gstafleu

As has been pointed out, it is much easier to set up such a parallel in literature than in real life. Getting all these people to show up at the right time with palm leaves is not easy, for example. So, strong evidence to the contrary lacking, the assumption has to be that it is a narrative device. Please note that organizing such an elaborate event as the triumphal entry is different in scale than an author using "expressions established in great literature" ("To be or not to be," mumbled Jesus in his beard when confronting Pilate).

Any such occurrence makes the work suspect as history, the more fictional occurrences to more suspect. Robert Price, afaict, holds that basically all of the gospels can be derived from pre-existing tales. If true, the gospels are completely suspect as history.

Same as above, it depends on how much is fictional, and the more is fictional, the more the documents become suspect as history. And it then becomes important how much other evidence there is for said personages being real. As we know, there is very little outside the gospels for Jesus, there is lots for Caesar and Augustus.

Gerard Stafleu

gentleexit

It isn't just ancient biography that follows models. All narrative does. It imposes plot on the mess of life, arcs of triumph or defeat. There's no clear "fiction" vs "nonfiction" gap. All narrative is "fictional" in a broad sense.

Look at Churchill, finest hour and all that. You can write him as a trier, a dabbler or as a great seer returning from the wilderness. Both and more have been written. Same "facts", very different person.

Reenacter? Glory by association. De Gaulle went to a farm in the country, waiting for the call to come back and save France. Cincinnatus anyone?

Closer to Jesus. Take Constantine. He paced out his new city dressed in ancient Greek clothing, spear in hand etc. In other words, he was Alexander - or was he? Did he pace out in this way? Reenact? Or did a biographer impose the reenactment? Reenacting Alexander was a favorite for the ancients.

Perhaps a protagonist reenacted. Perhaps his biographer did it for him. Thousands of years later, it's impossible to distinguish individual cases. I don't think you can determine the reality of Jesus from whether or not his "biographies" feature reenactment.

We're talking about the time before the spiritual became "supernatural". It was natural, in nature. I think you're too hung up on magnitude and title, King and God. If you take King == leader and god == superspirit then yes, it was common to assume leaders lived on in spirit, were present to their followers after death, were worthy of prayer and offering. Often, the feelings for a leader are greatest in smaller groups.

spin

Ummm, Imhotep, the builder of the step pyramid of Djoser.

Do we accept stories such as how the one-armed Min became a god in Egypt? We have the story of Aesculapius as a man on the battlefield in Homer. Pat, you're just making things up. How traditions regarding gods develop is usually not accessible to us, so you can't make such generalizations.


spin

aa5874

You have it completely wrong. It was the authors of the NT and the church writers that presented a myth. They claimed Jesus was total God and total man.

In Against Heresies by Irenaeus, the writer claimed that Jesus was not only man, as claimed by Cerinthus and Carpocrates, but 100% God, equal to the God of the Jews, but still the son of the same God.

In Against Heresies, the writer presented Jesus as born of a virgin, the offspring of the Holy Ghost as written in the Gospels who was before the world was created and was the Word who created the earth.

These writers presented a creature that was a myth. And it was confirmed by the mythicists.

No Robots

The authors of the NT and the church writers are quite distinct from each other. The former do not unambiguously assert Christ's divinity, whereas the latter do.

Both the church writers and the mythicists present a god, whether mythical or real. In this sense, both deify Christ. Against both there stand those who argue that the NT presents a man who has subsequently been deified either as real or as myth.

PapaverDeum

Wait a moment here. As far as I always read, deification was a formal practice of the old Roman state religion, whereby some emperors after their deaths were declared to be gods. Afaik this had nothing to do with literature or storytelling as such.

So, I take it that you do not think that the stories of Aesclepius were based on the life of a once human physician ?


What then are we to think of the story of King Midas ? Certainly he was not mythicized into a god, but there is very little in his story that is believable.(the touch of gold, his mother was a goddess, etc)
Yet, it looks as if Midas might well have been a historical figure, given that a couple of royalty type tombs has been found bearing that name.

But, did the ancient consider him to be a historical person. I have always understood that they did. Further, that the Romans of the early imperial period did believe that the Illiad was an historical account.

Casper

Cmon man, George Washington and the cherry tree? Not to take the exclamation out of context but historical figures are indeed mythicised. Rasputin for instance? Tesla? Chuck Norris?

SeekingKnowledge

I'm sorry if I don't follow, but how were these examples of "ordinary" men?

aa5874

This is completely erroneous, the authors of the NT write that Jesus was the son of the God of the Jews or was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, and was recognised by demons as the son of God.

Matthew 1 claimed Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, in Mark 1 claimed Jesus was the son of God, in Luke 1 Jesus is called the Son of God and also in John 1.

There is no ambiguity whatsoever, there are four gospel stories that unmistakeably refer to a character that was called the son of God.

And, further, the church writers used the very same gospels to propagate that Jesus was the son of the God of the Jews.

It was the church writers and the NT authors that presented a myth. The church writers quoted hundreds of passages from the NT to show that Jesus was fully God and yet a mortal man, but such a character can only exist as a myth.

The mythicist just used the documented records, the written statements as presented, and confirmed or agreed that Jesus was indeed a mythical character.

It would have been better, according to Trypho in Dialogue with Trypho, if Justin Martyr claimed he was just a man, but Justin insisted that Jesus was born of a virgin, which prompted Trypho to declare that Justin was propagating monstrous phenomena like the Greeks where Gods are born from virgins.


But, even if you propose Jesus was just a man, then he becomes, as Julian declared, a monstrous lie. Jesus becomes untenable, implausible, unrealistic and downright stupid.

patcleaver

None of you're examples are ordinary men who were mythicized.

I do not know of any examples ever, but it is possible, however unlikely, that some ordinary men are mythicized.

I should have said:

There is not even one case that I know of ever that an ordinary man was mythicized into a God. Your idea that Jesus was an ordinary man that was mythicized into a God is ludicrous.