dog-on

What are the known answers about Jesus that you would like to test with?

I would like to know exactly what you believe that these would be.

graymouser

It strikes me that - as far as historiography goes - mythicism doesn't have one single historiography but rather contains a number of different approaches that start from the rejection of the method used by historicists. If we define historicism as being based upon looking at the Gospels and attempting to strip away mythical elements and accretions to find a "historical core" to the documents, mythicism is the attempt to explain them without assuming that the core is a single historical human being named Jesus.

Historicism is predicated in every instance on the general outlines of the Gospels having a necessary historical kernel, on this kernel being the same person who is the subject of the Marcan material, the Q material, and the pre-Gospel works (i.e. Paul). All of this is assumed on the basis that later Christians saw them as unified, and for no other good reason. Mythicism looks at these things as relatively independent. It seeks out why the Pauline epistles are unconcerned with a historical character who had lived recently. Then it looks at Mark, which has no interesting data that could not be constructed from the Septuagint, and finally how this was merged with the Q material in Matthew and Luke. The radical conclusion it comes to is that no core Jesus is required for all of this.

I see mythicism as having the better methodology here, because it attempts to explain individual documents rather than the Gospels as a whole.

gurugeorge

Historiography, schmistoriograpy.

"Use the texts to define the agenda of the texts"? Well, what do you suppose we are meant to believe when we read the NT? Is not the plain meaning of the texts this: that a remarkable, divine entity walked the earth 2,000 years ago, preached, performed miracles, got into trouble with the authorities, was crucified and resurrected? I should think that's the take-home message that most Christians have taken home for the 1,500 years or so those texts have been in their present, solidified form. These texts are supposed to pass as witness of that entity, no?

Granted that (and I don't know if you do, but it seems pretty obvious, and has nothing especially to do with historiography), everything else I wrote follows logically.

The Christ story as we have it IS ALREADY A MYTH. So basically there are only the two options: either some human being got turned into a myth, or the myth somehow developed without a human being at its core. Both are possible, and both types of origin could have many forms. (They even blend into one another at some point: the historical core might be so vague and distantly related that it's almost "myth all the way down" anyway.)

The latter option ("myth all the way down") doesn't need to go outside the texts (and general background historical knowledge) to make it plausible. It doesn't need to prove that there WASN'T a historical person. It just needs to give a plausible story (consistent with the evidence) about how such texts could have come to exist without a historical person at the core of the myth.

The first option NEEDS to go outside the texts and look for proof of the hypothesised human being - the entity that's hypothesised to be at the root of the myth. Or at the very least, the tentativeness of its case WITHOUT such external evidence needs to be acknowledged.

Let me repeat that, to make sure it's absolutely clear: if you propose an entity as a solution to a problem, you need to show that that entity exists if you want to clinch the deal. The problem is the existence of the Christian texts and religion, with its myth of a divine god-man. The proposal is that there was a human being who got mythologised into the Jesus myth we know and love. That is a HYPOTHETICAL PERSON, until there's some external evidence for him.

To put all this IOW: it is not at all obvious that euhemerism ought to be assumed when we are confronted with a myth. That it has been (mostly) assumed in the case of this "Jesus Christ" myth, is simply an artefact of the fact that rational scrutiny has only slowly and gradually focussed on the Christ myth, and only in the last couple of hundred years or so, because of the myth's prior cultural dominance (it would have been more than my life was worth - or at least, more trouble than it would have been worth - to have openly been a mythicist 300 years ago, say).

This "euhemeristic tic" in the context of the Jesus myth is quite understandable in context, but by now we should all be aware of how inappropriate it is, if we're serious about getting to the bottom of how the myth (and the religion) came to be.

Historical Jesus? Maybe, maybe not. Truly, we're not yet in a position to be so all-fired cocksure about it one way or the other - and we need to be prepared for the possibility that we may never be.

aa5874

But, it MUST also be possible the Jesus character was a product of MULTIPLE characters, fictious or real.

It is clear that the Jesus of the NT was a product of the Septuagint or Hebrew Scripture. His origin is found in Isaiah 7.14 and his words and teachings even his acts are all found in the very same writings.

There is really only one good option, the MYTH, once an investigation is done.

I cannot remember hearing where all options presented before an investigation are still maintained after the investigation.

It can be shown that the historical Jesus, after investigation, is an extremely weak theory, it has no legs to stand. It is no longer a post-investigation option.

Historicists cannot explain how a man supposedly living for thirty years in Galilee was deified by Jews, by the very people who do not deify men. The Jews did not deify King David the Christ of God and Simnon BarCocheba the Messiah, yet some people say they deified a blasphemer, a false prophet or a lunatic.

