It’s long overdue for me to type something serious in response to this sort of comment that one sees all too frequently:
Litwa writes, “The fact is, few Mediterranean gods actually die; even fewer die and rise. . . . To be sure, a few gods die; and of these, some of them return, in some fashion, to life. Yet they do so for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. Mythicists such as Carrier fixate on abstract similarities. As a result, they often ignore or paste over important differences in the stories.” — from a comment on this blog.
The first indication that there is something wrong with Litwa’s argument is the use of “some” and “all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways”. Already Litwa is acknowledging that these gods can indeed all be classified as a group even though there are “all sorts of differences” among them. We know their respective stories are very different indeed but that does not prevent us from grouping them as, let’s say, a particular “type”. So the question that arises is, On what grounds do we omit Jesus from among “the few” and “the some” in his statement?
Robert M. Price has explained that comparisons among ancient “dying and rising” gods are based on the famous sociologist Max Weber’s explanation of “ideal types”. (Ideal here does not mean perfect but belonging to a common idea.) Price rightly identifies the fault in a milestone critic of such comparisons, Jonathan Z. Smith, as failing to grasp Weber’s discussion of how sociologists, historians and others justify making comparisons in the first place.
So here is a little background reading. I will quote liberally from a translation of ““Objectivity” in Social Science and Social Policy”, an essay in Max Weber’s On the Methodology of the Social Sciences.
To begin, note that Weber points out that the notion of an ideal type is not a fanciful extra, some ad hoc plaything, but is an absolute necessity for any historian who is making comparisons of different cultural groups:
If the historian (in the widest sense of the word) rejects an attempt to construct such ideal types as a “theoretical construction,” i.e., as useless or dispensable for his concrete heuristic purposes, the inevitable consequence is either that he consciously or unconsciously uses other similar concepts without formulating them verbally and elaborating them logically or that he remains stuck in the realm of the vaguely “felt.” (94)
Imagine we want to make comparisons between a church and a sect. How do we go about defining our terms: what is it (to take an example Weber uses) that makes a church a church and a sect a sect? To answer that question we look at the vast array of groups we classify as churches and sects. And when we do we soon find we are in trouble because there are simply so many different sorts of churches and sects. I know from first hand: when I belonged to the Worldwide Church of God cult I and fellow members frequently noted criticisms of cults and we saw core reasons why our church was not any of the cults listed and critics were making an ignorant mistake to classify us with them. If we pin down the attributes that define one sect as a sect we will almost inevitably encounter another instance that defies some of those determinants. If we want to compare different democratic governments, or specific social classes, or economic systems, or family structures, or religions, we will face the same problem.
Keep in mind that the word “ideal” in ideal type refers to the idea of something, not a “perfect” representation. So let the authority on ideal types speak. All italics are original, bolding and paragraph breaks are mine:
An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified analytical construct (Genankenbild). In its conceptual purity, this mental construct (Gedankenbild) cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality. It is a utopia. Historical research faces the task of determining in each individual case, the extent to which this ideal-construct approximates to or diverges from reality, to what extent for example, the economic structure of a certain city is to be classified as a “city-economy.”
When carefully applied, those concepts are particularly useful in research and exposition. In very much the same way one can work the “idea” of “handicraft” into a utopia by arranging certain traits, actually found in an unclear, confused state in the industrial enterprises of the most diverse epochs and countries, into a consistent ideal-construct by an accentuation of their essential tendencies. This ideal-type is then related to the idea (Gedankenausdruck) which one finds expressed there.
One can further delineate a society in which all branches of economic and even intellectual activity are governed by maxims which appear to be applications of the same principle which characterizes the ideal-typical “handicraft” system. Furthermore, one can juxtapose alongside the ideal typical “handicraft” system the antithesis of a correspondingly ideal-typical capitalistic productive system, which has been abstracted out of certain features of modern large scale industry. On the basis of this, one can delineate the utopia of a “capitalistic” culture, i.e., one in which the governing principle is the investment of private capital. This procedure would accentuate certain individual concretely diverse traits of modern material and intellectual culture in its unique aspects into an ideal construct which from our point of view would be completely self-consistent. This would then be the delineation of an “idea” of capitalistic culture.
