Litwa on Marcion as ancient Mythicist

[RandyHelzerman]

in a discussion on the historicity of Jesus, you are inviting me to ignore the author of the book 'On the historicity of Jesus'.

*sigh* That is why I said Mythicism is a Shibboleth. You better be waving around the same books!!!

It is a brute fact that exactly one of :

1. The talmud and the Gospels refer to the same Jesus
2. The talmud and the Gospels do not refer to the same Jesus

Is true. The problem is, the Carrier-justified argument wants to have it both ways: It wants to assume that #1 is true--so that the Talmud and (pre)Gospels are both talking about the same Jesus--the same one which the talmud supposedly denies the existence of--but then, they want to slide on over to #2, so that they can say that by asserting the existence of one Jesus, it is denying the existence of a different Jesus.

I.e. for that argument to work, you have to believe *both* #1 and #2, which are flatly contradictory. Its no good saying I'm wrong about this, you just did just that:

Here, you are clearly assuming #1:

You continue to ignore the implication of an identity between the pre-Gospel Jesus and the Talmudic Jesus. The next question then is: do you accept the definition of minimal historicity given by Carrier?

And here you slide on over to #2:

The implication is that the texts (i.e. epistles) preceding the first gospel were referred to that Janneus' Jesus. While the first gospel talked about a Jesus under Pilate. Are they the same Jesus? No.

Which is it? Does the Talmud refer to the same Jesus or not? Does it refer to the Jesus you want to claim it denies the existence of, or not?

--//--

This is why I said Mythicism was in its "late stage, decadent" phase...sooner or later, people take the writings of the founders so seriously that they forget they are human too, and sometimes adhering to them is embracing a contradiction. Not casting aspersions here, it happens to every movement sooner or later. Its happened to me on more than one occasion, and no doubt it will happen to me again.

[Giuseppe]

It is a brute fact that exactly one of :

1. The talmud and the Gospels refer to the same Jesus
2. The talmud and the Gospels do not refer to the same Jesus

Is true.

it is relative to the thought of the people. For example, Strömholm would answer that 1 is true, while Ellegard would answer that 2 is true. The difference is that Strömholm was more optimistic than Ellegard about the Gospels preserving historical material dated back to the Jesus lived 100 years before.

My point is that when the Talmudist placed Jesus under Janneus, very probably the Talmudist didn't know about the Christian connection between Jesus and Pilate. Therefore it is correct to say that the Talmudist would answer that 1 is true.

But when Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) knew both the Talmud and the Gospels, then he used the Talmud to deny the existence of Jesus under Pilate. In other terms, Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) would answer that 2 is true.

[RandyHelzerman]

But when Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) knew both the Talmud and the Gospels, then he used the Talmud to deny the existence of Jesus under Pilate. In other terms, Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) would answer that 2 is true.

If Abraham ibn Daud wants to say that Jesus didn't live in Pilate's time, but in Janeus's time, he must be using the word "Jesus" to refer to the same person. Just saying somebody lived at a different time than the time in which most scholars think he lived, doesn't mean you are talking about two people.

That's why I used the example of somebody who believed that Jesus was born on Christmas, died on Good Friday, and Rose on Easter Sunday. The Jesus of the Gospels was not born on December 25, 1 AD. So if I say "Jesus was born on December 25, 1 AD--he wasn't born in 4 AD, like those libtard scholars who are controlled by Satan say" does that make me a mythicist????

Preposterous!! I'm referring to the same Jesus, and so is Abraham ibn Daud.

If you have to strain these kinda gnats and swallow these kinda camels to make the case that Abraham ibn Daud was a mythicist, well, it's a reductio ad absurdum, because you really do have to believe two contradictory things at once. Come back to the light man, while you still can. Once you start getting numb to this kind of cognitive dissonance, its a loooong ways back.

Appendix: I'm pasting in here a quote you used to argue that Abraham ibn Daud is a mythicist:

The historical works of the Jews state that this Joshua b. Perahyah was the teacher of Jesus the Nazarene. If this is so, he lived in the time of king Jannaeus. However, the historical works of the Gentiles state that he was born in the days of Herod and crucified in the days of his son Archelaus. Now this is a significant difference of opinion, for there is a discrepancy between them of more than 110 years. The Gentile historians indicate their chronology in several different ways, by saying that he was born in the year 312 of the Seleucid Era and crucified thirty-three years later; that he was born in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Augustus king of Rome, in the days of Herod, and was crucified in the days of his son Archelaus. They argue this point so vehemently in order to prove that the Temple and the kingdom of Israel endured for but a short while after his crucifixion. However, we have it as an authentic tradition from the Mishna and the Talmud, which did not distort anything, that R. Joshua b. Perahyah fled to Egypt in the days of Alexander, that is, Jannaeus, and with him fled Jesus the Nazarene. We also have it as an authentic tradition that he was born in the fourth year of the reign of King Alexander, which was the year 263 after the building of the Second Temple, and the fifty-first year of the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty. In the year 299 after the building of the Temple, he was apprehended at the age of thirty-six in the third year of Aristobulus the son of Jannaeus.

