Chris Weimer

Jake,

I fail to see where you're driving at. What does it matter that the Passover lamb is not crucified? Both Jesus and the lamb are slain for Passover at the same time, and that would be, in my humble opinion, a coincidence enough for anyone Jewish to pick up on.

What does it have to do with plans?

Chris

jjramsey

I think we're agreeing more than disagreeing here, because I'm using "embellished history" merely to say that there is an underlying core, not necessarily to indicate that the embellishments are slight. (Adding on several miracle stories is hardly slight!)

Vorkosigan

Explained away, of course. The difference between "it's fiction" and "it's an historical core" is that the latter requires an extra layer of hypotheses. As Matthew's use of Zech 9:9 or the Passion's use of Ps 22 shows or the use of the Elijah-Elisha cycle shows, the writers simply made stuff up using the OT. What you need is some reason for us to accept the extra layer of claims you are making. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts is fiction.

The historical core is simply an irrefutable untestable load of shit that can be adjusted to fit any critique.

Yes....recycled by the writer of Mark.

You keep making this unsupported claim. Do you have any methodology that enables you to make it?

Nope.

No matter how many times you make this faith-statement that Jesus originally talked on this issue, it won't become viable until it is supported!

Ummm. No. A number of exegetes have noticed them. I pulled these from an excellent reader-response book on Mark.

That is because, as I have already noted, your "historical core" position is not only unsupported by any methodology, but simply doesn't get Mark. Here's what the Abomination of the Desolation really is. You keep taking for history what are actually typological constructions of the author.

Yes, and it could also be introduced by aliens from the Planet Zorp, but that would require that you had some way of supporting this claim.

Support, please.

ROFL. jj, you are wrong on two counts. First, any claim you make about the text stands or falls on its own. The mythicist position is one among many. Simply pointing to problems in the mythicist position doesn't advance your own, anymore than Creationists saying that evolution has problems is support for Creationism. If you want to claim that Jesus' words underlie Mark 13, show us the way that you know.

Second, and more importantly, like any Creationist, you don't seem to understand the opposite side at all. Jesus has no flesh and blood brothers -- they are creations of Mark (they are not found in Paul, where "brother of the lord" is a title) and existence to fill the writer's narrative purpose. I have no idea why you think it is weird that a mythical messiah fits OT prophecies -- how else could they sell him as a Jewish messiah, except by linking him to the OT!? And the crucified messiah was what was seen in a vision, as Paul lovingly describes, and created out of OT scripture.

Beats having no real methodology for recovering history from the gospels any day, like you. "Strained" is simply your subjective judgment -- and we know from your lack of methodology how good your judgments are -- and of course mythicism is a heck of a lot more than "arguments from silence."

Let us know when you can support your position with something other than misunderstandings, jj.

jj, as I pointed out to you in the other thread, we're not discussing whether the "facts" can be made to go away. We're discussing how facts are constructed in the first place. Like, for example, your claim that Jesus had brothers. It's not a fact until you have a methodology that helps us understand that it is a fact, and that methodology cannot be a circular one like those used in NT studies, that assumes what is trying to be proved. The historical core isn't a default that mythicism must address -- it is a position that you have to defend with actual methodological arguments -- which NT scholars do not possess.

So defend your position. How do you know that the writer of Mark drew on actual words of Jesus?

Vorkosigan

jjramsey

Addressing some of your issues out of order ...

Except there is no evidence that "brother of the Lord" was used as a title rather than a reference to a blood relationship. We have plenty of evidence that Paul called Jesus "Lord," and some evidence in Roman 1:3 that Paul understood that Jesus was a human who could have had physical brothers. There is certainly no evidence that subsequent generations of Christians, including the Gospel writers, took it as anything but a blood relationship. Josephus talks of James as the brother of Jesus called Christ, and the claims that this is an interpolation are pretty dodgy (unlike the case with the TF). This has been discussed further here:

http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=156233&page=7

There is nothing circular about this. It's just parsimony.

What I see as weird is that a mythical messiah is a poor fit to many supposed OT prophecies.

Um, where? That Paul was converted by a vision is not disputed. I do not recall Paul speaking of a vision of Jesus crucified, nor is there any indication that a vision is where he got the crucifixion from.

The problem is that someone comes to the OT cold isn't likely to see crucifixion in the text. Take Psalm 22, for example. To someone looking for a proof text for the crucifixion, verse 16, "My hands and feet are pierced," stands out. The context, however, makes clear that the passage is not about crucifixion, and someone coming to the text without having crucifixion in mind would read that passage differently. Now let's compare two theories:

• The crucifixion derives from Psalm 22:16,18. (Verse 18 is about casting lots for clothing.)
• Someone used Psalm 22:16 as a proof text for the tradition of the crucifixion, and then saw verse 18 and used it as embellishment to make Psalm 22 a better fit to the tradition.

Remember that parsimony is about the simplest explanation that fits all the facts. The former theory looks simpler but demands that a reader of Psalm 22 make a big leap. The latter looks more complicated, but explains why someone would see crucifixion in a text that did not imply it. Here, then, the latter explanation is more parsimonious, because it better accounts for how someone would see crucifixion in the Psalm.

