Addressing Dogsgod and the mythic Jesus Myth

[Copernicus]

...What do you know of historical Jesus criticism from Reimarus through Renan to Wrede? ...

Sorry, but name-dropping of that sort doesn't contradict my point that the majority of scholars in the community came to the study with an inherent bias to believe in historicity. Christians who do not believe in historicity are rare. That means that we are entitled to be more skeptical of this claim than of other claims made by communities of experts. You may not like this argument, but I am not the only one who has made it. Doherty, in fact, is quite eloquent about this aspect of the historicity debate.

As you are a linguist, I will use an anology: Doherty's book is the equivalent of a non-linguist arguing that Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit aren't related. Enough evidence can be marshalled to convince those completely unfamiliar with languages or indo-european linguistics, but no one who knows the field will be fooled.

There really isn't any analogy at all. I can easily explain the basic principles of historical reconstruction and why there is consensus among linguists on that score. You have been unable to articulate the basis for consensus in the scholarly community. It is true that there will always be people who fail to acknowledge the evidence, but that does not trouble me. And note this: linguists do not have any journals devoted to proving that PIE actually existed. In the case of linguistics, nobody thinks that a debatable issue. In your field, historicity is considered debatable.

I can tell you what the reasons are for such universal acceptance of the historical Jesus, but you reject all these reasons because you lack the knowledge base. As I said early, I can continue to explain why so many people for so long have reached the same conclusion, but eventually I will have to either build Jesus research from the ground up and write a book, or I can appeal to the universal acceptance by experts.

You can continue to base your claim on the fallacies of authority and popularity, and I will continue to reject it on those grounds. You believe that the popularity is based on solid scholarship; I believe that it is based on inherent bias and taboo. People are infinitely resourceful when it comes to rationalizing behavior and our beliefs. We need to examine arguments for a claim, not who and how many people back the claim.

I have studied enough about oral and written traditions to have some insight into their accuracy, having been a professional linguist for roughly 4 decades.

If you are a linguist, oral traditions would be peripheral to your field. We could discuss the effect of ergativity on the concept of subject in UG, and whether PIE was an active/stative language, or whether a formalist or functionalist approach is better, or theories of case grammar, and you would probably know more than I on all of these. However, the fact that you are a linguist doesn't mean you know much about oral tradition.

It means that I have a different professional perspective than you do on the question of oral traditions. To make the case that you are trying to make, you need to produce a methodology for separating true narratives from false ones, and I do not think that you are even close to doing that. All of the arguments that you have presented so far have been based on fairly strained speculations about how likely people were to have been in a position to know the facts. Those are very subjective arguments, and that is why skeptics don't just fade away when you rest your case so strongly on authority rather than substantive evidence.

I can certainly claim to have a broader understanding of the nature and diversity of languages than you do

I don't doubt it. I only know how to read 6, and only one of them isn't indo-european. I have studied the structure of other languages, and read a fair amount of classical linguistic and indo-european scholarship, as well as other linguistic scholarship.

Good for you. I would not insult you by trying to base a linguistic claim largely on the grounds that it is true because all the linguists that matter have reached a consensus opinion that it is true.

Again, bioi/viatae, not that it makes a difference in this case. Bioi can be riddled with erroneous information too. However, even those who have believed that the oral tradition behind the gospels was passed along freelly and uncontrolled, still acknowledge that there are very early traditions in them. Within a few years of Jesus' mission, Paul joins the sect. Within a few decades after his mission, Mark is written.

However, nobody really knows for certain when the original text was constructed. So a lot of assumptions are built into the "guesstimates". Embellishments happen quite naturally in oral traditions, and I'm surprised that you argue so forcefully for accuracy in transmission. We see evidence of embellishments in the garbled and contradictory details concerning the events of Jesus' life. You know that there are plenty of false details in those stories, yet you cannot accept that one detail--the actual existence of Jesus--might also have been an embellishment.

And here is where you hagiography (bioi) argument falls apart. Mark is full of a number of diverse traditions, which obviously pre-date him. He didn't simply write a story, nor did he just re-tell one. He weaved older traditions of aphorisms, parables, short narratives, etc, into one long narrative, and very badly. These independent traditions were around prior to Mark's composition. Yet not even a life-time had gone by since Jesus' mission. To argue that in that very short time (not even counting how early Q is) even an uncontrolled oral tradition could have completely swallowed up the historical Jesus is ridiculous.

Nonsense. Stories can change in just a few years, and the sad truth is that we are just now coming to understand how false memories can arise in the same individual over the course of years. We have no records to guarantee that the stories that come down to us were even the most popular versions that were being passed around in those days. All you have done here is admit that syncretism was at play. Diverse traditions were welded together poorly enough so that we can now tease them apart. Doherty's argument makes a lot of sense.

