The Christ Myth Theory

[steve_bank]

I posted a link somewhere on Christianity which described how among gentiles Christianity as it evolved included themes form paganism which is just a catch all term. A blending of ideas that made it palpable to different groups woudl have been natural. Look at how American Chrtianity split along lines that suit diffet groups.

The liberal god loves gays. That is new and is tailored to suit a cultural group.

Go far back and Hinduism apers as the root of all religious mythologies. There is nothing new in the gospels.

I read several books on Tibetan Buddhism back in the 70s. Supernatural, levitation, healing and so on.

Buddha was about 300 BCE.

Ancient Chinese and Indian traditions are filled with the supernatural predating Christianity. Chi or pranja the life force or spirit.

We can see more recently how the pagan winter celebration became the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus.

One can debate the origins of Chrtianity, but it des not en much without defining what you mean by a Christian. Good luck with that.

 

[dbz]

The gospels are Hellenistic probably intended as promotional material for the gentiles. The demigod birth narrative would resonate with gentiles, not Jews.

Paul was converted to a Hellenized form of some Jesus movement that had already developed into a Christ cult. [...] Thus his letters serve as documentation for the Christ cult as well.

Mack, Burton L. (1988). "The Congregations of the Christ". A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins. Fortress Press. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-8006-2549-8.​

The evidence from Paul’s letters is that the congregations of the Christ were attractive associations and that their emerging mythology was found to be exciting. A spirited cult formed on the model of the mystery religions...

Mack, Burton L. (1993). "Mythmaking and the Christ". The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins. HarperSanFrancisco. pp. 219f. ISBN 978-0-06-065374-3.​

[Per the Kyrios Christos Cult] The ancient Mediterranean world was hip-deep in religions centering on the death and resurrection of a savior god. [...] It is very hard not to see extensive and basic similarities between these religions and the Christian religion. But somehow Christian scholars have managed not to see it, and this, one must suspect, for dogmatic reasons. [...] But it seems to me that the definitive proof that the resurrection of the Mystery Religion saviors preceded Christianity is the fact that ancient Christian apologists did not deny it!

Price, Robert M. (2000). "The Christ Cults". Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus. pp. 86, 88, 91. ISBN 978-1-61592-120-1.​

Bolland, De Evangelische Jozua; Rylands, The Evolution of Christianity; Rylands, The Beginnings of Gnostic Christianity; Zindler, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew, 340, and others similarly held that Christianity began variously among Hellenized Jewish settlements throughout the Diaspora, with allegorized Jewish elements being made almost unrecognizable by their intermingling with gnostic mythemes.

Price, Robert M. (27 December 2010). Secret Scrolls: Revelations from the Lost Gospel Novels. Wipf and Stock Publishers. pp. 103, n. 5. ISBN 978-1-4982-7142-4.​

[Walter] Schmithals’s researches [The Office of Apostle in the Early Church. trans. John E. Steely. New York: Abingdon Press. 1969.] would in any case delineate for us the basis of a pre-Jesus cult of the Christ, one in which the Christ had nothing in particular to do with Jesus the Nazorean. And eventually it could be found alongside some form of Hellenized Jesus movement, I would guess the Jesus martyr cult, in Corinth.

Price, Robert M. (2000). "The Christ Cults". Deconstructing Jesus. Prometheus. pp. 79f, 83. ISBN 978-1-61592-120-1.​

 

[dbz]

• Hellenistic Jews like Philo and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews adopted Logos ideas to create a melding of Hebrew and Greek. But more mainstream Judaism had its own intermediary figure [Personified Wisdom] going back centuries, certainly as old as Plato. [...] In the Wisdom of Solomon, perhaps the most important surviving piece of Hellenistic-Jewish writing, we can see a clear and exotic blending of Wisdom with the Logos.
  • Doherty, Earl (2009). Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. pp. 92f. ISBN 978-0-9689259-2-8. "New edition, Revised and Expanded, Originally published under the title: The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? - Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus"
  
