Philadelphia Lawyer

How about Prester John? If his "letter" can be considered a biography (it's really more of autobiography) then that's at least one biography of someone who didn't exist before the invention of the printing press. The various versions of the letter (of which I believe that more than four existed within the 100 years following the letter's first appearance circa 1165 CE) could be counted as separate biographies-after all 3 of the separate Jesus "biographies", Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are just variations on a theme-so there you go.

Roland

King Arthur?

http://historymedren.about.com/od/hi...thofarthur.htm

Roland

As to the challenge posed here, one of the reasons why four "biographies" may exist of Jesus and not other mythological figures is because the Church had a vested interest in preserving and copying them over and over and over again, then placing them into a sacred canon that would ensure their longevity and permanence. How many other such biographies were preserved with such precision and care? Who knows how much literary material deemed irrelevant to the spreading of this particular faith was lost in the first thousand years of the Christian era? After all, if the books of the Bible had never been collected and preserved in a canon, who can say we would even have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John today?

Amaleq13

This fact is correct. The "earliest source" would be Paul and he does not identify the mother of Jesus by name.

Since we don't know if this scene from one of the stories (not "records") is historically reliable, we can't really say that we know Jesus was literate. While the vast majority of people in his time were illiterate, a good argument can be offered that Jews were an exception but specifically with regard to their Scripture.

The oldest known icon of Jesus dates to the 6th century. Could you provide a specific reference for the catacomb portraits?

There are no "bios" of Jesus. There are stories about his ministry and some include stories about his birth (incompatible with each other but included nonetheless) and some include stories about his childhood (complete with hilarious abuses of his divine power) but there is no single story that can be considered a "biography" in the sense of telling the entire story of the life of an individual. I don't understand why an absence of a similar example of fabulous stories about an individual requires that the individual be assumed historical. This may be the worst argument for historicity I've ever read.

Yes, including you.

I suspect you are right since it cannot even be met by your own Gospels.

I believe this statement to be 100% true despite the fact that your challenge is utterly without merit. Faith cannot succumb to any amount of evidence.

Vorkosigan

The earliest sources of Jesus are the authentic letters of Paul. As Amalek noted, they do not mention Mary. Mark 6:3 is a very interesting verse with two problems. First, the name "Mary" stinks of fiction. As Meier (A Marginal Jew vol 1, 1987) observes:

• "It is probably not by accident that, like himself, all of Jesus' relatives bear names that hark back to the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, and the entrane into the promised land. His putative father was Joseph, the name of one of the twelve sons of Jacob/Israel and the progenitor, through Ephraim and Manasseh, of two of the twelve tribes. His mother was Mary, in Hebrew Miriam, the name of the sister of Moses. His four brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Jude, were named after the patriarchs who begot the twelve sons/tribes of Israel (James =Jacob) and after three of those twelve sons (Joses=Joseph, Simon=Simon, and Jude=Judah)"(p207).

In fairness, "Mary" was the most common female Jewish name. Some exegetes argue that the phrase "Son of Mary" with its imputation of bastardy was too offensive to have been made up, but others point out that in Josephus and in the OT people are referred to as sons of their mother.

The second problem is textual: the phrase "Son of Mary" is not found in some manuscripts, for example p45, and the phrase is not found in any of the texts that copied Mark -- Matt, Luke, or John. Meier again argues (p225) that the text has been assimilated to Matthew here. So your claim rests upon a portion of the text that is perhaps not secure, and is almost certainly fictional (given everything else in Mark that is fictional).

Most scholars consider Luke 4 to be a fiction invented by Luke. No other gospel gives any hint that Jesus was literate, except the interpolated pericope adultera in John.

....but it does not follow that everything written about him is historical. What if the only evidence we had for Alexander was the Alexander Romance, the most popular book in antiquity after the Bible?

It has already been pointed out that the "bios" of Jesus are not "biographies" but appear to be relatives of ancient narrative genres such as popular biography (see the Life of Aesop) or perhaps Hellenistic fiction (see Tobert's Sowing the Gospel). A good place to start on understanding the problems of genre is Wills The Quest of the Historical Gospel.

First demonstrate that the gospels are biographies of Jesus. Then we'll talk.

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

He may have tried to call himself one, but he did not work like a one, acknowledging his sources and comparing and evaluating them, as Richard Carrier has shown.

However, there were lots of pagan and Jewish miracle-workers back then, and it is doubtful that AFisherOfMen agrees with the Talmud that Jesus Christ's father had been a Roman soldier.

rob117

I have to say that while I obviously don't believe Jesus performed miracles or rose from the dead, I find it hard to believe that as a man he never existed. There were many claimants to the position of Messiah in this period, both before and after Jesus (messianic expectation was high among contemporary Jews due to the Roman occupation). There were also many people of many backgrounds in the Roman world at this time who went around allegedly exorcising demons and healing the sick. We still see them today- faith healers. Like contemporary faith healers, the "miracles" that were attributed to Jesus in his day were probably rumors with no basis in fact. Jesus also seems to have borrowed his teachings from the various Jewish movements of his day- his teachings are reminiscent of those of Rabbi Hillel (died ca. 10 CE). He also seems to have picked up stuff from the Pharisees, the Essenes, and John the Baptist (who himself seems to have practiced a hybrid of Pharisee-Essene teachings).

So overall, the most parsimonious explanation, IMO, is that Jesus was the ancient version of people like Joseph Smith, David Koresh, or Edgar Cayce- a preacher/"prophet"/nut, but a real person nonetheless. Jesus represents what was a common phenomenon in the ancient (and modern) world- his followers just happened to have a better advertising strategy than those of his contemporaries.

