S.C.Carlson

That would be a serious problem.

Stephen

Doug Shaver

You are questioning his interpretation of certain evidence, not the evidence itself. What does Doherty actually say -- in his own words, please -- about either of those expressions that is demonstrably false?

According to Doherty, what did Trypho say? Did Trypho actually say it or not?

Can you prove, by quoting Tatian's own words, that Tatian must have believed in a historical Jesus?

The silence in most second-century writings exists until someone proves otherwise. What it tells us is a matter of interpretation.

Your involvement or noninvolvement in previous discussion is beside the point. What does Doherty actually say -- in his own words, please -- about kata sarka that is demonstrably false?

I asked for "a crucial fact [omitted from his analysis] that is inconsistent with his conclusion." Quote some Jewish literature and demonstrate its inconsistency with Paul's believing what Doherty thinks Paul believed about Jesus.

Can you be more specific? Which Christian literature of Paul's time did Doherty fail to take into consideration? If you mean any other time, how can what Christians believed then about Jesus refute any assertion about what Paul was likely to have believed about Jesus?

You are questioning a conclusion of his argument. That says nothing about the logic by which he reached that conclusion.

I see two basic parts to Doherty's argument. I will hazard no guess as to whether he intended to present it that way, but it is how I approach the issue Jesus' historicity.

We're dealing with two questions. One is whether Christianity began with some man who in some way, perhaps very indirectly, inspired the stories that appeared in the gospels. That would be the historical Jesus, however inaccurately the gospels might have portrayed him. The other question is: When and how did Christians come to think there was? An affirmative answer to the first question automatically answers the second, although raising countless secondary questions about the specifics of the process.

A negative answer to the first question does not force any answer to second. We could, if the evidence forced us to, without inconsistency deny a historical Jesus while declaring our pure ignorance as to how Christians got the notion that there was one.

I do not think the evidence forces any answer to either question. I think anyone who believes with certainty that Jesus certainly existed or certainly did not exist is mistaken. The undisputed facts are not sufficient to justify either conclusion. I think reasonable people can believe he probably existed, and I think reasonable people can believe he probably did not.

I think the crucial facts suggest that he probably did not. Those facts are:

1. For nearly a century following his purported death, no fact of his life is unambiguously attested by anyone. Christian references to his birth are cryptic, and no Christian teaching is clearly attributed to the man himself. And during that first century, non-Christian references to him are nonexistent with one exception, and that exception is known to have been tampered with.

2. The earliest known Christian writings, produced during within a few decades of his alleged lifetime, attest to a Jewish sect, the earliest known Christian community, that considered Jesus a god, or something very like a god. Those Jewish Christians, if there was a historical Jesus, were men who had known him or had learned about him from men who had kinown him.

By themselves, I think these two facts together imply, to a high degree of probability, that there was no historical Jesus. If Jesus had done, during his lifetime, whatever it would have taken to inspire some Jews to deify him after his death, then he would not have gone so unnoticed during that lifetime.

You say: But some Jews deified Moses. OK, but we know what Jews of the first century believed that Moses did, here on earth during his lifetime, to deserve it. We do not know what any first-century Christian, Jewish or gentile, believed Jesus did on this earth during his lifetime. We know what they thought he did after he died, but what did he do during his lifetime to make them think that? There is no hint of an answer to that question in any document known to have been written by any Christian or anyone else during the first century.

So then, what were Paul and his contemporaries thinking? And, how did that their thinking evolve, within the Christianity community, into the Christianity that we're familiar with?

Doherty offers one alternative based on his understanding of first-century Hellenistic philosophy. It seems plausible to me, and I have yet to see a cogent arguments for its implausibility. Whether it is a likely alternative, my jury is still out pending further research. Given the evidence against historicity, though, I think plausibility is sufficient.

Ben C Smith

I can think of from three to possibly five non-Christian references to Jesus within a century of his purported death (circa 30).

I presume the one you meant was the Testimonium. On top of that, we have Pliny (circa 110; he refers to Christ as one worshipped as if he were a god, but admittedly not to anything historical from his life), Tacitus (writing before 117), possibly Suetonius (he wrote before 130, but I am not certain he was writing about Jesus), and possibly Mara bar Serapion (I am quite certain he was writing about Jesus, but not certain he was writing before 130).

Ben.

GakuseiDon

Hi Doug, thanks for your response. I'm mulling over whether to reply to one or more of your points. It's reasonable to ask for more information, but I'm not certain whether I want to refight all those points though there may be benefits for doing so. I'd like to keep this thread devoted to pagan beliefs, so if I do respond it will be in another thread. Too often the argument swings back to Paul and early Christian writings, and I don't want to do that here (though I know that I was the one to bring up those off-thread topics in the first place, so my bad). I'd just like to respond to a couple of comments.

