The best Mythicist of the past

[Giuseppe]

I don't have doubts: he is William B. Smith.

[Bernard Muller]

William B. Smith was the founder of the Latter Days Saints Church and the Mormons believe in a past earthly & human Jesus:
https://www.mormon.org/beliefs/jesus-ch ... nd-history

Cordially, Bernard

[Giuseppe]

William, not Joseph.

[islamea]

jeus was not a god

[Bernard Muller]

William B. Smith was a Mormon and the brother of the founder of the Latter Days Saints Church. The Mormons believe in a past earthly & human Jesus.

Cordially, Bernard

[Peter Kirby]

Not this one:

[wiki]William Smith (Latter Day Saints)[/wiki]

This one:

William Benjamin Smith

William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934) was a professor of mathematics at Tulane University. In a series of books, beginning with Ecce Deus: The Pre-Christian Jesus, published in 1894, and ending with The Birth of the Gospel, published posthumously in 1954, Smith argued that the earliest Christian sources, particularly the Pauline epistles, stress Christ's divinity at the expense of any human personality, and that this would have been implausible, if there had been a human Jesus. Smith therefore argued that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Christian Jesus cult—that is, a Jewish sect had worshipped a divine being Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born.[1] Evidence for this cult was found in Hippolytus' mention of the Naassenes[2] and Epiphanius' report of a Nasarene sect that existed before Christ, as well as passages in Acts.[3] The seemingly historical details in the New Testament were built by the early Christian community around narratives of the pre-Christian Jesus.[4]

(And... if you keep reading, you might find a good reason not to idolize him...)

[DCHindley]

Yes,

I believe a couple threads have been dedicated to this guy (i.e., W.B.S.). IIRC, they all got bogged down on issues related to "astrotheology", I know not why. An ancient cult dedicated to a divine "Jesus", something I think is pie in the sky imagination, not explanation.

In my humble opinion, the honor should go to Bruno Bauer:

Bauer's final book on theology, Christ and the Caesars (1877) was his crowning effort to justify Hegel's position that Christian theology owed at least as much to Greco-Roman classical philosophy as it owed to Judaism.

IIRC, he adapted the philosophy of Hegel to propose that Christianity crystalized from ideas already put into the spirit of that age by Philo, who interpreted Plato through Stoic ethics.

Although he broke from Marx & Engles, his thinking on the subject of early Christian origins certainly continued to influence them. For example, Frederick Engels' Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity (1882) and Karl Kautsky's Foundations of Christianity (1953 ET of the 1923 German edition of the book first published in 1908).

Right behind him would be Albert Kalthoff, The Rise of Christianity (E.T 1907 by Joseph McCabe fr 1904 Germ ed).

[144] ... Nevertheless it is false to assert that according to Bauer the earliest Evangelist invented the Gospel history and the personality of Jesus. That is to carry back the ideas of a later period and a further stage of development into the original form of his view. At the moment when, having disposed of preliminaries, he enters on his investigation, he still assumes that a great, a unique Personality, who so impressed men by His character that it lived on among them in an ideal form, had awakened into life the Messianic idea; and that what the original Evangelist really did was to portray the life of this Jesus—the Christ of the community which He founded—in accordance with the Messianic view of Him, just as the Fourth Evangelist portrayed it in accordance with the presupposition that Jesus was the revealer of the Logos. It was only in the course of his investigations that Bauer's opinion became more radical. As he goes on, his writing becomes ill-tempered, and takes the form of controversial dialogues with "the theologians," whom he apostrophises in a biting and injurious fashion, and whom he continually reproaches with not daring, owing to their apologetic prejudices, to see things as they really are, and with declining to face the ultimate results of criticism from fear that the tradition might suffer more loss of historic value than religion could bear. In spite of this hatred of the theologians, which is pathological in character, like his meaningless punctuation, his critical analyses are always exceedingly acute. One has the impression of walking alongside a man who is reasoning quite intelligently, but who talks to himself as though possessed by a fixed idea. What if the whole thing should turn out to be nothing but a literary invention—not only the incidents and discourses, but even the Personality which is assumed as the starting-point of the whole movement? What if the Gospel history were only a late imaginary embodiment of a set of exalted ideas, and these were the only historical reality from first to last? This is the idea which obsesses his mind more and more completely, and moves him to contemptuous laughter. What,

144n1) Here and elsewhere Bauer seems to use "Christologie" in the sense of Messianic doctrine, rather than in the more general sense which is usual in theology.—TRANSLATOR.

[145]

he mocks, will these apologists, who are so sure of everything, do then with the shreds and tatters which will be all that is left to them?

But at the outset of his investigations Bauer was far from holding such views. His purpose was really only to continue the work of Strauss. The conception of myth and legend of which the latter made use is, Bauer thinks, much too vague to explain this deliberate "transformation" of a personality. In the place of myth Bauer therefore sets "reflection." The life which pulses in the Gospel history is too vigorous to be explained as created by legend; it is real "experience," only not the experience of Jesus, but of the Church. The representation of this experience of the Church in the Life of a Person is not the work of a number of persons, but of a single author. It is in this twofold aspect—as the composition of one man, embodying the experience of many—that the Gospel history is to be regarded. As religious art it has a profound truth. When it is regarded from this point of view the difficulties which are encountered in the endeavour to conceive it as real immediately disappear.

We must take as our point of departure the belief in the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Jesus. Everything else attaches itself to this as to its centre. When the need arose to fix definitely the beginning of the manifestation of Jesus as the Saviour—to determine the point of time at which the Lord issued forth from obscurity—it was natural to connect this with the work of the Baptist; and Jesus comes to his baptism. While this is sufficient for the earliest Evangelist, Matthew and Luke feel it to be necessary, in view of the important consequences involved in the connexion of Jesus with the Baptist, to bring them into relation once more by means of the question addressed by the Baptist to Jesus, although this addition is quite inconsistent with the assumptions of the earliest Evangelist. If he had conceived the story of the baptism with the idea of introducing the Baptist again on a later occasion, and this time, moreover, as a doubter, he would have given it a different form. This is a just observation of Bauer's; the story of the baptism with the miracle which took place at it, and the Baptist's question, understood as implying a doubt of the Messiahship of Jesus, mutually exclude one another.

A. Schweitzer on A. Kalthoff's and K. Kautsky's socio-economic theories of Primitive Christian development


Compiled by David C. Hindley, 2012


1a) Albert Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus (English Translation 1910, based on 1st German edition of 1906):

[315] According to Albert Kalthoff, (315n1) the fire lighted itself - Christianity arose - by spontaneous combustion, when the inflammable material, religious and social, which had collected together in the Roman Empire, came in contact with the Jewish Messianic expectations.

315n1) Albert Kalthoff, Das Christusproblem. Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie. (The Problem of the Christ: Ground-plan of a Social Theology.) Leipzig, 1902. 87 pp.

Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Bzitriige zum Christusproblem. (How Christianity arose.) Leipzig, 1904. 155 pp.

Albert Kalthoff was born in 1850 at Barmen, and is engaged in pastoral work in Bremen.

Jesus of Nazareth never existed; and even supposing He had been one of the numerous Jewish Messiahs who were put to death by crucifixion, He certainly did not found Christianity.

The story of Jesus which lies before us in the Gospels is in reality only the story of the way in which the picture of Christ arose, that is to say, the story of the growth of the Christian community.

There is therefore no problem of the life of Jesus, but only a problem of the Christ.

Kalthoff has not indeed always been so negative.

When in the year 1880 he gave a series of lectures on the Life of Jesus he felt himself justified "in taking as his basis without further argument the generally accepted results of modern theology."

Afterwards he became so completely doubtful about the Christ after the flesh whom he had at that time depicted before his hearers that he wished to exclude Him even from the register of theological literature, and omitted to enter these lectures in the list of his writings, although they had appeared in print. (315n2)

315n2) Das Leben Jesu. Lectures delivered before the Protestant Reform Society at Berlin. Berlin, 1880. 173 pp.

His quarrel with the historical Jesus of modern theology was that he could find no connecting link between the life of Jesus constructed by the latter and primitive Christianity.

Modern theology, he remarks in one passage, with great justice, finds itself obliged to assume, at the point where the history of the Church begins, "an immediate declension from and falsification of, a pure original principle," and that in so doing "it is deserting the recognised methods of historical science."

If then we cannot trace the path from its beginning onwards, we had better try to work backwards, endeavouring first to define in the theology of the primitive Church the values which we shall look to find again in the life of Jesus.

"Jesus," he says in one place, "has been made the receptacle into which every theologian pours his own ideas."

He rightly remarks that if we follow "the Christ" backwards from the Epistles and Gospels of the New Testament right to the apocalyptic vision of Daniel, we always find in Him superhuman traits alongside of the human.

"Never and nowhere," he insists, "is He that which critical theology has endeavoured to make out of Him, a purely natural man, an indivisible historical unit."

"The title of 'Christ' had been raised by the Messianic apocalyptic writings so completely into the sphere of the heroic that it had become impossible to apply it to a mere historical man."

Bruno Bauer had urged the same considerations upon the theology of his time, declaring it to be unthinkable that a man could have arisen among the Jews and declared "I am the Messiah."

But the unfortunate thing is that Kalthoff has not worked through Bruno Bauer's criticism, and does not appear to assume it as a basis, but remains standing half-way, instead of thinking the questions through to the end as that keen critic did.

According to Kalthoff it would appear that, year in year out, there was a constant succession of Messianic disturbances among the Jews and of crucified claimants of the Messiahship.

"There had been many a 'Christ,'" he says in one place, "before there was any question of a Jesus in connexion with this title."

How does Kalthoff know that?

If he had fairly considered and felt the force of Bruno Bauer's arguments, he would never have ventured on this assertion; he would have learned that it is not only historically unproved [that these royal claimants were claiming that they were the 'christ'], but intrinsically impossible.

But Kalthoff was in far too great a hurry to present to his readers a description of the growth of Christianity, and therewith of the picture of the Christ, to absorb thoroughly the criticism of his great predecessor.

He soon leads his reader away from the high road of criticism into a morass of speculation, in order to arrive by a short cut at Graeco-Roman primitive Christianity.

But the trouble is that while the guide walks [317] lightly and safely, the ordinary man, weighed down by the pressure of historical considerations, sinks to rise no more.

The conjectural argument which Kalthoff follows out is in itself acute, and forms a suitable pendent to Bauer's reconstruction of the course of events.

Bauer proposed to derive Christianity from the Graeco-Roman philosophy;

Kalthoff, recognising that the origin of popular Christianity constitutes the main question, takes as his starting-point the social movements of the time.

In the Roman Empire, so runs his argument, among the oppressed masses of the slaves and the populace, eruptive forces were concentrated under high tension.

A communistic movement arose, to which the influence of the Jewish element in the proletariat gave a Messianic-Apocalyptic colouring.

The Jewish synagogue influenced Roman social conditions so that "the crude social ferment at work in the Roman Empire amalgamated itself with the religious and philosophical forces of the time to form the new Christian social movement."

Early Christian writers had learned in the synagogue to construct "personifications." The whole Late-Jewish literature rests upon this principle [of constructing "personifications"].

Thus "the Christ" became the ideal hero of the Christian community, "from the socio-religious standpoint the figure of Christ is the sublimated religious expression for the sum of the social and ethical forces which were at work at a certain period."

The Lord's Supper was the memorial feast of this ideal hero.

"As the Christ to whose Parousia the community looks forward, this Hero-god of the community bears within Himself the capacity for expansion into the God of the universe, into the Christ of the Church, who is identical in essential nature with God the Father.

Thus the belief in the Christ brought the Messianic hope of the future into the minds of the masses, who had already a certain organisation, and by directing their thoughts towards the future it won all those who were sick of the past and despairing about the present."

The death and resurrection of Jesus represent experiences of the community.

"For a Jew crucified under Pontius Pilate there was certainly no resurrection. All that is possible is a vague hypothesis of a vision lacking all historical reality, or an escape into the vaguenesses of theological phraseology.

But for the Christian community the resurrection was something real, a matter of fact. For the community as such was not annihilated in that persecution: it drew from it, rather, new strength and life."

But what about the foundations of this imposing structure?

For what he has to tell us about the condition of the Roman Empire and the social organisation of the proletariat in the time of Trajan - [318] for it was then that the Church first came out into the light - we may leave the responsibility with Kalthoff.

But we must inquire more closely how he brings the Jewish apocalyptic into contact with the Roman proletariat.

Communism, he says, was common to both. It was the bond which united the apocalyptic "other-worldliness" with reality.

The only difficulty is that Kalthoff omits to produce any proof out of the Jewish apocalypses that communism was "the fundamental economic idea of the apocalyptic writers."

He operates from the first with a special preparation of apocalyptic thought, of a socialistic or Hellenistic character.

Messianism is supposed to have taken its rise from the Deuteronomic reform as "a social theory which strives to realise itself in practice."

The apocalyptic of Daniel arose, according to him, under Platonic influence.

"The figure of the Messiah thus became a human figure; it lost its specifically Jewish traits."
He is the heavenly prototypal ideal man.
Along with this thought, and similarly derived from Plato, the conception of immortality makes its appearance in apocalyptic. (318n1)

318n1) If Kalthoff would only have spoken of the conception of resurrection instead of the conception of immortality! Then his subjective knowledge would have been more or less tolerable.

This Platonic apocalyptic never had any existence, or at least, to speak with the utmost possible caution, its existence must not be asserted in the absence of all proof.

