Malachi151

It's not in the OT per se, but in a lot of 2-1st century BCE apocryphal writings.

Jayrok

If the Bible is divinely inspired and that event was the crux of God's plan, why wouldn't it be spelled out in the Holy scriptures?

Are any of these apocryphal writings available anywhere? And if these types of writings were well known among priests, et al, why would the Jewish leaders reject so harshly the idea that Jesus could have been God/God's son? Or were the Temple area priests not part of the whole apocryphalic movement?

Gamera

There is no doubt that there are true parallels between NT authors and LXX, the issue is are they narrative parallels, which are structural in nature.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're talking about quotes, doxologies, and theological pronouncements in the various works which clearly show influence. I have no problem with that. But that isn't the JM thesis. The JM thesis (with variations) claims that the Jesus narrative is derived from prior myths. The methodology is to discern structural similarities between those myths and the Jesus narrative. There is no claim of mss borrowing, since the mss that contain the earlier myths are usually of later origin than the NT mss.

Gamera

Comparative religion is a modernist study whose methodology has been vigorously called into question by poststructuralism.

Ben C Smith

One of the JM ideas on this very board entails Mark having gone through the LXX looking for inspiration for invented stories about Jesus: Mark based certain miracles on miracles worked by Elijah and Elisha; Mark reworked Jonah and one of the psalms to form the calming of the sea; Mark plumbed the depths of Psalm 22 for his crucifixion account; Mark used the Davidic retreat from Jerusalem as the foundation for the arrest sequence. This is not a natural development of one myth into another; this, if true (and I think it is partially true; for example, I regard the walking on water as based almost entirely upon OT theophanic texts), entails direct textual borrowing. A JM hypothesis of this kind (it is basically the kind held by, for example, Michael Turton) simply posits it in quite a few more instances than I would.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

Can you give us particulars on any of these apocryphal writings which contain the idea that God will send his Son (or come himself) to die for the collective sins of mankind?

My own favorite passage in the OT about the future covenant God would establish with his people is Jeremiah 31:33-4. Can anyone find a hint of Son Jesus in this:

"I will set my law within them and write it on their hearts; I will become their God and they shall become my people. No longer need they teach one another to know the Lord; all of them, high and low alike, shall know me, says the Lord, for I will forgive their wrondoing and remember their sin no more."

As I ask in my book Challenging the Verdict: "If salvation is eventually to be dependent on knowing and believing in Jesus, why is God's forecast of his future requirements limited to knowing the Lord, meaning himself? If Jesus' sacrificial death would be required to forgive sins, why does God's reference to the cancellation of sins make no mention of it?"

In the next day or two I should be posting something on the "archons" thread, as promised.

Earl Doherty

Vinnie

These types of speculatory objections do not amount to much and are only poignant for extreme fundamentalists.

That God gave prophecy through human pen's whose free will he did not over-ride during the process is a very simple apologetic for this. T

hat he keeps things vague at times for his own mysterious ways as it ties into the hiddenness of God is another.

That he need not spell out every detail when describing future hope is another.

That the book was penned in a specific situation for a specific audience by its author who would not totally understand the reference is another. Christians can read Jesus in because they know him now. They can see the allusions that are made more obvious A.D. In the B.C. world there was no necessary reason to do so.

Would you like another 10 speculatory apologetic responses here for this objection? It might be best to stick with historical issues. Otherwise the water will get even muddier than it already is.

Vinnie

Malachi151

The writing of Mark wasn't the "creation" of "the myth". The idea of Jesus Christ and crucified savior already existed by the time Mark came along.

To what degree did the author of Mark "dig up" references himself? To what degree were people pouring over scriptures looking for references to base a story on?

I agree that the passion narrative itself may be older than Mark, and may have been its own separate entity at one point, which may be why it is so densely based on prior scriptures.

The exactly process that took place to construct Mark, how much of it was borrowed from existing Jesus sources and how much the author put together himself I don't know.

Its obvious that some how the LXX was used to craft the story. Was the author simply very familiar with the LXX already, did he have much of it memorized, was he searching for what he thought were real prophecies, was he just looking for material, etc., I don't know, and can't know.

I think that a really key issue here is the Hebrew apocrypha, which is where many of the broader themes of the Jesus story really developed. Again, Enoch, Martyrdom of Isaiah, Wisdom of Solomon, Ascension of Moses, etc., but this was simply a genre of writing, and not used directly as a basis for material because it wasn't in the LXX.

The author of Mark used the LXX as the basis for material, but the ideas don't flow from the LXX, the idea flow from the existing genre of apocalyptic and messianic literature outside the LXX.

Now to change subjects:

To get back to the OP, I'd like to see people here, including myself, list out JM claims that we know are either flat our wrong, or dubious.

I know that many such claims have been made in drawing parallels to Dionysus and Mithras, I've made such claims in the past myself, but on deeper investigation the basis for these claims is often not true, i.e. the claims made about Dionysus or Mithras aren't supported, i.e. Mithras being born of a virgin on Dec. 25th., etc. As best as I can tell Mithras emerged from a rock. The use of the famed Bacchus pendent that shows him being crucified. This may be a forgery, but even if not, it's still a 2nd century or later charm and wouldn't be a basis for the Jesus story, rather the other way around. The claim, which I have made in the past, that the 12 apostles are based on the 12 signs of the zodiac, this may be sort of true in a round about way, but not directly. The 12 Tribes of Israel was probably based on the 12 signs of the zodiac way back a long time ago, but by the time the Jesus story came along, the people weren't thinking about the zodiac, they were thinking about the long tradition of 12 patriarchs, 12 tribes, etc. Now, "pagans" who came over to the religion may have related the 12 apostles to the 12 zodiac signs, but that wasn't what the early Jewish "Christians" would have been basing these references on.

GakuseiDon

Malachi, I've read through your Jesus Myth article, and it isn't bad, but the one thing that struck me is your refutation of "apologist arguments". I see this quite often in people pushing mythicism -- they will write "Apologists claim..." -- but does anyone really care what apologists claim??? If you are arguing a point that secular scholars also support, then saying that apologists are making the claim would appear to be a strawman, since the implications are that the claim is only being made by apologists, and thus only due to their beliefs.

For example, on the TF, you write as one of the options:
"The passage is partly authentic. Josephus wrote something about Jesus, but later Christians altered it. (This is the favored position by Christian apologists. This position may be the majority view at this time.)"

If the position is the majority, then why mention that it is favored by apologists? Of course it is! But if it is the majority view, why do you care whether apologists favor it or not?

I see mythicists use this strawman argument all the time, and it appears to be an attempt to ignore that non-apologists also hold a similar position. Getting rid of such obvious strawmen I think would improve mythicist arguments.

Ben C Smith

Well, of course I completely agree.

Are you asking me? Or are you asking those whose views I was summarizing to the best of my abilities? (I myself disagree with the bulk of the hypothesis that I described.)

Some of those works may not have been fully available, true, but 1 Enoch (with the possible exception of the similitudes) certainly was, I think, as was the Wisdom of Solomon.

Ben.