TedM

This is a review of portions of Doug Shaver's article found here. While eloquent and well writen, I don't see any compelling reason why Doug rejects the conventional theory (dealth with first herein) in favor of his alternative, which is much like Doherty's. The "conventional theory" is that simply that Jesus was a preacher who was crucified and for some reason believed to have been resurrected, thus launching Christianity.

I think you overlooked the book of Acts, which says a number of things about Jesus life, and presents Paul as being familiar with Jesus as a man who had recently lived. A main theme in the book is that the early Christians, including Paul, spent a great deal of time proving that this man Jesus had been the Messiah foretold in the scriptures. The book of Acts mentions Jesus’ mother Mary and his brothers, was foretold by John the Baptist, “went in and out among us (Jews)”, was a Nazarene, performed miracles, wonders and ‘signs‘, and was crucified by the Jews and Pilate, had disciples 12, was betrayed by Judas.

Some believe the chapters in Acts that deal with Paul’s travels--which begin in Ch 13 and the “we” chapters begin in Ch 16--were written by a true insider, and are thus more accurate. In those chapters we see Paul‘s Jesus as having been a man like that seen in the gospels: In Chapter 13 Paul attests to Jesus as having been fortold by John the Baptist just prior to his coming to earth, and that he had been crucified by Pilate, laid in a tomb, and then appeared to people after his death. In Ch 16 Paul is said to command a healing in the name of Jesus. In Ch 19 Paul again repeats the foretelling of Jesus by John the Baptist. In Ch 20 Paul quotes a teaching of Jesus “It is more blessed to give than to receive” In Ch 22 Paul recounts that Jesus appeared to him, calling himself a Nazarene. In Ch 26 Jesus is said to have been from Nazareth.

From the epistles, we do learn some things about what he said and did between his birth and death, but not much. We learn of the Last supper during which he is quoted by Paul as saying and doing specific things. As for his death we learn that it was in Zion, or Jerusalem, and was at the hands of rulers, by the Jews. We also learn a few other things--he had brothers, one named James, and he had been poor, and had a meek and humble spirit. I realize that each of these items are disputed regarding interpolations and interpretations, but you wrote: “From the epistles, we learn nothing of what he said or did between his birth and his death. “ You are making statements as though they are facts, which they are not.



You rightly mention Clement, which references Jesus a number of times. What about the Didache, which contains quotes found in the gospels and clearly implies Jesus to have been a teacher, recounts specific teachings found in the gospels, and calls Jesus the “son of David”? What about the non-existent Q document? What about the Gospel of Thomas? All these are argued to have been 1st century documents.


True, though the reference by Josephus to James should be considered. Again, there are arguments regarding interpolation, but do we have any evidence that the reference never existed? And IF the conventional is correct, should we expect Josephus to have said much about Jesus when he says nothing about the early Jewish Christian movement in Judea or elsewhere?


You really seem to gloss over this issue here. I question whether the scholarly analysis really does allow that the books could have been written in the 2nd century. 1st century writers could have messed up on some of their geopraphical, historical, and cultural details, I'll grant. But, could 2nd century writers have been so dead on right on some of those same kinds of details? It really requires a lot to just chuck the gospels and Acts as possibly too late to be reliable for even the existence of Jesus, so that primarily what we have left to look at are Paul’s letters. Don't even the majority of non-believing biblical scholars have a scientific basis for agree on the 70-90AD dates?


This isn’t an argument against the conventional theory you describe. It’s against the orthodox theory. The ‘trivial exceptions’ is a judgment call as is the contention that they are “countable on one hand”. See my conclusion page to the Top 20 silences.


That’s not the implication of 1 Cor 15 when Jesus is said to have appeared to 500 at once. One could certainly interpret 1 John and 1 Peter differently also.



I don’t see this as an argument against the conventional theory, since it (the conventional) implies an evolution of mythical development that takes time, and little other material survived. So, there shouldn‘t be much expectation for such data..One must ask--which documents does one expect particular references to be found if the conventional theory is correct, and where and what should those references be? This is the goal of Doherty's silences, except that he really flip flops between arguing against the conventional and the orthodox Jesus. The conventional is much harder to argue against when there exists snippets of references that do correspond with the later collections found in the gospels.


