The Jesus Myth: An unrelenting case for history

[Kishkumen]

I don’t know about desirability, but I’m skeptical at the notion of objectively making meaning. If the exercise in this case is to try and understand how Justin and his contemporaries thought about the gospels, fully recognizing our limitations, I have no quarrel. Giving the parallels asserted by Justin evidentiary value on the question of Jesus’s existence is where my quarrel lies.

It may be that Nibley and McDonald were engaged in fundamentally different projects. With Nibley, I don't think it is possible to say that his LDS work was straight history. I would argue that he was engaged in meaning making by relating Mormonism to the ancient world. Mormonism became the lens he used for interpreting antiquity, and the FARMS people adopted the same strategy. It is unfortunate that people are not made aware of the difference.

McDonald is fundamentally a historian, and he uses historical and philological methods to the best of his ability to help us understand how the New Testament literature was pitched at people conversant in Classical literature.

On the Justin question, I don't know. I will have to refer to Philo's discussion and get back to you.

[PseudoPaul]

It's been shown to you over and over again. You just say "nuh uh" and move on.

I haven't seen where. I've read the scholarship and have read the pop books like Erhman's. I've critiqued his book here to some degree of depth. I've interacted with some of the most ardent historicists. I'm not sure what you think you're proving by saying these things.

All of that said, I'm still quite interested in any credible case someone can present. If you have it, please stop dodging and provide something.

You disagreeing with 99% of Biblical scholars and siding with a few fringe cranks and then pretending you haven't seen a "credible case" is evidence that you are trolling here.

[Kishkumen]

You disagreeing with 99% of Biblical scholars and siding with a few fringe cranks and then pretending you haven't seen a "credible case" is evidence that you are trolling here.

I have always found stem to be a very genuine and sincere person. What is happening here is, not to dump on stem in any way, much more disturbing. Stem's perspective represents one example of the diminishing purchase of expertise and history in our culture. Many people feel fully justified to believe bizarre, conspiratorial takes on history because it suits their strong personal preferences, and experts in these fields are required to provide iron-clad proof to overcome these threadbare fantasies.

It is like Tacitus once wrote: People eagerly make up (fingere) outlandish stories and believe (credere) them when the world order is sufficiently thrown into question.

[huckelberry]

You disagreeing with 99% of Biblical scholars and siding with a few fringe cranks and then pretending you haven't seen a "credible case" is evidence that you are trolling here.

I have always found stem to be a very genuine and sincere person. What is happening here is, not to dump on stem in any way, much more disturbing. Stem's perspective represents one example of the diminishing purchase of expertise and history in our culture. Many people feel fully justified to believe bizarre, conspiratorial takes on history because it suits their strong personal preferences, and experts in these fields are required to provide iron-clad proof to overcome these threadbare fantasies.

It is like Tacitus once wrote: People eagerly make up (fingere) outlandish stories and believe (credere) them when the world order is sufficiently thrown into question.

Kishkumen, I agree with your view that Stem is very genuine and sincere. I feel that even when I find his interpretation at such odds with what I see that I struggle with maybe thinking him also stubborn, idiosyncratic, almost perverse. I find it difficult to relate to his dismissal of Ehrman but I do not doubt that it is genuine.

i wonder, I could be wrong, that Stem sees enough wrong with Christianity that he wishes a complete reboot dismissing all the past assumptions. A reboot could present a hope for escape from the entanglements of past conflict and oppression. I do not think it hard to understand a wish to escape the past understanding of things. There is hope that things do not have to be as they were in the past, the future is new.

[huckelberry]

I don’t know about desirability, but I’m skeptical at the notion of objectively making meaning. If the exercise in this case is to try and understand how Justin and his contemporaries thought about the gospels, fully recognizing our limitations, I have no quarrel. Giving the parallels asserted by Justin evidentiary value on the question of Jesus’s existence is where my quarrel lies.

It may be that Nibley and McDonald were engaged in fundamentally different projects. With Nibley, I don't think it is possible to say that his LDS work was straight history. I would argue that he was engaged in meaning making by relating Mormonism to the ancient world. Mormonism became the lens he used for interpreting antiquity, and the FARMS people adopted the same strategy. It is unfortunate that people are not made aware of the difference.

McDonald is fundamentally a historian, and he uses historical and philological methods to the best of his ability to help us understand how the New Testament literature was pitched at people conversant in Classical literature.