  
• Philo of Alexandria (c25BCE to c50CE) is the foremost example of the input of Greek ideas into Jewish thought, a phenomenon which produced an important type of philosophy and culture during this period, called "Hellenistic Judaism." [...] Charles H. Talbert ("The Myth of a Descending-Ascending Redeemer in Mediterranean Antiquity," New Testament Studies22 [1975], p.418-439) regards Philo as a witness to an existing myth in which Wisdom-Logos was treated as a heavenly personal being and a redeemer figure—through bestowing knowledge of God. This myth is reflected in the Alexandrian document, the Wisdom of Solomon...
  • Doherty, Earl (2009). Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. p. 723, n. 40, 41. ISBN 978-0-9689259-2-8. "New edition, Revised and Expanded, Originally published under the title: The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? - Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus"
  
  
• Christ is a divine presence in [early] Christian communities, bestowing revelation and guidance, a channel to God and to knowledge of spiritual truths. [...] Paul's system and that of early Christianity generally is permeated with the concept of evil spirit forces acting malevolently on the world and dividing earth from heaven. ...[This] illuminates the proto-gnostic atmosphere he [Paul] moved and even shared in...
  • Doherty, Earl (2009). Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus. Ottawa: Age of Reason Publications. pp. 24, 289. ISBN 978-0-9689259-2-8. "New edition, Revised and Expanded, Originally published under the title: The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? - Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus"
  
  
• [Per] a shift to a concern with the heavenly world and God’s activities within it, a focus which was continued and enlarged on in much of the Jewish intertestamental writings. [...] The Pauline corpus’ obsession with the threat of dark cosmic powers who inhabit the heavens, the period’s fixation on the threat from the demons, has little precedent in the Hebrew bible and marks a new development in Jewish thought, as it did in Hellenistic outlook generally. And inasmuch as Gnosticism is now seen as having had at least a partial origin within radical Jewish circles preceding Christianity, with its center of attention on a heavenly world and the workings of the Godhead, we can see an era-wide development in an interest in the Platonic view of an upper part of the cosmos where divine activities took place. Even Philo, with his focus on the Logos as emanation of God, as well as his “Heavenly Man” concept—another fixation in the period’s picture of divine realities which shows up in Paul’s concept of Christ as “anthrōpos”—demonstrates the saturation of earthly thought with heavenly imaginings.
  • Doherty, Earl (30 July 2012). Bart Ehrman vs. Earl Doherty. Part 29 of Earl Doherty’s Response to Bart Ehrman’s Case Against Mythicism.

 

[dbz]

I posted a link somewhere on Christianity which described how among gentiles Christianity as it evolved included themes form paganism which is just a catch all term. A blending of ideas that made it palpable to different groups would have been natural. Look at how American Christianity split along lines that suit different groups.
[. . .]
One can debate the origins of Christianity, but it does not do much without defining what you mean by a Christian. Good luck with that.

The Golden Bough (1922, but first edition published 1890), an early anthropological study by Sir James George Frazer, is the starting point for much of Graves's argument in the The White Goddess, and Graves thought in part that his book made explicit what Frazer only hinted at. Graves wrote:

Sir James Frazer was able to keep his beautiful rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge until his death by carefully and methodically sailing all around his dangerous subject, as if charting the coastline of a forbidden island without actually committing himself to a declaration that it existed. What he was saying-not-saying was that Christian legend, dogma and ritual are the refinement of a great body of primitive and even barbarous beliefs, and that almost the only original element in Christianity is the personality of Jesus.

 

[steve_bank]

So, what the followers of an imagined Jew believed and how that relates to what we call Christianity is not knowable.

At the time of Nicaea there were multiple sects competing at times aggressively and violently. Not all agreed om a divine Jesus. The creed was essetialy a loyalty oath to a new doctrine.

