Interpretive Paradigms about Jesus

>>The book is a work of German Enlightenment scholarship of the early 20th century. It demonstrates that Saint Peter is a literary invention of early Christianity and was not a historical figure. Includes sources that make Drews' argument more compelling. Has an illustration, Hercules as Crucifer.

>>The publisher claims this work has been unjustifiably forgotten by mainline biblical scholars and freethinking critics. Drews presents classical, biblical, and patristic literature regarding the question of the historicity of Saint Peter. Simon Peter is a fiction created by the church. Simon Peter evolved from Janus and Mithra, who carried the keys to the gates of heaven. Cover the Tyrian Hercules (Melkart).

>>Like Drews' book The Christ Myth, this book argues for the non-historicity of Saint Peter, a central character in Orthodox Christianity.

Frans-Joris wrote:

>I've got "Die Petruslegende" (3rd revised edition, Jena 1924)... 'tolle, lege' i.e. buy and read! I learnt amazing things... there was a pope Peter on the very Vatican [grounds] a long time before Catholic papacy became into being.

I naturally assume that this "rock" of Peter is the rock out of which Mithras is born: the rock of cosmic astrological determinism/Fatedness. That is the rock which he, in some way, leaves or comes out from, like we leave and come out of the cave/womb, like Jesus in the story comes out of the cave after his quasi-death on the cross. And isomorphically, this would be the same "rock" to which Prometheus is chained.

Frans-Joris wrote:

>..."No doubt: the Christian Peter is nothing but a reduplicated and humanized Persian Petros or Mithra, who got that way into the Gospels. The papal Church is nothing but the immediate continuation or the Christian substitute of the old Petros cult. The Archigallus, the highest priest or pagan Pope of the Mithras-Attis cult corresponds to the highest or archpriest of the entire Catholic Christendom. He had his residence on the Vatican, worshipped the Sun as Saviour and in the Kybele the 'virgin'-Godmother, who would be represented sitting with a baby boy on her lap having the Virgin Mary as her Christian counterpart."

>Besides "Die Christusmythe" I possess Drews' "Das Markusevangelium als Zeugnis gegen die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu" (1921), where he claims to have proved that 'not a single word' of Mark's Gospel has any basis whatsoever in historical facts.

>As for the thesis that gnostic Christianism preceded literalist "Die Entstehung des Christentums aus dem Gnostizismus" (1924) could be of great interest and for the use of dating; naming; construing 'facts' according to astronomy/astrology both in pagan (and derived therefrom in Christian) religion "Der Sternhimmel in der Dichtung und Religion der alten Völker und des Christentums" (1924).

What has all this irrelevant idle myth-comparison have to do with whether or not Jesus existed historically? Discovering such isomorphisms is tantamount to cracking the code of mythic symbolism of key myths that lie at the foundation of the Jesus story. When we learn how to fluently think in the language of these myths, we can better discuss and understand the Jesus story and its meaning.

Many contemporary investigators try to use a shallow kind of "historical scholarship" method that limits itself to a certain style of detective work that is stiffly forensic without grasping the very language of the "crime" being investigated -- but superior detective-work requires getting into the headspace of the people involved, which we largely *can* do and *must* do to understand the motives of the incident.

In our case, the incident is the "crime" of creating the lie of the Historical Jesus. To determine if there was such a crime, we must become fluent in the mythic language and build it up inside our mental repertoire of evidence for the case. Can you find the criminal while utterly lacking the ability to think like the criminal? To prove that Jesus was mythical, we can and must think mythically, otherwise our case will be as unconvincing as a stack of copies of The Jesus Puzzle is to narrowly historical scholars who really only are a shallow contemporary parody of scholarship, lacking the ability to think mythically.

Researchers who learn to think mythically are likely to recognize the mythic nature of the Jesus story and conclude that the mythic-Jesus scenario is completely compelling and plausible. But researchers who try to only think in a contemporary hard-headed detective way are like ordinary police who are stumped by the crime -- they cannot understand what the criminal's motives were, so they cannot relate to the criminal and follow his trail in order to successfully locate him.

Mere "historical" detectives will be prone to assuming a Historical Jesus.

Detectives who also possess the facility of mythical thinking will be prone to conclude a Mythic Jesus.

Researchers who maintain the Historical Jesus view are unlikely to find the book The Jesus Puzzle persuasive. Ultimately the only way to build a fully compelling case for the mythical nature of Jesus is to build a complete mythic explanation in addition to a complete contemporary, forensic, and narrowly historical explanation. I postulate that the earlier Christ Myth books had a more potent and comprehensive approach: they built a solid case by covering both components and building a substantial mythic explanation along with a substantial narrowly-historical case.

Today's approach to the problem attempts to build a compelling case while omitting the mythic dimension of the explanation in its own right -- the mythic dimension is treated as an afterthought, something we helplessly throw our arms up at, in a too-hasty defeat. The http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries discussion group cannot ever, despite thousands of narrowly scholarly postings, convince, compel, and persuade people on a narrowly historical basis. The limitations of such a 1-sided approach eliminates the possibility of success at compelling the Historical Jesus crowd -- what do we do, at this impasse we have reached?

How can anyone still believe the Historical Jesus view, after having read The Jesus Mysteries, The Christ Myth, The Christ Conspiracy, Pagan Christs, The Jesus Puzzle, and Deconstructing Jesus? The narrowly historical approach will never persuade such believers, no matter how many solid arguments are amassed. The only effective way to break through this undeniable stalemate and make real progress, the only untilled soil and virgin ground left, is to move the conversation toward the direction of mythic codebreaking.

We'll never prove the fictional nature of the Jesus story until we can explain what the story meant to those who constructed it. If you say that we are unable to understand what the Jesus story meant to those who constructed it, then there is no hope of ever persuading the Historical Jesus believers. No amount of such limited and helpless thinking and discussion will ever attain persuasiveness.

Researchers who assume that we are unable to determine what the Jesus story meant to those who created, developed, and propagated it, assume a helpless and weak view of the scope of scholarly power. Such a diminished and reduced notion of "scholarly evidence" is inherently incapable of building a convincing case. Such an approach dooms itself to defeat from the start.

Essentially the Christ-Myth theorists must crack the mythic code, then teach the Historical Jesus researchers how to think mythically, because what stops the Historical Jesus crowd from accepting Earl Doherty's book The Jesus Puzzle is not some deficiency of Doherty's sober, modern "forensic" evidence, but because of their lack of ability to think mythically. In practice, a historical thinker who lacks the ability to think mythically is likely to maintain the Historical Jesus view, while a researchers who has the ability to think mythically as well as historically is likely to adopt the mythic-Christ view.

A person whose mental repertoire includes mythic thinking is able to see the full self-sufficiency of the mythic version of Jesus as the complete foundation of Christianity. A person who is unable to think in the mythic language is unable to see how Christianity could possibly have been created and propagated without a historical Jesus founding Christianity.

The Historical Jesus crowd's main objection to the Christ Myth amounts to the belief that a merely mythic Christ cannot be sufficient to explain the origin of Christianity. The Historical Jesus crowd does not understand the conceptual language of myth, so they cannot understand that mythic motives are completely sufficient to explain the origin Christianity. The *cannot* believe Doherty; they are *incapable* of believing Doherty, because he does not teach them how to think mythically and therefore he cannot ever prove to them that mythic thinking can provide a sufficient basis and complete explanation of how it is possible for Christianity to begin as a myth.

This is my prophecy: only when the Christ-Myth researchers provide a fully serious and complete case on the grounds of the sufficiency of myth to explain the origin of Christianity, will the Historical Jesus crowd accept the Christ Myth view. Until then, they are unable to accept the Christ Myth view, because they underestimate the mythic dimension of human thought and cannot understand how mythic thinking could have given rise to Christianity.

Without a *full* and substantial mythic-thinking based explanation of the origin of Christianity, you can disprove the Historical Jesus view on narrowly historical grounds forever but that only disproves the conventional explanation of the origin of Christianity, *without providing an adequate alternative* in the form of a sufficiently compelling mythic-thinking based explanation of the origin of Christianity.

The JesusMysteries discussion group is determined to pursue the problem in only a narrowly historical mode of research, and therefore will never make any real progress, because it can only nullify the Historical Jesus explanation of the origin of Christianity; it can never provide a proven-sufficient and demonstrably plausible alternative explanation of the origin of Christianity: the entirely plausible mythic-only basis.

There is really only one practical solution: there needs to be two moderated newsgroups or two distinct areas of the moderated newsgroup: one that is dedicated to disproving the Historical Jesus explanation of the origin of Christianity, and one that is dedicated to proving the sufficiency of the mythic origin of Christianity, including cracking the code of the meaning of the Jesus myth in light of the mythic language of the time.

Now that the discussion group has become proficient at keeping the narrowly historical discussion on-track and constructive, it needs to expand its conception of "historical scholarship" to the more classic understanding of that as philology: the study of the meaning of classic writings. In the discussion group, the conception of what "historical scholarly evidence" is has remained limited to the printed evidence that there is insufficient basis to conclude that Jesus existed as a bodily, historical person.

But that negative project only nullifies and disempowers the Historical Jesus explanation, without providing a fully plausible alternative explanation, so the Historical Jesus believers will continue to maintain their views for lack of a *convincing* alternative. So far, the building of a positive case for the sufficiency of myth to provide a basis for the origin of Christianity has been anything but convincing, because that alternative has been put forth as a default alternative without fully and seriously fleshing it out.

As Doherty's proposed alternative, he offers what comes across to the Historical Jesus crowd as only a vague and diminished "myth". The Christ Myth scholars must become theorists who are adequate to the task of fleshing out a fully detailed, compelling, and vital alternative scenario, to put forth a mythic Jesus who is sufficiently fleshed out to become a real threat to the Historical Jesus scenario.

Doherty must present, reveal, and thus resurrect a Mythic Christ who regains enough vital substantiality to enable us to reasonably sacrifice the Historical Jesus. In contrast to the Historical Jesus, we must present a convincing enough positive case for the Mythic Christ that he can been seen to have a real body which even the disbelievers in him can see and touch.

We must explain in a convincing way, unlike before, how Paul saw Christ so compellingly that he created Christianity. Without such a fleshed-out scenario, we are left with two equally null and dubious explanations for the origin of Christianity: the implausible Historical Jesus for which we have no significant evidence, and the equivalently implausible "Mythic Christ" which today's scholars deny we can even explain or understand.

Given the choice between two such feeble explanations, people may become doubters in the Historical Jesus scenario but they will not become believers in the Mythic Christ scenario for the origin of Christianity. In the restricted approach that has been dominant so far, an approach that is not wide-ranging enough to deserve the name of "historical research", the most that the discussion can ever really hope to achieve is to weaken the certainty of the Historical Jesus crowd; the discussion has no chance of actively pulling them toward favoring the Mythic Christ scenario.

The Christ Myth theorists can never achieve satisfaction by using their existing approach, because they assume that all they need to construct is the negative side of the change of understanding: getting people to see the implausibility of the Historical Jesus view. It's a matter of how you conceive of "the mythic explanation" -- does "myth" merely the nonexistence of Jesus, or is myth the active existence of a mythic kind of Jesus?

There are two distinct senses of "the Christ Myth position". One is negative: Jesus didn't exist, he was only a myth. The other is positive: Jesus *did* exist, in a compelling and substantial way -- as a specific mythic being who was encountered in a mythic state of experiencing. But this positive case has not been seriously and thoroughly attempted yet.

The positive case combined with the negative case is far more powerfully persuasive than the negative case alone. The Historical Jesus crowd will loosen their belief in Historical Jesus but it is not possible for them to adopt a Christ Myth scenario on a purely negative basis; they can only change to some form of the Christ Myth position when the Christ Myth scenario is fully filled out, even if they are currently locked into the Historical Jesus worldview and are alienated from mythic thinking.

They cannot become interested in mythic thinking until it's presented with full convincing detailed explanation, and they cannot switch from the Historical Jesus view to some CM view until they are brought to become interested in mythic thinking well enough to see how convincing and plausible the Mythic Christ scenario is. As long as Historical Jesus believers are uninterested in mythic thinking, they cannot possibly switch to a Mythic Christ view.

The negative or neutral form of the Mythic Christ view cannot succeed, cannot convince people to let go of the Historical Jesus view. Only the positive form of the Mythic Christ view can actively pull people from the one scenario to another. The mission and mode of operation of the discussion group is to get people to switch from the Historical Jesus view to the *neutral* Mythic Christ view, but that project is evidently doomed to failure. We must present a much more detailed and coherent alternative that compels people's interest. Otherwise, this status quo cannot change.

The Jesus Mysteries discussion group members try to investigate the existence of Jesus as historians but not as philosophers or philologists.

The historian mentality by itself is insufficient to explain how myth can be more potent than a historical figure. Their kind of historian mentality is the vulgar form of history, which considers philosophy (particularly the philosophy of myth) to be outside of rational intellectual research. Great historians are also philosophers and are able to insightfully trace the history of ideas.

"The historical Jesus" covertly implies an unrealistic picture of Hellenism

The question of the historicity of Jesus turns out to be a matter of definitions and argument about what conditions must be met in order to assign the title of "the historical Jesus" to any particular man. Some say that the man of 100 BC (teacher of righteousness) justifiably warrants the title of "the historical Jesus", but I disagree -- he is just one man among many, who does not significantly deserve the title of "the historical Jesus" any more or less than 99 other very close candidates.

I maintain that for a candidate to warrant the title of "the historical Jesus", the candidate must tower over the rest in Jesus-likeness; he must be clearly and far more Jesus-like than the nearest contender candidates. We have evidence for many essentially equally Jesus-like historical men, therefore we cannot justifiably assign the title "the historical Jesus" to any one man, therefore there were many historical Jesuses or "original historical kernals for the Jesus figure", therefore there was no *the* historical Jesus.

Even so sharp and critical a thinker as Clark Heinrich doesn't comprehend my point. Fortunately, his book does point out that we don't know if there was a historical Jesus.

Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy

Clark Heinrich

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819979

He continues to reason that there may have been a Jewish initiator who gave his disciples visionary plants (and presumably also was crucified), but I disagree that this warrants assigning such a man the label "the historical Jesus".

The fact that a Jew gave followers visionary plants is utterly unimpressive and non-unique -- Heinrich's argument for reasonableness of "the historical Jesus" rests on making a big deal out of the possibility of a Jewish hierophant administering visionary plants, but in contrast, I point out that nothing could be more common, standard, and non-unique than that -- all kinds of Jewish feast leaders administered visionary plants all the time; it's utterly nonunique and the title of "the historical Jesus" entirely is a matter of Jesus' uniqueness.

If we must give any particular Jewish cultic hierophant the title of "the historical Jesus", then we must by the same logic assign the same title to hundreds of other Jewish cultic hierophants as well, resulting in contradiction of the criteria of uniqueness. Ironically, Heinrich's goal is to show the plausibility of visionary plants in the origin of Christianity, but he ends up painting a scenario in which visionary plants are *rare*, rather than common and standard.

If *every* Jewish cultic hierophant administered visionary plants, there's no way we can meaningfully assign the title "the historical Jesus" to any of them, insofar as "administering visionary plants cultically" is the or a primary criterion for identifying the historical Jesus. Heinrich repeats "but there could have been a Jewish cultic hierophant who administered visionary plants".

I don't disagree with that fact of possibility: what I disagree with is the necessary implication that there is anything rare or unique about such practice -- it was the opposite; it was entirely standard, a paradigm which you would think Heinrich would jump on eagerly. His hanging onto the idea of "the" historical Jesus forces him to portray visionary plants as rare and exceptional, rather than ubiquitous. With "defenders" of the entheogen theory of religion such as this, who needs opponents of the theory? To assign the "the historical Jesus", we must identify *uniqueness* criteria, and the most non-unique thing in the world is to find a Jewish hierophant giving visionary plants to followers.

Our goal: find the historical Jesus. How to recognize him? He is a Jewish hierophant using visionary plants. OK, that narrows it down to.... several thousand candidates. Add the criterion "He was crucified." OK, that narrows it down to ... 200 candidates. What other criteria? "He was like the attributes in the New Testament." OK, that narrows it down to 100 candidates, disproving uniqueness and leading to the conclusion that we cannot assign the title "the historical Jesus" to any particular candidate; therefore, there was no "the historical Jesus" in any warranted, meaningful, reasonable, justified sense.

There were likely many group leaders who gave their disciples visionary plants, many Jews who were crucified, and multiple Jews who both gave their followers visionary plants and were crucified. We cannot justify assigning the label of "the historical Jesus" to any one lone man.

And those two criteria are entirely debatable. What combination of criteria is used to judge which man warrants the label "the historical Jesus"?

I'm firmly and definitely against assigning the label "the historical Jesus" to any one man, because the moment you do, the mystical meaning of the cross is effectively shut out and not comprehensible. We can either comprehend the mystical meaning of the cross, or we can assign the label "the historical Jesus" to a single man -- we cannot practically do both.

The mystical, Hellenistic mystery-religion meaning of the cross is acknowledgement of no-free-will and consequent transformation of the mind's mental worldmodel. The acknowledgement restabilizes the self-control or practical viable self-government of the individual, avoiding chaos and restoring mental harmony and order and practical self-control, now purified of the animal-like delusion of metaphysical free will agency.

The moment you claim the plausibility of a "the" historical Jesus, you always and necessarily sneak in an entire implausible picture of history that doesn't stand up to the evidence. "Historical Jesus" is a code-word welded to an entire category of scenarios that don't hold up to an investigation of Hellenistic history.

Varieties of books proposing Christianity is literalist history or is allegory

People want an alternative to bad literalist Christianity, so they are looking for books about *good* literalist Christianity historical revisionism. But better yet is a third category, of eliminating literalism entirely; books which hold the view that nothing at all in the scriptures is literally true, but it is all allegorically true. That group divides further depending on the author's conception of what allegory is about, or the nature of allegory.

The inferior view of "scriptures are literally false but allegorically true" is that the scriptures are allegory about moral philosophy (pseudo-enlightened allegorists), about planets and stars (Acharya S), or other ordinary-state of consciousness concerns. The superior view of "scriptures are literally false but allegorically true" is that the scriptures are allegory and allegory revolves around describing the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state. The best of the latter group consider the altered state to be visionary-plant based. I can specify books in each of these categories.

Book category 1: Bad literalist Christianity.

I will consider which books characterize each group, later.

Book category 2: *good* literalist Christianity

Da Vinci code, Holy Blood Holy Grail, The Jesus Conspiracy (Kirsten/Gruber)

Book category 3: Purely allegorical Christianity, ordinary state of consciousness; "scriptures are literally false but allegorically true" is that the scriptures are allegory about moral philosophy (pseudo-enlightened allegorists), about planets and stars (Acharya S: Christ Conspiracy book), or other ordinary-state of consciousness concerns.

Book category 4: Purely allegorical Christianity, altered state of consciousness; "scriptures are literally false but allegorically true"; scriptures are purely allegory and allegory revolves around describing the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state, even if some political, magical, astrological, and other allegory domains are additionally woven in.

But this group considers the altered state considered a baffling, or even boringly alien and unsolvable puzzle; these scholars are so accustomed and acclimated to being utterly baffled by "eating the flesh of the savior for redemption", there's not even any sense of mystery and puzzlement about it.

Freke & Gandy's corpus lies mostly in group 4, partly in group 5. Jungian and Campbellian paradigm books are here -- proposing dreams where they should instead propose the mystic altered state. We should scratch out "dream" globally and write "intense mystic altered state"; then Jung would be worth something. Campbell is worse, by one measure; at least Jung knows that the ordinary state of consciousness is not enough to serve as the referent for myth (so he looks to dreams).

Book category 5: The altered state is visionary-plant based. Purely allegorical Christianity, altered state of consciousness; "scriptures are literally false but allegorically true"; scriptures are purely allegory and allegory revolves around describing the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state, even if some political, magical, astrological, and other allegory domains are additionally woven in.

There is no bafflement or mystery enigma about how the ancients had the holy spirit on tap routinely: "eating the flesh of the savior for redemption", because the problem is solved: religious experiencing has always flowed freely, most freely and completely freely, from the wellspring of visionary plants. Non-plant-based mystic experiences are feeble and rare and serve to provide but a glimpse, a foretaste of the oral teachings.

I need to describe how today's books fall short of expressing this scenario #5. There are other categories in a combinatorial matrix: the book Strange Fruit (and renamed 2nd ed.) is entheogenic but also literalist as far as Mr. Historical Jesus in emphasis, tho author Clark Heinrich points out we can't know whether Jesus existed.

>>>have you read Holy Blood, Holy Grail? Da Vinci Code?

Michael wrote:

>I posted an expose recently. "I'm descended from Mr. Historical

>Jesus, so I'm going to be king over you."

>I read HBHG. The theory in that genre is off-base and has no particular grasp of religious experiencing or religious mythic symbolism. It's too literalist. One needs to read lots of alternative histories, to piece together what most likely happened.

>My most popular book list: Mary "John" Magdalene

>http://www.egodeath.com/#BookLists

>I need to sort these by popularity.

>Popular:

>Gnosticism

>Ecstatic Alchemy

>Philosophy of Mother of God

>Mary "John" Magdalene, The Beloved Disciple

>Sophia, religious comprehension

>The Swoon/Shroud/India theory of Jesus' death

>Other book lists:

>Original, experiential, mystical Christianity

>Mystery Religion, Myth, and the Mystical State

>Religious Experiencing

>Holy Spirit and Christian Spirituality

>Word and Power (doctrine and spiritual experience)

>Gnosticism

>Western Esotericism

>Ecstatic Alchemy

>Hermeticism and ancient mystic astrology

>Entheogen theory of the origin of religions

>The active eucharist that reveals the kingdom of God

>Eucharist (Catholic authors)

>Lord's Supper (Prot., E. Orth, Ecum.)

>Ancient wine as visionary plant beverage

>Block-universe determinism, Necessity, divine predestination

>Tenseless time, eternity, and timelessness

>Reformed/Calvinist theology and determinism

>Mythic-only Christ theory

>Historical Jesus, or Christ Myth?

>Lives of the Apostles

>Religious myth: allegorical metaphor of mystic experiencing

>The kingdom of God is at hand

>Christianity as political rebellion against "divine" Caesar

>Martyrdom

>Earliest Christianity

>Ancient Near Eastern religion

>Theology of Religious Pluralism

>Rock as gnosis-initiation mystery religion

>Picture Story Bibles

>-- Michael Hoffman

Repositioning Kirby's Christian Origins websites

-----Original Message-----

From: KirbTron

Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 6:06 PM

To: kirbynews~at~yahoogroups.com

Subject: [kirbynews] Welcome

>>My name is Peter Kirby, and I am a student at Fullerton College in California. You may recognize my web sites:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com

http://www.gospelthomas.com

http://www.christianorigins.com

>>The big news of the day is that http://www.didjesusexist.com/ is being eliminated out in favor of the new "Christian Origins" title. Please fix your own links or the links of web sites you visit. There is plenty of stuff planned for the rest of this month, but for now enjoy the web site stuff already online. And e-mail if you have any questions or comments.

___________________

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kirbynews

Peter Kirby is phasing out his fairly new domain name Didjesusexist.com, in favor of Christianorigins.com, which reflects the problem we discussed with defining what people may mean by "Jesus existed" or "Jesus didn't exist". Due to the squirrelly nature of word-labels, it turns out to be far more straightforward, pertinent, on-target, and even intellectually mature to say "Let us determine the true origins of Christianity" then to debate "Did Jesus exist?"

If one just answers the question "Did Jesus exist", whether in the positive or negative, the biggest task remains; that of explaining the context in which the little "Did Jesus exist" question can be answered meaningfully. The only way for a meaningful context for the historicity question is the bigger, broader, more paradigm-establishing question (establishing the interpretive framework), "What is the true origin of Christianity? What was the true historical beginning and early development of Christianity?"

Will Kirby still put up the DidPaulExist.com site, as he mentioned upon coming to his senses in mid-October 2003?

