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What does it mean for Jesus to have existed?

vijeno

Member
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?
 

Kemosloby

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?

It boils down to three major elements, Jesus was crucified, Jesus was alive after being dead for 3 days, and arguements to convince people Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Good thread! You must read some of my posts. :) To your point. Interestingly enough a couple days ago I listened to Richard Carrier's analysis of the mythicist position and I found it quite engaging and thought provoking. There's an element missing from it of course, which is what you are touching on here. Of course, this discussion is not an area Carrier focuses on, nor is his work about.

You are right, at best these are reflections of what Jesus meant to these early writers. Even if Jesus was a literal historical person, the texts are expressions of faith. The Jesus presented in them are "inspired" in the sense anyone contemplating the grandeur of the cosmos might choose to speak of it. The words come from that place of inspiration from within us, and those words contain and convey some of the experience of the one sharing them. Then what those words inspire in others takes them into their own space of inspiration, puts them in touch with that, which in turn inspires them to speak about and share their own experience of inspiration.

Now this whole thing, in regard to Jesus himself as either an otherworldly being in the cosmology of the original Christians, or a real actual human that inspired all of it, is actually not the "real Jesus". Regardless of the original "seed", that was honestly left behind and "Jesus" became a "collective" of individuals thoughts and inspiration and symbols representing that "faith" in the divine or the transcendent they experienced, just as any human may. "Jesus" was "resurrected", or better stated "liberated" from the grave of being merely an individual being, into becoming a symbol of that inspiration. In other words, "Jesus" is a symbol of human faith, which is far more relevant than simply a historical figure.

This is something most Christians, especially fundamentalists, cannot fathom as the meaning of the symbol is bound to the literal "fact" in their imaginations. If Jesus never existed, it doesn't mean he doesn't now! :)
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?

First, the Gospels were not intended to be a biography or an historical account of the life of Jesus. While they contain elements of both, they are statements of faith. Scholars refer to the 'opinions' of the evangelists as theology and Christology. It is widely accepted that the author Matthew was neither an apostle nor an eye witness. They are witnesses in the sense that they wrote from the oral tradition and collected writings of the Apostles, most of whom scattered and never heard from again. But a few of them, Peter, James, Steven, and Paul, though not one of the 12, started communities, and it is from these communities that the evangelists write, addressing the needs of their particular community of believers. That's why there are different portraits of Jesus within the Gospels. They are documents in faith, as John puts it, 'these things are written so that you may believe.'
 

vijeno

Member
It boils down to three major elements, Jesus was crucified, Jesus was alive after being dead for 3 days, and arguements to convince people Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.

To me that sounds like an archetype, or an avatar or something.

Thought experiment: I just re-tell the story, only instead of Jesus 2000 years ago in Judaea, now it's a French Lieutenant in WW2 oppsoing the nazis, and he's not crucified but shot dead. We'll call him Francois Durand. But he still comes back from the dead, the story still claims he's the messiah, etc. Let's even make the guy jewish, cause why not. There are moral tales that amount to exactly the same message as Jesus proclaims in the gospels.

So according to what you say, if I write a Gospel of Vijeno, with Durand as the main character... For some strange reason, an actual religion emerges out of that: Durandism.

Would that be exactly the same as Christianity, except for the name? Would they worship *the same person*?

Assuming you answer with no to that, I'll give you this:

What if I move it back to the middle east? Back to, say 150AD. Or even back to 30?

At what point does it change into a valid gospel of the one Jesus Christ?

In short, what I'm asking is the old Shakespearean and Faustian question: What's in a name?
 

Kemosloby

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
To me that sounds like an archetype, or an avatar or something.

Thought experiment: I just re-tell the story, only instead of Jesus 2000 years ago in Judaea, now it's a French Lieutenant in WW2 oppsoing the nazis, and he's not crucified but shot dead. We'll call him Francois Durand. But he still comes back from the dead, the story still claims he's the messiah, etc. Let's even make the guy jewish, cause why not. There are moral tales that amount to exactly the same message as Jesus proclaims in the gospels.

So according to what you say, if I write a Gospel of Vijeno, with Durand as the main character... For some strange reason, an actual religion emerges out of that: Durandism.

Would that be exactly the same as Christianity, except for the name? Would they worship *the same person*?

Assuming you answer with no to that, I'll give you this:

What if I move it back to the middle east? Back to, say 150AD. Or even back to 30?

