Historian explains why Jesus ''mythers'' aren't taken seriously by most Historians

[Mudhammam]

One interesting problem in reconstructing a plausible scenario for the development of first-century Christendom---one that is easily though lazily addressed by the Christ-mythers, as every other historical question of some perplexity is presumably treated by them ("It's all fiction! Like Charles Dickens! Boy, solving that was just so simple for me!")---is the absence of any interest or mention by the disciples of a location for Jesus' tomb, if he was even really buried as they proclaimed from early on. It is a far bigger problem for Christians, in my view, considering the importance, both from the standpoint of its significance in religious worship and for their apology of a death and resurrection (however that may have been initially interpreted), that one can imagine such a location might have possessed. For the historian it seems to be a question that is much more open ended in terms of speculation over what actually happened when Jesus' corpse came off the cross, and how that affected the texts they came to write just decades afterwards.

[TimOneill]

One interesting problem in reconstructing a plausible scenario for the development of first-century Christendom---one that is easily though lazily addressed by the Christ-mythers, as every other historical question of some perplexity is presumably treated by them ("It's all fiction! Like Charles Dickens! Boy, solving that was just so simple for me!")---is the absence of any interest or mention by the disciples of a location for Jesus' tomb, if he was even really buried as they proclaimed from early on. It is a far bigger problem for Christians, in my view, considering the importance, both from the standpoint of its significance in religious worship and for their apology of a death and resurrection (however that may have been initially interpreted), that one can imagine such a location might have possessed. For the historian it seems to be a question that is much more open ended in terms of speculation over what actually happened when Jesus' corpse came off the cross, and how that affected the texts they came to write just decades afterwards.

It's definitely a problem for Christians, but I can't see how it's much of a problem for anyone else.  The tomb doesn't appear at all in the earliest account of the supposed resurrection of Jesus - that of Paul in 1Cor 15.  There he is trying to make the case that the resurrection was real and was a prefigurement of the coming general resurrection when the apocalypse happens.  He's arguing against an idea the Jesus sect in Corinth seem to have had that it was somehow figurative and not a precursor of the apocalyptic general resurrection, so if Paul knew of an empty tomb story, it's strange that he doesn't mention it here.  Yet he doesn't.  Instead he puts the emphasis on the various "appearances" of the risen Jesus, including the one he saw in a vision.

So what we seem to have here is a very early form of the belief in a risen Jesus - one that involves "appearances" and visions, not a physical revivification.  One that involves a "spiritual body" that is somehow different to a normal body.  And one that makes no mention of things like Jesus eating fish, letting people poke their fingers into his wounds and leaving behind an empty tomb.  There is also no mention of the revivified Jesus' flying bodily into the heavens after a while.

It's only later, when the story has changed and the resurrection has become more literally physical, that we lose these references to visions and get a physically revived Jesus.  He can still walk through walls or (strangely) appear to be someone else until he is "recognised" as Jesus and then disappears.  But he has all the physical attributes that Paul's "spiritual" risen Jesus doesn't.  This includes an empty tomb.

As Ehrman points out in his most recent book, we can see remnants of an earlier tradition whereby Jesus was not lain in a conveniently available tomb at all and was instead disposed by the Temple authorities to prevent his rotting corpse polluting the Passover.  Peter's sermon in Acts 13:27-29 seems to reflect this earlier tradition:

"Those who lived in Jerusalem and their rulers...requested Pilate to have him killed; and when they had fulfilled all that was written of him they took him down from the tree and placed him in a tomb."

Similarly, in some early manuscripts of gJohn there is a variant reading of John 19:38 that "So they (the Jewish leaders) came and took away his body."  Justin (Dialogue 97.1) says "For the Lord too remained on the tree almost until evening, and towards evening they buried him" in a context that, again, implies the "they" here are the Jewish leaders.  The Gospel of Peter likewise says "And then they [the Jews] drew out the nails from the hands of the Lord, and laid him in the earth" (gPeter 6).  Finally, the gnostic Secret Book of James has the risen Jesus detailing to his brother the hardships he endured in his death and says he was shamefully buried "in the sand".

