The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by Kishkumen »

Analytics wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:41 pm
Christian letters that are pastoral or theological in nature are typically filled with details that hint at a mortal ministry of Christ.

As an example of how, earlier today I got into a stupid little debate with smac97 about the Problem of Evil. To make one of his points, smac97 quoted a parable of Jesus. Smac97 quoting Jesus attested that as-of 2021 A.D., smac97 was aware that Jesus lived, was aware of what he taught, and considered his teachings useful and authoritative.

Likewise, if Jesus of Nazareth is the one responsible for starting Paul's religion, one would think that stories about Jesus' life, or at the very least the things Jesus taught, would have been circulating around the various churches. Paul could have said stuff like, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. For as the Lord told the Pharisees, loving God and loving thy neighbor are the two great commandments." But he never did. That's odd to me.
What is odd to you as a person who lives in the 21st century is irrelevant. The important question is what we might expect for someone like Paul to write in letters to believers in HIS teachings. What smac97 does? Ha!
Is that the right question? As far as we can tell, nobody cared about the life or teachings of Jesus all that much. They cared about his death and resurrection, but they didn't care about his life or teachings. That changed when an incredibly gifted storyteller now known as Mark sat down and wrote his gospel. The story was compelling. It moved people. The story immediately became a core part of the Christian textual tradition and spread through the churches. It was so good, Matthew, Luke, John and countless others imitated it.

Maybe Mark was the first person to document the life of Jesus of Nazareth in a way that was compelling enough to make it into the textual tradition. Or maybe he had the genius to write a compelling story that allegorically put a mystical Christ into a historical context. Telling a story that puts a fictional/mystical character in a historical context may be unlikely, but it isn't inconceivable. I imagine a world in 2,000 years where people are arguing about whether Forest Gump was historical or not.
Well, obviously that is untrue. Mark is not making up his material. He is getting it from somewhere. People did seem to care about Jesus’ life and teachings. We get quite different stuff in John. Where was that coming from if no one was interested? Where do Q and Thomas come from if people don’t care about Jesus’ teachings?

I don’t see that your description of the state of things matches the evidence as I understand it. I get that you have narrowed your view to Paul and Mark here, but the other evidence does bear on these issues. I don’t see how it is that Mark is believed to be making his material up out of whole cloth.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Not in the earliest version. The oldest known copies of Mark end with the women going to the tomb and seeing it open and empty, a mysterious figure next to the tomb saying of Jesus "He is not here," and the women running away afraid. The postmortem appearances of Jesus are all in the later tellings of the story.

When the gospels are arranged chronologically, they show a pattern: each makes progressively more grandiose claims for Jesus's status (Mark implies that he only becomes the messiah at his baptism, Matthew and Luke make him the preordained messiah from birth, and John makes him an aspect of God), and each describes progressively more dramatic postmortem appearances.
You beat me!
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:41 am
Not in the earliest version. The oldest known copies of Mark end with the women going to the tomb and seeing it open and empty, a mysterious figure next to the tomb saying of Jesus "He is not here," and the women running away afraid. The postmortem appearances of Jesus are all in the later tellings of the story.

When the gospels are arranged chronologically, they show a pattern: each makes progressively more grandiose claims for Jesus's status (Mark implies that he only becomes the messiah at his baptism, Matthew and Luke make him the preordained messiah from birth, and John makes him an aspect of God), and each describes progressively more dramatic postmortem appearances.
You beat me!
Not unlike what Joseph Smith did with his first vision.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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When the standard of evidence sinks to “it isn’t inconceivable” then aren’t all bets off anyway?
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Not unlike what Joseph Smith did with his first vision.
I think that is a useful comparison.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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honorentheos wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:16 pm
dastardly stem wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 5:15 pm
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.
Honorentheos, To say Jesus was not teaching Christianity points to some basic truth but may also be vague enough to cause some confusion. Christianity was and is focused on a crucified and risen Christ. It went through a rocky separation from Judaism.Jesus was of course Jewish and had no crucified christ to preach.

Jewish teaching in the first century was not a uniform homogenius thing. You could have a Jewish teacher that taught things which may match or not match what other people did at the time. The teachings which we have attributed to him are like that. They do not match with what we call Christianity. They can be seen to have some tendencies in that direction however. It is possible I see that way because they are linked that way by believers in his resurrection. If there had been no resurrection story it is possible, likely they would have remained absorbed in the body of Jewish discussion.

I think it is possible to correctly observe Jesus did not teach Christianity but to also observe that what he taught contributed a crucial impetus to the movement and has shaped it through out its history. I think it remains historically solid to say Jesus taught things a memory of which are in the gospels. He was crucified and some of his followers believed he was raised from the dead the belief in which became the foundation of Christianity. There are stories around that narrative that are not historically considered and can be viewed as mythological as Kishkumen has pointed out a few times.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by honorentheos »

huckelberry wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:36 pm
I think it is possible to correctly observe Jesus did not teach Christianity but to also observe that what he taught contributed a crucial impetus to the movement and has shaped it through out its history. I think it remains historically solid to say Jesus taught things a memory of which are in the gospels.
The above also reflects my views.
He was crucified and some of his followers believed he was raised from the dead the belief in which became the foundation of Christianity.
The careful wording here also aligns with my view.
There are stories around that narrative that are not historically considered and can be viewed as mythological as Kishkumen has pointed out a few times.
Again, we don't disagree here.

