About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Giuseppe
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About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by Giuseppe »

Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist? edited by John W. Loftus and Robert M. Price

I have not yet read this book.

What I would like to know from the reading of this book:
  • Why precisely "Pilate" was chosen as killer of Jesus in the first gospel;
  • If Earl Doherty will give new arguments about a celestial crucifixion in Hebrews;
  • If really Michael Hoffman is able to show at least the plausibility of a mushroom at the Origins of Christianity.
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arnoldo
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by arnoldo »

I would be interested to read about the varieties of Jesus Mythicism of people of the latter two centuries. . . doubt it has anything to do with the first or second century though. . .
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maryhelena
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by maryhelena »

Giuseppe wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 9:51 am Varieties of Jesus Mythicism: Did He Even Exist? edited by John W. Loftus and Robert M. Price

I have not yet read this book.

What I would like to know from the reading of this book:
  • Why precisely "Pilate" was chosen as killer of Jesus in the first gospel;
  • If Earl Doherty will give new arguments about a celestial crucifixion in Hebrews;
  • If really Michael Hoffman is able to show at least the plausibility of a mushroom at the Origins of Christianity.
I just downloaded a kindle sample from amazon...... It has no table of contents. Very frustrating.....
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arnoldo
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by arnoldo »

maryhelena wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 10:26 am I just downloaded a kindle sample from amazon...... It has no table of contents. Very frustrating.....
Here you go.
Contents:
Foreword by Richard C. Miller
Preface “The Jesus of the Gospels Didn’t Exist” by John Loftus
Introduction “New Testament Minimalism” by Robert M. Price
Part 1 Varieties of Jesus Mythicism
1 Why Mythicism Matters, by Dave Fitzgerald.
2 Jesus, by Barbara G. Walker
3 Dying and Rising Gods, by Derreck Bennett.
4 Christianity is a Western Branch of Buddhism, by Michael Lockwood
5 The Roman Provenance of Christianity, by Joseph Atwill.
6 Pauline Origin of the Gospels in the Wake of the Jewish-Roman War, by R.G. Price
7 Under the Mushroom Tree, by Michael Hoffman
8 Star-Lore in the Gospels, by Bill Darlison
9 The Mythic Power of the Atonement, by Robert M. Price
10 A Sacrifice in Heaven: The Son in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Earl Doherty
11 The Jewish Myth of Jesus, by Stephan Huller
12 Jesus: Pre-Existent and Non-Existent, by Robert M. Price
13 Mark's Gospel: A Performed Play in Rome, by Danila Oder
Part 2 Mythicist Rejoiners to Biblical Scholars
14 Is There a Man Behind the Curtain? A Response to Bart Ehrman, by Robert M. Price
15 A Rejoinder to James McGrath’s Case for Jesus, by Neil Godfrey.
16 Everything is Wrong with This: The Legacy of Maurice Casey, by Tim Widowfield.
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/ ... hoose.html

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GakuseiDon
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by GakuseiDon »

Thanks arnoldo. "13 Mark's Gospel: A Performed Play in Rome, by Danila Oder" sounds very interesting. More information on her theory on this website:
http://www.thetwogospelsofmark.com/

A revolutionary new proposal for the origin of the Gospel of Mark assumes Jesus mythicism. In The Two Gospels of Mark: Performance and Text, Danila Oder proposes that “Mark” was a playwright in Rome in 90–95 CE. He wrote a play in which his Judean congregation’s heavenly Jesus comes to earth. Jesus is on a mission to fulfill Scripture by suffering and dying, then returning to the heavens. The play was performed on a stage before an audience of Mark’s congregants. The play was an entertainment in the genre of mime.

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MrMacSon
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by MrMacSon »

I bought the kindle version yesterday and started looking through it. Yes, the lack of a Table of Contents is frustrating. But I found some interesting commentary. Even in the Foreword by Richard C. Miller (who I cannot recall knowing about & which forward made me look at his Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity eg. via previews or reviews eg. this goodreads one)

All the first ten or so commentaries are interesting. I hadn't previously read David Fitzgerald and didn't read all his article, but it likely gives an overview of his position. I got the impression it is static.

Robert M Price's first commentary is interesting though it represents and highlights the difficulties in trying to put 'Jesus Mythicism' or, as he's known for calling it, 'the Christ Myth Theory', into a neat box: that's not entirely a reflection on RMP but the fact it's still an evolving field with a wide range of dimensions (to which he has added a lot: to know RMP one has to read a lot of RMP).

'Dying and Rising Gods' by Derreck Bennett is thorough and topical. He covers very well how the concept, which fell out of favour even a decade or so ago, has come roaring back through a few scholars' recent books.

'Jesus', by Barbara G. Walker is kinda interesting via a quick look but a bit esoteric and maybe outdated in it's 'throw a lot of stuff out there without much in-depth discussion and hope some of it sticks' approach.

'Pauline Origin of the Gospels in the Wake of the Jewish-Roman War' by rgprice is very good, although I think he spends a lot of words (and readers' time) outlining conventional 'scholarship', something most readers would know.

rgp gives a few good gems such as

"David Oliver Smith’s work shows that Paul’s epistles are at the heart of much of the supposed Q material"

his views and points that

.
"Paul was the inspiration for the Jesus character [in the Gospel of Mark] ...

"the Gospel of Mark is in fact a polemic attack against Paul’s opponents, Peter, James, and John, those “reputed to be pillars,” [as were parts of the Pauline epistles] ...

