The Christ Myth Theory

[T.G.G. Moogly]

My reaction was the same as it is now: there is too much about the synoptic Jesus that seems idiosyncratic, that doesn't seem like a stock mythological template.

Which is precisely what good writing delivers.

I am not much interested in the 'controversy'. To me it's analogous to the anti-Stratfordian position that cropped up about Shakespeare -- unlikely, unprovable, and too irritating for me devote my time in exploring.

You have an uninformed bias. I get that. That's exactly what I've been saying is happening with the HJ story. And that is beside the fact that both orthodox endeavors are financially very rewarding.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor.

How quickly and conveniently we reject those idiosyncratic behaviors we find too idiosyncratic.

 

[ideologyhunter]

^This is all good sense, and I hope it becomes the standard secular view.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor. The fig tree is the Jewish people who are not in season, ie. not yet open to receive the teaching. See Wikipedia.

Sure it's a metaphor, but it has always been a problem text for Christians, because their guy is abusing a tree out of spite, when it wasn't harvest season. He feigns anger at the poor tree. I feel for that tree. I want to go back, find that tree, transplant it & water it.

 

[No Robots]

^This is all good sense, and I hope it becomes the standard secular view.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor. The fig tree is the Jewish people who are not in season, ie. not yet open to receive the teaching. See Wikipedia.

Sure it's a metaphor, but it has always been a problem text for Christians, because their guy is abusing a tree out of spite, when it wasn't harvest season. He feigns anger at the poor tree. I feel for that tree. I want to go back, find that tree, transplant it & water it.

Heh. Yup.

Here is something clear and unequivocal: The meek shall inherit the Earth. There is enough right there to outweigh all the ambiguity, metaphor or mythologizing in the New Testament. Someone said that, someone wrote that down. It speaks directly to the revolutionary core of human destiny. The man who said that, the men who wrote that down, deserve our loyalty, not our scorn.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

^This is all good sense, and I hope it becomes the standard secular view.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor. The fig tree is the Jewish people who are not in season, ie. not yet open to receive the teaching. See Wikipedia.

Sure it's a metaphor, but it has always been a problem text for Christians, because their guy is abusing a tree out of spite, when it wasn't harvest season. He feigns anger at the poor tree. I feel for that tree. I want to go back, find that tree, transplant it & water it.

Metaphor or mistranslation or just bad copying.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Heh. Yup.

Here is something clear and unequivocal: The meek shall inherit the Earth. There is enough right there to outweigh all the ambiguity, metaphor or mythologizing in the New Testament. Someone said that, someone wrote that down. It speaks directly to the revolutionary core of human destiny. The man who said that, the men who wrote that down, deserve our loyalty, not our scorn.

I saw a shirt this weekend. It said, "In 1775 they tried to take our guns...so we shot them." I better think that reflects the revolutionary core of human destiny. Maybe we're saying the same thing.

/derail

 

[No Robots]

Jesus regularly rants against those who reject him.

Ultimately, the Jewish people will come to see the Nazarene as themselves, just as the so-called Christians will come to understand that following Jesus means becoming a Jew and a communist.

 

[No Robots]

Heh. Yup.

Here is something clear and unequivocal: The meek shall inherit the Earth. There is enough right there to outweigh all the ambiguity, metaphor or mythologizing in the New Testament. Someone said that, someone wrote that down. It speaks directly to the revolutionary core of human destiny. The man who said that, the men who wrote that down, deserve our loyalty, not our scorn.

I saw a shirt this weekend. It said, "In 1775 they tried to take our guns...so we shot them." I better think that reflects the revolutionary core of human destiny. Maybe we're saying the same thing.

/derail

restarting derail

Second amendment peckerwoods screeching about "muh guns" has nothing to do with the Revolutionary War, and certainly nothing to do with the meek inheriting the earth. The American revolution was an important step in human progress. Here is Marx in a letter to Abraham Lincoln:

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

The next step in the revolutionary destiny of mankind does not involve guns. It is a war of ideas. And at the forefront are the ideas of Moses, the prophets, Jesus and Marx.

