The Christ Myth Theory

[No Robots]

Here is Waton:

An idea is the essence of reality. What is essence? Essence is that without which a reality cannot exist. When the essence is given, the reality will exist; when the essence is taken away, the reality ceases to exist. Let us consider the electric lamp. It consists of a material body and electricity. The material body and the electricity must cooperate in a definite way that they may constitute an electric lamp. The material body alone or the electricity alone could not be an electric lamp. It would therefore seem that the material body and the electricity are both the essence of the electric lamp. Yet we shall presently see that they are not the essence of the electric lamp. The material body is part of the eternal and infinite matter in the universe; likewise, the electricity is part of the eternal and infinite energy in the universe. The matter and the electricity existed eternally and infinitely, and yet there was no electric lamp. Why? Because the essence of the electric lamp was not in existence. What, then, is the essence of the electric lamp? It is an idea. This idea was crystallized by Edison. Once Edison crystallized the idea of the electric lamp, an infinite number of electric lamps came into existence. So long as this idea will live in the mind of men, so long there will be infinite electric lamps. When this idea will cease to live in the mind of men, then there will no longer be electric lamps. Thus we see that the essence of the electric lamp is neither the material body nor the electricity, but it is the idea.

The idea of the human person was crystalized in the mind of Christ and instantiated in his life. Once he had instantiated this idea, an infinite number of persons were able to come into existence.

 

[Jarhyn]

The power of an idea is not in fact only reliant on the extent of instantiation.

This is like saying that the electric light is more powerful as an idea than as a device.

For an idea to be true, it must be instantiated. Once instantiated, it remains an eternal and universal truth.

There is no device as nor need of it for 100% of the utility of an idea of an unkillable idea.

Just like I don't need to actually have literally created a whole universe in which "I did because in that universe I change my mind to actually decide X and there I actually got X" for the utility of the idea of "can", I do not need to literally have some real person die and come back to life for the message that this idea cannot be killed to be real.

In fact, part of the whole point of my life has been to come to this idea with the care and rigor necessary to demonstrate it from axiom rather than from "trust me". It's not the material resurrection, but the ideological resurrection of the idea that cannot die that has 100% of the utility.

If you wish to actually be as Jesus, as per the intent of the author, you will let his story die, be over, and be a metaphor, and then resurrect it in your own heart from reason rather than rhyme.

 

[No Robots]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

 

[Jarhyn]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

This is pure and unmitigated genetic fallacy.

You can absolutely get from axioms to proof of an idea against those axioms without any respect to the person who first suggested the path was there.

You can absolutely recognize that someone is right because they are right and not because they are who they happen to be.

You can absolutely put together some voltage with the idea that resistive structures create heat and hot structures create light and structures that normally ignite don't when held in a vacuum.

There is no need for holy revelation so much as a need for brute force: take something that can model any solution, fill it with chaotic data not correlated to the problem, run an algorithm that differentiates in the result against convergence with success, repeat with varying examples until something works better than what used to work.

This doesn't require prayer. It just requires time.

In short, the good idea needs to stand alone if it is to be considered resurrected.

In some ways this validates this conceot of ideological resurrection, and is the only way to validate it, to let it be dead in the tomb of doubt until reason brings it back.

 

[bilby]

There is only theology to argue.

As this thread ably demonstrates, the historical certainties about Jesus are an empty set. We can guess, speculate, and try to assign relevances to the surviving tall tales after their 1500+ years of corruption by both accidental errors and deliberate politically motivated alterations, but ultimately it is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

Jesus the historical person has no more influence on reality than Marx had on the Holodomor - People being total cunts to each other (or being unaccountably kind, for that matter) because they interpret a bunch of writings as saying something that they wanted to say anyway, and as providing some kind of authoritative backing for their actions, is utterly unremarkable human behaviour.

If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. If he wasn’t a God, or at the very least a prophet, then he was just one of millions of irrelevant people of his time. And Gods and prophets are solely theological in scope.

Take the theology away, and what are people left wasting their lives on here? Debating a meaningless question for which no evidence will ever exist might be entertaining, but it’s not worth shit beyond what little entertainment we extract from participating in the debate. It’s of no more value to humanity than any other light entertainment.

