Diogenes the Cynic

In spite of all this kind of reasoning, I still can't get around the fact that, in practical terms, the earliest audience for this stuff still would have heard the name the same as we would hear "Joe" or "Bob." It would not have sounded grand or mysterious but extraordinarily common and mundane.

Malachi151

The thing to understand is the order in which the various writings were produced.

The Gospel of Matthew, which is where what you are talking about comes from, is actually a very late work in time frame of the origins of the Jesus literature.

We can assume that there was first some "Jesus" body of worship that we no longer have preserved in writing.

Then at some point along came Paul, who gives us the earliest writings about "Jesus Christ".

Then we had a few early letters, probably such as the Letter to the Hebrews (Book of Hebrews).

Then we had the Gospel of Mark.

Then we had the Gospel of Matthew, then Luke, then John, then a few more letters, and somewhere intermixed in this is the Gospel of Thomas and some Gnostic writings.

What one has to understand when assessing the development of the Jesus story is this timeline, and understand that just because Gospel X says that Y happened "when Jesus was born", doesn't really mean that this writing represents the earliest time in the Jesus time line, the writing was produced at a later date and represents later mythology.

It is a later mythology that is written about an earlier period.

I think that this is one of the first issues that people have to get under their belt in order to start understanding the New Testament works.

gurugeorge

This was part of Monty Python's point in "The Life of Brian".

Brian (or Joe or Bob) the Anointed One.

Another (very minor) twinge of the needle towards mythicism I think - it would fit with the view that the earliest forms of Christianity saw their cultic entity as a cute time-inversion of the normal Messiah idea - as being an entity who had already done his work in some indeterminate past, and won his victory "under the radar" of the Archons, so to speak - almost anonymously.

IOW, if when you hear Jesus you automatically attach a biography to him in your mind, the use of a common name is odd; but if you take on the idea that initially there was almost no biography whatsoever, and the "good news" was simply about an already-won victory of a highly spiritualised Messiah in the past, in the guise of "Everyman", it kind of makes more sense.

And of course as Freke and Gandy have recently pointed out, "Joshua" has suitable Gnostic-esoteric resonances with the deeds of the famous original Joshua of yore. (Which resonances would probably have gone over the head of the average parent in Palestine, who would likely have called their kid "Joshua" much in the same way as parents nowadays might call their darling daughter "Britney".)

Malachi151

I think that the "Everyman" aspect is important to the mythology. The message from Paul was "this savior has suffered like us, and has made eternal life available to everyone". That pretty much fits with "Everyman".

Clouseau

That is your opinion, but there is no difficulty in the use of the word 'name'. Or do you disagree?

gurugeorge

Yes, exactly. And while the neat fit doesn't prove anything on its own (after all, there just might have been some obscure guy of that name, who somehow got taken up as a cult figure, whose later-made-up-biography was also taken mythologically, to represent Everyman), taken along with the preponderance of lack of evidence for the traditional alternative(s), it adds a bit of weight to the plausibility of the mythicist position.

Ray Moscow

WRT Message 25: Would you guys drop this "Emmanuel" business?

No one ever called Jesus "Emmanuel", except in much later reference to Matthew 1:23.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Chris,

This is a good question. Why the name Jesus instead of Moses? My hypothesis is that the Samaritans were pushing for a rerun of history with a Moses-like prophet-king as the new Messiah, which they called "the Taheb" (the Restorer or the Returning One). (see Lieman, John The New Testament Moses: Christian Perceptions of Moses and Israel (or via: amazon.co.uk) -- excerpt at http://tinyurl.com/23jw7a)

Choosing the archetype of Jesus for the job as against Moses would be an attack against the Samaritans, while co-opting their popular Taheb concept.

In this way, nationalistic Jews could attract Jews who were leaning towards the popular Samaritan brand of Judaism.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

No Robots

I still think that "Brian" is the best choice for the name of the Messiah. It has a certain ring, dontcha think?

gurugeorge

The point is, on the MJ hypothesis, the choice wouldn't have been made, initially, with any solid sort of biography in mind. The filling-in came later.

IOW, it wasn't as if they had the idea of this grand figure with a great story and then decided, anti-climactically, to call him "Brian".

It's that the figure was a sketchy, mythological Everyman, and obscurity and lack of detail were precisely the point of him. Remember the "stumbling block" idea, the paradox, the ignominious, shameful nature of his death, the crazy idea that unlike other then-contemporary candidate Messiahs, or unlike the traditional idea of the Messiah as someone to come and win a great military victory, this cultic Messiah had already been, had already won his spiritual victory for us all (in a somewhat dying/rising-tinged fashion), and had done it "sub rosa", precisely by virtue of being obscure, precisely by virtue of appearing (especially to the Archons) to be an ordinary Joe, dying a shameful, ignominious death.