Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lpetrich · 01-24-2002, 04:57 PM

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BK:
You should get Nash's book on this subject. He quite nicely shows how Christianity is independent of the Mystery Religions and other religions which it is supposedly based upon.

However, <a href="http://www.jesuspuzzle.com" target="_blank">Earl Doherty</a> makes a strong case that Jesus Christ was essentially mythical and that early Christianity owed a lot to pagan mystery religion in general, even if not Mithraism in particular.

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BK:
It's nice to speculate that Jesus didn't exist, but it is all to clear as an historical matter that he did. There may be questions about what he said and did, but not that he existed or that he died on the Cross in Palestine in the early part of the First Century A.D.

You might want to ask why he fits Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile so closely. Why does he have much more in common with the likes of Krishna, Theseus, Perseus, Hercules, and so forth than (say) Mohammed or Charles Darwin?

And I wonder why some people get so bent out of shape by the suggestion that Jesus Christ had been a myth.

BK · 01-24-2002, 05:07 PM

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Originally posted by turtonm:
[QB]Originally posted by Reactor:
First, the apostles didn't write the gospels, later writers did. John, to take one example, was edited several times. Consider that the authors of John moved several stories around, borrowed two fictitious miracles from Mark and inserted them in John 6, and borrowed the original ending of Mark and used it as John 21. It is clear that they did not regard their presentation as history, but propaganda.

Sorry, but you are simply accepting as true a theory of how the Gospels were created that is not the historically held view of the church and is, in many ways, a rather liberal view of the scriptures. There is very good reason to believe that the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the very individuals to whome they have been attributed, and if you want details, you should read the introduction to those four books in the Anchor Bible.

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Consider that John presents obviously fruitcake scenes, such as a Jewish crowd demanding that a Roman government execute a Jewish criminal so he'd be a friend of Caesar. That's patently unbelievable.

If you say so . . . .

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The gospels go to great lengths to reduce Roman culpability in Jesus' death and blame it on the Jews, creating all sorts of absurdities. This is highly suspicious; it smacks of historical revisionism.

And what is the history it was revising?

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Second, we know from long interaction with religiously-motivated writers that they are habitually and deliberately propagandistic.

There is no doubt they were presenting their view of what happened. The Gospels are clearly written to present Jesus in various lights (Messiah, King, God). But that is part and parcel of how all histories are written. Have you ever read the book "Armies of the Night"? The author spends the first part of the book detailing the "more objective" view of the events surrounding a protest at the Pentagon in the 1960s so that when he gives his first hand account in the last part of the book, it can be understood in context. Well, all we have from the writers of the Gospels is the accounts with their various shadings written consistent with the more free-flowing style of recording history acceptable at that time.

Having acknowledged that, it does not make the accounts any less accurate. It does not mean they were re-written. Moreover, in a fiercly monotheistic society such as the Jews were, the fact that these people were willing to even speak about Jesus being "God" shouts volumes about their belief that what they were writing to be true.

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It's quite accepted (as I understand it) for a historical figure to "make up an account... (part skipped)... by those who from the first were eyewitnesses...." as Luke did, or to testify as to what he'd seen and heard, as John did.

Let me correct this: as the authors of John claimed.

Let me correct you: as John did.

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Note also how diverse modern readings are. Jesus was a peasant revolutionary. An eschatological teacher. A religious nationalist fanatic. A magician. Etc. Real history does not produce such diversity; people disagree about Caesar's motives, but nobody denies that he fought the battle of Alesia or was Consul.[/b]

And no true historian doubts the broad outlines of Jesus' story: born in Palestine in the early First Century, he preached to peasants, allegedly performed miracles, was crucified under the Roman Government, and his disciples claimed that they saw him resurrected. The fact that out-of-the-mainstream scholars in the Jesus Seminar make outrageous claims like you note about Him does not make the basic facts untrue.

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Luke may have been a woman; see Randall Helm's Who Wrote the Gospels for a very convincing summary of the evidence.

I will. I will have to see what could possibly be so convincing that escaped all of the other Biblical scholars' notice for the past 1900 years.

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Do you know of many dispassionate religious biographies from, say, the first 1500 years of Christianity?

Let's see. We have a man who performed miracles, claimed to be God, rose from the dead. If these things actually happened (as I think they clearly did based upon the evidence), I would be surprised to find someone not take sides in writing a biography. Either Jesus was a fraud or he was God. There are no real alternatives.