The best post-investigation option is that the Jesus character was MYTHOLOGICAL.

show_no_mercy

On what grounds can you say something is a quote by Jesus and something else isn't? I don't think there are any authentic quotes by "Jesus" in Mark/Matthew.

"These"? You're assuming that the gospels were written in concert to compliment each other. That's the fallacy of the Catholics towards the end of the 2nd century. The textual evolution of these documents and what regions they were used in paints a different picture - that the gospels were fluid and were used in different communities with different theological agendas.

How exactly do you know that Mark was written as "true history"? You don't. No one does. Of course Matt and Luke (and all of the other regional variants of the synoptics) probably thought that Mark was history and -- ironically -- they did the same thing that HJ proponents do - pick and choose which parts they thought were "correct" and disregarding the parts they thought were "incorrect".

If Ignatius was quoting from Matthew, why are all of the supposed "quotes" that he makes of Matthew completely incorrect or in a completely different context? That to me suggests that the source is some sort of oral tradition, not any document.

And what's with the phrase "real scholars"? Is someone with a doctorate in Greco-Roman history not a "real scholar"?

And the biggest problem with this is that, just like John itself is anonymous, the Beloved Disciple is also anonymous. There's no tradition of any sort of beloved disciple until John is written, and we don't know when that was.

So you have an anonymous document that has as its marker of "authenticity" another anonymous person. It's not until the late 2nd century that the beloved disciple is identified with a "John".

No Robots

It is clear that mythicists are not interested in elaborating or working from a consistent historiography. They reject theory in general, in typical postmodernist fashion. They assume that their questioning and criticism is sufficient to undermine any positive position, and that their essentially negative position is thereby established. The only counter to this is to assert the fundamental place of theory in rational discourse. See on this Spinoza and the origins of modern critical theory by Christopher Norris.

All this leaves traditional Christians in an awkward position. They are subject to an absurd attack from which they can defend themselves only by embracing a consistent historiography, but that means abandoning all their traditions and embracing a thoroughly naturalistic approach to spiritual matters. Christians are forced to choose between the postmodernist approach in which whatever you believe is okay because nothing is fundamentally knowable as truth; and the Spinozist/Brunnerian approach which, proceeding from a rational theory, understands god as the abstract principle of Beingness, and Christ as a purely human mystic and genius.

Yellum Notnef

Wow. Just when I thought this thread couldn't get anymore convoluted and crazy, it did.

There are no discussions anywhere about anything that are more ridiculous than those about Jesus.

EarlDoherty

Yes, and my head is getting mighty sore, because the average historicist around here, including you, Rick, usually offers no other counter than something like “That isn’t what it means at all.” No content. No specific grappling with my arguments for the smoking gun (or even lesser incriminations) other than favorites like “No, it isn’t.” Unfortunately, “No, it isn’t” doesn’t constitute a counter-argument and does nothing to advance the debate.

Gurugeorge had a very good argument about the nature of the Gospel texts, and what did you do? Made no attempt to actually address it but demanded a volume on the principles of historiography. Answering content with no content, but further demands. (Spin called you on that.) I’m not sure that ‘hypocrisy’ is the right term for this, perhaps ‘evasion’ or ‘bluffing’. How about we coin a term encompassing all such non-argumentation masquerading as otherwise? I’ll call it “Gibsonism” or “Gibsonesque.” (Jeffrey, by the way, has had a complimentary copy of Jesus: Neither God Nor Man for a few months and we’ve heard nothing from him since.)

We can use an analogy to illustrate Gurugeorge’s principle. Somewhat like the Gospels, Alice in Wonderland is full of fantastical elements, rabbit holes leading to new worlds, miraculous biscuits and potions, talking cards. Such things make the story inherently unlikely to be ‘historical.’ Yet you would want the Alice text to be equally indicative of something that is, or that could point to some sort of historicity lying behind it. (Is this your brand of historiography?) The one historical element is that Alice is based on a real young girl known to the author. But how do we know that? Not in any way from the text itself, but because we have independent, external corroboration for it in what we know of Charles Dodgson, which was gurugeorge’s point, which you refused to recognize. (Ouch, another head bruise—gotta stop doing that.)

His point about the mythological nature of the Gospel character, bearing resemblance to so many mythical motifs and figures of the ancient world (not to mention Jewish scriptural heroes who are probably myths themselves), does the same thing. They point primarily to a mythical, symbolic character. Do your historians practising your brand of historiography take the Heracles legends as pointing with equal possibility to an historical person? Does your historiography regard the Homeric poems as pointing with equal possibility to historical events and characters surrounding a war with Troy? Do we have independent corroboration for Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector? I guess, since you have not volunteered anything further to elucidate your brand of historiography (despite demanding it from everyone else), we must take your historiographic principles as encompassing nothing but that: a text can be used to indicate history on an equal footing with mythology, placing the Gospels right beside Caesar’s Gallic Wars as revealers of history. Is that how you “do history”?