His new ChristianOrigins.com domain name is also better than his Early<Religious>Writings.com domain names: who is to say, before one has begun, whether or not these writings are in fact "early"? What if they turn out to be forgeries from the Reformation era, backdated? The term "early" presumes too much, too soon.

Supernaturalist, historicist, and mythicist Jesuses

Here is another list of standard views I'm categorizing.

o Supernaturalist

o Historicist

o Mythicist

What is the relation between these three positions? The main thing I notice is that they nest. The supernaturalist believes that Jesus was supernatural *and* existed historically *and* carried mythic meaning as well; he was the historical literal embodiment of what were formerly only mythic figures. The supernaturalist's Jesus is the completed, full-spectrum realization of the mystery-religion figures.

The historicist who sees Jesus as a spiritual leader substracts supernaturalist beliefs and keeps the mythic or allegorical beliefs, along with the historical beliefs about Jesus. Jesus has incredibly deep insight into spiritual matters. He fully understands all mythic and mystic insights.

The pure allegorist or pure mythicist removes not only the supernaturalist beliefs, but also removes the historicist beliefs.

In a Venn set diagram, the supernaturalist beliefs are a superset. There are concentric circles: supernaturalist containing historicist containing mythicist beliefs. In American culture, a person often starts by adopting the supernaturalist way of thinking, then stripping away magic thinking to arrive at the historicist position, and then after further critical thinking may arrive at the farthest destination, after stripping away the historicist beliefs to leave only the mythic associations as general concepts.

Mythical, Legendary and Historical Jesus

Neville,

The most noteworthy thing about the various possibilities you pose is a distinction you keep raising and then suppressing: the single-person versus multiple-people basis of legend. You are strongly biased in favor of there being a single person rather than multiple people upon which the myths were placed.

You mention the possibility of multiple people, the composite hypothesis, but don't give it fair time in your lists of possibilities enough to take it to the extreme conclusion. You keep rushing back, uncritically, to acting as though only a single-person basis is present as a possibility to consider.

Here are excerpts from your original posting, showing which paragraphs assume a single person underlying the Jesus figure, and which paragraphs assume a multiplicity of people underlying a composite Jesus figure. In the posting "An overabundance of historical Jesuses" ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/3099 ), I proposed *a radical multiplicity of people underlying the Jesus figure*.

I agree that there certainly was a person, or "even" multiple people underlying the Jesus figure -- but *so many* people, the Jesus figure dissolves back into myth. The few options you list bare touch on the multiple-people hypothesis, and then only assume a handful of people, and if one happens to be named Jesus, your thinking collapses back into the strong and hasty assumption of a single underlying person.

You have the appearance of considering the multiple-people hypothesis, but you don't really give it any serious consideration, so strong is your leaning toward assuming a *single* underlying person.

Your fleeting mentions of a multiplicity of people supports your argument for a historical Jesus until you really develop the idea of multiplicity -- beyond about 5 people, the multiplicity becomes overwhelming to your theory of there being a historical Jesus -- he fades and fades, as we bring in 10 more, then yet 10 more actual people upon whom the myths were piled.

The more historical Jesuses we admit onto the stage, the more our "Historical Jesus" fades, rather than solidifies.

Neville wrote:

>what will satisfy the several perspectives which are floated:

Here, Neville expresses himself in terms of assuming a singular person underlying the Jesus figure:

>1. A real god man who was everything the NT says.

Here, Neville expresses himself in terms of assuming a plurality of actual people underlying the Jesus figure:

>2. A composite godman created by humans from an array of other human and godman predecessors and stories, and to provide an eponymous man to the spiritual expectations of scripture and the Kingdom expectation and Sayings.

This is the only clear, wholehearted expression of the radical-multiplicity or what I dub the "overabundance" view of how many underlying people there were. After this, you avoid confronting overabundance as a problem, though it is the main problem raised by your posting, a problem that looms over all your various categories. If Jesus was radically plural, then he did not exist as a person -- as a reasonably singular person.

If Historical Jesus turns out to be based on 100 or 200 people, is this "an actual person who lived in the flesh"? No, it's a mob, a completely and truly *composite* Jesus, which is not a historical person. A composite figure based on many persons is not itself a person.

Here, Neville returns to the Singular (single actual person) assumption:

>3. A real Galilean peasant itinerant preacher who was later deified by humans.

Here Neville lists so many roles that Plurality is suggested, yet he portrays it still as predominantly Singular:

>4. One of the other humans detectable in the several threads of the canonical and extra-canonical gospel stories who became both eponymous and had the spiritual and secular godman stories added to his own - could be an executed revolutionary pretender to the throne, an itinerant preacher fallen foul of a theocracy defensive against rabble-rousing messiahs, a Nazorean rabbi caught up in anti-Roman resistance, a charismatic caught up in and driven by his own visions to seek scriptural martyrdom - add to the list (this is essentially a sub-component of No 2 - you might say that this is the just the list of persons selected for that composite, but I have listed it separately for the sake of analysis, as one of the list might well have been called Jesus, and been the eponymous and elusive character being sought).

In Neville's second set of categories, he has silently abandoned the Plurality hypothesis and the Plurality Problem that would snowball to increasingly weaken the single HJ he's constructing:

>classifying the types of Jesus we are talking about:

Neville's category A in the next set of categories is Singular:

>A. The Mythical One - supernatural, a spiritual being, to whom such typical godman attributes were progressively attributed - son of god, virgin birth, resurrecter, saviour, ascender to the skies, trinitarian, anthropomorphised.

Singular:

>B. The Legendary One - a hero-figure who wrought miracles, healed, attracted a great following, taught great truths, fought the forces of evil and religious and civil oppression, was executed and lived on as a hero, leader and teacher in the minds of his followers, later deified (as eg Herakles, Caesar, Augustus et al - that is raised to amongst the gods)

Singular:

>C. The Historical One - a notable character in his day and place, absorbed into A or B as either the primary character, or one of a series of persons compounded into the character - was a royal pretender, itinerant preacher, sectarian rabbi, religious pretender, ultra-nationalist revolutionary, others, according to taste.

>ALL THREE EXISTED/EXIST

>The Myth is real - it exists; the Legend is real, it exists; the Historical is real -it exists.

The rest of the original posting is almost uniformly slanted toward the Singular assumption, so I will only list the few parts that admit the Plurality hypothesis:

This passage starts in the singular, then is worded in the plural, yet returns quickly into the Singular underlying-person hypothesis:

>The Legendary Jesus in historical terms exists as an historical fact ...Within the legend lie real people and events, it is just that which are real, and which are the stories, tales and events which accumulate around notable personages, is the challenge which confronts us in trying to extract real historical content from a legend, whether it be an Alexander, a Jesus Messiah or an Elvis Presley. What is certain is that all of the legend is not fact - which leads us to search for the basic character within it, whether he be great or trivial.

The next paragraph is reluctantly Plural; it's not really addressing the composite/Plural possibility. It's actually written from the assumption of an inevitably Singular underlying person:

>it was a good name to evoke in connection with a Kingdom of God movement , and it is entirely possible that one or even more of a kingly pretender, preacher, magician, rabbi, nationalist-revolutionary or other categories would have been so called and so become a candidate(s) for a role model/central figure for a spiritual saviour-movement

This paragraph admits "perhaps" certain pluralities of underlying people, but again drives relentlessly toward the assumption of a Singular underlying person:

>This person does not have to be the one who is represented by this cult, he could have been, and is likely to have been, one or perhaps more of the particular individual characters embodied in the thread of the story.

Concluding the posting, Neville strongly endorses the Singular assumption, avoiding and forgetting to discuss the threatening Radical Plurality Problem.

>We should acknowledge that the 'no Jesus whatsoever other than supernatural construct' is so unlikely as to be dismissible as a serious point of debate.

>If we wish to pursue the topic of an historical Jesus, if indeed it is considered worthy of serious research and discussion, it should lie in accepting a physical man called Jesus who was not a god, and searching for what he really was.

Neville finishes with a sudden last glimpse of the Plurality possibility, but it collapses into the Singular assumption by the end of the sentence:

>Alternatively we could concentrate on just examining the antecedents which led to the composite Legendary Jesus without looking for a possible obscure person underneath.

Despite all the categories he proposed in the posting, we are instead left

with these two as the main, critical categories:

The single-HJ hypothesis: Jesus was a single actual person upon whom myths were piled.

The multiple-HJ hypothesis: There were many actual persons upon whom myths were piled.

At the extreme, the latter becomes the radical multiplicity of HJ hypothesis, which becomes no HJ at all. If HJ is two hundred people, then he is not an actual person, but a crowd and a composite. This renders Neville's conclusion rather empty and toothless:

>We should acknowledge that the 'no Jesus whatsoever other than supernatural construct' is so unlikely as to be dismissible as a serious point of debate.

"There is no Jesus other than the supernatural construct." This is equivalent to "HJ certainly existed; indeed *hundreds* of HJ's existed."

Neville wrote (my paraphrasing):

>I outlined a range of possibilities, some of which were mutually exclusive, some overlapping. We are in the process of examining a series of options within the spectrum I outlined.

>We should not even bother discussing the minimal-probability cases, and not debate another person here as though he holds those unlikely- extreme positions. Specifically, we should stop wasting time refuting the red-herring positions of the extreme Gospel Jesus or the absolute Nil Historical Jesus Model.

>This is an unexceptionable proposition for uncommitted historians. Ceasing discussion of those extreme positions would clear the air of the amount of time and ink wasted on proving that either is not so. We should collectively agree to accept that both are not so.

>My post was open-ended and I did not intend to promote or endorse any of the options I delineated in the first or second set of alternatives. I only intended to define several points the lie between the extreme positions -- between the extreme positions that likely no one here would seriously consider worth defending.

>Discussion participants should avoid putting extreme positions on another participant, who does not espouse them, as a means of argument. We should instead make positive statements and deliver positive evidence to support those statements -- then, we can make progress.

Your original posting was helpful though inadvertantly strongly slanted toward a single-underlying figure assumption. Let us take your advice and spend all our time weighing, debating, promoting, or refuting the specific, numbered intermediate positions which you suggest.

You presented a few positions, one of which had a plurality of figures, but your second list omitted that strong-plurality possibility. Your posting suggested that we ought to define additional intermediate positions, and I found that the most contentious aspect among the positions you defined is singularity versus plurality of actual persons underlying the myths. You define perhaps two "axes": "Perspectives 1-4" and "Classifications A-C".

Neville defined "perspectives 1-4 for CM, MJ, MC, HJ, HM" as follows:

>1. A real god man who was everything the NT says.

>3. A real Galilean peasant itinerant preacher who was later deified by humans.

Then Neville defined these "classification of Jesus types A-C":

You invited people to define subcategories within your positions. This is especially profitable when the subcategories are expressed in terms of single versus plural historical people and their relative influence compared to each other -- does one person tower impressively above the other remarkable people, or not? I define such subcategories below.

What was the actual basis for the Jesus figure?

Neville asks this discussion group to not bother refuting these two extreme positions:

Nv1. There was one remarkable man; there were no myths; the figure accurately represents the man

NvX. There were no really noteworthy men; myths alone condensed into one figure

These are the remaining positions worth discussing, refuting, debating, or promoting: (mapped to Neville's numbered list; this is my version or subcategories of Neville's approved-worthy categories):

Nv2. There were various noteworthy men, no one dominating; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure.

Nv2. There were various noteworthy men but they weren't a basis for the figure; myths alone condensed into one figure.

Nv3. There was one remarkable man; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure.

Nv4. There was one remarkable man and other noteworthy men; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure.

I think that these subcategories fulfill the spirit of Neville's proposition and they put a greatly needed stronger emphasis on the single/multiple issue, and they highlight the problem of *relative prominence* among a set of remarkable persons.

For example, if there were 15 remarkable people such as prominent rebel leaders, teachers, healers, prophets, magicians, and philosophers, and five of them are slightly more prominent than the rest, and one of them is slightly more prominent than the rest, can we go rushing to the declaration that we have found "the real historical Jesus"?

No, the crowd remains a crowd. But if one figure *towers* over the rest, then it would be reasonable to say we have found "the real historical Jesus". So the entire issue boils down to laying out a distribution curve of height of personality. Who was the bigger person, and how much bigger -- sufficiently bigger to be "the historical Jesus"?

How does the degree-of-influence curve look -- does a single figure rise and stand out from the rest as the clear winner, or is it a fuzzy, jagged curve?

Neville's original posting (inadventantly) too often presented the possibility of a single clearly dominant figure. But that is really what is at issue; that's the question all his categories raise: it really all boils down to,

Considering all the influential people of that era, was any one of them *relatively much more influential* than the rest, or not?

Then, after considering that question, which needs an answer in the form of a comparative bar-chart of influence of various actual contenders, we can ask: so condender #14 stands somewhat out from the rest as being more influential.

So what? Does this permit us to jubilantly declare that we have identified the historical Jesus? Suppose he stands out even more -- what then? Can we then say we've identified him?

I think no one man can ever have a bar on this relative-stature chart that stands so far about the other bars of relative stature that we can call him "the historical Jesus". Without supernatural miracles, there is no way to sufficiently elevate one man far enough above the other contenders.

We usually consider it a hard problem to locate a man of high enough stature to fit the historical Jesus role. But that problem is equivalent to the problem of sufficiently *suppressing* all the other contenders. State Christianity faced the problem of constructing *only 1* Jesus rather than an excessive number of unauthorized rebellious Christs running all over the place and contending against the bishops.

*That's* what the discussion participants here are looking for in the search for the historical Jesus -- one man who is *relatively far more influential* than all his many contenders -- a remarkable man *next to whom* the many other remarkable men of the day pale to nothing but shadowy forebears, as did John the Baptist.

The criterion is that this historical guy stand as high above the other contestants as the Jesus character stands above the John the Baptist character in the literalist storytelling. Is there one actual person who is *importantly* of higher stature than the rest, or are all contenders incapable of being that much more important than the other contenders?

Given the importance of the singular versus plural historical-man distinction, I disagree with Neville on one crucial point. I think we should still consider this a possibility:

There were no really noteworthy men; myths alone condensed into one figure. There were various semi-important men, all mere mice next to the towering approved historical Jesus that the HJ Believers require.

After reading theories that the Old Testament is all historical allegory, and that Peter is historical allegory, and that Paul and Jesus are historicized mythic allegory, I've reached the point of making the powerful hypothetical assumption that *every* character in the canonical scriptures is essentially allegorical.

Then it is no longer important whether some actual magicians were well-known, or some healers or teachers or rebel crucified Jews. The scriptures become so totally allegorical in their drive and purpose, they are mere historical fiction that *functions* independently of any various actual people.

I call into question what it means for fiction to be "based on" an actual person. Thus I can possibly assert that the Jesus figure is not really "based on" any man, or men, of any relative greater stature -- in all its important essence, the Jesus figure is a set of myths shaped as though it is based on a historical person or various historical persons.

The Jesus figure uses the various teachers, leaders, and characters of the ancient era, but none of those actual people were very important. The Jesus figure is *like* the various crucified rebel Jews and their leaders, and is *like* the various teachers and healers, and sure, some teachers or magicians may have been famous. But still there is too big of a gap between their mundane fame and the overinflated figure of Jesus.

The Jesus figure is *like* all those historical people, but is only generally and loosely "based on" them. It's a matter of degree. At some point, if there are too many historical people of too little relative stature, there is a disconnect that is fatal to your dismissal of the "no HJ at all" hypothesis.

It is quite possible to define a reasonable defensible position in the spirit of this discussion group that there was no historical Jesus at all; that the Jesus figure is, first of all, a literary composite that transcends any and all particular characters.

You can remove any particular historical person, or remove even ten of them, and the Jesus figure remains, because he is only loosely based on any actual particular people. Thus we can reasonably assert that there was no historical Jesus. The Jesus character is first of all based on a *type* of person, or collection of types -- not on *particular* persons.

Mythic Jesus versus Mythic Christ

There are two different kinds of "mythic Jesus" beliefs. The negative: Jesus is only a myth; and the positive: the Jesus figure is full of mythic meaning.

Suppose I believe that Jesus is purely mythical. I would be against those who say that Jesus is only a myth; I'd insist that the Jesus figure is full of mythic meaning. The former worldview or attitude is the "Mythic Jesus" hypothesis. The latter is the "Mythic Christ" hypothesis.

I mean the term 'Christ' as a purely mythic, spiritual, experiential mystery-religion savior -- the stories about this particular savior are in the form of a political rebel; this is a political-style mystery-religion savior figure, where "Christ" alludes to the anointed rebel-king military messiah type of figure -- as an allegory for the experiences one undergoes during initiation.

The discussion group is to debate whether Jesus existed or not, but I want to debate in what way the mythic Jesus is mythic. I am against the Mythic Jesus advocates. I am a Mythic Christ advocate. This discussion group is wholly against defenses of the Mythic Christ, full of meaning. There are only two positions put forth for scholarly debate here: Historical Jesus, or Mythic Jesus.

My use of "advocate" is ironically problematic. Suppose a man believes Jesus is nothing but an empty fairy tale used to delude childish thinkers: is he an *advocate of* the Mythic Jesus?

I associate "Christ" with the mystery-religion mythic savior experience. That experience was allegorized using the framework of the military rebel upstart king, the usurper of the throne of power.

What a great idea that seemed to the creators of mystery-religion schools: to express mythic allegorical concepts about initiation experiences in the form of historical literals... as long as people keep the historical and mythic aspects differentiated.

But it was not an era of differentiation as much as one that sought similarities and fusing of ideas together. "Jesus" connotes the historical figure taken as a literal figure; "Christ" connotes an experience-allegorizing mystery-religion mythic system that is based around the figure of Jesus.

When we refute the Historical Jesus dominant paradigm, we are either left with standard humanism, with a negative merely-nonexistent Jesus, or with a positive, meaning-filled Mythic Christ.

No one positively advocates the merely-mythic, non-existent Jesus. But Historical Jesus advocates tend to positively advocate that figure, and I can imagine the formation of a new standard view of positively advocating a Mythic Christ as an alternative to the merely mythic nonexistent Jesus.

This has not happened yet -- it is still early. Few people have been introduced to the possibility that Jesus did not exist, so they have not had a chance to form the idea of positively advocating a purely Mythic Christ that holds the historical Jesus to be fictional and purely an allegorical embodiment of mythic-mode experiencing. Today, almost anyone who positively advocates a Mythic Christ assumes that Jesus existed historically as a man who had full insight about all things spiritual and mystic.

Humanists who want to refute the Historical Jesus have a mixed attitude toward the meaning-rich Christ Myth. It helps but hurts standard humanism to assert that the meaning of the Christ figure is mythic instead of literal; they are more inclined to argue that the meaning of the Christ myth is null and empty. To this sort of extreme humanist, the Christ figure stands for deceit and folly, more than for some mythic Truth.

The Humanist scholar John M. Allegro took an actively negative approach to refuting the Historical Jesus. Instead of saying that Jesus merely didn't exist, or that Jesus was a fictional character to concretize mystic wisdom and the lofty insights of mythic-state experiencing, Allegro disparagingly portrayed Jesus as a personified mushroom -- distinctively existing in a negative form.

Allegro's attitude (disparaging Jesus as merely a personified mushroom cult) is a pole apart from the elevated Mythic Christ attitude, with the merely nonexistent Mythic Jesus sitting neutrally in the middle. There are thus degrees and various forms of Jesus' nonexistence as a historical person.

People can portray Jesus' nonexistence with a negative, neutral, or positive set of ideas. It's possible that one could value Jesus more as an entirely mythic figure packed full of higher meaning, without him existing bodily. From one perspective, the value and meaning of Jesus would be lessened if he existed as a historical person.

Defining a Mythic Jesus-Mythic Christ Spectrum

The above ideas can be summed up by another spectrum -- the MJ-MC spectrum. First, define and contrast two main opposing views.

o Jesus is merely a myth, a trite fable, a misunderstanding, a story, merely nonexistent.

o Jesus is the personification of Christ, which is a version of the mystery-religion saviors cast in the form of a dying/rising god represented by the image of the judged and crucified rebel upstart sovereign. The Christ figure is filled with all transcendent insights about the nature of the self. This figure allegorizes experience.

Then add an average position and extreme endpoints. This forms a 5- position spectrum from a contrasted pair of attitudes.

o The Extremist Mythic Jesus view: The Jesus figure has no worth, and has harmed humanity. It is just a falsity. He simply did not exist. He is an empty character filled only by wishful thinking.

o The standard Mythic Jesus view -- Jesus is merely a myth, a trite fable, a misunderstanding, a story, merely nonexistent.

o The Average Mythic Jesus/Mythic Christ view -- Jesus didn't exist, but that figure represents various mystic notions which are gathered by mystic-minded types of people -- he is a figure valuable for spiritualists.

o The standard Mythic Christ view -- Jesus is the personification of Christ, which is a version of the mystery-religion saviors cast in the form of a dying/rising god represented by the image of the judged and crucified rebel upstart sovereign. The Christ figure is filled with all transcendent insights about the nature of the self. This figure allegorizes experience.

o The Extremist Mythic Christ view: the loftiest insights are brilliantly captured in the experiential allegory of the judged upstart would-be sovereign. The story is the best allegorization possible of these transcendent principles of peak experiencing and ultimate insight into human nature. As a crafted myth to concretize abstract concepts encountered during the mythic-mode state of consciousness, the Christ myth is superior to the other Hellenistic myths.

The Historical Jesus advocates have a wide range of proposed Jesus scenarios to choose from in making their case. The Christ Myth and Mythic Jesus advocates also have a variety of attitudes and scenarios to choose from, broader than simple nonexistence of Jesus.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/4327

Michael wrote:

>>There are two different kinds of "mythic Jesus" beliefs. The negative: Jesus is only a myth; and the positive: the Jesus figure is full of mythic meaning.

>>Suppose I believe that Jesus is purely mythical. I would be against those who say that Jesus is only a myth; I'd insist that the Jesus figure is full of mythic meaning. The former worldview or attitude is the "Mythic Jesus" hypothesis. The latter is the "Mythic Christ" hypothesis.

>>I mean the term 'Christ' as a purely mythic, spiritual, experiential mystery-religion savior -- the stories about this particular savior are in the form of a political rebel; this is a political-style mystery-religion savior figure, where "Christ" alludes to the anointed rebel-king military messiah type of figure -- as an allegory for the experiences one undergoes during initiation.

Earl Doherty (author of the book The Jesus Puzzle, http://www.jesuspuzzle.com ) wrote:

>Distinctions like this are intriguing and allow for depth of discussion, though some might say that strictly speaking they threaten to go beyond the confines of the group's 'mandate' and get into mystical areas.

>Be that as it may, let me get back to the non-mystical and point out that Michael's characterization of the mythic, mystery-religion Christ 'story' is a post-Pauline product. The political rebel is unknown to Paul. It is the later product of the Gospel of Mark, who amalgamated the purely spiritual mythic savior with the "political rebel" (or perhaps more strictly 'reform' and 'apocalyptic') expression of the Kingdom of God Galilean preaching movement as exemplified in Q.

>Just so we don't lose sight of those distinctions I often point out about two different traditions coming together to create a composite Jesus and Christianity.

>>The discussion group is to debate whether Jesus existed or not, but I want to debate in what way the mythic Jesus is mythic. I am against the Mythic Jesus advocates. I am a Mythic Christ advocate. This discussion group is wholly against defenses of the Mythic Christ, full of meaning. There are only two positions put forth for scholarly debate here: Historical Jesus, or Mythic Jesus.

>>I associate "Christ" with the mystery-religion mythic savior experience. That experience was allegorized using the framework of the military rebel upstart king, the usurper of the throne of power.

>When approached from this point of view, we can safely acknowledge a legitimacy in Michael's approach. After all, unlike other mythic savior religions which had mythic stories attached to them that were originally set in prehistoric or even primordial times, the Pauline type of savior-god (Christ) cult had none, since it was of recent vintage. To the extent that Paul's Christ had a myth, it lay in scripture and was as yet poorly developed. (Scripture was like having all sorts of available puzzle pieces, and not being sure which ones to choose and how to put them together, and different people might do it differently.)

