Why is the "Jesus Myth" theory universally disregarded?

[Meatros]

@VegasReno

Mark wrote Peter’s Gospel. For the record. So when you read the Gospel of Mark… you are reading the Gospel of Peter.

You are making a lot of assumptions here. Some scholars do believe that Mark was a disciple of Peter, but this doesn’t mean that Mark relied solely on Peter.

From here:

Nevertheless, even though the author may have been a disciple of Peter at some point, the author of the Gospel of Mark needn’t have limited himself to Peter’s preaching for his material. The NAB introduction says: “Petrine influence should not, however, be exaggerated. The evangelist has put together various oral and possibly written sources–miracle stories, parables, sayings, stories of controversies, and the passion–so as to speak of the crucified Messiah for Mark’s own day.”

John P. Meier provides an example in which the author of Mark shows himself to be dependent on oral tradition. The story of the feeding of the multitude is found twice in Mark and once in John. Meier writes (A Marginal Jew, v. 2, pp. 965-6): “This suggests a long and complicated tradition history reaching back to the early days of the first Christian generation. Prior to Mark’s Gospel there seems to have been two cycles of traditions about Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, each one beginning with one version of the feeding miracle (Mk 6:32-44 and Mk 8:1-10). Before these cycles were created, the two versions of the feeding would have circulated as independent units, the first version attracting to itself the story of Jesus’ walking on the water (a development also witnessed in John 6), while the second version did not receive such an elaboration. Behind all three versions of the miracle story would have stood some primitive form.”

@VegasReno

We know this from Papius, bishop of Heirapolis (A.D. 130), in which Papius records “Mark, having been the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately all that he (Peter) mentioned, whether sayings or doings of Christ, not, however, in order. For he was neither a hearer nor a companion of the Lord; but afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who adapted his teachings as necessity required, not as though he were making a compilation of the sayings of the Lord. So then Mark made no mistake writing down in this way some things as he (Peter) mentioned them; for he paid attention to this one thing, not to omit anything that he had heard, not to include any false statement among."

Actually we get that from Eusebius, who is purporting to quote Papius. I’m not entirely sure how we can have confidence in his opinion of Mark and how it came about. Papius was born somewhere around 70 AD, which is when scholars date Mark to. He is supposed to have written around 100-130 AD, which is far too late to really give any credence to his knowing Mark, really.

Further, as Ehrman loves to point out (in Misquoting Jesus), the early Christians had a habit of altering texts - many of the early Church figures try to dissuade the copyists from adding things to their text. The most famous one that I can think of is the end of the Revelation.

[VinnyJH]

@Meatros

Actually we get that from Eusebius, who is purporting to quote Papius. I’m not entirely sure how we can have confidence in his opinion of Mark and how it came about. Papius was born somewhere around 70 AD, which is when scholars date Mark to. He is supposed to have written around 100-130 AD, which is far too late to really give any credence to his knowing Mark, really.

Eusebius didn’t think that Papias was very bright, apparently because he passed on any fantastic story that he heard. Little of Papias survives, but there is one story about how Judas became so incredibly fat and disgusting that he could not get through a space where a chariot could pass.

[Stringbean]

I just read this entire thread, and found it fascinating. Much of the core argument against Jesus mythicism is that there isn’t a coherent hypothesis of how Jesus was historicized into a man.

I felt the need to repeat two crucial posts by VinnyJH. The idea he presents is worth another look by all rational observers. At the very least, it goes to show that the Jesus myth theory is not simply inane. It raises some profound and important questions that noone can readily dismiss.

@VinnyJH

To put it somewhat crudely, Paul claimed to have seen a ghost named Christ. He did not know Jesus the man who became Christ the ghost and he wasn’t interested in anything Jesus the man did before he died. He doesn’t say when or where Jesus the man lived or died. For Paul, what matters is what Christ the ghost did, not what Jesus the man did. Paul tells us that other people saw Christ the ghost, too, but not that they were companions of Jesus the man. Paul doesn’t claim to know anything about Jesus the man that Christ the ghost didn’t tell him.

Without some record of what Paul believed about Jesus the man, I don’t think that we can expect to have a record of someone challenging what Paul believed about Jesus the man. All anyone knew from Paul is that Jesus the man had been crucified for unspecified reasons at some unspecified time and place.

I can easily imagine that no one in Mark’s church would have listened to the idea that Jesus the man didn’t exist, but might not some of them have recognized his composition as a creative reconstruction based on Old Testament texts of what Jesus the man might have done rather than a record of stories passed down from eyewitnesses? We cannot establish external references to the gospels until well into the second century so there is at least the possibility that it took some time for Mark’s stories to gain widespread circulation and acceptance.

So the question becomes whether the origin of Christianity might lay in the visions that Paul and others had of Christ the ghost rather than in the activities of Jesus the man. Is it possible that the stories about the sayings and doings of Jesus the man were later additions? Personally, I don’t think that the evidence we have is sufficient to eliminate that possibility although I agree that much more work would be needed to establish that as the most likely scenario. That’s why I am agnostic on the question.

