Chris Weimer

:huh: I never claimed that the whole story was exactly like Moses. Nor would I call it really a "parallel". Parallels indicate that the story arose without purposeful intention to copy. I disagree. I think Matthew knew what he was going for and emulated it on purpose.

Remember, they're working on tradition too. These are different stories, and Matthew just uses Moses as an archetypal figure on which he could mold Jesus into.

Of course they're not going to be exact. They're not supposed to be exact. Actually, I'd argue that because they're actually quite different in so many respects that it's an even stronger argument for historicity.

Chris Weimer

The Bishop - You take things a little too literally. Royal virgin? Mary, after all, had an exalted status "blessed are thee above all other women" or something like that in Luke, no?

Chris Weimer

[QUOTE=The Bishop;3788106](1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while - NO

Yes, as explained afore.

Yes, twice over. Jesus was called Son of David, David was the king, and moreover Jesus was also the son of God. God is the...most powerful king? Moreover, I'd extend king to god anyday - look at Hercules and Romulus. Many more.

Depends. In Matthew, for instance, this would be yes. Only Luke has a story about Jesus reading in the temple. With three against one, I'd say this should take a yes.

Yes!

Yes! He was driven from his hometown, remember? Still, I only get 15 1/2.

The Bishop

Chris, good to be debating with you!

If Raglan's score has any meaning at all when applied to Jesus, you have to be more literal.

Jesus is an exalted and worshipped figure, obviously - so his mother's being "blessed amongst all women" is derived from that. This is certainly not the same as her being a royal princess like Buddha's mother, or the foster mother who raised Moses, or Oedipus being the son of a Queen.

That doesn't count! Being the Son of God is what is special about Jesus, not general to a mythology. And it isn't the same thing. Jesus's father for the purposes of this account is Joseph, a carpenter (or some other form of teknon), and Mary is a seamstress. These are simply not "royal parentage" in the same way that Moses or Oedipus had.

Oedipus was a king. Buddha was a king. Augustus was an emperor. Romulus ruled Rome. Moses was both prince in Egypt and the sole leader of his people. No part of the mythology of Jesus makes any claim for his earthly sovereignty further than his attracting some followers. The story tells it the way it looks - preacher and rabble rouser, not king.

I interpreted that as meaning the mythological god/king is driven out of the earthly city where he rules. Theologically that interpretation has certainly been applied to the crucifixion (though I don't recall hearing about his purported sojourn in hell when I was being raised Catholic, but that's just me). I'm not sure I really see the point in including elements that cannot be anything other than fictional to prove fictionality or otherwise of the character. Complete fictions such as virgin births and resurrections are applicable equally to the real and the non-real. No matter whether someone was a real live person or just an imagined creation, if that person has a virgin birth in their history, we know that that part of the history is false, that is all.

Bizarrely, the only way to make the story of Jesus fit a "mythological checklist" in order to prove him unhistorical, is to apply the most stringent Christian interpretations to every event! Not being a Christian myself, I don't go around pretending that Jesus was in any respect a king in real life.

lpetrich

I'll respond to The Bishop's claims:

(1) The hero's mother is a royal virgin, while - NO
The virgin part, yes. Royalty is rather iffy; if we are to believe that one of the Matthew and Luke genealogies really refers to her, then she's royalty also. -- 1

(2) his father is a king, and - NO
Although he lives as a commoner, Matthew and Luke try to trace him back to King David. -- 1

3 - 7: I agree (0, 1, 1, 1, 1)

(8) reared by foster parents in a foreign land. Besides this, - YES
I wouldn't call Joseph and Mary foster parents, but he does spend some of his childhood in Egypt. -- 1

(9) we learn no details of his childhood until - NO
Only Luke's childhood-prodigy story. -- 1

(10) he journeys to his future kingdom, where - NO
I disagree; he does travel back to it -- 1

(11) he triumphs over the reigning king and - NO
He successfully resists the Devil's attempts to lead him astray from his mission, and the Devil slinks away -- 1

(12) marries a princess, often his predecessor's daughter, and - NO
I agree; he remains single all his life. Though he is extracanonically rumored to have had a love affair with Mary Magdalene, or even to have married her, she was a commoner without any special distinction. -- 0

(13) becomes king himself. - NO
He becomes a much-admired religious leader who is followed around by large crowds, and some even call him "King of the Jews" -- 1

(14) For a while he reigns uneventfully, - NO
He wanders around and preaches -- 1

15 - 16: I agree (1, 1)

(17) is driven from the throne and the city and - NO
I disagree; he is sentenced to death, the people of Jerusalem want him dead, Peter whimpers that he never knew him, and the other disciples flee -- 1

(18) meets with a mysterious death, - YES-ish
I'd say definitely yes; he dies very fast by crucifixion standards, and he was a young man in good health -- 1

19: I agree (1)

(20) If he has children, they do not succeed him. - NA
He was childless, so that counts here -- 1

21, 22: I agree (1, 1)

I found 20, though some of the items could be bumped down (Mary being non-royalty, learning about his childhood, whether his defeat of the Devil would really count) making his score 18 or 19.

ETA:

I agree that her later quasi-deification is not quite relevant here; I'm going from what one can deduce from the Bible.

(Jesus Christ being called Son of David...)
Except for those genealogies. Both Matthew and Luke go through the trouble of trying to show that Joseph was descended from King David

He was a great leader; I don't think that we should be too literal-minded about Lord Raglan's profile. But he was a king in a more literal sense; some of his authority came from descent, and he seemed to agree with the charge that he said that he was the king of the Jews.