>The Gospels were an attempt to provide that savior-god myth for Christianity. But rather than supply something which lay in the distant past, Mark took his cue from the Kingdom movement in Galilee and its supposed Q founder (even if some basic 'Jesus' figure or figures did lie at its roots, by the time Mark came to incorporate him he was much expanded and 'mythologized'). The savior-god Christ was cast, allegorically, as a kind of political rebel cum miracle-working agitator cum reformist sage who gets himself executed and rises from/overcomes death (the former elements being the basic character of the Kingdom movement, the latter a virtual common denominator among savior gods). Mark's brainstorm was to cast that allegory in recent times and in a compelling setting. His passion story, from start to finish, is sheer genius, though later evangelists found a few ways to improve on it.

>So Mark provided the mystery-religion Christ cult with a "mythic experience" that left the others in the dust. The potential for unification of the believer in the mythic Christ through that Gospel allegory, the scope for identification, lesson-learning, inspiration, conviction of salvation, etc., outdid all other savior god myths, as the subsequent two millennia have demonstrated. However, as the record shows, it took a few generations before the Christian movement came into contact with that innovation, adopted the "experience" and rendered it literally historical.

>Everything that follows by Michael I thoroughly agree with, and I think he has contributed a very insightful way of looking at things, and (by the way) of making some of the 'mystical elements' relevant to the discussion.

-- Earl Doherty

Michael wrote:

>>What a great idea that seemed to the creators of mystery-religion schools: to express mythic allegorical concepts about initiation experiences in the form of historical literals... as long as people keep the historical and mythic aspects differentiated.

>>But it was not an era of differentiation as much as one that sought similarities and fusing of ideas together. "Jesus" connotes the historical figure taken as a literal figure; "Christ" connotes an experience-allegorizing mystery-religion mythic system that is based around the figure of Jesus.

>>When we refute the Historical Jesus dominant paradigm, we are either left with standard humanism, with a negative merely-nonexistent Jesus, or with a positive, meaning-filled Mythic Christ.

>>No one positively advocates the merely-mythic, non-existent Jesus. But Historical Jesus advocates tend to positively advocate that figure, and I can imagine the formation of a new standard view of positively advocating a Mythic Christ as an alternative to the merely mythic nonexistent Jesus.

>>This has not happened yet -- it is still early. Few people have been introduced to the possibility that Jesus did not exist, so they have not had a chance to form the idea of positively advocating a purely Mythic Christ that holds the historical Jesus to be fictional and purely an allegorical embodiment of mythic-mode experiencing. Today, almost anyone who positively advocates a Mythic Christ assumes that Jesus existed historically as a man who had full insight about all things spiritual and mystic.

>>Humanists who want to refute the Historical Jesus have a mixed attitude toward the meaning-rich Christ Myth. It helps but hurts standard humanism to assert that the meaning of the Christ figure is mythic instead of literal; they are more inclined to argue that the meaning of the Christ myth is null and empty. To this sort of extreme humanist, the Christ figure stands for deceit and folly, more than for some mythic Truth.

>>The Humanist scholar John M. Allegro took an actively negative approach to refuting the Historical Jesus. Instead of saying that Jesus merely didn't exist, or that Jesus was a fictional character to concretize mystic wisdom and the lofty insights of mythic-state experiencing, Allegro disparagingly portrayed Jesus as a personified mushroom -- distinctively existing in a negative form.

>>Allegro's attitude (disparaging Jesus as merely a personified mushroom cult) is a pole apart from the elevated Mythic Christ attitude, with the merely nonexistent Mythic Jesus sitting neutrally in the middle. There are thus degrees and various forms of Jesus' nonexistence as a historical person.

>>People can portray Jesus' nonexistence with a negative, neutral, or positive set of ideas. It's possible that one could value Jesus more as an entirely mythic figure packed full of higher meaning, without him existing bodily. From one perspective, the value and meaning of Jesus would be lessened if he existed as a historical person.

>>Defining a Mythic Jesus-Mythic Christ Spectrum

>>The above ideas can be summed up by another spectrum -- the MJ-MC spectrum. First, define and contrast two main opposing views.

>>o Jesus is merely a myth, a trite fable, a misunderstanding, a story, merely nonexistent.

>>o Jesus is the personification of Christ, which is a version of the mystery-religion saviors cast in the form of a dying/rising god represented by the image of the judged and crucified rebel upstart sovereign. The Christ figure is filled with all transcendent insights about the nature of the self. This figure allegorizes experience.

>>Then add an average position and extreme endpoints. This forms a 5- position spectrum from a contrasted pair of attitudes.

>>o The Extremist Mythic Jesus view: The Jesus figure has no worth, and has harmed humanity. It is just a falsity. He simply did not exist. He is an empty character filled only by wishful thinking.

>>o The standard Mythic Jesus view -- Jesus is merely a myth, a trite fable, a misunderstanding, a story, merely nonexistent.

>>o The Average Mythic Jesus/Mythic Christ view -- Jesus didn't exist, but that figure represents various mystic notions which are gathered by mystic-minded types of people -- he is a figure valuable for spiritualists.

>>o The standard Mythic Christ view -- Jesus is the personification of Christ, which is a version of the mystery-religion saviors cast in the form of a dying/rising god represented by the image of the judged and crucified rebel upstart sovereign. The Christ figure is filled with all transcendent insights about the nature of the self. This figure allegorizes experience.

>>o The Extremist Mythic Christ view: the loftiest insights are brilliantly captured in the experiential allegory of the judged upstart would-be sovereign. The story is the best allegorization possible of these transcendent principles of peak experiencing and ultimate insight into human nature. As a crafted myth to concretize abstract concepts encountered during the mythic-mode state of consciousness, the Christ myth is superior to the other Hellenistic myths.

>>The Historical Jesus advocates have a wide range of proposed Jesus scenarios to choose from in making their case. The Christ Myth and Mythic Jesus advocates also have a variety of attitudes and scenarios to choose from, broader than simple nonexistence of Jesus.

Moderators at historicity-of-Jesus discussion groups maximize for bland uncontroversial postings

What pussies and pushovers the JesusMysteries and Christ Con discussion group moderators are. The mob of masses at JesusMysteries dictates to the moderators their decisions. The result is a group optimized for retaining a large number of members, with little regard to quality. It filters out controversial postings, leaving the bland results such as we see in that discussion group.

These bannings are done without even any debate. "Your postings are valuable but are controversial among our readership. Therefore we must prevent them." Popularity rather than quality or presence of value is the basis upon which these moderators filter.

The moderators ought to work with the members to shape and guide the posting conventions -- but no, they take the easy and unproductive way out, simply banning (or putting on individual moderation) without discussion, without communication and negotiation which could incorporate and integrate the controversial writers. The result is groups packed full of familiar and uncontroversial standardized mediocrity.

>-----Original Message-----

>From: [JesusMysteries moderator]

>Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 6:36 AM

>To: mhoffman

>Subject: Regarding Inappropriate Messages

>Hello Michael,

>Because you raise many good on-topic ideas in some of your messages to JesusMysteries we have allowed a lot of slack in your posts. But we are now getting too many complaints and have placed you on read-only status. If you would like to post messages in the future that are in line with the list guidelines for posting please send them directly to me for approval and we will look them over and get back to you.

>Best wishes,

>Moderator

-----Original Message-----

From: moderator

Sent: Sunday, July 13, 2003 1:33 PM

To: christ_conspiracy~at~yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Christ Conspiracy Mr. Egodeath Hoffman

>>Michael has an agenda of his own which is unique and has some tangential relevance to this egroup. As they have stimulated discussion at times, I have tolerated his posts despite complaints that they are long-winded, rambling, largely irrelevant, sometimes inconprehensible, and offensive because of the "entheogen" (hallucinogenic drug) issue.

>>After discussion with the list owner and Acharya S I have reluctantly decided the time has come to bring this to a halt.

>>Thank you, Michael, for your hard work and contributions, but I believe they would more appropriately be posted to your own website and lists.

>>Moderator

>>>>I've read some of the posts from Mr. Hoffman, but I can't succeed in understanding what his points are. It looks to me that his participations are a little off from the theme and threads of what this site is for. If a good portion of the members are in the same situation of not clearly understanding his writings, he should change his participations to a more digestible subjects.

Against notion of "proof" in Christian origins; circular frameworks

Michael wrote:

http://www.egodeath.com/edwinjohnsonpaulineepistles.htm

>>Proposes that the years 700-1400 didn't exist, and that Christianity, the "early" Christian texts, Paul, the Gospels, the Church Fathers, the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages were literary inventions fabricated in competing monasteries around 1500.

>What evidence do we have that these fantastic monks were not the invention of later and even more clever forgers? I want to find the dividing line between forged and chronological history, if that is possible. Something that will withstand scrutiny.

All evidence and all interpretation is substantially inter-fused "interpretation-evidence".

I would not use the below phrasing in the hypothetical scenario, "the bible wasn't written until the the 15th century and that proves that there was no historical Jesus." I don't approve of that construction and Johnson would probably reject it as well, as a poorly formed construction. Regarding the proposal that the canon wasn't established until around 1525, I treat that as a working hypothesis with tremendous and profound potential, and the later Johnson treated it somewhat more as proven.

One reason I'm more tentative than him is that I'm not an expert in his field or approach. I'm a leading expert theorist about the symbolic language of the intense mystic altered state, and the phenomena of that state, and its description in Rock music. Johnson was a leading expert in the kind of scholarship of Christian history found in his books Antiqua Mater and Pauline Epistles and his other writings. I've only known about Johnson's theory for a year or so, and only recently have anything like a decent grasp of exactly what it is that he is proposing.

Like the entheogen theory of the origin and perennial wellspring of religion ("all significant religion and spirituality is a more or less distorted reflection of psychoactive plant experiences"), the proposal of the extremely late, Reformation-era invention of formalized Christianity has a foundation of great essential strengths, and some minor puzzling challenges, some "problems" in a minor sense, of "puzzles" or tricky aspects.

Per Johnson, a sense of realistic visual spatial perception in art provides a good model for interpreting evidence, or "viewing interpretation-evidence". My gut perception is that the medieval Jews and Jewish mystic messiahs seem oblivious of Jesus as messiah because they hadn't heard of the Jesus lifestory, because it hadn't been invented and hyper-reified and literalized yet. The idea of Christianity and Jesus was a late medieval cooptation of developing Jewish ideas.

>that the new testament Paul , church fathers and other related works weren't written until the 15th century. If you said to the average christian church going person that the bible wasn't written until the the 15th century and that proves that there was no historical Jesus. What do you think the average person would say to such a hypothesis?

That's an odd jump above from using the term 'proves' to the term 'hypothesis', resulting in an inconsistent question.

Does the question mean that evidence is listed in support of the Johnson theory, or not? The hazily formed question above seems to equate "the hypothesis" of Johnson with the mere utterance of literally "the bible wasn't written until the the 15th century and that proves that there was no historical Jesus" -- the latter is a poor, heavily distorted expression of Johnson's hypothesis or theory and his chain or system of argument.

The lack of the historical Jesus is one part of a particular entire alternative interpretive framework, as is the 15th-Century origin of the biblical canon. One part of the framework doesn't serve to prove the other; the whole framework hangs together.

Johnson puts forth a theory, with some hypotheses, sometimes called proofs or evidence. I've written good postings by citing Edwin's book, unlike the poorly framed laundry-list posting of Jesus/pagan parallels that was introduced and labeled as "proof" but didn't even mention the book from which the list was excerpted. My complaint is more about the need for clearer presentation and framing than about adherence to what the uptight and eruditely clueless JesusMysteries discussion group would call "scholarly evidence".

There are *degrees* of providing citations and proof, and the posting in question was tacky and bad for introducing itself as "proof" but failing to provide anything so kindergarden elementary as mentioning the book from which the long list was taken verbatim. I don't expect to meet the high standards of the sophomoric pinheads in JM group, but just decent and effective writing and communication standards, period.

The question above implies a model of "proof" that is too simplistic. We must stop and seriously consider (like theologian Cornelius Van Til's idea of 'presuppositionalism') what we should believe about models of "proof" and "evidence".

http://www.google.com/search?q=Cornelius+Van+Til

_______________

http://www.christian-apologetics.org/html/Brenton.htm

"During my own theological training for the ministry I had two apologetics professors: one of them taught from a Van Tilian perspective, the other, an outspoken man named R.C. Sproul, didn't. I've witnessed the cross-fire between the two sides, and the fire wasn't always friendly. I'm not here to re-kindle the old flame or spark controversy, simply to present to you an apologetics programme that is to be reckoned with in our day, especially by evangelical Christians of a conservative bent. ... the title of my address ... suggests that there is such a thing as "the apologetic tradition" within Christendom. On the other hand it suggests that one man - Van Til - stands apart from the tradition in order to launch an attack against it."

The Method of Apologetics:

argue from presupposition

Just tell the truth! But how? Does Van Til have a method of telling the truth to the unbeliever? He does. The method is argument (or reasoning) by presupposition. It's back to the basis approach. Van Til describes his method as an indirect approach - even as circular. He says:

"The issue between believers and non-believers cannot be settled by a direct appeal to "facts" or "laws" whose nature is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate (why? because the Christian and non-Christian won't agree on the nature of the facts)."

"The question is rather as to what is the final reference-point required to make the facts and laws intelligible. Are the facts and laws what the non-Christian assumes they are. Or, are they what the Christian-theistic revelation presupposes they are?"

"To settle the issue the Christian apologist must place himself upon the position of his opponent, assuming the correctness of his method merely for argument's sake, in order to show him on such a position that the facts are not facts and the laws are not laws. That is, his framework of interpretation will not support the reality he is committed to.

He must also ask the non-Christian to place himself upon the Christian position for argument's sake in order that he may be shown that only on such a basis do facts and laws appear intelligible."

_______________________

The real, significant issue isn't "Christians" versus "atheists", certainly not "believers" versus "non-believers", but rather, per all the best mystics, the real, significant dispute is between literalists and mystic-state allegorists. Literalists -- whether "believers" or "atheists" -- maintain that the official Church story of Christian origins and history is essentially literally true, after certain legendary accretions are removed. The best mystic allegorists hold that it's all in the mind.

So the two camps naturally disagree on which scenario has "more realistic and plausible perspective" -- the official scenario of Christian origins and history, or the radical critical or extreme critical scenario which holds that none of the history happened; no towering church fathers, no literal single Jesus, no Paul, no Mary Magdalene actually existed in any substantial sense -- these are nothing other than pseudo-historical allegories describing the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state induced by psychoactive sacraments.

Which scenario in fact possesses the more realistic sense of perspective, in Johnson's sense? Which looks truer and more realistic? To the literalist believer in the official history, that scenario appears more realistic in perspective; the contrary of the mystic allegorist's opinion on realism.

_______________________

Wendy wrote:

>>G.A. Wells has changed his mind and now believes that Jesus DID exist?

>>In the JesusMysteries discussion group, I mostly see arguments for the mythicist point of view. Do we often see it argued that Jesus DID exist, with backup info?

The arguments for Jesus' historicity are already well-defined based on standard published arguments; the dominant paradigm is usefully seen as including and integrating one large set of arguments for Jesus' historicity. Such reasoning, such a type of interpretive framework, is the familiar established received view, the given. That was Phase I.

In the Internet era, the argument for nonhistoricity of Jesus is easier to publish and develop. That is Phase II, which is still struggling to formulate a typical and standardized scenario and interpretive framework that is as focused and standardized as the familiar received story of Christian origins.

It will take awhile longer for the no-Historical-Jesus model of Christian origins to become comparably distinct, stable, and standardized, and positively expressed. Most books, exemplified by comparing Doherty, Freke & Gandy, and Acharya, emphasize disproof of the received paradigm, and do so consistently, without having a consistent, distinct, positively specific, uniform, and consensus proposed paradigm as a compelling alternative to the received view.

The no-Historical-Jesus researchers need to reach some comparable degree of consensus on how Christianity actually did form if not by the currently predominant "big-bang historical Jesus" story of Christian origins. After that, Phase III will be the response to that specific proposed alternative story of origins from the adherents of the currently predominant historical-Jesus paradigm.

It is unlikely that the purely negative disproof that currently predominates in the no-Jesus books will compel a response from the comfortably established Historicist camp. Only when a highly compelling and uniform and coherent positive alternative story of Christian origins is formulated by the no-Jesus community of researchers will there be a sufficient challenge and threat to the dominant paradigm to elicit a response.

Lacking such a consensus alternative story of Christian origins, today's exchange between Phase I and Phase II adherents is bound to be limited to a paradigm status-quo standoff of "The official historical writings are basically reliable." "No they're not!" "Yes they are!" The Phase II paradigm is still too weak, too scattered; it can be ignored safely and comfortably: "Never mind those kooks over there who doubt everything ever written, seeing forgery everywhere throughout the entire canon of early Christian writings."

Also challenging the effort to formulate a no-Jesus paradigm is the "endless fence-sitting" attitude, which effectively amounts to accepting the familiar received Historicist way of thinking by default, with the excuse "Because we can't know Jesus' historicity absolutely for certain, the only rational thing to do is assign his historicity a plausibility of 50%." I disagree with the common and too-easily-made assertion or defense strategy of "We can't know Jesus' historicity absolutely for certain."

Such an assertion overemphasizes the role of certainty in epistemology, and underemphasizes the importance of interpretive frameworks which facts, knowledge, and certainty are importantly relative to.

Within a mature, fully-developed ahistoricist interpretive framework, we *can* be effectively reasonably certain that the Jesus figure is essentially a composite figure, such that the facticity of Jesus' existence becomes entirely a matter of definition: if 'Jesus' is defined as a single historical man serving as necessary kernel for the eventual composite mythic-accretion figure, we know things didn't work that way; all evidence indicates Jesus was a radically composite figure incorporating *multiple, not single* historical individuals as input sources.

Based on paradigm-aware analysis, we *can* say we can know there was no historical Jesus, about as much as anything is certain in history. I reject as simplistic and paradigm-naive the too-easy assertion that "We can't know for certain whether Jesus existed", an assertion that ends up being biased in favor of the Historicist story of Christian origins.

_______________________

Michael wrote:

>>>Within a mature, fully-developed ahistoricist interpretive framework, we *can* be effectively reasonably certain that the Jesus figure is essentially a composite figure, such that the facticity of Jesus' existence becomes entirely a matter of definition: if 'Jesus' is defined as a single historical man serving as necessary kernel for the eventual composite mythic- accretion figure, we know things didn't work that way; all evidence indicates Jesus was a radically composite figure incorporating *multiple, not single* historical individuals as input sources.

In the interpretive framework and research paradigm I advocate, the Jesus figure is conceived as essentially a composite drawn from as many actual people, legends, mythic figures, personified principles, etc. as possible, driven by competition and by the quest to create a single universal religion. For example, one source for the Jesus figure and for the themes involved was the historical individual Julius Caesar. Any given saying attributed to the Jesus figure may have been held by multiple actual partially Jesus-like individuals.

Michael wrote:

>>>Based on paradigm-aware analysis, we *can* say we can know there was no historical Jesus, about as much as anything is certain in history. I reject as simplistic and paradigm-naive the too-easy assertion that "We can't know for certain whether Jesus existed", an assertion that ends up being biased in favor of the Historicist story of Christian origins.

To merely claim that the evidence does not support historicity does little to change one's overall conceptual framework and mental mindset about the original nature of Christianity in its cultural context. It's a negation of certain aspects of one way of thinking about the origins of the Jesus figure, without a sufficiently compelling, clear and distinct replacement conception of the origins of the Jesus figure.

The result in practice is that one accepts the overall worldview of the official history, while subtracting, in a manner like modern demythologizing, individual elements of that official history.

The liberal demythologizing historicist and the eternally fence-sitting agnostics about Jesus' historicity share the same general style of conceiving of both the Jesus figure and the cultural context; the fence-sitting agnostics just put a 'not' in front of the historical-individual aspect of the eventual composite Jesus figure, and make a few statements of Jesus being thematically like the other mystery saviors -- that's not as much of a difference as people play it up to be.

So the familiar effortless conversation-terminating assertion that, "Well, in the end, we can't know for sure" causes the much-needed mental investigation to halt in a state in which researchers' thinking has just slightly moved away from the whole ancient worldmodel that is put forth by the received, historicist type of thinking. Thus agnosticism about Jesus' historicity usually is found together with a model of antiquity that is close to the pedestrian, familiar liberal demythologizing picture.

Many scholars lack an accurate whole ancient worldmodel, but there is enough evidence so that alternative researchers are reconstructing a clear, viable alternative, involving the gradual composite back-projected Jesus figure.

The composite Jesus model has only recently taken shape among current researchers, but there is enough evidence and enough support for an interpretive framework to make it the strongest candidate we have. What are the alternative, competing models: that Jesus *was* a single historical individual, without whom the eventual mythic figure couldn't have formed? That Jesus recovered from crucifixion and legends grew into myth?

The fully composite mythic model of the formation of the Jesus figure is clear, strong, and viable. I see no reason to hang onto the historicity assumption -- it only enables more complicated, implauible, anachronistic reconstructions or scenarios for Christian origins. I don't agree that we have little evidence. We have a great deal of evidence about the nature of Hellenistic-era religion.

If we can't see the greater merits of the composite-Jesus scenario *now*, when will we *ever*? If this amount of evidence isn't enough to pull people off the fence, what more evidence are the agnostics about Jesus' historicity waiting for? What would be the ideal kind of evidence that would pull the agnostics off the fence? We have a pile of evidence -- literally a bookshelf full of books.

Book list:

Mythic-only Christ theory

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/3W44V7JX4UH9I

If reading these books isn't enough to provide a much stronger theory of Christian origins based on the composite formation of the Jesus figure, then what further books, evidence, and interpretation would be ideal? What would a smoking gun, persuasive to the agnostics, amount to, if not this very set of books, evidence, and interpretation we've recently had access to?

I don't think we need more texts discovered, but rather, more time to profitably and insightfully interpret the wealth of texts we already have. A better understanding of esotericism, the mystic state of consciousness, and mythic metaphor are needed as well. An interesting way of looking at the problem amounts to asking, "What would it take to bring the discussion group to some further conclusions, and even an ultimate conclusion about Jesus' historicity?" I see progress of insight but not a direction toward the goal of a conclusion.

How does one know when one has "enough information"? Does one keep pushing bits of texts here and there forever, gaining a little insight here and a little there? How does one side, or one model of Christian origins, ever achieve a clear win or victory? I suppose this is the age of questioning and investigating and raising the question of historicity, more than the age of of concluding and answering the question.

Will we all become better and better fence-sitters, perched ever more steadily, so that we are bound to stay affixed there until the end of time, holding out forever for ever more texts and more reliable texts? Or is there some specific game plan to bring the conclusion down to one side or the other?

Paradigm/methodology of proposing the origins of the Jesus figure

>>Michael Hoffman used to speak in the list a lot about multiple Historical Jesuses, mystery religion connections, etc. Was there a methodology being used?

In the JesusMysteries discussion group, I criticized the concept of "methodology" and promoted the idea of "paradigms" and "interpretive frameworks".

In the paradigm I advocate, the Jesus figure is essentially a composite drawn from as many actual people, legends, mythic figures, personified principles, etc. as possible, driven by competition and by the quest to create a single universal religion. Any given saying attributed to the Jesus figure may have been held by multiple actual partially Jesus-like individuals.

The world's most Jesus-like figure is only slightly more Jesus-like than multiple other historical individuals, so that the Jesus figure is not critically dependent on any one individual. If you remove the world's most Jesus-like man from history, there is not a significant impact on the Jesus figure. In this carefully defined sense, there are no authentic sayings of Jesus, therefore there is no methodology for selecting authentic sayings of Jesus.

The methodology I advocate is the paradigm methodology, with a particular set of axiomatic assumptions selected. Ultimately it is only confusing to say yes or no to the question "Was there a historical Jesus?" Instead, the task at hand is to form an explanation of the true origin of Christianity, or the true origin of the Jesus figure. My explanation or explanatory paradigm accords with radical scholarship. The following are the axioms or methodology I advocate:

There was no historical Paul, Ignatius, Jesus, Mary, Mary, Mary, beloved disciple, Lazarus, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, or others. It is easier (shorter) to list which Bible characters are essentially historical, such as the Herods, Pontius Pilate, and Caesar.

