The Jesus myth Part I

[huckelberry]

The gospels contain a collection of statements presented as being from Jesus. This collection of sayings presents the sense of a distinct style of thought, concerns and viewpoint. The strength of the communication created therein strongly suggests that there was a somebody doing the thinking.

[Res Ipsa]

THanks Kishkumen and Res Ipsa, for those insightful comments.

I'm going to try and set us where we are so far.

If Jesus lived, he died around 30 A.D.

The religion, we can assume, started at that date (It had to come before Paul's letters in the 50s A.D. because Paul was a convert, and said he wrote these some years after he converted).

Paul's letters are the earliest source of any words about Jesus, on Christianity. That suggests if Jesus lived, any source that made note of his existence was lost, destroyed or never was.

Very few words from Paul can be used to say Paul thought Jesus was a real human. And each of those are disputed on the mythicist position.
Paul never points to anyone who claims to have known a mortal Jesus
Paul never says there was a Jesus who walked among everyone and taught them anything.
Everything Paul claims to be true about Jesus and his religion can only be gained through revelation. He doesn't suggest people who knew
Jesus were around teaching things this supposed preacher preached.

Some years, maybe 2 decades after Paul's writing and then likely after Paul had died, an anonymous writing appears describing fantastic things about this Jesus' life. Everything mentioning Jesus after that, seems to draw directly from that source or other sources already reliant upon that one source, or that mixed with "vague" allusions from Paul.

Before we move on, I'd like anyone to chime, who cares to, with other evidence that may be used to say Jesus lived. We can add that to the mix.

Just a few comments on the recap. I'm hesitant to say the religion did not start until after Jesus's death. The gospels are focussed on Jesus. The don't tell us much about what was occurring with his believers. He did set up an authority to succeed him. And shortly before his death he instituted what became the central religious ritual of Christianity. I think it's tough to identify exactly when the label "religion" applies.

I think you're right about the timing of Paul's letters. And weren't those letters written to churches that had already been established?

I think you might want to add "contemporaneous" before "source" in your third point.

The problem I have with point 4 is the unstated assumption that we should have expected Paul in the letters he wrote to spend time talking about Jesus as a human being. He had only met Jesus through a vision. But I think that the absence of references to mortal Jesus in Paul's letters would be present even if Paul believed he'd been mortal through hearing Jesus stories. Reading those letters, they were clearly not intended to write a history of Jesus. He was concerned with the future, not the past. The important thing to him was not the mortal Jesus, but the resurrected Christ and how and to whom the message of the resurrected Christ should be spread and how Christians should conduct themselves. In my mind, the unstated assumption behind point 4 is not well established. As a result, I wouldn't consider point 4 to represent significant evidence.

I don't know whether point 5 refers to Q or not. I still think of Q as a hypothesis and am not convinced it ever existed. I'd say the Gospel attributed to Mark appeared first, with Matthew and Luke being variations on Mark. John, of course, is a different beast from the other three.

If we're summarizing evidence, I think we need to include the part of the Josephus passage considered authentic. Did we also cover Thallos and Tacitus?

[dastardly stem]

Just a few comments on the recap.

Thank you. Very much appreciated, Res Ipsa.

I'm hesitant to say the religion did not start until after Jesus's death. The gospels are focussed on Jesus. The don't tell us much about what was occurring with his believers. He did set up an authority to succeed him. And shortly before his death he instituted what became the central religious ritual of Christianity. I think it's tough to identify exactly when the label "religion" applies.

All fair. I didn't mean to say the religion came after he died. I just meant in the same range of time that his death would have occured, that's about the time the religion seemed to come about. I didn't mean to make this a controversial point.

I think you're right about the timing of Paul's letters. And weren't those letters written to churches that had already been established?

Yep. And it'd be nice if we had letters written back, or more of his letters. But one thing would be impressive--the religion had spread to the point of Paul writing letters to different groups of Christians (how large those groups? Hard to say).

I think you might want to add "contemporaneous" before "source" in your third point.

Good. Agreed, it should include contemporaneous.

The problem I have with point 4 is the unstated assumption that we should have expected Paul in the letters he wrote to spend time talking about Jesus as a human being.

The point would not be that we should expect it. Its that there isn't any such information.

He had only met Jesus through a vision. But I think that the absence of references to mortal Jesus in Paul's letters would be present even if Paul believed he'd been mortal through hearing Jesus stories.

That's a tough sell. If Jesus was a preacher of sorts, he'd have teachings. If he wasn't a preacher of sorts then who are we talking about? What would be the point of saying someone lived? I mean we have to have some base to consider. Was it just someone out there who lived? Or was it someone who actually started what Paul continued in terms of teaching?

Reading those letters, they were clearly not intended to write a history of Jesus.

Possibly because there wasn't one.

He was concerned with the future, not the past.

I don't think that's accurate. He's so familiar with jewish scriptures its almost as if he can recite them at any point. Or that's the impression I get. He seems very concerned about the past.

