jjramsey

Why? The purported progression is from visionary experiences to stories of an empty tomb, and it is Paul's writings, which are earlier, that leave leeway for belief in the resurrection to come about by visions.

polyseeme

This is my first post here, and I apologize for its length, although I'm not known for brevity anywhere I write. (Don't hurt me...)

Having read through several threads on the HJ vs. MJ debate, I’m going to jump into my IIDB debut by jumping back onto the fence (from the mythical Jesus side), to pose some unanswered questions that arose from the evidence I read for each of these perspectives.

Why would there be any need to report the resurrection of someone who was never crucified because he didn’t exist? It is not so much the ignominious death of Jesus in the crucifixion itself that the Jews could not have invented (unlikely as this seems), nor yet that some Jewish heretics could not have arrived at a binitarian conception of deity as “God the Father and the Son” (which seems much more likely than the former). It also seems quite plausible that the resurrection story was a way that some disappointed messiah followers made sense of the otherwise senseless death of their leader in a REAL crucifixion.

...but, most problematic of all for the MJ position in my current thinking is this: what could possibly be the motive for making up a story about someone being resurrected after a MADE-UP crucifixion? (If the hero’s death was not a humiliation because it did not occur, why go to the trouble of pretending the hero overcame this humiliation with resurrection?)

On the other hand:

It seems to be true that extra-Biblical Roman records contemporary with the alleged life of Jesus show that no Jesus matching the description of the Nazarene/Nazarite in the gospel accounts was ever executed under Pontius Pilate. If so, it occurs to me that the Romans had no more need to CONCEAL evidence of their execution of Jesus than Jews/early Christians had to fabricate the same. Rather, for the Romans, the opposite motivation would seem to have been the case.

If Jesus had made himself a recognizable threat or even just a loud enough nuisance, even locally, that the Romans felt they could make an example of him, it seems likely they would have publicized his execution broadly enough that, in the highly literate city of Jerusalem, not only Roman and Jewish officials, but also AT LEAST one other contemporary source – from ANY religious position – would have recorded SOMETHING about it. Yet, again, just as I can conceive of no motive for Jewish or early Christian fabrication of BOTH the crucifixion and the resurrection stories, I can conceive of no motive for the Romans to suppress evidence of their having executed a Jesus under Pilate, since it seems highly unlikely that they would have been “contingency planning” for dealing with his followers’ (projected) resurrection claims. So, perhaps it is more reasonable to conclude that the crucifixion of the Jesus portrayed in the gospels didn’t happen because, as a fictional character, the individual of that description going by that name has not been shown to have been recorded as being in those circumstances by anyone other than the creators of his legend.

Were executed apocalyptic preachers/prophets simply too insignificant for Rome to name on occasion? If so, how common were such omissions? Could the legend of the resurrection have been a deliberate messianic Jewish subversion of the general meaning of the practice of crucifixion, Jewish radicals getting fed up with their heroes being made “examples,” and standing on its head what Rome intended as a demoralizing humiliation for would-be insurrectionists? If so, the resurrection myth would not necessarily have HAD to attach to a particular historical individual; a fictionalized composite of various charismatic apocalyptic preachers would serve this purpose just as well as a real person. Or is this kind of subversion far too sophisticated for what we know of first-century thinking?

For some reason, the MJ hypothesis still appeals to me as an agnostic weak atheist. (Please note: I think my definition of self-identity terms belongs in another forum, and this post is long enough as it is!) I have no desire or need to DENY that the extremely scanty and unconvincing evidence for the historical accuracy of the details of the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels does indeed exist to reassure myself of the ultimate fate of my soul – or even to assuage my ego. Furthermore, if this evidence or lack thereof indicates that “Jesus” is not the divine being the NT claims he is, whether or not he existed should be a moot point. I, for one, should just move on. I guess it bothers me as someone who is interested in knowing what the truth is, especially when claims for the historical authenticity of spiritual authorities and their actions historically have been and continue to be put to such morally repugnant uses as the justification of religious persecution, torture, and genocide. Whom do we trust? Whose divisions of “good guys” and “bad guys” best reflect our own highest moral standards as human beings? (And not so much of not lying as of not bearing false witness against our neighbors.) With the rampantly conflicting “histories” that we have, it is evident that somebody is (or many somebodies are) either bearing false witness (to others and/or themselves), or some are profoundly if not psychotically deluded – and I want to know which of us that is. Even if it’s everybody. Even if it’s me. ;0)

Vorkosigan

A non-answer. But I understand you lack any basis to supply a credible answer.

Yes, but it doesn't apply here, as the whole tale of disciples traveling with Jesus is an invention of Mark's anyway.

Vorkosigan

ynquirer

Correct me, but aren’t you trying to address a historical question – Jesus as history or as a myth – through analysing theological issues? I wonder whether this was Chris’ original intention in the OP.

