GakuseiDon

Vork, three questions before we continue:

(1) Are you saying that Tatian wasn't a follower of a "Jesus Christ", historical or mythical?
(2) What do you think the point of Tatian's "Address to the Greeks" is?
(3) Why doesn't Tatian give expression to his beliefs in his address, whatever his beliefs are?

the_cave

How come Doherty doesn't respond to my questions?

Vorkosigan

(1) Don, I am saying that evidence does not permit us to make the positive conclusion that Tatian was a following of Jesus Christ when he wrote the Address to the Greeks, for such a person is never mentioned in the Address. If want to show that in 160 Tatian was a Christer, point out the direct evidence.

Additionally, a fragment of Tatian cited elsewhere says:
"Tatian, who maintaining the imaginary flesh of Christ, pronounces all sexual connection impure, who was also the very violent heresiarch of the Encratites, employs an argument of this sort: "If any one sows to the flesh, of the flesh he shall reap corruption;" but he sows to the flesh who is joined to a woman; therefore he who takes a wife and sows in the flesh, of the flesh he shall reap corruption.--HIERON.: Com. in Ep. ad Gal.

However, this is apparently from the later period of Tatian's "apostasy."

(2) To defend his Logos religion, which is outlined at great length, against Greek philosophy. Here are some of his descriptions of this belief:

In chapter IV of Address to the Greeks, Tatian writes God alone is to be feared,--He who is not visible to human eyes, nor comes within the compass of human art. Only when I am commanded to deny Him, will I not obey, but will rather die than show myself false and ungrateful. Our God did not begin to be in time: He alone is without beginning, and He Himself is the beginning of all things. God is a Spirit, not pervading matter, but the Maker of material spirits, and of the forms that are in matter; He is invisible, impalpable, being Himself the Father of both sensible and invisible things. Him we know from His creation, and apprehend His invisible power by His works. I refuse to adore that workman ship which He has made for our sakes. The sun and moon were made for us: how, then, can I adore my own servants? How can I speak of stocks and stones as gods? For the Spirit that pervades matter is inferior to the more divine spirit; and this, even when assimilated to the soul, is not to be honoured equally with the perfect God. Nor even ought the ineffable God to be presented with gifts; for He who is in want of nothing is not to be misrepresented by us as though He were indigent.But I will set forth our views more distinctly.

It is difficult to square his comment....

• "God is a Spirit, not pervading matter,"

with any HJ. You will note that there is not a breath of Jesus in here AT ALL. But he continues through four chapters (IV-VII) in this vein, talking of the Resurrection --without mentioning Jesus. Don, that's not really silence that is amenable to either HJ or MJ explanation. Tatian is obviously an adherent of some Logos philosophy. Furthermore, Tatian in this discourse affirms that there is only God ALONE:

"....will restore the substance that is visible to Him alone to its pristine condition."

"For the Lord of the universe, who is Himself the necessary ground (npostasis) of all being, inasmuch as no creature was yet in existence, was alone" [at the beginning of all things]

"not having the nature of good, which again is with God alone," [if you read Tatian as an Christer, how can god alone be good?]

There's not even the slightest hint of a Trinity in Tatian.

Read it carefully. He speaks of

Resurrection without Jesus
Women with naming any NT women
God and Logos without Jesus
Demons without mentioning that Jesus exorcised them
Healings by several Greek figures, without mentioning any by Jesus (a whole chapter on healing, no Jesus)
Impregnations by gods without mentioning Mary
The soul rising to god without Jesus' intercession
The soul getting eternal life without knowledge of Jesus
Says Christian doctrine is opposed to dissensions, without apologizing for Judas or Paul vs. Jerusalem or then-current heretics.
Attempts to date age of religion by Moses, not by Jesus or Abraham or any other.

Again he says
"The perfect God is without flesh; but man is flesh."

Please, if you can, reconcile that with Jesus being the God Made Flesh. When Tatian says his god was born in the form of a man -- note that "in the form of" is he talking about Christian god? He specifically rejects that Jesus became flesh. The comparisons that he uses are from the Greek myths, of gods who temporarily took on the likeness of mortals.

You will also note that he rejected meat eating in this missive:

"You slaughter animals for the purpose of eating their flesh, and you

purchase men to supply a cannibal banquet for the soul"
and after Justin died this was also his position. That may indicate a continuity of belief.

