Category: Biblical Studies

The biggie. Much work needs to be done on the children of this category. These need to be greatly reduced in number.

Should this category include the ancient history of Palestine-Judea, including second temple era and Bar Kochba rebellion and rise of rabbinic culture? If so, should Biblical Studies itself be renamed in some way?

2010-07-21

When Bible authors can read their characters’ minds (Nehemiah case study 2)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, Old Testament
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The Jews who lived near the enemies told Nehemiah 10 times that they would attack us from every direction.

This post continues my earlier notes from David Clines’ discussion of traps biblical historians have often fallen into when reading a biblical text that sounds like an eyewitness, biographical record of historical events — with Nehemiah selected as the case study.

Literary criticism must precede historical presumptions

The lesson for historians to learn, argues Clines, is that literary criticism must precede using the text as a source document for historical information. Only by first ascertaining the nature of the source through literary criticism will we know if and how to read it for other types of information.

When the author is an omniscient narrator

In section 2 of his chapter titled Nehemiah: The Perils of Autobiography, Clines begins

It is a sign of omniscient narrators that they have access to the thoughts and feelings of their characters. The narrators of novels do not need to explain to us how they come to know what people are thinking or what they say to one another in private. Nor do the authors of fictions of any kind. But when authors write as the first-person narrators of their work, we are bound to ask how they come to know what they claim to know. (pp.136-135)

In the Book of Nehemiah there are many times the author writes like an omniscient narrator. He also writes as a first-person narrator, and the effect is to persuade readers that what he says about his character’s feelings and thoughts is true.

Only readers on their guard will be alert to distinguishing between what the author could possibly have known, and what he claims to know. And Clines’ observation is that most biblical commentators and historians have been fooled (“taken in”) by the author’s rhetorical technique and accordingly believe whatever Nehemiah says about Sanballat’s intentions, etc.

Sanballat’s reaction to Nehemiah’s arrival

When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about it, it was very displeasing to them that someone had come to seek the welfare of the sons of Israel. (2.10)

The author does not describe here any observable fact, such as an outwardly hostile reception. Whether or not Sanballat was pleased or not is only something Sanballat could tell us.

But the problem gets murkier.

The author then proceeds to give us the motivation for this particular feeling of Sanballat and Tobiah. This can only be at best speculative.

  • Can we imagine Sanballat using these words, or anything like them?
  • Can Sanballat have been such a racist, or so blind to his own interests as a governor of a Persian province, that the ‘welfare’ of the citizens of a neighbouring province would have been so displeasing to him?
  • Would Sanballat have been thinking that Nehemiah’s work (building the walls of Jerusalem) was “seeking the welfare of the Israelites”?  — or is not this rather the language and thought of Nehemiah?
  • Would not Sanballat have thought of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea as “Judeans” rather than “Israelites”?

The account is clearly entirely the point of view of Nehemiah about his enemy. It is scarcely “a historical report”.

Now Ezra 4:8-16 does make a claim for some evidence of Samarian hostility against Jerusalem. But the letter is not evidence for Sanballat’s motivations.

Clines asks, even if we grant that Nehemiah is correct in his claim that Sanballat was displeased, what conclusions we are entitled to draw about his motives. He answers: none. There may be many possibilities:

  • he might think he has reason to suspect Jewish loyalty to Persia
  • he might resent having a royal appointee with direct access to the king as his neighbour
  • he might be mistaken about Jewish intentions

As Clines concludes:

Narrators may read minds; but real-life persons, and authors, have to make do with guesswork. Nehemiah as narrator is hardly likely to be a reliable witness to the motives of people he regards as his enemies. But modern historians of the period are so good-natured that they prefer to take Nehemiah’s guesses for truth unless there is evidence to the contrary. Is this a historical method?, I ask. (p.138)

Sanballat’s taunting of the Jews Continue reading “When Bible authors can read their characters’ minds (Nehemiah case study 2)”

2010-07-18

What might a Davidic Messiah have meant to early Christians?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Messiahs and messianism, New Testament
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king David from Chludov Psalter
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The metaphor of the messiah . . . is used neither as a direct reference to any contemporary, historical king nor to any known historical expectations before Bar Kochba (c. 135 CE). (Messiah Myth, Thompson, p.291; SJOT, 15.1 2001, p.58.)

