ynquirer

My position at this point of the debate is not to support any supposition: one cannot infer anything from Paul’s silence, either his belief in a HJ or a MJ. His writing seems mythical to you just because you are only too eager to have it look mythical. It might with equal strength seem theological to an evenhanded observer.

As regard independent sources of either historicity or mythicism, you for mythicism don’t have any. I for historicity have the gospels - which is way far from this thread. Yet, back in the topic it is the mythicists that have tried to used Paul’s silence as proof of mythicism to challenge the gospels reliability. There may be proof for that, but not Paul’s silence.

gurugeorge

But the very point of this thread is to assume there is no silence in Paul.

No, it looks mythical because it looks mythical.

If by "theological" you mean in the traditional Christian sense, it could only look that way if you asssumed he was talking about a historical Jesus, in which case the "silence" would appear, and have to be explained.

As I said, "Paul's silence" only appears if you presume historicity. If you don't presume historicity, there's no silence, and Paul is obviously talking about a mythical entity. Since there's no evidence in Paul for why we should presume historicity, why should it be presumed? Because 2,000 years of Christian tradition tells us so? That's ok for someone who's already a believing Christian, but for someone who isn't a believing Christian who wants to get to the bottom of what Christianity is about, things have to be taken in sequence, and read as they stand, in and of themselves, before they can be compared to what came after.

ynquirer

Let's try your way.

It would be more accurate to say that it looks either mythical or theological.

For the records, by “theological” I mean a speech on a divine entity that may in principle be either exclusively supernatural, like the Father, or both supernatural and human, like the Son.

No, his theological speech is just talking about what it must mainly talk, namely, Jesus’ divinity.

If the Christians’ belief in Jesus’ historicity from the beginning is not outright proof, it at least is quite safe indication of what Paul, their teacher, thought. I’m afraid you have nothing of the like.

gurugeorge

What Christians' belief in historicity? Paul? The author(s) of Hebrews, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, etc., etc.? But belief in a historical Jesus is precisely what's missing from these people. That is to say, again, if you look at them as they are, there's no silence, they are unambiguously and fulsomely vocal about an evidently mythical being. But if you project the historical Jesus back into them, they are silent about him.

The gospels are the first place we see the "historical Jesus" as that's ordinarily understood. But if scholarship is correct in taking Mark as the first version of the famous Jesus story, it has to be noted that Mark in and of itself also looks like it could easily be a mythical biography (i.e. it is mostly mixed midrash and wisdom sayings of various kinds, with no element of it clearly genuinely historical).

That later Christians believed the gospel accounts to be historical accounts is true, and it does have some weight (that's why I'd say the historicist position is not altogether ridiculous, it's a possible, though only just barely possible interpretation); but on the other hand people do make mistakes. The belief could be no more than a case of snowballing "Chinese Whispers".

Or rather, just as some ancients had more strongly historical views of their gods than others, and tied them to specific places and events, so did some early Christians. But many other Christians didn't have such a strongly historicised view.

Stepping back a bit, and looking at the bigger picture, everywhere in early Christianity, right from the beginning, you have a struggle of a certain type of Christianity (what's called the "proto-orthodox") against "heresy". From the proto-orthodox point of view, this heresy was a wilful deviation from their strongly historicised mythical entity, to whom they believed they had a lineage connection; but the other Christian beliefs were merely variations on a theme (some less historicized and more spiritualised, others going even further in the historical direction in the sense of de-mythologising the entity and making of him a mere prophet - a sort of Jewish eheumerism re. their cultic entity).

Clivedurdle

Let me try another approach to this. Various people have visions of a Christ. They know their Daniel and think they are in the end times - lots of stories in the Gospels about this, Revelation etc.

Their beliefs include this Christ becoming human to save us all - the marriage of heaven and earth, a new heaven and earth, Christ and his bride - exactly as all the creeds and xianity have stated for millenia.

But no-one ever knew this Jesus of Nazareth because he never existed - it was always entirely mythological AND theological. It was the right time and place for the greatest story ever told.

Someone at some point must have done some calculations based on Daniel and come up with a result oh he must be born of a virgin under Quirinus and died under Pontius Pilate. There are probably mythological and theological reasons behind those parameters.

Is not the fact that there is no agreement on this - and the geneaologies - evidence that we are looking at made up stuff?

Look at the gospel stories - water into wine, walking on water, clay and spittle healing - alchemic stuff, mythical stuff.

The theology of a god made man is by definition mythical!

There is no silence in Paul. In fact the entire NT and history of xianity states very clearly their belief is in fully god fully man. This hybrid creature is classic mythology!

The pieces of this jigsaw fit - they do not with the hj model - where you have first to define which hj and then get lost in anti ockham complexities about silences.

Accept what the xians say at face value - fully god fully man. Your choices are then - they are correct - believe on the Lord Jesus Christ - or hang on, this seems familiar territory - what is this about fish and virgins and resurrections and miracles and darkness at noon.

We can even track an evolution in the human side of this story over time - nothing really in Paul, Mark obviously a character in a story, only with the enlightenment a search for the historial Jesus that fails to find Atlantis.

And the Pope says it is heretical to look for the HJ!

It is a strange type of history that keeps on insisting a godman is historical!

No Robots

Quite so, quite so: just as there have been alternatives to the heliocentric theory.

gstafleu

There is no evidence for such an entity in the epistles. Hence, in order to assume him, you have to come up with some other evidence that, at the time of the epistles, people were aware of such an entity. If you just assume it without that, you get cut by Occam's razor.

Gerard Stafleu

spamandham

I'm not sure it's quite that simple. It is possible that proto-Christianity started as a cult of reverence among Jews toward some historical person, but that so much legend was attached that the historical details were eventually forgotten. Then later on, people began to question the historicity of Jesus, and so a history was invented. I think we have to date Paul much later than typical, or date the historical figure behind Jesus much earlier than typical, for this scenario to even be plausible. It isn't credible to claim Paul converted a mere 10 or 12 years after Jesus lived and yet writes virtually nothing but creedal aspects of the life of Jesus within his voluminous writings. It would be credible to claim the The Essene TOR was the historical Jesus though. A couple of hundred years is more than enough time for this scenario to play out.

But the biggest problem with this scenario, is that we are trying to peer backwards through the myth big bang, and so, while the scenario is plausible, there really isn't anything of substance to support it. A purely mythical Jesus rooted in Osiris is just as likely. So is a purely mystical Jesus based on Isaiah's suffering servant.

gstafleu

That is not a valid approach, because of that razor. What you'd have to do is something like: Let us assume that Paul and others are referring to a HJ, we then find that the following passages in the epistles are much better explained than if we assume he was not referring to an HJ.

The point GG wants to make in this thread, I think, is that there are no such passages.

Gerard Stafleu

andrewcriddle

Hi Gurugeorge

I think that two separate questions may be being confused here.

The idea that the Jesus believed in by Paul was not a historical entity could mean
a/ that Paul believed in Jesus but did not believe that he had lived and died on this earth.
b/ that Paul believed that Jesus had lived and died on this earth but he was wrong.

Among the problems with a/ is the difficulty in finding good parallels in the ancient world to this sort of idea, particularly with respect to claims about things supposedly in recent times. (Paul's Jesus must at the very least be later than the prophets whom he fulfils.)

b/ seems to be a form of very extreme scepticism and although some of your arguments seem IMO to support b/ more than a/ I have doubts whether it is what you are suggesting.

Andrew Criddle