Is Christ Myth Theory Credible?

[Milton Platt]

[My own bias is that it's credible, even to the point of it becoming the wave of the future.
However, I still keep the question of the historical Jesus on the back burner because at any time a discovery could be made of eyewitness testimony from Jesus, his original disciples, or better yet, from hostile sources. In which case Christ Myth theory would be stood on its head.]

Christ Myth - central tenets:

1. There is no unambiguous reference to a historical, or a Gospel Jesus in the earliest known Christian texts, namely, the seven authentic letters of Paul.

2. There are no relevant historical sources for Jesus in non-Christian sources, because these have either been debunked (e.g., the Testimonium Flavianum in its several versions);
or
are simply too late (Pliny-Tacitus, Celsus, etc.). These latter merely explain what their contemporary Christian peers were saying about Jesus, and do not use early sources from Jesus's own lifetime.

3. Thus the historian is thrown back, and narrowly, on Paul.

4. Paul was citing the earliest christology, which was shared by James, John and Cephas, "the Jerusalem Pillars".

5. Pauline christology held that "Jesus" never had a historical existence, but did have a completely real spiritual existence in heaven as an angelic figure.
This is why Paul does not know of, and never cites, the life or example of a historical Jesus.
He had no historical Jesus to cite.

6. Paul says that this celestial figure "emptied himself" (Paul calls it "kenosis") and entered the sphere of the lower heavens, where he was "found" (probably by Satan) to be "in the likeness or form" of a man and of a servant. This is the Pauline "Incarnation", but it happened in the sublunar celestial sphere, not on geophysical earth.

7. The original Gospel or "Good News" was announced via a series of mystical experiences in which Jesus himself made it known that he had "incarnated", suffered, died, had been buried (again, this transpired in the lower heaven, not earth), and then been raised back to his previous position at God's "right hand".

8. The risen Jesus originally did not involve a resuscitation of the corpse of a dead Galilean carpenter-sage, but rather the raising up of a preexistent spiritual Jesus as "heavenly Adam".
If there was ever an empty tomb, it was located in the lower heaven, not in the suburbs of ancient Jerusalem.

9. Heaven was considered to be the grand model of creation, the earth only being a kind of shadowy duplicate of heaven. Heaven had residents, gardens, temples, rivers, and soil (wherein Adam was said to be buried, and where Jesus was temporarily buried prior to his resurrection).
This is supported by the Letter to the Hebrews which depicts the risen Jesus entering the heavenly city of Jerusalem, entering the heavenly Temple with its heavenly sanctuary.

10. Because there was no historical Jesus who died and rose again, there was originally no tradition of a risen Jesus who walked with disciples, broke bread with them, or permitted them to prove his crucifixion wounds.

11. Such material resurrection narratives only arose with the first Gospel, Mark.

12. Mark's Gospel is the first known expression of a process of historicizing an originally heavenly, non-material Christ into a biographical person with a personal history and career. This process of concretization, reification and solidification created the Jesus of the Christ Myth theory out of the spiritual Jesus of the earlier celestial Christ revelations. This process is called "euhemerization".

13. To the commonplace objection by mainstream/historicist exegetes, namely, that "No mainstream scholars accept Christ Myth theory!", mythicists retort that - as has been said of the sciences generally - knowledge proceeds one funeral at a time. That is, the issue is not the popularity of the mythical Jesus model, or about the number of scholars who support it. The issue is only about serious, relentless searching for evidence. So far, no such evidence for a historical or a Gospel Jesus has been disclosed.

What do you think?

How plausible is Jesus's existence in view of Christ Myth claims?
[Recall that Paul never mentions Jesus's supposed miracles, cures, exorcisms, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the raising of the dead, his Torah teaching, his conflicts with Pharisees, priests, and his own family and disciples, his trial and arrest, etc.]

What would Christianity look like without a historical Jesus?

If you're a Christian, could you, like the ancient Gnostic and Docetic Christians, revere a wholly non-material Christ who never lived on earth "in the flesh"?

I don't really care if he existed as a person or as a myth. The questions to be answered are about whether he was a god, or a son of a god, or did miracles. Outside of the Bible stories, nothing indicates this is the case.

 

[Subduction Zone]

So you say. But your poor understanding of Messianic prophecy is what's evident.

Example: You claim the (fulfilled) Christian virgin birth prophecy is inaccurate. Which Hebrew word for virgin do you claim is the correct one?

Nope, that really is your problem. Talk to some Jews some day.

Let's go over the Virgin Prophesy myth first. Read the verses in context. They are clearly not about Jesus. Second they do not say virgin. Third they did not call Jesus Emmanuel. Three strikes and you are out.

 

[Spartan]

Nope, that really is your problem. Talk to some Jews some day.

Let's go over the Virgin Prophesy myth first. Read the verses in context. They are clearly not about Jesus. Second they do not say virgin. Third they did not call Jesus Emmanuel. Three strikes and you are out.

Answer the previous question you just avoided?

Which Hebrew word for virgin do you claim is the correct one?

