The Jesus Myth Part III

[Manetho]

To do something with this thread that isn't a retread, I'll talk about this.

It looks like the people they mention as necessary characters in this calls come after Jesus....but I wonder if they just throw Jesus in.

Most of the figures of this sort are later than Jesus, but not all. From the book review I linked (bold text mine):

According to K., the proliferation of the evidence for pagan miracle-workers in the second century A.D. reflects an increase in numbers. Again, this is a dubious argument. The most important second-century sources on pagan miracle-workers are written in Greek, and their protagonists come from the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. In order for us to get acquainted with miracle-workers, narrative texts are needed. For such texts to be written, intellectuals interested in miracle-workers are required. For such texts to be handed down, they must be appreciated by posterity for literary merit or intrinsic interest. The expansion of our evidence may thus very well be the outcome of a combination of two other developments, viz. an increase in the social and intellectual respectability of miracle-workers, and an amelioration of the state of preserva­tion of pagan Greek prose literature from the later first century A.D. onwards.

A third objection to K.'s treatment of pagan miracle-workers concerns his handling of an important pagan miracle-worker from the second century B.C.: the Syrian Eunus, leader of the first Sicilian slave revolt, portrayed by Diodorus/Posidonius. Eunus is a fine specimen of the species: he predicts the future, he performs — or fakes — miracles, and he claims a special relationship with divinity, i.c. the Syrian Goddess... K.'s observation that, in comparison with Greeks and Romans, orientals are over­represented among pagan miracle-workers, amounts to neglect of the effects of an age-long process of cultural interaction — without altering the fact that these miracle-workers were pagans. In fact, by stressing the oriental origins of a number of pagan miracle-workers, his argument tends to reduce rather than to augment the distance between these figures and the cradle of Christianity. Returning to Eunus, we should not overlook the fact that our acquaintance with this figure is extremely fortuitous. If he had not become the leader of a slave revolt, itself the result of a series of coincidences, we would never have heard of him. This confirms the inappropriateness of the utilization of arguments from silence on the issue under discussion...

The increase of our evidence from the second century A.D. onwards can, as I suggested above, at least partly be explained by an increase in the social and intellectual respectability of miracle-workers rather than by an increase in numbers. The revival of Pythagoreanism from the first century B.C. probably played a signifi­can't role in this upward mobility. The Pythagorean tenet of a third ontological category of intermediate beings 'like Pythagoras' between gods and humans pro­vided a perfect philo­sophical legitimization for the activities of miracle-workers. To a considerable extent, the prolifer­ation of sources on miracle-workers in the second century A.D. may reflect the success of this legitimization in philosophical terms...

So as miracle-workers became more respectable, they began to appear more in the written record. (Keep in mind that the vast majority of people in the Roman Empire were illiterate. A religious movement could exist while leaving hardly any trace in writing, hence the relevance of Eunus, who only came to the attention of literate people because he led a slave revolt.) A couple of years back, while researching material relevant to ancient Egypt, I came across this paper about the story in which the future emperor Vespasian miraculously healed two men in Alexandria by the power of the Egyptian god Serapis. The paper argues that the story didn't become a major part of Vespasian's claim to imperial authority, because people in Rome itself had a long tradition of thinking Egyptians were weird and suspicious (e.g., the future emperor Augustus stirring up Roman xenophobia to make war on Antony and Cleopatra a century earlier). But the story did become important in the ideology surrounding Vespasian's son Domitian.

Domitian’s reign is replete with evidence indicating that he created an environment in which the story of the Alexandrian wonders could flourish. Under Domitian, Vespasian’s Alexandrian healing wonders were accorded a startling prominence, especially given their explicit cultural hybridity, which stands in stark contrast to Vergil’s depiction of Roman dominance over Egypt at Actium. In the former narrative, Serapis acted as a divine partner in bringing Rome’s new emperor to power. This embracing of hybridity was consistent with Domitian’s Philhellenism and Egyptomania, which provided a cultural space in which Vespasian’s wonders resonated and interacted with Domitian’s political, religious, architectural, and ideological efforts.

