Where Does the Christos Myth come from?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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billd89
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Where Does the Christos Myth come from?

Post by billd89 »

Jesus either a) antedates or b) postdates the Christos Myth. Or c) there is only Jesus = Christos, the Xian Assumption. I believe b) is correct, as I've posted in so many other threads/replies. And 'because Jesus comes later', it's fair to ask where the (perhaps 'gnostic') Christos Myth originates.

Something in MaryHelena's reply on another thread got me thinking about identifying the underlying characteristics of the Christos Mythos (which may have built up over time, become muddled, mixed together many varied bits, etc.) as a guide to the first source: if those factors might serve as cultural reference to a particular time and place.
maryhelena wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:02 ammy thinking about the whole body and spirit scenario is to try and understand what is at the root of what it was that the ancients were trying to articulate. ...

The ancients had two options when looking around the world they lived in. The material world and the 'spiritual' world - the unknown world. Animals die, men die -but- vegetation dies but is reborn in the spring. Thus, went the thinking, man being part of nature, reflects not only nature's material aspect but also it's rebirth in the spring spiritual aspect. ... Since no material/physical rebirth was observed for man - a spiritual rebirth, an unseen rebirth, was man's destiny. Gods and an unknown heaven became man's rebirth reward. A spiritual rebirth in the unknown heaven became the goal of man - hence Gnostics and all those who seek spiritual enlightenment - often at the expense of overlooking the material needs of themselves or the natural environment. ... The intellectual framework in which the ancients lived is not our world. It is, in effect, a dead world. Our job today is not to attempt it's rebirth but to seek that new intellectual world that the ancients perhaps sensed in their musings but were unable to grasp and hence to articulate.
Mine is a WHEN, WHERE question. If this were all I had to go on, I'd consider the simplest direction is: look for a locus w/ syncretizing interpreters proximate to 1) a vegetative rebirth tradition, 2) a celestial rebirth tradition.

Add: If it is widely believed Christianity is born in Asia Minor or Syria, logically, shouldn't the Christos Myth appear there first, also?

I also wonder what ALL the components/criteria for the oldest level of the Christos Myth should be. Recommendations, thoughts?

Surely, scholars have tackled this problem before! So what is the shortlist of cities or specific areas where the Christos Myth appears, c. ... 100-25 BC?
Thor
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Re: Where Does the Christos Myth come from?

Post by Thor »

Is there such a thing as A Christos myth? I mean, the Marduk/Cyrus stories was just modified and placed in the OT.

Cyrus prophesied as future King by the current rulers Magi. Ordered to be killed, escape, and return to take his place as King. Was so familiar "origin myth", that it was used to connect Ardashir I to the Achaemenid Empire as legitimate ruler and King of kings.

Or do you simply mean the more mystical spiritual parts of the Christos myth?

I imagine the revolutionary change a spherical understanding of the earth and the heavens would impact all other perceptions of life and reality as well. Beyond the disappearance of established concepts as "four corners of the world". If one can ever say something about how and where a not specifically defined Christos myth originated, one could look to the revolutionary ideas of the mind.
rgprice
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Re: Where Does the Christos Myth come from?

Post by rgprice »

I think that the Jesus Christ we recognize all started with the writing of the Gospels. In other words that the writing came first and the writings are what spurred belief in all this.

As for what Paul was talking about, I think that if not for the Gospels Paul's writing never would have led to belief in a human Jesus. So in other words, no one was worshiping a human Jesus until the first Gospel was written, and then people thought it was a true story, when it fact it was all just a fictional allegory.

What Paul was talking about really was just an interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, in which the Lord was seen as the son of God, instead of as one and the same as God. I see that perseusomega9 recommended Margaret Barker's The Great Angel to you, and I totally agree. I'd say that that book has had a bigger impact on my view of Christian origins than anything else. I can't recommend it enough.
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maryhelena
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Re: Where Does the Christos Myth come from?

Post by maryhelena »

billd89 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:51 am Jesus either a) antedates or b) postdates the Christos Myth. Or c) there is only Jesus = Christos, the Xian Assumption. I believe b) is correct, as I've posted in so many other threads/replies. And 'because Jesus comes later', it's fair to ask where the (perhaps 'gnostic') Christos Myth originates.