But, supposing it were admitted that Jewish apocalyptic had some affinity for the Hellenic world, that it was Platonic and communistic, how are we to explain the fact that the Gospels, which describe the genesis of Christ and Christianity, imply a Galilaean and not a Roman environment?

As a matter of fact, Kalthoff says, they do imply a Roman environment. The scene of the Gospel history is laid in Palestine, but it is drawn in Rome.

The agrarian conditions implied in the narratives and parables are Roman.
A vineyard with a wine-press of its own could only be found, according to Kalthoff, on the large Roman estates.

So, too, the legal conditions.
The right of the creditor to sell the debtor, with his wife and children, is a feature of Roman, not of Jewish law.

Peter everywhere symbolises the Church at Rome.

• The confession of Peter had to be transferred to Caesarea Philippi because this town, "as the seat of the Roman administration," symbolised for Palestine the political presence of Rome..."

• The woman with the issue was perhaps Poppaea Sabina, the wife of Nero, "who in view of her strong leaning towards Judaism might well be described in the symbolical style of the apocalyptic writings as the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' garment."

• [319] The story of the unfaithful steward alludes to Pope Callixtus, who, when the slave of a Christian in high position, was condemned to the mines for the crime of embezzlement;

• that of the woman who was a sinner refers to Marcia, the powerful mistress of Commodus, at whose intercession Callixtus was released, to be advanced soon afterwards to the bishopric of Rome.

"These two narratives, therefore," Kalthoff suggests, "which very clearly allude to events well known at that time, and doubtless much discussed in the Christian community, were admitted into the Gospel to express the views of the Church regarding the life-story of a Roman bishop which had run its course under the eyes of the community, and thereby to give to the events themselves the Church's sanction and interpretation."

Kalthoff does not, unfortunately, mention whether this is a case of simple, ingenuous, or of conscious, didactic, Early Christian imagination.

That kind of criticism is a casting out of Satan by the aid of Beelzebub.

If he was going to invent on this scale, Kalthoff need not have found any difficulty in accepting the figure of Jesus evolved by modern theology.

One feels annoyed with him because, while his thesis is ingenious, and, as against "modern theology" has a considerable measure of justification, he has worked it out in so uninteresting a fashion.

He has no one but himself to blame for the fact that instead of leading to the right explanation, it only introduced a wearisome and unproductive controversy. (319n1)

319n1) Against Kalthoff: Wilhelm Bousset, Was wissen wir von Jesus? (What do we know about Jesus?) Lectures delivered before the Protestantenverein at Bremen. alle, 1904. 73 pp.

In reply: Albert Kalthoff, Was wissen wir von Jesus? [Eine Abrechnung mit Prof. Bousset] [What do we know about Jesus]?A settlement of accounts with Professor Bousset. Berlin, 1904. 43 pp.

A sound historical position is set forth in the clear and trenchant lecture of W. Kapp, Das Christus- und Christentumsproblent bei Kalthoff. (The problem of the Christ and of Christianity as handled by Kalthoff.) Strassburg, 1905. 23 pp.

In the end there remains scarcely a shade of distinction between Kalthoff and his opponents.

They want to bring their "historical Jesus" into the midst of our time. He wants to do the same with his "Christ."

"A secularised Christ," he says, "as the type of the self-determined man who amid strife and suffering carries through victoriously, and fully realises, His own personality in order to give the infinite fullness of love which He bears within Himself as a blessing to mankind - a Christ such as that can awaken to new life the antique Christ-type of the Church.

He is no longer the Christ of the scholar, of the abstract theological thinker with his scholastic rules and methods.

He is the people's Christ, the Christ of the ordinary man, the figure in which all those powers of the human soul which are most natural and simple-and therefore most [320] exalted and divine-find an expression at once sensible and spiritual."

But that is precisely the description of the Jesus of modern historical theology; why, then, make this long roundabout through scepticism?

The Christ of Kalthoff is nothing else than the Jesus of those whom he combats in such a lofty fashion; the only difference is that he draws his figure of Christ in red ink on blotting-paper, and because it is red in colour and smudgy in outline, wants to make out that it is something new.

1b) Albert Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus (New English translation, ©2001, based on 2nd German edition of 1913, which includes an additional chapter covering 1907-1912):

[445] K. Kautsky's life of Jesus (445n14) requires only a brief mention.

445n14) Karl J. Kautsky, Der Ursprung de Christentums [The Origin of Christianity], Stuttgart 1908, 508pp. Kautsky, born in Prague in 1854, lives in Berlin as a socialist writer and is editor of Neue Zeit.

It undertakes to correct Kalthoff's theory. (445n15)

445n15) For Albert Kalthoff, see pp. 279-283 [pp. 315-320 of 1910 English edition].

Instead of making the communist movement from which Christianity is supposed to have arisen take place in Italy, Kautsky shifts its location to Palestine.

This enables him to do more justice than his Bremen predecessor [Kalthoff] to the broad outlines of the evangelists' thought and to retain the historicity of Jesus.

He believes Jesus to be the leader of a band of men and a revolutionary pretender to messiahship, who was seized and crucified by the Romans. (445n16)

The reason he is depicted in the Gospels as an apolitical religious preacher and sufferer is because, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the [446] community movement abandoned its revolutionary character and organized itself into a great religious community.

445n16) Hans Windisch, in his Das messianische Kreig und das Urchristentum, Tübingen 1909, 95 pp., a lecture, demonstrates that Jesus had nothing to do with a warlike messiahship. Hans Windisch, who was born in Liepzig in 1881, lectures in theology there.

See also Gerald D. Heuver, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning Wealth, Chicago 1903, 208 pp. In his thorough philosophical doctoral thesis, Heuver demonstrates that Jesus did not defend any economic system and was not a socialist revolutionary.

2) Albert Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (First editions of both German original and English translation appeared in 1912):

A footnote appears in the chapter entitled BAUER REDIVIVUS

123n1) A[nother] Spiritual descendant of Bauer's who writes on popular lines is Albert Kalthoff (Die Entstehung des Christentums, 1904, 155 pp. [E.T. The Rise of Christianity, 1907]). But neither as regards the problem nor its solution has he contributed anything to Pauline scholarship.


The Denial of the Historicity of Jesus in Past and Present by Arthur Drews (1865-1935), Karlsruhe, 1926
http://www.egodeath.com/drewshistorymythiconlyjesus.htm

This is Klaus Schilling's summary in English of Arthur Drews' article "Die Leugnung der Geschichtlichkeit Jesu in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart", on the history of the denial of the historicity of Jesus, at http://www.radikalkritik.de/leugnung.htm at Radikal Kritik. Edited, formatted, and uploaded with Schilling's permission by Michael Hoffman.