If the scientific and technological development of humanity had been held back by a millennium of diverting almost all scholarly effort, and the minds of almost every literate person, into analysis of a different light entertainment - the minute study of every aspect of Ross from the TV show Friends, for example - it would be no less stupid and futile.

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

The entire and complete discussion of the non-theological history of Jesus is simple:

Might have existed. Doesn’t matter in any way whether he did or not. We will never know anyway.

Anything and everything else is theology.

Is this your view about historical study in general, or just Jesus in particular? I don't find such questions meaningless; humanity is nothing of interest if it is not a conversation about itself, and the conversation stretches across the millennia. I think it matters greatly what stories we tell about our history, and why, and on what basis. Or if it does not matter, it matters as much as most anything else. The thing that offends me most about conspiracy theories is the disdain they engender for the power of evidence and the value of learning, and I think societies that come to champion anti-intellectual attitudes generally come around to a very sticky end - as history has shown us many times.

I think the point he was making is that there is no way to conduct any kind of meaningful historical analysis on whether the Jesus stories are based on a single, unique individual, or a group of individuals in history, or whether the stories are fabricated out of whole cloth because there is virtually no data to support such an analysis. I don't understand how you jump from this statement of fact to a discussion about championing anti-intellectual attitudes, since bilby is clearly not advocating for the latter, and his statements cannot be reasonably construed that way.

There is a significant difference between "We cannot answer this question reasonably" and "Don't ask questions you can't answer". Inability to resolve the question of Jesus' historicity does not render the discussion of said question "meaningless", as bilby has said in the quoted post.

But I am not interested in beating a dead horse here, I've spoken my piece.

And for what it's worth, I am well aware that bilby is not, on principle, generally anti-intellectual in outlook, hence why I was trying (perhaps clumsily) to point out that he probably would probably not make the same argument about other historical topics. We all have blind spots. I certainly do.

Oddly, I am not saying “don’t ask questions you cannot answer”; I am saying “let’s stop beating this dead horse”.

Unless there’s some new and hugely important evidence (hint - there’s not), this question has been done to death - it’s literally wasted the entire intellectual resources of a continent for a millennium, arguing and even killing over unresolvable questions for which we have utterly insufficient evidence, and for which even a definitive answer would be of little value beyond mild curiosity, when we could have been doing something more useful.

Suggesting that it’s time to stop isn’t a demand for incuriousity. It’s a recommendation against time wasting.

Surely by now there’s enough evidence to definitely say “we will almost certainly never have anywhere near to enough evidence, so let’s just pop the question into the ‘open questions’ file, and revisit it only if something new comes to light”.

How much time, money, and effort should be expended on a stone cold case with scant current evidence, and no likely way to obtain any more evidence?

The horse is dead.

 

[Jarhyn]

There is only theology to argue.

As this thread ably demonstrates, the historical certainties about Jesus are an empty set. We can guess, speculate, and try to assign relevances to the surviving tall tales after their 1500+ years of corruption by both accidental errors and deliberate politically motivated alterations, but ultimately it is not, and never will be, possible to say for sure whether a real Jesus ever lived.

And, more importantly, it doesn’t matter one iota either way, to anything other than the entirely self referential mythology. The only real effects Jesus and the stories about Jesus have had on anything non-fictional are themselves fictions. Christians behaving in ways that are predicated on their beliefs in the myths.

Jesus the historical person has no more influence on reality than Marx had on the Holodomor - People being total cunts to each other (or being unaccountably kind, for that matter) because they interpret a bunch of writings as saying something that they wanted to say anyway, and as providing some kind of authoritative backing for their actions, is utterly unremarkable human behaviour.

If Jesus didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. If he wasn’t a God, or at the very least a prophet, then he was just one of millions of irrelevant people of his time. And Gods and prophets are solely theological in scope.

Take the theology away, and what are people left wasting their lives on here? Debating a meaningless question for which no evidence will ever exist might be entertaining, but it’s not worth shit beyond what little entertainment we extract from participating in the debate. It’s of no more value to humanity than any other light entertainment.

