Toto

Doherty concentrates his case on Paul, and I forget exactly what he says about Mark, but a number of mythicists hypothesize that Mark's narrative was written as an allegory or a novel with no intent of representing history, but that it was later (mis)interpreted as literal history. So I think that Jay's examples are exactly on point.

What I meant was, do you think that the character Zorba is historical? He is a character in a novel. But in other of Kazantzakis' writings, including his "autobiography," Alexis Zorbas is identified as a real person, and Kazantzakis claims to have based all of his fiction on real life. But - that autobiography has a number of features that make one wonder if it is reliable, or was just a further exercise in fiction.

Gamera

My understanding of Doherty's position is somewhat different (correct me if I'm wrong). The proto-mythicist narratives don't just get misinterpreted, the texts (which is all we have and all we care about), are read by a particular class of people in a particular community and over time are transformed from a mythic narrative to a recognizable historical narrative.

This is an important distinction. As I pointed out, people (especially literate people) are pretty good at discerning genres. Read the first page of Zorba the Greek and you will immediately know by the conventions (the first person, the detailed perceptions, the impossible perspectives) that it is a novel.

Literate people in antiquity were just like us. They understood genres. That's why genres existed. So, Jay's example is exactly off point. This is not a case of ignorant or lackadaisical persons getting befuddled about fictional characters. It's a case of literate people (who weree relatively rare at the time) reading genres and utterly and completely not understanding them (but nonetheless transforming them from one genre to the next).

This doesn't add up.

As to Zorba, you're raising an epistomological question that is far broader than this issue can bear. I think you know my position, which is rather radical, and that is the distinction between historical texts and fictive texts is discursive --it isn't about "real" people versus "fictional" people, since histories are also narratives and just texts. The reading of a text is not life, so histories aren't about "real" people, but a relationship with the past that is textual in nature.

So to answer your question, not only do we not know if Zorba was a real person, but we can never know, and we don't have to know. The book is a novel and is experienced as a novel (as opposed to a history of Crete). Neither this novel nor a history of Crete gets us any closer to whatever person Katzansakis met or didn't meet.

GakuseiDon

I think one big silence that is generally overlooked is the silence in the pagan literature of anything similar to what Doherty proposes for Paul. Doherty writes on his website:

"For the average pagan and Jew, the bulk of the workings of the universe went on in the vast unseen spiritual realm (the "genuine" part of the universe) which began at the lowest level of the "air" and extended ever upward through the various layers of heaven. Here a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull, Attis could be castrated, and Christ could be hung on a tree by "the god of that world," meaning Satan"

I've searched in vain for references to Mithras killing a bull or Attis being castrated in a "sublunar realm" **. Carrier proposes something similar for Osiris, but he appears to be reading that into the text (I started a thread on this a while ago). While it could be argued that historicist Christians for some reason removed references to a sublunar Christ -- even denials of such beliefs from anti-heretical tracts -- I think it would be more difficult to argue that Christians went around removing such specific references from pagan literature.

Here is a thought experiment: A scroll written 2000 years ago comes to light, detailing myths about a previously unknown Roman god. Do any scholars spend time analysing the scrolls, to determine whether the people back then thought the myths were either set on earth or were set in a non-earthly sublunar realm? From what I've read, the answer is "no" -- the latter concept was never part of pagan thinking, AFAICS. IMHO Doherty has cast a Jedi mind-trick over Internet readers (both pro-HJ and pro-MJ) to make them think that such beliefs existed. But concentrating on whether Paul was consistent with such pagan ideas is problematic, if such pagan ideas never existed in the first place.

If anyone has any references from pagan sources to support Doherty's statement about Mithras killing a bull or Attis being castrated in a "sublunar realm", please bring them out. Otherwise, I think we need to take that pagan silence into account when reading Doherty's analysis of Paul's beliefs.

** Technically speaking, the "sublunar realm" stretches from under the moon down to the ground, so it includes the earth, but Doherty uses the term to mean above the earth, so for consistency so do I.

Toto

I do not recognize this formulation of Doherty's theory. He concentrates on showing that the Epistles make more sense without a historical Jesus; later on, a historical Jesus became a requirement. But IIRC he doesn't claim to have the exact mechanism by which the spiritual Jesus became historical.

On the contrary, you can read the first page here There is nothing impossible or unrealistic about it - it could be a memoire.