Nicene Creed - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The original Nicene Creed (/ˈnaɪsiːn/; Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Νικαίας; Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) was first adopted at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. In 381, it was amended at the First Council of Constantinople. The amended form is also referred to as the Nicene Creed, or the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed for disambiguation.

The Nicene Creed is the defining statement of belief of Nicene or mainstream Christianity[1][2] and in those Christian denominations that adhere to it. The Nicene Creed is part of the profession of faith required of those undertaking important functions within the Catholic Church.[3][4]

Nicene Christianity regards Jesus as divine and co-eternal with God the Father. Various non-Nicene doctrines, beliefs, and creeds have been formed since the fourth century, all of which are considered heresies[5] by adherents of Nicene Christianity.

In Western Christianity, the Nicene Creed is in use alongside the less widespread Apostles' Creed.[6][7][8] In musical settings, particularly when sung in Latin, this creed is usually referred to by its first word, Credo. On Sundays and solemnities, one of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora (eucharistic prayer), and is also recited daily at compline.[9][10]

The purpose of a creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and heretics. For that reason, a creed was called in Greek a σύμβολον (symbolon), which originally meant half of a broken object which, when fitted to the other half, verified the bearer's identity.[11] The Greek word passed through Latin symbolum into English "symbol", which only later took on the meaning of an outward sign of something.[12]

The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, "objected to Alexander's (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation".[13] Emperor Constantine called the Council at Nicaea to resolve the dispute in the church which resulted from the widespread adoption of Arius' teachings, which threatened to destabilize the entire empire. Following the formulation of the Nicene Creed, Arius' teachings were henceforth marked as heresy.[14]

The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the Father as the "one God" and as the "Almighty," and Jesus Christ as "the Son of God", as "begotten of ... the essence of the Father," and therefore as "consubstantial with the Father," meaning, "of the same substance[15][16]" as the Father; "very God of very God." The Creed of 325 does mention the Holy Spirit but not as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father." The 381 revision of the creed at Constantinople, which is often referred to as the Nicene Creed, speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The Athanasian Creed, formulated about a century later, which was not the product of any known church council and not used in Eastern Christianity, describes in much greater detail the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The earlier Apostles' Creed, apparently formulated before the Arian controversy arose in the fourth century, does not describe the Son or the Holy Spirit as "God" or as "consubstantial with the Father."

And for some light reading the Catholic Catechism. A thousand tyeas of an evolving theolgy clamed to be the one and only truth Chrtian church. This they clam by claiming the pope is in a direct line back to Peter.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

2634 Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did. He is the one intercessor with the Father on behalf of all men, especially sinners.112 He is "able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them."113 The Holy Spirit "himself intercedes for us . . . and intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."114

2635 Since Abraham, intercession - asking on behalf of another has been characteristic of a heart attuned to God's mercy. In the age of the Church, Christian intercession participates in Christ's, as an expression of the communion of saints. In intercession, he who prays looks "not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others," even to the point of praying for those who do him harm.115

2636 The first Christian communities lived this form of fellowship intensely.116 Thus the Apostle Paul gives them a share in his ministry of preaching the Gospel117 but also intercedes for them.118 The intercession of Christians recognizes no boundaries: "for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions," for persecutors, for the salvation of those who reject the Gospel.119

 

[dbz]

At the time of Nicaea there were multiple sects competing at times aggressively and violently. Not all agreed om a divine Jesus. The creed was essetialy a loyalty oath to a new doctrine.

youtube playlist:

• Extra History: Early Christian Schisms
• 
  

 

[dbz]

[And for some light reading the Catholic Catechism]

2634 Intercession is a prayer of petition which leads us to pray as Jesus did. He is the one intercessor with the Father on behalf of all men, especially sinners. He is "able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them."

