gurugeorge

*sigh* Except that he's not a human being in the myth.

Suppose there were no fantastic elements in the Jesus story, then you could say "story of human being" and nobody would quibble, right? A story about a man is a story about a man, no problem.

But because of the fantastic, god-man stuff, the miracles, the "superpowers", you cannot so easily help yourself to "story of a human being".

Because of the god-man stuff, "story of a human being" is a hypothesis that requires a human being to be found independently, who could then be plausibly assigned as the real kernel of a mythical story.

But since no such person has yet been found in the historical record (e.g even a glimmer of a reference like Seutonius' "agitator Chrestus", but mentioned by the contemporary Philo, say), the whole myth is ambiguous between "totally made up" and "mythified human being". We simply can't tell, for sure.

Hence the relevance of the superhero analogy. Imagine future archaeologists digging up Superman comics thousands of years from now. Some might latch onto the hypothesis that the fantastic tale was based on some real guy (e.g. a strapping yokel who became a famous reporter in a big city). They might discount the fantastic elements in the story (the superstrength, invulnerability, heat vision, etc.), and seeing what remains, claim that their hypothesized entity was the "historical Superman".

We can tell that would be a ludicrous leap of logic. It's obvious to us, because we know about Simon & Shuster, we know the sources of the Superman mythos, and we know there's no specific human being who shares enough of the quotidian Superman story elements, such that we could say with confidence that they based the story on that person.

But suppose S&S had in fact, in reality, based their fantastic mythos on a real person? Our future archaeologists would still be making a ludicrous leap of logic. Until and unless they had identified that person from the same records we have access to.

There are historical-seeming and human-sounding elements in myth, but that doesn't mean you can just gaily strip all the fantastic stuff out and be left with a real human being who must have existed, any more than Clark Kent's ordinariness would warrant those future archaeologists plumping for a "historical Superman". It really is quite ludicrous.

You need triangulation for the HJ hypothesis to be meaningful - you need to independently identify a plausible candidate. Only then would the Jesus Christ myth crystallize as being about an ordinary human being, whose biography later got blown up out of all proportion.

Until then, the only prima facie historical claim in the Jesus Christ story is that a miracle-working god-man walked the earth 2,000 years ago. THAT'S THE STORY. The existence of that story and the existence of the religion based on that story are what need explaining. That there was a historical man behind the myth is a possible explanation, but it requires more historical triangulation for a man, to make it plausible. In the absence of a plausible candidate for the human Jesus, "myth all the way down" remains also a very reasonable explanation.

And if we're talking about comparisons, the relevant comparison is between Paul channeling "Jesus" and Mohammed channeling "Gabriel", or Zhang Daolin channeling "Laozi". Really, a very common type of religious origin.

"Man has vision of talking to god, spirit, etc., and brings back the good news."

ApostateAbe

gurugeorge, I appreciate your thoughts. When I say, "complete invention of a mythical human being like Jesus," I am not implying a "human being" that necessarily existed in reality. I am talking about a human being in the myth. The gospels tell of a human being, even if he was also God, son of God, fantastic fictional superhuman, or whatever else.

Now, when you say, "In the absence of a plausible candidate for the human Jesus, 'myth all the way down' remains also a very reasonable explanation," then here is what you need: find a historical comparison. Find a merely-mythical human doomsday cult leader. Won't be easy. The best competing theory has the evidence of actual human beings who were (1) doomsday cult leaders and/or (2) had their myths embellished with adoring praise. We have a large list of characters that closely compare to Jesus as a doomsday cult leader. A very good comparison is Haile Selassie (though he was more of a figurehead than a leader). And you have... who? Gabriel? Laozi? What you need are merely-mythical human doomsday cult leaders. Again, when I say "human," don't get the wrong idea--I mean human in the myth, not human in the history. Your model requires accounts of Jesus who was human in the mere myths (i.e. Mark 6:3, Luke 4:16). If Jesus is your only example of a merely-mythical human doomsday cult leader in history, then maybe you have a comparison to some other sort of a merely-mythical human that is closely analogous to Jesus in some other way. Who is it?

Such comparisons are important, because without close comparisons to Jesus you are saying that the origin of Christianity was an extraordinarily unique event, and no such a thing has ever happened in the history of the world as far we know! And, you are competing against a theory that explains the origin of Christianity with a pattern that happens all of the time everywhere.

Eldarion Lathria

Wouldn't call him THAT lucky. He was chased out of Ethiopia in 1935 by the Italians, restored by a British and South African army in 1941, overthrown by his own people in 1974 and died (or was executed I forget which) in 1975.

