TedM

I think a change from the expectation of a human-king Messiah to a non-human heavenly Messiah would have been seen as extremely dramatic, don't you? It's one thing to talk theory--but to switch to worshipping such a figure would have been highly controversial: Thus the persecutions IMO.

The stakes were their own salvation, the answer is 'Yes'. We clearly have different opinions.


What would be the conflict though? How do either conflict with the other?


There is no evidence of such a divide. That's my point. You are suggesting that one simply 'died out' without leaving a trace, if there was no conflict. Yet, we know that Paul's followers were many and did not 'die out'. AFAWK they accepted the gospel narrative. If they didn't there is no evidence of the conflict. We have Marcion and Valentinus, but since the writings concerning them say nothing of a dispute about Jesus having lived on earth with a family the evidence not only doesn't support the divide, it suggest the original Paul's record could not have supported a non-HJ. It would have been much simpler for Marcion and Valentinus to just reject a HJ altogether: "Hey you idiots, we all know that our Jesus never lived on earth, never walked in Galilee, and never was crucified on earth. Paul would roll over in his grave at your ridiculous assertions to the contrary!" But, that's not what they said! That HUGE evidence against this idea.


I"m not too worried. This dichotomy has to explain why there would be two such movements worshiping the same Jesus. Unlikely. One was first. My second of Top 10 addresses this: Diversity is to be expected from an undeveloped theology coming from real historical events moreso than a think-tank religion invented in order to solve theological riddles.



Ok, sorry about that. As I see it the issue comes down to likelihoods with regard to human nature--what is the likelihood that certain people would behave,write, believe, ignore, etc...certain things when there is an absence of what most people consider to be 'evidence'.

Rick Sumner

It's only dramatic if it doesn't have precursors, such as the one I noted, 11QMelch.

No, I don't think it's dramatic.

Why? Even among existing evidence, distinct Christian movements existed without ever explicitly challenging each other. Where there is conflict, it's almost uniformly inferred rather than stated.

The same one you propose, just to a slightly lesser degree. No matter how you cut it, Paul describes Christ in decidedly different terms than Mark.

Except there is evidence of such a divide. The very existence of the two traditions and the distinct flavor each has is evidence of it. Your point is that there is no evidence of conflict, which is not at all the same thing as a divide.

Actually, what I'm suggesting is that with the passage of time the two may have been amalgamated. Which we see happen time and again in the record, sometimes even with explicit intention, such as during the Assyrian conquests. More often just with the passage of time.

No, as far as we assume, which is a much different assessment. Don't let speculation accumulate. And we can just drop the "die out," since it reflects nothing I said.

Before we get too far away from my initial contention, it was not that "Earl's division is right," rather it was "We cannot anchor our evidence, and other explanations are reasonable." Just to keep it in mind since we're getting far afield from it.

Which is fine. See above.

It suggests nothing of the sort. Though it's interesting how we got all the way to the conclusion with only repeating, rather than justifying, the premises.

Have you not read Earl? That actually isn't what he says.


Here's the problem: "Likelihoods with regard to human nature" actually doesn't mean anything. We can only assess "human nature" from personal perspective. In other words "What would I or people I've encountered do."

History done this way is autobiography. Wherever value judgments can be eliminated, they need to be. Otherwise we aren't discussing data, we're discussing opinions. That is indefensible historiography. If you can't get there without that kind of value judgment, you can't get there at all, and what you actually know is the same as me, you just like to guess more.

TedM

Maybe I'm lost. Gnosticm, Docetism were strongly challenged. But not the alleged nonHJ.


It is possible, but doesn't explain why ideas from a non-HJ movement were accepted but the gnostic and docetic Jesus groups were 'heretics', excommunicated.


I edited what I said above. Do you think Marcion and Valentinus clearly knew Paul's theology? Wasn't Valentinus a student of Paul's direct student? If so, why does the surviving record of their beliefs not reflect a non-HJ? Do you think they got Paul's message wrong? It doesn't add up..


That's all it is Rick. You won't get there. It is based on value judgements. It always has been. Do you trust 100 identical eye-witness reports over one dissenting one? That's not science. That's a value judgement. Science is repeatable in the here and now. The only reason people say history repeats itself is because human nature is fairly consistent. And, that's what historical assessment rely on--human nature applied to the evidence that we have.

Rick Sumner

No. You assess evidence based on value judgments, to some degree. You should try and minimize it, but the necessity of interpretation is unavoidable.

You do not, however, define evidence by them. It's what (should) separate history from an exercise in persuasive rhetoric. If you did not get that from my blog post, you have thoroughly misunderstood it.

If you do not have rules for what constitutes evidence, and simply allow interpretation unbridled all the way down, then what you are writing is indistinguishable from fiction, except that it is written to persuade rather than entertain. A functional historiography needs rules, and the fact that it is frequently done without them does not excuse their absence.

And your'e right. In this instance, you won't get there.

TedM

Of course you do. It takes a value judgement to decide whether hearsay should be considered evidence and under what conditions. It takes a value judgement to decide whether archeological findings should be considered evidence and under what conditions. It all comes down to people making decisions based on what they think went into the creation of the 'evidence'. That's a value judgement. The evidence seen as worthy will vary depending on what people consider to be worthy of that label. We all define what is 'evidence' and what isn't evidence. The smarter, more knowledgeable, more insightful,we are about EVERYTHING related to the potential evidence we end up using, the more likely we are to end up figuring out the truth.