BK

Metacrock · 01-24-2002, 05:16 PM

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Originally posted by Asha'man:


Consistency of the Christian story is not convincing to me at all. What year was Mark written in, somewhere around 60 or so? All the scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke had read Mark. Everything else was written after the story of Mark had been circulating. Do they all agree on some issues? Sure, they are all just copies and retellings and embellishments of the same story. If you copy a document a thousand times, I would expect it to say the same thing a thousand times.

Meta =>That's not the point. Just the four gospels is a small sample. There are hundreds of documents such as:

Gospel of Thomas
Gosper of Peter
Gospel of Nichodemus
Epistle of the Apostles
The Teaching of the Twelve
Protoevangelon

And many many more. IN several hundred different documents it is all one story. That is imporessive when you consider that there are 14 different versions of the Tamuz story, and that Tamus then become Adonis and has a buhch more versions. So to have only one version in hundreds of different tellings is amazing. That can only mean that the facts were know to everyone because they were set in stone early on.

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The problem is that the author of Mark could have altered or invented the story. Not a lot of people knew the story at that time, and time had dulled the memory of the few who had heard rumors. The people who knew the real story could be discredited or coerced into following the new party line.

Meta => Ok see to pull off that kind of argument you alway have to resort to conspiracy theories, which are just totally out of bounds for historians of any real sort. The witnesses are discredited or bribed. that in itself is a sheer conjecture and one with no real warrant and which wouldn't even be brought up if it weren't for an ideolgoical anti-clearical need to disprove that Jesus existed. How likley is it really?

all of that invovles absurd difficulties that just aren't worth thinking about in real history, no other histoircal quesiton is ever treated that way. Consider some of the difficutlties:

1) 12 guys go out and start to preach about a savior who they say appeared to as many as 500, who was seen by the multitudes risen form the dead, who was crucified in public, funny thing though, no one has ever heard of him and no one knows anyone else who has ever heard of him.

2) To get past that you have imagine that all those who were there (wherever "there" was assuming there was no real Jesus) were just magically discredited, even though being part of whatever original event would in itself make them very speicial in their groups.

3) The priniciples start being met by others such as Paul, and yet they either never deny their alledged role in the events or no one every listens to them, as those such as Peter say "there wasn't a Jesus, I'm telling you I didn't deny him because he didnt' exist." but they just go on telling the story.

4) Or if Peter was in on the conspiracy to spread a false story why did he die for something he knew was a lie? What did he ever get out of it?

5) Even more absurd, Peter is in on the conspiracy, they make up that there was this Jesus even though no one has ever hread of him and no one remembers ever seeing eanyone crucified or hearding of anyone rising from the dead and Peter is going around saying he was there but he can't even produce one person other htan the 12 to back him up and no one ever calls his blough?

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There are no known writings earlier than Mark that support his story.

Meta +>Yes there is! Helmutt Koster and Crosson both attest to the pre-markan redaction passion narrative dated to AD 50 which they find in the Diatesseron and reconstruct from Textual criticial methods.

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Paul didn’t seem to know the details of the story, or at least didn’t write them down.

Meta =>He wasn't there. What he knew or what any not there would know would be limited to oral traditions. They didn't have documentaries or novels to write about it. Thus they would have a general outline and not much detail.but that's all they would need. That is why the same 11 or 12 points are contrantly repeated with great accuracy and not much beyond that is told.

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The few statements he did make are vague at best, and a plain reading of the “whom ye slew and hung in a tree” verse sounds more like a Jewish stoning than a Roman crucifixion.

Meta =>Not true. "Hung on a tree" was a euphemism for crucifiction, see Ray Brown Death of the Messiah.

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The motivation to change the story is crystal clear: Crucifixion sells better. If you are preaching to gentiles, they don’t really care about some poor bastard that the Sanhedrin dealt with. On the other hand, every gentile in the land lived with some fear of crucifixion, and might show sympathy for someone killed in this manner.

Meta =>That's absurd! AS though the Jews didn't live in fear of crucifiction. Besides very few schcolars beleive that the Gospels were written for Gentile audiences. We can see from mark and Matthew were Jewish by their content and written for Jewish audiences. John was written for the Johonnie community which was probably Jewish and Smeritan. Cricifiction was infamous for Jews, look at that time when thousands were crucified and so many they ran out of crosses and had to stick them on the city gates. That was the ultimate symbol of the Roman oppression!

