lpetrich

Actually, parts of Jesus Christ's teachings, notably those attributed to "Q", have some close parallels with some contemporaries -- the Cynic philosophers. Earl Doherty has some nice discussion of that oddity.

Sensei Meela

Thanks, all, for the help!!

I have a few remaining questions, though:
My opponents argument or my response (or maybe you meant Vinnie's)? ...indeed, I seem to have argued that 'the Gospels writers' (whoever they be) manufactured a 'transcendent victory' story as a diversion to an 'embarassing defeat.' But is that accurate? [From what I've read thus far, I can't tell]
You refer to the 'Logos'-type theology, yes?

I see; thank you!! I hate to expose my ignorance of Doherty's work (I'll get the books someday, I swear!!), but to make it clearer to me, can you tell me if this paraphase is accurate?

A) Doherty argues for a 'God-man sacrifice,' first as only theology, and the writers of the Gospels later invented Jesus to fill the role
B) Opponents argue for a failed 'real leader,' Jesus, and the Gospel writers later made him into a God-man sacrifice to account for this

Crude, I know, but (more-or-less) proximate? And which is more plausible? [I've now read through a majority of the thread on Doherty and, I must say, I'm undecided (but leaning towards B)]

This is a good point that I won't fail to mention.

Call me recalictrant, but wouldn't this sort of weaken the Doherty hypothesis? [Maybe not, if I'm not too drunk to 'get it'...it would mean that Paul -- or whomever -- picked 'some guy,' or rather 'grains of truth' about him, to give their (later) personification of said 'salvific deity' a more plausible ring...right?]

Another excellent point!! 'It's all for the drama;' it is, after all, still a story!!

Amaleq13:
Good call on the Jewish Wisdom literature!! (Interestingly enough, I'd mentioned Wells in passing to him, suggesting that he may have misidentified said as 'H.G. Wells') With that and the above 'literary creations,' I think there is definitely a precedence.

[And, hey, by my watch it's always 4:20 somewhere!!
p.s. New favorite bumper-sticker: "4:21 -- Chronically late" ]

Indeed, though (as your "itchy footnote" [] indicates) this may not have been as big a problem for the Jews of the time as is usually assumed. Paul, of course, goes on to call them merely 'stubborn' (in Rom 10:21) but it's implied (in Titus 1:14) that "Jewish fables" (regarding the messiah, I'd imagine) "turned from the truth"...straw-manning, maybe?

NOGO:
Your observation on the story's usual reception is most helpful to my point (re: the 'transcendent victory'), and it seems reinforce that a "salvific deity" was indeed the "crux" of the tale; but again, which came first, the chicken or the egg (read: Doherty's 'sacrificed' God or the 'defeated' leader)?

I'd also agree that the apostles (or is it disciples? I can never keep the two straight) held symbolic aspects, including a forewarning to be faithful (see Judas for a 'bad example', yadda yadda), and your assessment of Christianity's success -- in spite of the 'ignimonious' or 'embarassing' elements -- is spot-on.

And, as Lauren mentions, Jesus' teachings most definately resemble both contemporary and (uh..'pre-contemporary'? ) styles, in form and content.

[for the record, I'm not sure of my opponents denominational affiliations, but I'm certain he isn't a JW!!]

Vorkosigan:
Interesting question...response?

Llyricist

Well it is one possible response, but my point is that the leading explanatory MJ hypothesis is Doherty's, and it completely circumvents the embarrassment argument. That is, the embarrassment argument basically says that they wouldn't have put the crucifixion in the gospel if it didn't happen... that they were "stuck with it" because it happened. Doherty's hypothesis, however, argues that the gospel writers were indeed stuck with it, BUT they were stuck with it because of the existing THEOLOGY (Paul and the epistles came BEFORE the gospels), NOT because of the existence of an actual crucified person.

Indeed
Pretty much, actually, I never got his book, the MEAT of his hypothesis can be found on his website here
Well that's the traditional belief (leaving aside the possibility of his actually BEING that God-man)
Yes that's more or less proximate. Hey all we have is hypotheticals to work ith on either side.... so I'm undecided leaning toward myth.

There's others too, for a hypothetical HJ that doesn't really resemble the common perception, try Hyam Maccoby's "Mythmaker - Paul and the Invention of Christianity"

actually that was the entire point!
Well to start, it wasn't Paul... it was whoever wrote Mk, Mt, Lk, and Jn. And no, I'm saying that when they created a person, they had to go by their experience and knowledge of actual people to come up with details... not just one person. All fiction works this way, all fictional characters are based on people that the author actually knows.... not usually entirely however, more like.. this or that characteristic from this person, this or that characteristic from another person.. and so on. I don't think that there is "some guy" that the gospels were based on. However there were probably several archetypes and models for Jesus' characteristics and actions.

Sensei Meela

It was the primacy of Paul's work to the Gospels that was the good point I referred to. Sorry for the obfuscation.

Again, I was unclear; I meant to imply the possibility of several sources for the Jesus character with the 'some guy' remark. Sorry 'bout that!!

Thanks for the summary, link and book referral!!

Brother Daniel

Good question.

From the very little I've seen on that matter, it seems to me that those Jewish traditions that included semi-divine characters did not treat those characters as truly human, although they appeared as human. (The Bible has angels appearing as humans from time to time, and one can interpret some of the Genesis stories to say that YHWH himself appears as human.) It's not clear to me that Melchizedek et al fit the template of "a known (or postulated) man being treated as divine". That is to say, the very suggestion of divinity suggests a denial of humanity, in traditional Jewish thinking. Or am I wrong on that point? I'm no expert, and I would be interested to see your insights on the matter.

Enoch and Melchizedek are figures from what was already the remote past when they were (probably) first written about. The alleged HJ, on the other hand, is supposedly a figure from recent history who would have been known personally by people who were still around when the first written Gospels appeared. Quite a different setup, I would have thought.

But Vork's objection brings up another point: Just how flexible were the Jews with respect to deviations from what we normally think of as Jewish tradition - where a man is never divine, and pagan ideas are off-limits? To a MJ-er, at least some of the Jews were very flexible, allowing a (probably pagan-inspired) myth to be created. To a traditionalist, the Jews were very inflexible, so that the disciples could not possibly have elevated Jesus to divinity without having been forced to by supernatural evidence, and by the sheer Truth of the matter. Mainstream scholarship, however, seems to play both sides: The Jews could easily turn a real human Jesus (posthumously) into God, but they couldn't possibly create a myth of a Jesus who lived and worked on some divine plane and never appeared physically as a man. A fine balance, don't you think?

I'm probably wrong somewhere in there, but I don't know where. Anyone care to help me out?