Albert Kalthoff

A. Kalthoff countered the liberal-critical Christology thoroughly around 1900. He's been a part of that movement himself, but was finally dissatisfied with its methods and results, as it drove especially Protestant theology into a dead end. If taken seriously, it revealed an average nice Jewish guy of 1900 years ago; how would he have been the reason for a new religion? And it took theology almost 2 millennia to realize this, so there were many centuries wasted for virtually nothing. And if it was really a messianic prophet, it must have been a psychopath, and the church he founded was the catholic one.

No one yet dared to explain Christianity in a dialectically materialistic manner. This was applied to Judaism, but Christianity was still assumed as the one and only big exception, founded by a Great personality. Kalthoff decided to sweep away this arrogant attitude. Christianity must be explainable from the economical, political, and social circumstances of the region and time period where it started. The attempt to delete away all the supernatural elements led to a Jesus without anything at all that justified seeing him as the beginning of a new religion; whether one starts with John's gospel or with the synoptics didn't even matter.

According to liberal-critical theology, the resurrection tale would be the result of pathetic messianic enthusiasm, and with this main Gospel event being of psychotic origin, consequently Christianity would be nothing but a psychosis. Kalthoff also figured that the New Testament is based on the early church, not the other way round, which would directly undermine the core preassumptions of Protestant theology.

The oldest Christian writings see Christ essentially as the transcendental principle of the community. The Gospels had been written not to tell about the life of any Jesus whatsoever, but to represent the Christ according to the community's dogmatics. The mood of the first Christians was doubtlessly an apocalyptic one, with expectation of the closing end of the world, and hence the coming of something new. The social reform of the apocalyptic Old Testament prophets has to be seen as central moment in the early Christian communities.

Kalthoff also discussed the possibility of Pilatus being a code for Plinius, the antichristian procurator of early second century. The figure of Peter as head of the Roman community forcefully suggests that the placement of the events was moved from somewhere else to Palestine. Many social circumstances described in the Gospels fit much better to Italy than to Palestine. After the suppression of Spartacus' slave rebellion, the social reformer forces were oppressed more and more, but could not be eliminated completely. This leads to a fertile ground for Jewish apocalyptic concepts of an end of the world as it is, and expectations for a better one. Christianity is the result of the concept of the power struggle from above versus below, a thoroughly socialist movement.

After giving many more details, Drews agrees with Kalthoff in his refutation of the liberal-critical school, but refutes many weak spots of his hypotheses. Plinius is surely a late forgery. The proscription under Trajan, just like that under Nero, is just pious martyr-history. Then slavery is justified in the New Testament, and was only frowned upon modern times.

The aims are spiritual, not material, even if worldly possessions are seen as corruption. Christian communism, where it appeared, has never been the result of economical, but of religious consideration. But after forgotten Bauer, it was Kalthoff who had reanimated criticism against the Historicity of Jesus in Germany, and he must be honored for that.

So, there you go.

DCH

Not this one:

[wiki]William Smith (Latter Day Saints)[/wiki]

This one:

William Benjamin Smith

William Benjamin Smith (1850–1934) was a professor of mathematics at Tulane University. In a series of books, beginning with Ecce Deus: The Pre-Christian Jesus, published in 1894, and ending with The Birth of the Gospel, published posthumously in 1954, Smith argued that the earliest Christian sources, particularly the Pauline epistles, stress Christ's divinity at the expense of any human personality, and that this would have been implausible, if there had been a human Jesus. Smith therefore argued that Christianity's origins lay in a pre-Christian Jesus cult—that is, a Jewish sect had worshipped a divine being Jesus in the centuries before the human Jesus was supposedly born.[1] Evidence for this cult was found in Hippolytus' mention of the Naassenes[2] and Epiphanius' report of a Nasarene sect that existed before Christ, as well as passages in Acts.[3] The seemingly historical details in the New Testament were built by the early Christian community around narratives of the pre-Christian Jesus.[4]

(And... if you keep reading, you might find a good reason not to idolize him...)

[Giuseppe]

I have read well the Part I of Ecce Deus, and I like very much the great logical ability of this scholar, that makes him the ''Richard Carrier'' of the past or something of like, regarding clarity.

There is not bullshit as astrotheology, first of all (I wonder that the term was even related to him).
Bruno Bauer cannot be the best Mythicist because he denies the authenticity of Paul, and deniers of Pauline epistles are the first to recognize very rightly that, with a genuine Paul, the mythicist case becomes really more strong.

Maybe only Couchoud MAY be better than William Smith, but Couchoud is very too much poetic in his being precursor of Markus Vinzent (Mcn as first Gospel in absolute). And personally I don't like his excessive love for Chiristian religion, à la Brodie.

I think that it is highly overstated to resume William Smith's view merely as ''Jesus = God'', since he seems to think again and again that it is not very significant the difference between a strict identity Jesus = God or only an approximation Jesus ~ God.

I like when he says that the few apparently historicist clues in the epistles are very much insignificant to make a real case against Mythicism. There is need of a real strong evidence to confute Mythicism.

I like when he argues that the original secrecy of the cult was a collateral effect of the Jesus-cult being really an anti-Pagan MONOTHEIST crusade. Once the ''deus'' Jesus was euhemerized, they became ready to proclaim openly that anti-Pagan crusade.

Dulcis in fundo, Smith was the first Mythicist to argue a celestial crucifixion of Jesus, according to a strict reading of 1 Corinthians 2:6-8.

[DCHindley]

I have read well the Part I of Ecce Deus, and I like very much the great logical ability of this scholar, that makes him the ''Richard Carrier'' of the past or something of like, regarding clarity.

There is not bullshit as astrotheology, first of all (I wonder that the term was even related to him).
...
I think that it is highly overstated to resume William Smith's view merely as ''Jesus = God'', since he seems to think again and again that it is not very significant the difference between a strict identity Jesus = God or only an approximation Jesus ~ God.

I like when he says that the few apparently historicist clues in the epistles are very much insignificant to make a real case against Mythicism. There is need of a real strong evidence to confute Mythicism.

I like when he argues that the original secrecy of the cult was a collateral effect of the Jesus-cult being really an anti-Pagan crusade. Once the ''deus'' Jesus was euhemerized, they became ready to proclaim openly that anti-Pagan crusade.

Dulcis in fundo, Smith was the first Mythicist to argue a celestial crucifixion of Jesus, according to a strict reading of 1 Corinthians 2:6-8.

I am not unfamiliar with William Benjamin Smith (it's best to put the "B" in there, as there was other notable "William Smith" who was as orthodox as you can get). Like I said, this was a topic of earlier discussions (it was on the old FRDB, so prior to December 2013).

Smith first published his theory in Der Vorchristliche Jesus (1906). I do not think there is an English Translation of this, and sorry to say I do not read German.