If the scientific and technological development of humanity had been held back by a millennium of diverting almost all scholarly effort, and the minds of almost every literate person, into analysis of a different light entertainment - the minute study of every aspect of Ross from the TV show Friends, for example - it would be no less stupid and futile.

Jesus is an irrelevant bit of mindless entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with mindless entertainment, but when people take it seriously, other people get hurt - just ask anyone who’s been caught up in football hooliganism. We shouldn’t encourage that.

The entire and complete discussion of the non-theological history of Jesus is simple:

Might have existed. Doesn’t matter in any way whether he did or not. We will never know anyway.

Anything and everything else is theology.

Is this your view about historical study in general, or just Jesus in particular? I don't find such questions meaningless; humanity is nothing of interest if it is not a conversation about itself, and the conversation stretches across the millennia. I think it matters greatly what stories we tell about our history, and why, and on what basis. Or if it does not matter, it matters as much as most anything else. The thing that offends me most about conspiracy theories is the disdain they engender for the power of evidence and the value of learning, and I think societies that come to champion anti-intellectual attitudes generally come around to a very sticky end - as history has shown us many times.

I think the point he was making is that there is no way to conduct any kind of meaningful historical analysis on whether the Jesus stories are based on a single, unique individual, or a group of individuals in history, or whether the stories are fabricated out of whole cloth because there is virtually no data to support such an analysis. I don't understand how you jump from this statement of fact to a discussion about championing anti-intellectual attitudes, since bilby is clearly not advocating for the latter, and his statements cannot be reasonably construed that way.

There is a significant difference between "We cannot answer this question reasonably" and "Don't ask questions you can't answer". Inability to resolve the question of Jesus' historicity does not render the discussion of said question "meaningless", as bilby has said in the quoted post.

But I am not interested in beating a dead horse here, I've spoken my piece.

And for what it's worth, I am well aware that bilby is not, on principle, generally anti-intellectual in outlook, hence why I was trying (perhaps clumsily) to point out that he probably would probably not make the same argument about other historical topics. We all have blind spots. I certainly do.

Oddly, I am not saying “don’t ask questions you cannot answer”; I am saying “let’s stop beating this dead horse”.

Unless there’s some new and hugely important evidence (hint - there’s not), this question has been done to death - it’s literally wasted the entire intellectual resources of a continent for a millennium, arguing and even killing over unresolvable questions for which we have utterly insufficient evidence, and for which even a definitive answer would be of little value beyond mild curiosity, when we could have been doing something more useful.

Suggesting that it’s time to stop isn’t a demand for incuriousity. It’s a recommendation against time wasting.

Surely by now there’s enough evidence to definitely say “we will almost certainly never have anywhere near to enough evidence, so let’s just pop the question into the ‘open questions’ file, and revisit it only if something new comes to light”.

How much time, money, and effort should be expended on a stone cold case with scant current evidence, and no likely way to obtain any more evidence?

The horse is dead.

And, as a metaphor of the unkillable idea, it only actually has real value if it is resurrected by a different person lacking the evidence that Mark never provided for the worldview anyway.

 

[Copernicus]

Oddly, I am not saying “don’t ask questions you cannot answer”; I am saying “let’s stop beating this dead horse”.

Unless there’s some new and hugely important evidence (hint - there’s not), this question has been done to death - it’s literally wasted the entire intellectual resources of a continent for a millennium, arguing and even killing over unresolvable questions for which we have utterly insufficient evidence, and for which even a definitive answer would be of little value beyond mild curiosity, when we could have been doing something more useful.

Suggesting that it’s time to stop isn’t a demand for incuriousity. It’s a recommendation against time wasting.

Surely by now there’s enough evidence to definitely say “we will almost certainly never have anywhere near to enough evidence, so let’s just pop the question into the ‘open questions’ file, and revisit it only if something new comes to light”.

How much time, money, and effort should be expended on a stone cold case with scant current evidence, and no likely way to obtain any more evidence?

The horse is dead.

So, are you saying that my plan to start a new thread on whether Gilgamesh was based on a real historical person is not a good idea? I don't think that that horse has been pulverized quite so systematically in internet forums, so the body can take more beatings. We could compare the evidence for historical Gilgamesh with the evidence for historical Jesus and have a contest to decide which was more likely to have been real. I wouldn't be surprised if Gilgamesh won the contest, but he doesn't have a huge Goliath of a fan club facing a much smaller, but equally charged up, David of Gilgamesh mythicists.

