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The Christ Myth Theory
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dbz
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- Max 1:3 possible that Jesus b. Joseph/Pantera was a historical personage
- Do you concur that dependent evidence has zero value in Bayesian estimates of likelihood (OHJ, Ch. 7.1).
- Do you concur that Josephus’ testimony and other non-Christian sources are NOT (demonstrably) independent of the Gospels (and Gospel-dependent Christian legends and informants).
dbz
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- Max 1:3 possible that Jesus b. Joseph/Pantera was a historical personage
A common objection is that “ahistoricists” or “mythicists” do not have an alternative explanation for Christian origins. However given Paul’s testimony that he hallucinated a Jesus constructed from the Jewish Scriptures, it only need be shown—as Narve Strand asserts—"that the historicist doesn’t have real evidence that would make his purely human Jesus existing more probable than not."[182][183]
Lataster writes:
T.G.G. Moogly
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Jarhyn
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Or The Three Amigos, or The Tortuga Twins, or The Count of Monte Cristo...
ramoss
Member
The agnostic position of "I don't have to present an alternative, I just have to demand proof" is reminiscent of the Sandy Hook truthers demanding that the coffins of the murdered children be opened. It is a know-nothing position that makes no demands of itself. Those who affirm the historicity of Jesus don't need to prove anything. Allow the agnostics to wallow in their unknowing. There are many advantages to be gained from simply going forth with one's conviction in the historicity of Jesus. As my mythicist father once said to me, "You have one big advantage over me: you believe that Jesus was a real person." It's time to dust off our sandals and leave the mythicists, agnostics and fence-sitters behind. Let us be know by our fruits.
Jarhyn
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Personally, I find it far more likely that in 100-120ce writer of Jewish origin who grew up with heroes like Jesus Chrestus and observing people whom they respected in youth despite their craziness such as Jesus Ananus sought to change the image of "crazy Jewish Jesus" stereotype with a portmanteau of two histories as best as they could construct along with a fair bit of refinement on the philosophy of such. Possibly, they cast Chrestus entirely as the portmanteau.
I expect they did not ever write his last name because, well, his followers did cause some riots that were rather ill looked upon, and a fire or two.
Jesus was a common enough name though, and there has been a couple of those crazies, so the story they were going to right could be ambiguous. Nobody's going to execute you for lyonizing a rebellious traitor if its about some fictional Jesus bin Yousef.
So they write about Jesus bin Yousef.
Everyone knows that it's about Jesus Crestus.
Paul knows it's about Jesus Chrestus.
The Sadducees know it's about Jesus Crestus.
But the followers don't say it, the same way some idiots on drug forums think saying "someone who is not me broke the law" means LEO won't get up in their shit.
People elevate Crestus.
Then it hits the Greek culture or a Greek adjacent region of the cult's following at that point and suddenly, they're calling him Christos instead. It's still close to Chrestus without saying it, and it adds another level of "oh, it's a messiah, not that Chrestus guy".
Their name was probably "Mark", they wrote themselves into the story like a lot of authors do, and then claimed they were the "Mark" of the story because maybe as regards Ananus, he was in some way associated with the person.
In fact... Hey @pood thoughts as a plot? A historical fictionalization of a historical fictionalization!
Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
This is a topic on which I'm completely ignorant — for example I was quite unaware of the Chrest/Christ controversy — so I am reading the thread with interest. I had read two 20th-century "biographies" of Jesus Christ, but they gave little or no attention to a mythicist perspective.
I do not know how many of you even understood the general argument I tried to make about Bayesian analysis applied to complicated controversies. Among those, if any, who understood my point, I don't know how many believed it. But I am not so masochistic to argue the general point further.
Let me ask some specific questions. These are yes/no questions and I'm hoping for yes/no answers rather than links to 2-hour YouTubes.
(1) Christians believe a prominent Christian named Simon Peter was crucified in 1st-century Rome. Do mythicists believe Peter was fictional?