Is Doherty really all you have read on this subject? You are a professional linguist, you must know the kind of research and backround that goes into to advocating for, say, minimalist over government and binding, or something like that. Doherty doesn't interact with most current (or past) scholarship. His books, and books like his, are riddled with errors, and they completely mistake the nature of Jesus' culture, and of the sources. If that is all you have read, it is no wonder you argue as you do.

No, that isn't the only thing that I have read, and I am much more interested in hearing substantive criticisms of his work rather than sweeping generalizations based on your disdain for those who you feel are unqualified to have an informed opinion on the subject matter.

Paul said he knew the followers of Jesus, including Peter, and admitted that he never knew Jesus during Jesus' life. He also admits that he is competing with Peter. He has every reason to try to undermine the authority of Peter, yet still he writes about James and Peter being before him, about their primacy, about James being Jesus' brother, about his spending 15 days to learn the tradition from Peter, etc.

And maybe what you read in the text was the absolute truth. Maybe it was a partial truth. Maybe Paul lied. Maybe some subsequent story-teller put words in his mouth. The problem is that there is nothing to corroborate what you read in the text. A thousand scholars all assuring you of its truth does not change the fact that your source evidence is too narrowly based to license your level of conviction.

I don't discard the impossible parts of the stories, at least not in the way you are suggesting. I believe that Jesus was credited with all sorts of wonders. But this is hardly unique. Plenty of historical figures were said to perform miracles and such. I just don't believe that whatever Jesus did was REALLY a miracle...

The fact that miracle-laden hagiographies were common in no way validates your claim that Jesus really existed. It only demonstrates that falsehoods were, at best, interwoven with truth. Since the Gospels contradict each other on minor details, we have little way to know where the truth lies, if it indeed lies anywhere at all in those stories.

Again, it is incredibly foolish to argue that Jesus can't be historical because he is credited with miracles. By this argument, every faith healer, shaman, witch, etc, never lived. Because no one who is thought to be able to cast out demons and heal people by "magic" could possibly be historical

It is indeed foolish to claim that blatant falsehoods mean that everything in the story "can't be historical". That isn't what I or anyone else is arguing. The argument is that such falsehoods tend to contaminate the reliability of those parts of the story that you are treating as reliable. And stop confusing the storytellers with the existence of characters in their stories. Nobody disputes that real people believed these stories and passed them on to others. Nobody disputes that the Jesus legend MIGHT have been based on a real person. It is just that the evidence offered to support his existence is highly disputable.

 

[DallasApple]

Well this may be goofy and not fit your analysis or anything but maybe proof of Jesus is in the condtion of peoples hearts who resemble Him by even a flicker .

Love

Dallas

 

[Copernicus]

The problem is you don't because of how early our sources are. It is impossible to explain the Jesus sect without Jesus, because no other religious sect starts like that without a founder.

Actually, Doherty presents a very good case for just how the Jesus story could have arisen in the absence of a real person as its central figure. You have already admitted that much of the story is pieced together from more than one tradition. It is clear that the process you describe did not accurately reflect real events. If the storytellers could not get their other facts straight, then there is no compelling reason to believe that they were speaking about an actual person. There were plenty of messiah candidates back then, so it is reasonable to suppose that the facts got twisted up in the retelling of the story. Even if the legend did start out with a real person, there is no way to know whether even a single event attributed to him actually happened to that person. Too much of the story is inconsistent and filled with obvious fantasy.

Many linguistic arguments depend on shaky assumptions about how to interpret certain phrasing in context. For example, we now understand passages better in the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic scripture after having translated related languages such as Ugaritic.

Yes, and the discovery and deciphering of Hittite, Tocharian, and Linear B helps us a great deal in the reconstruction of PIE. So what?

So there can be big differences between the literal meanings of phrases and conventional usages that have been lost over time. That fact was underscored by what Ugaritic taught us about the interpretation of biblical Hebrew. Linguists who study living languages find that there is a richness to the language that tends to get washed out by reliance on historical records of languages for which there are no longer any speakers who can correct misunderstandings.

...Even those who have rejected a controlled transmission, and most of the historicity of the gospels, say we can know far more than just "jesus existed." And ALL of ancient history is like this! We can either reject all works of ancient history or try to sort out the factual from the non-factual. This is what Carrier, for example, does with his classical sources, although they (and I am including historians here) are also full of myth, factual errors, and contradictions.