Clivedurdle

Unless I am particularly thick, if the above is read without any preconceptions from gospels and later theology, is this not an explicit description of a mythical jesus?

The speaking to us is as Paul states - via visions. There is no statement of where the purification for sins occurs.

It reads as a complete heavemly story....

Vorkosigan

Chris' topic is great, let's move back to it.

I don't see why it isn't possible for an HJ to be at the root of it all.

GakuseiDon

Having looked at the beliefs of the people of the time, Doherty's views of actions occuring in a "fleshy sublunar realm"/"world of myth" can be rejected I think as being against the evidence available.

But looking at their beliefs also makes a lot of sense on how Jesus came to be viewed as a god. Vork has posted an interesting link above on articles dealing with heavenly mediator figures which is well-worth looking at. One interesting thing is that they were often associated with people on earth: Moses, Enoch, Melchizedek.

What I think happened was this: Jesus came preaching something that got him killed -- I suspect that Jesus promoted some kind of "getting back to grass-roots" adherence to God's law, as were probably John the Baptist and James the Just. This ended up getting him killed.

At that time, Hellenized Judaism struggled with the idea of a Platonic God. How could a perfect and unchanging God interact with the corruptible temporary world of flesh? The answer was an intermediatary figure, eternal and perfect, but able to act in the world -- in fact, through it God brought the world into existence. This concept had several names: Logos, Metatron, Wisdom.

Now, these figures either interacted with people on earth, or the people on earth were regarded as somehow channelling them, e.g. a kind of adoptionism. Moses is an interesting case. From here:

Philo says: "He [Moses] was entombed not by mortal hands, but by immortal powers, so that he was not placed in the tomb of his forefathers, having obtained a peculiar memorial [i.e., grave] which no man ever saw" ("De Vita Moysis," iii. 39). Later on, the belief became current that Moses did not die, but was taken up to heaven like Elijah... No sooner was the view maintained that Moses was translated to heaven than the idea was suggested that his soul was different from that of other men. Like the Messiah, he is said to have been preexistent; he is thus represented in "Assumptio Moysis" (i. 12-14); so too "He was prepared before the foundation of the world to be the mediator of God's covenant, and as he was Israel's intercessor with God during life [xi. 11, 17], so is he to be the intercessor in all the future."

So: Jesus came proclaiming a new law and a new covenant (or it was thought that he came proclaiming it). His supporters regarded him in some way as a "new Moses". At his death, his body disappeared (*), and his supporters regarded this as a sign that he had been taken up like Moses. But his supporters were still Jews, and still working within the belief system of the Hellenized-influenced Judaism of the day. It would have been a fringe belief, probably frowned upon, but not so much different from those who thought that Moses and others had been "taken up".

Then along comes Paul. He has a vision of Jesus, and becomes a follower. He believes that Christ's death and resurrection had brought in a new Law and a new Covenant. However, he believes something different to the Jerusalem followers: he believes that he has found the great secret hidden in Scriptures: the New Covenant was to the whole world, and included Gentiles!

So Jesus the Mediator figure became relevant to Gentiles also. Paul then goes around for the next 20 years preaching that gospel: that Jesus was the "good news" to the Gentiles, and he justified it by finding passages in the Scriptures.

After 70 CE, the Jerusalem group loses influence, and Christianity becomes increasingly "paganized". But as Jesus became more associated with God, the original problem pops up again -- how could a perfect God inhabit corruptible flesh? This was answered in the Second Century through the introduction of docetism and gnosticism.

To my mind, that explains just about all the data: The association with a Moses-style assumption could have started from his death, so the belief of a divine role for Jesus may have started very early. Paul then comes into it and tries to make it more acceptable to pagan thought. The Ebionites were the remainders of the Jerusalem Group, and the gnostics were the remainders of Paul's thinking (though Paul wasn't really a gnostic himself).

The Second through Fourth Centuries fought over the nature of Christ until the true beliefs emerged.

The whole thing fits together so well, IMHO at least. Still, it maybe nothing more than trying to work out the gaps between the Star Trek movies. That it hangs together coherently doesn't make it true.

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(*) Since reading up on Middle-Platonism, I've started to believe that Paul is aware of an empty Tomb tradition (or at least a "missing body" tradition). He refers to the transformation of those living at the end times into a glorified body which will fly up into the air to meet Christ. Now, this in my mind can only be to get around the problem of how people with corruptible flesh can enter an incorruptible realm: they didn't drop their bodies and leave them behind, but rather the bodies transformed and they took them with them.

Since Jesus was the "first fruits" of this, it can only be because his body was transformed and taken up. But if that happened, that means that there was no body remaining behind. Thus, I suggest that Paul believed that Jesus's body went missing after the crucifixion.

Clivedurdle

How exactly does using mythological figures help your argument?

GakuseiDon

As far as I know, they were regarded as historical to the people of the time. Thus they are precedents.

Doug Shaver

I for one don't question whether it is possible. All I doubt is the likelihood.