What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Greediguts]

"The believed God Jesus" - Do you feel Paul's messiah is the same as John's messiah? Is Mark's the same as John's?

Second highlight - I don't know anything about Paul, John, Mark all believing in different messiahs/Jesus-variations. But again, I don't think it's necessary to invent ideas like that.

1 Corinthians, part 4

But the important bit comes at the end. "Christ belongs to God."

Note that he does NOT say "Christ is God".

Paul does NOT believe that Jesus is God.

There is, as always, a hierarchy: God --> Jesus --> The faithful --> Everybody else.

It was not an invention.

 

[pakeha]

1 Corinthians, continued

...Note, too, that Paul disdains both the Jewish Law and Greek philosophy as a means of saving oneself from the imminent wrath of God. ....Once again we see what Paul's method was -- he didn't convert people by argument, but by some sort of charismatic ceremony, we don't know exactly what, in which the power of the Holy Spirit was demonstrated to the convert. It must have been something like a tent revival, in which participants are whipped into an ecstatic state, which can be quite a compelling experience.

And as always, the message is the sacrifice and bodily resurrection of Jesus as a sign that the end has arrived. ...

...

Thanks for that work, Piggy.
I feel as though I understand Paul much better now.
And yes, seeing one of those Holy Spirit demonstrations is now on my top 20 must-do list for when I eventually obtain a time machine.

... at that time in that very region, there had for centuries already been belief in Greek Mystery religions and envisioned imaginings believed as reality etc. That's clear not just from the very obvious Hellenic influence of the people, but also from the DS-Scrolls (which unlike all the biblical stuff, are actually the original writing from precisely that time and precisely that small region).

And that writing and it's religious beliefs, and in fact the people's entire way of life, was entirely about their belief in imaginary gods. ...

That's an excellent point about the DDS, IanS.

1 Corinthians, part 3
...Also note that Paul is referencing a passage that condemns non-Jewish "superstitions". Does this sound like someone who embraces non-Jewish mystery cults? No, not in the least. ...Here's the thing about Paul… he is what he says he is -- a Jewish religious fanatic. A highly literate one, but a fanatic nonetheless. And his references are exclusively to Jewish scripture.

...Paul believes this stuff literally. In his mind, this army is coming from heaven, within his lifetime. ….

Again, great work, Piggy.
I'm left wondering how Paul made the leap from being a Jewish fanatic to rejecting the necessity of circumcision.

1 Corinthians, part 4...In that last bit, Paul is echoing the theology developed by Ezekiel -- you see how we keep coming back to the same few books, over which all the Christian groups, not just the Pauline assemblies, obsessed -- which held that God was not tied to the Temple in Jerusalem, but "tabernacled" with his people wherever they were. Paul says that this group, the righteous remnant, are the new Temple of God.

(I hope the 1200 years of historical background is making more sense now.)

And this echoes the religious politics of the time. The apocalyptic group at Qumran, for example, poured out all kinds of venom against the Temple. Not because they hated the institution of the Temple, and certainly not because they hated God, but because the Temple had been usurped by Rome and the Temple priesthood stripped of Levitical control, which according to scripture was the ONLY group authorized by God to serve at the Temple.

It is extremely likely, given not only Jesus's own fate but also the fate of his mentor John the Baptizer, that Jesus also preached this doctrine, that the Temple had been corrupted and was no longer an acceptable abode for the one true God.

So, if God no longer abided in the Temple, where did he abide? As Ezekiel had written during the exile in Babylon, the righteous Jews themselves were the Temple, and God tabernacled with them.

And who, in Paul's opinion, were the current righteous ones? Those who had faith in the resurrection and return of Jesus, both Jewish and gentile.

As for Jesus, he very likely would have preached that his group of followers, and they alone, were the new Temple.

Now here's an interesting bit:



Most of that's a repeat. The citations are from Job and Psalms, by the way.

But the important bit comes at the end. "Christ belongs to God."

Note that he does NOT say "Christ is God".

Paul does NOT believe that Jesus is God.

There is, as always, a hierarchy: God --> Jesus --> The faithful --> Everybody else.



Paul's doing a little two-step here, what we might call "humblebragging" today.

On the one hand, he has the true gospel, and his assemblies are not as spiritually mature as he is, but on the other hand, he's in the 3rd tier just like the rest of them and that will be proven when God arrives at the Day of the Lord.