No, all of ancient history is not like the gospels, which you have admitted was a rather clumsily constructed hodge podge of several traditions. Tacitus was actually not a bad historian by modern standards, but Josephus was little more than a propagandist for the Romans. The gospels were not biographical works intended to pass on accurate information about the past. They were propaganda works intended to spread a set of religious beliefs that represented a schism from the Jewish religion.

Then why did the model fail to preserve accurate details of the man's life? What happened to his childhood?

He wasn't important in his childhood. The tradition most accurately preserved his teachings, because Jesus (if he was anything like any other Jewish, Greek, Roman, or any other ancient teacher), repeated his teachings over and over again. Events less so, because they only happen once, and are more apt to be added to or altered. What was important, and what the Jesus tradition was full of, was what happened during Jesus' mission.

But there were gospels that contained accounts of the childhood of Jesus. They just didn't fit well enough with the orthodox tradition to escape being purged from the historical record. The problem that orthodox Christians faced was that there were too many gospel stories out there. Hence all the religious strife among Christians after Constantine and Eusebius put the religion into better shape to serve as a vehicle for governing an empire. The Nag Hammadi texts were likely hidden to preserve them from being destroyed by other Christians. What comes down to as the actual story was an edited, cherry-picked version of the the story of Jesus.

The date is less important than when the people who wrote the stories lived. Do you think mark wrote as a baby? Paul was writing in the 60s, but his memory goes back far longer. Mark in the late 60s early 70s, but his memory also would have gone back longer. How do you explain such a full fledged sect, so soon after the life of someone you claim to be either wholly or completely myth, without the charismatic sect founder?

It is possible that the only charismatic figures were those peddling these stories. You can't possibly have any idea how accurate their memory was or how truthful they were in their storytelling. All you really know is that people found their stories convincing in an age when people were easily impressed and convinced by those kinds of stories. Lucretius made a career out of satirizing the gullibility of people in those times.

Luke was present during many of the events described in Acts...

Really? How could you possibly know that?

Paul has no reason to lie about the communities he was writing to...

How do you know that? Do you think that people who spread religious gospels never stretch the truth or lie? How meticulous was Paul's scholarship?

Papias gains little by claiming to have interviewed the disciples of the disciples...

For starters, he gains credibility and social status. Maybe he was telling the truth, but how could we ever check on the motives of people back then?

Your level of skepticism and criticism for christian sources is FAR, FAR, above what is applied to other ancient historical works, which also contain myth, legend, rumor, fact, and bias. There is good reason to doubt the historicity of many things in the NT. But there is no reason to doubt that the Jesus sect appeared shortly before Paul and continued to grow outward from what he describes as the "central" community in Jerusalem. This is particularly true as Paul was competing with actual eyewitnesses for authority, and tried to give himself more authority and them less as much as possible.

Well, we both admit that those stories contained plenty of falsehoods. Your approach is to take them at face value unless they can be proven false. The gospels were sales documents--religious propaganda that was used to attract converts. The fables were meant to impress people, and many of the events were intended to establish Jesus as the bona fide Jewish Messiah. They were not equivalent to other records and treatises in the Roman Empire. Josephus, the erstwhile Jewish rebel and pro-Roman turncoat, was part of a political campaign. Religious propagandists are not always reliable sources of information when you are searching for the truth.

 

[Oberon]

Not vital, but helpful.

Again, you don't know what you are talking about. It IS vital. The Jesus sect began as a jewish movement, within Jewish circles, with jewish apocalyptic and messianic expectations. These Jewish thoughts and hopes are represented in the sources we have, even the later ones, but especially the early ones. The references within the gospels and within the epistles are to jewish literature. It is absolutely essential to understand the Judaism of Jesus' day in order to understand the Jesus movement.

And you really don't know what he knows about Jewish history in those times.

I have read what he has written. His treatment of orality was absolutely wrong. He writes a supportive paper about the Illiad as a source behind the gospels, which is terrificly idiotic, and totally indicative of his classical slant, and lack of knowledge of Jewish studies.

He happens to know a lot about Roman and Greek history that may also be VITAL in this discussion.

It is vital. however, it is even MORE vital to understand the judaism of Jesus' day.

What you need to do--and have not done--is explain what it is about Jewish history that you think is so VITAL to the argument.

My fault. I keep forgetting you have no actual relevant knowledge about this field. The Jesus movement originated in a Jewish culture. The references in the NT are to jewish literature. The awaited "Christ" is a Jewish figure. The oral traditions began in first century jewish circles. The pharisees, sadducees, and a good part of the sources are devoted to Jewish thought, expectations, theology, etc. It is far more important to understand the cultural and religious background that the Jesus sect originated from than the Greco-roman background of the rulers behind that culture. Yes, that is vital too. But lack of knowledge of judaism, combined with a slant towards classical thought, will get you Carrier's article on the illiad as a possible inspiritation.

