gurugeorge

In another thread, Vinnie asked if I could think of examples of historicized myths. The well-known example of William Tell, used by GA Wells, was the only one that immediately came to mind. Coincidentally I was looking at Richard Carrier's blog, where he mentions comparative investigations by a scholar, A J Droge, into the myth of Ned Ludd (I think Toto and spin have alluded to this in other threads, but it deserves a wee mention of its own, I think):-

To this end, Droge summarized the latest research on Ned Ludd and drew some parallels with the extant Jesus tradition. Like Jesus, Ludd had many contradictory traditions arise about him well within a century--in fact many quite rapidly, within 40 years of his alleged techno-sabotage in 1779, an event that historians have failed to find any evidence of, or of the man at all, yet by 1810 he was a revered hero and imagined founder of a movement (or several originally unrelated movements) of antitechnocrats. Soon all manner of stories were circulating about him, even fake letters by him were written as early as 1812, and novels about his life within decades of that.

The thing I find particularly amusing about this is that it stops even "political agitator" Jesuses from being insulated against a-historicism

Steven Carr

Even as we speak, there is a religion being founded on a mythical person

http://www.share-international.org/

http://www.share-international.org/b...in.htm#anchor6 explains that hundreds of people have seen him.

We have a statement that would send historicists into raptures if they read it in Paul's letters


'When you say that Maitreya has been here since 19 July 1977 and that the Master Jesus is in Rome, do you mean in a physical body?

BC: Yes.'

Despite this utterly historicist statement from Benjamin Creme, the Maitreya does not exist.

Of course, historicists never look up from their Bibles and study other religions ,preferring to call mythicists 'cranks', even when mythicists can actually point out that religions based on mythical people, are perfectly possible, and those religions will include statements of historicity far outstripping anything found in Paul, James, Jude, 1 Peter, Hebrews etc etc

Petergdi

Rubbish.

Any statement, not matter how clearly indicative of an historical Jesus, in Paul's letters would have been already explained away and discounted by mythicists.

Peter.

Steven Carr

However Paul says Jesus was revealed through scripture.

And that Jews do not believe because they had either never heard of him or rejected the preaching of Christians about him.

Just like nobody would have heard of the Maitreya, if it were not for Benjamin Creme preaching about him.

Doug Shaver

Why? If you think we're just being incorrigibly pigheaded, what do you think our motivation is?

Toto

Let's not get into a discussion of ulterior motivations.

A mythicist could think that the weight of Paul's writings describe a celestial Christ, so any apparent references to a historical Jesus are anomalies. That's all the motivation one needs.

Steven Carr

Or a completely unknown Jesus,a la GA Wells, who will tell you that Paul certainly believed in a flesh and blood Jesus who died here on Earth.

aa5874

But, that is exactly what Jesus believers think about Jesus. Believers today think that the God/man was on earth and was betrayed in the night, crucified, died, was resurrected on the third day and ascended through the clouds.

It is not necessary for a real human Jesus to have existed for believers today to believe in Jesus the God/man, it is only necessary for the story to be plausible.

But what is completely lacking in the Pauline letters is that the writer called Paul, although a contemporary of Jesus the God/man, did not mention that he personally saw Jesus before he died.

The Pauline writer "saw" Jesus when he should not. He saw Jesus in a resurrected state, and not only him but over 500 people.


It is clear now that the Pauline writer saw and heard from a mythical entity, the resurrected.

Petergdi

I didn't say pigheaded. I just said that any possible evidence for HJ could be explained away neatly by using the same methods already employed against the evidence that we have.

Your motivation is not germane to the issue.

Peter.

gurugeorge

This is just nonsense.

I was thinking about this today actually. Suppose we discover some text buried in a jar tomorrow, that's mostly like, say 1 Corinthians, and it has a passage that reads something like "Cephas told me this wasn't what Jesus said". That would be a proper historical attestation to a historical Jesus that a mythicist would have to concede. It connects the "pillars" to some living human being whom they knew personally.

The problem is that from the evidence, it's hard to distinguish between a mythicist and historical Jesus, but because of the lack of the kind of clear attestation of a human Jesus that I've given an example of above, the picture looks a bit more mythicist than historical.

For Christians this isn't a problem because they would never think of a totally mythical Jesus as a live option. But for rationalists, a mythical Jesus is just as live an option as a historical one. More of a live option, in fact, because if you look at religion as a worldwide phenomenon, it's usually about someone having some kind of visionary experience, seeming to themselves to meet and contact some sort of divine being, and getting "teachings" of some sort from them. This holds all the way from animism and shamanism right up to even Buddhism and Daoism (which are God-free, but not god-free), via the Jewish prophets, Islam, and all the rest of it. In fact it's overwhelmingly the origin of religion in general.

And that's what looks like is happening in the case of Paul (the earliest Christian stuff we have).