RyanS2

I sent Earl Doherty an e-mail about the questions raised by Charlges Guignebert on the ahistorical position of Jesus.

This is the quote:

Charles Guignebert, The Life of Jesus, pp. 72-73:

“When we consider the mythological theories as a whole, problems start up on all sides. If Jesus was a god, how was it that the Christians, even
Paul himself, did not regard him as one, and why this parody of humanity with which they unanimously clothe their myth?...Moreover, the Christianity of the gospel is not an independent religion; it worships the god of Israel.

Why, then, should it have created for itself another divinity, and then proceeded to conceal him, for he never appears as such? If the god
Jesus is an aspect of Jahweh, why is this great truth never even hinted at? It is suggested that we are in the presence of a Mystery, in which secrecy is the rule. But the God of the Christian cult dies openly, at the hands of the Roman authorities, after a public trial; this has nothing in common with a Mystery, or anything like it. If the legend of the god is purely
imaginary,divorced from all foundation in fact, it is strange that it should have been left so full of gaps and inconsistencies, that is should have been encumbered with the details of a common human existence, which serves no useful purpose, and are even shocking. Why take the trouble to speak of the brothers and sisters of the god, and even give their names? Why represent the family as believing him ‘beside himself’? Why show him exhibiting anger and grief, and weeping over himself and others? Why cause him to reject
the designation of himself and good and proclaim that God alone is good? Why should he, who has come down to proclaim and to bring about salvation, declare that he does not know when the great day, his own day, from the Pauline point of view, will come? And why is his last cry, at the very moment of his consummation of the divine mystery, one of despair (‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?&#8217 To explain all this as an attempt at verisimilitude, is surely to attribute an incredible amount of method and consistency to men who are, in other respects, so conspicuously lacking in either. How are we to reconcile this with so much vagueness and ambiguity in the teaching, so that even today the exact meaning is sometimes doubtful? Above all, why did those who created the myth, place their hero of it in their own time, instead of, in accordance with the universal practice of religions, seeking to avail themselves of the enormous prestige of antiquity?”

The following is his response:

***I'm not in a position right now to give you an organized, detailed response to the Guignebert quote, so I'll just 'wing' some of it. First
let's keep in mind that he wrote around the 1930s, when many of the advances and insights we take for granted in NT research had not yet
occurred. So much of his counter-argument to the ahistoricity position fails to take certain things into account. (Which is not to say I don't
have the greatest respect for Guignebert generally; he is actually one of my favorite scholars.)

But let's focus on the embarrassment criterion. Even more modern versions of it base it on the 'a priori' acceptance of the historicist paradigm,
that Jesus existed. When you remove that as a given, the criterion largely evaporates. Put it this way: if Jesus was *not* an historical figure, and the central character of the Gospels was originally meant to allegorize certain aspects of community belief and practice, and if his words and deeds were also meant to convey lessons to the community, then we need to
evaluate the 'events' of the Gospels in such a light. Would they be embarrassing in that case? (Guignebert is too short-sighted in suggesting
that the only feasible explanation for all this human detail is "versimilitude".)

The classic example is the denial by Peter. It's claimed that it's embarrassing that Jesus' chief apostle would have denied him, therefore it's likely to have happened since the early church wouldn't have preserved or invented such a tradition. But if that episode was simply a detail in an allegorical story, meant to convey that even the high ranking believer was capable of denying the faith out of fear (something the community may well have experienced) and yet could be forgiven, the consideration of
embarrassment would take a distant second place in importance, if it was considered at all.

If Jesus symbolized the believer himself (which I think to some extent
he
does), undergoing baptism would not be out of place. It is only as time
went on, and other writers reworked Mark's allegory, that a sense of
embarrassment would start to intrude on their thinking, leading them to
'hedge' on the baptism scene. In such a light, even the "My God, why
hast
thou forsaken me" is not out of place in Jesus' mouth. Besides, why is
it
inherently unlikely or embarrassing to portray a 'god who assumes human
form' as evincing some of those human weaknesses and idiosyncracies? It
makes him more accessible, more empathetic. It's almost a necessity.

