Toto

I wouldn't call that paranoid. Please don't get personal here. You don't have the qualifications to diagnose paranoia.

Except for the first statement, all of those directly attack faith based positions.

Doherty's first book was favorably reviewed by Richard Carrier, who thought that it at least shifted the burden to the historicists.

Are you claiming that people back then thought that myths happened on earth in real time? What is your evidence for that?

GakuseiDon

I see. So why not do the first one? As we nutted out before, there is no conspiracy against the mythicist theory in academic circles. Indeed, they barely know about it. And Earl apparently believes he has the evidence he needs.

Would you agree that by going the popular press route, Doherty is writing mostly to an audience who knows very little about the topics of early pagan and Christian thinking and don't understand the issues?

No, I am claiming that IMO people back then didn't think the myths were played out in a spiritual realm.

avi

Agree. Earl was a little annoyed with me, and perhaps justifiably so. I probably should have simply sent him a personal message.

I can claim no understanding of this dispute, for the whole business of "spiritual realm", is akin to talking about quarks and mesons, for all I comprehend.

If I have understood Toto's objection, and I am not confident of that either, then, I would reply, that YES, folks back in ancient times did surely believe "that myths happened on earth in real time." The whole history of alchemy supports this notion. What about Jack and the Bean Stalk, or Cinderella? (In French, it is NOT a glass slipper!!)

avi

mountainman

I agree with Earl's findings that the Jesus of the new testament was neither a god nor a man but a myth - in any other words a literary fabrication. That is, there was never any historical jesus in history (until later!)

I agree with Earl's findings that the alleged non-Christian witness to Jesus: Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, etc are "discredited or rendered unreliable as offering any witness to an historical Jesus." However, I extend this position to also cover the witness for the "nation of Christians" - not just an HJ.

I agree with Earl's modus operandi of examing the non canonical and Gnostic material evidence that continues to rise up from the earth of Lower Egypt, and placing this material on a level playing field with the canonical fabrication. However my chronology for the gnostic gospels reject anything in Eusebius the Heresiologist - I think they are all post Nicaean.


Earl appears to be still pushing for a chronology that sees the fabrication of the canonical new testament literature in the late 1st or second century, and as a result has taken it upon himself to sort out the Eusebian framework of history and chronology for the "Early Church" in those early centuries. This will endear him to the historicists, for all they have is Eusebius.

As you are aware, I was able to let go of Eusebius and Jesus, and postulate that the fabrication of the greek new testament waited for the Christain Boss and the Fourth Century Revolution of 324 CE. So the two positions are compatible, but are differentiated clearly by their chronology.

GakuseiDon

'In other words a literary fabrication'? I think you are using the word 'myth' here as 'fictional', which is not how Earl is using it. Earl believes that an analysis of Paul's letters show a belief in a Jesus Christ who existed as an actual being, but just not on earth. THAT is Earl's findings. Do you agree with that part (leaving aside the question of who authored those letters for the moment)?

drdave

Charles Freeman, "The Closing of the Western Mind" (or via: amazon.co.uk), argues that Constantine was forced to call the Council of Nicea in 325 and impose doctrine by fiat on Christianity precisely because it had become sufficiently powerful and its disputes disruptive to the Empire. Constantine allied Christianity with the state, granting tax exemption and hence wealth and power to the Bishops around the Mediterranean in exchange for cooperation with the Empire.

It would seem that one needs to explain the development of Christianity and its power prior to the alliance with Rome. And certainly "Paul" was involved in that early development. His epistles along with documents like "The Ascension of Isaiah" indicate the state of thinking about the structure of the world in that period and the arguments among the early Christianities.

By the time of Constantine, the transition from heavenly myth to worldly pedigree had been accomplished. The Jewish sources had been long abandoned.

EarlDoherty

What do you mean by this? That the meal we may presume was observed among the devotees of the cult of Mithras took place in the spiritual realm? (OK, not even you would imply that I was saying this.) So presumably you mean the meal celebrated by Mithras himself and the sun god Helios on the carcass of the slain bull attended by other divine figures, as represented in Mithraic iconography. Are you suggesting that among the devotees, such a myth could only have been regarded as taking place on earth in some kind of historical (even if primitive) time, and that the suggestion by a mythicist like myself that it could have been regarded as taking place in another dimension, in a mythical/spiritual setting, can only be the work of a crank?

