The Jesus myth Part I

[Kishkumen]

My take on Carrier’s response is that he misrepresented Barnes’ critique and spent way too long doing it. He gets a lot of mileage out of saying an awful lot, often in response to even the smallest of disagreements.

[Analytics]

Is it possible there were people who identified as Christians who didn't think "Christ Jesus" referred to a Nazarene that had very recently walked among them?

When? Where? Among whom?

I suppose everything is possible to some degree, but I don’t know what that has to do with the historicity of Jesus.

Repeating what I said above, I think the “historicity of Jesus” question needs to be clarified. Rather than asking “did Jesus exist historically,” I’m more interested in looking at the different Christian groups and trying to better understand their provenances and relationships to each other.

There are two groups I’m most interested in. Paul’s group and Mark’s group.

1- Who was Paul referring to when he talked about Jesus the Christ? Was he imagining something closer to the mystic Christ described in Ascent of Isaiah? Or was he referring specifically to a crucified preacher from Nazareth?

2- What is the original inspiration for the Gospel of Mark? Was it a real person? Or is Carrier right and it fiction that places the mystic Jesus in a historical setting?

Mark’s Jesus was in all likelihood historical. Paul’s Jesus? That question is open for me.

I’m not trying to play the Evangelical anti-Mormon game of saying somebody of the wrong sect believes in a different Jesus. Rather, I’m sincerely asking if Paul and Mark crossed paths, would they recognize each other as belonging to the same religion? Paul worshiped Jesus. Did Mark? Maybe not.

[Physics Guy]

I'm by no means an expert on this subject, but from my cursory reading of some early Christian texts (in English translation), my impression has been that early Christianity had a huge version control problem. Jesus Christ was this hot meme, and all kinds of people wanted to hitch their ideological wagons to him. For a good long while there were lots of alternative takes on Jesus floating around. If Joseph Smith had lived anytime in the first four centuries CE, he would have had to get in line.

A lot of what now seems appallingly authoritarian in Christian tradition, with official church hierarchies enforcing orthodoxy, seems to me to have started in that early phase of struggling for version control. Whose Jesus would win?

The Jesus that did win, historically, was this merger of the historical preacher and the cosmic Logos: true God and true human, two natures, one Christ. There's nothing revisionist in putting it that way, as a merger of memes. Everyone agrees, that's what happened. The mainstream Christian believers just insist that it happened because the Holy Spirit guided the Church into truth. Regardless of any such ultimate reason why it happened, however, how exactly it happened is an interesting historical question.

[huckelberry]

I'm by no means an expert on this subject, but from my cursory reading of some early Christian texts (in English translation), my impression has been that early Christianity had a huge version control problem. Jesus Christ was this hot meme, and all kinds of people wanted to hitch their ideological wagons to him. For a good long while there were lots of alternative takes on Jesus floating around. If Joseph Smith had lived anytime in the first four centuries CE, he would have had to get in line.

A lot of what now seems appallingly authoritarian in Christian tradition, with official church hierarchies enforcing orthodoxy, seems to me to have started in that early phase of struggling for version control. Whose Jesus would win?

The Jesus that did win, historically, was this merger of the historical preacher and the cosmic Logos: true God and true human, two natures, one Christ. There's nothing revisionist in putting it that way, as a merger of memes. Everyone agrees, that's what happened. The mainstream Christian believers just insist that it happened because the Holy Spirit guided the Church into truth. Regardless of any such ultimate reason why it happened, however, how exactly it happened is an interesting historical question.

Physics Guy, not meaning to question your observations here but it seems reasonable to add that the first impetus for that merger would be the belief in the resurrection of that human Jesus. Of course that is not the whole connection. One could also consider themes of son of man, messianic connection for apocalyptic expectations. I think these points fit with what you observed and do not replace it.

[huckelberry]

Repeating what I said above, I think the “historicity of Jesus” question needs to be clarified. Rather than asking “did Jesus exist historically,” I’m more interested in looking at the different Christian groups and trying to better understand their provenances and relationships to each other.

There are two groups I’m most interested in. Paul’s group and Mark’s group.

1- Who was Paul referring to when he talked about Jesus the Christ? Was he imagining something closer to the mystic Christ described in Ascent of Isaiah? Or was he referring specifically to a crucified preacher from Nazareth?

2- What is the original inspiration for the Gospel of Mark? Was it a real person? Or is Carrier right and it fiction that places the mystic Jesus in a historical setting?

Mark’s Jesus was in all likelihood historical. Paul’s Jesus? That question is open for me.

I’m not trying to play the Evangelical anti-Mormon game of saying somebody of the wrong sect believes in a different Jesus. Rather, I’m sincerely asking if Paul and Mark crossed paths, would they recognize each other as belonging to the same religion? Paul worshiped Jesus. Did Mark? Maybe not.

Analytics, I think you present a reasonable angle to question.
As best as I can read Mark sees Jesus as the Son of Man who is enacting the beginning of the Kingdom of God and inviting people to join. He dies by Roman execution and is raised again on the third day. Mark reports this as foretold by Jesus.Now what exactly did Mark think the son of man was? I do not see any theory in Mark.

Paul sees Jesus as the son of God in power demonstrated by his resurection from the dead.(beginning or Romans and said over and over again) Again a question of what exactly does that mean is not resolved.