But here's more on God's flesh according to Tatian:

"One of you asserts that God is body, but I assert that He is without body; that the world is indestructible, but I say that it is to be destroyed;"

If God is without body, what is Jesus?

(3) Tatian does give expression to his beliefs! The address is thick with them. His beliefs just have nothing to do with what you claim he believes, an MJ or an HJ. Rather, Tatian has some kind of Logos religion that is based on the Hebrew scriptures, and many include a son, but there isn't enough there to determine what position the son holds or what form he takes. Still, it is clear from how he describes his religion that he is not a Christian of Vers 2.0 with the Crucified Christ Plug-in.

Vorkosigan

the_cave

Uh, all of which seems to mean that Tatian is not in fact a 2nd-c. apologist (?! I guess...?) Which would mean that he provides no evidence whatsoever for the MJ case, which is what Doherty is trying to use him as--right? But instead, he becomes completely irrelevant.

Gregg

Dunno--I don't kiss his ass or anything. I just ask him how he's doing, apologize if he's busy, ask him my question, thank him for any help he can give, and wish him well. I also thank him when he sends a response.

Tercel

Well I read Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God recently am currently reading his What Saint Paul really said, and have read quite a few articles on the internet discussing his position, and I would say the following:

Wright is hardly an evangelical apologist. Though, publically, he calls himself an evangelical, I believe he only does this in order for evangelicals to take him seriously. He is very much a "believing liberal" - the same title as I would give to myself. He denies inerrancy, he thinks Protestantism has largely misunderstood Christianity, and takes liberal scholars far more seriously than many evangelicals are confortable with. My guess at why the conservative books mentioned by Vork don't refer to Wright is that he is too liberal for them.

Part Two of Jesus and the Victory of God should be REQUIRED READING for anyone wanting to have a serious discussion about Jesus, and if I had the power to make all Christians read it I would. It should be compulsary reading for anyone in a seminary. I would love to see Part 2 (the historical Jesus) of that published on its own in a less-scholarly "layman's version", as it is quite distinct from Part 1 (a boring history of Historical Jesus research) and Part 3 (Wright's, uncomfortably more liberal than me, little-evidenced, speculation about Jesus' opinion of himself). While there are quite a number of points Wright makes in Part 2 that I am not entirely convinced he is right about - though neither am I entirely convinced he is wrong about anything - quite a lot of his points and arguments I would consider incontrovertibly true. I do not believe it should be possible for any rational critical open-minded scholar to construct a picture of the historical Jesus that is significantly different to Wright's basic picture.

I have long been sick and tired of people who dismiss the evidence as worthless (without bothering to explain why it exists) and proceed to invent an entirely ficticious Jesus straight from their own imagination: Usually, it seems, what they wish Jesus had historically been like. I fully agree with Wright's sardonic comment that historical Jesus' have traditionally told us more about the scholars who created them than about Jesus himself. Wright's Jesus is the first one I have come across where I have thought "yes, that actually deals with the evidence, gives us a complete picture of Jesus, and is believable by everyone". Wright's proposed historical Jesus is acceptable to atheists and fundamentalists alike.

In my opinion Wright is quite probably today's greatest Jesus/Biblical scholar. The idea of ignoring him as not-worth-reading that has cropped up in this thread, comes across to me as quite amusing for its gross naivity.

Wright doesn't think Jesus believed himself to be God or God's Son (in the way normally thought of by Christians). Wright argues that Jesus believed himself to a) be a prophet to Israel like Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah etc and b) believed that God was doing something revolutionary for Israel through his work (eg like God had given new promises to Abraham, or given the law to Moses, or ended the exile under Ezra, Jesus believed God was beginnning a new era and that he was using Jesus as His instrument in this).

Wright doesn't think Jesus believed himself preordained from eternity past to die for the worlds sins and change the universe. Wright thinks Jesus had far less ambitious thoguhts: that he interpreted a number of old-testment prophesies as refering to him and and fortelling his death. Wright suggests Jesus had a two-fold interpretation of these: 1) that he would die symbolising the destruction that he was fortelling would come upon unrepentant Israel, and 2) that his death would exhaust God's wrath towards repentant Israel.

In short, your "mentally insane" construction bears little relation to Wright's position. Read his book: Part 2 of Jesus and the Victory of God is the most thought-provoking and convincing discussion on Jesus I have ever read. I rank it above both Crossan and Meier.