In other words, whereas miracle-working figures seem to have previously been ignored or looked down upon by those in a position to write about them, miracle-working, and the eastern deities that were often connected with it, became legitimized enough that by the end of the first century, the emperor himself could use them both to bolster his authority. Thereafter, miracle-workers started to show up more often in the written record, usually in Greek texts from the eastern half of the empire.

Hmm. Greek texts about men who perform miracles in the name of weird foreign gods from the eastern empire — texts that emerge in the late first and early second century. What does that sound like?

[dastardly stem]

Well, I am not opposed to mysticism, and I am not really opposed to most forms of mythicism. I am only opposed to what I view to be bad methodology in ancient history. For me the intimate and inextricable interaction of myth and historical persons is one of the most fascinating aspects of Mediterranean antiquity. Everyone who said anything about others around them was generally providing a highly rhetorical and artistic take on the person that was not expected to be slavishly tethered to the "facts." That phenomenon so thoroughly permeated the literate cultures of the time that the insistence that Jesus the myth is divorced somehow from a historical person is unlikely in the extreme. When Cicero takes down Catiline or Marc Antony, is he representing them factually? The question is simplistic and poorly framed. Likewise with Jesus. It would be stupid to say that myth has nothing to do with how Jesus is presented. At the same time it would be daft to say that no historical Jesus existed. What we see over and over again in that age is historical people presented to us in highly rhetorical, artistic, and mythicizing terms. To expect differently in Jesus' case is blinkered.

These are good points, Kishkumen I appreciate them getting added to the mix. Sure, actual otherwise verified people were mythologized. But, it's also true that non historical people were included in myth. It feels like a bit of a wash to suggest everyone who concludes Jesus didn't likely exist are being daft because some mythologized characters have other reason to think they were historical, if there were also characters that are today not considered historical, but also had mythical tales written about them. If we only consider one side of this, we'll end up short in our evaluation it seems to me. On this there's nothing daft in concluding one over the other. And yes, since all we have are mythologized versions of Jesus its hard to go from that myth to anything certain about whether Jesus really lived. I think it's hard to do, anyways.

Go through all of our ancient sources in this general era--the Hellenistic Age through the High Roman Empire--and you will see how widespread this is. It is the air these people breathed. Now tell me that Jesus is the lone exception, and I will show you what is statistically unlikely to be the case.

Why would Jesus be the lone exception?

When making fun of Christians for their absurd religious beliefs, the 2nd century critic Celsus listed a number of other resurrected gods and heroes whose myths he accused the Gospels of emulating. He says legends of returning from the dead included Zalmoxis, Pythagoras, Rhampsinitus, Orpheus, Protesilaus, Hercules, and Theseus. Some of these were actual resurrection myths; others, just visitors to (and lucky escapees from) the land of the dead. But either way, Origen says Celsus was “maintaining that these heroes disappeared for a certain time, and secretly withdrew themselves from the sight of all men, and gave themselves out afterwards as having returned from Hades, for such is the meaning which his words seem to convey” (Against Celsus 2.56). In other words, Celsus was offering a polemical explanation of pagan resurrection myths (that they were all actually cons), just like the critics Herodotus was citing for Zalmoxis, and then suggesting the Christians were doing the same with Jesus. But this again entails that popular belief held these resurrections to be real. And accordingly, Origen’s only defense is not that these were not really dying gods, or not really claiming to have died, but that Jesus couldn’t have pretended to have died, as Celsus was alleging these other gods had done. Origen thus fully accepted Celsus’s point: that resurrected gods and heroes were a commonplace in popular mythology. Origen could only argue that Jesus was the only real one.

https://www.richardcarrier.information/archives/13890

There were plenty who lived in the region and in the area who held to a dying and rising god belief. And it turns out, in many ways, Jesus' myth fit with many of them. Its as if many around the Jews had one of these saving or not saving Gods and Jesus became the perfect fit if the Jews too decided to have one.