So we have elements here of an earlier tradition or traditions where (i) it is the Jewish leaders who dispose of Jesus' body, not his followers and (ii) he is "laid in the earth" or buried "in the sand", not neatly tucked away in a tomb, ready for a physical resurrection and subsequent bodily ascension into heaven.

The tomb first appears in gMark, along with an otherwise unmentioned follower called Joseph of Arimathea, who pops up solely to provide this tomb and then disappears again.  The tomb seems to appear to serve two purposes.  Firstly, it is necessitated by the evolving beliefs about the resurrection, which have now gone from being a matter of visions and perhaps "spiritual bodies" to a physical event.  Jesus being disposed of by the Jewish authorities, probably by being buried in a mass grave, no longer works.  So now we get a conveniently supplied tomb for the body to rest in, waiting to physically rise from the dead.  The other purpose it serves is the supposed fulfilment of "prophecy" as found in the book that provides a lot of the theological and exegetical framework for the story of the death of Jesus, Isaiah:

"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death" (Isaiah 53:9)

So to fulfil this we get a tomb provided by a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.  All this explains the lack of interest in the location of his tomb - there was no tomb and Jesus was, as Paul says and the remnant traditions indicate, simply unceremoniously buried by the Jewish authorities, probably in a common mass grave.  By the time the stories of the tomb evolved they were circulating amongst late first century Christian communities in the diaspora, who simply assumed this "tomb" was still there somewhere near Jerusalem but who, living in Greece, Syria or Egypt, had never been there.

[Mudhammam]

Thanks for the reply. That's some excellent analysis. Have you read Cicero's On Divination by any chance? It's a pretty incredible exposé of the types of ideas and trains of thought that were popular with the herd in the first-century BC. After having read that and Philo's complete works recently, along with some other Greek and Roman writers (currently on Seneca's letters), it's really easy to see how Jesus the wise man who courageously shed his mortal flesh evolved into Jesus the resurrected Word of God. This is just one example of the mindset that pervades the elite class and simply by observing the modern-day situation of religion in less affluent environments, it's kind of all too obvious to me how the Christian superstitions came to be as they appear in the surviving texts:

"If you see a man who is unterrified in the midst of dangers, untouched by desires, happy in adversity, peaceful amid the storm, who looks down upon men from a higher plane, and views the gods on a footing of equality, will not a feeling of reverence for him steal over you? Will you not say: 'This quality is too great and too lofty to be regarded as resembling this petty body in which it dwells? A divine power has descended upon that man.' When a soul rises superior to other souls, when it is under control, when it passes through every experience as if it were of small account, when it smiles at our fears and at our prayers, it is stirred by a force from heaven. A thing like this cannot stand upright unless it be propped by the divine. Therefore, a greater part of it abides in that place from whence it came down to earth. Just as the rays of the sun do indeed touch the earth, but still abide at the source from which they are sent, even so the great and hallowed soul, which has come down in order that we may have a nearer knowledge of divinity, does indeed associate with us, but still cleaves to its origin; on that source it depends, thither it turns its gaze and strives to go, and it concerns itself with our doings only as a being superior to ourselves." (Seneca, epistle XLI, popularly entitled "On the God Within Us")

What texts would you say were particularly eye-opening for you in understanding how Christianity grew out of the Hellenistic Judaism that was splintering off from the more traditional sects of Hebrew faith at the time? (There were a number of instances when I was reading Philo where it was just like, "Oh wow... That's remarkably similar in thought.")

[Wyrd of Gawd]

One interesting problem in reconstructing a plausible scenario for the development of first-century Christendom---one that is easily though lazily addressed by the Christ-mythers, as every other historical question of some perplexity is presumably treated by them ("It's all fiction! Like Charles Dickens! Boy, solving that was just so simple for me!")---is the absence of any interest or mention by the disciples of a location for Jesus' tomb, if he was even really buried as they proclaimed from early on. It is a far bigger problem for Christians, in my view, considering the importance, both from the standpoint of its significance in religious worship and for their apology of a death and resurrection (however that may have been initially interpreted), that one can imagine such a location might have possessed. For the historian it seems to be a question that is much more open ended in terms of speculation over what actually happened when Jesus' corpse came off the cross, and how that affected the texts they came to write just decades afterwards.

