Yes. Mythicism Is Still A Joke

[Starlight]

History isn't about what's possible, it's about what's probable, as you acknowledge. It's very tough to explain where Paul gets all his information. He says he receives the gospel he preaches. Carrier and others have always misread that as "he got everything from a vision."

Well Paul literally says he got it from a vision in Galatians 1:

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Which is in line with the various other statements in the Pauline epistles about having visions of Jesus and getting teachings from them, as I discussed in the other thread. Paul tells one church that the cut-off for the authority of such visions is if anyone says "Jesus be cursed" you know they're not speaking with authority from God's spirit (1 Cor 12:3) but if they say "Jesus is Lord" then they are being guided by the Holy Spirit and presumably whatever else they have to say is divinely revealed truth. And elsewhere Paul asks that the people in the church who have spiritual powers to get teachings from Jesus will be able to confirm that Jesus totally agrees with the long list of church rules Paul appears to be making up (the gospels don't appear to give any support to them) regarding speaking in tongues and women being silent: "Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord." (1 Cor 13:37)

In the Pauline churches, there seems to be a lot of getting teachings from Jesus in visions occurring. More than a few scholars have called the Pauline churches "proto-gnostic" for this reason, and there seems to be a continuum from them into the later fully fledged gnostic Christianity of the 2nd century where spiritual information obtained through spiritual visions was the order of the day. Paul certainly seems to want to make it clear in Galatians 1 that he does not need, nor is he subservient to, the existing Christian Jesus-disciples and their gospels or preachings about Jesus, because he got his gospel from divine revelation. Paul is at the very least pretending to his churches and trying to have them believe that his teachings come from visions and have not been passed onto him by men who heard Jesus talk in the flesh. I happen to think it's most likely that Paul is lying here and that actually his knowledge about Jesus almost certainly does come from the earlier disciples and theirs likely comes from actually interacting with Jesus. But I would also say it's also possible that it's visions all the way down - i.e. Paul is getting getting his information from the earlier disciples who themselves got it from a vision and Jesus only ever existed in the visions of the members of the early Christian cult group and was not actually a fleshly person.

[Adrift]

Well Paul literally says he got it from a vision in Galatians 1:

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Which is in line with the various other statements in the Pauline epistles about having visions of Jesus and getting teachings from them, as I discussed in the other thread. Paul tells one church that the cut-off for the authority of such visions is if anyone says "Jesus be cursed" you know they're not speaking with authority from God's spirit (1 Cor 12:3) but if they say "Jesus is Lord" then they are being guided by the Holy Spirit and presumably whatever else they have to say is divinely revealed truth. And elsewhere Paul asks that the people in the church who have spiritual powers to get teachings from Jesus will be able to confirm that Jesus totally agrees with the long list of church rules Paul appears to be making up (the gospels don't appear to give any support to them) regarding speaking in tongues and women being silent: "Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord." (1 Cor 13:37)

In the Pauline churches, there seems to be a lot of getting teachings from Jesus in visions occurring. More than a few scholars have called the Pauline churches "proto-gnostic" for this reason, and there seems to be a continuum from them into the later fully fledged gnostic Christianity of the 2nd century where spiritual information obtained through spiritual visions was the order of the day. Paul certainly seems to want to make it clear in Galatians 1 that he does not need, nor is he subservient to, the existing Christian Jesus-disciples and their gospels or preachings about Jesus, because he got his gospel from divine revelation. Paul is at the very least pretending to his churches and trying to have them believe that his teachings come from visions and have not been passed onto him by men who heard Jesus talk in the flesh. I happen to think it's most likely that Paul is lying here and that actually his knowledge about Jesus almost certainly does come from the earlier disciples and theirs likely comes from actually interacting with Jesus. But I would also say it's also possible that it's visions all the way down - i.e. Paul is getting getting his information from the earlier disciples who themselves got it from a vision and Jesus only ever existed in the visions of the members of the early Christian cult group and was not actually a fleshly person.