 

[No Robots]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

This is pure and unmitigated genetic fallacy.

You can absolutely get from axioms to proof of an idea against those axioms without any respect to the person who first suggested the path was there.

You can absolutely recognize that someone is right because they are right and not because they are who they happen to be.

You can absolutely put together some voltage with the idea that resistive structures create heat and hot structures create light and structures that normally ignite don't when held in a vacuum.

There is no need for holy revelation so much as a need for brute force: take something that can model any solution, fill it with chaotic data not correlated to the problem, run an algorithm that differentiates in the result against convergence with success, repeat with varying examples until something works better than what used to work.

This doesn't require prayer. It just requires time.

In short, the good idea needs to stand alone if it is to be considered resurrected.

In some ways this validates this conceot of ideological resurrection, and is the only way to validate it, to let it be dead in the tomb of doubt until reason brings it back.

Even the greatest magician in the world cannot pull a rabbit out of the hat unless there is already a rabbit in the hat. "All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given."

 

[Jarhyn]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

This is pure and unmitigated genetic fallacy.

You can absolutely get from axioms to proof of an idea against those axioms without any respect to the person who first suggested the path was there.

You can absolutely recognize that someone is right because they are right and not because they are who they happen to be.

You can absolutely put together some voltage with the idea that resistive structures create heat and hot structures create light and structures that normally ignite don't when held in a vacuum.

There is no need for holy revelation so much as a need for brute force: take something that can model any solution, fill it with chaotic data not correlated to the problem, run an algorithm that differentiates in the result against convergence with success, repeat with varying examples until something works better than what used to work.

This doesn't require prayer. It just requires time.

In short, the good idea needs to stand alone if it is to be considered resurrected.

In some ways this validates this conceot of ideological resurrection, and is the only way to validate it, to let it be dead in the tomb of doubt until reason brings it back.

Even the greatest magician in the world cannot pull a rabbit out of the hat unless there is already a rabbit in the hat. "All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given."

This is some unmitigated crazy coming off you right now, this idea that humans cannot originate ideas by methods that have been proven as valid problem solving techniques on a mathematical level.

Evolution works the same way: noise plus selection and pressure towards a differentiation towards solution equals results.

This is no different.

 

[fromderinside]

. . . rude to say this is disappointing?

You've not been following the Trump Saga. It's more like people see something they like and try to identify with it. What's truth or statistics got to do with it - thanks TinaTurner.

So you failed to comprehend a single word in my post, not even a single syllable.

Obviously I read you loud and clear. How else would I know you were refering to my critiquing Richard Carrier who claimed to use Bayesian methods defending the existence of JC'

Why did I write that? I did so because Bayesian methods have little to do with the merit of Richard Carrier's conclusions. His claims lack merit because they can't be substantiated.

 

[No Robots]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

This is pure and unmitigated genetic fallacy.

You can absolutely get from axioms to proof of an idea against those axioms without any respect to the person who first suggested the path was there.

You can absolutely recognize that someone is right because they are right and not because they are who they happen to be.

You can absolutely put together some voltage with the idea that resistive structures create heat and hot structures create light and structures that normally ignite don't when held in a vacuum.

There is no need for holy revelation so much as a need for brute force: take something that can model any solution, fill it with chaotic data not correlated to the problem, run an algorithm that differentiates in the result against convergence with success, repeat with varying examples until something works better than what used to work.

This doesn't require prayer. It just requires time.

In short, the good idea needs to stand alone if it is to be considered resurrected.

In some ways this validates this conceot of ideological resurrection, and is the only way to validate it, to let it be dead in the tomb of doubt until reason brings it back.

Even the greatest magician in the world cannot pull a rabbit out of the hat unless there is already a rabbit in the hat. "All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given."

This is some unmitigated crazy coming off you right now, this idea that humans cannot originate ideas by methods that have been proven as valid problem solving techniques on a mathematical level.

Evolution works the same way: noise plus selection and pressure towards a differentiation towards solution equals results.

This is no different.

