Magdlyn

I already cited one source. Why ask me? You want more? No need to be sarcastic with me just b/c you are thinly read.

Magdlyn

Of course, even Mark has the "messianic secret" with an inner circle (pneumatics) and the lesser hordes (psychics).

Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (or via: amazon.co.uk) actually has 2 parallels drawn towards Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism and the "gospel message", george. One entire chapter for each. Have you read it?

I would add to your hypothesis above, besides "disappointed apocalypticism" you have the issue of Roman domination and the hope for a mighty military messiah being replaced by a spiritual one. I think those 2 stressors pretty much cover the origin of the mythical (inner/spiritual) Jesus soter figure.

I would suggest a lot more reading up on early "heretical" xianities by people here. Besides the 2 books already cited:

The Jesus Mysteries (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Jesus and the Lost Goddess (or via: amazon.co.uk)
Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk)
www.gnosis.org for the entire Nag Hammadi library
The Other Bible (gnostic lit as well as apocrypha and non-canonical Jewish writing) with explanatory essays.

Joseph Campbell for general info on how religions work, evolve, serve a purpose.

Magdlyn

May I ask why you are concerned with this? There had been great Hellenistic influence since at least the rule of Antiochus, if not before him with Alexander. A couple hundred years of it, at least, by the time of Paul, despite the role of the Hasmoneans.

Spanky

If there were people who could imagine and create a person who walked on water, didn't eat or drink for 40 days and 40 nights, turned 5 loaves and 5 fishes into an amount that could feed a multitude, made a fig tree wither, made a person come back to life after being dead, "fulfilled" words spoken by people who lived thousands of years before, walked on water, calmed a storm, turned water into wine, and personally rose from the dead himself, then you can see that such an imagination would have no problem adding a little "apocalypse" into the recipe!
How many religions, cults, have arisen from apocalyptic roots? Why is this one different? People who create this shit, whether the Jesus story or some other tall tale, have big imaginations when it comes to reality and the laws of physics.
My point has nothing to do with Doherty's line of thinking, I cannot wrap my mind around his thesis (which by the way, doesn't give me a free pass to try to attack him or call him out at every turn--it seems like some of you people, instead of contributing to this "Jesus puzzle" yourselves, only know how to attack Doherty. What have you written? A blog? Hiding behind a computer?).
I can see, however, that attaching apocalyptic musings to an already overinflated myth is not a feat that catches my attention. It goes with the territory.

gurugeorge

Sorry I wasn't terribly clear there, by "Hellenistic" I was thinking of the kinds of more obvious and overt bleed-through from (Middle- to Neo-)Platonism, the Mystery religions, etc., that you get in later Gnosticism (and even in orthodoxy). I agree that there had already been a fair amount of influence from the general Graeco-Roman/Hellenistic culture in Jewish culture for quite some time, but I think the origins of the movement still have to be found in a more specifically Jewish/Samaritan context, with some Greek/Roman influence, but not as much as came later, as Gnosticism and orthodoxy developed.

This is as a result of listening seriously to some of the HJ counter-arguments against the earlier phase of MJ theory, which posited a stronger Hellenistic influence even on early Christianity. (For instance, I don't go as far as some of the Dutch Radicals, in seeing Christianity as totally the product of a mileu that's outside Palestine altogether. e.g., to make an analogy with a modern situation, it's not like Westerners who are into Tibetan Buddhism developing a religion that riffs off Tibetan Buddhism, it's more like native Tibetans developing a religion that riffs off their native religion, but is slightly influenced by their contact with the West, and then gets more Westernised as it's taken up by Westerners, because some of the ideas are already sympathetic to Western ideas. I actually think this parallel is quite close. Judaism was probably as "cool" to subjects of the Roman Empire as Tibetan Buddhism is "cool" to young spiritual people today.)

Clivedurdle

Assume a proto gnostic Paul from Tarsus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsus_in_Cilicia


Other famous visitors are Anthony and Cleopatra.