Religions of the Greco-Roman era were based on banquets that were based on 'wine' that was actually a visionary-plant mixture. Club banquets, Jewish feasts, agape meals, sacred meals, sacrificial meals, initiation meals, philosophy schools, professional clubs, and many other groups were based on the classic banquet tradition, and the classic banquet tradition was based on 'wine' which was a visionary-plant mixture.

Research has barely started on the composition of this standard 'wine', but the effects reported are certainly the same as would result from adding powdered psilocybin mushrooms to modern wine. Candidates include one or more of opium, henbane, datura, psychoactive mushrooms, ergot, cannabis, lotus, and others.

When properly understood, myth, religion, and mysticism are the same thing. Religious myth typically interweaves multiple allegory domains such as astrology/cosmology, visionary plants, fertility, Ruler Cult, protection and benefits in mundane life, and altered-state psychological phenomena. The meaning of myth-religion is not just astrology per Acharya S, but is a combination of these various meaning-domains.

When considering religion as religion proper, the central meaning-domain is not astrology, fertility, protection and benefits in mundane life, or visionary plants, but rather, altered-state psychological phenomena. Astrology or fertility are common goals of religion but they are not, properly speaking, the main goal of religion as religion.

The banqueting groups, which is to say the entire Greco-Roman culture, generally followed the same initiation pattern. Most initiation-banqueting groups used a series of around 7 initiations, each one shaped something like follows.

o Instruction.

o Practice at prayer and purification and self-humbling.

o Ingestion of visionary plants ("mixed wine").

o During the visionary peak, the initiate has an experiential insight of no-free-will/no-separate-self. This soon leads to self-control seizure or the problem of practical recovery of the sense of being a potent control-agent.

o Prayer to a controller of the cosmos beyond spacetime and Necessity (fate, heimarmene) for gracious arbitrary protection, rescue, and restoration of self-control.

o Resumption of the ordinary state of consciousness, retaining after each 'wine'-drinking banquet an increased degree of the mental worldmodel that was encountered during the altered state.

Around the time the Jesus lifestory was formed (perhaps 140 CE), the Jesus version of the standard Greco-Roman initiation-banquet was originally popular because of its diversity and because Jesus' lifestory portrayed him as a counter-Ruler Cult figure. Judaism was largely condoned although technically it was an alternative to pagan culture and a rejection of pagan culture.

The Jesus figure had the advantages of providing everything provided by pagan culture (philosophy, ethics, religious initiation) while also being a resistance movement against Ruler Cult and the domination hierarchy that was the system of peace and good society offered in the name of Caesar.

References:

The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

Earl Doherty

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0968601405

Proposes that there was no historical Jesus.

Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians

Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400045940

Proposes that Christianity was originally about gnostic experiential initiation based on intense mystic-state experiences.

From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World

Dennis Smith

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0800634896

Proposes a "common banquet tradition" behind sacred meals, club banquets, sacrificial meals, philosophy clubs, and other Greco-Roman gatherings and meals.

Hellenistic Religions: An Introduction

Luther Martin

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/019504391X

Proposes that the core theme of Hellenistic religions is reconciling with or transcending cosmic determinism.

The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes

Rudy Rucker

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395393884

Chapter on the block universe portrays time as a spacelike dimension, with a single, frozen, timelessly existing future. Several passages in the book imply that mystic enlightenment involves experientially seeing this perspective.

The Road To Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

Carl Ruck, Albert Hoffman, R. Gordon Wasson, Jeremy Bigwood, Albert Hofmann, Jonathan Ott, Huston Smith, Danny Staples

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/091514820X

Proposes psychoactive ergot as the basis of the Mysteries at Eleusis.

The Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation, and Mystical Experience

Dan Merkur

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/089281862X

Proposes the use of psychoactive plants by leading religious figures including Philo, Bernard, and Maimonides.

__________________________

I don't believe that one can first define a methodology and then follow it to a conclusion. One iteratively develops a paradigm or interpretive framework, from which a methodology can later be abstracted after the framework is settled. A framework has several key assumptions. The task is not to find a methodology and follow it to a conclusion, but to find a paradigm or interpretive framework, and lock onto the framework by figuring out what the key assumptions are to strengthen that framework.

The overall task for Jesus scholars is to discover the true story of the creation of Christianity. This means determining which groups held which views, when, and how these views evolved and spread. Criteria like Ludemann's can be used to determine which groups held which views, per Mack. It is a waste of effort to speak in terms of "what Jesus himself thought"; it is hard enough work to determine which groups held which views, when.

That is the work at hand -- hard work, partially structured work, tentatively structured work with constant development of heuristics, methods, theories, models -- a jungle of brainstorming, theory, enumeration and permutation of hypotheses. One must read many theories, many views, especially including radical views, and seek the combination of hypotheses that makes the most sense.

There is much wisdom in Feyerabend's idea that when developing scientific theories, anything goes, and in Kuhn's theory -- before he backpedalled -- that science proceeds through selecting productive paradigms.

I'm skeptical about the efficiency and applicability of a Ludemann-shaped set of "criteria" -- his criteria work well for the simple paradigm of the existence of a historical Jesus, but that type of small criteria-set doesn't work so well in the highly complex problem of tracking evolving views among groups over hundreds of years. We can be sure that different groups held different views, that many views were heavily allegorical, that views were held for various reasons.

7 paradigms for Historical Jesus research

This is my Amazon.com review of Earl Doherty's book The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? It actually became a high-level comparative guide to relevant books.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0968601405

There are several distinct approaches taken by Jesus researchers; which group do you fit into?

1. Orthodox mystics

(Supernaturalist esoteric Historical Jesus researchers.) These investigators research Jesus' life as part of seeking direct mystical experiences of the supernatural Christ, which manifested as the actual Historical Jesus. They think Jesus was supernatural and also can be experienced mystically.

2. Orthodox literalists

(Supernaturalist non-esoteric Historical Jesus researchers.) These do Historical Jesus research as part of worshipping the Christ of Faith. The assume there was a real, single, towering supernatural Historical Jesus who performed miracles, was resurrected from death, and is God. Even if they let go of some or all miracles, they maintain that Jesus is holy, is uniquely God, and is the Savior. The very existence of Christianity depends on an actual, single, uniquely holy Jesus.

3. Modernist mystics

(Non-supernaturalist, esoteric Historical Jesus researchers.) These assume Jesus was a mystery-religion initiator and spirituality expert who was unfortunately crucified. This approach so well explains mythic allegorical Christianity, an actual Jesus tends to become an unnecessary hypothesis, though by habit of tradition, such theorists try to find something for the supposed Historical Jesus to do as part of the mystery religion: he spent time with the Essenes as the Teacher of Righteousness, or was an even more towering and ethically influential man. Example: Andrew Welburn's book, The Beginnings of Christianity: Essene Mystery, Gnostic Revelation and the Christian Vision.

4. Moderate demythologizers

(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric Historical Jesus researchers.) These are today's mainstream Jesus scholars and liberal Christians, who focus on Historical Jesus studies to uncover a supposed liberal ethical teacher. They assume there was a real, single, towering Jesus, upon whom many myths were piled. They treat Jesus as a largely unique figure, though not a unique holy savior. Examples: The Jesus Seminar.

5. Skeptical hyperpluralists

(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric, skeptical Historical Jesus researchers.) These are interested in exploring our inability to choose among the plethora of Jesuses and Christs rather than promoting a particular Jesus. They acknowledge the mythic-only Christ hypothesis, but don't treat that any more seriously than any particular proposed Historical Jesus. Examples: Richard Grigg, Imaginary Christs: The Challenge of Christological Pluralism; Robert Price: Deconstructing Jesus.

6. Radical humanist debunkers

(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric mythic-only Christ researchers.) These classic scientific humanists neglect or belittle esoteric religious experiencing. Religion is bad; it's all superstition and deceptive myth to manipulate weak and irrational minds. This approach equates all religion with exoteric religion, and dismisses religion, without giving special coverage of esoteric religion and its claims to provide transcendent knowledge, insight, or wisdom beyond what scientific humanism provides. When Jesus is proven to be mythical, Christianity automatically vanishes altogether ("good riddance") for such scorched-earth debunkers. Example: Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?

7. Fully allegorical mystics

(Non-supernaturalist, esoteric/allegorical mythic-only Christ researchers.)

These researchers propose an esoteric, allegorical, usually mystic-experiencing theory of the origin of Christianity. Scientific history refutes the Historical Jesus hypothesis, which should be replaced by a positive alternative hypothesis of the Jesus figure as an allegorical mythic personification of esoteric initiation experience that, with the Holy Spirit, conveys transcendent knowledge, enlightenment, an experiential core of religious insight, spiritual, mental, and ethical transformation, and the revealing of hidden wisdom. Mystery-religions are entheogenic (see James Arthur's Mushrooms & Mankind, and Clark Heinrich), experiential (Andrew Welburn), and determinism-transcending (see Luther Martin's Hellenistic Religions). Examples: Freke and Gandy's The Jesus Mysteries, and Jesus & The Lost Goddess, propose a Gnostic drama of Jesus rescuing Sophia, the lost and deluded soul; Acharya S, author of The Christ Conspiracy, proposes an astrotheology explanation for the origin of Christianity. The Jesus that became canonical was a mythical, allegorical figure loosely based on a variety of political, ethical, and religious figures of the era. The canonical Jesus is a socio-political rebel, liberator of those oppressed by the power establishment, whose storyline also allegorizes the mystic experiences of Hellenistic mystery-religion initiation. Jesus is an allegorical mythic dying/rising savior figure as in Hellenistic mystery-religions. His dramatic mystery-ritual storyline is set in the historical rather than mythic realm; it is about political rebellion against the power establishment that tried to use religion to justify the oppressive status quo. The power establishment took over this politically and mystically popular religion of Jesus to defuse it by making it a supernaturalist exoteric-only religion.

Doherty's radical humanist debunking approach may have an immediate impact because its methodology and style is so similar to the moderate demythologizers. This approach uses the methodology and style of the moderate demythologizers to refute the unexamined foundation of their entire system. The approach of fully allegorical mysticism is too great a jump for the mainstream of Jesus researchers at this point; they may need to transition through the radical humanist debunking approach before proceeding forward to the fully allegorical esoteric approach. However, they might change more readily if a positive alternative explanation of the origin of Christianity -- fully allegorical mysticism -- is provided, instead of a purely negative explanation (deceit and superstition) or a purely exoteric, socio-political explanation (Rodney Stark) without any mystic-experiencing aspect.

The radical humanist debunkers most immediately contradict the moderate-demythologizer mainstream, which simply takes it for granted that some single Jesus or another existed -- the question of *whether* such a single man existed is out of bounds as an investigation for them; for them, the only question is about the details.

The fully allegorical, mythic-only Christ books may be more relevant in the long run, into the era that will be familiar with the no-Historical-Jesus alternative. But at the moment, the radical humanist debunker approach seems to be the most likely to be influential. The skeptical hyperpluralists are also likely to be influential, because they highlight the overabundance of plausible scenarios about Jesus.

See my Amazon book lists: Mythic-only Christ theory; Christianity as political rebellion against "divine" Caesar; Original, experiential, mystical Christianity; Entheogen theory of the origin of religions; Block-universe determinism, Necessity, divine predestination."

'Axioms' vs. 'methodology' in explaining the formation of the Jesus figure

Philo wrote:

>My own view of methodology [for selecting theories of the formation of the Jesus figure] is that is a tool for pruning down the almost infinite number of things that _might_ have happened. If you don't have some guidelines for cutting down the list, the sheer bulk of things to think about becomes an impenetrable barrier to progress. Methodology doesn't guarantee success, it just prunes the search space.

Everything is potentially a point of disagreement. I reject the idea that "methodology leads to conclusion". Is "the Jesus figure was essentially a composite figure, not based on any single historical individual" a 'methodology', or a 'conclusion'?

For Doherty while writing Jesus Puzzle, it was a conclusion. For my own research into the early meanings of Christianity and Hellenistic myth-religion-mysticism, it is a methodology -- that is, an axiom and starting point. I don't understand what you mean by "methodology" and I don't frame my thinking in terms of "first pick a methodology, and then see what conclusion it leads to."

I don't believe other researchers actually work that way, either -- with the unusual exception of the Jesus Seminar. I think you are taking the oddball case of the Jesus Seminar, with their use of criteria for sorting "authentic sayings of Jesus", and attempting to assume that all Historical Jesus research uses an approach of "set a methodology, to reach a conclusion".

Actual theory formation about the formation of the Jesus figure proceeds holistically: a researcher accepts certain ranges of possible hypotheses and scenarios, looking for the set of hypotheses and scenarios and criteria of plausibility that seem to cohere most soundly. I need to study Kuhn's book more to see how he uses the terms and concepts such as "methodology", "conclusion", "axiom", "hypothesis", and "criteria".

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas Kuhn

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226458083

I can tell you my views on the formation and meanings of the Jesus figure, but will you consider those views to be my "methodology", or my "conclusions"? I have concluded that all the Hellenistic banquet varieties were based on a psychoactive ingestion model, but that idea might be a "methodology" at some points in my thinking, yet a "conclusion" at other points in my thinking.

When I'm acting as advocate of the entheogen theory of religion, I treat that model of Hellenistic banqueting as a conclusion, but when acting as theorist of "ego death as experience of no-free-will/no-separate-self", I treat that model of Hellenistic banqueting as a starting-axiom (supporting-axiom) or methodology. Ultimately, researchers put forth *models*, and it's somewhat artificial to label part of the model "conclusion" and part of the model "axiom" or "methodology".

I don't think the idea of "methodology leads to conclusion" is as broadly useful and relevant as the notion of "model" and "paradigm". The idea of 'axiom' makes more sense to me than 'methodology'. The idea of 'methodology' seems strictly relevant to the Jesus Seminar's work on sorting the "authentic sayings of Jesus", and is thus a poor model for general research into the formation and development of the Jesus figure.

The view of the Historical Jesus in the main version of Christianity

Is Jesus historical?

Various main versions of Christianity have different stances on the importance and relevance of Jesus' historicity, relative to the importance of Jesus' spiritual aspects.

Is there only one Christianity?

We can say there is a single Christianity with multiple variations, or we can equivalently say that there are multiple, different Christian religions, or versions of the Christian religion.

Is Catholicism that one Christianity?

Each main version of Christianity can be posed as the "main" Christianity, for one reason or another.

Gnostic Christianity is the main Christianity because it is esoterically truest and earliest and is reflected in the New Testament.

Greek Orthodox Christianity is the main Christianity in that it is the earliest standardized and single determinate system of doctrine and was formed between the Gnostic and Catholic eras.

Catholicism is the most dominant and influential and *popularly* paradigmatic form of the Christian religion, due to its alliance with the Roman Empire and the later State. It's the most central, looming form of the Christian religion.

Anglican is the most average, state-aligned version of Christianity, so is representative of Christianity in that respect.

Protestantism can claim to be the most representative type of Christianity because it has been culturally dominant in the modern era, and is closely Bible-based in certain respects, and has diversity of denominations which reflects the actual diversity throughout all Christianity.

Historically, with respect to a 20th-Century vantage point, Catholicism is the most representative of what Christianity has been about. The Greek Orthodox church didn't even register on the cultural radar, except as an occasional esoteric influence, for many centuries in many major countries.

Do all the churches agree on the same creed, a historical crucifixion and resurrection as the central theme?

Almost. They differ in their conception of the crucifixion and resurrection. The official or commonly accepted version of each main form of Christianity does emphasize the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the central theme and idea of Christianity.

Gnostic Christianity didn't consider the crucifixion historical; for example, the Bible has no evidence that the Paul figure held the crucifixion to be historical; by omission it plainly implies that the Paul figure *didn't* consider the crucifixion to be historical in any important or unimportant sense.

The early Greek Orthodox church officially held Jesus and his resurrection to be historical, but proportionally, it emphasized the mystic allegorical, mythical and spiritual aspect to the point of eclipsing the historical aspect or the historical dependence. If you subtract the historical Jesus from early Gnostic Christianity, that version of Christianity is almost wholly unaffected.

Each version of Christianity has its own degree of dependence on the Historical Jesus. If you subtract the historical Jesus from the early Greek Orthodox version of Christianity, the majority and essence of Greek Orthodox Christianity remains standing. In contrast, most of Catholicism collapses -- particularly official literalist superficial supernaturalist Catholicism -- and Protestantism is hit hardest of all, with little left standing.

We can almost equate what remains standing with the degree of emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Protestantism has the least emphasis on the Holy Spirit, and the most emphasis on the Historical Jesus, and would thus be hit the hardest by subtracting the historical Jesus.

Perhaps the majority of the disparate Gnostic churches didn't hold the crucifixion as historical, but they did consider Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection as the central theme. However, the crucifixion and resurrection were held as allegorical metaphors conveying and describing the experience of each initiate.

Jesus was considered incarnate in that he resided in the eucharist, the divine flesh of sacred eating and drinking, that brought about the experience of the Holy Spirit in the initiate and caused the initiate to undergo the cruciform mental experience of death as an acting agent, and rebirth from that inert state into a new mode of personal existence, changing the agent from one kind of existence to another.

Liberal Protestants who have taken the historical Jesus idea to its logical completion, reject the physical resurrection of Jesus, but the more esoteric among these postulate that Jesus during his lifetime had one or more spiritual experiences amounting to an esoteric rebirth. However, official Protestantism places more emphasis than other versions of Christianity on the historical crucifixion and resurrection, especially relative to the mystic, mythic, allegorical, and esoteric aspects of the Jesus figure.

Catholicism also insists on a historical crucifixion and resurrection as the most important and central event through which salvation was made possible, but this doctrine is offset by a strong, Orthodox-like emphasis on the spiritual and transcendent aspects of the Jesus figure.

Each version of Christianity makes Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection the main, central theme, but they have different views about the historicity of this event, and they have other interests that offset and balance this event.

Which church takes historicity of Jesus as least significant, focusing on the message?

Among official standardized versions of Christianity, the historicity of Jesus may be proportionally the least in the Greek Orthodox version of Christianity. Among all versions of Christianity, the historicity of Jesus is the least in the earliest, nonstandardized, nonunified and disparate family of churches, which is Gnostic Christianity. We could talk about disparate Protestant denominations or sects, as "Protestantisms" in shorthand.

By the same token, we could investigate conflicts within Catholicism and talk of "Catholicisms" (to a lesser extent). Each main version of Christianity has some degree of cohesion.

Catholic has the most cohesion, Greek Orthodox also has very high cohesion, while Protestant and Gnostic Christianity have lower cohesion - particularly Gnostic Christianity, though that has a certain kind of family resemblance or common character not in terms of formal doctrine or surface worship style, but rather, the same mode of worship: initiation-oriented, strongly experiential, and pointedly esoteric.

If Gnostic Christianity, standardized in its esoteric mode rather than liturgy or doctrine, is considered a church, then it is the earliest Christian church, from which others broke away.

Which church or version of Christianity is the original from which all others broke away?

The disparate Gnostic forms of Christianity preceded the first officially organized and standardized version of Christianity. As far as officially organized and standardized versions of Christianity, Greek Orthodox is the first, the earliest, and the original, from which Catholic broke away.

Protestant then broke away from Catholic, then Anglican politically broke away from Catholic while incorporating some Protestant doctrinal aspects. Aspects of Greek Orthodox periodically were reintroduced into the Catholic breakaway version and its descendents.

_________________

Does the Paul figure in the canon proffer a historical Jesus and historical crucifixion, when talking of "Jesus Christ crucified for you"?

http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=1COR+1

Does this *appear* to be a historical Jesus, or a spiritual Jesus? "I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way -- in all your speaking and in all your knowledge -- because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful." -- 1 Cor 1:4-9

As argued by the Dutch radical critics, there are no verifiable letters of Paul, and Paul might not be a historical figure. We don't know the origin and redaction history of 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians has the Paul character refer to a Jesus Christ that was crucified for people. The mere fact of preaching some "Jesus Christ that was crucified for you" doesn't itself establish the nature of such a Jesus Christ. It is not specified whether this Jesus Christ was purely spiritual/allegorical, like the other saviors of that era, or was a literal person.

When writing that book, did the author, or authors and editors, have in mind a historical Jesus Christ, as a single, literal person? Was the Jesus Christ they had in mind at least partly spiritual/allegorical, like the other savior figures? Yes; the book supports that. Was their figure at least partly historical? The book doesn't assert as much, and the lack of any historical details about the figure implies that he was not historical, but was essentially spiritual/allegorical, like the other savior figures of that era.

Did the Paul figure in the canonical scriptures agree that the Jesus that was crucified was a historical, single, actual person? Does the Paul figure appear to teach about a Jesus who was a historical person? There is no evidence for this; there is only evidence for Paul teaching a spiritual Jesus, of the same character as the saviors in the other Hellenistic initiatory mystery-religions.

St. Paul appears to teach about *some* type of crucified Jesus, but what type of crucified Jesus does he appear to teach? Paul doesn't appear to teach about a *historical* type of crucified Jesus. Paul appears to teach about an *allegorical/spiritual* type of crucified Jesus, the same as the other saviors of that era. What makes Paul's description appear to be spiritual rather than literal?

The appearance of a spiritual rather than historical type of crucified Jesus is built up in Paul's description in that no historical details about that Jesus figure are provided, but the context is that of the Hellenistic mythic-allegorical savior figures.

Taxonomy of Jesus-Christ Beliefs

Below is my complete original posting, including the explanations, showing my taxonomy of Historical Jesus and Christ Myth thinking. I posted similar material in a thread about "Doherty", but this is my later, revised, actual Amazon posting.

____________________

The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? -- Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

by Earl Doherty

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0968601405

An essential Radical Humanist Debunking book

To characterize Doherty's book in relation to others, here is a high-level comparative guide to books about Jesus. Doherty's "radical humanist debunking" book is essential, though limited.

Orthodox mystics

Orthodox literalists

Modernist mystics

Moderate demythologizers

Skeptical hyperpluralists

Radical humanist debunkers

Fully allegorical mystics

(Non-supernaturalist, esoteric/allegorical mythic-only Christ researchers.)

Loren wrote:

>>>(one of the axes of Jesus-Christ belief)

>>>The orthodox end pictures Jesus Christ as a sort of cosmic superbeing, while the mythicist end considers the accounts of JC to be either fictional or allegorical.

Bernard wrote:

>>I feel my views are squeezed out of the picture: I am sure some HJ existed but certainly not as a cosmic superbeing.

Loren wrote:

>I ought to have expressed this axis more clearly; a historical but only-human JC falls in the middle of it, between him being a cosmic superbeing and him being a myth.

Loren wrote:

>From Amazon's customer reviews of

The Jesus Puzzle

Earl Doherty

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0968601405

>is a taxonomy of beliefs about JC from Michael Hoffman.

Loren (not MH?) wrote:

>I've rearranged and summarized the descriptions; they will follow my discussion of the axes that these views can be plotted on.

>One axis covers non-esoteric to esoteric.

>The non-esoteric views focus on how historical the Jesus Christ of the Gospels had been; what would one see if one went to early 30's Palestine in a time machine? Were the Gospels letter- perfect documentaries? Or were they partially fictional? Or even entirely fictional?

>The esoteric views are about experiencing Jesus Christ in some way or other, and what interpretation to pin on those experiences, whether literal or allegorical.

>The other axis covers orthodox to modernist/skeptical to mythicist.

>The orthodox end pictures Jesus Christ as a sort of cosmic superbeing, while the mythicist end considers the accounts of JC to be either fictional or allegorical.

Bernard wrote:

>I feel my views are squeezed out of the picture: I am sure some HJ existed but certainly not as a cosmic superbeing. The mythicist might see JC as fictional or allegorical, but still concentrate on the mythical cosmic superbeing (and try to ignore any human humble origin). You are quickly passing over most of the research in this field (or is it only book writing?), which is on HJ (many of them looking for "down to earth" solutions, even if I would not approve any of those) and not on some MJ or FG.

