How Important Is The Debate Over The Historical Jesus

[Joshpantera]

What is a Mythicist?

http://www.stellarho.../mythicist.html

 

The History of Mythicism

http://www.stellarho.../mythicism.html

 

^ Some good background reading on the position and debate.

 

My input on the MP video was to keep it as uncertain at this point: 'some feel that after all of the evidence is weighed the Jesus of the gospels MAY not have even existed. And He MAY be completely mythological like the gods and godmen of the surrounding cultures who are currently accepted as myths...'

 

That's keeps close to the truth of the matter. To venture off into certainty claims is false territory. So we hadn't ought to go that route...

[mymistake]

What is a Mythicist?

http://www.stellarho.../mythicist.html

 

The History of Mythicism

http://www.stellarho.../mythicism.html

 

^ Some good background reading on the position and debate.

 

My input on the MP video was to keep it as uncertain at this point: 'some feel that after all of the evidence is weighed the Jesus of the gospels MAY not have even existed. And He MAY be completely mythological like the gods and godmen of the surrounding cultures who are currently accepted as myths...'

 

That's keeps close to the truth of the matter. To venture off into certainty claims is false territory. So we hadn't ought to go that route...

 

Thank you for the resources. I'm going to spend some time there.

[Ouroboros]

What is a Mythicist?

http://www.stellarho.../mythicist.html

 

The History of Mythicism

http://www.stellarho.../mythicism.html

 

^ Some good background reading on the position and debate.

 

My input on the MP video was to keep it as uncertain at this point: 'some feel that after all of the evidence is weighed the Jesus of the gospels MAY not have even existed. And He MAY be completely mythological like the gods and godmen of the surrounding cultures who are currently accepted as myths...'

 

That's keeps close to the truth of the matter. To venture off into certainty claims is false territory. So we hadn't ought to go that route...

What's the difference between the evemirist and the mysticist positions?

[Joshpantera]

The evemerist and mythicist positions both delve into mythological aspects, it's just that the evemerist would consider the godmen of mythology to have started out as historical people who were later mythologized. When applied to the Christ myth of the NT we have the situation where people have been believers taking the whole thing as truth or evemerists thinking that a real Jesus of Nazareth did exist and did die but was later mythologized by his followers. Then the mythicist argument arises as a third party to the older debate. The idea is that when closely analyzed the evidence for the supernaturalism of the myth is completely lacking and in edition the evidence put forward for just a basic historicity is lacking as well.

 

This problem has actually come around to the attention of Richard Dawkins who recently responded this way about Jesus in an interview with Playboy Magazine:

 

http://www.playboy.c...-dawkins?page=2

PLAYBOY: What is your view of Jesus?

 

DAWKINS: The evidence he existed is surprisingly shaky. The earliest books in the New Testament to be written were the Epistles, not the Gospels. It's almost as though Saint Paul and others who wrote the Epistles weren’t that interested in whether Jesus was real. Even if he’s fictional, whoever wrote his lines was ahead of his time in terms of moral philosophy.

Dawkins was an evemerist in the past and has been quoted talking that way. But it seems that Dawkins is now "evolving" - for lack of a better term - the more he reads into the matter. It sounds like Earl Doherty's work on the Pauline Epistles has come across Dawkins attention.

 

That's more or less the paradigm shift currently in action. Before it was more or less accepted as a given that the NT Jesus was a well established historical figure who's only controversy is whether or not he was really divine and rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Dawkins has become aware of the deeper problem surrounding the issue now and has adjusted his speech accordingly, which is something that Bart Ehrman is now facing with Earl Doherty's chapter by chapter refutation of "Did Jesus Exist?" Will he begin to adjust his speech as well? I'd say that once you start seeing that the NT Jesus MAY have not existed historically in the first place then you start crossing over from the evemerist position to the mythicist position. The mythicist is the only one of the three that doesn't start off with certainty claims as a foundation. It's about the uncertainty surrounding the issue...

[mcdaddy]

yay team mythicist

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

Looks like Dawkins does what you're supposed to. Not believe until someone puts forth the believe to convince you otherwise. My intuition tells me that its likely that the cult leaders Jesus and Paul existed, but the evidence doesn't seem to say enough to make their existence a certainty. That's where I stand.

[waitingongod]

I don't believe whether Jesus was a true historical figure makes any difference at all. What does make a difference is whether or not Christians can prove their claims of him being the son of god or The God™. The reference of the New Testament concerning Jesus is based upon Christian concepts of the Old Testament prophecies and how they believe these prophecies foretold the coming of Jesus. Or look at another way, did Frank live and how do we know Frank lived? Frank lived because there is physical evidence that Frank lived. Can we find proof that someone named Jesus lived? Some claim Jesus was a popular name back then. I don't believe it but others do. I have not found a reference to another Jesus beyond the texts used to comprise the New Testament and those 'gospels' not included in the New Testament. To me the reality of Jesus is as mythological as the myths of Moses or the talking snake. Did they exist? Only in the pages of religious writings which are a collection of mythology and historical events--in short they are historical fiction. Even if Jesus existed as a teacher who went against the religious status quo of his day and was executed for it, I could believe that much. But what I do not believe is an historical Jesus who was The God™ Christians claim him to be. That person just does not exist beyond the myths of religious belief. And the fact that someone long ago altered writings belonging to Josephus to include a mention of Jesus makes me disbelieve his existence completely.