If later Jews accepted such diefication, which they did, then why not 1st century Jews too? Either way the man was dead, so it wasn't as if they were claiming some man currently living amongst them is God.

Early on the “son of God” is Paul’s view. Others--maybe even the early Jewish church may have preferred “prophet” or Messiah.

Certainly you believe that some 1st century Jews followed certain living men, believing they were the long awaited Messiah, right? Certainly you believe that people sometimes believe their beloved didn’t really die or is still living on, at least in spirit, right? Why not combine the two? And, if you add to it the idea that this man was crucified during Passover--something Paul may be implying when he calls Jesus the “paschal lamb”, and in Jerusalem, something Paul may be implying when he says Jesus was the stumbling block in Zion (and of course both when and where are also alleged clearly in the gospels), you have a powerful setup for some Jews to believe just that--especially since the Jews have a long history of believing that sacrificial death brings ATONEMENT to their suffering. These things can quickly elevate a man to being more and more ‘godlike’. The issue of Jewish diefication of a man does not seem to be much of a problem with the conventional theory to me when these things are considered, especially given the context of the Jewish nation at the time.



I have yet to see a strong overall argument against the conventional theory here, Doug. Your points have some merit, but can all be addressed adequately IMO.



OK, now let’s look at your alternative theory.


I take issue with that still. In how many verses does Paul or the other epistle writers actual say that Jesus’ death was revealed and not witnessed by them or anyone else? Paul certainly implies that Jesus was talking to MEN just prior to his death, in the Last Supper account of 1 Cor 12. And, he certainly implies that it was men without spiritual wisdom, government rulers (archons) who crucified Jesus.

What Platonic spirit world? To my knowledge Don G has shown that such a world in which gods are ‘born’, “have flesh”, have “brothers”, are “poor”, are “crucified” ALL in ‘another sphere’ is simply the product of Doherty’s mind, and not supported by the evidence. Certainly Paul doesn’t talk about this other sphere when referencing Jesus‘ life. Not once.. The concept is created out of imagination with little or no evidential support..

Not the kind Doherty says Paul envisioned. Rather, there were ‘ideals’ of goodness and traits found on earth. Those ideals were considered to be in some other dimension. I’m not speaking as an authority, but that is my understanding. If it goes beyond just ‘ideals’ to actual happenings other than angels or devils fighting each other, please let me know. If any of these spheres talk of having a man of flesh saying and doing things in their dimension, please let me know.

That’s quite a statement. Not sure how accurate it is. Which elements are you referring to as “significant”? EVEN IF your statement is true, it still doesn’t argue against the conventional theory. Each of those precedents could have just as easily (more easily IMO) been applied to the man Jesus.



I don’t see yet that a strong case has been made for the conventional theory to be a ‘problem’.


Ok, and I’ll give my impressions as to how realistic those are.


I’m not sure there is any clear evidence of either the kind of parallel spiritual realm you allege, or such savior cults, so this while possible seems to be lacking in evidence.


To my knowledge there is no evidence of any Hellenized Jews who believed the long awaited Messiah would be a savior-god, and not a man. All known other would-be Messiahs were men. In the OT he was clearly described as being a man in the line of Judah/Jesse/David, and a king. As for the name Jesus, I think it is overblown because the name didn’t mean “Savior”. It was a declaration about God, which was common with a lot of names at the time. Plus, the name Jesus was common also. Not for gods, but for men.. Wouldn’t they have wanted to pick a unique name for their savior-god?



There is no known precedent of such a title in Judaism (the name with such a meaning is close, but not the same thing), nor is there a record of such a special group in Christian literature, as I think would be expected. Paul’s treatment of the passages as well as his silence about such a group makes it more likely IMO that the group was actual brothers of Jesus.

Perhaps, but the qualification is not spelled out clearly. Paul was considered by some to not be an apostle though, yet in his writings he talks about his revelation.


Is there any evidence that followers did not think of the teacher as having really existed, or are you just speculating?


Perhaps, but it should be noted that a revelation after Jesus’ death is consistent with the gospel timetable, which puts Paul‘s conversion after Jesus‘ death..

While such evolution is consistent with a non-human source (cosmic Christ), it is also consistent with a human Jesus who didn’t minister clearly about the role of salvation for Gentiles.