(2) Christians believe a prominent Christian named Paul was executed about the time of Nero. Do mythicists believe Paul was fictional?
(3) After the deaths of Peter and Paul; Linus, Anacletus, Clement I and Evaristus all allegedly served as 1st-century Bishops of Rome. Do mythicists believe these four Bishops were fictional? John the Baptist: Was he also fictional?
(4) Google informs me that 'Jesus Chrest' means 'Jesus the Good' while 'Jesus Christ' means 'Jesus the Anointed.' Either name might be applied to a revered figure, and the same figure might be known by BOTH names. Indeed that the two words had identical(?) pronunciation would make the conflation of these two honorifics likely. What am I missing?
I admit to not understanding the mythicist position but it seems to involve the on-going doctoring of texts by Suetonius AND Josephus AND others. Does it also involve the invention of several fictional characters — Paul, Peter, Luke, Linus, etc. — and careful weaving of a story to make it conflatable with some other Jesus and/or some other Chrestus? If all these inventions and rewritings were going on, someone MIGHT have become aware that Jesus Christ and other parts of the myth were fictional; they MIGHT have written about that; and their writings MIGHT have been preserved. Even if their writings were not preserved they might have been disputed and records of those disputes MIGHT be detectable in early writings.
Notice I wrote MIGHT rather than WOULD for events whose probability is less than 100%. But these probabilities are greater than Zero. In fact, the "dog did NOT bark in the night" (to quote Sherlock Holmes) — (afaik) there is no evidence that anyone in the early centuries suspected Jesus to be fictional. Do you understand that this "non-barking dog" must be included in any Bayesian analysis?
I don't know if you meant "demonstrably not" rather than "not demonstrably." In either event, Bayesian analysis is about probabilities not about all-or-nothing criteria.
I do not know how many of you even understood the general argument I tried to make about Bayesian analysis applied to complicated controversies. Among those, if any, who understood my point, I don't know how many believed it. But I am not so masochistic to argue the general point further.
Let me ask some specific questions. These are yes/no questions and I'm hoping for yes/no answers rather than links to 2-hour YouTubes.
(1) Christians believe a prominent Christian named Simon Peter was crucified in 1st-century Rome. Do mythicists believe Peter was fictional?
(2) Christians believe a prominent Christian named Paul was executed about the time of Nero. Do mythicists believe Paul was fictional?
(3) After the deaths of Peter and Paul; Linus, Anacletus, Clement I and Evaristus all allegedly served as 1st-century Bishops of Rome. Do mythicists believe these four Bishops were fictional? John the Baptist: Was he also fictional?
(4) Google informs me that 'Jesus Chrest' means 'Jesus the Good' while 'Jesus Christ' means 'Jesus the Anointed.' Either name might be applied to a revered figure, and the same figure might be known by BOTH names. Indeed that the two words had identical(?) pronunciation would make the conflation of these two honorifics likely. What am I missing?
I admit to not understanding the mythicist position but it seems to involve the on-going doctoring of texts by Suetonius AND Josephus AND others. Does it also involve the invention of several fictional characters — Paul, Peter, Luke, Linus, etc. — and careful weaving of a story to make it conflatable with some other Jesus and/or some other Chrestus? If all these inventions and rewritings were going on, someone MIGHT have become aware that Jesus Christ and other parts of the myth were fictional; they MIGHT have written about that; and their writings MIGHT have been preserved. Even if their writings were not preserved they might have been disputed and records of those disputes MIGHT be detectable in early writings.
Notice I wrote MIGHT rather than WOULD for events whose probability is less than 100%. But these probabilities are greater than Zero. In fact, the "dog did NOT bark in the night" (to quote Sherlock Holmes) — (afaik) there is no evidence that anyone in the early centuries suspected Jesus to be fictional. Do you understand that this "non-barking dog" must be included in any Bayesian analysis?