• Jesus is the one intercessor with the Father on behalf of all men
  translated
  • Second-god is the one intercessor with First-god on behalf of all men

 Middle Platonism​

First-god is a transcendent being, who operates through divine intermediaries, which are the gods and daemons of popular religion.​

 

[dbz]

The purpose of a creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief. The creeds of Christianity have been drawn up at times of conflict about doctrine: acceptance or rejection of a creed served to distinguish believers and heretics.

• Early creedal formulations found in the New Testament—or created as a result of later church councils—defined the essential claims of what Christians believed about God and Jesus.

Cor 15:3–7
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received:
that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,
and that he was buried,
and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas,
then to the twelve.

Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of
whom are still alive, though some have died.

Then he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles.

Philippians 2:5–11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

 

[dbz]

So, what the followers of an imagined Jew believed and how that relates to what we call Christianity is not knowable.

• I concur

Our best educated guess (hypothesis) is:

• Carrier, Richard (2012). Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-61614-560-6.
• Carrier, Richard (2014a). On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. Sheffield Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-909697-35-5.
• Carrier, Richard (2014b). "Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt: Should We Still Be Looking for a Historical Jesus?". The Bible and Interpretation.
• Carrier, Richard (2020a). Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ. Pitchstone Publishing. ISBN 978-1-63431-208-0.
• Carrier, Richard (2020b). "Jesus from Outer Space?". The Bible and Interpretation.
• Lataster, Raphael (2016a). "Review Essay: Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus". Literature & Aesthetics 26 (1): 181–192. ISSN 2200-0437. (Online PDF)
• Lataster, Raphael (2019). Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse. Brill-Rodopi. ISBN 978-9004397934.
• Law, Stephen (2011). "Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus". Faith and Philosophy 28 (2): 129–151. doi:10.5840/faithphil20112821. (Available Online)

 

[steve_bank]

Think about it, a small group of people determine 'what Christian means'.

Christianity has always been about power of the few over the many in the Earthly human domain.

A good example is Hnery 8th. The RCC did not meet his needs so he created his own version to serve his personal and political needs.

 

[No Robots]

Think about it, a small group of people determine 'what Christian means'.

Christianity has always been about power of the few over the many in the Earthly human domain.

A good example is Hnery 8th. The RCC did not meet his needs so he created his own version to serve his personal and political needs.

And now we have the mythicists telling us what science reveals and how anyone who disagrees is an ignorant nut job.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

...purely Jewish thought.

There is no such thing. If you are a Jewish supremacist and believe you are somehow a chosen race then your position is explained. Jewish culture evolved from earlier cultures. We're all the same that way. Welcome to the real world, time to jettison your racism.

 

[No Robots]

...purely Jewish thought.

There is no such thing. If you are a Jewish supremacist and believe you are somehow a chosen race then your position is explained. Jewish culture evolved from earlier cultures. We're all the same that way. Welcome to the real world, time to jettison your racism.

I acknowledge that the whole of Western civilization is based on Jewish thought, and that the whole planet is headed that way.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

...purely Jewish thought.

There is no such thing. If you are a Jewish supremacist and believe you are somehow a chosen race then your position is explained. Jewish culture evolved from earlier cultures. We're all the same that way. Welcome to the real world, time to jettison your racism.

I acknowledge that the whole of Western civilization is based on Jewish thought, and that the whole planet is headed that way.

But Jews are mutts just like everybody else. It's obvious you are still stuck in your racist ditch.

He didn't get everything right but got a lot of it right. You should pick up a copy of Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. Read it at least once. You will understand that the inequality between societies can be explained.

But if I'm a diehard white nationalist or aryan supremacist skinhead running on emotion and not intellect it's not going to land simply because my brain isn't developed in a way that will allow it. That's natural selection at work. It doesn't fix the world but it might allow you to understand the conflict aside from your fear induced racist tendencies. But it still might not if your brain is incapable. Again, natural selection at work.

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

 

[Politesse]

You should pick up a copy of Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. Read it at least once. You will understand that the inequality between societies can be explained.

