The Jesus myth Part I

[dastardly stem]

I'm really enjoying the discussion. I intend to get back on board, but obviously have some catching up to do. I don't want to derail by starting back up where I left off. Just a note to suggest I don't want this to die and I think there is plenty more to consider on the questions posed.

[huckelberry]

The strongest evidence is that crucifixion was typically used for particular crimes against Rome. It can be similar to accepting the Pentateuch was not written by Moses but instead by different authors over centuries as well. Certain verses that seem ill-fitting and uncharacteristic of Jesus such as the cursing of the fruitless fig tree or the violent cleansing of the temple make more sense. Multiple hands become apparent, multiple traditions captured in the text regarding what happened.

As to the failed rebellion, I think it's better understood as reframed than failed. Paul didn't invent the belief in Jesus' resurrection, and his writing is saturated in a belief in an imminent arrival of sweeping divine change. The ideas in Paul regarding grace, rebirth in Christ, adoption into the divine are likely his most noticable and appealing evolutions from the original beliefs of remaining true to the covenants in a corrupted society where the Herodians were seen as having led the priests astray.

Honerentheos, your point about assembled pieces which may not all fit seems appropriate even though your comparison to Moses is comparing a five hundred year period to a forty year period. What I find a bit striking is that your choice of what does not fit, temple cleansing and curse fig tree are what I would see as fitting most centrally and are what puts Marks story together. But Mark is not picturing a revolutionary Jewish legal purist he is picturing a prophet who is renewing Israel by making the start of the kingdom of God and establishing a new covenent to make that start into an ongoing process, a new beginning.

I am inclined to see in Mark the beginning of a shift away from Pauls time is short no need to marry view to a view that believers must ready to be in for the long haul.That in itself could be seen as reason to think Mark almost all fiction, that is if Jesus was a purist revolutionary.

Physics guy pointed out that it would be odd to build an ongoing peace movement out of an executed failed revolutionary. I was thinking to add that the revolutionaries were a dime a dozen. At least according to Josephus, who might exaggerate a bit I suppose, the place was lousy with them fighting each other. Not only do we find no Jesus memories of him as a revolutionary fighting Rome, whoever Jesus was he was the preacher of the wisdom literature we have in his name in the gospels.

Certainly one can see differences in understanding between Paul, author of Hebrews, John, authors of the gospels. but they all seem to be trying to understand the events around an unusual preacher who made an important impression on people.

[honorentheos]

Hi huckleberry,

Physics guy pointed out that it would be odd to build an ongoing peace movement out of an executed failed revolutionary.

I don't think it's fair to say the New Testament is describing a peace movement. It is more fair to say that the chronology of authors focus the combat on spiritual targets. We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual darkness in high places...

In the time of Mark's writing the temple was likely already destroyed and Rome was at war with the Jewish national identity. Matthew and Luke are almost certainly after the tens of thousands of deaths and wide spread destruction that came with the Jewish revolt. Paul is a precursor, and to the side of whatever filters those oral versions of the narratives about Jesus had passed before being written down. By the time John was being composed the Jews were seen as having unjustly killed tens of thousands of Roman civilians in their revolts and the text is blatantly anti-Semitic.

The Jesus in the writings is Sunday School Jesus, not the historical Jesus.

Context matters here. It's again one of my issues with mythisicm and Sunday School Christianity alike.

[Physics Guy]

Pacifism itself is not a major New Testament theme, but I find it hard to think of any passages that suggest an aggressive message. The "not peace, but a sword" speech tolerates conflict, all right, but what it describes is a general everybody-against-everybody chaos, not a victorious struggle by a coherent force against an enemy. It's apocalyptic, not revolutionary.

Suppose that the earliest roots of the written gospels started after CE 70. At that point there would certainly have been an eager Jewish audience for an accommodating message that disavowed rebellion. There might have been a gentile audience primed to condemn savage Jews, all right, too. So okay, if you were campaign manager for the Jesus movement in CE 72, you might have been desperate to present your candidate as anything but revolutionary.

I still find it hard to believe that you could really have succeeded in popularising a fictitiously reinvented version of a failed revolutionary leader from two generations before. He'd have been long dead at that point; such memory as there was of him would have been of a revolutionary, not a pietist; and he'd have been a failure. It seems to me that candidates with nothing but strikes against them don't usually just re-spin everything about themselves 180° and become enduringly popular. I think they drop out of history.

On the other hand, since people in CE 72 are hungry for an upbeat message that points away from bloody and futile rebellion, I can see that as a motivation for reviving an anti-revolutionary figure from the recent past—and maybe trying to make out that he wasn't really failed (or dead!). When people are scared about crime in the early 1960s, you put Eliot Ness from the 1920s on TV; you don't pretend Al Capone was a cop. Even a really good spin doctor needs some base of authenticity.

[huckelberry]

That's basically the argument around Paul having betrayed the original teachings. To Eisenmann the evidence is for Paul being a deliberate vehicle for Rome to defang a dangerous rebellious belief system. Its been a while since I've read him but my take away was that conclusion was tenuous. The evidence leading to it that the religion of Paul was being composed by someone with a sympathetic Roman view and willingness to be all things to all people was much more compelling. The results being essentially that Paul took what was being taught among the Jerusalem disciples and fabricated a universally appealing message around Christ that was only possible by removing the Jewish teachings and leaving the benign.

Honorentheos, You have mentioned a couple of times the difference between historical and sunday school Jesus. At the least that would mean knowing something of the Jewish Roman context as apposed to not. It makes sense to try to clarify the distinction further. What do you understand the historical Jesus was about? Do you think you have a reliable picture of what James was all about?

When you brought up Eisenmann I took a little time to try and refresh my faded memory of him a bit. A simple Wikipedia look at James lists sources of information about him. The earliest was a hundred years after his death and pictured him as an earnest ascetic. There was a lot of interest in that approach to Christianity at that time and thereafter.

[huckelberry]

I ran across this relevant passage from Josephus which I had not noticed or thought of before.

18.116] Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist.

[18.117] For Herod had killed this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God. For only thus, in John's opinion, would the baptism he administered be acceptable to God, namely, if they used it to obtain not pardon for some sins but rather the cleansing of their bodies, inasmuch as it was taken for granted that their souls had already been purified by justice.

[18.118] Now many people came in crowds to him, for they were greatly moved by his words. Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best to put him to death. In this way, he might prevent any mischief John might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late.

[18.119] Accordingly John was sent as a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the castle I already mentioned, and was put to death. Now the Jews thought that the destruction of his army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God's displeasure with him.

This page was created in 2001; last modified on 5 June 2020.

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Jewish Antiquities
Josephus on John the Baptist
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/ ... e-baptist/

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The thinking of John might just have some similarity to the thoughts of Jesus.(that would be same ball park not so much exact correspondence)