Then Arthur O. Lovejoy had a review published, "The Theory of a Pre-Christian Cult of Jesus," in The Monist (Vol. 18-4, Oct, 1908, 597-609)*. Lovejoy had summed up Smith's argument as follows:

What we know as primitive Christianity, Dr. Smith contends, was the product of a vast and slow syncretism. The more fundamental and distinctive elements in it were derived from Gnosticism of which movement, therefore, it was the child, and not, as has been supposed, the parent.

The Christian faith of the second century emerged, through certain processes of fusion and modification, out of the doctrines of quasi-Gnostic sects that flourished in Syria at least a generation before the Christian era.

The name of its reputed founder, Jesus Nazoraeus, was originally that of a divine being or Aeon reverenced by the sect of the Naassenes, - and probably by others.

The semi-human figure who is the hero of the Synoptic Gospels was evolved (chiefly as the result of the partial transformation of this Gnostic theosophy through its merging with Jewish Messianism) out of the celestial object of this primitive Jesus-cult.

The resurrection-belief originated in a sort of etymological myth, due to the ambiguity of such words as anistimi, anastasis, egeirw; the doctrine of 'the raising-up of the Christ' at first related, not to the reappearance of a body once entombed, but to the divine legation and the final triumph of the heaven-descended Messiah.

William B. Smith responded with an editorial, "Professor Lovejoy on 'Der Vorchristliche Jesus'." (The Monist, Vol 19-3, Jul 1909, 409-420)**, in which he said:

[409] The following reply to Professor Lovejoy's criticism was promised in a footnote for the January number of The Monist and was in fact written out in full nearly two weeks before October 29, 1908, when I sailed for Chile. But as the protracted absence from the United States that followed rendered it quite impossible either to give the paper final revision or for me to see the proofs, if it should be issued in January, it seemed best to hold it back for the present number. The occasion for any rejoinder whatever is supplied not by the argumentative appeal of the review, which may be safely left to the judgment of readers of the book, but by its strictures upon the author's treatment of authorities, especially of Hippolytus.

Imprimis, let me thank Professor Lovejoy for the general manner of his review. While not exposing fully the argumentative nerve of the work in hand, he seems really to have intended to get at the heart of the matter, and his statement of the main drift of the essays calls for acknowledgement. Moreover, he has not shrunk [410] from making certain concessions, which seem to be far-reaching, however restricted they may have been in the purpose of the Reviewer.

I. It is particularly in dealing with Hippolytus that Professor Lovejoy's criticism calls for comment. He has, in fact, in terms doubtless meant to be as delicate as possible, charged upon me unfairness in citation. He quotes from p. 123 that Hippolytus "declares repeatedly that the Naassenes were the first of the heretical sects, from whom all the others afterwards known as Gnostics derived (Ref. V. 6, 10, 11)." "We may quite definitely conclude, therefore, in agreement with Hippolytus, that Naassenism was antecedent to Christianity, that it flourished before the Cross was preached, and that the later forms of Gnosticism were its offspring" (p. 124).

To these sentences, thinks Professor Lovejoy, the readers of Hippolytus will "revert with some astonishment." First, he denies that H. in the "passages cited makes any such statement as that ascribed to him, about the descent of all other Gnostic doctrines from Naassenism"; secondly, he declares that "H. in plain terms describes the Naassenes as Christians. They are classified as a "heresy"; they taught that the archetypal Man "descended in one man, Jesus, who was born of Mary" (V, 6); they traced their doctrine "through Mariamne to James, the brother of the Lord" which, of course, shows them not only Christian but also, at earliest, of the first or second generation after the Apostles. Dr. Smith's omission to mention any of these statements of H., and his citing of that authority as a witness in favor of a view of the date of the Naassenes which the very same chapters of the Refutatio categorically contradict this is a thing so amazing that it is difficult to comment upon it with propriety."

In a word, the gravamen of his charge is that the [present] author has suppressed statements of H. that show precisely the opposite of what the author ascribes to H.

Let us see. It may not be necessary to weary the reader with citation, but in any case the matter is too serious to pass over lightly. Does H. declare repeatedly that the Naasseni were the first Gnostics?

Book V of the Refutatio opens thus: "The following are the contents of the fifth book of the Refutation of all Heresies: What the assertions are of the Naasseni who style themselves Gnostics." It is not here said of the following Peratae, Sethians, Justinians, that they called themselves Gnostics, but only of the [411] Naasseni.

To my mind there is here a general identification of Naassenes and Gnostics, stated almost as clearly as Hippolytus states anything. Again H. proposes here (and the sentiment is repeated in VI, 6 and X, 9), "to begin from those that have dared to celebrate a serpent, the author of the error (ton aiton ths planhs genomenon ofin umnein) . . . .The priests then and champions of the system (dogmatos) have been first those surnamed Naasseni (prwtoi oi epiklhqentes Naasshnoi), in the Hebrew tongue so named for the serpent (o ofis) is called Naas"

The decisive adjective first is seemingly unobserved by Professor Lovejoy,* who remarks queerly that the phrase "afterwards called themselves Gnostics" "does not imply that they were the only or the first heretics who did so."

Apparently in eagerness to convict the author of misstatement, Professor Lovejoy seems to overlook logical pitfalls. If the Naassenes were not the first Gnostics, then the latter must be even older than the author maintains, which would strengthen the general position of his book perceptibly.

These Naassenes who called themselves Gnostics were the first in championship of the dogma (Gnosticism). If this does not mean that they were the first Gnostics, what does it mean? And if they were not the first, who pray were the first? And who were the others, if they were not the only?

H. continues: "Afterwards they surnamed themselves Gnostics, declaring they alone knew the depths." There is no hint that they took the name Gnostics from any others; they surnamed themselves so for a specific reason: they nicknamed themselves Knowers, because they alone did know.

The only fair understanding of such words is that the surname Gnostics originated with these Naassenes; in the absence of any counter-indication, we must affirm as much.

H. proceeds: "From whom many having parted off multifariously constituted the heresy, though essentially one, in different dogmas detailing the same things, as the discussion as it advances shall prove."

From this passage, in connection with others similar, I have inferred that H. would represent the Naassenes, surnamed Gnostics, as the first Gnostics, from whom all other Gnostics sprung, the heresy having parted into many subdivisions. Is not the inference fair?

Professor Lovejoy holds that it refers "merely to the diverse subdivisions of the Ophite Sect." But Ophite Sect means Ophites, and this is merely the Greek for Naassenes (ofis = naas , says H.), and this was the earlier name for such as "surnamed [412] themselves Gnostics."

That my interpretation was not forced, but perfectly natural, is made clear by the remark of Dr. Salmond in a footnote to his translation of H.: "gnwsis, - a term often alluded to by St. John, and which gives its name "Gnosticism" to the various forms of the Ophitic heresy." The position of the great English scholar, who certainly has no bias in favor of Der vorchristliche Jesus, seems to agree precisely with the position which Professor Lovejoy so criticises and yet seems to adopt as his own!

