The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:21 am
The wedding at Cana is a funny story, all right. It features an odd little non-sequitur dialog between Jesus and his mom: she remarks that they've run out of wine; he infers that she's implicitly asking him to do something about it and objects; she concludes in spite of his complaining that he has agreed to help.

And thereafter I can't help but notice that the whole interpretation of the story as a miracle hangs on the one narratorial parenthesis "which had become wine". Without that one phrase, the rest of the story reads like a rabbinical joke of some kind, to which the "ruler of the feast" catches on and supplies the punchline, that the wine they've had so far has been worse than washing water.

The episode does end with the summary that Jesus's followers took it as a "sign". And obviously somebody thought the story worth telling, whatever it was supposed to be about, or it wouldn't be in the gospel. It has always seemed to me rather quirky as a miracle story, though. It seems easier to riff on water-into-wine in a sermon than to get any profound message out of the story itself as it reads—and elsewhere in John Jesus is by no means shy about making explicit theological assertions. So I wonder whether this story had a first edition with no miracle involved, maybe some parabolic teaching point at the most, and later got rebooted with special effects, perhaps by an editor who simply missed the joke, along with whatever point the story's first version had.

Perhaps an effort to appeal to an audience familiar with myths about Bacchus was part of the reboot. If the story was just supposed from the get-go to be about Jesus out-Dionysosing Dionysos, though, then it was clumsily done, with too many distracting irrelevant details and no real close-up of the miracle itself.
Interesting thoughts. I have not studied the episode in any depth lately, so I'll have to think about this. I would say that if the Bacchus elements seem tacked on, then that might be because the story started off as quite something different, as you say. It may be that all of the other wine and meal symbolism in Jewish prophecy and teachings attributed to Jesus are responsible for this little episode being included. What I will say is that even in Greco-Roman times there was a fair amount of water "turning into wine" in a Dionysiac cultic context that was believed to be miraculous. From our point of view, these things look silly, but for some reason they appear to have been appealing to people of the time. Simon Magus supposedly turned water into wine as a regular feature of his ministry or cultic practices.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Kishkumen wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 11:50 am
[E]ven in Greco-Roman times there was a fair amount of water "turning into wine" in a Dionysiac cultic context that was believed to be miraculous. From our point of view, these things look silly, but for some reason they appear to have been appealing to people of the time. Simon Magus supposedly turned water into wine as a regular feature of his ministry or cultic practices.
Well, see, I didn't know that. A fine example of why I try not to get into factual gunfights with my merely argumentative knives, in a field I don't know.

Maybe it wasn't really even so stupid of those ancient folks to believe in instant wine like that. I understand that Romans drank wine mixed with water anyway—I don't know in what proportion, but if we think about a purported change from imperfectly clean water into well-watered white wine, then that would certainly be subtler than Perrier into Zinfandel. And actual fermentation would have been a mysterious process until microscopes and chemistry, of course, so it wouldn't have been obviously absurd to imagine that the magic could happen in a cultic ceremony.

Maybe turning water into wine was a kind of minimal party trick that anyone with any kind of supernatural pretension was expected to do, like chopping a board if you say you're a black belt. So maybe there would have been better reason than I would have expected to write a water-into-wine scene for Jesus.
Last edited by Physics Guy on Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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A side issue about which I'm now suddenly curious ...

I've seen conflicting statements about the alcoholic strength of ancient wine. On the one hand I've seen a quote from Pliny (I don't know which one) that a cup of a certain wine close to a flame could catch fire. That seems crazy because you need about 40% ABV for flambé—even sherry and port don't burn for me. And I have a hard time understanding how they could possibly have gotten much above 12% ABV without distillation, which I understand was only invented much later in the Arab world.

That much alcohol kills the yeasts that produce the alcohol, even if they have plenty of sugar to eat, so it's really hard to get to high alcohol levels with fermentation alone. Modern wines only get up into the 20% range through fortification with distilled spirits. BrewDog famously got a beer up to 55% ABV, but they concentrated the alcohol with multiple rounds of freezing into slush and sieving out ice, and I'd be surprised if ancient Romans could do that without refrigeration—and a clearer understanding of what was involved in making "strong" drinks than I imagine they had.

On the other hand it's hard to see where Pliny would even have gotten the idea of wine catching fire, if nothing like that was known. So how strong was ancient alcohol?

Edit: It was Pliny the Elder, in the middle of the third paragraph here, and he stipulates that only one particular wine was ever known to catch fire. I wonder how they made that one. Maybe very sweet grapes and a really tough yeast, and then "catching fire" was just a flicker of flame that went out right away.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Physics guy, your wine question has puzzled me. I tried adding water to modern wine and did not find the result very desirable. Perhaps for compact storage the wine was made with high fruit concentration. Adding some water could bring the alcohol content down to say 8 percent still leaving it effective and drinkable. I am only making a speculation.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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I think it depends on the wine. In Germany Weinschorle, a mix of (almost always white) wine and sparkling water, is quite popular. Where I live the classic formula is "four fingers wine" (with the hand in a karate-chop pose so that four fingers is a couple of inches) "to four fingers water" (with the hand flat so that four fingers is half an inch of height). That's just what everyone likes to say, though. It's not really that strong, though normally more wine than water. People drink it by the pint and it's really not bad with dry Riesling. Or you can substitute Sprite for water to make it sweet. Such is human perversity.

