dog-on

Like looking for a needle in a haystack, when one doesn't know what a needle looks like...

HJ in a nutshell.

youngalexander

Nope, I dunno wot it means - but could be more relevant than the debate?

gstafleu

This does indeed serve admirably to illuminate our difference: I think it is silly not to talk of myth. We're having this debate because JC has a central role in the Christian religion. That role, and the religion, is built on myth ("Jesus died for our sins"), not on a person. The myth works equally well with or without an attached historical person, except of course when you are one of the literally minded Christians. Does Confucianism not work just because in all likelihood there wasn't a historical Confucius?

Sure, as long as one realizes that this is a side issue when it comes to understanding the meaning and development of the religion in question. It is unlikely there was a historical Buddha. Does this have any impact on the study of the meaning and development of Buddhism? No. Same for Confucius, Lao Tse, Jesus, Zoroaster, you name them.

Now let me wiggle back a little. There is of course an interesting socio-psychological question here: why is it that people so often find it necessary to historicize myth? Plus, once myth gets historicized it begets the most interesting--if only in their absurdity--problems. Consider for example the "true nature" of Jesus. Those are interesting issues, but, again, they are by and large independent from the question about the reality of any euhemerized kernel.

Gerard Stafleu

spin

You are not considering your audience, especially when you seem to me to be assuming your conclusions.

As you continue to promote the centrality of a term which will continue to be used ambiguously (in that different people perceive the content and impact of "myth" differently), we won't be able to get any further.


spin

jjramsey

It does two things:

• It rules out MJ theories in which Paul and other early Christians supposedly believe in a "spiritual" Christ not in a human time line.
• It forces the MJers who concede GD's point to complicate their explanations further in order to account for this early belief in an HJ, which makes those explanations more vulnerable to Occam's razor.

spin

You're not making sense. But others will be able to see the stupidity of using the term "mythical" in a loose manner.

The reason I've been talking about other types of Jesus is because there is not a simple dichotomy of MJ/HJ. The mythical Jesus argument involves a Jesus who was perceived as not having an earthly real existence. Ebion is clearly seen as having had an earthly existence, but still we know he didn't exist. Ebion was neither historical nor mythical. Paul's proselytes probably believed Jesus was real, though we cannot trace Jesus back prior to Paul's revelation.


spin

dog-on

Thus the attempt to fathom the nature of Paul's revelation.

Isn't it possible that Paul, himself, was the origin of the good news? Couldn't later stories (the gospels) simply be a "fleshing out" of the details of the hero's story which initially left the crowds wanting more?

Isn't this the extent of the available evidence one way or another?

gstafleu

I take it you say that because there were no mythical elements attached to Ebion? But to Jesus there clearly are mythical elements (virgin birth, walks on water, god's son, resurrection). So I would say there certainly is such a thing as a mythical Jesus. I still don't get how in that case a "traditional Jesus" is different from an erroneous historization of the mythical one. Sure, if, as in the case of Ebion (I assume) there is no myth, then it makes sense to say that his historization is a matter of tradition. But if the person clearly does have mythical elements, why not just say so? Tradition may have kicked in after the myth, but even then we still have the mythical version as well, don't we? (And to forgo difficult discussions about exactly how we define myth, I define it here by example.)

Gerard Stafleu

jjramsey

Unfortunately, "mythical" has been used loosely for quite some time as a rough synonym of "unhistorical." Deal with it.

This is half-accurate. "Jesus-mythicist" or "MJer" is usually a term used to describe someone who believes that Jesus didn't exist. It happens to be that often the way such a one goes about justifying his/her case is to argue that Jesus "was perceived as not having an earthly real existence."

spin

It just helps people overlook the real options. That means they don't have to deal with the real options. Convenient, isn't it? Language can be a sneaky bitch. You should learn to live with the implications.

As you believe he does exist, you're not in a position to self-define what a MJer is. In fact, for most people who use the notion of a mythical Jesus technically, and that's who you've tended to deal with, they treat their Jesus as someone who wasn't on this earthly plane, so using the technical definition of mythical Jesus, one would ignore all the other possibilities if one only dealt with those who support the technically accurate term "mythical Jesus".

Given that other non-historical analyses of Jesus aren't concerned with such, it is totally irrelevant.

Ebion, the founder of the Ebionite movement according to church fathers, did not exist. They thought he did. Do you call him mythical? He certainly doesn't partake in any myth. He certainly wasn't historical. Nobody made him up, so he wasn't fictional. How do you, jjramsey, describe Ebion? You might want to claim that Pilate's wife, who Luke has sending Pilate a letter about a dream, was real, but she has the earmarks of a non-historical figure brought to life through the active christian tradition eventually gains a name and even becomes a saint in the orthodox church, St Procla (though she had a few other names). Non-real people do get turned real. Ebion and Saint Procla are examples. Didn't Paul think his divinely revealed Jesus was real?


spin