What Do Mythicists Want?

[Tenorikuma]

Yeah, I don't buy Eisenmann's conclusions, but I think there might be something to the connection between his title ("just") and the Teacher of Righteousness, the sons of Zadok, etc.

[Adam]

What about James Tabor and the Jesus Dynasty? http://jesusdynasty.com/
Sure makes it look like Jesus and company was real, or in this case all too real for conventional Christianity.

[Blood]

James, like John and Jesus before him, saw himself as a faithful Jew. None of them believed that their movement was a new religion. It was Paul who transformed Jesus and his message through his ministry to the gentiles, breaking with James and the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem, preaching a message based on his own revelations that would become Christianity. -- James Tabor

Interesting. Christians have actually been worshipping a liar named Paul for 2,000 years. Why this isn't bigger news, I don't know.

That would be a good title for the next historical Jesus book: A Liar Named Paul.

[Peter Kirby]

That might have been Hyam Maccoby's basic approach in "The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity" (1987).

[Rick Sumner]

The problem I have is that I agree with you.

Your statement on historicity-skepticism on your blog is brilliant, and I agree with that too.

I wish everyone had that problem. I don't run into it nearly enough! And thanks, that means a lot, even if my answer is wrong, the struggle with the question is sincere.

I'm not making an argument from authority. I just disagree with the way spin characterized the lay of the land in terms of opinion.

Gotcha. But if we allow for "spheres of influence," for wont of a better term, it does begin to shift more in a "spin"ward direction.

[Rick Sumner]

Let's start with Paul. Mythicism begins and ends with Paul and Paul...

Not for me it doesn't. In fact, I think Paul (in Gal.1.19) provides the only strong evidence against. I also think it doesn't matter. It's entirely possible that Paul is referring to an actual brother of an actual James who was actually the origin of the movement. I don't know, and because of that I'd probably be more an agnostic than a "true" mythicist. But insofar as our evidence allows, I'm a mythicist for virtually all intents and purposes, but that has nothing to do with Paul. That has to do with what I would consider to be valid historical evidence, and the absence of concrete overlap between our surviving material and known reality. All history is a story about the past, but not all stories about the past are history. I see no way to differentiate with our material.

Who the fuck would this make any sense to other than someone who was brought up in a Jewish culture.

Why on earth would people "brought up in a Jewish culture" need to debate circumcision or table-fellowship? You are dramatically overstating what our evidence tells us about the communities. The answer to your rhetorical question, however, are "god-fearers." Especially ones who had received preaching about table-fellowship and/or circumcision that was contrary to Paul's. It's also important to differentiate Paul's imagined opponents from his immediate audience. He isn't always addressing the people he's speaking directly to.

In my mind this severely curtails what is possible about Jesus the invented founder of Christianity. If he was a supernatural man he was a supernatural man compatible with or found in the Jewish scriptures.

There can be absolutely no doubt that a great deal of our surviving ostensible biography of Jesus is of a supernatural man compatible with or found in the Jewish scriptures. To suggest that there is a limit to how much of it can be so--that we have a line at 80% or 90% or 99% where we can go no further and demand a real story behind our story--that, to me, requires some explanation. Perhaps you could elaborate on where this line exists and why?

Now we are all very limited in terms of figuring out what sort of an invented man Jesus was. And I think most mythicists demonstrate their lack of scholarly interest by basically poking holes in the story of the historical Jesus. Ok, we get that Jesus wasn't who everyone says he was. Now get off your ass and come up with a plausible explanation for how this relatively large Jewish affiliated community of believers believed in a fictitious heavenly man. The problem is they can't do it because they are only this for the hate.

There is a fundamental problem with this. Suggesting, for example, that there is insufficient evidence for the historicity of Jesus does not require an alternative explanation. I'm content to say that I don't know--that, in fact, based on current evidence we can't know, and should therefore proceed with our material with a mythicist paradigm--after all, we know much of it is mythic, but we do not know if much of it is historical. I don't need to present an alternative for me to say the historicist is wrong. It is true to say that 2+2 does not equal five, whether I point out that it really equals four or not. It's wrong with or without the alternative.

[Blood]

It's the same old dilemma.

The disconnect between James Tabor's pro-Torah, Aramaic Palestinian origins in 30-50 and the utterly homogenized Greek NT documents a mere 70-100 years later is vast, vast enough to question whether there were any authentic Palestinian origins or a historic Jesus. It's hard to believe such a complete reversal of what the Jesus sect could have been would've transpired in such a short amount of time.

On the other hand, inventing a foundation myth around events that happened a mere 40-70 years earlier is unprecedented and insane. If you're going to just invent things, the smart thing to do is to project them back in time at least 300 years, like the author of Daniel.

[outhouse]

What about James Tabor and the Jesus Dynasty? http://jesusdynasty.com/
Sure makes it look like Jesus and company was real, or in this case all too real for conventional Christianity.

Tabor makes me puke


he oversteps his knowledge and over attributes much worse then what I would call typical scholars.

he sells sensationalism, not history