Further on (V, 8) H. designates these same Naassenes outright as "the Gnostics": "Following these and the like, the most marvelous Gnostics, inventors of a new grammatic art...."

Again, in quoting the Naassene Parable of the Sower: "That is, he says, none becomes a hearer of these mysteries except only the gnostici perfecti (oi gnwstikoi teleioi)."

Again, (V, 11): "These (the foregoing) doctrines, then, the Naasseni attempt to establish, naming themselves Gnostics. But since the error is many-headed and diversified, as in truth the hydra that history tells of, when at one blow, wielding the wand of truth, we have struck off the heads of this (heresy) by means of refutation, we shall exterminate the whole monster. For neither do the remaining heresies show off much different from this, being mutually connected in spirit of error. But since, altering the words and the names of the Serpent (ofis), they wished there to be many heads of the Serpent, neither so shall we fail to refute them as they will."

So closes H. his 38-page long treatment of the Naasseni. The extreme length of this treatment, greater than is given any other single heresy, shows clearly their decisive importance in his eyes. Playing on the terms Naas and Ophis, he likens this Naassenism (Ophism) to a Hydra, he seems to identify it with Gnosticism, he thinks that in beheading it he has beheaded all heresies, since the rest (ai loipai) are held together (with it) in spirit of error; he does not regard the rest as really worth while; nevertheless (all'), since they are heads of the same Serpent (that is, outgrowths of the same Naassenism Ophism), he will smite them also one by one, and this he straightway proceeds to do in the remainder of his work. If not then quite as plain as day, it is at least as plain as anything in the Refutatio, that H. regards his task as in principle fulfilled with the slaughter of the Hydra or Serpent of Naassenism; but to make assurance double sure he will thrice slay the slain, he will smite to death through his following pages every form of the many headed monster. The simile is faulty, but the meaning is clear.

[413] Manifestly H. must and does regard these "remaining heresies" as second in importance and still more in time. The multifission of the Hydra must follow and could not precede the Hydra itself. It is evident beyond argument that H. regards these "other heresies" as later and as offshoots of primitive Naassenism. He does not indeed say "all other heresies," but he does say "the remaining heresies." The meaning is the same. H. is speaking of a class of things, and a single class, and the "all" was not necessary. He was not careful to guard against quibbling that he could not anticipate.

This use of the article in a universal sense is regular in Greek. Euclid does not say "All parallelograms on equal bases and between the same parallels are equal to one another" but "the parallelograms" (ta parallhlogramma); so in the famous 47th it is not "in all" but "In the right-angled triangles" (en tois orq. trig.)

The case is not different in English; says the master logician, W. Stanley Jevons (Elementary Lessons in Logic, p. 65) "I shall frequently use propositions in the indefinite form as examples, on the understanding that where no sign of quantity appears, the universal quantity is to be assumed. It is probable that wherever a term is used alone, it ought be interpreted as meaning the whole of its class."

Such is plainly the necessary interpretation here; for if not all forms of Gnosticism be derived from this primitive (in H.'s estimation), then he must have supposed some other independent primitive. But is there the slightest shred of evidence that he ever assumed two original sources of Gnosticism? Or that there ever was any other than the one Ophitic source?

Entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitate. This razor of Occam shears off any other stem until its necessity is proved, and no proof has ever been attempted. What form of Gnosticism was there that could not be traced back to Naassenism, in H.'s conception? What Dr. Salmond thought of the matter appears clearly in the heading he has given to this chapter VI: "The Ophites the Grand Source of Heresy," and again to chapter I, Book VI: "The Ophites the Progenitors of Subsequent Heresies."

I should here remark that in my original thought only the first part of Professor Lovejoy's quotation, was intended as a declaration of H., "That the Naassenes were the first of the heretical sects"; the following clause, "from whom etc. derived," was intended merely as my own inference gathering up the diffuse and disconnected deliverances of H. into a single statement.

The reader now has the facts sufficiently presented, and in view of them I maintain with added emphasis that the natural and hardly avoidable inference from [414] the words of H. is that he regarded all "the other heresies" or forms of Gnosticism as diversifications of primitive Naassenism. Possibly the language of the text may sound a little dogmatic, but the explanation is easy to find, by glancing at the opposite page, 122, where it is stated that unfortunately it was not possible to go into details at that point, but that only the general lines of the argument could be laid down.

In fact, the detailed treatment of the whole testimony of H. has for some years lain in my desk in manuscript, waiting upon a similar treatment of Irenaeus, not yet completed, the two to be published together.[***] Pages 122-4 merely resumed under heads A, B, C, D in briefest terms some main results of that study. But even as it stands there is naught to retract. The statement of the text is borne out by comparison of all the pertinent passages in H.

Of itself the criticism of Professor Lovejoy may not seem to call for so much attention; but it may be properly used as an occasion to set an important matter in clearer relief.

However, it is not this quotation that most moves the amazement of Professor Lovejoy, not to say his virtuous indignation. It is the alleged suppression of the alleged counter-testimony of H., that the Naassenes were at the earliest post-apostolic. Now if the pages in question had professed to give full discussion of the matter, this "omission" might justly have excited more than marvel. In fact, however, they profess no such thing; they give intentionally no discussion at all but merely state certain results to which the writer had been led by a minute study, yet unpublished. Now these results were all that the pages professed to state; the minute investigation is a large part of a volume yet in manuscript. In that volume the reader will find a discussion of the passages referred to by Professor Lovejoy a discussion almost painfully minute. The results stated on page 123 are not in the least affected by the passages in question. They hold firmly in spite of those passages.

Such being the case, I felt and still feel myself justified in stating the results arrived at, without any mention of passages that do not really invalidate those results. In such a summary statement of conclusions it would be out of place to refer to objections that do not really hold. Their "omission" does not imply that such objections can not be made, but only that in the opinion of the writer they can be satisfactorily answered. In the present case the passages were not quoted, because they appeared trivial. My critic may hold that so far from being trivial they are weighty and even decisive. The reader may judge.

Professor Lovejoy says: "H. in plain terms [415] describes the Naassenes as Christians." He does indeed quote a Naassene writer as saying: "And of all men we Christians alone are those who in the third gate celebrate the mystery etc." (V, 9). But what of it? When the Naassenes assumed this name is not said, not hinted, neither do we know how old is the name itself. It may very well be pre-Christian.

There is in fact a double reference in the word Christian, to which I had never supposed it would be necessary to advert, namely a chronological and a dogmatic reference. Chronologically Christian refers definitely to the year I of our era and later; before the beginning of that year, everything was pre-Christian.