It's definitely a problem for Christians, but I can't see how it's much of a problem for anyone else.  The tomb doesn't appear at all in the earliest account of the supposed resurrection of Jesus - that of Paul in 1Cor 15.  There he is trying to make the case that the resurrection was real and was a prefigurement of the coming general resurrection when the apocalypse happens.  He's arguing against an idea the Jesus sect in Corinth seem to have had that it was somehow figurative and not a precursor of the apocalyptic general resurrection, so if Paul knew of an empty tomb story, it's strange that he doesn't mention it here.  Yet he doesn't.  Instead he puts the emphasis on the various "appearances" of the risen Jesus, including the one he saw in a vision.

So what we seem to have here is a very early form of the belief in a risen Jesus - one that involves "appearances" and visions, not a physical revivification.  One that involves a "spiritual body" that is somehow different to a normal body.  And one that makes no mention of things like Jesus eating fish, letting people poke their fingers into his wounds and leaving behind an empty tomb.  There is also no mention of the revivified Jesus' flying bodily into the heavens after a while.

It's only later, when the story has changed and the resurrection has become more literally physical, that we lose these references to visions and get a physically revived Jesus.  He can still walk through walls or (strangely) appear to be someone else until he is "recognised" as Jesus and then disappears.  But he has all the physical attributes that Paul's "spiritual" risen Jesus doesn't.  This includes an empty tomb.

As Ehrman points out in his most recent book, we can see remnants of an earlier tradition whereby Jesus was not lain in a conveniently available tomb at all and was instead disposed by the Temple authorities to prevent his rotting corpse polluting the Passover.  Peter's sermon in Acts 13:27-29 seems to reflect this earlier tradition:

"Those who lived in Jerusalem and their rulers...requested Pilate to have him killed; and when they had fulfilled all that was written of him they took him down from the tree and placed him in a tomb."

Similarly, in some early manuscripts of gJohn there is a variant reading of John 19:38 that "So they (the Jewish leaders) came and took away his body."  Justin (Dialogue 97.1) says "For the Lord too remained on the tree almost until evening, and towards evening they buried him" in a context that, again, implies the "they" here are the Jewish leaders.  The Gospel of Peter likewise says "And then they [the Jews] drew out the nails from the hands of the Lord, and laid him in the earth" (gPeter 6).  Finally, the gnostic Secret Book of James has the risen Jesus detailing to his brother the hardships he endured in his death and says he was shamefully buried "in the sand".

So we have elements here of an earlier tradition or traditions where (i) it is the Jewish leaders who dispose of Jesus' body, not his followers and (ii) he is "laid in the earth" or buried "in the sand", not neatly tucked away in a tomb, ready for a physical resurrection and subsequent bodily ascension into heaven.

The tomb first appears in gMark, along with an otherwise unmentioned follower called Joseph of Arimathea, who pops up solely to provide this tomb and then disappears again.  The tomb seems to appear to serve two purposes.  Firstly, it is necessitated by the evolving beliefs about the resurrection, which have now gone from being a matter of visions and perhaps "spiritual bodies" to a physical event.  Jesus being disposed of by the Jewish authorities, probably by being buried in a mass grave, no longer works.  So now we get a conveniently supplied tomb for the body to rest in, waiting to physically rise from the dead.  The other purpose it serves is the supposed fulfilment of "prophecy" as found in the book that provides a lot of the theological and exegetical framework for the story of the death of Jesus, Isaiah:

"He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death" (Isaiah 53:9)

So to fulfil this we get a tomb provided by a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.  All this explains the lack of interest in the location of his tomb - there was no tomb and Jesus was, as Paul says and the remnant traditions indicate, simply unceremoniously buried by the Jewish authorities, probably in a common mass grave.  By the time the stories of the tomb evolved they were circulating amongst late first century Christian communities in the diaspora, who simply assumed this "tomb" was still there somewhere near Jerusalem but who, living in Greece, Syria or Egypt, had never been there.

