Jesus from Outer Space

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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maryhelena
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Re: Historicists use of the Josephan TF

Post by maryhelena »

GakuseiDon wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:56 am
maryhelena wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:18 am
Earl Doherty: Response to Mary:

Models for the Gospel Jesus

I can well acknowledge that elements of several representative, historical figures fed into the myth of the Gospel Jesus, since even mythical characters can only be portrayed in terms of human personalities, especially ones from their own time that are familiar and pertinent to the writers of the myths.

------------------------------------------

Sorry I can't give link to the Doherty quote - don't know if it's still on his website or if he still has a website.....can't remember - maybe 20 or so years ago.....Readers feedback page.
In my review of Earl Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", I looked at how he saw the origins of the first Gospels. The extract below is from my review, written about 10 years ago. Doherty sees the Jesus figure of Q (and then the Gospels) to be a symbol of a Q community. The Q community were itinerant 'miracle-wielding' prophets from Galilee teaching about the coming kingdom of God and urging repentence. Basically a whole group of Jesuses, in order to explain one Jesus! I'll note that Dr Carrier rejects the idea of there being a Q document.

From my review of Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" (no longer on-line):
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The Q document is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke. Many scholars accept that a sayings document best explains agreements between Matthew and Luke that are independent of Mark.

GA Wells – probably the best known mythicist before Doherty – stated a few years ago that he now believes that an actual itinerant Galilean preacher was arguably behind some of the sayings and deeds of the Jesus found in the Gospels. He attributed this change of mind to the work done on Q. He writes:


Some elements in the ministry of the gospel Jesus are arguably traceable to the activities of a Galilean preacher of the early first century, whose career (embellished and somewhat distorted) is documented in what is known as Q (an abbreviation for 'Quelle', German for 'source'). Q supplied the gospels of Matthew and Luke with much of their material concerning Jesus' Galilean ministry...



Wells believes that the dying-and-rising figure in the epistles was merged with the life of the Galilean preacher, to produce some of the material found in the Gospels. I knew that Doherty also accepted the probable existence of Q, so I was interested to see how Doherty viewed the development of Q in terms of a historical Jesus.

Doherty spends much time establishing the existence of Q. He sees the Q community as a Jewish “kingdom of God” preaching movement centred in Galilee, although it seems to have extended beyond that region. He writes:


The itinerant prophets of this new 'counter-culture' expression announced the coming of the kingdom of God and anticipated the arrival of a heavenly figure called the Son of Man who would judge the world. They urged repentance, taught a new ethic and advocated a new society; they claimed the performance of miracles, and they aroused the hostility of the religious establishment. (Page 3)



So Doherty sees a Q community of itinerant 'miracle-wielding' prophets teaching about the coming “kingdom of God” and urging repentence. On the Q community performing miracles, Doherty writes:


As for miracles, there is no question that the Q prophets, as preachers of the kingdom, would have claimed the performance of signs and wonders, for every sectarian movement of the time had to possess that facility. These, especially miraculous healings, were the indispensable pointers of the kingdom. (Page 384)



Doherty agrees with those scholars who see Q divided into a number of strata ('Q1', 'Q2' and a 'Q3') though he has his own views about what went into each layer and the timing of their development. Doherty sees the material in Q1, the earliest layer, as being derived from a Cynic or Cynic-like source which existed prior to the formation of the kingdom preaching movement. (Page 336) The sayings were not attributed to any individual, and there was no reference to any founding figure. (Doherty notes that scholars do see some sayings relating to Jesus, but Doherty argues against them being in the earliest layer.)

Q2 reflects an apocalyptically oriented mind and community, one which prophesies the coming of the Son of Man and a terrible judgement (Page 343). As Ehrman points out:


... Q is chock-full of apocalyptic sayings on the lips of Jesus, sayings in which he predicts the imminent end of the age in a catastrophic act of judgement sent by God. [4]



Again, although scholars do see sayings attributed to Jesus in Q2, Doherty argues against this conclusion (Page 354). It is only in Doherty's proposed Q3 layer that the name of Jesus starts to appear (page 386).