He is a "servant" of God and Jesus, but at the same time he has been "entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed". And as we've seen in our earlier examination of the scriptures which Paul incessantly cites, that "mystery" is the coming of the end time.

What comes next might be a dig at a different sort of belief in "mystery", on the part of the Egyptian Apollos, whose teaching -- at least as Paul views it -- may be tinged with gnostic overtones:



Paul constantly quotes Hebrew scripture, and attacks Apollos for claiming some sort of "wisdom" apart from that. According to Paul, Apollos is preaching something not backed by Jewish prophecy, and anything that doesn't come from there is not to be trusted....

I would love to know just what kind of charismatic services Paul led. He must have been quite adept at it, like a master tent show evangelist. (I know some people associate all such folks with hucksters, but as a lifetime resident of the deep South, where this kind of thing still goes on, I can assure you that many of these people fully believe what they preach. For a riveting account of such groups, I highly recommend Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington, who set out to report on snake handlers and ended up being converted by the ecstatic experience. In my opinion, it is here, and not Marjoe, where one should look for contemporary parallels to Paul.)

I think that's enough for this installment. Next, Paul will launch into a description of the goings-on within the Corinthian assemblies, and Lakeview Baptist it ain't!

More later….

I loved this third part of the commentaries on Corinthians, Piggy.
I see where you're coming from now, having grown up with HRs and so on.

 

[maximara]

The material in question was the gospels and not Irenaeus.

But Irenaeus clearly stated that events he related were "even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information."

So Irenaeus claims for over 50 years of age (Against Heresies 2:22:4) Jesus when he was crucified under Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar supposedly came from the Gospel!

Was Irenaeus reading from variants since lost or was he reading things into them? If the former then just what was going on with the Jesus timeline?

 

[pakeha]

I think, given the circumstances in 1st Century Judea, a more apt comparison from recent times of the rise of similar movements is the Native American Ghost Dance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance

Yes.

... that the only known earlier source are the letters of Paul, where apart from a fake letter written in the 2nd century AD, Paul's description of ever meeting Jesus does not actually mention anyone called Pontius Pilate at all. And where Paul only says that he had a vision of Jesus communicating to him at some time after Jesus had died ... but he does actually say that the vision took place 3 days after the execution. Or perhaps you disagree with that?

What I am saying to you is that the reason sceptical writers, for over a century, do not automatically accept the involvement of Pilate as the executioner of Jesus, is for reasons such as the above. Namely, that the whole idea seems to have come from Paul's letter describing his vision of Jesus.

IOW - the name of Pontius Pilate seems to have been added afterwards, by gospel writers who thought Paul had said that Jesus must have been executed some time around 30 to 36 AD, ie a time when they believed Pilate was the prefect for the area.

But, throughout any of this, you might also note that Paul’s vision is clearly make-believe anyway. So, it's probably very unwise to trying to conclude any dates from a fictional vision like that.

... the only earlier source for the claim of the crucifixion, appears to be Paul’s belief. Though, afaik, Paul says he understood all such things from his visions & according to scripture, and not from any man.

So the gospel stories of the crucifixion seem to derive from what had earlier been written by Paul … unless you know of another earlier source telling of the crucifixion?

But as I just pointed out - without checking, iirc, (a) the genuine letters of Paul do not mention anyone called “Pilate”, and (b)Paul only says he had a vision of Jesus after Jesus had died, but afaik he does not actually say that he knew when Jesus had died.

Hang on.
Is there reason to think the world's most hated Roman Procurator was simply a later addition to the body of myths built up around Jesus?
Something like the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood?

 

[Belz...]

But Irenaeus clearly stated that events he related were "even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information."

So Irenaeus claims for over 50 years of age (Against Heresies 2:22:4) Jesus when he was crucified under Herod the king of the Jews and Pontius Pilate, the governor of Claudius Caesar supposedly came from the Gospel!

Was Irenaeus reading from variants since lost or was he reading things into them? If the former then just what was going on with the Jesus timeline?

Or does "gospel" mean what we think it means ? Maybe he's refering to something very different. Would Paul call his visions "gospel" ?

 

[Piggy]

I'm left wondering how Paul made the leap from being a Jewish fanatic to rejecting the necessity of circumcision.