We must disregard for the moment whether and how this procedure could be carried out. It is possible, or rather, it must be accepted as certain that numerous, indeed a very great many, utopias of this sort can be worked out, of which none is like another, and none of which can be observed in empirical reality as an actually existing economic system, but each of which however claims that it is a representation of the “idea” of capitalistic culture. Each of these can claim to be a representation of the “idea” of capitalistic culture to the extent that it has really taken certain traits, meaningful in their essential features, from the empirical reality of our culture and brought them together into a unified ideal-construct. For those phenomena which interest us as cultural phenomena are interesting to us with respect to very different kinds of evaluative ideas to which we relate them. Inasmuch as the “points of view” from which they can become significant for us are very diverse, the most varied criteria can be applied to the selection of the traits which are to enter into the construction of an ideal-typical view of a particular culture.
(Unable to find source)
. . . .
Whoever accepts the proposition that the knowledge of historical reality can or should be a “presuppositionless” copy of “objective” facts, will deny the value of the ideal-type. . . . . [A]re concepts such as “individualism,” “imperialism,” “feudalism,” “mercantilism,” “conventional,” etc., and innumerable concepts of like character by means of which we seek analytically and empathically to understand reality constructed substantively by the “presuppositionless” description of some concrete phenomenon or through the abstract synthesis of those traits which are common to numerous concrete phenomena?
. . . .
A simple “descriptive analysis” of these concepts into their components either does not exist or else exists only illusorily, for the question arises as to which of these components should be regarded as essential. When a genetic definition of the content of the concept is sought, there remains only the ideal-type in the sense explained above. It is a conceptual construct (Gedankenbild) which is neither historical reality nor even the “true” reality. . . . It has the significance of a purely ideal limiting concept with which the real situation or action is compared and surveyed for the explication of certain of its significant components. Such concepts are constructs in terms of which we formulate relationships by the application of the category of objective possibility. By means of this category, the adequacy of our imagination, oriented and disciplined by reality, is judged.
In this function especially, the ideal-type is an attempt to analyze historically unique configurations or their individual components by means of genetic concepts. Let us take for instance the concepts “church” and “sect.” They may be broken down purely classificatorily into complexes of characteristics whereby not only the distinction between them but also the content of the concept must constantly remain fluid. If however I wish to formulate the concept of “sect” genetically, e.g., with reference to certain important cultural significances which the “sectarian spirit” has had for modern culture, certain characteristics of both become essential because they stand in an adequate causal relationship to those influences. However, the concepts thereupon become ideal-typical in the sense that they appear in full conceptual integrity either not at all or only in individual instances. Here as elsewhere every concept which is not purely classificatory diverges from reality. But the discursive nature of our knowledge, i.e., the fact that we comprehend reality only through a chain of intellectual modifications postulates such a conceptual shorthand. Our imagination can often dispense with explicit conceptual formulations as a means of investigation. But as regards exposition, to the extent that it wishes to be unambiguous, the use of precise formulations in the sphere of cultural analysis is in many cases absolutely necessary. . . . If the historian (in the widest sense of the word) rejects an attempt to construct such ideal types as a “theoretical construction,” i.e., as useless or dispensable for his concrete heuristic purposes, the inevitable consequence is either that he consciously or unconsciously uses other similar concepts without formulating them verbally and elaborating them logically or that he remains stuck in the realm of the vaguely “felt.”
(90-94)
Weber does not address dying and rising gods but he does use the amorphous concept of “Christianity” as an illustration of the messiness of reality against the type:
* Apply that highlighted point to the ideal type of dying and rising gods on the one hand and the specific instances of different gods, means of rising, form of dying, etc. on the other.
