Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 12-01-2012, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Robert M. Price also thinks that Jesus and John the Baptist were both based on the same original character, which may or may not have been historical.

Effectively, Robert Price doees NOT help the HJ position.

Whether or not HJ existed, he cannot be recovered based on the present state of the evidence according tp Price.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Price

Quote:

...He is known in particular for his skepticism about the existence of Jesus as an historical figure, arguing in 2009 that Jesus may have existed but "unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."..

Chili · 12-01-2012, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

Mythicism is a position that views the gospel JC as a literary figure, a symbolic figure, a mythological figure i.e. that gospel figure is ahistorical.

You should be careful with the word symbolic to explain myth because myth is real and more real than the historical Jesus could ever be, because he died, remember? . . . and he made 'star-gazers' out historicist who nearly have everything backwards they read.

The same is true with transubstantiation and consubstantiation, which is an insult to wisdom and these are those same star-gazers again . . . looking for evidence so they might believe too, while it is precisely in that which they cannot see where truth will be found . . . or myth would no longer be myth.

Not to defend the mythicist as a united position to hold and defend. I also agree that the -ism does not belong to the word myth in the same way as 'truth-ism' does not quite sound right either.

Chili · 12-01-2012, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

...He is known in particular for his skepticism about the existence of Jesus as an historical figure, arguing in 2009 that Jesus may have existed but "unless someone discovers his diary or his skeleton, we'll never know."..

Tell them to look for Joseph as it all happened to him.

Chili · 12-01-2012, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave31

. It's pretty cut and dry to me and Rene Salm himself has made it very clear that he is an "euhemerist"/evemerist on that very specific issue. Salm may take the mythicist position on many other issues, however, the most significant issue of all, the HJ question, Salm himself claims to be an "euhemerist"/evemerist. So, there's just nothing to debate here.

And they wrangle new words to isolate their position now with 20.000 of them strong while Jesus simply was a name given to the intermediate transformation stage of man.

Chili · 12-01-2012, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Robert M. Price also thinks that Jesus and John the Baptist were both based on the same original character, which may or may not have been historical.

They were bosom buddies reborn inside the mind of one man.

maryhelena · 12-01-2012, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

You should note that Earl Doherty thinks that there was a Galilean teacher behind the Q sayings. But if this prophet/teacher was not crucified under Pilate, it is hard to call this person the historical Jesus.

Earl, as these quotes below demonstrate, does not think there was a Galilean teacher behind the Q sayings. That is the position of Wells not Doherty.

Quote:

No supernatural figure lies behind Q, even if it could be demonstrated that an historical sage of some sort did. I have argued that it cannot, and that it can be shown that in fact one did not.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....85#post6782085

Quote:

In other words, the founder Jesus Wells subscribes to is superfluous, and serves no practical purpose. Besides, I have demonstrated that the Jesus figure in Q was invented in the course of the Q community’s evolution.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....12#post6781312

Quote:

My disagreements with Wells are two: That last phrase above I reject, substituting instead that Paul and his fellow cultists placed Jesus and his death in the heavens. And I reject his acceptance of a specific historical individual as the founder of the Kingdom preaching movement in Galilee represented in Q, a rejection I have offered an in-depth analysis of Q to demonstrate.

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....56#post6904956

However, Earl, over 10 years ago, replied to a post of mine on his website:

Quote:

"I can well acknowledge that elements of several representative, historical figures fed into the myth of the Gospel Jesus, since even mythical characters can only be portrayed in terms of human personalities, especially ones from their own time that are familiar and pertinent to the writers of the myths."

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/rfset5.htm#Mary

Why then, with this position, would Earl seek to reject the position of Wells? Once it is acknowledged, as Earl has done, that historical figures "fed into the myth of the Gospel Jesus" - then, why, oh why, seek to maintain the position on a Q figure that Earl does in the above quotes from FRDB?

Yes, according to Wells, his Galilean preacher was not crucified. But if the gospel JC figure is a composite figure - as even Earl acknowledged above in the quote from his website, "...elements of several representative, historical figures fed into the myth of the Gospel Jesus", then, logically, not all of these historical figures had to be crucified figures. It needs only one historical figure to have been crucified for the composite gospel JC figure - and that figure need not be the Galilean preacher figure of Wells. A figure that Wells finds, contrary to Doherty, within Q.

maryhelena · 12-01-2012, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Robert M. Price also thinks that Jesus and John the Baptist were both based on the same original character, which may or may not have been historical.

