J-D

Why do you think so? What sort of evidence is there for the historicity of John the Baptist?Unless Paul was intentionally propagating doctrines at variance with the teachings of Jesus. But why is that not a possibility?

J-D

It seems to me at least possible that the results of a struggle between rival churchmen were decided not by who really was closer to Jesus, but by other factors--like who was the better political organiser, or who was promoting the doctrine that people found most attractive. That doesn't exclude the possibility that some individuals had factually been closer to Jesus. I wouldn't assume that people were really faithful to Jesus just because they paid lip service to faithfulness to Jesus.

J-D

I didn't intend the word 'switching' to imply an abrupt and rapid change, only a change, a change which might equally have been a gradual one. However, the Jesus Myth model as you have been presenting it still seems to me to involve a change, however gradual, from an original belief in a traditional doctrine of a fleshly Messiah to a belief in an entirely otherworldly/spiritual Messiah, and then a secondary change, however gradual, back to a belief in an incarnate Messiah, with the complete effacement of any record of the first change. Which I still don't say is impossible, but which still strikes me as strange.

dog-on

GDon wrote:
In my mind, the simplest reason for these references is that they were part and parcel of the Christ revealed in OT scripture. So maybe they were just assumed by the epistle writer(s) because God said so. There would be no need for the writer(s) to worry about whether or not this had actually occured in a historical context. Religious fundamentalists make similar leaps all the time, and this is 2006.

Paul talks about his beliefs as being based on revealed truths hidden for long ages past, or something to that effect.

Amaleq13

I continue to be baffled at the apparent discrepancy between what I've written and your understanding of it. :huh:

The MJ model I've presented starts with concerns about the apparent failure of traditional expectations. IOW, they had lost their faith in those traditions.

Clivedurdle

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au...b97f/b97f.html

Somewhere in there - is there a way to search on line books?

The Bishop

Sorry I've gotten back to this so late.No, of course not. It does help clarify the Historical Jesus model in that clearly the early Christians believed that Jesus had resurrected. Whether the dirty work at the crossroads consisted of a deliberate fraud on the part of James and Peter, or whether the Ascension and Pentecost tales arose from a simple subterfuge in which the only evidence that Peter and James had for Jesus's "triumph over death" was an empty tomb - which might easily have simply been stolen - is in the realm of the forever unknowable, unfortunately. I simply wanted to point out that when Peter was first preaching, he could easily have done so - as the pre-Gospel texts seem to - without reference to certain Gospel specifics that Doherty's MJ case regard as essential. It was interesting to me that the speech could have been written solely from reference to the epistles of Paul, but it seems likely that was probably just by accident. But, patently, the Resurrection tale had to be central to it, so in the case of a HJ the Resurrection story has to be explained. I myself don't see that we have to stretch human nature too far to explain it!

Johann_Kaspar

The xian character is a total myth. The only valid historical question is the following one: was there a man crucified by Pontius Pilatus as King of Israel? The problem is that much of the evidence was destroyed by the xians... and what is left is not conclusive.

aa5874

Absolutely correct. The xian character was a child of a ghost. Ghost cannot have children.

J-D

In my first post to this thread, I suggested that some people might consider the model I was canvassing, with a historical flesh-and-blood original leader of the Christian movement, but one about whom little or no biographical detail could be known with certainty, might be considered by some people an 'MJ' rather than an 'HJ' theory, and that I didn't care how people wanted to classify it, it was the content I was interested in.You can see people in the streets preaching messages who never succeed in attracting any followers. It seems to me that any preacher who succeeds in building up a following of any size to his own ministry can't be completely non-descript, or a 'stick figure'. On the contrary, I would infer confidently that such an individual must have seemed quite an impressive figure, at least to some of his audience, even if it is not possible for us to discover what specifically it was that they found so impressive.