:9, for example, renders the characterization of the humble (Heb >onéÆ) donkey-riding Messiah as ptoµchos, poor. However, little is known of Symmachus, so this possible identification adds little to our knowledge of Ebionites.

Among possible allusions to Ebionites in Rabbinic literature, one of the more likely appears in b. �*abb. 116a, wherein rabbis debate whether to save books of the minim (heretics) in the case of fire. If one allows for a slight self-censoring spelling of the names, the rabbis consider books found in the house of Ebionites (by<bydn) relatively more worth saving than books in the house of Nazarenes (see NAZARENES). In favor of this reading, it may be noted that the rabbis were more inclined to condemn Nazarenes, whereas Church writers were more inclined to condemn Ebionites.
Many questions remain concerning the evolution of the Ebionites and their relation to other Jewish-Christian groups. After the accounts in Epiphanius and Jerome, Ebionites fade from history.

Bibliography

Fitzmyer, J. A. 1955. The Qumran Scrolls, the Ebionites and Their Literature. TS 16: 335–72. Repr. in Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament. Missoula, 1974.

Keck, L. 1965. The Poor among the Saints in the New Testament. ZNW 56: 100–129.
———. 1966. The Poor among the Saints in Jewish Christianity and Qumran. ZNW 57: 54–78.

Klijn, A. F. J., and Reinink, G. J. 1973. Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects. Leiden.

Koch, G. 1976. A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius’ Knowledge of the Ebionites. Ph.D. Diss. University of Pennsylvania.

Schoeps, H.-J. 1969. Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church. Trans. D. Hare. Philadelphia.

Strecker, G. 1959. Ebioniten, RAC 4: 487–500.

Teicher, J. L. 1951. The Dead Sea Scrolls—Documents of the Jewish Christian Sect of Ebionites. JJS 2: 67–99.


Jeffrey Gibson

spin

You've got the reality, but the problem is not one of reality but perceptions of it. As I'm responsible for bringing the notion of Ebion into the fray, I'll muscle in here to say that the real origin of the term "Ebionite" is beside the point when looking at the process of turning a nonentity into one perceived to have existed. Ebion by Tertullian's time was an entity of his own. Epiphanius even supplies the birthplace of Ebion as being in Kochabe in the Bashan. This is the process of giving bones and flesh to a nonentity. The analogy to the giving bones and flesh to a possibly mythic Jesus should be transparent.


spin

Chili

I would argue that there were hundreds of them since Jesus was a Nazarite by nature and those are just purgatorians where I come from (we pray for them during mass).

One of the many that completed this 1260 day period in the desert (sic) where the dragon was slain just wrote about and that became known as the Gospels.

Jesus is just a name given to a purgatorian (Jesuit by nature) who will be a Christian but not until the dragon is slain (Rev.12 and the first beast of Rev. 13). Note that 1260 days is 42 months or 3.5 years in purgatory instead of 40 and still die.

I mean, what is so special about Jesus? They crucified him didn't they? and to have him on board for 42 months is long enough, I would say.

lpetrich

What spin described for Ebion can also be deduced from the Gospels.

Paul's Christ had very little earthly history -- at best.

Mark has no birth story, only the baptism of a mature Jesus Christ. That Gospel originally ended with those women discovering that JC's tomb was empty; his post-resurrection appearance (Mark 16:9-20) was added later.

Matthew and Luke add the "Q" sayings, genealogies, birth stories, and various other details.

John goes even further, giving JC a very metaphysical sort of origin as "the Word" (logos).

The Bishop

Or you can equally argue the opposite. If Paul made Jesus up, surely he would have made up significant life details. Conversely, if Jesus's life was well known amongst the already-Christians to whom Paul was incontestably addressing, then the omission means nothing at all. The prima facie evidence is that a man lived and died and attracted a following, and then Paul came along and created a Theology to go around him. Neither Doherty nor Carrier have sufficiently strong arguments or any evidence at all that makes a stronger case for Paul simultaneously creating a theology and a figure.
But if those characteristics have all been chosen because they are part of the Christian story, then how useful is it as a comparison? Effectively he's saying "Jesus scores highest in the myths that are like the story of Jesus." If the myriad of other mythological beings/gods don't score nearly as highly, then surely that's an indication that Jesus is not a mythological story? I'm not arguing that Jesus is not a myth here, only that the criteria are clearly weighted towards the Jesus story, and consequently the disparity in scores with other people both real and imagined undermines the theory rather than bolsters it.