"Peter, James, John, and the other disciples in the [G.Mark] story cannot understand Jesus’ parables. This is why the disciples fail to recognize who Jesus is. Aside from demons, Peter is the one who finally recognizes him, but Jesus then calls him Satan and Peter goes on to deny and abandon Jesus, just as Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians. The story itself is an allegorical mystery that presents Paul’s apostolic opponents as individuals who themselves fail to grasp the mysteries of Christ."
.

and his post Deciphering the Gospels, 2018, view that

The Gospel of Mark must have been written by someone within the inner Pauline circle [ie. someone "more than simply a Pauline 'follower'."]

(I wonder if all this might have happened in or around a/the marcionite community)

rgp notes

"In 1988, Wolfgang Roth had published a little-known book that laid out the relationship between the Gospel of Mark and the story of Elijah and Elisha from the books of Kings in the Jewish scriptures, called Hebrew Gospel: Cracking the Code of Mark. This work was followed up in 2010 by Adam Winn with another book on this topic, called Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative. These works show how the writer of Mark constructed his narrative from one of the most popular and well-known narratives in the Jewish scriptures."

I'd like to add Thomas L Brodie's contribution as Adam Winn's supervisor at the Dominican Biblical Institute in Limerick, Ireland, and the author of the forerunner to Winn's book, [] The Crucible Bridge: The Elijah-Elisha Narrative as Interpretive Synthesis of Genesis-Kings and a Literary Model for the Gospels[/i], 2000.


I started flicking through 'Under the Mushroom Tree: R. Gordon Wasson versus John M. Allegro' by Michael Hoffman, but I get the impression it's longwinded and typical lukewarm take by 'person C' [Hoffman] on person A v person B that pervades these sorts of issues and discussions, and requires the reader to know more than they do and to be interested in the all ingredients in lukewarm minestrone type soup.

It's all interesting and mostly topical, yet will take a while to digest.
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maryhelena
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by maryhelena »

arnoldo wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 1:57 pm
maryhelena wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 10:26 am I just downloaded a kindle sample from amazon...... It has no table of contents. Very frustrating.....
Here you go.
Contents:
Foreword by Richard C. Miller
Preface “The Jesus of the Gospels Didn’t Exist” by John Loftus
Introduction “New Testament Minimalism” by Robert M. Price
Part 1 Varieties of Jesus Mythicism
1 Why Mythicism Matters, by Dave Fitzgerald.
2 Jesus, by Barbara G. Walker
3 Dying and Rising Gods, by Derreck Bennett.
4 Christianity is a Western Branch of Buddhism, by Michael Lockwood
5 The Roman Provenance of Christianity, by Joseph Atwill.
6 Pauline Origin of the Gospels in the Wake of the Jewish-Roman War, by R.G. Price
7 Under the Mushroom Tree, by Michael Hoffman
8 Star-Lore in the Gospels, by Bill Darlison
9 The Mythic Power of the Atonement, by Robert M. Price
10 A Sacrifice in Heaven: The Son in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by Earl Doherty
11 The Jewish Myth of Jesus, by Stephan Huller
12 Jesus: Pre-Existent and Non-Existent, by Robert M. Price
13 Mark's Gospel: A Performed Play in Rome, by Danila Oder
Part 2 Mythicist Rejoiners to Biblical Scholars
14 Is There a Man Behind the Curtain? A Response to Bart Ehrman, by Robert M. Price
15 A Rejoinder to James McGrath’s Case for Jesus, by Neil Godfrey.
16 Everything is Wrong with This: The Legacy of Maurice Casey, by Tim Widowfield.
https://www.debunking-christianity.com/ ... hoose.html

Thank you for that list. For a non-fiction book, and a book with multiple authors, to not have a Table of Contents is surely an un-professional way to present the book's information. Not a good look for authors wanting to challenge the consensus position on the gospel story.
==========
It seems Richard Carrier declined to contribute to the book....understandable from his own comment on the Loftus blog.
Mainstream experts mostly already agree the miraculous Jesus didn’t exist, but what about a merely human Jesus? This anthology usefully exhibits the full gamut of doubting even that, from the absurd to the sound. Some contributions are not credible, but some are worth considering, and several are brilliant, indeed required reading for anyone exploring the subject.
- Richard Carrier, Ph.D., author of On the Historicity of Jesus.

Giuseppe
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by Giuseppe »

I am doing a first reading of the book.

In particular, I see that Robert M. Price, with his gnosticism at the origin of Christianity, resembles strongly Jean Magne's view about a celestial crucifixion where the original killer was YHWH.

What surprises me is that so many mythicists are the mere American copy of old French Mythicists.

Doherty, for that matter, is totally indebted to Paul-Louis Couchoud, even if he wants to portray himself as someone who has gone more far than his precursor.

So also RG Price: as also Bob Price pointed out, his strong focus on Mark from a mythicist POV resembles strongly the old position of an American Mythicist, William B. Smith, the author of Ecce Deus.

Danila Oder's drama theory seems to be the unaware copy of Mythicist Dujardin's sacred drama at the origin of Christianity.

Still after the half of the book, there is no mention at all about why Pilate was introduced in the first gospel.
Giuseppe
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by Giuseppe »

A jem by Bob Price about the TF:

in seeking to rehabilitate the Testimonium Flavianum by cutting out inconvenient pieces of it, its defenders are engaged in the same sort of falsification practiced by Eusebius (or whomever) when he slipped the whole counterfeit passage into the text of Josephus which he viewed as inadequate for its silence about Jesus!

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maryhelena
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Re: About the Varieties of Jesus Mythicism

Post by maryhelena »

Just found a Table on Contents in the Kindle version of the book. It's a menu item.... Small icon to the left on top of page. Titles are listed but if long authors name is not listed. However the chapters are hyperlinked so one can move around in the book.
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