Freethought & Rationalism Archive

aa5874 · 07-12-2008, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

[

Historicism is not the default, but when mythicism keeps failing to provide a superior explanation of the evidence, does agnosticism really continue to be warranted?

So, what is historicism then?

It is just a case of futility and rhetoric.

GakuseiDon · 07-12-2008, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by No Robots

Maybe that's the key to this whole mythicist project, that at its core is belief in a kind of social indeterminacy, a sociological parallel to the quantum indeterminacy of physics.

I suggest it's something more basic. One commonality I noticed when reading many of the more popular "MJ" books is that they push this idea: The early "mythicist" Christians were philosophers, who had a higher understanding of the myths, while the early "literalist" Christians were the ignorant rabble, too blind to understand their own origins. And those books imply that the HJers and MJers today fall into the same groups. IMHO it's an appeal to vanity. Who doesn't want to be on the smart side?

(ETA) Now that I think about it, many fringe ideas push the same dichotomy.

Toto · 07-12-2008, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

...

Furthermore, establishing the likelihood of a historical core does not need to involve stripping the supernatural elements. For example, one doesn't need to do that kind of stripping to argue that mythicist attempts to explain apparent references to Jesus' brothers from Paul and Josephus are kludgy. The stripping can be done after establishing that a historical core is likely.

But this gets to the heart of the matter: how can you decide that a historical core is likely? Legends are created about historical people and without historical people, and there is nothing about the legend that indicates which it is.

And Josephus and Paul do not refer to Jesus brothers. Paul refers to "the brother of the Lord" and Josephus (or his interpolator) refers to James the brother of Jesus [called Christ].

You might find the mythicist explanations kludgy, but I would regard the entire reconstruction of early Christianity rather kludgy. You have to force fit pieces of evidence to try to explain why Jesus was so obscure no one write about his movement, but enough of a threat to get executed, yet not enough of a threat for his followers to be harmed. That's a kludge, one among many.

Toto · 07-12-2008, 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

.... One commonality I noticed when reading many of the more popular "MJ" books is that they push this idea: The early "mythicist" Christians were philosophers, who had a higher understanding of the myths, while the early "literalist" Christians were the ignorant rabble, too blind to understand their own origins. And those books imply that the HJers and MJers today fall into the same groups. IMHO it's an appeal to vanity. Who doesn't want to be on the smart side?

...

This is precisely Freke and Gandy's thesis, and why they promote a neo-gnostic version of Chistianity.

And I think we have discussed this before - that the ancients thought that there were always levels of interpretation, of which the literal was the most basic and intended for people with no imagination, but the spiritual interpretation was superior.

But I don't think other mythicists share this particular philosophy. And I think that you would do better to avoid trying to find some ulterior motive for people who disagree with you.

aa5874 · 07-12-2008, 10:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

To quote you: "Exactly how does your process number 1 differ from stripping the supernatural elements from the gospels and assuming that the rest has some basis in fact?"

To quote myself: "1. We know that the process of humans making stuff up can lead to legends can accrue in the reported histories of real people."

If one is reasoning along the lines of my "four steps," and one is only at step 1, one isn't at the point of deciding that stripping supernatural elements leads to a rough reconstruction of the real history. That comes after that four-step reasoning is done. All "process number 1", or "step 1" if you will, is about is noting that humans have in the past made up legends about real people. Whether that process likely applies to the contents of the NT or not isn't discussed until in the third and fourth steps.

Furthermore, establishing the likelihood of a historical core does not need to involve stripping the supernatural elements. For example, one doesn't need to do that kind of stripping to argue that mythicist attempts to explain apparent references to Jesus' brothers from Paul and Josephus are kludgy. The stripping can be done after establishing that a historical core is likely.

This is like 1 step forward and 4 steps backward.

How can you establish the core before you strip?

Don't you realise the core is inside, you MUST strip first?

But perhaps that is your methodology to guess that there is a core and never strip.

However, the game has been over about 2000 years ago, Marcion has proven to the world that Jesus only needs to APPEAR to have a core to be believed to be an HJ.

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar Jesus came down to Capernaum....." Behold, the coreless HJ.

spamandham · 07-12-2008, 10:42 PM

I'd like to return to this point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

Shoehorning. Matthew is stuck with Jesus being from Nazareth and feels that he needs to force-fit prophecy to justify this.

But why? "Matthew" had already added a genealogy and a phony birth narrative to show Jesus was the equivalent of David. The explanation in regards to Nazareth was superfluous. It was enough to concoct the birth story.

On the other hand, if he wrote that because his audience was not sympathetic, then he couldn't reasonably expect to get away with it. I suppose you could argue he knew his intended audience had heard about the Nazarite expectation, as you suggested might have been the case, and "Matthew" wrote that knowing his audience was so gullible they'd buy it, but this is a stretch that needs more than just wild eyed speculation to accept.

The simplest explanation, is that the author and his audience believed what he wrote actually was a prophecy. To claim otherwise requires much more of a leap than suggesting 'brother of jesus' was a title.