Of course, there is the question of where the tradition of the crucifixion came from to start with. There is a parsimonious explanation for that, too, but one which you have shown no interest in accepting.

A sarcastic false analogy. This looks like something I'd see from ... well, I'll let you fill in the blank.

Seriously, you are making a false comparison. Mark massaging a pre-existing tradition is nowhere near as unlikely as aliens from the Planet Zorp.

My "untidy thoughts about what is possible history" are above, but I'm sure you already read that. Bear in mind that I am far more likely to put stock in the Gospels' broad outlines than its details.

jakejonesiv

If the intention to die, or the foreknowledge of events, was something that was attributed by later followers, this places it firmly in the "never happened" category.

Jesus as portrayed in the gospels did intend to die. In the Paulinics too if 2 Phillipians is any guide. This is a core part of the story. It is only when the story of Jesus is demythologized is there any difficulty in the answer.

And this is where many historical scholars (including Schonfeld) get into trouble. If any of the fantastic elements of the story are to be retained (such as fulfilled prophecies or divine foreknowledge), then prosaic explanations (often strained) must be proposed.

The believer will say the prophecies were actually fulfilled. The skeptic will say the prophecies were historicized, but never really happened. But the historical advocate who wishes to retain the incident must claim either coincidence or intentional fulfillment by Jesus. It is fascinating to watch this footwork.

The mythicist and the true beliver have much in common; both can retain the integrity of the tale, supernatural and all. The difference is that the former says it never happened, the latter that it did. The odd person out in all of this is the HJ proponent. He or she must butcher the story without regard to the mythic themes that give it coherence in order find something that was never intended by the authors.

Jake Jones IV

Didymus

I think it's likely that the entire Christian soteriological scheme articulated by Paul, emerged from the universal belief in the effectiveness of propitiary sacrifice, and specifically from the Paschal lamb tradition that commemorates, yep, deliverance. Of course, that alone doesn't get us to crucifixion.

Here's one possible scenario:

The means - a humiliating crucifixion - simply answered the question: "If Jesus was like the humble suffering servant of the Wisdom stories - and that's certainly how Paul describes him - and if he lived in times like our own, how would he have died?" Crucifixion - the most humiliating of deaths - would have been the obvious choice. Further support for the crucifixion idea could be found in Psalm 22:16-18, in Isaiah and elsewhere.

And another:

The catalyst could have been the coupling of those crucial words in Psalm 22 - "they have pierced my hands and my feet" - with the most brutal application of execution by crucifixion. Viewed by a first or second century Jew with the Wisdom tradition in mind and a fervent desire for a messiah in his heart, that coupling could have easily led to the belief that the psalmist was prophesying the crucifixion of the messiah.

Paul took up the crucifixion idea in vague form, then Mark took it to "the next level" and made the legendary teacher Jesus into the messiah and placed the whole story in recent history. It's only a small step to stage the sacrifice of that lamb in the time and place where would be most meaningful to a Jew: 1st century Jerusalem, during Passover.

Although crucifixion might have been a stumbling block with Gentiles, it was not necessarily "embarrassing" to 1st century Jews steeped in the Wisdom tradition. Here are the words of the wicked oppressors at the Final Judgement, standing before the Just One: "This is he whom once we held as a laughingstock and as a type for mockery, fools that we were. His life we deemed madness and his death dishonored." Wisdom 5:3-4.

jjramsey

1 Corinthians 1:23: "but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles"

Paul was very clear. A crucified Messiah didn't make much sense to either Jews or Gentiles.

Didymus

So Paul was a living contradiction of his own words! That may have been what he thought at the time, but he sure turned out to be wrong about Gentiles.

jjramsey

No, just him commenting on the kind of reception he was receiving.

Not really.

From Origen's Contra Celsus: He next charges the Christians with being "guilty of sophistical reasoning, in saying that the Son of God is the Logos Himself." And he thinks that he strengthens the accusation, because "when we declare the Logos to be the Son of God, we do not present to view a pure and holy Logos, but a most degraded man, who was punished by scourging and crucifixion."

From Arnobius' Against the Gentiles: But, says my opponent, the deities are not inimical to you, because you worship the omnipotent God; but because you both allege that one born as men are, and put to death on the cross, which is a disgraceful punishment even for worthless men, was God. (1.36) ... O ye who laugh because we worship one who died an ignominious death (1.41).

Arnobius was writing around 300 A.D., and the crucifixion was still a hard sell. It's not as if the Gentiles were volunteering en masse to be Christians.

Ben C Smith

The definitive study of the offense of the cross to gentiles is Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, essentially a monographic historical commentary on 1 Corinthians 1.23. On page 1, after touching on that key verse, he turns to Justin Martyr, Apology 1.13.4:

They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the creator of the world.

After surveying scads of Greco-Roman references to the shame of dying by crucifixion, Hengel concludes on page 90:

[Paul] never forgets the fact that Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock, much less passing on 'old and full of years' like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Rather, he died like a slave or a common criminal, in torment, on the tree of shame. Paul's Jesus did not die just any death; he was 'given up for us all' on the cross, in a cruel and contemptible way.

Ben.