 

[Oberon]

Sorry, but name-dropping of that sort doesn't contradict my point that the majority of scholars in the community came to the study with an inherent bias to believe in historicity.

You are basing this claim without having read any scholarship. How could you possibly know? You assume it so it must be true?

Christians who do not believe in historicity are rare.

Since Reimarus and Strauss, hundreds of years ago, plenty of christian scholarship has been devoted to saying that we either can no little or nothing about the historical jesus, and that our sources are next to worthless. It has been since that time, with far MORE non-christians entering into the field, in a far LESS christian background, that skepticism has rightly decreased.

That means that we are entitled to be more skeptical of this claim than of other claims made by communities of experts.

You, having not read a single academic source on this topic, are harldly in a postition to make this claim.

Doherty, in fact, is quite eloquent about this aspect of the historicity debate.

Suprise! Doherty isn't an expert, doesn't interact with the bulk of historical Jesus research, and doesn't know what he is talking about.

There really isn't any analogy at all. I can easily explain the basic principles of historical reconstruction and why there is consensus among linguists on that score.

Not to someone who doesn't know anything about language. Believe me, I tried to do this in another thread. You can explain all you want, but there are people who will stick to what seems to be absurd arguments to you (e.g. they all come from sanskrit, or the cognate words were borrowed, or whatever) because you know the field.

You have been unable to articulate the basis for consensus in the scholarly community. It is true that there will always be people who fail to acknowledge the evidence, but that does not trouble me. And note this: linguists do not have any journals devoted to proving that PIE actually existed. In the case of linguistics, nobody thinks that a debatable issue. In your field, historicity is considered debatable.

The same with the historical Jesus. The journal isn't devoted to proving he was historical, but to finding out who he was. The entire field realizes that one can't account for the Jesus sect without Jesus.

You can continue to base your claim on the fallacies of authority and popularity, and I will continue to reject it on those grounds.

I'm not. I have said that the movement can only be explained by Jesus. I have told you that the reason that scholars, even ones rejecting the control of the sources, all realize that Jesus was historical is that the sources are too early to explain the sect without Jesus. I have explained that there is no comparable sect started without a founder. I have told you that scholars realize that Paul actually knew Jesus' followers. I have explained why the Josephus reference to Jesus' brother is so accepted by everybody. I have told you that it is universally acknowledged that the their are ealier sources behind all the gospels, which themselves are very early for historical sources in the ancient world. And so on.

In other words, I have given you a detailed summary on the reasons why scholars are in so universal agreement. You, lacking the knowledge base to properly evaluate all of these reasons, reject them because you read a book by some guy with a bachelor's in classics.

You believe that the popularity is based on solid scholarship; I believe that it is based on inherent bias and taboo.

The difference being only one of us has actually read the scholarship. Your belief are not based on research. Mine are.

It means that I have a different professional perspective than you do on the question of oral traditions.

It means your perspective is pretty worthless. Oral traditions vary widely, both intra and inter culturally. This field is at best peripheral to your area of study. Moreover, you haven't studied cultures similar to the ones from which the Jesus sect emerged. Finally, if you knew about oral traditions in general, you would know something about how oral traditions are treated in general cross-culturally based on genre. Rumor, for example, is cross-culturally a widely uncontrolled orally transmitted genre. Oral history, of the type the gospels record, is not.

 

[Oberon]

To make the case that you are trying to make, you need to produce a methodology for separating true narratives from false ones, and I do not think that you are even close to doing that.

No, I am not going to do that on a thread. It would take a book. I can summarize, however, and point to various criteria used. I have done that. For example, saying which would be embarassing to the early sect are more likely to be authentic. There is no reason for the Jesus sect, seeking to defend claims about Jesus' historicity, to record the fact that most of his family and his hometown rejected him. Or the criterion of multiple attestation. If it is recorded in multiple independent traditions (Paul, the gospels, and Josephus for example, in the case of James as Jesus' brother) it is more likely to be true. If it is a saying as opposed to an event, knowledge of oral traditions similar to Jesus' and supported by the gospels tell us it is more likely to be historical. This is because teachers in the ancient world (not just in judaism but also in greece and rome) made their disciples/students memorize their teachings. In a primarily oral culture, this was the number one teaching technique. It is also why teachings were phrased in easily memorizable ways (like parables or aphorisms). Events, on the other hand, happen only once. They are not repeated over and over again. As such, much more is likely to be confused.

And there is a great deal more (how early is the source, what purpose does it serve, etc).

