A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Irish1975
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A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by Irish1975 »

Hello,

I'm new to the forum.

I take the failure of the quest for a historical Jesus as given. The mythicists have responded to that failure with a clear and fascinating thesis. In general their questions and observations are valid and compelling, eg, why, apart from the four gospels, do the NT authors and early fathers have so little to say about a Jesus of Nazareth? So there is a lot of mythmaking at the origin of Christianity, most especially in the case of Paul. So far I agree entirely.

But what about this "tripod" argument? The sayings in Q, in Thomas, and in the Letter of James come to us by three independent routes. Nonetheless they concur thematically and, to a great extent, verbally as well. They must originate in some common source. Was that source an individual mind? I think it probably was, and that James the brother of Jesus was directly or indirectly behind the Letter attributed to him.

The argument does not give a definite portrait of the man; it merely asserts that there was a real man there to begin with, and he was not conjured by generations younger than Paul. You may wonder why I am leaving out Mark. Like many I don't know what to make of the Markan Jesus. He seems incredibly real, but the more I read Mark and Marcan scholarship the more mythological the text and the portrait seems.

So for Jesus I fall back on the Q-Thomas-James nexus, despite the significant variety across that nexus.

Conclusion: we can't say who Jesus was, but we can affirm that there was a Jesus.

Thanks for reading, love to hear what you think, glad to be here, etc.
Giuseppe
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by Giuseppe »

According to prof Mark Goodacre, Q didn't exist, while Thomas was based on the Gospels and is post-Bar-Kochba.

According to some scholars, the Epistle of James was a Jewsih text later christianized to brandish a Christian James against the Solus Paulus' marcionite propaganda.
Not by Paul Alone explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a compelling case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament.
https://www.amazon.com/Not-Paul-Alone-F ... 1932792716


The fallacy (sayings of Jesus ---> Jesus existed) was already confuted by the great Mythicist L.G. Rylands.

He wrote:
There is an Epistle to the Corinthians which is ascribed to Clement of Rome. The writer has occasion to rebuke the Corinthians on various counts, but though he puts before them the examples of Peter and of Paul, he never drives home his rebukes by reminding them of what Jesus did on any occasion. He writes of the blood of Christ and of the resurrection, but not of anything that Jesus did. Certainly he quotes from a Gospel, or, more probably, a collection of Logia, some sayings of Jesus; but he also quotes as a speech of Jesus verses from one of the Psalms ! [1 Clem 16] That illustrates the degree in which he regarded Jesus as an historical person in the usual sense of the term. Everywhere in this early literature we are confronted with a divine being; never with a mere man.
(Did Jesus Ever Live?, p. 29, my bold)
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
iskander
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by iskander »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:38 am Hello,

I'm new to the forum.

I take the failure of the quest for a historical Jesus as given. The mythicists have responded to that failure with a clear and fascinating thesis. In general their questions and observations are valid and compelling, eg, why, apart from the four gospels, do the NT authors and early fathers have so little to say about a Jesus of Nazareth? So there is a lot of mythmaking at the origin of Christianity, most especially in the case of Paul. So far I agree entirely.

But what about this "tripod" argument? The sayings in Q, in Thomas, and in the Letter of James come to us by three independent routes. Nonetheless they concur thematically and, to a great extent, verbally as well. They must originate in some common source. Was that source an individual mind? I think it probably was, and that James the brother of Jesus was directly or indirectly behind the Letter attributed to him.

The argument does not give a definite portrait of the man; it merely asserts that there was a real man there to begin with, and he was not conjured by generations younger than Paul. You may wonder why I am leaving out Mark. Like many I don't know what to make of the Markan Jesus. He seems incredibly real, but the more I read Mark and Marcan scholarship the more mythological the text and the portrait seems.

So for Jesus I fall back on the Q-Thomas-James nexus, despite the significant variety across that nexus.

Conclusion: we can't say who Jesus was, but we can affirm that there was a Jesus.

