Ehrman's Adoptionist Theory and Christ Mythicism

[MrMacSon]

Carrier is misusing euhemerism.

No he isn't. Deal with it.

• What Is Euhemerism?
  
  Tim Widowfield

http://vridar.org/2016/01/25/what-is-euhemerism/

Widowfield provides some interesting background, but he clouds Carrier's correct & straight-forward use of the term & the concept

• (though it seems Widdowfield has pointed out a few things Carrier got wrong about Euhemerus's alleged narrative, of which we only have second-hand accounts).

You quoted the final sentence of Widdowfield's long-winded confusion - the penultimate sentence is a confusion of tenses and shows that Widdowfield has confused himself and produced a confusing ending.

Euhemerism or euhemerizing (or euhemerization) is where a god (or other celestial being) becomes narrated as human or having human attributes (thus often misrepresenting their previous history as having always been human), whether that god continues to be narrated as a god or not.

• This happens quite a lot in the OT books - figures are narrated as appearing as angels, and are then called 'the man' or 'a man' (while often also being referred to as 'Lord' or 'the Lord'). See, for example, various chapters in Zechariah.

The term or the process has been confused b/c it has been used by Christians to disparage pagan gods as 'only being human' or 'only having been human' who had been subsequently deified.

.

[Giuseppe]

.

... the author of Mark must appear to be 'truthfully historicist' ...

'the mythicists' you refer to are not uniform - do you "some mythicists"?

I was not clear enough, sorry.

I'm saying that if Mark was preserved by the winners was because it was not considered entirely heretic, still it allowed a compromise with the proto-Catholic beliefs. Compromise that I see in the fact that Mark, however in odor of adoptionism, separationism, etc., was still a historicist gospel, written and preached apparently by sincere historicists.

Paul was preserved *at least* in virtue of his alleged antiquity (beyond if originally heretical, mythicist or historicist).

But Mark was not so old (it was at least post 70 CE, and therefore ipso facto not from apostolic age), therefore it was preserved probably for the reasons described above, in my opinion. Then a suggestive question is raised:

compared to which other Gospel even an adoptionist and separationist heretic as Mark was preferable and worthy of preservation, in the eyes of the proto-catholic winners?

'the mythicists' you refer to are not uniform - do you "some mythicists"?

I refer only to Carrier/Doherty model. I know that Doherty recognizes his debt to Couchoud, who was a proponent of Marcion's priority, therefore I think that, under the mythicist paradigm, that thesis is worthy of investigation.

[MrMacSon]

In reply to Giuseppe's post (immediately about this one) -

I think the gospels selected for special consideration were selected towards the end of the 2nd century or later. They were probably redacted somewhat to align with each other at some stage before or around that time.

Doherty recognizes his debt to Couchoud, who was a proponent of Marcion's priority, therefore I think that, under the mythicist paradigm, that thesis is worthy of investigation.

OK. I don't know much about Couchard - Paul-Louis Couchoud ??.

The 'Marcion priority' thing is interesting as quite a few 'scholars' have proposed Marcion priority over various or all canonical gospels in recent years (away from any discussion about mythicism, or mythicism v historicism).

The bottom line, though, is Jesus mythicism is consistently about a 'celestial-being' being anthropomorphised as a human-form Jesus-Christ of Nazareth

• (rather than an initial human-Jesus being later deified (apothesized) as is the case with a historical or the traditionally theological Jesus).

It is mainly the outlines of the heavenly levels, firmaments, & paths-taken that vary between the various mythicist outlines.

.

[Ben C. Smith]

Doherty recognizes his debt to Couchoud, who was a proponent of Marcion's priority, therefore I think that, under the mythicist paradigm, that thesis is worthy of investigation.

OK. I don't know much about Couchard - Paul-Louis Couchoud ??.

You once linked to an article of his: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1771. I know, though... it can be hard keeping it all straight and handy in the memory.

Couchoud famously argues that the "name" in the Christ hymn of Philippians 2.6-11 is Jesus, not Lord. It was he whom I was tacitly responding to in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1564.

I have tried to find The Creation of Christ online before, but had no luck.

Ben.

[JoeWallack]

So what I'm wondering is: what do people think of Ehrman's case and how does it interact with the mythicist theory as proposed by Doherty and Carrier?

Best,

Ken

JW:
The arguments on both sides are disappointing because each is making historical conclusions that are not supported by the evidence. The best developed criteria for evidence in the US is the US legal system. The best evidence would be quality witness. Quality witness is multiple credible first hand witnesses. We don't have that here or anything close. The closest you could get would be Paul saying he knew "the brother of the Lord". Regarding a historical Jesus this would be a second hand witness, but not a credible one. You also have issues here of meaning and transmission. Still, this is a piece of witness evidence, just not a quality one, and there appears to be nothing better.

HJ inventories these types of weak witness evidence and secondary arguments that lack good criteria and compares to the even weaker arguments for MJ, claiming that because there is relatively more evidence for HJ, HJ is than probable/proven/fact. This is not the way history is done. History is based on absolute evidence and not relative. The standards of evidence are always the same. They are not lessened because of a lack of evidence.

Compare to your arguments regarding Eusebius/TF where it is agreed that Eusebius is the author and he writes that Josephus included the TF. Here we have a first hand witness to the TF in Josephus. Is that quality evidence though for the TF in Josephus? No, because Eusebius is not credible. We have examples in our lifetime of multiple first hand witness that is disputed because of credibility and contradiction issues.

