The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by Kishkumen »

huckelberry wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:38 pm
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.
I know, right?

It is interesting for a while until the conversation starts going in circles. The facts are pretty stubborn. Yes, it is true that Paul was the first person to write about anything we would recognize today as Christianity. It is unfortunate that we don't have the sources that Tacitus and Suetonius were relying on. Is the Testimonium Flavianum an interpolation? To what degree if yes? So we have the few genuine Pauline epistles that give us minimal information about Jesus because they are mostly pastoral and theological in nature. We have the Gospel of Mark. Later come the other epistles, gospels, etc. We either think that what we have points to a real person whose religious activities provoked Roman punishment, or that some myth about a cosmic being come down to earth somehow got spun out into a story about an apocalyptic preacher who was crucified by the Romans . . . for some reason.

Honestly, I just don't get the latter at all. Why would one turn the cosmic god into the flesh and blood Jesus who is given the most humiliating punishment by the Romans? It would be much less problematic a story if the cosmic god stayed a cosmic god and his demonic enemies stayed demonic. Transforming the tale into one about a nobody from Galilee who was tacked up on a cross strikes me as counterintuitive to the point that it seems almost impossible. No matter how I slice it, which angle I examine, I am just not seeing the fictional cosmic Jesus who became a regular guy.

Don't get me wrong: to me the incarnation of Jesus is one of the most unbelievable aspects of Christian doctrine period. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You want to believe it is a myth on the other side of things because it really makes no sense. And, yes, it is a myth, but I think it is the same kind of myth as the one about the divine parentage of Alexander the Great. It is the one where you take your person that you think is really cool and imagine that he must be divine because of how cool you think he is. Because he would have to be divine to be that cool. It is not the sui generis kind where you take a cosmic deity and then for some incomprehensible reason make him less cool by having third-rate Roman authorities tack him up like they would a common slave.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by huckelberry »

honorentheos wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:54 pm
.....r.

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.
Honorentheos, I took a second look at this wondering what you are aiming at and found myself wondering if we might possible agree on something important here.

The person Jesus was taking a stand against the corrupt power of Rome though perhaps by first confronting the local people compromised by that corruption for their own benefit. He was doing that through ideas and means available in his time and culture. He was also willing to put his life on the line and paid with his life. All sorts of people might find somewhere in themselves some respect for that courage and integrety with or without the religious doctrines. To say that God raised him from the dead expresses a belief that it is right to stand for the rights of the common man against the brutality of selfish power. As a myth underlying the sunday school doctrine it influences people ,even those who do not believe the religious doctrines. It even survives the betrayal of the principal by manipulative religious leaders or political leader who use the religious ideas. Despite those corruptions the image of courage is still there and can give courage to seek human mutual respect.
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Manetho
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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dastardly stem wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:16 pm
honorentheos wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:00 pm

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 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.
I can't really make sense of this post. The position that Honorentheos describes is exactly the one that Kishkumen and I have been defending this entire time. If you're only now grasping that position, as you seem to be from this comment, what on Earth did you think you were arguing against?
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by ¥akaSteelhead »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 12:07 am
Honestly, I just don't get the latter at all. Why would one turn the cosmic god into the flesh and blood Jesus who is given the most humiliating punishment by the Romans? It would be much less problematic a story if the cosmic god stayed a cosmic god and his demonic enemies stayed demonic. Transforming the tale into one about a nobody from Galilee who was tacked up on a cross strikes me as counterintuitive to the point that it seems almost impossible. No matter how I slice it, which angle I examine, I am just not seeing the fictional cosmic Jesus who became a regular guy.

Don't get me wrong: to me the incarnation of Jesus is one of the most unbelievable aspects of Christian doctrine period. It makes absolutely no sense to me at all. You want to believe it is a myth on the other side of things because it really makes no sense. And, yes, it is a myth, but I think it is the same kind of myth as the one about the divine parentage of Alexander the Great. It is the one where you take your person that you think is really cool and imagine that he must be divine because of how cool you think he is. Because he would have to be divine to be that cool. It is not the sui generis kind where you take a cosmic deity and then for some incomprehensible reason make him less cool by having third-rate Roman authorities tack him up like they would a common slave.
Kish - isn't that basically just the criterion of embarrassment? Which I don't see as convincing at all, as the next part of the story has him floating away into the sky as a god, and it becomes integral into the sacrificial lamb part of the narrative, where he then takes away death and sin from humanity by conquering it.
Last edited by ¥akaSteelhead on Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by Analytics »

