Does anyone have On the Historicity of Jesus yet?

[andrewcriddle]

^The issue is not whether Paul's epistles prove a historical Jesus, but whether Paul believed Jesus to have been born/lived/crucified here on Earth or in a heavenly realm. This question is as much about the validity of the Carrier/Doherty hypothesis as much as it is about the validity of other hypotheses (historicist or mythicist).

Yes.

It is quite possible to doubt the existence of a historical Jesus without any sympathy for Earl Doherty's specific alternative. However, that is not what Richard Carrier is arguing.

Andrew Criddle

[maryhelena]

^The issue is not whether Paul's epistles prove a historical Jesus, but whether Paul believed Jesus to have been born/lived/crucified here on Earth or in a heavenly realm. This question is as much about the validity of the Carrier/Doherty hypothesis as much as it is about the validity of other hypotheses (historicist or mythicist).

Yes.

It is quite possible to doubt the existence of a historical Jesus without any sympathy for Earl Doherty's specific alternative. However, that is not what Richard Carrier is arguing.

Andrew Criddle

A point the Carrier-Doherty mythicists would do well to remember...

[toejam]

The issue is not whether Paul's epistles prove a historical Jesus, but whether Paul believed ....

Sorry to disagree so fundamentally.

Can you assert what ...

You don't know (and neither does anyone else) anything about 'Paul'...

Toejam, do you "know" whether ...

Snooze. I wasn't aware I was claiming "knowledge" or "asserting" anything. That I think a better explanation of the Paul quotes in question is that he's talking about a spiritual being who came to Earth, as opposed to a spiritual being who came to the "1st Heaven" or what-have-you, should not be confused with an assertion of knowledge. There is very little I feel confident in asserting knowledge of when it comes to any ancient history. It boils down to probabilities and plausibilities.

[Kapyong]

Gday,

Is it not first, incumbent on us to verify the legitimacy of our sources, before commencing with a laborious and detailed assessment of this or that nuance, regarding a word, some word which an author may have expressed or which may have been inserted by a redactor? What is the provenance of 'Paul's' letters? Does anyone on planet earth know, with certainty, that 'Paul' even existed as a human being? I smell a ponzi scheme.

You raise some good points, but it's not as if Paul hasn't been analysed - his works have been evaluated and analysed for centuries and we know a few things about them.

Even if we don't know Paul existed,
we do know that one or more Christians wrote them - probably one person wrote the 'authentic' seven.
We know they have been re-arranged into different letters then they started out.
We know they have been tampered with and interpolated.
We know, fairly well, that they date to sometime in the first century.

But you're correct that we have many questions that make arguing from his works problematic. I think Bernard places to much weight on vague statements from these letters.

The problem is we don't have much else to go on - Paul's works are so important for the history of Christianity, even with these problems.


Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard,

Doubtful Historicities : 2
4) He was a minister to Jews (Ro 15:8).
5) He was poor, in poverty (2 Cor 8:9) and "humble" (Php 2:8).

Why doubtful historicity: Why would a human being on earth ministering the Jews be less likely than an heavenly deity doing it from heaven?
Why being poor and humble is more likely referring to be in heaven than on earth?
Obviously Kapyong, you did not read my piece on "poor", "in poverty":
http://historical-jesus.sosblogs.com/Hi ... b1-p24.htm
Cordially, Bernard

I have read your blogpost - I acknowledge that poor and rich usually refer to earthly concepts.

But if Christ was seen as a celestial being then he could have easily, by extension, been seen to be poor in power and humbled by descending the heavens.

Just because most examples are earthly doesn't mean ALL examples have to be earthly - Christ was not like the other earthly beings and examples you cited, so his poorness could be different.

Weren't Inanna and Baal 'humbled' when they descended too ?


Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard,

Gosh, mythicists like Doherty & Carrier send the gospels and Acts in the thrash bin but they consider highly corrupted "Ascension of Isaiah", most likely christianized after the gospels, as their gospel, quasi-canonical.

That's a bit unfair - Gospel and Acts are not sent to the trash bin - they are evaluated and then determined useless for historicity of Jesus.

But the Ascension of Isaiah is a crucial text for mythicism - it deserves careful study because it describes exactly what Carrier and Doherty claim - a journey from heaven down almost to the earth.

BTW, when traveling below the firmament, Jesus is given a body like the angels of the air, not in the "likeness of men".