Maybe, but we do know that the eventual stories on paper, that is the gospels, DO present it as history, and it was within only a couple of generations of the events, so could easily have been demonstrated by those who opposed Christians that such a man never had even lived. Non-believing Jews and believing Pauline Christians (if the theory is correct) would have reason to argue against a human Jesus, but we have no such records. Of course, they could have been lost, but that fact remains. Critically, we do have some writings that discuss both the skeptic Jewish viewpoint and if I'm not mistaken, the viewpoints of one or more of Paul's disciples, but none of them suggest that they questioned the basic human existence of Jesus.


The silence of conflicts between Christians who believed Jesus had been human and those that didn’t (except possibly in 1 John--which I address in the Top 20 site), suggests to me that the idea of such a merger is unrealistic.



Your alternative theory relies on an unsupported type of parallel universe by Paul, a minimization of Paul’s references to an earthly Jesus, an unsupported Jewish conception of the Messiah as not being a man though given a common man's name, speculation that the pre-Paul apostles received revelations the same way as Paul did even though Paul doesn’t write about that and even though Paul fought hard to be considered an apostle on the same level as them, speculation about the evolution of a merger of an unknown teacher of righteousness and a cosmic Christ, without evidence of such a merger even among the writings we do have from Paul‘s following. While you suggest the dissenting writings were eventually dropped by the orthodox majority, it is interesting that the most prevalent early writings that remained and were promoted by the orthodox winners were those of Paul--the very one you claim was promoting an “otherworldly Christ” who lived in a parallel universe.


A person would not most reasonably expect the following facts to be true if your theory were true:

*No references to a similar parallel universe can be found.
*Paul doesn‘t defend or explain his Jesus as having not walked the earth, but existing in some kind of parallel universe.
*Paul doesn’t defend or explain the concept of a non-human Messiah, something that you claim would have been very distasteful to Jews
*No gospel writer suggests or even hints that the events were not based a human Jesus.
*Paul’s writings weren’t rejected by the orthodox majority that accepted without question a human Jesus
*No writings about or by Paul’s followers suggest that Paul believed Jesus didn’t walk the earth.
*No writings discuss the merging of an earthly and unearthly Christ, nor any such conflict during this evolution, which would have covered decades and would have been a hot topic among the two camps.

It seems to me that the conventional theory is much more consistent with the evidence that does exist, as well as with the silences that exist too than your alternative theory.

ted

spamandham

There is no historical concensus regarding Jesus other than "he existed". Every other aspect, including the scant portions you listed, are contended by respected properly credentialled historian, according to Amy-Jill Levine, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt (Point of Inquiry podcast interview of her titled "Who Was Jesus of Nazareth".)

I find it odd that historians can agree he existed, even though they disagree on every aspect of his life. Is there any other historical character that is so enigmatic, yet historians agree existed nonetheless? IMHO, if Christianity were not so predominant, they would not take his existence so seriously.

Doug Shaver

I don't remember whether, when I wrote the article, Acts crossed my mind as a possible counterexample to what I was saying. If it did, I probably dismissed it on grounds that it could be considered just an extension of one of the gospels. If that was my thinking, I should have been more explicit about it.

It is, to my knowledge, essentially undisputed that Acts was written by the same man who wrote Luke's gospel, whoever that might have been. It therefore does not, relative to the gospels, constitute any additional evidence for Jesus' historicity. Whatever confirmation Luke provides, Acts does not provide any more.

Yeah, some believe that. Most of them are inerrantists. As for the few who aren't, I haven't seen them offer any better reasons to believe than the inerrantists do.

Setting aside the issue of any NT author's actual identity, I am aware of no argument for treating Acts as a work of history, even very distorted history, that does not depend on a presupposition of Jesus' historicity. Without that prior assumption, there is no good reason to presume that there is any factual history at all in Acts. The question ought not be: How much of it is true? The question ought to be: Is any of it true, and why should we think so?

Only by reading the between the lines from a historicist presupposition. No epistle known to have been written during the first century explicitly says anything about anything that Jesus did before his death. No epistle explicitly says that Jesus said anything during his eathly ministry. No epistle known to have been written during the first century says he even had an earthly ministry. The one, the only, arguable exception is the Last Supper reference in I Corinthians 12. And, had there been an earthly ministry, it is quite amazing that there would be only that one exception.

