gstafleu

I think GD has put his finger on it here. There is indeed some evidence that there was a HJ, but, as GD himself admits, that evidence is not all that convincing. In such a case the best one can do, absent a competing hypothesis, is be agnostic. But of course there is a competing hypothesis, but it is out of scope for this debate. Which may mean that this debate cannot be "won," at best it can show that there is some, but not very convincing, evidence for an HJ. The question then becomes (outside the debate): is the MJ hypothesis stronger than the HJ one?

Not, I'd say, if that scholar was a mythologist. A mythologist would immediately say: "Oh well, we've seen all that before," and not deduce any historical Jesus from the writings in question. Maybe a "pure" historian would conclude an HJ, though?

Gerard Stafleu

spin

If you think the finger's on a pulse, then you believe zombies still have heart beats. MJ is just another theory. There are others. Some people believe a totally fictional Jesus is more convincing. I find a tradition Jesus seems to fit the evidence we have best. That's why I dangle Ebion so often. Ebion, who didn't exist is neither mythical nor fictional, but people believed he existed.

Gak believes that all readers need to be naive literalists.


spin

spin

OK looks like we can forget about this debate. Seen it all before so far. Can't see it getting any meatier. :huh:

The topic was:

"Resolved: the evidence shows that the Jesus of the letters of Paul, the Gospels and other New Testament works was a real live person."

Here's what Gak says in his second effort:

I think it is reasonable to conclude from the little data I present that Jesus was a real live person. I also have no problems with people who are "historical Jesus-agnostic" if they believe that the evidence for historicism isn't strong enough to come down one way or the other. I suspect that many of the scholars that hold this latter view are the ones who aren't interested in the question of Jesus's historicity, simply because there isn't enough data to meaningfully discuss the question. And again, that is a reasonable position to take.

Gee, Gak thinks it's reasonable to conclude 'that from the little data I present that Jesus was a real live person. I also have no problems with people who are "historical Jesus-agnostic" if they believe that the evidence for historicism isn't strong enough to come down one way or the other.' That certainly is hedging one's bets. Well,... backing two horses in a three horse race. "Jesus's existence" is not a "fact" historically.

Apparently as an argument Gak says of the gospels, "There is no record that they were recognized as being works of fiction as far as I can see, even by the people of that time." This is not very helpful. As I have pointed out for someone a lot less in the popular imagination, the works of Tertullian and others about Ebion were not "recognized as being works of fiction as far as I can see, even by the people of that time." Yet we know that Ebion wasn't a real person. An argument based on the fact that certain texts weren't recognized as being works of fiction is no argument whatsoever. Gak seems unaware of the task before him.

There are no arguments for historicity, so far -- just for the fact that no-one is coming out and saying the equivalent of "what we wrote is a load of condom scrapings." So I'm afraid there's not much hope of anything substantial coming out of this debate.


spin

mountainman

Historical criticism in Bible studies - WIKI


Historical Criticism - Catholic Encyclopedia

gstafleu

I didn't really say "pulse," rather what I meant was an important problem with this debate. There is indeed some evidence for an HJ, be it of a rather unconvincing nature. If that were the only thing we had, all that would be left to us is agnosticism. Sure it is "evidence," but it is so little that it doesn't even suffice to raise the HJ hypothesis to "most likely" status, simply because its likelihood remains next to indistinguishable from zero. So to make progress we now need other hypotheses, MJ, TJ, whatever, and see if we can do better there.

I don't quite understand your "Jesus of Tradition" idea. Let us consider some Jesuses, starting with the Jesus of Myth. There certainly is such a creature, he is the Jesus born from a virgin, walking on water, rising after dying and then disappearing on a cloud. We find him e.g. in the gospels.

Then we have the Jesus of Tradition, who is the Jesus of Myth but erroneously seen, at some point, as historical. He also exists, I would say with certainty as of, say, Tertullian?

Finally we have the Jesus of History. He is the guy for whom we have next to no evidence. It would be nice if we had e.g. some coins with his face, but we don't. So maybe he existed, but we just don't know.

How, though, is the Jesus of Tradition different from an erroneously historicised Jesus of Myth?

[BTW, I hope it is clear that I'm using "exists" and "findable in the texts" interchangeably.]

Gerard Stafleu

mountainman

That would require an analysis of the misrepresentation
of the actual ancient history of the Nth century
in which we appear to have evidence.

It is in the degree of misrepresentation and the nature
of the misrepresentation of ancient historicial data that
the various theories surrounding any Jesus differ.

Those who following blindly and literally the HJ as revealed
make the assumption (for their analyses) that there
has been no misrepresentation. The J story is straight.

The MJ theorists allow the misrepresentation to be defined
by means of an assumption that the misrepresentation has
somehow arisen due to a "mythologising activity" of various
degrees and types. The J story has been bent by myth.

Theories in which the misrepresentation is defined by means
of processes relating to the association of traditional stories
and the figures in traditional stories. The J story has been
bent by tradition.

