Please be assured that is very much the case.
For what it’s worth, my own investigation into critical biblical scholarship comports very well with what you have been writing.
If so, I hope it’s rabidly infectious!
I don’t want to wholly hijack the thread, but I must comment on the following:
Perhaps not fiction as we know it today, but there are no adequate grounds for considering their intent – and certainly not their product – to have been anything like some kind of historical reportage, as nearly all Christians do. The Bible is first and foremost a compilation of vital religio-social myth, and, at least in general, the authors and redactors of the Bible knew this perfectly well.
I would suggest Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? for some insight on the production of the Pentateuch mythology, and Mack’s The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy for a preliminary examination of the mythical basis of the New Testament (which would ideally be followed up by reading the works of G. A. Wells and others).
An excerpt from Mack’s book:
The authors of the Bible, while perhaps not writing modern fiction, were certainly not writing anything approaching history. They were myth-makers, inventing and/or embroidering legends of mythical heroes (such as Moses and Jesus) to impart new social ways and religious teachings for largely temporal purposes.
An interesting thesis, but one which I would have to catagoricaly reject without a whole lot more evidence. The very books we are talking about in this thread, Luke and Acts, were written with the express, stated purpose of being a historical account.
**Luke 1:1-4** *Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph'ilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. *
Now, I don’t suggest that the historical account was necessarily accurate, I simply believe that the writer of Luke was not lying when he wrote the first four verses. He was not creating a myth (in his mind), but was, to the best of his knowledge, writing an accurate account of the story of Christ and the church.
Without solid and convincing evidence otherwise, I think the intent of the books of the Bible have to be taken at face value.
It’s not my thesis, but rather one that’s been established and furthered by several exceptional critical biblical scholars for well more than a century.
I can find no persuasive evidence at all for such a claim. In fact, the evidence tells us otherwise…
For example, in your citation of Luke 1:1-4, the anonymous author (whoever he or she was) doesn’t claim at all that he/she was an eyewitness to anything but instead that all (s)he was doing was “writing an orderly account” based on other people’s (hearsay) stories, also implying that those other stories weren’t “orderly” and that a new order would be supplied by the author, as befits one task of a mythmaker – intentional or otherwise.
For more information on “Luke”, see also: Are the Gospels Eyewitness Accounts?
The evidence you request is to be found in the references I’ve already provided above. Here’s an expanded list: Read Mack’s 2001 Christian Myth, Drews’ classic The Christ Myth (Westminster College-Oxford Classics in the Study of Religion), G.A. Wells’ The Jesus Myth, and Doherty’s The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus
In short, the preponderance of the evidence that the Bible – Old Testament and New – is a collection of myth featuring mythical heroes such as Moses and Jesus is much more compelling than that the evidence which suggests that the Bible represents historical reportage, accurate or otherwise.
Without solid and convincing evidence otherwise – which no one yet has been able to produce – the Bible must be understood to be myth, first and foremost.
ambushed,
While I appreciate you directing me to your evidence, do you have anything I can look at without spending over $100 at Amazon.com?
Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a great deal of myth and legend in the Bible, but I do not believe for a minute that the intent of the writers was to create myth.
In my opinion, the writers of the Penateuch believed the stories they wrote and believed it was the true history of the Israelite people. The writers of the gospels believed the stories they told about Jesus were true, and Paul certainly believed that Jesus was born, died, and was resurrected.
I just don’t see how the Bible can be construed as intentional mythmaking.
However, until I read the books you have suggested (real soon now), I really have no way of arguing against the thesis you espouse. It is simply my opinion that the idea is ridiculous on its face.
Roundguy,
Ambushed is advocating a school of historical Jesus scholarship called “mythicism” which takes the position that no historical Jesus ever existed. It is a minority view in the field (and it’s a view which I personally don’t subscribe to) but here is a link to Dougherty’s Jesus Puzzle site which contains a basic presentation of the theory and includes the full text of Dougherty’s novel, The Jesus Puzzle. The book is fiction but is used as a vehicle for arguing the mythicist theory as well as making some general points about the conflict between religion and secularism in contemporary culture. I think it’s a fairly intriguing and entertaining read even though I don’t agree with all its conclusions.
Burton Mack is not quite an all-out mythicist even though he believes the gospels are complete fiction. He believes that there may have been a historical teacher called Yeshu who was simply reinvented and recast as a deity after his death. Mack acknowledges little or nothing in the gospels as historical or authentic, including the teachings ascribed to Jesus, but he stops just short of saying no such person ever existed.
Here is an interesting review of Mack’s work written by Dougherty which gives a good overview of Mack’s theory.
While I’m not arguing for the mythmaking hypothesis, I should point out that you seem to be projecting your own (and all our modern) ideals back onto people of another time.
Back then, there was no empiricism. There was no widespread philosophy of history. Indeed, the very idea of “true” meant something very different. What you would consider a fabrication, people in that era would have considered deep mystical insight. Stories were composed out of illustrative and symbolic content far more often than straight reportage. And it was common, for instance, for students of great people to write AS that now deceased person, speaking for them without clarifying that this is what was being done. In this environment, it’s a lot easier to envision people creating stories to illustrate what they think are the basic truths without thinking that they are fabricating anything. Especially when telephoned hearsay and rumor were the common form of information transport.
Well, it would seem I have some reading to do.
Interesting indeed. He basically tore Mack a new one. I found “Paul and the Pillars” to be an especially noteworthy section.
Perhaps ambushed would like to comment on this review*?
I really have nothing more to add other than, in my opinion, the argument for a mythical Jesus is far more of a stretch than the argument for a historical person.
