A mythicohistorical (hybrid) approach to Christian origins.

[Ben C. Smith]

I feel like the conversation is getting too hypothetical. What really matters to me is that the gospels hail from a point after which my proposed mythical Jesus Christ has already been superimposed upon my proposed historical Jesus. This is an attempt, at least in part, to negotiate the various kinds of materials in the gospels, especially in Mark, which range from portraying Jesus in a way that suggests he is just another sinner on his way to get baptized by John to portraying him as taking on the very prerogatives of Yahweh himself in stilling a storm and walking on water. The only uncontested text which survives and describes the historical Jesus himself, sans mythical overlay, is Josephus' description of those anonymous enchanters and thieves. The texts which survive from the mythical Jesus Christ, before the historical figure got integrated (at least in that local community), are numerous epistles (Pauline and others) and possibly other works (the Didache, for example). A comparison of those numerous epistles versus that single line in Josephus will tell you just how minimalistic this historical Jesus figure is compared to the maximalistic mythical figure.

Setting aside all questions of what might have occurred had such-and-such not happened, how do you feel about the overall arrangement as outlined above?

Ben, your overall scenario is indebted to George Wells.

Of course it is. It is also indebted to Couchoud and Price on the mythicist side, with valuable points of observation from Doherty and Carrier. On the historicist side there is a wider selection of influences, from the very traditional (Wright, Bauckham) to the rather nontraditional (Crossan).

[iskander]

...
While the gospel story is not a true story i.e. it has no historical reality, it does reflect the history that was relevant to the writers of that story. Consequently, the historical search is not a search for that gospel figure of Jesus - it is a search for the authors of that story and thereby attempting to discern their intent for their creative endeavor.

...
and thereby attempting to discern their intent for their creative endeavor.

The historical intent of the writings over 1000 years later.

A Protestant Allegory



https://www.royalcollection.org.uk/coll ... t-allegory

The names of the four evangelists are written clearly on the stones when the image is magnified

[iskander]

It was the same intent in the first century AD . Who or what was the target then?

[Giuseppe]

Ben, under your paradigm, how do you interpret the following passage in Mark 9:

38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is for us. 41 For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

Is this Mark's cooptation of Pauline legacy, or the reversal?

Was there a real point of contact between the followers of Paul and the followers of the historical figure (or only in the story)?

How much do you think that the fact that ''Mark'' is pauline makes him one who reduces - in a proportionally inverse sense - the need of the historical figure? (I see this as a great difficulty to accept for the paradigm, frankly).

I am not exactly seeing your difficulties in either case (your penultimate sentence is hard to follow), but I have honestly not made up my mind yet (A) on precisely how Pauline Mark is or (B) whether the "strange exorcist" is a stand-in for Paul.

I was seeing that the episode of the independent exorcist seems to be very expected on your paradigm as ''historical event'': a Paul who preached Jesus without really knowing him (!), from the point of view of the ''your'' (as follower of a previous historical figure) ''Mark''.
In this sense, that episode talks about a Mark who coopted Paul by reducing him to a mere anonymous follower of the earthly ''Jesus''.


But then other questions rise.
IF I read Mark by applying on it a more or less strong ''reductio ad Paulum'' (see Dykstra or Adamczewski as examples of this exegesis) - Mark as midrash from epistles, basically, and his Jesus as 90% mirror of Paul - this may reduce the (assumed) historical figure to a insignificant figure even if he is named ''Jesus Christ''. To the point that it is legitimate to ask: was ''Mark'' really his [of the historical figure] follower and not rather, before of all and after all, a follower of Paul in search for a stunt (or ''convenient database'') for his invented (euhemerized) hero?

[outhouse]

, which Josephus calls a fourth philosophy. I may have time to look it up later.

I have search every scrap of evidence on Zealots and there is very little to go except our Hellenistic lens knowing they are pious Galileans which starts with Judas the Galileans.

Did your search discover historical evidence for the Josephan figure of Judas the Galilean??

Why was Sepphoris factually leveled at the beginning of the first century?

I understand some question Josephus, but most do not because much matches what we know.

[Ben C. Smith]

I was seeing that the episode of the independent exorcist seems to be very expected on your paradigm as ''historical event'': a Paul who preached Jesus without really knowing him (!), from the point of view of the ''your'' (as follower of a previous historical figure) ''Mark''.
In this sense, that episode talks about a Mark who coopted Paul by reducing him to a mere anonymous follower of the earthly ''Jesus''.


But then other questions rise.
IF I read Mark by applying on it a more or less strong ''reductio ad Paulum'' (see Dykstra or Adamczewski as examples of this exegesis) - Mark as midrash from epistles, basically, and his Jesus as 90% mirror of Paul - this may reduce the (assumed) historical figure to a insignificant figure even if he is named ''Jesus Christ''. To the point that it is legitimate to ask: was ''Mark'' really his [of the historical figure] follower and not rather, before of all and after all, a follower of Paul in search for a stunt (or ''convenient database'') for his invented (euhemerized) hero?

I do not think that Mark was a direct follower of the historical Jesus; I just think that the figure Mark wrote about was (or was based on) an actual historical figure (overlaid by the mythical stuff). And I think you are once again importing many assumptions into your analysis that are either invisible or irrelevant to me. My paradigm makes no particular prediction about the strange exorcist; much less does it give any expectation of it as an historical event.

I am also fairly indifferent to your questions about Mark using the historical Jesus as a convenient database. If he did, so what? His story is still, on this hypothesis, the conflation of a mythical figure with an historical figure. It seems you are trying to press my idea for details that I do not have yet.

[outhouse]

I do not think that Mark was a direct follower of the historical Jesus; .

I think it was compiled by people far removed from his Galilean life, and it was only compiled because the way early Christians shared information changed with the fall of the temple.

No more return trips to Passover means they had to Proselytize differently and a need for textual traditions started.

To much historically wrong in mark to be from anyone half close to its origin, it reflects 70CE not before

[outhouse]

Everyone including most scholars forgets mark is the first textual means of Proselytizing. That we know about.

Pauline text was not really works of "good news" as much as direct response to early communities and did not proselytize the religion as a whole as trying to correct problems deemed not orthodox for Pauline communities.

[andrewcriddle]

It has always seemed clear to me that Paul believed that something predicted by Moses and the prophets (properly interpreted) had recently actually happened in the life death and resurrection of Christ. (It is not quite as clear to me where these events are supposed to have occurred). I don't find it plausible that Paul held that these events had already happened when Moses and the prophets wrote but were only now being revealed.

Andrew Criddle

[Ben C. Smith]

It has always seemed clear to me that Paul believed that something predicted by Moses and the prophets (properly interpreted) had recently actually happened in the life death and resurrection of Christ. (It is not quite as clear to me where these events are supposed to have occurred). I don't find it plausible that Paul held that these events had already happened when Moses and the prophets wrote but were only now being revealed.

My scheme has Paul coming in around the stage when the death and resurrection of Christ is thought, based on the suffering servant passage and other prophecies, to have happened obscurely (as you say, it "is not quite as clear...where these events are supposed to have occurred") but within human history and probably quite recently.