maryhelena

Indeed, if the gospel of John is re-dated to very early, pre-70, then it could well be that a re-think is in order for both the historicists and the mythicists ie a high Christology right at the start of Christianity not a build up. Great, in some respects for the mythicists - but on the other hand, all the talk re Paul having no knowledge of the gospel storyline would, most probably, have to be dumped...Does not provide evidence for a historical Jesus though - just a necessity to start looking at history instead of prophetic and theological interpretations of that history.

From The John, Jesus and Project thread.

Current Approaches to the Priority of John

Mark A. Matson
Current Papers and Projects


http://www2.milligan.edu/administrat...son/papers.htm

maryhelena

If there is some deification process within the gospel account re Jesus, all that process relates to is Jesus ie the mythological figure. To assume that this process was also attributed to some historical figure that might have been inspirational to the early Christians is, methinks, not a necessary step to be taking. Particularly so, as such a deification of a human figure would, seemingly, have been so alien to Jewish culture. Consequently, ideas of a historical Jesus that was mythologized and deified is something that would be an abomination to Jewish thought. However, an historical inspirational figure that inspired a mythological Jesus construct – is an entirely different ball game….And one that keeps in focus the integrity of early Jewish Christians.

History is one thing. Interpretation of that history something else. Hence, any historical figure that was important to the early Christians, any historical figure that might have inspired a new perspective re theology, prophecy or philosophy, would, at the very most, only warrant a dim reflection in any mythology storyboard that was created. To equate the mythological storyline with a specific historical figure is to attempt to concertize it – and thus to loose any theological or prophetic insights that it was designed to reflect. The ‘saving power’ within the Jesus mythology is not a historical figure – the ‘power’ is the ideas that are entwined within that mythology – theological or philosophical ideas. The Word became flesh – the idea became reality – ideas become us, they change who we are and they change our future and our world.

Perhaps, rather than the continual debate re Jesus – historical verse mythicist positions – a far more relevant issue is trying to determine early Christian history. Here again, the historicists and the mythicist have two opposing positions – but two positions that are fundamentally in agreement!. Some mythicists seem to go with the idea that order came out of chaos – with Paul charging in on his white horse to put everyone on the straight and narrow path. The historicist are saying that straight and narrow path was already indicated some time earlier by a historical Jesus. Both positions are placing the turning point with one figure, either Paul or the gospel Jesus. If mythicists can see Paul in this light – then they have already conceded the point – that early Christianity owes its jump start to the ideas of one man. It is surely not a big jump from that to the idea of a man earlier than Paul who did the same thing – provide others with ideas that became foundational in their own lives.
Especially so since Paul himself tells us he was a latecomer to the party.

The fundamental issue is not did the gospel Jesus exist – the real issue is the historical time period relevant to the gospel story. The gospels have interpreted that history re prophecy and spirituality concerns. Consequently, one cannot simply work from an interpretation and expect to find a clear historical picture. Likewise, a clear historical picture does not equate with the gospel story’ interpretation of that history.

A clear historical picture, for argument a picture of a historical inspirational figure, can provide an anchor of sorts, a point from which things can develop, move forward etc. Without an anchor in reality ideas are simply floating abstractions. Without an anchor in history, prophecy is, likewise, meaningless. That is, basically, the gospel’s answer to the Gnostics – ie real time please….

Doug Shaver

I am not rejecting any eyewitness account of Jesus' life. I am rejecting the claim that certain documents are eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life.

gurugeorge

Again, that would be a plausible enough idea - if there were any hint of a man Jesus, or anything that couldn't be positively explained as non-historical.

"Plenty of reason"? No, plenty of speculation about someone's psychology.

And how do you know what's "likely" in the context? Do you feel you have a good enough understanding of the area at that time in order to form a cogent opinion as to what's "likely"? Of Judaism? Of the context-forming Hellenistic philosophies? I don't feel I do, but I try, which brings me to my next point ...

Well, I'm jealous - I wish I had Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Coptic, so I could refer to the primary texts myself! :blush: Unfortunately, I don't have those languages, so I must perforce avail myself of the work of the scholars who translate those ancient texts into English, and must critically review the analyses and commentaries of the scholars whose life work is to analyse and comment on those texts.

I don't feel that just reading English translations of the Bible without any sort of canvassing of what's known or mooted (by the people who spend their time investigating and thinking about these things) about the context of the day, is going to get me close to the primary texts, to what those people actually said, and what it betrays about what they did. It beats me how you can think you can do it.