It has to do with Paul's interpretation of the apocalyptic scriptures we've seen before.

Remember that those scriptures say that all nations (gentiles = nations) will bow down to the one true God once He establishes His Kingdom on Earth, with Jerusalem at its capital.

Now, if you believe that those prophecies are accurate, then Paul's theology actually makes more sense than the theology of the "Judaizers" who say that only Jews will be saved.

Because if all the gentiles are wiped out when God's army comes at the Day of the Lord, then there will be no other nations to bow to God!

So according to Paul's reading of the prophecy, conversion of gentiles to faith in the resurrection and return of Jesus, without their conversion from gentile to Jew, was absolutely necessary if the prophecies were to be fulfilled.

And he considered it his personal mission to accomplish the number of the saints, or in other words to convert some critical mass of gentiles which would trigger the Day of the Lord itself.

That's why I say Paul is a complete megalomaniac. He literally believed that he was the one chosen by God to fulfill the prophecies that would bring about paradise on Earth. In a way, that made him even more important than Elijah and Moses!

My image of Paul is that of someone suffering from extreme mania. He was a highly unusual person, in a lot of ways. And without him, I have serious doubts that Christianity would exist today.

I doubt that Paul's interest in charismatic religion and the power of the Holy Spirit as a liaison between God and humans began with his conversion to Jewish Christianity. He probably was already of that bent.

I imagine that he would have gone through the same kind of experience as Dennis Covington did with the snake handlers. Covington originally went down to Alabama as a reporter from the New York Times, but at some point after witnessing these ecstatic gatherings, he got caught up in it, and felt the power himself. And that's heady wine, right there.

I've actually talked with Dennis, and although he eventually came back to earth, so to speak, he says that when he was a believer, to the point of taking up snakes himself, it seemed like the only reality.

So I think Paul was probably converted in the same way that he converted others, by ecstatic experience.

Only after that would he have re-interpreted the apocalyptic scriptures, which he probably knew much better and much more extensively than did the Galileans, who may have been illiterate and knew the scripture through oral transmission. And in doing so, he realized that Jesus had not come back because there were no gentile converts -- and off he went!

Of course, I don't know that it went down like that, but if I had to bet, I'd put my money on some sort of scenario like that.

 

[IanS]

Well, if I have misunderstood, so be it. But the way you expressed yourself was extremely ambiguous.

OK, well perhaps that was not the clearest sentence I’ve written in this thread.

However, leaving that aside, though at risk of perhaps confusing the matter further - when you were saying that the gospel writers believed that Jesus had recently died … although I was not actually contesting that they may well have believed that, or at least given the impression that they believed it, just on that particular point - I’m not sure that interpretation actually makes any sense anyway.

And here’s why - firstly we must, as I emphasised earlier, keep in mind that the gospel authors, who all seem to copying from Mark anyway, apparently never witnessed any of the things they believed about Jesus. So they were getting that sort of belief from some other source.

OK, well I said earlier that they were probably getting the idea of Pilate’s name from one of Paul’s letters. Though that letter is, afaik, one of those generally accepted as a “fake” written in the 2nd century AD. But of course, as I also said before - Paul was apparently not getting the idea of the crucifixion from any Man telling him about it, but instead from his visionary beliefs in the prophecies of what he thought he knew from the ancient Jewish OT stretching back at least 500 years before Jesus was ever supposed to have been born. So …..

Second point - in respect of what the gospel of Mark (and the others) say about the crucifixion, afaik “everything” they say about it actually comes from that same OT writing from 500 years and more before Jesus was ever supposed to have lived!

And if that is the case (the source of it all being the OT), then what sense could it ever make for those gospel authors who had never met Jesus and who themselves knew zero about him, to think that Jesus had just recently died, when they knew perfectly well that what they were writing about the crucifixion had come from centuries earlier in the writing of the OT?

Now, I have not given here the references to various passages from the different gospels concerning the crucifixion story. And nor have I given the references to passages in the OT from which the gospel authors were clearly obtaining their beliefs. However, if you really want me to do that, then I can of course produce that. Though afaik, all of that is fully known to the so-called “biblical scholars” who are being cited in this thread as being quite sure that Jesus was real.

