Diogenes the Cynic

Ehrman claims oral traditions, not written.

aa5874

Ehrman does NOT, does NOT have any evidence for his claims about oral traditions of the Jesus story and even worse the author gMark is a fiction writer.

ALL presumptions that gMark was written in the 1st century are NOT accepted WITHOUT evidence.

Please, you are wasting time with your PRESUMPTIONS. The author of gMark did NOT even claim he was writing history.

Diogenes the Cynic

Well, with all respect, they don't all agree on that in NT scholarship, especially with regards to material which contradicts the author's normal theologocal/Christological assumptions.


But an agreed upon crucifixion is not what's being claimed, only an agreement that Jesus was a real person. Q and Thomas have no crucifixion, but assume he was a real person. Even Thomas has Jesus name james as his successor, which connects him to a historical person independently confirmed by Paul and arguably Josephus.
Docetists were not mythicists. This is obvious from reading any of their literature. They thought Jesus walked around and talked to people. They thought he was real, and they said he looked real, but that he was really made of spirit.

Docetics were not mythicists. They believed Jesus was a historical person, they just thought he was a ghost. This is also not a primary development ior an early one.
I listen to his podcast all the time.

Sheshbazzar

Thanks for the comments James. I think 'Mark' was writing for a non-Jewish audience, or at the least for a very syncretized Hellenistic one.
It is understandable that if the Jewish scholars and Rabbis had been long familiar with hearing midrash material on 'Joshua/Iēsous The Anointed High Priest', that they would not be inclined to 'buy' into the newly fleshed out Gospels with all of their syncretized Gentile religious accretions, particularly once the recent birth stories became attached.

But it was perfect for the Gentiles who were not all that familiar with the finer details of the Jewish Scriptures and the Messianic requisites, and of course not being aware that what they were hearing was 'old news' (really old) to the Jewish people.

But I also think the post 70 CE Jewish attitude about it was; 'Let the Gentiles and apostates believe whatever it is they want, and do their own thing. We can't stop them, and already have enough troubles of our own."
Judaism which was already a very insular and separatist religion became even more so. Still is.
I have some amusing anecdotes of my family members who have attempted to reach out in good will to Orthodox Jews, they soon learned just how unwelcome unwanted interaction with the goyim can be.

aa5874

Again, People of antiquity BELIEVED the Angel Gabriel was real, that Satan was real and that the God of the Jews was real.

You are now using IMAGINARY evidence and questionable sources for the history of Your Jesus.

Please, show that any of the so-called disciples did actually live. Please show that James the Apostle did live.

You promote so much logical fallacies. It is absurd to suggest that Jesus was a figure of history because he was mentioned in UNRELIABLE Sources multiple times.

You admit the Gospels are fiction yet is kicking and screaming to use the very same sources for your history.


Another absurd STRAWMAN argument. You show lack of knowledge of Docetism. There is NO human father of the Gods in Docetism.

Docetists did NOT support the Jesus cult who claimed Jesus was the Son of God but had real human flesh and did NOT SUPPORT those who claimed Jesus had a human Father.

The Docetists believed in MYTH Gods.

You are clutching at STRAWS.

Docetism has NOTHING whatsoever to do with an historical Jesus--NOTHING.

James The Least

Acts imagines what speeches in the 40s and 50s would have been like.

How do we know they didn't? 99.9% of these would have been illiterate anyway. Nothing odd about doubts not surviving when they were never written down in the first place.

Nobody within the church saw this as a myth. It was a secret that had been embedded in the Scriptures since the beginning of time, but only revealed now (perhaps after the destruction of the Temple). Christos, like Enoch and Seth, were mystical beings prophesied long ago, who could come to earth and put on clothes (a body) any time they wanted. Mark, writing in the late first century, decided that that had happened in the 20s and 30s. And thus legend became "history." It's really not complicated or preposterous.

Diogenes the Cynic

Why would Acts imagine the Apostles to have believed something totally contrary to Paul and to Luke?
We aren't talking about ostensible doubts. According to the mythicist view, non-existence is not a doubt, but is the belief itself. Why do we only have heretical, historicist claims about Jesus. but nothing surviving from the true believers.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but merely asserting it to be so doesn't make it so. What is the evidence to support it?

couch_sloth

Well if Jesus was purely mythical I would take for granted that those who started this myth knew that, i.e. That they had some ulterior motives for doing this.
If this myth was started say 20 to 30 years after Jesus's supposed death, I doubt that very many would necessarily know that he was a myth. And for those that possibly suspected this: 1.] Because they didn't want to upset the other 'beleivers' they kept their mouths shut, and/or they dropped this belief system completely 2.] They didn't make a public record of that knowledge (Why bother making such a stink of it and offend your friends, family and neighbors?). and 3.] If they did make such a record of it, it was not saved. e.g. It was later viewed as a lie and not saved and/or destroyed.

BTW
For what it's worth... I tend to believe that Jesus wasn't a purely mythical character. I just don't find this to be a good argument in favor of a HJ.

Vorkosigan

The more interesting question is why you keep asking this incredibly stupid, purblind question when you've already been answered 1,000 times. When Earl has written a whole book about it.

Vorkosigan

Diogenes the Cynic

I disagree that Earl has answered it convincingly. Earl is bright and he is careful and he does not make stupid mistakes or deal in reckless invention (like certain authors with certain Sanskrit noms de plume), but I don't think he proves anything or makes a case that no real Jesus could have existed. He makes an intelligent case for how a mythical Jesus could have developed, but it relies on a number of merely possible factors falling his way, and at a certain point it becomes (in my mind) too airy a construction as is. A lot of coin flips need to come up heads for Doherty's hypothesis to work. If one assumption goes wrong, the whole thing collapses. Dohety's thesis is like a model airplane put together without any glue. It's a good model for what an MJ origin for Christianity might look like, but it isn't glued together yet. It lacks hard evidence.