Toto

Only Frank Zindler See this previous thread for a review.

aa5874

Authentic, in this case, does not mean non-fiction. An authentic copy of Harry Potter is still fiction. And you cannot use the Pauline Epistles to prove the Pauline Epistles is true, you need external corroboration.

gurugeorge

I think both apparent references are (to me) obvious interpolations - the Testimonium breaks the flow of what comes before and after, and is (by all accounts) un-Josephus-like; and with the other one the "Jesus" referred to where someone has inserted "the so-called Christ" obviously referrred originally to the "Jesus son of Damneus" at the end of the passage, probably on account of the confusion I mention below re. "James" and "brother".

I don't see anything that isn't ambiguous and could possibly refer to a human being but more likely refers to the typical kind of mythical entity that also has some human-like aspects (e.g. the Greek gods used to have very human-like characteristics too).

If he had other brothers, it's strange that none of the tradition mentions it apart from seemingly Paul. It makes much more sense to assume that "brothers of the Lord" was a jargon term for the earliest Christians in the Jerusalem cult, and James was simply another "brother" of that kind.

Yeah that's what I mean - they're kind of ambiguous. So in view of point 1), and in view of the way that (as I understand it) mythical entities coalesce out of a) visionary experiences shared by small religious communities, and b) religions usually start that way, and c) in the other way of religions starting - some big person starting it - the disciples and students usually treasure every little tidbit about the Master they can get a hold of, the all-myth hypothesis just seems more likely to me.

The thing is, that doesn't mean you can't worship Jesus Christ! In fact, I think "the living Christ" that really fervent believers believe in nowadays is exactly the sort of thing the first Christians believed in too - a divine intermediary between a very distant, abstract, incomprehensible God, and man. "God with a human face", as it were. The "historical" aspect was really part of a theological to- and fro- between two parts of the early Church - one part wanted to keep the idea purely spiritual, and had a sort of mystical elitism about the idea, the other part wanted to spread the idea to more people (cynicism might suggest, in order to bring in more revenue) so took over the notion of putting up an exemplary detailed biography of a "great man" from the Stoics (who originated this idea of using the life story of great men as an inspiration to good conduct), and filled-in historical details into what was originally a more purely spiritual conception with just some vague historical aspects like you find in other myths.

In what I think is the original sense of Christ, I am a Christian, I believe in Christ in the same way I believe in Vajrasattva (a Buddhist "god" with similar characteristics) - it's an imaginary being, contemplation of whom engages the emotions, makes one cry and want to purify oneself. (Even if one's intellect knows full well the whole thing is nonsense, that's not the point, the point is to get the juices flowing, to clear crap out of the system.)

The "historical Jesus" - a man behind the myth - is just a 19th century liberal theological fantasy for whom the evidence is very thin. It's a desperate attempt to keep the institution of Christianity going in a time and place when nobody (of any intellectual worth or repute) believes in Godmen any more.

But the institution doesn't need that kind of shoring up. The idea is a mistake - because if you posit that kind of "historical Jesus" as the thing to be admired and have faith in, then when (as is becoming apparent I think to more and more people) the evidence for that Jesus is so thin, then faith is lost. Whereas if you posit a purely spiritual Christ, it's a matter of faith right from the start - of faith, visionary experience, etc. No problem. Rationally one knows such entities don't exist, but one can join with others in worshipping them for the benefit and glow that participation in the "as if" (suspension of disbelief, just like in the theatre) brings to the heart.

The thing that's dishonest is the hybrid entity - it's also theologically corrupt because it makes God become man once and once only, whereas the original message was "God in you". We are all avatars of the divine, crucified in this flesh, but capable of resurrection and coming to our true estate.

Ah but the gospels are about a cosmic MJ - with pseudo-historical characteristics, just like other myths. Those characteristics give an appearance of more detail, but on closer inspection the detail seems to be drawn from other sources than the life of a human being.

