(January 8, 2014 at 8:56 am)xpastor Wrote: I know Min has read this book, The Bible Unearthed by Finkelstein and Silberman.
To summarize their findings, we are given the impression of an original adherence to a strictly monotheistic cult of YHWH from which the people (especially the northerners) lapsed into the polytheism of the neighboring nations. However, polytheism was there from the beginning. ...
OK, I ordered the book, but for the particulars rather than the general POV. I'm well aware of the need to whip the populace into obedience to monotheism, away from the charms of the alternatives.
We can know and agree about the generalities, however, and still be out-of-focus on the particular situation to which this thread was addressed: the origin of the Jesus-resurrection myth, as distinct (the way I see it) from the myth of divinity. The NT gospel stories have about zero (before John, anyway) to do with divinity, and a lot to do with the mortal human guy Jesus. Do you say that the original group, the very first followers, the mostly Galilean Jews, those who invented and spread the resurrection story, ascribed divinity to Jesus? Divinity of Jesus, as distinct from apocalypticism and messianism, for which no divinity was required? Where in the (unforged, at least) earliest writings (Acts, Letters) do you find persuasive evidence of that? If the earliest writings had lots of divinity stuff there, why were so many of the early "heresies", still rather later on the scene than the 1st C CE, concerned with the issue of the acquisition of divinity by Jesus, the when and the how?
I agree with the syncretism, and that in the stewpot of the area and the times it happened pretty fast (John was not so very late), I only disagree that it was there ab initio, which was the title of the thread.
I'm reminded by this discussion of what I was told by Bart Ehrman: his shtick is finding the earliest, most original text of the Gospels. He really doesn't care about the actual history. I'm interested in that history.