 

[Swammerdami]

^This is all good sense, and I hope it becomes the standard secular view.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor. The fig tree is the Jewish people who are not in season, ie. not yet open to receive the teaching. See Wikipedia.

Sure it's a metaphor, but it has always been a problem text for Christians, because their guy is abusing a tree out of spite, when it wasn't harvest season. He feigns anger at the poor tree. I feel for that tree. I want to go back, find that tree, transplant it & water it.

Bishop Spong (an atheist!) has an interesting take on the fig tree. According to Spong, the chronology of events within the synoptic Gospels has been rearranged, and at least one set of episodes, including the fig tree story, occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles. This claim IS supported by evidence.

The point is that figs WERE in season during the Feast of Tabernacles. In Spong's opinion the Temple Cleansing and Palm Sunday both occurred at that Feast and NOT at the time of Passover (when figs were NOT in season.)

This changes the meaning of the parable significantly ... although I don't understand this revised version either! ... Unless one purpose of the story was to hint at the true chronology.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

^This is all good sense, and I hope it becomes the standard secular view.

About the cursing of the fig tree, it is obviously a metaphor. The fig tree is the Jewish people who are not in season, ie. not yet open to receive the teaching. See Wikipedia.

Sure it's a metaphor, but it has always been a problem text for Christians, because their guy is abusing a tree out of spite, when it wasn't harvest season. He feigns anger at the poor tree. I feel for that tree. I want to go back, find that tree, transplant it & water it.

Bishop Spong (an atheist!) has an interesting take on the fig tree. According to Spong, the chronology of events within the synoptic Gospels has been rearranged, and at least one set of episodes, including the fig tree story, occurred during the Feast of Tabernacles. This claim IS supported by evidence.

The point is that figs WERE in season during the Feast of Tabernacles. In Spong's opinion the Temple Cleansing and Palm Sunday both occurred at that Feast and NOT at the time of Passover (when figs were NOT in season.)

This changes the meaning of the parable significantly ... although I don't understand this revised version either! ... Unless one purpose of the story was to hint at the true chronology.

Again we have a tampering with the historical record, if one wishes to call it that. Or maybe one wishes to see all of historical artifact as human tampering. In any case your offering demonstrates again how stories are created by authors.

 

[Swammerdami]

Again we have a tampering with the historical record, if one wishes to call it that. Or maybe one wishes to see all of historical artifact as human tampering. In any case your offering demonstrates again how stories are created by authors.

I might start a thread called something like "How do I know what to believe?" I'm not sure what forum to put it in. Or even how to phrase the title: "Believe" might seem to have religious overtone, but I just want to write about why I accept some science but am less sure about other science. It's a complicated topic, and it would take much effort to organize the essay. Some key points will be:

In the 19th century, almost all relevant scholars agreed that the Works of Shakespeare were written by a certain man from Stratford. I greatly admire thinkers like Mark Twain who deduced that the Stratford Authorship was a hoax long before a huge body of new evidence and intelligent argumentation was available to book readers and Googlers today. This is not the only example where a consensus has proven wrong. Often I form my own opinion by studying the expert opinions on both sides. I can't double-check their research, but I can review their writings for tone, logic, mathematical competence and common-sense.

Extraordinary claims -- e.g. the rejection of a 99+% expert consensus -- require extraordinary thinking. Again: I greatly admire the several 19th century geniuses who rejected the "William Shakespeare" consensus: I wouldn't have the imagination and confidence to dare.

99+% of professional historians believe Jesus was a real person. (I've defined the Historicity yes/no definition many MANY times by now.) This 99+% consensus may NOT be enough to be fully convincing, but expert opinion deserves respect. Relevant experts' knowledge and research is hundreds of times that of myself, and many thousands of times greater than that of some others here. To challenge the experts, I might read the opinions of contrarians and focus my common-sense and, yes, my mathematical intuition on a few key controversies.
. . .
It would be impossible to take a Stratfordian seriously if he can't acknowledge that the Preface to Shakespeare's Sonnets is a major puzzle. The preface to the earliest Troilus and Cressida is one of many MANY other puzzles ignored by those who follow the consensus blindly.

