Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180 CE): mythicism already then

[Giuseppe]

If someone denies that Abraham Ibn Daud was a mythicist, I will reply in advance by quoting the words of Alvar Ellegard (see below):

The historical works of the Jews state that this Joshua b. Perahyah was the teacher of Jesus the Nazarene. If this is so, he lived in the time of king Jannaeus. However, the historical works of the Gentiles state that he was born in the days of Herod and crucified in the days of his son Archelaus. Now this is a significant difference of opinion, for there is a discrepancy between them of more than 110 years. The Gentile historians indicate their chronology in several different ways, by saying that he was born in the year 312 of the Seleucid Era and crucified thirty-three years later; that he was born in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Augustus king of Rome, in the days of Herod, and was crucified in the days of his son Archelaus. They argue this point so vehemently in order to prove that the Temple and the kingdom of Israel endured for but a short while after his crucifixion. However, we have it as an authentic tradition from the Mishna and the Talmud, which did not distort anything, that R. Joshua b. Perahyah fled to Egypt in the days of Alexander, that is, Jannaeus, and with him fled Jesus the Nazarene. We also have it as an authentic tradition that he was born in the fourth year of the reign of King Alexander, which was the year 263 after the building of the Second Temple, and the fifty-first year of the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty. In the year 299 after the building of the Temple, he was apprehended at the age of thirty-six in the third year of Aristobulus the son of Jannaeus.

https://hal.science/hal-03928867/document

But we "mythicists," as Doherty names us, disagree on how the early Christians envisaged Jesus.

https://jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/BkrvEll.htm

[Secret Alias]

Yoizel.

[RandyHelzerman]

IDk if Giuseppe is still defending that position or not?

[Giuseppe]

I stand on this position well described here.

Amicus RandyHelzerman, sed magis amicus Alvar Ellegard.

[RandyHelzerman]

In NT studies, I'm nothing more than an interested layman. But, in semantics of natural languages, I've published many peer-reviewed articles, and I'm crackerjack in the kind of Modal logics used to analyze issues like these. This is my wheelhouse.

Its a tricky issue: When do we say that there is *one* object, which has changed, and when do we say the change is so radical that one object has changed into a completely different object?

Concrete example: I take a bar of iron, melt it, pour it into a cast, and let is solidify into a statue of St. Joseph. Questions:

Is it the same thing?
is it the same iron?
is it the same bar of iron?

Then say I melt it down again and make a bar of iron out of it.

Is it the same statue of St. Joseph?
Is it the same iron?
Is it the same thing?

These issues are tricky, and philosophers and logicians have wrestled with them since Plato wrote about the ship of Theseus. Its *HARD* to get them right, but it is *IMPORTANT* to get them right---our current discussion is a good example of that. Another way to illustrate the problems is counterfactual situations:

Abraham Lincoln was president. But.
Abraham Lincoln *might not* have been president. If he wasn't president, would he still be Abraham Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln...might have been a woman?
Abraham Lincoln...might have been an alligator?

The last one seems pretty out there, but Alvin Plantinga (famous for giving a modal-logic solution to the problem of predestination) argued, straight-faced, seriously, that Socretes could have been an alligator.

How different would Abraham Lincoln have to be before he stopped being Abraham Lincoln?

Other tricky but very momentous contexts this occurs in: Is Allah the same as God? Do Muslims and Jews and Christians worship the same God? Do unitarians worship the same Jesus as trinitarians? What about Marcion? (every post these days has to have an obligatory reference to Marcion). Did he worship the same Jesus as the Mormons do?

And finally, is Abraham ibn Daud talking about *the same* Jesus as the Gospel of Luke does?

So let me ask you: how do *you* analyze these kinds of problems? I know you don't owe me, but could I ask a favor? Would you think about these two questions, and tell me what answers you'd give--and more importantly--what reasons you would give for answering them that way?

1. I melt down a statue of St Joseph, and cast it into a statue of St George. The exact same atoms are/were in both. Is it the same statue?
2. I started out as a unicellular organism, and now am an old man. All the atoms have been replaced several times over. Am I the same person?

[Giuseppe]

It is clear that you want to nail me between the two horns of the beast.
I would answer "yes" to reassure you that I understand perfectly your point: in abstract logical terms the Talmudist was a historicist, he didn't deny the historicity of Jesus.

I felt someway 'obliged' to answer "no" because in the case of the Janneus's Jesus, the chronological error is so giant that hardly, very hardly, ordinary people would think about the Talmudist view as a historicist view, because under this hypothesis the corollary is that very a lot has been altered to the point of complete unrecognizability.

When one is too much unrecognizable from the his presumed portrait, I am justified to deny the identity between him/her and his/her presumed portrait.

In the case of Jesus, the his connection with Pilate is said to be the more clear and evident fact about the his real existence. A voice in my inner self may even say: Jesus is Pilate.