At what point does it change into a valid gospel of the one Jesus Christ?

In short, what I'm asking is the old Shakespearean and Faustian question: What's in a name?
Whatever dude, if you don't want to believe you can make up as many arguments against it as there are stars in the sky.
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Given that there is a consensus among scholars that Jesus was an historical person, the more problematic question is discerning the historical Jesus from the Jesus of faith. One cannot dismiss the literary forms of the time, otherwise one is left with defending an absurdity. And one of those forms in both Hebrew and Christian Scripture was myth.



Thus, we think now of myths as nothing but widely believed falsehoods, like the myth of racial superiority, or of inevitable progress. The belief that sudden fright on the part of a pregnant woman can injure her unborn child is dismissed as a myth, that is, a groundless falsehood.

That is not at all how myths were thought of in antiquity. They were an important part of Greek civilization and other cultures. They were not, as we think of them now, popular errors, but fabulous tales, sometimes of great complexity, usually involving gods in their relationships with men. But what is distinctive about the more lasting ones is that instead of being simply false, they were thought to embody truth. Thus a myth was an account which, while literally false and even absurd, was true on a deeper level. Moreover, it was thought that these truths could not be expressed in any other way. They could not, for example, be formulated in straightforward declarative sentences without being reduced to banality.


Plato, the paradigmatic product of Greek culture, understood the role of myths. He never thought it necessary to explain them. Thus, usually after plumbing some philosophical question as deeply as he could by rational dialectic, Plato sometimes culminated the discussion with a myth. He saw that reason can grasp only so much of a great truth and insight. The rest he incorporated into myth. His Republic, for example, is an expression of precise and rational thought at its best, and yet this great work culminates in the myth of Er, to make the point that our understanding of our ultimate good can be conveyed in no other way. In the same work he invents a tale of men imprisoned in a cave and thus limited to shadows and echoes until liberated and compelled to look at things as they really are, and at the sun that illuminates everything. Final truth, the story suggests, cannot be discovered by unaided intelligence. Plato’s understanding of myths is perhaps most clearly seen in his portrayal of a dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras. Protagoras, in this dialogue that bears his name, is asked to render an account of how virtue is taught. He offers to do this in either of two ways, by straightforward exposition, or by myth. It is thus understood that these are two quite different paths to one and the same truth, and Socrates does not question this presupposition. Protagoras then complies, by inventing an elaborate and instructive myth.

The concept of a myth, as thus understood, is essential for understanding religion, and the Christian religion in particular. Without this understanding it is impossible to see the power of a religion and how it can endure for generation after generation. The power of a religion lies in its stories, not simply as stories, but as vehicles of truth and, sometimes, profound truth. It is superficial to say, on whatever grounds, that scriptural accounts of events long past are false, and it is no less superficial to say that they are, as they stand, true. Some, at least, have a deeper meaning, overwhelmingly important to human understanding, and the task should be to try finding those meanings. Viewed this way, we can see that secularists, who dismiss religion as simply false, and fundamentalists, who insist on literal truth, both miss the point.





The power and endurance of religion cannot be understood independently of myths. The Christian religion, for example, does not rest just on a belief in God, even though many unreflective adherents seem to think so, nor does it rest upon belief in the divine nature of its founder. Belief in God is shared by virtually all religions, and the term ‘divine’ means many things to many people. Christianity rests upon the story of the resurrection.

What, indeed, is belief in God? Many assume that this means simply a belief in the existence of a god. That, by itself, however, has no more significance to religion than a belief that there is life on Mars. It is only an opinion about what happens to exist. What a Christian professes is not merely that there is a god, but rather, belief in God, which is a vastly stronger statement. And this is something not easily comprehended. It can be seen through story or myth, but it cannot be stated. The story of Abraham gives us a sense of its meaning, as does the story of Job, or, above all, the manner in which Jesus dealt with his suffering on the cross. Here a Christian sees, dimly, what it means to believe in God, but not even the wisest theologian or philosopher can say what it is. They should not even try.