On the Justin question, I don't know. I will have to refer to Philo's discussion and get back to you.

kishkumen, I think Mcdonalds studies have some value. Ask the question of how are stories told and see the gospels employing storytelling methods of the time. I doubt that story telling devices are of interest only to literary elite. I think the most common of folks can appreciate a good story. I believe there is reason to be cautious about determining the audience for gospels which came to be accepted by a community of believers, church, with a variety of people in it all of whom could desire a good story with a message.

On the Justin question I am not aware of any early church fathers who recommended belief in Jesus because of his similarities to other pagan myths. They were aware of similarities and those could be used by critics then as now so the similarities were dismissed or seen as demonic for an easier dismissal. Now ECF is quite a large body of work so I hardly have a definitive view.

[Kishkumen]

Kishkumen, I agree with your view that Stem is very genuine and sincere. I feel that even when I find his interpretation at such odds with what I see that I struggle with maybe thinking him also stubborn, idiosyncratic , almost perverse. I find it difficult to relate to his dismissal of Ehrman but I do not doubt that it is genuine.

i wonder,I could be wrong, that Stem sees enough wrong with Christianity that he wishes a complete reboot dismissing all the past assumptions. A reboot could present a hope for escape from the entanglements of past conflict and oppression. I do not think it hard to understand a wish to escape the past understanding of things.There is hope that things do not have to be as they were in the past , the future is new.

Stem feels strongly that our assumptions must be challenged. I mostly agree with him. The question is: what degree of skepticism is warranted? In the end, I think extreme skepticism may prove more useful in some areas than others. In religious history it is a lot more useful than in politics and science. What are the stakes in religious history? Will people en masse lose their religion because of mythicism?

Hardly.

So, bring it on, I say. It is good to see just how tenuous historical knowledge of past eras is. Hopefully this will lead to greater reasonableness in pressing historical claims. I find it equally annoying when Christian apologists try to place the evidence for the historical Jesus on par with evidence for Alexander the Great or Augustus. That is so laughably false it beggars belief that any educated person could say that with a straight face.

And yet very smart, educated people do say it.

The truth is that history was never necessary to uphold religion in general or Christianity in particular. Human beings tell stories and think about their meanings. They experience uncanny things, wonder why, and try to explain them. Religion is going nowhere. It may take many new and different forms, but mythicism is no challenge to it. Mythicism is just one tool for thinking about how religion works.

Mythicism is only a threat to brittle fundamentalism.

As a historian, I only find it counterproductive and annoying when it distorts perceptions of history.

[Kishkumen]

kishkumen, I think Mcdonalds studies have some value. Ask the question of how are stories told and see the gospels employing storytelling methods of the time. I doubt that story telling devices are of interest only to literary elite. I think the most common of folks can appreciate a good story. I believe there is reason to be cautious about determining the audience for gospels which came to be accepted by a community of believers, church, with a variety of people in it all of whom could desire a good story with a message.

Excellent point. People saw plays, told stories, listened to songs. There were many ways of coming into contact with myths.

On the Justin question I am not aware of any early church fathers who recommended belief in Jesus because of his similarities to other pagan myths. They were aware of similarities and those could be used by critics then as now so the similarities were dismissed or seen as demonic for an easier dismissal. Now ECF is quite a large body of work so I hardly have a definitive view.

Could it be that arguing for demonic fakes is a way of using the myths to prove Jesus true? I mean, if Jesus were not real, why would demons be attempting to copy his story? It’s a brilliant, audacious, and repugnant move. Take Jesus’ debt to Classical culture and turn it against Classical culture.

Jesus would not exist without Classical culture. Neither would Christianity. Christianity is nothing more or less than the synthesis of Hellenism and Judaism under Roman imperialism. Take away any of those things and there is no Christianity.

You can believe that this is the will of God. I am not saying it isn’t. I just think it is important to combat the anti-Hellenism that took root in Protestantism and got ported into Mormonism too.

[huckelberry]

kishkumen, I think Mcdonalds studies have some value. Ask the question of how are stories told and see the gospels employing storytelling methods of the time. I doubt that story telling devices are of interest only to literary elite. I think the most common of folks can appreciate a good story. I believe there is reason to be cautious about determining the audience for gospels which came to be accepted by a community of believers, church, with a variety of people in it all of whom could desire a good story with a message.

Excellent point. People saw plays, told stories, listened to songs. There were many ways of coming into contact with myths.

On the Justin question I am not aware of any early church fathers who recommended belief in Jesus because of his similarities to other pagan myths. They were aware of similarities and those could be used by critics then as now so the similarities were dismissed or seen as demonic for an easier dismissal. Now ECF is quite a large body of work so I hardly have a definitive view.