What all that appears to boil down to, is that (as I said about 20 times before in this thread), as we have seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls from 200 years before Jesus, and is also apparent in Paul’s Letters, the gospel authors like Paul and the DSS writers, were quite deliberately refusing to accept the difference between fact and fiction…. they thought that 500 year old interpretations from the OT could simply be attributed to someone who they wished to believe as a recent messiah … and the same with Paul’s visions etc., ie he thought his visions were the same as real events (or even better, since they were direct communication from God) …

… IOW, all of this biblical writing, is from people who quite literally choose to be unable to tell fact from fiction. They were mixing up fact and fiction as if there were no difference between those things.

 

[IanS]

It was not an invention.

What is not an "invention"?

What do you think my word "invention" was referring to?

 

[pakeha]

...So according to Paul's reading of the prophecy, conversion of gentiles to faith in the resurrection and return of Jesus, without their conversion from gentile to Jew, was absolutely necessary if the prophecies were to be fulfilled.

And he considered it his personal mission to accomplish the number of the saints, or in other words to convert some critical mass of gentiles which would trigger the Day of the Lord itself.

That's why I say Paul is a complete megalomaniac. He literally believed that he was the one chosen by God to fulfill the prophecies that would bring about paradise on Earth. In a way, that made him even more important than Elijah and Moses!

My image of Paul is that of someone suffering from extreme mania. He was a highly unusual person, in a lot of ways. And without him, I have serious doubts that Christianity would exist today. ...

I imagine that he would have gone through the same kind of experience as Dennis Covington did with the snake handlers. Covington originally went down to Alabama as a reporter from the New York Times, but at some point after witnessing these ecstatic gatherings, he got caught up in it, and felt the power himself. And that's heady wine, right there.

I've actually talked with Dennis, and although he eventually came back to earth, so to speak, he says that when he was a believer, to the point of taking up snakes himself, it seemed like the only reality.

So I think Paul was probably converted in the same way that he converted others, by ecstatic experience.

Only after that would he have re-interpreted the apocalyptic scriptures, which he probably knew much better and much more extensively than did the Galileans, who may have been illiterate and knew the scripture through oral transmission. And in doing so, he realized that Jesus had not come back because there were no gentile converts -- and off he went!

Of course, I don't know that it went down like that, but if I had to bet, I'd put my money on some sort of scenario like that.

I've got it, finally. Thanks for sharing so much via the thread, Piggy. On to the next letter?

 

[IanS]

Hang on.
Is there reason to think the world's most hated Roman Procurator was simply a later addition to the body of myths built up around Jesus?
Something like the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood?

Well …. What do you think?

You’ve seen most of what has been written in this thread. How do you think the name of Pilate got into our extant copies of the gospels?

 

[eight bits]

IanS

I did a roundup of hte Gospel authors' claimed sources just above, in post 3338.

who all seem to copying from Mark anyway

Not John.

Though that letter is, afaik, one of those generally accepted as a “fake” written in the 2nd century AD.

Pilate is mentioned in 1 Timothy 6: 13, which is, as you say, confidently believed to be a Second Century fake. That Jesus' death involved some Jews' mortal dislike of him is 1 Thessalonians 2: 13-16, but phrased in a way that doesn't nail down the time, so to speak.

Paul's readers would very likely have known his professed opinion about the matter, whatever that was. The surviving letters are the tip of an iceberg of Paul's performances. That the letters do not conflict with a recent date, and that everybody who aspired to build on Paul's work seemed to like Pilate for the hammerman, suggests that Paul may well have taught Pilate.

The letters are our only source for Paul's teaching, but probably weren't the only source available to that community in the late First Century when the canonical Gospels appear to have been composed. Pace maximara.

Paul was apparently not getting the idea of the crucifixion from any Man telling him about it

That isn't at all clear from what survives of Paul. He says, but does not describe, that he had adversarial dealings with the movement before the visions. He must have had some idea why he had persecuted them. Paul also claims to disagree with lots of folks currently, which requires him to know what those folks teach currently, in order to know whether he disagrees or not. Finally, the scope of what comes from no man is the "good news" aspect. That could be as narrow as the tail end of Galatians chapter 2: his self-serving interpretation of things, not necessarily the ground facts which are being interpreted.

(Earlier in the thread, Piggy and I went a few rounds on whether Paul claimed to have originated the institution narrative. No, he didn't. There, too, what Paul claimed to be original with himself could be his interpretation of the event, not the story that there was such an event, or the detail that Jesus was handed over in the evening.)