When even that 'fact' disappears, what is still clear and evident about Jesus?

This is the reason why I am extremely troubled by the mention by Josephus of the Samaritan false Prophet slain by Pilate: was he Jesus? The requisite 'connection with Pilate' is satisfied fully with him. The Tacitus's reference would work perfectly with him (the Romans didn't distinguish between Jews and Samaritans). in the tomb Heinrich Hammer may laugh in this moment.

[RandyHelzerman]

It is clear that you want to nail me between the two horns of the beast.

I am trying to persuade you, but I don't think that trying to crucify you between two theives will persuade you or anybody else .... this is just a pleasant conversation among friends.

BTW I wasn't going that way at all....the point I was trying to make is that matters of identity are not determined by whether or not the material they are composed of is identical. But if its not the identity of atoms which make things identical.....what does?

I would answer "yes" to reassure you that I understand perfectly your point: in abstract logical terms the Talmudist was a historicist, he didn't deny the historicity of Jesus.

I am reassured Here's the thing though: the more carefully and precisely you want to speak about these matters, and the more certain and secure you want your inferences to be in these matters, the more precise you have to be in *stating* your points....which is to say, the more abstract and logical they are going to have to be.

Its an easy trap to fall into to make some rough inference speaking causally, and then try to present the conclusion as secure. You have to make sure that each step of the argument doesn't rely on extraneous or distracting details---and leaving out those details *is* abstraction. And you have got to make sure that each step of the argument is valid--that's what logic is. "Abstract and Logical" is what you are going for in scholarly work.

I felt someway 'obliged' to answer "no" because in the case of the Janneus's Jesus, the chronological error is so giant that hardly, very hardly, ordinary people would think about the Talmudist view as a historicist view, because under this hypothesis the corollary is that very a lot has been altered to the point of complete unrecognizability.

I'm sympathetic to that point. Lets take an even more extreme example: Santa Claus!! He started out as a resident of Asia Minor, with a swarthy complexion, and a temper. He was basically God's own Luca Brasi. But it was said that he saved 3 virgins from marriages to horrible old men by buying them off....which evolved into viewing him as being generous and giving gifts to children...as christianity spread north, his complexion started to match that of the people living up north...eventually his abode moved up to the north pole too....then in the 19th and 20th centuries, corporate advertisements by coca cola and others gave him a red suit, made him old enough that his beard was white....

So, Does "Santa Clause" refer to the same person as Saint Nicholas? It seems very reasonable to conclude they are two different people. Where he started is soooo different from where he ended up.....

But, the process was very gradual, with many more stages than I mentioned above, over hundreds of years. If we took any 50-year window, and asked somebody about St. Nick, they would say that they were talking about the same person as everybody was 50 years ago. There was no specific point in that chain you can point to and say "here is where we started talking about somebody else!" Much like how there's no particular point in my growth that you could point to and say "here is where Randy started being a different person."

So at the very least, there is an argument to be made that no, we are not talking about two different people.

How to resolve the conundrum? Well, my parents never let us believe the stories about Santa Clause were really true. But of course I knew about them, and I remember asking my mother, "was there really a Santa Clause?" How she answered that question is key. She said that yeah, there was some guy, named Saint Nicholaus, but he lived in Turkey and not at the North pole, its just that legends started growing around him..."

So that's how I resolve the conundrum. Yes, we are speaking about the same person, and that person was a historical figure. But, we are speaking *mythically* about him. Santa Clause really existed, but his life was very different than the stories told about him. Nevertheless, those stories are still *about* him in the sense that, even though he is in a fictional situation, the story still says something true about how we remember Santa Clause. Kind of like a parable--these myths are meant to be "more true than literally true."

And that's pretty much how we speak about Jesus too. Was there a historical Jesus, like there was a historical Santa Clause? Who knows, and ultimately, who cares. The gospel writers knew very well that what they were writing wasn't literally true. They were meant to be "truer than literally true." Its only later, people started taking the Gospels as literally true--a mistake on the order of taking Santa Clause to literally see whether you are naughty or nice, and visits every kid in the whole world to give them what is coming to them.

This is the reason why I am extremely troubled by the mention by Josephus of the Samaritan false Prophet slain by Pilate: was he Jesus? The requisite 'connection with Pilate' is satisfied fully with him. The Tacitus's reference would work perfectly with him

That very well be true--but if so, it perfectly illustrates my point. What you are saying is that maybe when everybody says "Jesus", they are really talking about Josephus the Samaritan. They are talking about a historical figure, but they are talking "mythically" about him. Like "Saint Nicholas" was shortened to "Santa Claus", his name got shortened from "Josephus" to "Jesus"---not a big jump at all, especially in Aramaic. He has accumulated a lot of legends and mythical stories about him, which are not literally true, but meant to reveal something about him that we want or need to hear.