gurugeorge

Yes, that's right - in light of the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything internal to the texts that "gives the game away" that there was a real human being behind the myth (i.e. the paradigm I have in mind of the sort of internal evidence that would be helpful would be some hint in Paul that any of the people he is talking about as the "Pillars" actually spoke to Jesus in a non-visionary way), and in light of the fact that there's no external evidence of a man who fits the bill, the best explanation of those facts is that there was no man.

IOW, the most probable explanation for the lack of evidence for a man behind the myth is lack of a man.

And wrt probability wrt everything else, we know for a fact that people have visionary and mystical experiences, it's now starting to be seriously investigated (see Thomas Metzinger) as a gateway to understanding more about how the mind works (much in the same way as pathology does, cf. Oliver Sacks' wonderful books, although this sort of thing isn't inherently pathological, it's more like a quirk of the brain under certain conditions, a byproduct of the way the brain models its body and the world). It's rarer now than it was in those days, but even today it's not that difficult to obtain with an appropriate course of exercises. It's just something the brain does.

Not only that, but, as I said, the background of religion, from shamanism to the most sophisticated philosophical religions, is that some guy has visions and mystical experiences, and brings back the spirits' or the deities' "message" to humanity.

Yes, it's true that religions are started by people, and that it could have been a Jesus fellow how had visions of God giving him a mission; but since we have no evidence for such a fellow, or his doings, or his sayings (since all the supposed doings and sayings can be traced to other sources, from Scripture to other myths at the time, such as the Messiah myth itself), either externally or internally, and since we do have a very-slightly-better attested human being (a non-mythical entity) in Paul, and that person avowedly had visions of the Jesus entity, there's no reason to go any further: it's the most plausible explanation, it's the explanation that accounts for the evidence.

But not only that, as I said in a previous post, we have a means and motive for later historicization of the myth (I mean the stress on something that looks very plausibly human: the discipleship of the "Twelve" to the Jesus entity at a specific time and place in history): the concept of Apostolic Succession. ("Ha, your lineage is descended only from someone who had visions of Jesus; that's all very well and good, but our lineage is descended from people who knew him personally and got teachings from him personally"). And this dislocation of the self-understanding of the cult from its true origin was made possible by the Diaspora - a huge, unusual event, that has sufficient unusualness to account for the slight oddity of the historicization of a myth.

As regards to Price, Toto has dealt with that, and I agree with what she's saying. I don't really see Price as a post-modernist in the sense of proper PoMo, he's just a learned person who knows about that approach and has it as part of his arsenal. I'm a fan of his podcast, and I constantly see him coming back to the evidence-for-existence of things. He cherishes the texts in themselves, but his interest is also clearly in the facts, in the history, about what people thought then, and about how the religion came into being. Sure, in the podcasts, he's unbuttoned and does speculate freely, but he always qualifies his speculations as speculations, and distinguishes them from what the evidence warrants us saying with confidence.

Will get back to your silence post

ApostateAbe

I challenge you to go to Price's books, choose evidence where mythicists are perceived to have an uphill battle (baptism, hometown of Nazareth, apocalyptic prophecies, crucifixion, James and Peter in Galatians), and see how Price argues those points. You can find many of those discussions in The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, which I read upon your recommendation. Find any sign that Price cares about probability in those discussions. Does he show how the alternative explanations are better than the established critical scholarly explanation? Or, does he briefly describe the alternative explanations and leave it at that? The one and only thing Price is good at is research, which is great for unloading as many bizarre theories as he can upon a helpless reader. He doesn't argue for the probability of any particular historical conclusion, except, of course, for the conclusion that we just don't know anything, which of course is his whole point. If he ever did argue that one conclusion is more probable than another, then it would contradict not only his general philosophy of postmodernism but also his closely-aligned position of no historical knowledge at all. That is the position he advances all of the time. He has no other message. Don't believe me? It is typical for a qualified author trying to make his or her own case to occasionally show that his or her own objective conclusion is more probable than the competition's objective conclusion. Price never does that. Of course, that is in large part because he doesn't even have any objective conclusions.

ApostateAbe

I think you have a good point about Paul. I find it a little bizarre that mythicists tend to think that Paul's Jesus was merely spiritual, given the small handful of times he seemingly refers to what could only be a plainly physical human Jesus. I don't want to debate those passages of Paul specifically in this thread, BUT it occurred to me that such a rhetorical point is favored among the mythicists because, if it were true that Paul's Jesus were seemingly spiritual and nothing else, then it would be a point where mythicists have explanatory power. As in: we would strongly expect that Paul's writing about Jesus would be nothing but spiritual if that really were the earliest Christian belief about Jesus. It would constitute convincing evidence that Jesus was nothing but myth.

You can focus on that new thread, now.

Sheshbazzar

How do you get a physical Jebus from Paul when Paul tells us that the only Jebus that he ever had any contact with was the one that appeared to him in a 'vision'.... one that took place after the Jebus whom he had never met in the flesh, had already died, been buried, and allegedly ascended into heaven?

Nothing Paul says is any evidence that there was ever a real-life physical man behind the myth.
Paul cannot be used as a witness to the existence of a man whom he admits he never even met or laid eyes on in any flesh and blood form. The dude was supposedly already in heaven.
He claims to have held conversations with a 'vision', never once with a living breathing physical person.
Paul insists that what he teaches about his Jebus he did not receive from (other) men. So whatever the 'Pillars' may have claimed to have seen first hand, are rejected by Paul as any proof or evidence of his spiritual Jebus.

ApostateAbe

Start a new thread, and I'll be glad to talk about Paul's model of Jesus and Paul's relation to the historical Jesus.

hjalti

Cue spin!

But I think there are very serious problems with the argument of Jesus being from Nazareth.

Sheshbazzar

Bullshit. There is no need to start another thread. Either Paul met Jesus in physical flesh and blood form or he did not.
Paul quite clearly states that his conversations with Jebus all took place after Jebus was dead and in heaven.
You can't make him state anything else.

ApostateAbe

Well, not in my opinion, but the point is that Price will not argue in favor of the probability of any of the alternative hypoetheses he may or may not bring up about Nazareth (or any other relevant topic).

aa5874

The question "How did they come to believe what they believed?" RESOLVES nothing. The question OFFERS nothing but RHETORIC.

Such a question cannot help ApostateAbe and does NOT advance HJ.

"How did people come to BELIEVE Marcion's PHANTOM existed"?

"How did people come to BELIEVE the Myth God SERAPIS did exist?"

We just need a source of antiquity we can TRUST for HJ and there is NONE.

And BELIEVING Jesus was a man does not MAGICALLY excluded him from being MYTH.

You should know that people described as human can be MYTH.

There is ONLY one way to EXCLUDE HJ from being MYTH and that is to PRODUCE a CREDIBLE historical source of antiquity for HJ.

HJ is an argument from SILENCE and UNANSWERED questions.

ApostateAbe

Start a new thread, and I will be happy to talk about it.

11. FRDB Rules.

FR makes available to you FRDB provided that you agree to and abide by the Terms of Use, including that you agree:

[...]
9. Not derail threads or detract from board discussions;