True but irrelevant - what I'm pointing to is a growing awareness amongst some scholars of the possibility that "philosophy" in those days may IN FACT have been strongly influenced by occultism, not just in the times under discussion, when the influence of mysticism and occultism on Middle and Neo Platonism (and vice-versa), Neo-Pythagoreanism and Hermeticism is kind of obvious, but even going right back to people like Parmenides and Empedocles and other pre-Socratics and Pythagoreans - ferchrissakes, even Socrates, the honest-to-goodness founder (through Plato) of Western rationalism, had a "daemon" who he contemplated/communed with. There's actually a fair bit of recent archaeology backing this line of argument up. (a recently-discovered near-contemporary bust of Parmenides which, in its context, shows him to have been a healer-priest of Apollo at Velia; gold leaf funerary tablets which show cross-fertilization of ideas between contemporary magickal practices and current philosophical ideas; long-held but only recently-translated ancient Hellenistic religious texts that reveal insights into early Orphism, and hence early Pythagoreanism).

And not just the Hellenistic side, but also on the Jewish side. Note this review by Price of the recent work of a scholar investigating the more woo-woo side of Judaism at the time.

And it's not just archaeology that backs up this kind of context - it's neurology, psychology, etc. We understand better how people have mystical experiences and visionary experiences, and how common they are.

So IF that context is correct, if those scholars are correct, not only does the presence of a lot of interest in these subjects in those times substantially affect the over-arching context we must view the Christian stuff in, it also affects the translation of the texts. But even in ordinary translation, there's enough there to form a plausible explanation of Christian origins that were not quite as the orthodoxy later described them.

Anyway, some philosophers were not only interested in mysticism and occultism as a topic of discussion, they actually practiced those things. And if you understand the subjective power of the types of experiences involved, then it's easy to see where the conviction comes from (and also faith, in the sense of trust, or dogged determination).

THAT is where religion comes from, from people doing spiritual exercises and having results. If it weren't for that, for peoples' natural capacity for these unusual types of experiences, nobody, no rational person would ever have invented "spirits", "gods", etc., etc., as serious explanations for the world. But these were rational people who also happened to have these types of experiences - they were subjectively powerful enough to convince them of their reality, and fire them with enthusiasm and conviction.

Now sure, there were political movements at the time too, and religion has often been involved with politics. But you have to stretch it to think this movement was primarily political. Again, ok, there's evidence that (IF THERE HAD BEEN A MAN JESUS) might well be interpretable as hinting at a political origin, but for that argument to have bite you first have to find your man.

There seems to have been a bit of one-upmanship going on the congregation and Paul is reminding them that whatever "gifts of the Spirit" (i.e. what we would call mystical and visionary experiences) they may have, everyone's in it together. But the real point of interest is how this is mentioned casually (again, it's the little slips that give the game away). It's a matter of course that people in Paul's congregation were having visions, prophesying, seeing spirits, etc., etc. It's no big deal.

So, in the earliest Christianity we know, the direct evidence shows that people were doing this stuff.

None of your quotes especially point to an origin as a "working class" vs. my "middle class" (actually I do apologise for introducing these terms, they're really not literally apt, but I guess they stand for something we're talking about). I've already acknowledged that the Christians did pick up a lower-class following, but the evidence (even in the fact that it's literary evidence) doesn't point to the lower classes as being anywhere near the origin (unless one thinks of someone like Paul as the type of working class con artist who charms middle-class folks with a "bit of rough").

Come on! You say "preconceived", but you've got to start somewhere. Sure you can read the texts straight off the bat and read what you think they mean. But the more you know about the context, their provenance, etc., the more accurate your picture is likely to be. I'm reading the texts with a background general knowledge (not as sharp as it could be, but I've built it up over some time) about religion, first as a worldwide phenomenon throughout prehistory and history, and about religions and philosophies nearer the time under discusssion. At each step, I've looked at whatever scholarly backing I could find AND tried to keep an eye on opposing views.

There are always preconceptions, preconceptions are absolutely necessary for reason to function at all. It's just you have to be ready to give them up sometimes, and try others on for size.

Do you or do you not think GLuke intends its readers to believe that Jesus was born of a woman who was f****d by a spirit?

a) I don't "miss" the faith aspect, I stress it as a very important part of the later orthodox riffing off the original mystical/visionary Jesus idea (again, let me remind you: the reason I think orthodoxy is later is because their own words betray it, a la Bauer - note, this doesn't in itself prove the mystical origin, but it leaves room for it if there are other reasons to hold there was a mystical origin - and we do have other reasons, from a plain reading of the Paul writings as (largely) mystical and visionary documents, the writings of someone who saw and communed with a visionary Jesus, an imaginary (or rather "astral", lucid-dream-like) friend.

b) the gospels are already part of the orthodox stream of thought (they obviously must have bits of the earlier stuff in there, but whatever one's theory might be, one would have to have some independent criteria for teasing out what's original).