No, we do not learn that from the epistles. We read it into the epistles if we assume a historical Jesus.

I'll be updating the article one of these days. That is one statement I'll probably revise.

I believed them to be factual when I wrote them. As for the Last Supper, while it is technically true that it occurred "between" his birth and his death, I don't think it unreasonable to construe it as a constituent of the event of his death.

I'm assuming for the sake of discussion that I Clement was written, as is widely supposed, during the 90s. Its references to Jesus don't show that Clement knew anything beyond the stories that eventually found their way into the canonical gospels. Whether or not the gospels had been written by the time Clement wrote that epistle, it is not disputed that the stories were circulating within at least some parts of the Christian community by that time. What is disputed is whether the stories had any basis in fact.

What about it? The most we can infer is that the author of the Didache was familiar with the gospels.

Please read this -- http://www.columbia.edu/~gm84/gibran1.html -- and then tell me whether it implies the historicity of Almustafa. It clearly implies that Almustafa was a teacher, does it not?

If it doesn't exist, it cannot be evidence for anything.

Assuming that Q did exist at one time, the fact of its existence might prove something, but we can infer its contents only from what is in documents that do still exist. Therefore, whatever was in Q cannot tell us any more than what is in any extant document.

As evidence for Jesus' historicity, I don't see it adding anything to what we can reasonably infer from the canonical gospels.

So stated, that is an irrelevancy. The canonical writings have been argued to be inerrant. The mere existence of an argument for some proposition says nothing about the credibility of the proposition.

If you know of a cogent argument for first-century authorship of Thomas or the Didache, please summarize it and we'll see where we can go with it.

I have considered it, and I think I have given it due consideration. I will stipulate that a reasonable person may find the arguments for its inauthenticity uncompelling. Even so, I think they establish enough reasonable doubt about authenticity that Josephus cannot be treated as if Antiquities 20:9 were sufficient to settle any arguments about James's family tree.

What we can most reasonably believe about what Josephus originally wrote must be determined by an examination of all the relevant evidence. If everything outside of Josephus says there was probably no Jesus, then that alone creates reasonable doubt about the complete authenticity of Josephus's reference to James.

If the conventional view is correct, then a great many things happened contrary to what people usually expect to happen. That is the basis of my argument against the conventional view. If the conventional view is correct, then we should expect Josephus to have said much more than he did, not only about Jesus himself, but also about the Jewish Christian movement at least in Judea. That is to say, if the original Jewish Christian movement was anything like its depiction in Acts, then Josephus's silence about it is yet another anomaly, compounding the anomaly of his silence about Jesus.

Which scholar's analysis are you referring to? I said the evidence accommodates second-century authorship. I know there is a scholarly consensus for first-century authorship, but I am also saying it is reasonable to think the consensus could be in error. At the same time, my own position does not depend on the consensus being entirely wrong. It allows for early versions of the gospels to have existed during the first century.

I have looked for one. I haven't found it yet. As far as I can tell, they are deferring to church tradition on the dating, even while they dispute the traditional claims about who the authors were.

Give me whatever you think is the best example of such a detail, and I'll tell you what I think.

That might be another candidate for revision. Even under the conventional theory, first-century Christians believed that their founder attracted disciples, preached to thousands, healed the sick and raised the dead, etc. etc. In other words, the epistles were written by people who believed everything that, some years later, were put into the gospels. The only difference between that and the orthodox view is that according to the orthodox view, what they believed happened to entirely true. My point is that either way, it is hard to explain why the epistle writers ignore practically all of it.

I'll get to that when I can.

We don't have the testimony of those 500. We have no document in which any of them asserts -- or is quoted as asserting -- "I saw Jesus a few days after he was crucified by Pontius Pilate." We have Paul's unelaborated assertion that Jesus "appeared" to 500 people. That tells us nothing about what those 500 people actually thought they were seeing. In particular, it does not prove that they believed they were looking at a man who, to the best of their knowledge, had recently lived and preached in Galilee and been executed by a Roman official in Jerusalem.