No progress in 2000 years?

Something doesn't.

So why don't you apply the same analysis to Jesus?

Amaleq13

What does this have to do with your alleged ability to differentiate historical from fictional characters without doing any research?

Known historical characters in a known historical setting and in known historical events combined with fictional characters and fictional events.

Doug Shaver

So do I.

And that is precisely why I find it highly credible that a fictional account of a charismatic Jewish teacher who got himself executed came to be widely thought of as factual history.

Solo

You are being asked, my friend, if seeing a text from a book you could tell whether the events happened as described.

One of the favourites historical novels of my teens was Karel Herlos' Wallenstein's Assassins. The book freely mixes historical fact and romantic fiction. You are seriously impaired in judgment if you think you would be able to tell from the structure of the detailed narration and/or writing style which aspects of the events surrounding the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein in 1634, were historical and which were fiction.

What you are doing is repeating the totally unwarranted claim made by C.S.Lewis. He says of the gospel literature (speaking specifically of John):

I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that none of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique od modern novelistic, realistic [sic] literature. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who does not see this simply has not learned to read. ........ quoted in, Ian Wilson's Jesus : The Evidence, Pan Books 1981, p.44

Probably unknown to Lewis was that Schweitzer set aside John's gospel as fiction, when assessing the mental health of the gospel Jesus (The Psychiatric Study of Jesus, 1913). This seemed preferrable course for the theologian and physician to defending the flagrant dementia of the person realistically reported to have been revealing himself in the first person singular.

Jiri

TedM

The reason I think certain events happened is not just because of the way it "strikes" me. In addition to that, are the following:

1. The apparant speed at with is was accepted within the Christian community as being factual, at least with regard to the historicity of Jesus.
2. The lack of any record of it in the Christian literature as being controversial with regard to the historicity of Jesus.
3. The lack of any hint of an apology or tipping of the hat by the author of knowledge that he was making up a character.

Perhaps there were a number of unstated other reasons Schweitzer had doubts about John, unrelated to how the content "read" to him.

TedM

Thanks for the on-topic post Don. Ok, so far we have the following silences, and reasons one might NOT expect them if Doherty's theory is accurate:

1. Paul's lack of clear placement of Jesus in another sphere. No description is made of his having been somewhere other than earth. This absence is true even when he makes specific references to Jesus as having been a "man", of "flesh" and "blood", of the Jewish "race", the "seed of Abraham", and "descended from David according to the flesh". Why might a description of where Jesus had lived be expected? i. Because of the quantity of refences he makes: Paul speaks of Jesus in a way that sounds like his life was on earth over 90 times. ii. Because the widely held expectation for a Messiah was one that would come to earth, derived from many scriptural references. iii. Because Paul was very familiar with Messianic references in the scriptures which place the Messiah on earth.

2. The lack of any reference by Paul to opposition that claimed Paul's Jesus was a figment of people's imagination. Why might such a reference to this claim have been expected? Because Paul tells us of other oppositions to his gospel of faith. Faith is a cornerstone of his message. IF part of that was having faith that Jesus wasn't a figment of imagination in the first place, Paul would be expected to include THAT in his requirements of faith. Instead, the opposition Paul DOES refer to seems to pale in comparison (eating meat, circumcision for Gentiles, what a "true" apostle is) to such a basic requirement that one believes he really had lived and died in the sphere above.

3. The lack of any reference in the non-Paul literature to a non-historical Jesus origin or popular branch. We would expect later Christian writers to have been aware of such a tradition because of their knowledge (and acceptance) of Paul and his teachings, and because of the tradition among churches Paul founded and wrote to.

4. The lack of any reference in the pagan writings to anything similar to what Doherty proposes for Paul with regard to activities in the sublunar realm. We would expect that because much was written about mythical characters and their actions in the pagan literature.


Anyone care to add to the list, or comment on the above?

ted

Toto

Except in heaven.

Where does Paul refer to Jesus as a man?

Who or what was the other Jesus that Paul's opponents preached, referred to in 2nd Corinthians 11:1-4?

If Doherty's theory is correct, there was no historicist opposition to Paul and no reason for him to oppose a historicist interpretation, or for historicists to oppose him. The whole issue of historicity is a modern issue. The ancients argued about whether the savior was of the same substance as god or merely a similar substance, or other issues that seem to silly to argue about now.