Malachi151

I'm trying to piece together the historical development of Biblical criticism and criticism of Christianity in general, including the exposing of fraudulent papal documents, exposing of interpolations and insertions, and the history of Jesus mythicism.

I know a few things so far, but not as much as I'd like.

Who was it that first put forward the idea of the "synoptic" gospels, showing that they contained mostly the same material, etc.

The history of challenging quotes such as those by Josephus, etc.

I do know of the role that Bruno Bauer played in Jesus mythicism.

I know of this book: The Truth About Jesus, Is He a Myth?, written in 1909 by Mangasarian.

Other than that I am not as familiar with the historical development of Christian criticism as I'd like to be.

andrewcriddle

You might find interesting the English translation of Schweitzer's expanded edition of 'The Quest of the Historical Jesus'.

Unlike the original edition it has several chapters on Jesus mythicism.

It's available on Amazon.co.uk at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0...lance&n=266239 but not apparently at Amazon.com

Andrew Criddle

yalla

Have you read Joseph Wheless?

jjramsey

Are you referring to this Wheless: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/wh...less_intro.htm

steph s.

i'd strongly suggest you start with some mainstream scholarship. i've read an article by mangasarian but he was no scholar, and wrote a long time ago.

if you can find it (and dont mind carrying a book that would make a good doorstop home with you) thiessen & merz' "the historical jesus: a comprehensive guide" starts with a very good survey of biblical criticism from the enlightenment onwards. also, paula fredriksen's "jesus of nazareth: king of the jews" has a good introduction to the synoptic problem.

i'm not sure if there was one particular writer who first raised the synoptic problem. the existence of tatian's diatessaron, for example, shows that christians were aware of the similarities and differences between the gospels in the second century. you could look up writings online by the early higher critics who tackled this and the issue of myth in the gospels, like david friedrich strauss, hermann samuel reimarus, ferdinand christian baur, rudolf bultmann and albert schweitzer. there is an online text of schweitzer's "quest of the historical jesus" here:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...zer/index.html

yalla

More or less.
Wheless is to be found in the Scep. Web library. I would recommend him.
He has a lot to say about forgery.
Roger has criticised him for his scholarship in your link.
Also recommended.
But in addition I would suggest you check out the online Catholic Encyclopedia and chase down references of Wheless, for eg try finding "Pseudo-Isidorean Dacretals".
A fascinating exercise in excavating "truth'' from obsufcation.
I found Peter De Rosa's "Vicars of Christ', a populist history of the papacy interesting, once again, particularly interesting when you try to correlate references in his book to the material in the CE.
Using Wheless and De Rosa as starting points and bringing in the CE and Roger's perspectives is interesting.
If you do have a go at this, and find it interesting, share your thoughts OK? Or have you "been there and done that"?
cheers
yalla

Clivedurdle

I think there is a real problem that before the enlightenment everyone's world view contained god gods spirits devils. Jesus was part and parcel of this.

The concept of jesus as myth could therefore only be spoken post enlightenment, but it is in fact the converse side of a coin - the hj is the other side, or like janus.

HJ and MJ are both post enlightenment ideas that developed with a bias towards hj arising because the enlightenment asks historical type questions and it was an easy assumption to make that this godman was a real person. Would the question have been that important in a world where the dead could be raised? Even the story of Doubting Thomas - putting hands in wounds of a ressurected person, cannot be true - but is reasonable in a world where everyone believes in this stuff!

There is a huge amount of unpicking to do, we have all the features of novel, godman, hero. If there was anyone around from Nazareth they cannot be recognised as anything like the jesus of the nt. Thus on logical grounds you go mythical, as there are clear mythical antecedents all over the place!

aa5874

The Bible describes a mythical Jesus, and I have not seen any evidence to rebut his mythicism. Claiming that Jesus was historic is like claiming Abraham Lincoln lived but he was never involved with politics.

Rick Sumner

It's available at Chapters for substantially less than the £30.00 Amazon.co.uk wants, coming in instead at $34.27 CDN. Which is most certainly money well-spent.

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/...88/0800632885/

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Clivedurdle

Is it not out of copyright?

What happened to the list of neo mythicist writers we had on another thread that brought things much more up to date?

If Bible Unearthed has concluded myth about Abraham et al is there a problem with using similar arguments about Jesus?

Is the myth historicist argument really a post enlightenment one - HJ was invented by xians post 1500 as a response to the slow dissapearance of things that go bump in the night?