Of course, if you assume Jesus' historicity, then it is the most parsimonious interpretation. But only on that assumption.

I am not arguing about what interpretations of any particular document are possible. I am arguing about what interpretations make the best fit with the totality of the relevant evidence. It makes no difference if any given document, considered in isolation, is most easily interpreted as reflecting the author's belief in a historical Jesus. What we're after is the most parsimonious explanation of the whole kit and kaboodle of them.

Clement was a contemporary of the gospel authors according to conventional dating, and Ignatius was somewhat later. According to the conventional theory, the gospels recorded what had come to be considered common knowledge within the Christian community.

The conventional theory says that Jesus was mythologized because he was so impressive. That's why I call often call it the "charismatic rabbi theory." My argument, like Doherty's, is that if the man made such an impression on so many people, why was there virtually no talk of his life until nearly a century after his death? And why was there no tendency for anyone mentioning his alleged teachings to credit him with those teachings until nearly a century after his death?

Doherty answers that on his Web site. I'll restate just one point he makes in my own words.

If I point to a certain passage in, say, Ignatius' letter to the Trallians and claim he should have such-and-such about Jesus, the historicist can conjure up some explanation for why he didn't. And it might even be a plausible explanation as regards that particular passage. So then what? So then I point to another passage in Trallians, and again the historicist has an explanation. So then I move on to Magnesians, and we go through the routine again. And again for Philadelphians, and Smyrneans, and so on and so on through the Ignatian corpus. Then we do the same for Clement. Then for Barnabas. Then for the Shepherd of Hermas.

The point is: Whatever the plausibility of any particular omission, it is not plausible on the assumption of historicity that nowhere in any of those documents is there any unambiguous mention of a teacher, charismatic or otherwise, who had recently lived in this world.

I am not aware that any later Jews did any such thing. Please present the specifics and your source.

And if you're referring to the alleged deification of Moses, I addressed that some time ago in another thread somewhere around here.

Paul's view is that earliest Christian view we know about, and for its time it is the only one we know about.

Speculation about what they "may have" believed is not evidence of what they did believe. No Christian leader contemporary with Paul wrote anything that has survived. For whatever it is worth, Paul himself clearly indicates that the leaders of the Jerusalem church had no significant disagreements with him, excepting only the issue of the gentiles' obligations regarding Jewish law.

Now, I am not suggesting that we have to take Paul's word for what the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem believed. My point is that we have no other word. If Paul does not inform us as to what Christians believed circa 50 CE, then we have no contemporary information at all as to what Christians believed circa 50 CE.

I have not studied that question. However, it is my understanding that Josephus says they did, and for the time being I'm assuming that he was correct.

I have heard credible reports to that effect, yes.

I would if I had a good reason to, but "could have happened" does not imply "probably happened."

I cannot see two "may be implying"s as adding up to a "powerful setup," but we can disregard that for the moment. Let's stipulate for discussion's sake that Paul does in fact assert, if indirectly, that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem during Passover. What, according to Paul's writings or any documents contemporary with his, did Jesus do during his lifetime that caused certain Jews to think his death was a sacrifical atonement for anybody's suffering?

How many verses does it take to establish that that is what Paul believed? Are you claiming that he never says he received the gospel by revelation? Are you claiming that he never denies having gotten his message from human sources?

I am not going to get into a proof-text-counting contest. The revelant documents, considered in their entirety and considered in the larger context of all other evidence relevant to Christianity's origins, make it clear enough to me that Paul did not learn about "Jesus Christ and him crucified" by having a few chats with Cephas and James.

That passage has been debated to death in this forum. I'm not going to plow that field again.

Since even some historicists disagree with you, I suggest you give up on this one.

DonG has argued to that effect. I don't find his argument cogent, though, and therefore I don't agree he has shown anything beyond the fact that he thinks Doherty is wrong.

Of course not. That's because he doesn't reference Jesus' life. He references only his death and resurrection.

How close would it have had to be? What were the limits on how much a certain religious sect could modify whatever was the standard version of Platonic philosophy?

Same here, but ever since I first read Doherty I've been trying to augment my understanding by doing my own research into Hellenistic thinking. Time and other constraints have precluded any deep research so far, but I haven't found anything yet that is inconsistent with Doherty's thinking.

