Symmachus wrote: Analytics, I think I was not making my point as clear as I would have liked. First, let me say that since mythic presentation were such a pervasive mode of constructing any message (ideological, religious, political, historical, moral, etc.), the mere presence of mythic in one part of an ancient narrative is by no means grounds for rejecting the historicity of the narrative as a whole.
It's a pretty useless criterion for determing whether there was a historical Jesus.
I totally agree, and that is kind of my point. According to Fears, it’s common for heroes to become mythologized—it is a common pattern. The question is, did the hero that the earliest Christians believe do his heroic acts in the spiritual realm or in the physical realm?
Symmachus wrote:I am not saying, as you seemed to think, that because the Gospels have a historical detail (namely, Pilate), that therefore the historicity of Jesus as settled. What I am saying is subtler than that. The analogy to Forrest Gump made me laugh before it made me cry: if that's the logic I wrote, it's not the logic in my head. Actually, someone like Pilate would be analogous not to a US president in the 60s but to the attorney general of Alabama in the 60s….
Ah. I understand your point now. On the one hand, Mark contains a lot of details that were obviously made up or modified for literary purposes, and also contains at least a few details that are historically accurate and don’t seem to fit in an allegory.
Symmachus wrote:On the point of allegory, I would suggest reading some ancient allegories. You probably know Plato's story of Er in Book 10 of the Republic. I think that has some typical features of allegory: it is self-consciously and explicitly allegorical (i.e. there is no chance you could confuse this as history), and the historical details it does give are general rather than particular (e.g. Er is Pamphylian and dies in battle, but which and when is not given). Jesus's parables themselves are allegories, and, like the story of Er, are particular in the moral truths they are used to illustrate, but very non-specific in circumstantial details. The gospels on the other are very particular in their details, even if those details are not always right. So we do not have a parallel to the mythicist position in any ancient allegories with stories that are explicitly invented for the purpose of moral or philosophical or theological instruction.
Fine point, but of course not everything fits historical patterns. The gospel of Mark is a very powerful story—whether real or not, it is a story that changed the world. This single fact means that it is unlike almost any other story that was ever written. In fact, it is the powerful nature of the story that is causing it to be considered in the first place.
Setting the story in a historical context that made it accessible and seem real are literary qualities that are essential to its power. Within the mystic hypothesis, it’s conceivable (to me at least), that somebody was telling the story of Jesus to their kids, and the kid asked a simple question like, “who are these evil beings that killed Jesus?” In a flash of irony and creativity, the storyteller said, “it was the Romans!” The kids instantly became much more interested in the story, so the storyteller began extrapolating and enhancing the characteristics of the story that made it seem relevant to his audience, which eventually leading to the gospels.
Of course that’s speculation, but it seems like a plausible explanation.
Likewise, you might read Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, another miracle-working moral teacher (of sorts). Even in antiquity he and Jesus were points of comparison, but the reason I mention here is because it will give you a parallel to the historicist position: a wandering Syrian spreads his teaching while wonder-working on the side and is later executed and ascends to the heavens. We have a historical person here around whom miraculous stories accrued. He was even worshiped by a Roman emperor a hundred years before Constantine. So we have a parallel. Yes, it's later, but unlikely to be influenced by Christianity.
Symmachus wrote:Why you think the gospels read as allegory from throughout is beyond me. They are primarily Jesus going from place to place saying X, Y, and Z, and occasionally performing some miracles.
Carrier explains the symbolic meaning he sees in these details. It almost sounds like listening to Consiglieri teach a Sunday School course—he sees a lot more there than a casual reading leads you to see. He then makes the inference that these patterns and meanings wouldn’t be thee unless they were put there deliberately.
Symmachus wrote:And, yes, we need to ask how the mechanics of the mythicist position really could have worked. That is the basic task of any historian advancing a thesis, and if they can't show how their explanation actually worked, then it's not much of an explanation. Kish's question above distilled this problem perfectly….
There are multiple ways it “could have” worked. Yes, we need to find plausible ways it could have happened. Proving which specific way it did happen is another issue.
Symmachus wrote:Key questions. There are 150 years worth of scholarly labor that have provided some pretty good answers to these questions. Obviously I can't summarize all of them in a small space, but I have found persuasive E. P. Sanders on Paul, and John Meier, E. P. Sanders, and Paula Frederiksen on Jesus (especially "From Jesus to Christ"). Given that these are some of the most influential scholars in the field, I am puzzled that they receive such little mention on these sorts of threads.
A lot of valuable reading has now been provided to me. Thank you (and Kish). I might make one more post that gives a non-mathematical explanation of Carrier’s Bayesian analysis just so you can have a better understanding of how his argument works. But otherwise, I should put my participation on this thread on hold until I’ve had the time to review all of the reading suggestions that have been provided.