Christ: Myth or Reality? by I. Kryvelev

[Giuseppe]

Next days I will receive an old copy of this book.

http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/ ... et-02.html


And here I will write my personal review of it.

[Giuseppe]

Download:

http://unism.narod.ru/alb/lib/kre.pdf

[Giuseppe]

I found this jem:

This, however, does not explain why it had to be the biography of a human being and not of God. For it would seem that sermons and teachings would be more authoritative if they came from a deity rather than from a human being.

Here the new religion was influenced by what its followers brought with them from older faiths and cults. In Judaism and the religions of the Hellenistic world the divine saviours are often both gods and men, and not "pure" gods. According to the Old Testament the Messiah must be a descendant of King David and be a king himself; in other words, a human being. In another version of Judaic Messianism, founded on the fifty-third chapter of the Book of Isaiah and other Old Testament sources, the Messiah is conceived of as one who suffers and sacrificed himself for the sins of man. Here, too, the Messiah is a human being with his weaknesses and sufferings. As is known, in Hellenistic religions the cult of saviours Who die and rise again was widespread. Beginning with Prometheus, these saviours are both gods and men, heroes an~ demigods with carefully elaborated earthly biograPhLes.

(p. 175)

[outhouse]

What is more important is the fact the emperor was first "son of god" that the Christ cult competed with. many biblical text parallels the Emperors divinity in the rhetorical prose they used to create all the text

[Giuseppe]

What is more important is the fact the emperor was first "son of god" that the Christ cult competed with. many biblical text parallels the Emperors divinity in the rhetorical prose they used to create all the text

Curiosuly, your implicit objection is covered entirely by the Prof Kryvelev, and (obviously) confuted easily:

Opponent: Here is yet another weak point in your argument.
The deification of a living human being was indeed
widespread in the Graeco-Roman world. But the ascribing
of human features to a god is a much more complex
matter. Since this is so, the transformation of Christ
the god into Jesus the man would probably be the only instance
of its kind. It is therefore highly unlikely.
Author: "Since this is so," you said. But it is not
so.
The religious and philosophical trend associated with
Euhemerus, the Greek philosopher of the 4th-3rd centuries
B.C.,·is well known. But the rationalistic doctrine that
came to be called Euhemerism (according to which the origin
of religion lies in the deification of real persons)
was not founded by him, it had existed long before him.
As the French historian Gaston Boissier points out, Euhemerus
"merely described the doctrine in a treatise which
was highly readable and became very popular".75 Its main
idea is that all the gods of Olympus and the Roman Pantheon--
Jupiter, Saturn, Cadmus, Venus and others--were
once real people. For example, Cadmus was the cook of a
Cydonian king; Venus was a sensuous woman who, in order
not to appear different from other women in Cyprus, where
she lived, led the entire female population on the island
from the path of virtue.
But perhaps Euhemerism was an isolated, little-known
trend in the Graeco-Roman world? Not at all. As Boissier
notes, the Roman poet Ennius translated Euhemerus' novel
and from then on this doctrine became well known among the
Romans and was apparently completely accepted by them.
This is seen in the fact that they began to vie with one
another in attributing human features to their gods.
There is no lack of factual material on this subject.
Here is how Boissier characterises the Roman religion of
the period: "Everything in it assumed an incredibly precise
form. The most improbable fictions seemed not to
differ from the most authentic narratives." Imaginary
earthly biographies of gods were not only passed on by
word of mouth, but were also reproduced in great detail
in literary works. In vividness of detail these earthly
biographies of the Euhemeristic gods are in no way inferior
to the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels.

(p. 151-152, my bold, cursive original)

[outhouse]

Curiosuly, your implicit objection

You may have serious comprehensive abilities, mine was not an objection but more an addition.

covered entirely

It states nothing that refutes a single word I stated. What I stated is not even up for debate. You don't have to like it.

The Christians factually used the "Son of God"
The Romans factually used the "Son of God"

Both groups existed in the Roman Empire, and factually gentiles one would could worship at certain times of year the emperor as son of god, then worship with Christians the next week as son of god. This is fact, not up for debate.

So, the only thing you can question me on in any way, is if the NT authors paralleled Jesus verses the Emperors divinity which was plagiarized to some degree. And factually you cannot.

[Giuseppe]

Curiosuly, your implicit objection

You may have serious comprehensive abilities, mine was not an objection but more an addition.

But also I have made an ''addition'' in my comment. I have written:

your implicit objection

@outhouse

The Christians factually used the "Son of God"
The Romans factually used the "Son of God"

There is no evidence of the Christian use of ''Son of God'' as hidden (or implicit, or secret) anti-imperial propaganda. The Gospels are subversive propaganda, but never seditious propaganda.

If you want to talk more diffusely about it, please do so in another thread. This thread talks about the Mythicist view of an Academic Prof.

[Giuseppe]

The Myth succeed for two reasons:

1) it couldn't be verified
2) it proved already partially the apocalyptic hope (insofar ''something had been fulfilled and accomplished'' already).

In this process of "natural selection"
the legend associated with the name of Jesus Christ
survived and eventually triumphed.

