Didymus

It has been posited many times.

Much as I lean toward the mythicist position, I can't make this work to my satisfaction. The minimalist Jesus sketched by Paul just doesn't spring full-grown out of the OT. While I agree that the details in the gospels were largely derived from Old Testament sources, the rudimentary story arc of Paul's Jesus - son of God, a Jew born of a virgin, had a brother, crucified, buried, resurrected, made post-resurrection appearances - simply cannot be sussed from the OT.

Much as I admire Earl Doherty and respect his work, I'm becoming unconvinced that Paul didn't think of Jesus as a man who lived on earth in recent times. Paul describes Jesus as a human being in a number of respects. Although it's possible to explain those references in a way that allows us to think Paul may not have thought of Jesus as human, Paul himself says nothing that forces us to do so. That's a big deal. If Paul believed that Jesus didn't live among us, it seems like he would have told us that outright, just like he would have said something about the Trial and the miracles if he had known anything about those things.

Fiction is often based on current events and characters, "Ripped from today's headlines!" as it were. In the same fashion, it seems like Paul (or whoever came up with his Christ crucified) would have needed some recent person or incident to build on. The most likely such incident - because it is historically plausible, and because it would be remembered as a terrible injustice and quite possibly as the rejection of a prophet, ala the Wisdom stories - would be the crucifixion of an innocent man, and most particularly a man named Jesus, a name that has messianic connotations.

At this point, this "virtual MJ" notion seems to solve more problems than it creates. By permitting Paul to regard Jesus as a human being, it dispenses with the kata sarka question. It permits the phrase "brother of the Lord" to be taken literally. (Did James have a "long lost" brother named Jesus? It's conceivable.) It permits us to think of the Eucharist as an event presided over by a man, not merely as a church ritual with a fictional or mythical character presiding. It permits Paul to imagine Jesus as having a mother. And, most of all, it allows for, even compels, an earthly crucifixion. (Is there any other kind? Not in the OT, that's for sure.)

It also explains the infamous Pauline Silences. Paul didn't talk about Jesus' life and teachings because during Paul's time those things had not "come to light" (been gleaned from scripture) yet.

The "virtual MJ" doesn't suggest that the gospels are historically accurate. And it certainly doesn't demand that we kludge up a fully formed historical figure to serve as the central figure in four ahistorical, geographically awry, miracle-rich, flat-out impossible narratives.

I don''t think of this as some sort of truncated HJ. The term is almost always taken to mean an individual whose life narrative has significant similarity to the Jesus of the gospels. That's not what I mean. I'm really just talking about an incident, a spark - not a template. That's why I'm using the term "virtual MJ."

I fully agree, although it may have evolved over time rather than being invented by Mark as a single unified narrative. There's nothing that persuades me that any of the gospels are based on actual series of historical events. An isolated incident like the crucifixion, perhaps, but nothing more than that, and nothing as complex as the Trial narrative, for sure. It's just too problematic and too colored by the social, political and communal issues that the gospel writers were addressing.

Hard to do. Where do you find Pilate and crucifixion in the LXX?

Basing pericopes and phrases and concepts on scripture is one thing. Imagining an entirely new quasi-contemporaneous character from those passages is something else entirely, and implicit in that is deliberate deception. I don't think Paul constructed a human character, rather I think he and his congregations came to believe that the mysterious "Jesus" who they heard was crucified in Jerusalem was indeed the messiah.

Didymus

Didymus

There's no indication in the gospels that Jesus was executed because he had a following, large or small. According to the gospels, he was executed because he disturbed the peace and his claim to be the messiah was feared by the Jewish authorities as possibly true. (This never made sense to me, but there you go.)

Risk assessment has its risks. What are the chances that all the ducks would be lined up just so, as opposed to just so? Depending on the situation, either scenario is equally likely. The problem is that the entirety of the evidence for the latter - Mark's gospel - is swamped by fideistic and ahistorical material. It is derivative and uncorroborated. It simply has to be taken with a grain of salt.

You are right that a community of disciples would have been helpful in perpetuating his memory, but I don't think they would have been essential. Unjust executions seem to have been taken very seriously - see Josephus' account of the stoning of James. James never had followings like JtB, for example, but the unfairness of his execution became etched in memory, as they say. The destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 was even thought to be divine retribution for that heinous act.

Didymus

Blui

To me the distinction between a historical Jesus and a theological or biblical Jesus, what i mean is, the distinction between perhaps some person whom the Jesus of the Bible is based off, and the Jesus of the Bible, is largely irrelevant.

If we take out all the improbabilities of the biblical jesus, that is to say, no virgin birth, no talking to God, no talking to the Devil, no large following, no crucifixion, no miracles and no descendancy from David.

What is left? possibly someone whom may or may not be called Jesus, whom inspired a following by preaching some unknown words that were possibly lifted straight from the OT.

