gstafleu

That is a good question, and part of the answer is: in the long run, this movement did not keep itself alive based on such an entity: it morphed into a historialized version.

Is it necessary that any religious movement at some point acquire a sufficient number of earthly attributes? I would say yes, certainly in the case of Western (west of Iran) movements. The mythologies with which we are familiar (Sumerian, Greek, Egyptian, early Jewish as in Genesis...) all have their divine beings exhibiting quite human behaviour. Even in the East the Buddha is represented as a human (although apparently Buddhists will tell you that they don't really think of it that way).

The Jewish religion had, over time, gotten itself into trouble (it was not unique in that, it followed an evolutionary path thousands of years in the making, but that is another story). The trouble was that their god had become so remote, so far from earth, so "wholly other," as to be come practically useless. What good, after all, is a god whose name you cannot even mention? So in order to get this god down to earth again, a "missing link" was posited, Jesus, whose task it was to reconcile god and men.

Now mediating between such a wholly other god and the grubby reality here on earth is not exactly easy, hence the confusion about how much god and or man he was, what he did kata sarka and what kata pneuma, and such. But given that his whole raison d'etre was bringing god down to earth again, it is hardly surprising that, while he started god-like, i.e. spiritual, he had in the end to become more human-like, i.e. like a real historical being. Otherwise, why bother?

So you are quite right, in the long run such a purely spiritual being is unstable, which is why he evolved in the first place: to bring the wholly other god down from the purely spiritual. But in the shorter run such a being can persists for a while, certainly in a situation where people are already used to such a remote god.

Gerard Stafleu

Amaleq13

That doesn't really answer the question even in part, though, does it? It begs it by not answering how this belief managed to even make it to a "long run".

The HJ position can use the same dodge. The movement based on a figure about whom little was known kept itself alive by adding details to his story.

In which of the examples you mentioned were earthly attributes acquired over time rather than being in place from the outset?

IIUC, such a "missing link" had been part of Judaism well before the onset of Christianity (eg incarnation of God's Wisdom) but the "link" was always a human on earth. Second, "down to earth" seems a poor choice of words given the details of Earl's thesis.

How is that unique to a heavenly messiah?

But in the shorter run, a largely unknown but historical figure can persist as an intermediary between people and a remote god.

gstafleu

Perhaps, but I'm not sure if the two cases, spiritual/historical vague figure from scripture, are symmetrical. The spiritual figure had a head start, simply because people were already used to a nebulous, invisible, wholly other god. Humans, on the other hand, are quite familiar, and it seems to me that positing a human would invite queries to specific historical detail much sooner than some other-worldly figure.

We agree, IOW, that both a vaguely described spiritual figure and a vaguely described human are unstable. The question is about which is the more unstable. My proposition that a vague human would evoke more, or sooner, addition of details than some other worldly one seems reasonable to me, but I'll agree that it is not a slam-dunk by any means.

The reasons why I think it is likely that Jesus initially started out as spiritual are as follows. First, I have a general theory which makes this likely. Second, Earl makes a good case that the initial Jesus can be seen this way. Third, we do see without a doubt a process of increased historization. Paul may or may not have had a historical person in mind, he is overall pretty spiritual, we have to fish for historical details. By the time we hit Matthew, though, we have made a sizable shift to the earthly, "historical," realm, and this is, by and large, how it has stayed since then.

So could a historical figure underly all this? Yes, he could, but he is by no means necessary, and the early evidence does seem to point the other way.

Gerard Stafleu

Ben C Smith

I know you have. But you are writing now as if you had never even heard of him. I will answer your question (the new version) again, using Crossan.

The early Christians were almost totally bereft of historical traditions about his passion experiences (omit teachings here, since Crossan thinks they did have his teachings) because all the early Christians knew is that their master had been taken away from them and crucified. They did not witness the event itself, but knew what had happened.

The early Christians were almost totally focused on scripture because that was all they had to interpret the terrible event and all they had to fill in the missing details.

That answers the question you are asking; I suspect you are really asking a different question altogether, but for some reason are not coming right out with it.

Doug answered this nicely.

But let me add that I do not think the religious movement exemplified by Paul was based on an historical man and his life; I think it was based on his death and purported resurrection.

This is not close enough to my own view of Paul to elicit an answer from me.

Yes (assuming the date is correct; I have been tempted to an earlier date for 1 Clement).

No, I do not believe Mark started the trend, though I do think it was limited at first to a fairly narrow stream.