Having recently enrolled at a local state university, I now have access to resources that weren't previously available to me, at least not readily. I'll be checking them out as my study schedule allows.

I'll be keeping everyone here well posted, I hope.

I sort of went out on a limb with that one. I put it up and still stand by it because (a) I've seen the statement made by other apparently knowledgeable people besides Doherty, some of whom are historicists, and (b) I have never seen it contradicted by anyone who knows anything outside of evangelical apologetics.

Any element that, if true, would lend credibility to some historically significant variation of the Christian religion.

Yes, if we assume there was such a man.

I did the best I could with what I knew six years ago, when I first wrote that article. I had no illusions about being able to change anybody's mind. My purpose in putting it up was more to explain why my own mind had changed. Before I read Doherty, I thought all ahistoricists were a bunch of crackpot conspiracy theorists, and that was after having been an atheist for over 30 years.

There weren't any before Christianity came along. That's what defined Christianity.

I hope you're not trying to argue that no hellenized Jew could have been so intellectually innovative as to come up with the idea on his own.

And therefore, no Jew could possibly have conjectured that the messiah could be anything else?

For some 1,400 years, one of the bedrock dogmas of Christianity, common to all of its hundreds of sects, was that God's divine inspiration had stopped with the book of Revelation. There was to be no more sacred scripture. The canon was closed, period, end of discussion. And then a Christian named Joseph Smith begged to differ, and now we have millions of Mormons claiming that a few other books in addition to the Bible are just as divinely inspired as it is.

Whether real or mythical, Jesus was obviously not a king, whatever his ancestry. That could explain why Christianity never attracted more than a bare handful of Jews and probably would have ceased to exist had it never accommodated itself to gentiles.

Under any theory -- orthodox, conventional, or mythicist -- the first Christians had to be telling their prospective converts among the Jews, "The messiah isn't what you've always thought he would be. You've been expecting a warrior-king. You've been mistaken. The messiah wasn't supposed to deliver Israel from her worldly oppressors. He was supposed to save the whole world from the oppression of sin."

I have no idea what a 21st-century marketing consultant would say about that, but I have noticed that as long as they have existed, Christians have gotten a lot of mileage out of giving new meanings to words already in common usage.

And therefore, Christians could not have done it?

Aside from I Cor. 9:5, you mean?

Your arguments seems to be: If the phrase "brothers of the lord" was an honorific given to a certain group of leaders in the Jerusalem church, we should expect Christian writers later on to have referred to that group, or any other group like it, by that same honorific.

Considering that the Jerusalem church's existence almost certainly ended during the Jewish War, I see nothing implausible about such a localized usage fading from memory within the larger Christian community after Paul's lifetime.

Yes, so he tells us. But he doesn't say on exactly what grounds his credentials were questioned. That is to be expected if the qualifications were not well defined. But if they were not well defined, why not?

Paul's claim to apostleship could be disputed if the essential qualifications, whatever they were, were subject to some interpretation. But on any credible historicist interpretation of the New Testament, one essential qualification apparently was having been a disciple of Jesus during his earthly ministry, and there was just no way anybody could have interpreted that to make Paul eligible. Now, Paul himself might have tried to argue his way around it, but whom would he have persuaded? Certainly not the "the pillars" of the Jerusalem church. They would have declared him a fraud and sent word to every Christian community they could get in touch with to have nothing to do with him. There is zero evidence for anything like that having happened. Maybe it did, but the only surviving evidence says that although some did dispute Paul's apostleship, the leaders of the Jerusalem church accepted it.

I am not speculating about people taking seriously and seeking to promulgate teachings put into the mouths of people they know to be fictional. It is a fact that it can happen and does happen. I don't know how old you are, but when I was coming of age in the '60s, lots of my cohorts treated The Prophet like it was sacred literature.

Yes, it is. It is also consistent that Paul might have needed a revelation to discover the meaning and purpose of Jesus' crucifixion. However, it is not consistent with historicity that Paul would have needed a revelation to know that Jesus had been crucified. As far as we can tell from his writings, though, he didn't learn about it any other way.

If it is consistent with both historicity and ahistoricity, then I suspect it is all the more plausible for that.