Bernard, I agree that my categorization scheme failed to account for your "view", if we define "view" as a set of beliefs (about historical facticity) together with attitudes. Your beliefs about the facts about HJ, but not your non-reverential attitude, fits into the intent of the category which I described as:

"Moderate demythologizers

I think your views are close to the most liberal or skeptical end of the range of views within the Jesus Seminar. However, there may be a possibly significant difference between your attitude toward the facts and the attitude of the most liberal/skeptical part of the Jesus Seminar.

The real question this discussion raises is, how well can the Jesus Seminar be generalized as holding a single view, to fit into a single category I have defined? You tend to portray the Jesus Seminar as almost orthodox, conservative Christians, but the conservative Christians try to disown the Jesus Seminar, portraying them as almost un-Christian, liberal humanists.

When one takes the big-picture view, taking the complete range of views into consideration, the Jesus Seminar is a midpoint on a wide spectrum. You portray the Jesus Seminar as being conservative supernaturalists compared to him, but that's inaccurate. I consider your view to be the same as the typical, average view of the Jesus Seminar: moderate demythologizer.

The term "demythologizer" has been used in books to describe the attempt to retain religious liberal Christianity while removing all or nearly all the miracles from the supposed underlying Historical Jesus, retaining the "demythologized" Historical Jesus as a towering religious man upon whom Christianity was built.

Peter Kirby wrote:

>The Jesus Seminar is not monolithic, as can be seen from the fact that Robert Price is a member.

Should people stop talking about "the Jesus Seminar's view" and specify which scholar they are talking about? Though Price is part of the Jesus Seminar, I specifically placed him in a different category than the Jesus Seminar:

"Skeptical hyperpluralists

Some confusion in this thread concerns the contentious generalization of the Jesus Seminar's view. What does the Jesus Seminar believe? I think my original, complete taxonomy posting remains correct and accurate, but I should have qualified "the Jesus Seminar" by saying "the typical, average view of the Jesus Seminar".

Bernard claims that the Jesus Seminar view includes a "Christ of faith" option, even a resurrection option, while his own view is HJ but no myth or "Christ of faith" or resurrection. This is the crux of this whole thread and calls into question my midpoint of my overall categorization scheme. Bernard feels that my categorization scheme should break out this distinction:

Jesus Seminar view: HJ, some Christ of faith, some mythic infusion, "religious"

Bernard view: HJ, no Christ of faith, no mythic infusion, "non-religious"

The difficulty of pinning down the Jesus Seminar shows how their view is being torn between:

o Orthodox thinking that believes there was a Historical Jesus but tries to remove myth while retaining religious faith

o Humanist debunking that believes there was a Historical Jesus but tries to remove myth and remove religious faith

This is a pivotal, central debate about liberal Christianity within Christianity itself. The conservatives criticize the liberal Christian scholars, saying that there is no real difference of belief between Bernard's view and the liberal, fully demythicized Christian view -- only a difference in attitude, in reverence.

Liberal Christians, such as the Jesus Seminar on average or the most liberal half of the Jesus Seminar, removes all myth from the (assumed) Historical Jesus, but somehow retains religious reverence, while Bernard removes the religious reverence. My scheme fails to differentiate between these two views -- or should we say, "attitudes"?

Does Bernard hold different *beliefs* than the more liberal half of the Jesus Seminar? My initial feeling is "no".

Does Bernard hold different *attitudes* than the more liberal half of the Jesus Seminar? My initial feeling is "yes", but this raises the huge question: what does a liberal scholar of Christianity *really* believe, and what attitude does he *really* hold, given that honesty can jeopardize a scholar's financial income?

We really must differentiate between the *published* beliefs/views/attitudes of liberal scholars of Christianity versus their *actual* personal views. I believe that the *actual* beliefs/views/attitudes of the liberal half of the Jesus Seminar are hardly distinguishable from Bernard's beliefs/views/attitudes.

Bernard makes a reasonable case for breaking out this distinction about the "attitude of religiosity" within my category scheme. A major issue in Christian scholarship is "Isn't it inconsistent to maintain an attitude of religiosity after we remove all myth from the Historical Jesus?" That raises the related peripheral issue of the esoteric, mythic, or mystery-religion type of religiosity versus the supposedly traditional exoteric, Literalist, supernaturalist type of religiosity.

Michael wrote the following plus clarification:

>Moderate demythologizers

>(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric Historical Jesus

>researchers.)

>Examples: The Jesus Seminar.

Bernard wrote:

>I do not think the Jesus Seminar closed the door to the Jesus Christ of faith, the one after the alleged resurrection. Also, they do believe in a "historic" HJ, a lot bigger than the one I defined, I may add. Looking at your heading, I would classify me as a radical demythologizer.

Bernard, I think the more liberal half (if not the whole) of the Jesus Seminar conceives of a Historical Jesus that is no bigger than your conception of HJ -- but their published views implicitly retain the attitude of moderate religiosity, while your views explicitly disavow religiosity. I think your view of Jesus is actually very close or the same as some of the Jesus Seminar.

The conservatives claim that the Jesus Seminar has practically closed the door on the Jesus Christ of faith, especially to the degree that the Jesus Seminar rejects belief in the resurrection. Hardliner conservatives commit themselves all-or-nothing to the supernatural resurrection, saying that Christianity is completely empty and ruined if the supernatural bodily resurrection of Jesus didn't happen.

To such conservatives, the Christ of faith is exactly the supernaturally bodily resurrected Jesus. Liberal scholars (moderate demythologizers) attempt to retain the established attitude of reverence the conservatives have, while rejecting the notion that such reverence is purely based on the miraculous bodily resurrection.

Thinkers such as yourself certainly do not attempt to retain the established attitude of reverence the conservatives have.

Orthodox literalists (conservative Christians): affirm HJ, affirm myth, affirm reverence

Moderate demythologizers (liberal Christians): affirm HJ, reject myth, affirm reverence

*Standard humanists*: affirm HJ, reject myth, reject reverence

Radical humanist debunkers: reject HJ, reject myth, reject reverence

The "standard humanist" category is new per Bernard's request. If we admit this category, this implies narrowing the category of, or tightening the boundary of, "moderate demythologizers". A scholar can only be assigned to the latter category if they hold an essentially traditional attitude of Christian religious reverence toward Jesus.

Note that Campbell and Borg refute the consensus notion that Supernatural Literalism is "the traditional" attitude of Christianity. The 20th century *assumed* that Supernatural Literalism is the traditional attitude of Christianity. History is filled with far more mystic and mythic Christianity, and frank disbelief in Literalism or Supernaturalism, than was realized during the late-modernity era of Fundamentalism and 20th-Century Evangelicalism.

Christianity always developed as tension and communication between esoteric and exoteric views, or between the points on the spectrum of exoteric to esoteric to atheist views. The Literalist authoritarian orthodoxy always had to co-opt (and thus take advantage of), not just suppress, heresy/esotericism.

Michael wrote the following plus clarification:

>Skeptical hyperpluralists

>(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric, skeptical Historical Jesus researchers.)

>Examples: Richard Grigg, Imaginary Christs: The Challenge of Christological Pluralism; Robert Price: Deconstructing Jesus.

Bernard wrote:

>Hum! I am certainly skeptical and I acknowledge that my HJ is only a wee part (but indispensable and crucial) of the Jesus Christ of the Christian faith and the NT. The HJ I defined certainly required a lot of add-ons to go places. Actually, the HJ's cult would have been extinguish very early on without the Christological and theological delirious developments. So maybe I am also a skeptical hyperpluralist too.

My explanation was omitted, and confusion resulted. The label and examples alone cannot convey the subtleties of this category of Jesus-view.

My explanation was: "These are interested in exploring our inability to choose among the plethora of Jesuses and Christs rather than promoting a particular Jesus. They acknowledge the mythic-only Christ hypothesis, but don't treat that any more seriously than any particular proposed Historical Jesus."

Michael wrote the following plus clarification:

>Radical humanist debunkers

>(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric mythic-only Christ researchers.)

>Example: Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?

Bernard wrote:

>Radical humanist debunker! That's me but it is strange I would have to share that with Earl. Does radical mean MJ had to be crucified in heaven?

>So put me for radical/skeptical demythologizer/debunker/hyperpluralist.

You might be leery of the phrase "mythic-only Christ". Perhaps I should have written "fictional-only Christ", to clarify that I didn't mean a positive belief in significant mythic-realm events.

Another problematic term is "believing in". Does Earl "believe in a mythic-only Christ", or "believe in a fictional-only Christ"? Here is a highly ambiguous, worst-case phrasing: "Do you believe in the mythic-only Christ?"

Does Price believe in the mythic-only Christ?

Does Price believe that Christ is only a myth?

Does Price believe that Christ is only mythical?

Does Price believe that Christ is profoundly mythical but not literal?

Does Price believe that Christ is profoundly mythical in addition to having literally existed as the man Jesus?

Does Price believe that Christ is only mystical?

Does Price believe in the mystical-only Christ?

Does Price believe that Christ is only fictional, having no literal, mystical, mythical, or supernatural existence?

I formulated my system of categories of Jesus views in order to disambiguate expressions such as "believing the Christ Myth view", or "scholars who hold the Christ Myth view". Doherty, Freke & Gandy, Acharya S, Bernard, and Price all may be said to "hold the Christ Myth view", yet there is great variety among their views.

Per Bernard, I may add the category "standard humanists":

Orthodox literalists (conservative Christians): affirm HJ, affirm myth, affirm reverence

Moderate demythologizers (liberal Christians): affirm HJ, reject myth, affirm reverence

Standard humanists: affirm HJ, reject myth, reject reverence

Radical humanist debunkers: reject HJ, reject myth, reject reverence

(This mini-scheme omits mystery-religion esoteric experiential mystic allegorical myth.)

Terms like "affirm HJ", "affirm myth", and "affirm reverence" are highly ambiguous, needing qualification, study, and explanation.

If you say "I believe there was a Historical Jesus", you may mean several different things.

If you say "I believe Jesus is mythical", or "I believe the mythic Christ view", you may mean several different things.

If you say "I am reverent toward Jesus", or "I am reverent toward Christ", you may mean several different things.

It was an illusion to think during the 20th century that there has been a single established tradition of what it means to "believe in Jesus".There have been many different "beliefs in" Jesus.

The next step in clarifying this spectrum, or n-dimensional space, of Jesus-views is a table formatted in a Web page.

Below, I break out these categories:

o Liberal Christians (Jesus existed, and was religiously important)

o Jesus-honoring secular humanists (Jesus existed, and was a model person)

o Humanist debunkers, or Jesus-belittling secular humanists (Jesus existed, and was nothing special at all)

>>MICHAEL: Radical humanist debunkers

>(Non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric mythic-only Christ researchers.)

>Example: Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?

Bernard wrote:

>>BERNARD: Radical humanist debunker! That's me but it is strange I would have to share that with Earl. Does radical mean MJ had to be crucified in heaven? So put me for radical/skeptical demythologizer/debunker/hyperpluralist.

You might be leery of the phrase "mythic-only Christ". Perhaps I should have written "fictional-only Christ", to clarify that I didn't mean a positive belief in significant mythic-realm events.

Bernard wrote:

>I think the "Christ in heaven" bit, before and after the incarnation, is the result of Theological/Christological extrapolations (within standard Judaism/Hellenism), but NOT the result of a conscious effort of mythologisation. Consequently, "Christ in Heaven" is more fictional than mythical for me. As far as Christ on earth (his alleged extraordinary works, circumstances of his birth, etc.), I see that also as an effort to have HJ measure up to the new Christology, but again not a conscious effort to render Jesus as a mythical earthly entity.

Bernard wrote:

o You are a complete ("radical", or full, not moderate 3/4) demythologizer who thinks that there was a historical Jesus -- a small HJ (not a venerable model man or a genius of a new religion, per the more mainstream secular humanist view that "apologizes" for stripping all myth away by heaping praise on the merely human man Jesus).

o Doherty is a complete ("radical") demythologizer who is relatively "radical" in that he posits that there was not a historical Jesus.

o I am a fully ("radical") esoteric allegorical mystic who thinks that there was not a historical Jesus; I am relatively "radical" in that I posit a Dionysus-like Jesus figure that was tangibly and vividly experienced in the mystic stage, mythically allegorized.

Bernard wrote:

>BERNARD: ... I am certainly skeptical and I acknowledge that my HJ is only a wee part (but indispensable and crucial) of the Jesus Christ of the Christian faith and the NT. The HJ I defined certainly required a lot of add-ons to go places. Actually, the HJ's cult would have been extinguished very early on without the Christological and theological delirious developments. So maybe I am also a skeptical hyperpluralist too.

No, because you hold a particular view: that there was a HJ, and that he had the characteristics you present. "Skeptical hyperpluralists" as I defined it refers to researchers who are interested in exploring our inability to choose among the plethora of Jesuses and Christs rather than promoting a particular Jesus. They acknowledge the mythic-only Christ hypothesis, but don't treat that any more seriously than any particular proposed Historical Jesus.

It is becoming evident that the term "radical" is hopelessly confusing - in any position about Jesus, there are multiple points on which one could be called conservative, moderate, liberal, or radical.

To show this ambiguity, first I will portray Bernard as conservative (or moderate) and Doherty as radical:

o Doherty is radical in removing all myth from Jesus, and he is radical in removing Jesus himself.

o Bernard is radical in removing all myth from Jesus, and (like Liberal Christians) he is moderate or non-radical in retaining an actual, single, particular man, Jesus.

When focusing on those points, Bernard is moderate, conventional, or conservative, while Doherty is radical.

Next I will portray Doherty as conservative and myself as radical.

o Doherty is radical in removing all myth from Jesus, and he is radical in removing Jesus himself, and he is conservative/conventional/moderate in holding a reductionist mundane secular humanist view that considers the mystic/mythic realm to be mere delirium.

o Allegorical mystics are radical in removing all myth from Jesus, and are radical in removing Jesus himself, and are radical in positing a quasi-tangible mythic-realm Jesus.

So I have demonstrated that "conservative/moderate/liberal/radical" are potentially confusing modifiers that are highly relative to, or dependent on, their context of the moment.

Bernard wrote:

>As a non-believer, I find rather odd to be assigned a set of beliefs. The existence of a human Jesus is not a matter of beliefs, but is substantiated by [various textual evidence].

>... "beliefs"? again. My study is based on evidence, nor beliefs. For me, anyone NOT accepting a HJ is very dependent on "beliefs", because he/she has to fight many clear-cut pieces of evidence to the contrary (i.e. a human Jesus existed), invoke some great ill-defined late 2nd century conspiracy, and choose among a multicity of ill-substantiated far-fetched theories.

That is a brittle definition of "belief" that is too much identified with the religious concept, "faith". In this thread, I treat these all as synonymous: belief, believe, posit, hold that, think that, propose, assume, assert, envision, suggest, suppose, postulate, put forth, maintain. I would not include "faith", in the religious sense, as synonymous. In this thread I am not analyzing faith, but "belief", in the sense of "more or less tentatively holding that something is the case".

You portray the Jesus Seminar as being conservative supernaturalists compared to him [this should read "in comparison to your own view"]

Bernard wrote:

>I wonder (where did I write about the Jesus Seminar being conservative supernaturalists?).

You wrote "I do not think the Jesus Seminar closed the door to the Jesus Christ of faith, the one after the alleged resurrection."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/6924

Faith in Jesus Christ being alive after being bodily killed is the hallmark of the conservative supernaturalist view. Your statement amounts to saying that the Jesus Seminar allows the possibility of this supernatural miracle. If the Jesus Seminar allows the possibility of Jesus being alive after having been bodily dead, then they allow the possibility of conservative supernaturalism, and are therefore close to holding the view of conservative supernaturalism.

Bernard wrote:

>For me, "historical Jesus" is no more as somebody who existed and (inadvertently) had a part in starting Christianity. I strongly reject "towering", the capital H, and I do not attempt to retain any religious liberal Christianity. As a matter of fact, I did the opposite: I debunked out all of that.

I consider the capital H to merely indicate that we are talking about the common particular *idea* of a historical Jesus figure. Acronyms HJ and CM are used often, and can be expanded as "Historical Jesus" and "Christ Myth". The term "Historical Jesus" is a formal pointer to a particular idea and writing it that way does not imply an endorsement of any kind, but serves to indicate that I am referring to a particular familiar concept within the context of the JesusMysteries discussion group.

The difficulty of pinning down the Jesus Seminar shows how their view is being torn between:

o Orthodox thinking that believes there was a Historical Jesus but tries to remove myth while retaining religious faith

o Humanist debunking that believes there was a Historical Jesus but tries to remove myth and remove religious faith

Bernard wrote:

>What do you mean by "tries". It is not as difficult or hopeless as you think.

"Tries to" here means "intends to" or "works to".

Bernard wrote:

>I guess here I see a misconception from the mythicist side: Any historical Jesus is believed to come with myth and faith attached to it. Admitting a historical Jesus is then thought as accepting some form of Christianity. Or the existence of some historical Jesus is deemed a threat to unChristian beliefs. So [that explains the motive behind] all the efforts to deny his existence, even as a simple Galilean Jew.

Your approach here parallels my approach in many ways, grappling with the challenges that result when people incorrectly assume that there are only two possible positions: wholesale faith (N.T. Wright) and wholesale disbelief (Doherty). Your position is that there *was* an HJ but nothing really "religious" about him.

My position is that there was no HJ but instead Jesus was very tangibly experienced in the mystic state and that mystically experienced figure was then mythically allegorized (just like the Dionysus figure); the only kind of HJ I think existed was a great swarm of men, including Caesar who had (per Peter Gandy's idea) taken over the attributes of (per Harrison) "the democratic people's king", Dionysus.

Bernard wrote:

>When I started my study, I was not sure which way that would lead me. But now, I am certain Christ is made up (and I know exactly how it happened!). Actually, by not spending time trying to dispel a HJ out of one's mind,

This idea is remarkably parallel to what I have found in trying to discover the meaning of the mystic Christ. I concluded that as long as theorists of myth and mystic experiencing assume there was an HJ, they'll never be sufficiently mentally free to understand the mythic meaning of the Cross.

Assuming that there was a HJ puts a big wrench in the way of grasping how Hellenistic Mysteries worked. The HJ assumption actively prevents solving the puzzle of what Paul's Christ was about.

Bernard wrote:

>and concentrating on close analysis, there are many infos which can be extracted from primary evidence, proving that HJ was NOT what he is claimed by Christians, throwing to the ground any pretense HJ was a legitimate founder of Christianity (and I do not care how, great teacher or Son of God).

If Jesus was actually a strictly mystic-experiencing, mythic-realm entity that one subjectively experienced during religious epiphany, would you say that such a Jesus (or positively Mythic Christ) was a "legitimate founder of Christianity"?

Doherty's no-HJ position helps the positively Mythic-Christ mystic position. But no-HJ is not completely sufficient to provide the mystic Mythic-only Christ position. Doherty and I both hold no-HJ, but I'm a mystic and he's not; he's a secular humanist -- I'm a scientific mystic.

My main concern in this thread is not to approve or disapprove of positions, but to accurately and systematically characterize positions within the HJ/no-HJ debate. There are 8 HJ views, 8 no-HJ views. Essential for HJ/no-HJ debate. I disapprove of implication that there are only 2 or 3 positions, that there's a single HJ view and a single no-HJ view.

In my overall writings, I want to show how no-HJ and Hellenistic mystery-religion powerfully mutually support each other. It is an error to assume that if there was no HJ, Freethought Secular Humanism is true. Instead, the mystic-only Christ remains as viable as ever, and as impressive and mind-transforming to those who are initiated into his mysteries.

The conservatives criticize the liberal Christian scholars, saying that there is no real difference of belief between Bernard's view and the liberal, fully demythicized Christian view -- only a difference in attitude, in reverence.

Bernard wrote:

>I did not know my name was used in some debate between conservative Christians and liberal Christians. Tell me more! Once again, I find very strange I am thought to be in the same bed as the liberal Christians.

I don't know whether or not your name has been used often in conservative/liberal debates. I hope Jesus-scholars are often studying sites such as yours that provide alternative views. When I wrote "Bernard's view" there I meant: The view held by humanist debunkers (or scientific freethought secular humanist atheists) who hold that there was a (single, main) historical Jesus.

Bernard wrote:

>I did have some good comments from people who may be (extremely liberal!) Christians, but that's puzzling for me: Why? I do not think my site would sustain any Christian faith (rather the opposite!), but I tried not to be anti-Christian in it, just look at the facts, and let the ball roll wherever it goes. Maybe

that got appreciated by some. As far as I can see, the ball did not roll on the Christian side (but a religious mind works in very strange way!).

Typical Christians have only heard of the authoritarian system that says you must fervently believe Literally in a large set of myths or else you will be condemned to eternal torment in Hell after you die. It is emancipating to learn that alternative ways of conceiving of Jesus exist -- the fact that you provide one way implies that there may be yet other ways.

Does Bernard hold different *beliefs* than the more liberal half of the Jesus Seminar? My initial feeling is "no".

Bernard wrote:

>Did you read my website? That would be a good way to dispel "feelings" and go into the heart of the matter.

No, I might read it to see if I understand your framework of interpretation and see what you assert. My characterization of your view was based only on your original posting in this thread.

http://www.concentric.net/~Mullerb/ -- Jesus: A historical reconstruction

Bernard wrote:

>I see here an effort to put me with some Christians I do not agree with. Another point: Everybody who has a HJ in his cards would be relegated in a few categories, while the others are housed in many more of them. Net apparent result: The HJ'ers are in a minority! Very comforting for the others!

I don't know how many HJ vs. non-HJ categories I or others have defined. When I make a formatted table in a Web page, I might find additional views on both sides. I envision 8 distinct views that hold HJ, and 8 distinct views that hold no-HJ. You have helped ferret out more combinations of assertions, therefore more views on the HJ side.

Bernard wrote:

>The Jesus Seminar is usually considered to be a group of liberal Christians, and that's why I do not want to be associated with them and put in the same category. Sure, there are many fellows of the JS who are more radical and even non-Christians. So I suggest we should be put in a different category: radical debunkers/demythologizers.

In my previous posting, I didn't call the new category "radical debunkers/demythologizers", because:

o The term "radical" is merely relative and therefore confusing

o The term "radical" can apply to any of several points within a position.

Instead, I labelled the category "standard humanists" (which in the present posting I have taken to calling "freethought secular humanist" or "humanist debunkers") because almost all of the anti-religious writers from 1650 onward, including the heyday of so-called freethought around 1850-1950, sought to remove all trace of mythic thinking from Jesus, while retaining Jesus as an essentially ordinary man.

Compared to typical freethought secular humanists, you might put forth a smaller HJ than they do, denying that he was anything special at all.

This would suggest subcategories:

o Secular humanists who portray Jesus as an excellent man

o Humanist debunkers who portray Jesus as an ordinary and non-excellent man (Bernard Muller)

Standard Humanism, Radical Humanism, and Renaissance Humanism:

There would be multiple ambiguities if your position were simply called "humanism":

o Typical modern Humanism holds that Jesus existed and was a model man (it used to be extremely risky to go that far -- not to mention positing no HJ at all, or positing an HJ that wasn't a lofty model man).

o Renaissance Humanism was thoroughly religious, or was forced to publically pretend to be, in the works which were permitted to be published.

Your view contrasts with both of these familiar, established forms of "Humanism" (as represented by the works that managed to be published), because you don't write that Jesus was a venerable model man that decent people ought to revere and base their life upon.

The position labels are less important than the set of assertions they are intended to indicate; see the full description of each position for greater accuracy. "Secular humanism" connotes a whole raft of views and goals, some of which might be incorrect or irrelevant for the HJ/no-HJ debate.

Bernard wrote:

>That does not mean I would agree with the conclusions of my new would-be comrads, but that would be fairer, rather than to be put in >the same bag as convinced (liberal) Christians, who, I suspect strongly for some of them, also act as Christian apologists.