Thus the causal relationship between the historically determinable idea which governs the conduct of men and those components of historical reality from which their corresponding ideal-type may be abstracted, can naturally take on a considerable number of different forms. The main point to be observed is that in principle they are both fundamentally different things.* There is still another aspect: those “ideas” which govern the behavior of the population of a certain epoch i.e., which are concretely influential in determining their conduct, can, if a somewhat complicated construct is involved, be formulated precisely only in the form of an ideal type, since empirically it exists in the minds of an indefinite and constantly changing mass of individuals and assumes in their minds the most multifarious nuances of form and content, clarity and meaning. Those elements of the spiritual life of the individuals living in a certain epoch of the Middle Ages, for example, which we may designate as the “Christianity” of those individuals, would, if they could be completely portrayed, naturally constitute a chaos of infinitely differentiated and highly contradictory complexes of ideas and feelings. This is true despite the fact that the medieval church was certainly able to bring about a unity of belief and conduct to a particularly high degree. If we raise the question as to what in this chaos was the “Christianity” of the Middle Ages (which we must nonetheless use as a stable concept) and wherein lay those “Christian” elements which we find in the institutions of the Middle Ages, we see that here too in every individual case, we are applying a purely analytical construct created by ourselves. It is a combination of articles of faith, norms from church law and custom, maxims of conduct, and countless concrete interrelationships which we have fused into an “idea.” It is a synthesis which we could not succeed in attaining with consistency without the application of ideal-type concepts.
Historians speak of the power of the new teachings of Calvin or the driving forces identified by Marx even though we know any individual may well have entirely idiosyncratic psychological motivations for behaviour. To the historian that does not invalidate the function of the ideal type in historical analysis:
The relationship between the logical structure of the conceptual system in which we present such “ideas” and what is immediately given in empirical reality naturally varies considerably. It is relatively simple in cases in which one or a few easily formulated theoretical main principles as for instance Calvin’s doctrine of predestination or clearly definable ethical postulates govern human conduct and produce historical effects, so that we can analyze the “idea” into a hierarchy of ideas which can be logically derived from those theses. It is of course easily overlooked that however important the significance even of the purely logically persuasive force of ideas — Marxism is an outstanding example of this type of force — nonetheless empirical-historical events occurring in men’s minds must be understood as primarily psychologically and not logically conditioned. The ideal-typical character of such syntheses of historically effective ideas is revealed still more clearly when those fundamental main principles and postulates no longer survive in the minds of those individuals who arc still dominated by ideas which were logically or associatively derived from them because the “idea” which was historically and originally fundamental has either died out or has in general achieved wide diffusion only for its broadest implications. The basic fact that the synthesis is an “idea” which we have created emerges even more markedly when those fundamental main principles have either only very imperfectly or not at all been raised to the level of explicit consciousness or at least have not taken the form of explicitly elaborated complexes of ideas. When we adopt this procedure, as it very often happens and must happen, we are concerned in these ideas, e.g., the “liberalism” of a certain period or “Methodism” or some intellectually unelaborated variety of “socialism,” with a pure ideal type of much the same character as the synthetic “principles” of economic epochs in which we had our point of departure. The more inclusive the relationships to be presented, and the more many-sided their cultural significance has been, the more their comprehensive systematic exposition in a conceptual system approximates the character of an ideal type, and the less is it possible to operate with one such concept. In such situations the frequently repeated attempts to discover ever new aspects of significance by the construction of new ideal-typical concepts is all the more natural and unavoidable. All expositions for example of the “essence” of Christianity are ideal types enjoying only a necessarily very relative and problematic validity when they are intended to be regarded as the historical portrayal of empirically existing facts. On the other hand, such presentations are of great value for research and of high systematic value for expository purposes when they are used as conceptual instruments for comparison with and the measurement of reality. They are indispensable for this purpose.
(96-97)
(Unable to find source)
Avoid value judgments, ideological prejudices….
An “ideal type” in our sense, to repeat once more, has no connection at all with value-judgments, and it has nothing to do with any type of perfection other than a purely logical one. There are ideal types of brothels as well as of religions; there are also ideal types of those kinds of brothels which are technically “expedient” from the point of view of police ethics as well as those of which the exact opposite is the case.
(98-99)
Take the concept of the state:
It is necessary for us to forego here a detailed discussion of the case which is by far the most complicated and most interesting, namely, the problem of the logical structure of the concept of the state. The following however should be noted: when we inquire as to what corresponds to the idea of the “state” in empirical reality, we find an infinity of diffuse and discrete human actions, both active and passive, factually and legally regulated relationships, partly unique and partly recurrent in character, all bound together by an idea, namely, the belief in the actual or normative validity of rules and of the authority-relationships of some human beings towards others. This belief is in par consciously, in part dimly felt, and in part passively accepted by persons who, should they think about the “idea” in a really clearly defined manner, would not first need a “general theory of the state” which aims to articulate the idea. The scientific conception of the state, however it is formulated, is naturally always a synthesis which we construct for certain heuristic purposes. But on the other hand, it is also abstracted from the unclear syntheses which are found in the minds of human beings.
