The Jesus Myth Part II

[Bret Ripley]

You've stated the problem as I see it very succinctly: "[F]or me it just makes too much sense that we'd expect something from Paul."

Bingo. Paul's letters are didactic in purpose; our questions are biographical. Our expectations run the risk of hating a nickel because it isn't a dime.

[Manetho]

Paul's letters are didactic in purpose; our questions are biographical. Our expectations run the risk of hating a nickel because it isn't a dime.

And the reason so much discussion focuses on Paul's letters is that they are the only Christian texts from the first ~40 years after Jesus would have died that survived long enough for later generations of Christians to have treated them as authoritative. They're not even all of the letters Paul wrote to Christian communities (1 Corinthians 5:9 indicates that it is not actually Paul's first letter to the Corinthians). So it's unreasonable to expect this fairly small group of texts to give of a full picture of what Christians in that period believed.

By the time other Christian authors show up in the record, of course, they refer to an earthly Jesus... and no texts from that point on assert that Jesus had no earthly existence.

The argument from silence can cut both ways.

[honorentheos]

If Jesus was a real human who taught Christianity,...

What if he didn't teach Christianity because it wasn't a thing until Paul?

This gets at what I mean when I argue the mythicist argument is with a mythical, Sunday School Jesus which is largely separate from an investigation into the historical Jesus. I don't think most scholarly attempts to better understand the human person behind the Jesus myth agree that he was teaching Christianity.

[dastardly stem]

What if he didn't teach Christianity because it wasn't a thing until Paul?

This gets at what I mean when I argue the mythicist argument is with a mythical, Sunday School Jesus which is largely separate from an investigation into the historical Jesus. I don't think most scholarly attempts to better understand the human person behind the Jesus myth agree that he was teaching Christianity.

Joshua or Jesus was a common enough name. If all we want to say is there was a Jesus who lived in the early first century and that person didn't teach Christianity, nor had any connection to anything later said to be Jesus christ, then all we're doing is agreeing with a mythicist position.

[malkie]

What would the Aramaic equivalent of the word "Christianity" have meant in the early first century?

Some kind of messianic religion?

Is that what the modern-day Christians believe that their Jesus was teaching?

[honorentheos]

What if he didn't teach Christianity because it wasn't a thing until Paul?

This gets at what I mean when I argue the mythicist argument is with a mythical, Sunday School Jesus which is largely separate from an investigation into the historical Jesus. I don't think most scholarly attempts to better understand the human person behind the Jesus myth agree that he was teaching Christianity.

Joshua or Jesus was a common enough name. If all we want to say is there was a Jesus who lived in the early first century and that person didn't teach Christianity, nor had any connection to anything later said to be Jesus christ, then all we're doing is agreeing with a mythicist position.

Again, this is a jump too far in the other direction.

Believing the evidence supports, "there was a Jesus who lived in the early first century and that person didn't teach Christianity," does not demand, "...had any connection to anything later said to be Jesus christ," is also supported by evidence. The historical person, Jesus, need not have believed he was the son of god nor taught anything other than a form of Judaism with an apocalyptic view that God's kingdom was imminently to be established on earth, which would wipe away the Roman invaders and pretender priests of the Sanhedrin. But also still been the germ around which Christianity was born. I believe the evidence around who Jesus was, what the Gospels likely are based on, and what Paul - a Roman citizen and sympathizer - did not find appealing and omitted in his creation of what we consider to be Christianity aren't resolved by scripture but instead assisted by investigating the historical context to better see the historical person still to be found in th gospel accounts.

Mythisicm appears to confuse this issue, thinking that Sunday School Jesus can't be real so there was no historical Jesus. That's a believer's overly simplistic view made complex with hand waving arguments. Not actual attempts to dig into the context of 1CE Roman Palestine and what history has to suggest.

If the argument is over which first person accounts about Jesus came first regardless of context, we made a bad turn at the intersection of history and religion.

