And you write:
I am reading a complex book, Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity, of Richard C. Miller. His analysis starts just from these words of Justin.But my point here was simply against those who have claimed that the Gospels were not presented as true biographical accounts. Pagans like Julian called them "lies", because Julian recognised that the Gospels were being presented as factual. Allegories or fictions are not usually called "lies".
...
Justin Martyr seems to think the pagans really believe those stories.
He writes:
(p. 4,5)...the apology confessed that the two groups were identical in kind ... The apology simply proposed what the logician may deem a genetic fallacy, namely, that demons inspired the classical writers to produce lies or fictions that proleptically mimicked the Christian Gospel narratives, thus seeking to preempt and undermine their veracity and legitimacy by apparent generic association.
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The repositioning reflects and underlying shift in the proposed modality of the Gospel narratives, moving along the continuum from fictive mythography toward historical fact. Such shift corresponds with rising second-century demands being placed upon the Gospels. Whereas, at first, such stories succeeded inasmuch as they were capable of appropriating, riffing on, and engaging the conventions and themes of the classical literary tradition, by the middle of the second century, early Christians had their sights on a higher prize: a comprehensive cultural revolution of the hellenistic Roman world. This claim to a new order required a foundation of distinct superiority, who placed new, unprecedented weight upon the etiological myths of the movement, that is, the Gospels. The founder must be better than, truer than, more virtuous than, of a more archaic tradition than, and more prophetically legitimated than the established classical cultural forms. No longer was it enough that Jesus should join the classical array of demigods as an exciting Near Eastern installment or instance; he must obtain a sui generis stature, while condemning all prior Mediterranean iconic figures.
Miller talks about a precise ''shift'': the Gospel were considered before fiction, later mythic biography, later TRUE biography. I think personally the reason is that, under the threat of Marcion & co and in reaction to pagan attacks, appeal to a strong ''historical Jesus'' was more useful as argument.
Note that under the mythical paradigm, it's 100% expected that who knew that Jesus was a sublunary celestial angel did his best to hide his secret.
While who was historicist Christian, almost by definition, did his best to spread and reveal and sell a ''historical Jesus''.
Against Price, I think that the former didn't obstacle in no way the latter. The fact that you, GakuseDon, recognizes rightly that in the II CE historicist epistles a ''Gospel Jesus'' is not mentioned so much, is a precise consequence of the fact that their autors were clearly embarrassed to show pride in their Gospels: evidently, these Gospels had yet a lower status as recipient of ''truth''. As like the same pagan mythic biography for educated pagan readers.
But not all the pagans considered ''true'' their mythic biographies. Here is where I disagree from you.
(ibidem, p. 27)To sum up, they produce many such myths, those that irrationally deify the mortal elements of nature together with the divine. [Plutarc, Rom. 28.6]
Plutarch seems similar to Julian and Celsus in their criticism of Gospels. Plutarch, Celsus and Julian seem share the same hate against these people that ''irrationally deify the mortal elements of nature together with the divine''. Is not this the exact description of what do the Catholics even today, for example, with the their Eucharist?
Miller writes:
(p.144, note 78)The escalation in embellishment in the Gospel traditions, and not merely its accretion, serves to disprove the Jesus Myth Theory. From this trajectory, one is able to derive a more modest, human figure behind the earliest stratum. The recent Jesus Myth movement in academia, however, contributes substantively to the understanding of these early Christian renditions of Jesus in that, for the most part, the texts did present a mythologized founder and emblem for the ancient movement(s). This shift away from the faith-based presumption of postulating historical accuracy in the Gospel portrayals of Jesus realigns the discussion with the conventional literary and cultural patterns of classical antiquity, precisely where that discussion belongs, and frees the discourse from the delusive a priori impact of socially governed systems of ''belief'' that have all too often derailed the modern discourse. One must remain mindful that these texts have served as the sacred bedrock of Western myth an, as such, have presented a most formidable resistance to conclusive academic inquiry.
Note that Carrier has already replied against this argument, arguing together other scholars that even in Mark there is a high christology, for which it is simply not true that ''From this trajectory, one is able to derive a more modest, human figure behind the earliest stratum''.
The Jesus in Mark is falsely modest.
I am doubting personally about the same Markan priority, given that some recent scholars are proposing that was the Gospel used by Marcion and marcionites (proto-Luke aka Mcn) the Earliest Gospel. In that prospective, the ''false modesty'' of Jesus in our synoptics (especially in Mark) was a precise reaction to Mcn: the modest ''rabbi from Nazaret'' was introduced against Marcion.