Some of Guignebert's objections really don't show too deep a cogitation. He asks why they didn't set their mythic hero in some great, revered
antiquity. First of all, he fails to distinguish between the Galilean tradition and the cultic, Pauline-type tradition. Paul never places his
mythic hero in *any* time and place, let alone recently. In fact, he seems almost entirely heavenly. So Guignebert's objection has limited
application. In the Galilean/'Q' tradition, how could he be placed other than in the recent past, at the onset of that particular preaching movement, at the "time of John the Baptist" which Q identifies as the onset of that Kingdom preaching?

Also, Guignebert fails to allow for the fact that the Gospel version of Jesus is far less divine and exalted than the Pauline Christ, and less
the cosmic redeemer based on mystery cult principles. As I said, he has failed to 'disentangle' the Pauline from the Galilean, and a lot of his objections falter under that consideration. The Gospels don't seem to make Jesus an aspect of Yahweh because quite possibly they didn't envision him as such (at least until the later stages of John). That more exalted aspect from the Pauline side of things did not get fully incorporated into the Gospel tradition until later. Nor does the Pauline cult ever present a scenario in which "the God of the Christian cult dies openly, at the hands of the
Roman authorities, after a public trial." The epistles say nothing about any such alleged historical events. (Nor, for that matter, does the Q tradition, which the Gospels build upon, leading one to deduce that the entire 'historical' Passion sequence with its death under Pilate is simply a fabrication by the writer of Mark.)

Further, I would strongly dispute that Paul did not regard Jesus as a god (just to cite 1 Corinthians 8:6 as one example, a thoroughly Logos-type statement which identifies Paul's Christ as a part of the functioning heavenly system of Godhead). And as for the "humanity with which they (supposedly including Paul) unanimously clothe their myth," this is a
misreading of the entire epistolary record, since any semblance of humanity in those documents is entirely unrelated to the Gospel Jesus or any
recent identifiable figure, and moreover can be otherwise explained in Platonic fashion (and general salvation mythology in the broader Hellenistic world) in terms of a "spiritual incarnation" within the lower spirit world--as
Carrier has acknowledged in his review of The Jesus Puzzle.

As a final comment, let's look at Guignebert's contention that it seems unusual that a sect which "worships the God of Israel" would "invent
for itself a new god." This, I'm afraid, is extremely short-sighted. It implies that everything Jewish was monolithic. It overlooks the whole gentile phenomenon of conversion to or adoption in varying degrees of things Jewish. It discounts the possibility that the impetus to the formation of the Christian cult in the first place came from contemplation of the Platonic Logos, the intermediary Son and mythic redeemer ideas, which certain thinkers among those gentile 'camp followers' of Judaism may have
been led to meld with the Messiah concept, turning the latter into a divine figure (which has parallels even in apocalyptic Jewish thinking in, for example, the heavenly Messiah/Righteous One of the Similitudes of Enoch). All sorts of explanations for the rise of a Jewish-flavored cultic savior god of the Pauline variety present themselves which Guignebert too blithely dismisses or simply hasn't thought of.***

rodahi

Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate the fact that a couple of you took Guignebert's quote seriously enough to respond. Also, I sincerely thank Earl for taking the time to respond.

Ron

Vorkosigan

Some of Guignebert's objections really don't show too deep a cogitation. He asks why they didn't set their mythic hero in some great, revered antiquity.

Yes, I wanted to address this as well. The Christians in fact did place Jesus in the ancient past in another way: they declared him to have existed before the universe was created.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

And another issue where Guig has gone wrong: the "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" is drawn from a psalm, not history. Many parts of the Jesus legend relate to the OT or other writings. For example, Judas may have been created in response to psalm 41:9.

Vorkosigan