However, none of this is really necessary to understand that Jesus was historical. Bultmann (writing early in the 20th century), for example, rejected most of the gospels as unhistorical because he used german folklore as a model for orality, and assumed that sayings and events would be freely generated and then attributed to Jesus. As such, he was very skeptical about how much we could know about the historical Jesus beyond a basic sketch. However, he did know that our sources (Paul, a contemporary of Jesus, and the oral traditions first set down in Mark while witnesses still lived) are too early for the entire sect to have been attributed to a completely mythical founder.

All of the arguments that you have presented so far have been based on fairly strained speculations about how likely people were to have been in a position to know the facts.

No. Actually, all that type of argument gets into how much we can know about the historical Jesus. It does not address how whether or not he was historical. As I said, even those who believed that the gospels were completely uncontrolled realize that they are too early for a sect to be generated from a founder who never existed. Sociological study of sects and knowledge of sects and movement in the ancient world in general and in the jewish world in particular tell us this. The "myths" which cults were based on all had gods who lived in a long distant past. Not rising messianic teacher/prophets who died less than a lifetime ago (in Mark) or a few years prior to conversion (Paul).

However, nobody really knows for certain when the original text was constructed. So a lot of assumptions are built into the "guesstimates".

Which is when I go back to your ignorance on NT textual criticism. NT textual critical problems are few and far between. They have no relevancy in the historical Jesus tradition because of the wealth of textual attestation.

Embellishments happen quite naturally in oral traditions, and I'm surprised that you argue so forcefully for accuracy in transmission.

Again, that depends on the oral model. There are plenty of oral traditions which are well controlled. In fact, there are even those that are repeated verbatim across generations. Then there are oral traditions that are completely unreliable. However, none of this really matters for just arguing that the historical Jesus existed and stood behind the sect. It matters for sorting out the history from the non-history, but without jesus, even the most skeptical model of orality in the tradition still requires the founder.

We see evidence of embellishments in the garbled and contradictory details concerning the events of Jesus' life. You know that there are plenty of false details in those stories, yet you cannot accept that one detail--the actual existence of Jesus--might also have been an embellishment.

1. We see a great deal of evidence for control in transmission. Controll doesn't mean the sources agree in every detail. It means the various strains of transmission contain similar accounts of Jesus' teachings and deeds. They do.
2. Once more, the control has next to nothing to do with whether Jesus himself was not historical.

Nonsense. Stories can change in just a few years

Yes, but the point is mark didn't just tell the story. He recorded and redacted various independent accounts of Jesus' teachings and deeds. He set them into a narrative they didn't exist in. Now, even if we say, for the sake of argument, that these teachings were passed along like telephone, the point is that Mark wrote them about 35 years after Jesus died. He was alive far earlier, and his memory goes back far earlier. Paul was alive while Jesus was said to have lived. Yet you argue that it is possible or even likely that this sect grew up attributing teachings and actions to a founder who never lived, despite the fact that the first written sources are by a contemporary, and the first full bio is by someone who at least lived shortly after Jesus died. In other words, you go from no sect to sect with mythical founder in less than 40 years (with mark) and less than a few years with Paul. Only sects don't work that way.

 

[Oberon]

and the sad truth is that we are just now coming to understand how false memories can arise in the same individual over the course of years.

One of the most recent academic works on orality within the Jesus tradition utilizes psychological research on memory.

Doherty's argument makes a lot of sense.

How would you know, if that is the only thing you have read? Carrier hasn't published anything on the subject yet. So far all you do is rehash junk you read in Doherty's book.

No, that isn't the only thing that I have read, and I am much more interested in hearing substantive criticisms of his work rather than sweeping generalizations based on your disdain for those who you feel are unqualified to have an informed opinion on the subject matter.

What academic works have you read, then?

And maybe what you read in the text was the absolute truth. Maybe it was a partial truth. Maybe Paul lied. Maybe some subsequent story-teller put words in his mouth.

Paul wasn't telling stories. He was writing letters to other communities of followers. They knew the people he was talking about, as is clear by the letters. He had no reason to lie about knowing Peter and about peter knowing Jesus (ditto with the other followers of Jesus and his brother) because he was in disagreement with them.

The problem is that there is nothing to corroborate what you read in the text.

Texts. Plural. Mulitiple early sources all attesting to Jesus existence, several with the purpose of recording history.

The fact that miracle-laden hagiographies were common in no way validates your claim that Jesus really existed.

You missed the point. The fact that Jesus is said to have performed miracles does not mean that the gospels did not accurately record that he was thought to have performed miracles. You claim that the presence of miracles and magic make the gospels bad historical sources. As far as modern history goes that is true, but it isn't true for ancient history. More importantly, the argument that "the gospels have Jesus doing magic and miracles therefore they can't be historical" is ridiculous because plenty of historical people were thought to do the same.

