Originally Posted by gurugeorge

The idea that the first apostles knew Jesus PERSONALLY was the invention, purely for the purposes of establishing an Apostolic Succession for the newfangled orthodoxy, and it's the driving force behind the illusion of a historical Jesus (as we would now deem it - i.e. an ordinary human being) that's assumed to be found in the texts - of course, as I say, and as must be borne in mind, many early Christians may have considered their superhero-Jesus to have been "historical" and to have had a fleshly aspect! But not necessarily all - divergence again).

Originally Posted by Elijah

I think you have to consider the orthodox Christianity as partially an ideological response to basic Gnostic ideas of the time not an ideological hijacking. The Gnostic position is that understanding something about the universe will lead to some kind of salvation where the orthodox position goes opposite in that faith in Christ will save you and you don’t have to understand anything.

Also the intermediary/demiurge in Gnosticism is replaced with a person in a mystical state connecting to god. The reason there isn’t an intermediary is because one isn’t necessary because unlike Gnosticism where the whole material realm was evil or flawed; nothing from the orthodox position is unclean, only the perception of it is.

To the Gnostic mindset the orthodox push of Jesus’ sacrifice leading to salvation seems just as crazy and the trying to get people to accept him as a messiah is just a trick to get people to submit and not actually an ideological maneuver to establish a spiritual king. This is why documents like GThomas don’t include his death but instead understanding his words is the key to eternal life. Salvation to the early orthodox is about the resurrection of the dead which they saw Jesus’ resurrection of proof of and a means to be resurrected with him once he’s established as king of the world as a reward to all his faithful followers. So the story of his actual resurrection becomes a central tenet and anything that says otherwise is heresy.

And there is some middle ground because Paul seems to have a problem with the resurrection happening with flesh so he’s showing some Gnostic/orthodox hybrid thinking. The reason he thinks this is because the nature of matter is contrary to that which is eternal so more rarified bodies would be needed from his POV.

As for the succession being manufactured as evidence of a nonexistent source figure, I didn’t really see that as good evidence since that kind of thing is going to be nearly inevitable if there is a movement left to argue over and succession isn’t clearly defined.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

The idea that the first apostles knew Jesus PERSONALLY was the invention, purely for the purposes of establishing an Apostolic Succession...

Originally Posted by Andykiwi

Did Christianity begin just like it says in the bible?

Originally Posted by DramaQ

I think I have to disagree with this.

“Apostles [who] knew Jesus personally” was the invention of the author(s) of GMark. GMark is decidedly ANTI apostle.

If inventing a Jesus-on-Earth story was for the purpose of establishing Apostolic Succession, it would have been done by the PRO Petrine group. (Presumably the one(s) GMark is reacting to.)

Instead, Apostolic Succession was invented by the group(s) who reacted to GMark (GMatt and GLuke) transforming them into PRO apostle documents, instead of telling (or inventing) their own history.

Unless I missed something.

DQ

Originally Posted by Atheos

As has been pointed out many times already in this thread, other "God-man" myths developed and had substantial followings in spite of the fact that the subject of that myth probably never existed. Hercules, Perseus and Dionysus are a few other (among many) sons of some god and a mortal woman. None of these characters probably existed in a historical context, but each of them influenced many believers.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Yes, indeed - but also, we have to bear in mind that those figures might have been historical-to-their worshippers - i.e. they might have actually believed that Hercules existed historically, as a hero of giant strength, etc.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

In all these debates, it has to be kept separate what's "historical for us" (as modern, rational inquirers) and what might have been "historical for them" (as believers with low standards of rationality, putting it probably more rudely than one should). With any of those figures, you can sometimes see other people saying "pah, your god never existed, it's just a fable, but OUR god existed, he's no fable". And a few more rationalistic thinkers, even then, thought it was all a crock of shit (or thought that there might have been "historical cores" to some of them

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

There's a compact summary that nearly fills a chapter of Ehrman's "Lost Christianities" - unfortunately I don't have a copy any more, otherwise I'd have been happy to type out some key points (Ehrman also outlines some counter-arguments, and points out errors Bauer made, but comes out in favour of Bauer's argument overall, and thinks it's very important). Ehrman also outlines Bauer's argument in "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture" but I haven't read that. Other than that, "Orthodoxy and Heresy" itself is online here.