Once again, you have to distinguish between the Christ myth (the Godman, the super-powered entity), and some person who might possibly have been behind the myth. The gospels offer plenty of historical detail about the Godman. But we know that such an entity can't exist. The question is, can some evidence for a human being be dredged out of the pseudo-historical gospel detail about the Godman? There doesn't seem to have been much success in that enterprise - simply because, since so many of the "details" seem to come from other sources (theological to-and fro-, mythological correspondences that come from other sources, and stuff that's just obviously made up), there's nothing (or so very little left over) that looks original, like it could be about a person.

Not sure about that, I think the "prophet only" Jesus is a slightly later development of Jewish Christianity.

We must be reading different Epistles - the Jesus Paul is speaking of (in the authentic Epistles) is a spiritual entity with a few historical-seeming characteristics that just seem to be required for the fulfillment of prophecy. Paul spoke to Jesus, the Jesus he was speaking to was the one he believed in. He obviously believed this Jesus took human form at some point in the past, but there's no evidence to suggest that it was in Paul's recent past, or that the Jesus he's talking about was a human being known personally to any of the Jerusalem people.

Yep, it's possible, but it just seems too thin a start to my mind. Remember, the idea of great healers who could even resurrect other people wasn't that uncommon an idea at the time - e.g. Empedocles and Aesclepius, I think also even the near contemporary Apollonius of Tyana? - and dying/rising vegetation gods who could resurrect themselves - so to speak - were already an ancient trope. It's not as if either resurrecting others or resurrecting oneself was all that revolutionary a concept.

Also, as I said above, the big thing that goes against the "great healer/preacher" thing for me is that I think his earliest disciples would have treasured his actual words and doings more (like the early Buddhists did with Buddha, or the Muslims with Mohammed), and he would have made more of a "splash" on the world outside the cult (like Apollonius of Tyana). In the earliest materials, this Christ seems to say nothing that's not from the OT, which to me raises the alarm bells that here we have to do with an imaginary entity, none of whose words or original thought is preserved because nothing was said.

Whereas visionary experience is a more common form of how religions start, and that's incredibly rich and inspiring to those who have it - Christ seen in an "astral" vision is someone who seems to the experiencer as real as you or I, but more "magical", and someone who you can talk to and he talks back (like in a dream, but awake).

It may be the case that people had visionary experience of a human being after his death (and resurrection, if they believed in it), but to make that plausible you'd have to have some reason to believe there was a human being. Otherwise, just visionary experience of an imaginary entity (an entity "seen" in scripture, for example) is a perfectly fine and normal way for a religion to start.

TedM

Yes, he pounds the table. His best argument is that Jesus wasn't a well known recent preacher. His worst argument is that Jesus lived in the sphere.

I'd like to know which interpolations that support a HJ are considered interpolations by scholars that believe in a HJ, as opposed to those who might be biased with an anti-HJ agenda.


I don't. I prefer women.

take care,

ted

LawMur

I had always assumed that a minor jewish rabbi named jesus actually did exist. However, hearing these bits and pieces did make me wonder;

He is the Son of God who is born to a virgin on the 25th of December before three shepherds. He is a prophet who offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He is a wonderworker who raises the dead and miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He is God incarnate who dies at Easter, sometimes through crucifixion, but who resurrects on the third day. He is a savior who offers his followers redemption through partaking in a meal of bread and wine, symbolic of his body and blood.

This is talking about osiris and dionysis, not jesus. I have not yet investigated how well the original stories parallel the jesus story but this topic has made it to my reading list. Even if specifics differ, the coincidence appears to be remarkable.

Lawmur

TedM

Wow. Thanks for such a though provoking reply.

I don't think the TF is out of place, but I suspect Josephus originally wrote something else, and it wasn't very flattering. No way to know though. I don't think it is obvious that the first Jesus was the son of Damneus. Makes for a strange need for an interpolation, and then a very minor one at that.

You've probably seen all of these, but either Earl is right (for which there is almost no support) about a life in the sphere, or the literal reading is right, as I see it.

http://mypeoplepc.com/members/tedrik...op20/id24.html


I don't know what you mean. They are mentioned in Acts, and all the gospels. Josephus, Hegessippus.. What tradition would you expect to see it in that doesn't have it?