Similarly, there are important clues to the Jesus Historicity question. Both experts and laymen's common-sense single out evidence related to Jesus' brother James as one of the major stumbling-blocks to Myth Theories like Carrier's.

Recently, right here in this thread, an Infidel admitted to thinking Shaksper of Stratford wrote the plays and poems. I tell him "Fight your ignorance! You can start by reading the preface to Shakespeare's Sonnets and trying to reconcile it to a still-alive poet."

And I can only sneer at Mythicists who refuse to contemplate the puzzle of James the Brother. Or to answer, say, the question of Buddha's historicity just to clarify where they're "coming from."

 

[No Robots]

^Twain was satirizing. On Shakespeare authorship, there is overwhelming scholarly concensus, just as there is overwhelming scholarly consensus that Jesus was a Jew.

 

[No Robots]

What the critics get wrong about Shakespeare is the same thing that the critics get wrong about Jesus. Like Jesus, Shakespeare is a Jew.

 

[steve_bank]

What the critics get wrong about Shakespeare is the same thing that the critics get wrong about Jesus. Like Jesus, Shakespeare is a Jew.

Are you circumcised and do you eat only kosher food?

Jewish can be be cultural, religious, or racial. One can be Jewish by birth but not Jewish by religion or culture.

 

[No Robots]

^Judaism is an intellectual/spiritual stance: Hear, Israel! Being is your god, Being is one!

 

[steve_bank]

Cultural appropriation takes place when members of a majority group adopt cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way. To fully understand its consequences, though, we need to make sure we have a working definition of culture itsel

You arr culturally appropriating Jewish culture and religion. It is what gentile Cistians did early on, they appropriated the OT as their own and rejected Jews.

Over here there arr anglophiles and francophiles, those enamored with English and French culture.

There are t hose whom adopt Japanese culture.

Back in the 60s 70s there were white Americans who embraced Japanese culture and Zen as an alternative to mainstream American culture, claiming it has a superior quality.

In the 70s when I was living in Hartford Ct there was an ashram of American Sikh converts. They took on Sikh names. Men wore beards, turbans, and had traditional Sikh ceremonial daggers. For a few weeks I went to their house in the early mornings and did their morning rituals and yoga out of curiosity.

Your fascination with a non western culture is nothing new. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Mysteries and secrets to be found.

 

[No Robots]

^Mankind's destiny is Jewish and communist. Everything else is dead.

 

[No Robots]

^Resistance to universal communism and Judaism is, of course, the core tenet of fascism.

 

[Swammerdami]

As Christianity is built on the myth, the supernatural, that there may have been a man behind the myth is of interest, but it hardly matters.

It sure matters to Dr. Richard Carrier, PhD who's set for life now by writing books on the topic. Jesus from Outer Space -- what's the one about?

It seems to matter to some Infidels posting here who spend dozens of posts repeating the same tired and wrong pseudo-arguments against historicity.

For me, it started as a very mild curiosity but has bloomed into something else at this message-board. I am ASTOUNDED to see such ignorance, and such refusal to actually research or respond to argumentation. Five distinct references to Jesus' brother James lead to a conclusion that, like James, James' brother was also flesh-and-bones. But many dozens or even hundreds of posts here by Mythicists do not mention James AT ALL, let alone admit that there are strong clues pointing to historicity. I think Carrier has five totally different arguments to dispose of the five James mentions. The Carrier-cult atheists remind me of the stupidest evangelical Christians. But while extremist Christians can repeat long passages from the Bible, the Carrier cultists here don't even know how their Messiah disposes of James!

 

[dbz]

• Britt, Matthew; Wingo, Jaaron (2024). "Christ Before Jesus: Evidence for the Second-Century Origins of Jesus". Cooper & Samuels Publishing.

Hello all!

This is Matthew Britt, one of the co-authors.

I'm happy to answer questions when I get the chance.

I do want to clarify that Jason BeDuhn did not directly assist us, but rather we thanked him in general (as we did this forum) for inspiration and doing important work. We have presented our information to a number of people in the field and done guest lectures at some public universities in our area but we haven't talked to BeDuhn as of yet.