Jesus’s death and resurrection is a singular apocalyptic event rather than part of an eternal cycle…because that’s the Jewish contribution fused to the dying-and-rising motif. It’s exactly how a dying-and-rising god would be Judaized. Likewise the role of sacrificial-atonement blood-magic in framing his death, which is exactly a replication of Jewish temple atonement magic (Jesus thus becomes the Yom Kippur: e.g. OHJ, Element 18, pp. 143-45; pp. 402-07; etc.), foundational to Jewish soteriology. So we can already expect that in the creation of any Jewish savior cult, as well. Meanwhile the Hellenistic contributions include the role of Jesus as incarnated divine being (and thus demigod and not fully human), in this respect most closely modeling Romulus (who was also a pre-existent celestial who assumed a mortal body; and in myth, even born to a human woman), but as we’ve seen, many other resurrected mortals and demigods abounded to inspire the same concept. Likewise, the abandonment of the communal agricultural context and its replacement with an interpretation of future individual salvation, is exactly what happened to many other resurrected gods (such as Osiris and Adonis) precisely in consequence of the influence of the Hellenistic mystery religions.

[Kishkumen]

Kishkumen, this is a clear thoughtful statement that should be kept in mind in considering the gospels.I will try and not forget it.

It is perhaps odd,or not, that I can think of the gospels as having a variety of uncertain doubtful details. I can also just read them without worrying about that , take the message as presented.

Thank you for the compliment, huckelberry!

[Kishkumen]

These are good points, Kishkumen I appreciate them getting added to the mix. Sure, actual otherwise verified people were mythologized. But, it's also true that non historical people were included in myth.

I am not really seeing anything to disagree with there. I disagree that these non-historical people placed in myth are written into anything that looks like the Gospels.

It feels like a bit of a wash to suggest everyone who concludes Jesus didn't likely exist are being daft because some mythologized characters have other reason to think they were historical, if there were also characters that are today not considered historical, but also had mythical tales written about them.

This suggests to me that you do not understand what I am saying. What I am saying is that most historical figures that are featured as the primary characters in the literature of the period of Jesus receive a highly rhetorical, artistic, and mythologizing treatment, the mix of which depends on the genre. Jesus is no exception.

If we only consider one side of this, we'll end up short in our evaluation it seems to me. On this there's nothing daft in concluding one over the other. And yes, since all we have are mythologized versions of Jesus its hard to go from that myth to anything certain about whether Jesus really lived. I think it's hard to do, anyways.

I say it is hard to buck the overwhelming trends of the majority of ancient literature of the period by inserting wholly mythological characters into seemingly historical narratives, down to the detail of who the Roman governor and emperor was at the time. That is what you are expecting ancient historians to believe. It is something like asking people to accept ancient Hebrew Christians in the fourth century BCE in Mesoamerica.

Why would Jesus be the lone exception?

I am saying he is not the lone exception in that he is not a wholly fictional, mythological character. He is not the exception because, like most figures of his period who were written about in that period, he gets a similarly rhetorical and mythicizing treatment.

When making fun of Christians for their absurd religious beliefs, the 2nd century critic Celsus listed a number of other resurrected gods and heroes whose myths he accused the Gospels of emulating. He says legends of returning from the dead included Zalmoxis, Pythagoras, Rhampsinitus, Orpheus, Protesilaus, Hercules, and Theseus.

You are misusing Celsus. Celsus is writing polemically against Christianity, not as a historian. He should not be used to make an argument whereby Pythagoras, a figure who is written about by authors contemporary to him, like Heraclitus, and authors who lived not long after him, one who is almost certainly historical, is treated as being the equivalent of Hercules and Orpheus. Ancient historians of antiquity could identify the difference, just as responsible historians today do.

Origen’s only defense is not that these were not really dying gods, or not really claiming to have died, but that Jesus couldn’t have pretended to have died, as Celsus was alleging these other gods had done. Origen thus fully accepted Celsus’s point: that resurrected gods and heroes were a commonplace in popular mythology. Origen could only argue that Jesus was the only real one.