Eldarion Lathria

ApostateAbe

And I think any man would be lying if he said he wouldn't like to have a life like that.

spin

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Once again we have someone acculturated to the cultural hegemony citing hegemonic literature literally, uncritically. There is no effort to understand the genre in which the text was written. It's taken as though it were words straight out of the mouth when it in fact contains a large amount of Jewish apocalyptic employed by a text redactor. And if Jesus were a real person and the messiah, he would have been well and truly past the born stage when he gave this discourse.

One of the give-aways in the Mk 13 passage are the "birth pangs" of 8b. This of course refers to the birth of the messiah in Jewish tradition, a tradition that had become so commonplace in the oral tradition that it emerges in 1QH 11:9-10,

[T2]"the woman expectant with a boy is racked by her pangs ... and through the pangs of Sheol there emerges from the crucible of the pregnant woman a wonderful counsellor with his strength..."[/T2]
One recognizes the messianic flavor of the "wonderful counsellor" from Isaiah 9:6. The notion of the birth pangs of the messiah continued through Jewish literature (See Sanhedrin 98b).

As to the other predictions:

[T2]Therefore when there shall be seen earthquakes and uproars of the people in the world: Then shalt thou well understand, that the most High spake of those things from the days that were before thee, even from the beginning. For like as all that is made in the world hath a beginning and an end, and the end is manifest: Even so the times also of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonder and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs.[/T2]
This is from 2/4 Esdras 9:3-4, a text written at a similar time to the gospels. In the 2nd c. Apocalypse of Abraham, the apocalypse is ushered in with ten plagues against the "heathen":

[T2]The first will be great distress through want: the second, the burning of cities by fire: the third, destruction of cattle by pestilence: the fourth, universal starvation: the fifth, destruction among rulers by the ravages of earthquake and sword: the sixth, deluges of hail and snow: the seventh, lethal attacks by wild animals: the eighth, (to vary the mode of destruction) famine and pestilence: the ninth, retribution through the sword and flight in terror: the tenth, crashing thunder and destructive earthquakes.[/T2]
One finds similar indications in Mishnah Sotah 9:15, though there is no mention of it aimed against the "heathen". They are the signs of the "footprints of the Messiah".

It is unlikely that later Jewish writers would have copied from the earliest christians, but it would be natural for the early christian to use Jewish materials. We have glimpses of the Jewish apocalyptic tradition from 1QH to Sanhedrin.

Mk 13 is a composite text. It contains a Jewish apocalypse:

[T2]7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
[HR=1]100[/HR]
14 “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong--let the reader understand--then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15 Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16 Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 17 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18 Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19 because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now--and never to be equaled again. 20 If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
[HR=1]100[/HR]
24 “But in those days, following that distress,
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25 the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’

26 “At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27 And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
[/T2]
Full text:
N/AYou'll note that the sections that had previously been omitted is different material, much more personalized and tailored to the sorts of experiences christians would have been exposed to, being arrested, flogged, witnessing, meeting false messiahs. The discourse is brought back to the fig tree of 11:12ff and finishes with personal advice. One can say with good certainty that if there were a Jesus, he never gave this discourse, for it is a literary mixture of Jewish apocalypse and church advice.

That leaves us with the tradition of the end coming before all the listeners have died. But again, this is nothing new. Paul himself says that when the lord comes (1 Thes 4:17a), "we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds...." Does the notion that some will still be alive at the end come from Jesus or Paul or someone else? There are no necessities here. There is no argument in the OP, just wishful thinking.

aa5874

Again, you PROMOTE unsubstantiated claims. The Gospels do NOT tell of a man. Why are BLATANTLY mis-representing the Gospels.



In gJohn, Jesus was GOD INCARNATE.

In gJohn, Jesus was BEFORE anything was made.

Please stop your nonsense, ApostateAbe. Read the Gospels.

Joh 1:1 - The NT CANON was NOT about a human being. The NT CANON is NOT an Heretical document.

The NT CANON represents the TEACHINGS of the Church that Jesus was GOD and then became FLESH.

Examine Matthew 1.18-20, Luke 1.34-35 and John 1.

The NT CANON is about GOD in the FLESH, GOD INCARNATE, the Son of God made of a woman, the CREATOR, the Word, the OFFSPRING of the Ghost of God.

ApostateAbe, Go find a history book for YOUR human Jesus.

The Heresy of a human Jesus is NOT in the CANON of the Church unless you think the Church writers or officials who compiled the CANON were COMPLETE IDIOTS.

ApostateAbe

Thanks, spin. You didn't debate against my argument. In fact, you claimed that I didn't even have an argument in the OP, which seems to be a headscratcher. So, I am thinking maybe I need to lay out my argument very simply. It is basically an argument from deduction.

