the_cave

I don't understand the claim that one has to fall into the four categories listed in the OP, or that a mythical Jesus is equvalent to the gospels being "myths in totality", or that mythical histories cannot be histories, nor can they reflect actual events. It just seems like simple-mindedness to me.

If I tell an embellished story about a friend of mine, which has a structure similar to the actual events, but with many fabricated details, have I told a myth?

If so, what, then, would distinguish such a story from a story I invented entirely, about someone who didn't exist?

Surely there is a distinction. And it's not being made here.

I myself fall into none of the four categories (am I to now be told that I am having an impossible thought?).

Clearly mythical imagination can work upon historical facts and produce a narrative that is a representation of both myth and reality.

Duh?

Ted Hoffman

The story, as you have described it, would be a myth.
As I explained earlier, horns do exist. Horses do exist. Put a horn on a horse. You get a unicorn.
Unicorns do not exist.

So your story would be part fiction, part factual. But in its totality, it would be a myth.

Myth too.

You either choose to talk about a story, or part of a story.

Yes there is.

On the contrary. Your thoughts are beautiful.

Indeed

Ted Hoffman

bedrock facts about Robin Hood that are beyond dispute.

In the time of Richard the Lionheart a minor noble of Nottinghamshire, one Robin of Loxley, was outlawed for poaching deer.

So Robin took to the greenwood of Sherwood Forest, making a living by stealing from rich travellers and distributing the loot among the poor of the area.

He got a band of followers (the Merry men) and a spouse, Maid Marian he had friends like Little John and Friar Tuck.

He won the archery contest set up by the Sheriff of Nottingham

He lived in the thirteenth century. The earlist writing about him is by William Langland's "The vision of William concerning Piers Plowman" which was written in 1377.

He lived/dwelt in Sherwood forest which stretches over 30 miles from Nottingham to Worksop.

Robin journeyed to Kirklees Priory where he was eventually killed by his cousin the prioress and Sir Roger of Doncaster.

Vinnie

What does Robin Hood have to do with Jesus?

Unbeliever

I definitely come down on the side of Jesus as myth. I would actually state it much more strongly, and say Jesus as lie.

joedad

Bedrock facts about the Titan:

Sank when it struck an iceberg in fog while steaming from New York to Liverpool in the Northern Lanes of the Atlantic at a speed of 25 knots.

Passenger manifest of two thousand.

"...eight hundred feet long, of seventy thousand tons displacement, seventy-five thousand horse-power, and on her trial trip had steamed at a rate of twenty-five knots an hour over the bottom, in the face of unconsidered winds, tides, and currents..."

cork jackets, insufficient lifeboats...

"John Rowland, sailor of the Titan, with child passenger, name unknown, on board Peerless, Bath, at Christiansand, Norway. Both dangerously ill. Rowland speaks of ship cut in half night before loss of Titan."

Gibraltar

Lloyds of London

etc.

And plenty of embarrassing testimony which would never have been knowingly included, hence its obvious historicity.

Vin,

I thought you were going to produce something different, maybe a new argument.

Fiction is fiction, as others have stated. With fiction, however, we generally know what's historical about a given work and what isn't. Short of that, I don't know any method of separating one from the other, and that's the problem with the protagonist of the gospels.

We can take parts of the Titan and sink them for obvious reasons, such as the episode of a drugged and injured man having a knife fight with a hungry polar bear on the iceberg that destroyed his ship, while protecting a toddler from certain death, but its a seamy and subjective business. Look at this episode in another two-thousand years, when maybe polar bears are extinct and we possess little info and zero personal experience with them, and maybe it gets less silly, maybe even believable.

Thanks, though.

joe

Vinnie

What does anything you said have to do with the historicity of Jesus. Lets put away the Titan and Robin Hood red herrings and get back to the historicity of Jesus.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Why not! I'll play along.

Are any "educated" mythicists who like to trumpet Robin Hood red herrings up for a real discussion? If so feel free to post an inventory of the Robin Hood tradition by chronological stratification and independent attestation. I also want short descriptions of sources including possible authors, recipients or intended audiences, textual critical views of the sources etc. To see an example of something similar to what I am asking for see Appendix 1 of The Historical Jesus by John Dominic Crossan (pp. 427-450).

I also want a basic chronology of Robin Hood's life or simply the time he was said to live (outer limits on birth and death being established) and I want to know how this information is obtained. Further, I expect this information to be obtained through critical-historical means. For an example see John Meier's chronology of Jesus in A Marginal Jew Volume 1 pp. 372-433

I won't be holding my breath.

Vinnie

Vinnie

Let it be known that I know next to nothing about the possibility of a historical Robin Hood or any of the alleged sources. I saw the movie with Kevin Costner and probably a cartoon here or there and that is pretty much the extent of my "Robin Hood knowledge".

Vinnie

Peter Kirby

Here is a place to find plenty of Robin Hood scholarship:

http://www.geocities.com/puckrobin/rh/index.html

See especially "Search for a real Robin Hood."

I deny an exact parallel between the cases of Robin Hood and Jesus, of course. For example, there is no collection of early Hood material that neglects to emphasize historical details--the earliest Hood sources couldn't have been speaking of a heavenly being in their ballads. The parallel would be closer in regards to Wellsian mythicists who propose a "Jesus" before Pilate, or otherwise raise issues of chronology, becuase Robin Hood (also) has competing alleged dates.

best,
Peter Kirby