(99)
Don’t confuse the analytical tool with the data:
We have purposely considered the ideal type essentially — if not exclusively — as a mental construct for the scrutiny and systematic characterization of individual concrete patterns which are significant in their uniqueness, such as Christianity, capitalism, etc. We did this in order to avoid the common notion that in the sphere of cultural phenomena, the abstract type is identical with the abstract kind (Gattungsmässigen). This is not the case.
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17 thoughts on “On (Dying and Rising Gods and) IDEAL TYPES”
“…we see that here too in every individual case, we are applying a purely analytical construct created by ourselves. It is a combination of articles of faith, norms from church law and custom, maxims of conduct, and countless concrete interrelationships which we have fused into an ‘idea.’ It is a synthesis which we could not succeed in attaining with consistency without the application of ideal-type concepts….”
Which is why unless this is fully ackowledged, to the point of begrudging gratitude for the powerful natural instincts behind the christian moral imagination, unbelievers will never honestly grasp the ŕeasons WHY Jesus became an historical figure WITHIN the collective mythic mind of second century believers.
Actually, the best ‘feel’ one can acquire for the psychological and social attitude, disposition, ‘Weltangschuung” of the first historicist christians —their resentment, their one-upsmanship, judgementalness and antisemitism—is to observe carefully the Jehovah’s Witnesses!
“Few Mediterranean gods actually die”? All the gods of the ancient world were dead, yet mystically “alive.” Their spirits were present on the battlefield and in their temples. All the gods had lived on earth at one time. They were either born miraculously, or died miraculously, or were killed by other gods, or died in some non-human way. They are dead, but immortal.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m also not a fan of these “ideal types” and I also don’t care for comparisons between Jesus and pagan gods. I don’t think that Jesus worship has much of anything to do with pagan religion, hence my original publican, “Jesus – A Very Jewish Myth”.
Nevertheless, I do think knowing about and understanding these dying and rising gods is important, if only to understand what Romans found believable and worthy of worship. Because the origins of Christianity is a two fold process – first the origin of Jewish Jesus worship, and second the adoption of Jesus worship by Romans.
I don’t think that these “pagan” dying/rising gods are relevant to the first part, but they are very relevant to understanding the second part. I also think that over the years far too much focus has been put on parallels between Jesus and pagan gods, and feel that this is mostly a distraction and largely serves to undermine the case against historicity.
I also don’t care for vague or qualitative analysis, which I feel all this talk of “types” amounts to, and much prefer hard data.
The “Dying and Rising Gods” thing is a later novel development of “Christian (brothers of the lord)” origin.
Precursors were Philo and the Dead Sea sects.
Prior to the pending “end of days”, the Dead Sea sects already saw themselves as a replacement of the temple in Jerusalem. Thus if the “end of days temple” was the physical embodiment of the sect itself, instead of the actual temple building, the difference between the “two temples” might very well have entailed nothing more than an upgrade in the degree of its holiness and perfection.”
A likely guide for obtaining holiness and perfection is the “Psalms of Solomon” which creates a division between the faithful and the unfaithful: sinners are accused of forgetting God (4:21; 14:7), being arrogant, verbose and ostentatious (4:2), angering and provoking God (4:21), committing sin in secret (4:5), living in hypocrisy (4:3, 6, 12), putting on a charade to impress and defraud others (4:7–8, 19–20, 22), breaking the Torah (4:1, 12), being deliberately deceitful and dishonest (4:4, 8–11; 12:1–6; 17:15), condoning and supporting prostitution (4:5), ogling women (4:4), being more lawless and impure than the gentiles (2:12; 4:3; 8:13; 14:6; 15:8), refusing to learn from God’s chastisement (3:9–12) and passing cruel verdicts and harsh sentences (4:1–3).