Thanks for reading, love to hear what you think, glad to be here, etc.
Hi,
This indicates the existence of a reforming movement like the one attributed to one man known to us as Jesus

This is the problem as presented by Professor Ehrman .
Text and Tradition: The Role of New Testament Manuscripts in Early Christian Studies
The Kenneth W. Clark Lectures
Duke Divinity School
1997
Lecture One: Text and Interpretation: The Exegetical Significance of the "Original" Text
Bart D. Ehrman
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"

7. We have, of course, come a long way since Mill. Today we have over fifty times as many
MSS as he had--at last count, there were upwards of 5300 complete or fragmentary Greek
copies--not to mention the thousands of MSS attesting the early translations of the NT into
Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Old Slavonic, etc., and the many
thousands of quotations of the NT by church authors of the first few hundred years. What is
particularly striking is that among the 5300+ Greek copies of the NT, with the exception of
the smallest fragments, there are no two that are exactly alike in all their particulars.

8. No one knows for sure how many differences there are among our surviving witnesses,
simply because no one has yet been able to count them all. The best estimates put the number
at around 300,000, but perhaps it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are
more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT. "

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3240&hilit=angry&start=30
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MrMacSon
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by MrMacSon »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:38 am Hello, I'm new to the forum.

I take the failure of the quest for a historical Jesus as given. The mythicists have responded to that failure with a clear and fascinating thesis. In general their questions and observations are valid and compelling, eg. why, apart from the four gospels, do the NT authors and early fathers have so little to say about a Jesus of Nazareth? So there is a lot of myth-making at the origin of Christianity, most especially in the case of Paul. So far I agree entirely.
Hi Irish1975. Yep, the paucity of information about a Jesus of Nazareth in the early texts is interesting, as is the lack of reference to many of the texts themselves. I think people like Irenaeus could well be part of the development and 'personification' of the Jesus of Nazareth cyborg.

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:38 am
But what about this "tripod" argument? The sayings in Q, in Thomas, and in the Letter of James come to us by three independent routes. Nonetheless they concur thematically and, to a great extent, verbally as well. They must originate in some common source. Was that source an individual mind? I think it probably was, and that James 'the brother of Jesus' was directly or indirectly behind the Letter attributed to him.

The argument does not give a definite portrait of the man; it merely asserts that there was a real man there to begin with, and he was not conjured by generations younger than Paul. You may wonder why I am leaving out Mark. Like many I don't know what to make of the Markan Jesus. He seems incredibly real, but the more I read Mark and Marcan scholarship the more mythological the text and the portrait seems.

So, for Jesus, I fall back on the Q-Thomas-James nexus, despite the significant variety across that nexus.

Conclusion: we can't say who Jesus was, but we can affirm that there was a Jesus.

Thanks for reading, love to hear what you think, glad to be here, etc.
I'm not sure I've heard the 'tripod argument' before. 'Q' is, of course, a proposition to help address 'the synoptic problem', which some have recently proposed can be overcome or by-passed by giving Luke or the Marcion texts priority (+/- Mark).

A few people have proposed that, as you suggest, the Markian text is mythological or where Jesus is first reified.

In terms of considering the proposition that Jesus "was not conjured by generations younger than Paul", there are those like Robert M Price that think Paul was writing later than is commonly proposed or thought, or that the Pauline texts were initially about a Christ, not necessarily Jesus, and were later edited to include references to Jesus, or both those proposed-scenarios happened.
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MrMacSon
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by MrMacSon »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:38 am
... The sayings in Q, in Thomas, and in the Letter of James come to us by three independent routes. Nonetheless they concur thematically and, to a great extent, verbally as well. They must originate in some common source. Was that source an individual mind? I think it probably was, and that James 'the brother of Jesus' was directly or indirectly behind the Letter attributed to him.

The argument does not give a definite portrait of the man; it merely asserts that there was a real man there to begin with, and he was not conjured by generations younger than Paul ...
It seems likely that some texts would have developed in a community or adjacent communities, or even in a scriptorium or three (pl. scriptoria).

I think Thomas has something like 60-70+ sayings of Jesus without any supernatural or miraculous events, which is interesting.
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Irish1975
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by Irish1975 »

Thanks for the feedback.

Just to be clear, the premiss of the argument is the extensive similarity, verbal and thematic, in the sayings material in Q, Thomas, and James. This is a datum to be explained.

There is no need to postulate the existence of a Q document, much less a "Q community" and all the baggage that has been piled onto that hypothetical wagon. I'm just talking about the Q material itself as we have it in Luke and Matthew. This is something real whether or not Goodacre and the Farrer hypothesis are correct about the synoptic problem. (However, since Luke never follows Matthew's sequencing of events unless they both follow Mark, I find the 2-source theory far more convincing.)