Elijah

The point that I was making was that your evidence of being able to reconstructing the gospel story with bits of Jewish history/OT doesn’t mean anything. Thrown on the conspiracy pile with the rest.
For me:

More likely, he doesn’t know because whatever bit of data you imagine would have convinced you wasn’t a point of conversation with the apostles.

More likely, what he does know he can’t be sure of because it came from second hand sources.

More likely, the apostles can’t be sure of what you want because Jesus didn’t talk about and they had just met him during the movement so they didn’t know his past.

More likely, Paul knows and trusts it but it isn’t relative to what he is discussing.

Very very very unlikely, this is the smoking gun for the world’s most fantastic conspiracy theory; where there is no Jesus, they just made him up later.

Hmm let’s see, do I need to be a Jew from the time period to be able to take a stab at what isn’t a likely scenario here?
No I’m just speaking of reading the texts in English. You could of just said you don’t evidence and we could have moved on, instead of you trying to make it about my ability to understand what is going on.
Sure there was influence, sure there was people doing both and combining but you still have to distinguish the two. How about, it’s like science and technology, they may be related and influence each other but they are not the same.
No religion is the product of children’s natural curiosity and asking where they come from and where they go when they die. It also comes from us not being at peace in life and with each other and looking for solutions to that. These solutions have evolved as we have reasoned em out and seen what works and what doesn’t while letting the people pick and popularize what they want to.

Visions don’t produce these ideas they confirm them. Paul had the idea that Jesus could be the messiah and the vision confirmed it for him. That’s how visions work and you know this because visions are products of our mental state so the ideas that they display are ideas we are already familiar with. They don’t create new ideas and they don’t crate religions… they validate existing ideas within them already.
Well if it’s catered to save everyone, who would include the working class it’s got to be political. What they need first and foremost is a reform of society. The whole first last, last first bit. A complete philosophy is going to include politics like with Plato’s Republic and Laws or Aristotle’s Politics. Also you have to look at Judaism itself as political reform in a kind of early republic trying to get out of earthly rulers /Pharaoh’s control.

Jesus is an attempt to establish a new kind of idea for a king, for a new kind of kingdom where the authority was meant to serve man, not rule over them and that meme was injected into the empire. Political reform, not just mystical mumbo jumbo is going on in a lot of these movements as well.
And by your interpretation that it wasn’t a big deal so shouldn’t be seen as the crux of what they are trying to push should it? The fact that it was a part of their society doesn’t mean it was their mission or the key to the salvation they were selling.
What more do you want it to say? He speaks to the working class about saving them and has them for his apostles and followers in the story? Where is your evidence again for this middle class origin, what does the list look like for examples? If the working class movement wasn’t there from the beginning when did it start and why, with who?
Everyone has biases, sure but you are letting a broad hypothesis about how all religions start dictate what evidence you accept in order to try and confirm the original hypothesis by conforming the data to it. You should be real weary of any theories that claim to explain how all religions start and those would be the first I would look to get rid of.
Good laughs man! It’s truly hard to tell if you’re serious or not, if it wasn’t so common I would be sure you were just messing with me. No I don’t think there is any way in HELL that the author is trying to write ghost porn. You say you haven’t missed the faith aspect but you are missing it here and interpreting the story in the context of a Greek myth about a man god instead of Jewish story about messiah where faith is the emphasis and can do anything even allow a virgin conceive a child if she has faith.

His power comes from the people’s faith, not from being a magical god man. Anyone can have his power if they had even a bit of true faith.
Instead of developing some criteria for how you should dissect and cut up the text so that it can be reinterpreted in a new light different from the one presented, maybe you should just consider it really is just a story about how they thought the faith started in a guy they thought was the messiah. Simple solutions that coincide with the evidence we have is preferred over conspiracy theories that don’t make sense and there is no evidence for IMO.

Elijah

Read it thanks. I think the high Christology is just simply thinking he is the messiah in John, the author is just more keyed in on that he is offering eternal life for faith in him. The prologue may have been original to the author but the metaphysical statement about personifying the logos isn’t what the story is trying to illustrate. The point isn’t to say he was the logos in the flesh but the messiah and to that writer/community the messiah would personify reason/logos.

aa5874

Actually you don't really know anything about Paul. You are making up stuff from your imagination. You need to stick to the narrative. Your imagination is just running wild.

It cannot be proven that the Pauline writers had visions. Any one can say they had a vision. Are you the authority on visions and can determine without any facts what visions are?

