The Jesus Myth: An unrelenting case for history

[Manetho]

So....I'm suggesting Paul was the first to write about Jesus. Mark was second, in the historical record. They both were diaspora Jews, steeped in Greek and Roman thought. There is no clear evidence that either of them got stories or material from anyone else regarding who Jesus was or what he should be. Indeed, the vague description by Paul is James and Peter believed in him previous to Paul, but when Paul met up with them, he found himself disappointed in what they had to offer. it may very well be their Jesus was quite a bit different from his Jesus. The contention was, apparently, Paul wanted others to convert. Peter wanted to convert Jews. But we get no word from Peter or James, so we don't know what they thought. I would suggest there was a weak or raw version of Paul's later version floating among some illiterate people in jerusalem, and perhaps minimally in regions nearby. But what that was might not really have been quite as coherent as what Paul tried to preach, nor what Mark later wrote. Its all very sketchy history, but that'd be part of the point. Its not neat and tidy. The guesswork can be near infinite, if we let it.

But why was Jesus invented in the first place?

Plato, Alexander, Julius, Caesar, Augustus, and Apollonius of Tyana were all real people who had mythical tropes applied to them in historical times. It's a phenomenon that we know existed in this era. We don't know of any analogous case of a mythical figure being relocated into recent history in the way you're proposing. If it happened, why did it happen?

[dastardly stem]

I think I read that MacDonald himself believes Jesus actually existed.

True.

M. David Litwa, another scholar who says studies of the gospels should engage more with Greek mythology, also believes Jesus actually existed.

True.

I've read both of them, and find their works great--both of them. Litwa's Iesus Deus was a great book. I'd recommend it. And I've read a couple from MacDonald.

I've never heard either cogently argue for historicity. I've heard them both complain about mythicism, but in each case they seem to misunderstand the points. I don't understand the lack of engagement here.

(According to this response to one of his books, "Litwa’s contention that the gospels are myths made to look historical will initially be met with gasps of excitement and anticipation by the online Jesus mythicist community — and their gasps of joy will dissipate just as quickly once they realise that Litwa himself is not a Jesus mythicist, but believes in a historical Jesus.")

More confusing. Litwa is a believer, so there is an interest in keeping the hope of Jesus alive. But, if he ever gets around to actually making a case for historicity in his works, I'd be all ears.

So, as I said in my post upthread, it's entirely plausible that multiple mythic elements could be applied to a historical person. And that still seems to be what most scholars believe happened with Jesus.

yes. What scholars believe and what can actually be argued for and articulated in scholarship tends to be a pretty obscure line to lay people. But I think it's a distinction we ought to uphold for the sake of scholarship. If these scholars ever get around to engaging the topic, in the realm of scholarship, that'd be very helpful to the ongoing conversation, I'd think.

[dastardly stem]

But why was Jesus invented in the first place?

Why questions are perhaps the hardest to respond to. You make a point like, obviously Jesus was put out to compete with the mythic beliefs prevalent among people surrounding diaspora Jews. But that'd be only part of it. Christians often argue Jesus need to fulfill the Messianic prophecies of Old Testament jewish thought. Why? how? That's the thing...who really knows. All talk of jesus before Paul is lost. Whatever was invented before Paul might have been Pauline or might have been something quite different. Who really knows?

Plato, Alexander, Julius, Caesar, Augustus, and Apollonius of Tyana were all real people who had mythical tropes applied to them in historical times. It's a phenomenon that we know existed in this era. We don't know of any analogous case of a mythical figure being relocated into recent history in the way you're proposing. If it happened, why did it happen?

Your qualifier of "recent" may or may not apply all that much. Why would that matter? It could be that Jesus existed...It could be that he did not. That is the question. You seem to be suggesting it's evidence that he existed because Alexander existed. But it's two separate cases. Paul or Mark didn't write Alexander mythologies. they wrote mythologies about a jewish hero god. Again, its quite possible Jesus existed, taught things similar to what Paul or mark thought, started a religion, gained followers and was killed. There's just no evidence for that. do you think it's a good faith effort to show Jesus' historicity all because Alexander and others existed? There is evidence for these others that confirm their existence. That's why they are agreed to have existed.

[Manetho]

Your qualifier of "recent" may or may not apply all that much. Why would that matter? It could be that Jesus existed...It could be that he did not. That is the question. You seem to be suggesting it's evidence that he existed because Alexander existed. But it's two separate cases.