Meaning what, specifically? What statement is in the gospels that has never appeared in any work of fiction? Or that rarely appears in a work of fiction? Or that almost never appears in a work of fiction? Word it any way you want. Exactly what, in any of the gospels, implies -- without any question-begging -- the author's specific and deliberate intention to write a factual account of events that he honestly believed actually happened?

When, where, and how? Tell me a city where we know one of the gospels was being read by (or to) Christians in that city during the first century. Then tell me what evidence their opponents in that city would have come up with to prove Jesus' nonexistence. And for extra credit: Tell me why they would have bothered.

And for still more extra credit, you can prove that the Christians would have changed their minds in response to their opponents' arguments.

Regardless of when the gospels were originally composed, there is no evidence of general awareness about them among Christians until well into the second century. By that time, nobody, friend or foe of the historicist sects, would have had any advantage, in terms of readily available factual evidence, in any argument about whether or not there really had been such a man.

Yes, and it is an inconvenient fact for ahistoricists. On the other hand, it is a fact to be expected if ahistoricity is true. The historicists won the war (assuming there was one) and for roughly 1,000 years -- between the fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance -- they were the essentially the sole custodians of the entire historical record in the Christian world.

Now, I am not among those who think the church ever engaged in a search-and-destroy mission against documents that it didn't like. It might have, on some occasions in some places, but never worldwide. And it never had to. When every document has to be hand-copied, 1,000 years is a gawdawful long time for anything in writing to last. The only thing that had to happen, for a document unfriendly to orthodoxy to vanish forever from the historical record, was for the church to decide there was no reason to preserve it.

I have no idea which Jewish viewpoint you're referring to. As for Paul's disciples, they didn't need to argue against a historical Jesus because in Paul's time (and within the probable lifetime of anybody who could have been a disciple of his), nobody was arguing for a historical Jesus.

It is not unsupported. The middle Platonists did believe in a parallel universe of some kind. They got the idea from Plato himself. The only argument is over whether, by Paul's time, a variation of it had evolved to the point where the events related by Paul could have happened there.

Your calling them "references to an earthly Jesus" begs the question. The question at issue is whether those references cannot be reasonably construed except as being to an earthly Jesus. It is not minimizing "born of a woman" to argue that Paul could plausibly have meant something other than what anybody using that phrase nowadays would mean by it.

He had a common man's name, therefore he must have been a man? Gimme a break.

Is that an argument from silence?

In that context, why would he have made a big deal of having had a revelation, unless it were common knowledge that in order to be an apostle, you had to have had a revelation?

The hypothesis on the table says the merger didn't happen until several decades after Paul's time. His immediate followers would not have been involved in it and therefore would have had nothing to say about it.

It could hardly be more obvious that to anyone committed to historicity, Paul's writings do not present a dissenting viewpoint. That does not mean that they support historicity, though. It means only that with a little effort, they can be interpreted so as to seem consistent with historicity.

His failure, for whatever reason, to be more explicit about certain of his cosmological assumptions is obviously a problem for us mythicists. I think we can deal with it.

Depends on how similar it has to be. I am reminded of certain inerrantist arguments about pre-Christian virgin-birth stories.

If the gospels had existed in his time, that would indeed be odd. But they didn't.

I don't remember making that claim. I remember claiming that a deified man would have been anathema, even if he had been the messiah.

Have we any reason to think they would have?

So far as I'm aware, Kahlil Gibran never suggested or hinted that Almustafa was not based on a real prophet. Does that imply anything at all about Almustafa's likely historicity?

He didn't say anything that flatly contradicted orthodoxy.

Nobody at the time was saying Jesus ever had walked the earth.

There is good reason to believe such writings would not have survived a millennium of orthodox guardianship of the historical record.

GakuseiDon

My argument is that:
1. There is no evidence that there was a "non-earthly fleshly sublunar realm".
2. There is evidence that the denizens of the sublunar realm were regarded as spirits made up of air, fire or some kind of spirit substance.

For Paul to think the way that Doherty proposes is unprecedented. It may still be possible, but the evidence doesn't support it (Point 1), and seems to be against it (Point 2). It doesn't prove a HJ, but it goes against a Doherty MJ.

