Originally Posted by Toto

This is on topic - scholars who are mythicists, as opposed to the digression that we have gotten into.

Originally Posted by Toto

But this question of whether Jesus existed is still much more controversial and unsettling than the question of the dating of Acts. It brings out an emotional response that is difficult for a young scholar to deal with, especially if the question is not really important.

If you want to examine why this question is so touchy with evangelicals, look at the recruitment literature for CCC. Realize that if there were no historical Jesus, the pitch would fall flat.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

S.G.F. Brandon seems to be much more of a borderline case than I thought at first. He believed in an historical Jesus but also believed that the Jesus of the Gospels was a Myth.

Here's an example of his influence on Rev. Elizabeth L. Green, http://www.christianecology.org/Jesus.html

At nearly the same time, a classmate shared a book she had just read entitled "Religion in Ancient History" by a biblical scholar named S.G.F. Brandon. In it, he describes humanity’s oldest written documents, the hieroglyphic texts inside the Pyramids, and their tale of Osiris, an incarnating God turned human, who suffers unjust death, but by divine intervention is resurrected, ascends to the heavenly realm, and their reigns, judges, and provides a blessed after-life to the faithful. In Brandon’s words, "Osiris emerged as the classic prototype of the saviour-god, who by his own death and resurrection can assure to his devotees a new life after death."1 There it was. The proof I had sought. The Christ story was just a rip-off of an old Egyptian myth, a myth predating it by over 2,000 years, and predating any comparable Jewish writings by over a 1,000 years. With this powerful revelation, I completed my liberation from the tradition of my upbringing, deconstructing it, and ripping it out by the roots.

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

But this question of
But if you think that modern HJ scholars have no right to consider the matter of the existence of Jesus as settled, then why don't you finally put your money where your mouth is and address then directly by writing up and sending your view to JBL or NTS or JSNT or by proposing to read a paper in the historical Jesus session at the next SBL?

Jeffrey

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi GakuseiDon,

I would agree. It does seem that from the late 30's to the 90's, both the quality and quantity of the scholarship in this area dropped quite a bit. My guess would be that a general and almost universal emphasis on hard sciences and technology, and an abandoning or shrinking of soft science (Humanities, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Classics etc.) departments in public higher education during this period had something to do with it.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Nice of you to stack the deck by limiting your sample to evangelicals. For folks like Crossan et al., the emotional response your question engenders is the same that the "were the theologians of the middle ages flat earthers" question brings out in Midevalists or that Von Daniken's claims brings out in Carl Sagan & company -- a yawn -- and for the same reasons.

Originally Posted by MASSEY

THE "LOGIA OF THE LORD"

The Christian report respecting the Gnostics, Docetae, and others, always assumes the human reality of the supposed history, and then explains the non-human interpretation of the Gnostics themselves as an heretic denial, or perversion of the alleged facts. Hence the Gnostics are charged by Irenæus with falsifying the oracles of God, and trying to discredit the word of revelation with their own wicked inventions.

We learn from Origen that, during the third century, there were various different versions of Matthew's gospel in circulation, and this he attributes partly to the forgers of gospels. Jerome, at the end of the fourth century, asserts the same thing; and of the Latin versions he says, there were as many different texts as manuscripts. The Gnostics, who had brought on the original and pre-Christian matter of the mysteries that were taught orally, no sooner placed it on record than they were said to be forging the Scriptures of Anti-Christ, whereas it was the Gnosis of the Ante-Christ of whom they, the Christians, were ignorant.

Theirs is altogether a false mode of describing the position of those who always and utterly denied that the Christ could be made flesh, to suffer and die upon a veritable cross. Here is a specimen of the way in which the Gnostic doctrines had been turned to historic account:--The true light which lighteth every man coming into the world was Gnostic, and had been Gnostic ages before the prologue of John was written; and as Gnostic doctrine it has to be read. This Light of the world, born, as the Gnostics held, with every one coming into the world, is the immortal principle in man! Hyppolytus, referring to the teaching of Basilides, a Gnostic teacher of the second century, shows us how the doctrine of the Gnostics was falsified.

"And this," says he, "it is which is said in the Gospels, 'The true light which lighteth every man was coming into the world!'"

"Was coming" is an interpolation of the believers in the fact of historic fulfilment applied to that eternal light which lighted every man coming into the world; the light that dawned within, and could not come without in any form of flesh or historic personality. The Emperor Julian also remarks on the monstrous doings and fraudulent machinations of the fabricators of Historic Christianity. We may look upon the Gnostics as Inside Christians; the others as Christians Without.

Never were mortals more perplexed, bewildered, and taken back, than the Christians of the second, third, and fourth centuries, who had started from their own new beginning, warranted to be solely historic, when they found that an apparition of their faith was following them one way and confronting them in another--a faith not founded on their alleged facts, claiming to be the original religion, and ages on ages earlier in the world--a shadow that threatened to steal away their substance, mocking them with its aerial unreality--the hollow ghost of that body of truth which they had embraced as a solid and eternal possession! It was horrible. It was devilish. It was the devil, they said; and so they sought to account for Gnosticism, and fight down their fears of the phantom terrifying them in front and rear: the Gnostic ante-Christ who had now become their anti-Christ. The only primitive Christians then apart from, or preceding, the Christianised pagan church of Rome, were the various sects of Gnostics, not one of which was founded on an historical Christ. One and all they based upon the mystical Christ of the Gnosis, and the mythical Messiah, -- Him who should come because he was the Ever-Coming One, as a type of the Eternal, manifesting figuratively in time.

Historic Christianity can furnish no sufficient reason why the biography of its personal founder should have been held back; why the facts of its origin should have been kept dark; and why there should have been no authorised record made known earlier. The conversion of the mythos, and of the Docetic doctrines of the Gnosis into human history, alone will account for the fatal fact. The truth is, the earliest gospels are the furthest removed from the supposed human history. That came last; and only when the spiritual Christ of the Gnosis had been rendered concrete in the density of Christian ignorance! Christianity began as Gnosticism continued, by means of a conversion and perversion, that were opposed in vain by Paul.

The mysteries of the Gnostics were continued, with a difference, as Christian. The newly-christened re-beginnings were not only shrouded in mystery, they were the same mysteries at root as those that were pre-extant. The first Christians founded on secret doctrines that were only explained to initiates during a long course of years. These mysteries were never to be divulged or promulgated until the belief in historic Christianity had taken permanent root. We are told how it was held by some that the Apocrypha ought only to be read by those who were perfected, and that these writings were reserved exclusively for the Christian adepts. It must be obvious that the doctrine or knowledge that was forced to be kept so sacredly secret as that, could have had no relation to the human history, personality, or teachings of an inspired founder of that primitive Christianity supposed to have had so simple an origin.

True history is not established in that way, although the false may be -- as it has been. Nobody was allowed by Peter to interpret anything except in accordance with "our tradition!" Nobody, says Justin Martyr, is permitted to partake of the Eucharist

"unless he accepts as true that which is taught by us"

Originally Posted by Toto

....In fact, a few years ago Crossan participated on a yahoogroup Q&A, and said that it was impossible to prove the existence of Jesus since all of the evidence could have been forged. (I don't know if I can locate the quote, but he didn't yawn - he pretty much conceded that there was no proof.)

Originally Posted by Toto

And you know this - how?

Originally Posted by Toto

And you know this - how?

But if you think that modern HJ scholars have no right to consider the matter of the existence of Jesus as settled, then why don't you finally put your money where your mouth is and address them directly by writing up and sending your view to JBL or NTS or JSNT or by proposing to read a paper in the historical Jesus session at the next SBL? Jeffrey