cornbread_r2

Among the reasons this apologist cites for believing in a historical Jesus is the apparent fact that none of early church fathers spent any time arguing against the notion that Jesus was not a real, historical person.

As he puts it:

Other heresies, such as Gnosticism or Donatism, were like that stubborn bump in the carpet. You could stamp them out in one place only to have them pop up again centuries later, but the mythcist “heresy” is nowhere to be found in the early Church. So what’s more likely: that the early Church hunted down and destroyed every member of mythicist Christianity in order to prevent the heresy from spreading and conveniently never wrote about it, or that the early Christians were not mythicists and so there was nothing for the Church Fathers to campaign against? (Some mythcists argue that the heresy of Docetism included a mythic Jesus, but I don’t find that claim convincing. See this blog post for a good rebuttal of that idea).

My hypothetical response:

The earliest Christians who believed Jesus to be a cosmic figure readily accepted the historical portrait of the later gospel writers and/or were long dead and gone by the time the church fathers started dealing with other heresies.

Your opinions?

Thanks

Toto

This topic comes up periodically.

Freke and Gandy classify the docetists as early mythicists. Most mainstream scholars reject this, because they think that docetists would have believed in a Jesus who could interact with the world, although he was of a different substance (ectoplasm?)

Earl Doherty believes that the earliest Christians in the mid first century believed in a spiritual Christ, but by the time of the second century heresy hunters, this tradition was lost, and the gospels were accepted as historical. (I guess this is your position.)

Roger Pearse

The argument being made is straightforward.

1. The fathers argue against claims being made at the time.
2. There is no trace of anyone claiming that Jesus did not exist, in the Fathers or elsewhere, and there are traces of people jeering at him, as a disreputable figure, all through antiquity.
3. Therefore they did not encounter any such claims, or they were not made by anyone.

The response you give is not very clear to me. If I understand it correctly, you are saying:

1. The earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament (or within it, for that matter) treat Jesus as God. (Which is correct).
2. The gospel writers treat Jesus as historical. (Which is true).
3. Later Christian writers, unspecified, were "long dead" by the time they came to write and so don't know what people at the time said.
4. Therefore we can disregard the argument.

#3 seems very vague and unsatisfactory. I'm not sure what you had in mind here?

But it is also clearly unsatisfactory, from another point of view. Any writer of antiquity had 100 times more data than we do, since 99% of ancient literature is lost. No writer before 325 AD is more than a handful of generations from the events in question. We rely on Macrobius (5th c.) for some of our information about the reign of Augustus (1st c.), for instance.

Finally #4 does not follow from #1 and #2.

The argument to which this is a response is basically sound. Nobody in antiquity denied that Jesus of Nazareth existed, any more than we deny that L. Ron Hubbard existed (and for the same reasons). As Toto has said, some of the Gnostic heretics supposed that his body was phantasmal, rather than real, in order to evade the fact that he was executed as a cowardly low-grade criminal in a manner that brought shame on all who knew him. The latter taunt may be found in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, and in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, and doubtless in other places too.

The pagan (and Jewish) taunt could easily have been answered by the Gnostic approach, if the Christians had not, one and all, held firmly to the view that Christ had died on the cross and risen. Tertullian (ca. 200), indeed, against Marcion, makes the point that the story of the death and resurrection can't be a convenient fake intended to deceive the gullible, precisely because it's embarassing, it's revolting and tends to turn people off: "It is certain because it is impossible." We forget how the story struck people in pre-Christian times.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

jgreen44

The Christians Athenians held firmly to the view that Christ Theseus had delivered Athens from the curse of Yahweh King Minos.

To satisfy his wrath for a transgression that had been committed many years earlier, Yahweh King Minos demanded sacrifices. At regular intervals every seven years, unblemished animals the seven most courageous youths and the seven most beautiful maidens had to be placed on the altar into the Labyrinth to be sacrficed to Yahweh the Minotaur. Otherwise the Jews Athenians would face the wrath of Yahweh King Minos. Enter Jesus Theseus.

Jesus Theseus was the son of a mortal woman and a god. Jesus' Theseus' descended into
Hades the Labyrinth to rescue those who would otherwise incur the wrath of Yahweh mortals being sacrificed to the Minotaur. Jesus Theseus faced and defeated death the Minotaur to break the curse which had been held over the human race Athenians for years.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,
he took many captives
and gave gifts to his people.”