Apparently so, and apparently that means that you would expect that scholars, even of the mysteries and Mithraism in particular, would equally regard such a suggestion as no better than a crank one. After all, you have already been presented in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man with essentially all of the evidence and argument I would present in any article seeking “peer review” of my contention that it could well have been regarded by the cult itself as a mythical /spiritual world event. Since you undoubtedly see yourself and your scepticism as in tune with critical scholarship and the short shrift you would expect them to give me, why then should I bother?

Apparently all my evidence that heavenly events of all sorts are to be found in much of the writing of the period, whether pagan (e.g., Cicero and Plutarch) or Jewish sectarianism (e.g., Enochian, Ascension of Isaiah)—as in my chapter on “The World of Myth” or discussion of various Heavenly Man traditions, Gnostic writings, the very nature of the Mithras myth having an astronomical/heavenly setting and significance, etc.—had no effect on you. Well, you may well be right in your expectation that mainstream NT scholarship would be equally unaffected, since where topics like this are concerned they could well be as closed-minded as yourself. Why, then, I ask again, should I attempt the kind of peer review you suggest? Simply so that their anticipated dismissal of any aspect of mythicism would be seen as a corroboration of your own?

In conjunction with this ploy, it would seem that you have another one. Declare that no one but critical scholars (the “peers”) are competent enough to evaluate the arguments and evidence I put forward. The layperson readers are not allowed to count, in that if they are convinced, even in part, by the material and argumentation I put forward, I have somehow pulled the wool over their eyes, taking the charlatan’s advantage of their ignorance. Instead, mainstream/critical scholarship, whose bias against mythicism is regularly in view, is the only voice allowable.

Why should I expect that peer review of an isolated article on an isolated topic would be received with any more open-mindedness and perception than mythicists’ books as a whole, including my own? As I pointed out, not even Jeffrey Gibson, who has had a copy of JNGNM for a year, has offered any comment, let alone a rebuttal. Did he read it? Who knows? Did he toss it on his bottom shelf as unworthy of any consideration? Maybe so. Bart Ehrman was sent a copy. Did he respond in any way, pro or con? Not that I know of. Adela Yarbro Collins nicely requested a copy several months ago. No comment thus far. My point being that, on a subject such as the non-existence of an HJ and the ever higher profile which it has obtained, a book, especially by someone reputed to be its leading contemporary voice, ought to be considered a legitimate offering for ‘peer review.’

An isolated article would also suffer from its own brevity, a lack of background provided on which the particular subject matter in question is being based and supported. If scholarship’s abysmal lack of understanding of the mythicist case in general is regularly in evidence, how would individual articles serve to correct that lack of understanding? And do you seriously think that SBL (recently infiltrated by conservative and even evangelical elements) is going to give any exposure to an outright mythicist submission? We couldn’t even get a mythicist speaker on The Jesus Project!

Do I think there is a “conspiracy” against mythicism within mainstream scholarship? Do I think there is a conspiracy to prevent an atheist from being elected President of the United States? A conspiracy isn’t needed, when the vast majority of the population regards atheism as only a notch above Satanism.

Am I paranoid, as you recently suggested? I don’t need to be.

Earl Doherty

mountainman

Correct. As I see it if Jesus did not make an appearance on Earth then Jesus is not an historical figure, then logically it follows that his historicity has been fabricated in whole. This is the essence of the myth hypothesis, but there exists a spectrum of theories and beliefs about whether this fabrication was an innocent organic evolution of "tall stories" and "visions" (ie: "pure myth") or whether the fabrication of the jesus of the NT involved deliberate and fraudulent misprepresentation of history itself.


I deliberately generalised here and did not use the word "fiction" but rather the term "literary fabrication", and have qualified this term to represent a spectrum of modes, some organic and innocent others fraudulent.


Yes. Jesus Christ exists in the letters of "Paul" speaking through a visionary but not speaking from the earth - and the ground of ancient history.

Leaving aside the most important question again as usual.

Nevertheless it occurs to me that you should already know all this stuff since it has been thrashed around in other threads here and there, the most recent one I can remember being Developing table as beginner's guide to Jesus positions.

If we remove the positions in this table that are taken by those who assume that an historical jesus existed, we are let with a spectrum of belief concerning the hypothesis that Jesus was not historical. We can call this the Mythical Jesus, but other options mandate this must also represent a spectrum of hypotheses and theories in which the fabrication of the myth or story was not just some innocent organic evolution of devoted scribes, but rather the fabrication was undertaken with liberal amounts of pious forgery, the ruthless perversion and interpolation into extant literature, and the fraudulent misrepresentation of ancient history by the "Earliest Christian Historical Researchers". This spectrum within the "Myth Theories" is labelled below as "Use of Myth".