As to your second point, if the authors believe that it all happened under Pontius Pilate, then they don't think it's all in the Jewish scripture, and has been for centuries. Of course, if it is supposed to be the fulfillment of prophecy, then some version of events must be there beforehand. But prophecies are always light on details. These "prophecies" especially.

 

[Piggy]

I've got it, finally. Thanks for sharing so much via the thread, Piggy. On to the next letter?

No prob.

I'll post more tonight, but we're not even 1/3 of the way thru Corinthians -- told you it was dense!

 

[Belz...]

Not John.

No, John was a remake. Or reboot.

 

[Piggy]

I Corinthians, continued

I hope it's becoming apparent now why I've bothered with all these "long winded posts".

The thing is, if you take the shortcuts that the mythicists take, and indulge in Campbellian "parallels" -- no insult to Joseph Campbell here, it's an abuse of his method, not a faithful use of it -- and don't bother to search for answers within the time and place and culture you're examining, and don't take the time to even inquire whether or not there are documented connections among the various supposed influences you're claiming, then you're leaving yourself open to all sorts of fatal mistakes.

So far we've seen several of these exposed when it comes to mythicist claims.

For example, although the early Christians believed that Jesus had been crucified and had been resurrected, that belief had absolutely nothing to do with any "dying and rising gods" of other cultures. First because the earliest Christians didn't think Jesus was God, but also because their beliefs are entirely explicable within the framework of Jewish prophecy.

Granted, their interpretation of the prophecy was cherry-picked, but as we've seen, this fact is perfectly explained by the psychology of disappointed end-time cults dating from the 2nd to the 20th centuries, as was their propensity to evangelize.

Also, we've seen that Paul's references to "wisdom" and "mystery" do not require us to go casting about for influences from mystery cults -- for which there is no evidence in early 1st century Judea and Galilee -- but in fact are drawn directly from the Jewish apocalyptic scriptures which infuse early Christian thought, even among gentile communities.

And we've seen that the table ritual described by Paul parallels the Jewish seder, using food in remembrance of critical events in the group's history and their relationship to God. Furthermore, both Paul and the Jerusalem Christians were thoroughly, even fanatically Jewish and would not have dreamed of performing anti-Jewish rituals.

Paul states unequivocally that Jesus was human, a man who was born of woman, born a Jew, born under the law, who ate and drank and died, and that Jesus was not God. Much less a "dying and rising" one.

And there are no parallels for any group in that culture claiming that a god or ancient folk hero was someone who lived among them, and died a public death.

Even at this early stage of examination, the foundations of the mythicist belief system are crumbling. And by the time we get to Mark, the remaining tenets of mythicism will crash and burn like the Hindenburg.

Meanwhile, we've seen that a historical Jesus meshes perfectly with the traditions documented by his followers. As we continue past the Pauline doctrine and go on to examine other communities not associated with Paul, this fit will become even more apparent.

So, that said, let's continue with Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

As we've seen, there were some problems which arose within the assemblies in Galatia and Thessalonia, but these were nothing compared to the rather chaotic situation in urban, metropolitan Corinth. In Paul's letters, we can see the Christian movement coming loose from its Judean and Galilean moorings, and growing beyond the control of the original Jewish Christian group.

So let's dive into the soap opera, taking up where we left off….

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? .... Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch — as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Both Roman and Jewish law forbade a man from marrying his stepmother, and this news from Corinth would have certainly shocked and dismayed Paul.

So Paul advises that they put this man out of the community, lest the entire community become tainted by his sin.

Paul then segues from the image of Passover bread (unleavened bread) to the image of Jesus as the Passover lamb. This is the only reference surviving from Paul to Jesus as the Passover lamb, and appears to be a situational reference. The point is that the blood of Jesus protects those who have faith in his resurrection from the wrath of God, just as the blood of the lamb on the doorpost was said to have protected Jews in Egypt from the angel who slew the firstborn of the Egyptians. It is not any sort of cannibalistic reference whatsoever.

Paul then moves on to another problem -- some member or members of the assembly have taken another member or members to court:

If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the assembly? .... Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

Interesting stuff!

Of course, we expect Paul to say "why not rather be wronged", because we've already seen that he believes God will only save those who show compassion and do not attempt to place themselves above others.