It only demonstrates that falsehoods were, at best, interwoven with truth.

Again, if the gospels record Jesus curing a blind person, and the historical Jesus was thought by people around him to have actually cured that blind person, than the gospels are good sources (as far as ancient history goes anyway). They have accurately recorded an event as it was seen by those around Jesus.

Since the Gospels contradict each other on minor details, we have little way to know where the truth lies, if it indeed lies anywhere at all in those stories.

Wrong. Myths in the ancient world did not contradict each other in minor details. MAJOR parts of the myth changed. For example, the persian mithras wasn't the dying and resurrecting savior god. The Medea in Euripides is probably the first to kill her own children, which is what makes her most famous, while other versions of the myth have her children killed by the Corinthians, or have her kill them trying to make them immortal.

The fact that the gospels are not treated like myth, but actually disagree less than Herodotus and Thucydides do, and are treated like history, are arguments in favor of their over all accuracy. However, even if they were far less accurate, that still is no argument against the historicity of Jesus, only against what we can know about his beyond a bare sketch.

It is indeed foolish to claim that blatant falsehoods mean that everything in the story "can't be historical". That isn't what I or anyone else is arguing. The argument is that such falsehoods tend to contaminate the reliability of those parts of the story that you are treating as reliable.

Again missing the point. Let's say that the historical Jesus, the real Jesus, is thought by the people around him to have cured a lame man. Now, various people can argue that he didn't really cure him, or that it was a faith healing, or that it was a real miracle, and so on, but that doesn't change the fact that the event itself was historical. I don't believe in the magic/miracle part, but that doesn't preclude me from believing that an actual person was living and actually was thought by witnesses to perform a miracle, and that this miracle was recorded accurately as those witnesses transmitted it by the gospel authors.

And stop confusing the storytellers with the existence of characters in their stories.

Again, Paul wasn't a story-teller. He wrote letters.

Nobody disputes that real people believed these stories and passed them on to others. Nobody disputes that the Jesus legend MIGHT have been based on a real person. It is just that the evidence offered to support his existence is highly disputable.

Wrong. Because even if the most skeptical view of the sources is adopted, that traditions of jesus were freely created and uncontrolled, that still leaves you with Paul, Q, and Mark, all around while witnesses to the "myth" were still living. It means that a sect was attributed to a founder that never lived, while people who were alive while the founder was said to be alive were still around. That didn't happen in the ancient world, or today. Cults could be formed around mythic godmen of the ancient past, and frequently were. However, Jesus is nailed down to a period shortly before the sources. He isn't a myth from the distant past.

 

[Oberon]

Actually, Doherty presents a very good case for just how the Jesus story could have arisen in the absence of a real person as its central figure.

You aren't able to judge how bad it is, because you clearly are not familiar enough with either the sources or the culture or the scholarship.

You have already admitted that much of the story is pieced together from more than one tradition.

Not exactly. The point is that the Jesus tradition was passed along as independent narratives and sayings. In other words, a teaching of Jesus (for example, on divorce) was passed along independently. The people passing on the tradition simply told others what Jesus said about divorce. Or what happened when Jesus was crucified. Eventually, various authors took it upon themselves to work all these various teachings and narratives into one biography.

It is clear that the process you describe did not accurately reflect real events. If the storytellers could not get their other facts straight, then there is no compelling reason to believe that they were speaking about an actual person.

Completely wrong, for a number of reasons.

1. No ancient historian got all their facts straight. Are you suggesting that no written source prior to the modern age can be trusted?
2. You keep saying "storytellers" as if a story was being told and retold about Jesus. It wasn't. The various independent traditions were not stories. They were in the forms of a single aphorism, or a short parable, or a short narrative describing a single event. It was these traditions that were weaved into a biography.
3. There is still no way to explain the Jesus sect without the founder.

There were plenty of messiah candidates back then, so it is reasonable to suppose that the facts got twisted up in the retelling of the story.

Again, it wasn't a single story that was being retold. More importantly, this isn't important for establishing the bare historical facts about Jesus, only about about establishing who he was beyond this.

Even if the legend did start out with a real person, there is no way to know whether even a single event attributed to him actually happened to that person.

Multiple attestation, early date of source, method of transmission, model of orality, criterion of embarrassment, and so forth. There are many ways. Were you familiar with historical Jesus research, and not just a book by some random guy, you would know this.

Too much of the story is inconsistent and filled with obvious fantasy.