I've tried it once or twice with red wine, and at the time it seemed okay, but it might actually have been what the guy at Cana would have classed as a drink for the later stages. The bubbles help.

About the ancient practice I've read that they weren't so much adding water to their wine as adding wine to their water, to kill germs.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:33 pm
Well, see, I didn't know that. A fine example of why I try not to get into factual gunfights with my merely argumentative knives, in a field I don't know.

Maybe it wasn't really even so stupid of those ancient folks to believe in instant wine like that. I understand that Romans drank wine mixed with water anyway—I don't know in what proportion, but if we think about a purported change from imperfectly clean water into well-watered white wine, then that would certainly be subtler than Perrier into Zinfandel. And actual fermentation would have been a mysterious process until microscopes and chemistry, of course, so it wouldn't have been obviously absurd to imagine that the magic could happen in a cultic ceremony.

Maybe turning water into wine was a kind of minimal party trick that anyone with any kind of supernatural pretension was expected to do, like chopping a board if you say you're a black belt. So maybe there would have been better reason than I would have expected to write a water-into-wine scene for Jesus.
My knowledge is a little rusty, but I think there was an entire tradition of party tricks for banquets that were called in Greek paignia, and turning water into wine might fit that. These were the sorts of illusions that alchemy came close to fitting. There was no clear demarcation between technology, party tricks, and magic. All three areas were very closely related in practice.

https://www.ancientmedicine.org/home/20 ... rty-tricks
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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That link is awesome! A bizarre trick to make a hard-boiled egg look just like a slightly weird peach, recreated convincingly thanks to understanding how Ancient Greek distinguished different kinds of fruit.

(Pseudo-)Democritus walks into TikTok.
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:41 pm
That link is awesome! A bizarre trick to make a hard-boiled egg look just like a slightly weird peach, recreated convincingly thanks to understanding how Ancient Greek distinguished different kinds of fruit.

(Pseudo-)Democritus walks into TikTok.
I heartily second PG observation! That was a very FUN link Kish! Man, I'm gonna try that! How spectacular fun, and what a party conversation that would be!
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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For anyone interested in reading the old thread that I excerpted from before, here it is from the top: https://www.discussmormonism.com/viewto ... 4&t=141499
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Re: The Jesus Myth Part II

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Philo Sofee wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 4:43 am
Kishkumen wrote:
Mon Sep 20, 2021 1:48 am


Great post, Philo! You gotta think that the gospel authors were doing their level best to pack their works with appealing meaning for their ancient readers!
And, there could not possibly be anything more appealing to the Gospel writer's audiences than the Greek epics (literally all the schools taught them to the students in every possible country, both Homer and Vergil, amongst others - even Philo and Josephus use them to make illustrations of points they were making). What would have truly caught their eye (and we miss this because no one in our day has been taught the classics as necessary in order to graduate - Greek itself being begun to be taken off the curriculum as necessary after WW II, sadly) is the numerous allusions to so many of their stories, and how Jesus outdoes them in his own actions! They would have lapped this up! It's a form of what we moderns label confabulation - Oh you have a good story about your hero, ha! Get this! Ours is even better, Jesus always does one up better! It is most certainly the guiding principle of John using Euripides for one main purpose, to show Jesus in a greater light in all of Dionysus' specialties! John's audience would have certainly caught onto the miracle of water to wine (Jesus filled much more and larger jugs with the best wine than Dionysus ever did, and in Jesus being the Logos, even in the divine realm before birth, which outdoes Dionysus utterly unique Greek god of having been the only one twice born. Things like that are fantastically fascinating to see how John more or less just man-handles (and mansplains) Jesus vs. Dionysus and giving Dionysus uppercuts, cross jabs, and knock out blows). But it was most especially in Jesus's morality in favor of loving all people that decimatingly eclipsed Dionysus, and John's audience would clearly have known this, and absolutely soaked it up. I shall share more specifics as I have time. In the meantime it is quite helpful to read Euripides Bacchae. There are literally throughout the Gospel of John beautiful examples of how Jesus ends up in a better light, or greater power, or more convincing love than Dionysus, and by the dozens. It is the exact same with Luke and Vergil, and Mark with Homer's epics.
John using Euripides(??) Philo, I ran down a copy of Bacchae and read it. It is not long. I completely missed any connection with John. I read a story of a God who felt he had been slighted and took revenge using madness upon the ruler who was responsible .

It reminded me of the possible view that America neglected the spirit of Christ while waving his flag and marching in the parade. In revenge we have been given the madness of Trumpism. Perhaps we will not reach the bodily dismemberment stage of delusional madness.

I did not catch or understand John foretelling such misfortune.

I also found myself thinking that down through the ages there have been Christians reading the hope of Christs Kingdom through the lens of this Bacchae. God is slighted by nonbelievers and a variety of irregular folks so upon returning sets them in a tree to be torn to pieces by the believing hoard. ,

There was a escape from jail showing divine power. that is a story repeated more than once.(acts rather than John might come to mind)

There could be uncertainty but I have doubts that Euripides was trying to sell Dionysian observance with this story.
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