What Do Mythicists Want?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

A very large amount of analytic material on this subject can be found here.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

Also skip down the left column for material on Paul. One of them brings up the Paul of Acts and notes most every big city he visited already had Christians there to greet him and extend hospitality. That raises the question of how Paul ever got his reputation of spreading Christianity. These days when reality does not match reputation we look for a good public relations firm behind it. And the same PR questions can be raised about Jesus. The consequences of what is "known" about him from the gospels have no relation to the Christian religion which supposedly resulted from it.

[Peter Kirby]

I've been amusing myself by figuring out if James the Just existed. Thus far, I have gone over every reference to James (anyone by that name) in the texts on this site as well as all the Pre-Nicene Fathers and the Nicene fathers up to Eusebius.

Interesting... any observations you've made?

[Tenorikuma]

So far, I see a clear sequence in the development of the character's identity, tied closely to the invention of a Jerusalem episcopate, which is most certainly a misinformed view of the Palestinian church held by later Greek Christians. There is also confusion among various writers regarding the numerous Jameses and Jesus' familial relations.

What I find strangest is the emergence of a tradition that James was a Nazirite and the Jewish high priest. I have also come across a tradition that John was a high priest.

[Blood]

But I have to say this is true for mythicism as well. I acknowledge that it's true - most scholarship just assumes that Jesus existed because, hey, what else could he have been? But on the mythicists side there is very little effort to attempt to explain how or why a belief could have been sustained in a Jewish culture (or a culture affiliated with Judaism) if he was just made up. Indeed I think there is a tendency for each side to see each other as caricatures - i.e. on the one side 'atheists' who hate Jesus promoting 'mythicism' and 'believers' 'clinging' to their traditional beliefs.

Since I am a contrarian by nature I will tell you what drives me crazy about mythicists. In fact I will tell you several things which drive me crazy about mythicists. Here's what bothers me today

1. they tend to hate 'authority' when it works against them but then all of a sudden if they can find a claim that sounds 'authoritative' that helps their side they parade it around like a flag. Like the stupid belief that Christianity wasn't Jewish. This drives me batty. Let's start with Paul. Mythicism begins and ends with Paul and Paul is filled with references to the Jewish scriptures. Now even if we boil down that set of writings down to the Marcionite recension there were references to the Pentateuch, Isaiah etc. Not as many of course. But it was still there. What fucking kind of white people do mythicists imagine Paul was writing to with these offhand references to "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings?" Who the fuck would this make any sense to other than someone who was brought up in a Jewish culture.

To this end, while there is no reason to believe that the early Christians were as 'Jewish' as let's say Hebrew National Hot Dogs, his audience had been 'initiated' in to Judaism already. This is impossible to argue with. The first Christians weren't white people like Barbara Bush (even a white person from New York has some familiarity with what Jews believed - much more in fact that what we should expect from the average Roman). Indeed the leadership of early Christian communities were remarkably 'fluent' in Jewish cultural ideas and especially the scriptures. Much more than Barbara Bush.

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.

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.

Strawman alert!

"Mythicism begins and ends with Paul"? No, that is only the deeply flawed Doherty-Carrier thesis. Nothing actually "begins" with Paul. The primary sources for "Paul" are (a) second century pseudepigrapha, and (b) his "biography" in Acts, which leading scholars just concluded is largely ahistorical, and based on the letters, i.e. based on letters that the "historical Paul" probably did not write. So, right there, you have an extremely poor basis for arguing the historicity of anything.

Christianity is about as "Jewish" as Roman Mithrasism is "Persian" or the Roman Isis-Osiris cult is "Egyptian." Christianity is anti-Jewish. I can't believe that people like you cannot see that. They considered themselves the chosen ones, not Jews. "What the hell does Christianity have to do with Judaism?," asks Ignatius. YES, THEY USED THE SEPTUAGINT! And they interpreted it to mean that it was really all about Gentiles, not Jews. That means they probably came from a long background of God-feaers in the diaspora. People converted to nascent forms of the Jewish religion for probably hundreds of years prior to Jesus. Some of them eventually broke away, took the texts, and formed their own cults.

[Tenorikuma]

Peter Kirby: It looks like your reply to me replaced my comment, but your comment is attributed to me. Could you fix that?

Thanks for the link. That is a remarkable bit of research you have done. You ought to polish it up and publish it.

[Blood]

At this point I wonder why I even bother reading the literature on the historical Jesus. Wouldn't my time be better spent changing the parameters of the discussion by coming up with my own systematic argument (for whatever I discern--I'm not sure what)?

Yes. Too much time is spent trying to isolate the "historical Jesus," and not nearly enough time is spent exploring or discussing epistolary fiction of the ancient world. That omission is especially appalling given that we have an extraordinary number of forged epistles within the New Testament canon itself.

[Blood]

I had an exchange with Hurtado at his blog where I asked if the "gospels written just 40 years later" apologetic also supported the reliability of Joseph Smith writing The Book of Mormon a mere nine years after his first vision of the Moroni. His response was that was such a bizarre way of thinking that it didn't make any sense.

Nothing is going to penetrate those skulls.

