How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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hakeem
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by hakeem »

Jax wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 3:36 pm I am curious. What order of writings and events do you assign to the Christians?
Which Christians are you talking about?

The term Christian is really ambiguous and may refer to multiple diverse cults who did not even believe in the Jesus story.

See Dialogue with Trypho and First Apology attributed to Justin

Dialogue with Trypho XXXV
And, 'Many false Christs and false apostles shall arise, and shall deceive many of the faithful.'

There are, therefore, and there were many, my friends, who, coming forward in the name of Jesus, taught both to speak and act impious and blasphemous things; and these are called by us after the name of the men from whom each doctrine and opinion had its origin.

For some in one way, others in another, teach to blaspheme the Maker of all things, and Christ, who was foretold by Him as coming, and the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, with whom we have nothing in common, since we know them to be atheists, impious, unrighteous, and sinful, and confessors of Jesus in name only, instead of worshippers of Him.

Yet they style themselves Christians, just as certain among the Gentiles inscribe the name of God upon the works of their own hands, and partake in nefarious and impious rites.)

Some are called Marcians, and some Valentinians, and some Basilidians, and some Saturnilians, and others by other names.....
First Apology XXVI
And, thirdly, because after Christ's ascension into heaven the devils put forward certain men who said that they themselves were gods............ There was a Samaritan, Simon, a native of the village called Gitto, who in the reign of Claudius Caesar, and in your royal city of Rome, did mighty acts of magic, by virtue of the art of the devils operating in him. He was considered a god........... And a man, Meander, also a Samaritan, of the town Capparetaea, a disciple of Simon, and inspired by devils, we know to have deceived many while he was in Antioch by his magical art. He persuaded those who adhered to him that they should never die........... And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. ........ All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians
Based on the writings attributed to Justin there were people called Christians since the time of Claudiusc c41-54 CE but they were followers of Simon Magus.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by neilgodfrey »

John T wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:31 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 2:20 pm
Read my detailed reviews, John T. Ehrman demonstrates that he has no interest in applying the methods of historians outside the field of biblical studies to the Jesus question. His logic and explanation of how "historians" evaluate evidence for knowing how someone exists is simply risible and would be laughed out of any serious history department.

Read my reviews where I dissect his arguments in great detail. They are all there in the public realm. You have no excuse for not reading them.
Yet, you refuse to cut & past any of your so-called detailed reviews?!

Please elaborate your reluctance to argue the merits on this thread. :scratch:


John T
Coz I could not be bothered cutting and pasting anything from my blog to here. Do you really expect me to do my many detailed posts all over again here just for your convenience? I don't think you're important enough for that, sorry.

I have given you the link to the archive where I keep all my reviews on Ehrman. I have no interest in repeating those arguments here just for you or anyone -- especially for someone who is so quick to accuse me of not reading something when it is plain as day he is merely projecting.

I have backed up every criticism with detailed analysis and citation of Ehrman's book. I have other interests now and am not interested in revisiting Ehrman in any detail.

You are welcome to cut and paste passages from my reviews here and criticize them if you wish. But I will expect you to be honest and not just snip bits out of context. I expect you to cut and paste the evidence I cited for each criticism.

And I do not jump to the whims of people who refuse to address my arguments and insist on setting up straw man substitutes for them - and who still refue to address them when I copy them out and put them under their noses -- nor do I jump at the whims of anyone who writes in bully-boy tones. And I am not particularly interested in doing any favours for someone who accuses me of all sorts of devious character flaws and ill-motives.

(Not all the posts in that archive are by me. Some are by Earl Doherty and Tim Widowfield. There are about 14 posts per page, and a total of 7 pages of posts. The first pages -- you have to go back to page 7 -- begin with reasons it was pretty clear Ehrman did not read with any care all of the books he was criticizing; there are more by Doherty; then on page 3 I discuss the nonsense of Ehrman's attempts to prove anyone exists, .... I think that is a pretty thorough treatment of any book. You want me to repeat all of that here now?)