Here is the result:


Developing table as beginner's guide to Mythical Jesus positions

[T2]{r:bg=lightgray}{c:bg=slategray;ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Type of Mythical Jesus
[Historicity %]
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Status of Mythical Jesus
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Characteristics
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Worth of the gospels
|
{c:w=45;ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Use of Myth
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Published Proponents
||
{c:bg=DarkOrchid;b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Spiritual realm
[Zero %]
|
{c:bg=#FF2050;b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Existed in spiritual realm, not the mundane world
|
{c:b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Purely theological in origin, Jesus died in our stead not in this mundane world, but in a spiritual realm. Later this spiritual being became reconceived as having acted in this world and reified.
|
{c:bg=#E060C0;b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Embody a complex myth & reflect honest belief distorted by reification
|
{c:bg=Orange;b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Full
|
{c:b-b=3,double,black;av=top}Earl Doherty (*)
||
{c:bg=#B05070;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Mythological composite
[Zero %]
|
{c:bg=#F00000;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Authorial invention
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Jesus was the product of mainly pagan mythological elements, be they solar myth (Acharya S) or dying & resurrection myths of Osiris/Dionysis (Freke & Gandy).
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Nothing but cobbled myths
|
{c:bg=Orange;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Full
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Acharya S, Freke & Gandy
||
{c:bg=#B05070;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Fictional
[Zero %]
|
{c:bg=#F00000;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Authorial invention
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Jesus was the product of purely literary activity. In the Atwill version, it was the policy of the emperor Titus with the aid of Josephus who tried to gain control over the unruly Jews.
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}A tool for deceiving & manipulating people
|
{c:bg=#F00000;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}FRAUD (Pious Forgery)
|
{c:b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}Hermann Detering (*), Joe Atwill (*)
||
{c:bg=#B05070;b-b=2,solid,black;av=top}Transformed
[Zero %]
|
{c:bg=#F00000;b-b=2,solid,black;av=top}Did not exist
|
{c:b-b=2,solid,black;av=top}Jesus was the product of corrupted retelling of events relating to Julius Caesar. Under Vespasian the story was developed into a new religion.
|
{c:b-b=2,solid,black;av=top}Underlying history garbled beyond recognition
|
{c:bg=#F00000;b-b=2,dashed,black;av=top}FRAUD (Pious Forgery)
|
{c:b-b=2,solid,black;av=top}Francesco Carotta
||
{c:bg=RoyalBlue;av=top}Jesus Spectrum
[0 to 100%]
|
{c:bg=#D0D0B0;av=top}Unknown
|
{c:av=top}Due to the nature of available information there is insufficient evidence to decide on the existence of Jesus.
|
{c:bg=#D0D0B0;av=top}No current way of evaluating for veracity
|
{c:bg=#D0D0B0;av=top}[-]
|
{c:av=top}Robert M. Price[/T2]

PS @GDon,

As I see it your position is somewhere within the "HJ" theories on the original table in the thread mentioned above, and your claims are that Jesus was in fact an historical figure who existed in history, and that you are prepared to grant him a percentage historicity value somewhere between --- for arguments sake, 5% and 99% --- but not zero like the MJ theories above. Just out of morbid curiousity GDon, what historicity do you ascribe to Jesus between 1 and 100?

aa5874

Perhaps the reason you don't understand is due to the fact that you are NOT aware that there were Christians who did NOT believe in Jesus.

Once you read the writings of Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, and Municius Felix it would become CLEAR that Christianity or the word Christian did NOT originate with the character called Jesus Christ.

There were Christians who believed ONLY in God, not Jesus, and that the LOGOS was NOT physical at all and was purely theological.

It was the Roman Church that propagated the false information that Christianity was derived from or was started ONLY when Jesus, born of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, was on earth or shortly after his death.

A mere man could NOT REMIT sins, not even the deified Emperors of Rome could REMIT sins and further a mere man could NOT resurrect.

A mere man could NOT ignite Christianity except to make it go up in smoke.

mountainman

Your book is your thesis Earl, and many congratulations for the perseverance and the tribulation taken to bring it to the bookshelves of the world, and to the internet. Peer review will come to it I should expect, and not vice verse, because of the care you have taken to present your case, and the sources that it covers.

Where next Earl? Are you planning on any future additional research (and perhaps further books) and if so what specific area interests you?