Something in MaryHelena's reply on another thread got me thinking about identifying the underlying characteristics of the Christos Mythos (which may have built up over time, become muddled, mixed together many varied bits, etc.) as a guide to the first source: if those factors might serve as cultural reference to a particular time and place.
maryhelena wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 1:02 ammy thinking about the whole body and spirit scenario is to try and understand what is at the root of what it was that the ancients were trying to articulate. ...

The ancients had two options when looking around the world they lived in. The material world and the 'spiritual' world - the unknown world. Animals die, men die -but- vegetation dies but is reborn in the spring. Thus, went the thinking, man being part of nature, reflects not only nature's material aspect but also it's rebirth in the spring spiritual aspect. ... Since no material/physical rebirth was observed for man - a spiritual rebirth, an unseen rebirth, was man's destiny. Gods and an unknown heaven became man's rebirth reward. A spiritual rebirth in the unknown heaven became the goal of man - hence Gnostics and all those who seek spiritual enlightenment - often at the expense of overlooking the material needs of themselves or the natural environment. ... The intellectual framework in which the ancients lived is not our world. It is, in effect, a dead world. Our job today is not to attempt it's rebirth but to seek that new intellectual world that the ancients perhaps sensed in their musings but were unable to grasp and hence to articulate.
Mine is a WHEN, WHERE question. If this were all I had to go on, I'd consider the simplest direction is: look for a locus w/ syncretizing interpreters proximate to 1) a vegetative rebirth tradition, 2) a celestial rebirth tradition.

Add: If it is widely believed Christianity is born in Asia Minor or Syria, logically, shouldn't the Christos Myth appear there first, also?

I also wonder what ALL the components/criteria for the oldest level of the Christos Myth should be. Recommendations, thoughts?

Surely, scholars have tackled this problem before! So what is the shortlist of cities or specific areas where the Christos Myth appears, c. ... 100-25 BC?
Dying and Rising God mythology is as old as the hills. Part and parcel of our cultural heritage - whatever our own specific cultural variation of it. Judaism seems not to have made this mythology it's primary focus - it's focus was on land, on nationalism and identity. Not of course that this rules out this ancient mythology being relevant to some sort of Jewish mythicism - or for that matter being a popular sideline - re woman weeping for Tammuz in the OT.

Inanna

Inanna is the earliest known resurrected god. For her, a clear-cut death-and-resurrection tale exists on clay tablets inscribed in Sumeria over a thousand years before Christianity, plainly describing her humiliation, trial, execution, and crucifixion, and her resurrection three days later. After she is stripped naked and judgment is pronounced against her, Inanna is “turned into a corpse” and “the corpse was hung from a nail” and “after three days and three nights” her assistants ask for her corpse and resurrect her (by feeding her the “water” and “food” of life), and “Inanna arose” according to what had been her plan all along, because she knew her father “would surely bring me back to life,” exactly as transpires in the story (quotations are from the tablets, adapting the translation of Samuel Noah Kramer in History Begins at Sumer). This cult continued to be practiced into the Christian period, Tyre being a major center of her worship. By then, there is some evidence her resurrection tale was shifted to her consort Tammuz, one of several resurrected deities the Greeks called Adonis.


Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890


In the Bible

In Ezekiel 8:14, the prophet Ezekiel, shown here in this illustration from 1866 by Gustave Doré, witnesses women mourning the death of Tammuz outside the Second Temple.
The cult of Ishtar and Tammuz may have been introduced to the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Manasseh and the Old Testament contains numerous allusions to them. Ezekiel 8:14 mentions Tammuz by name: 'Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the Lord's house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto to me, 'Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these."

Ezekiel's testimony is the only direct mention of Tammuz in the Hebrew Bible, but the cult of Tammuz may also be alluded to in Isaiah 17:10–11.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumuzid#: ... 20festival.

I'm beginning to wonder if the focus of the Pauline epistles was to turn this ancient mythology on it's head. Yes, the gospels have their dying and rising god in the figure of Jesus - a straightforward application of this ancient mythology. But did the NT Paul turn things around? After all, for Paul, believers are the body of Christ, they have the mind of Christ. Interesting - a Paul who viewed the dying and rising god mythology as relevant, as applicable, not to a spiritual life of man after death of the body - but to a living man - applicable to a living man's intellectual capacity: Life, death and rebirth as the mechanism of intellectual evolution. No wonder NT Paul thought of himself as an abortion - born way ahead of his time!

Something to think about.........................
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