Did you notice the hyper-correlation between the name 'jesus' in Josephus and the position of high priest?

aa5874 · 07-13-2008, 07:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I'd like to return to this point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjramsey

Shoehorning. Matthew is stuck with Jesus being from Nazareth and feels that he needs to force-fit prophecy to justify this.

But why? "Matthew" had already added a genealogy and a phony birth narrative to show Jesus was the equivalent of David. The explanation in regards to Nazareth was superfluous. It was enough to concoct the birth story.

On the other hand, if he wrote that because his audience was not sympathetic, then he couldn't reasonably expect to get away with it. I suppose you could argue he knew his intended audience had heard about the Nazarite expectation, as you suggested might have been the case, and "Matthew" wrote that knowing his audience was so gullible they'd buy it, but this is a stretch that needs more than just wild eyed speculation to accept.

The simplest explanation, is that the author and his audience believed what he wrote actually was a prophecy. To claim otherwise requires much more of a leap than suggesting 'brother of jesus' was a title.

Did you notice the hyper-correlation between the name 'jesus' in Josephus and the position of high priest?

One cannot assume that the author had an audience that expected anything from him, since it possible that the audience for gMatthew was zero initially and then grew over a very long time and was probably non-Jewish.

And also the author of Matthew did not make any reference to a Nazarite, he wrote NAZARENE.

There was a Jewish tradition for NAZARITE.

The word NAZARENE is NOT even in the (KJV) OT. No prophet, no scripture, in effect, claimed that Jesus would be a NAZARENE, so if the author initially had an audience, they would not expect such a thing.

And further, the audience of the author appear not to be familiar with the OT, even perhaps the author himself, not unless the false claim was deliberately written.

jjramsey · 07-13-2008, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

The explanation in regards to Nazareth was superfluous. It was enough to concoct the birth story.

True enough, but an appeal to a prophecy that was really about nazirites is likewise superfluous. Either way, Matthew ended up doing something unnecessary, even if he didn't see it that way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

The simplest explanation, is that the author and his audience believed what he wrote actually was a prophecy.

Fair enough, but that doesn't preclude shoehorning on Matthew's part. Note that any way you slice it, if Matthew is using an OT prophecy, he is still taking it way out of context. Even well-meaning people can distort facts in what seems to be a willful way.

Nor does it make it any more likely that the name "Nazareth" merely results from a misreading of "nazirite."

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Did you notice the hyper-correlation between the name 'jesus' in Josephus and the position of high priest?

Not until you mentioned it and I checked it out on Perseus:

Search in Antiquities of the Jews
Search in Jewish War

Trouble is, it's not a very useful correlation in the MJ/HJ debate, unless one wants to deal in Rube-Goldbergesque theories.

jjramsey · 07-13-2008, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

But this gets to the heart of the matter: how can you decide that a historical core is likely?

We've discussed this, already, ad nauseum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

And Josephus and Paul do not refer to Jesus brothers. Paul refers to "the brother of the Lord" and Josephus (or his interpolator) refers to James the brother of Jesus [called Christ].

You are forgetting 1 Cor. 9:5, where "brothers of the Lord" is plural. Josephus, of course, only refers to one brother.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

You have to force fit pieces of evidence to try to explain why Jesus was so obscure no one write about his movement, but enough of a threat to get executed,

In the Gospels, Jesus was executed around the time of Passover, when Jerusalem would be overcrowded and full of people celebrating freedom from Gentile oppressors while under the rule of those who were seen as Gentile oppressors. Under those conditions, an otherwise mostly harmless no-account apocalyptic ranter could potentially start a riot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

yet not enough of a threat for his followers to be harmed.

If Jesus is doing the ranting while the followers are in amongst the crowds, then it is a heck of a lot easier to arrest him than his followers. It's not as if his followers are portrayed as some sort of insurrectionist armed group that would stand out or reach the notice of someone like Josephus, who did write about such insurrectionists.

These are your idea of kludgy explanations?

Solo · 07-13-2008, 10:00 AM

[QUOTE=aa5874;5443048]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

It doesn't need any faith to believe a cosmic figure was crucified on earth?

No, actually it does not. All you need is understanding of the metaphor.

Quote:

Don't you need faith to believe a cosmic figure was buried and ROSE from the dead as stated by Paul?

How did Paul mean that ? What was he talking about ? I am convinced that if you manage to stop obsessing about what Paul wrote, you will have no trouble accepting that it was something that related to his own experience with the Spirit.

Quote:

You can only have faith to support your position, and even if you deny your faith, you still cannot provide any evidence to contradict Paul's claim that Jesus ROSE from the dead, and ascended to heaven.

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In effect, you cannot contradict Paul's claim that Jesus was a God, a cosmic figure.

Nor am I inclined to do that: I am simply interested in gauging what it was that made Paul believe God himself chose to reveal to Paul (and Paul alone) the ultimate Wisdom he kept secret during the ages, until the end of days. And what was it that persuaded Paul the end of the world was imminent ? The only thing that I have come to believe - truly and without any secret embrace of a religious dogma - is that the Cross came to represent to Paul the purpose of his own suffering in which he recognized the universal Weltschmerz of humanity.

Jiri

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