Brother Daniel

Is that a criticism? "Disproving the HJ" is an essential part of "proving a (not necessarily Dohertian) MJ", surely. (More on this below.)
I agree. But I haven't noticed mythicists drifting into that false dichotomy. The OP, for example, is more general (MJ/HJ); but it was your response that focused attention on Doherty in particular.
Since we're talking about how to decide between the alternatives, it's worth pointing out (again!) that it isn't all about "support". Evidence for a position is only part of the story. Evidence against a position is often (and IMO in this case) more important. The two sides of the HJ/MJ debate are like a couple of novice snooker players; the winner will not be the one who sinks the correct balls in the correct order, but rather the one who makes fewer fouls. (Okay, lousy analogy. But I'll leave it here anyway.)

The big hurdle for any MJ case to overcome is the mere fact that GMark was written in the first place. Now MJ-ers will come up with all kinds of explanations for that fact (within their framework), and you'll ask for "support" for those explanations. But if the MJ-ers can present a bunch of hurdles for the HJ position, that cumulatively outweigh GMark's challenge to MJ, then their case is made, even without "support".

You may say that's a very big "if". And the "outweighing" is a difficult subjective judgement, in any case.

But if you think my "if...then" statement is preposterous, then consider this example:

Suppose a bunch of people in the 30th century's equivalent of IIDB find themselves arguing about a certain Fred Schlabotnik who supposedly lived circa 2000 CE. The only existing near-contemporary historical reference to Fred Schlabotnik (from a mid-21st century April 1st issue of USA Today, just before the time of the Great Cataclysm) claims that he was a lunar cheese-miner with a 30-foot penis, and says little else about him. Since the 22nd century (and possibly earlier), there have been traditional Freddists who believe in the 30-foot penis and the lunar cheese (in spite of the continual denials -- by those who work on the moon -- that the moon is made of cheese). The mainstream HF (historical Fred) advocates read between the lines and claim that Schlabotnik was a NASA astronaut, who probably achieved notoriety with his sexual exploits. Meanwhile, the MF (mythical Fred) advocates say he didn't exist, since the surviving (admittedly incomplete) NASA records never mention the guy. The HF people would say, in a sense correctly, that the MF people don't have an ounce of support for their position -- because they don't have any 21st-century documents that show the existence of people who explicitly disbelieved in a historical Fred Schlabotnik.

See the problem?

GakuseiDon

True enough, though Vork listed "Dohertian silences" in his chart, so I assumed that Vork was using Doherty mythicism. His list seems compatible to it, down to the strawmen, rather than other forms of mythicism. Wells mythicism, for example, has "born of woman" as literal.

youngalexander

GDon, as I have sed before, I am interested in the question as an academic exercise, I do not have any emotional stake in the result. Doherty's position is extreme on the MJ spectrum, problematic to argue, and I suspect unlikely of any final consensus. Nevertheless, he makes a number of well argued and telling points.

Sufficient for my well honed skeptical judgement to continue an abeyance of decision.
Something, she is not right with HJ!

As I have indicated previous, I think that we may all benefit from an examination of the archaeological and especially art evidence - it don't lie, or at least not anywhere to the extent that the lit does.

But I've gotta lot of work to do yet.

Lucretius

Just a couple of points to make about your little chart Vorkosigan it would be clearer if it said "The single reference to Jesus in Tacitus", rather than just "Tacitus", which to me at least seems to imply that all of Tacitus' works were supsected of being forgeries (I do know that there has been some controversy in the past regarding Tacitus' Annals due to the fact they come from one source but I do not think and neither do most reputable classical scholars, that they are completely forgeries from the Middle Ages,)
Pliny is also a reference to Christians rather than Christ and basically has nothing to say about the historical existence of Jesus or not merely the existence of Christians at that time which I would say was not a controversial matter at all.

Ben C Smith

Except that the chart has the Ignatian epistles as forged on the MJ side, and Doherty seems to accept them as genuine.

Ben.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Gakuseidon,

I do not have much time, but just briefly in response, I would say that Earl Doherty's work has to be seen as a continuation of, and an advance over, Hyam Macoby's extraordinary work. Macoby, in books like "The Mythmaker" pointed out that Paul's Christianity was quite different form the Jerusalem Christianisty of the other disciples. It was, in effect, a new religion, one without the slightest interest in the man called Jesus. Doherty adds the logical corollary idea to this that the reason he wasn't interested in the man called Jesus is because he never knew of a man called Jesus. Paul's Christ is purely a heavenly creature.