I do not see any conflict between what Paul and Mark are saying but they may have some different ideas floating around in them. As Physics Guy mentioned discussion on just how to best fit them together went on for some time , often in conjunction with sorting out ideas which arose which were seen as not fitting.

[Physics Guy]

Yes, I think you must be right about the importance of the Resurrection. For whatever reasons they had, the early Christians believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. They seem to have believed that it happened in a matter-of-fact way, but ordinary humans don’t do that; not even Moses or Elijah had ever been supposed to have done that. If you didn’t believe Jesus had risen, then there wasn’t so much reason to be interested in him or his movement after his death. If you did believe he had risen, then his status had to be revised upward. Just how high wasn’t immediately clear.

The Ascension is what puzzles me. Without even asking whether it really happened, but just asking what is supposed to have happened within the story, I have a hard time making sense of the Ascension. It’s like an after-the-credits scene, but one where you don’t get a clear enough view to be sure what happened. It’s as if they didn’t have the special effects budget for the Ascension so they just skipped it. Maybe it was a shark that was better left un-fixed.

[Kishkumen]

Repeating what I said above, I think the “historicity of Jesus” question needs to be clarified. Rather than asking “did Jesus exist historically,” I’m more interested in looking at the different Christian groups and trying to better understand their provenances and relationships to each other.

There are two groups I’m most interested in. Paul’s group and Mark’s group.

1- Who was Paul referring to when he talked about Jesus the Christ? Was he imagining something closer to the mystic Christ described in Ascent of Isaiah? Or was he referring specifically to a crucified preacher from Nazareth?

2- What is the original inspiration for the Gospel of Mark? Was it a real person? Or is Carrier right and it fiction that places the mystic Jesus in a historical setting?

Mark’s Jesus was in all likelihood historical. Paul’s Jesus? That question is open for me.

I’m not trying to play the Evangelical anti-Mormon game of saying somebody of the wrong sect believes in a different Jesus. Rather, I’m sincerely asking if Paul and Mark crossed paths, would they recognize each other as belonging to the same religion? Paul worshiped Jesus. Did Mark? Maybe not.

Sincere question here: if Paul is such an outlier according to this mythicist model, what was it that Cephas and others believed and why did their opinion differ so much from Paul's?

[Kishkumen]

I'm by no means an expert on this subject, but from my cursory reading of some early Christian texts (in English translation), my impression has been that early Christianity had a huge version control problem. Jesus Christ was this hot meme, and all kinds of people wanted to hitch their ideological wagons to him. For a good long while there were lots of alternative takes on Jesus floating around. If Joseph Smith had lived anytime in the first four centuries CE, he would have had to get in line.

A lot of what now seems appallingly authoritarian in Christian tradition, with official church hierarchies enforcing orthodoxy, seems to me to have started in that early phase of struggling for version control. Whose Jesus would win?

The Jesus that did win, historically, was this merger of the historical preacher and the cosmic Logos: true God and true human, two natures, one Christ. There's nothing revisionist in putting it that way, as a merger of memes. Everyone agrees, that's what happened. The mainstream Christian believers just insist that it happened because the Holy Spirit guided the Church into truth. Regardless of any such ultimate reason why it happened, however, how exactly it happened is an interesting historical question.

That seems just about right to me. I guess the Carrier question is whether the cosmic Logos preceded the historical Jesus and whether the latter was just a fiction to put flesh on the Logos. There is no question that the idea of the cosmic Logos existed before Jesus. It was brought into Judaism at a time roughly contemporary from Jesus by Philo of Alexandria. The idea of angels becoming human beings seems also to have been contemporary to Jesus. Of course, none of these beliefs is inconsistent with Jesus having been a real person, and different people saw him as one or the other, very likely.

All that said, the builder from Galilee who was executed by Pontius Pilate for causing problems at Passover sounds like a completely human person who actually lived. This person was undoubtedly not the cosmic Logos or an angel. That he came to be seen as such later is not surprising to me. His movement survived and they believed that he had too, albeit as some immortal superbeing.

[kairos]

I asked Bart Ehrman via email years ago when he was blasting the New Testament gospels almost as badly as the Jesus Seminar crowd led by RC-ex Dominic Crossan if Ehrman could find in the gospels confirmation of at least one or two miracles. If so I wrote would that affirm Jesus as divine(and human too!)
Ehrman said Jesus could have been a man with the gift of
Healing. He did not answer my question but I think he did.

Just testifying that Jesus is Lord to me and many many more!

k

[huckelberry]

I skimmed some of a you tube presentation by Carrier which seemed to cover the same points being discussed here. As this thread is not the first go round of the points I skimmed and gave up. I did note a mention of a view I have heard on a few other occasions. It was proposed that average lifespan at the time was 35 to40 years so there would not be people living who remembered Jesus or Jesus time when Mark was written.

Remembering the basics of arithmatic I thought that sincc a lot of people died young to get an average of 35 you have to have old people to balance the average. I found a little link with some back up proposing that in fact there were people who grew old in those day just not as many as nowadays.

I do not think there is any reason to think that in any time in the first century no Christians were still alive to remember the beginning beliefs and events started Christianity .(perhaps question the last decade)

https://revealedrome.com/2012/06/ancien ... women-age/