Those scholars who repeat that there was popular Jewish anticipation of a Messiah to emerge as a contemporary, historical leader in their own time — any time before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE — do not cite evidence that actually supports this assertion. Thompson likes to remind readers of W. S. Green’s observation that biblical scholars have tended to form their understanding of the concept of the Messiah — and their (unsupported) belief that the term refers to contemporary Israelite kings — by studying texts where the word does not appear.

But at the same time there is no doubt that David was depicted as a once-upon-a-time messianic figure as well as an author of psalms.

So what do we read about the career of David as an anointed (messianic) one? In the Psalms attributed to him he cries out to God as one forsaken and persecuted. (Pss 18, 142). In Psalm 22 he cries out in pious agony, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

David’s career is one of fleeing from persecution. He is the chosen and pious, righteous sufferer. His persecution is a badge of his honour, not shame, in the eyes of all who look to him as a model of piety.

He is betrayed by his closest followers, and ascends the Mount of Olives to pray in his darkest hour.

He prepares for the building of the future temple after his death.

If early Christians ever thought to apply the Davidic motifs to Jesus, they surely did so with remarkable precision. David may have ruled a temporal kingdom, but Jesus demonstrated his power over the invisible rulers of the entire world. Even though ruler over the princes of this world, he was still betrayed, deserted and denied by his closest followers. He ascended the Mount of Olives in prayer at his darkest hour.

And he suffered the injustice that the righteous have always proverbially suffered, even crying out with David, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But as in the Psalms God delivered David from the depths and pits of hell to exalt him in vindication before his enemies, so did God deliver and exalt Jesus. What was the suffering of humiliation in the eyes of his enemies, has always been the badge of honour in the eyes of God and devotees.

And none of this should be surprising. Even in Daniel we read of a prophecy of the Messiah to be killed, “but not for himself”, with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple to follow. Daniel 9:26 Continue reading “What might a Davidic Messiah have meant to early Christians?”

2010-07-16

3 wrong ways (and 1 right way) to translate Biblical Hebrew

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Old Testament
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I nice little book, And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Orginal Meaning, by Dr Joel M. Hoffman, gives us some valuable and interesting insights into the complexities involved with translating from Hebrew to English. He entertainingly discusses some culturally entrenched mistranslations that we have inherited in most of our Bibles, too.

I am sure I am not the only one with an interest in Bible study who has been known to struggle to find original meanings of Hebrew words by piecing together data from a number of lexicons and dictionaries. Hoffman has a discussion highlighting three common methods of understanding Hebrew that don’t work very well. I can understand his advice being fit for amateurs but he seems to be saying that even professional translators have also at times fallen into these traps:

Unfortunately, three common methods of understanding Hebrew are rampant among translators, and none of them works very well. The three methods are internal word structure, etymology, and cognate languages. (p.21)

The news is not all bad, though. Hoffman does discuss a fourth method that really does work. But first he addresses the three bad wolves.

Wrong: Internal word structure

Hoffman illustrates the problem here with English language analogies.

The word “patent” by definition means a “non-obvious art”, with “art” being use in its technical sense to embrace science as well what we think of as art. But the key part of the definition is “nonobvious”.

In fact, Section 103 of Title 35 of the U.S. Code, the part of U.S. law that deals with patents, specifically notes that “non-obvious subject matter” is a “condition for patentability.”

He incidentally refers to one wag who managed to patent the simple stick though describing it in a way to hide its obviousness, and I have seen a patent go through for “a circular transportation facilitation device” (the wheel!) — again clever scientific jargon can be used to make something obvious seem quite novel.

Now since the suffix “-ly” usually turns a word into an adverb, one might expect that patently would mean doing something in a non-obvious way. But of course we know the word means the exact opposite!

Again, the word “host” means someone who welcome guests at parties. But “hostile”, once again, has an opposite meaning. If we tried to use the word “host” to understand “hostile”, or vice versa, we would get a completely wrong answer.

Knowing the meaning of “intern” does  not help us in any way to establish the meaning of “internal”. Continue reading “3 wrong ways (and 1 right way) to translate Biblical Hebrew”

The Dishonesty of a “Scholarly” Review of Robert Price

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by Neil Godfrey

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Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University, and professing Christian, James McGrath, has written in his review of Price’s chapter, “Jesus at the Vanishing Point”, in The Historical Jesus: Five Views, the following:

Crossan rightly highlights that Price’s statement that he will simply skip the matter of the Testimonium Flavianum is “not an acceptable scholarly argument as far as I am concerned”.

It is outright dishonesty to suggest Price “simply skips the matter of the TF”. Price in fact discusses his scholarly views of the TF, and cites a number of scholarly references supporting his view and where readers can explore his arguments in more depth. Price also explains why the evidence for the TF is less conclusive than other evidence he proceeds to discuss.

(I expand on these and other points in my two-part review — Part 1, Part 2 — of McGrath’s so-called review of Price’s chapter. The point of this post is simply to highlight as brief notes the extent to which at least one scholar will go when faced with mythicist arguments. See the fuller reviews for the details.)

McGrath also writes:

For instance, is it possible that early Christians went through the Jewish Scriptures, choosing a story here, a turn of phrase there, and weaved them together to create a fictional Messiah? Certainly – as are all other scenarios. What is never explained is why someone would have done this . . .

This is a double lie. Price nowhere argues that early Christians weaved scriptures to “create” a fictional Messiah. Continue reading “The Dishonesty of a “Scholarly” Review of Robert Price”

2010-07-14

Three Pillars of the Traditional Christ Myth Theory

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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A few posts back I listed 3 reasons scholars have embraced the Christ Myth theory, 6 “sound premises” of the early Christ Myth arguments, and the weaknesses of 6 traditional arguments against the Christ Myth idea (all archived here), as published by Hoffmann in his introduction to Goguel’s book.

So why not complement those posts with Price’s 3 pillars of the traditional Christ Myth theory? These are from his Jesus at the Vanishing Point chapter in The Historical Jesus: Five Views.

Pillar #1 Why no mention of a miracle-working Jesus in secular sources?

Pillar #2 The Epistles, earlier than the Gospels, do not evidence a recent historical Jesus.

Pillar #3 The Jesus as attested in the Epistles shows strong parallels to Middle Eastern religions based on the myths of dying-and-rising gods.

On the latter, it is worth drawing attention to the word “epistles”, and to the fact (as per pillar 2) that these preceded the Gospels. Some critics of the Christ Myth appear to fail to notice these details and launch off into non sequiturs by way of rebuttal.

Price summarizes in broad strokes here the relationship between these myths and Christianity. Population relocations and a kind of urban cosmopolitanism from Hellenistic times and throughout the Roman Empire coincided with a revised function of ancient myths.

The myths now came to symbolize the rebirth of the individual initiate as a personal rite of passage, namely new birth. (p.75)

Price outlines the evidence that these myths definitely did predate Christianity, as affirmed by both archaeology and the testimony of the Churh Father apologists themselves. Price once again addresses the pedantry of the attempts of J.Z. Smith to claim minor differences invalidate any attempt to compare any ancient myths with any of the Christian ones.

One book I have not yet read, but that Price tempts to me to read, is Gilbert Murray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion. The link is to the full text on Project Gutenberg. It is probably also on Googlebooks. Rich — has this one been added to Webulite, yet?

Price invites me to read it with these comments:

I must admit that when I first read of these mythic parallels in Gilbert Murray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion, it hit me like a ton of bricks. No assurances I received from any Christian scholar I read ever sounded like anything other than specious special pleading to me, and believe me I was disappointed. This was before I had ever read of the principle of analogy, but when I did learn about that axiom, I was able to give a name to what was so powerful in Murray’s presentation.

Reviewing McGrath’s review of Robert Price on mythicism (2)

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by Neil Godfrey

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“When early Christians gave the Easter shout, “The Lord is risen!” they were only repeating the ancient acclamation, “Yahweh lives!” (Ps 18:46), and they meant the same thing by it.” (Price)

This continues my previous post in which I began discussing McGrath’s “review” of Price’s arguments for mythicism, although as I pointed out there, “review” must remain in quotation marks because McGrath simply writes a lot without actually addressing Price’s arguments!

In my previous post I remarked on the ignorance of the oft-repeated claim that there is as much evidence for Jesus as for any other ancient historical figure. This, as I said, is complete nonsense and only reveals the ignorance of those making such a claim. I did not elaborate in that post, but I have discussed this more fully in other posts such as Comparing the sources and Comparing the evidence.

Failing to understand Price’s argument

My last post finished with McGrath’s complaint that Price is making something of a “creationist” like argument. Reading McGrath’s accusations an uninformed reader would think that Price is arguing that just as God made the world ex nihilo in all its complexity in one sitting, so someone sat down and created a fictional Messiah and Jesus ex nihilo in one sitting.

Yet when Price does clearly demonstrate that he is making no such argument, as when he writes

Some god or savior was henceforth known as “Jesus”, “Savior,” and Christianity was off and running. The savior would eventually be supplied sayings borrowed from Christian sages, Jewish rabbis and Cynics, and clothed in a biography drawn from the Old Testament. It is futile to object that monotheistic Jews would never have held truck with pagan godlings. We know that they did in the Old Testament, though Ezekiel didn’t like it much. And we know that first century Judaism was not the same as Yavneh-era [post 70] Judaim. There was no normative mainstream Judaism before Yavneh. And, as Margaret Barker has argued, there is every reason to believe that ancient Israelite beliefs, including polytheism, continued to survive despite official interdiction . . . . Barker suggests that the first Jesus worshipers understood Jesus to be the Old Testament Yahweh, the Son of God Most High, or El Elyon, head of the Israelite pantheon from time immemorial. . . .(p.82)

McGrath quaintly represents such an argument by Price as follows:

Price . . . . seems to think that the fact that Judaean religion was not yet monotheistic in Ezekiel’s time means that an affirmed monotheist like Paul would have happily borrowed from myths about Tammuz.

McGrath is clearly intent on oversimplifying mythicist arguments. Shadow boxing is always much easier than getting into the ring with a real opponent.

Ignoring the elephant in the room Continue reading “Reviewing McGrath’s review of Robert Price on mythicism (2)”

2010-07-13

Observations on McGrath’s “Review” of Robert Price on Mythicism

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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History is Myth
Image by LU5H.bunny via Flickr

I place “review” in quotation marks because Associate Professor of Religion of Butler University James McGrath simply avoids addressing Dr Robert Price’s arguments. I used to think McGrath was not very bright, but I have recently come to understand that he is as subtle and smart as a serpent when it comes to those twisting and avoidance manoeuvres whenever confronted with challenges to his most fundamental — and obviously never at any time in his life seriously questioned — assumptions.

I am referring here to Robert Price’s “Jesus at the Vanishing Point”, the first chapter in Beilby’s and Eddy’s The Historical Jesus: Five Views, and McGrath’s “review” of same. (My own earlier comments on Price’s chapter at 5 commandments and at Johnson’s response. A little of what follows assumes some acquaintance with these earlier posts.)

To keep this post within reasonable limits, I address but a few of McGrath’s responses to Price’s chapter.

Before getting into it, I must admit to being surprised by one omission from McGrath’s review. Even though McGrath complains that Price’s chief fault is merely making a case for something that is possible but not probable, and even though McGrath has elsewhere charged mythicists who fall into this “trap” as thinking “just like Creationists”, McGrath strangely fails to publicly accuse Robert Price of being “just like a creationist”. I would not like to think McGrath is somehow being selective in whom he chooses to public insult, or that he allows a person’s academic status to deflect him from making insults he quite liberally casts out to non-academics who make the very same arguments.

I hope to see in future McGrath have the intellectual consistency to publicly accuse Price and Thompson of being like creationists in their mythicist views.

But now on to what McGrath does say in his review:

McGrath argues that the evidence for Jesus is comparable to the evidence for anyone else in ancient times Continue reading “Observations on McGrath’s “Review” of Robert Price on Mythicism”

2010-07-12

Gospels and Genesis as historical documents

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament, Old Testament
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I believe that few “serious scholars” (as they say) see any reason to attribute the first couple of chapters of the Book of Genesis to historical reality. Few actually see any reason to attribute its claims that God fashioned the world in 6 days and created Adam from dust and Eve from his baculum.

But I do observe that many “serious biblical scholars” do attribute historical reality to a New Testament book that claims the heavens split apart and that both God and Satan spoke to a man who was baptized by John in the Jordan River.

Both books reference geographical and human facts on the ground. There really is a sky above, land below and a sea teeming with fish. Human males really do exist, lack a baculum, and generally enjoy the companionship of womenfolk, especially when they serve as dutiful helpmates. There really is a Jordan River, an ancient Jerusalem and Judea, and if we can believe that the received text of Josephus is an honest indicator of what he originally wrote, a John the Baptist.

So why do biblical historians reject the historicity of one yet embrace the historicity of the other?

We don’t want to open ourselves as sceptical inquirers who reject miracles on principle.

(I am amazed at the lengths to which quite a few scholars seem to go to prove they are not somehow biased against the supernatural or the miraculous. They do have very logical arguments — analogy etc — but hell, let’s just cut the crap and say “No way! Miracles are an absurd notion and are not allowed into the discussion!” Anti-supernatural bias? Sure! Why not? I’m also biased against the notion that pixies live under toadstools or that teacups orbit Saturn.)

Okay, so maybe we don’t care about opening ourselves to accusations of such bias. But let’s play the game anyway. Continue reading “Gospels and Genesis as historical documents”

Having interacted with historians who do not agree with me, as advised . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Associate Professor of Religion, James McGrath, helpfully offered me the following advice:

Perhaps your time would be better spent interacting with those historians and philosophers of history who don’t agree with your presuppositions, and seeking to understand why and address those issues, rather than insulting those who have understandably not written a full-fledged monograph in response to your blog-only self-published proclamations on history.

Well I have spent quite a bit of time reading historians who do not agree with me, and I have responded to quite a few of them. James McGrath himself is one of them. I have responded to aspects of his own little volume in which he sets out for the lay reader exactly how biblical historians work. I have demonstrated that his analogies with prosecuting attorneys or detectives are false, and actually make a mockery of how those professions really work.

McGrath also challenged me to read the discussions of historical method by historians such as E.P. Sanders. So I did. And I wrote some detailed responses demonstrating that the methodology was nothing other than another example of “biblical exceptionalism”. I was a little disappointed that James failed to respond to my efforts that I had undertaken at his request, but he did eventually say he simply disagreed with me when I finally pushed him for a comment. Continue reading “Having interacted with historians who do not agree with me, as advised . . .”

2010-07-11

Does McGrath think Hoffmann, Davies, Schweitzer, Thompson, Schwartz, et al are Creationist-like crackpots?

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by Neil Godfrey

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In my two latest posts attempting to epitomize a couple of aspects of R. Joseph Hoffmann’s thoughts as expressed in his introduction to Goguel’s Jesus the Nazarene, I could not help but be struck by Hoffmann’s remark that a reason for the scholarly debate over Jesus mythicism was largely a desperate response designed to salvage the basics of Christianity itself from the direction in which liberal theology was veering. It was one thing for scholars to jettison a miracle working Jesus, but they could not do without the ethical teacher. At least that latter had to be defended at all costs, and so the mythicist debate was left behind in the dust.

Hoffmann recently corrected me (rightly) when I ignorantly misrepresented the reason for his republication of Goguel’s book (I had not read his book at the time), but in doing so he opined that the reason the Jesus mythicist debate is less prominent than it perhaps deserves to be in academia has more “to do with academic appointments (as in security thereof) rather than common sense.”

On both counts, here, — the ideological reason for jettisoning serious continuation of the mythicist debate, and career threatening political correctness — one begins to understand why Jesus historicists who repeatedly shout that the mythicist question was “finally settled and fully rebutted” long ago never seem to accompany their war cries with evidence, citations, publications. Just shouting loud and long (with crude insults and misrepresentations as repeated refrains) that the debate was settled long ago and only looneys persist to ask questions about it seems to be sufficient assurance for some historicists. Continue reading “Does McGrath think Hoffmann, Davies, Schweitzer, Thompson, Schwartz, et al are Creationist-like crackpots?”

Weaknesses of traditional anti-mythicist arguments

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by Neil Godfrey

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jesusthenazareneThis post addresses R. Joseph Hoffmann’s discussion of Maurice Goguel’s 1926 defence of the historicity of Jesus in response to the early mythicist arguments, initially launched by Bruno Bauer in 1939, and developed in particular by Reinach, Drews and Couchoud. Hoffmann divides Goguel’s defence (Jesus the Nazarene: Myth or History?) into the following six sections. I have attempted to epitomize Hoffmann’s responses to each of the core arguments of Goguel for historicity. I have clearly indicated where I have departed from my understanding of Hoffmann’s own words and introduced my own comments.

When I started this post I half expected it to become a response to historicist arguments in general, hence I sometimes speak of “some Jesus historicists” where Hoffmann is specifically addressing Goguel himself.

1. The notices of opponents

Goguel suggests that Christianity was recognized by outsiders at least from the time of Tacitus (55-120) and none of its opponents doubted the existence of Jesus.

Hoffmann responds:

Tacitus, even if his report (Annals 15.44) is authentic, is reporting on the teaching of the cult and not on historical records he is attempting to verify.

None of the pagan critics of Christianity cast doubt on the historicity of Jesus “for the simple reason that after the second century –the first age of Christian apologetics — the story was regarded as a canonical record of the life and teachings of an authentic individual, thus to be refuted on the basis of its content rather than the details of its historical veracity.”

The earliest official report referring to Christianity, the letter of governor Pliny to Emperor Trajan (111 ce), “knows nothing of a historical Jesus, only a cult that worships a certain Christ as a god (quasi deo).

Other critics such as Celsus, Porphyry and Julian found the idea of the historicity of Jesus a point in favour of their attacks on Christianity. They could mock the insignificance (not the nonexistence) of the Christian founder.

The inconspicuousness of Nazareth also lends credence to the myth theory. Was Jesus “the Nsr/Nazorean/Nazarene/Nazaraios” (my own variations of the word mixed with Hoffmann’s here) originally a divine name, as in Joshua the protector or saviour? Compare Zeus Xenios, Hermes Psychopompos, Helios Mithras, Yahweh Sabaoth. The evangelists appear to struggle with placing the name as a geographical locality in their gospels. Opponents were happy to associate Jesus with an insignificant town, but Hoffmann’s point is that the confusion over this epithet is embedded in the earliest debates over whether it was a local or a divine title.

2. The Docetic heresies

The various docetic views held that Jesus was not truly flesh, but a spirit, perhaps only appearing as a flesh and blood human. Some Jesus historicists have argued that when orthodox Christianity combatted these views, they were indeed affirming the historical reality of Jesus.

But this misses the point of what the debate was about. The issue was not whether Jesus had lived in the time of Pilate, but about the “materiality” of Jesus — was he manifest as real flesh and blood or only an apparition.

The existence of such docetic views among a range of Christian groups may well have been vestiges of some “pre-Christian” Jesus myth. But those arguing for the historicity of Jesus have focussed only on the orthodox response to docetic views, without really addressing the full complexity of its implications.

Is is not a myth the church was refuting in attacking Docetism; it was the belief that Jesus was of a different order of reality than the dichotomous reality it attributed to him as both god and man. Church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian will accuse the Gnostics of believing in a phantasm, an apparition, a ghost, a spirit, in order to malign their opponents’ denial of the physical Jesus, but at no point do they accuse their enemies of creating a deception or myth. (pp. 26-27)

3. Paul and the Gospel

Opponents of the mythical Jesus idea have claimed mythicists make far too much of Paul’s silence on the details of the earthly career of Jesus. Continue reading “Weaknesses of traditional anti-mythicist arguments”

2010-07-10

6 sound basic premises of early Jesus Mythicism — & the end of scholarly mythicism

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by Neil Godfrey

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Mithras slaying bull (my own pic this time!)

Orthodoxy itself is best defined as the victory of the belief that Jesus had actually lived a full human existence over the belief that he was a mystical being or a man from heaven, greater than the angels (see Hebrews 2.1-18).

And the foundation of this victory was the canonization of the Gospels. Paul’s letters, without the Gospels, could give no case against the docetic and gnostic views of Jesus. As Hoffmann remarks, these letters might even be viewed as sharing those views.

(This post presents an outline of another section of R. Joseph Hoffmann‘s introduction to the newly republished Jesus the Nazarene, Myth or History, by Maurice Goguel.)

Paul’s language of myth

Hoffmann remarks that Paul’s explanation of the way of salvation is described in mythical language. Note in particular Galatians 4.3-6, 9:

So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the elemental spirits of the universe [archontes tou kosmou]. of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, [to be] born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we [too] might receive the adoption of sons. . . .

But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable elemental spirits? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?

So in Paul’s view of history, the human race that had long been damned was suddenly liberated from sin by the advent, death and resurrection of Christ, and this Christ “in significant respects resembled the savior gods of Hellenistic religion — especially Mithras.”

So what does Paul’s savior god and lord look like? Here are the descriptors as delineated by Hoffmann:

  • he had no personal biography (or rather the merest of one: “born of a woman under the law”)
  • “the most important events in his sketchless life were his death and resurrection — or rather revelation as a god.” — see, for example, the early Christian hymn quoted in Philippians 2.5-11:
    • he originated as a god
    • temporarily forsook his divinity
    • was born in the likeness of man
    • was killed
    • was restored to full divinity by his Father-god
  • Compare the same story in the “pro-Gnostic Hymn of the Pearl“

Paul’s claim is . . . that Jesus was a dying and rising savior God, a “redeemer” given to the Jews in the same way that Mithras had been given to the gentiles. (p.19-20)

Comparing the Mithras beliefs Continue reading “6 sound basic premises of early Jesus Mythicism — & the end of scholarly mythicism”

2010-07-09

3 reasons scholars have embraced the Mythical Jesus view

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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R. Joseph Hoffmann has in interesting introduction to his (re)publication of Jesus the Nazarene by Maurice Goguel in which he discusses some aspects of the early history of Jesus mythicism. He notes that the theory that Jesus had never lived at all was first broached in the nineteenth century. He cites three reasons why some scholars held this belief.

The evidence of the earliest Christian literature

Paul’s letters, being the earliest Christian literature, are completely silent about Jesus as an historical figure. For Paul, Jesus is Christ the Lord who died for sins and offered forgiveness and immortality for those who believed in him.

There is little — one almost has to say no — reference in these letters to a Nazarene who taught by the sea of Galilee, healed the sick, and spoke in parables about the end and judgment of the world. There is next to nothing, and certainly nothing on the order of a historical narrative, about a public crucifixion and resurrection, merely a reference to “deliverance,” death and resurrection as events of his life (see Galatians 6.14) which were understood to have bearing on the life of believers within the cult of “church.” (p.15)

Hoffmann then cites the Philippian hymn (2.5-11) that “seems to locate these events in a cosmic dimension that bears closer resemblance to Gnostic belief than to what emerges, in the end, as orthodox Christianity.”

The only datum in Paul’s writings that appears to have any significance for Christians is belief in the bare fact of Jesus overcoming death in order to give believers confidence in their own salvation.

While the whole meaning of Christian “faith” was predicated on the acceptance of a single event located in time (Paul does not specify the time, and seems to have an eschatological view of the days nearing completion: Romans 8.17-20), the earliest form of Christianity we know anything about yields not a historical Jesus, but a resurrection cult in search of a mythic hero. It found this in the divine-man (theios aner) cult of Hellenistic Judaism.

Synthesizing myths and traditions Continue reading “3 reasons scholars have embraced the Mythical Jesus view”

2010-07-08

Why I am Not a “Mythicist”, and why I challenge mainstream methodology

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament, Vridar
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This cartoon has nothing to do with the post, but I like to add a bit of colour, and blue is my favourite colour, and I like mermaids, and I can’t find anything else appropriately mythical.

I suspect [ETA: strongly suspect] Jesus originated as a theological and allegorical creation, that he was “a myth” if you like. I do not know it. I cannot prove it. But I can see some very good arguments in favour of this proposition. I can also see some very good reasons to question the standard methodology of mainstream scholars based on the assumption that Jesus was a historical figure. And the same questions I raise about this methodology also open up questions about the standard mainstream arguments for the historicity of Jesus.

But I have never thought of myself as “a mythicist” because that sounds to me like I am entrenching myself in a position that I will defend at all costs.

I have posted this sort of remark before, but given that James McGrath and others continually label me “a mythicist”, I will repeat it once more. I do not see the point of “defending” a “mythical Jesus” position.

That is not what historical inquiry is about.

Would any scholar bother to spend a career arguing for or against a historical or mythical Socrates? Some mainstream scholars really do question the historical existence of Socrates, but no-one calls them “Socrates mythicists”. It is a ludicrous proposition when we see it in the context of nonbiblical studies. The existence of Socrates has been occasionally raised as a minor side-point that is really quite irrelevant to the real historical questions about the origins and nature of early Greek philosophy.

My interest is, to repeat, in exploring the origins and nature of early Christianity.

I think that this historical inquiry has been held captive by mainstream NT historical methods that begin with the presumption that the narrative of Gospels-Acts is in some sense related to real events. What I have questioned is the rationale for this assumption. Continue reading “Why I am Not a “Mythicist”, and why I challenge mainstream methodology”