gregor

Brooke

Please visit the board often. There are a number of posters (not me) that are classically trained in relevant fields, and they really help folks like me.

I wonder, however, if you are not abandoning somewhat the historical method in accepting a significant amount of historicity in the gospels. If the premise of historicity requires evidence, consistency, objective standards, & etc., are you taking the path of appeasment ( e.g. "fine so I'll grant you significant historicity, but for theology . . . ") rather than the critical review.

This is fine for the layperson, but scholars should carry their jaundiced eyes to every examination.

LGM

On the grounds they have spent a good portion of their life studying them, and "want" them to be at least somewhat "historical", instead of a purely fictional invention, that was endlessly expanded upon, by "Christian" scribes with various agendas.

The search for the historical Jesus is a never ending game of peeling the gospel onion and pure speculation. And so is the search for any kind of coherent Christian theology in them.

Well said.

gdeering

I am woefully not up to understanding what mystical Jews thought, though I think it is one of the most important questions in this field, I just have a hard time picturing the spread of a fiction with out an identified prime claimant. Some one before Paul, naturally.

You know one thing I would like is Heavenly Christ Revealed for Dummies. It might help me a lot.


Gregg

LGM

The evangelists spreading the fiction are the prime claimants.

It's a time honored tradition.

Did anyone ever really see those Greek gods on Mt. Olympus?

Anybody ever see Joseph Smith's Jesus inspired natives?

aa5874

I would like to know what corroborative information you have obtained to convince you of the historicity of Jesus, or is it just based on probability? I have not seen one shred of evidence anywhere to demonstrate that there was a Jesus, the Christ, before the 2nd century. No extant first century writings, including Josephus, Pliny the elder or Philo Judaeus wrote a single word about Jesus the Christ or his so-called followers.

You appear to be certain about things that are speculative.

Gregg

There already is one. It's called www.jesuspuzzle.org.

The Jesus myth thesis does not state that the early Christians were spreading a "fiction." Rather, they were spreading their version of a belief that was actually not uncommon in the Roman empire at the time; the Greek neo-Platonist idea that there was a heavenly intermediary between god and man who provided the key to salvation and eternal life. Some Christian sects believed that this heavenly redeemer saved by imparting spiritual knowledge, but Paul and the Jerusalem church believed that the saving activity of the Christ had been revealed to them in the Jewish scriptures--the Son of Man, the "suffering servant" of Isaiah and other passages. The Christ had descended into the lower heavens and been put to death by the archons, the demon rulers, then returned to life and reasserted divine authority over the heavens and Earth.

This also is not a stretch, since there were a number of pagan mystery cults in existence that worshipped "dying/rising" savior gods. The god had undergone suffering and death in the spiritual world or in the primordial past, then had been resurrected. The initiate to the cult would, through mystical union with the god, "die" with him and be "reborn" with him. Some of these cults even had a sacred meal.

Then, several decades after Paul, the scribe of some Christian community sat down and wrote an allegory about his version of Christ, one that, like Paul's, had undergone suffering, death, and resurrection. He brought the Christ to Earth in a tale modeled on the outline of the Jewish scriptures, indeed drawing the elements of the Passion story almost line by line from scripture. He used actual places and an identifiable time period as the setting for his story, and used some real historical figures as characters as well, but did not show a great deal of concern for historical accuracy. His purpose may have been to provide a liturgy, a teaching tool, for his community.

Several rewrites later and the addition of teaching material from the "Q" document, and people far removed in time and space from the events portrayed in the gospels, and unable to verify them (if they even had any interest in doing so--look how many people even today accept outlandish claims as fact and never bother to verify them) due to the destruction of the Temple and the depopulation of Palestine, began to believe they told the story of an actual divine being, perhaps even God, who came to earth, entered into human history, to live and die as one of us.

This struck a chord that the mystery cults, the high-minded ruminations of Greek philosophers, and even the zealous efforts of missionaries like Paul had not. Christianity began rising rapidly in popularity and the rest of the mystery cults were left in the dust.

Gamera

The problem with that is similar miraculous events (of different kind but of the same level of absurdity) are found in most of the "historical" texts of the time. Yet I doubt that you doubt that the authors weren't doing "history." What I suspect you do is bracket off the miraculous events, and consider the rest reliable.

I think Brooke is applying this same standard to the Christian scriptures and I think that is a proper and consistent position to take.