Exactly. Please see my thread Toward a Judeo-Marxist biology.

 

[Jarhyn]

I cannot attain to reason and moral autonomy without recognizing the source and model, any more than I could "invent" the electric lamp by pretending that the idea came to me of its own.

This is pure and unmitigated genetic fallacy.

You can absolutely get from axioms to proof of an idea against those axioms without any respect to the person who first suggested the path was there.

You can absolutely recognize that someone is right because they are right and not because they are who they happen to be.

You can absolutely put together some voltage with the idea that resistive structures create heat and hot structures create light and structures that normally ignite don't when held in a vacuum.

There is no need for holy revelation so much as a need for brute force: take something that can model any solution, fill it with chaotic data not correlated to the problem, run an algorithm that differentiates in the result against convergence with success, repeat with varying examples until something works better than what used to work.

This doesn't require prayer. It just requires time.

In short, the good idea needs to stand alone if it is to be considered resurrected.

In some ways this validates this conceot of ideological resurrection, and is the only way to validate it, to let it be dead in the tomb of doubt until reason brings it back.

Even the greatest magician in the world cannot pull a rabbit out of the hat unless there is already a rabbit in the hat. "All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given."

This is some unmitigated crazy coming off you right now, this idea that humans cannot originate ideas by methods that have been proven as valid problem solving techniques on a mathematical level.

Evolution works the same way: noise plus selection and pressure towards a differentiation towards solution equals results.

This is no different.

Exactly. Please see my thread Toward a Judeo-Marxist biology.

My point is, your claim is "revelationism" and robs every person ever of all the hard work they ever did as a human. It delivers a massive insult to all of humanity.

It is pure insanity to argue that people are incapable of coming up with solutions where they previously had none.

History is replete with people being just as wrong as others are right.

A good example of a pointed disproof that you might still be able to watch happen in the odd sixth grade math class:

Present the class with a problem. This problem is to count the number of times mathematics is spelled out in the following graph along any path

M
A M
T A M
H T A M
E H T A M
M E H T A M
A M E H T A M
T A M E H T A M
I T A M E H T A M
C I T A M E H T A M
S C I T A M E H T A M

With your claim, someone never exposed to a particular function of math should be incapable of solving it without answers provided for them.

If you would like to take on this problem, be my guest. It has been proven that sixth graders CAN solve this without being told what the answer is. Or at least some of them can.

Ideas stand alone, and to say that it matters where they come from is a misnomer, and genetic fallacy.

No reification of that form is in fact desired, either. People don't die and come back fly into the air. People die and stay dead. The idea told in the original Markian passion play, is much like calculus. It won't stay dead because it is both correct and useful, and even if all the world burned and all the libraries and believers and Bibles burned with it, the idea of radical love as a function of personal symmetry would re-emerge.

That was the metaphor, and the point, and the message.

And in fact it can't be proven with a physical resurrection. All that a physical resurrection can prove is simulationism, and that the universe is not "real" but rather an implementation of something else. A physical resurrection in fact disproves the central idea.

The story a metaphor for the idea coming back, and for believing in something more than a man, an idea that will come back, not because it is delivered by a god you pray to, but because it is delivered by people who intersect chaos with selection of results and brute-force their way to knowledge that isn't going to just be given.

Metaphors don't have to be real, stories don't have to have actually happened, for them to deliver real, important, and useful truth among their lies.

 

[No Robots]

It is pure insanity to argue that people are incapable of coming up with solutions where they previously had none.

History is replete with people being just as wrong as others are right.

A good example of a pointed disproof that you might still be able to watch happen in the odd sixth grade math class:

Present the class with a problem. This problem is to count the number of times mathematics is spelled out in the following graph along any path

M
A M
T A M
H T A M
E H T A M
M E H T A M
A M E H T A M
T A M E H T A M
I T A M E H T A M
C I T A M E H T A M
S C I T A M E H T A M

With your claim, someone never exposed to a particular function of math should be incapable of solving it without answers provided for them.

If you would like to take on this problem, be my guest. It has been proven that sixth graders CAN solve this without being told what the answer is. Or at least some of them can.

Ideas stand alone, and to say that it matters where they come from is a misnomer, and genetic fallacy.