I've struggled through a few chapters of it, and it seems well-argued, but I'm not a scholar, so can't really judge (plus it's pretty old so I'd have to be familiar with the scholarship around it to be able to tell how opinions have changed since the 30s). I provisionally trust people like Ehrman and Price though, so I'm going with it for now. Roughly, Bauer goes through the evidence about the main areas of early Christian activity and finds:-

1) In Edessa, orthodoxy wasn't established until the 3rd century CE (even later than Marcionism) and didn't finally win out over heresy until after Constantine.

2) In Egypt, early Christianity seems to have been in fact syncretic (Barnabas, Clement, Origen) and orthodoxy wasn't firmly established until Demetrius (late 2nd century).

3) In Asia Minor, the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp suggest that the orthodox were in a minority, struggling for survival.

4) Rome has a clear and stable orthodox majority by the second century. It gradually builds authority and influence by (basically) bribery and ecclesiastical pressure, in Corinth, western Asia Minor, and Antioch.

So, as I say, my interpretation of this (taken together with other bits and pieces) is that the "Apostolic Succession" was invented to rein in the divergent bunch of early Christian lunatics, and (most importantly! ) to get them securely paying dues, etc. The key invention is that some of the early apostles knew personally the Jesus of whom they preached, knew him as a human being, and that they were (natch) the ones who eventually ended up with the Roman line of bishops (via "Peter", who is I think another invention, a conflation with Paul's Cephas, and probably representative of post-Diaspora Roman Jewish Christians who presented to their fellow early Roman Christians as having some sort of closer connection to the origins than the ones who had been seeded by "Paul"). It's this idea that's the kernel of the strong historicization of the Jesus myth, as it gets developed in the synoptics (all the action there is between 70 and 150 CE, I think). The key argument is neatly outlined by "Peter" in the Pseudo-Clementines: surely it makes more sense to follow people who heard the gospel from the horse's mouth than to follow a mere visionary? But, in reality (as I propose) the earliest ones (especially, and most obviously - even in his own words - "Paul"/"Saul"/"Simon Magus") were "mere visionaries" - that's all there was to it, to begin with, and that's why it was IMMEDIATELY so divergent to begin with. There was no person anybody knew, just some visions and mystical experiences, some perfervid scripture-poring, and a sort of conglomerate mysteries-influenced Jewish soter deity (NO DOUBT an entity they believed had existed on earth at some recent-ish time). (Why Jewish? Jews were cool at the time - I mean circa the pre-Diaspora time when the religion was first developing - just like Tibetans are cool nowadays. They were respected as having an ancient religion.)

The idea that the first apostles knew Jesus PERSONALLY was the invention, purely for the purposes of establishing an Apostolic Succession for the newfangled orthodoxy, and it's the driving force behind the illusion of a historical Jesus (as we would now deem it - i.e. an ordinary human being) that's assumed to be found in the texts - of course, as I say, and as must be borne in mind, many early Christians may have considered their superhero-Jesus to have been "historical" and to have had a fleshly aspect! But not necessarily all - divergence again).

Originally Posted by aa5874

But, it must be that people of antiquity believed their Gods were real entities and that they did exist and could hear, talk, see, walk, and perform supernatural acts.

These are some of the reasons Gods have Temples and given names.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Yes, but I think it's more complicated than that - I think there were all sorts of positions between "mythical, made up, crock of shit" from the few rationalists in those days, to "lived on earth, solidly historical, but super-powered" from true believers of a certain type. But also, you have to factor in visionary experience, magickal thinking, etc., etc. An untutored person can be forgiven for thinking their deity is real when he talks to them in a lucid dream or an astral vision - there's a sort of grey area where an entity could be conceived as having had a flesh-and-blood component, and a specific setting in at some place and time in history, but also being etherial-yet-real in some way and capable of entering peoples' dreams and visions right now, even if they had lived on the earth at some time in the past.