The strength of the HJ argument is that it at least has some direct evidence, unlike MJ. The strength of the MJ argument is just the weakness of the HJ argument. Both sides should concentrate on the evidence and not the conclusions. HJ largely ignores/denies proper consideration of witness evidence and MJ follows that lead because the witness evidence for MJ is even worse. Trying to make a conclusion based on "which is the better explanation" is just an excuse for a lack of quality witness evidence.


Joseph

The New Porphyry

[Adam]

Hey, Joe,
I know you totally disagree with me, and that's your right, but these apodictic statements in this post assume what is to be proven, that there are no eyewitness records of any kind. My Thesis totally refutes this. Even some academics refute you, such as Bauckham and (implicitly) Crossley, Casey, and Ehrman.

[Ulan]

The strength of the HJ argument is that it at least has some direct evidence, unlike MJ. The strength of the MJ argument is just the weakness of the HJ argument. Both sides should concentrate on the evidence and not the conclusions. HJ largely ignores/denies proper consideration of witness evidence and MJ follows that lead because the witness evidence for MJ is even worse. Trying to make a conclusion based on "which is the better explanation" is just an excuse for a lack of quality witness evidence.

In the end, this just means that this question is principally not solvable. There is not enough evidence one way or the other. This is also my personal conclusion: We will never know.

[Ulan]

Hey, Joe,
I know you totally disagree with me, and that's your right, but these apodictic statements in this post assume what is to be proven, that there are no eyewitness records of any kind. My Thesis totally refutes this. Even some academics refute you, such as Buackham and (implicitly) Crossley, Casey, and Ehrman.

There is no refutation of this point. Any evidence with regard to the HJ is very weak. All that your list of names shows (and you could add lots of further names to this without sweating it) is that taking this position is a prudent career choice. It's very convenient to just affirm this and move on to less dangerous questions, like whether someone may have changed a word in a document.

The difficulty with counting evidence in this field is that the winner side of all theological struggles destroyed most evidence to other lines of thought, at least everything they found. Which means that any proposal that aligns with "catholic" positions has an automatic advantage here. In this light, evidence regarding this specific question is surprisingly weak. Which still doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's hardly a slam dunk.

[Adam]

Hey, Joe,
I know you totally disagree with me, and that's your right, but these apodictic statements in this post assume what is to be proven, that there are no eyewitness records of any kind. My Thesis totally refutes this. Even some academics refute you, such as Bauckham and (implicitly) Crossley, Casey, and Ehrman.

.... All that your list of names shows (and you could add lots of further names to this without sweating it) is that taking this position is a prudent career choice....

Not a prudent career choice for me. I spend much more money on religion than I get even reimbursed (which has been zero).
You're thinking that my list of scholars is my case. Not at all. You're probably unfamiliar with my Thesis that there are seven written eyewitness documents underlying the four gospels as sources. I hold that Matthew wrote the Aramaic portion of Q, John Mark wrote the Passion Narrative, and Nicodemus wrote the Discourses--all this while Jesus was still on Earth. Andrew wrote the Signs Source, Peter wrote the basics of gMark, Simon wrote Proto-Luke, and the Apostle John edited and (largely) completed GJohn. (News flash that Apelles was the later Redactor of gJohn.) All edited together right here for me in Ur-Marcan Priority?.... inBCH by Peter Kirby. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14 (Read after, 'THESE ARE NOT MY IDEAS)

[cienfuegos]

The strength of the HJ argument is that it at least has some direct evidence, unlike MJ. The strength of the MJ argument is just the weakness of the HJ argument. Both sides should concentrate on the evidence and not the conclusions. HJ largely ignores/denies proper consideration of witness evidence and MJ follows that lead because the witness evidence for MJ is even worse. Trying to make a conclusion based on "which is the better explanation" is just an excuse for a lack of quality witness evidence.

In the end, this just means that this question is principally not solvable. There is not enough evidence one way or the other. This is also my personal conclusion: We will never know.

It isn't necessarily about knowing or not knowing. I think most mythicists admit there is not enough evidence "to know," Carrier makes that point many times. On the other hand, historicists claim 100% certitude. It is that overreach that most annoys me. The evidence does not support that level of certainty and to claim otherwise, in my opinion, is ether dishonest or evidence of bias.

This is all about hypothesis testing, not about making excuses. And, to me, it seems that what many who make this kind of argument miss is that the difference is in what the underlying question is. Personally, I am not as interested in whether there was a Jesus of Nazareth. I am interested in the evolution of the body of beliefs that became known as Christianity. Where did these ideas come from? That is a different question than: Did Jesus Exist? If Jesus of Nazareth really did exist, he was just a man like any other who espoused the thinking and philosophies of his time. Whatever he believed or his immediate followers may have believed is rooted in the culture in which those ideas took root and eventually flourished. That is why I find the thesis that Paul borrowed from the philosophies of Philo very interesting. Paul doesn't need Jesus of Nazareth to develop his Christology and, for me, that's the point. The emergence of Christianity, as we know it, didn't require the actual existence of Jesus of Nazareth. The ideas behind Jesus-belief existed independently of him. Whether those ideas were applied to a crucified cult leader by mourning followers or not, to me, doesn't really matter that much.

AND NOTE: The actual existence of Jesus mattered not at all to the spread of Christianity. The vast, vast majority of early converts would never have any first hand or even second hand knowledge of the life of Jesus.