Wrong. Again, the record of a miracle doesn't equate with "fantasy." It can be an accurate recording of how a real event was interpreted by real eyewitnesses. If a bunch of people believe see Jesus make a guy they think is lame walk, and interpret this as a miracle, and the gospels record this, this isn't "obvious fantasy" but history. Today, if were were writing a good history on such a person, we would add the obvious caveat that "so-and-so was THOUGHT by witnesses to have magically been healed." But the essence is the same: a historical event, which is interpreted by some as a miracle, by others as black magic, by others as fraud, and so on, is recorded in a historical source.

So there can be big differences between the literal meanings of phrases and conventional usages that have been lost over time. That fact was underscored by what Ugaritic taught us about the interpretation of biblical Hebrew. Linguists who study living languages find that there is a richness to the language that tends to get washed out by reliance on historical records of languages for which there are no longer any speakers who can correct misunderstandings.

This is too completely misunderstand the culture in which Jesus lived and preached. Although he lived in one of the most Jewish regions, and it is even possible he only spoke aramaic, we know from Paul that early on Jews with a more hellenistic background, and eventually non-jews, joined the sect. We know from other sources how bilinguial much of the eastern empire was. Even if Jesus spoke only aramaic, and even if all his initial followers did too, it wasn't long after his death that his aramaic teachings were being translated into greek by bilinguals for the sake of those speaking only or mainly greek.

No, all of ancient history is not like the gospels, which you have admitted was a rather clumsily constructed hodge podge of several traditions. Tacitus was actually not a bad historian by modern standards, but Josephus was little more than a propagandist for the Romans.

Tacitus WAS a bad historian. He was blatantly biased. Moreover, there were plenty of worse biographers (like Diogenes) as well as better (like plutarch) than the gospel authors. The point is, they fit very well into the genre of ancient history.

The gospels were not biographical works intended to pass on accurate information about the past. They were propaganda works intended to spread a set of religious beliefs that represented a schism from the Jewish religion.

Wrong. Because they were written to those who already believed, and passed along by those who already believed, in an attempt to preserve the tradition in a written form as well as oral.

But there were gospels that contained accounts of the childhood of Jesus. They just didn't fit well enough with the orthodox tradition to escape being purged from the historical record.

These accounts were written hundreds of years later. And they were not included in the canon because they were obviously mythical, were not mentioned by any of the early church fathers, had none of the authority that the earliest sources did (as they didn't exist until centuries later) and so on.

The problem that orthodox Christians faced was that there were too many gospel stories out there.

Again you show a blatant unawareness of the field. With the exception of perhaps Thomas, none of the other gospels were anywhere near as early as the canonical ones.

Hence all the religious strife among Christians after Constantine and Eusebius put the religion into better shape to serve as a vehicle for governing an empire.

The religious strife began before and ended afterwards. Also, plenty of the dissenting views were recorded by the very people intent on stamping them out. The anti-gnostic works are actually more important for understanding gnosticism than the Nag Hammadi texts. One of the biggest impacts this collection had was that it confirmed how accurately the anti-gnostic authors recorded gnostic beliefs.

It is possible that the only charismatic figures were those peddling these stories. You can't possibly have any idea how accurate their memory was or how truthful they were in their storytelling.

This is again to completely mistake sects/cults. Multiple charismatic figures do not found a sect attributed to a mythic charasmatic figure.

Really? How could you possibly know that?

Because he says so. Of course, he could be lying. But it is only in random and relatively unimportant places that he puts himself as present. Why trust any author in ancient history?

How do you know that? Do you think that people who spread religious gospels never stretch the truth or lie? How meticulous was Paul's scholarship?

Ha! Paul shows was writing LETTERS! It is clear by what he says that the people he was writing to knew a great deal about the tradition already. He wasn't trying to convert, as he was writing to those already converted.

For starters, he gains credibility and social status.

GAINS social status? The early christians were a persecuted sect. Credibility? He wasn't writing a gospel. He was talking about his own life.

Maybe he was telling the truth, but how could we ever check on the motives of people back then?

Good point. Let's disbelieve every piece of ancient history, because we can't possibly know the motives behind any of it. Even a historian as recent as Michelet was blatantly biased, and his works have to be read carefully. Obviously nothing can be known at all from ancient historical texts, no matter who wrote them.

The gospels were sales documents--religious propaganda that was used to attract converts

Wrong. You have no evidence to support such a view. What internal and external evidence we have supports the view that the gospels were used internally, by already christian groups. Proselytizing was done by word of mouth, not by handing out expensive copies of texts. The gospels were set down to immortalize the oral traditions, not as advertising pamphlets.