No reification of that form is in fact desired, either. People don't die and come back fly into the air. People die and stay dead. The idea told in the original Markian passion play, is much like calculus. It won't stay dead because it is both correct and useful, and even if all the world burned and all the libraries and believers and Bibles burned with it, the idea of radical love as a function of personal symmetry would re-emerge.

That was the metaphor, and the point, and the message.

And in fact it can't be proven with a physical resurrection. All that a physical resurrection can prove is simulationism, and that the universe is not "real" but rather an implementation of something else. A physical resurrection in fact disproves the central idea.

The story a metaphor for the idea coming back, and for believing in something more than a man, an idea that will come back, not because it is delivered by a god you pray to, but because it is delivered by people who intersect chaos with selection of results and brute-force their way to knowledge that isn't going to just be given.

Metaphors don't have to be real, stories don't have to have actually happened, for them to deliver real, important, and useful truth among their lies.

It is a question of the origin of ideas that are not deducible from the available evidence. Here is Spinoza:

[A] man who can by pure intuition comprehend ideas which are neither contained in nor deducible from the foundations of our natural knowledge, must necessarily possess a mind far superior to those of his fellow men, nor do I believe that any have been so endowed save Christ. To Him the ordinances of God leading men to salvation were revealed directly without words or visions, so that God manifested Himself to the Apostles through the mind of Christ as He formerly did to Moses through the supernatural voice. In this sense the voice of Christ, like the voice which Moses heard, may be called the voice of God, and it may be said that the wisdom of God (i.e. wisdom more than human) took upon itself in Christ human nature, and that Christ was the way of salvation. I must at this juncture declare that those doctrines which certain churches put forward concerning Christ, I neither affirm nor deny, for I freely confess that I do not understand them. What I have just stated I gather from Scripture, where I never read that God appeared to Christ, or spoke to Christ, but that God was revealed to the Apostles through Christ; that Christ was the Way of Life, and that the old law was given through an angel, and not immediately by God; whence it follows that if Moses spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend (i.e. by means of their two bodies) Christ communed with God mind to mind.

Ideas are implicit until they are materialized. The materialization of an idea is entirely a function of mind. Mind is an eternal and infinite property of reality. Ideas materialize in determined sequence and in accordance with the prevailing material conditions.

 

[Jarhyn]

The materialization of an idea is entirely a function of mind.

This is an assertion without evidence or meaning.

Your claim that radical love is not deducible from the foundations of philosophical knowledge is straight up horseshit.

Mind is an eternal and infinite property of reality.

This is again straight up horseshit. You haven't even defined "Mind".

Of course, I have some thoughts on the matter as to what minds are, but they are not "properties of reality" nor can they possibly be infinite. The very process of thought itself requires time and an iteration of frame, and "all thought all at once" is a meaningless and useless concept.

Ideas materialize in determined sequence and in accordance with the prevailing material conditions.

Determinism, causal necessity, is not itself a doer of work. It has no say other than to say effect follows cause.

To state something in this way as you do is more akin to fatalism.

If you wish to understand more on the topic, there are a few threads in Other PD.

Suffice to say, there is nothing that prevents anyone else from putting together the same pieces, and it is self-defeating to the concept of the emergence and inevitability of radical love to think that you have to be some magic holy God person to figure such things out.

All it takes is care and time.

 

[Swammerdami]

Will one of the mythicists here PLEASE help me out? I have a VERY specific question (or rather four such questions) that can be easily answered in very few words. I don't need argumentation.

Will even ONE of you volunteer? I'd like you to pick ONE (1) specific Myth model. Pick any specific model you wish; suggested criteria include (a) easy to defend, (b) easy to explain, (c) likely, (d) entertaining, etc.

If, at the end of the exercise I admit that the scenario seems about a 12% chance then YOU CAN DECLARE VICTORY. Just say, "I have another five scenarios just as likely, 12% times 6 is a whopping 72%! I'm not committed to any side here; I just want to learn.

I will ask about FOUR specific documents: A, B, C and D.

Document A) Paul's Epistle to the Galatians where he writes "[I met in Jerusalem with] James, the Lord's brother."
(I use a very old English translation. :-( What is the actual Greek for Paul's 'Lord' here? Is it again 'Christ' (or an abbreviation thereof)? I may not really need to know.)