• Perhaps of interest to r.g.price:
Byrne, Brendan (2014). “The Qumran Melchizedek Scroll and the Gospel of Mark: Coherence and contrast in soteriology”. Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies. 27 (2): 123–148. doi:10.1177/1030570X14547563.
. . . .
A simple “descriptive analysis” of these concepts into their components either does not exist or else exists only illusorily, for the question arises as to which of these components should be regarded as essential. ….
This scenario of finding the ideal type, in Christianity, only works if people are made to believe that there can be a special one who defies the laws of nature. When “connoisseurs”, lol, decide on who the prospective God will be, they take a specimen from the medium of Earth, which already follows a secure, repetitive pattern in nature, and they give to it a second-hand immortality. This is wrong to begin with. Everything is already immortal, everything “reincarnates”.
I don’t know if anybody has brought this up, but Christianity’s God, Jesus, who dies and comes back to life because he is supposedly immortal, unlike the rest of us, is a thinly veiled teaching that essentially mimics reincarnation. Everything in nature is born, dies and is reborn. Immortality or reincarnation is discussed in the New Testament. Jesus says to his audience that if they recognized John, Elijah is he who was for to come (John). Reincarnation is the one soul, many bodies concept. It is based on nature, in that all of nature reincarnates. Two come together to form one. A seed from the father and mother is planted in prepared soil, grows, matures, and dies. But before dying, it throws out its seed, returns from it’s own seed and is reborn. In Christianity, though, God’s son is immaculately conceived, which again defies laws of nature. So anybody with a thinking brain should see how preposterous the idea is of a male God in heaven impregnating a woman on earth. Not to mention that Mary had to be told by Gabriel or she wouldn’t have known (until she started to swell), so she was not a willing participant, and so would that be considered rape? But all that aside…
The Tibetan religion, which predates Christianity, has a three-day ascension ceremony. The soul that left behind the body is guided by skilled priests to the celestial plane so that it does not attach to a family member or friend, to make them sick. During that time, the people are cautioned not to speak that person’s name, which would pull the soul back to Earth. The soul’s transition is fraught with dangers of being attracted by it’s former earthly desires. In the Tibetan religion, a human soul can become a kind of “demon” in the intermediary planes between Earth and Heaven. The Jewish have a description for “demon”, which is an ‘unspecified manifestation of light’. The dead take many forms. If a soul attaches and does not ascend, it must be exorcised.
The Christian religion teaches a twist, in that Jesus does not immediately ascend. The crucified Savior, Jesus, who is God, dies and goes to the underworld where he engages with trapped souls and brings them out with him, and then he ascends. Christianity borrowed the idea from Egyptian religion. There is the story about Jesus and Mary in the garden outside the tomb; the disguised Jesus says to Mary, “Don’t touch me, I have not yet ascended.”
As for Jewish notions of dying and rising salvation figures see:
The Offering of Isaac … Death and Resurrection — a series of posts discussing a Jewish belief that Abraham did slay Isaac but that God raised him back to life again straightaway, with Isaac’s blood having the power to atone for Israel’s sins. — and how this story influenced the story of Jesus: https://vridar.org/tag/levenson-the-death-and-resurrection-of-the-beloved-son/
— posts are in reverse chronological order so start at bottom of page.
Neil, is there any possible association to the Yom Kippur Temple sacrifice as well, per your article “Jesus supplants Isaac — the contribution of Paul”. viz. “Paul identifies Christ with the Passover lamb” ?
Levenson’s only reference to Leviticus 16 (the Atonement sacrifice) is on page 189:
If the martyrs’ deaths had benefited only themselves, the full measure of self-sacrifice that is its distinguishing characteristic would, our text seems to suggest, be undermined. For 4 Macc 17:20-22 carries the interpretation of their deaths beyond the exploration of the consequence for the martyrs themselves. It was, these verses tell us, death on behalf of the rest of Israel, whom it benefited by eliciting God’s compassion and ultimately his rescue of the downtrodden nation. The language in which this enormous benefit is described is unabashedly cultic. The term for “propitiation” (hilasterion) in v 22, for example, is the word that the Septuagint uses for the cover of the Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew, kapporet), on which the high priest sprinkles the blood of the bull as a sin offering (Lev 16:14). It is worthy of note that it is also the term that Paul was to use when he wrote that “God set [Jesus] forth as an expiation, through faith, by his blood” (Rom 3:25).