Joseph of Arimathea got the body and ate it because he believed what Jesus had said about eating his flesh and drinking his blood to gain eternal life.  That's why Jesus hasn't been around for the past 2,000 years.  Joe had him for dinner.

[smax]

When people say, "there was definitely a man named Jesus" it's one of the most pathetic attempts often used to validate him as a historical figure. Of course there was a man named Jesus, many of them in fact. And there have also been many people named Hercules and Buddha. Does that validate them as historical figures of note?

Not at all.

The only thing that makes Jesus a relevant historical figure is some kind of credible substantiation of the bible's claims about him. Nothing like that, to my knowledge, exists.

Even the accounts of Jesus in the gospel are in clear contradiction of one another, which further discredits him as a historical figure.

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL...I missed this before but...Nestor....the thing you thought that mythicists didn't have a good explanation for, that was an example of their laziness in describing things as fiction turned out to be what?

Fiction?

[Mudhammam]

When people say, "there was definitely a man named Jesus" it's one of the most pathetic attempts often used to validate him as a historical figure. Of course there was a man named Jesus, many of them in fact. And there have also been many people named Hercules and Buddha. Does that validate them as historical figures of note?

Not at all.

The only thing that makes Jesus a relevant historical figure is some kind of credible substantiation of the bible's claims about him. Nothing like that, to my knowledge, exists.

Even the accounts of Jesus in the gospel are in clear contradiction of one another, which further discredits him as a historical figure.

Hmm... I think spawning a culture that boasts of more adherents and has had more influence in the world than any other figure or movement in history makes him somewhat relevant...

[Mudhammam]

LOL...I missed this before but...Nestor....the thing you thought that mythicists didn't have a good explanation for, that was an example of their laziness in describing things as fiction turned out to be what?

Fiction?

I'm pretty sure historians know that almost all ancient texts contain fiction in their accounts.

Fiction in text =/= text is fiction.

All you have to do to see an example of the laziness I'm referring to is scroll up to the post above yours:

Even the accounts of Jesus in the gospel are in clear contradiction of one another, which further discredits him as a historical figure.

The stupidity in that remark would be shocking if it wasn't so typical.

[smax]

When people say, "there was definitely a man named Jesus" it's one of the most pathetic attempts often used to validate him as a historical figure. Of course there was a man named Jesus, many of them in fact. And there have also been many people named Hercules and Buddha. Does that validate them as historical figures of note?

Not at all.

The only thing that makes Jesus a relevant historical figure is some kind of credible substantiation of the bible's claims about him. Nothing like that, to my knowledge, exists.

Even the accounts of Jesus in the gospel are in clear contradiction of one another, which further discredits him as a historical figure.

Hmm... I think spawning a culture that boasts of more adherents and has had more influence in the world than any other figure or movement in history makes him somewhat relevant...

No more so than any other myth that has been brought to life. All the planets, long before the Jesus myth, were once believed to be gods. And, unlike Jesus, the planets existence could be verified. 

And yet we now know that they aren't gods, but rather the perception of them being such is an invention of the human mind. Just like Jesus. 

Likewise, the days of the week are named after those same gods (or planets). These gods (or days of the week), better known now by their Norse cultivated roots, make up our current calendar associations. 

Shall we now validate the beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Norse religions, simply because their myths are now part of our culture? Or, would we be better suited to accept that myths are, as I said before, most often and most likely the invention of the human mind?

The only Jesus that would be worth considering would be one that:

Walked on water
Turned water into wine
Fed 5000 people with 2 fish
Raised Lazurus from the dead
Defeated death himself and walked among us

Something tells me a guy like that, however, doesn't need obviously unreliable and contradictory religious accounts to verify him as an historical figure. 

The very nature of religion is to make shit up, that's a mathematical certainty no matter which crap you are buying. Therefore, religious accounts are useless to anyone sincerely in search of truth.

[smax]

The stupidity in that remark would be shocking if it wasn't so typical.

I'm sure you are 98.5 percent right!