What made this legend so attractive? What enabled
it to put down such strong roots?

Like all Messianic legends, the Christian legend
was attractive because it inspired hopes for liberation
from a seemingly hopeless situation. But it had another
feature which assured it of a most important advantage:
it could not be verified by practice. Anyone with Messianic
aspirations would have to prove the legitimacy of
his claims by real deeds, by military or other kinds of
victories, by some achievements that would signify fulfilment
of the will of Yahweh who had decided to forgive
and save his chosen people and bring them glory. And
when from faraway Judea came news that yet another Messiah
had failed in his mission, the end of the legend was
near. If this legend were based on an imaginary person,
it too would inevitably be discredited. As years passed
there would be less and less rumours about him, and since
his "activity" had not led to any real results, the legend
would die a natural death. The legend about Christ
had a different fate.
Its main concept is that the Messiah should not triumph
in the real, visible world, but should perish in it.
The world sunk in the mire of evil would meet its "final
reckoning" only in some distant future. People were accustomed
to waiting for this future: the whole Messianic
ideology was built on such expectations. But here it
was more than a matter of waiting. The legend made people
feel that something had been fulfilled and accomplished,
while at the same time there was still room for hope.
The legend was all the more viable since the question of
whether something had indeed been accomplished could not
be verified.
If the Christian legend had originated in Palestine
and were of a mythical character it could have been exposed.
There would be demands for eyewitnesses and participants
in the events and all "enthusiasts" to be
brought forth. As for people who lived at the time in
Jerusalem and other localities where, according to the
legend, the events took place, they could easily refute
it; they would simply say that nothing of the kind had
occurred. But if the events took place in faraway Palestine
several decades ago, there was no way of verifying
them. The Messiah was born (in a miraculous way!); he
preached and worked wonders; he was persecuted and crucified,
then rose again and went to heaven; how could one
verify all this if the events took place in a faraway
place at an unspecified time? As for that which could be
verified, it would take place only in the future. So one
could do little except keep one's faith and wait.
True, here is the Achilles' heel of the legend. The
second coming of Christ "in all his glory" was promised as
a momentous event which should occur in the very near future,
during the lifetime of that generation. The fact
that it had not taken place could seriously undermine the
new faith. Between the time when the foundations of the
Christian legend were laid and the time when it was formulated
as a system of dogmas several generations had
passed. Meanwhile, the second coming had not taken place.
Very likely a large number of followers of the new doctrine
fell away as a result. But many--they could be the
majority, but they could also be a minority--only became
strengthened in their faith. This was in part made possible
by the kind of arguments that were used: what was
said was incorrectly interpreted, there was a mistake in
calculations as regards the date concerned, and the like.
Such arguments are still used in our time to rescue a
prophecy that had failed to come true. As is known, the
Adventists to th1s very day cont1nue to believe that
~oomsday is near despite the fact that their calculations
on the subject have obviously been wrong. So the vulnerable
point of the Christian legend turns out to be not
so threatening after all.
In a sense the legend about a Messiah who was born
and died in faraway Judea could have originated and
spread among the Jews living in the Diaspora "out of nothing",
meaning that it was not based on a real person.
But once the legend appeared among the Jews of the Diaspora
it could have spread very quickly among those peoples
with whom the Jews were in constant economic and cultural-
ideological contact. As Robertson notes, "Jews
and Gentiles were not mutually isolated, but mingled
daily in the Mediterranean cities, the poorer Jews propagating
their vision of a coming Messiah and in the process
assimilating it to the poorer Gentiles' dream of a
redeeming god triumphant over death". In the continual
diffusion of ideas among the peoples of the Hellenistic
cultural world the legend about Christ won over more and
more followers with each decade. Meanwhile, it was being
constantly enriched by what the new followers brought to
it from their own historical and religious experience.
Of the two possible variants why do I consider more
likely the one according to which the Evangelical legend
does not have a historical kernel in the form of a real
person?
The other variant has too many weak points; there is
too much in it that cannot be explained. It is not merely
a question of the "silence of the century", although
this of course is of considerable importance. No less
significant is the fact that the history of the image of
Jesus reveals a fairly clear picture of an evolution not
of God from a man, but of a man from God.

(p. 163-165)

[Giuseppe]

If the death of Jesus was localized in an unspecified past, then the two conditions necessary for the survival of the original cult IN ISRAEL were already satisfied.

But when the cult was propagated in the Diaspora, then the two conditions could continue to be satisfied by simply localizing the death of Jesus in the recent past in Israel: no people of Diaspora could verify the events happened recently in Israel.

Therefore there is really very little difference between the Jesus of Paul and the Gospel Jesus : both cannot be tested, by construction, about their real existence (respectively, in the unspecified past - for Paul - and in the faraway Israel - for ''Mark'').

[outhouse]

The Gospels are subversive propaganda,

Unsubstantiated.

They factually were Hellenist accepting monotheism using Judaism as the foundation of their theology, factually it was the divorce of Hellenistic Judaism from cultural oppressed Judaism.