For the 724th time, John T, please tell me how your initial criticism is valid to the actual argument that brought you into this thread:
[Y]ou are quite correct that that OT source of stories about Jesus [or any other mythical source of stories about Jesus] does not prove he was nonhistorical and entirely made up. Correct.

The point, though, is that if all we have are stories that we can either trace to OT or other literary precedents or stories that can find no corroboration at all in independent contemporary sources then we have no reason to embrace the historicity of Jesus.

That does not mean Jesus had no historical existence, however. He might have. It's just that the only evidence we have cannot be corroborated in any way or it can be sourced to something other than historical events.

So the default position is that we have a literary and theological figure of Jesus. We simply cannot know on the basis of the above that Jesus was also historical. There is no unambiguous evidence to support this claim.

I can live with not knowing. I don't think the question matters too much because if Jesus' historical life and sayings really did have the historical impact of the power to change lives and history then I suspect we would find unambiguous evidence to that effect. Instead, we only find "faith-documents" without historical corroboration and stories derived from other fictions.

Maybe the historians are just unlucky in that the most interesting evidence has simply not survived. That's possible, too.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Tue Feb 13, 2018 12:04 am, edited 3 times in total.
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toejam
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

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The mythical Jesus thing just doesn't hang together, in my opinion.

People like Carrier and Wells are left straining to interpret a Paul who doesn't think Jesus was ever here on Earth. In order to do so, they're left smudging the language Paul uses to identify Jesus as having been here on Earth, trying to shape them into possible alternatives - like fundamentalist Christians who try to smudge away biblical language that expects the apocalypse to have been imminent.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

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toejam wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 10:28 pm The mythical Jesus thing just doesn't hang together, in my opinion.

People like Carrier and Wells are left straining to interpret a Paul who doesn't think Jesus was ever here on Earth. In order to do so, they're left smudging the language Paul uses to identify Jesus as having been here on Earth, trying to shape them into possible alternatives - like fundamentalist Christians who try to smudge away biblical language that expects the apocalypse to have been imminent.
Wells never argued that Paul's Jesus was never on "here on Earth." Most mythicist arguments have never suggested Jesus was never on earth in the myth. The only ones I know of are Couchoud, Doherty and Carrier.

Had you read OHJ you would know you could well delete or reject his arguments on Paul and still make an overall similar assessment of the historicity of Jesus on the basis of remaining evidence and background knowledge. If you read OHJ you will know that Carrier says several key passages in Paul could indeed well fit the historicist paradigm -- contrary to the mythicist thesis.

Ehrman set a bad example when he demonstrated one could get away with not reading with any serious attentiveness the mythicist arguments and still be widely respected as having demolished those arguments.
Last edited by neilgodfrey on Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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andrewcriddle
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by andrewcriddle »

arnoldo wrote: Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:06 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Feb 10, 2018 3:32 pm It's not about "proving" anything. It's about testing and falsifying and riding with what we have provisionally been able to establish and that works -- until we find new tests and falsifications lead us to new hypotheses.
Is there any way to test/falsify that Lucian of Samosata was a historical rather than a mythical person?

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/lucian.html
Just to clarify.

Did you mean Is there any way to test/falsify that Peregrinus Proteus was a historical rather than a mythical person?

(Is so the answer is probably yes. Lucian's Passing of Peregrinus is mostly fiction but we have corroborating evidence of the existence of Peregrinus.)

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 11:21 pm
arnoldo wrote: Sat Feb 10, 2018 7:06 pm
neilgodfrey wrote: Sat Feb 10, 2018 3:32 pm It's not about "proving" anything. It's about testing and falsifying and riding with what we have provisionally been able to establish and that works -- until we find new tests and falsifications lead us to new hypotheses.
Is there any way to test/falsify that Lucian of Samosata was a historical rather than a mythical person?

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/lucian.html
Just to clarify.

Did you mean Is there any way to test/falsify that Peregrinus Proteus was a historical rather than a mythical person?

(Is so the answer is probably yes. Lucian's Passing of Peregrinus is mostly fiction but we have corroborating evidence of the existence of Peregrinus.)