But look at what else he reveals here.

This is the first time we've seen direct reference to Paul's beliefs about what will happen to the righteous remnant, the faithful in Jesus, after the Day of the Lord, other than their receiving perfect immortal bodies and living in paradise on Earth.

Where in the world does he get the notion that the survivors of the wrath of God will judge the world?

It should be no surprise by now that he gets this idea from the prophecies of Daniel:

As I looked, the [beast] made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them, until the Ancient One came; then judgment was given for the holy ones of the Most High, and the time arrived when the holy ones gained possession of the kingdom.

As crazy as it sounds, Paul apparently believed this stuff.

And I'll take this opportunity to mention that earlier on this thread, some in the mythicist camp scoffed at the idea that serious study was necessary to understand these texts. Instead, they wanted a bumper sticker answer, a quick forum post that would explain it all. Lengthy discussion was mere "delaying".

I hope it's becoming apparent why I'm being so "long winded" about this. And I also hope it's becoming apparent that what I said was true -- you can't understand these ancient texts, and what they have to tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived, without a great deal of study. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to undertake the kind of analysis I'm doing here on the basis of a superficial gloss, and we'll see how well that holds up.

And this is not to blow my own horn by any means, btw, because I'm only a student -- what I know is a fraction of what the degreed professionals know. I only want to point out that drive-by analysis simply isn't possible when it comes to ancient cultures.

OK, moving on….

The body... is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.

The context of the reference is telling here. Paul is discussing the proper role of the body, and uses the resurrection of Jesus as an example.

What this tells us is that Paul views the resurrection of Jesus as a bodily resurrection, as we saw earlier in his letter to the Galatians, in which he describes the resurrection of the saints who are given bodies of perfect immortal celestial material.

Today, people tend to think of heaven as a spiritual place, and the resurrection as the ascending of the soul into heaven. This was not true of Paul's time.

According to Paul, Jesus was resurrected bodily, but not with a flawed mortal earthly body. Rather, God clothed Jesus in a body made of the stuff that exists in the celestial sphere, immortal and perfect and flawless.

And it would be the same with the faithful who would be saved from God's wrath. They would be literally "raised" into the air, both the living and the dead, and their bodies transformed from faulty earthly matter into the same sort of matter which exists in Heaven.

We're about halfway through the letter now, but I'll be able to pick up the pace as we go forward because I've covered most of the major doctrinal points. Next time we'll pick up at the thorny issue of celibacy.

Til next time...

 

[davefoc]

...

The more I look the harder it is to stay objective and not see exactly what you want to see or expect to see. The only thing I'm sure of is the religious icon, cultural Jesus I was familiar with is pure myth.

The lack of reliable data points in the Jesus story leads people to make assumptions to justify reasoned guesses about what went on. The problem is that sometimes we lose track of the assumption we've made and the basis for them and then we become believers in a particular HJ view. HM's idea that there is just insufficient evidence to justify any view seems more appealing to me all the time.

 

[davefoc]

A brief summary of the literary form discussion:

...

I'm looking for a non-Jesus-centric piece of literature that followed the same new format of writing about a fictional figure of any kind that was purported in the story to live among the reading audience, or nearby them, within their lifetime; similar to modern fiction.

Eight Bit;

None of that helped.
I'm still left without a single separate instance of a literary form that is not related to Jesus which parallels the fictional form we have in the texts regarding Jesus if we take Jesus to not have existed in any fashion at all.

You said, "so what"?
Maybe it's not a big deal to you, but to me; someone who loves culture and anthropology; it's a very big deal.

If a new form was created, then we should see it repeated with different subject material; as is the pattern of human cultural behavior.
The first instance of something leads to duplicates of it within shot of the same culture from which it came, and near the same generational time frame.
More stuff on Jesus is not a parallel or duplication of the form.

If that happened; I want it accounted for and not lost to history for favor of a guy that didn't exist.
...

JaysonR

The literary style argument is the first substantial argument for an HJ that I have so far seen.

But if Paul had invented a new literary style would anyone else know it? They might assume it was a true account, after all part of his writing was designed to deceive. If no-one else had noticed the novelty then there would be nothing for near contemporary authors to copy.

Why are so few of you addressing Jayson's point that contemporary fiction as a genre wasn't even around until the 500s? If a 1st-century text exists that describes a sequence of events involving a contemporary figure like Pilate, then that sequence of events is going to be more historic than not, regardless of hagiographic embellishments.