Do we have equal external corroboration for Caesar and his activities as we do for Jesus of Nazareth and his? Hardly. Gurugeorge’s (and aa’s) point is that we do not, and in fact the Gospel Jesus is notably and perplexingly missing from the contemporary record. (Josephus, anyone?) It would be like Mark Antony having written the memoirs of his time without mentioning Julius. Yet for you, Mark and Matthew and rank right up there beside Livy and Plutarch.

Gurugeorge was not offering a general set of historiographic principles, merely one particular facet of his own which was quite legitimate. Why not choose to address its validity, with concrete counter-argumentation, showing that you can comprehend and deal with specifics? I’ve been trying to get you to do that for years, with little success. I’ll tell you what. Since you seem to think that half of my new book is material you’re already familiar with (and presumably, in your mind, have already dealt with), I’ll give you a special discount of 50%. Send me $20 (I’ll even waive the mailing cost) and I’ll send you a copy. Then you can address my smoking guns (like Hebrews 8:4 and Minucius Felix which I present in greater depth than ever before, not to mention an entire chapter on your beloved kata sarka) and other arguments that Paul and the early epistle writers can be speaking only of a mythical, heavenly figure. You can demonstrate that your historiography (and especially the interpretation of texts) is superior to mine, that your common sense can whup my common sense. Right here for all to see. And finally provide some content from you that we can all sink our teeth into.

How about it? (That goes for ‘Apostle’Abe, too—sorry, only Gibsonists need apply.)

P.S. Nor is “No Robots” (I’d style him another Gibsonist) correct in accusing mythicists of simply rejecting all theory. That’s nonsense. (Though I do reject the ‘theory’ that it is somehow legitimate for Christian ‘historians’ to regard supernaturalist accounts as history. Is that how they ‘do history’?) I’m no postmodernist.

Earl Doherty

No Robots

Ouch.

Sorry, Earl, but I see no evidence of mythicists engaging with critical theory in any serious way. What, for example, do you have to say about Spinoza's approach to literary analysis? This isn't an obscure question: a casual perusal will show how central Spinoza is to critical theory today, especially as it pertains to Biblical literature.

I agree. That is why I adhere to the Spinozist/Brunnerian theory which specifically and emphatically rejects all supernaturalism.

I disagree. Your whole approach is based on the rejection of any idea of a self-consistent and wholistic theory. Instead, you present a bricolage of attacks against and counters to standard interpretation.

rob117

I never claimed that this was an authentic quote of Jesus. I simply claimed that it is depicted as such in the gospel, whereas "let the reader understand" is best understood as an authorial interjection.


I am not assuming that, nor do I see how you can get that from what I wrote. "These" is what is called a "grammatical function" (that's something we use in this thing called "language"), expressing specificity. Nowhere does the word "these" have the implication of "these things which all complement each other."

This isn't even worth answering. Read the damn thing. It's not a play, and it's not a novel. We know how it was used by the early Christian communities, and we have absolutely zero reason they would have been so stupid as to have taken something that was intended as fiction as actual history such a short time after it was written (see the Papias testimony, c.110, which refers to Mark).

There are criteria for choosing which are correct (i.e. "embarrassment" and others; ideally one's reconstruction using these criteria would not be arbitrary (although I'd agree with you that many reconstructions go too far-- but this is because they quietly break the criteria, rather than any fault of the criteria themselves). Given that the life of Jesus is so staunchly at odds with both OT messianic prophecies and what the Jews of the day expected the messiah to be like, we can be sure that the main elements of the life of Jesus that do not fit that model (such as being crucified, and not actually having an earthly reign) are probably correct. This is why the early Christians had to take non-messianic prophecies out of context and interpret non-prophecies as prophecies--because they knew that if they didn't, their case for Jesus as the messiah would fall apart.



Quoting out of context was a common Jewish and Christian practice. The NT has a field day with it, and it's all over the Talmud as well.

NT criticism is a different field than Greco-Roman history. This doesn't mean that Classicists can't have anything substantial to say of course, but if someone outside a field expects to be taken seriously within the field, they need to be familiar and conversant with scholarship in that field. This is not what Richard Carrier does. Instead, he attempts to show that an entire field of scholarship (that is not his own) is totally and completely illegitimate. Not a good way to be taken seriously.

Just because someone has a PhD, doesn't mean they're not a crank.

I never claimed the beloved disciple was originally intended to be John the apostle. I explicitly said he was probably an old man falsely claiming to have known Jesus. You have a habit of extrapolating way too much from what I actually say.