Doherty's Mythicism

[_Kishkumen]

To perform their salvific work, the savior gods descended into the lower reaches of the spiritual world, taking on increasing resemblance to lower and material forms: Attis, for example (so Julian the "Apostate" relates in Orations V), to the level just above the moon; Christ, so Paul indicates in 1 Corinthians 2:8, along with the writer of the Ascension of Isaiah 9, to the sphere of Satan and his powers in the firmament.

The one thing I would like to point out here is Doherty's rather puzzling use of a late fourth century CE source, and an idiosyncratic one at that (Julian), to demonstrate how Attis cult had this notion of a savior god who descended into the lower reaches of the spiritual world. Julian was a convert to paganism from Christianity; he was also a student of late Platonic thought. As a fourth-century figure who discussed Attis from such a unique perspective, he should not be used as a source for understanding Paul's writings in the mid-first century CE.

I hope by now that any of you who are reading this are starting to get the point about the problem with Doherty's use of evidence. He is cherry-picking from all over the place to find those bits of evidence that best support his idiosyncratic theory. In this he is no different from Hugh Nibley in some of the latter's questionable decisions about the value of evidence.

[_Maksutov]

In the case of Paul, we see a charismatic religious figure (Paul) who has, in fact, imported elements of Hellenistic ruler cult into his missionary activities. He makes himself into the messenger of the king's arrival and the one who is a harbinger of the coming of the kingdom. Jesus is presented to us partly in the mode of a ruler who is the benefactor of his partisans. The rhetoric of Hellenistic rulers pervasively influences Paul. It is not the case that he is simply borrowing from some mystical monomyth that takes place in the upper spheres. He is preaching the coming of the kingdom of God on the model of the arrival of the Hellenistic king and the arrival of that king's kingdom. (A fine late example of this is the career of Mithridates Eupator, king of Pontus, who exploited Greek and Persian prophecy to announce his arrival, his future destruction of the Romans, and his restoration of religion.) The pseudo-Pauline 2 Thessalonians picks up on this and makes it more explicit. Here ps-Paul warns people of false news and false messengers. He predicts that another ruler will arrive, the Man of Lawlessness, who will be destroyed by the Lord at his advent.

Fascinating insights. More, please.

[_Maksutov]

I hope by now that any of you who are reading this are starting to get the point about the problem with Doherty's use of evidence. He is cherry-picking from all over the place to find those bits of evidence that best support his idiosyncratic theory. In this he is no different from Hugh Nibley in some of the latter's questionable decisions about the value of evidence.

Exactly. I've read some of the mythicists' lists of "dying and rising saviors" that claim parallels to Christ and the comparisons are often very strained if not broken. And, as you've noted upthread, the oft-claimed connection to Mithraism is problematic when we have so little information about their actual activities.

[Guest]

More sophisticated philosophers like Plutarch and Sallustius regarded the stories of the Greek salvation cults as allegorical interpretations only, "eternal meanings clothed in myth." Sallustius, writing in the 4th century, speaks of the story of Attis as "an eternal cosmic process, not an isolated event of the past" (On Gods and the World, 9). Paul, while he shows no sign of regarding the myth and suffering of Jesus in anything but literal terms, would have been quite capable of placing such redeeming activity in this upper, spiritual realm, and indeed his language shows every sign of such an interpretation.

One wonders why it is that Doherty finds this stuff applicable to his argument. Yes, it is true that Platonists employed allegorical strategies when interpreting and writing about religious subjects. This does not mean that they were making up the material from nothing. It means that they believed their philosophical interpretations and explications were superior to the material that was available to the senses of the average, uneducated person. The fact that such things happened does not lead to the conclusion that Paul made up Jesus along Platonic or mystical lines. Doherty seems to be merely struck by a vague, seemingly shared mystical quality between Platonic cosmology and allegorical interpretation and the writings of Paul. He has not shown in any way that his intuition is meaningful or significant.

I would guess that Doherty takes this tack because he is aware that Gnosticism was influenced, at some point, by late Platonic thought. Although scholars have expended a lot of ink on early Gnosticism, the simple truth is that we do not know enough about it to say whether it was rife with mystical Platonic ideas in the time of Paul, or that Paul was a Gnostic. We do know that Marcion, the mid-second century CE heretic and the first one to define a kind of canon that accorded with his theology, was fond of Paul, but this only means that Marcion found him useful for his own interpretation of Christianity, not that Paul was a Platonic Gnostic in the middle of the first century CE.