Origen would only argue that Jesus is the only "real" one because he is making a theological point, not a historiographical one. Origen, of all people, was an allegorizing Platonist, and he should not be treated like a fundamentalist Christian writing in the modern period. Celsus' response to Origen will not take him on his own terms, but instead deliberately misconstrue what Origen says for rhetorical effect. Those who wrench these ancient arguments from their context to use in modern arguments are doing a disservice to everyone who really wants to understand antiquity and its thinkers.

[Analytics]

Yes, on Kish's point, we can't get too caught up on evidence for ancient history, because it's not there. And yes, granted, we simply just take for granted, as assumption, that when people get mentioned, they were there. Jesus is a different case, though. There is a reason to evaluate whether characters in history really existed or not. There's a reason why people reject the historicity of Osiris, and Adam. Jesus, as we hear about him, is simply a mythologized character, no matter how we slice it. If there were a Jesus behind the myth where was he and who was he? No one really knows.

I think there is some real evidence Jesus was historical. Around A.D. 70, Mark wrote a detailed account of his life, and put it in a very specific setting only 40 years earlier. The book has specific details that seem really unlikely to be included in a made-up book (e.g. why would a mythological Jesus be from Nazareth of all places? Why would they depict him as being baptized by John the Baptist?)

We also know that ten years later, Luke sat down and wrote his gospel, with the following introduction: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

This makes it clear that by A.D. 70, there was a large community of people who believed Jesus was historical, that there was great interest in his life, and that there were accounts that purported to be from actual eyewitnesses of these events. In other words, it's hard to conceive of how this could have been written and received the traction that it did if the people alive then did not think Jesus was historical. So if the Christians of A.D. 70 believed he was historical, is it conceivable that he wasn't? To me that is a stretch.

On the other hand, it is easy to trace Christianity back to the early apostles--to the indisputably historical Paul, Peter, and James. To me, the real question isn't whether Jesus of Nazareth is historical. The real question is this: when referring to Christ Jesus, was Paul specifically referring to the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, or was he referring to a demigod who was crucified and resurrected in a spirit realm vis-à-vis Ascension of Isaiah? We know that the religion Paul preached is not the same religion Jesus of Nazareth preached. And we know that according to Paul, you became an apostle by having a vision of Jesus. Clearly, the implication is that the other apostles were apostles for having visions that were qualitatively the same as Paul's. So what does any of this have to do with a guy from Nazareth?

That's where I'm at. The gospels paint a picture of a preacher named Jesus of Nazareth, who morphed from being a son-of-man preacher in Mark to the Word Himself in John, over the years 70 to 90. But Paul's entire ministry took place before Mark was even written, and is about a mystic religion that seems to have nothing to do with an apocalyptic preacher from Nazareth and nothing to do with the son of man. That's why my own theory makes so much sense--the evolution of Christianity we see from 70 to 90 in the gospels is an attempt to harmonize the story of Jesus the preacher with Paul's preexisting Christianity--a sect of Judaism that predated Jesus of Nazareth. To me, that's most easy to believe.

The competing idea is harder for me to swallow. Reconstructing the evolution of ideas, how do we go from Jesus-->Peter-->Paul-->Mark-->Matthew-->Luke-->John? The evolution of the ideas in the book don't line up with the chronology--Paul should have been written after John, not before Mark. That's why I think the Jesus of Nazareth/Son of Man history in the gospels merged with the already existing Christ-Jesus-savior religion of Paul. They are two different faith traditions with two different origins.

[Kishkumen]

On the other hand, it is easy to trace Christianity back to the early apostles--to the indisputably historical Paul, Peter, and James. To me, the real question isn't whether Jesus of Nazareth is historical. The real question is this: when referring to Christ Jesus, was Paul specifically referring to the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, or was he referring to a demigod who was crucified and resurrected in a spirit realm vis-à-vis Ascension of Isaiah? We know that the religion Paul preached is not the same religion Jesus of Nazareth preached. And we know that according to Paul, you became an apostle by having a vision of Jesus. Clearly, the implication is that the other apostles were apostles for having visions that were qualitatively the same as Paul's. So what does any of this have to do with a guy from Nazareth?

