NOGO

On your first statement:
You are ignoring many other possibilities.
For example:
Christianity started with a MJ which was later associated/confused with the story of a man.

On your second statement.
You are saying that it is not very probably that a myth can become a real man. Even if the myth-to-historical transition is unique to Christianity we have strong evidence for it and therefore your Ockham's Razor falls apart.

You cannot remove the theory which best fits the data using Ockham's razor.

You did not answer my last post.

spin

Specifically on this issue, you will remember the thread I started on the non-existent Ebion, won't you? You even looked at it and yet you can ask this question? You're cut to shreds by Occam.


spin

GakuseiDon

That is the "from non-historical to historical in 50 years or so". Are there any other examples of this?

Agreed... if the evidence is strong. In this case, Doherty only has speculation. You only need to count the "maybes" and "possiblys" in his articles to see that.

The best fit IMHO is that there were at least two groups in early Christianity:
(1) The Jerusalem group, focused on Jesus's teachings - early evidence for this is Q and the Ebionites.
(2) The Pauline group, focused on salvation through the resurrection, but was concerned with the neo-Platonic influences of the day, so was not concerned with historical details, except when needed to make a point (e.g. "born of a woman", "seed of David", etc).

The Jerusalem group was Judaistic, and so remained in Judea, and ultimately faded away after the rebellions in 70 CE and early 2nd C CE.

The Pauline group expanded outside Israel, and went from strength-to-strength. The Pauline group saw the Risen Christ as the mediator between God and Man. They weren't interested in an earthly Messiah, nor would it have played too well to the gentiles.

It wasn't until the Pauline group had moved far enough away from its Jewish roots that they felt comfortable enough to discuss the historical Jesus. Even as late as the end of the 2nd C CE, there are letters from apologists who don't mention any details of a historical Jesus, while it is clear that they knew of such.

That would explain the available evidence much better, AFAICS.

OK. Let's look at them in light of my theory:

Paul tells us that Jesus was given the title of Son of God when he returned to heaven (See Romans 1 and confirmed by Hebrews 1) This happened in heaven so we are not talking history. I throw the question back at you how does Paul know this. Also please do explain why the Gospels says otherwise.

Paul gets it through revelations of the Risen Christ, which is his focus. The Gospels came through the Jerusalem group, who had a different focus.

Paul tells us God will subjugate all enemies under Jesus' feet.
This is a future event which refers to a verse in a Psalm.

Not sure what the problem is here.

Paul tells us that a secret. We will not all die. First the dead in Jesus will resurrect then we who are still alive and the resurrected will join Jesus in the clouds and be with Jesus forever.
Where did Paul get this?

Revelation or philosophical deliberations.

Paul tells us about the resurrected body. A notion which is very different and contrary to the Gospels description of Jesus' resurrected body. Where did Paul get this? Not from the Gospels.


I'm not sure how it is different from the Gospel stories. Paul's version is more complete - as you'd expect for someone whose main focus is the implications of the crucifixion for salvation.

Paul tells us that Jesus was sent by God to undo some error Adam had committed in the Garden of Eden.
Clearly Paul invented this from reading the OT. Neither the Gospels nor anybody else gives any clues that this was Jesus' mission.

True, the Gospels don't, as their focus was on Jesus's teachings.

Paul tells us that Jesus created the whole world. (same as John 1) Genesis has Yahweh or Elohim creating the world.
I can guess at what Paul means but even then this is not interpretation of history. Paul is creating myth.

Not sure what the problem is here.

Let's look at First Epistle of Clement: http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/...htm#P171_20841
This seems to fit perfectly with the events of the crucifixion, and appears to refer to events on earth, yet there are no more historical references here than there are in Paul. Why?

Amaleq13

Q names no followers and does not mention a crucifixion but appears to depict Jesus as God's Wisdom incarnate. If, as Crossan suggests, his death can be said to be implied by certain passages, there is no indication that this death was considered in any way different from the expected fate of all prophets. Last, the prophets of Q are depicted as focusing on rural areas and even complain against Jerusalem for killing the prophets. If we accept Kloppenborg's (Excavating Q) depiction of Q as consisting of three successive layers, it seems relevant that it is only with the final layer that "the Torah and the Temple appear in a positive light" (pg 212).

The GEbionites depicts Jesus as intending to do away with Temple sacrifices.

Neither of these appear to be consistent with the depiction of James as extremely pious and observant of the Law.

Those aren't "historical details", they are statements of faith.

Here is Doherty's consideration of 1 Clement:

http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/supp12One.htm

GakuseiDon

I meant that Q and the Ebionites were evidence of early groups of Christians who were not centered on the crucifixion. From here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/q.html
On the Ebionites:
http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuse...m;%20Ebionites
I meant "historical" as relating to a real person on earth.

Just more speculation. As Doherty says, "almost anything is possible"! It is actually evidence for my own speculation: that Paul deliberately doesn't refer to a human Jesus in order to focus on the salvation aspects of his gospel.

Amaleq13

That is a different claim since you appeared to be originally offering Q and the Ebionites as evidence that TJC preached a living Jesus. This new claim can also appeal to the Didache which contains no reference to crucifixion nor to the concept of atoning sacrifice. Jesus is recalled as a source of knowledge.

Early groups of Jesus Christ followers who were not centered on the crucifixion doesn't really make sense assuming all these movements were begun by a crucified man. It does make sense if Paul introduced this concept to his interpretation, however.

Statements of faith about a figure do not require that the figure be historical.

He says that about the possibility that 1 Clement is a 2nd century forgery. He goes on to provide his reasons to doubt that possibility.

It is more evidence that early Christians relied heavily on Scripture to describe the "details" of the suffering of Jesus Christ rather than any allegedly historical oral traditions.

