The G Man

Depending on how you finesse it, Augustus looks like a pretty good fit. I make him a 15.

Chris Weimer

I thought that to be fact. You can easily dismiss the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke as fiction, especially Matthew. It's not *meant* to be taken literally.

Timothy may be too late for consideration.

lpetrich

(In other words, use only the Gospel of Mark? That's essentially saying that the other Gospels contain unhistorical stuff.)
I agree that those birth narratives are unhistorical, but how would one justify such a conclusion?

If I had to justify why I consider them unhistorical, I'd say:

* The Matthew and Luke genealogies and birth stories contradict each other -- they have almost no names in common.

* How did Matthew and Luke find out about Joseph's ancestry?

* This seems like an effort to impute eminent ancestry to someone who would otherwise have totally undistinguished ancestry. And ancestry suitable for a Jewish Messiah.

* Divine impregnation seems like an overly literal interpretation of "son of God".

* Why is one to believe Matthew's and Luke's stories of divine impregnation and not the numerous such stories in Greco-Roman mythology? Or those in historians like Iamblichus, Diogenes Laertius, and Plutarch about Pythagoras, Plato, and Alexander the Great?

* Matthew tells us that Herod ordered the murder of the Bethlehem baby boys because he was concerned that one of them would grow up to supplant him. However, that event was not noted by historians Philo and Josephus, who discuss him in detail, and who note that he ordered the murder of some of his relatives on the ground that they would be rival claimaints to his throne.

Why do you say that? As far as can be determined from the text, Matthew and Luke tell those birth narratives with a straight face.

Clivedurdle

Who on earth do you mean?

And if someone states they have no position on historicity why does it feel as if they are somehow supporting an HJ?

Chris Weimer

The same way one justifies many other unhistorical narratives. Context clues. I begin on the topic here and here.

Well, that could mean that one of them is true and the other not. I doubt it. Also, concerning the genealogies, if almost no names are identical, then it makes those names that are emphasized, no? I write about that here.

More importantly, how did Matthew and Luke find out about Joseph!

"Straight-faced" history was not all that common back then, especially among Jews/Jewish splinters. Moreover, narratives in general tended to not be straight-faced history. It just wasn't that common. You have to understand that what actually happened wasn't nearly as important as its theological implications. Matthew was writing theology, not history.

lpetrich

cweb255, I think that I understand what you are claiming -- Matthew's birth story was Matthew's way of making Jesus Christ seem like a new Moses.

But while the stories share the common mythical element of "evil king vs. Our Hero as a baby", and an eventual coming out of Egypt, they do not seem to share much else.

This is criterion (6) in Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile, and it is very common:

Pharaoh vs. Moses
King Herod vs. Jesus Christ
Kronos vs. Zeus
King Laertes vs. Oedipus
King Acrisius vs. Perseus
Hera vs. Hercules
King Amulius vs. Romulus
King Kamsa vs. Krishna
...

There's even something like that in the canonical biography of the Buddha, where his father tries to keep him from scenes of suffering and death, so that he will become a suitable heir and not a great religious leader.

Chris Weimer

Do they not? I disagree.

1a. Jesus is sent to rescue his people people from their sins.
1b. Moses is sent to rescue his people from slavery.

2a. Jesus is sent to Egypt to be spared from the King.
2b. Moses is raised in Egypt to be spared from the Pharoah.

However, that's pretty much the extent of the birth narrative anyway, isn't it? The Moses-Jesus parallel is stretched.

3a. Jesus says his followers will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
3b. Moses says his followers will enter the Promised Land.

4a. Jesus delivers laws on the sermon on the mount.
4b. Moses delivers laws on Mount Sinai.

5a. Jesus leads 12 disciples.
5b. Moses leads 12 tribes of Israel.

There's so much more that's there as well.

lpetrich

I will concede on being able to find lots of parallels.

But several of the parallels are not quite perfect, and there are some parts that have no parallels. Like Moses getting furious at how the Israelites were worshipping a golden calf and breaking the tablets of the Law. Curiously, God is remarkably understanding about this and composes a new set of tablets for him.

I do think that the birth stories are imperfect parallels. Moses is floated down the river and raised as an Egyptian, while Jesus Christ is raised by his parents, who flee with him to Egypt. Moses is closer to Lord Raglan's profile here than Jesus Christ.

Also, Jesus Christ is depicted as having very notable ancestry, while it's a bit harder to argue that for Moses.

Toward the end of their careers, both are repudiated and die unusual deaths on hilltops, but the details are very different. After Moses reaches the Jordan River, God lets him look at the Promised Land from atop Mt. Nebo, but does not allow him to enter it. And after 120 years of good health, he gets mysteriously sick and he dies there -- and stays dead. After Jesus Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, his Temple temper tantrum pisses off the authorities (Synoptics version), Judas Iscariot turns him in, and they put him on trial. The citizens of Jerusalem, after giving him a hero's welcome, now want him dead. Peter whimpers that he did not know him, and his other disciples flee. JC gets crucified on Skull Hill (Golgotha), and he dies very fast by crucifixion-victim standards, complete with a mysterious sky darkening, earthquakes, zombies on the move, etc. And he rises from the dead a few days later.

Also, Jesus Christ's biography has much more prophecy fulfillment than Moses's -- someone here once called Matthew a "prophecy slut".

Boro Nut

....when he should have been paying far stricter attention to more mundane tasks such as instructing his subordinates in a clear and unequivocal manner which fucking guns to attack. If he had have done I’m sure poor Lord Lucan wouldn't have felt it necessary to bludgeoned the nanny when asked if he'd had a nice day.

Boro Nut

The Bishop

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while - NO
(2) his father is a king, and - NO
(3) the father is related to the mother. - NO
(4) The hero's conception is unusual or miraculous; hence - YES
(5) he is reputed to be a son of a god. - YES
(6) Evil forces attempt to kill the infant or boy hero, but - YES
(7) he is spirited away to safety and - YES
(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this, - YES
(9) we learn no details of his childhood until - NO
(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where - NO
(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and - NO
(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and - NO
(13) becomes king himself. - NO
(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully, - NO
(15) promulgating laws. But - YES
(16) he later loses favor with his subjects or with the gods and - YES
(17) is driven from the throne and the city and - NO
(18) meets with a mysterious death, - YES-ish
(19) often atop a hill. - YES
(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him. - NA
(21) His body is not buried, yet - YES
(22) he has one or more holy sepulchers. - YES.

Can someone explain to me exactly how it is that Jesus is accounted as scoring 19?