TedM

Could be. Anyone here willing to address the thread topic?

Doug Shaver

I don't need to explain why they are missing until you explain why they should be there. You say "one would expect" them to be there, but your saying so doesn't make it so. Why should one expect them to be there?

Gamera

The point is, short of an orthodox interpol roaming the Mediterranean world looking for embarrasing mss, you would in fact expect at least some text to have survived that clearly supports Dougherty view, some concrete statement by some early exegete or devotee, even if only mentioned in another source, to embody a mythic view of Jesus, or a clear reference to Paul's purported mythic view of Jesus.

Doherty's silences on this issue (as the OP suggests) amounts to a faith in a clean sweep by the orthodox interpol (which is dubious) or just pure bad luck for the mythicists.

Doherty's method of creative reconstruction of these texts is dubious because one can reconstruct them any which way. He happens to have reconstructed a mythic Jesus that accords with the agenda of many of his readers, but his method could be used to construct any number of Jesuses, with just as much, and just as little, validity.

TedM

The purpose of this thread is to identify the silences which one would not expect to be there if Doherty is right about his conception of Jesus' "life". Whoever identifies one certainly needs to make a case for why it should be "expected". Both sides argue for why they should or should not be there and why things are or are not missing, which I would expect once some data is put forth..

ted

TedM

Thanks Gamera. I thought that would be obvious to folks here. It's amazing how people seem to be unable or unwilling to think outside of their "belief box" in support of a quest to add to a more complete understanding of the data (silences or not) regarding Doherty's theory. Of course, that's human nature.

ted

Gamera

Doherty's methodology is so obviously tendentious, I'm surprised anybody takes his narrative of how we got from mythic Jesus to the messianic Jesus seriously, except as a bracing example of how easily we can mystify ourselves with the inevitable ambiguities of texts.

While a case for the mythic Jesus can be made (barely), Doherty's achaeological digs into these texts, pulling up a word here and a phrase there as evidence of some mythic substratum is both too narrow and too broad. Too narrow because it focuses on textual elements out of context. Too broad because it gives those element more wieght than they seem to carry.

The gospels and epistles are relatively long texts, and like any long text are filled with contradictions, false starts, ambiguities, obscurities, unrecoverable traditions. The only thing that lacks ambiguity is the basic Jesus narrative, and basic interpretation it engendered, which for the past 2000 years preachers have been able to recite on street corners in about 3 minutes to most people's comprehension if not acceptance. I look at Doherty as just one of the most recent example of the vast and offbase commentary on these texts that have bloated historical Christianity for two millennia. The gospel seems like a pretty simple narrative to me, with a pretty simple (if profound) existential message.

Toto

We only have these texts because the orthodox church decided to preserve them. I don't think that you need to posit a very efficient orthodox machine to explain why lots of documents did not survive.

But when I read these documents, I see a very mythic Jesus. He walks through walls and flies through the air and performs miracles. The orthodox were just clear that, due to some mystery that we can't wrap our minds around, this mythical, magical Jesus was also fully human. The historical Jesus is based on slicing off the mythical part and assuming that there was a real person behind the myth. I would call that a creative reconstruction of the text. Doherty is just reading the text that is there.

Toto

Compared to Homer? What are you talking about

Lacks ambiguity? Are we reading the same text?

What people recite on street corners is: accept Jesus into your heart as your personal savior or burn in hell. Their Jesus is a timeless spirit, not a historical entity.

OK - I give up. What is that simple existential message and why does it imply a historical Jesus?

Gamera

But this doesn't seem to accord with historiographical developments, which demonstrates an opposite arc time and time again. Namely, the accretion of mythic, legendary elements onto the biographical elements of an historical personage.

Thus, Joseph Smith was a real guy who moved from New York to Pennsylvania and Missouri and Illinois and was defenestrated. After his death, all sorts of legends attached to him by his devoted followers (and enemies), legends that are similar to those attributed to Jesus.

The same happened with Alexander the Great. And Thales. And Parmenides. And Richard the Lionhearted. And George Washington.

It appears to be a common historiographical process.

In contrast, the process claimed by Doherty appears to be sui generis to the Christian scriptures (at least in historical times).

That's reason enough to require extraordinary evidence.

Regarding the missing texts, sure, the institutions of the church took vigorous efforts to preserve the current canon. That's why we have so many good mss of the Christian scriptures. But all sorts of other texts also survived in significant numbers without church support (and even in the face of downright church hostility) -- the epigraphia, the pseudographia, the "gnostic" texts, along with lots and lots of references to them in other manscripts, along with thousands of papyri about all kinds of sundry topics.

Yet in this vast universe of noncanonical texts, not one, not a single unambiguous fragment of a text declaring the mythic Jesus survives -- even though you claim that Christianity began with this inspired idea, and even though texts announcing other heterodox Christianities did survive, like the gospel of Judas or the gospel of Thomas.

I'm sorry but I'm unconvinced.

Gamera

I'm talking about relatively long texts, like Romans and Matthew and Luke. Needless to say Homer isn't the yardstick. If you don't think the epistles and gospels are relatively long and complex, there goes Doherty's claims about layers. I take he doesn't focus on say Philomen for that reason.

I think so. The Jesus narrative is pretty simple. I can (and preachers have) been reciting it for millennia on streetcorners in about 3 minute. There isn't a lot of ambiguity in the general story of this guy who preached peace, ran afoul of the powers that be, and then was executed, only to be resurrected. Similarly its meaning requires little verbosity, though the issues it raises are far-reaching.

Needless to say, I disagree with your characterization, and I suspect so do the guys preaching on streetcorners. But you seem to be conflating the narrative (which is pretty simple) with the import of the narrative, which is also simple if profound (you just recited it in one sentence -- good job!)

The simple existential message is that acceptance of God's love (as articulated in this little narrative about his son) can transform you into a loving person. The implications of that are of course not easy to articulate, because they are existential in nature, and involve our identity.

I didn't claim this in any way implied an historical Jesus, and as you know my brand of Christianity doesn't require an historical Jesus (though I think that as a historiographical matter, using the standard for judging historicity, Jesus was an historical figure). It wouldn't make any difference to me if the gospel was invented by a bored 1st century Syrian housewife. Indeed, I would find that even more interesting. God certainly can work in mysterious ways. But alas, this time there seems to have actually been a guy called Jesus who walked the earth, preached a particular relationship among humans, and was executed by the powers that be for whatever reason.