Grog

Anything can be data, it just depends on how it is used. "Mythical Accounts" that are regarded by early christians as depicting real events are data. They help us understand what early christians believed.

Grog

J-D, what about religions started by a man who rose from the dead?

Davka

As long as we take them as mythical accounts, yes. Just as accounts of Thor and Loki are of interest to anyone collecting data on the irrational beliefs of Norsemen during the Middle Ages, or accounts of Set and Thoth are of interest to anyone collecting data on the irrational beliefs of ancient Egyptians.

It is when we begin to treat these accounts as historical that we run into problems.

Davka

There are none, because nobody has ever risen from the dead.

Grog

People interpreting the Words of the Lord in the books of the prophets started the Jesus cult of Christians. Who were those people? We don't know for sure. Was it someone known as Jesus who interpreted those words to be about himself and created a following?

At first glance, this seems reasonable to accept. Why not? Someone started it and we have a lot of ancient thought that emerged around the idea that it was this follow, Jesus who was executed by a particularly notorious Roman governor. That is perfectly reasonably to accept.

But I get stopped when I consider the problems with this position: No contemporary accounts and those that are closest are probably fabricated (like the references in Josephus) or enigmatically unclear (like Paul). The underlying theory of transmission (oral transmission) from events that happened to their recording in writing is deeply flawed. The clearest recordings we have are clearly theological texts with theological purposes, not historical biographies at all. The supposed "history" in Acts is often lifted from Josephus and possibly other sources. There are conflicting beliefs in the second century, some of which seem to deny belief in a crucified criminal (M. Felix). Recent findings of ancient contemporaneous texts (DSS) have nothing about Jesus or the Jesus cult.

In his book, the Signal and the Noise, Nate Silver discusses how much easier it is to sift out the signal from the noise in hindsight. When I read defenses of the belief that Paul really does reference the life of a real Jesus, it reminds me of this phenomenon. People who want to defend the position that Christianity really was founded by Jesus pick through Paul looking for signal and they certainly find it. But the signal is weak and the most honest of these folks admit, frustratingly weak. In my opinion, if the hypothesis is correct, we ought to expect a fairly strong signal from Paul.

The line of defense at this point is to simply MAKE UP REASONS for why the signal from Paul is weak. we all know it is a problem, so we are going to justify our preconceived beliefs based on two thousand years of Church tradition. So instead of reading Paul in a different way, one we haven't really considered before, we try to fit Paul into what we want. Paul had psychological reasons for not referring to Jesus directly. Paul relied on the common knowledge of his audience so didn't feel like he needed to fill in details (so he refers to Mary as "woman," for instance because everyone already knew her name was Mary, so why have to say so?).

The probability of these reasons are less likely, in my opinion, than that Paul just had a different understanding of who or what Jesus was than what we expect to read based on our preconceived assumptions.

So we come to the unthinkable: Paul is not referring to a Jesus that recently was crucified by Rome (see Romans 13 if you think that's even plausible). But that is so absurd and outside what we can think of, that we reject it out of hand.

Nate Silver quotes Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling's observation that:

"...The contingency that we have not considered seriously looks strange; what looks strange is thought impossible; what is improbable need not be considered seriously."

This is in relation to intelligence failures like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. In retrospect, we can decipher the signal from the noise, but the contingencies were thought so remote that they were not factored into predictions of what could occur.

I think we see a similar problem in Jesus studies. It's easy in hindsight, in all the noise (and there's a lot of noise in Jesus studies) to find a signal that fits what we want to be true or what we have always thought to be true. But to find that signal we have to make it fit our preconceptions. For example, 1 Cor 2:8 refers to Romans, though Paul never mentions Romans, or Jews for that matter, as being agents of Jesus' crucifixion. I would argue that Romans 13 falsifies that position, anyway.

J-D can't think of a religion that started with what was "in the air." Who started the Romulus cult? How do we know it wasn't started by ideas in the air? Who started the Zeus cult or the Isis cult? Who started, for that matter, Judaism? Who started the New Age movement in the United States? Is there a single person who can be credited with that amalgam of native american, offshoot judaism, and weird hippiness spirituality? I would proffer that the origins of early christianity are much more similar to the origins of new age than to the origins of Scientology (for example).

Yes, I think religions can emerge from what is "in the air." I think a lot of advances (if you can call them that) in human thought are collaborative, collective, movements toward new understandings. L. Ron Hubbard didn't just dream up Scientology, he built it on the ideas of others. He might have founded "Scientology" but his underlying ideas were "in the air" already.

Who first called this new amalgam of religious beliefs "Christianity" and associated it with a character named "Jesus?" I don't think we'll ever know. That person or, more likely, those separate people (there is evidence that some Christians did not associate their movement with a Jesus Christ) is lost to history.

