Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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davidmartin
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by davidmartin »

If there really was a transition from a celestial/mystical Jesus to a historical man, or even from a fuzzy non-specific man to a specific, definite man, it had to have been a messy, divisive process. So yeah, no universal approval.

There is an interesting verse in Acts where Paul, in his emotional farewell speech to the Ephesians, predicts future schisms and internecine strife. It is entirely believable that the author of Acts had this Johannine schism in mind:

Acts 20:30
καὶ ἐξ ὑμῶν αὐτῶν ἀναστήσονται ἄνδρες λαλοῦντες διεστραμμένα τοῦ ἀποσπᾶν τοὺς μαθητὰς ὀπίσω αὐτῶν.
and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Here the insinuation of novelty, the “perverse things,” is more concrete. But orthodoxy has a forked tongue.
What about 2 John? I'm fascinated with his deference to 'the lady' and change of tone. It's clear enough that this group is not as fussy as he is because he has to implore them to have nothing to do with his opponents
So now there are three parties involved. If 1 John himself is innovating then the 2 John group is in the middle of both of the others and it would be this group that had probably been around longer. Recreating the beliefs of these is even harder than 1 John's opponents but i recon its the Johannine community (the whole of this Johannine schism might be a split within groups attached to this community).
the wackiest thing i believe is the Ignatian epistles to and from the virgin Mary are genuinely late 1st century and are the communications between the same lady in 2 John and some other early orthodox leader whatever their names really were, because of the encoded information she dishes out
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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neilgodfrey
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by neilgodfrey »

Irish1975 wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:44 pm
Hypothesis: 1 John makes sense on the mythicist theory about Jesus Christ despite its own affirmation of a historical Jesus. It reflects the controversy and upheaval that, on the mythicist hypothesis, must have attended the transformation of the Jesus figure as the Gospel stories were developed and shared. 1 John reflects the aftermath of the church's recent acceptance of one or more narrative accounts of a recently historical Jesus of Nazareth as being one and the same Jesus Christ as the celestial/mystical one originally preached to them.

Excuse me if the point of this response has been covered since the OP was posted.

I suspect the 1 John document and the issues it confronts long postdate any "mythicist-historicist" controversy. I imagine that the author and his like-minded "beloved" friends have broken themselves off from the main body that had always taught a "divided Jesus" as per Andrew Criddle's comment about the Latin variant. (People who break away from a main body, in my experience, are the ones who claim to be the "true faithful" and that it is the others, even if a majority, who have "left" or "broken" or "fallen away" from the original truth.)

I have no direct evidence to support that interpretation. I am inferring it from the only way I can imagine the gospels got started.

The idea of Jesus as a suffering servant/sacrificed beloved son/messianic deliverer was discovered in the Scriptures as an answer to the destruction of the Jewish cult in 70. (Yes, Paul's letters, too.) How that scriptural mosaic of a figure was understood in reality was surely a matter of debate. Celestial? Earthly? Form of a man or really a man from heaven?

The gospels bypassed those questions and sought to create a new set of scriptures from a re-working of the "Old" and they created a symbolic tale of the death of the old and birth of the new, etc. The earliest gospels were clearly portraying Jesus as the messianic ideal Israel, one who suffered but rose again, etc. and who instituted the "fulfilment" of what the cult was meant to be all about anyway -- as was suggested through Isaiah, Daniel, Genesis, and so forth.

I think such a (Jewish) understanding of the gospels was very early lost as a result of less sophisticated and "less Jewish" interpretations -- aided by some anti-Jewish sentiment.

The question arose, then, from the moment the gospels were interpreted literally, as to what form that Jesus had taken. The Gospel of John was written partly with the intention of removing the purely symbolic interpretation of the previous gospels by creating its own purely symbolic narrative but insisting it was all about real flesh and blood and witnessed by real eyewitnesses (such as the fictitious author of 1 John).

By the time the debates over how many natures Jesus had, one, two (or three?), the idea that Jesus had in some sense literally walked the earth and suffered literal crucifixion was all taken for granted. Was he a spirit, a spirit in a man, or a man who was walking around Galilee and on his way to Jerusalem?