As for the divinity of Christ, we are again confronted by incomprehension. There is no rational way to express it. Some suppose that it is attested by the moral sublimity of his teachings. Such a notion, however, would enable us to bestow divinity on other historical figures – Socrates, for example, whose teachings, and whose death at the hands of his persecutors, will forever inspire. The veneration of Socrates does not, however, constitute a religion. Others say that Jesus’s divinity is exhibited by his miraculous powers. Someone’s power to perform miracles, however, even if such power is conceded, proves nothing with respect to religion, for it would be consistent with his being simply a wizard. Wizardry can evoke amazement and wonder, perhaps fear and awe, but it evokes no sense of religious veneration.

What is essential to the Christian religion, then, is not jut a belief in God, nor any miraculous powers of its founder, but the story of the resurrection. Without this there is no such thing as the Christian religion. There may be all sorts of pieties, fellowships, good works, professions of love, all the things that have come to be associated with being a Christian, but the religion is simply diluted into nothingness.

Of course this presents an overwhelming problem for thoughtful and sophisticated persons, for the doctrine of the resurrection, literally understood, is an absurdity. That a man, three days dead, might be revived, to mingle again with the living, talk to them, and move about much as if nothing had happened to him, violates the most basic certainties of reason and common knowledge. The dead become dust and ashes. They do not rise.

Does this mean that the Christian religion should be discarded as false? That is what many conclude. Humanists take just this stand. They embrace, more or less, the basic ethical value associated with liberal Christianity, but dismiss the religion as resting on an absurdity – as indeed it does, if one considers its foundation a literal description of fact.

Christians have tried to meet this challenge in two ways.

On the one hand are those who find the doctrine of the resurrection difficult or impossible to swallow. They tend, then, to hold to what they can, falling back upon the broad, uncontroversial pieties – belief in God, the divine nature of Jesus (variously interpreted), the sanctity of human life, the dignity and worth of all persons, the value of prayer, and so on. Little is said about the resurrection except, perhaps, at Easter, when they rejoice at the rebirth of nature, this being obvious to all and vaguely suggestive of a kind of resurrection. The image of resurrection is deemed inspiring, the stuff of hymns, poetry and art. But they do not feel required to declare a belief that such a thing actually happened, simply because it is an inescapable absurdity.

Such, generally speaking, is likely to be the position of liberal Christianity.

The other way of addressing this basic absurdity is to boldly proclaim it. This is the way of fundamentalism. Christian doctrine, as embodied in Scripture, is simply and literally true as it stands, and faith is understood to be the willingness to declare this. The fundamentalist considers this bold and uncompromising stand to be the mark of courage and strength. He loudly proclaims "I believe," and this does indeed take considerable strength and courage if one is referring to the resurrection.

Strength and courage are virtues, no doubt, but to enlist them to embrace the absurd is difficult or impossible for most intellectually sophisticated persons. On the other hand, falling back upon the conventional pieties and platitudes common among religious people seems to leave out what is distinctive and precious in a religious understanding.

We are not limited to these two choices. Perhaps all religion rests upon mystery. Certainly the Christian religion does. Everything that is of value there is embodied in stories, in myths, understood in the proper sense of that word. The truths embodied in some of these stories are not impossible to discern. And some of them may even be totally devoid of worth, nothing but stories. But some of them embody profound truth that we can only barely discern and cannot really state. The account of the resurrection is surely one of these, and we are not obliged to say that the Christian religion rests upon an absurdity, nor that it is without any real foundation at all. Minimally it means that death is not what it seems to our senses to be, but beyond that lies mystery. Truth here is, if seen at all, seen dimly indeed, as through a glass, darkly.

Finally we should note that the meanings underlying myths, some of them profound, need not be exclusive. If, for example, theologians should render different interpretations of the Book of Job, this does not mean that one of them is right and the others wrong, even if those interpretations should be incompatible with each other. A myth, like a poem or a work of art, might embody different truths. The myth of Sisyphus, with which we began, has in fact been variously understood, and it would be in vain to contend that one interpretation is the meaning. The same is surely true for religion, and it is well that it is so. While proclaiming the often precious insights of religion, we can at the same time concede that they are buried in mystery, some more and some less, and we are liberated from the kind of dogmatism that makes another person’s understanding of religion an adversarial one. Literalism, and the urge to reduce religious myth to clearly and rationally understood claims, always amounts to trivialization. Truths that are perfectly clear and unambiguous to reason are not the truths of religion, while myth and mystery, which are never clear and unambiguous, are.

excerpts from
Richard Taylor on the proper role of myths and mysteries.



 
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?