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Look at who was using this story: evangelical preachers. Do you think they didn’t know what messages worked with their audience? Do you think they were too scrupulously honest to change the story to one that worked better?

Meta -> Have you ever heard the term "informal fallacy?" Argument ad hom is one of them. That's all this is. O preacher said it so it must be untrue!

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Have you ever listened to the nonsense spouted by a modern evangelical preacher when he gets really lathered up?

[/QB]

Meta =>Classic example of guilt by association. That too is also an informal fallacy. "Look who believes this, it must be wrong." that's not logical.

BK · 01-24-2002, 05:17 PM

I have not read Doherty's site, but I have read similar material. I will reserve comment until I have more time to read it other than to say this: Most material that I have ever seen that attempts to revisit basic issues about Christianity usually rely upon little matters that are seen as inconsistent until they are understood in context. Thus, while I will look, based upon my skim through of a couple of artilces and my past experiences, I doubt that I will be impressed.

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Originally posted by lpetrich:
You might want to ask why he fits Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile so closely. Why does he have much more in common with the likes of Krishna, Theseus, Perseus, Hercules, and so forth than (say) Mohammed or Charles Darwin?[/b]

I know nothing about Raglan, so I don't know why I would ask the question in the first place. Second, he has very little in common with either group you identify.

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[b]And I wonder why some people get so bent out of shape by the suggestion that Jesus Christ had been a myth.

Gee, perhps it is because it is simply astounding to some of us that anybody would question something that is so obviously real. Perhaps it is because we see his handiwork in the heavens, and we still find it hard to believe that people can so tightly close their eyes to what is, to us, obvious.

BK

Metacrock · 01-24-2002, 05:20 PM

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Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt:
Originally posted by turtonm:

There is no real evidence for a Persian Cult of Mirthras. The cultic and mystery aspect did not exist until after the Roman period, second century to fourth. This means that any similarities to Christianity probably come from Christiantiy as the Soldiers learned of it during their tours in Palestine. The Great historian of religions, Franz Cumont was able to prove that the earliest datable evidence for the cult came from the Military Garrison at Carnuntum, on the Danube River (moern Hungary). The largest Cache of Mithric artifacts comes form the area between the Danube and Ostia in Italy. (Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1903), 87ff.)

Quoting Cumont from 1903 is not really a good strategy. We know that Mithraism predates Christianity.
From David Ulansey's wonderful article
<a href="http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html" target="_blank">http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html</a>
"For most of the twentieth century it has been assumed that Mithraism was imported from Iran, and that Mithraic iconography must therefore represent ideas drawn from ancient Iranian mythology. The reason for this is that the name of the god worshipped in the cult, Mithras, is a Greek and Latin form of the name of an ancient Iranian god, Mithra; in addition, Roman authors themselves expressed a belief that the cult was Iranian in origin. At the end of the nineteenth century Franz Cumont, the great Belgian historian of ancient religion, published a magisterial two- volume work on the Mithraic mysteries based on the assumption of the Iranian origins of the cult. Cumont's work immediately became accepted as the definitive study of the cult, and remained virtually unchallenged for over seventy years."

Ulansey says that the oldest physical remains are late first century, which, combined with Pliny's clear attribution of the cult to the first century BCE, shows that mithraism predates Christianity.

Michael

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To be somewhat less selective, it might be worthwhile to quote the following, also from "David Ulansey's wonderful article" ...

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There were, however, a number of serious problems with Cumont's assumption that the Mithraic mysteries derived from ancient Iranian religion. Most significant among these is that there is no parallel in ancient Iran to the iconography which is the primary fact of the Roman Mithraic cult. For example, as already mentioned, by far the most important icon in the Roman cult was the tauroctony. This scene shows Mithras in the act of killing a bull, accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion; the scene is depicted as taking place inside a cave like the mithraeum itself. This icon was located in the most important place in every mithraeum, and therefore must have been an expression of the central myth of the Roman cult. Thus, if the god Mithras of the Roman religion was actually the Iranian god Mithra, we should expect to find in Iranian mythology a story in which Mithra kills a bull. However, the fact is that no such Iranian myth exists: in no known Iranian text does Mithra have anything to do with killing a bull.