Yeah, no, this is complete bunk, par for the course from you. As Larry Hurtado recently pointed out in his blog,

I have no idea where you're getting the idea that "More than a few scholars have called the Pauline churches 'proto-gnostic'". Where did you hear that from?

[JimL]

That's a fringe position at best.

Really? What's the ratio?

[psstein]

Really? What's the ratio?

In terms of relevant PhDs?

Everyone against 3.

[tabibito]

There's so much Mario Gilbert in the mythicist stories. Kind of sad, really.

[JimL]

In terms of relevant PhDs?

Everyone against 3.

[Sparko]

In terms of relevant PhDs?

Everyone against 3.

Nice. of course Jimmy is laughing too above, but only because he is ignorant enough not to understand how on point this is.

[rogue06]

In terms of relevant PhDs?

Everyone against 3.

The real irony is how many atheist scholars there are that face palm whenever a Christ myther rears their head.

[JimL]

The real irony is how many atheist scholars there are that face palm whenever a Christ myther rears their head.

That's because all of those athiest scholars must actually believe that Jesus resurrected after 3 days and ascended up into the stars.

[rogue06]

That's because all of those athiest scholars must actually believe that Jesus resurrected after 3 days and ascended up into the stars.

No. They rejected his divinity (if they didn't they wouldn't be atheists) but they weren't so foolish as to think that he never exisited

[JimL]

No. They rejected his divinity (if they didn't they wouldn't be atheists) but they weren't so foolish as to think that he never exisited

Doesn't really matter if they believe someone named Jesus existed, if they rejected his divinity then they are christ mythers.

[Cerebrum123]

Doesn't really matter if they believe someone named Jesus existed, if they rejected his divinity then they are christ mythers.

[psstein]

Doesn't really matter if they believe someone named Jesus existed, if they rejected his divinity then they are christ mythers.

You have a bizarre sense of what Jesus mythicism is:

For the sarcastically impaired the following is said in jest

From the conservative evangelical Richard Carrier

Minimum Historicity Claims

[JimL]

You have a bizarre sense of what Jesus mythicism is:

For the sarcastically impaired the following is said in jest

From the conservative evangelical Richard Carrier

Well you tell me psstein, if Jesus isn't god, is the story of jesus being god a myth?

[Starlight]

Well you tell me psstein, if Jesus isn't god, is the story of jesus being god a myth?

It's a difference of:
- "Historical Jesus": There really existed a person named Jesus who formed a cult and taught some stuff, possibly vaguely along the lines of some parts of the gospels, whos followers (maybe at the time, maybe decades or centuries later) eventually came to believe was actually a god.
- "Jesus mythicism": The first Christian had spiritual visions / dreams / hallucinations which they interpreted as revealing to them a mystical figure they called "Jesus". From these spiritual visions they got teachings and stories, and the gospels are compilations of those. The gospel accounts are not based on any literal living breathing human person who taught things, gathered disciples, or founded Christianity.

The traditional secular/liberal position for the last couple of hundred years has been the former - that there was a dude named Jesus who was a self-appointed wandering religious teacher in the 1st century Judea, who founded the Christian movement, and who's followers subsequently came to believe all sorts of silly supernatural things about him (see Sathya Sai Baba for a modern parallel).

But more recently, people who have been following anthropological research into religious visionary experiences, have suggested that you need to give much more credence to the possibility that it wasn't Jesus who founded the early Christians and instead it was the early Christians who invented Jesus via their religious visions which they seem to have been quite keen on. So in this reconstruction the start of the book of Acts where it portrays a bunch of cultists having the "Holy Spirit" descend on them and all starting to talk in tongues and have visions etc is where historical Christianity begins and those crazy cultists subsequently then went on to invent the contents of the gospels based on their visions including inventing Jesus.

It's a case of did a person named Jesus found Christianity, or did the early Christians invent a fiction spiritual figure named Jesus?