Pray tell, which two instances of "Jesus" in the above refer to two different people. What sentence even remotely implies that Jesus never existed?

Come on man.

[Giuseppe]

What sentence even remotely implies that Jesus never existed?

it seems to me that the difference escapes to you, between the Jesus lived in the remote past (under Janneus) and, for example, the claim that the historical Jesus was Jesus ben Sapphat, crucified in 70 CE by Titus. In the first case (the claim that Jesus lived under Janneus) it is correct to say that it is a mythicist claim, since it is implicit in the idea of "a Jesus lived 100 years before" that an accusation is going to be addressed against the Christians: "your Jesus is so remote in the past that very probably your stories about him under Pilate have been invented by yourselves". Put bluntly, the Gospel Jesus is fiction.

Different is the case with the claim that the historical Jesus is Jesus ben Sapphat: in this case the chronological error is so reduced (only 40 years) that very probably much historical material has been preserved in the Gospels. Pilate is fiction but the rest may be historical.

[RandyHelzerman]

"your Jesus is so remote in the past that very probably your stories about him under Pilate have been invented by yourselves". Put bluntly, the Gospel Jesus is fiction.

That sentence doesn’t even have 2 occurrences of the word “Jesus” to refer to two different people.

I suppose that if Abraham said to the Christians “your Jesus is so recent that your stories about him must be fiction” that would make Christians mythicists too? If any two people don’t believe any story about Jesus, then they are both mythicists? This is why I said if Marcion is a mythicist then “Mythicisim” has been stretched to the point that it has no meaning.

*sigh*. Man if you practice ignoring contradictions long enough, you will eventually lose the ability to notice when the facts contradict your beliefs. When your beliefs get so unchangible by anything that could correct them, that is a pretty scary place to be in, epistemicly. It’s hard to imagine how to come back from that, and any Thanksgiving dinner will tell you that a lot of people never do.

[Giuseppe]

It seems that you are begging the question about the implications of an alternative dating. When the alternative dating carries with itself the risk of a total invention de novo of Jesus (with the first gospel), then the original Jesus is reduced to be only a tiny prototype of the invented Jesus: this is mythicism in its own right (the readers of the Gospel will be condamned to see an abyssal difference between the two Jesuses, and they will think "rightly" that they are two different Jesuses).
Ellegard insisted on this point, when he minimized the differences between his own view and the Earl Doherty's view:

Yet though I maintain that Paul and others looked upon Jesus as an historical figure, but one long since dead, I do not believe that they actually modeled their own Jesus figure on that historical person. Instead, they built on the Old Testament passages that the Church of God, inspired by their founder, the Teacher of Righteousness, interpreted as Messianic prophecies.

(my bold)


Vice versa, when the chronological error is reduced (40 years after, as it would be the case if the true Jesus was Jesus ben Sapphat or the "Egyptian" false prophet), then the risk that the Gospel is inventing totally de novo Jesus is minimal. This is rightly called: historicity.

[RandyHelzerman]

When the alternative dating carries with itself the risk of a total invention de novo of Jesus (with the first gospel),

Anytime anybody believes anything about Jesus they run the risk of believing something that is a total invention. So once again, everybody is a mythicist.

then the original Jesus is reduced to be only a tiny prototype of the invented Jesus:

And when I was born, I was a tiny prototype of what I am now Every single atom in my body has changed, virtually all of my physical and mental properties have changed, I am now powerful beyond measure compared to the helpless baby I once was. I guess this means I should be a mythicist about myself.

[Peter Kirby]

It is a brute fact that exactly one of :

1. The talmud and the Gospels refer to the same Jesus
2. The talmud and the Gospels do not refer to the same Jesus

Is true.

it is relative to the thought of the people. For example, Strömholm would answer that 1 is true, while Ellegard would answer that 2 is true. The difference is that Strömholm was more optimistic than Ellegard about the Gospels preserving historical material dated back to the Jesus lived 100 years before.

My point is that when the Talmudist placed Jesus under Janneus, very probably the Talmudist didn't know about the Christian connection between Jesus and Pilate. Therefore it is correct to say that the Talmudist would answer that 1 is true.

But when Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) knew both the Talmud and the Gospels, then he used the Talmud to deny the existence of Jesus under Pilate. In other terms, Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE) would answer that 2 is true.

This is actually kinda brilliant.

If true, this would make Abraham ibn Daud a mythicist.

Bravo.