Ugh.....

 

[Jarhyn]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

I'll offer that maybe the resistance you are seeing is in fact over the absence of shown work in the text. Western thought is as much founded on platonic philosophy as much as any kind of "Jewish" philosophy, and while I feel there is an identification of co-homology that these two are moving towards, it's equally dismissive of the vast mountain of work that's being spent not just to believe it but to prove it out, to say "oh, to that's just Jewish thought".

I get where you're going with singularity of thought on the matter of  social rather than  genetic operation, but it's not anti-jewish to want to do that work to take an idea and to put it on a solid foundation rather than a foundation of just-so stories.

It's rather anti-platonic to suggest this is anti-jewish. It's jewish-agnostic. And being anti -platonic in a meeting place founded on platonic thought is kinda nutty

I think it's important to be realistic about how time has hopelessly corrupted any access we might have to any truth of any of the lives of the early Baptismal cults, and that's all there is to it, really.

Rather than trying to get people to believe your book which we can well agree has seen too much corruption to recover any degree of basis perhaps you might try the harder, narrower road, of painstaking certainty on the construction rather than accepting any "rote".

Then, you can find gratification later as much as you please knowing you, too, have now done the work and not just heard "the name" but learned it entire, how it is spelled and spoken.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

And they will all live happily ever after I suppose. It's just gonna happen. Dream on, Macduff.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You should pick up a copy of Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. Read it at least once. You will understand that the inequality between societies can be explained.

Ugh.....

Like I said, he doesn't get it all right but it certainly opens one's eyes to the structural advantages and disadvantages accorded to different societies based primarily on the availability of natural resources and geography. One big thing I think he gets wrong it to assume that prehistorically all humans were hunter gatherers all enjoying the same lifestyles. In other words they were all the same. Nothing could be more inaccurate. In doing so Diamond himself falls prey to how we fool and comfort ourselves out of a desire and need to understand and have closure.

 

[No Robots]

There is a process in which the whole of mankind is progressing toward greater and greater unity. Not all individuals are capable of participating directly in this movement. But the vast majority of mankind have embraced it in one way or another. It is Judaism and includes all of its outreach forms: Christianity, Islam and socialism. Resistance is found in various forms: materialist atheism, truculent conservatism, antisemitism, mythicism and the theory of evolution.

I'll offer that maybe the resistance you are seeing is in fact over the absence of shown work in the text. Western thought is as much founded on platonic philosophy as much as any kind of "Jewish" philosophy, and while I feel there is an identification of co-homology that these two are moving towards, it's equally dismissive of the vast mountain of work that's being spent not just to believe it but to prove it out, to say "oh, to that's just Jewish thought".

I get where you're going with singularity of thought on the matter of  social rather than  genetic operation, but it's not anti-jewish to want to do that work to take an idea and to put it on a solid foundation rather than a foundation of just-so stories.

It's rather anti-platonic to suggest this is anti-jewish. It's jewish-agnostic. And being anti -platonic in a meeting place founded on platonic thought is kinda nutty

I think it's important to be realistic about how time has hopelessly corrupted any access we might have to any truth of any of the lives of the early Baptismal cults, and that's all there is to it, really.

Rather than trying to get people to believe your book which we can well agree has seen too much corruption to recover any degree of basis perhaps you might try the harder, narrower road, of painstaking certainty on the construction rather than accepting any "rote".

Then, you can find gratification later as much as you please knowing you, too, have now done the work and not just heard "the name" but learned it entire, how it is spelled and spoken.

I appreciate what you are saying, Jarhyn. Perhaps if all mythicists were as spiritually generous as you, I wouldn't hold such a dim view of them.

Platonism and Judaism do have similar ends. However, there is a deep problem with Greek thought: it is dualist. Judaism is monist, and therefore is able to work directly on operationalizing its meaning and goals.