jjramsey

Again, Paul mentioned the Pillars Peter and James as if he expected his audience to recognize the names and know who the people behind them were. So there was oral tradition circulating the names.

We aren't talking about minutiae, but rather the broad outline of who the Pillars were, and that under the scenario that Didymus proposed, Mark would be making a radical rewrite of this broad outline.

They obviously weren't all illiterate. The ones who could read would know about the Pillars as well.

These are problems in details, not in the broad outline. It's the change in the broad outline that I contend would be noticed. Actually, the ten-year discrepancy between Matthew and Luke on the timing of his birth is about what one would expect if the time of Jesus' birth was guestimated from the his approximate age that he was at his death around A.D. 30. Also, while there is certainly disagreement on how Jesus got from Bethlehem to Nazareth, all the Gospels are agreed that Nazareth was his hometown. Bear in mind that noticing these discrepancies requires some attention to detail and a fairly specific background knowledge of history, while noticing a radical change in the broad outline of the Pillars' history would not.

J-D

It doesn't take rule by a single empire to enable the spread of ideas. The conditions permitting the spread of ideas around the Mediterranean existed before the whole area came under Roman control. And in those conditions, some ideas did spread. And others didn't. The conditions existed for the ideas of the Essenes to spread to the Diaspora. But is there any actual evidence for the existence of Essene groups in the Diaspora, or are you just making assumptions?

gurugeorge

Well a lot depends on what is meant by "inspiration" and "staying power". An obscure preacher might have started an obscure movement, but it's unlikely that an obscure preacher would have been (e.g.) deified within 50 years of his death (which is of course absolutely contrary to what one might expect in Jewish milieu) without some good reason - can you supply such a good reason?

I think some of these sorts of details are explainable either in symbolic terms or in terms of later requirements for retroactive fitting in of latterly-imposed historical details. (As to the letters, I don't know what you mean.)

It was more a side-swipe expressing my puzzlement at how some Christians seem content to argue for such a personage as the "founder".

But anyway, do you see the point about "HJ" not being a simple explanatory concept? How there are several "possible HJs" and how it's quite problematic to decide which is the most likely, given the (scant) evidence, and how therefore "HJ" isn't actually all that perspicuous an explanation for the Christian movement, given the (scant) evidence?

Sparrow

If they were fairly certain about a death date in 30 CE, then a difference between a birth before 2 BCE and on in 6 CE is nearly a third of his short life. What a guesstimate. I suppose it's possible that they weren't exactly sure when he died, only that it was 'recent', but then detailed knowledge of the actual events would likely be compromised. Maybe different writers would even provide diferent sayings as Jesus last words. Imagine that.

Sparrow

No, I don't think he does. I have to keep going over the fact that I have never asserted that there cannot have been a real person at the root of the Christian story. All I've claimed is that my interpretation of the the evidence I've seen leads me to conclude there likely wasn't a single identifiable person at the root.

J-D's explanation is plausible, as is jjramsey's. I don't even care to disabuse them of their notions, if I were able. I just think there are many more problems with their scenarios than they let on.

jjramsey

Jesus was purported to be around thirty when he started his ministry, so he might have been anywhere from 25-35 years of age, and even there we can give or take a year or two. Given that, a 10-year uncertainty is not surprising.

Not that unlikely. We already have Moses being described as preexistent. Sound familiar? Enoch is described as "guardian of all the celestial treasures, chief of the archangels, and the immediate attendant on God's throne." Judging from verses like 1 Corinthians 15:28, Paul himself took Jesus to be a highly exalted second-in-command. Also, Christianity mostly spread across the Gentile world, which had far fewer compunctions about deifying people, and it is likely that it was the Gentiles who bumped Jesus from being nearly god-like to being part of the Godhead itself. Note, too, that despite Jesus' deification, the monotheism from Judaism was ultimately maintained; he is not depicted as a separate, independent god.

gurugeorge

Yeah but normally when people were deified, it was because they'd done something remarkable in some way, or were already renowned. They weren't already obscure.

jjramsey

However, a cult leader can be obscure to the world at large and yet be considered remarkable by his followers.

Sparrow

Like Jim Jones or David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite (Heavens Gate). Are you trying to convince us that Jesus was a Looney Tune?

gurugeorge

Remarkable sure, but remarkable enough to be God - especially in a Jewish setting? No. It just doesn't make sense to me I'm afraid. I can accept a famous person who'd done notable things in the ancient world being deified by their followers, maybe even a famous Jewish person being deified by gentiles. I just can't get an obscure person who made no impact on the bigger world being deified by his Jewish followers only shortly after their death.