More than enough room there for huge Persian and Greek inflences on Paul!

gurugeorge

Both Price's Jesus books are soooo on my reading list, I just haven't gotten around to getting them yet!

I'm also a fan of Freke & Gandy. Although I agree with some of their critics (from my amateur's understanding) that their scholarship's a bit flakey sometimes, I think on the whole they've just about got it right. The only criticism I'd make of them from my own personal point of view is that I think they lay a bit too much stress on non-dual mystical experience, and not enough on visionary magical experience in early Christianity - they perhaps see everything too much through Advaitic spectacles, if you know what I mean. I think a some of the subtle sayings in Gnosticism can clearly be interpreted non-dually (e.g. as I mentioned somewhere in another thread, the Epistle to Rheginos on "resurrection", with its talk of the world as "apparition" is blatantly non-dual mysticism), but those guys were also heavily into visionary experience, astral travel, etc., and it did produce for them a heavily cosmological religion.

I'd also shoot back at you a recommendation to check out (if you don't already know of it) the work of Peter Kingsley on the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Empedocles, the early Sophists, and the undercurrent of (what for all the world looks like) a native Western form of non-dual mystical philosophy running from those quite ancient times in pre-Socratic philosophy, through Plato, through neo-Pythagoreanism, to neo-Platonism, the Mysteries, Gnosticism and Hermeticism, with its last functional redoubt in some forms of Sufism on the one hand, and some of the "occult" personalities and formations in the West on the other (although these last were barely functional, more like a sort of cargo-cult version of the real thing, until their rejuvenation by contact with the real thing from the East in more recent times).

Cheerful Charlie

I am not a mythicist, but apocalyptic thinking predates Christianity by centuries. Read Daniel for instance. A century before Christ the Essene's leader the "Perfect Teacher" was executed and when Jesus was roaming around these Essenes were still expecting the immenent second coming of their perfect teacher. Much of what we see in the Gospels as far as claims can be traced to verses in the OT, so little is new, and the apocalyptic books that did not make it into the OT canon did in fact supply yet more material for the gospel writers. There is no real mystery here.

CC

Chris Weimer

You really missed the question on that one, didn't you?

Cheerful Charlie

No, you missed the answer.


The gospels record that Jesus communed with Moses and Esais (Isaiah).
They record this as something temporal, but such things may have come from a tradition that was more or less visionary, such as Paul's vision of Christ on way to Damascus. Ot tales jesus walked among his disciples unrecognized, oddities that tend to make me think originally we are talking visions et al, not real appearances. Mary Magdalene in John mistakes Christ for the gardener. Mythicism maybe what happened. Or as I suspect, a mixture of the two. Semi-historical up to the death and crucifiction of Jesus. Visions and rumors supply the' resurrection', oral traditions as false as tales of Nero's not being really dead.

None of this took place in a vaccum, and apocalypticism was rampant in Israel and Judea at that time.

The gospels are late renditions of this mythology and may be reifications of visions as actual physical appearances. I can make a good case for a historical mythicism, if I wish, not my bag though.

But any way you slice it or dice it, apocalypticism is a backround to early Christianity, and the gospel writers repeatedly dig through the apocalyptic OT prophets for material when they fleshed out their tall tales. Their genius lies in the fact that they avoided the worst of such things, later violent Jewish apocalyptic works, and made it seem reasonble to many by doing so.

But mythicism or non-mythicism maybe the wrong way to think about it all to begin with.

Think mixed model. Jesus, the real Jesus is an apocalyptic Jew who claims as son of god he will preside over the end of the world and judgment day.
Apocalypticism is the basis of his claims. He is crucified. He is not buried and arises. Vultures eat his carcass as happens to crucified criminals.
The rest is mythicist rumors based on visions, rumors, hypnogogic dreams from anguished women followers of Jesus. A mystery Jesus who walks among his disciples in mystic disguise. See also John 21 for rmore.


CC