The important thing to him was not the mortal Jesus, but the resurrected Christ and how and to whom the message of the resurrected Christ should be spread and how Christians should conduct themselves.

But that says something. If Paul who came along preaching decades after Jesus, and wanted to continue Jesus' teachings, we'd expect to see some of Jesus' teachings coming out of Paul. Paul suggests he heard the gospel through revelation and not through anyone whom Jesus knew or appointed. This is hard to square with the thought that Jesus had lived a human life.

In my mind, the unstated assumption behind point 4 is not well established. As a result, I wouldn't consider point 4 to represent significant evidence.

Ok. Hopefully we can get more into that.

I don't know whether point 5 refers to Q or not. I still think of Q as a hypothesis and am not convinced it ever existed. I'd say the Gospel attributed to Mark appeared first, with Matthew and Luke being variations on Mark. John, of course, is a different beast from the other three.

It's meant to refer to Mark's Gospel. I don't think hypothesizing Q helps anything.

If we're summarizing evidence, I think we need to include the part of the Josephus passage considered authentic.

Which is? The passing reference to a death of James who was Joshua's brother? Do you take the Christ reference as authentic? I'm happy to consider it. But I am curious how we take it and how we apply it as evidence.

Did we also cover Thallos and Tacitus?

We did not. But I'm certainly game. Let's lay them out as evidence. Can we consider them such?

[Res Ipsa]

Thanks, Stem. I'll try to get into the other references tonight. I don't have any strong opinions on them, but I think they should be included in the discussion.

[dastardly stem]

Thanks, Stem. I'll try to get into the other references tonight. I don't have any strong opinions on them, but I think they should be included in the discussion.

Oh yeah. Great. I didn't mean to say you had to get on that. I'll enter in the data for these items. I started just blabbering arguments against Josephus and that's not the way we should do it.

In Antiquities, found in Book 20, Chapter 9 Josephus says (Whiston Translation):

[The] younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. [The Roman prefect] Festus was now dead, and Albinus [his replacement] was but upon the road; so [Ananus] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a Sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, High Priest.

It's odd that someone named Jesus was considered Christ, or Messiah or the anointed one by Josephus. Some take that to mean the "who was called Christ" as a later interpolation. For instance, did Origen when writing a century later, mention this phrase in Josephus? Origen was apparently attempting to establish Jesus' historicity but failed, after scouring Josephus to find this one passage? It seems unlikely. It also seems unlikely on Josephus' style. He normally would have taken time to explain what this would mean, to whomever thought it meant something. But that's a possible miss by Josephus, perhaps.

But there's already referenced a Jesus of the Damneus family. If we drop the later interpolation there's no reason to think this references James the brother of Jesus Christ. At least as I see it.

On Tacitus:

I don't know how we take his passing comment on Christians and Christ as evidence for historicity. It's written nearly 100 years after Jesus would have lived, and thus is subject to being a repeat of what is told him by believers. But if someone takes it as evidence, I'd love to consider an explanation.

On Thallus:

I don't' think it means much. We have Thallus telling us there was an earthquake at some point in the first century, as quoted by Julius Africanus a couple centuries later. I mean, if it can be considered evidence I'd like to see a good explanation.

[Kishkumen]

It's odd that someone named Jesus was considered Christ, or Messiah or the anointed one by Josephus. Some take that to mean the "who was called Christ" as a later interpolation. For instance, did Origen when writing a century later, mention this phrase in Josephus? Origen was apparently attempting to establish Jesus' historicity but failed, after scouring Josephus to find this one passage? It seems unlikely. It also seems unlikely on Josephus' style. He normally would have taken time to explain what this would mean, to whomever thought it meant something. But that's a possible miss by Josephus, perhaps.

What Josephus is doing there is saying that others called him the Christ. This has nothing to do with what Josephus considered Jesus to be. Writers of history in antiquity distinguished between what they reported on their own authority and what they reported on the authority of others. It was not úncommon for them to talk about what others claimed without lending it the credence of their own authority. Josephus is merely saying here that some people called Jesus the Christ.

[huckelberry]

From ancient stories there is a trend developed for defining a 'divine king' hero. Carrier calls this the Rank-Raglan hero-type.

These are the top 15 on the list (scores in parentheses):

1. Oedipus (21)
2. Moses (20)
3. Jesus (20)
4. Theseus (19)
5. Dionysus (19)
6. Romulus (18)
7. Perseus (17)
8. Hercules (17)
9. Zeus (15)
10. Bellerophon (14)
11. Jason (14)
12. Osiris (14)
13. Pelops (13)
14. Asclepius (12)
15. Joseph [i,e., the son of Jacob](12)

No known historical persons are on the list. Only mythical people ever got fitted to this hero-type. Yet every single one of them was regarded as a historical person and placed in history in narratives written about them.

Kishkumen, You have been helpful with your expertise. Is it possible to lean on you to ask you to note which of these figures above are associated with a particular body of teaching or ideas which have been valued by people. If so do we know or have good ideas where those ideas actually came from?