I'm sure there are at least ten possibilities:
i. - Paul is speaking of a genetic sibling of the Nazarene crucified under Pontius Pilate.
ii. - James is the Nazarene's brother, but that Jesus was never crucified.
iii. - James was brother of a different Jesus. Paul didn't realize this, or played along.
iv. - Paul knew (or suspected) that James' brotherhood was a lie, but played along to add veracity to the Jesus myth.
v. - The verse was edited or added in the late 1st or early 2nd century
vi. - The verse was edited or added after ___ AD.
vii. - Paul was a compulsive liar
viii. - There never was a Paul
ix. - Other
x. - Et cetera

Let's make clear what I am NOT asking for. I do NOT need a laundry list of the possibilities I've overlooked. I do NOT want to hear argumentation for or against any item on the list. I do NOT even need to hear probability guesses of the 3 or 4 likeliest possibilities. What I WOULD like is for you to assess the document's reading according to the particular mythologism scenario you have selected. Just write "ii" or "vii" if your assessment is on the list, or write a 10- to 20-word summary.

Document B) Josephus writes "[in Jerusalem] James the brother of Jesus [who is called Christ]."
I won't list the various cases beyond noting that a later interpolation of the bracketed phrase is a popular suspicion.

Document C) Paul(?) and/or Luke(?) imply that there are Jews and/or Christians in Rome circa 60 AD.

Document D) Tacitus and/or Suetonis, presumably reading 1st-century accounts, write of Chrestians in Rome circa 60 AD.

Obviously I hope that the same Myth model (scenario) is used to derive all four answers to the four questions:

I. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document A?
II. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document B?
III. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document C?
IV. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document D?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ramoss]

Will one of the mythicists here PLEASE help me out? I have a VERY specific question (or rather four such questions) that can be easily answered in very few words. I don't need argumentation.

Will even ONE of you volunteer? I'd like you to pick ONE (1) specific Myth model. Pick any specific model you wish; suggested criteria include (a) easy to defend, (b) easy to explain, (c) likely, (d) entertaining, etc.

If, at the end of the exercise I admit that the scenario seems about a 12% chance then YOU CAN DECLARE VICTORY. Just say, "I have another five scenarios just as likely, 12% times 6 is a whopping 72%! I'm not committed to any side here; I just want to learn.

I will ask about FOUR specific documents: A, B, C and D.

Document A) Paul's Epistle to the Galatians where he writes "[I met in Jerusalem with] James, brother of Jesus our Lord."
(I use a very old English translation. :-( What is the actual Greek for Paul's 'Lord' here? Is it again 'Christ' (or an abbreviation thereof)? I may not really need to know.)

I'm sure there are at least ten possibilities:
i. - Paul is speaking of a genetic sibling of the Nazarene crucified under Pontius Pilate.
ii. - James is the Nazarene's brother, but that Jesus was never crucified.
iii. - James was brother of a different Jesus. Paul didn't realize this, or played along.
iv. - Paul knew (or suspected) that James' brotherhood was a lie, but played along to add veracity to the Jesus myth.
v. - The verse was edited or added in the late 1st or early 2nd century
vi. - The verse was edited or added after ___ AD.
vii. - Paul was a compulsive liar
viii. - There never was a Paul
ix. - Other
x. - Et cetera

Let's make clear what I am NOT asking for. I do NOT need a laundry list of the possibilities I've overlooked. I do NOT want to hear argumentation for or against any item on the list. I do NOT even need to hear probability guesses of the 3 or 4 likeliest possibilities. What I WOULD like is for you to assess the document's reading according to the particular mythologism scenario you have selected. Just write "ii" or "vii" if your assessment is on the list, or write a 10- to 20-word summary.

Document B) Josephus writes "[in Jerusalem] James the brother of Jesus [who is called Christ]."
I won't list the various cases beyond noting that a later interpolation of the bracketed phrase is a popular suspicion.

Document C) Paul(?) and/or Luke(?) imply that there are Jews and/or Christians in Rome circa 60 AD.

