GakuseiDon

Like you, I've promised myself to spend more time on other things a few time. I've announced my 'retirement' from arguing against Doherty and Acharya S style mythicism a few times, but it has a habit of drawing me back. It is addictive, isn't it?

I think I remember where you said that, on the 2 Enoch stuff, so I will respond to it, though as it's late here now it won't be until tomorrow.

"What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography" by Richard A Burridge (or via: amazon.co.uk)

GakuseiDon

Sure. I give an example in my review of Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man":
http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakus...M_Review1.html

A final example: Doherty warns that it is a mistake to read Gospel events into the writings of Paul and other early letters. He states that even “critical scholars now agree” that Jesus' deeds “could not possibly have matched those of the Gospel story” (page 21) and that “critical scholarship... has begun to admit that much of the Gospel story... is indeed fabrication” (page 82). And yet, Doherty finds significance in Gospel details that are missing in Paul:

The descent of the dove into Jesus would have provided the perfect parallel to Paul's belief that at baptism the Holy Ghost descended into the believer. The voice of God welcoming Jesus as his Beloved Son could have served to symbolize Paul's contention (as in Romans 8:14-17) that believers have been adopted as sons of God. (Page 65)

I doubt very much that critical scholarship would expect to find the Gospel story of the dove descending on Jesus in Paul, given that Paul states that Jesus was appointed Son of God by his resurrection from the dead rather than by his baptism (as seen in Mark). It might give fundamentalists food for thought, but would any critical scholar be concerned by the lack of that particular Gospel story in Paul?

... if Doherty wants his theories to be addressed by critical scholarship, then surely he should be focusing on points raised by critical scholarship rather than those raised by Christian apologists.

Doherty underlines his approach when he writes:

Throughout this book, in the course of examining the silence in the epistles on the life and teachings of Jesus, we will look at all of the Gospel elements, without discrimination. This will include those which critical scholarship has cast doubt on, or even totally rejected—such as the apocalyptic sayings or the existence of Judas. (Page 28)

Evaluating elements that critical scholarship has already rejected does not seem a fruitful endeavour, especially if Doherty wants his work to be taken seriously by that same critical scholarship.

That's one of the reasons why people argue Doherty should write a paper for peer-review. It's not even to get it to peer-review. It's to get him to remove all the crap apologetics-facing arguments he brings up in his book.

Yes, I agree. But without knowing exactly what parts, how do you know what Paul should have been aware of? Obviously for Doherty's argument above about the dove to work, he has to first assume that the story of the dove in Mark had been in circulation before Paul wrote. Is that a reasonable assumption, in your view? Is there any evidence to support such an assumption?

avi

Excuse me, for intruding here, it is only my opinion, which is not worth much, but, I don't think this forum operates that way. Your opinion is always welcome, whether or not someone has responded to you in particular.

Toto will correct me, if I err on this point of comportment.

Again, same qualifier as above, but, I think the goal here is to elaborate or uncover some idea or some novelty, and not to quiz folks on their personal ideology. Some people, (spin comes to mind, but also Gakusei Don, for example) intentionally obscure or blur their own disposition, while others (myself, as a bad character for example) blurt it all out, leave nothing to chance, expose their innermost thoughts, including some thoughts no one is really keen to learn about....

I am rather confident that Doug Shaver is not someone who would be offended that you jumped into his inquiry, with a comment of your own, uninvited, so to speak. He is keen, in my opinion, on learning and uncovering ideas, including novel ideas.

Hmm. Side note? The whole forum is a "side note".
ahem.
Can we not rewrite this exact sentence, inserting "historicist", in place of "mythicist", and arrive at the same impasse?

There is no "orthodox" explanation. We have no reliable data for early Christianity. That's why we tend to focus on banal trivialities, describing what some person thinks that some other person thought, based upon an unidentified third party's translation of a copy of an unknown source.

We need a DSS for the first three centuries of the common era, identifying, before Constantine, the major players, with their authentic writings, in their original languages. We don't have that. We have only copies, usually in translation, generally dated AFTER Constantine. Until we have those original data, we will continue to nag and harp on tiny issues, which the rest of the world views as a "side note".

a. I have no idea what Paul's or Jesus' followers thought of either person.

b. Maybe they thought, as aa5874 has surmised, that Jesus was some kind of amorous fellow. I have no idea, how anyone interpreted him, 1800 years ago, when Jesus was initially elaborated....

c. I don't think it is proper English, to write "precisely", in this circumstance. It is vague, imprecise, and fundamentally, unfathomable, at least until we uncover some authentic, ancient documents.

d. There is, in my opinion, nothing "obvious" about any of this business....

e. the basis for the whole religion....

Wow. that's a big jump. First, of course, we would need to define "the whole religion". Do we include the Ebionists? How about the Mormons? Do you suppose that the German peasants, fighting in the 17th century, in the bloodiest exchange in Germany's long history, were able to explain the distinction between protestantism and catholicism? When Constantine crushed the Eastern wing of the nascent Christian movement, do you suppose those dying in front of his spears and arrows, were able to imagine the need for unity, hegemony, and a single religious system to ensure the proper flow of goods and materials to Rome?

In my view, Christianity before Constantine was tiny, and based upon gaining a ticket to paradise. I think the religions, we call today Christianity, back then, had little to do with what we consider Christianity today. After Constantine, the religion became dominant throughout the empire, not because of ideology/theological issues, nor because of marketing hype, but because the government ordered it.

