The Jesus myth Part I

[ceeboo]

Hah! Look at that. I forgot the "y" in myth in the title. I'd fix it, but can't see how. So, I'll leave it.

If you want to fix it: Go to your opening post. look at the upper right corner - You will see 3 options (a quote feature, a report feature, and an edit feature. That's the pencil looking thing)

Hit the edit feature (pencil looking thing) that will allow you to edit anything in any of your posts. In this case, you are the author of the thread so in addition to being able to edit anything in the body of your post, it also allows you to go to title of the thread as well (subject line) and edit that too.

So, if you would like to change "mth" to myth, you can.

If you would rather leave it like it is, you can do that too!

The only thing you really can't do, is to believe Jesus is a myth if you want to live in reality.

[dastardly stem]

Hah! Look at that. I forgot the "y" in myth in the title. I'd fix it, but can't see how. So, I'll leave it.

If you want to fix it: Go to your opening post. look at the upper right corner - You will see 3 options (a quote feature, a report feature, and an edit feature. That's the pencil looking thing)

Hit the edit feature (pencil looking thing) that will allow you to edit anything in any of your posts. In this case, you are the author of the thread so in addition to being able to edit anything in the body of your post, it also allows you to go to title of the thread as well (subject line) and edit that too.

So, if you would like to change "mth" to myth, you can.

If you would rather leave it like it is, you can do that too!

The only thing you really can't do, is to believe Jesus is a myth if you want to live in reality.

Thanks, ceeboo. How foolish of me to not see that easy fix. I'm glad you chimed in because I'd love to see a credible case that shows this reality you speak of.

[dastardly stem]

Thanks for all the great comments. Philo I had already had "The Immortality Key" on my reading list. It sounds great and I'm looking forward to it. So I appreciate you bringing it up.

I don't mean to dismiss anyone's comments. I think I have a ton to get to that should in part address much of what is said. I certainly haven't scratched the surface. Anyway a time permits I intend to be more direct in responding to the many fantastic points and ideas already raised. Much love good people. Keep it up.

[ceeboo]

Thanks, ceeboo.

You're welcome, Stem.

How foolish of me to not see that easy fix.

Not foolishness, rather just something you hadn't noticed and/or something you weren't familiar with.

I'm glad you chimed in because I'd love to see a credible case that shows this reality you speak of.

Maybe? I'm not sure I want to participate in the thread - but maybe.

[dastardly stem]

No doubt Christian apologists have exaggerated the evidence for Jesus in comparison to other figures. They may have more wiggle room than Carrier allows them, however. The “quality” of sources can mean a lot of things; one may well be able to point to some respect in which the evidence for figure X is somehow worse than it is for Jesus.

If it’s naïve to just accept a traditional consensus, furthermore, it’s a lot more naïve to take everything Carrier says at face value. There are a number of historical sources about Socrates, for example, but they present quite inconsistent pictures of him. The challenge of reconstructing a historical Socrates from them was considered an outstanding problem for centuries. It seems by now to have been abandoned as hopeless. If Carrier treated Socrates the way he treats Jesus, he’d call him a myth, too.

Hey PG, thanks for the comment. I hear your point but I disagree and I think Carrier would, with ample emphasis, disagree harshly. Remember what I offered here is but a snippet from his book, which itself is but a snippet on his take of Socrates.

My father died 20 some odd years ago. If on record we had two stories about him, one from me and one from my sister, we'd have really good sources to suggest he was a real person having lived a real life. But as it happens the two sources could present a wildly contradicting person, so much so it'd be hard to know which divergent view was most representative of the person. The result may be a problem, much like you mention for Socrates, suggesting we don't know which he really was or if both are wrong or exaggerated. But the question is not can we accurately and consistently recreate the man. It is did he live? And on that question, I'd say without question the sources would be enough to say yes.

This is, I'd suggest, the way we should view the comparison between Socrates and Jesus. The quality and quantity of sources as described for the question did Socrates live dwarf the sources for Jesus. That's not to say Socrates lived and Jesus didn't, mind you. But it's a telling data point.

by the way I am not interested in taking everything Carrier says at face value. That'd be a big purpose of this thread. I'd agree we certainly should not. And on his claims they deserve to be heavily scrutinized.

