Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Iskander · 06-23-2013, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

Docetism http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Docetism The domain of the definition of the word “Docetism” is Christianity. Outside Christianity the word “docetism” has no meaning. Who is the object of the docetic deliberations? Which Christian assertion was Docetism reacting to?

Saying that Jesus was "apparent rather than real" can be read in different ways. The orthodox heresiologists who are our main direct sources on Docetism apparently failed to understand it properly. Orthodoxy assumes the Gospels are historical, so the orthodox reading of Docetism sits in that framework, and does not engage with the truly heretical possibility that Docetism was the original source of Christianity whereby the Gospels were written as pure fiction.

The sun seems to go around the earth, but actually does not. Frodo seems to travel to Mordor, but actually does not. Saying the Christ spirit appeared to be present in Jesus can be read against either of these examples of seeming, even though one (sunrise) has a factual explanation and the other (Frodo) is purely imaginary.

My view is that the most probable explanation of Christian origins is that Docetic fiction was the original authentic Christianity, inventing the myth of a divine saviour as a secret mystery, and this origin was suppressed, ignored, forgotten and denied by a rampant triumphant orthodoxy.

There is no divine saviour anywhere. There is no life after death.

What we are considering is whether Christianity is a variation of Judaism and whether this innovation is likely to have been started by a religious Jewish man living 2000 years ago,

I much prefer the Jewish model based on Rav Kook, the Amidah insertion circa 80 AD, the explanations of Prof, Schiffman of the change in the Amidah and the progress outlined by Prof Clark, and Prof Harnack.

The cosmic Christ, Constantine’s invention and so forth are less attractive. The afterlife and everything associated with it is a ‘myth’, but the history of religions is based on the preaching of real men in the appropriate cultural setting.

MrMacSon · 06-23-2013, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrMacSon

Docetism was not necessarily reacting to anything; or, if it was, it may not be a "Christian assertion" it was reacting to.

It was an early form of Christianity per se - a pre-flesh one.

Doeticism may not have had a clear objective, either.

Likely to have been just a variation of a version of a salvation story for the increasingly dispersed and down-trodden Jewish Diaspora.

Quote:

It was an early form of Christianity per se - a pre-flesh one.

This early Christianity, how early was it? .Was it based on what? . What made it Christian?

The words [in English here] - Christos & Chrestos Christus, Chrestes - have probably all been interchanged with

translation from one language to another (and probably back again)
different applications of each, in various situations

In searching them I cam across this web-page; by poster here, mountainman -

Quote:

XXX BCE Homer's use of "chriso" ....

Christian theology has chosen and decreed that the name Christos
should be taken as derived from [chrio, chriso], "anointed with
scented unguents or oil." But this word has several significances.
It is used by Homer as applied to the rubbing with oil of the body
after bathing (Il. 23, 186; also in Od., 4, 252). Yet the word
Christes means rather a white-washer, while the word Chrestes
means priest and prophet, a term which on the surface may appear
to be far more applicable to Jesus, than that of the "Anointed,"
since, he never was anointed, either as king or priest.

======================================

XXX BCE
Erythrean Sybil. [IESOUS CHREISTOS THEOU HUIOS SOTER STAUROS].
The prophecy relates to the coming down upon the Earth of the Spirit
of Truth (Christos), after which advent will begin the Golden Age;
the verse refers to the necessity before reaching that blessed condition
of inner (or subjective) theophany and theopneusty, to pass through the
crucifixion of flesh or matter. (NB: This IMO refers to ASCETICISM)
The words meaning literally "Iesus, Christos, God, Son, Savior, Cross,"
are most excellent handles to hang a Christian prophecy on, but they
are pagan, not Christian.

470 BCE
Aeschylus (Cho. 901) we read of pythochresta
the "oracles delivered by a Pythian God"

460 BCE
Pindar (pp. 4-10) The words [chresen oikistera]
mean "the oracle proclaimed him the colonizer."
In this case the genius of the Greek language permits
that the man so proclaimed should be called Chrestos.
Hence this term was applied to every Disciple recognized by a Master,
as also to every good man.

350 BCE
Plato (in Phaed. 264 B) has [chrestos ei hoti hegei] --
"you are an excellent fellow to think . . ."

333 BCE
Demosthenes saying [o Chreste] (330, 27),
means by it simply "you nice fellow";
Demosthenes, De Corona, 313, declares that
the candidates for initiation
into the Greek mysteries were anointed with oil.
So they are now in India, even in the
initiation the Yogi mysteries, various
ointments or unguents being used.