While the mass of material in the epistles point to a heavenly Christ, there are a half dozen or so references within the epistles that do appear to indicate that Paul could be referring to the Jesus character of the Gospels. Doherty argues that these are best interpreted as poetical expressions. Personally, I would suggest that a better explanation is that these are later interpolations or textual changes designed to make it look like Paul knows a gospel-style Jesus. In either case, poetical expressions or interpolations, the general thesis of Doherty explains the mass of evidence that Paul talks consistantly (if not exclusively) about a heavenly figure of Jesus.

This is better than the traditional psychological explanation that Paul is embarrassed about not being a real apostle of Jesus. In fact, if this was true, then his starting point would have had to be the false teachings of the legitimate apostles. Only after refuting them could he introduce his alternative Jesus-in-the-sky hypothesis. He would have had to begin by demonstrating that Jesus' teachings ran counter to the disciples' teachings. Paul could never have pronounced the disciples wrong on circumcision and not eating meat offered to the Gods, unless he offered Jesus' words on the subjects in his own defense. Only if Paul and the disciples he was opposing did not know an historical Jesus could he have argued with them on these subjects in the way he does, citing Jewish scriptures instead of the words of Jesus.


So, we have to credit Doherty for giving the most reasonable and satisfactory answer to the lack of reference to an historical Jesus in the Pauline epistles.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

EarlDoherty

Not quite. Don has actually created the straw man he puts in my lap.

By let's say 170, I have no doubt that some pagans knew the Gospels, or at least the 'traditions' contained in them. Celsus was one, probably Lucian another, though to what extent Lucian knew them is debatable. However, I have used the "since according to even Doherty the pagans already knew what Christians believed" argument in an only if context. If there were an historical Jesus and Christianity had been around for a century based on such a figure, then pagans everywhere who had ever heard of Christianity would presumably have known about Jesus of Nazareth, and therefore the apologists who "described minutely" all the details of their faith wouldn't have been accomplishing anything, and would in fact be discrediting themselves by leaving out and denying something every pagan already knew.

But if no HJ existed, and Christianity had not been basing itself on such a figure for most of its history, and recently only in certain circles, then most pagans would presumably not be familiar with such a figure, the apologists would know that, and they could easily leave out something they themselves considered unhistorical and irrelevant. Especially if they lived in centers that were not yet heavily impacted by historical-Jesus belief. And we should note that this is true of Theophilus (Antioch), Athenagoras (Athens), and Minucius Felix (North Africa). Whereas Justin, at the point when he encountered some gospel(s) and turned his Logos into the Gospel Jesus, was living in Rome, which was the hotbed of HJ development (whereas, if I recall, he was converted in Ephesus two decades earlier, and in Trypho recounts that conversion with no mention of an historical Jesus).

And once again, Don just doesn't seem to be able to follow, or even pay attention, to what I say. Yes, Tatian was a mythicist (he was not yet following in his 'teacher's footsteps when he wrote his Apology), but he was familiar with the "stories that we, too, tell"--those like the pagan myths which he compares them to. Only he didn't accept them as historical accounts. Theophilus and Athenagoras may also have been familiar with some sort of "gospels" but they do not seem to treat them as history either. The evidence for that we went over very thoroughly quite recently, and I'm not going to go down that road again at this time.

It would be so much easier to debate with Don if he could just learn to understand what the opponent is saying and then take it into account before repeating himself.

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Thanks to Jay for putting a very good cast on something I had not formulated quite that way before, that if Paul were ever to demonstrate that his apostleship was as worthy as the Jerusalem apostles', if he believed that his interpretation and preaching of Jesus was superior, he would have to discredit that of the other apostles by appealing to Jesus' words and deeds in life.

But I want to clarify the following:

"Poetical expressions" is misleading. It implies that I think Paul didn't mean what he said, that he didn't take it literally, that it was all metaphor. I think Paul meant everything he said literally, but in application to his concept of the spiritual world and Christ within it. "Of the seed of David kata sarka" is not a metaphor, much less poetic; Paul believed it had some kind of reality in the spiritual dimension (in "the world of myth," to use Don's favorite expression), revealed to him by scripture. It is that viewpoint that I have come to solidify and fine-tune in my own mind lately, not the least through our discussions here on kata sarka, etc. and which I have tried to get across in a few long postings in the last couple of weeks.

The mythicist case, like science--as opposed to the HJ position and revelation--is not set in stone and will evolve as the evidence is further examined. Mythicism, like science, can also encompass disagreement and contradiction between those who argue it, such as the difference between Wells and myself.

Earl Doherty

PhilosopherJay

Hi Earl,

Thanks for the clarification on this issue.

Sincerely,

Jay

Spanky

I have to admit that even when I was a minister I always thought of "James, the brother of the Lord" to be a term of endearment and not a literal brother. I still think this way.