 

[Wandering Monk]

Answer the previous question you just avoided?

Which Hebrew word for virgin do you claim is the correct one?

Bethulah. Rabbi Eliezer (mid-first to early second century CE) defines her as 'Any woman who has never yet observed a blood flow, even if she is married.' (Mishna, Niddah 1:4)

 

[Augustus]

No, I mean the original compilation of the Qur'an.

What you described would relate to hadith, but not the Quran. It would be a very fringe theory that the Quran was compiled in the 9th C

They're vastly more persuasive than the nothing Jesus has of that kind. Yes, there's room for doubt, but the fit doesn't seem all that bad.

Muhammad was a political leader who lived 600 years later and had a significant effect on his environment and still needs to rely on near-contemporary verification of a very incidental nature.

Jesus was an impoverished preacher with a small band of followers who didn't do a great deal. Thinking that he 'should' have been noted earlier is unrealistic.

That his followers appeared very soon after him and are noted by numerous independent sources is very strong evidence he existed.

That no one around these times questioned his existence, despite the fact that Romans would likely have had records of executions that could be checked is further evidence.

From the nativity, to being from Nazareth, to his baptism by John, to having a living brother James, to being wrong about the eschaton to being crucified his biography makes far more sense as an exaggerated hagiography of a real person containing slivers of truth rather than as a blank-slate mythical archetype.

Other than 'no contemporary sources' there is no reason to think he is pure myth, and for 'Jesus the man' the overwhelming expectation is that there would indeed be no contemporary sources.

The evidence is perfectly consistent with him being a man, and not at all consistent with him being a myth.

As Zeus, Dionysos, Jesus et al all show.

Neither Zeus or Dionysius had followers being noted within a few years of their lives including a living brother and neither remotely resembled a normal person with a few Divine attributes tacked on at a later date.

Have you paused to look into Paul's statement in Galatians 1:12? In plain English it means that everything Paul says about Jesus comes out of his own head.

And he wasn't writing a biography, but engaging in theological musing.

One possibility might be that Mark was closer to the mark than Paul; that would mean the proto-Jesus was imagined as a human whom God resurrected and elevated to divine status.

This still doesn't answer the question of why anyone would invent such an implausible messiah if they had a completely blank slate.

I'd (highly speculative) guess that his elevation in status occurred as his followers had to rationalise the fact he died before the eschaton, which turned into his 'sacrifice' preventing the eschaton, to him being raised by god, which became him being Divine via adoption which became him being divine by birth.

I don't understand you to be disputing that none of the gospel writers has a serious clue about an historical Jesus.

I believe there are things in his bio that would not be there had they been dreaming up a mythical figure from scratch.

I believe they were basing the Gospels on an oral history with kernels of truth supplemented by a lot of hagiographical exaggeration and theological musing and interpolation.

 

[Spartan]

Bethulah. Rabbi Eliezer (mid-first to early second century CE) defines her as 'Any woman who has never yet observed a blood flow, even if she is married.' (Mishna, Niddah 1:4)

I don't think so. You cannot necessarily use the Hebrew word "betulah" - which can be an older woman, and since a betulah in Joel 1:8 is a married woman. The only word in Hebrew (besides possibly naarah) that can really signify a young maiden virgin is almah. Also, nowhere in Scripture is an almah seen as one who has lost her virginity."

Not only that, but if you think betulah is unambiguous for virgin, then you have to explain how and why the King's concubines were referred to as betulah's even AFTER they had shacked up with the king in Esther chapter 2? Almah clearly doesn't have the baggage that your betulah's have in Scripture.

What's more, when betulah is used in reference to Rebekah as a virgin (in Genesis chapter 24) it came with the qualifier "nor had any man known her." The qualifier wasn't necessary when almah was used in reference to her as a virgin.

Finally, when the Jewish sages translated the Tanakh into the Greek (Greek Septuagint) they used the Greek word for virgin - parthenos - in Isaiah 7:14. That's the word from which we get the Parthenon - the Temple of the Virgin Athena!

 

[JJ50]

Virgins didn't give birth in Biblical times IVF hadn't been invented. Mary would have got pregnant by having sexual intercourse with a guy.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Answer the previous question you just avoided?

Which Hebrew word for virgin do you claim is the correct one?

Sorry, I missed your questions from all of the errors that you made and did not acknowledge.

Bethulah is a word that is unambiguous if one wants to refer to a virgin. An almah is not. It only means young woman and here is an article that disagrees with your claim about the word bethulah:


https://outreachjudaism.org/alma-virgin/

 

[Spartan]

Virgins didn't give birth in Biblical times IVF hadn't been invented. Mary would have got pregnant by having sexual intercourse with a guy.

That completely ignores the supernatural God who has produced miracles from Genesis to Revelation. If you want a non-supernatural book find something other than the Bible.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I don't think so. You cannot necessarily use the Hebrew word "betulah" - which can be an older woman, and since a betulah in Joel 1:9 is a married woman. The only word in Hebrew (besides possibly naarah) that can really signify a young maiden virgin is almah. Also, nowhere in Scripture is an almah seen as one who has lost her virginity."