[Kishkumen]

Kishkumen, You have been helpful with your expertise. Is it possible to lean on you to ask you to note which of these figures above are associated with a particular body of teaching or ideas which have been valued by people. If so do we know or have good ideas where those ideas actually came from?

The closest would perhaps be Moses in that he is associated with the Decalogue, but the Decalogue is not really credited to Moses in the way that Jesus’ teachings are credited to him personally. Jesus is quite a different kind of figure from Moses, and there really is little evidence of Moses’ historicity. For example, if you consider the distance in time between the chronological setting of Moses’ life and our first written accounts of Moses, and then compare that to the distance between the life of Jesus and our earliest written accounts of him, the disparity is stunning.

Oral tradition is not very valuable several generations out. It is not worthless, mind you, but it doesn’t really capture the details of a person’s life accurately. My maternal grandmother felt like her family was really special, and that was about all I heard concerning the matter. Her father (my maternal great-grandfather) had his mother’s (my great-great-grandmother) maiden name as his own middle name. It wasn’t until I dug into the family genealogy that I realized that this name came from a plural wife of Joseph Smith. This plural wife’s brother was my ancestor.

I never would have known that based on oral tradition alone. There was something up there, but my grandmother did not know it. Or she did not share it if she knew it. My mother did not know it.

[honorentheos]

The mythicist argument is with a mythical story. It helps to get into the actual history of the 1st century rather than assume the mythology is the basis for Christianity's founding.

Examples:

The Catholic church worked to actively remove references to Jesus having a family because of the claim Mary remained a virgin for life prior to her deification. Paul did speak of a living person and describes James as Jesus' brother. The idea this refers to James and Jesus having a religious relationship and not referring to a biological relationship is apologetics based on muddy linguistics that would struggle with dealing with the internal evidence of the attempts to remove Jesus' biological family and his brother James' role as his successor. The manuscript evidence and bits that remain the the New Testament reflect this attempt to erase Jesus being part of a very human family not unlike the mythicist attempt to do. Perhaps more than anything about the mythicist position, it's the reliance on the Catholic revisionism and reluctance to engage what this revisionism had modified that makes it seem disinterested in history so much as for being an easy button to push to dismiss Jesus wholesale. If you look at a historical attempt to rewrite a person's history from something mundane into their being God incarnate, engage with the revisionist stories, and decide that person didn't actually exist, well...

Anyway.

James the brother of Jesus was the leader of the movement left behind after the execution of Jesus as can be found in two stories in Acts that made it through the censors who recast Peter as the leader to bolster claims of Roman Bishop authority. The mythicist argument is with the Catholic mythology so of course it finds footing if one isn't spending time pulling back the curtain of what they think about Jesus and the early church to discover to he complex, messy, diverging reality.

Paul also created a religion, he didn't convert to the one taught by the remaining followers of Jesus. He actively boasts about this, claiming in his descriptions of the very few (2 I think, might have been 3) encounters he had with the Jerusalem apostles over 14 years or so that he corrected them and puts them to shame every single time. Whatever the historic Jesus taught, it wasn't the religion of Paul. Paul was a Roman citizen with a romanized religion that stripped away the parochial in order to universalize and make accessible (small c catholic, effectively) what was otherwise a tribal and rebellious belief system with limited appeal or accessibility outside of Roman Palestine.

[dastardly stem]

What Josephus is doing there is saying that others called him the Christ. This has nothing to do with what Josephus considered Jesus to be. Writers of history in antiquity distinguished between what they reported on their own authority and what they reported on the authority of others. It was not úncommon for them to talk about what others claimed without lending it the credence of their own authority. Josephus is merely saying here that some people called Jesus the Christ.

I don't know that that really changes the concerns. It still appears that this James and Jesus were better said to be Damneus' rather than the James and Jesus we think of. That is one main reason why some think this was a later interpolation. But granting it was some passing comment about Jesus, Josephus then, as you point out, is talking about what others thought. Others very well could have been quoting Paul on James and Jesus and if so, it could be that Paul is referencing James as the brother of Jesus, not as a biological brother, but as a fellow believer. This may stretch things a bit, but as I said, there are plenty of reasons to think this passage in Josephus is a later interpolation.
1. The context better fits the Damneus family.
2. Origen never references this passage, even though he likely would have if he knew about it, and he surely knew about Josephus.
3. Josephus never describes what is meant by Christ.
4. Josephus was in the habit of making mention of any he introduces, particularly as it relates to a group of different believers. Even in this passage he makes a side blurb about the sadduccees.
5. The context also doesn't make sense. James was on the side of Peter who sought to preach the Christian gospel to jews and would require converts convert to judaism as well. But this passage in Josephus suggests James was killed for breaking the law. Not preaching something other than Judaism or in addition to. I suppose we could say preaching Christianity on top of judaism could have been thought to breaking the law, but that's another guess.