Certain sayings within the gospels that seem common place to us today, and the parables attributed to Jesus, are only familiar and lack novelty because we live in a society saturated in their influence and history. Their novelty for the time and structure suggest there is content in the gospels that are:

1) Attributable to the historic person behind the stories
2) These sayings and teaching influenced Christianity
3) These teaching are not inherently Christian but Christianity took it's shape under the influence of the sayings attributed to Jesus
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Well put, honor and huckleberry.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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I have learned much from these two threads.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:40 am
Analytics wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:41 pm
Christian letters that are pastoral or theological in nature are typically filled with details that hint at a mortal ministry of Christ.

As an example of how, earlier today I got into a stupid little debate with smac97 about the Problem of Evil. To make one of his points, smac97 quoted a parable of Jesus. Smac97 quoting Jesus attested that as-of 2021 A.D., smac97 was aware that Jesus lived, was aware of what he taught, and considered his teachings useful and authoritative.

Likewise, if Jesus of Nazareth is the one responsible for starting Paul's religion, one would think that stories about Jesus' life, or at the very least the things Jesus taught, would have been circulating around the various churches. Paul could have said stuff like, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. For as the Lord told the Pharisees, loving God and loving thy neighbor are the two great commandments." But he never did. That's odd to me.
What is odd to you as a person who lives in the 21st century is irrelevant. The important question is what we might expect for someone like Paul to write in letters to believers in HIS teachings. What smac97 does? Ha!
My Smac97 example is an example of something we see repeatedly in the New Testament. The gospels make multiple references to people, stories, and teachings of the Old Testament. So do the letters of Paul. Likewise, the letters of Paul make references to other letters that he wrote, some of which we don't have. Referring to important writings and authoritative teachings of others is something that Paul did. The writings of Paul attest to the existence of other apostles, other epistles, and to the existence and teachings of the Old Testament. But they do not attest to the earthly ministry of Jesus.
Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:40 am
Is that the right question? As far as we can tell, nobody cared about the life or teachings of Jesus all that much. They cared about his death and resurrection, but they didn't care about his life or teachings. That changed when an incredibly gifted storyteller now known as Mark sat down and wrote his gospel. The story was compelling. It moved people. The story immediately became a core part of the Christian textual tradition and spread through the churches. It was so good, Matthew, Luke, John and countless others imitated it.

Maybe Mark was the first person to document the life of Jesus of Nazareth in a way that was compelling enough to make it into the textual tradition. Or maybe he had the genius to write a compelling story that allegorically put a mystical Christ into a historical context. Telling a story that puts a fictional/mystical character in a historical context may be unlikely, but it isn't inconceivable. [emphasis added]
Well, obviously that is untrue. Mark is not making up his material....
How do you know he isn't making any of it up?

You may have misunderstood my point here, because I think what I said manifestly is true. My understanding of nascent Christianity is that the various churches that Paul and others established all had a member of two who could read and write. We know this because Paul wrote them letters and expected there to be somebody in the church who could read it. Those letters would then be read to the body of believers. They must have been read repeatedly. If a letter was good, meaning that it really touched the people who heard it, the letter was cherished, read over and over, copied and recopied, and sent to other congregations. If a copy of the letter started to wear out, a fresh copy was made. The letters that spread through the Christian community and persisted in this way are what I'm referring to as the "textual tradition."

Like Jews, Christians were a people "of the book." Teachings they thought were important were written down. If the community as a whole cherished what was written, it entered the textual tradition. If the community didn't like what was written, it may have been copied a few times, but otherwise faded from the textual tradition.

Chronologically, the earliest documents that got traction in the Christian textual tradition were Paul's epistles. These epistles weren't the least bit interested in the life of Jesus. We do have some attestation of writings about Jesus that predate Luke. According to Luke 1:1, Luke consulted "many" sources of Jesus that "were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word." The most important of Luke's sources are Mark and Q, but there were probably others.

What do we know about these sources that existed prior to Mark? Not a lot because we don't have them. Why wouldn't we have them?

1- Because for whatever reason, unlike Mark and Paul's surviving epistles, these earlier sources about the life of Jesus didn't gain sufficient traction in the textual tradition to survive to this day.

2- A conspiracy theorist might say they were systematically destroyed in the 4th century because what they said contradicted the official religion.

3- Something else?
Kishkumen wrote:
Sat Sep 18, 2021 2:40 am
He is getting it from somewhere. People did seem to care about Jesus’ life and teachings. We get quite different stuff in John. Where was that coming from if no one was interested? Where do Q and Thomas come from if people don’t care about Jesus’ teachings?

I don’t see that your description of the state of things matches the evidence as I understand it. I get that you have narrowed your view to Paul and Mark here, but the other evidence does bear on these issues. I don’t see how it is that Mark is believed to be making his material up out of whole cloth.
I'm not saying Mark made it up out of whole cloth. I'm simply saying that whatever was written about Jesus before Mark didn't move people the way Mark did. We know this because Mark was copied and recopied and spread throughout Christianity in a durable way and made it into the canon. Earlier writings about Jesus weren't compelling enough to make it into the textual tradition.

Somewhere in the Library of Mendel there is a book about Johnny Cocheroo that would move people to tears and would inspire a new religion. The author of this unwritten book wouldn't have invented John the Conqueror out of whole cloth. Rather, he would have written about a mythical figure that put him into a historical context. I am conceding it is very unlikely this is what Mark did. But it seems entirely consistent with the evidence.
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