Again, don't be too literal-minded. All his admirers turn into a lynch mob, and his closest followers run away.

What's your justification for arguing that virgin births and the like are unhistorical and that the Gospels are not completely historical?

No, it's treating the text as literal history and seeing what happens, the same as with other mythic heroes -- Moses, Hercules, Oedipus, Romulus, Krishna, etc.

If you wish to see what happens to his score while omitting the more farfetched and miraculous parts, please feel free to do so. But one ought to be honest about that if one does so.

Chris Weimer

A pleasure.

What do you mean by "has any meaning"? As in, does it negate his historicity? If so, then I cry rubbish. The score is good to see human archetypal thinking.

I disagree. Achilles' mother was certainly not a princess. She was a nymph. However, being a nymph is still an exalted status. The point being was that the mother was exalted. How many whores gave births to "heroes"?

I disagree again. Divine ancestry is very common in Mediterranean mythology. Hercules, Theseus, Aeneas, etc...

I disagree. In Mark, we are heard of no father, and Matthew, Luke, and John all emphasize God as Jesus' father.

Jesus clearly had authority in heaven. His kingdom was not on earth, as many times mentioned, but in the sky/of God.

...Yes...who was saying otherwise?

Ah, I never once advocated that Jesus was unhistorical. Quite the contrary.

S.C.Carlson

More like 12 for me.

Bede

Is Cyrus of the Medes a myth? Heroditus gives a standard legend of his youth. Born of royal princess, threatened by Grandpa, spirited away, returns home, succeeds to kingdom etc etc. But Cyrus is 100% real. You could get him another five Raglan points as well if you believe all the legends about him.

If anyone could be bothered to do more research, you'd find loads more examples, no doubt. Raglan is bunk, or should I say bollocks, which seems to be the accepted term around here.

B

The Bishop

My point is that either full Christian theology was applied to the list in order to shoehorn Jesus into as many categories as possible, or the list was derived from Jesus's life, with all the royal and divine connections notable from other mythology counted in his case as fully as it is for those other mythologica figures. Like you, I have also been denigrating the usefulness of the Raglan list as any indication of unhistoricity.

God being Jesus's father is a theological point, not a mythological one. Instead of stating the obvious about Jesus once again, perhaps you should have found some other mythological entities who were apparently born to lowly parents.

How does Achilles scoring one less help your case that Jesus scores one more? Achilles mother would have been "special" anyway, already being a supernatural entity. If Mary had never given birth to Jesus, exactly how "exalted" would she ever have been? Womankind, as far as I am aware, is not divided into "Queens" and "Whores"!
No, you misunderstood. Divine ancestry is incidental to the stories of Hercules, Theseus and Aeneas. They did their things, and they were so great they were accounted the sons of Gods. Jesus effectively did nothing except be accounted the son of God.

The Kingdom of God is only spoken about. It is never actively demonstrated in the narrative. From what we learn in the Bible, everything Jesus said about the Kingdom of Heaven could well be a metaphor. With the other royal connections and authority accorded to various mythological figures, (Oedipus, Gilgamesh, King Arthur) their regality is a de facto exercise of authority over a real nation or people. Narratively, the battles they fight are real battles, not metaphorical ones.

Well, I wasn't really addressing you with that, only people who emphasise Jesus's purported high score as some kind of indication that he wasn't a historical figure. That's why I talked about the irony of having to apply the strictest Christian interpretation (both Joseph and Mary being of the blood royal, for instance) in order to get the score as high as possible, for the purpose of proving he never existed.

I'm quite certain that had Christianity never existed, the virginity of a hero's mother or the death of the hero "frequently on a hill" or the strange little note about "no childhood details" would never have been included in any such mythology list.

As has been pointed out, Lord Raglan is not in fact "best known" for this list, he's best known for cocking up the Charge of the Light Brigade. How does this list stand up alongside Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a Thousand Faces"? (I have a copy, but haven't read it yet! :|)

lpetrich

Herodotus was not exactly close in time or place to Cyrus's birth, so the next question is how historical those stories are. There are some similar stories told about Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar. In particular, Suetonius tells us in is biography of Augustus in The Twelve Caesars (94:3-4) that
Suetonius also mentioned how Augustus fulfilled a prophecy that in his home town a ruler of the world would someday be born, and he also tells us how when he learned to speak, he told the frogs of the area to shut up -- which they did and have done so ever since.

Bede, do you believe that that stuff about Augustus is literal history?

After you, Bede. Since you are so smart, you should have no trouble coming up with loads of counterexamples.

Bishop, this is not "Christian theology", this is treating the Gospels as literal history.

Bishop, what's the difference?

Except that Jesus Christ's teachings are often considered to be super great.

But Jesus Christ was still considered a great leader, and he agreed with the charge that he called himself "King of the Jews".

Well, I wasn't really addressing you with that, only people who emphasise Jesus's purported high score as some kind of indication that he wasn't a historical figure. That's why I talked about the irony of having to apply the strictest Christian interpretation (both Joseph and Mary being of the blood royal, for instance) in order to get the score as high as possible, for the purpose of proving he never existed.

Bullshit.

The virginity part was derived from how the mythic hero is usually his mother's first or only child. And sometimes these ladies were explicitly described as virgins, as in the case of Rhea Silvia, mother of Romulus and Remus.

Dying on a hill? Hercules died on top of Mt. Oeta and Moses died on top of Mt. Nebo. Which mythic hero has ever died in a pit?

Checking on Lord Raglan, there have been several Lords Raglan.

FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan was the one associated with the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade, while FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan was the mythographer.

Bishop, why don't you tell us?