You seem to be missing my point, even though it's a point that Kishkumen and I have made before. In this era, we see multiple real people being elevated to divine status by having mythic elements applied to the stories of their actual lives. We do not see previously mythical figures being placed in a specific, recent historical setting. Or, in Kishkumen's words:

Never do we see someone who has made up a history out of seemingly authentic details to turn a god into a human being. We don't see Ti. Julius Dionysus, you may have seen him in such stories as the god who beheaded Pentheus, but now he's back, and he's a drunk consul of Rome defying Augustus' orders and getting into zany capers.

If you want to present the mythicist hypothesis as more probable than the historicist one — or even equally probable as the historicist one — you have to present a reason why the beliefs about Jesus developed differently from the way we would expect in this era.

[huckelberry]

.... The vast majority of New Testament scholars agree that there is a historical person behind the Jesus in the gospels, although the self-identity and history of that person is very different from what the evangelists portray.

Mythicists are just a few cranks on the fringes of academia who have yet to deal effectively with the historical evidence for Jesus of Nazareth. It's flat earther conspiracy theory nonsense.

PseudoPaul, perhaps this discussion could be helped by a closer look at what you mean by a very different person than what evangelists portray. What would be the reason for difference and similarity? There would be important similarities in order to call someone the historical Jesus. After all it would be silly to simply say there was some fellow named Jesus who did not preach,cause a stir, and get into trouble but is the basis for the person portrayed in the gospels.

[dastardly stem]

Your qualifier of "recent" may or may not apply all that much. Why would that matter? It could be that Jesus existed...It could be that he did not. That is the question. You seem to be suggesting it's evidence that he existed because Alexander existed. But it's two separate cases.

You seem to be missing my point, even though it's a point that Kishkumen and I have made before. In this era, we see multiple real people being elevated to divine status by having mythic elements applied to the stories of their actual lives. We do not see previously mythical figures being placed in a specific, recent historical setting. Or, in Kishkumen's words:

Never do we see someone who has made up a history out of seemingly authentic details to turn a god into a human being. We don't see Ti. Julius Dionysus, you may have seen him in such stories as the god who beheaded Pentheus, but now he's back, and he's a drunk consul of Rome defying Augustus' orders and getting into zany capers.

If you want to present the mythicist hypothesis as more probable than the historicist one — or even equally probable as the historicist one — you have to present a reason why the beliefs about Jesus developed differently from the way we would expect in this era.

i think i've replied to this before, yes. We do see many characters who were divinized being made to have actual histories. That's what's behind the Rank-Raglan mythotype application. Those from ancient times who rank high tend to be people who are believed to have no existed. Alexander was one who ranked on the list but is said to have existed. The rest....not so much. I know it matters to you that Paul and mark write in the first century and all the other hero/god figures under consideration were written about before or after. But I don't think it matters. The question isn't--can we assume historicity if the other characters written about during a specific century were all historic characters? The question is simply, can we assume jesus' historicity all because other characters like Alexander or Apollonius were mythologized in centuries nearer to Jesus' time than say we live? In other words, I don't see why anyone would assume historicity for Jesus all because other characters may have been historic people.

The problem with the historicist position is there is no scholar who has taken the question seriously and provided us a work from which we can draw. its all mythicism at this point....sadly.

[drumdude]

Stem,

If the Jews were to invent a character which was to be the messiah, they would not have chosen the Jesus story. Jesus was not the new David that they expected. Jesus did not save the Jews from the Roman occupation. Jesus was not the glorious triumphant leader they expected. He asked Jews to go against their traditions, to look inward instead of outward.

Instead of being the messiah they expected, Jesus was humiliated on the Cross without accomplishing any of what the messiah was supposed to do.

You have to explain why they would create a story which was exactly opposite of the one they expected. What makes more sense is that a real leader named Jesus was martyred by the Romans, and they had to come up with a reason for why his failure was actually a victory.

[drumdude]

In Deconstructing Jesus, Price claims that the Jesus of the New Testament is a "composite figure" out of which a broad variety of historical Jesuses can be reconstructed, any one of which may have been the real Jesus, but not all of them together. According to Price, various Jesus images flowed together at the origin of Christianity, some of them possibly based on myth, some of them possibly based on a historical "Jesus the Nazorean", and that the historical Jesus has become obscured behind the dogma. Price concluded that it is plausible that there might have been a historical Jesus, whose story was completely assimilated into the "Mythic Hero Archetype", but that it was no longer possible to be sure there had ever been a real person underneath all the fiction

I think this is worth emphasizing. No one except believing Christians are claiming with a surety that the historical Jesus existed. All scholars are saying is that it seems very plausible that a historical Jesus existed, in as far as it is possible to know that anyone from that long ago existed.

