In the early Christian midrash, the speculation on “Messiah-Christ” / MŜYĤ chronologically precedes the discovery of “Jesus-Joshua”. This is proven by a number of New Testament verses and, above all, by the absence of Jesus (midrashized Joshua) in several early Christian monuments. And the ultimate question posed and posed by the Christian midrash is not if Jesus/Joshua is the Christ-Messiah, but the reverse: it is if the Christ-Messiah is Jesus/Joshua.
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Then the Christians look for the name of the Christ-Messiah. The name, therefore, of MŜYĤ, in other words - according to them, and always by midrash - the name of living-rising-risen YHWH (and not the name of a miserable human messiah ...). And they look for it in the Bible: and not in some historical event.
Among them, some immediately opt for YWĤNN! "John". Not for a contemporary John: but for the word (the proper name) YWĤNN /“John” as it occurs in the Hebrew Bible. But others, who are not biblically satisfied with such a choice, who are not satisfied with the direct identity existing between "John" and "messiah", who are not satisfied with it because:
1 it does not contain the idea of salvation;
2. it does not contain the seed of the resurrection;
3. it risks the reiteration of the Johns of the Hebrew Bible: these Johns have nothing particularly glorious to offer.
Quoted in Bernard Dubourg, The invention of Jesus, t. 2, p. 58)
Michel Onfray observes that the only switch that had to be flipped was to claim that the messiah had already come. The idea of a future messiah had been in people's minds since the prophets of the Exile. All that some inspired person had to do was say, "the messiah already came, and we missed him." In other words, they found a way to invent the past. Which is exactly what Jewish culture had already done in the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomic history.
The preaching of the recently missed messiah created the feeling of belatedness that is so characteristic of Christianity. The Bible controls the world by defining the past, and the best way to define the past is to invent it. To invent new facts.
With all the respect for Michel Onfray, I like him more as philosopher and political views, than as Mythicist, since he sounds sometimes very Acharyan.
In this case probably he is correct. I note that not only the Jewish world had Messianic expectations, but also the general tenor of the time - the Sybilline Oracles and the IV ecloga of Vergilius for an example - expected "something"/"someone" in the air.
It was relatively easy for late Apologists, to raise the idea that even the Pagans expected Jesus Christ.
Dubourg's point has much in its favour. The name Jesus does not appear to be universally embraced in our earliest sources. Even some historicists have proposed that Jesus was not the real name of Jesus, that it is too neat theologically and was surely later imposed on What's-his-name.
But do we need to invoke a culture of messianic expectations to justify or strengthen D's case? That there was some sort of collective "messianic expectation" among Jews of the day is not universally accepted by scholars of the era. It is not a fact but an interpretation read into the data. There are other more mundane explanations for the various prophets and bandits Josephus speaks about prior to the 60s without seeing in them "hoped-for messiahs".
As for Virgil's Eclogue, it is on a par with his Aeneid, and the "universal expectation" of which he speaks is a fiction, a propaganda device that serves to legitimate Rome and Augustus as the fulfilments of divine destiny. (It's the same function as the Christian invention that Jews were generation after generation pining for a messiah. The prophecy-motivated historical narrative is propaganda, it exalts the present status quo as the "divine fulfilment" of what the world had been waiting for.)
I like Dubourg's idea. There is a lot in the record to make it very plausible. But the trope of prophecy-driven narratives was very common in the more fanciful fictional stories of the era, in grand epics about the heroes and gods, and in historical writings, too. -- oh, and in apocalypses and oracles that were likewise wirtten post-factum.
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:49 am
With all the respect for Michel Onfray, I like him more as philosopher and political views
Only the philosophers have understood Christianity.
That's one of the lessons from Schweitzer that I've been trying to highlight. The majority of the original critics of the NT (Reimarus, Herder, Schleiermacher, Strauss, Weisse, Bauer) were essentially thinkers, not philologists or idle historians. Thinkers gave up on thinking about Christianity a long time ago, which is why we have to deal with facetious dolts like Bart Ehrman.
Onfray is important because he is the only prominent thinker alive today who takes Christianity seriously. He understands the weight of Romans 13, of Constantine, of the history of Christian art and architecture, etc. It's careless or clueless or dishonest IMO to separate the history of Christianity from the history of its politics.
neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 8:56 am
But do we need to invoke a culture of messianic expectations to justify or strengthen D's case? That there was some sort of collective "messianic expectation" among Jews of the day is not universally accepted by scholars of the era. It is not a fact but an interpretation read into the data. There are other more mundane explanations for the various prophets and bandits Josephus speaks about prior to the 60s without seeing in them "hoped-for messiahs".
I was talking about Psalms and the OT Prophets. I agree with you about the paucity of evidence for messianic expectation in Hellenistic Judaism. But the messianic idea had to come from somewhere. Nothing comes from nothing, and Paul (or whoever) didn't invent it whole cloth. At any rate I wasn't invoking some sort of culture.
neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Thu Jun 24, 2021 8:56 am There are other more mundane explanations for the various prophets and bandits Josephus speaks about prior to the 60s without seeing in them "hoped-for messiahs".
Also in Herod's case, the reason is midrashical. Herod was Idumean. The Shilo prophecy appeared to be fulfilled and in absence of other candidates, Herod himself, the Idumean usurper, was hailed as the Messiah!
So Mergui.
At any case, Neil, in absence of Messianic expectations as the impulse behind the focus on the identity of the Christ, I don't see other impulses. The hypothesis of a theodicy after the failed Revolt seems not as well decisive. Even the placing of the day of the Messiah in the indefinite future is an optimal theodicy after the 70 CE.
The fact that our earliest copies of Christian literature use the nomina sacra for the noun associated with the Christ and then that the Church fathers argued that the name of the Christ was Iesous makes it seem to me that no one had any idea what the name actually was and so had to go and find one.
hard to beat YHVH saves.
The clue for me is that someone would bother using a NS for such a common name like Jesus-Joshua which is thought to be the 5th or 6th most common name for Jewish men in the 1st century.