It has no more poignancy than the historical me.
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?
It means that Jesus was a historical person. Unfortunately our knowledge of him comes second and third hand. Historical Jesus researchers look at all the evidence and argumentation from the writings and the culture of the time and judge the most reasonable assessment of what was most likely to have actually happened. And they don't all agree.

My thought is that what has come down to us is a mixture of facts and errors/opinions.
 

vijeno

Member
First, the Gospels were not intended to be a biography or an historical account of the life of Jesus.

Thing is, almost every christian apologist has this on their lips all the time. And THEN they move on to treat the gospels as history.

/rant

Okay, just a shorty for now. I could go way more ranty on that for sure.

But this thread is not about what the gospels were intended as. Surely, we can ask the question about any person's historical existence: Julius Caesar, Jesus of Nazareth, Ned Ludd, me.

Now, if I see it correctly, those that do history of the bible in the context of historical-critical analysis agree on one, maybe two, MAYBE three points:

* Jesus was a man out of Judaea
* Jesus lived in the first century CE (duh)
* Jesus was crucified

On top of that, the following MIGHT have happened:

* Jesus was baptised
* Jesus was an itinerant preacher who preached the imminent coming of the "kingdom of god"

The rest is, pretty much, a question of faith.

Now, that is not an awful lot to actually know about a person's life.

If you excuse me for going all philosophical on you, that is pretty close to saying that Jesus exists as a non-historical person, indeed that he never existed at all. There really isn't an awful lot of difference.

And yet, this person (or their image in history, regardless of whether they existed) is at the center of the most extraordinary success story, a religion that forms this world even 2000 years later.

And, moving on from my original question, I do wonder if that is a necessary condition. I mean, I don't know about Mohammed, but I do know that the situation is not better, if not worse, in the case of Siddharta Gotama, the Buddha. And as for Hinduism, well... I doubt that any sane Hindu claims an actual historical basis for any one of their gods. (Judaism is interesting though, because most of their heroes don't really have such an enormous claim to extraordinary powers, so yeah, let's say Moses and David really existed and really did some of the things they were said to have done.)

I mean, maybe the power of the whole Jesus tale is not at all in opposition to his deficiency in tangible history, but on the contrary: BECAUSE he's ALMOST a myth, BECAUSE it makes us wonder even today whether he really existed or not, that is precisely why we're so fascinated and why it was possible to erect this gigantic building of faith on top of the gospels.
 

vijeno

Member
You must read some of my posts! :)

Oh indeed I will!


Now this whole thing, in regard to Jesus himself as either an otherworldly being in the cosmology of the original Christians, or a real actual human that inspired all of it, is actually not the "real Jesus". Regardless of the original "seed", that was honestly left behind and "Jesus" became a "collective" of individuals thoughts and inspiration and symbols representing that "faith" in the divine or the transcendent they experienced, just as any human may. "Jesus" was "resurrected", or better stated "liberated" from the grave of being merely an individual being, into becoming a symbol of that inspiration. In other words, "Jesus" is a symbol of human faith, which is far more relevant than simply a historical figure.

That is one noteworthy paragraph, and it captures what I would have probably liked to say, only in better language and with more clarity.

As I stated in another answer, Jesus' ambiguity is probably a necessary condition, rather than an obstacle, to the success of Christianity. It might be one of the best applications of using (or abusing) our extreme, masochistic need for riddles. Or in slightly less offensive terms, our love for mysticism. :)

In other words, Jesus is probably the Missing Link between mythicism and historicism, which is precisely why the question is so interesting, and so contentious.

Still, Jesus remains interesting because the question of his existence leads us to ask a more general, more interesting question: What exactly does it mean for a person to exist? Ultimately, this seems to lead to a "theory of an existing person", i.e., an entity that persists for a while and to which we can attribute at least "a few" actions in a meaingful way, such that this existing person is a better, more parsimonious theory than the explanation that one, or several, other individuals made that person up.

And of course, the real question is: how many actions do constitute "a few" in this instance, and what are the qualititative conditions for those actions!
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
The rest is, pretty much, a question of faith.

The rest is entirely a matter of faith concerning Jesus. The communities founded on him by Apostles are historical as secular history confirms.

that is precisely why we're so fascinated and why it was possible to erect this gigantic building of faith on top of the gospels.