[_Kishkumen]

In the first half century of Christian correspondence, including letters attributed to Paul and other epistles under names like Peter, James and John, the Gospel story cannot be found. When these writers speak of their divine Christ, echoes of Jesus of Nazareth are virtually inaudible, including details of a life and ministry, the circumstances of his death, the attribution of any teachings to him.

If we limit ourselves to those seven epistles that consensus holds to be genuinely Pauline, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, First Thessalonians, and Philemon, then these are the references Paul makes to Jesus that appear to place him in the mundane realm:

7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

While vague, this passages seems to me to suggest that at some point, Paul's Jesus was on earth and assumed the form of a human being, and a humble one at that, and at least appeared to have died by crucifixion. Whether this leaves open the possibility that Jesus inhabited a divine realm before or after these events is uncertain, but it makes little sense to suppose that Paul is saying that this Jesus hung out in some upper realm and there took on the form of a human servant to suffer death on a cross. In other words, the passage strongly suggests that at some point, Paul's Jesus lived in circumstances roughly similar to what one finds later in the gospels. This scripture would not lead me (or his ancient readers, for that matter) to believe that Jesus never lived on the earth.

3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;

Here we see Jesus referring to Jesus being of "the seed of David." Granted, there are, particularly in later Gnosticism, senses in which one can be the "spiritual seed" of a divine avatar (seed of Seth). Furthermore, it is most definitely the case that early Christians envisioned the possibility of becoming the seed of Christ through some mystical means. What is not clear is that being the "seed of David" had anything to do with being some superlunary figure who never existed in the mundane world at all. David was believed to be an earthly king, and however distorted and mythologized his memory became, it is not the case that he was viewed as an allegorical aeon living in a sphere between Metatron and the Watchers, or some such. So, to call Christ the "seed of David" as a way of describing an angelic being in a heavenly realm who never existed on earth is beyond counterintuitive. It is nonsensical.

4 but when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

Here, in what was likely the earliest of Paul's epistles, we find Paul reporting that Jesus was "born of a woman," and "born under the law." It seems to me much more likely that Paul's words indicate that Jesus was born of a human woman and that he was born as a Jew. While I am sure one can argue that these words don't mean what they seem, such readings will always fall short, in my view, of the rather plain meaning of the text, which is not presented in such a way that would lead us to see Jesus as a mystical being in a higher realm who never lived on earth.

23 For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread;

24 and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me.

25 In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink [it], in remembrance of me.

Again, whatever historical problems may be involved in supposing that there was a Last Supper in which Jesus said these things, it seems pretty clear to me that Paul assumed that Jesus was dining on earth and breaking bread with other people. I do not see here a mystical banquet in the sky where a mythological drama involving Jesus being betrayed in the midst of this celestial banquet (at night, no less) unfolds.

While I would agree that Jesus' biography is of minimal interest to Paul, I would not agree that he clearly envisions Paul as a being who belongs, and only ever inhabited, a realm outside of the world Paul himself lived in. If, as rather seems to be the case to me, he seems to have assumed that Jesus lived on earth at some point, then this is a problem for those who champion the view that Jesus is a mystical being who was only later clothed in a quasi-historical person's trappings at some later date. Paul is without question our earliest extant Christian author, and if he plausibly views Jesus as a person who lived on earth at some time, then it is difficult to conclude confidently that Paul made up this Jesus as a mythical figure, or inherited Jesus as a mythical figure from someone else. Paul does seem to view Jesus as someone who lived, but it is the theological Jesus who is most important to him, indeed.

[_Kishkumen]

The Gospel Jesus and his story is equally missing from the non-Christian record of the time. Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish historian Justus of Tiberias, Pliny the Elder as collector of reputed natural phenomena, early Roman satirists and philosophers: all are silent.

On its face, this passage appears to be damning of the possibility that Jesus existed. How could all of these writers failed to mention one of history's most important people? Of course, Jesus was not very important at all during his own time. The fact that the only non-Palestinian person of any consequence he encountered was a Roman prefect of relatively low status who had worked his way up from the ranks of the soldiers--here I mean Pilate--would not bode well for his later mention in histories.