Could it be that arguing for demonic fakes is a way of using the myths to prove Jesus true? I mean, if Jesus were not real, why would demons be attempting to copy his story? It’s a brilliant, audacious, and repugnant move. Take Jesus’ debt to Classical culture and turn it against Classical culture.

Jesus would not exist without Classical culture. Neither would Christianity. Christianity is nothing more or less than the synthesis of Hellenism and Judaism under Roman imperialism. Take away any of those things and there is no Christianity.

You can believe that this is the will of God. I am not saying it isn’t. I just think it is important to combat the anti-Hellenism that took root in Protestantism and got ported into Mormonism too.

kishkumen, that is an interesting point you make about that old demon trick accusation. I have heard ,perhaps it was C S Lewis, more recent thoughts that perhaps the similarities are from human hope and intuition. I find that a more valuable approach than blaming demons. It recognizes that the Hellenistic contribution has clear positive elements. But back then there may have been an urge to leave the brutalities of the circus behind and being cozy with the pagan myths may not have been seen as a help.

[Manetho]

I recently came across a series of videos by a scholar named Kipp Davis picking apart Richard Carrier's use of Jewish texts in his claims about the Jesus myth: link. Davis isn't the foremost expert out there, but judging by his list of academic publications, his credentials are better than those of Carrier. And while I've only watched one video and part of another, it certainly sounds like Carrier has a habit of reading texts tendentiously.

I know Stem isn't trying to slavishly adhere to Carrier's hypothesis, and at the start of this latest thread he emphasized the Hellenistic parallels to the Jesus story more than the Jewish ones. But the Jewish elements of the Jesus story are obviously essential, and Carrier has become the most visible mythicist because he offers an explanation for them: the key points of the Jesus story were constructed out of preexisting Jewish beliefs about the messiah. But if the preexisting beliefs don't fit the story, it obviously weakens that explanation.

As I indicated in a previous post, I think Christianity originated in the cognitive dissonance triggered by Jesus' death. His followers thought he was the messiah, and after he died, the most committed among them maintained that belief in large part by finding scriptural parallels, however strained they might be, to explain how his death had been part of God's plan all along.

I could very well be off the beam. Nobody will ever know what really happened. But this hypothesis would explain why the Jesus story is set in the very specific time and place that it is (because that's when Jesus actually lived and died) and why Jesus doesn't fit the understanding of the messiah that existed beforehand (because his most committed followers coped with his death by redefining "messiah" so he would fit). I haven't seen any mythicist answer the first point, and the lack of an answer is one of my biggest frustrations with mythicism. Carrier has an answer to the second — that the prior understanding of the messiah is more Jesus-like than most scholars assume — but it doesn't seem to hold together very well.

[Kishkumen]

I recently came across a series of videos by a scholar named Kipp Davis picking apart Richard Carrier's use of Jewish texts in his claims about the Jesus myth: link. Davis isn't the foremost expert out there, but judging by his list of academic publications, his credentials are better than those of Carrier. And while I've only watched one video and part of another, it certainly sounds like Carrier has a habit of reading texts tendentiously.

I know Stem isn't trying to slavishly adhere to Carrier's hypothesis, and at the start of this latest thread he emphasized the Hellenistic parallels to the Jesus story more than the Jewish ones. But the Jewish elements of the Jesus story are obviously essential, and Carrier has become the most visible mythicist because he offers an explanation for them: the key points of the Jesus story were constructed out of preexisting Jewish beliefs about the messiah. But if the preexisting beliefs don't fit the story, it obviously weakens that explanation.

As I indicated in a previous post, I think Christianity originated in the cognitive dissonance triggered by Jesus' death. His followers thought he was the messiah, and after he died, the most committed among them maintained that belief in large part by finding scriptural parallels, however strained they might be, to explain how his death had been part of God's plan all along.

I could very well be off the beam. Nobody will ever know what really happened. But this hypothesis would explain why the Jesus story is set in the very specific time and place that it is (because that's when Jesus actually lived and died) and why Jesus doesn't fit the understanding of the messiah that existed beforehand (because his most committed followers coped with his death by redefining "messiah" so he would fit). I haven't seen any mythicist answer the first point, and the lack of an answer is one of my biggest frustrations with mythicism. Carrier has an answer to the second — that the prior understanding of the messiah is more Jesus-like than most scholars assume — but it doesn't seem to hold together very well.

Thank much for all of this, Manetho. I agree with you when you opine that cognitive dissonance regarding Jesus' execution is at the root of Christianity. Turning his unexpected death into a divine plan with a purpose was a brilliant stroke that resulted in a powerful image of inversion of Roman imperial assumptions and values.