GakuSeiDon and I had a discussion about this - he says 'in your [Isaiah's'] form' is present in the Slav/L2 MSS, even though Doherty and Carrier say otherwise :

"...you are suggesting that the Beloved descending "in your [Isaiah's] form" is not in the Slavonic/L2 texts. Doherty made a similar claim in JNGNM, but he was wrong. It is in 9.13 of S/L2 "

GakuSeiDon argues this means Christ must have descended to earth to receive Isaiah's form.

Carrier quotes 8:26 as "who shall one day descend in your form"
and 9:13 as "And after he has descended and become like you in appearance, they will think that he is flesh and a man"

But Carrier claims these passages are not present in all versions - not sure about that, my copy of Charlesworth suggest they are present.

9:14 follows on with
"And the god of this world will stretch forth his hand against the Son, and they will lay hands upon him and crucify him on a tree".

Showing that this fleshly form [Isaiah's] was the form in which he was crucified in the sub-lunar heaven.

The whole point of the celestial crucifixion was that Christ descended to the sub-lunar sphere of 'flesh' (still above the earth) to be crucified like a man - of course he had the form of a man, to enable the crucifixion to save mankind.


Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday,

I don't think it's far fetched at all, Paul states specifically that the women are allegories - what more do you want ?

No, Paul introduced the women as real ones before starting his allegory (using these two women in it). Paul, as a Jew, was not about considering biblical persons described being human in the past as being allegorical.

But yet he actually said he was doing exactly that :

"For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, one from a slave woman and one from a free woman—but the one from the slave woman was born according to the flesh, and the one from the free woman by the promise. Which things are said allegorically. for these [women] are the two testaments, the first being the one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to slavery. That's Hagar—Hagar meaning Mount Sinai in Arabia, which corresponds to Jerusalem now, for she is enslaved with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother ... "

The whole passage is allegory, starting with :
"If you are Christ's, then you [like him] are the sperm of Abraham, heirs according to the promise"

This passage simply is NOT about a historical woman giving birth to Jesus - it just isn't.


Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard,

I certainly know about the passage and its context: "you" refers to David, "his" refers to Solomon, and the "throne" refers to the Davidic dynasty.

Solomon may be the first choice, but it's not impossible that a pesher interprets this as being the Messiah to come, still part of the Davidic dynasty. A new Solomon, a new son-of-God, a new descendant of David.

As far as I know, only Carrier used 2 Samuel 7 for his interpretation.

But that doesn't necessarily mean someone else didn't interpret it that way - maybe Paul did, and that DOES make someone who saw it that way. We know ancient Jews and Christians interpreted their scriptures in many and varied ways - why not this ?

My piece on Carrier's theory:
http://historical-jesus.sosblogs.com/Hi ... b1-p74.htm
At the end of my blog post, I quoted the passage from OHJ.

I have read your blogpost - if the future tense can mean Solomon, it can also mean the Messiah to come.
As for building a house - didn't Jesus build up a house that was destroyed in 3 days ?
A few rare examples of ginomai used elsewhere doesn't remove the strangeness of Paul using the word purely for Jesus and gennao elsewhere.

All in all, I don't think you have demolished Carrier's point - you have a reasonable argument, but so does he.

In order to see what Carrier saw in that passage, it has to be "read like a pesher". And Carrier goes on "It would not be unimaginable that God could maintain a cosmic sperm bank" and conclude "And since scripture required the messiah to be Davidic, anyone who started with the cosmic doctrine inherent in minimal mythicism would have had to imagine something of this kind."

I think Carrier's argument is fine - in the case of mythicism, something like this makes perfect sense. Carrier's argument is to assume mythicism then see if the evidence supports it, then to assume historicism and see if the evidence supports that. In this case, assuming mythicism produces a result that fits quite well.


Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard,

So, the cosmic Jesus would get his body from a David's sperm and, according to Carrier OHJ, pp577-582, On Born of Woman', from the allegorical Hagar: "Jesus was momentarily born to the allegorical Hagar"

Makes sense to me - this happened in the realm of 'flesh', the Air Beneath the Moon, the realm of corruption and change - here Christ could be born to the old covenant through the celestial Hagar, only to be crucified in that realm so we could be made free.

But that Hagar is considered a real woman by Jews and certainly Paul. That complicates things.

Not at all - Paul saw TWO Hagar's - the historical and the allegorical (celestial), like the Jerusalem above and Jerusalem below. "As Above So Below" to quote the Ascension of Isaiah.