You simply do not know how Christianity was started.

Anybody can start a religion by claiming they had some vision from some God.


If you look at the narrative it would be noticed that Jesus spoke in riddles to the Jews so that they would remain in sin. To the Jews, Jesus was talking mumbo jumbo.

In the Gospels, Jesus did not even condemn the deification of Roman Emperors. Jesus cursed the Pharisees and the Sadducees but never once cursed a Roman Emperor.

Jesus did not one single time applaud the Jews for not allowing Pilate to place effigies of the Roman Emperor in the Temple.

Jesus came to warn the Jews about the impending destruction of Jerusalem and of the conflagration of the earth.

There is nothing mystical about the Jesus story. It is about death and destruction to the Jews and Jesus coming back in the clouds of heaven.

If the so-called propecies did come true, we would not be discussing Jesus, the world as we now know it would have been conflagrated about 2000 years ago.

In the narrative, the world was to come to end shortly after the Fall of the Temple, Jesus told the Sanhedrin that they would see him coming in the clouds. Jesus would judge the world and burn up those who did not believe in him.

"Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The time draweth nigh". That is all to the Jesus story in the Synoptics.

The Jesus in Revelations is compatible to the Jesus in the Synoptics. The God/man Jesus of the Synoptics and the heavenly Jesus of Revelation are consistent.

Their message is the same "Behold I come quickly." There will be a conflagration coming with utter destruction to those who do not believe in Jesus.

Revelations 2.10-12 It was after the failed prophecy of the conflagration that the Jesus story changed to salvation by the resurrection.

In the narrative, gJohn's Jesus did not tell the Sanhedrin that they would see him coming in any clouds. gJohn's Jesus abandoned the Synoptic Jesus apocalyptic theme.

The Pauline Jesus did not reveal to Paul any urgent apocalyptic message of massive immediate destruction. The Pauline Jesus' revelations are not compatible with the revelations to John or the apocalyptic teachings of the Jesus of the Synoptics.

There was no suicide pact in the narrative.

Jesus claimed he would be raised from the dead and that the Jews would suffer the destruction of all destruction for not believing he was the Messiah.

maryhelena

And, interestingly, if GJohn is re-dated to being the earliest gospel, this would be the first concept of the messiah ie a man full of wisdom, a cynic type figure, a man concerned with ideas and the power of intellectual/spiritual pursuits. So, yes, the high Christology is wisdom based, is 'godlike' and is the hallmark, the standard, for any messiah that would be seeking not an earthly kingdom but a 'heavenly' kingdom...

And if it's a 'heavenly' kingdom, an intellectual or spiritual kingdom, that is the goal of a high Christology - then this idea would straightaway place early Christianity within a world-wide context. Only later, with GMark is this high Christology being reigned in to conform to a particularly Jewish context - the last supper and its flesh and blood inauguration of the New Covenant.

Actually, if one starts with GJohn and its high Logos/Wisdom Christology - a Christology that is fundamentally an open-ended philosophy - then the later movement, in Mark, Matthew and Luke, to concentrate on the Jewish setting of the Christology storyline - is clearly discernible. In other words - later gospels, the synoptic gospels, are running with the Jewish element and letting the open-ended Logos/Wisdom Christology of GJohn sit on the back burner.....

And are we not here seeing a hint of that very early controversy with the heretic Marcoin - he was not buying into the wholesale Jewish take-over of the Logos/Wisdom high Christology. Little wonder, so it seems, that GJohn has been so neglected as far as being able to offer some insight into early Christian beginnings.

I laid out in earlier posts the possibility that Philip, son of Herod the Great, was an inspirational figure that others saw as somehow being relevant to their own spiritual, intellectual, ideas etc. If this is so, then it becomes obvious that these ideas could go either way - towards a wholly Jewish context or towards a more open-ended context. The early evidence regarding Christian history was that it in fact went the way of Marcion. His following being much larger and spread wider than the 'orthodox' view - which was the wholly Jewish viewpoint. Obviously, with Philip, the Jewish position would have been the very much harder sell (re his father....). Eventually, of course, the Jewish take on things won out over Marcion - ie the ancient heritage idea being, ultimately, a bigger draw card in some circles.

Chili

It began in Jn 6:66 when unbelievers first parted company with the true faith and have been swervers ever since. To me it doesn't matter who Paul was or what he looked like not do I care if Jesus ever walked or talked because the message is not in 'that' he said but 'what' he said.

Chili

It seems to me that that passage is also where so called Christians have apostolic tradition with James the so called Christian who already then started scattering the flock.