1) The synoptic gospels directly reflect ancient Christian myth of Jesus as a human doomsday cult leader (among a few other things).
2) All of the myths of a reputedly-human doomsday cult leader seem to be based on an actual-human doomsday cult leader of the same rough profile as the character in the myth.
3) Therefore, the myth of Jesus was based on an actual-human doomsday cult leader of the same rough profile as the character of Jesus in the myths.

If you find something wrong with that argument, then please make sure that you understand the details properly by reviewing my OP. That is the argument and the theory. You have your own theory with your own set of arguments, which is great, because you will need to compete, and one of the two ways to compete is by promoting your own theory. So, I will list and explain what I find insufficient about your arguments.

• Your explanation of "birth pangs" does not have explanatory power. You think it refers to the messiah. The passage you are referring to is Mark 13:8.

  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

  To make sense of "birth pangs," you go to a completely different set of writings of a completely different myth of a completely different religion of a very different time (Dead Sea Scrolls, Essenes, 100 BCE). Your only connection between the two myths is messiah and "birth pangs". If we had no other way to make good sense of it, then that is what we would need to do. But, we can make perfect sense of it by looking at the immediate context--same document, same myth, same religion, same time. The topic of the same verse in Mark is kingdoms, and the surrounding passages refer to a new kingdom of God. For example, Mark 14:25.

  Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’

  And Mark 1:15

  ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

  Those are the two passages in Mark that indicate that the kingdom of God is new. Throughout all of the rest of the gospel of Mark, the kingdom of God remains Jesus' focus.
• Your other connections are merely rough similarities between the myths of Jesus and other myths of the same cultural context, and it takes much more than rough similarities to claim literary borrowing. If religious apocalypticism was common at the time (as it seems to be common in all times and places), then would we expect anything different?
• Your explanation expects doomsday prophecies, but not a human doomsday cult leader. Not necessarily a death blow, but it is a disadvantage given your rival theory. The best theory explains the whole of the evidence with strong predictive power, not just some of the evidence somewhat plausibly.

All the same, I appreciate your criticisms and contributions.

spin

Really? I mean because all your observed cases are X, then all cases are X? You still want to present that as an argument?

Not one of your doomsday prophets comes from a period close to the one you are trying to analyze. Your argument is based not on context, but modern themes projected into the past.

This is fluff for your basic belief, which is fundamentally that Jesus must have been real because he made boo-boos as a prophet. It's a crypto-embarrassment argument. As you stated in your OP:

[T2]This thread is about the evidence that first convinced me of the historical mortal Jesus--it was the set of his failed prophecies of the imminent doomsday.[/T2]
Perhaps you lost track of what you were supposed to be talking about.

You don't get to dictate how things go here. This is a dialectic.

Saying that the reference to "birth pangs" has no explanatory power is empty rhetoric, as you misunderstand my comment. The birth pangs and related material help to show that the work in Mk 13 is of origin text not speech, which removes it from the mouth of Jesus and in the case of 1QH text which originates prior to the epoch of Jesus.

Just because most mainstream scrolls scholars suck up Essenes, it's still an untested belief. The Hodayot (1QH) is a Jewish document which represents Jewish ideas that were in circulation prior to the emergence of christianity and therefore available for influencing the latter. It's connection with later Jewish thought shows that it isn't out of the mainstream and that the ideas continued over centuries.

I'm demonstrating that you are starting with your hands tied. You make assumptions about the text which you have no reason to make. Somehow you extract a real Jesus from a figure in a text, a text which in the case of Mk 13 evinces redactional effort rather than an oral source.

Your making perfect sense equates to a form of naive literalism, ie you are bound for no clearly stated reason to try to make the text reflect some reality, when the text doesn't allow you to do so.

You're moving into new material. The central content of the OP was based on Mark 13. Why not try to deal with that first?

If you want to call centuries of tradition rough similarities rather than see that much of Mk 13 fits into a well recognized genre, then you aren't dealing with the context of the literature.

Still shooting at the wrong thing. You haven't made it out of text. You are just assuming that you can get out. The problem that you have before you is an epistemological one. You don't seem to be able to show how you can turn text into history.

That's your assertion. Naive literalism in any form doesn't make much of a theory.

There is nothing new in the material that you have offered as a means of showing that someone specific, who you claim must be Jesus, was responsible. You are trapped in text, pretending that you can get reality out of it.

You can keep making crackpot theories until the cows come home that assume your conclusions, for you do assume that you can get history out of the literature. That is a conclusion that you need to demonstrate, but you don't seem to have the tools to help you, so you assume it.

arnoldo

Or the phrase may be an aramaic idiom. .

Juststeve

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