[Philo Sofee]

The one thing... the ONE thing I really have come to appreciate about Carrier... the guy got me onto MacDonald. I would have never known about him if it wasn't for Carrier. MacDonald makes good sense of so many issues Carrier made without all the vehemence and backsplash. Now I enjoyed Carrier's approach, and I have enjoyed MacDonald's approach, and now I have this yet another angle to work on with Muraresku. I think eventually through time it will gel in amazing ways. I am about to receive some 7 books Muraresku cited in his, and I am excited to take it to another depth level from his angle. The mysteries have always intrigued me, so from Muraresku's approach, I am quite excited to plumb some depth and see where it goes. His Joe Rogan interview was absolutely stellar.

[Kishkumen]

In perfect line with this is Dennis R. MacDonald's massive amounts of information that many of the stories in the Gospels and Acts are created using Mimesis, that is imitating the Greek classics of Homer and Vergil. This entirely leaves room for a person named Jesus who actually existed, yet also confirms Carrier that stories are created which are just simply not history, nor are they meant to be. It is not history that is the arbiter for what is truth and true. MacDonald's overall case, with all his materials is quite convincing to me personally. And other scholars who have also contributed to this theme of mimesis and intertextuality (I'm thinking Allison, and Brodie, and Miller and Winn, among others) just adds to the serious probability we are simply not reading history in the New Testament stories. That does not have anything to do with their value. Because they are not history does not mean they are useless and a waste of time.

Yes, I've read MacDonald, and it is an interesting and attractive idea. On the ground, I would have to say that his arguments are not infrequently less than convincing. Moreover, it was just standard practice to recast events through the light of mythology and earlier literature. That did not necessarily make the events themselves fictional. On the other hand, I have little problem with the idea that many stories about Jesus are made up. The thing that really keeps me in the historical Jesus camp is the way the basic facts about the text fit the historical context fairly well and do not look like something someone made up for purposes of verisimilitude. I just don't see someone making up a Galilean rebel against the powers that be who is executed by the Romans as the fictional basis of a cosmic messiah myth.

Symmachus made the argument best on the old board. The problem with guys like Carrier is that they are arguing for people in antiquity basically acting ass backwards to the way we know they did in their crafting of myth and history.

[Kishkumen]

I think an actual reason for the rise and stick-to-it-ivness of Christianity, since it adapted the pagan mysteries, is the new book by Brian C. Maruresku, "The Immortality Key." I thought it was very, very well done, and a screaming update on the actual scientific claims verifying his thesis.

Brian is an acquaintance of mine, really a close friend of one of my close friends. I do think the idea of a mystery cult with hallucinogens at the center of its practice is a real possibility, be it for the Greek mysteries, the Christian mysteries, or the Mormon mysteries (up through Kirtland).

Oh, by the way, his name is spelled "Muraresku." Guy is freaking brilliant. Studied Classics at Brown and worked on the hallucinogen thesis for a very long time. Met and befriended its earliest proponents, who were unfairly marginalized in the Academy for their great work.

[Moksha]

I think mythology can be beneficial for us, in that it can include a useful moral code and give us a sense of belonging since it is our mythology. However, once it is understood to be a mythology, it becomes much harder for individuals to declare themselves to be spokespeople for the mythology and seek money from the adherents of that mythology.

[Kishkumen]

Showing that these historical figures are better attested to than Jesus doesn't show that Jesus didn't live. What it demonstrates is that there is a push to suggest, without demonstration, that Jesus really did exist. And perhaps expected since the largest religion in the world accepts Jesus must have lived.

That is a wonderful and valuable post, stem. One that shows exactly where the problem is. You have scholars of the New Testament who are, at the end of the day, just not very good ancient historians, and as a consequence of that and their boosterism of Christianity as a topic of great interest are making hyperbolic claims about how wonderful our evidence of Jesus is, and then completely undermining the credibility of the historicity position thereby. I was intrigued by the arguments of mythicists because they were fairly good at pointing out these problems, naturally, but then they go on to propose a much more nebulous and unfalsifiable theory about Jesus.

I think the sweet spot here is to acknowledge that there was a Jesus but that it is difficult to get to the bottom of his actual life because it is overlaid with a number of layers of mythological, ideological, and theological material that obscure the actual facts. I hold onto these things as facts:

Jesus was from Galilee. He was a tekton. He was born sometime around the turn of the millennium. He led a movement that opposed the powers in place at that time in Judea. He was executed by Pontius Pilate. His movement subsequent to his death grew and split into factions, some of which turned him into a god.