Roland

Hi everyone.

I'm currently involved in a debate with an evangelical woman on another site. I generally take the Doherty position that the Jesus biography sprang basically full grown out of the imagination of the writer of the Gospel of Mark, while she, of course, argues that the gospels were based on stories passed down through oral tradition over about a 30-year period. I know why I believe as I do, but I was wondering if there is any evidence pointing to the fact that she is right from a skeptic's perspective or whether the idea of oral transmission is just so universally accepted that people believe it without question.

Thanks.

SqueezetheShaman

The similarities to other saviors myths is beyond coincedence There are too many. Mithras is the first who comes to mind, and I know there are many others. So it wasn't even so much the imagination of the author, but the memories of many other myths that led to this particular one. I can't ever believe it is an original recount of a real man.

I have a horrible memory, so let me utilize google...

http://www.objectivethought.com/atheism/jesusmyth.html

and how can you prove an orally transmitted story from so long ago? there isn't any way, really, is there?!

Amaleq13

You've got to make her do the work. It is her claim so she needs to support it.

Crossan tries to apply a systematic methodology to identify oral traditions in The Birth of Christianity and that would be a great place to obtain ammo. He covers the absence of any systematic methodology employed by anyone make this claim and then tries to develop one of his one based on known oral traditions of Irish laments.

He could find no similar pattern in the the Gospels. IIRC, he was specifically considering the Passion accounts.

Otherwise, your best bet would be to focus on the positive evidence for the involvement of literary traditions.

Chris Weimer

You're forgetting about the many eschatological/soteriological letters and Jewish cults that arose from 50 BC to 50 AD. Christians weren't even Christians at first, but the Nazarean sect. If you ever have a chance to go through the Dead Sea Scrolls, you'll see what I mean. Christians just got lucky.

CX

All of this is false. We have virtually no information about the Roman Cult of Mithras, save archaeological evidence. Typically Mithras is depicted as springing fully-formed from a rock. Certainly a miraculous birth, but not a virgin birth. December 25th was the usual feast day for the Cult of Sol Invicti to celebrate the birth of the unconquerable sun. Mithras was often syncretistically conflated with Sol Invicti which is where the confusion comes from. When december 25th was established as Christ's Mass by the early church it was not because they believed that Jesus was born (contemporaneous sources say explicitly that they did not know when he was born) but rather it was chosen because that's when pagans were already celebrating anyway. Mithras is sometimes depicted with two "attendants" but the twelve disciples business is made up. Mithras didn't resurrect at all. He never died. He was a god. After he had slain the sacred bull he ascended back to his throne on a firey chariot.

Rick Sumner

I hadn't know this. What contemporary sources state this?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Amaleq13

Are you looking for sources that explicitly describe this as the reason the church chose the date or evidence that the date was celebrated prior to the church?

Rick Sumner

I'd been reading too fast, and misunderstood what he wrote--I had thought CX had written that Mithraists did not know when Mithra was born, which struck me as rather odd, Mithra coming from a rock and all.

CX:

On Mithra's companions, some time ago I'd seen the Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion at a local bookstore, and intended to order it online when I got home (where it is considerably cheaper than the 75 Canuckistani bucks the bookstore wanted for it), and then promptly forgot about it (*note to self: Get book). The entry there on Mithraism mentions Mithra's two attendants, and notes that the names of both are known from dedicatory inscriptions. Can you recall, offhand, what those names were?

The former was more trivia than anything, my second question has a little more meat to it. Acknowledging, as I think we both do, that a Persian God who slays no bull cannot be Roman Mithra, how does one account for the distinctively Persian dress of Mithra's attendants? Was such attire common in Roman art in that period?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Rick Sumner

Never mind, found it: Cautes and Cautopates. I knew it started with a C. :P

Regards,
Rick Sumner

post tenebras lux

Going back to the OP, is this evangelical woman contending that the gospels were handed down accurately by oral tradition such that the versions finally written down were basically the originals? Or via an oral tradition where the underlying story (facts?) are basically lost (or could, at least, have been basically lost without painstaking study/research/etc.) underneath all the changes, additions, misunderstandings, etc. that occured during the oral stage?

I'm not so much interested as to what she thinks the underlying story or facts are, nor how they might differ from my thoughts on the matter, but just whether the current versions are effectively the originals (in which case there's one set of questions to be pondered) or not (another set of questions to ponder, but at least we could move innerrant a little lower down the list).

Many thanks
Luxie.