Arguments about the date or provenance of the Gospel of Thomas seem weak to me. Not much is known, right? It appears clearly earlier than Valentinian gnosticism, which it influenced, and the theology is original. Most scholars I have read on Thomas do not postulate familiarity with the synoptics.

The Letter of James is not attested earlier than Origen (per Luke Timothy Johnson). It was a late entry into the canon. But I cannot believe that it was ginned up by the 2nd century church fathers. Its Christian patina is so mild as to be non-existent (nothing about a risen or heavenly Christ), and it has none of the tendentious flavor of 2 Peter. It is entirely unconcerned with orthodoxy of any kind, and has a radically practical theology, unlike the whole rest of the NT.

The arguments for a mid-to-late first century origin for all three texts (if Q is a "text") are at least plausible. They convey very different theological perspectives, despite the similarities. Their family resemblance suggests a common parent.
John2
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by John2 »

I'm with you regarding the Letter of James, but I don't think there was a Q (or, rather, I think it was the original Hebrew Matthew that Papias mentions rather than a lost sayings gospel), and Thomas ... well, it's been awhile since I've thought about it, and I guess I could be open to it being based on a Q-type sayings gospel, but at the moment I see it more as being selected sayings from the NT along with gnostic additions. But James, yes, I'm entirely on board with it being genuine and I'm also a Farrer hypothesis guy these days.
You know in spite of all you gained, you still have to stand out in the pouring rain.
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MrMacSon
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by MrMacSon »

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 4:48 pm Thanks for the feedback.

Just to be clear, the premiss of the argument is the extensive similarity, verbal and thematic, in the sayings material in Q, Thomas, and James. This is a datum to be explained.
Sure.

Irish1975 wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 4:48 pm
There is no need to postulate the existence of a Q document, much less a "Q community" and all the baggage that has been piled onto that hypothetical wagon. I'm just talking about the Q material itself as we have it in Luke and Matthew. This is something real ...
Sure, but I wasn't proposing a Q community. Just a community that fitted with the similar sayings material in Q, Thomas, and James.

... since Luke never follows Matthew's sequencing of events unless they both follow Mark, I find the 2-source theory far more convincing.
Which is something Vinzent, Klinghardt, Beduhn, +/- others take into account in proposing the synoptics were written around the Marcionite text/s.

The Letter of James is not attested earlier than Origen (per Luke Timothy Johnson). It was a late entry into the canon. But I cannot believe that it was ginned up by the 2nd century church fathers1. Its Christian patina is so mild as to be non-existent (nothing about a risen or heavenly Christ), and it has none of the tendentious flavor of 2 Peter. It is entirely unconcerned with orthodoxy of any kind, and has a radically practical theology, unlike the whole rest of the NT.
1 If not attested earlier than Origen, what is the basis for the proposition the Letter of James was ginned up by 2nd century fathers?
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Irish1975
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by Irish1975 »

If not attested earlier than Origen, what is the basis for the proposition the Letter of James was ginned up by 2nd century fathers?
I was responding to Giuseppe, who mentioned a theory about the origin of James:
Giuseppe wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:55 am According to some scholars, the Epistle of James was a Jewsih text later christianized to brandish a Christian James against the Solus Paulus' marcionite propaganda.
Not by Paul Alone explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a compelling case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament.
https://www.amazon.com/Not-Paul-Alone-F ... 1932792716
It seems there are two incompatible claims here: (1) that James was originally a Jewish text, and (2) that it was composed by anti-Marcionite 2nd century fathers. (Or is Nienhuis arguing that it was merely redacted in the 2nd century? Certainly it must have been redacted at some time.) If we just consider (1), then I think the tripod argument stands in that Jesus and James were of course Jews. I don't think there is a chance of defending (2), since there really is nothing 'catholic' about the Letter of James, nothing that smacks of 2nd century christianity other than the mild baptism in 1:1 and 2:1. As James Tabor notes in Paul and Jesus, you could remove those two references to the "lord jesus christ" and the letter's shape and meaning would remain perfectly intact.

Any fans here of James Tabor? IMO the best interpreter of Paul alive today.
iskander
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Re: A "tripod" argument against mythicism

Post by iskander »

Irish1975 wrote: Sat Dec 16, 2017 9:32 am ...
Any fans here of James Tabor? IMO the best interpreter of Paul alive today.
I have never read anything of James Tabor, but if you have read James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, I would like to hear what you may think of them . Thank you
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