As Paul is our earliest source by some ten to twenty years, I don’t know how we could go about establishing that his correspondents had any more interest in Jesus the Man than Paul did. Our best and only direct evidence of what they knew about Christ the Ghost and Jesus the Man is what we find in Paul’s letters. It is surely not everything they knew, but I think that it may be everything that we can establish that they knew.

My hypothesis would be that as soon as people heard about Christ the Ghost who was the Messiah from Paul or others, they would have been curious about Jesus the Man. If in fact, no one claimed to have known Jesus the Man personally (which seems to me to be a possibility that we can’t eliminate), the logical place to look for information about him would have been in the Old Testament prophecies that the Messiah would have had to fulfill.

One possible hypothesis would be that Paul’s preaching was based entirely on his encounter with Christ the Ghost, but as his converts spread the message to others, it proved effective to include stories about Jesus the Man. The more these stories proved to be effective, the more of them would have been invented or “discovered” in the Old Testament.

I think it is a legitimate question whether there was enough time for this to occur, but I think the potential time frame is a bit longer than twenty years, which is the time from when Jesus the Man was crucified until Paul’s writings. I would add to that another twenty or so years until stories about Jesus the man start being written and perhaps as much as another fifty years before we have solid evidence that the stories were generally accepted.

Again, I don’t claim that we can know that this is what happened. But it seems to me that the evidence allows it as a logical possibility that cannot be fully eliminated.

[tomndebb]

@Stringbean

I felt the need to repeat two crucial posts by VinnyJH. The idea he presents is worth another look by all rational observers. At the very least, it goes to show that the Jesus myth theory is not simply inane. It raises some profound and important questions that noone can readily dismiss.

I would not dismiss his conjecture out of hand.

I would note that Paul spends a lot of effort condemning the actions of people who are actively preaching different things about the same character. This strongly implies that there was a tradition of a man, Jesus, that preceded Paul’s preaching. Otherwise, you have a guy inventing a religion that begins to encounter separate traditions across widely separated locales in just a few years without the benefit of modern media or even a printing press. It also ignores Paul’s own statements regarding his feuds with the church leaders in Jerusalem. A claim of a complete lack of historicity requires that Paul was able to get a religion founded that grew large enough to spin off doctrinal divisions, but that permitted the believers of those disparate beliefs to reconcile with each other in a very short time.
Impossible? Perhaps not. Implausible? Very.

[VinnyJH]

@tomndebb

I would not dismiss his conjecture out of hand.

I would note that Paul spends a lot of effort condemning the actions of people who are actively preaching different things about the same character. This strongly implies that there was a tradition of a man, Jesus, that preceded Paul’s preaching. Otherwise, you have a guy inventing a religion that begins to encounter separate traditions across widely separated locales in just a few years without the benefit of modern media or even a printing press. It also ignores Paul’s own statements regarding his feuds with the church leaders in Jerusalem. A claim of a complete lack of historicity requires that Paul was able to get a religion founded that grew large enough to spin off doctrinal divisions, but that permitted the believers of those disparate beliefs to reconcile with each other in a very short time.
Impossible? Perhaps not. Implausible? Very.

You might be correct that the diversity of the traditions proves that Paul couldn’t have been the founder of the movement, but I don’t see that it makes it any more likely that the competing traditions were traditions of a man rather than traditions of a heavenly being who was known through revelation and appearances. On the other hand, if you look at the history of the Mormon church, there were disputes and factions from a fairly early point so I’m not sure how much can be inferred from Paul’s feuds.

[tomndebb]

@VinnyJH

On the other hand, if you look at the history of the Mormon church, there were disputes and factions from a fairly early point so I’m not sure how much can be inferred from Paul’s feuds.

Are there references to Joseph Smith getting into fights with other people preaching about the Book of Mormon when he arrived in Ohio or Illinois or Missouri? Paul’s feuds say nothing about a historical Jesus. They do point to a larger movement that existed separate from Paul, calling into question those theories that claim that Paul “invented” Christianity.

[VinnyJH]

@tomndebb

Are there references to Joseph Smith getting into fights with other people preaching about the Book of Mormon when he arrived in Ohio or Illinois or Missouri? Paul’s feuds say nothing about a historical Jesus. They do point to a larger movement that existed separate from Paul, calling into question those theories that claim that Paul “invented” Christianity.

Paul tells us that others saw the risen Christ before him. On the other hand, he also says that his message came directly from God by revelation and that no man added anything to it. I think that makes it very hard to determine how much of what we now think of as Christianity existed before Paul came along and how much of it was due to his theological creativity and imagination, particularly since Paul is our earliest source and he tells us next to nothing about what the movement looked like before he came along.

Paul says that after his conversion, he went out and preached for three years before he bothered to go up to Jerusalem and he didn’t go there again for another fourteen years, at which point Peter, James and John were still there. Most of Paul’s letters are to communities that he founded. I agree that there was some larger movement, but I’m not sure that it can be established that it was very much larger. I’m not sure that Paul “founded” or “invented” Christianity, but he may nonetheless have been responsible for much or most of what we now understand to be Christianity.