The "messiah" business, in my opinion, simply reflects an ignorance, a universal ignorance, of Hebrew. I think that if Christians understood that "cristou", as it appears in the new testament, does NOT mean messiah, then, changes in the doctrine would be made.

avi

TedM

No. I don't want it to blow up into a big thing. The point primarily is that appealing to gospel 'silences' in Paul is a way to argue against the existence of a gospel Jesus, but not necessarily some other kind of historical Jesus. By appealing to gospel 'silences' in Paul it inflates/distorts the strength of the more general argument against a historical Jesus.

IF that was all Paul was impressed by, then I'm not sure why we should expect more references by Paul than what he made.

archibald

I will separate this out and do it first, since it is really the basis of my replying to you a while ago.

If the above is the case, and the word itself, whether messiah or Christ, was already used (in the LXX, I believe, for example) then.........why does it set off your interpolation detector so readily? :]

Now to other points, which are interesting, but not central, for me here:


Glad to hear it. If one isn't interested in learning something new, I don't see the point in coming here. This may even extend to 'experts'. Having said that, I think it's human nature to be difficult to convince of something which goes against a prior position. Emotional investment and all that. In it's worst form, this leads to threads becoming extended dick-swinging contests. :]

Oh, btw, I wasn't trying to quiz Toto on his personal ideology (I had been sort of assuming he doesn't have a particularly strong one in any case, or at least that 'ideology' might be too strong a word), but it seems to me that one of the very few things everybody agrees on is that Jesus was uniformly described as having been crucified. I'm still hoping he'll answer.

Perhaps 'whole religion' might have been stretching it. Having said that, I was only referring to the basic concept of someone having been crucified and being seen after as a messiah, and not the multitude of other nuances.

Perhaps it was, strictly speaking, stretching it to include absolutely everybody even on that narrow criteria? I don't know enough about the Ebionites and Marcionites (and would be interested to know more) but had thought that the evidence for them not believing in at least that one thing was not strong?

I do realize it's possible that at the very beginning, both during his supposed life and immediately after, that he was not necessarily seen as a messiah. Didn't the Jesus Seminar get into this possibility?

Anyhows, you can modify my use of the words 'whole religion' if you like. :]

As I said, I was under the impression that Cristou was in the LXX? I thought I had read that somewhere very recently. Perhaps I need to go check now that it was the case.


No. Not in my personal opinion. But you could use any of them - mythicist, historicist, orthodox, non-orthodox - in the sentence 'group X may be prone to interpret 'evidence' to suit their hypothesis', though I think I already said that. As I said above , I was using orthodox to mean 'most commonly accepted' and not using the word as a value judgement. It's entirely possible for 'most commonly accepted' to be wrong.

avi

Hi friend.

Thanks. I don't mean to harp on the same melody, again and again, ok, yes I do mean to harp on it, because it is so interesting....

MESSIAH, does NOT EQUAL "cristou", so whether or not you find it in LXX, is irrelevant.

Moreover, LXX itself, has been altered, from the original LXX, used by Philo, when one compares the oldest extant version (Codex Sinaiticus) to DSS.

(n.b. this has been a sore point, with considerable disagreement, on the forum, spin, in particular, disputes my contention on this issue)

Let's suppose that you DO FIND "cristou" in LXX, and, for sake of argument, let's suppose that its inclusion DOES NOT REPRESENT a third/fourth century interpolation, fine. Then what?

What does the presence of "cristou" in LXX reveal? What does that discovery, explain about the use of "cristou" in Paul's epistles? Jesus was never annointed, neither in "history", nor in myth.

Its inclusion, in Paul's epistles, suggests to me, at least, that phrases containing "cristou", represent interpolations. Paul himself, could not have written "cristou", because he knew the contrary, i.e. that Jesus had been crucified, not annointed. So far as I am aware, Paul was Jewish.....He certainly would have known the distinction.

avi

archibald

When was Jesus supposed to have been annointed then? :]

By the way, you're not harping on. Or at least if you are, so am I. :]

archibald

by the way again (sorry, I'm terrible for pressing 'post' and then thinking of more things)...

I'm not especuially concerned with whether the descriptive term itself was changed, more why you (seem to) think passages containing it were also changed, because that term is in them? Maybe I've picked you up wrongly on that. Because, for me, you can keep it as just 'Jesus', since I'm mainly interested in the MJ/HJ thing.

You're right. I should perhaps have realized that there was no way to know for sure what the LXX used at the time it was written.

avi

Archibald: you are confused. I don't claim that Jesus was annointed. I claim that neither in history, nor in myth, was he annointed.

Annointment is a procedure evolved over millenia to offer public acclaim to a king or victorious general.

Crucifixion is the antithesis of annointment.

Spartacus, another of my heroes, was crucified, not annointed.

In other words, "cristou", meaning "annointed" represents interpolation, and could not have been part of the original text, because Jesus was not annointed, but crucified.

avi

archibald

Believe me, I think I do see what you are saying about actual annointment, but by this reasoning, he should never (rightly) have been called Christ, any any point. And if you don't know when the use of that (for the purposes of the discussion, at least as far as we can reasonably tell, factually inappropriate) term was first used, how can you say it needs to be from 'later'?

Anyhows, as I said, one can just use 'Jesus' or even 'messiah', since for me, it's not central to the MJ/HJ thing.