Andrew Criddle
I asked arnoldo the same question at the end of my answer to his challenge. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3886&start=20#p82920
Yes. The evidence indicates that Lucian of Samosata really did write the works attributed to him in those same works. Subsequent ancient scholars included him in their lists of ancient authors so presumably literary traditions supported his historicity, since the works produced by those ancient scholars (Eunapius, Photias, "Suidas") re of the kind that demonstrate an interest in preserving the historical information and independent corroboration supports their value as records of ancient sources.

If we had comparable evidence for Jesus -- quasi-biographical works written by Jesus and subsequent lists including the author Jesus alongside comparable authors like Philo, Josephus, Paul, etc -- there would very likely be no debate about his historicity.

(Your link takes us to a page that asks the question about the historicity of Peregrinus. Did you mean to ask if we can establish the historicity of Peregrinus?)
Hopefully he will reply with clarification soon.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by neilgodfrey »

hakeem wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:31 pm Based on the writings attributed to Justin there were people called Christians since the time of Claudiusc c41-54 CE but they were followers of Simon Magus.
What is our earliest independent witness to the existence of this Justin and his writings? Should we just take Justin's self-witness for granted?

How do we know he was not simply repeating a late legend or ideologically fabricated narrative?

I think you know why I am curious about your methods.
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John T
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by John T »

neilgodfrey wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:46 pm
And I do not jump to the whims of people who refuse to address my arguments and insist on setting up straw man substitutes for them - and who still refue to address them when I copy them out and put them under their noses -- nor do I jump at the whims of anyone who writes in bully-boy tones. And I am not particularly interested in doing any favours for someone who accuses me of all sorts of devious character flaws and ill-motives.
Dittos.

John T is done with this thread. :cheers:
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Giuseppe
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

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toejam wrote: Mon Feb 12, 2018 10:28 pm The mythical Jesus thing just doesn't hang together, in my opinion.

People like Carrier and Wells are left straining to interpret a Paul who doesn't think Jesus was ever here on Earth. In order to do so, they're left smudging the language Paul uses to identify Jesus as having been here on Earth, trying to shape them into possible alternatives - like fundamentalist Christians who try to smudge away biblical language that expects the apocalypse to have been imminent.
The ''red thin line'' between a mythicist Paul and a historicist Paul is not the presence or not of Jesus ''here on Earth'', but the presence or not of Jesus on earth at a definite moment in history:

Indeed, even the suffering servant of God in Isaiah was so unmistakably described as man that the most resolute elevation of his figure to the supernatural and metaphysical world, such as we find in Paul, could not obliterate his human features. The question is, whether these features are those of a real, that is to say historical, man: whether the heavenly being which must appear as a man according to Paul came upon the earth at a definite moment in historyIndeed, even the suffering servant of God in Isaiah was so unmistakably described as man that the most resolute elevation of his figure to the supernatural and metaphysical world, such as we find in Paul, could not obliterate his human features. The question is, whether these features are those of a real, that is to say historical, man: whether the heavenly being which must appear as a man according to Paul came upon the earth at a definite moment in history.

(Arthur Drews, Witnesses to the historicity of Jesus Christ)

It is seriously difficult to think with extreme confidence that terms like ''right time'', ''fulness of time'' in Paul allude to a ''definite moment in history''. Add to this the more-than-evident fact that the mention of Pilate is necessary to a true historicist view, and the case for a mythical Jesus is done.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: How does the mythical Jesus thing hang together?

Post by Giuseppe »

The same dr. Carrier agrees with me about the real difference between a historicist and a mythicist reading of a text:

The original 'revealed' death and burial could have been imagined as occurring on earth and still be (from our perspective) mythical, if, e.g., the passion sequence was 'revealed' to have occurred somewhere like the Garden of Eden, a place no one knew the actual location of and thus where no ordinary witnesses could have been available (of course, the earliest Christians thought even the Garden of Eden was in outer space: 2 Cor. 12.2-4; see Element 38).

(OHJ, p. 563, note 67, my bold)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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