By the time that discussion began the idea of the gospels being a form of symbolic midrash was long lost and forgotten.
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 3:15 am The idea of Jesus as a suffering servant/sacrificed beloved son/messianic deliverer was discovered in the Scriptures as an answer to the destruction of the Jewish cult in 70. (Yes, Paul's letters, too.)
  • 1. are you saying that you are inclined to place the Paul's letters after the 70 CE?
  • 2. In Book of Revelation, the celestial Woman already represents the idealized suffering Israel persecuted by Rome (the Great Prostitute). If she gave birth to a celestial Jesus, then Jesus inherited naturally from her the role of symbol of new Israel, and this even before the Gospels were written. Mark's invented hostility between Jesus and his carnal mother (and brothers) may allude to the conflict about who had to symbolize the true Israel: if the celestial Woman or Jesus.
Giuseppe
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

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neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 3:15 am I suspect the 1 John document and the issues it confronts long postdate any "mythicist-historicist" controversy.
ok but it may still date the gospel-making, insofar "Barabbas" may allegorize precisely the rival Jesus adored by the people called "Anti-Christs" in the epistle. Note that Barabbas is equivalent to a Jesus who is NOT the Christ (marcionism?), and to a Jesus who has just abandoned his carnal prison (separationism?).

Note that in the Fourth Gospel the Barabbas episode is easily proved as interpolation.
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Irish1975
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by Irish1975 »

neilgodfrey wrote: Sun Dec 20, 2020 3:15 am I suspect the 1 John document and the issues it confronts long postdate any "mythicist-historicist" controversy.
...

I have no direct evidence to support that interpretation. I am inferring it from the only way I can imagine the gospels got started.

The idea of Jesus as a suffering servant/sacrificed beloved son/messianic deliverer was discovered in the Scriptures as an answer to the destruction of the Jewish cult in 70. (Yes, Paul's letters, too.) How that scriptural mosaic of a figure was understood in reality was surely a matter of debate. Celestial? Earthly? Form of a man or really a man from heaven?

The gospels bypassed those questions and sought to create a new set of scriptures from a re-working of the "Old" and they created a symbolic tale of the death of the old and birth of the new, etc. The earliest gospels were clearly portraying Jesus as the messianic ideal Israel, one who suffered but rose again, etc. and who instituted the "fulfilment" of what the cult was meant to be all about anyway -- as was suggested through Isaiah, Daniel, Genesis, and so forth.

I think such a (Jewish) understanding of the gospels was very early lost as a result of less sophisticated and "less Jewish" interpretations -- aided by some anti-Jewish sentiment.

The question arose, then, from the moment the gospels were interpreted literally, as to what form that Jesus had taken. The Gospel of John was written partly with the intention of removing the purely symbolic interpretation of the previous gospels by creating its own purely symbolic narrative but insisting it was all about real flesh and blood and witnessed by real eyewitnesses (such as the fictitious author of 1 John).

By the time the debates over how many natures Jesus had, one, two (or three?), the idea that Jesus had in some sense literally walked the earth and suffered literal crucifixion was all taken for granted. Was he a spirit, a spirit in a man, or a man who was walking around Galilee and on his way to Jerusalem?

By the time that discussion began the idea of the gospels being a form of symbolic midrash was long lost and forgotten.
Thanks Neil. If I understand correctly, your theory of 1 John is that it reflects precisely the latter day debates about how many natures Jesus had, and other ways of thinking that presuppose a widespread acceptance of the narrative of Jesus as a fully human crucified messiah?

The critical christological verses in the Johannine epistles (1 John 2: 18-27, 1 John 4:1-4, and 2 John 7-11) reflect the first genuine schism in primitive Christianity, an event that the NT editors wanted to commemorate (otherwise why include 2 John at all, it has no other subject). I just don’t see this schism as arising from a patristic-style debate about the natures of an already-agreed-upon Jesus of Nazareth figure. Something much more fundamental is at stake.

This post in particular, in which I analyze and rebut Larry Hurtado’s theory of the schism, adds to my account in the OP of what I think is really going on.
I imagine that the author and his like-minded "beloved" friends have broken themselves off from the main body that had always taught a "divided Jesus" as per Andrew Criddle's comment about the Latin variant.
I completely agree with Ben that this variant cannot be taken as original:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Wed Dec 02, 2020 5:23 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Tue Dec 01, 2020 11:48 pm
It is relevant that there is a variant largely Latin reading in which 1 John 4:3 reads
and every spirit that divides LUEI Jesus is not from God; this is that of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now it is already in the world.
Ehrman mentions that one in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, IIRC. My own sense is that this reading is probably not original, but it may show that later scribes or editors thought of something separationist when they read the rhetoric of 1 John.
Emerging orthodoxy had no better explanation of the schism than we do today. This is because, if you assume that the author of 1 & 2 John and his opponents already had agreed upon and believed in a Jesus of Nazareth, the schism makes no sense.
(People who break away from a main body, in my experience, are the ones who claim to be the "true faithful" and that it is the others, even if a majority, who have "left" or "broken" or "fallen away" from the original truth.)
On this point I agree with you. There is no good reason to accept the author’s contention that his opponents, and not his own group, were responsible for the schism.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by neilgodfrey »

omg -- a sure sign of senility -- saying the same thing 6 times --- apologies for the duplications.
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