If I may ask of you erudite chaps here, what would be your reasons for dismissing this scenario:
At a small place of worship somewhere in Judaea in the time of Herod, some chaps start talking about the Scriptures, specifically the prophetic and predicitve parts regarding the Messiah, and hypothesising about what he might be like when he comes. One (perhaps a temporal lobe epileptic - maybe Paul was too?) proposes the idea that he would have great wisdom and would preach a message of love and tolerance, and even goes so far as to conceive a story that he might tell. This becomes a popular pastime for the group, hypothesising the nature and teachings of the character described by the Scriptures. They share this with others, and eventually it forms the basis of a popular movement characterised by men such as John the Baptist, preaching preparation for the character’s arrival. One of these preachers, who may or may not have been part of the original group, is exectuted in Jerusalem at a significant time of year for some dramatic disturbance or other. The crowds in Jerusalem file back to their villages and tell the story of what happened. In the confusion of the Chinese whispers, the meme emerges that the lowly preacher was saying he was the character or, at least, some of the original movement are hypothesising that he was, having never met him.
Thus the “real Jesus” was just some poor schmuck executed by the Romans for repeating stories and teachings he’d heard from someone else. Indeed, over the decades, could the ‘hypothesising movement’ become a ‘biography-based movement’ all on its own, ie. there simply was no single historical personality on which the Gospels are based?
What convinces you that this scenario was not the case, but that there was a single human being (perhaps called Jesus/Joshua) who conceived the parables and teachings himself?
Luke was the Cecil Adams or Snopes of early Christianity. As he makes clear in the dedication that constitutes the first four verses of his gospel, he sifted through the urban legends about Jesus to try to get the straight dope about Him. Part of that appears to have been checking out the reminiscences of those who had known Him. It’s very early tradition that he went to Ephesus and met Mary, allegedly painting her portrait. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on him and his gospel gives a pretty good summary of what extrascriptural tradition has to say about him, with sources. And yeah, he definitely used Mark as a frame story, and the Q collection, whatever it was (long story on this one), as source for many of Jesus’s teachings. Let’s not get into a Apparition of the Virgin inspiring him scenario here, though – what I’m saying is that tradition says that he knew and liked the living woman who outlived her Son, and recorded her reminiscences of His birth and the few places where she comes into His story, along with the other eyewitness accounts he relied on.
That’s why I have a problem with discounting the Virgin Birth story altogether. It’s completely against common sense: “Yeah, sure you never slept with anybody – but you’re pregnant? :rolleyes: C’mon, tell me another one – how big was that fish that got away?” But, while Luke was a well-educated First Century Greek man, with all the misperceptions-from-a-modern-view that entails, I’m pretty clear that he did his utmost to get to the bottom of the plethora of urban legend surrounding the Jesus story, and that his gospel is the closest thing we have to “the Straight Dope on Jesus.” And that means that, annoyingly from a rationalist perspective, I have to give some sort of credence to this bizarre, almost-obviously-mythical bit of Secret Origins story.
I trust you can see where I’m coming from. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say, “C’mon – that’s clearly a borrowing from the Mithras story patched on to give Jesus a suitably inspiring birth story.” But like the Harmodius and Aristogeiton story being, bizarrely, the grounds for the start of the Athenian democracy, or the strong probability that the historical Riothamus did fight battles in Gaul as the legends about Arthur claim that he did, “historical fact” (or the nearest we can come to it) has a bad habit of sounding like the stuff of legend.
There are some serious problems with the traditions regarding Luke.
The author knows Josephus which pushes the date of authorship back to the mid-90’s CE.
The author does not claim to have interviewed witnesses.
The author does not claim to have even known Paul.
If Luke got the VB story from Mary (a tradition that does not appear in Christian literature until at least 50 years after the crucifixion) then why did he invent so many other things in his Nativity? Why did he conflate the census of Qurinius with the reign of Herod? Why didn’t he know that Judea under Herod was a client kingdom, not subject to census or tax? Why did he think that the Romans required people to return to their home towns to register? Why the obvious fiction of the angels and the shepherds?
Why did Luke copy secondary sources such as Mark and Q if he had access to witnesses himself?
There are some serious problems with the “John Mark” traditition as well, not the least of which is the thoroughly Pauline perspective of the book and the villification of Peter which belies the legend of “John Mark” (a name lifted from Acts) being a secretary or confidant of Peter’s. Don’t forget that Peter is not given any redemption in Mark and does not ever see a risen Jesus. Mark’s Peter betrays Jesus and flees and that’s it.
I didn’t really want to get into a whole big debate about this but I’m really only scratching the surface. I’ll just say that all of those traditional authorships for the Canonical gospels have long been abandoned in serious Biblical scholarship and it’s very hard to make a case for any of them.
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If I may ask of you erudite chaps here, what would be your reasons for dismissing this scenario:
At a small place of worship somewhere in Judaea in the time of Herod, some chaps start talking about the Scriptures, specifically the prophetic and predicitve parts regarding the Messiah, and hypothesising about what he might be like when he comes. One (perhaps a temporal lobe epileptic - maybe Paul was too?) proposes the idea that he would have great wisdom and would preach a message of love and tolerance, and even goes so far as to conceive a story that he might tell. This becomes a popular pastime for the group, hypothesising the nature and teachings of the character described by the Scriptures. They share this with others, and eventually it forms the basis of a popular movement characterised by men such as John the Baptist, preaching preparation for the character’s arrival. One of these preachers, who may or may not have been part of the original group, is exectuted in Jerusalem at a significant time of year for some dramatic disturbance or other. The crowds in Jerusalem file back to their villages and tell the story of what happened. In the confusion of the Chinese whispers, the meme emerges that the lowly preacher was saying he was the character or, at least, some of the original movement are hypothesising that he was, having never met him.
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Since we’re telling some lovely stories here…let me explain a little of what I understand of Harpur’s hypothesis.
So like the story above there are a bunch of Jewish guys chatting about contrictory and problematic aspects of the whole Messiah thing. Using the tools of Midrash to retell stories to clarify problematic points various stories evolve using the same guy’s name - oh let’s pick Jesus since that would make sense eh?
These great stories are understood by the Jews creating and discussing them to be fiction but they fall into the hands of gentiles unaware of this. In the hands of the gentiles they assume the information is historical and become inspired. The Christian movement emerges with Paul at forefront and many years later the gospels are written down with the intent of preserving oral traditions.
With no historical basis for much of this - what criteria do you use to determine which story is more compelling?