[Peter Kirby]

So far, I see a clear sequence in the development of the character's identity, tied closely to the invention of a Jerusalem episcopate, which is most certainly a misinformed view of the Palestinian church held by later Greek Christians. There is also confusion among various writers regarding the numerous Jameses and Jesus' familial relations.

What I find strangest is the emergence of a tradition that James was a Nazirite and the Jewish high priest.

Indeed. This usually ends up on the cutting room floor when sorting through evidence concerning Christian origins.

I have also come across a tradition that John was a high priest.

http://peterkirby.com/johns-priestly-pe ... rates.html

Have you read this? If so, what did you think?

Peter Kirby: It looks like your reply to me replaced my comment, but your comment is attributed to me. Could you fix that?

Thanks for the link. That is a remarkable bit of research you have done. You ought to polish it up and publish it.

Thanks.

[Gilgamesh]

Dear Outhouse:

Thank you for your comments. I offer the following for your consideration.
Even if the Paterfamilias whom you posit is Almighty God herself, there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of the same. (Spare me the beauty of nature and all that finite stuff which cannot demonstrate infinity, either logically or experimentally.)
You suggest that with popularity came diversity. Actually, the process worked exactly opposite to your suggestion. The most diverse christianities existed in the 1st century, reducing in diversity with succeeding generations evermore until at least the 11th century. Rome swallowed the churches.
There is overwhelming evidence that the gospels are compositions of pre-existing material. Form criticism is not a new discipline. None of the evangelists were eye-witnesses.
This ancient, pre-existing material could have originated nowhere but in Galilee, the home of Jesus, his family, the Apostles, their families, and James, the brother of Jesus who became chairman of the Jerusalem congregation. Who else knew Jesus but these people? Let’s dispense with Paul, the Jewish rabbi, the author of the first NT writings: he says almost nothing about the earthly life of Jesus, from which it is fair to conclude that he knew almost nothing about the earthly life of Jesus. His “gospel” (good news, more properly designated kerygma today) derived from a private revelation, not from James, Peter, or any other of the Apostles. Could he have known about Jesus the man and not cared to tell others what he knew? Pluralities should not be postulated without necessity. (N.B. You have a point here regarding the origin of “good news” but not in the sense of gospel as the word is used today, in Hellenic communities. Paul did not depend on the Palestinian churches for his good news. He had a private revelation. Picture the man carrying a sign proclaiming that the end is near and you have a pretty good picture of Paul.)
The evangelists were, in all likelihood, third generation christians who collected the stories composed by first and second generation christians. It is impossible that the gospels led to the formation of churches at this time, since churches (assemblies/congregations) were the seed beds of the stories which were included in the gospels and occasionally the producers of the gospels themselves, each reflecting a theological point of view. When one reads the gospels carefully, one can see the travails and prayers of early congregations in the gospel stories. The gospels could not have produced churches at this time, Gnostics excepted. There would have been no churches until at least 70 CE if gospels had been the catalyst of church formation.
Since we do not know who are the evangelists, it is futile to speculate where the gospels were written. There are many reasonable theories, but what do they matter since all the early gospels depended upon the Galilean treasure trove of stories? Remember, none of the evangelists were eye-witnesses of the matters about which they write. As a matter of fact, the theories concerning where the gospels were composed--not to mention redacted--usually depend heavily on the theology reflected in the gospels for their arguments.
Apparently, you believe that John taught that Jesus was equal to God. I cannot accept this thesis because it does not comport with the historical circumstances in which the fourth gospel was developed and the manner in which the gospel was regarded by proto-orthodox communities. John’s gospel was resisted by proto-orthodox assemblies almost throughout the second century because they regarded it as Gnostic. In fact, only in the 4th century, after some development in the third century, did the notion of “Trinity” occur. That is, the synoptic gospels and the epistles of Paul were re-interpreted to entertain the possibility that Jesus was equal to God--even though there is no unambiguous claim to that effect in these writings--at the same time when the fourth gospel was re-interpreted from its Gnostic origins to suggest that Jesus was equal to God rather than the first emanation from God.
Finally, I think you are unduly generous in extending your sufferance for evidence to 120 years--after what I do not know. The earliest canonical gospel is tinged with theology, and the later gospels are more corrupt.
These are not my opinions. They are opinions of pre-eminent scripture scholars, historians, archaeologists, and theologians cited in the “Sources” section of From the Cross to the Church.
Again, thank you for your comments.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

So far, I see a clear sequence in the development of the character's identity, tied closely to the invention of a Jerusalem episcopate, which is most certainly a misinformed view of the Palestinian church held by later Greek Christians. There is also confusion among various writers regarding the numerous Jameses and Jesus' familial relations.

What I find strangest is the emergence of a tradition that James was a Nazirite and the Jewish high priest. I have also come across a tradition that John was a high priest.

Have you read Eisenmann's work on James? He's a terrible writer, winding, redundant, digressive,convoluted, but he has some good insights if you take the slog (though I don't think his identificaton of James as the "Righteous Teacher" is persuasive) . One of the things he says that I think I do agree with is that "whatever James was, Jesus was. If you can find James, you can find Jesus." I think that's probably true, but I'm not sure that James is any more discoverable than Jesus.