9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) (Ephesians 4)

"After decapitating the beast ("I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you." Luke 10:19), Theseus used the string to escape the Labyrinth and managed to escape with all of the young Athenians and Ariadne as well as her younger sister Phaedra. Then he and the rest of the crew fell asleep on the beach. Athena woke Theseus and told him to leave early that morning. Athena told Theseus to leave Ariadne and Phaedra on the beach."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus...d_the_Minotaur

So after committing his great act of heroism Jesus Theseus mysteriously disappears. Forever.

But wait. There's more.

Ship of Theseus

According to Plutarch's Life of Theseus, the ship Theseus used on his return from Crete to Athens was kept in the Athenian harbor as a memorial for several centuries.

The ship had to be maintained in a seaworthy state, for, in return for Jesus's Theseus's successful mission, the Christians Athenians had pledged to honour God Apollo every year henceforth. Thus, the Christians Athenians sent a religious mission everywhere to the island of Delos (one of Apollo's most sacred sanctuaries) on the Athenian state galley — the ship itself — to pay their fealty to God the god.

...for Christians Athenians the preserved gospels[ ship kept fresh their understanding](http://www.jesuswalk.com/christian-symbols/ship.htm) that Jesus Theseus had been an actual, historic figure — which none then doubted — and gave them a tangible connection to their divine providence."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theseus#Ship_of_Theseus

Bottom line:

The ancients had no problem readily accepting the notion that just about anybody was an historic figure.

And I suspect the mundane details of the Jesus story, including the crucifixion, were a lot easier to accept as historical than Theseus' rescue mission into the labyrinth

Iskander

Implicit question: “none of early church fathers spent any time arguing against the notion that Jesus was not a real, historical person.”


Explanation: “Nobody in antiquity denied that Jesus of Nazareth existed,”


Explanation grudgingly accepted:” The ancients had no problem readily accepting the notion that just about anybody was an historic figure.”

Clivedurdle

http://biblehub.com/matthew/26-40.htm

There seems to be a basic confusion here. Was not God thought to be historical?

James The Least

Although written in the second century, I think Justin's Dialogue with Trypho gives a good insight into what pre-70 Christians believed. Jesus was a theophany of YHWH who appeared throughout history on momentous occasions. After the fall of the temple in 70, they examined Daniel's "70 Weeks" prophecy to determine that the most recent time that Jesus had appeared in the flesh was during the reign of Tiberius. The reason that the Temple fell was the Jews' execution of the Son of God.

The gospels were classic vaticinia ex eventu. They believed Jesus had been a real person, but nobody ever saw or met the Son of God.

James The Least

That's a good comeback. A lot of the gods were assumed to have been historic figures at one time, and nobody could disprove the existence of someone who lived long ago.

Chili

To me it is very simple: If the essence of bread is the body of Christ, and if the essence of wine is the blood of Christ, just as "this is Buddha" is true while pointing at substance in Buddha land still today, it does not take much to figure out that essence of being is what is called Christ that must be made known by the seer to see who therefore must become essense in being to see what reality is all about.

Mythicism would deny this [self] engagement and see it as 'third party' beyond yonder somewhere while it is inside the seer himself to be uncovered in the netherworld of his own, and for this a re-emergence is needed to see first hand for himself.

Or as Plato held, that a man has no [telec] vision for other beings in their being until he has realized his own being. Or, a man can see en-ergeia of things only after he himself has become en-ergetic. Or, only after a man sees his own purpose in what he is for (as opposite to what is for him, sic), only then can he see what moves other things without itself moving (in the same sense as an apple is always good, but not always good for the purpose we have in mind).

So in this sense would mythicism deny the appleness of apples to make apples never good for us either. Iow, telos must be before telic can see, just as logos must be before logic can be in the same was as sophia must be before philosophy can be philo and therefore Sophia is real, and really is the reality of us and hence is the energy of substance itself that makes energeia known to us (to einai = in function as being), here now first hand as insider to her (agape without opposite).

Go figure, but true nonetheless in that She is second cause as the essence of material itself to be made known to us so we can understand what others are like (this is something Aristotle never quite understood and it shows, but is not part of this there, but is prior to division where so now God and Lord God become one and the same = no place for eros to move us = beyond desire that now spells freedom to move).

cornbread_r2

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll post again later with some additional thoughts on the subject.