Toto

It is misinformation to claim that this is a viable possibility.

No he didn't. He wrote that Christians told fictional tales, not that they invented Jesus. In other parts of his writings he described Jesus as a mere person.

It is not necessary to think that Julian denied the historical existence of Jesus to understand why the church disliked him. He was trying to disestablish the church and bring back paganism. There is no hint in any of his writings or in writings about him that supports your hypothesis.

You have set up a hypothesis that cannot be tested, but which has no evidence supporting it. You have framed it so no one can refute it, because you claim that all the evidence has been erased. But this hypothesis does not help us understand Julian or Christian history at the time. It just looks like an ad hoc claim on your part in support of your theory, which has not led anywhere.

Not every hypothesis that cannot be refuted is viable (like that teacup in orbit around Saturn.)

Solo

Oh, rest assured they did make that distinction: peshat reading has a been long established tradition in reading the tanakh. Mark specifically says that his whole gospel is a parabolical allegory and it is written in a manner to fool the infidel.

4:11 And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything [i.e. the whole gospel !] is in parables

Mark uses "everything" (ta panta) recursively i.e. inclusive of the statement itself. Marks gospel probably started as his community's collecting parables of Jesus (oι παραβολες του Ιεσου), i.e. parables by Jesus or parables about Jesus, as the genitive suggests double meaning. Most of Mark uses this paradoxical mode of discourse with moving point of reference between the narrative and the narrated material.

Best,
Jiri

Horatio Parker

Since all this material is in gMark, isn't this esoteric/exoteric divide a literary device only? Dramatic material that illustrates the divide between those who have God in their lives and those who don't.

It's not clear to me what Jewish exegetical practices have to do with it. Anyway, aren't they an anachronism?

What I'm thinking of is something along these lines: if Jesus represents an eternal being or principle, does it matter whether any particular story of an earthly manifestation is exactly right or not because the larger theological truth is independent of history. What did the ancients consider more important, the life of Alexander the Great or the forces contained in him that enabled his achievements? I doubt that they had much empirical awareness about these questions. Contracts, money, land etc I'm sure they were very modern in that respect. But when it comes to spirituality, I don't think so.

Solo

I would say, yes, but I think Mark was more pointed. The ones to "whom it was given to know the mystery" are ecstatics who live for nothing but God. A beautiful example of that is in the parable of the rich man (10:17-22)

Well, yes, it was the "Christ" spirit that mattered first and most. Always. But the problem of course is not "Christ" but how "Christ" relates to reason. Paul's disagreement with the Nazarenes was in that they clamoured for the Conquering Superman and he for the End of Earthly Suffering. Big difference, but somehow the two got smashed together in the end.

Best,
Jiri

Horatio Parker

Sounds Greek to me; the natural man.

The answer is that the Christ spirit is the manifestation of God in humans. With consciousness, awareness and the ability to choose, create, and judge, we are ourselves creators, ourselves Gods, at least in part. This power is how we are able to transcend the suffering of the world, how we redeem "sins"(in the sense of mistakes as opposed to deliberate acts of injustice). The real spiritual polarity being good and chaos, not good and evil. IMO.

But however they conceived of the Christ spirit, I suspect that our modern notion of using evidence such as written documents to prove or disprove whether someone existed or not wasn't something they conceived of.

mountainman

Asserting something from authority, and demonstrating something logically are two separate exercises.



This is an argument from authority.



These claims themselves are hypotheses. They may represent the consensus of current opinion, but they are nevertheless hypotheses.



Again an argument from authority. The claim is that it is possible that Julian denied the historical existence of Jesus, not that it is necessary to think he did.



You are not being logical - we do not have his original writings "Against the Christians" and the letters of Julian that have been survived show significant signs of mutilation. Do you understand what this mutilation implies?




What do you mean - like the historical jesus? This is bullshit from authority. The hypothesis can be tested if we were to find the original Greek writings of Emperor Julian. Your mainstream hypothesis that Julian believed in a flying spagetti monster from Judea can also be tested in the same manner.



The hypothesis satisfies the Popperian falsifiability criteria, and as framed can be refuted, as can the consensus hypothesis.



On the contrary it helps us understand that it is hypothetically possible that the Christian history furnished in the Constantinian epoch was denounced as a fabrication within 40 years of Nicaea.



The hypothesis is not ad hoc. It follows from the premise that the religion of Big J and the Boneheads was invented by wicked men who controlled the Greek literature preservation process. This premise expects a denouncement of the Flying Judaic Spagetti Monster story. It's quite plain and simple logic.


It is historically possible that Julian's books against the Christians exposed an organised fabrication and perversion of the Greek literature by the Nicaean Regime of Christians. You chopped out the valid political analogy that you yourself elsewhere employ with the Republicans and the Democrats. Some one manufacures a fictional manifesto. The other side obtains power and exposes it. Subsequently the original organisation resumes power and attempts to delete and censor the history of the exposee.

This leads us to Cyril of Alexandria.