Amaleq13

I would even be willing to bet that more than one was named "Jesus".

Would you find it hard to believe that several decades after Paul preached a crucified/resurrected Christ that somebody thought one of those guys would have been great as the living Jesus Paul felt free to essentially ignore and then wrote a story based on that idea while still conveying the same theology?


Oh, and Welcome to IIDB!!!

rob117

Thanks.

I generally tend to find the basic stuff about Jesus's life in the gospels- that he was a Jewish preacher and alleged messiah who had problems with the High Priests and Roman authorities- and that he gathered a following, was considered a threat to the peace, and was executed- to be plausible.

AFisherOfMen

Let’s keep this simple: you’ve agreed that the gospels are relatives of “popular biography�. Let’s go with that. If you can find four (4) similarly-lengthed “popular biographies� written before the printing press within a century of the life of the person in question, and there is solid reason to believe that this person *never existed*, then you’ll have demonstrated that there is reason that the “Jesus Myth� theory should not necessarily be dismissed out of hand. However, failing to produce the same type of phenomenon being claimed from anywhere else in world history, I’ll remain firmly convinced that the “Jesus Myth� theory has no claim to being even seriously discussed.

I notice that I’ve previously issued the challenge twice now, and still no takers. I expect that many of the replies I receive will not take up the challenge; I fully expect that it cannot be met and that everybody knows this. I’m issuing the challenge here a third time: produce the requested documentation that something like this has ever happened in history, that there are 4 biographies (“popular biographies� if you will) written before the printing press within a century of the life of someone who never existed. Unless the challenge is met I see no reason to prolong haggling over details of a theory that has not passed or cannot pass the simplest test of mere plausibility.

That much said about whether I’ll bother to reply further if the challenge cannot be met, there were a few previous questions/comments to which I’ll reply.

There was some question on references for the artwork in the catacombs. I have two different books which show different early depictions of Jesus from the catacombs, both translated into English in the 1990’s and published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. One is Theology of the Icon Volume 1 by Leonid Ouspensky (translated by Anthony Gythiel), St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992. The other is The Icon: Window on the Kingdom by Michel Quenot (translated by a Carthusian Monk), St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996. Note that neither of these books has any interest in giving a comprehensive review of catacomb artwork; the authors just give sufficient documentation for their own purposes and move on. Someone who wanted to make sweeping claims about Christian artwork would do well to have reviewed the catacomb artwork a bit more extensively than these two. It does raise questions about the qualifications of someone to make broad claims about early Christian artwork who shows no awareness of catacomb art. It tends to confirm my initial impression that the people involved here are discussing things outside their realm of expertise. There’s no discredit to anyone for not being aware of catacomb art – unless they happen to be claiming enough knowledge to make sweeping statements about Christian art history.

The earliest sources which have any interest in a biographical (“popular biography�) approach to Jesus are the 4 gospels; there’s no particular reason for a letter which is not biographical in intent to mention Jesus’ mother’s name. It’s an interesting maneuver to try to limit discussion of Jesus’ life to what can be found in the letters, and it’s been done before. Such selective use of sources is not going to add to the strength of your position. That tack is just going to lend support to the view that the “myth� theory survives only by an unwarrantedly selective use of early sources.

Back to Mary – someone having the name Mary does not “stink of fiction� any more than having the name Tom “stinks of fiction� (Tom Sawyer, Tom Riddle, Tom Thumb). Such an odd claim – that someone being named “Mary� stinks of fiction – just confirms my original impression that there are not solid facts upon which to base the idea of a “Jesus Myth�.

LOL where to start. First, your claim that “given everything else in Mark that is fictional� begs the question that’s on the table.

Next, given the condition of P45 (tears, holes, and generally the sort of serious fragmentation that affects very old documents, evident in the P45 pics that I’ve seen), any discussion of it really ought to take place with an image of the particular portion of the manuscript in front of us. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that we had the image in front of us and let’s say that it showed an actual “omission� (as opposed to a case where a portion of the parchment simply didn’t survive the centuries). That’s still not enough, by itself, to invalidate the other ancient witnesses. General-purpose texts do not footnote that section of Mark with notes about alternate readings or whether various manuscripts omit it, which is common practice when doubts about the original text have been credibly established by the manuscript finds. You can find places where scholars consider that the text of Mark is in doubt (e.g. how do you spell Gergasenes anyway?), but this isn’t one of them.

As for whether Matthew, Luke, and John mention Mary at that exact point, that’s a bit of a non-issue for several reasons: First, very few accounts are word-for-word in the original Greek for any extended length between Mark and the other gospels; second, every gospel author mentions that Jesus’ mother is named Mary at some point; third, the fact that the mention of Mary is in different contexts in the gospels other than Mark actually strengthens the demonstration that it is multiple attestation; if they had all been mentioned at the same point in the narrative we wouldn’t necessarily think we had anything more than copying a text going on. The idea that Jesus existing and having a mother named Mary should be considered implausible – no evidence has been brought forward to make this worth serious consideration.

LOL, no, it would take a very, very selective group of scholars for that “most scholars� statement to fly; “most scholars in a certain camp� maybe, but all that proves is that isolated camps of scholars tend to have like-minded opinions.

So in closing, I’ve answered questions and counter-claims here but I have yet to see anyone answer my challenge for something historically comparable as detailed above. Barring that, I’ll plan to move on to other threads.