Thus it is in the later layers that sayings begin to be attributed to a Jesus, and it is this Jesus who eventually comes to be regarded as the founding figure of the community. However, in common with many scholars who have worked on Q, Doherty believes that there was no Passion narrative, crucifixion or resurrection in Q.

So, if there was no Jesus figure in the earliest layers of Q, how did such a figure emerge as the author of those sayings? Doherty notes key Q scholar Arnal's observation that in Q Jesus was represented as not qualitatively different from any other teacher in the Q community; rather, he was a “first among equals”, the “most important exemplar of activity that others can and do undertake” (Page 340). Doherty views Arnal's comment as significant. He writes:


This is an extremely momentous admission, because it opens a key door. If the Q community does not treat Jesus as an exalted figure (let alone as deified Son of God), if they allot to him no more than what the Q preachers themselves are and do, then there is no impediment to seeing him as merely symbolic of them. (Page 340)



And this left me scratching my head. “No impediment to seeing him as merely symbolic of them”? I suppose it is possible that a community might decide to adopt a symbolic name to represent them as a symbol. And undoubtedly the name “Jesus”, although a common one, with its meaning of “Savior” would be an appropriate symbolic name. But is that the most obvious choice? Doherty's leap from Arnal's “first among equals” to a “merely symbolic” figure is neither obvious nor natural.

Doherty continues:


Even more significantly, there is no impediment to postulating, based on specific evidence in Q, that earlier versions of many sayings embodied a group reference, lost when the Jesus figure was introduced and elements like pronouns were changed to assign such sayings to him personally.



There is no impediment to postulating any number of things, including that earlier sayings in Q embodied a group reference that were assigned to a Jesus figure, but... exactly how does this lead to a symbolic figure being a likely alternative? The same situation would arise if there were a person who actually rose to prominence within the group. Group sayings might well start to be assigned to such an individual; indeed, as a member of the group, he would actually be using those sayings himself. (In fact, even accepting Doherty's views on the development within Q, I would suggest that this later option is still the more plausible.)
Whether Q existed or is relevant is not something that is of particular interest to me. Interpretations are anyone's game. History, particular dates for Roman history is, as far as I'm aware, reliable. Hasmonean dates are probably questionable. All one can do is be aware of how Josephus is connecting the two. Whether a Hasmonean date is otherwise to what Josephus assigns to it is not the issue - it's what Josephus does with connecting Hasmonean events to Roman dates that is interesting.

Yep, we both have been back and forth with Doherty over the years. Unfortunately, once he left Wells behind his theory has gone, with Carrier, as far as it can go - brick wall.

That's not, of course, to say Wells is some golden standard for NT research. However, the Carrier approach needs to take a backwards step....
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Re: Historicists use of the Josephan TF

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maryhelena wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:18 am Methinks it's becoming a merry-go-around with 1 Cor.2.8. It fascinates me that historicists are so hell-pent on taking Carrier down over his interpretation of this passage - for heavens sake - it's an interpretation!
That single passage (1 Cor 2:8) is very crucial. The silence about the humans being involved in the crucifixion of Jesus is even more strong, when we observe that Luke 24:20 uses the same term, Archontes, only, not "of this Aeon":

The chief priests and our rulers [οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ ἄρχοντες ἡμῶν] handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him

Despite of the same used term (or just in virtue of that same term? :cheers: ), these two verses could have been written on two different planets, so great the ontological difference - and consistence! - between the killers of these two Jesuses!
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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maryhelena
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Re: Historicists use of the Josephan TF

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Giuseppe wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:09 am
maryhelena wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:18 am Methinks it's becoming a merry-go-around with 1 Cor.2.8. It fascinates me that historicists are so hell-pent on taking Carrier down over his interpretation of this passage - for heavens sake - it's an interpretation!
That single passage (1 Cor 2:8) is very crucial. The silence about the humans being involved in the crucifixion of Jesus is even more strong, when we observe that Luke 24:20 uses the same term, Archontes, only, not "of this Aeon":