Ben.

GakuseiDon

Yes, and if the earliest Christians were trying to convince their Jewish neighbours that a historical Jesus was the Messiah, wouldn't they have had to show that Jesus matched the Messiah described in the Hebrew Scriptures? It would have been a strong incentive for them to either recast real events or make up false events to match Hebrew Scriptures, and then claim Hebrew Scriptures showed that Jesus was the predicted Messiah. Eventually any biographical details that couldn't be tweaked to match Hebrew Scriptures would have either disappeared or been expunged from the record. How do you eliminate this as a possibility?

Certainly, after resurrection Jesus was regarded as operating in heaven. But I think that if we look at passages in early epistles dealing with Jesus before resurrection, we would get an overwhelming picture of an earthly Jesus (which does not necessarily mean a historical Jesus).

EarlDoherty

You'd better ask that question of the Jews, of the Muslims, of the Greeks, of the Romans, of the Egyptians, of the Medes, of the Persians, of the Zoroastrians, of the devotees of Dionysos, of Isis, of Osiris, of Attis, of the North American Indians, of the Aztecs, of the Mayans, of the Incas, of...well, you get my drift. All of their religions were based on gods who had never been to earth.

Of course, for them it was not the case that "absolutely nothing was known about the entity and his experiences." They knew that through their myths which allegedly told of them. But Christianity was supposed to be based on a recent man about whom nothing was known. And until the Gospels came along, no one had invented any myths about him beyond the bare fact of death and resurrection. I ask again, in this sort of case, how did such a faith get off the ground, how was it spread and accepted, and how was it passed on?

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

No, Ben, it does not answer the question. This is the very 'explanation' I am referring to which has always been put forward but answers nothing. I made the point that it is all very well for a group of followers of someone to perhaps have some kind of 'revelation' and religious experience after his death and then decide to try and carry that conviction to others. But that is as far as it can be expected to go if they cannot bring any knowledge about that man to those they approach.

But while we don't have any direct writings from those alleged followers of Jesus, we can readily deduce from Paul and other pseudonymous early writings that no one had any historical traditions about their Jesus whatsoever. There was no such thing as apostolic tradition going back to Jesus. No one appeals or even mentions the fact of anyone having a link to an historical person. That is clear from the record, and any attempt to read something like that into the background is simply fallacious wishful thinking. It is simply not there.

It is not just a question of not knowing the details of his death, or of the scene of his resurrection. It is about everything. That is an impossible situation, both to conceive, and to imagine that a movement could get off the ground and spread in that kind of void of knowledge. It's one thing to go out and preach a god who is known through his myths, it's quite another to go out and preach a man about whom you are able to say absolutely nothing. Claiming one can know of him through scripture and preach him through that route is a crazy idea. First you have to convince the listener that one ought to believe that scripture would be set up tell about a man whom not even his preacher knows anything about. On what basis would a listener accept that this unknown man, about whose death and resurrection nothing was known, whose life story is never told, whose teachings are never used to hold him up as at least a wise man, deserved to be believed as being foretold by God's own scripture? That would be an insurmountable hurdle.

And since the early record doesn't give us the slightest hint of such a hurdle or having to deal with it, no hint of the blasphemy inherent in turning a man into God, no echo of even where this unknown man had lived or where he underwent his death or at whose hands, the whole thing doesn't have a single hook to hang upon, unless it be a skyhook.

The "all they knew or could tell about the man they were preaching was what they found in scripture" is an unworkable 'explanation.'

Earl Doherty

Amaleq13

Even if true, so what? Why is that a problem for the HJ position?

No, the question was why Earl's question doesn't apply to his own position as well.

More than what and sooner than what? Are you claiming that the Gospels would have been written sooner and provided more details? You'll need more than your personal perception of "reasonable", I think.

The addition of the obviously mythical nativity stories increases "historization"?

In fact, his theology tends to make any such details irrelevant since all that is important was what happened subsequent to the sacrifice.

Nobody is claiming a historical figure is "necessary". That is a straw man. The early evidence points to the risen Christ.

Amaleq13

Then they are not analogous.

No, it was based on the preached faith of a group of men and their apparent ability to perform miracles.

What makes you so certain no one invented any myths about him before the Gospels were written?

No one invented the Temptation story before the Gospels were written? I thought you accepted Q.

Your question continues to appear to be a legitimate one for both positions.

Doug Shaver

What did Jesus do or say to give those earliest Christians the notion in the first place that he was the Messiah?