Not only that, but if you think betulah is unambiguous for virgin, then you have to explain how and why the King's concubines were referred to as betulah's even AFTER they had shacked up with the king in Esther chapter 2? Almah clearly doesn't have the baggage that your betulah's have in Scripture.

What's more, when betulah is used in reference to Rebekah as a virgin (in Genesis chapter 24) it came with the qualifier "nor had any man known her." The qualifier wasn't necessary when almah was used in reference to her as a virgin.

Finally, when the Jewish sages translated the Tanakh into the Greek (Greek Septuagint) they used the Greek word for virgin - parthenos - in Isaiah 7:14. That's the word from which we get the Parthenon - the Temple of the Virgin Athena!

Joel 1 9 does not refer to a woman at all. At least not according to the link. Perhaps you were thinking of another verse.

 

[Spartan]

Bethulah is a word that is unambiguous if one wants to refer to a virgin. An almah is not. It only means young woman and here is an article that disagrees with your claim about the word bethulah:

Betulah is definitely ambiguous. I demonstrated that in the following post: Is Christ Myth Theory Credible?

And betulah can mean a very old woman so it's not a word you want to use if you want to talk about a young, virgin maiden.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That completely ignores the supernatural God who has produced miracles from Genesis to Revelation. If you want a non-supernatural book find something other than the Bible.

No reliable miracles in the Bible, only mythology. And you shoot yourself in the foot by referring to Genesis, it was proven to be a book of myths a long time ago.

 

[Spartan]

Joel 1 9 does not refer to a woman at all. At least not according to the link. Perhaps you were thinking of another verse.

Typo. The verse is Joel 1:8

 

[Subduction Zone]

Betulah is definitely ambiguous. I demonstrated that in the following post: Is Christ Myth Theory Credible?

And betulah can mean a very old woman so it's not a word you want to use if you want to talk about a young, virgin maiden.

an old woman can be a virgin, that does not make it not credible. A young woman can have sex.

 

[Spartan]

No reliable miracles in the Bible, only mythology. And you shoot yourself in the foot by referring to Genesis, it was proven to be a book of myths a long time ago.

Tell it to somebody who believes you. I don't.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Typo. The verse is Joel 1:8

That appears to be a single woman lamenting that she never got married. That does not help your case.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Tell it to somebody who believes you. I don't.

But that is your problem. All you have is here belief. People that are not weak in faith know.

 

[JJ50]

That completely ignores the supernatural God who has produced miracles from Genesis to Revelation. If you want a non-supernatural book find something other than the Bible.

There is no evidence that god exists. Much of the Biblical lacks any credibility, and is much more likely to be a human production with no input from any god.

 

[Spartan]

There is no evidence that god exists. Much of the Biblical lacks any credibility, and is much more likely to be a human production with no input from any god.

Nuts.

 

[blü 2]

Jesus was an impoverished preacher with a small band of followers who didn't do a great deal. Thinking that he 'should' have been noted earlier is unrealistic.

Or else Jesus was a story told by a small band of followers. We simply don't know what the proto-Christians that Paul said he persecuted thought, There may be glimpses, as in Paul's 'kenosis hymn' (in which Jesus isn't called Jesus till after his death, and 'even on the cross' is added as someone else's gloss on the text) but we have no anchor-point to assess their historical value, if any.

That his followers appeared very soon after him and are noted by numerous independent sources is very strong evidence he existed.

What independent sources when, and where did they get their information?

That no one around these times questioned his existence, despite the fact that Romans would likely have had records of executions that could be checked is further evidence.

That may simply reflect the smallness of the sect. And if those records ever turn up, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

From the nativity, to being from Nazareth, to his baptism by John, to having a living brother James, to being wrong about the eschaton to being crucified his biography makes far more sense as an exaggerated hagiography of a real person containing slivers of truth rather than as a blank-slate mythical archetype.

That's your view. My own remains that there's no clincher either way. And also that there are many more questions about Jesus' existence in history than you think there are. None of that makes me right or you right, but so it goes.

Other than 'no contemporary sources' there is no reason to think he is pure myth, and for 'Jesus the man' the overwhelming expectation is that there would indeed be no contemporary sources.

That no one who wrote about him knew who his was, that Mark is constructed from a sort of midrash view of bits of the Tanakh and is more than 40 years after his purported crucifixion, that maybe there was a Q and if there was, who wrote it and when, that no real Jesus is needed to account for Mark or for Paul, are some of the reasons to doubt.

The evidence is perfectly consistent with him being a man, and not at all consistent with him being a myth.

And vice versa.

Neither Zeus or Dionysius had followers being noted within a few years of their lives including a living brother and neither remotely resembled a normal person with a few Divine attributes tacked on at a later date.

The two principle problems for the no-HJ argument are James the brother of the Lord and the eternal argument from authority, which even Ehrman stoops to. The James argument has a number of problems, which prevent it being a clincher.

And so on.

Wouldn't it be fun if next week we learn his tomb's been found with his autobiography buried with him!