It is another example of an early Christian totally ignoring the preaching, teaching, miracle-performing aspect of Jesus that features so prominently in the Gospel stories.

Gregg

That's how scholars have tried to explain it for centuries. Doherty is quite aware of this explanation, and covers it in detail.

It's more than a little odd that Paul would have no interest, beyond the bare essentials, of things the incarnate, eternal Word said and did while on Earth. It's even odder that when Paul tells us the few details he does, he draws them from scripture or says he came to know about them via revelation, not from being told about them.

Paul often warned the churches against "false apostles" who preached a different Christ, one that did not come "in the flesh" and was not crucified. He considered the message of the Cross to be of prime importance. Yet all his arguments for an in-the-flesh, crucified Jesus are drawn from scripture, theology, and personal revelation. He never does the obvious thing and suggest that doubters at least send a representative to Jerusalem to check up on Jesus' story.

Given all the OTHER evidence to suggest that Jesus could easily be entirely "mythical" (remember, it's a cumulative case), it seems to me that all these odd omissions in Paul are better explained by there being no HJ, rather than by insisting that Paul consciously and deliberately omitted Jesus' teachings and most of the details of his life in order to focus on the bare essentials of the salvation message.

capnkirk

Gregg:

I think that the discussion on this thread has become unnecessarily polarized into camps that insist that there was NO historical Jesus figure, period...and those that say Yes there was; he was human, a messiah candidate, cricified, allegedly recurrected. That leaves a lot of room between the poles for the "truth" to lie. I think that most of us would also concede that there just isn't enough evidence to reach a definitive conclusion...which is to say that there is enough ambiguity remaining to provide fuel for argument indefinitely.

There is actually a lot more that we all agree on than there is to disagree over, starting with the agreement that there was no Historical Jesus Christ. No one is arguing any theist viewpoint, so there shouldn't be much reason for strong emotional attachment to either camp's POV. They both deny Xtianity as having any better claim to divine sourcing than any other religion. So let's all recognize that we are arguing over "how" the mythical JC originated, not "whether", and we are down to the details of that. Clearly there is sufficient evidence both for and against both positions to preclude the possibility of a final unambiguous resolution in favor of either.

So let's refocus on just what those differences are. Using your "What about..." list as a template (I have arbitrarily numbered each "bullet item" so that they can be refered to below more specifically.):

I think that we can all stipulate that paragraphs 2-11 (The first paragraph being "There is no HJ".) do not conflict with either side's understanding of the historical background of the times or to their HJ v. MJ POV.

Paragraph 12 says: "There are certain messianic Jews based in Jerusalem, influenced in varying degrees by Greek neo-Platonism and the dying/rising savior god cults, and who engage heavily in scripture study and the practice of midrash...." There seems to be a difference of opinion on this issue, and it seems to revolve around just how much of Par. 11 is evident in Judea at the time (with respect to the probability that such groups existed, or to what extent).

Para 13 depends on Para 12: The Roman practice of crucifixion suggests to the midrashers that scripture verses about "hanging on a tree" are references to the manner in which the Christ was killed by the demons in the sublunar realm." In the absence of a surviving historical record of a crucifixion of a prophet named Jesus, HJ'ers have only the references in Paul's letters (re: his conversion) and the subsequent presentation in Acts of Paul's quarrel with TJC upon which to base any claim of a crucified HJ.

Para 14 says: "These Jews begin preaching and teaching and gathering converts among other Jews." This statement equally supports both camps.

Para 15 says: "The Pharisee Paul encounters Jewish Christians and, although he persecutes the sect at first, later has a spiritual epiphany of some sort and converts himself." Here the two camps differ only over the context of this persecution and conversion. Were they followers of an HJ or an MJ?

The HJers minimize the midrash evident in the Synoptics and Acts, while the MJers maximize it.

The HJers see Paul as the first to "have the Christ of the Logos revealed to him as the fulfillment of OT prophesies". The MJers assign the primacy of that revelation to a Pre-Saul group of Jews.

These observations illustrate just how narrow the realm of disagreement between MJers and HJers really is. In fact, the entire argument seems to ultimately hinge on the the issue described in the immediately preceding paragraph.

capnkirk

The full blown (meaning the crucified Jewish messiah candidate) HJ position argues that Paul genuinely felt that HIS visionary insight was superior to that of either HJ's disciples or his followers, he says as much in his letters. Or he may have considered all that HJ did was play a role to get himself crucified; having accomplished that, the nature of his earthly role was no longer relevant. The HJ position holds that Paul never met HJ, so anything he knew about HJ was information extracted from followers during interrogation (associated with their "official" persecution). One would reasonably expect his knowledge of HJ's life to be quite limited. It wasn't his job to learn about HJ, but to deter the followers. His job wasn't conducive to learning about HJ. Besides, if the real HJ most closely resembled the Q figure, there wasn't that much to tell (from Paul's POV). The only exception that I might concede would be the final act of the Passion...the suffering, the death, and the resurrection. The HJ POV is weak on that particular point, but not necessarily so on the whole of HJ's life.

capnkirk

If there were a MJ group in Jerusalem that was the ultimate progenitor of the Christ concept, then there are some things that we can deduce about it:

If Paul (a real Pharisee) was persecuting them, then it would have been on religious grounds, and would have reflected the prevailing contemporary attitude in Jerusalem. Else, more of their cosmos would have been absorbed via midrash by the mainstream later on. In fact, quite the opposite happened. The mainstream reaction to Xtianity was from the beginning, one of disconnect and rejection, an attitude that persists to the present time. This mitigates against claims that Xtianity naturally evolved out of Judaism, and relegates such a group to the status of apostates or worse. But it doesn't completely preclude their existence, and WOULD explain Paul's persecution.