Dogmatically it refers to the general thought content of the propaganda that has spread over Europe and America. This Christian content, I contend, was in large measure pre-Christian in time. The Naassenes might have called themselves Christians before A. D. 1, though I by no means affirm that they did so. "Christians" (i. e., Christ-servants) may have been one of their later names.

Professor Lovejoy continues: "They [Naassenes] are classified as a 'heresy.' " This has no significance, no evidential value. "Heresy" simply meant sect, school, set of philosophic or religious principles, and there is no reason for supposing that heterodoxy must be later than orthodoxy. In my judgment the heresies were not in general deviations from existent orthodoxy; on the contrary, they were more ancient forms of faith, which orthodoxy had outgrown and left behind; just as errors in syntax and pronunciation are very often only elder correct forms of speech, which the language has at last rejected.

[Continued in part 2 to follow]
===
[Part 2 of W B Smith, "Professor Lovejoy on Der Vorchristliche Jesus." The Monist, Vol 19-3, Jul 1909, from page 415]:

Professor Lovejoy again: "They traced their doctrine "through Mariamne to James, the brother of the Lord" which of course, shows them not only Christian but also at earliest of the first or second generation after the Apostles." "H. plainly and consistently describes them as a late first-century or second-century school." Indeed! So then they were at earliest near the beginning of the second century!

It is hard not to smile at the naivete{/I] of these deliverances. Of Mariamne we know little or nought. Origen indeed speaks of the followers of this shadowy character as mentioned by Celsus, but himself had met none of them (C. C. V. 62).

But "James, the brother of the Lord"! Here Professor Lovejoy assumes the whole point in controversy. If James was really the flesh-and-blood "brother of the Lord" (i. e., of Jesus), then the book reviewed was not worth reviewing. But can it be that any one really attaches [416] weight to this expression, even when strengthened by the prefix "twin"?

Least of all men does Professor Lovejoy need to be taught about kinship in the Orient. Who can forget the answer of this same "Jesus" to the question "Who are my brethren"? How "looking round on them which sat round about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." It would be hard to imagine a passage more thoroughly in accord with the contentions of the work reviewed. In Matt, xxviii. 10 the same Jesus says "Fear not; go, announce to my brothers." And in John xx. 17 "Go to my brothers and say to them," clearly meaning disciples. Jerome understood the matter better, for he says, commenting on Gal. i. 19, "James was called the brother of the Lord because of his great character, his incomparable faith, and his extraordinary wisdom." The Epistle attributed to James shows not the faintest trace of blood kinship with Jesus, in fact nowhere suggests the New Testament story, but expounds solely the philosophical morality of the Dispersion. As well might one think of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius as of its author as consanguineous with Jesus. The phrase "Brothers of the Lord" seems to be merely one of a score of names borne by groups of early propagandists.

As such a class name it appears in i Cor. ix. 5, "The Apostles and the Brethren of the Lord and Kephas." We need not then "strike out" anything "from Hippolytus's text"; these "numerous passages" are not "unfavorable to the theory of a pre-Christian Jesus." But even if they were, what would it signify? Simply that H. himself did not embrace that theory, that he occupied the modern standpoint of Professor Lovejoy. And doubtless he did. Like Epiphanius and all the heresiographers he was an Old Catholic and held fast to the view established against the "heretics" in the second century and prevalent to-day. Even had he explicitly declared the Naassenes were post-Christian in origin, it would not matter; for he would merely have been expressing what must have been his faith, whether with or without evidence, whether consistent or inconsistent with acknowledged facts.

The truth is, all the heresiologues are special pleaders. They had to make out a certain case against the "heresies"; they had to postdate them, in order to uphold their dogmas. It made no difference that unmanageable facts embarrassed their faith; the more intractable the fact, the more steadfast their faith; with Tertullian they cried out, "I believe it, because it is impossible." Hence the deliberate statements of these excellent men regarding heresiarchs and [417] their dates count but for very little, being divided by such a large factor of prejudice.

All the more heavy do their unthoughted statements fall into the scale. Their unmeditated words are also unmedicated. It is these we are to heed most closely, from these we must draw out the implications of which the authors were unconscious. It was Thenius (I believe) who shrewdly said of a datum given by Josephus: "This statement appears to have been made incautiously; we may therefore accept it as correct."

Professor Lovejoy smiles at "the humorous idea of a conspiracy of silence about the Nasaraioi"; but why should such a conspiracy be more unlikely in the third century than in the twentieth? It would imply only a general motive operating on the writers: a bewilderment as to how to deal with these ancients, a bewilderment manifest enough among moderns also.

Now let us see how the whole representation of H. impresses a competent English specialist certainly orthodox enough to please Professor Lovejoy. Speaking of Hippolytus on Justinus, Dr. Salmond says: "What H. here states respecting Justinus is quite new. No mention occurs of this heretic in ecclesiastical history. It is evident, however, that, like Simon Magus, he was contemporary with St. Peter and St. Paul [an elder contemporary according to Acts viii. 9, W. B. S.] Justinus, however, and the Ophitic sect to which he belonged, are assigned by H. and Irenaeus a prior position as regards the order of their appearance to the system of Simon, or its offshoot Valentinianism. The Ophites engrafted Phrygian Judaism, and the Valentinians' Gentilism, upon Christianity; the former not rejecting the speculations and mysteries of Asiatic paganism, and the latter availing themselves of the cabbalistic corruptions of Judaism.

The Judaistic element soon became prominent in successive phases of Valentinianism, which produced a fusion of the sects of the old Gnostics and of Simon. Hippolytus, however, now places the Ophitic sect before us prior to its amalgamation with Valentinianism. Here, for the first time, we have an authentic delineation of the primitive Ophites. This is of great value."

We need not accept all that Dr. Salmond here says. Some of his constructions may be faulty; the important fact is that he states unequivocally that Justinus was contemporary with St. Peter and St. Paul, and that Hippolytus and Irenaeus assign him a "position prior to the system of Simon," himself prior to the preaching of Peter (Acts viii. 9). Here then Dr. Salmond ranges himself squarely against Professor L. in the matter under debate.

What Dr. Salmond [418] neglects to state is that H. writing of Justinus declares that "all these style themselves Gnostics in the peculiar sense that they alone have drunk down the marvelous Gnosis of the Perfect and the Good." Here then was a Gnostic prior (according to H.) to Simon Magus (who was at the latest contemporary with Sts. Peter and Paul), hence in the first half of the first century; moreover he was an Ophite, a Gnostic, full-fledged.

Moreover he is placed by this same H. after the Sethians, and these after the Peratae, and all these after the Naassenes, the Ophites proper, the first who surnamed themselves Gnostics. These latter facts are no less important, indeed far more important, than the ones that Dr. Salmond emphasizes, which by themselves are enough to upset Professor Lovejoy's contention completely.