I agree, and see Matthew's sayings as that treasure (Q), which has been incorporated into Matthew, along with 90% of Mark. I consider this to be the best explanation of the Papias reference. James is full of Jesus' gospel sayings, but doesn't attribute them to Jesus. This suggests to me that Jesus' preaching possibly in great part mimicked the Nazarene philosophy, which focused a LOT on the condition and salvation of the poor. Paul is the conundrum. I resolve that by saying he was a quantum leap ahead with a focus on the WHY of the resurrection.

Interesting. That might work for me, but I'd have to come to believe in the cosmic Jesus not having first been a HJ, I think.


A lot, yes, but not near as many as people like Vork see, IMO. I think some people have let their imaginations go nuts on finding parallels. Of course I may simply have a proper lack of imagination.


But where? Do you believe Doherty's theory?


Certainly not very clear. That's where the dating and purpose of the gospels is critical, I think. Maybe that is what I need to start looking at more closely.

What would have been revolutionary is connnecting the resurrection with the Jewish Messiah crucified during Passover, as a replacement for the passover lamb sacrifice.


A preacher doesn't have to be original. Nevertheless there is a philosphy being presented that perhaps was to some degree "revolutionary". That of salvation for the poor. And, we unfortunately don't have many examples of different early authors, do we? Should the Didache be included? Q?


very true. Thanks much,

ted

TedM

See the archives here. These similarities are generally misleading and overblown.

Clivedurdle

Politics - competing sons of gods - one a Caesar son of Jupiter, the other a saviour messiah (Is Jesus Christ actually a name or is it only a title?) the son of YHWH.

Too many anti Caesar points in the gospels.

Conclusion - if it based on some form of political satire, propaganda, why are we even bothering to look for historical roots?

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=215565

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=205276

Clivedurdle

Didymus
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Join Date: December 2004
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jbarntt View Post
Not sure what the point is here.

Really? I shouldn't speak for the OP, but it seems to me that he's saying that the Jesus story was contrived as a theological, social and political antithesis to the enormously popular Augustan mythology that was created during and after Augustus' rule.

Quote:
Deification of an emperor by the senate had nothing to do with the idea that the emperor was actually a god. Many emperors were so honoured - Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, etc.

You have it backwards. The point is not that Christianity was an imitation of the cult of Augustus, but that it proffered a dialectical alternative.

Julius came first, but the Augustus cult was by far the most significant and it was more than just a tribute of some sort. His divinity was widely accepted by ordinary Romans; he was worshipped in temples that were built to him across the empire during the first and second centuries. All the other deifications came after, and, as you say, were merely honorifics. Augustus was the only emperor with such a huge following.

Quote:
The traditional Roman view of religion is different than ours.

But that's exactly the point. Christianity was imperial Rome inverted: carpenter vs emperor; heavenly king vs earthly emperor; spiritual vs material, the provinces vs the capital; rural vs urban; pacificism vs militarism; poverty vs wealth; monotheism vs polytheism; and so on. Of course, the parallels are also significant: aggressive expansionism in pursuit of world domination; an insistence on total loyalty to the central authority; a highly legalistic approach to ethics and belief, and so on. (I'm talking about early Christianity here, before the development of a structure that also mirrored that of the Roman state.)

(In fact, Rome did have a problem with the mystery cults. I can't get to my references right now, but as I recall, the Isis cult was outlawed for political reasons having to do with Egypt, and others were banned for licentiousness and "atheism.")

It seems to me that the idea of Christianity as a dialectical reaction to Augustan imperialism is a sound one, at least on its face. I'm going to reread Vork's superb survey of Mark with that in mind.

Toto

There are no scholars with an anti-HJ agenda that I know of who support interpolations. Doherty tries to accept the Epistles largely as written, which is what lead him to the theories about a Platonic sub-lunar sphere.

William O. Walker, discussed here before, as far as I know is a Christian with no particular agenda on this question.

I see from a search that you have asked this question or one like it before.