Stone

I'm in the camp that either doesn't understand JaysonR's argument here or I just disagree with it.

Is the argument that the creation of the Jesus mythology would be a unique event in the history of myth making unless the underlying character had existed and therefore it is unlikely not to have been based in part on an actual HJ?

I'm sure this has been answered but why wasn't the John Frum thing an example?

And no matter what, some kind of HJ existed based on the wide definition preferred by Maximara. Suppose that the Jesus in the time of Janeus was the Jesus that served as a model character for the creators of the Jesus mythology. Does that mean the Jesus myth creation would not have been unique? The inspiration for the beginning of the Jesus mythology might not be recognizable as such to us, but it existed.

Certainly there are elements of the Jesus mythology that are unique but that is true of every mythology. Unique elements of mythology don't necessarily point to the idea that some aspect of the mythology must be true.

One thing to take note of here with regard to this discussion is that after the creation of the first Jesus fiction, the creation of other Jesus fiction took off. None of the authors of any of that Jesus fiction were witnesses to the HJ nor apparently did they have a source of reliable information about the HJ and yet they were all able to create works of Jesus fiction. Why wasn't the author of the first Jesus fiction capable of creating a work of Jesus fiction that did not depend on the existence of an HJ? I agree that some kind of oral tradition that an HJ had existed would have made it easier for early Jesus fiction authors to find traction for their works but was the existence of an HJ necessary to initiate an oral tradition that an HJ had existed? I don't think so, particularly in an environment where it was widely believed that a Messiah was on his way.

 

[Piggy]

The lack of reliable data points in the Jesus story leads people to make assumptions to justify reasoned guesses about what went on. The problem is that sometimes we lose track of the assumption we've made and the basis for them and then we become believers in a particular HJ view. HM's idea that there is just insufficient evidence to justify any view seems more appealing to me all the time.

I don't believe I'm losing track of anything.

If you think I am, show me where.

 

[davefoc]

I don't believe I'm losing track of anything.

If you think I am, show me where.

I can't.

Your view of this and my view are different and I don't think there is a way to bridge the gap.

A few years ago, I thought several pieces of independent information pointed to the existence of an HJ. I have come to believe that the reliability of most of that information is very low. The sole exception to this is the letters of Paul which, for me, seem to be credible. However, I think, Paul's letters represent an uncorroborated source of ambiguous information and it seems to me to be a plausible view that either Paul lied, or that what Paul says has been misinterpreted or that Paul was taken in by people pretending to have direct knowledge of an HJ that didn't have such knowledge.

HM, in an earlier thread, proposed a thought experiment to imagine the nature of the HJ if we assume that the only reliable evidence about the HJ is Paul. I didn't think much about the thought experiment at the time because I believed there was enough corroborating information about the HJ outside of Paul to make the exercise moot. That thought experiment seems more interesting to me now that it seems like the only possibly reliable information about the HJ is based on Paul.

 

[Piggy]

I can't.

Your view of this and my view are different and I don't think there is a way to bridge the gap.

A few years ago, I thought several pieces of independent information pointed to the existence of an HJ. I have come to believe that the reliability of most of that information is very low. The sole exception to this is the letters of Paul which, for me, seem to be credible. However, I think, Paul's letters represent an uncorroborated source of ambiguous information and it seems to me to be a plausible view that either Paul lied, or that what Paul says has been misinterpreted or that Paul was taken in by people pretending to have direct knowledge of an HJ that didn't have such knowledge.

HM, in an earlier thread, proposed a thought experiment to imagine the nature of the HJ if we assume that the only reliable evidence about the HJ is Paul. I didn't think much about the thought experiment at the time because I believed there was enough corroborating information about the HJ outside of Paul to make the exercise moot. That thought experiment seems more interesting to me now that it seems like the only possibly reliable information about the HJ is based on Paul.

I hear a lot of "I think".

I don't hear any evidence or analysis.

 

[Brainache]

When Pakeha has finished with his time machine, I wonder if I could borrow it...

What I'd like to know is how reliable "Tradition" is when I hear things like: "The tradition is that g-Mark assembled his gospel based on the sermons of Peter". Where do these traditions come from? How close are they to the time in question etc etc...