Gamera

I agree with your premise, that we discern the mythic from the historical by means of the historical. I totally disagree with your conclusion. By the usual standard of historiography we apply to classic history, the gospels appear to be no different from any other biography of the classic period. Nobody doubts the historicity of Agricola, despite the huge political and personal biases of Tacitus. Tacitus is clearly romanticizing the man, using typical heroic myth elements. But there is no reason to think he made the whole thing up, because it accords with genre of biographies of the time, and include recognizable and verifiable historical elements (the Roman invasion of Britain), and does not purport to be a fictive piece (despite the fictive, romanticized elements that always get into the biographies of the time).

The gospels are no different. They are biased, but they appear to be in the same genre as classic biographies, their ms history is well attested (better than any other classical texts), they refer to historical events that can be verified, and they are supported by other traditions.

So by the same standard we accept the historicity of Agricola or Socrates or Pericles, we should accept the historicity of Jesus. Or we should throw them all out. The point is the skeptics generally use a double standard: they want to dehistoricize Jesus, but keep Alexander. I think that's illegitimate.

spamandham

It's certainly possible that the Jewish idea of rising from the dead (such as in 2 Kings 4:29-37) ,from which the Christian idea is likely based, came about independently from the Egyptian idea of Osiris being raised from the dead. But considering that Judaism grew up in the Samarian region, why would we expect they did not intermingle religious ideas?

What do you think of the comparison between Osiris' resurrection and the story of the resurrection of Lazarus?

http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/...200720#lazarus (based on Helms, Gospel Fictions, who quotes THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
in The Papyrus of Ani by E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, the anthropologist who translated the actual pyramid texts)

If you see similarity there, then why would you not suspect that the idea of the resurrection of Jesus was likely rooted in the Lazarus story - itself rooted in the Osiris story?

You seem to simply be denying that religious ideas are interchanged between differing religious sects and morphed to fit - or at least denying that it happened around the time of the first century.

Smohg

Of course, by that logic, the story of Jesus and resultant christianity might be one of those "hoked up cults."

Actually, if there are numerous devil-implanted "hoked up cults," chances are that Jesus actually is an agent of the devil - playing the odds.

You might say that the Jesus myth is the "real one" based on it being the most popular with God wanting to bring salvation to the maximum amount of people - but then if that were the case, he would be directly intervening in free will and if so, why would ge allow any person to get side-tracked by ANY hoked up cults.

I'm sorry, there is no logic in your conclusion, so I'm afraid you'll just have to invoke the "mysterious ways clause" for this one.

Roger Pearse

I am unclear as to the relevance of this comment to the point at issue.

Which conclusion was that?

I stated a fact and I asked a question (to which you do not reply). Your own comments seem to lack any logical connection to anything I wrote, I'm afraid.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gurugeorge

Well, except for the fact that they purport to be eyewitness accounts of a living God-man who resurrected.

Romanticising, sure, but did he claim that he cured the sick, the lame, brought the dead back to life, rose from the dead himself and was actually the one and only avatar of God incarnate, God's literal son?

We are dealing here not with just some literary figure, or some politician or great thinker, but with what purports to be the biography of a God-man - i.e. it's a religious text in the first place.

And there's no apriori reason to consider exaggerated stories about religious entities to conceal historical figures.

Occasionally they do, but it's not the default assumption is it? The default assumption would be that it was a visionary experience (someone claims to have encountered and and conversed with some discarnate intelligence in a vision and received wisdom, rules, laws, writings), or something simply made up for a religious purpose.

To put it another way, usually the only historical figures behind a religion are the creators of the religious myths about deity X. A historical investigation might possibly be undertaken if there was some suspicion that there might be some living person at the root of the story about deity X, but usually people just accept that deity X was either a vision, or made up, by the only historical figures who matter - the myth makers.

Is there reason to suspect there might be a historical figure behind the Jesus myth? A little bit, but not much. And what little historical evidence there might be bespeaks a rather pale echo of the Jesus of the myth - a human being hardly worth bothering about, whose words, apparently, nobody bothered taking note of, yet into whose mouth everybody seemed to want to put whatever words took their fancy.

Minimalist

Ah, yes...the old "the-early-church-having-destroyed-all-the-evidence-so-you-have-no-evidence" routine. It's why murderers try to dispose of the gun!

Too bad those early churchies were so eager to apologize for christian doctrine that they wrote down parts of what they were 'refuting' thereby preserving them for us. Very sloppy on their part. We should be thankful for the parts of Celsus and others that they preserved.

Gamera

It was the biggest most successful conspiracy in history, and the worst executed, apparently.

Gamera

Any account of a Roman emperor or Alexander will contain similar miraculous claims. Emperors we're divine, and Alexander was the son of a God. So, applying this rule, Alexander and Augustus weren't real historical characters.

Roman emperors claimed to be divine. Yet they existed. I think your hard and fast distinction between "religious" texts and "historical" texts simply didn't exist at the time.
I don't see the power of your argument here. The biographies of Tacitus are political texts. I don't think political texts are less biased than religious texts. Do you?

Let's stipulate that many exaggerated stories in the Jesus narrative exist that are suspect. That's a separate issue from his historicity. Roman emperors and Alexander the Great have exaggerated stories attrbuted to them and they existed

The synoptic gospels don't read like a visionary experience. They read like a dimestore Roman biography.

I don't know what you mean by "usual." Certainly in modern times we have lots of religious founders who existed, like Joseph Smith, around whom ridiculous mythical elements form. Indeed, I think most religious founders for the past 1500 years are well attested. Mohammed is. His historicity is being doubt. The stories that surrounded him are clearly fictitious.

I think you're simply identifying the general historiographical difficulties that surround any historical personage from antiquity. None of them are well-attested and history-writing as a discipline didn't really exist. What you have done is simply privilege certain texts (which you claim are nonreligious) or other texts (which you claim are religious). I would assert that these distinctions had no meaning at the time.

I think the existence of the Christian scriptures and susequent traditions are as good a reason to suspect the historicity of Jesus as we have for any person from antiquity. That's where we disagree.

Gamera

I wouldn't expect them not to. The issue is religious "ideas" are one thing, and historicity is another. Religious ideas can insinuate themselves into historical narratives, and indeed almost always seem to do so, especially in antiquity. But that doesn't mean the personages involved were not historical. There is no pure historiography. There are texts that fall under all kinds of influences.

Like I say, if you're looking for similarities, you can find them. It's the differences that are problematical. I really think the mythicists suffer from a lack of examination of narrative theory. There are only so many ways you can tell a story about a dead person resurrection. There are similar motifs that are going to arise, even in utterly unrelated narratives, because of the limitations of narrative. So finding similarities between Osiris and Lazarus isn't in the slightest surprising. It would be surprising if there weren't similarities, given the limited narrative ark a death and resurrection involves. But the whole context and meaning is different in the two stories.

No, I wouldn't argue that at all. I would argue these interchanges are irrelevant to determining the historicity of personages from antiquity.

spamandham

I doubt you can support this.

From what I've read, the gospels are unique, and do not much resemble period biographies.

Other than hardcore Christians, few take as historical the resurrection of either Jesus or Lazarus. So if these are not historical events, where did the ideas come from?