In my preparation for writing a critical review of R.T. France's
The Evidence for Jesus (which I promise will not be as glowing as Layman's review), I believe I've stumbled on a possible way for someone to conclusively refute the MJ hypothesis.
Strauss was probably the first to extensively use OT parallels of NT stories to show they are mythical. Most of us here have read works like Helms'
Gospel Fictions and Price's
The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, which make even more extensive use of this method. But what are the criticisms of it?
Rick Summer, in another thread said:
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Jews read current events in the light of scripture--that is, their recounting of events, events that actually happened, was often influenced by scripture...When dealing with ancient Jewish texts, we are left exactly the question already mentioned--what came first, the chicken or the egg?--and arguments need to be tendered for or against. You don't have a secure default position, which is what you're trying to go behind.
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Rick, knowingly or unknowningly, has given a similar excuse to the one that has always been used. To illustrate, here is what Albert Schweitzer had to say about Strauss on the matter about 100 years ago:
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He sought to make the boundaries of the mythical embrace the widest possible area; and it is clear that he extended them too far.
For one thing, he overestimates the importance of the Old Testament motives in reference to the creative activity of the legend. He does not see that while in many cases he has shown clearly enough the source of the form of the narrative in question, this does not suffice to explain its origin. Doubtless, there is mythical material in the story of the feeding of the multitude. But the existence of the story is not explained by referring to the manna in the desert, or the miraculous feeding of a multitude by Elisha. [1] The story in the Gospel has far too much individuality for that, and stands, moreover, in much too closely articulated an historical connexion. It must have as its basis some historical fact. It is not a myth, though there is myth in it. Similarly with the account of the transfiguration. The substratum of historical fact in the life of Jesus is much more extensive than Strauss is prepared to admit. Sometimes he fails to see the foundations, because he proceeds like an explorer who, in working on the ruins of an Assyrian city, should cover up the most valuable evidence with the rubbish thrown out from another portion of the excavations.
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Little has changed in the nature of objections to this in the last 150 years (France gives a similar excuse, with a reference to another book of his). Critics just keep crying that it doesn't mean
it couldn't have happened despite the clear literary ties (nevermind the supernatural). What's even more striking is how this criteria is still used by believers in a historical Jesus like Schweitzer, though in a seemingly arbitrary fashion.
So I ask Rick, and others who believe in a historical Jesus, how can we tell what is historical from what is literary in the life of Jesus? Given the fact that nearly ever single aspect of Gospels has literary parallels to the OT, is there any way rule out the literary explanation? If so, then mythicism would be refuted, or greatly weakened as an explanatory hypothesis.
08-25-2004, 08:42 AM
Possible refutation of mythicism.
