(May 13, 2011 at 2:55 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Oddly.....or perhaps not so oddly... the alleged "Paul" also came from Tarsus.
Wow, are you also questioning the historicity of Paul? You are a skeptic among skeptics my friend.
To be sure the "Mythic Jesus" camp is a minority (even more so the "Mythic Paul" camp), but any group that can make a legitimate argument is a legitimate group. The position seems kind of reactionary to me, to assume a person as historically located as Jesus is false. It's very historically interesting though. It always seemed to me that just using the same methods of historical science we use for any other historical event it would be hard to deny that Jesus existed. Let’s see:
First of all, to say Jesus is fake you would have to assume that "Paul" was not really writing in the time period he said he was, and therefore the letters were retroactive inventions that were never really addressed to anyone. Otherwise the letters represent someone who is too plugged-in to the Christian community too soon after the "death" of Jesus to be talking about a fake person. Also the disciples don't really make any sense in this system. Why would they go to a group of Jews who were expecting a military leader and earthly king and tell them, "Oh, the messiah was already here, he wasn't at all what you expected, he was publicly shamed and executed by the Romans"? The kind of Messiah Jesus represented is not what any of the Jewish groups expected or wanted, inventing a messiah executed as a criminal was not a quick way to make friends. Also curious, why would the disciples then die to defend the story they made up when all they had to do to live is recant? So if Jesus is fake, the disciples also have to be fake. If the disciples are fake, then all of the people mentioned talking to them are likely fake too. Pontius Pilate is mentioned in other sources, but then again, so are Jesus and Paul, so fair's fair, he's fake too (and yes I'm aware of the supposed problems with the secondary sources for Jesus, I just don't think they're convincing enough to disregard the source) (also I'm kidding about Pontius Pilate, he could have been thrown in as a detail to make the story seem more real).
So if some is writing a completely fake story about Jesus they have to make up a few dozen completely imaginary people. Now, this story will circulate throughout the Roman world, which includes the region it is set in. The story is written with a ridiculous amount of detail for a mythological account. There are way more locations, people, times, and other details about the setting than any Greco-Roman myth. So apparently the author wanted the story to be believed as fact. The problem is, the story mentions several high-profile events that many people in the region would have seen or heard of, so no one will believe it. Unless of course you circulate the story well after all of those people are dead, which would be about fifty years, give or take a few years. The most likely date scholarship has for the gospels puts them about fifty years after the events in question. So, purely fictional events?
That would make absolutely no sense. First of all, there would still be some people alive who could counter those claims. People could live into their 70's, 80's, or even 90’s in the Roman world, especially if they had any kind of wealth. Second, there was record keeping and practices of oral tradition. People would have been aware of the history of the place they lived. Still, if you have a REALLY critical stance on dating the NT you can get around some of this. But the biggest question is, why? Why would anyone in Jewish society make up a story about a messiah who came, who was nothing like what anyone expected, and died a shameful death on the cross? It's not a story anyone would have liked. There was no benefit for being part of the Christian movement, the Jews hated them and the Romans hated them. If they stayed Jewish at least the Jews would have liked them. Also, the story in Luke-Acts involves the spread of the church well into the 50's CE (events also attested by Paul’s letters). So now you have stories about stuff that happened EVEN later, and the story claims a wide following for the movement all over a network of important cities, and ALSO claims several high-profile events in those cities that would have meant people were aware of the Christian presence in the communities.
So for Jesus to purely mythical, the Christian movement would have had to come into existence out of nothing in the 80's CE or later. The only problem is, that's not what the historical record says. The historians Tacitus and Suetonius both record Christian persecutions taking place in 64 CE, as well as other persecutions in 52 and 57. Also, Christianity had become big enough by around 100 CE to be a problem for the Romans. Pliny the Younger writes the Roman emperor c. 112 CE to ask him how to deal with Christians, and the emperor responds. The emperor already knew of the Christians, and apparently he had thought out a specific policy for dealing with them. This suggests an empire-wide issue, and the letter verifies a Christian presence in the city which is at least 20 years old. Also you have Clement of Rome, who was the third bishop of the church, writing c. 95 CE to a Christian church that already has some ecclesiastical structure and has spread to numerous cities. Also, Clement grew up during the spread of the Jesus movement, and knew Peter and Paul personally.
As for the account of Jesus being derived from the OT text, there are a lot of similarities, but this doesn’t mean that Jesus was created out of the Jewish mythical tradition. Keep in mind that contemporary Jewish documents show that the picture of the messiah they expected looked nothing like Jesus. The picture of Jesus as the promised Messiah of Scripture was something that only made sense in retrospect. What you see in the Gospels are several authors re-reading the text in light of Jesus. This creates a distinct hermeneutic where it seems obvious that Jesus fits the picture. Basically, hindsight is 20-20. The argument that Price makes from the OT is basically just copying what the NT authors came up with when they were trying to convince people that Jesus was actually the Messiah. It might be fair to see things Price’s way, but if the Jesus story was just a part of the mythos, why were the NT authors trying to prove that Jesus fit into the story. Paul quotes the OT for proof, and so do the Gospels when they say, “this was done to fulfill what was written…” At the very least we see a group that is outside the norm of Jewish tradition, so the Jesus movement is not a natural evolution of Jewish myth.
So to me, the Jesus movement being based around an entirely fictitious person makes no sense. It seems that the writings of the NT represent an attempt to re-interpret the story of Jesus to people in various contexts, (the argument of whether or not Jesus was really Divine or just a moral teacher is a completely separate issue). So while I can see the debate about what Jesus’s life really signified, I have to side with the consensus of modern scholarship on the issue of his existence.
Wow, what a fun rant! It’s been a while since I just spouted out a big, rambling post about something. “Mythic Jesus” turned out to be the perfect thing, thanks Min!