Bernard wrote:

>I would strongly object to that. I see it as an attempt to marginalyse me and my conclusions. I do not care about what liberal scholars of Christianity *really* believe. I do not think any liberal scholar would share my views, overall.

Jesus scholarship has often been persecuted and distorted by various cultural and political pressures. The politically sensitive researcher should in general differentiate between published views and personally held views, when moving in the direction from a conservative to liberal view of Jesus. The more liberal the scholar's view, in a conservative-dominated world, the more that scholar will be pressured to inflate the Jesus figure and draw a bigger rather than a smaller Jesus.

Bernard wrote:

>Why am I always crucified on those beliefs/views/attitudes, while my reconstruction is dealing with facts and skeptical analysis and a lot of historical research?

Maybe that problem would be prevented by systematizing positions -- by clearly defining your position in relation to other possible positions so that people are clear on what you do and don't assert. I think defining 8 HJ and 8 non-HJ positions helps avoid any position being marginalized by being distorted and unjustifiably subsumed into another position.

Your position, as I understand it so far, seems as strong and defensible as any; it has a distinctive purity, coherence, and self-integrity, because it strips 100% of the mythic thinking off of the historical Jesus, and the figure remaining is therefore fully plausible.

(My own main objection to your position is that your criteria for HJ are so easy to meet, how can you show that there was only a single man under the pile of myths? I find 0 or 81 HJ's simpler than 1. But this is just a hint of how I might criticize your quite plausible, distinctive position, in a thread focusing on the particulars of your system.)

If we lack names for these positions, if we lack a systematic way of categorizing positions, it is more likely that one position will be improperly marginalized by being confused with another position and subsumed into it. Therefore every researcher should be a master of differentiating between positions, to preserve their own from being effectively swallowed and dismissed as part of dismissing a supposedly neighboring, equivalent position.

o Liberal Christians (moderate demythologizers, Jesus Seminar) remove 3/4 of the myth from the conservative Christian (Literalist Supernaturalist) view, and retains a Big Historical Jesus.

o Freethought Secular Humanism (Bernard) removes all the myth, and retains a small historical Jesus. The resulting Jesus may be venerable or not, and may have intended to start a religion, or not.

A table is required to track these various options which, as you can see, threaten an otherwise unmanageable combinatorial explosion. It reminds me of a wonderful online form asking multiple-choice questions about your beliefs: at the end, it reports what religious denominations match your views.

The following is about methodological meta-level considerations in the debate about whether there was an HJ. What is "compelling textual evidence"? Textual evidence is strongly affected by the interpretive frameworks, and frameworks of assumptions, that we've been using. We must have a certain reasonable level of skill and explicit awareness of how interpretive frameworks work.

It is impossible to put aside interpretive frameworks and examine the textual evidence "directly". All data is context-bound; there is no interpretation-free observation. The JesusMysteries discussion group, like HJ research in general, has not had a reasonable level of skill regarding how interpretive frameworks work.

As a result, the textual evidence has only been arrayed in a few of the possible ways, and there are resulting confusions about how to arrange the various arguments and stories. Christological Pluralism (too many versions of Christ, too many apparently plausible ways of arraying the evidence) has become itself a serious problem in understanding who Jesus and wasn't.

We need ways of keeping track of these ways of arraying the evidence and we need to find out whether there are yet more ways, which may be more compelling than anything we've thought of so far.

How does my "taxonomy of Jesus-Christ views" project compare to the JesusMysteries discussion group's "Deconstructing Jesus" project?

The DJ project intends to systematically lay out the textual evidence for all the main "Jesus as (x)" portrayals and specifically describe each portrayal.

My "taxonomy of Jesus-Christ views" project intends to systematically define some 8 distinct mentalities of views about Jesus that posit an HJ, and 8 that posit no-HJ.

My personal motive for this project is to define and put forth and defend a "positive Mythic Christ, no-HJ" view and show the relations between this view and other distinct views. I am especially fascinated by how well the no-HJ postulate and the positive esoteric Mythic Christ postulate support each other like a match made in Heaven.

When I abandoned the careless assumption that a HJ existed and perfectly understood mystic Christian ideas, the doors of plausible interpretations of mythic meaning flew open -- by letting go of the HJ assumption, I was freed to think mythically and was able to penetrate the meaning of the Hellenistic Mystery-Religions.

Interestingly, now, I would be able to allow an HJ (or 81 of them) back into my thinking, distinct from the experiential mystical meaning of the Cross -- but I am not particularly interested in whether or not there was an HJ, or none, or 81.

My driving interest, as ever in my Philosophy research, is to comprehend Christian symbolism in terms of mystic experiencing: particularly, to grasp the mystical meaning of the thorn-crowned savior king fastened to the cross, with side pierced. This led to the challenge of understanding the mystery-religions, and Jewish esotericism, and finally, religious myth in general.

Such a goal has a minor overlap with the JesusMysteries discussion group, and a major overlap with the Deconstructing Jesus project.

The construct of 'spectrum' is problematic, complex, or limited. It can mislead; worst of all, it can imply that there are fewer possible views (combinations of ideas) than there really are. There is really an n-dimensional matrix of spectrums or positions. One could invert the above spectrum from arrangement 1 to 2:

Spectrum arrangement 1. exoteric <--> esoteric <--> atheist

Supported by telling the history this way:

1. First there were exoteric Christian Literalists like N.T. Wright

2. Then there were Christians who became mystics

3. Then finally they let go of HJ and therefore became atheists/pagans.

Spectrum arrangement 2. exoteric <--> atheist <--> esoteric

Supported by telling the history this way:

1. First there were exoteric Christian Literalists like N.T. Wright

2. Then there were reactionary atheists (humanist debunkers) like Bernard Muller who denied that Jesus was anything special (or that Jesus is merely a commendable model man who did or did not intend to start a religion)

3. Then finally there were esotericists like Freke & Gandy who denied Jesus existed at all and was instead a matter of mystic experiencing.

Terms like "conservative/liberal" or "orthodox/heretic" or "moderate/radical" are problematic because they are too abstract and relative and imply that there is a very limited number of positions -- a "two-party system". It's better when defining categories to be more specific, which is why my original scheme included for each defined position:

o A characterization label of the position

o Parenthetical technical descriptors

o An explanatory paragraph

o Examples of who holds such a position.

This discussion group is based on presenting textual evidence, but in the area of origins of Christianity, it seems that there are not just one or two, but more like 16 ways to arrange the available textual evidence. These "ways" are paradigms or interpretive frameworks. To help provide alternative frameworks for presenting the evidence, I am defining some 8 no-HJ positions and 8 HJ positions.

If I present textual evidence to support my belief that there was no HJ, I need to possess an interpretive framework that works for me. Doherty provides a no-HJ interpretive framework, but his doesn't work for me because his grasp of the mystically experienced Jesus is weak. Freke and Gandy provide a framework that essentially does work for me, so that it is just a matter of fine-tuning.

o I have no doubt that one can make a reasonably consistent case that the textual evidence indicates there *was* an HJ, of the type envisioned by Secular Humanism, with a big or little HJ.

o I have no doubt I can make a reasonably consistent case that the textual evidence indicates there *wasn't* an HJ, but that instead, Jesus was a purely an allegorical experiential mythic-realm figure.

In any case, to most effectively array an HJ researcher's interpretation of the textual evidence against mine, and to include other researchers, it helps everyone if we systematically define an assortment of views, or interpretive frameworks. In debating whether there was an HJ, an immensely practical intermediate question is *which* of the several HJ frameworks is best supported by the textual evidence, and *which* of the several *no-HJ* frameworks is best supported by the evidence?

Conservative Christian scholars, in characterizing liberal Christian scholars, try to push (so to speak) liberal Christian scholars toward the humanist debunker position. A humanist debunker, in characterizing liberal Christian scholars, tries to push liberal Christian scholars toward the conservative supernaturalist position. The liberal Christian scholars try to distance themselves both from the conservative supernaturalists and from the humanist debunkers.

The modifier "radical" is so relative and confusing, I may have to remove it from my categories of Jesus-Christ views. This very type of confusion happened when a bookseller described evangelicals as "conservative", while the books I had been reading characterized evangelicals as hopelessly "liberal".

The bookseller couldn't understand why I would consider evangelicals "liberal" until I showed him the title of a book on his shelf: The End of Liberal Theology: Contemporary Challenges to Evangelical Orthodoxy.

It is interesting to see the challenge faced by the middle party in a spectrum, between a rock and a hard place.

Given a spectrum of positions:

A <--> B <--> C

Examples of A-B-C spectrums:

Conservative Supernaturalism <--> Liberal Christian Demythologizers <--> Freethought Secular Humanism (Bernard)

Liberal Christian Demythologizers <--> Freethought Secular Humanism <--> No-HJ Humanists (Doherty)

Church/state Christianity of 1650-1750 <--> the Moderate Enlightenment <--> and the atheist Radical Enlightenment like Spinoza

Catholicism <--> Moderate Reformers (Luther, Calvin) <--> Radical Reformation (libertine mystic revolutionaries)

moderates <--> moderate radicals <--> radical radicals

Here is the typical dynamic around the middle position in any such spectrum that one can define:

C accuses B of being practically the same as A, and A accuses B of being practically the same as C. B feels A pushing it toward C, and B also feels C pushing it toward A. Meanwhile, B resists being pushed toward A and resists being pushed toward C.

Freethought Secular Humanism is a "moderate radical" position in comparison to No-HJ Humanists (Doherty).

Similarly, Liberal Christian Demythologizers (the Jesus Seminar) can be characterized by Humanists as "moderate conservatives" or even "moderate conservative-supernaturalists".

Here is the spectrum I find most intriguing:

moderate atheist (Freethought Secular Humanism w/ HJ) <--> radical atheist (Freethought Secular Humanism w/o HJ) <--> fully allegorical esotericist (no-HJ, positive mythic Christ)

Do humanist debunkers fear Doherty's position because Doherty's position is (within this spectrum) a step toward mysticism? Secular humanists are eager to get rid of all the myth that was added to the historical Jesus, but they actively *want* to retain the existence HJ himself, because if they were to let go of HJ, they'd be only one step away from the most dreaded position that threatens secular humanist atheism: mysticism.

I imagine that such atheists are eager to slay the supernaturalist conception of historical Jesus to make modernist reductionist secular humanist atheism triumphant. However, although they might success at slaying the supernaturalist conception of historical Jesus, a separate battle looms: slaying the conception of the mystically encountered Jesus.

As one who is working to define a defensible allegorical mystic-only Jesus framework, I'm interested in making a case that the humanist debunker HJ position should give way, when the textual evidence is arranged within the allegorical-mystic no-HJ framework, to the mystic/mythic-only Jesus position. Really, Feyerabend's theory of how science actually progresses, suggests that there is not "textual evidence" so much as "textual evidence arranged into competing frameworks of interpretation".

This means that it is naive to think we can have a sophisticated debate with forcefully compelling results about whether or not there was an HJ by keeping our noses to the grindstone of studying textual evidence. Yes, we must present textual evidence, but we won't make progress unless we recognize that we are in fact using interpretive frameworks, whether we realize it or not.

So I am working on systematically enumerating the frameworks that researchers in fact have been using as containers in which to place the textual evidence, and lenses through which to look at the textual evidence. I am not a radical relativist. There is truth, apart from our knowledge of it, and we can approach that truth by refining our knowledge.

However, to accomplish this real progress, we have to become reasonably skilled at understanding how interpretive frameworks work to make the textual evidence seem to say a variety of different, contradictory stories. There is no escape from interpretation, though hopefully some interpretations are, in the end, more compelling than others.

As an example of how different views covertly strive to bend or frame the textual evidence in a particular direction, consider how the textual scriptural evidence about exorcism and walking on water is presented.

o For the Fundamentalist, this canonical textual evidence certainly shows that Jesus was a worker of miracles, and that if our Christian view is Bible-based and literalist, we must believe in demons and miracles.

o For the Liberal Christian, this shows that Jesus was a new-age superman, or that myths were piled on top of a toweringly impressive model man.

o For the Secular Humanist, these scriptures show that myths and noxious magical thinking distorted the more or less great man Jesus.

o For the no-HJ experiential mystic, these scriptures show that the allegorical mystics had genuine, intense, first-hand experience with mental-model transformation, ego transcendence, and mystic-state perceptual distortion.

This demonstrates how very flexible the textual evidence is; how very framework-dependent the facts are. When you call into question the historicity of Paul or Ignatius, and whether Christianity came from Jerusalem or rather came *to* it after some time, textual evidence starts looking more and more like a house of mirrors.

The Jews -- or those who identified with their empire-resistance -- may have lacked swordsmanship, but they sure had a capable army of pens and knew their pseudo-history well.

The JesusMysteries group ought to be afraid of letting the number of possible viewpoints be reduced too quickly to two or three.

Did a man Jesus exist, or not? That's a simple question -- but it leads out to many worlds of textual interpretation, and the unspoken question reveals the true complexity:

What is the true origin of the Jesus figure? That's not a simple question. For example, consider the simplest possible complication: suppose there was one man who was a teacher, and a different man who was crucified and then recovered or escaped with his life? Suddenly we see what hubris was hidden in the seemingly reasonable question "Did Jesus exist or not?"

That question is packed with covert assumptions, such as that the only possible alternatives are "The man Jesus existed" and "The man Jesus didn't exist." That only begs the question, "What are the real characteristics of this man whose existence is contested?" In effect, "Did Jesus exist or not?" may be some kind of trick question.

To allegorist mystics such as myself, exorcism and walking on water are essential elements of the Jesus figure. To me, removing these elements is folly, sheer incomprehension of what the Jesus figure is all about. On the other hand, reading these elements Literally is just as much folly and incomprehension. I describe this position in order to show that the no-HJ position has more ammunition than Doherty's view implies.

The allegorist mystic view has more to offer the no-HJ position than Doherty implies. The allegorist mystic view is stronger and more substantial than Doherty implies.

It is oversimplistic to think we can focus on debating the question in narrow isolation of whether or not HJ existed. To move forward in that debate, we need to first realize that there are several different views that hold that there was an HJ, and several different views that hold there was no HJ. Some of these views have not been explored, so the conversation defaults to limited sets of assumptions about what the possibilities are.

A main project of mine in the JesusMysteries discussion group is to show that the no-HJ view supports mystic insight, the HJ view blocks mystic insight, allegorical mystic view supports no-HJ. There is a special close relationship between the no-HJ proposition and the mystic-experiencing point of view.

Freke and Gandy positively unite the no-HJ proposition with the mystic-experiencing point of view; in contrast, Doherty doesn't have any real interest in the mystic-experiencing point of view, and merely acknowledges that it existed in early Christianity.

It's better to talk of spectrums in the plural, not "the spectrum" of beliefs. The single-spectrum fallacy is bad because it shuts out a variety of possible alternative positions, saying "You either have to agree with my position, or accept one of just two other unappealing positions." In truth there are more like 8 positions that posit an HJ, and 8 positions that posit no-HJ.

When debating HJ vs. no-HJ, it's clearly beneficial to categorize various debaters and scholars into these more precise categories, so that we can lay out a rich array of scenarios for the origin of Christianity. If we don't more or less systematically define these 8 kinds of HJ positions and 8 kinds of no-HJ positions, we will end up with frustrating misunderstandings of each other and won't understand how many ways there are to arrange the evidence for or against the existence of an HJ.

______________________

Forward of post from JesusMysteries discussion. I am omitting Peter's writings per the rules. These rules are an issue for me. I don't have time to rewrite the original exchange as an independent article now. I may be able to post a link here to the original message -- for it to resolve, you would need to be subscribed to the JM discussion group.

Michael wrote:

>>This posting is about methodological meta-level considerations in the debate about whether there was an HJ.

Peter wrote:

>...

Without providing justification, you implicitly propose defining 'methodology' as 'heuristics for deciding which passages to accept as true'. Aren't there many other aspects of methodology? Is this really the most important aspect?

The aspects of methodology I have focused on start off with classifying the paradigms or frameworks of thinking. Your approach implicitly asserts, without discussion, that the correct and useful way to think about methodology is in terms of *first* defining heuristics for assigning credibility to texts, and *then* following those heuristics through to a conclusion. Science and knowledge don't simply work that way.

In practice, and as a practical approach, deciding rules for assigning credibility happens hand in hand with adopting or trying out frameworks. You develop the framework or paradigm hand-in-hand with considering what ways of assigning credibility are best. This is really what the concept of 'paradigm' is all about. Each paradigm implies a different set of heuristics and methodologies.

Some paradigms put an emphasis on the framework and explore what elements of reasoning and justification follow; other paradigms emphasize the axioms, reasoning, and justification more than the overall framework -- but in either case, the theorist works from all angles: framework-first, and axiom-first -- akin to the idea of working both analytically and synthetically, or bottom-up and top- down.

Without a framework, there is no guide to deciding heuristics for assessing credibility of texts. In practice, people adopt a view of Christianity first (a framework), and then adopt whatever principles of interpreting the text are needed. The theorist must use all approaches together (top-down and bottom-up) and not be unnecessarily handicapped.

No matter how good your set of "methodologies" of assigning credibility are, that approach fails to provide any way of classifying the many views proposed -- orthodox mystic, radical mythic-only Christ mysticism, secular humanism that's completely averse to mysticism (Ayn Rand).

Heuristics *alone*, as you seem to propose, are limited -- if you shut frameworks out of your mind and only follow heuristics of assigning credibility to texts, that is an inefficient approach that doesn't effectively account for, or sync up with, all the various frameworks that have been proposed. It is poor methodology to refer to these "frameworks" as "conclusions".

Michael wrote:

>>How does my "taxonomy of Jesus-Christ views" project compare to the JesusMysteries discussion group's "Deconstructing Jesus" project?

>>The DJ project intends to systematically lay out the textual evidence for all the main "Jesus as (x)" portrayals and specifically describe each portrayal.

>>My "taxonomy of Jesus-Christ views" project intends to systematically define some 8 distinct mentalities of views about Jesus that posit an HJ, and 8 that posit no-HJ.

Peter wrote:

>...

I largely agree; we must not ask whether Jesus existed, but rather, in what sense did Jesus exist and in what sense did he not exist, and what is the true nature of Jesus or of the Jesus figure. However, we must systemtically lay out and account for all the views of Jesus that have been held, and identify what axioms and criteria for textual credibility are associated with those views -- not that the axioms come first in time, and then the views/frameworks come later in time.

The best methodology assumes a variety of approaches, sometimes thinking in terms of framework-first, sometimes axiom-first. We must categorize both the views/frameworks/paradigms, and the sets of axioms or heuristics for assigning textual credibility. I assume these two emphases should be joined by several other areas, approaches, or theoretical techniques.

Michael wrote:

>>When I abandoned the careless assumption that a HJ existed and perfectly understood mystic Christian ideas, the doors of plausible interpretations of mythic meaning flew open -- by letting go of the HJ assumption, I was freed to think mythically and was able to penetrate the meaning of the Hellenistic Mystery-Religions.

The scholar of global religious myth immediately recognizes that the historical story above is dense with standard mythic elements: kings, betrayals, evil twin brothers, insurrections, and losing the throne. In principle, theoretically, the religious-mythic Osiris is perfectly independent of whether or not there was a historical Osiris who fits many of the storyline elements of the religious-mythic Osiris.

In practice, the literalist mode of thinking shuts out the religious- mythic way of thinking. Kings *have* been overthrown by plotting brothers all the time. The main problem and mistake is to assert unique, singular historical entity when what really exists is an entire *class* and *type*.

Any historical Osiris or historical Jesus should be considered much more as a truly existing class and type of person, a category of person, rather than a single remarkable unique person who created and founded the whole class. Many men were magicians, many men were betrayed kings, many men were crucified as rebel leaders.

I can believe there were many historical Jesuses or historical Osirises and still think with rich, mature, skeptical rationality, but to propose that there was one single original Jesus or Osiris that gave rise to the genre and who is the origin of the religious type (involving such popular mystic-state mythic allegorical elements as kings, betrayals, evil twin brothers, insurrections, and losing the throne), is to misunderstand how mythic mystic elements and types come about, and is to give up both sophisticated Reason and sophisticated mystic insight.

I'm more nitpicking about how religious-mythic elements originate, here. To assert that "there really was a king Osiris, on whom the Osiris myth was based", or that "there really was a leader Jesus, on whom the Jesus myth was based" is to fall into an irrational model of the relation between individuals, types of individuals, and mythemes and mythic characters.

When someone says "there really was a Jesus" they are generally asserting an entire implicit false theory of the origin of religious- myth. I say there may have been a Jesus (that fits with an accurate theory of the origin of religious-myth), but there certainly was not a Jesus (that fits with a grossly incorrect and Literalist theory of the origin of religious-myth). The grand issue here really can't be described as simply a debate about whether Jesus did or did not exist.

The *meaning* of any Jesus individual is really what the entire debate is secretly about.

Peter wrote:

>...

This discussion group seems to be about whether Jesus did or didn't exist. But that question when analyzed and understood is deconstructed to reveal the real issue, the real question: what kind of Jesus or Jesus-type individuals actually existed; what were they really about, *and* what is the actual relationship between this man (or these men) and the received Jesus figure of Christianity?

The question of HJ/no-HJ is secretly *all* about the question of the *interpretation* of such a man, and his relationship to the mythic figure associated with this man or these types of men. There proveably *cannot* be a simple "yes/no" answer to the question "Did Jesus exist?" The only question is: of the men who existed, what was their relationship to the figure of Jesus that came together in Christianity?

The Jesus figure was based on actual men, types of actual men, divine mythic figures, legendary men, and so on. There certainly was not a single lone man Jesus who had a monopoly on all the attributes of the received Christian Jesus figure. All the debate moving forward is necessarily a debate about which attributes were present in which actual men, and the relationship between these men and the Jesus figure.

In that sense, the question of "Did Jesus exist or not?" is dead, or resolved, or deconstructed. There certainly was no man who clearly stands out as uniquely fitting nearly all the attributes of the Christian Jesus figure. Instead, there were various actual men who more or less fit some number of these attributes.

My final answer to the question "Did Jesus actually exist" is that there was no single Historical Jesus figure, but only a variety of actual men, from whom the Jesus figure was partially drawn.

Ayn Rand is so averse to mysticism -- away with it all, she would say, reducing it to nothing but delirium, delusion, and power mongering. Doherty is fairly averse to mysticism, withholding any positive defense of it.

A particular atheist can have any of these attitudes:

o Affirm the high value of mysticism

o Moderately defend mysticism

o Stay neutral to it

o Reject it as soft-headed silliness

o Reject it as noxious, regressive, and destructive.

The notion of "methods and their conclusions" is theoretically distorted. "Conclusion" implies a surprising discovery that happens later in time after methods or axioms play out over time. Rather, it's a matter of justifications and frameworks mutually supporting each other and giving rise to each other, with a framework implying certain set of justifications, and a set of justification implying a framework.

One explores and tests and works-out frameworks and axioms in conjunction -- per Kuhn and Feyerabend's models of how science actually works, and per the idea of "Conjectures" in Popper's work Conjectures and Refutations. Developing a model of the origin of Jesus is a messy process, not reducible only to adopting various criteria for assessing credibility and then seeing where they happen to lead.

Michael wrote:

>>As an example of how different views covertly strive to bend or frame the textual evidence in a particular direction, consider how the textual scriptural evidence about exorcism and walking on water is presented.

Anyone who possesses suitable methods of transforming cognitive states and mental models can perform an exorcism, with is the essence of religious enlightenment. Jesus is the person, thing, or ability which casts out the demon that inhabits every uninitiated mind. It is the height of folly to remove exorcism from the Jesus character if Jesus is to be considered as a religious entity.

If you remove exorcism from the Jesus character, Jesus is no longer a religious entity. Religion *is* exorcism. This view doesn't evidently conflict with that of Celsus or the professional exorcists, or Josephus or Eleazar.

Peter wrote:

>... Considerations like these may call into question the division of positions into "HJ" and "no-HJ" categories.