XXX BCE
Pagan classics expressed more than one idea
by the verb [chraomai] "consulting an oracle";
for it also means "fated," doomed by an oracle,
in the sense of a sacrificial victim to its decree, or --
"to the WORD"; as chresterion is not only "the seat of an oracle"
but also "an offering to, or for, the oracle.'' (18)
Chrestes is one who expounds or explains oracles,
"a prophet, a soothsayer;" (19) and
chresterios is one who belongs to, or is in the service of,
an oracle, a god, or a "Master" (20);

010 CE
Philo Judaeus speaks of theochrestos "God-declared,"
or one who is declared by god, and of
logia theochresta "sayings delivered by God" --
which proves that he wrote at a time
when neither Christians nor Chrestians were yet known
under these names, but still called themselves the Nazarenes.

090 CE
[to chreon] is given by Plutarch (Nich. 14.) as "fate," "necessity."
Plutarch (V. Phocion), wonders how such a rough
and dull fellow as Phocion could be surnamed Chrestos.

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essene...20christos.htm

I agree with what Robert Tulip wrote at #30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

The orthodox heresiologists who are our main direct sources on Docetism apparently failed to understand it properly. Orthodoxy assumes the Gospels are historical, so the orthodox reading of Docetism sits in that framework, and does not engage with the ... possibility that Docetism was the original source of Christianity whereby the Gospels were written as pure fiction.

[snip]

... the most probable explanation of Christian origins is that Docetic fiction was the original authentic Christianity, inventing the myth of a divine saviour as a secret mystery, and this origin was suppressed, ignored, forgotten and denied by a rampant triumphant orthodoxy.

Iskander · 06-23-2013, 03:58 PM

Fine

MrMacSon · 06-23-2013, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

... the history of religions is based on the preaching of real men in the appropriate cultural setting.

Yes, and the cultural setting of the start of Christianity is set against the background of
the then increasing mixing of several cultures in the [now]-Middle-East region - Roman, Greek, Eqyptian, Eastern, etc - starting ~5-300BC/BCE,
particularly

translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the formation of the Septuagint
the suppression of the Jews starting with
- the periods before and during the 166 BC/BCE Maccabee Revolt [& subsequent Hasmonean dynasty rule) and
- going through the Jewish-Roman Wars in the 1st & 2nd centuries CE
the dispersion of the Jews

ie. increasingly diverse salvation stories in increasing spatially-diverse settings
.
.

mountainman · 06-23-2013, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Tulip

The orthodox heresiologists who are our main direct sources on Docetism apparently failed to understand it properly. Orthodoxy assumes the Gospels are historical, so the orthodox reading of Docetism sits in that framework, and does not engage with the ... possibility that Docetism was the original source of Christianity whereby the Gospels were written as pure fiction.

[snip]

... the most probable explanation of Christian origins is that Docetic fiction was the original authentic Christianity, inventing the myth of a divine saviour as a secret mystery, and this origin was suppressed, ignored, forgotten and denied by a rampant triumphant orthodoxy.

And championed by the gnostic heretics who may be seen to be strong and militant mythicists. The author of the Acts of John writes that he followed Jesus around everywhere he went hoping to see a footprint upon the planet Earth but, alas, the author of the Acts of John never once saw one.

Welcome home Harry Potter.

The problem with stating that the centralised monotheistic 4th century state figure of Jesus was a Harry Potter character was an imperial sword through your guts. Between the late 4th and mid 20th century, state and national "blasphemy laws" basically kept the heat off the public scepticism of the Jesus Story Book.

The big question is how can any investigator explain the excessively heresiological polemic of the so-called early church fathers without there being an orthodoxy. There was no orthodoxy until the 4th century. How much of the "early church fathers" were forged?

εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

MrMacSon · 06-23-2013, 08:23 PM

Focusing on "the centralised monotheistic 4th century state figure of Jesus" seems to often constrict how one thinks about the development of that figure.

Roger Pearse · 06-24-2013, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrMacSon

Focusing on "the centralised monotheistic 4th century state figure of Jesus" seems to often constrict how one thinks about the development of that figure.

Particularly since Christianity did not become the state religion until ca. 391, which leaves precisely 9 years to refer to.

Cheerful Charlie · 06-24-2013, 03:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by James The Least

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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.”

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.

Euhemerism.

Cheerful Charlie

Grog · 06-30-2013, 10:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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?

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

Yet we don't use the same argument to argue in favor of the historicity of William Tell. I don't don't think this argument amounts to much.

Roger Pearse · 07-01-2013, 02:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grog

Quote:

Originally Posted by 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

Yet we don't use the same argument to argue in favor of the historicity of William Tell. I don't don't think this argument amounts to much.

?

I don't see how this relates to my post. I made no argument in favour of anyone's historicity. And quite how William Tell relates to antiquity I do not see.

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06-23-2013, 03:58 PM	#33
Iskander Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 3,619	Fine

06-23-2013, 08:23 PM	#36
MrMacSon Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: South Pacific Posts: 559	Focusing on "the centralised monotheistic 4th century state figure of Jesus" seems to often constrict how one thinks about the development of that figure.

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