I’ve recently begun to believe that in trying to explain the origins of Christianity and the Jesus narrative, the model of the “hidden messiah” is perhaps more promising than the mythicist model of Doherty and Carrier.
The mythicist position is built on some very slender foundations, after all: Carrier in his book really proposes two: (1) Plutarch on Isis & Osiris and (2) his speculative reconstruction of the Ascension of Isaiah. The first is tangential at best, the second is, well, speculative, so it may be correct and it may not; it may explain everything but, such are the variations of belief on such subjects, it may prove nothing.
But one of the crucial elements of the Ascension of Isaiah is the notion of the Christ being incognito; at each level in his descent from earth, his higher nature is disguised – he makes himself like the form of the denizens of each lower level, and this is crucial to the plot: none of the lower level angels know that he is a being from above. And this clearly ties in to the “hidden messiah” notion that you have discussed above.
If the messianic narrative was that the messiah was expected to come to EARTH rather than a heavenly realm, and suffer in secret, completely unrecognized as the higher being he was, then it is conceivable that people of the 1st century CE might come to the conclusion (possibly by chronological calculations derived from the Book of Daniel,) that this earthly visitation had indeed already happened, unbeknownst to anyone, hiding in plain sight. If people came to believe that, one can easily see how theories about precisely when and where these events had happened and precisely who he had been, might easily arise. Narratives might easily develop around these theories.
One of my big problems with the Mythicist model is that it requires some sort of conceptual revolution before we arrive at the canonical gospels: people who had originally believed that Jesus existed on a purely heavenly level then completely switched and argued that he existed on an earthly level. The Incognito model doesn’t require this volte-face: the previously unidentified messiah simply could be identified as a certain X, who lived in a certain time in a particular place. The narratives told about him might have been derived wholly from prophetic literature, or might have been partly based on the life of a real person or persons, or simply linked to the name of an actual person. And one can also see how one could end up with more than one retrospective contender for the role. Some might have argued that John the Baptist, killed by Herod, was him; a narrative arose about a certain Jesus (real or invented) executed by Pilate, as in the Gospels; another candidate was a Jesus of the previous century (real or invented), executed in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, as suggested in Talmudic sources. And this model might explain the vagueness of Paul’s letters about the life of Jesus every bit as well as the mythicist model – the vagueness arising because no-one knew for sure where and when those events (derived from prophetic literature) had happened, rather than because they had taken place in a higher realm. Perhaps, for Paul, actually identifying who the Son had been on earth really wasn’t important at all; what mattered was that he was coming back in his undisguised form soon, to finish his business.
Well, it’s a theory, no?
The mythicist position is built on some very slender foundations, after all: Carrier in his book really proposes two: (1) Plutarch on Isis & Osiris and (2) his speculative reconstruction of the Ascension of Isaiah. The first is tangential at best, the second is, well, speculative, so it may be correct and it may not; it may explain everything but, such are the variations of belief on such subjects, it may prove nothing.
But one of the crucial elements of the Ascension of Isaiah is the notion of the Christ being incognito; at each level in his descent from earth, his higher nature is disguised – he makes himself like the form of the denizens of each lower level, and this is crucial to the plot: none of the lower level angels know that he is a being from above. And this clearly ties in to the “hidden messiah” notion that you have discussed above.
If the messianic narrative was that the messiah was expected to come to EARTH rather than a heavenly realm, and suffer in secret, completely unrecognized as the higher being he was, then it is conceivable that people of the 1st century CE might come to the conclusion (possibly by chronological calculations derived from the Book of Daniel,) that this earthly visitation had indeed already happened, unbeknownst to anyone, hiding in plain sight. If people came to believe that, one can easily see how theories about precisely when and where these events had happened and precisely who he had been, might easily arise. Narratives might easily develop around these theories.
One of my big problems with the Mythicist model is that it requires some sort of conceptual revolution before we arrive at the canonical gospels: people who had originally believed that Jesus existed on a purely heavenly level then completely switched and argued that he existed on an earthly level. The Incognito model doesn’t require this volte-face: the previously unidentified messiah simply could be identified as a certain X, who lived in a certain time in a particular place. The narratives told about him might have been derived wholly from prophetic literature, or might have been partly based on the life of a real person or persons, or simply linked to the name of an actual person. And one can also see how one could end up with more than one retrospective contender for the role. Some might have argued that John the Baptist, killed by Herod, was him; a narrative arose about a certain Jesus (real or invented) executed by Pilate, as in the Gospels; another candidate was a Jesus of the previous century (real or invented), executed in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, as suggested in Talmudic sources. And this model might explain the vagueness of Paul’s letters about the life of Jesus every bit as well as the mythicist model – the vagueness arising because no-one knew for sure where and when those events (derived from prophetic literature) had happened, rather than because they had taken place in a higher realm. Perhaps, for Paul, actually identifying who the Son had been on earth really wasn’t important at all; what mattered was that he was coming back in his undisguised form soon, to finish his business.
Well, it’s a theory, no?
https://vridar.org/2018/03/08/the-hidde ... ment-84906
It's an interesting model. But does it assume a Jesus lived recently or in an undefinite past?
If Jesus was crucified in incognito in a recent past, then the his killers would be probably the Romans.
The point is that often in the Jewish history the rabbis realize, via dreams, that the Messiah "is born". Even today. As it is said: "In this precise moment".