But this figure would be so far removed from the biblical Jesus that i really dont think it is even worthwhile to call it a historical Jesus.

The most persuasive argument to me is that the legends of jesus could not have arisen in such a short time span between him living and the writings of him after, but this assumes two things.

1.There was not already significant myth/legend building spurred by the OT prophetic messiah.

2.The events of Jesus' life actually happened, for instance, his crucifixion etc.

J-D

Some documents from that period have survived. Many have not. If we have no surviving documentation of Christians in first-century Palestine, how reliable a basis do we have for the inference that none ever existed? For that matter, given how long some of the now known documents remained hidden and unknown, how reliable a basis do we have for the inference that there is no surviving documentation still awaiting discovery?Either the ‘ben Pandera’ legend is a Jewish counterblast to Christianity, or it isn’t. To describe it as a counterblast is necessarily to suppose that the people who propagated it were aware of the Christian story of Jesus, even if not in full detail, and the radical dissimilarity of their version makes sense to me in a polemical context. On the other hand, if it was not such a counterblast, what could its origin be?In fairness, I’m not suggesting that I have an airtight case either. But your point that not much would be expected from Judaism during that turbulent period supports the suggestion that not much would be expected from Christianity during that period either—perhaps less, if Christians in Palestine were fewer than Jews. And you’ll see from what I’ve written above that my mileage does vary.I understand you now. A reasonable point.

J-D

Joseph Smith was a real character, not a fictitious one. Your hypothesis would put Paul in the Joseph Smith role, as the real person who founded the religion by making it up out of whole cloth. This in turn would imply that there was no real Christian movement whatsoever before Paul. If that were so, why would Paul himself represent things otherwise? Joseph Smith never represented himself as following in the footsteps of flesh-and-blood immediate predecessors. I also think that by far the simplest explanation for the traditions of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites, as referred to above, is that they represented the lineal successors of the earliest Christians, preserving a pre-Pauline tradition.

J-D

You asked me to stick what you actually said, but now you are paraphrasing. Your original word, which I quoted, was 'realisation', and yes, I do think that 'realisation' implies a change in belief.

What's more, even if the specific individuals involved had never themselves adhered to the traditional belief, they must still be accounted as repudiating the traditional belief. (Unless you are going to assert that they never even knew of the traditional belief.)

Didymus

I don't infer from the lack of documents that none ever existed. We don't know for sure. But when I look at the sum total of evidence for the presence of post-Markan Christianity in Palestine during the first three centuries CE, all I see are Luke's highly dubious reports of mass conversions, martyrdoms, miracle cures, etc. There's nothing else to support the belief that there was a thriving Christian community in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Palestine.

One never knows, does one? But those who make a claim ought to be able to support it with some kind of evidence. Prior to Megiddo, what evidence is there for a Christian community in Palestine? On what basis should we believe that there was such a community? Luke and Luke alone?

Who knows? It's hard enough to trace the origins of Christian legend! It seems that the best way to sabotage a story is with the addition of "facts" that undermine the truthfulness of those who told the story in the first place. Telling a completely different, unrecognizable tale isn't very effective because it's so hard to make the connection.

I've seen the ben Pandera tale described as a completely unrelated legend that was used to disparage Christianity only in the 3rd century. From the many elements that separate the stories, that seems like a pretty fair assessment. And if it's accurate, ben Pandera may have originated as something else entirely. It seems to have been employed as a counterblast only when Christianity became a real "threat." Far as I know, the first time the ben Pandera story was conflated with the Jesus story was in Celsus' "True Doctrine" near the end of the 2nd century. Celsus, of course, was not a Jew. Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia:

In 178 CE, the pagan writer Celsus, in a polemic against Christianity, claimed that he had heard from a Jew that Mary had been divorced by her husband after having an affair with a Roman soldier named Pantheras who was the real father of Jesus. The similarity between Pantheras and Pandera as well as the detail of the lover being a Roman soldier, suggests that Celsus' claim has its origins in material later incorporated in the Talmud. But whereas the Talmud presents separate anecdotes, in Celsus' version they are conflated. The Toledot Yeshu narratives similarly conflate the various anecdotes, and this may be the source for the later common Jewish description of Jesus as Yeshu ben Pandera.

In any case, the ben Pandera in the Tosefta doesn't reveal an accurate knowledge of Christian beliefs, nor, as far as we know, does any other Jewish or Christian document that originated in Palestine during the first three centuries CE.

As I've said, I think Christianity was a phenomenon of the Diaspora from the very beginning. I would be interested in seeing evidence to the contrary.

Didymus

J-D

I think more or less this view, or all the components of it, has been posited on this thread already. And I have already posed the questions I have about it, so I won't repeat them.

J-D

Of course I haven't plumbed all the possibilities. Who has? But I don't need to plumb all the possibilities to compare the likelihood of a specific hypothesis put forward by Didymus with the likelihood of one alternative.

J-D

So just what is it you and I are disagreeing about, then?