I think the evidence is increasingly against the idea that the founder was someone named Jesus who was from Nazareth, who was crucified by Pilate after some sort of altercation on the Temple grounds.

Grog

The evidence that Jesus founded Christianity comes from sources who also claim he rose from the dead. Why should we trust that?

Davka

I suspect that the primary reason you're having trouble communicating this idea is the use of the phrase "in the air." It's somewhat ambiguous, to say the least. Perhaps you would have better luck with 'dominant social paradigms' or 'contemporary popular concepts' or some similar phrase. "In the air' can be too easily interpreted as having something to do with woo.

Grog

I didn't use the term first. I understand the term quite well. I was quoting J-D. But that's a red herring. Move on to some substance, please.

J-D appealed to ignorance, I am responding to that. The idea is that Christianity may have evolved out of ideas that were current in the culture of the time, mostly out of the hellenism and judaism. J-D could not imagine a religion emerging from ideas "in the air." J-D's appeal is the logical fallacy of the appeal to ignorance. At the same time, I can contradict that:

--Three Teaching
--New Age Spirituality

In addition, J-D seems to believe that all religions can be attributed to a founder, but there are religions that we don't even know where they came from. The Romulus cult? What one person founded that? Who founded the Plumed Serpent religion in pre-columbian america? Who founded the Isis cult? Who founded Judaism? Couldn't Judaism itself have emerged as an evolution of Egyptian, Canaanite, and Babylonian religions? Emerging, as it were, from ideas "in the air."

I can't think of a reason for p, therefore not p. That's a fallacy.

Really? That whole post and all you can do is come up with a red herring around the phrase "in the air?"

aa5874

They were NON-Jews. We can only use the DATA we have presently.

The earth was assumed flat BEFORE the DATA showed it was round. When there is DATA WE REJECT assumptions.

The very stories of Jesus have been recovered and it can easily be deduced that the authors were NON-Jews who most likely did NOT live in Galilee and were not aware of Jewish customs.

The absurdity was not rejected out of hand. It was REJECTED for lack of evidence from antiquity. The evidence from antiquity points to LATE Pauline Corpus.

Why do you constantly assume that the Pauline writings must be early when even scholars have already deduced the Pauline Corpus was a product of Multiple authors and some writing after the Fall of the Temple or after Paul supposedly died?

Why don't you consider that even Church writers claimed Paul was ALIVE after gLuke was composed? See the writings of Eusebius and Origen.

Why can't you understand that an Apologetic claimed the Pauline letters to Churches were composed After Revelation by John? See the Muratorian Canon.

There are many 2nd century Apologetic writers who did NOT acknowledge Paul like Aristides, Justin, Municius Felix, Theophilus, Athenagoras and Arnobius.

Origen, an Apologetic writer, admitted that Celsus wrote NOTHING of Paul.See Against Celsus

No Pauline letters have been recovered and dated to the 1st century.

The Pauline writer claimed he Persecuted the Churches of Christ---it is in the 2nd century we have Non-Apologetics writing about the Jesus cult of Christians who worshiped a crucified man. See Lucian's Death of Peregrine.

Why must the Pauline writings be early when the Pauline writer claimed OVER 500 people was seen of Jesus BEFORE him? See 1 Cor.15

Why must the Pauline writings be early when in the very Canon of the Jesus cult there were NO Pauline letters to Churches up to c 59-62 CE when Festus was procurator of Judea? See Acts of the Apostles.

It is most remarkable that although Late Pauline writings is an obvious resolution which is completely compatible with the evidence from antiquity that you still want to consider an absurd position which has zero corroboration in or out the Canon.

In the Canon, the Pauline letters were NOT known up to c 59-62 CE.


The author of Acts, an Apologetic writer, admitted that Jesus was NOT on earth when the Jesus cult of Christians was started.

The Gospel was preached for the FIRST time on the DAY of Pentecost--LONG after Jesus was dead and ascended in a cloud.

The Jesus cult STARTED when people BELIEVED the story that the JEWS KILLED the Son of God.

Acts 2 In Acts the men of ISRAEL caused the KILLING of Jesus.

The Pauline Corpus has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the start of the Jesus cult.

The Pauline Corpus only makes sense AFTER the Fall of the Temple.

It was the Fall of the Temple and the Desolation of the Jerusalem with supposed prophecies by the Prophets in the Septuagint that caused Non-Jews to INVENT the propaganda that was later BELIEVED by Non-Jews of antiquity.

Iskander

The story of a man legally executed by the government of the time at the instigation of a pressure group is one which is found in every society .Even if one defines such an execution as ‘ legal murder’ the story is soon forgotten.


Religion makes what is common and forgettable into a unique event of supreme importance to be remembered and lamented forever. This alone makes religion an undesirable state of mind.