Good stuff. Richard Carrier makes much the same point but I appreciate your use of different material, Weber, to do so. Contrast those rebutted, who make no original argument in their whinging and always seem to be addressing some straw-man rather than reading the authors they whinge about. Par for the course really: they do not seem to read the texts their “discipline” is allegedly based on studying either!
“…we see that here too in every individual case, we are applying a purely analytical construct created by ourselves. It is a combination of articles of faith, norms from church law and custom, maxims of conduct, and countless concrete interrelationships which we have fused into an ‘idea.’ It is a synthesis which we could not succeed in attaining with consistency without the application of ideal-type concepts….”
Which is why unless this is fully ackowledged, to the point of begrudging gratitude for the powerful natural instincts behind the christian moral imagination, unbelievers will never honestly grasp the ŕeasons WHY Jesus became an historical figure WITHIN the collective mythic mind of second century believers.
Actually, the best ‘feel’ one can acquire for the psychological and social attitude, disposition, ‘Weltangschuung” of the first historicist christians —their resentment, their one-upsmanship, judgementalness and antisemitism—is to observe carefully the Jehovah’s Witnesses!
“Few Mediterranean gods actually die”? All the gods of the ancient world were dead, yet mystically “alive.” Their spirits were present on the battlefield and in their temples. All the gods had lived on earth at one time. They were either born miraculously, or died miraculously, or were killed by other gods, or died in some non-human way. They are dead, but immortal.
thanks Neil. Ball [ I mean ground] breaking work.
OP cite: Litwa, M. David (2019). How the Gospels Became History: Jesus and Mediterranean Myths. Yale University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-300-24263-8.
Thanks for this. I don’t think I would have run across it otherwise.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m also not a fan of these “ideal types” and I also don’t care for comparisons between Jesus and pagan gods. I don’t think that Jesus worship has much of anything to do with pagan religion, hence my original publican, “Jesus – A Very Jewish Myth”.
Nevertheless, I do think knowing about and understanding these dying and rising gods is important, if only to understand what Romans found believable and worthy of worship. Because the origins of Christianity is a two fold process – first the origin of Jewish Jesus worship, and second the adoption of Jesus worship by Romans.
I don’t think that these “pagan” dying/rising gods are relevant to the first part, but they are very relevant to understanding the second part. I also think that over the years far too much focus has been put on parallels between Jesus and pagan gods, and feel that this is mostly a distraction and largely serves to undermine the case against historicity.
I also don’t care for vague or qualitative analysis, which I feel all this talk of “types” amounts to, and much prefer hard data.
“Hansen @time 1:47:52”. YouTube —notes how unimportant and tangential the “Dying and Rising Gods” thing is to the argument of Carrier and R.M. Price.
It does seem relevant in that jews certainly would have been introduced to these other rising and dying God ideas.
The “Dying and Rising Gods” thing is a later novel development of “Christian (brothers of the lord)” origin.
Precursors were Philo and the Dead Sea sects.
Prior to the pending “end of days”, the Dead Sea sects already saw themselves as a replacement of the temple in Jerusalem. Thus if the “end of days temple” was the physical embodiment of the sect itself, instead of the actual temple building, the difference between the “two temples” might very well have entailed nothing more than an upgrade in the degree of its holiness and perfection.”
A likely guide for obtaining holiness and perfection is the “Psalms of Solomon” which creates a division between the faithful and the unfaithful: sinners are accused of forgetting God (4:21; 14:7), being arrogant, verbose and ostentatious (4:2), angering and provoking God (4:21), committing sin in secret (4:5), living in hypocrisy (4:3, 6, 12), putting on a charade to impress and defraud others (4:7–8, 19–20, 22), breaking the Torah (4:1, 12), being deliberately deceitful and dishonest (4:4, 8–11; 12:1–6; 17:15), condoning and supporting prostitution (4:5), ogling women (4:4), being more lawless and impure than the gentiles (2:12; 4:3; 8:13; 14:6; 15:8), refusing to learn from God’s chastisement (3:9–12) and passing cruel verdicts and harsh sentences (4:1–3).