My approach to analyzing whether the ego exists or not, or whether the will is free or not, apply to the question of whether Jesus existed or not. In all these cases, the problem is simplistic yes/no thinking, asking a yes/no question when that's inappropriate and inapplicable. The only correct type of question is that which doesn't include false implicit assertions.

Yes/no questions are invalid and themselves false, like if I ask you "Are you still robbing banks?" or "Do unicorns have a single horn?"

The correct type of question is of the form:

o In what sense does x exist, and in what sense does x not exist?

What is the nature of x?

where x = ego, or free will, or Osiris, or Jesus.

The incorrect and invalid form of such questions is:

o Does x exist?

An incorrect and invalid question, with no possible correct answer, is:

o Did Jesus exist, or not?

The correct and valid question is:

o What is the true origin of the Jesus figure?

The above analysis suggests that that goal is incorrect and invalid:

o The purpose of this discussion group is to study textual evidence to determine whether Jesus existed or not.

A correct and valid goal would be:

o The purpose of this discussion group is to study textual evidence and frameworks of interpretation to determine in what sense Jesus existed and in what sense he didn't exist, and to determine the nature and origin of Jesus or the Jesus figure.

Peter wrote:

>...

That's theoretically true, but in practice, the familiar assumption that Jesus existed entails a whole way of thinking, and that way of thinking actively shuts out and prevents alternative ways of thinking. To reiterate: The way of thinking that would accept that there was one, single Jesus is the way of thinking that lacks the flexibility that is required to discover or envision or fully grasp alternative views.

In principle, the existence of an Historical Jesus is wholly irrelevant to the existence of a mystical-plane Jesus; the mystical- plane Jesus is unaffected by whether or not an HJ exists.

Michael wrote:

>>... the no-HJ position has more ammunition than Doherty's view implies. ... The allegorist mystic view has more to offer the no-HJ position than Doherty implies. The allegorist mystic view is stronger and more substantial than Doherty implies.

Peter wrote:

>...

In private correspondence, Earl Doherty stated that he considers science to provide all valuable knowledge. Whatever mystic experiencing might hold, it is either not valuable, or is covered by science. I might review his wording and consider posting it here. Doherty does not value mysticism, mystic experiencing, mystic insight, or mystic knowledge; Freke & Gandy do. In this sense, these researchers hold opposite views.

I hold that setting science and mysticism in opposition is ultimately a false dichotomy that is disproven by mystic-state experience and insight. Mature science and mature mysticism converge and unite. Only immature science and immature mysticism -- crude science and crude mysticism -- stand in a contrived opposition to each other.

___________________________

>KIRBY

>... Yes, in practice, theories are developed alongside criteria. We often tend to judge a criterion by whether it leads to

conclusions that are already accepted. So, certainly, a study in frameworks could be a contribution towards an understanding of methodology. I guess I would have to weaken my point to saying that your table seems to consider frameworks without criteria,

Your approach could be considered a criteria-driven approach while mine could be considered a framework-driven approach. Who knows; that's fairly abstract theorizing. You and I as catalogers of theories or approaches are similar. Where we differ is that you specialize in distinctions among theories that are dominated by HJ, while I specialize in distinctions among theories that are dominated by the esoterically experienced Jesus.

All the HJ-dominated theories are essentially the same to me, and the JesusMysteries discussion group is completely taken over by the HJ style of thinking, even among those who would label themselves no-HJ. What fascinates me is the relationships among various mystic-Jesus views and the relationships between mystic-Jesus dominated views and HJ-dominated views.

How does the mystic-Jesus/HJ axis relate to the HJ/no-HJ axis? That is a question worth investigating -- it's on-topic, and can be supported by the HJ-related texts we've been working with, but also needs support from texts from the mystic-Jesus side. Among writers who were most interested in the mystic Jesus, what were the various views about Jesus that they had, and what various ways did they relate to the HJ views?

Based on relevant texts, can we conclude that the mystic-Jesus view is strongly correlated with the no-HJ view? If so, the more evidence we have for people having held the mystic-Jesus view, the less likely it was that people held the HJ view.

This raises the relevant distinction between whether there was an HJ and whether the original Christians *thought* there was an HJ. If almost all the original Christians thought there was an HJ, that would strengthen the position that there was an HJ. If almost all the original Christians rejected the notion of an HJ, but had a rich life of mystical Jesus encounters, that would strengthen the position that there was no HJ.

>which is as much a sin as considering criteria without frameworks. That does not mean that it is not useful. I have my own page on "Historical Jesus Theories" that catalogues so-called conclusions.

I largely agree; we must not ask whether Jesus existed, but rather, in what sense did Jesus exist and in what sense did he not exist, and what is the true nature of Jesus or of the Jesus figure.

An incorrect and invalid question, with no possible correct answer, is:

o Did Jesus exist, or not?

The correct and valid question is:

o What is the true origin of the Jesus figure?

Peter Kirby wrote:

>With this understanding, with which I tend to agree, I wonder why you seem to have allowed "HJ" and "no-HJ" to become the fundamental divide in your taxonomy.

That's a good question, warranting analysis. First of all, do I in fact allow "HJ/no-HJ" to be "the fundamental divide in my taxonomy"? No -- I included it as one of several criteria for *simply characterizing* various views that Jesus scholars and Christians have held. Below, I discuss orders of approximation, and problematic flexibility of terms such as "HJ".

Terms are inherently flexible; the solution is not to avoid using terms, but rather, to define them -- as I more or less did in my original taxonomy, which was not represented by the first post of this thread, but by my later full repost of my Amazon comparative review. You are more of an expert within the varieties of HJ views; I focus on varieties of mystic views of Jesus and their relations to the familiar sorts of HJ views.

That's why you tend to discard the utility of the basic "HJ/no-HJ" opposition, while I find it useful for characterization, when the terms "HJ" and "no-HJ" are carefully applied and defined. I am much less interested than you in the differences between various HJ schemes. I'm interested in the contrast between mystic and Literalist views, so it's interesting to relate the mystic/Literalist axis to some archetypal or stereotypical HJ/no-HJ axis.

In the beginning, the Jesus storyline, involving some sort of trial and conflict of powers and death and rising, was sufficiently accurate, more than accurate or plausible enough. The historical Jesus paradigm has been necessary, to learn about the context of the origin of Christianity. However, study of the mystery-myth understanding of Christianity lags far behind.

We've learned all about the mundane details of how trials were conducted, but have utterly missed the point of the trial as an allegorization of one stage of mystery-religion initiation. After all our historical scholarship, we understand everything, yet nothing.

The Mysteries of Jesus and Mary were the same as all the other Mysteries of godmen and goddesses, but put a greater emphasis on the king aspect of the godman, and the pseudo-history political framework such as the Jews emphasized.

By the time of Eusebius (313), the Mysteries of Jesus and Mary were distinguished by being much more political styled than the other mysteries, and by the novel claim of Literalism: according to the Church fathers, yes, Jesus was the same as all the other godmen, and yes, the Mysteries of Jesus had everything that all the other mystery-cults had, but the Jesus Mysteries are superior because unlike the other mystery-cults, this godman was also, additionally, manifested Literally.

Eventually, this Literalist addition became dominant and was combined with supernaturalism, to eliminate the mystery-religion initiation so that the Mysteries of Jesus were no longer really considered officially to be a mystery religion at all (the Jesus Mysteries officially disavow mysteries and mystery religion as such). Officially, the Mysteries of Jesus were still pronounced to be a mystery religion, but at the same time, any mysteries or actual mystery-religion initiation was officially anathema.

Christianity was officially declared to be the mystery religion that no longer held mysteries in the old sense of the mystery religions; it was therefore declared to be a mystery religion that was not a mystery religion. Official Literalism was forcefully joined with official supernaturalism, and esoteric initiation was officially banned at the same time as all the other mystery religions were officially banned.

It's usual to say that the "pagan mystery religions" were banned, and the only legal "religion" was the religion of Christ. However, the scholar of the Mysteries emphasizes that in fact *all* mystery-religion was banned, including the mystery religion of Christ, when official Christianity, which was strictly the Literalist and supernaturalist form of Christianity, was mandated for the empire.

Eusebius and his power-mongering cohorts not only killed off the so-called "pagan mystery religions", but they also killed off any genuine mystery religion in the Christian religion.

Before Eusebius, we had many mystery religions, including the Mysteries of Jesus and Mary; after Eusebius, we had no mystery religions at all -- instead, we were given one replacement religion of Literalism, supernaturalism, and authoritarian credence, and forbidden to partake of any actual mystery religions, whether of Jesus, Mithras, Osiris, Attis, or Dionysus. Instead of mystery religions, we were given one religion that was labelled a mystery religion but forcefully stripped of any mysteries.

Eusebius and the other power-mongers changed the meaning of trial, from a mystery-myth sense of the trial of king ego in the psyche, to the historical trial of an actual rebel king -- a trial resulting in literal death of this actual uniquely incarnate mythic-godman, which was followed by the literal and *therefore* supernatural return to life of the literal incarnate godman.

"Theology" is the intellectual dance that is required when mystery-myth is forced to change from initiation experiential allegory to literalist supernaturalism. Theology was born when Christianity was forced from being a mystery religion to being a Literalist supernaturalist religion -- which is "religion" in an essentially different sense than the mystery "religions".

There are two essentially different forms of the Christian "religion" -- the mystery-religion form before 313, and the Literalist supernaturalist form after 313. This entails two different senses of the term "religion" and two different conceptions of the trial of Jesus.

The great majority of Christians would accept that Christianity before 313 was an actual mystery religion, but they would seek to also consider Christianity before 313 as a Literalist or Literalist supernaturalist religion. A fundamentalist can easily accept original, pre-Eusebius Christianity as a Literalist religion and supernaturalist religion and mystery religion. What typical Christians are unable to do is accept that original Christianity was a mystery religion *but not* a Literalist religion or supernaturalist religion.

Christianity has always been a genuine mystery religion to some degree and a Literalist supernaturalist religion to some degree -- both sides are timeless traditions. It would be enlightening to see a graph of the extent to which Christianity was considered as a mystery religion, Literalist religion, and supernaturalist religion, from around 200 BCE to the present day.

We would find that it began more as a mystery religion, then became heavily Literalist-supernaturalist around 313, and later, at times, became very predominantly Literalist-supernaturalist with the mystery-religion aspect being effectively driven underground most of the time. Christianity has always wrestled internally with authentic mystery-religion pitted against official Literalist-supernaturalism.

This suggests that the trial, execution, and crucifixion of Jesus has always been considered as an allegorization of mystery initiation experience by some, and as literal events with supernatural explanation, by others.

For simplicity, the model of Christianity to a first order of approximation consists of two completely separate and mutually exclusive positions: purely mystery-myth allegorization of mystic initiation experience (rejecting the assumption of historicity); and purely Literalism combined with supernaturalism (rejecting esoteric experiential allegorism). This first-order model provides structure and clarity of analysis.

Reality requires an nth-order model in which all sorts of combinations and hybrids are formed, between the mystery-religion ways of thinking, the Literalist ways of thinking, and the supernaturalist ways of thinking. The archetypal pure esotericist -- the initiate or follower of the mythic-only Christ, of the Mysteries of Jesus and Mary -- considers the trial and execution by crucifixion to refer *only* to an event that happens in the psyche of the initiate.

The archetypal pure Literalist supernaturalist -- the exoteric "believing" Christian -- considers the trial and execution by crucifixion to refer *only* to an event that happens in the literal historical realm.

To formulate a system of taxonomies of Jesus-views to a first order of approximation, one must define the simplest and most drastic oppositions, asking each kind of scholar of Christianity:

o Did Jesus exist as an actual man in history, or not?

o Is Christianity about esoteric phenomena in the psyche of the initiate, or is it about literal and supernatural events?

- Does the trial of Jesus happen in the psyche of the initiate, or in the actual physical court of Pontius Pilate at one point in history?

- Does the execution by crucifixion of Jesus happen in the psyche of the initiate, or on an actual cross on a particular actual hill at one point in history?

Peter Kirby has expressed interest in "methodology" conceived of as choosing a set of principles for deciding which passages of text to accept as historically accurate. Here instead is methodology centered around techniques for systematically categorizing and defining paradigms, where each paradigm includes a pertinent set of principles for assigning textual accuracy.

The two main questions above are formulated with two simple answers each, forming a 2x2 grid or table, defining 4 potential positions or viewpoints or paradigms. That is valuable, but the interesting question looms, and is obviously suggested upon seeing the first-order model: what about combinations of esoteric and Literalist ways of thinking -- isn't that where all the action and complexity is at?

This presents the concept of an "axis", which is a 2nd-order model or taxonomy of views about Christianity, as follows.

The esoteric-to-Literalist-supernaturalist axis:

o Esoteric only

o Esoteric and Literalist (some point between esoteric and Literalist supernaturalist, or combination of them)

o Literalist supernaturalist only

Proposing an axis raises the question of whether other axes are possible and more useful, such as the following.

The Secular Humanism-to-Literalist Supernaturalism axis:

o Secular Humanism (Christianity is only stupid, empty, gullible, superstitious myth)

o Liberal Literalism (some point between Secular Humanism and Supernaturalism, or combination of them)

o Literalist Supernaturalism (Christianity is about miracles)

Toward a 3rd-order taxonomy of Christ views, and commensurate views of the trial and execution by crucifixion

The most useful and interesting taxonomy results when you take a few such axes and combine them into a table, keeping things simple as possible yet as rich as possible, for an optimal ratio of richness to simplicity, to explain the greatest number of worldviews with the smallest number of principles.

Each cell of the resulting table, such as some sort of 7x7 table, defines a distinct view or paradigm of Christianity, with its own distinctive set of principles for assigning accuracy to textual passages, and its own view of the trial and execution by crucifixion of Jesus.

Which is more worth discussing: the midpoint of the esoteric-to-Literalist-supernaturalist axis, or the midpoint of the Secular Humanism-to-Supernaturalism axis? The JesusMysteries discussion group and the scholars and scholar-apologists who write books dwell on various points along the Secular Humanism-to-Supernaturalism axis, but that is futile and a dead end.

The midpoint of Literalist supernaturalist Christianity and Secular Humanism is liberal ethical Historical Jesus Christianity -- it's interesting to consider Bernard Muller as a sort of negative end state and midpoint of exploring this axis. You end up with a Jesus that is of no significant interest, appeal, or relevance to Secular Humanist ethics or to Literalist supernaturalist Christians.

The Secular Humanists don't admire such a Jesus, the liberal ethicists don't admire him, and the Literalist supernaturalists don't admire him.

The axis and midpoint that is badly in need of consideration is the esoteric-to-Literalist-supernaturalist axis, with the greatest question being, could the truth be a combined or hybrid esoteric and Literalist supernaturalist Jesus, with some appropriate view of events such as the trial? Couldn't the trial be both an event in the psyche of the initiate *and* an event that to some extent actually happened in a courtroom, in history?

Isn't this combination reasonable, affirming mystic experience of Jesus and some historical Jesus? That is an important and worthwhile question for investigation.

The Secular Humanism-to-Literalist Supernaturalism axis presents a midpoint that is not so important or worthwhile question for investigation, and a question that has been fairly thoroughly investigated: "Isn't a combination possible, that the Secular Humanists are largely right but the Literalist supernaturalists are also largely right?"

The archetypal pure Secular Humanist position dismisses mysticism as deluded, regressive, anti-scientific delirium.

The Secular Humanist position is theoretically interesting for defining an n-dimensional space of conceptions of Christianity, but is ultimately a boring dead end. Such a position contributes tremendous and essential value but is ultimately too shallow and is therefore only of transient importance.

Applying this perspective about secular humanism to the question of the trial and execution by crucifixion of Jesus, we are presented with two readings of the trial: there was no trial at all, or the trial happened literally and led to miraculous death and resurrection. The esotericist or mystery-religion initiate sees no potential in either of these readings of the trial.

The initiate in the Mysteries of Jesus and Mary would reject that there was no trial, and would reject that the trial happened literally and led to miraculous death and resurrection.

The battle I'm most concerned with and fascinated by is that between two points on the esoteric-to-Literalist-supernaturalist axis. Was the Jesus storyline *only* an event in the psyche of the initiate of the Mysteries of Jesus and Mary, or that storyline *also* something that more or less happened in actual mundane history?

The position I want to argue, the position I'm becoming committed to endorsing, is the Jesus Mysteries hypothesis, that the Jesus storyline was *only* an event in the psyche of the initiate, and that the events of the Jesus storyline did *not* happen, whether "more or less", in actual mundane history.

Some men were actually crucified, some men did actually teach and heal, some men were actually on trial as rebel leaders, some men were actually revived after affixion to a cross... but, in this specific sense, I maintain that despite all these fragments of actual events, "there was no historical Jesus". Bits of history do *not* make anything that I deem acceptable as a "historical Jesus". When I deny the existence of a historical Jesus, I do so in the specific sense and system defined hereby.

My main enemy and opponent in the debate hall, the one whom I am most concerned to refute, is he whom promotes the position that Jesus was historical *as well as* mystically experienced. My opponent understands all that I do about the Christ of Paul who is encountered in the psyche, but we take opposite views regarding whether Jesus was *also* an actual man who more or less lived the life described in the Jesus storyline.

To those who are accustomed to assuming there basically was a historical Jesus, it might seem very reasonable to combine the mystically experienced Jesus as I describe with some sort of actual historical Jesus. But my job is to insist that such a combination is irrational, delusional, regression, unjustifiable, unacceptable, and disproven insofar as anything can be disproven.

I have to insist and make a solid and irrefutable case that Jesus was *not* both esoteric and exoteric/Literal, but rather, *strictly* esoteric. Everyone and their brother is eager to find a Jesus who is a true *superset* of the fully developed esoterically, mystically experienced Jesus. This is why my matrix or taxonomy of Jesus views is so concerned with and fascinated by mystics who do or don't believe there was a historical Jesus.

The simple-as-possible HJ vs. no-HJ dichotomy sometimes feels essential to my methodology of taxonomy. I have to account for the many meanings of "there was a man who fulfilled some aspects of the Jesus story, so we can say there was a historical Jesus". Yes, my ultimate goal and destination is a rich way of saying the ways in which Jesus did and didn't exist.

But a practical method of developing that view is to consider extremes of yes/no responses to the question of whether Jesus existed as a historical man. This investigation is being pulled into the question of, what is the origin of mythic figures; where do godmen come from?

In some ways, I reject and oppose a midpoint or compromise along the esoteric-to-Literalist-supernaturalist axis. Jesus was purely esoteric, not at all literally or supernaturally existing. But in some other ways, I do assert what can be considered a certain kind of halfway point or compromise. Here, Peter Kirby's wisdom comes forth: it is impractical, and useless for debate, to label our positions simply "HJ" or "no-HJ".

Those are ultimately meaningless labels that say nothing clear about what story we're proposing and defending. If a man comes along and says "There was a historical Jesus", I have *no idea whatsoever* of what his view or position is, and I am only fooling and confusing myself and others if I assume that I have any clue what the stranger intends by his completely vague, insufficient, ambiguous, and opaque assertion. If that is all the stranger says, he might as well say "Jesus truly existed, in some sense."

If I come along and assert the following:

Jesus truly existed, in some sense.

Every person of every persuasion can agree; that lone statement by itself fails to divide positions. The Secular Humanist such as Doherty in an extreme mood would say, "I agree potentially -- and the sense in which Jesus existed is as a delusion, myth, frivolous mystic experience." You can imagine the senses other people, holding other positions, would adopt in order to agree with the statement. So the *entire* debate must be about the *sense in which* Jesus "existed".

To assert "HJ" or "no-HJ" is utterly meaningless, when considered this way.

My enemy and opponent in debate is that person who easily concurs that Jesus was mystically experienced, but also maintains that there was a historical Jesus. How can he and I develop our positions, come to full agreement, and rest in truth and Reason and enlightenment? I must refine and clarify my position to detail what I assert and what I reject.

I can accept any view of a historical Jesus as long as such a Jesus is treated as minor, incidental, and not the cause, intentional or unintentional, of the Christian religion. Ultimately, I argue about which story or process of historical development occurred, rather than a "position". I insist that the Jesus figure developed in such-and-so a way, and denounce each and every essentially opposing *story* or *description of development* of the Jesus figure.

You say the Jesus figure developed in such and so a way; I disagree! and insist that rather, the Jesus figure developed in this other way instead. Shall we label my position "no HJ" and label your position "HJ"? Why not just as well label my position "HJ" and label your position "no HJ"? At some point, the labels "HJ" and "no-HJ" become ridiculous, and adhering to their usage becomes itself the superstition to be overcome.

Dumbly asserting "HJ" or "no-HJ" becomes itself a sure indicator of insufficient sophistication, uttering something meaningless while assuming that it is meaningful. Thus I *can't* say "there was no historical Jesus", unless I *also* say what sense of "historical Jesus" I mean. So far, I have only an intuitive feel for what sort of "historical Jesus" I reject. I have to work to do better.

When I say "there was no historical Jesus", I mean that I reject anything like the following proposed portrayal of history:

There was a single distinctive man upon whom Christianity was based, and this man was later experienced mystically in the same way godmen were experienced.

My main area of work in the JesusMysteries discussion group is to examine and debate the interpretation of the above position statement. What is my view on the concept of Jesus as a single distinctive man? What is the importance of this sort of distinctiveness? What does it mean and what can't it correctly mean, to assert that it was "this" man who was experienced mystically? Is it important, or is it unimportant, whether there was a single distinctive man?

Why am I still fully inclined to assert the Jesus Mysteries position using the description or expressions:

o When you drop the assumption that there was a HJ, only then can all enlightenment about the Mysteries of Christ open up to you.

o Jesus is *not* a combination of esoteric and Literal, but is esoteric only.

o If you start with esoteric Jesus and then introduce Literal Jesus, you lose the true esoteric Jesus, resulting in an illegitimate and ineffectual pseudo-esoteric Jesus, and mind-destroying, regressive abomination.

In that sense, I am an extremist world-hating dualist, or an "ascender" (in the sense defined by Ken Wilber, hating the lower), or Docetist. I loathe and fear the proposition of adding a bodily literal Jesus to the spiritual Jesus; the notion of a combined esoteric *and* literal historical Jesus is horrifying and disgusting to my way of thinking; or to put it positively, I have been delighted with the grasp of the religious-mythic Jesus that seems to occur only when the literal historical Jesus is firmly rejected.

I suspect that it is impossible to grasp the religious-mythic Jesus when any significant proposition of some literal historical Jesus is accepted. It's becoming clear to me *that* there are many subtle implications and implied assertions that are always customarily included in the notion "historical Jesus".

The problem in debate that makes debate untenable is when one person assumes a narrow conventional meaning of "historical Jesus" that includes the customary raft of assumptions, and another person assumes a broad, open, and negotiable meaning of "historical Jesus" for which even the denatured HJ proposed by Alvar Ellegard, Bernard Muller, or Burton Mack would qualify.

The point I am most concerned to defend is that the mystic Jesus is completely independent of any particular man. Any particular man who lived some elements of the Jesus storyline is *only incidental* for the fabrication of the Jesus figure.

There is no harm in supposing that Jesus as legend and esoteric mystic figure was based on various actual men -- what worries me is the mental tendency to revert into a whole particular way of thinking, the conventional liberal view of a super special or at least uniquely distinctive particular man Jesus. Why am I inclined to balk at any proposal of a *particular* man Jesus?

I have *no problem* with 81 men each of whom satisfied a couple requirements of the Jesus figure, but I sharply recoil at any notion that would elect any particular one of them as *the* HJ. I find the latter view to be instantly poisonous to grasping the mystic Jesus. The practical problem here is that the mind finds it much easier to wholly oppose an idea, or pick a very different idea, rather than making a network of many revised and reinterpreted points.

Bernard Muller or other HJ-asserting scholars would have me accept many conventional notions forming the concept of the particular historical man Jesus, while revising and adjusting many other notions -- that's much harder than simply discarding the HJ altogether and adopting a fully spiritual Jesus instead as a radical wholesale alternative.

