Clivedurdle

Thought I would attempt a summary of the main hypotheses and make some comments.

Might the orthodox one be labelled the John 3 16 hypothesis?: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. The vast majority of xians I assume would assert that one.

Other ones include:

Variants of a human preacher priest whose ideas get taken up by Paul and then by Constantine. What would be a good label for that set of hypotheses?

Variants on the mythical, gnostic messianic Christ - these ideas hit the zeitgeist and take off. I favour this group, and add in alchemic and psychological ideas - transubstantiation.

Political - Eusebius helping Constantine with a religion to unify the Empire. Carotta - an earlier Emperor doing similar games.

Timeline issues - Ellegard, Archelaus

Literary - Senecca, Gospels as fiction.

Other influences - Buddhism, Cynicism

What have I missed?



My impression of the current state of play is we can immediately dump the "allied view of history" version of the John 3 16 hypothesis. Hypothesis is too strong a word - fantasy?

I would keep ALL the others in play - because I think we do see as in a glass darkly and we are like a group of blind people trying to describe an elephant! I think there are important insights in all the above ideas - NONE of it should be thrown out because an insight from an allegedly off the wall viewpoint may be very important.

And in reality, none of them are as off the wall as the John 3 16 variant - which is only accepted because of arguments by numbers (and power of those) who proclaim it!

Imagine a planet on which the only fossils known for thousand of years is a small unrepresentative group. The study of these fossils become huge institutions, people quote chapter and verse about these fossils all the time.

Then other fossils turn up that do not fit the accepted viewpoints? How should they be treated? Shoehorn them into the accepted views or start again and look openly at all the evidence?

mountainman

The role of Apollonius of Tyana in the history of antiquity.

Hypothesis is IMO the correct word for what is required; namely
that we are considering one by one various theories of history
each of which are based on various but specific hypotheses.

Most of the major strands of theories outlined above are essentially
based on the hypothesis that the theory of history outlined by
Eusebius of Caesarea c.324 CE is of "reasonable historical integrity".
for example.


The number of different viewpoints and vantage points upon the world
are at least as numerous as the number of living creatures which dwell
within the world, and who is to say this one vantage point is right, or
this other vantage point is wrong.


IMO one must always be prepared to start again. In fact the nature
of any dynamic evolution of thought basically requires a continual and
open review of all the evidence, without exception.

What one age treats as a fact another age treats as a fable.
Human evolution is certainly about freedom of thought.
Good summary btw.



Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

Clivedurdle

Allegory as another category? Has anyone composed a similar table?

mountainman

In this thread http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=161405