• Perhaps of interest to r.g.price:
Byrne, Brendan (2014). “The Qumran Melchizedek Scroll and the Gospel of Mark: Coherence and contrast in soteriology”. Pacifica: Australasian Theological Studies. 27 (2): 123–148. doi:10.1177/1030570X14547563.
. . . .
A simple “descriptive analysis” of these concepts into their components either does not exist or else exists only illusorily, for the question arises as to which of these components should be regarded as essential. ….
This scenario of finding the ideal type, in Christianity, only works if people are made to believe that there can be a special one who defies the laws of nature. When “connoisseurs”, lol, decide on who the prospective God will be, they take a specimen from the medium of Earth, which already follows a secure, repetitive pattern in nature, and they give to it a second-hand immortality. This is wrong to begin with. Everything is already immortal, everything “reincarnates”.
I don’t know if anybody has brought this up, but Christianity’s God, Jesus, who dies and comes back to life because he is supposedly immortal, unlike the rest of us, is a thinly veiled teaching that essentially mimics reincarnation. Everything in nature is born, dies and is reborn. Immortality or reincarnation is discussed in the New Testament. Jesus says to his audience that if they recognized John, Elijah is he who was for to come (John). Reincarnation is the one soul, many bodies concept. It is based on nature, in that all of nature reincarnates. Two come together to form one. A seed from the father and mother is planted in prepared soil, grows, matures, and dies. But before dying, it throws out its seed, returns from it’s own seed and is reborn. In Christianity, though, God’s son is immaculately conceived, which again defies laws of nature. So anybody with a thinking brain should see how preposterous the idea is of a male God in heaven impregnating a woman on earth. Not to mention that Mary had to be told by Gabriel or she wouldn’t have known (until she started to swell), so she was not a willing participant, and so would that be considered rape? But all that aside…
The Tibetan religion, which predates Christianity, has a three-day ascension ceremony. The soul that left behind the body is guided by skilled priests to the celestial plane so that it does not attach to a family member or friend, to make them sick. During that time, the people are cautioned not to speak that person’s name, which would pull the soul back to Earth. The soul’s transition is fraught with dangers of being attracted by it’s former earthly desires. In the Tibetan religion, a human soul can become a kind of “demon” in the intermediary planes between Earth and Heaven. The Jewish have a description for “demon”, which is an ‘unspecified manifestation of light’. The dead take many forms. If a soul attaches and does not ascend, it must be exorcised.
The Christian religion teaches a twist, in that Jesus does not immediately ascend. The crucified Savior, Jesus, who is God, dies and goes to the underworld where he engages with trapped souls and brings them out with him, and then he ascends. Christianity borrowed the idea from Egyptian religion. There is the story about Jesus and Mary in the garden outside the tomb; the disguised Jesus says to Mary, “Don’t touch me, I have not yet ascended.”
As for Jewish notions of dying and rising salvation figures see:
The Offering of Isaac … Death and Resurrection — a series of posts discussing a Jewish belief that Abraham did slay Isaac but that God raised him back to life again straightaway, with Isaac’s blood having the power to atone for Israel’s sins. — and how this story influenced the story of Jesus: https://vridar.org/tag/levenson-the-death-and-resurrection-of-the-beloved-son/
— posts are in reverse chronological order so start at bottom of page.
From Israel’s Suffering (Isaiah’s Servant) to Atoning Human/Messianic Sacrifice (Daniel) (https://vridar.org/2014/11/24/from-israels-suffering-isaiahs-servant-to-atoning-humanmessianic-sacrifice-daniel/)
Neil, is there any possible association to the Yom Kippur Temple sacrifice as well, per your article “Jesus supplants Isaac — the contribution of Paul”. viz. “Paul identifies Christ with the Passover lamb” ?
Levenson’s only reference to Leviticus 16 (the Atonement sacrifice) is on page 189:
Good stuff. Richard Carrier makes much the same point but I appreciate your use of different material, Weber, to do so. Contrast those rebutted, who make no original argument in their whinging and always seem to be addressing some straw-man rather than reading the authors they whinge about. Par for the course really: they do not seem to read the texts their “discipline” is allegedly based on studying either!