 

[dogsgod]

The gospel of Mark places Jesus at a time and place on earth without a shred of anything to support such a time and place. Paul certainly doesn't and those claiming Paul met disciples of Jesus can't see beyond their own circular reasoning. None of the epistle writers mention the word "disciple" ever. Paul describes apostles like himself, appointed by God and in doing so excludes Jesus from the process altogether. Paul's letters predate the gospels and it's these gospels that portray these apostles from Jerusalem, Peter, James, and John, as disciples of an earthly Jesus living in Galilee. It's gospel writers that give Jesus a time and place on earth. The earliest Christian writers don't do this.

 

[Oberon]

The gospel of Mark places Jesus at a time and place on earth without a shred of anything to support such a time and place.

What the hell does this even MEAN!!?? Did you want photographs with Mark or something? Mark places Jesus in a specific time and place, dying less than 40 years after Mark was written. Meaning even if Mark was not alive when it happened (which is possible) he was around shortly after. The evidence he gives is the testimony he writes, the same with all ancient historians. Its not like they wrote up lists of citations.

Paul certainly doesn't and those claiming Paul met disciples of Jesus can't see beyond their own circular reasoning. None of the epistle writers mention the word "disciple" ever. Paul describes apostles like himself, appointed by God and in doing so excludes Jesus from the process altogether. Paul's letters predate the gospels and it's these gospels that portray these apostles from Jerusalem, Peter, James, and John, as disciples of an earthly Jesus living in Galilee. It's gospel writers that give Jesus a time and place on earth. The earliest Christian writers don't do this.

While Pauls letters do not concentrate on the earthly Jesus (as he was believed to have been resurrected) neither do they ignore him. For example:

1) Paul states that Jesus was descended in the flesh.
2)He states that Jesus prohibited divorce, and distinguishes this teaching from his own. This is odd if you are right and Paul believes in a spiritual Jesus who gave him the authority to preach the gospel. After all, if Jesus was only a spiritual entity to Paul, why would he bother to say on the one hand that Jesus prohibited divorce, but in the other instance he does not have a command from Jesus, but only from himself. Why not claim both commands were from Jesus? It would certainly support his argument. Oh wait! Its because he knew of earthly Jesus' teachings and distinguished these from his own teachings.
3) Paul states that Jesus had a meal before being crucified. Odd, considering that he was not "earthly."

In other words, while Paul (writing letters and not a biography) does not give us much evidence about Jesus' life, he certainly gives evidence of historicity.

 

[dogsgod]

The author of Mark placed his story a few decades prior to Paul's writing, but from reading Paul a Jesus type figure could have lived in a far distant past, generations before Paul, if at all.

 

[dogsgod]

According to Paul, God taught us to love each other. Paul didn't attribute the core of Jesus's teachings to Jesus, but to God. Paul isn't aware that a Jesus that once lived in Galilee taught this.


4. - 1 Thessalonians 4:9

• Now, about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. [NIV]

 

[Oberon]

According to Paul, God taught us to love each other. Paul didn't attribute the core of Jesus's teachings to Jesus, but to God. Paul isn't aware that a Jesus that once lived in Galilee taught this.




4. - 1 Thessalonians 4:9

• Now, about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. [NIV]

It doesn't say that. The word translated as "taught by God" is actually a single verb. It really means more like a divine teaching. In any case, this certainly does not preclude it from being a teaching Paul knows of from Jesus. Far more important than the various teachings Paul refers to which are also found in the Jesus tradition is when Paul EXPLICITLY cites Jesus' teaching on divorce. He then contrasts that with his OWN teaching. If Jesus were just a spiritual entitity that appeared to Paul, and Paul's teachings come only from a spiritual Jesus, there would be no reason to make this distinction.

The author of Mark placed his story a few decades prior to Paul's writing, but from reading Paul a Jesus type figure could have lived in a far distant past, generations before Paul, if at all.

Wrong. Because his brother was still alive. The same brother mentioned in Josephus, and in the gospels. Also, so are others who followed Jesus while he was alive.

Moreover, even if Mark wrote Mark at age 20 (quite young, compared to your average author) then he would have been around years before. The tradition in his gospel is not a single story passed along to him, but a variety of aphorisms, parables, and miracles attributed to the founder of the sect Mark belongs to. Yet this founder only died at most 2 decades or so prior to mark's life. Your situation calls for a sect to develop around a founder placed in a particular day and age, and then be so shrouded in myth that by the time the various teachings and miracles attributed to the founder reach mark, there is nothing left of historical value, even that the founder was ever around. That is WAY too short of a time for such an incredible type of development. People who lived and walked and breathed where Mark story is set were still around not only during Mark's day, but when Mark was written. Yet according to you they were willing to die and be persecuted, even though their founder, who was said to live during their lifetime, was never around. Right.