Gamera

So what was Tacitus on when he wrote this nonsense:

(Annal. Lib. VI. c. 28):

“At the time of the consul Fabius and L. Vitelius (a. R. 788; 34ad), after a centuries long period, has arrived in Egypt the bird phoenix. Its coming here was a miracle which has served as matter of discussion for the most learned men of this country and of Greece. I shall report here the facts on which general opinion concurs, as well as other data less certain, but which presents an interest. This bird is consecrated to the sun, and all that have described its shape say that it has a figure and feathers different from those of the other birds. Opinions about the length of its life vary. According to most, it lives 500 years, but there are some who affirm that it has a life to 1461 years. The first phoenix had appeared, as it is said, at the time of Sesostris, the second at the time of Amasis, the third at the time of Ptolemy the Macedonian, who has ruled over Egypt. This last bird had flown to the city named Heliopolis, accompanied by several flocks of other birds, they also astonished by this unknown form. But its age is unknown. Between Ptolemy and Tiberius have been less than 250 years, and because of this some believe that this bird had not been the real phoenix, and that it did not even come from the countries of the Arabs, as it did not have any characteristic confirmed by ancient traditions. This bird, when the number of years of its life comes to and end and its death closes in, builds in its country a nest, which it fecundates with its generative power, out of which a chick is born later, which immediately upon growing up takes care to bury its father. It does this not without knowledge, but it lifts firstly its weight of myrrh, and tries it on a longer flight, to see if it could bear the load and make this trip, after which lifts the body of its father and takes it to the altar of the sun, where it burns it. But this data is unsure and full of fable. Nevertheless, the people in Egypt do not doubt that this bird is seen there sometimes”.

Gregg

I wanted to add: When I read Earl Doherty's Jesus myth thesis, it made perfect sense to me almost immediately, even though I was initially very skeptical. At the time I was an agnostic (having previously been a New Thought Christian) and was very interested in the works of John Shelby Spong and the Jesus historicists, as well as the Jesus Seminar. I'd heard about those who proposed Jesus was a myth and dismissed them as cranks on the order of the "fake moon landing" people--the whole idea seemed so ridiculous. Of course Jesus had existed! Even with all the historical inaccuracies and contradictions in the gospels, there had to be a kernel of historical truth in there somewhere! How could a movement like Christianity have possibly started without some real figure--some charismatic individual at the root of it?

At the same time, there were some questions that had always niggled at me. Corroboration of Jesus outside the gospels was practically non-existent (and at the time I did not know about the problems with Josephus, etc.). The historicists explained this away by saying Jesus was obscure and unimportant. He gathered a small group of followers, preached, then at some point drew attention to himself by creating a disturbance on the Temple grounds. He was arrested as an insurrectionist, quickly put to death, and probably buried in a shallow grave. Struggling to make sense of his death, his followers dug into the Jewish scriptures and began applying various prophecies to him. Later some of them had visions of him risen from the grave. This convinced them, and shortly thereafter men like Paul who had never even met him, that this obscure preacher/teacher who had been put to death as a rebel was in fact a divine being, part of the godhead, and the savior of the world.

What bothered me initially was ... why? If Jesus was so obscure, his life so brief and unaccomplished that it received no notice except among his close followers, his death so abrupt, why would they have exalted him so? Why would someone like Paul who never even met him respond the same way? Why hadn't any other Jewish sects tried to make their martyred leaders into crucified/resurrected saviors? Why did this vast mythical framework get applied to Jesus almost immediately after his death, with no evidence of gradual accretion? Why would people all over the Empire so rapidly respond in such a fantastic variety of ways to the story of an unknown crucified rabbi in faraway Palestine?

Then I encountered Doherty's site which raised even more questions. Why were Paul and the other early Christian writers so silent about the human life of the object of their faith? No references to his teachings, to Calvary, not a single detail of his life. Paul even says that God is "now" revealing the Kingdom and the plan of salvation through himself and apostles like him (whose eyes have been opened to mystery hidden in the Scriptures), with no mention of Jesus' Kingdom-preaching ministry that preceded his, and supposedly concluded with the very act of sacrifice that Paul never discusses directly, but only alludes to via scripture references. And what the heck is that writer of Hebrews talking about, with his Christ offering up his blood in a heavenly sanctuary?

When Doherty started talking about the religious beliefs and philosophies that were prevalent at the time of Christianity's emergence, everything fell into place. I'm not sure why some people seem to find it such a stretch to imagine first-century philosophers and religious mystics envisioning multi-layered heavens, heavenly redeemers, otherworldly acts of sacrifice, and thinking of these things as absolutely real, with real effects on the world of matter. I mean, the belief that the "spirit world" is more real than our own goes back to the shamans of primitive hunter-gatherer tribes. Even in this scientific age people believe in heaven and hell and miracles. I guess I have an easier time understanding such a mindset because I still vividly remember certain moments in my childhood looking at clouds and feeling caught up in them, into another world. That people in the first century looked at the sky and imagined it filled with angels and demons, descending-ascending redeemer gods, mystical processes, higher realities, etc., not to mention the means of escaping death and the travails of earthly existence, is easy for me to understand. That a person like Paul could envision, so vividly it hurt, his heavenly Christ hanging pierced and bleeding doesn't require much effort for me to accept, yet this is where lots of people get "hung up" (pun intended). Even non-Christians will say, "Oh come on! The crucifixion at least had to be real!" But it WAS very real, for Paul and people like him. Just as real as the gods eating and drinking in Valhalla was for the Vikings. Just as real as Attis' castration was to his priests who cut off their own genitals in frenzied devotion. In the mind of the believer, anything is possible.

Gregg

Except that what's left does not stand up to close scrutiny, either.