Zeichman

If this is what you're referring to:
"I was brought up and educated in Eastern Europe where the MJ theory was firmly linked to the historical (or dialectical) materialism of Marx, i.e. communist theory."

It would equally support either what I said or what you said. I meant like primary source documents or secondary ones about Lenin, USSR, Communism, Mythicism in general, etc.

No Robots

[Mythicism] was taken up by Soviet writers on the beginnings of Christianity largely on account of Lenin's apparent acceptance of it as an established fact in the course of his criticism of some of Drew's other opinions in his article "on Militant Materialism'... and his opinion dominated Soviet accounts of the rise of Christianity until well into the post-war period when, although not officially discarded..., the question of the historicity or otherwise of Jesus was superceded by a more Marxist interest in the general history of early Christianity and by a return to the explanation of it offered by Engels in his On the Early History of Christianity—an explanation which is now the standard in Soviet writing on this topic.... But although the existence of Jesus is now generally accepted in Soviet study of the origin of Christianity, stress is still laid on the mythological prototypes of the picture of Jesus as it emerged in the developing Christian tradition, and on the debt owed by Christianity to movements in Judaism, Egypt and the Greco-Roman world of the first century BC.—Marxist-Leninist Scientific Atheism and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR (or via: amazon.co.uk) / James A. Thrower, p. 426

My main point is that in no wise could Soviet mythicism be considered a "popular" movement. It was a top-down dogma of the ruling caste.

Zeichman

Alright. Thanks.

Ted Hoffman

What is the following (in the same page) intended to mean?:

No Robots

From what I can tell, there was some kind of domestic dispute that resulted in her real name being made public. There was also some kind of kafuffle involving Price's review of her book in which he gave out her name. Price also linked to cheescake photos on her website (now taken down). Definitely female.

Solo

All communists in the USSR and its satellites believed what the party ideologues told them to believe. The ideological branch of the Party decided what was what in history. The official "hard" Marxist-Leninist line was that Bruno Bauer (one time Karl Marx'es idol) "disproved" the historical existence of JC. That Jesus was a total fabrication, was not something that was believed just by Lenin but by Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Bernstein, Plekhanov and after them pretty well by every prominent communist intellectual before 1945. The Christian and communist world-views were held absolutely exclusive of each other. One, was either a historical-materialist, or a dupe of some form of bourgeois idealism, or "unscientific" materialism (Malthusean, Social-Darwinist), or ancient laughable superstitions like Christianity.

In the communist circles of the West of the sixties, some "soft" treading and "liberalism" on the issue of Jesus existence came into evidence, especially in Italy, where the communists were gaining electorally and had interests in keeping their options open. Hence, the talk of a dialogue with the Church. Pasolini's movie (The Gospel According to Matthew) became something of a rallying point for Jesus-the social revolutionary (the ancient prophet of social justice walks around in the movie to the tunes of Russian revolutionary chorals) and I am sure prefigured some of the "liberation theology" in the Latin-speaking countries. The Italian Marxist thinking v-a-v JC was also absorbed in the reform-minded communism of Poland and Czechoslovakia, in some quarters as a sense of genuine embarrassment at the loss of cultural maturity and civil tolerance, in others as a tactical device in communist PR.

Jiri

No Robots

You can also catch Acharya S. on video here.

Toto

Robert Price is quite conservative on political and social issues. There is clearly no relation between politics and an opinion on the historical Jesus once you get beyond political ideologies.

Ted Hoffman

I can see that Price is now finally stating openly that he is a mythicist:

Ted Hoffman

Thanks