show_no_mercy

Did you read what I wrote? The Ebionites reject his virgin birth (and every other "divine" aspect of Jesus) and don't use the NT that's in Bibles today. Accordingly, Jesus' mother in the Ebionite scripture witnesses a very human, normal birth of Jesus.

bacht

Would you agree that the canonical NT writers wanted us to think the early believers were apocalypticists? Isn't this part of the official story that we are meant to accept? All four NT gospels use John the Baptist as an eschatological prophet eg.

aa5874

So you don't believe the mother, Mary.

Now, who told the Ebionites that Jesus was not born of a virgin and was not divine?

Some other mother?

neilgodfrey

I thought the question was about Jesus, not John the Baptist or early believers. Mark et al certainly portray a gulf between both Jesus and certain early believers. The original article assumed Jesus discipleship of John, but there is nothing of this in the gospels at all. On the contrary, they have John speaking of one "greater than" he -- not a pupil! And the heavens rending etc proves the point. This is the real "evidence of the extant evidence". As for "early believers", Mark has Jesus similarly attack the apocalypticism of Peter and the Twelve.

My original list that points to the non-apocalyptic traditions associated with the sayings and actions of Jesus has not been addressed here, even deliberately avoided by one. I think we are entitled to question the apocalyptic assumptions on the basis of that list.

I see Mark, in particular, as one writing in the tradition of Jewish scriptures, and his Jesus is in that literature's tradition of prophets and kings. Plus the Second Temple interpretations associated with those. Those interpretations of Joseph and Isaac carried that literature quite close indeed to the way Mark portrays Jesus, as I've discussed at some length elsewhere.


Neil

nickpecoraro

Big Deal! My mother always tells me that I was born of a virgin.

nickpecoraro

bacht

A mythicist reconstruction would be something like this:

- A spiritual Christ is revealed to the early believers through scripture and visions
- After the first generation passes Christ is re-defined as a Jewish prophet who died and resurrected on earth in historic time
- Torah-following Jewish Christians like the Ebionites reject the divinity of this prophet, leading to schism with the Incarnation believers
- 4th C Constantinians define Jesus as fully human and fully divine, breaking with strict Jewish monotheism

teamonger

Yes, that is an excellent blog post. The main point as regards historicity is, the apocalyptic Jesus was an embarrassment to the early church, and that aspect was watered down as time went on. Likewise other aspects: his radical ethic suited to end-times, his coming from Nazareth, his baptism by John. Seems unlikely that Mark would fabricate such inconvenient aspects, which later writers would need to find ways to explain away. The simplest explanation is there was a real preacher at the beginning of the tradition, one who didn't quite fit later theology.
t

spamandham

I think we have good evidence the theology changed (it's still changing afterall), but I don't see how that implies a historical Jesus. If Jesus started as a symbolic myth, and was later historicized, we would see the same thing.

teamonger

I think there's a chronological problem with your reconstruction. The early believers (before Paul, whom Paul persecuted) were apparently Torah-following Jewish Christians (the "pillars" at Jerusalem, i.e., the "superlative apostles".) These folks were more conservative than Paul, thus it's difficult to imagine them following a "spiritual Christ", or any pagan-style savior-god. It's much easier to imagine them following a Galilean preacher who impressed them with his graphic parables and last-days talk.
t

show_no_mercy

It also appears that the tension that Paul created with these Jewish-Christians was maintained by the Ebionites. They said that Paul was a gentile Greek who converted to Judaism either for money or power, and when he wasn't able to acheive this under the Pharisee high preist, he apostized and became a self-appointed apostle to the gentiles, fusing his innate pagan Greek ideology with the Judaism that he learned as a Pharisee. Basically starting his own religion by latching on to these early Jewish-Christians which thus became Pauline Christianity.