James Brown

Sure, IF Paul was thinking of Jesus as an historical character, he might. If I understand Doherty's thesis, Paul did not "make Jesus up," he revealed Jesus to be the mythical Logos of the Old Testament, who lived and died in the upper realms on our behalf.

Think of it this way. Most Americans are familiar with the character Uncle Sam, the rail-thin bearded patriot of WWI posters. We all know what he looks like, and can probably guess what principles he stands for. And yet no one knows where or how he was born, what his childhood was like, if he is married, or even if he's still alive today. Why is that?

But Alex Ross recently illustrated a graphic novel starring Uncle Sam as an action hero, which inserted more physical details about the man. I can easily imagine someone producing a "biopic" that fills in even more detail, all in the name of promoting an agenda, say, patriotism or loyalty to the United States.

It seems to me to be similar to the New Testament. The first mentions are vague, lofty ideals of a personification, followed by more concrete data developed to promote a particular agenda. And yet to ask why the 'creator' of Uncle Sam didn't also 'create' a well-developed background for the character is missing the point.

Of course, I stand ready to be corrected by Mr. Doherty itself if my thinking is completely off-base.

Why would people in Greece be familiar with the life of Jesus? Even if you argued that one or two eye-witnesses of Jesus traveled to far-off countries to establish churches, wouldn't the faithful inquire about another eye-witness' point of view? Look at how many gospels were written...that wouldn't be the case if Jesus' life was well-known to everyone. If people today are hungry for the details of Jesus' earthly life, why wouldn't people two thousand years ago be just as hungry?

But Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar are not mythical characters. They are confirmed real individuals onto which mythical elements have been grafted. I don't think that anyone used the New Testament as the template to determine what characteristics must exist in a mythical hero.

From my end of the Internet, it seems to me that you are saying, "This mythical hero exhibited some of the mythical hero characteristics, and that one exhibited a few more, but since Jesus exhibited all of them he must be real." Sorry, but that doesn't make sense to me.

The Bishop

What I was pointing out was that the arguments are not compelling in either direction. You can say that Paul left out Jesus's details because there weren't any, or you can say that if Paul made Jesus up then he would have put more details in. You believe the one argument, and I believe the other. There is no compulsion either way.

But here you're just arguing the "Jesus could have been made up just like [insert fictional character here, generally Harry Potter so well done for originality]. I don't find those arguments worthwhile, and neither, I suspect, do Doherty or Carrier.

Just because something is clearly true of the Uncle Sam as illustrated at the start of the last century, recently taken up and fully formed a century later, doesn't mean the same thing must have happened with Jesus. I'm afraid I don't find the parallel with the New Testament compelling at all.

I don't know, but you only have to read even a couple of paragraphs of the epistles to understand that evidently they must have been.

Why? People who are taking up a new religion (I mean new to themselves) aren't notable for being open to alternate points of view.

But the point at which the gospels were written was substantially different from the point at which the epistles were written - twenty years later according to the most traditional, but nearly 50 years later according to Carrier.

Don't know what you're trying to say here, since the people were hungry and were satisfied.


Like a lot of people on the other thread, there seems to be a habit of looking at the list in the wrong way. There isn't any point in trying to apply the mythological list to real persons, the vast majority of whom fall on 9 of the 22 tests simply by dint of not being Royal (and in my view Jesus fails those tests as well).

The exact opposite of what I was saying - I was saying nothing about his mythological status, I was stating that if the criteria you pick more or less follow the New Testament story and order of events, it's not surprising that Jesus scores highly on it. I'm saying here that the mythological list fits Jesus's life like a glove, so how can we trust it? On another thread I have argued that Jesus's purported high score of 19 is ludicrous anyway - and the whole thing smacks of a distinctly Christian-influenced person making up a list by following the story of Jesus, and in order to match many other mythological characters has promoted all the vaguely royal references in Jesus's life to full blown regal status, as if they are the same thing.

EssEff

The case of King Arthur comes to mind also. If a fictional character of a much later date could have such a detailed and plausible biography (in most respects), couldn't it also be true of a much earlier character? When the overwhelming majority of the population is illiterate, it takes only a few writers & scribes to generate a myth.