Document D) Tacitus and/or Suetonis, presumably reading 1st-century accounts, write of Chrestians in Rome circa 60 AD.

Obviously I hope that the same Myth model (scenario) is used to derive all four answers to the four questions:

I. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document A?
II. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document B?
III. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document C?
IV. In the designated model, what is the provenance and truth of Document D?

Thanks in advance.

It's pretty clear that the author of James wrote the epsitle to disagree with paul.

 

[steve_bank]

It would be great to have a thread here where the meaning and value of the New Testament could be discussed without the intrusion of any mythicism.

Start a thread.

I do not really understand what you men by meaning of the NT.

You identify as Chrtian ahteist. I assume then you view the NT as philiopsy and wisdom literature? A philosophical Christian as a opposed to a believer in the supernatural stories of the gspel?

Correct.

I'll start putting a thread together. Thanks for the encouragement.

My response is the same as for the theists. The bible rpesents no coherent phulopshy and morality. The ancient Jews were ite bizarre if you look at the 613 biblical commandments. The ancient Jews were more like the current extreme Muslims.

 

[steve_bank]

GMark always did make sense as a closet drama.

I read somewhere that the gospels were in the form of an ation adventure of the day. The Acts were the seqwuel that tied up the narritives.

 

[dbz]

The ancient Jews were more like the current extreme Muslims.

Rather, current extreme Muslims are descendants of ancient sectarian Jews.

~30+ Jewish sectarian movements have been identified. At least one, contra the hippie Chrestus-sect, probably thought it absurd that Philo's Gnostic intermediary to Allah would ever die (much less rise). This Jewish sect then gave rise to Islam. Their name for this intermediary was Michael.

Carrier (11 June 2021). "Was Jesus-Is-Michael an Early Christian Mystery Teaching?". Richard Carrier Blogs.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have long claimed to have uncovered the secret truth that, in fact, Jesus was none other than the Archangel Michael, traveling under another name (one that just happens to mean God’s Messianic Savior, suggesting that name, in this case, is fabricated: Christ means Anointed ergo Messiah/Messianic; and Jesus, i.e. Joshua, i.e. Yeshua, means God’s Savior). And there is a good case to be made that they are right. And this case is most expertly laid out in Darrell Hannah’s doctoral dissertation, later revised and published by Moer Siebeck and then Wipf & Stock in 1999: Michael and Christ: Michael Tradition and Angel Christology in Early Christianity.

 

[dbz]

GMark always did make sense as a closet drama.

I read somewhere that the gospels were in the form of an ation adventure of the day. The Acts were the seqwuel that tied up the narritives.

MacDonald argues that close reading and careful analysis show that Mark borrowed extensively from the Odyssey and the Iliad and that he wanted his readers to recognize the Homeric antecedents in Mark’s story of Jesus. Mark was composing a prose anti-epic, MacDonald says, presenting Jesus as a suffering hero modeled after but far superior to traditional Greek heroes.

Arguably the only relevant gospel to the historicity debate is Mark (preferably the earliest version i.e. the hypothetical Chrestus version of Marcion) the rest being redaction, embellishment and fan-fiction.

Per Svartvik 2006, p. 177, n. 20. "[Some] scholars have suggested that Mark may be described as a Pauline Gospel. [^20] In favour of this understanding are the facts (1) that both Paul and Mark emphasize the theological importance of Christ on the cross, rather than on the teachings of Jesus, (2) that both repudiate the actual followers of Jesus [i.e. the disciples], and (3) that the Gentiles play an important role both in the letters written by the ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος [apostle to the Gentiles] (Rom. 11.13) and in the Markan narrative. . . . What Paul states about the Gospel in Rom. 1.16, Mark depicts in his narrative about the Nazarene. Mark is perhaps best described as a narrative presentation of, and a parallel to, the Pauline Gospel."

"[note:20] See, e.g., D.C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 132ff. and especially p. 190 (‘Mark’s law-free attitude...clearly places him in the camp of the Pauline churches’.); J. Marcus, ‘Mark – Interpreter of Paul’, NTS 46 (2000), pp. 473–87. For further references, see Marcus, p. 474 n. 3."

Cf. Marcus 2000, p. 474, n. 3. and Lataster 2019b, p. 255.