But leaving aside the question of evidence for a moment: In your opinion, what would be inconsistent with Doherty's thinking on this particular topic? How would we go about showing Doherty's view is improbable? (I'm assuming that explicit statements like "Jesus was not crucified in a non-earthly location" are unlikely)

TedM

Here's a partial response. More to follow as time allows.

I think some--including Richard Carrier--believe that there may be something to the idea that the 'we' portions of Acts were written originally by a firsthand traveler with Paul. The Pauline section of Acts is not nearly supernatural in nature, and there are numerous (a thread here a few years ago went on and on listing them) consistencies between it and the Pauline epistles. IF someone were simply constructing Acts from the Pauline epistles however, they likely would not have made some of the discrepancies that do exist. So, there is SOME evidence that goes back to as early as the Pauline epistles, which of course would put them in a different category as the first part of Acts or Luke.


I think there is more than one exception for things Jesus did before his death:

1 John:
*He taught about God's purity and walking in the light 1:5
*He walked (lived) as an example 2:6
*He promised eternal life 2:25
*His was a message of brotherly love 3:1, 3:23

Hebrews:
*He declared God's salvation and was heard by others 2:3
*As death approached he prayed with loud cries and tears 5:7


Here are some things he didn't do:
*Romans--Did not live to please himself, reproached by man 15:3
*2 Cor--He was sinless 5:21

1 Peter
*He never sinned 2:22
*He didn't lie 2:22
*He didn't threaten or fight back 2:23

*Hebrews--Though tempted, he was sinless 4:15


Here are some very earthly-sounding things about who he was beyond the numerous mentions of him as a man with flesh and blood, found in the epistles:

*Romans--Was a direct descendent of King David, and his father Jesse. 1:3,15:12
*Romans--Was of the Jewish race 9:5
*1 Cor--He had brothers 9:5 (my opinion)
*2 Cor--He became poor 8:9
*2 Cor-- He was meek and gentle 10:1
*Galations--He was a Jew 4:4
*1 John--He was unrecognized by the world (earth) 3:1

I agree that this is not a lot and does not describe specific detailed ACTIONS of Jesus, so much as characteristics.

Your right. I also think it is by far the most reasonable explanation for various other reasons, though.


ted

Toto

The digression has been split off and sent elsewhere

spin

On the possibility of James being the brother of Jesus:
When you are conditioned to think that way -- and that is the case, isn't it TedM? -- obviously it's the most reasonable explanation.


spin

Chris Weimer

Right on, spin! Obviously, he's a Christian so he can't be trusted. He must be brainwashed from all that conditioning.

spin

I don't notice a big anti-racist campaign in America until well after Truman's time.


spin

Doug Shaver

Assuming a historical Jesus, it is extremely unlikely that anybody would have written a statement like that. Nobody would have understood Paul as referring to a non-earthly location for the crucifixion and therefore nobody would have tried to refute it.

However, there are any number of things that certain people probably would have been written about a historical Jesus. The leaders of the Jerusalem church, for example, were supposed to have been some of his disciples. I think it unlikely in the extreme that they would never have written anything about their recollections of his earthly ministry. Granted that the originals almost certainly were destroyed during the Jewish War, surely some copies were made and distributed to some of the churches outside of Judea? How in the world would the Christian community have let those documents vanish into oblivion?

It might not be so improbable that no copies survived, but there are not even any references to such documents in any surviving writing. What we have instead from the Jerusalem "pillars" is two epistles attributed to Peter and one attributed to James, neither of which the scholarly consensus accepts as genuine, plus a couple of gospels that everyone agrees are inauthentic.

The canonical gospels are now known to be of anonymous authorship, but very early on the church leadership attributed eyewitness authorship to them. It was claimed -- falsely, we now know, or at least without sufficient reason -- that they were written either by eyewitnesses or by people acquainted with eyewitnesses. Why was that necessary? Because as early as the second century, nobody knew of any genuine eyewitness accounts of anything Jesus had said or done. It was not that eyewitness documents were inaccessible or that nobody knew where they were. It was that so far as anyone knew, none existed.

If such documents were now discovered, or if unambiguous credible references to such documents were found in writings incontrovertibly datable to the first or early second century, then I might say that Doherty's thesis had been falsified.