I don't know if you meant "demonstrably not" rather than "not demonstrably." In either event, Bayesian analysis is about probabilities not about all-or-nothing criteria.
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
Mythicism is nothing but the denial that Jesus was a historical figure, not that all of those other characters were fictional. Any, or all, of them could be. The credibility of their existence should depend on the type and amount of actual evidence we have for their existence. How do we justify belief in historicity of anyone? Poli had been arguing that one could argue a kind of equivalence between Julius Caesar and Jesus, if we just looked at textual evidence alone. I thought that that equivalence did not hold, but it's possible that we have no better evidence for some other figures than for Jesus--i.e. purely based on scripture and no other corroborating evidence. One thing I think that most or all of us agree on is that the figure we know of as Jesus Christ is heavily mythologized, whether or not there ever was an actual historical figure behind the mythology.
Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
I'm just trying to get a feel for the hoax hypothesis. For me to think O.J. Simpson was innocent I'd have wanted to hear an alternate-killer hypothesis. If Jesus of Nazareth was a hoax, how did the hoax construction play out?
From the perspective of mythicists was Simon Peter probably part of a fiction-writing cabal?
ramoss
Member
There might or might not have. However, it doesn't look like any of those other people have supernatural events linked with them, and no one ever told me that I must accept Paul as my lord and savior or burn in hell forever.
As for the 'rewriting'... there is fairly good evidence of writing of Josephus. For . Suetonius , things are taken out of context, and he certainly wasn't contemporary. Suetonius was born in 69 AD, with the bulk of his writing after about 100 ad. THe line that is waved as 'proof' of Jesus is 'Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome'. Now, that sounds like he is referring to someone named Chrestus that was in Rome at the time.
Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
I just skimmed through the first several pages of a 37 year-old book by Ian Wilson. (I'm not a fan of Mr. Wilson either, but let's not shoot the messenger and ignore his message.) I try to paraphrase his relevant claims fairly; blame him for any errors of fact.
Dating the Gospels. While these books were revised in the 2nd century or even later, they were based on earlier accounts. According to a Dr. John Robinson, The narrative would have been different at several points had the accounts been written AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.
Old manuscripts. Complaints that 1st-century documents have not turned up are not convincing. Papyrus documents decompose readily in all but very arid climates like Egypt's. Even parchment documents were often mistreated by the early Church. Sinaiticus, written on expensive vellum which required the skins of 360 young sheep and goats, was eventually sold to the British Museum for the record-setting price of £100,000 but was first found dumped at a monastery in a heap used for kindling. The mid-4th century Sinaiticus (which, for example, omits the final 11 verses of the Mark gospel) and its "sister" document Vaticanus "remain the oldest near complete texts of Old and New Testaments in existence." That these expensive vellums existed at all is attributed to rich patronage after the conversion of Constantine the Great.
Old Jewish writings refer to "Yeshu the Nazarene."
Josephus. In the mentions of Jesus, phrases like "wise man" and "paradoxical deeds" are phrases Josephus uses elsewhere. The 3rd-century Origen comments on the "James brother of Jesus" passage, so that alleged interpolation predates the date Wilson thinks mythicists rely on.
Another oddity, explicable most readily by being true, is the relationship between Jesus and prostitutes. Some claim his mother was a prostitute; the four women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy were all harlots.
Do any of these arguments PROVE Jesus was historical? Of course not! Can they be dismissed by someone pretending to estimate historicity by Bayesian analysis? Absolutely not.
Dating the Gospels. While these books were revised in the 2nd century or even later, they were based on earlier accounts. According to a Dr. John Robinson, The narrative would have been different at several points had the accounts been written AFTER the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.