If you mean that I believe that they knew the difference between a truth and a lie, yes, you are correct.
Hmmm. Are you telling me that the ancient readers of scripture didn’t actually believe there was a flood? That the exodus didn’t really happen? That the conquest of Canaan was just “deep mystical insight”?
How about the readers of Josephus? Did the original audience of Josephus understand that he was just making it up as he went along; that it wasn’t “true” history as Josephus understood it?
I’m going to need a little more information on your point of view, Apos
This amazes me. In one statement, you are saying to take this at it’s face, yet:
you say go into the original linguistic and cultural contexts.
So when we’re talking about something like a contradiction that can be, in the original linguistic and cultural context, shown to probably have a non-contradictory statement, it’s rejected outright, as it doesn’t agree with what you believe, but for something that if you read at face value will say something you don’t agree with, there’s a different set of rules?
What’s that smell? Fish? Why, yes, I do believe it’s a … Red Herring!
How am I applying a different set of rules? In both cases I am applying a prima facia reading of the text in its original lanuage.
The passages from Acts contradict each other. The passages from Corinthians and Timothy when read at face value do not comndemn homosexuality. Those interpretations are based on mistranslations and cultural prejudice. Nothing Paul said can rightly be translated as “homosexual.” That is an interpretation which must be forced into the translation. It doesn’t exist in the Greek.
No, I am telling you that they had no common or agreed upon standard for how to figure out whether something was true, and how much of every element was true. There was almost always no means for anyone to do this beyond reading what other people had written about the subject, (which itself mainly involved making bold claims) and just listening to a whole bunch of people’s opinions.
They had a different concept of “really happen” than we do because there simply didn’t exist the same sort of verification mechanisms or philosophies that we take for granted when we debate what “really happened.”
They really did belive that there had been a flood.
You obviously didn’t read my post very closely. Josephus was one of the limited number of people who did have something of a philosophy of history starting up, and some idea that the discipline needed to be systematic. Even so, Josephus did not operate in the same way as a modern historian. There wasn’t exactly much of a culture of peer review going on, or a whole lot of techniques for separating truth from rumor.
Just a moment please, Diogenes. Your statement’s ambiguity unfortunately adds to the confusion that Doherty himself set loose by giving his novel an all-too-similar name as his far more important, non-fiction book. (And just for the record, his name is spelled “Doherty”.)
There is the novel you refer to, which is titled: The Jesus Puzzle: A Novel About the Greatest Question of Our Time (which I’ve never bothered reading), but FAR more important is his scholarly, compelling, non-fiction work titled: The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? : Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus
It is only the latter work – the non-fictional, scholarly book – that I strongly recommend. The novel is quite inessential to the topic and it shouldn’t be considered when evaluating Doherty’s powerful arguments and scholarly work.
As I understand it – and this conflicts with Doherty’s reading as described in the review you cited – the latter is no longer Mack’s stated position. In his most recent book, The Christian Myth, he emphasizes unambiguously that the New Testament cannot be considered to portray even some misrepresented or misremembered stories of some such teacher! While it is true that he doesn’t explicitly state that Jesus was entirely mythical, I’d thought that was chiefly because he felt that the truth is entirely unknowable and utterly besides the point. However, I must concede that I may well have interpreted Mack’s frequently rather ambiguous words differently than he had intended (and clearly differently than Doherty’s reading). I’ll have to re-read him with Doherty’s comments in mind. But between Mack and Doherty and Wells, et. al., I’ve always found the latter groups’s work and arguments to be far more compelling.
Finally, Mack does make it quite explicit that the New Testament is the product of mythmaking, which is actually my central thesis (rather than the ahistoricity of Jesus).
[ul]Amen [sup]amen[/sup] [sub]amen[/sub]
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I’m sure nearly all of the average readersdid, but did the writers? I seriously doubt that they believed it was an actual historical event.
This is a perfect example to illustrate what I’m talking about. The best modern research and evidence tells us that the Exodus never happened, just like the Flood never happened. So why are these things “reported” in the Bible if they never happened?
What other answer makes any sense but that the first people who wrote these things down were consciously, deliberately creating holy mythology, often borrowing from other cultures’ mythology and adapting it for their own culture’s needs? Myth serves to unite a people by giving them an unique history and an unique self-identity, as well as providing several other important social benefits to a pre-industrial society. The ancients were far from stupid and knew this perfectly well. Therefore, deliberately creating and/or adapting myths and recording them in the various books which later became the Bible makes perfect sense, while the thesis that they were trying to record history – however inaccurately – makes almost no sense at all.
But to understand these points, it is necessary that one distinguish between “fiction” and “myth” – they simply aren’t the same thing. Apos’ explanatory posts are fine explications of the nature of the differences.
Sorry for the confusion. I linked to the novel because Roundguy asked for something he could read online. If the nonfiction book is online I don’t know where to find it. In any case, the novel presents the same theory, just in a different format.
Mack is definitely a mythicist as far as the NT is concerned, he just isn’t quite ready to state categorically that Jesus was a completely ahistorical character (and that is Dougherty’s main criticism).
Personally, I don’t believe that the gospels were intended to be factual biographies but were liturgical and mythological in nature. I do believe, however, that Jesus was a historical figure and that at least some of the sayings attributed to him in the gospels are authentic. I believe that the authentic sayings are basically the parables and the beatitudes and possibly some of the exchanges attributed to him in debates with his critics. I don’t believe he ever claimed to be the Messiah and certainly not God. Those claims are part of the mythmaking that happened after his death.
(I think it goes without saying that I don’t believe in miracles, virgin births, resurrections etc.)