gurugeorge

The mythicist interpretation of early Christianity is often presented as an "argument from silence". (There's a couple of threads raging on this issue at the moment, lots of good stuff.) But actually, as Doherty himself says somewhere, this is only one side of the coin.

The "silence" (e.g. in Paul) is something that's only apparent from a historicist perspective - something that has to be explained from that perspective, which takes for granted a fair amount of the "official" Christian apostolic history (Acts, etc.), and a fair amount of the self-image of proto-orthodoxy in the first couple of hundred hears of Christian history. Of course, it is possible to explain the "silence" from that perspective (and standard biblical scholarship seems to have found several ways that are feasible from that perspective, AFAIK it's still a live issue), but the "silence" itself remains (from that point of view) a puzzling intrinsic feature of Paul (or the earliest texts as a whole).

But from the mythicist perspective, there's no "silence" at all in Paul/Early Christianity.

From the mythicist perspective, e.g., Paul's writings (bracketing likely tweaking and interpolation, first by proto-orthodoxy, then Marcion, then again proto-orthodoxy) do exactly what they say on the tin. They are a presentation of what Paul thought, and preached, in the context of exhortation and advice (therefore necessarily somewhat summary, but not necessarily therefore incomplete).

This is a positive virtue of the mythicist hypothesis that I think is often overlooked in these arguments.

In fact, the part the "argument from silence" plays in the mythicist line of thought is merely suggestive. It suggests that thinking "out of the box" of standard biblical scholarship might produce a more coherent, less "epicyclic" explanation. IOW, it suggests the following idea: what if we take what Paul, Hebrews, etc., say as more or less sufficient, coherent, and silence-free? What do those texts look like, if we assume that they aren't silent about anything?

dog-on

Guru, what evidence do you have that places the epistles in the hands of the "proto-Orthodoxy" prior to them being found in the hands of the Marcionites?

gurugeorge

I added that aspect in because I was impressed by DC Hindley's argument on my Marcion/Paul thread. The Radikalkritik line of argument which I think you follow (Marcion's Paul was more or less authentic) is also plausible to me. Price's view, which seems to be slightly different again, and triangulated between the radical and standard scholarly views, I also like. I'm honestly not decided about it, I'm just pretty sure there was some proto-orthodox interpolation at some time, but I also think that it can't have been all that extensive, just a bit of tweaking. (If it had been all that extensive, there probably wouldn't have been any "silence" at all!)

dog-on

Then we are basically in agreement. Maybe because the orthodox doctrine, in the end, was meant to be understood in its packaged form (the history of JC). Only small "tweaks" to the original Paulines may have been necessary in order to subjugate Paul without completely disinfranchising the congregations that the proto-orthodox hoped to add to their own ranks. A reworking of the forerunner of Luke, tack on Acts and away you go...

GakuseiDon

This is an interesting exercise! Let's pretend that the Gospels or any other Second Century writings didn't exist (so people on either side of the debate can't appeal "but the Gospels say..!") I'm not sure which writings you'd like to include or exclude. At the least, let's use Paul and the other "Pauline" letters.

Perhaps we can break this into two areas: Jesus before crucifixion, and Jesus before birth/after crucifixion.

Jesus before birth/after crucifixion:
* Jesus was pre-existent
* After being crucified, Jesus is buried, resurrected and goes to sit at the right side of God.

Jesus before crucifixion (list adopted from info from Bede's website):
* Jesus was born a Jew (Gal 4:4)
* Jesus was a descendent of David (Rom 1:3)
* Jesus was a descendent of Abraham, just like Paul (Rom 11:1)
* Jesus was born sometime after Moses and Abraham (Gal 3:16)
* Paul and his countrymen were Israelites, as was Jesus, who came out of the Israelites according to the flesh (Rom 9:3)
* Jesus came from the tribe of Judah (Heb 7:14)
* Jesus had a brother named James (Gal 1:19)
* Jesus taught on divorce (1 Cor 7:10)
* Jesus taught on the end-times (1 Thess. 4:15)
* Jesus was handed over to authorities who crucified him (1 Cor 2:8, 1 Cor 11:23-25)
* Jesus underwent abuse and humilation (Rom 15:3, Heb 5:7)
* In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to God (Heb 5:7)
* "Jesus came to deliver us out of the present evil age" (Gal 1:4), and "the risen Christ is the first-fruits of those sleeping" (1 Cor 15:20), and "now once in the end of the world Jesus has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb 9:26), all suggesting that the crucifixion was a recent event
* Jesus ("the Deliverer") came out of Jerusalem (Rom 11:26)
* Jesus ("the stumbling block") was crucified in Jerusalem (Romans 9:33, 1 Cor 1:22)
* Jesus was crucified at Passover (1 Cor 5:7)
* Jesus suffered outside the gate, so that he could sanctify the people with his own blood (Heb 13:12)
* Jesus despised the shame of the cross, and endured the hostility of sinners (Heb 12:3)
Finally:
* People are waiting for Jesus to appear a second time (Heb 9:28)

I know that some of these are controversial (e.g. James as "Lord's brother"), some posters here would regard one or more passages as interpolations, and some passages may fit a "spiritual" Jesus as well as a historical Jesus (e.g. crucified by "authorities"). Still, regardless of whether Paul was referring to a historical Jesus or a mythical Jesus in those passages, does the information above consist of a "silence"? Should we be surprised that Paul didn't offer more about Jesus? Remember, we are assuming that the Gospels didn't exist at this stage, so no fair comparing to what is in the Gospels for this exercise.

spamandham

I think it IS silent on what is most important - what it was that made Jesus 'the christ'. Paul gives us no clue as to why Jesus was so special, which is extremely odd, and is IMHO the whole reason for the controversy.

BTW, 1 cor 7:10 is derived from Mal 2:16, in which the exact same 'thus saith the lord' language is used. "The Lord" refers to YHWH, not to Jesus.

Likewise, 1 thes 4:15 is OT teaching from 1 kings 13:17. I don't see this as a claim of 'jesus said', so we are left with Paul making clear references to the OT, when a reference to Jesus on the subjects would have been more compelling to a Christian audience.

If you exclude the passages that are under contention historically, (such as Gal 4:4), and remove from your list that which is obviously just a reference to the OT, you aren't left with much.

Clivedurdle

They look profoundly and completely mythical, with the alleged historical bits as obvious scraps of introduced realism, not even required for the plot and probably not even consciously thought about - stories upon stories.

Comment on the radio today about the KJV being a political translation to bolster King James and moderate Anglicanism - religious extremists - catholic and puritan - were not seen as heretics but traitors.

I was brought up on KJV and New English Bible. Thinking about it, it was the NEB that led me to mythicism, other writers confirmed a basic understanding I had developed but was not conscious of.

I am wondering if people's position on hj mj continuum is related to the texts they are used to - and in fact going back to the alleged original Greek is also misleading because no one can return to that world as it is badly polluted by our modern concepts. We can though see as in a glass darkly and do probabilistic calculations and literary criticism and decide if it looks like a story, barks like a story, maybe it is a story!

ynquirer

They really look like theological, not historical writings. Much like hundreds and hundreds of writings by Christian theologians that have believed, beyond any doubt, that Jesus was a historical man.

spamandham

Don, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Don is trying to do is to establish what Paul believed regarding Jesus, not so much what is actually historical regarding Jesus.

ynquirer

Since your comment seems a comment on something ynquirer has said, and provided that ynquirer is me, may I ask what your comment on what I said means?