mountainman

Including the unknown authors of the Nag Hammadi Codices, where one ancient was bold enough to write the following ....

Evidence is evidence. Evidence and not conjecture is what people should be dealing with. The ancients in this case appear to have stated that their entire generation was fleeing christianity because they did not consider that Jesus was a living person. What on earth could this possibly mean?

Toto

It doesn't say that people were fleeing Christianity, and I don't see any reason to interpret it that way.

mountainman

The Interpretation of Knowledge

Translated by John D. Turner

Here are the opening lines from THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY
I see in the above that the author is describing the spread of belief in Christianity. The new christians came to believe by means of signs and wonders and fabrications. Do you know what "fabrications"imply? Emperor Julian uses the same exact term when he wrote about the "Fabrication of the Christians".

The spread of the belief was accompanied by reproaches and humiliations indicates that christianity was being taken to the people of the empire by the sword. Temples of the existing Graeco-Roman religions were being destroyed and the chief priests were being torture or killed by the army which had been ordered to perform and enforce this "purge and revolution". The Old Guardian Class of "noble philosophers" were tortured to confess the error of their ways. See Vita Constantini and Constantine's rescripts following the council of Antioch c.324 CE.

Such was the despotic terror of the times, that people fled in advance of the military backed conversion to christinaity, and did not have the time to hang around and learn the details of the new God Jesus -- such as the crucifixion story. People were just trying to get away from the revolution which was happening and which they had absolutely no control over, since they could not resist Constantine's supreme and absolute military based power.

The last lines above --- our generation is fleeing since it does not yet even believe that the Christ is alive reiterates that the entire generation (and here I maintain the conjecture that it was the generation of the Graeco-Roman populace of c.324 CE) was fleeing in advance of the social and religious revolution, destruction of the temples and the prohibition of the "Old Ways" in preference to the "New and Strange Religion" being touted by Constantine with the direct support of his army.

For these reasons, I argue that people were fleeing the conversion of the empire to Christianity. The authors of the NHL fled all the way hundreds of miles up the Nile to get away from the despotic revolution. Pachomius has "a vision" c.324 CE and heads out of Alexandria. Thousands and thousands were to follow him.

PapaverDeum

It seems to me that mythologizing began much earlier than that.

OK, for a moment let's accept the usual solution to the synoptic problem. That Mark was written first, Matthew and Luke followed, copying from Mark ( or using Mark as a source) and addiing other material. One conclusion that falls out of this is that the consistencies of the synoptics ("synoptic meaning "alike" called so for that very reason) are due to the fact that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source.

Now, Let us consider Luke's birth narrative. What I cannot fathom is how that addition could be considered as anything other than mythologizing ! From here there are two possibilities. Either Luke himself composed it, or he got it from some earlier source who did so. Either way it would seems that mythologizing began with Luke, or perhaps even earlier.

(Of course, if one considers Luke to have been written in the second century, then in that case Horner/Sherwin-White would be correct.)

The other strange thing that I noted was that Mark seems to be a complete and well-constructed narrative, with almost all issues/conflicts resolved with well developed storylines and chracters. If one is trying to be historical, then surely there would be many missing elements, moments when no-one was there to know what really happenned. So what does the writer do in these situations ? He could either leave it out of the story, or alternatively he might compose up a likely scenario that he thinks would have happenned, something that fits the situation and character. Thus does it not seem that the author is at this point, writing fiction or mythologizing ?.

For example, let us consider Mark's scene in the garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest. The author/narrator tells us that everyone but Jesus was asleep so who was there to know what happenned ?). So, at least this part is probably one of those fictional parts.

There is also found that Mark uses material and stories from the Hebrew scriptures in his story, painting Jesus as having the attributes of and being in situations like Elisha, Solomon, etc. The author is casting Jesus as being very much like these older well known figures from Hebrew lore.

As an example of this, consider the feeding of the crowds. This seems very similiar to an older story about Elisha.

I ask myself if this is would be the case with real histories. Is it that here was so much unknown that the author simply filled in the unknown parts with clever fictions while casting his character like those well known and respected from these his characters people's history/folklore ?

I suppsoe that this is a possible explanation. But, the problem is that, we have to admit that the author Mark seems to be already engaged in mythologizing (at the worst) or simplying writing reasonable fiction (at the least).


James

Rich Oliver

Or try spreading a rumour about some fictitious nonsense that Jesus's bloodline has played a major part in European history. Its not like you could expect it to turn in to a major publishing industry in a few decades, with vast numbers of believers leading to best selling novels and block buster movies using its premisses.

arnoldo

IIRC Elisha was feed by ravens and before that the Israelites ate manna in the desert. Other parallels of course is Jonah being in the belly of the whale thee days and Jesus in the earth for three days as well. Apparently Jesus had the wisdom of Solomon when asked the question concerning paying taxes to Caesar (render unto Caesar what is Caesar's). The parallels continue including Joseph being thrown into a pit, and later not being recognized by his brothers (at least not till the second visitation). We could go on about the parallel of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, etc, etc. It seems that Christianity had more than enough time for the myth to develop if it was based on even earlier Judaic mythology.

Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following from a Christian website:

http://www.newlifechttp://www.newlif....php?q=node/63

Do you agree or disagree with that?

If Rodney Stark's estimate in "The Rise of Christianity" that there were 7,530 Christians in the world in 100 A.D. is anywhere near correct, apparently the claim that Jesus rose from the dead was discredited. I know that the texts say that the Pharisees believed that Jesus healed people by the power of Beelzebub, but there is not any credible historical evidence that that was the case. If the Pharisees believed that Moses caused the Ten Plagues in Egypt to occur by the power of God, it is reasonable to assume that they would have believed that Jesus healed people by the power of God. The claim about the Pharisees is obviously false.

show_no_mercy

Surely there wasn't enough time for the myths about Ned Ludd to develop. The Luddites (c. 1810) were simply too close to the actual events (c. 1780) to have come about by myth. There was no time for a myth to take root and if a mythic version was being proclaimed it would easily be discredited by eyewitnesses of the events.

rlogan

To the OP -

Above is why myths are made up a couple generations or more after the alleged events.

Otherwise people laugh you out of town. Oh yea sure, right here on this spot last year a guy came in on a donkey with flowers and coats on the ground, 'cuz he had done ten thousand miracles before that point, he was so popular and famous he became a threat to the Temple or Roman authorities.

Oh, but wait! He was so popular that when Pilate offered to let him go, the crowd picked a murderer instead. Right here in this square that happened!

That kind of story is so ridiculous to anyone who lived there the year before, or in the cities where supposedly five thousand people were fed with a sardine - oh and the two thousand pigs into the sea. The largest pig farm in history to that point. Wiped out. Right here in this town. C'mon I can show you the farmer. He's still trying to serve papers on Jesus for damages.

Although Jesus is dead, if he's going to go around as a spirit directing a religious cult then he can damn well pay damages for the two thousand pigs he killed.

Sp you weave your story at not just a remote place in time, but also a remote region. A good strategy is to smuggle your story in. You can't admit to making it up.


So yes, all over the bible they pre-date things. Oh look what I just happened to find in the attic. Why, it is a new doctrine. Well, actually it is an old doctrine we were supposed to be following, but it got lost...


Since someone brought mormonism into it, that was Joe Smith's line too. Christianity had lost its way and his revelations were back-dated with the alleged ancient scriptures he translated, the indians being a lost tribe of Israel and all...

Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following from the Abrahamic Religions forum: