Finished Carrier’s book--On The Historicity of Jesus. Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt.
As no other book has, this one addresses the question of Jesus as a myth or a real man very clearly. Basically, the book is in two parts. The first part he lays the groundwork and states the question--Jesus real or myth. He then lists 48 elements that need to be considered for both sides of the question. He then spends the last half evaluating those elements and assigning probabilities for each side. The book is highly footnoted and one could spend a lifetime reading all of his listed source material. I am willing to admit that I approach this question with a large bias--and he addresses how one needs to deal with that when reading any historical records or documents. Even so, I think he confessed his, addressed them and came to a very reasonable and thought out conclusion.
I will briefly summarize his conclusion:
There is only about a 0% to 33% chance Jesus existed. Furthermore, this means the probability that mysticism is true is about 67% to 100%--and more likely to be near the upper end of that projection.
What does this mean for Jesus studies? It means all later tales of a historical Jesus and his family need to be seen as legendary, mythical and propagandistic inventions, and studied for their literary and rhetorical purpose and not for their specific historical content. But more importantly, it means we need to re-examine the earliest evidence from a completely different perspective. That means the authentic letters of Paul, but also other Epistles close to him in thought, such as Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews, 1 Peter and 1 Clement, and perhaps other works such as the Didache. We need to to reconsider all the evidence now from a new perspective. We need to see it in the light of what the present study has shown to be the most likely account of the origin and early development of the Christian religion, which now fits the theory of minimal mysticism.
In summary: Before the 20’s, the Jesus that Christians would later worship was known by some Jews as a celestial being, God’s agent of creation. Sometime between the 20’s and 40’s a small fringe sect of Jews, probably at the time led by a man named Cephas, came to believe that his Jesus figure had undergone a salvific incarnation, death and resurrection in outer space, thus negating the cultic role of the Jerusalem temple, freeing them from it politically, spirituality, and physically, which was a very convenient thing to conceive at the time. They also came to believe that through his act their salvation had been secured through the defeat of the demonic world order, so long as they shared in that sacrifice metaphysically through baptism and ritual communion, a concept already adopted by many similar cults of that time.
This sect like many others of the same period, had been looking for hidden messages from God in the OT in order to learn how and when God would solve their present woes. And also like many Jews, this sect was under syncretistic influences from diverse Jewish sects and the most popular and culturally diffused aspects of the Greco-Roman religion and philosophy. Its members were also highly prone to having (or claiming to) visions, and with the combination of such visions and their searching for creative reinterpretations of scripture that spoke to their present troubles they convinced themselves that this celestial self-sacrifice occurred and was part of God’s plan and had now been ‘revealed’ from heaven to a select few. We cannot know now whether the idea was discovered in scripture first, inspiring visions to corroborate or elaborate it, or whether it was creatively arrived at in visions first, inspiring the apostles to then find corroboration and elaboration in scripture. It could have been both, each a catalyst for the other.
This cult began as a Torah-observant Jewish sect that abandoned their reliance on Levitical temple cult, and was likely preaching the imminent end of the world, in accordance with the Scripture, signs and revelations of the celestial Jesus. In the 30’s or 40’s an active enemy of the cult, named Paul, had his own revelation from this Jesus and became an apostle spreading rather than attacking the faith. Over the next twenty years, he converts many, preaches widely, and writes a body of letters. During this time, the original sect driven by Cephas fragmented. There are many church schisms, and many alternative versions of the original gospel arise, including the version inaugurated by Paul, which abandoned Torah observance and more avidly sought the conversion of pagans, seeking to unify Jew and Gentile in a common community.
Between the 30’s and 70’s some Christian congregations gradually mythicize the story of their celestial Jesus Lord, just as other mystery cults had done for their gods, eventually representing him rhetorically and symbolically in overtly historical narratives, during which time much of the more esoteric truth of the matter is ir reserved in secret for the upper levels of initiation. Right in the middle of this process the Jewish War of 66-70 destroyed the original church in Jerusalem, leaving us with no evidence that any of the original apostles lived beyond it. Before that, persecutions from Jewish authorities and famines throughout the empire further exacerbated the effect, which was to leave a thirty year dark age in the history of the church, a whole generation in which we have no idea what happened or who was in charge. In fact this ecclesiastical dark age probably spans 50 years, if 1 clement was written in the 60’s and not the 90’s, as then we have no record of anything going on until either Ignatius or Papias, both of whom could have written well later than the 110’s.
It’s during this dark age that the canonical Gospels most likely came to be written, by persons unknown, and at least one Christian sect started to believe the myths they contain were real, and this began to believe that Jesus as a real person, and then preached and embellished this view. Because having a historical founder represented in controlled documents was a significant advantage. This ‘historicizing’ sect gradually gained political and social superiority, declare itself ‘orthodox’ while condemning all others as ‘heretics’, and preserved only texts that agreed with its view and forged and altered countless texts in support. As a result, almost all evidence of the original Christian sects and what they believed has been lost or doctored out of the record; even evidence of what happened during the latter half of the first century to transition from Paul’s Christianity to second-century ‘orthodoxy’ is completely lost and now almost wholly inaccessible to us.
More to come--the topics covered in this book are large, fascinating, thought provoking and head shaking.
QuoteIt’s during this dark age that the canonical Gospels most likely came to be written, by persons unknown, and at least one Christian sect started to believe the myths they contain were real, and this began to believe that Jesus as a real person, and then preached and embellished this view. Because having a historical founder represented in controlled documents was a significant advantage. This ‘historicizing’ sect gradually gained political and social superiority, declare itself ‘orthodox’ while condemning all others as ‘heretics’, and preserved only texts that agreed with its view and forged and altered countless texts in support. As a result, almost all evidence of the original Christian sects and what they believed has been lost or doctored out of the record; even evidence of what happened during the latter half of the first century to transition from Paul’s Christianity to second-century ‘orthodoxy’ is completely lost and now almost wholly inaccessible to us.
Exactly. I appreciate you are doing this, because I wimped out- got caught up in other stuff, and haven't finished the book. Very apt. The highlighted part of the quote above to me is really the key issue- what we have is what we were given, and we will never know what was taken out, thrown away, burned or ignored. And that by itself calls the whole authenticity of Christianity to question.
I've pretty much seen Paul as the founder of Christianity for quite some time now and believe that Jesus is a composite character combining Jewish prophecy with a few real world preachers common to the era.
As there was nothing original to christianity the similarities to Mithra, Horus, Ra and other gods/prophets who predate Christianity is quite telling.
Well now.. We know for certain that all of this is going to be questioned if not downright denied by the vast majority of the pious. It's essentially saying that they just made it up as they went along and destroyed any evidence to the contrary.. If I'm reading correctly..
Quote from: AllPurposeAtheist on December 06, 2014, 02:02:55 PM
Well now.. We know for certain that all of this is going to be questioned if not downright denied by the vast majority of the pious. It's essentially saying that they just made it up as they went along and destroyed any evidence to the contrary.. If I'm reading correctly..
You are reading it correctly. Carrier indicates several times that the 'pious' or those with much vested interest in the religion are not going to want to put any effort into overcoming their bias toward the subject. They will be blinded by that bias--and or, will continue to invent 'evidence', stretch it or simply lie about it. Christianity and falsehoods seem to go hand-in-hand--always have.
Quote from: stromboli on December 06, 2014, 01:01:40 PM
Exactly. I appreciate you are doing this, because I wimped out- got caught up in other stuff, and haven't finished the book. Very apt. The highlighted part of the quote above to me is really the key issue- what we have is what we were given, and we will never know what was taken out, thrown away, burned or ignored. And that by itself calls the whole authenticity of Christianity to question.
I would say that it is my pleasure--but it isn't. Well, not totally, really. I only finished the book as quickly as I did because my computer went into a month long series of 'strokes' or something. If I believed in that crap, I'd say it was/is possessed. I goes into a series of endless loops of repairing windows, stating that windows cannot be fixed, then starts fixing it again..................My local shop had it for 10 days and broke that loop. But it still freezes, turns off in an instant--and then it told me that I needed to authenticate my copy of windows 7--I typed in the product code and was told that that was not it. So, for a couple of days I had a little message telling me that my copy of windows was not authentic. Took it to the shop and was told to call Microsoft. Plugged it in again, and was taken to another authentication screen--followed a little different path and now it is authentic. But I can't play games on it. The volume is down to 8% and when I change it, it goes dead. Weird. I now have a new gaming computer on order, so in the next week I can lay this one to rest. The upshot of all that is that I read Carrier's book. The book is two parts--the first part are the elements (48) and the second part is where he examines the elements and comes to his conclusion. So now I am re-read the elements. They make much more sense now that I have a fuller understanding of the context of those 48 elements. It is really a great book and deserves to be read.
You didn't pray for winblows to fix itself? :pray:
Well there's your problem.. :naughty:
Lol, prayer doesn't work on Windows. Bill Gates is an atheist. :biggrin:
Yeah, the book is dense, and that's no exaggeration. the reason is because he is arguing to historicity-minded historians as much as anything else.
Unless you are into demonic possession, I think you might need a new computer.
Back up whatever you can and overwrite it with Linux and banish winblows..
I was a $1000 donor of the book. My name is the second name in the list of credits. I've seen some Christians pose what seem to be decent counter arguments to at least some of Carrier's arguments. But, I think there are more than enough good arguments in Carrier's favor. I will say that while in some places, he gave good historical reasons for concluding some section of the Bible was mythical. For example, I thought he did a great job in explaining why the Barabas story is mythical. I felt like all too often Carrier said something like "this sounds like myth, so, its almost certainly myth". On one hand, he's probably right in each of those cases, I thought that it just wasn't well argued in many cases.
Quote from: caseagainstfaith on December 06, 2014, 03:11:57 PM
I was a $1000 donor of the book. My name is the second name in the list of credits. I've seen some Christians pose what seem to be decent counter arguments to at least some of Carrier's arguments. But, I think there are more than enough good arguments in Carrier's favor. I will say that while in some places, he gave good historical reasons for concluding some section of the Bible was mythical. For example, I thought he did a great job in explaining why the Barabas story is mythical. I felt like all too often Carrier said something like "this sounds like myth, so, its almost certainly myth". On one hand, he's probably right in each of those cases, I thought that it just wasn't well argued in many cases.
I applaud you on your donation. But I'm not sure I agree with you on how he argues. Many, many times, he admits that he is not the final answer, (and that many issues may never have a final answer), but offers an opinion based on the facts as he sees them--and he issues a challenge each time to those who disagree--show me the error of my ways; but do it with facts and not fanciful conjecture. And he even says several times that he does not really have any horse in this race--he does not care what the answer is, just use good, sound historical research and reasons to demonstrate whatever your side is. In essence, he told those who believe believe Jesus was a man--prove it!
This is an example of what he calls an Element--Element 9:
What in the first century were considered the inspired scriptures of God consisted of a larger network of texts than are now collected in the OT, including texts outside the canon and texts that no longer exist and also variants of texts that do exist (even canonical texts) but which often said different things then than extant versions now do. In other words, anyone trying to construct their picture of the messiah from hidden messages in the 'Bible' would have been using texts and variants not in any current Bible today, and Christianity can be understood only in light of this fact.
Jewish authorities did not establish a canon until the second century CE, so no actual 'Old Testament' existed at the dawn of Christianity, just a sea of scriptures, from which different sects selected their own collections. The earliest Christians clearly held in their sacred collection books no longer in the Bible, including the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Enoch, and others. Codex Sinaiticus, for example, one of the earliest surviving Christian Bibles, includes in its OT 'canon' 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach . These and other texts influenced everything the earliest Christians said or believed about Jesus.
Thus Christians were not relying on the biblical texts we have. They had different versions to work from, as well as books no longer in the bible at all. Which means whenever a Christian text claims there was a scripture that we can't find in the Bible, we should presume they were looking at a textual variant we no longer have, or were citing a book other than any now in the OT.
This brings up a point I remember thinking from when I was a child. Why was God so obscure with his rules and regulations? Why not be plain about it. And why were they only issued in one language? Why didn't the American Indians know about all of this stuff?? Of course the answer is obvious, it was crafted for political reasons; no Christian is going to admit that though.
And there is a whole canon of scripture not included in the bible
http://listverse.com/2012/07/06/10-books-not-included-in-the-new-testament/
http://notinthebible.com/
and those books removed from the original Catholic Bible to become the King James version. The funny thing is that xtians never hook up to the word "version." I remember when the NASB and other modern English versions were produced, how much flack there was in that. I was deeply involved in Christianity at the time, so studying the crap out of it. There is so much gobbledygook in such things as the rapture and other xtian beliefs that you pretty much have to mentally set aside any scholarly aspects of it and just believe.
At this point I don't totally buy into either historicity or mythicism, simply because there is no way to know for sure, due to lack of evidence. But I think Carrier overall does a very good job stating his case.