Anyway it looks that Hagar (the real one or the allegorical one) had to be preserved alive in heaven (resurrected or raptured!) in order to be available for Jesus' incarnation from that sperm of David that God preserved for a millennium.

An allegorical (celestial) Hagar can live for ever - like the Prince of Powers of the Air.

Later, that allegorical woman is replaced by the old covenant: "So the 'woman' here is simply the old covenant, not an actual person."

Yes - it's an allegory - one celestial woman Hagar (slavery) is the old covenant, the other celestial woman Sarah (freedom) is the new covenant.

So now we would have for Gal 4:4, with Carrier's "corrections": "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of the old covenant, made under the law,"
or going to Carrier's first interpretation: "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of the allegorical Hagar, made under the law,"

Well, it could be combined to mean this :

"But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of the old covenant, the allegorical Hagar, made under the law,"

Which makes perfect sense - the new replaces the old - the old being under slavery, the new being freedom and giving rise to the birth of the son-of-God in the sub-lunar sphere which is of flesh, but still part of the heavens.


Kapyong

[GakuseiDon]

BTW, when traveling below the firmament, Jesus is given a body like the angels of the air, not in the "likeness of men".

GakuSeiDon and I had a discussion about this - he says 'in your [Isaiah's'] form' is present in the Slav/L2 MSS, even though Doherty and Carrier say otherwise :

"...you are suggesting that the Beloved descending "in your [Isaiah's] form" is not in the Slavonic/L2 texts. Doherty made a similar claim in JNGNM, but he was wrong. It is in 9.13 of S/L2 "

GakuSeiDon argues this means Christ must have descended to earth to receive Isaiah's form.

Carrier quotes 8:26 as "who shall one day descend in your form"
and 9:13 as "And after he has descended and become like you in appearance, they will think that he is flesh and a man"

But Carrier claims these passages are not present in all versions - not sure about that, my copy of Charlesworth suggest they are present.

Just relooking at what you quoted by Carrier earlier:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=687&start=140

• In line with this, two other key phrases also appear to have been interpo­lated: 'they will think that he is flesh and a man' (9.13) and he shall 'descend in your form' (8.26) are both missing from the Latin version.

Since 9.13 is 'And after he has descended and become like you in appearance, they will think that he is flesh and a man', then I wonder if Carrier implies an understanding that the 'become like you in appearance' is still part of the Latin text. If so, it still leaves the question of where "become like you in appearance" actually occurs, since the Beloved has already descended past the firmament -- into the air below -- and at that point has the form of the creatures of the air.

From Carrier's comment that "human sor­cerers could fly into the air and be met with there", Carrier seems to suggest that it is possible that AoI has the celestial Christ crucified "in [Isaiah's] form" in the air, below the firmament and above the earth. But if that is true, what is the significance of "they will think that he is flesh and a man" and "descend in your form" missing from the Latin versions (if that is even the case)? Would that prove a problem for Carrier's theory? Especially since he also writes "earliest Christian belief certainly held that Jesus had assumed the form of a man". I'm a bit confused by what Carrier is suggesting there. Was there an implication that the Beloved appeared "in your form" or not? If so, why point out that the "in your form" statements were missing? Confusing.

Carrier then goes on to explain what he sees may have been in the original Latin version, and its implications:

• This is what we see (translating from the Latin text):
  
  • [11.1] After this, the angel said to me. "Understand. Isaiah, son of Amoz. because for this purpose have I been sent from God. that everything be revealed to you. For before you no one ever saw. nor after you will anyone be able to see. what you have seen and heard'. [11.2] And I saw one like a son of man, dwelling among men, and in the world, and they did not know him. |11.23] And I saw him ascend into the firmament but he did not change himself into another form, and all the angels above the firmament saw him. and they worshipped him.
  This new version of 11.2 describes a kind of earthly sojourn, but in an absurdly brief fashion. This actually looks like a rewrite of the Jewish scrip­ture of Bar. 3.38, where God himself was 'seen on earth and conversed with men', which would sooner suggest a revelatory experience was going to be described. Hence it's notable how this Ascension text transforms Baruch: it does not have Jesus converse with men or seen by men. but has him only among men yet completely unknown to them.

So was "in your form" there or not, according to Carrier? Does the Latin form of AoI have Christ on earth in the form of a man (even just as a revelatory experience) or not? It is quite confusing what Carrier is suggesting was in the Latin version.

For my 2 cents: the original AoI looks like a docetic text that had Christ come to earth, be crucified and then ascend.