Steven Carr

'Professor Wells has always maintained that this is the way Paul regarded his Christ Jesus, as a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time.'

We are often told that mythicism is totally busted because the historical Jesus was an obscure person who never attracted any attention in his own lifetime.

Isn't this what mythicists like GA Wells have always claimed?

ApostateAbe

Jesus was an obscure rural lower-class leader of a small Jewish cult. It seems to follow plainly from the historical vestiges of the gospel portrait of Jesus, so I am kinda skeptical that GA Wells pioneered that idea. What did reasonable people believe about Jesus before GA Wells?

Solo

In case you haven't noticed Wells changed his position (cca 1996) and now says that there was a historical figure of Jesus. He now maintains there were two Jesus professing streams, on based Pauline's celestial Christ and the other based on an obscure apocalyptic preacher whose traditions are attested to by 'Q'. Wells is now restating basically the theory of two Christianities by the founder of the Tuebingen school, Ferdinand C. Baur, except in reverse where he is right (Baur thought Paul wrote after the gospels were out), and maintaining the two streams were completely separate where he is kind of right, but also dead wrong. Paul's Galatians is an unmistakable proof of the connection, and suggests very strongly that the two streams could not be bridged in Paul's lifetime. He is right to maintain that the streams were going independently. Mark is the proof that there was no Christianity to speak as of his writing. The religion, as we know it, started with Matthew attacking, gutting, and competely re-styling the earliest gospel to suit the purposes of the newly formed Jewish Christian faith in Yeshua after the catastrophy of the war. Luke transparently knew Matthew becuse he was consistently trying to smooth out the differences between the Markan Paulines and the Petrine Mattheans. This cannot be co-incidence. Marc Goodacre is right - there was no Q.

Best,
Jiri

aa5874

It is CLEARLY erroneous that Jesus was an obscure character in the NT whether or not he actually lived.

Jesus was SIMPLY a WELL-KNOWN character in the NT as the ACTUAL written evidence shows.

Mr 1:28 - Mr 6:14 - Mark 6Mark 6Mr 8:9 - Again, what we are witnessing is a complete REVERSE of the actual written evidence in the NT by ApostateAbe.

There is NO actual written evidence or story that shows Jesus was an Obscure character. NONE.

Why is ApostateAbe continuing to spread PROPAGANDA or "Chinese Whispers".

WHY?

In the Jesus stories, Jesus was a Well-Known character who PERFORMED many Spectacular Miracles with the "SPIT and TOUCH" technique and was even known by Herod.

aa5874

And because the "historical Jesus" is COMPLETELY flawed. It just is NOT even reasonable Plausible that the Jesus cult of Christians was INITIATED by a WELL-KNOWN LIE that Jesus was a KNOWN man with a human father.

It is far more likely that Jesus was just a story INVENTED very late and was BELIEVED to be true just like Christians BELIEVED that Marcion's Phantom existed even WITHOUT birth and Flesh.

Myth Jesus is COMPLETELY Compatible with the Competing Myths of antiquity and it is the MYTH characteristics of Jesus in the Fable that made him accomplish his Goal and RESURRECT.

Based on the Pauline writings Jesus MUST RESURRECT for the Christian FAITH and for the REMISSION of Sins.

1Co 15:17 - Ro 10:9 - The Pauline Jesus MUST PERFORM a MYTHOLOGICAL act.

The MYTH Jesus theory is FAR MORE reasonable than HJ and does NOT require ANY changes at all to the NT as it was found.

The NT CANON in any version of the EXTANT CODICES is a compilation of MYTH fables when EXAMINED EXACTLY as found.

ApostateAbe

My comparison between mythicism and phrenology is not just my own opinion, but it roughly corresponds to the opinions of relevant academics who know mythicism. So, if you were to ask the chair of any department of New Testament, "Why isn't mythicism part of your curriculum?" that is roughly the answer that they would give you--mythicism is no more relevant to New Testament studies than phrenology is to medicine (or pick any other analogous outdated fringe theory). It is important to realize, too, that Dave31 has his own specialized idea of "mythicism"--entailing that Jesus was a copycat of other mythical godmen (see this thread), and that was one of the many variations of mythicism that was promoted and defeated 100 years ago.

aa5874

It is just not true that the MYTH Jesus theory was defeated. You are merely SPREADING PROPAGANDA.