Finally, we have the FJ theories of various natures and forms
in which the misrepresentation is seen as fraudulent,
(against to various degrees) and that we are dealing with a
purposefully contrived fiction and/or fable.Here the J story
has been bent (or indeed created) by purposeful fiction,
and quite possibly fraudulent misrepresentation.

IMO it's all about misrepresentation of ancient history.
And whether that misrepresentation is in fact fraud,
and then who perpetrated the fraud, when was it
perpetrated, how and by what means, etc, etc, etc.
It becomes essentially a job for forensics.

God's been reported murdered by cricifixion.
Who circulated this story and when? Who
had the most to gain at the time? Do we have
any witness to fraud? What did they say? What
happened to their writings? etc. Hawaii 5-O.



Best wishes


Pete Brown

spin

If you think there is "indeed some evidence for an HJ" I'd like to know what it is. Some people seem to think for some reason that anonymous unprovenanced undateable sources somehow fit the category of evidence for historicity, but would you for example accept such evidence in a court of law?

As I have asked many times with this claim, evidence of what exactly? Certainly it is evidence of something.

I must have mentioned Ebion here for some reason. Ebion is not historical, nor is he mythical, nor is he fictional. He has simply entered the tradition and has been developed upon.

When dealing with possible non-historical Jesuses, I have elsewhere talked of a Mythical Jesus, a Fictional Jesus and a Tradition Jesus. I use "Tradition Jesus" as a general term which doesn't include the others -- someone might suggest a better term for a non-real figure who is perceived as a real one.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter how the figure entered the tradition. It could have been because of a dream, drugs, a psychic experience, a psychotic experience, bad logic. The limited range of mythical Jesus and historical Jesus that has so often been pursued is simply FITH.

And here it comes:
Myth is a narrative which has a specific religious purpose. That is how it is being used by published advocates of a mythical Jesus.

No evidence.

It is a problem of terminology. We have many possible Jesuses. Only one of them is the mythical Jesus. This last Jesus is a very different fish from the fictional Jesus, wouldn't you agree? Ebion is certainly neither mythical nor fictional, yet not historical. Jesus may be a figure who entered tradition not because of invention nor mythic need, but for one of the methods already mentioned in this post.

We must stop this confusing dichotomy of MJ/HJ. When people deal with the non-historicity of Jesus they argue against a specific mythical analysis which is far from appropriate in dealing with the issue. Much of the debate has been about how early on people believed Jesus was real, which is only an appropriate response to the mythical Jesus. If Paul taught his proselytes that Jesus was real why should they disagree with him?

Gak here isn't considering anything other than the mythical Jesus of the Doherty and followers strain. I think Doherty is probably wrong, as I think the historical Jesus position is improbable. The fictional Jesus argument seems ridiculous to me. I have no problem with Paul having his revelation of Jesus and teaching that to his proselytes, who willingly believed he was real. Paul, if this line of thought is correct, probably believed he was real as well. Gak doesn't face this Jesus. For that matter he doesn't deal with a historical Jesus either. His argument is simply that the mythical Jesus isn't reasonable to him and the other position, HJ, seems the most likely of the two.


spin

gstafleu

Exactly. My point, though, is that I assume priority for myth: first we get some mythical concept, then this gets historicised by some means, e.g. tradition. It is, in other words, unlikely that a Jesus (or Ebion, or Confucius or...) tradition would form if there weren't some mythical foundation for it. Given that the mythical blocks are hardly missing in the case of Jesus, this seems to me to be rather straightforward in his case.

Now I agree with you that this whole HJ/MJ debate is of marginal use at best (other than from e.g. an Age-of-Reason POV). But even if there were an HJ, or any other Euhemeristic kernel to you-pick-the-myth, then one should still realize that it is the person who got attached to the myth, not the other way around. The myth will develop with or without the person, and at least its beginnings will develop before the person gets attached to it. So in the mythological sense it doesn't matter if there is a historical kernel: such a kernel is incidental.

Gerard Stafleu

spin

The only disagreement we have is that I think it is silly to talk about myth at all. It only clouds the issue. Figures enter tradition. Myth implies a solely religious source for the community's understanding of the elements that make up the myth. If Paul's first proselytes accepted a real Jesus then there was never a community of believers in a myth and the term "myth" is simply inappropriate. We look to other ways that figures enter tradition than the conversion of myth.

If you accept the notion that a "myth will develop with or without the person" then myth is irrelevant to the discussion, especially the debate at hand. One has to deal with how the person got into the tradition. This could be that he jumped out of reality, was part of a community's mythology, was a fabrication, was based on a bad assumption, etc. That's the issue. Was Jesus a real person? (And for us, if not, what?)


spin

youngalexander

That's it then? No HJ, no MJ, certainly no FJ, not even an LJ, just a good ol' TJ.:blush:

If that's all there is,
then keep on dancing,
let's break out the booze,
and have a ball -

If that's all ...