[dastardly stem]

Again, this is a jump too far in the other direction.

Believing the evidence supports, "there was a Jesus who lived in the early first century and that person didn't teach Christianity," does not demand, "...had any connection to anything later said to be Jesus christ," is also supported by evidence. The historical person, Jesus, need not have believed he was the son of god nor taught anything other than a form of Judaism with an apocalyptic view that God's kingdom was imminently to be established on earth, which would wipe away the Roman invaders and pretender priests of the Sanhedrin. But also still been the germ around which Christianity was born. I believe the evidence around who Jesus was, what the Gospels likely are based on, and what Paul - a Roman citizen and sympathizer - did not find appealing and omitted in his creation of what we consider to be Christianity aren't resolved by scripture but instead assisted by investigating the historical context to better see the historical person still to be found in th gospel accounts.

Mythisicm appears to confuse this issue, thinking that Sunday School Jesus can't be real so there was no historical Jesus. That's a believer's overly simplistic view made complex with hand waving arguments. Not actual attempts to dig into the context of 1CE Roman Palestine and what history has to suggest.

If the argument is over which first person accounts about Jesus came first regardless of context, we made a bad turn at the intersection of history and religion.

What you describe appears to be a different myth position. Yes, it's likely a Jewish Jesus lived in the early first century. And it's likely Paul and others taught and innovated upon that which was floating around them in the air. I suppose we can say Paul built upon other ideas others had shared and someone named Jesus lived before Paul and he likely believed something and taught something to someone so that means there really was this Jesus christ. But then again that's what I'd call a different myth position.

[Bret Ripley]

Mythisicm appears to confuse this issue, thinking that Sunday School Jesus can't be real so there was no historical Jesus. That's a believer's overly simplistic view made complex with hand waving arguments. Not actual attempts to dig into the context of 1CE Roman Palestine and what history has to suggest.

What you describe appears to be a different mythicist position. Yes, it's likely a Jewish Jesus lived in the early first century. And it's likely Paul and others taught and innovated upon that which was floating around them in the air. I suppose we can say Paul built upon other ideas others had shared and someone named Jesus lived before Paul and he likely believed something and taught something to someone so that means there really was this Jesus christ. But then again that's what I'd call a different myth position.

QED

[huckelberry]

Yes there were various people named Jesus. I thought we were talking about the one who went about preaching and was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was believed by some to have risen from the dead. Of course other people did not believe he rose from the dead. No reason to think Jesus Rodriguez living down the street was involved.

[honorentheos]

My understanding is Carrier and other mythicists argue the myth came first and the attempt to claim Jesus was a living human being as described in the Gospels came after as a sort of apologetic.

If we look at the gospels and see in them a mythologizing of the stories around a historical person that reinterpret what that person's life signifies, we aren't talking about the same thing.

In fact, the one excludes the other.

Look, stem. It really seems to me that this debate as it occurs in th board is over the Jesus we grew up learning about, praying in their name, engaging in ritual rememberance each Sunday, and otherwise believed to be real and still living. And we agree. That person never existed. But that isn't what is meant when one refers to the historical Jesus. The history of a person named Jesus who lived and taught some things of apparent significance to some people in early 1CE Roman Palestine is a valuable thing to explore, in my opinion. It changed history. You and I live in a world saturated with consequences from that person having lived that, also in my opinion, are actually better understood when one digs past the myths, and doesn't attempt to dismiss it all as nothing but myth, to get to the history.

It matters in the 21st century that this person was part of a society that viewed itself as being under condemnation for sin, oppressed by the godless and blasphemous powerful state, which was godly to resist in some form or other.

It matters in the 21st century how that power responded.

It matters in the 21st century that the context of the time this occured imprinted on the structure of western civilization not just it's beliefs and religious metaphysical views.

It's worth taking seriously enough to say that, even if one isn't interested in digging into the history and context ones self, the argument is not so simple as Sunday School had us believe.