ChandraRama

Even if we agree the MJ, and the christ cult, the question still remains why "jesus"? A common name that appears in first century Judea be used by the "christ" cult people as the first name of this supposed son of God. Why did they use that name?

gnosis92

especially since Isiah's messianic prophecy called for the name to be Immanuel.

Has any MJ theory been published in peer-reviewed journals? I would imagine Robert Price and Earl Doherty would hav the best chance.

spin

Not a very meaningful question. Why Kali? Why Zeus? Why Marduk? Etc. Names get chosen for various reasons that you often may not be privy to.

However, the name Jesus does have important significance: it means "Yah saves". If Matt 2:23 refers back to a pseudo-prophecy in Jdg 13:54, we have Jesus linked closely to the birth of Samson, who was a nazirite (confused by many church fathers as "nazarene"), who would save Israel. At the same time, Joshua, the same name as Jesus, led the people of Israel to the promised land. Will that suffice to thrill your vain speculation. Oh, well.


spin

spin

The prophecy in Isaiah originally had nothing to do with Jesus. It just happened to be dragooned by people who couldn't read enough Hebrew to know that the ripe young woman ((LMH) was already pregnant. Scratch that silliness.

jjramsey

On the other hand, we have heard of the Docetists and several other heresies, even though the heretical sects themselves did not continue. It would perhaps be surprising if an MJ sect invited no negative comment from the (proto)orthodox.

jjramsey

Robert Price's book Deconstructing Jesus was reviewed in the RBL:

http://bookreviews.org/bookdetail.as...5&CodePage=805

It was politely panned. On the one hand, there is this positive note:

On the other hand, there is a passage like this:

The review is certainly not indicative of an academy that refuses to consider the MJ at all. Price's work was at least given a hearing.

Steven Carr

You would have to ask Paul, who complained about people preaching a different Jesus to him.

2 Corinthians 11:4' 'For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, refer them to the review in the RBL which rules it out as a fabrication.'

Paul had written to the same Corinthians 'For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.'

So virtually all Paul taught about Jesus was Jesus crucified.

Yet other Christians were teaching a different Jesus - presumably different to a Jesus crucified.

Toto

Who is the reviewer, if you know? H. Stephen Brown or Harold S Brown with no identification or degree attached to his name. Probably the same reviewer here of St. Francis College.

In any case, the objection to mythicism based on the time necessary for legendary development is one of those old canards that keeps popping up, with no real substance behind it. The substance of Brown's other objections indicates that he accepts the basic historical reconstruction of Jesus, without feeling the need to prove it. I don't think that this review indicates that the academy is about to give a fair hearing to the mythicist position.

jjramsey

I've never seen that canard. I've seen the canard justifying that the Gospels are reliable on the grounds of there not being enough time for legends to develop and make their way into the Gospels, but that is not even close to what Brown is arguing here. It looks to me that Brown is objecting to Price's specific thesis, which seems to be that Jesus was a composite of "multiple, independent fabrications from unrelated groups" that had "Simon/Peter and the other apostles as independent messiahs."

It doesn't look like you gave the review a fair hearing, but read into it canards that weren't there.

RUmike

This is true, but as jjramsey seems to point out, the MJ-sect is never even mentioned again, yet many other heresies are. The MJ completely disappears, and somehow every single person (and not very much later) thinks Jesus was human, or at least appeared human, on the earth, and no one counters this (that we are aware of). This is no doubt not a good historical argument, but to me it is very suggestive of a HJ in the first place.