Christians worship a concept. I think this is pretty common in theistic religions. You need to attach that supernaturalism to a real person to make it real. In this case, a guy named Jesus, who may or may not be real, was unlucky enough to be that person.

[Ouroboros]

To me it sounds like the evemerist is the one keeping an open mind towards the possibility of some historical fragments to the story, while the mythicist denies any. Isn't the evemerist also a mysticist, but maintain the possibility of a "sage" beginning?

[Joshpantera]

^That's what I'm getting at. Both evemerist and mythicist are looking at a myth. But the Evemerist leans more towards the historical origin and the mythicist more towards the mythological origin. And from conversations I've had with evemerists I'd say that we both tend to leave open the possibility that we could both be wrong and the other right. Although some one like Ehrman represents an evermist who is more certain of himself and seems to discredit the possibility that he could be entirely wrong about the historical origin. That's another kind of evemerist.

 

The mythicists will generally say that of course it's possible that the Jesus myth could have started with an historical founder, but the evidence tends to contradict that assumption. This is no different than an atheist wanting credible evidence for the existence of God before getting on board. Only in this case it's the historicity of the Jesus in question. It's just healthy skepticism as far as I know.

 

When you strip down the authentic Pauline Epistles Jesus is by and large portrayed as a mythical heavenly being (Doherty outlines this to the detail) with very little in the way of biography and historical detail. Then the Gospels appear later in history with Jesus as an amalgamation of the biographies of many different possible historical people along with many Egypto-Greco-Roman mythological traits. The further back in time the less historical the character is portrayed instead of more and more historical.

 

But the door is always open to new evidence that might better substantiate the evemerist view though. And if such evidence were to emerge mythicism would be shut down just like that, we'd all have to go back to being evemerists again, because, most mythicist have evolved from believer, to evemerist, to eventually mythicist after more consideration.

[Ouroboros]

Thank you J. Well answered.

[Joshpantera]

And here's one example of looking at some of the exceptions where Paul appears to be talking about an historical Jesus more so than a heavenly mythical one:

 

 

 

Pretty interesting stuff. I never caught the insertion before coming face to face with it like this. I can imagine that just like in the case of Josephus where some one thought that there ought to be a reference to Jesus in there somewhere, the same was true of the copyists sorting through Paul's letters seeing that they lacked in historical detail and figured they'd go ahead and add some more detail into it. This is just the tip of the ice burg, but it shows why even the authentic Pauline Epistles deserve closer attention when checking for forgery and interpolation. There's some pretty interesting stuff in this guys youtube series.

[mcdaddy]

^^^^^ive watched every vid he's put out.

[Joshpantera]

I spent the whole day one Sunday going through these videos supporting the Jesus Puzzle. Quite interesting.

[Geezer]

It seems that this debate is getting so heated in recent times, that perspective has been almost entirely lost!

 

If Jesus was an historical person, and you prove it, do you save a starving child in Sudan?

If Jesus was not an historical person, and you prove it, do you bring back a child's parents, who have been killed in war?

 

Just how important is this debate?

 

When I was going through my deconversion process this was an enormously important question. I could not simply say God the bible and Jesus don't make sense. I had to have valid evidence that proved to my complete satisfaction that Christianity and the bible weren’t literally or historically true. I couldn't let go until I found creditable evidence that validated it was all a myth.

 

So, for many like me, this is an enormously important question.

[srd]

The debate is actually being waged on two different fronts.

 

1) the so-called mythists position which basically denies Jesus' existence due to lack of, nay no, evidence. While this may sound convincing it is built on many misconceptions about antiquity and tends to retroject the mythic Christ of the Christian 3rd century into the Jesus movement of the 1st century which took place on Palestinian ground. Also the arguement from no-evidence is much like arguing today that if you're not in Google you didn't exist. It's sheer nonesense.

 

2) this is the classical scholarly debate that initiatied the Jesus seminar, whose position I share nothing with. But basically it disputes the idea that a 1st century Aramic speaking Jew named Joshua from Galilee is the what we have in the gospel protraits of Christ. Personally, I would say that the historical Jesus existed; however, there is nothing of that that remains. The gospel portraits are later theologized renderings of a man that became a symbol, the Christ. Studying the gospel contradictions bears this out. So, yes there is a lot at stake. Because Christianity is NOT founded on a Jew from Galilee but rather on a religious symbol, a very powerful one at that. Fiction informs our reality and becomes that reality.

[Guest r3alchild]

It is possible jesus existed like robin hood, but there was someone or something to inspire their hero status. But like robin hood, jesus hero status is based on myth and mystery.

[stryper]

I guess i take the view of the intro to Lord of the rings. 

 

History becomes legend

Legend becomes myth

Myths become forgotten. 

 

to bad we haven't gotten to forgotten.