I think the evidence for a historical Jesus is so small that it is valid to question whether he existed or not. Even disproving Doherty doesn't tell us that a HJ existed. But I think any investigation into Doherty's theory would lead to it being rejected. Some of what he says can't be disproved, since Paul can always have had his own unique views on any topic. At the least, I think the evidence is clear that the pagans didn't believe what Doherty claims they believed.

Well, this thread is certainly here to look for evidence to support the plausibility (or otherwise) of some of Doherty's claims on First Century Hellenistic ideas.

So, here are some of Doherty's claims:

It is admittedly impossible to nail down with any precision the exact viewpoint early Christians held in regard to the death of their mythical Christ, except that it took place in a dimension not our own, in "some other place," as one IIDBer put it. Apologists like to jump on this and claim that this discredits the entire theory. But they don't just win by default. What they fail to acknowledge is that the early record is full of indicators in such a direction, that it makes a good fit with the philosophy and cosmology of the time, and is supported by close parallels with mystery cult mythology

Do you think it is supported "by close parallels with mystery cult mythology"? If so, what are they? And what is the textual evidence for this?

Doherty also wrote that for "the average pagan", the myths of their gods were carried out in a "vast unseen spiritual realm" where "a savior god like Mithras could slay a bull", and "Attis could be castrated". Again, what is the evidence for this?

Juma

Is Doherty dead? If not, why not ask him directly...

Ben C Smith

Believe me, GDon has. He has.

Ben.

Toto

Doherty is not dead. (This is how rumors start!)

He can be reached through his web page here and he sometimes drops by this forum. GDon has has previous exchanges with him and knows how to reach him.

GakuseiDon

Because I know what he will say: "It's a failure of imagination!" or "Desperate apologetics by people stuck in a historicist paradigm!" or "We don't know how they thought in those days, so they must have thought this way!" I don't expect him to provide textual evidence to support his views on what pagans believed, otherwise he would have produced it. At the least, I hope people here can see that the evidence appears to be against him on this topic.

I'm hoping that people here will start to question Doherty, in the same way as people are starting to question "Mithras was crucified between two thieves" type of claims. As one person told me on another board, I can't prove that pagans didn't believe that, and since there were lots of variations on ancient myths, it's possible that that version of the myth existed. I once debated with an atheist I respected on another board who believed that there were all these myths about crucified saviour figures. I gave him several dozen links giving the origins of those gods showing that this was not the case. He responded "I see nothing there that contradicts my views".

The problem isn't that historicists aren't looking into Doherty, it is that mythicists aren't looking into Doherty. There is a curious attitude of "well, I don't believe that Doherty is completely correct, but..." Maybe those mythicists who feel that Doherty is partly wrong can start a thread listing the evidence for where they think he is wrong?

Doug Shaver

Suit yourself. I was responding to your question about what it would take to refute Doherty. I think I've answered that question. If you now want to go off on a tangent to argue that what I said had to be done has in fact been done, then I suppose a new thread would be appropriate.

In wording it that way, you imply that there has been no such investigation yet.

We'll see. Last I heard from Amazon, my copy of Dillon should arrive sometime in January.

I am not familiar enough with the relevant primary literature to say one way or the other. To my knowledge, though, nobody who has the appropriate expertise has contradicted Doherty, and at least one who does have it supports him. I think that justifies my layman's opinion that Doherty is probably on to something.

How many of his sources have you checked? He lists quite a few in his bibliography.

I really don't much care whether Doherty was right about that particular datum. The average pagan is probably as chimerical as the average American, and he certainly is just as irrelevant to any consideration of what a handful of religious cultists could have believed. In the middle of the first century, Christianity was not likely attracting many average pagans, and it certainly was not attracting many average Jews.

Granted, Christianity's original belief system could not have been too eccentric or else it probably would not have gotten big enough or lasted long enough to have made any history (although the success of cults like Mormonism and Scientology should give anyone pause on that score). Whatever, Doherty's plausibility is not contingent on finding evidence of beliefs, widespread or otherwise, exactly analogous to his reading of Paul's cosmology. All it needs is evidence that some people in those days imagined the universe to be something like, kinda sorta, what he says Paul and other Christians of that time imagined it to be.

I believe that evidence exists. I believe I have seen bits of it. But I'm going to keep looking, as time and resources allow, until I find something more substantial.

aa5874

Earth is the location for myths, what nonsense! Myth happens, really? In which world? The mythical world!!