The chief priests and our rulers [οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ ἄρχοντες ἡμῶν] handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him

Despite of the same used term (or just in virtue of that same term? , these two verses could have been written on two different planets, so great the ontological difference - and consistence! - between the killers of these two Jesuses!
So.... The crucifixion of Luke's Jesus involves the wicked demons using flesh and blood figures to do their dirty work. While Paul's Lord of Glory has the wicked demons doing their own dirty work..... :thumbup:
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maryhelena
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

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I found the link to the Doherty quote...pity no dating on website. (and my email has somehow got lost in cyberspace but about 10 years ago is probably close to timing. Did a bit of letter writing at one time - even 30 years ago to Wells. Michael Goulder and Don Cupitt in 1983. It was the two books Goulder and Cupitt were involved with that struck a cord and set me thinking......The Myth of God Incarnate and Incarnation and Myth: The Debate Continues. Lots of water under the bridge since those days......)


https://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/rfset5.htm#Mary

RFSet5Yep

Mary writes:

Your research and writing regarding the Jesus Puzzle
is excellent. For a non-academic like myself, I found
your thoughts clearly presented and easy to grasp.
I think that the Jesus myth is not without an historical
basis. The myth is colored, given personality, by human
personalities. (It) is a composite myth, with characteristics
of possibly at least three people. Who they are is irrelevant;
they are purely of historical interest and have no salvation
value whatever.
I think the Gospels and Acts contain condensed history.
After all, we are dealing with salvation theories, and
salvation theory tries to find meaning or purpose or a
better future from an interpretation of history.


Response to Mary:

Models for the Gospel Jesus

I can well acknowledge that elements of several representative, historical figures fed into the myth of the Gospel Jesus, since even mythical characters can only be portrayed in terms of human personalities, especially ones from their own time that are familiar and pertinent to the writers of the myths. However, just because certain models were drawn on, this does not constitute the existence of an historical Jesus. Even if Mark, shall we say, focused on a certain messianic pretender figure—even one named “Jesus” who some suggest could have been mentioned by Josephus as acting around the 30 CE mark (something I still doubt very strongly)—this figure would have served only as an historical hook for a writer of midrashic fiction. We would no more claim that the modelling of Captain Ahab on one or more known whalers of the time would justify saying that Melville’s hunter of Moby Dick was an historical person. And the bottom line of such a proposition would be that the pre-Gospel cultic figure of the Son, from Paul and the other New Testament epistles to the Odes of Solomon or the early layers of the Ascension of Isaiah, as well as many reflections of the Gnostic Christ, would have had nothing to do with any historical man or model.

I can’t quite agree that “salvation theory tries to find meaning or purpose . . . from an interpretation of history.” In this era, salvation came from above, from the spiritual reality which lay in the higher, unseen portion of the universe. I rather think that the effort to understand this, to convey it to others, led to the placing of the myth in an historical setting. This would initially have been only symbolic with no intent to mislead, and it simply took on a life of its own through eventual misconception.

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

Post by annotate »

" Fuck Richard Carrier. And fuck you Giuseppe. Fuck anyone who thinks Carrier is anything more than disingenuous fraud."

Sounds like intense jealousy to me.
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

Post by Joseph D. L. »

annotate wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 1:29 pm " Fuck Richard Carrier. And fuck you Giuseppe. Fuck anyone who thinks Carrier is anything more than disingenuous fraud."

Sounds like intense jealousy to me.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

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I'm guessing from the following video by Dr Carrier that the words "space alien" and "space temple" will be a theme appearing in his book. This is from a speech he made at the 2015 Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist Conference (warning: sound quality not too good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObFFFGy5sEE

(From 1 min 40s) Now I’m going to start by telling you something that a lot of people don’t know about, which is the original Jesus was a space alien, um, in a sense. We know from Philo of Alexandria who was writing in the 20s-30s A.D... ... he wrote about a particular angel in Jewish angelology, and he says that this particular angel is the same character named Jesus in this Old Testament passage in Zechariah...