Kishkumen wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 12:07 am
It is interesting for a while until the conversation starts going in circles. The facts are pretty stubborn. Yes, it is true that Paul was the first person to write about anything we would recognize today as Christianity. It is unfortunate that we don't have the sources that Tacitus and Suetonius were relying on. Is the Testimonium Flavianum an interpolation? To what degree if yes? So we have the few genuine Pauline epistles that give us minimal information about Jesus because they are mostly pastoral and theological in nature....
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.
Kishkumen wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 12:07 am
Honestly, I just don't get the latter at all. Why would one turn the cosmic god into the flesh and blood Jesus who is given the most humiliating punishment by the Romans?
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.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by huckelberry »

Analytics wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:41 pm


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.

.... 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.
Analytics,
I cannot imagine a world in the future where people are saying anything about Forest Gump. But perhaps that is an issue of taste. I cannot imagine anybody caring about the name Jesus without a story of who he was. I cannot picture people getting all excited about a Jesus religion without wanting to know who he was and what he did. I cannot imagine Christian churches meeting at least weekly and not caring who Jesus was and what he said. I cannot imagine anything so strange. I think it vastly more likely that they already knew so did not need a letter from Paul to tell them.

About the quote from Paul I am certainly glad Paul was so not so unsure of himself that he would patch up his beautiful statement with quotes. As Physics Guy points out Pauls writing can be rocky, a bit tangled and sometimes obscure. I think there are moments when he finds a sharp clarity, that 1 Corinthians passage is one and one one best not messed up.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by dastardly stem »

honorentheos wrote:
Thu Sep 16, 2021 11:54 pm
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.
I'm not saying they are the same. I said yours is another version of a myth, not mythicist, position. If you suggest since it's likely a Jewish Jesus lived and he taught something that was not Christianity, then fine by me. As I've pointed out, it's quite likely there was a Jesus who lived. It was a common name and all that. If he taught anything we have no record of it. Right? So how do we know he taught something? We just kind of guess because it's likely a Jesus lived and someone, (Paul, Peter?) Started a myth. Correct?
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.
This is what I started with in part I. It's not evidence that Jesus lived to say a great movement resulted from a myth. That is possible whether Jesus lived or not. Saying its more meaningful to you if Jesus really lived also doesn't give us good reason. It could be meaningful if it were myth. In fact, to the same degree. While I appreciate your preference for what it is, I'm not sure that gives us good reason to accept the historicist position.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by dastardly stem »

Manetho wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:16 pm


I can't really make sense of this post. The position that Honorentheos describes is exactly the one that Kishkumen and I have been defending this entire time. If you're only now grasping that position, as you seem to be from this comment, what on Earth did you think you were arguing against?
In the opening post, in part I , I suggested Jesus was a common early first century Jewish name. Of course someone so lived. But, as I pointed out for a historicist position one must provide arguments and evidence that there was a jew, named Jesus, who taught something that birthed Christianity. And he gained a following, upset authorities and got himself killed. That's a pretty minimal position. Honor suggested a historical Jesus didn't teach Christianity, but seemed also to indicate that the myths likely were added to someone. I mean great. Who is it? The only records we have are from fanatical believers who believed a magical Jesus christ. Right?
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by Manetho »

¥akaSteelhead wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:40 pm
Kish - isn't that basically just the criterion of embarrassment? Which I don't see as convincing at all, as the next part of the story has him floating away into the sky as a god, and it becomes integral into the sacrificial lamb part of the narrative, where he then takes away death and sin from humanity by conquering it.
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.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

Post by Kishkumen »

¥akaSteelhead wrote:
Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:40 pm
Kish - isn't that basically just the criterion of embarrassment? Which I don't see as convincing at all, as the next part of the story has him floating away into the sky as a god, and it becomes integral into the sacrificial lamb part of the narrative, where he then takes away death and sin from humanity by conquering it.
I think of this not as the criterion of embarrassment so much as a failure to conform to the usual criteria for ancient myths. In that sense, it really isn’t weak at all. We can resurrect that checklist for ancient heroes and see whether things like “executed like a common criminal by a small-time official” makes the list. Really, Mark’s Jesus does not look that much like a hero.

The original ending of Mark does not have him floating away into heaven. There is just an empty tomb where a young man claims that Jesus is risen. Not very heroic.
“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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