I have come closer to mythicism in my view of Paul’s idea of Jesus. Paul is the earliest example of a Jesus whose humanity is negligibly important. The idea that an angel took human form is sufficiently well established in Judaism to be a viable position to attribute to Paul in his view of Jesus based on what we see in his letters. Yet, I don’t see this as incompatible with having a historical person who was divinized in this Jewish way. If Alexander could have Zeus-Ammon as a father, and Augustus could have Apollo as a father, then surely Jesus could be an angel in human form.

That said, Paul doesn’t make much of the human side of Jesus’ life. His doctrine is mostly concerned with the angelic nature of Jesus. That makes sense, but it is quite striking. The idea of two quite different sects that eventually came together (partly because Paul’s cult of Gentile Godfearers was much more successful and was not slammed by Roman legions in Jerusalem in 70 CE) is quite plausible. I don’t see it being at all improbable.

[Kishkumen]

In other words, whereas miracle-working figures seem to have previously been ignored or looked down upon by those in a position to write about them, miracle-working, and the eastern deities that were often connected with it, became legitimized enough that by the end of the first century, the emperor himself could use them both to bolster his authority. Thereafter, miracle-workers started to show up more often in the written record, usually in Greek texts from the eastern half of the empire.

Hmm. Greek texts about men who perform miracles in the name of weird foreign gods from the eastern empire — texts that emerge in the late first and early second century. What does that sound like?

Yep! Nice extrapolation from the argument. I think it works. But then I am predisposed to agree with you.

[honorentheos]

It appears you think I said the opposite of what I said. To put it clearly (hopefully) my rhetorical point was suggesting there is very little difference (a distinction without a difference, in effect) between saying there was a historical person Jesus who later was mythologized, perhaps even to the point of being unrecognizable to that historical person, and saying there was a myth developed and there is likely no historical person at the bottom of it.

At risk of derailing other excellent points made, the issue to be addressed is in the space between Jesus being a fabrication out of whole cloth and Jesus being a historical person of no merit. In effect, making the historical Jesus into Brian Cohen from Monty Python's Life of Brian or the Christ as the only options being entertained.

In the second thread on this topic I suggested one of the major red flags in the discussion was the lack of historical context, instead choosing the same path as fundamentalists in only engaging the scriptural texts.

To save time, I'm offering the "beats" in the narrative we have from the Gospel of Mark that are meaningful (meaning, the person who lived them would be of value for the sake of study and understanding the time/context in which they lived) and align with the historical context in ways that make little sense if Jesus were being reinserted back into the mortal realm after being invented as a heavenly being first.

First beat is actually a pause or silence. That being, his life prior to becoming of note is unknown and not recorded by the author of Mark. This is a point for historicity. It's what one would expect of a normal person rather than an invented god figure whose birth and childhood would typically be part of the mythology. See the Rank-Raglan metric for examples. And subsequent retellings in Matthew and Luke, plus the even more imaginative tellings in the apocrypha.

The bass line/Context. The ruling religious bodies among the Jews at this time period were elites supporting Roman rule but with varied views about Jewish law. The ruling religious priestly class of the time had been a sore subject for most the lifetimes of the people in this period going back to the end of the Hasmonean dynasty around 35 BCE. Jewish nationalism, tied to a mythologized view of the success of the Maccabean revolts against Greek and Hellenized culture/religion, was burning just under the surface for the common Jewish people who compared this glorified past and Jewish orthodoxy to the coarse reality of their time of Herodian oversight under Roman rule. Folks like John the Baptist placed themselves in stark opposition to these corrupted ruling elites who left Judah to perish under the heel of Rome. John ends up being executed for being so outspoken about Herod Antipas marrying his brother's wife after he divorced his wife the daughter of King Aretas of Nabataea, who in turn attacked and defeated Herod in 36 CE because his daughter escaped Herod and went to her father for aid. The attack on Herod by Aretas IV Philopatris is a historical event, and the loss of lands to him confirmed to many that the religious leadership of the Jews were corrupted and failing the people.