Yes, you need rules, but those rules are simply value judgements and what seems a good rule to you may be a lousy rule to somewhat way more knowledgeable than you (or me) are..

aa5874

It is already known what is meant by an historical Jesus but you have NOT produced the source for your claim.

We have sources for Pilate the Governor, Tiberius the Emperor, Gabriel the Angel, Satan the Devil and Jesus the Son of God and Creator.

Where is the source for your Jesus??? You cannot have us looking for an Imaginary character. You MUST FIRST present a credible source with the PRECISE description of the Biography of YOUR Jesus.

tanya

Gosh, Tom, is there enough information available to you, to come to a reasonable stance on whether or not Odysseus was assisted by the goddess Athena?

Hey, Rick, would this be the same Polybius who railed against Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, (both of whom lived a century before Polybius), and the rest of the Alexandrian i.e. scientific, school?

Wasn't Polybius a big admirer of Homer? Did he not explain historical events in terms of Homer's descriptions? Maybe I am confusing Polybius with some other famous Greek historian....

How can anyone be confused about whether Athena lived, or is an imaginary, fictional deity?

Ditto for Isis. Are you agnostic about her life? No? Well then, can you identify which parameters you have chosen to view Krishna, and al Buraq, et al, as mythological, fictional characters, AND your rationale for not applying those same parameters to Jesus of Capernaum?

For me, Mark 1:1 suffices to clarify that jesus was a mythical character in a work of fiction. I don't need to read the whole of Homer to discern that Athena did not help Odysseus win the race. Contrary to Polybius, I view Eratosthenes and Aristarchus, as authors whose writing is clearly superior to anything composed by Homer.

The Talmud was obviously rejected as irrelevant, like many other ideologies, by the earliest Christians...They may not have taken a buzzsaw to the Talmud, but they sure did massacre many Jews who resisted conversion, post Nicea.

What is a "mythicist criterion"? There is only one simple definition of "mythical": supernatural attribution. The moment one introduces "god", or other supernatural phenomena, (noah and the flood, for example), the description becomes myth.

What? Utter nonsense. Hopeless.

Amazing. And if I can just get these wings attached to good ole buraq here, out back in the stables, we can still catch the midnight showing of Charlton Heston's 15 Commandments....

I guess, that once we have deciphered enough of the carbonized papyrus manuscripts from the library at Herculaneum, we will have proof enough, of Paul's writing in the time before Vesuvius erupted, 79 CE. Absent such confirmation, I will continue to believe that the "epistles" attributed to "Paul", were composed in the middle of the second century.

Compelling case?
evidence?

Really?

So, then, you are not sure whether or not Hercules was a genuinely divine fellow? There is certainly compelling evidence supporting his stature: temples, monuments, heck we have a whole city named in honor of Hercules.

But, Atheos, I am fairly certain that you are NOT ambivalent about the divinity of Hercules. I suppose that you are completely convinced, 100%, that Hercules was not born, the son of Zeus. Why is that, Atheos? How is it possible that you are absolutely crystal clear, that Zeus was not the father of Hercules?

What is there about the Jesus myth that you find NON compelling, but in the case of Hercules, praised even by Philo of Alexandria, (and Josephus), you are 100% certain, of his mythical stature? That seems, to me, entirely contradictory. Do you have difficulty accepting contemporary accounts describing cardiac circulation, or genetic diseases, or electroencephalograms? Do you not appreciate the fact that in seeking an explanation for everyday events around us, like sunrise, or snowfall, or crops devastated by disease, or children dying in infancy, ancient peoples accepted mythical explanations, having no other available?

How much more compelling can the evidence be, than what is right in front of your nose? Mark 1:1

aa5874

Jesus was NOT historicized. That is the PRECISE REASON why there is a Quest for an historical Jesus.

It is completely flawed REASONING that the Gospels historicise Jesus.

And further, it would make no sense to make Jesus a human character since that would DESTROY his Divinity.

ALL the Gospels claimed Jesus was the Son of God, and never mentioned that he had a human father at all.

mountainman

Have you read any of the works of Arnaldo Momigliano, who is considered by some to extend the attitude of Edward Gibbon in regard to the "early church"? Of course, these two authors are historians and not mythicists.

Sheshbazzar

How's that?

Paul wrote about a person dead and gone, whom he admitted that he had never so much as set eyes on in a flesh and blood body.

Old Jake used to tell us stories of how he met Jesus in 1965 while out in the woods hunting, and how Jesus had sat down on a stump, shared a sandwich, and conversed with him for an hour or so.
Or how that time he fell in the river while fishing, Jesus came right down out of the sky and lifted him out of the water.
At least old crazy Jake had enough sense to claim that he'd actually met Jesus in a present and physical body, Not simply seen 'visions' and heard voices in his head.
Even crazy Jake's testimony makes more sense than 'Paul's'.

'Paul' by his own confession never even met any flesh and blood Jesus.
Nothing that 'Paul' ever wrote after making that admission could ever be used to establish that there was a flesh and blood historical Jesus.

'Paul' is NOT a witness to any flesh and blood, walking on this earth, historical Jesus.
Paul never knew, and never met any such man.