Irish1975 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 08, 2023 10:22 am
If Charbonnel and her predecessors are right about the Gospels being Midrash from soup to nuts, the mythicism debate of the last twenty years has been misconceived.
- Ancient Jews wouldn’t need to have been inspired by a historical Jesus in order to write the Gospels; they had the Hebrew and LXX scriptures.
Ah - but the stories in the Hebrew scriptures are connected with Jewish history - actual or perceived history.
- Ancient Jews wouldn’t need to have been inspired by actual celestial visions of a Christ Jesus by Cephas or Paul or anyone, much less tales of an empty tomb; they had the Hewbrew and LXX scriptures.
Again - the Hebrew scriptures are not all imagination - the stories also had a historical relevance.
The unfortunate conflation of ‘mythicism’ with the celestial vision thesis seems like an « own goal » by the secular critics of Christianity. You would think that a theory associating itself with « myths » would be connected somehow to imaginative literature, i.e. the composition of « stories. » Instead people try to geo-locate Jesus. OUTER SPACE? Jerusalem? Galilee? That’ll get views on Youtube, I guess. The framing of this « debate » reinforces the inevitability of the Jesus archtype. The actual scriptures are read by both sides as « evidence, » which they can never be, and not as « literature, » which they will always be.
Indeed, the mythicism debate has been misconstrued. A celestial, outer-space, Jesus, however constructed - literally ?? - or philosophically, is not a substitute for the gospel story; it is not a way of avoiding perceived problems in the gospel story.
The Lukan writer has set the scene, as it were, for the gospel Jesus story: King Herod, Tiberius, Pilate, Herod of Galilee (Antipas), Philip (the Tetrarch) and Lysanias ruler of Abilene. That gives a historical landscape from 40 b.c. to 37 CE - a 77 year period. That's the historical backbone to the gospel Jesus story. The question therefore is: What was it, within that history, that inspired the gospel writers to write their story ? Yes, they could turn to the Hebrew scriptures to add colour to their Jesus story - but without a historical relevance their Jesus story would have been still-born. Imagination is no replacement for historical realities.
The early, non-Jewish, christians misread the gospel Jesus story as history. (Maybe the great falling away is what is behind that later man of lawlessness idea.) Failure to realise that a historical Jesus, of whatever makeup this theory comes up with) is useless for 'salvation' - then or now. It's not flesh and blood that 'saves' - it's ideas that can 'save' - just as they can destroy. It's intellectual evolution that can bring 'salvation' - not a presumed historical Jesus of two thousand years ago.
It's ideas that the NT writers were interested in - ideas with the potential to further human development. Humanitarianism is as much about intellectual growth as it is about putting food on the table.