jgoodguy

Conspiracy? :constern02:

discordant

Okay.

I'll grant that there are plenty of such mythicists, but since historicists aren't immune to it either, what's the point of looking at it this way? It seems like you just don't understand why smart people would believe this nonsense, so your inference is that they must be ideologues, most of them.

My difficultly isn't that you don't own up to mistakes. You obviously do. It's that you don't seem to change your tact no matter how badly you foul up. Earlier, you made a mistake that we both know Earl Doherty would never have made. Then you say how it's damningly obvious that mythicists are wrong. How much sense does that make?

Sounds like pointless rhetoric to me.

ApostateAbe

Yes, it is pointless rhetoric except to answer your question. You are writing like you have followed my writings for some time. Do I know you?

discordant

I don't understand this. My only knowledge of you is from what you've written in this forum, and maybe a few hit-and-run comments on Neil Godfrey's blog. I think it's enough to form an opinion, or to see a trend.

If you don't think it's worthwhile to talk to me, I hardly mind.

ApostateAbe

No, it's cool. I was just curious.

squiz

Whatever the merits of his arguments, I found the tone in Carrier's response very disappointing. There is no need to resort to such insulting language as calling Hoffmann "insane". Such language is counter-productive, especially if you are trying to promote a minority position.

mg01

I'd be interested to see the investigation of the idea of to what degree is a HJ necessary to the formation of Christianity. Given that some sort of messianic expectation already existed, the nature of which was debated, the mythological aspects that are considered to have been layered on afterwards, debates that ensued (god/man, spiritual/literal, deeds/belief, trinity) in the formation of orthodox tradition, what role is an HJ actually thought to have played? What elements are outright missing without and HJ? What does an HJ actually add if all the theology is derivable elsewhere?

On the one hand, If an HJ is absent from Paul, he has to be derived from the assumption of an HJ at the kernel of Mark, a work seething with allegory that derives it's narrative from the OT. The HJ then is either an individual who to Mark existed in the past as the wandering apocalyptic whom his followers thought fulfilled the messianic expectation and served as his basis for his narrative, or, a composite of several such figures. In either case, from Mark's narrative, the messiah showed up and was crucified just like the scriptures predicted as an answer to the delay in the apocalypse. All the anticipation was turned into "it actually happened and no one noticed".

On the other extreme, you have Judaism (at least in all the flavors it existed as a phenomenon at the time), HJ, Christianity, in a scenario where a great deal of all ideas "Christian" are attributed to being originated directly from HJ. Paul then was just unfamiliar with historical details and Mark had a real individual in mind.

It would be curious to see some discussion of what features of early Christianity would be more or less likely to have required an HJ. Is anyone aware if this type of approach or similar has been done?

ApostateAbe

Yes, for sure. A hundred years ago, when the position of Jesus-minimalism was promoted by a few respected scholars such as Arthur Drews, that is when the debate was hot. That is when Albert Schweitzer presented his model of the historical Jesus--an apocalyptic prophet who believed the end of the world was imminent--and he derided the mythical Jesus model as belonging among all the other wishful thinking models. Scholars tended to make Jesus in their own image.

That was the start of the first "Quest" for the historical Jesus, and one hundred years of debate have developed a model of Jesus very much like Albert Schweitzer's model, which is predominant among critical scholars today. They still call it the "apocalyptic prophet" model, but I prefer the phrase, "doomsday cult leader," sacrificing diplomacy for description. There are a few facets of the evidence that can be elegantly explained only by the doomsday cult leader model, and there are a larger handful of facets of the evidence that can be elegantly explained as Jesus being an actual historical human figure instead of just a myth. Such evidence includes...

• ...the Christian myths reflected in all of the earliest evidence (Paul, Q and Mark) written from the perspectives of members of a doomsday cult, with Jesus as the founding leader. Any time in history we have such myths of a doomsday cult leader, there is seemingly always a human being who fits the same profile as in the myths.
• ...the details of the gospel accounts of the baptism of Jesus (Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist), in spite of the Christian belief that Jesus was both sinless and the religious authority of John the Baptist.
• ...Paul wrote of having met in passing, "James, the Lord's brother" (Jesus had an actual brother named "James," per Mark, Matthew and Josephus)
• ...the hometown of Jesus is identified as Nazareth, despite the apparent Christian interest in Jesus being from the town of Bethlehem (Jesus really was from Nazareth)
• ...the accounts of the crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, despite the expectation that the messiah would be a conquering military hero (Jesus really was crucified).

The merely-mythical-Jesus models can explain this stuff, too, just as they can explain almost any evidence that you can imagine, but they seemingly require propositions that are ad hoc, and the whole models do not seem to plausibly fit the patterns of history.

I have written extensively on many of these points, so feel free to ask for more information on any point.

The historical Jesus is NOT absent from Paul, though there is a popular theory that tries to fit the handful of references to the human Jesus to a more spiritual realm. Jesus could have been myth even if Paul believed that he was a human, but I figure that any plausible model of a merely-mythical Jesus needs to be realistic about what Paul really believed, not try to make Paul believe something when it seems to contradict the evidence on the face of what Paul wrote. Here is a list of things that Paul apparently believed about the human Jesus:

• Paul believed that Jesus was born from a woman as the Son of God in a Jewish society - Galatians 4:4-5.
• Paul believed that Jesus "was descended from David according to the flesh" - Romans 1:3.
• Paul believed that Jesus taught that "those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" - 1 Corinthians 9:14, see also Luke 10:7.
• Paul believed that Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, gave thanks, broke it, said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me," took the cup, said, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me" - 1 Corinthians 11:23-25.
• Paul believed that Jesus was the sacrificed passover lamb - 1 Corinthians 5:7.
• Paul believed that Jesus was crucified by rulers of this age who did not understand that Christians speak God's wisdom - 1 Corinthians 2:7-8.
• Paul believed that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day, appeared to Cephas, to the twelve disciples, to five hundred Christians (some of whom have since died), to James, to all of the apostles, and much later to Paul himself - 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.
• Paul believed that Jesus commanded that a wife should not separate from her husband and a husband should not divorce his wife - 1 Corinthians 7:10-11, see also Mark 10:11-12.
• Paul believed that Jesus had a brother named James - Galatians 1:19, see also Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55.

bacht

If there was a Jewish-Christianity either at the beginning or later, they would need to make their Jesus human rather than a god-man.

Proto-catholics claiming the Jewish scriptures as foundational (as opposed to gnostics who rejected Yhwh) could construct their back-story based on apostolic succession going back to Jesus, sort of a quasi-dynastic model.

Toto

Where did Schweitzer deride the mythic Jesus model? Perhaps you are thinking of Bultman, who did describe it as insane.

Neil Godfrey's favorite quote from Schweitzer

(I can't find that exact quote on Peter Kirby's site - it might be from the 2nd edition - but the substance is there.)