Old manuscripts. Complaints that 1st-century documents have not turned up are not convincing. Papyrus documents decompose readily in all but very arid climates like Egypt's. Even parchment documents were often mistreated by the early Church. Sinaiticus, written on expensive vellum which required the skins of 360 young sheep and goats, was eventually sold to the British Museum for the record-setting price of £100,000 but was first found dumped at a monastery in a heap used for kindling. The mid-4th century Sinaiticus (which, for example, omits the final 11 verses of the Mark gospel) and its "sister" document Vaticanus "remain the oldest near complete texts of Old and New Testaments in existence." That these expensive vellums existed at all is attributed to rich patronage after the conversion of Constantine the Great.
Old Jewish writings refer to "Yeshu the Nazarene."
Josephus. In the mentions of Jesus, phrases like "wise man" and "paradoxical deeds" are phrases Josephus uses elsewhere. The 3rd-century Origen comments on the "James brother of Jesus" passage, so that alleged interpolation predates the date Wilson thinks mythicists rely on.
Another oddity, explicable most readily by being true, is the relationship between Jesus and prostitutes. Some claim his mother was a prostitute; the four women mentioned in Jesus' genealogy were all harlots.
Do any of these arguments PROVE Jesus was historical? Of course not! Can they be dismissed by someone pretending to estimate historicity by Bayesian analysis? Absolutely not.
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
Why did there have to be a deliberate hoax? A process of
Chinese whispers can produce all sorts of distortions of a true story. So there can be many processes, including deliberate hoaxes, that can create a mythologized person. Joseph Smith created a deliberate hoax when he founded Mormonism, but I wonder if there ever was a real John Frum, who became a central founding figure of the Cargo Cult religion. Religious charlatans have been known to create hoaxes, so that seems a plausible scenario. In the end, it isn't really important whether there was some historical Jesus figure, but it is natural to be curious, given the impact of Christianity on human history.Mythicism stems from the complete opposite of curiosity. It is a refusal to engage with the text. What I long for is an atheism that is self-confident enough that it can engage freely with the text and extract from it all the benefits it has to offer. The current populism provides some hope in this regard. Disdain for authority and entrenched power finds its root in the rebel who called the leading lights of his day, “whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness.” In this light, mythicism is a tool of the entrenched powers to keep this incendiary text out of the hands of today’s rebels.
Politesse
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Oh, always! There is no generation in which such statements are not suppressed. They are an implicit threat to the very instruments of suppression.
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
The entire mythicist community does nothing other than engage with the text. You may disagree with their analyses, but that has nothing to do with entrenched powers, attempts at censorship, and the noble efforts of heroic defenders of the existence of Jesus being hounded and pursued for their efforts to resurrect the truth.
steve_bank
Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
The true believer dwells in a perpetual state of well being and bliss. That is what religious myths can do.
For the religious belver it is not about academic debate or facts, it is about feelings. Logical arguments are irrelevant.
For the religious belver it is not about academic debate or facts, it is about feelings. Logical arguments are irrelevant.
The whole mythicist project is to disengage from the text by discounting it as derivative of [put your favourite alternative theory here]. Never does a mythicist consider the import of the text itself. Witness your own silence with regard to the whited sepulchres. The reason for this silence is that most mythicists in fact identify with the very powers that are under attack in the text: the scribes, priests and scholars. The scholastic class has been fighting an end-game battle against the text for millennia. At first, they co-opted it, making it a weapon they could use against the hoi-polloi. With mass literacy that little game came to an end. Now, all that is left is to chuck dust into everybody's eyes in the hope that somehow that will save the professors, priests, politicians and pundits from their day of reckoning.
Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
I stayed silent about the "whited sepulchres" because I couldn't be less interested in them, nor did I feel any sense of identity with the scribes, priests and scholars that you referred to. I'll take my chances on my "day of reckoning". Thanks for the warning, but be assured I'll remember that you tried to save me from my self-delusion and rue my decision not to listen.
As I went on to say in the part that you snipped away:
"...You may disagree with their analyses, but that has nothing to with entrenched powers, attempts at censorship, and the noble efforts of heroic defenders of the existence of Jesus being hounded and pursued for their efforts to resurrect the truth."