Antigonus II Mattathias

Quote:

Josephus states that Marc Antony beheaded Antigonus (Antiquities, XV 1:2 (8-9). Roman historian Dio Cassius says he was crucified. Cassius Dio's Roman History records: "These people [the Jews] Antony entrusted to a certain Herod to govern; but Antigonus he bound to a cross and scourged, a punishment no other king had suffered at the hands of the Romans, and so slew him."[6] In his Life of Antony, Plutarch claims that Antony had Antigonus beheaded, "the first example of that punishment being inflicted on a king."[7]

The last King and High Priest of the Jews, executed by the Roman Marc Antony, in Antioch, in 37 b.c. Enough, methinks, in that history to lay the groundwork for many a mythical reconstruction.

maryhelena · 12-01-2012, 10:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Salm's website contains articles from people who claim that Jesus was John - an article that Salm translated from the French by George Ory, and Robert Prices' article showing an argument that the gospel Jesus was John the Baptist raised from the dead.

He directly addresses your concern here:

Quote:

Semi-mythicism and euhemerism

A mythicist is one who concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed and also that no human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity.

That is how I define a “mythicist.” The definition has two components. For those who, like myself, embrace only the first part but not the second, I use a different term: “semi-mythicist.” I personally have concluded that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, yet I also suspect that a human prophet (the Teacher of Righteousness? John the Baptist?) lay at the root of the Christian religion. Of course, I am quite convinced that the biography of Jesus of Nazareth was invented out of whole cloth. So in my view the following sequence obtains:

(1) a prophet –>
(2) a false biography (Jesus of Nazareth) –>
(3) the second member of the divine Christian trinity.

The above makes me a euhemerist, and so we see that there is no conflict between euhemerism and mythicism. Anyone who thinks that a human lies at the root of Christianity (even if that human was not Jesus of Nazareth) is a euhemerist—for that human was eventually deified. The Christians get around this by saying that Jesus was God from the start. I happen to be an atheist and don’t buy into that doctrine nor deification—nor into the false biography of Jesus. But I am still both a euhemerist and a semi-mythicist. This is altogether too nuanced for most people and so, in casual parlance, I am simply a “mythicist”—one who denies the existence of Jesus of Nazareth (the “common” definition of mythicism).

So, it's a "common" definition of mythicism that Rene Salm rejects. A "common" definition that he defines as: " A mythicist is one who concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed and also that no human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity."

This is not how Wikipedia defines what the mythicist position is:

Quote:

Christ myth theory

The Christ myth theory (also known as Jesus mythicism, the Jesus myth theory and the nonexistence hypothesis) is the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was not a physical historical person, but is a fictional, mythological or solely incorporeal character created by the early Christian community.[1][2][3][4] Some proponents also argue that events or sayings associated with the figure of Jesus in the New Testament may have been drawn from one or more individuals who actually existed, but that none of them were in any sense the founder of Christianity.[5]

Rather than seeking to redefine mythicism, Salm needs to cut out the "also" addition to his definition"

Quote:

A mythicist is one who concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed and also that no human prophet lay at the origin of Christianity.

This "also" add-on to Salm's definition of mythicism is illogical. A mythicist is, as he states in his definition, someone who "concludes that Jesus of Nazareth never existed". That is all it it. That some mythicists might seek to reject any human connection, any relevant historical grounding to the gospel JC story, is, in effect, to discredit that position. It opens up the mythicist position to unwarranted attack.

It seems, to me, that Rene Salm would be better occupied endeavoring to spring clean the mythicist 'house' - rather than shying away, by redefining what mythicism is, from the accumulated dross that has inflicted itself on to this position.

maryhelena · 12-01-2012, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Acharya S is trying to monopolize mythicism, and she is a real contender. If I were a mythicist, I would be worried about that. Bart Ehrman did mythicists a favor by giving Acharya S so little bother in his book.

Well, Abe, I'm a mythicist and I'm not in the least worried about Acharya S and any attempt to "monopolize mythicism".

The mythicist position, i.e. that the figure of JC in the gospel story is ahistorical, is not the 'baby' of any one writer. In whatever manner this position, the mythicist position, garners public notice, is all to the good. And Abe, it is not argument that is going to settle this issue - so whatever the arguments - all they can do is bring public notice to the issue. They cannot, and will not, settle the matter.

As far as the general public is concerned, that is all that is necessary. Public awareness that such an ahistorical position exists and that it has supporters who can offer arguments for that position.

And really, does it matter by which road one arrives at that conclusion - the conclusion that the gospel JC is an ahistorical figure? I have a grandson who came to that position because of a movie he saw. He, for now at any rate, is perfectly happy with just that conclusion; that the gospel JC is ahistorical.

Debating the issue is, of course, necessary. But, Abe, debate will not settle the issue. It's going to require new discoveries, of some sort, that have the potential to be a tipping point.

In the meantime.....all and everyone that has something to contribute to the debate should be welcome.....

That does not mean that the historicist camp and the ahistorcist camp don't have their own internal dross to get rid off..

Chili · 12-02-2012, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

[
That does not mean that the historicist camp and the ahistorcist camp don't have their own internal dross to get rid off..

You probably mean to say that to play ostrich is to draw attention to the bigger part unseen.

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