Bart Ehrman is certainly not providing any cover or support for believing Christians, because he doesn’t believe the historical Jesus was anything but an apocalyptic Jewish preacher. He agrees with the myth position that supernatural aspects were slowly added on to the Jesus character over time.

The fanatical position here is the belief that a historical Jesus could not have possibly existed. Agnosticism about the historicity is perfectly warranted, and I don’t see any scholars saying dogmatically “Jesus 100 percent existed with 0 doubt.”

[dastardly stem]

Your qualifier of "recent" may or may not apply all that much. Why would that matter? It could be that Jesus existed...It could be that he did not. That is the question. You seem to be suggesting it's evidence that he existed because Alexander existed. But it's two separate cases.

You seem to be missing my point, even though it's a point that Kishkumen and I have made before. In this era, we see multiple real people being elevated to divine status by having mythic elements applied to the stories of their actual lives. We do not see previously mythical figures being placed in a specific, recent historical setting. Or, in Kishkumen's words:

Never do we see someone who has made up a history out of seemingly authentic details to turn a god into a human being. We don't see Ti. Julius Dionysus, you may have seen him in such stories as the god who beheaded Pentheus, but now he's back, and he's a drunk consul of Rome defying Augustus' orders and getting into zany capers.

If you want to present the mythicist hypothesis as more probable than the historicist one — or even equally probable as the historicist one — you have to present a reason why the beliefs about Jesus developed differently from the way we would expect in this era.

youv've jogged my memory, a bit, Manetho. I wanted to make another response to these points you've raised.

You are suggesting since Jesus came from a period that was closer to Alexander and Apollonius we should treat them as more closely allied with Jesus than say Osirus, or Romulus, or Moses for that matter. You don't like or appreciate Carrier's use of the Rank-Raglan mythotype to help establish some basis as his starting off point. I admit, i don't care that much about this. I like Carrier's approach over yours only in that he takes a list of criteria then applies the stories of these characters checking off anytime they meet the criteria. It's less biased it seems to me, than to take a bunch of characters and suggesting Jesus is like these all because timing.

But an interesting point (to me) in this thread has been others including Justin a defender of the faith, sees in jesus parallels to these other characters who match more closely to Jesus than do Alexander or Apollonius. Justin seems to be more closely related to Carrier's take. Also, MacDonald in his work, has detailed stories from long before Jesus as the basis from which Mark also attempts to hit the mark on these hero myths. So I suppose you can take this thread as another response, added to the previous ones I provided you from years past, as reason to take Jesus as more Roman/Greek myth added to history rather than a historic figure who later was mythologized (which I think has been established, there is no evidence for).

Ultimately I'd maintain it doesn't matter if there were a Jesus or not. I find myself confused by the dogmatism of historicists. That's what makes me feel use in addressing this. As I see it, and I hope others agree, the discipline of history matters. We shouldn't wash it away because we can't simply know all the details of things that happened in the past. All too often, it appears, we have to conclude we don't know.

[dastardly stem]

Stem,

If the Jews were to invent a character which was to be the messiah, they would not have chosen the Jesus story.

I dispute that. As Justin and many others have shown us, Jesus is exactly the character the hellenized Jews of the diaspora would have invented.

Jesus was not the new David that they expected. Jesus did not save the Jews from the Roman occupation. Jesus was not the glorious triumphant leader they expected. He asked Jews to go against their traditions, to look inward instead of outward.

I'm recommending to you one of the books i offered in the OP: Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity. It may not convince everyone, but it works for me. A good startign point to dispel some of this myth that you've allowed apologist teach you.

Instead of being the messiah they expected, Jesus was humiliated on the Cross without accomplishing any of what the messiah was supposed to do.

Surely, to the point, most jews rejected the Jesus story. many held out even as Christianity dominated. Surely though, you realize there was more than one way to view Jewish religion and heritage.

You have to explain why they would create a story which was exactly opposite of the one they expected. What makes more sense is that a real leader named Jesus was martyred by the Romans, and they had to come up with a reason for why his failure was actually a victory.

Mark's story was created by, as Robyn Faith Walsh puts it, an anonymous hellenized Jew who was likely a part of a literal elite community set on impressing his community. If Mark was to write a story that was to impress his fellow literate people he had to hit the themes they thought were necessary for a godlike hero. And he did. That seems pretty obvious, particularly for those who have dug deep into the works of MacDonald. I'm not impressed by the old theories because they are simply dogma at this point, and carry little to no reasoning with little to no evidence to support them.