... he's God’s celestial High Priest, because everything on Earth is dirty and messy and you gotta have your own super amazing space alien temple. So you have the temple on Earth which was just a dim copy of the true space temple, and you have to have a true space Priest for the space temple...

(From 4 mins 55 secs) Adam was believed to have been buried in outer space, according to the Revelation of Moses, either on Venus or on Mars, depending on which scheme they were using at the time. So if you really want fundamentalist Christians to increase the budget of NASA, you can maybe convince them that we might be able to find the bones of Adam on one of those planets.

While Carrier is obviously adopting a terminology to generate laughs from his audience, he isn't doing the case of mythicism any favours if his listeners start to use the same terminology when discussing the ideas with people who understand ancient beliefs in their context. It seems he is looking for notoriety rather than going for respectability.
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

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GakuseiDon wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 8:08 pm While Carrier is obviously adopting a terminology to generate laughs from his audience, he isn't doing the case of mythicism any favours if his listeners start to use the same terminology when discussing the ideas with people who understand ancient beliefs in their context. It seems he is looking for notoriety rather than going for respectability.
In this evident use of irony "to generate laughs from his audience", I don't see great difference between Richard Carrier and Voltaire or Diderot or D'Holbach. If you attack Carrier on his anti-Christian use of irony, then you should have the same identical problems with these great philosophers, accordingly.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

Post by maryhelena »

GakuseiDon wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 8:08 pm I'm guessing from the following video by Dr Carrier that the words "space alien" and "space temple" will be a theme appearing in his book. This is from a speech he made at the 2015 Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist Conference (warning: sound quality not too good): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObFFFGy5sEE

(From 1 min 40s) Now I’m going to start by telling you something that a lot of people don’t know about, which is the original Jesus was a space alien, um, in a sense. We know from Philo of Alexandria who was writing in the 20s-30s A.D... ... he wrote about a particular angel in Jewish angelology, and he says that this particular angel is the same character named Jesus in this Old Testament passage in Zechariah...

... he's God’s celestial High Priest, because everything on Earth is dirty and messy and you gotta have your own super amazing space alien temple. So you have the temple on Earth which was just a dim copy of the true space temple, and you have to have a true space Priest for the space temple...

(From 4 mins 55 secs) Adam was believed to have been buried in outer space, according to the Revelation of Moses, either on Venus or on Mars, depending on which scheme they were using at the time. So if you really want fundamentalist Christians to increase the budget of NASA, you can maybe convince them that we might be able to find the bones of Adam on one of those planets.

While Carrier is obviously adopting a terminology to generate laughs from his audience, he isn't doing the case of mythicism any favours if his listeners start to use the same terminology when discussing the ideas with people who understand ancient beliefs in their context. It seems he is looking for notoriety rather than going for respectability.
What can one say ? It's just really sad to see/hear how a case for ahistoricity of the NT Jesus figure has become nothing more than a science fiction fantasy.

If there is ever to be a resolution of the ahistoricist/historicist debate it won't be settled by anything Paul wrote. I used to say to Doherty - don't put all your eggs in a Pauline basket. Paul's writing is wide open for interpretation. So, of course is the gospel story. However, when dealing with a story set within a specific historical time frame, avenues for research open up that are impossible for an 'outer space' Pauline interpretation. Yes, ideas are in the mind but our feet are on terra firma. Our ideas, to have relevance to our physical reality, have to be rooted, have to be connected, to that physical reality. Pie in the sky ideas remain floating abstractions.

Sad day for mythicism when all that's on offer are floating abstractions.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
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Re: Jesus from Outer Space

Post by Giuseppe »

maryhelena wrote: Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:49 pm If there is ever to be a resolution of the ahistoricist/historicist debate it won't be settled by anything Paul wrote.
yes, by Hebrews, Revelation, Odes of Solomon and original Ascension of Isaiah also, not only by Paul.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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