Now, one might wonder why it is that Philo, who discusses Pilate, does not also mention Jesus. The answer is simple: Philo discusses Pilate in his Embassy to Gaius a document in which Philo is making an appeal to the Roman emperor to intercede on behalf of the Jews against the Greeks. Philo refers to Pilate as a governor who exploited his relationship with the emperor to do things that were in reality against the emperor's interests. The incident of the shields is reported to show how the interests of Rome and its provincials (as mediated by the Herodian dynasty) may align in an uncomplicated way despite the bungling of a poor governor. The story of Jesus does not work in the same uncomplicated way, so there is no reason why it would be of benefit to Philo to refer to it. Remember: the incident of the shields is supposed to convince the temperamental emperor Caligula to side with the Jews in a conflict with Greeks. He had a specific reason to report the story, and he chose his anecdote carefully.

Pilate was an official who had been appointed prefect of Judaea. With the intention of annoying the Jews rather than of honoring Tiberius, he set up gilded shields in Herod's palace in the Holy City. They bore no figure and nothing else that was forbidden, but only the briefest possible inscription, which stated two things - the name of the dedicator and that of the person in whose honor the dedication was made.
But when the Jews at large learnt of this action, which was indeed already widely known, they chose as their spokesmen the king's [Herod the Great] four sons, who enjoyed prestige and rank equal to that of kings, his other descendants, and their own officials, and besought Pilate to undo his innovation in the shape of the shields, and not to violate their native customs, which had hitherto been invariably preserved inviolate by kings and emperors alike.
When Pilate, who was a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition, obstinately refused, they shouted: 'Do not cause a revolt! Do not cause a war! Do not break the peace! Disrespect done to our ancient laws brings no honor to the emperor. Do not make Tiberius an excuse for insulting our nation. He does not want any of our traditions done away with. If you say that he does, show us some decree or letter or something of the sort, so that we may cease troubling you and appeal to our master by means of an embassy.'
This last remark exasperated Pilate most of all, for he was afraid that if they really sent an embassy, they would bring accusations against the rest of his administration as well, specifying in detail his venality, his violence, his thefts, his assaults, his abusive behavior, his frequent executions of untried prisoners, and his endless savage ferocity.
So, as he was a spiteful and angry person, he was in a serious dilemma; for he had neither the courage to remove what he had once set up, nor the desire to do anything which would please his subjects, but at the same time he was well aware of Tiberius' firmness on these matters. When the Jewish officials saw this, and realized that Pilate was regretting what he had done, although he did not wish to show it, they wrote a letter to Tiberius, pleading their case as forcibly as they could.
What words, what threats Tiberius uttered against Pilate when he read it! It would be superfluous to describe his anger, although he was not easily moved to anger, since his reaction speaks for itself.
For immediately, without even waiting until the next day, he wrote to Pilate, reproaching and rebuking him a thousand times for his new-fangled audacity and telling him to remove the shields at once and have them taken from the capital to the coastal city of Caesarea [...], to be dedicated in the temple of Augustus. This was duly done. In this way both the honor of the emperor and the traditional policy regarding Jerusalem were alike preserved.

The story of Jesus might show the willingness of many Jews to follow a usurper in a situation where Caligula was angry with the Jews for refusing to worship the emperor (Caligula). Such a story would undermine Philo's cause.

[_Kishkumen]

So the question we need to ask about ancient sources, before we get sucked in by the ploy of listing all the authors Jesus is not found in, is whether they had any reason to mention Jesus. Most of the authors Doherty mentions or at least alludes to here had no reason to mention Jesus. Elite imperial authors discussed other elite figures who moved in their world and touched on their interests. The fact that they did not mention a minor Jewish prophet in an imperial backwater is not indicative of Jesus' non-existence. It is mostly indicative of Jesus' marginal status. Before you conclude that the absence of Jesus is significant, it would be good to show why he might be expected to be there. The simple fact is that in most of the cases Doherty mentions here, there really isn't a good reason we should expect Jesus to come up.

[_Jersey Girl]

Is this thread complete? I was reading/following it...

[_mikwut]

Thank you Kish and Symmachus.

mik

[_Kishkumen]

Is this thread complete? I was reading/following it...

Nope! I have family visiting, but stay tuned for further additions. Thanks for reading.