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Not only that but this is about Cumont's notions of Mithras as the Persian deity. that is not about the Romans at Ostia bringing Christian element into mithrism. that argument has gone unchalleneged, and I can tell you Ulancy says nothing about it. There is no answer to that it is unanswered. So it's not important that Cumont was wrong on one thing. Everyone is wrong on something, he is not showen to be wrong on the thing I argued!

Metacrock · 01-24-2002, 05:26 PM

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Originally posted by Asha'man:


One little space in time? Maybe you had better look at your sources again. The Sanhedrin had been carrying out executions for as long as they existed. Stoning and hanging the corpse on a tree was long established as a form of execution. Check out Joshua 8:29 and Esther 2:23.

Meta =>yea, but the Romans did quite a bit of crucifying before the first century. Maybe the Jews hadn't lost capital punishment at that time, but the Romans certainly did do it themselves in Palestine before and during the time of Christ. I already argued that there are other reasons why they would want to enginer the crucifiction of Christ, so the people wouldn't hate them for one, or they may genuinely have feared Roman peranoia about sedition for another.

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Josephus documents an incident in the year 48BCE. Herod, then governor of Galilee, executed some bandits without giving them a fair trial before the Sanhedrin. The Jews raised a really big stink, and called for Herod to stand trial for murder. (Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book XIV, 9:3-5.) Clearly, the Jews had the right to enforce capital punishment, and were very protective of that right, even when under Roman authority.

Meta =->So did the Roamns. That argument is unimportant, they had other reasons to desire Roman handling of the exicution.

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I’m being very careful to provide references for you, Metacrock. As a historian with access to a good library, please check them out. Don’t just dismiss them because you think they are absurd.[/QB]

Meta -=>That's not the point. I know that's true, I've seen the passage in Jo, but the point is there are other reasons; Jesus wasn't crucified for blasphemy, they Sanhedrin had other reasons to desire Roman involvement.

Anunnaki · 01-24-2002, 05:29 PM

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And I wonder why some people get so bent out of shape by the suggestion that Jesus Christ had been a myth.

I`m amazed by all these guys who so strongly believe that he was a real guy who was really crucified. It`s as if their whole life depended upon it or something. Oh wait a minute,their religion tells them it DOES.
They certainly get a little testy when someone even just mentions the possibility and I`m often reminded of Doctor Zauis getting angry when told his sacred scrolls weren`t real.

[ January 24, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

Metacrock · 01-24-2002, 05:32 PM

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Originally posted by ReasonableDoubt:

Originally posted by Anunnaki:

Theres a few other things on that page that stink of apologetics not to mention the site itself is called Christian Thinktank.

Meta =>Picky, picky, picky! Let's not read the content, let's just react to the labels. Apparently atheists can and do judge books by their covers. I somehow have the feeling that's all they read too.

It looks just like the kind of stuff that gets pulled up using metacrocks Jesus powered search engine.

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Anunnaki ]

What is a Jesus powered search engine? Where did you get that prhase. I use Google too. Miller's site may have a cornball name but he research is good.

Anunnaki · 01-24-2002, 05:36 PM

BK:

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Perhaps it is because we see his handiwork in the heavens

Care to show me an example of Jesus` "handiwork" in the heavens?

Metacrock · 01-24-2002, 05:41 PM

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Originally posted by Rimstalker:

Um, no. This is yet another weak straw man. Sorry, Meta, but 19 points on a 22-point scale don't count as "taking a few points and ignoring the ones that don't fit."

However, taking the 3 out of 22 that JFK got and proping them up like some kind of refutation is.

I wasn't talking about the JFK thing, I was talking about the one where I took it down to 7 out of 22 points. you must have missed that one.

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I don't care! You see how I reduced their stupid list, most of the things on it didn't apply anyway. You get the general idea.
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Actually, most of your "reductions" were as ham-handed as your JFK straw man. The "general idea" I get is that you are a dishonest pseudo-scholar using any misdirections you can to score rhetorical points.

[/QB][/QUOTE]

another waste of time. amature! You wouldnt' know real schorship if it bit you. you don't know waht it is. You have no concept of what it means to be a scholar.you haven't been to the good grad school and you haven't the background I know I have it I don't care what you think. My whole life has been about fighting idiots and the ignoarnt rababble who hate knowledge and fighting for the right to love knowledge for its own sake and that is a quest you can't even comprehend. !

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