Even HJ Scholars OPENLY admit that there is VERY little or NOTHING for HJ.

You KNOW that HJ is a PRESUMPTION and that HJ cannot be RECONSTRUCTED at all using the NT since even HJ Scholars OPENLY ADMIT that the NT is historically UNRELIABLE.

It is FAR MORE reasonable that Jesus was just a Myth fable like Marcion's Myth fable of the Phantom and was simply BELIEVED to be true than to have been KNOWN and DOCUMENTED by people of antiquity to be LIE.

All Extant Codices when Examined as found REVEAL a Compilation of an ABUNDANCE of Myth Fables about a character called Jesus Christ.

DCHindley

Steven,

I waggeth my long pointy finger and cross my beady eyes at you.* Wells, AFAIK, isn't (wasn't?) a JMer. He's agnostic when it comes to whether Jesus was a historical person or not. That quote (wherever it came from) relates what Wells is supposed to have thought Paul thought Jesus was like.

I agree that the Jesus Christ of the Pauline epistles is certainly "a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past," although I'd add that this figure also died and was resurrected as part of a divine plan. However, these concepts can develop around a formerly living man just as much as plucked from the mythological universe.

I am thrown off by your suggestion that "Mythicists" often say "the historical Jesus was an obscure person who never attracted any attention in his own lifetime" as a means of explaining why a historical Jesus escaped notice.

Did you really mean to confront "Historicists" who explain the lack of secular mention of a real life Jesus as due to his obscurity, with the exalted status of Jesus Christ found in the Pauline epistles? If so, why didn't you just plainly say so rather than blurt it out in a confused and oblique manner? For a moment, I thought I was reading something from my wife.

What, pray tell, prevents such exaltation to accrete around a real life nobody? Also, somebody who was not of interest to secular writers (who tend to be of, or be retainers of, the elite Greco-Roman classes, and this includes Josephus at the time he wrote his works) may be of plenty interest to Judean or Galilean messianists. What prevents these messianists from redefining their understanding of their leader's significance in response to social changes and disconfirmed expectations?

Whether Paul was the reformulator of these beliefs about Jesus, or his letters were used as a convenient mouthpiece for them, it doesn't matter. The "high" Christology of Paul's letters does not necessarily have to be a contradiction for a Jesus who was obscure (at least to the Romans of his day).

DCH

Doug Shaver

Historicists keep saying that. Over and over and over again.

But . . . ask them what was the killer argument that vanquished mythicism once and for all, and they can't seem to remember what it was.

GakuseiDon

The quote comes from Earl Doherty's website, here:
http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/BkrvEll.htm

Professor Wells has always maintained that this is the way Paul regarded his Christ Jesus, as a heavenly, pre-existent figure who had come to earth at some uncertain point in the past and lived an obscure life, perhaps one or two centuries before his own time. This conviction Paul had supposedly drawn from perceived revelations and a study of scripture. Wells does not suggest that any such man as Paul believed in had actually lived or contributed to later Christian traditions. Professor Ellegard, however, has taken Wells' idea a step further and has identified the Jesus of the early Christians as an actual historical figure known to us from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Teacher of Righteousness of the Qumran Essenes.

Doherty's response is that both Wells and Ellegard have the same problem. Even if Paul thought that Jesus was someone who lived one or two centuries before, we would expect Paul to have included more details about Jesus. It's human nature, apparently. As Doherty writes (my emphasis):

It is difficult to see any evidence in the pre-Gospel record of a widespread tradition or revered memory about a human founder who was a prophet, teacher and interpreter of scripture.

One could point to the same deficiency in the view of G. A. Wells. We get no sense from the early Christian (non-Gospel) record that their Jesus was looked upon as having been a prophet, a teacher, a miracle-worker. Nothing ties him to an earthly career. Even if that career had taken place in the obscure past and not within recent memory, we would expect, in principle, that something, teachings, miracles, prophecies, would in some measure be attributed to him. Yet the documents are silent.

Steven often posts this way. He presents a series of marginally connected statements, and let's people interpret them as they may. It's kind of like a Rorshach test, I guess.