Jesus: Mark tells us Jesus was aligned with John the Baptist. From this we can derive he was someone who had negative views of the Jewish religious elite. He preached in the region called Galilee, gaining popularity and the attention of the religious leadership who sent representatives from Jerusalem to debate and engage him. He apparently proved to be a match for his opponents in these public encounters, and over time gained a following. He seems to have picked up a reputation for being a healer. He also appears to have directly lived in a way that contrasted with the Jewish elite, declaring their religious expressions to be vanity while engaging in acts he taught to be truly aligned with God's will. Sometime around a year into his engaging in public life, he traveled to Jerusalem for Passover and took his opposition to the corruption of the Jewish religion by the elites to them, including engaging in an assault on the practice of money-lending in the temple. This level of affront could not be ignored and he was executed by crucifixion. This suggests that his preaching included anti-Roman sentiments of sufficient concern it warranted his execution.

That's in the Gospels and is both informed by and is comfortably situated within the history of the time period.

From this we could speculate on why he became the Christ following his execution. The claim he was resurrected would be an attack on some of his religious political foes who denied it. Claiming resurrection, though, is a bit of a tell in that it was at the center of some religious debate of the time. Its somewhat like the Book of Mormon seeming to be very interested in the religious controversies of the frontier west in the mid-1820's. The teachings of the imminent arrival of the Son of Man to redeem Israel and usher in God's kingdom on earth had to be reframed to account for the death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans and through the influence of his political foes he claimed were corrupt in the sight of God. According to Tacitus, what he called Christianity - the religion present in Rome in 69 CE, was suppressed and put down early on but then flared up. The religious belief that Romans and the corrupt Jewish elite would be defeated by God's chosen champion would be a dangerous idea that needed dealt with by the authorities. But in this period. If we place Jesus as being within a couple of years of John being executed (36-38 CE) then this suggests Paul was very early on first involved in suppressing this very Jewish, very anti-Roman sentiment before having his conversion event that resulted in a romanized reimagining of the message of Jesus...and his became one of many offshoots springing up all around at the time. The Gospels appear to be codified at and after the Jewish War sees the Romans go full heel in the story, and the appeal of Christianity apparently increased even as the Jews were viewed about as badly as possible. It's no wonder the Gospel of John turns the story of anti-Jewish sentiment into the prime narrative thread, with the Romans becoming practically innocent which again makes historical sense when viewed in the timeline of the evolution of the narrative. The various stories of the life of Jesus were codified, organized, edited and concatenated into the Gospels and the rest, as they say, is, well, it's something.

The point isn't to assert there was definitely a historical Jesus, 100%, Bruce Dale eat my stats! It's that the probability of there being a historical figure at the heart of the narrative, and one whose life has something valuable to learn when looked into beyond that of Sunday School Jesus or what the mythical dismissals omit is higher than either of those two apparently bitterly entangled alternatives. Is Ehrman doing damage by placing that probability at 99%? Yeah, that's silly. But if Bruce Dale, er, Carrier actually engaged with the historical Jesus rather than giving lip service to the term before focusing entirely on Sunday School Jesus, I've yet to see it. I know, he SAYS he is concerned only with a historical Jesus and no one worth debating with believes in the mythical Jesus. But he then isolates the discussion into positions that exclude actually engaging with history in favor of engaging religion.

[Kishkumen]

Thank you for that write up, honorentheos. It is very well done and I enjoyed seeing a historical Jesus set out like that. It is great to watch you at work with this question. I particularly like the point about Mark’s silence regarding the time before Jesus’ ministry. You put that very well.

[honorentheos]

Hi Kishkumen. You are too kind and I appreciate the thought if recognizing my contributions pale in comparison to the more weighty and far more informed efforts you and others have gifted us over the various threads on the topic.