This book is aimed at a general audience, so there are a lot of places where some people might find things a bit over-simplified or things they're already aware of. After having published, we realized that there's an even more significant divide between the general public that we targeted and the more academic end of things which some of the end of the book gets into.

We're hoping to work on some journal articles but are currently working on a follow-up book touching on a few details we didn't get into. Eventually we'll also be working on the OT, Quran, BoM, and others. Personally, I've been working more on Plato lately in terms of our stylometric analysis.

All of what we used is available free online and is open source. The software is called Stylo and can be run through R Studio. Our textual data was sourced from a variety of places such as the Perseus Library from Tufts University, the Harvard Dataverse, SBL's Greek texts they make available to members, and a few texts were sourced elsewhere.

We go live on Tik Tok every week to answer questions in person if anyone wants to talk to us there. Usually Jaaron does Tik Tok more than I do. We're also available via email and have done some podcasts which should be somewhere on YouTube if anyone is interested.

We welcome any feedback, including critical feedback, as we want to continue to improve our methodology and presentation of the information.

I'd also like to thank everyone here as well as a number of people who are no longer active here. This forum has been a great wealth of information and inspiration throughout the process.

Also, I want to recommend everyone check out Chrissy's book! I've been meaning to write a review on Amazon but my daughter broke her arm around the time the book came out and I haven't got around to it. It's a really good deep dive into Philemon and takes a much more scholarly approach than our book while still being accessible.

[box=cornsilk]Paul, it seems, was not a first-century individual but a second-century group effort by a Marcionite school that produced some of the first Christian literature. The first-century figure of Paul, as with so many other characters found in the Bible, existed only on paper.[/box]
Britt, Matthew; Wingo, Jaaron. Christ Before Jesus: Evidence for the Second-Century Origins of Jesus (English Edition) (p.101). Cooper & Samuels Publishing.

[box=cornsilk] In fact, it was likely the first gospel most Christians had ever come across, as whatever Proto-Mark, which came before Marcion’s Evangelion, looked like was different from our version and didn’t seem to cause as much stir as when Marcion published Evangelion. [/box](Ibidem, p. 162)

The authors use stylometry to derive this tree:

Their comment of the figure:

[box=cornsilk]In the image, you’ll see that most of Luke is at the bottom of its own tree. The passages found there overlap with the chapters taken from Marcion’s Evangelion. At the top of the image, you see Acts on a different branch. In the middle, but connected with Acts and not with Luke, are the following chapters of Luke: 1-4 and 24. These are the main chapters added and expanded upon in Luke that are not found or are significantly shorter in Marcion’s Evangelion. It is proof that Marcion’s version came first and Luke was a later text. Let’s walk through the logic here. If the Gospel of Luke and Acts were written by the same person as tradition claims, then there would likely not be the separation we see here between the two in the first place. Second, and more importantly, the chapters not found in Marcion’s Evangelion would not act any differently than the rest of Luke. However, if the author of Acts did not write most of Luke but rather edited it and wrote 1-4 and 24, then what we see is exactly what we would expect. Luke 1-4 and 24 match the style of Acts, not of the bulk of Luke taken from Evangelion.[/box] (ibid., p. 233, my bold)

[box=cornsilk]What we found is that Proto-Mark was roughly one third of the length of canonical Mark. It’s roughly the size of 1 Corinthians or Hebrews and lacks a significant portion of the miracles and teachings of Jesus found in canonical Mark. The travels and historical details are much more scarce, as well. In fact, the entire story seems to potentially take place over a period of just a few weeks. Despite having significant portions of the canonical version cut, though, the text still flows well. We believe it is likely, given Jesus descends to Earth in Evangelion, that this is how he first appears in Proto-Mark. In canonical Mark, a dove descends on Jesus and God declares him his son. The original was likely Jesus himself descending, with God declaring him his son. Jesus does not get baptized by John the Baptist, but immediately begins his teaching after descending. Likewise, the scriptural passage referencing Elijah (John the Baptist) coming before Jesus is usually cited at the beginning of canonical Mark, but it seems to be absent in Proto-Mark.[/box]
(p.282, my bold)

 

[No Robots]

^Brotheist grift.