It seems to me that the version of mythicism most worthy of discussion is the "strong" one. The others are simply saying, the evidence for Jesus isn't strong enough, while the HJers (to use dejudge's terminology) are saying, well it's just about strong enough. There's little difference between them. But the Carrier style mythicists are stating something that in principle excludes any historical Jesus, as similar considerations preclude a historical Osiris or Heracles. If in this sense there was any historical Jesus, for example really crucified on earth and this being the source of the belief that he was crucified on earth, the strong mythicists are unambiguously wrong. The question is this: were the gospel stories inspired by any historical reality, or were they inspired by a pre existing salvation myth? This is a pretty clear cut distinction. The HJers need to show the reality of the Jesus figure, and the MJers need to produce their pre existing myth.
I accept that the baptism is one of the few specific biographical events that most participants in the "scholarly HJ consensus" agree upon. So vast is this consensus, that I can accept that there is diversity among the participants as to why each person thinks this event really happened.
That argument is crushed under the weight of a contradiction. Baptism washes away sins. Even infant baptism, which washes away "original sin". But Jesus was not born in sin, and never perpetrated any sins. So this interpretation is inimical to the most important element of Christian belief, not in agreement with Christianity. Mark discusses sins in this context.
but Matthew puts a different slant on the incident.
The embarrassment at the implied sins of Jesus outweighs the value of the incident as a confirmation of the doctrine of the remission of sins.
That's a different problem. Eastern Orthodoxy, which practices infant baptism, does not teach personal culpability for the "original sin." The imagery is spiritual rebirth, complementary with physcial birth. Since there is no reason to think that John dunked infants, I prefer to compare "like with like," which is already hard enough.
The issue is not what Mark thought, really. If he had no preconceptions regarding the doctrines of Jesus as a sinless sacrificial lamb, or of baptism as a remission of individual sins it is the more likely that he is relating a real event. In that view the reticence of the later Evangelists (I mean John in fact) is what is to be explained by the conflict between the Marcan account and the later Christian doctrines.
I don't think that is necessarily true. Data about a real existing person could have been collected either in (now lost) written or oral form, and could have survived the decades between the death of Jesus and the composition of Mark. We are told that Jesus had "brothers"; if not blood brothers, at least close associates, surviving into the 50s and 60s. Collections of sayings of wise men can be made and retained, even by word of mouth, especially if they are recorded in a poetic form. I can still recite poems that I learned many decades ago as a child, and I can teach them to my own grandchild.
Nobody is really a Messiah, you know. Except in the mundane sense of being anointed. It is an imaginary religious concept, dejudge. But some people believed him to be a messiah, just as later some people believed bar Kochba to be a messiah.
Very improbable. That's why I say it didn't happen. Aretas died in c 50 AD and I don't think people were worshipping Jesus as a god as early as that.
Yes he did. And? Remember that David and Solomon are called "Sons of God". Evidently a royal title of kings of the Davidic dynasty.
And he wasn't ever by the majority of Jews. Or by the majority of Romans for hundreds of years during which time Rome turned into a cosmopolitan empire and Jesus was made over several times by the church, ending up as a god figure which would have been unrecognisable to Paul and Jesus' companions.
Insofar as I can perceive any meaning in that, I disagree with it. Jesus was quite evidently an observant Jew who attended the temple and synagogues, as did his companions both during Jesus' life and after.
This is a totally original notion of the relationship between authors and their writing. You must have meant something other than what I read you as saying; probably my fault.
Why would I infer that Mark had ideas like these? About the only Jesus-movement ideas about baptism we can document earlier than Mark are Paul's, that it is initiatory (and what do you know? It's the first thing in Jesus' career Mark thinks worth mentioning) and that people kept score who baptized whom (and Jesus' is done one-on-one by the leading brand-name). Add to that the only early non-Christian account of John's method, Josephus', does not yoke the remission to the dunking, but gives it an independent symbolic meaning - one suited to a Christian interpretation of Jesus' mission, the redemption of flesh.
Not your fault at all. It does look odd, and I should have put it differently.
Yes, and it may therefore be that it didn't affect Mark, but may have affected, not later readers (of course you're right here) but later authors; the authors of the later Gospels, who expounded a more, and increasingly, exalted Jesus. I'm omitting Mark from the embarrassment, and meant to say that the reason is not some assumption about Mark's thinking, but an assumption about the religious doctrines to which Mark's mind was exposed. I don't mean that what Mark thought had no effect on what Mark wrote.
No, no, no and no. The first is given in garbled forms in the gospel accounts. There are contradictions in the accounts of the second. The third is I think, from an alleged "prophecy". The fourth is from a mythical birth story and is contradicted by the other mythical birth story. It is not reported by the ancient secular authors who expatiate on Herod's crimes, of which this would be the worst example--if it were true!