Vorkosigan

No, I think you are wrong. Doherty's point is that well into the second century there were plenty of people who apparently had never heard of the son of god, Jesus, and the many legends about him -- for example, Tatian. If the HJ had really existed in the time that the later Christians claim he did, why doesn't anyone in the second century know him? Tatian's logos religion and his "son" who is not fleshly is an example of a form of the MJ, and thus, supports Doherty's contention.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Now that's comedy. I never suspected you of having that kind of sense of humor, Tercel. And note I said conservative scholarly not conservation Christian -- I have no idea what kind of Christianity the scholars I mentioned subscribe to. Don't get confused.

Tercel, as an example of Wright's intellectual integrity, when he made that comment, does he let the reader know that he is the one millionth HJ scholar, going back to Schweitzer, who made that comment? And I do not know of anyone who dismisses evidence as worthless and then invents a Jesus for himself. AFAIK every serious scholar deals with the evidence. Which scholar were you referring to with that remark in the first sentence above?

Wright believes that it is historically plausible that Jesus rose from the dead, and that only a bodily resurrection can explain the advent of Christianity. That is supposed to be acceptable to serious scholars how (never mind atheists)?

Yes, well, keep us posted of your other opinions. The only grossly naive one is Wright for wasting his and everyone else's time writing an apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus.

The Christians wrote the NT using these prophecies. This demonstrated most clearly in the Passion, where the Roman guards, whom Jesus had no control over, nevertheless fulfill "prophecy." The implication is clear that these are later impositions on the Jesus story. Nothing about the story suggests that they are anything but fictional creations by later authors.

Your description suggests that Wright is attempting to find some middle ground wherein he can appear to give in to liberal scholarship and give his apologetics a veneer of scholarly authenticity without actually giving up the idea of the Resurrection.

Well, yes, we already are aware of this opinion. The problem is that among serious thinkers on the issue, it is not a very widely shared one.

But just to let you know, I will be happy to read all three and publish a substantive review, if you will pay for them to be sent to me. My book budget won't permit purchases of NT Wright.

Vorkosigan

Bernard Muller

Vorkosigan:
Those apologists may not have wanted to involve a gospels Jesus who came with all kind of myths, contradictions, variations and tales. They preferred a clean Platonic/Philoic approach to Christianity, which gave them an advantage over the pagan religions and cults, with all their myths.
Justin had problems defending Christian myths against similar Pagan ones (such as the godly conception). Others chose to ignore the gospels Jesus, who came in all kind of flavor, with many mythical items, with conflicts and flaws, through dozens of dubious gospels and associated histories (such as infancy stories).
And I think Tatian was referring to that when he (defensively) declared:
"We do not act as fools, O Greeks, nor utter idle tales, when we announce that God was born in the form of a man. I call on you who reproach us to compare your mythical accounts with our narrations."
Tatian is obviously concerned that Christians would be considered fool because of "God was born in the form of a man". And the narrations are most likely the many dubious gospels.
Earlier the author of 1Timothy appears to relate to the same:
1Ti1:4 "nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith."
And so the author of 2Peter:
"we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty." (1:16)

Furthermore, deifying someone crucified was something better not to talk about (see Minucius Felix).

Furthermore, Doherty coined the expression "riotous diversity" but does not seem to apply it all across the 2nd century, where the Christianities were at their wildest. He assumes that then anyone "catholic" would based their Christian beliefs or teachings or apologies on the gospels Jesus. Of course that's not the case. Long live riotous diversity!
And with so many gospels around, and Justin, in Rome, quoting extensively some of them, how could any Christian writers in the second part of the second century not aware of some of those?

Best regards, Bernard

Tercel

Now I remember why I stopped posting on the SecWeb... Although I'm having a nice discussion with Gurdur in another thread, so it's probably just you...

Read it and find out.

Perhaps, I haven't read the third volume in the series yet (the one on the resurrection you're talking about), but the second book did raise a number of valid issues that needed exploring and which would not have necessarily consistuted "apologetics". Just because you choose to label the third book "apologetics" does not make it so. I did not find the second book to be in any way apologetical, and I see no reason to think that the third book would be any more so.