If then I am at all capable of comprehending chronological combinations, I must hold unshaken the positions of Der vorchristliche Jesus with regard to H. It should be added that the chronological order given by H. is fully confirmed by analysis of the various doctrines, that of the Naasseni showing itself to be obviously the most primitive. No one, however, would insist upon the particular order of the middle terms, Peratae, Sethians, Justinians, who may well have been nearly contemporary.

II. With regard to the testimony of Epiphanius it seems sufficient merely to refer to the passages quoted in full in Der vorchristliche Jesus, as a correction of the representations of the review. The reader may judge for himself. So far as the general opinion of reviews would seem to go, there is but one escape from the conclusions of the text: to deny outright that Epiphanius knew what he was talking about. The desperation of this last resort needs no comment.

III. With regard to avisthmi and avastasis Professor Lovejoy is at pains to show that the former is used classically to mean "restore to life."

"Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way."
[To an Insect, by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1831]

The same is distinctly recognized in Der vorchristliche Jesus. The passages referred to by Professor Lovejoy (I. 24, 550-551), Agam. 1361, Electra, 139) were not mentioned, nor Eur. H. F. 719, more apposite though uncited by Steph. or L. and S., because the discussion was not about anisthmi but about anastasis. It was not questioned that "raise up" might be applied to the dead, indeed such an occasional use seems almost inevitable; not quite so, however, [419] the use of "raising up" as the technical term for resurrection from the dead, though this sense was also admitted as "perhaps known from the earliest times."

In fact the actuality of the double use was well-nigh essential to the argument of the text. The verses, Is. xxvi. 14 and Job. xiv. 12, mentioned "as pertinent passages our author likewise neglects to quote," are caught by Professor Lovejoy in a net as fine-meshed as a Pasteur filter. "Dead, they shall not live; shades, they shall not rise" (Is. xxvi. 14): "So man lieth down and riseth not" (Job xiv. 12). Such a use of the Kal future of qum in the commonest sense of rise up was surely not under consideration. That the rising is from the couch of death, is given only by the context. The passages have no logical pertinence. If such must be cited, what can be omitted?

Professor Lovejoy thinks the linguistic argument wholly without valuable results, in striking contrast with a pre-eminent Biblical scholar in England, who declares that "though exceptions may be taken to some details of the argument, a prima facie case is certainly made out." Perhaps it may be well to recall the logical movement, which can hardly be detected in Professor Lovejoy's comments.

The reader will find the situation summed up on pp. 81-82: The preachers in Acts use uniformly terms that might indeed mean resurrection (from the dead), but to their hearers at least meant much more naturally and familiarly quite another thing, namely, establishment.

They spoke in the same breath of "raising up David" and "raising up Jesus." It would be strange if under the supposed conditions they indulged in an unnecessary pun. They also certainly spoke of this "raising up of Jesus" (Acts iii. 22, 26; xiii. 33) in the sense of establishment; strange that they should also use it then originally in a sense entirely different. Also the text criticism shows that the phrase "from the dead" is in many cases loose and uncertain and bears strong internal marks of being an insertion.

But this linguistic argument does not stand alone. It is confirmed by the second half of the essay, which even critics who reject the first half find very significant. The argument must be judged as a unit. In fact, the whole argument of the book is cumulative. It must be answered, if at all, in its entirety, not merely in this or that detail.

IV. The case of Apollos has proved a veritable crux to the critics of Der vorchristliche Jesus. Nearly every one adventures a solution of the difficulty, no two the same solution, and no solution at all acceptable. Loisy, in reviewing Der vorchristliche Jesus, [420] concedes the inadequacy of all solutions and admits (il faut admettre) that the primitive preaching must have taken place under forms more various and conditions more complicated than hitherto supposed. This concession seems to me to go very far, much beyond what Loisy intended. Clemen takes the bull by the horns, frankly declaring that the author of Acts must have erred. Soltau admits that the reference ta peri tou Ihsou must be to the cult (Religionsanschauung) and not to the historic content of the life of Jesus. Into this list of warring explanations Professor Lovejoy's may enter with the rest. To my mind it goes far aside into irrelevant matters, leaving the knot of the difficulty untouched. It is at best what a chemist might call a 2% solution.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that the argument of the book cannot be judged save by the laws of cumulative evidence. It is the whole body of facts adduced that must be adjusted into some self consistent scheme of interpretation. We must restore in thought the unity and coherence that undoubtedly bound them together originally.

Nor let any one imagine, as does Professor Lovejoy apparently, that practically the whole body of evidence thus far accumulated or at least the most important elements have been presented in Der vorchristliche Jesus. That work was in fact a reconnoissance in force. The mass of evidential matter already gathered is three or four times as great and in my judgment has independently even greater demonstrative power. Of course, the examination is not yet complete; in the nature of the case it cannot be completed, but it seems to have gone far enough even now to indicate clearly that (to quote a distinguished British scholar and philosopher) this new "conception of the Origines of Christianity is in the main on right lines."

WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH.
TULANE UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS.

* But not by Mansel, e. g., who repeatedly speaks of these sectaries as "first," "earliest Gnostics." "The Naassenes, the earliest sect according to the arrangement of H., are spoken of by him as the first body who assumed the name of Gnostics" (Gnostic Heresies, 7, 95, 104).

It seems to me that both Bruno Bauer and Wm B. Smith saw Christian dogma crystalizing from ideas current in the cultures of its times, but Bauer wrote his work that rejected any possibility that Jesus Christ was a real person, Christus und die Caesaren (Christ and the Caesars), in 1877. Smith introduced his explanation in Der Vorchristliche Jesus (1906) and followed up with Ecce Deus - Studies of Primitive Christianity (1913). So, the "earliest" modern mythicist (is that an onxymoron?) was Bauer.

DCH

* [attachment=1](Lovejoy, Arthur O) The Theory of a Pre-Christian Cult of Jesus, (The Monist, Vol 18-4, Oct, 1908, 597-609, with FRDB markup).rtf[/attachment]
** [attachment=0](Smith, William Benjamin) Professor Lovejoy on Der Vorchristliche Jesus (The Monist, Vol 19-3, Jul 1909, 409-420).rtf[/attachment]
*** I think the work Smith was intending to publish in future was probably Ecce Deus.

[arnoldo]

I don't have doubts: he is William B. Smith.

The Emperor Julian: mic drop.

It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness. Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish, it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale is truth. Now since I intend to treat of all their first dogmas, as they call them, I wish to say in the first place that if my readers desire to try to refute me they must proceed as if they were in a court of law and not drag in irrelevant matter, or, as the saying is, bring counter-charges until they have defended their own views. For thus it will be better and clearer if, when they wish to censure any views of mine, they undertake that as a separate task, but when they are defending themselves against my censure, they bring no counter-charges.
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julia ... 1_text.htm