Toto

Creationism=JM is more than rhetoric. It is an insult meant to distract from the real issues.

It is an indication that McGrath really doesn't understand what he's talking about.

Kapyong

Gday,

Yup.
JMcG has already decided that MJ = creationism.

Now he's just doing anything he can to spread the meme.

And he is being succesful, e.g. we can see the meme turning up in various fora such as here :
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=208491]


K.

Toto

McGrath did not invent the idea. It first surfaced here when a group of Christian apologists tried to make the point almost a decade ago.

jgoodguy

It is intended to discomfort his opponent(s) and it is a distraction.

stephan huller

Why don't those who argue for the Jesus Myth proposition latch on to an actual tradition in antiquity that embodies their beliefs - viz. Marcionitism. This is the part that never makes sense to me. Why not just hitch your wagon with Marcion and say 'here is the earliest form of Christianity and it held that Jesus's was definitely not a human being.' I guess I am showing my ignorance but why not make this a fight about Marcion? Those who argue for a historical Jesus have this thing called 'the Church tradition' which gives them comfort knowing that Jesus was a man etc. Why not attack them with an even older tradition that says the opposite? It's just a question of strategy, I guess.

jgoodguy

Thanks for your comments!

GakuseiDon

Who was that, Toto? Which Christian apologists made the point that being associated with creationists was an insult? And haven't atheists made the same comparison?

Toto

I think Freke and Gandy in their Jesus Mysteries did claim that the gnostics were actually mythicists.

Of course, the orthodox do not admit that Marcion is an earlier tradition, or that he was a mythicist.

Toto

I'm not sure how you got that out of what I wrote.

Nomad used to try insult mythicists by comparing them with creationists. It was much later that a few atheists wanted to claim that mythicism was like creationism. No one, either Christian apologist or atheist, has made a coherent case that mythicism is at all like creationism in any significant aspect.

I still think that the historical Jesus has more in common with creationism, especially the pre-Darwinian version.

stephan huller

I am just suggesting for what's its worth I can't get over the question of grounding these ideas in a particular historical individual or tradition. Which tradition came closest to the truth of the original paradigm for Christianity? I think this is the difficulty for Ehrman and even those who stand close to many at this forum in other respects. The question of identifying Church Fathers who line up in favor of the Jesus the man is quite straightforward - the author of the Hypomnemata attributed to Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Theophilus, Hippolytus, Tertullian etc. Who are the historical witnesses who witness the JM position?

I just think that it would be important to find a 'real person' from antiquity who becomes the poster child for the movement. You know, the face of Jesus Mythicism in antiquity. That might turn around Bart Ehrman and other people who seem to be allies in other respects.

I would imagine that many of the Nag Hammadi writings are JM texts (maybe I still don't get this). Now it's just a matter of finding a historical individual or perhaps a whole tradition.

I actually think there were more people in the second century who thought that Jesus was divine hypostasis than a human being. I think Celsus's book demonstrates that quite clearly.