At the end of his book on Jesus, Wright has dealt with the major events in the life of Jesus, how people perceived him and how he percieved himself. The next obvious question is: what happened after? The early Christians spoke of something called a "resurrection" and the "risen Jesus" - what did they mean by that? Was it a mystical experience that they had in a group or individually? Was it a reworking of prophesy? Were they really claiming to have seen a resurrected Jesus? etc. This is what he indicates will be in his third book. It came across as entirely neutral in nature - it could be that he did a 180 turn and wrote an apologetic instead when he sat down to write his third book... I highly doubt it. I would assume that in his third book he examines the idea of a resurrection and concludes that historically, what the early Christians believed, was that Jesus had been physically and bodily resurrected from the dead. If I was him, I'd stop there with that line of thought and not deal with the question of whether Jesus was really resurrected, and just be content with accepting that Jesus' followers really believed it, just as Muhammed's followers really believed his miracles or just as Joseph Smith's followers really believed his claimed revelation etc.

From what I've been reading here, however, it seems apparent that Wright actually discusses the truth or falsity of the resurrection. I think that's dubious ground - at very best (from the Christian point of view) the historian can conclude "if you can accept that sort of thing as possible, then it seems to be the best explanation, if you don't accept that sort of thing as possible, then you will have to accept one of a range of what appear to be an unsatisfactory explanations and perhaps assume that there is important information we are not privvy to or that some of what we would normally consider 'established historical facts' are false." It may be he goes further than that, but I am inclined to doubt it given that in his second book he came across as very careful to ensure his conclusions were acceptable to both atheists and theists.

Anyway, I don't really give a stuff about the third book - I'm not interested in arguing about the historicity of the resurrection. I think that is a topic on which reasonable people can validly differ without either side needing to regard the other as irrational or silly. But with regards to the original post I think it not surprising at all that so many Jesus Mythers have read Doherty's work and not Wright's work, since I think that had they read Part 2 of Jesus and the Victory of God they would not be Jesus Mythers.

Vork, I think you've got it backwards. I (as a liberal) am quite happy to agree that there is nothing supernatural about the fulfillment of prophecies surrounding the death of Jesus. I don't give a toss about biblical prophecies: they are far too easily explained away, and not relevant to me. If I found out tomorrow that none of the prophecies in the Bible were from God I wouldn't care. So when I say: Your position on this strikes me as very silly, it's not out of any religious reaction that I say it. Why on earth would you think that the event was made up to fit the known prophecy rather than the prophecy made up to fit the event?

The Christians clearly thought that they were living in important times, that these events were the climax of God's work in human history. If you believed that, then you'd be 100% sure that the Scriptures would have had something to say on the matter. Something as important as God's climactic work in rescuing Israel through Jesus must have been prefigured / predicted / fortold / allegorised or otherwise inspired-into the God-given scriptures, because God knew the future and so He must have put stuff into scripture about it. Can you get yourself into that mindset and realise that (assuming for a moment the historicity of the basic gospel events) this is what the Jewish Christians would have thought? If so, what would you do (as a Jewish Christian)? Why, simple, you'd trawl the scriptures until you found those references. And given 1000 pages of scriptures to trawl, you'd find a lot of references (whether God-inspired or not) that you'd know must be about Jesus.

And then, when writing your account of Jesus' life, you'd point out to people how the scriptures had predicted this in advance (especially if you're wanting to convince Jews to Christianity). Thus in your account when describing a particular event in Jesus' life, you'd mention how this was predicted in the scriptures. You'd probably mention all the events great and small in the life of Jesus that you could find references for - just to show how prophesied-about Jesus was, but aside from those you'd mention only the major events of his life (as you knew them).

That is how I think the compilation of the Gospels went - the writers found parallels for the events they were recording in their sacred scripture, and noted those parallels when reporting the event (generally wrenching the scripture quite badly out of context in forcing it to fit the situation).

Your idea that the events reported themselves were fabricated based on the prophesy is far harder to swallow. I see no convincing evidence whatsoever to make me recognise this as a reasonable hypothesis. By all historical standards and methodology we have, it is best to assume the (non-miraculous) events are depicted reasonably accurately, that the miraculous ones accurately tell us that people really believed that miracles occured, and that the "prophesy" was force-fitted afterwards.

I'm afraid Vork, that no Christian can "give up the idea of the Resurrection" and still be a Christian in any meaningful sense. If you wish to believe that this means no Christian can ever have more than a "veneer of scholarly authenticity" when compared to the intelligent and authentic atheist scholars then you can, but I decline the invitation to join you in your hallucination, and I see little point in discussing the matter further with you.

Most people in my country know how to use a library, it's fairly easy to learn. If you're in a part of the world that doesn't have libraries then you'll just have to remain horribly deprived...