You have it backwards, the gospels were 'erected' upon the faith, with its churches, liturgy, Creed already in practice before any written gospel, and before the first writings, that of Paul.
 

vijeno

Member
The rest is entirely a matter of faith concerning Jesus. The communities founded on him by Apostles are historical as secular history confirms.

Umm.. I was of course, talking about the historicity of Jesus. I don't see how the purported history of communities founded upon the faith in Jesus would impact that (as long as we agree that those communities were not in the possession of long-lost time machines).


You have it backwards, the gospels were 'erected' upon the faith, with its churches, liturgy, Creed already in practice before any written gospel, and before the first writings, that of Paul.

Well... what was that creed erected upon?
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?
I'm not an authority. The term 'Mystery' means "We are not explaining this to outsiders." Hence we are having this little discussion.

The answer I think comes down to theology. It depends upon how you receive gospel phrases about resurrection "I am the resurrection and the life" "You were dead in your sins, but now you have been made alive." What is the resurrection, really? I take the view that it is about living righteously. Those who take the view that it is about an afterlife, they are the ones who must have a physical Jesus. Naturally people can get very hot under the collar about it, so I am not surprised that early church people hot-headedly disagreed about whether Jesus had a physical body.
 

Kemosloby

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
I'm not an authority. The term 'Mystery' means "We are not explaining this to outsiders." Hence we are having this little discussion.

The answer I think comes down to theology. It depends upon how you receive gospel phrases about resurrection "I am the resurrection and the life" "You were dead in your sins, but now you have been made alive." What is the resurrection, really? I take the view that it is about living righteously. Those who take the view that it is about an afterlife, they are the ones who must have a physical Jesus. Naturally people can get very hot under the collar about it, so I am not surprised that early church people hot-headedly disagreed about whether Jesus had a physical body.
Then there is the possiblity that it means both things. Which I think is probably the correct way. Similar to so many things from the bible seeming to have double or triple meanings, like a snowball to heaven.
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
As I stated in another answer, Jesus' ambiguity is probably a necessary condition, rather than an obstacle, to the success of Christianity. It might be one of the best applications of using (or abusing) our extreme, masochistic need for riddles. Or in slightly less offensive terms, our love for mysticism. :)
The measure of a good mythology is where it can take people. I believe that was Joseph Campbell who said something to that effect, only better stated than me. If you try to prove the historicity of Jesus, you in effect gut it of those legs, effectively bringing God down to earth to examine like some creature like a Bigfoot. If we found such a creature, it would no longer captivate our imaginations. The story is larger than the furry beast itself.

Here's a really great read I've quoted from for many years now as it never tires in it relevance to what we see being done today with religious discussion, trying to prove the "factuality" of them, or disprove them, entirely and utterly missing the point of them. Let me know what you think of his essay: Biblical Literalism: Constricting the Cosmic Dance

In other words, Jesus is probably the Missing Link between mythicism and historicism, which is precisely why the question is so interesting, and so contentious. Still, Jesus remains interesting because the question of his existence leads us to ask a more general, more interesting question: What exactly does it mean for a person to exist? Ultimately, this seems to lead to a "theory of an existing person", i.e., an entity that persists for a while and to which we can attribute at least "a few" actions in a meaingful way, such that this existing person is a better, more parsimonious theory than the explanation that one, or several, other individuals made that person up.
I'm a big fan of Burton Mack. I want to share a quote from his book The Christian Myth which addresses the issue of the search for the historical Jesus, which the Jesus Seminar was engaged in. Interestingly, I got to spend a couple hours having coffee with one of the Jesus Seminar scholars discussing my points of view her. I asked her what she thought of Burton Mack and she knew of him of course, but that he was from a different approach than what the Jesus Seminar scholars were pursuing. He has a social theory of the birth and evolution of the Jesus movement, and I find it quite plausible and intriguing. He writes regarding his view of the Jesus Seminar efforts:

“A second criticism is that none of the profiles proposed for the historical Jesus can account for all of the movements, ideologies, and mythic figures of Jesus that dot the early Christian social-scape. We now have the Jesuses of Q1 (a Cynic-like sage), Q2 (a prophet of apocalyptic judgment), Thomas (a gnostic spirit), the parables (a spinner of tales), the pre-Markan sets of pronouncement stories (an exorcist and healer), Paul (a martyred messiah and cosmic lord), Mark (the son of God who appeared as messiah, was crucified, and will return as the son of man), John (the reflection of God in creation and history), Matthew (a legislator of divine law), Hebrews (a cosmic high priest presiding over his own death as a sacrifice for sins), Luke (a perfect example of the righteous man), and many more. Not only are these ways of imagining Jesus incompatible with one another, they cannot be accounted for as the embellishments of the memories of a single historical person no matter how influential.”

(the Christian Myth, pgs 35, 36)​

So I'm not so sure that having a historical Jesus was actually necessary at all to get the whole thing going, since if he is in there, he can't be seen! :) Having a cosmic being would actually seem to be more a seed for mythmaking, or rather a simpler seed to bend and shape into the many "Jesuses" Mack observes here. I don't believe Mack is a mythicist, however. I believe he sees a historical Jesus that can be seen briefly in Q1. But now that many scholars think Q is wrong, I'm not sure where he stands today, if he still holds to Q or not, and if things like what Carrier is proposing maybe makes sense to him. Don't know.
 

vijeno

Member
The measure of a good mythology is where it can take people. I believe that was Joseph Campbell who said something to that effect, only better stated than me. If you try to prove the historicity of Jesus, you in effect gut it of those legs, effectively bringing God down to earth to examine like some creature like a Bigfoot.

Well, uh, yes, but that makes it sound as if it was a bad thing. Let's say you're reading The Lord of The Rings. The measure of that is also "where it can take you", into a fantasy world that is. If you ask what the influence of Tolkien's war experience on his books was, then you "gut it of its legs", too. But that's ultimately a good thing. It can only enrich your experience.

It's a quest for truth, even if it turns out that that truth simply cannot be had. But if the text cannot withstand that inquiry without falling apart, then... ahem... f**ck the text, it's not worth jack sh^H^H my time.

Having a cosmic being would actually seem to be more a seed for mythmaking, or rather a simpler seed to bend and shape into the many "Jesuses" Mack observes here.

That seems to be the case, yes.

As I'm sure you're aware, it's not an argument in itself. Paul or Matthew couldn't decide that there was no Jesus, if he did still exist; or the other way around.

Of course, my whole question is *cough cough* somewhat academic, insofar as it is obvious that Jesus has been buried under loads of Jesus avatars for 2000 years anyway, regardless of whether he ever existed. Which is, of course, why I asked it. Not to be obscure or facetious, but the whole thing just seems so odd. It is quintessential to christian faith that the guy existed, and yet, the only answer in this whole thread that I can positively identify as mainstream christian amounted to nothing but "he was crucified and rose from the dead, and he is the messiah". That's just... tragical, tragicomical, pitysome. It's like next to nothing, so close to it as to be pretty much the same, no-thing. Ommm.

I don't believe Mack is a mythicist, however.

Ha, I'd have to look it up, but I have the impression that Robert Price thinks otherwise.

"Q is wrong", good grief. One really can't count on anything anymore these days. Good thing I never got into New Testament studies on a professional level!
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Well... what was that creed erected upon?

The beginning of the formulation of the Creed is found in Paul,
'
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures'.
 

2X4

Member
It is often said that most scholars believe that Jesus existed. In recent years, there's a fringe group of "Christ Myth Theorists" who claim the opposite, but the majority opinion is that he did.

But I often wonder... what do we actually mean by that?

(I'm deliberately excluding personal experience, visions and so on, here, since that does not at all translate across confession boundaries - the point below would still stand though. IOW, I'm not talking about Jesus as a religious concept, but about Jesus as a historical person.)

At the very first step of our inquiry, Jesus is simply a literary character. We know him through books, essentially. Now, a literary character consists of nothing but the words that the author wrote down - the opinions and deeds of that person are exactly equal to what was written down.

So, as long as we agree that the evangelists brought a whole lot of their own opinions into their respective texts, then the question of this thread arises -- just like with every biography, only more pointedly and with much further reaching consequences. The Jesus of, say, Matthew, is of necessity a literary fiction in that, even if Matthew knew Jesus personally, and even if he would have started writing a day after the crucifixion, this would be the memory of one man with strong opinions, tainted and skewed and not quite referring to the "original", as it were.

So yeah, what does the "historicity of Jesus" actually mean?

To some people, Jesus is just a name in a book they believe in and take everything they read in it literally.. Some of us know what Jesus knew and even more than what he knew.

John 14
12: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.
 
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