The moment a scholar points to any single man as "the" Jesus, there is a very strong tendency of mental associations to open the floodgates to myriad, countless accompanying assumptions and implied assertions. Strictly speaking, I have no problem with a field of 81 actual men and one of them being slightly more fitting of the Jesus qualifications than the others.

Creeping farther along this line, I technically have no problem if one of these 81 men was in fact relatively much more fitting of the Jesus qualifications than the others. Exactly where I draw the line is when the whole conceptualization of this "better-qualified Jesus contender" flips and reverts into a monstrous set of conventional notions, such as the notion that the mystical Jesus figure wouldn't have come about without that particular man.

I permit you to show me any actual contender for the Jesus qualifications, but please *don't* imply to me that the mystical Jesus figure is "based on" or "dependent on" that particular man -- I reject such a theory of the origin of the Jesus myth and theory of what the engine is that propels the Jesus mythic godman.

You say the particular man Jesus was important -- I say it's completely doubtful that any one particular man was required for the formation of the Jesus figure, whether the goal Jesus figure is considered as a political legend to rally by (a gospel-style Jesus figure), or as a mystically experienced godman (a Pauline-style Jesus figure).

The problematic linguistic and hermeneutic aspect of debate -- the troublesome covert variability of terms -- is shown most clearly in the free will and determinism debate. That debate is really all about the *meaning* of the *concept* that can possibly be called "free will". The worst problem arises due to the fact that the single term "free will" can be interpreted in two somewhat opposite ways: the narrow way and the loose, broad way.

o The typical free willist says "yes there is free will" but in a narrow sense, meaning that there is metaphysical freedom and that one literally creates one's own future as an independent agent as a prime mover moving through time.

o The typical so-called compatibilist says "yes, there is free will" meaning it in the broad sense, that the practical fact that choosing happens, and the social fact of it being pragmatically reasonable to hold people as responsible agents, can reasonably be *labelled* "free will".

o The typical determinist says "no there is no free will", meaning the term "free will" in the narrow sense.

Many or most so-called compatibilists and determinists actually believe the same thing, they just label themselves differently: the determinist intends "free will" in the narrow, conventional sense and then rejects the proposition of "free will"; the compatibilist intends the term "free will" in the broad, negotiable sense and accepts the proposition of "free will" (with emphatic qualification).

So then it's just a matter of superficial style whether one poses as a determinist who rejects free will, or a compatibilist who accepts free will but with drastic, fundamental qualification of what the term "free will" means -- technically, there's no meaningful difference between such compatibilists and determinists, and I propose to ban such so-called compatibilists from so labelling themselves, and make them sit where they really are, firmly in the determinist camp.

Such compatibilists are determinists who are embarrassed and reluctant to admit their determinist views, as though publically confessing to determinism would be morally reprehensible.

That analysis reveals the subject of the politics of self-labelling. Compare the self-labelling of two people who believe the same thing, but one labels themselves a "no-HJ" scholar and the other labels themselves a "liberal HJ" scholar -- the first appears radical and the second appears moderate, though the two people in this scenario in fact think the same thing.

The same pattern happens in debating where or not there was an HJ, expecting either a yes or no answer. The worst problem comes in because the term "HJ" can be meant in a narrow way, or a broad way. When I propose to categorize Jesus theories in terms of "whether they assert HJ or no-HJ", I mean "HJ" in a fairly narrow sense, defining "HJ" as a large set of specific assertions that results in a vibe or spirit of familiar, mainstream liberal Christianity.

When, on the other hand, I admit there may have been a HJ, I mean "HJ" in a broad sense; when you really stretch the HJ concept pretty much to the breaking point, only then can I accept that there was an HJ. HJ only existed in the broadest way: HJ existed insofar as there were in fact men who were crucified, and rebel leaders on trial before people such as Pilate. I firmly reject "HJ" where "HJ" is taken in the narrow sense of conventional liberal Christianity.

"HJ" in the narrow, conventional liberal Christian sense:

o There was a distinctive man who was tried as a rebel leader and was put to death, and Christianity was based on that particular man, and that particular man was later experienced mystically.

"HJ" in the broad, highly critical sense:

o HJ existed insofar as there were in fact men who were crucified, and rebel leaders on trial before people such as Pilate.

When I say there was no HJ, I mean that the Jesus figure was a composite of types of men (and godmen) and was not significantly based on or dependent on any one particular man. Bernard Muller says there was an HJ -- he means that the Jesus figure *was* significantly based on and dependent on a particular man.

Some say there was a historical Osiris -- they are asserting that the Osiris figure was signifcantly based on and dependent on a particular man; having studied world myth and mystic initiation, I must disagree. I say there was no HJ and no Historical Osiris -- that is, there was no HJ or HO in the narrow sense as someone upon whom the mystery-myth godman depends; HJ existed only in the broad sense, and Historical Osiris existed only in the broad sense.

There were various historical Jesuses, but the Jesus figure is *not* dependent on any one of them; therefore, in this sense, I assert and insist that there was "no historical Jesus".

The simple label "HJ" used on its own in isolation is not only useless, but seriously confusing. It is hopelessly ambiguous and means anything to everyone. As in so many other areas, we'll never progress beyond the present state in this debate until we tighten up our conceptual clarity and transcendently master language usage like analytic philosophers of language.

I am supposed to put forth views about HJ in this discussion group and support them with texts. But that requirement for texts is biased against the no-HJ view and against the mythic-only Christ of the Jesus Mysteries Hypothesis. The requirement for textual support is naturally relevant to the various scholars who put forth a thousand and one varieties of HJ -- they want to positively show that their particular version of HJ is supportable by texts.

It's much less clear to me how texts positively could support the Jesus Mysteries hypothesis, and an even greater concern and practical problem is that texts are of limited use during the hardest part of discovery: the phase of formulating a new paradigm. Only after the paradigm has been formulated does it make sense to defend the paradigm with textual evidence. This raises the issue of what "textual support" means -- an issue akin to Peter Kirby's call for attention to what he calls "methodology".

The problem here is that conception of "methodology" is different for HJ scholars than for mythic-only, mystic Jesus researchers. I can show you a thousand texts showing that Jesus was encountered in mystic initiation, but you'll still ask whether there was also an actual man Jesus.

I'm inclined to treat the two as opposites, saying that Jesus was fully and intensely and definitely and provably encountered in mystic initiation and "therefore" there was no actual man Jesus -- more exactly, therefore the mystic Jesus is not at all dependent on an actual man Jesus.

I'm trying to fathom what sort of texts and approach to texts, what presentation of texts, would constitute scholarly support for my position as advocate of the Jesus Mysteries thesis, beyond what's already been fully and completely presented in the books The Jesus Puzzle and The Jesus Mysteries. I think at this point we are not lacking in texts, but rather, we are lacking in frameworks for considering the texts.

The call for "textual evidence" usually ends up being a call away from higher-order framework consideration; it's like a call for closer study of the epicycles when what's actually appropriate is a wholesale paradigm shift which amounts to more of a reinterpretation of the familiar evidence than the presentation of additional evidence -- it's a matter of shining a new, clearer light on the existing evidence which we are familiar with.

There certainly were many partially Jesus-like men, and logically one of them must have been the most Jesus-like, but here, what I'm supposed to do is provide texts that show that this leading Jesus in our Las Vegas Jesus lookalike contest is not *importantly* the most Jesus-like. There were many Jesus-like men, but I have here some texts that prove that no one of these Jesus-like men is *importantly* more Jesus-like than the others.

These texts to put forth must prove that there was no uniquely important Jesus-like man. These texts must prove that the Jesus figure (whether considered as Gospel political rallying figure or as Pauline Mystery godman figure) is not dependent on any one particular Jesus-like man for whom we have evidence. Yes, the Jesus-like man you found is proven to exist -- and yours too, and yours. We have no shortage of proof of existence of many Jesus-like men.

We have proof not only that there was a historical Jesus, but that there were 81 of them and counting.

But my presentation of the texts and my points about the texts prove that there was no one particular man upon whom the Jesus figure was dependent, and therefore, in this defined sense, I have used texts to prove that there was no historical Jesus but only the mystically experienced Jesus, and therefore we are right to conclude the mythic-only Jesus, which is the Jesus Mysteries thesis as defined by Freke & Gandy.

This is my methodology of textual proof. How do we determine which texts are true and which are false? Those texts are true which assert a mystically experienced mystery-religion Christ and the existence of various actual Jesus-like men. Those texts are false which assert any particular Jesus-like man as being indisposable, essential, and necessary for the formation of the Jesus figure of the Christian religion. I present not texts, but frameworks for presenting texts.

The concept of "assertion of dependence": does a text or a scholar assert that the Jesus figure of Christianity is *dependent upon* a particular Jesus-like man?

To say there was an HJ is to assert that the Jesus figure of Christianity is significantly dependent upon a particular Jesus-like man.

To say there was no HJ is to assert that the Jesus figure of Christianity is not significantly dependent upon any particular Jesus-like man.

Before we can present texts to show there was no HJ, we first have to define "there was no HJ". I say there was no HJ. That is, if you remove Bernard Muller's Jesus-like man from history, the Jesus figure of Christianity remains standing; if you remove Alvar Ellegard's Jesus-like man from history, the Jesus figure of Christianity remains standing.

The no-HJ position really amounts to the proposition that no one Jesus-like man was so much more essential to the formation of the Jesus figure than the many other Jesus-like men that if you removed him, the received Jesus figure would be significantly different.

Textual proof to support this paradigmatic and definitional "no-HJ" position would then amount to that text presentation which concerns hypothetical removal of various individual Jesus-like men from history. Perhaps Kirby is right in abandoning the confusing and overly abstract "HJ" and "no-HJ" labels, requesting that we simply lay out positively what did happen.

What's the point: to dumbly blurt an isolated conclusion that "Jesus did exist" or "Jesus didn't exist", or instead, to gain knowledge of what the heck happened and who were the players and what was the significance and import of each actual man. The next step beyond that is to forbid use of the term or title or label "Jesus", because the moment you utter "Jesus", we all think we know, and yet we don't know at all, what the term is intended to point to.

Two Jesus scholars say Jesus existed, but one points to the Essene teacher, and one points to a rebel leader. So we end up debating over pointers (the word "Jesus" as a contended pointer) and how to ordain one pointer over another as the truly legitimate one.

The only way I'd accept as true that "there was a Jesus" is if a towering man existed who was certainly the uniquely important and necessary man upon whom the Jesus figure is practically entirely dependent, without whose actual existence Christianity couldn't have possibly started.

As soon as we move significantly away from believing in such an essentially required man without whom Christianity couldn't have happened, we might as well reject the term or pointer "Jesus" at all (as referring to a highly important man) -- the best we can possibly have is little proto-Jesuses or mere somewhat Jesus-like men, and the usual timeless mystical Jesus.

Here is my dogmatic assertion essentially about labels: Either Jesus existed as a man upon whom Christianity was dependent, or Jesus as a man didn't exist at all. Not one of the Jesus-like men who existed was a man upon whom Christianity was dependent. Can the existent texts support or prove the assertion of non-dependence of Christianity upon various actual men of whom we have records?

How does one prove non-dependence? I don't know, but proving that Jesus didn't exist amounts to just such a proof of non-dependence. If Christianity didn't depend on any particular man Jesus, then we cannot warrant calling any particular man "the Jesus of Christianity". Jesus is defined as the man upon whom Christianity is based. If Christianity was not dependently based on any particular man of whom we have records, then by definition there was no Jesus.

The unexpected results of the scholarly effort to find Jesus through studying his historical context is that the more we understand the cultural context, the better we can explain the formation of Christianity independently of any need for a particular man Jesus. It's easy to show that one or more Jesus-like men existed; what is impossible is to maintain the fiction that Christianity's formation is dependent upon any such man.

The scholars will succeed too well and discover to their dismay that there were so many good reasons for the rise of Christianity, the man Jesus (defined as the man upon whom Christianity is dependent) has become worse than superfluous and instead, an impediment to bringing an elegant theory together -- an extra part discovered to be left over after the boy has reassembled the family radio.

But Kirby's claimed end goal is not to determine whether or not there was a Jesus, but "much more importantly", what methodology we can have for assigning meaning and authenticity to ancient texts. I propose a methodology of allegorical mythic-mystic reading, alluding to the phenomena encountered during initiation: that's how the ancients preferred to write.

Use a mythic-mystic version of the hermeneutics of suspicion: first assume that all the writings are for the purpose of expressing initiation experience using mythic allegory including such mythic tales woven together as pseudo-history; only assume a text is intended as literal truth if you have compelling reason to do so.

As one example, whenever reading the word "death" or "die" in a myth-dominated culture, always first consider whether the main meaning is spiritual death as experienced in the mystery religions. That may not be the type of methodology the modern scholars were in search of, but it is the first methodology of the writers and readers of the time. The ancients primarily valued mythic-mystic authenticity rather than mundane factual authenticity.

In determining "whether or not Jesus existed", we more specifically are determining what actually happened regarding various Jesus-like men and Jesus-type figures, and determining whether there was any particular man (whom we may choose to call "Jesus") who was the basis for Christianity and without whom Christianity as we know it couldn't have happened.

So we have to ask what it means for a man to be a "basis for" Christianity, and what kind of Christianity could warrant the label "Christianity" if it had been different if some particular Jesus-like man hadn't existed. In asking whether the Jesus of Christianity existed historically, given that the historical Jesus is defined as the basis of Christianity, we have to define what we mean by "Jesus", "basis", and "Christianity".

Suppose you take away Bernard Muller's Jesus-like man, and a slightly different Christianity resulted -- could we then say that we've demonstrated that "Christianity depends on that man"? Would it then be accurate to say that "Without that man, Christianity couldn't have happened"?

My position is that Christianity was only slightly dependent on each of an assortment of partly Jesus-like men; Christianity was based on a mythic composite figure that was only loosely based on various types of men, as well as on various types of mythic figures. Unlike all the scholars who assert a particular HJ, I deny that removing any one man would make a significant impact on Christianity. This is what it means to assert no-HJ.

By this reckoning, presenting texts to support the no-HJ position would amount to presenting texts that show that removing any one man about whom we have records wouldn't make a significant impact on Christianity.

__________________________

I created the table showing a systematic taxonomy of Jesus views.

http://www.egodeath.com/christviewstaxonomy.htm

There are now 8 categories, paradigms, or views, based on 3 axes or criteria:

The supernaturalism question (or axis or criterion):

o Do you include and allow supernaturalism in your thinking? [yes or no]

The esotericism question (or axis or criterion):

o Do you strongly include and allow esotericism, such as a mystic experience of Jesus, in your explanation of the origin of Christianity and what Jesus was about? Is your theory of Christian origins largely driven by an interest in esotericism? [yes or no]

The Literalism question (or axis or criterion):

o Was there a historical Jesus, where historical Jesus is defined as a uniquely distinctive man who was the basis for the Christian religion and without whom Christianity would not exist? [yes or no]

I sometimes say "esoteric versus Literalist supernaturalist". The three criteria above correlate to supernaturalism, esotericism, and literalism. I distinguish Literalism from supernaturalism; most HJ researchers are Literalists though not supernaturalists -- that's Literalism with a lower-case "L", so to speak.

Freke and Gandy draw the main distinction between esotericism and Literalism, but I dislike how they conflate supernaturalism and mundane literalism into the term "Literalism". So I differentiate between "supernaturalism" and "Literalism". One can be a supernaturalist literalist or a non-supernaturalist literalist.

If esotericism is correlated with the no-HJ position, we'd expect to see many theorists categorized in {esoteric, no-HJ}, and many in {non-esoteric, HJ}. I found 7 and 16 scholars, respectively, so far, indicating that to some extent, esotericism and HJ tend to be opposing options. Many esotericists reject the HJ assumption, and many researchers who assume HJ are non-esoteric.

These three questions, axes, or criteria, or polarities, span a very wide space of diverse views, whereas most debate about Jesus is limited to one eighth of that space: the only scholars who are respected are those that publically toe the line of {non-supernaturalism, non-esotericism, literalism (HJ)} -- the position I characterize and label as "moderate demythologizers".

Bernard Muller's position is {non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric, HJ[nothing special]}. To show how Bernard fits into this category within my this taxonomy, I removed the overgeneral term "Jesus Seminar" from this category, and changed Jesus as "towering" man to "distinctive" man.

___________________________

Peter,

To your category Jesus the Myth: Heavenly Christ (Doherty, Freke/Gandy) you could add:

o Acharya S.

o Arthur Drews - The Christ Myth http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573921904

o Zain Winter - Jesus is a Myth : A Handbook To Reclaim Your Celestial Inheritance http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/097065880X

o Alvin Kuhn - Rebirth for Christianity http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0835600157

o Max Reiser - The True Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812 {non-supernaturalist, non-esoteric, no-HJ}

The above writers could be divided most readily by whether they specifically emphasize astrotheology. I think the last two don't. Reiser is worthy of our attention and shows political reasons for the spread of, origin of, and contention about, the myth of Jesus, the myth of Paul, and the myth of the Apostles.

One really interesting sword for dividing supposedly radical mythic-only Jesus scholars is their position on whether Paul existed. Reiser and Acharya S. propose that he didn't, and I agree. It is axiomatic for me that all religious writings and the figures they contain are mythic-only -- my default assumption is that all characters mentioned in the Bible are mythic-only. Which of the supposedly "radical scholars" will follow us down this road to truly mythic thinking?

Thank you very much for your work on

Historical Jesus Theories

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

and for your help on placing scholars fairly within the different grouping scheme I have devised.

Because you have classified scholars into a scheme, you understand and have a feel for the sometimes difficult judgement required to group or divide disparate scholars.

I am very interested in finding certain kinds of scholars. My attention perks up at groupings like your

o Jesus the Man of the Spirit (Marcus Borg, Stevan Davies, Geza Vermes)

o Jesus the Hellenistic Hero (Gregory Riley) -- really ought to be filed under the category "scholars who present an esoteric mytical experiential Jesus while mistakenly thinking that they are presenting an HJ"

o Jesus the Apocalyptic Prophet (Bart Ehrman, Paula Fredriksen, Gerd Lüdemann, John P. Meier, E. P. Sanders) -- because in my paradigm, apocalypse is a powerful event within the psyche -- to me this category of yours is essentially mystical, though the misguided scholars of the "apocalyptic HJ" don't realize it. A scholar who proposes that Jesus was a man who taught apocalypse is misguided, covering essentially mysticism without knowing it, distorting mysticism by a Literalist treatment. So you can see some challenges and insights my scheme reveals via an alternate scheme of categorizing scholars into families in terms of whether the scholar "is esoteric" -- how about a category for "scholars who present an esoteric mytical experiential Jesus while mistakenly thinking that they are presenting an HJ"?

Peter Kirby wrote:

>Stevan Davies is an atheist. I am not sure that I would classify him in "Modernist mystics."

I am not sure either. There is a rich lode of profitable issues discovered here in the question of how to categorize an atheist non-mystic who proposes that Jesus was about mysticism and writes a whole book focusing on Jesus and mysticism. I would try to place that atheist, non-mystic author in the esoteric category.

What is the purpose of my classifying scheme and the meaning of putting a scholar in the category? One of the hardest things for me with my interests is separating Doherty from Freke & Gandy. Although Doherty has claimed that he *does* cover mystery-religion, he himself thinks within a Secular Humanist paradigm which is conventionally non-mystic or even stereotypically anti-mystic. He has no feel for the mysteries, and no driving interest in them.

I also have my doubts about classifying Acharya S as esoteric -- she and the other astrotheology scholars have no clear feel for the mysteries; everything instead points to and is based on the stars, whereas I feel the true mystic firmly makes the stars point to the psyche; she emphasizes that the Jesus figure points to the stars, whereas I would emphasize that Jesus points to the psyche and the stars point to the psyche. My feeling about Acharya S is that she is an astrotheological Literalist rather than an experiential mystic.

The problem of two ways of categorizing a non-esoteric proposer of an esoteric Jesus is a problem of layers: what style of thinking does the scholar hold to and apply (the scholar's own paradigm and worldview), versus what style of thinking does the scholar propose Jesus was involved in (the paradigm that Jesus held or that the original Christians held).

Doherty's *own* paradigm is Secular Humanist, but he proposes that the original Christians held an esoteric paradigm based on an experiential mythic-only Jesus. So do I file Doherty under "Secular Humanist", or "esotericist" (fully allegorical mystic)?

John M. Allegro is the extreme of this dichotomy: he is a fully secular humanist with a hostile attitude toward religion and religious experiencing, and dismisses Christianity by showing that it was just esoteric-mythic; his own paradigm is practically a caricature of anti-mystic, anti-religion Secular Humanism, and the mythic-only "Jesus cult" he proposes is practically a caricature of esotericism.

Two scholars can be in one category of a given classification scheme and yet be so opposite, so different from each other -- especially when their own personally held paradigms differ from each other, even if the paradigms that they propose the original Christians held are the same.

This problem is almost so important that I have to split out another column in my table - that's good and bad. This is the kind of benefit and profit I was hoping for in this categorization project -- it is working as hoped. It's good that I'm coming across problems and distinctions to resolve.

As my table and classification/analysis scheme stands at the moment, I have conflated together:

o The scholar's own paradigm

o The paradigm the scholar proposes the original Christians held

o The paradigm the scholar proposes Jesus held (applies only to scholars who propose there was an HJ)

For example, imagine a scholar who himself holds a Secular Humanist viewpoint, and who asserts that Jesus was a mystic who taught esotericism, and whose followers were misguided supernaturalist Literalists who distorted and misunderstood Jesus' mystical "message". Do I classify that scholar (or his book) as Secular Humanist, Esotericist, or Literalist supernaturalist? It may take some days to decide which direction to go on such matters, or how to modify or qualify my classification scheme. Some kind of subtyping is really required, lest the scheme be more confusing than enlightening.

>Vermes is Jewish (maybe also an atheist). I am not sure that I would classify him in "Modernist mystics."

For my purposes, he is on the verge of being an exciting esotericist, never mind the irrelevant issue of Vermes' own personal belief-paradigm, and never mind that Vermes misunderstands {the allegorized mystical idea of a spiritual Jesus} as {the literal existence of a man Jesus who was a mystic-spiritualist}.

You state that Vermes proposes an HJ who was a charismatic teacher, healer, exorcist, believed in soon-to-be-realized Kingdom of God, Hasid, Galilean holy man, prophet, and expected decisive action from the God of Israel in the near future. You group Vermes in "Jesus the Man of the Spirit".

Such a Jesus can be considered esoteric and mystical. Suppose:

o Scholar A proposes that Jesus existed and was purely a mystic and hierophantic teacher and conductor of mysteries (Andrew Welburn)

o Scholar B proposes that Jesus didn't exist but was a mythic figure cast like Dionysus as such a hierophant; the godman is the head hierophant of his own mystery cult in which he is mythic-only. That scholar frames all of Vermes' elements as actually being familiar, stock, classic, standard allegories for mystic experiencing during initiation: charismatic teaching, healing, exorcism, Kingdom of God, becoming a holy man, becoming a prophet, experiencing decisive action from the God of metaphorical Israel in the near future like during an upcoming initiation. (Freke & Gandy)

My view of mainstream HJ scholars: "Oops, wrong paradigm!" They are Literalists, always tending to read mystic writings Literally.

o Fundamentalists read the Bible 95% literally and 5% metaphorically.

o Typical HJ scholars read the Bible 50% literally and 50% metaphorically.

o The religions of late antiquity were 5% literal and 95% metaphorical.

Typical HJ scholars are light-years away from reading and thinking mythically. Pure esotericists such as myself accuse typical HJ scholars of reading scriptures that were 95% metaphorical as though they were only 50% metaphorical. Such enlightenment-era scholars pride themselves on having rejected the (supposedly) traditional Fundamentalist extreme of assuming the scriptures were only 5% metaphorical.

What use is it presenting texts to each other as proof when one of us operates under the assumption that the scriptures are 50% metaphorical, and the other, 95% metaphorical? We're operating under incommensurate paradigms. Such "evidence" about HJ is foolishness to the esotericist.

Here I deeply agree with Kirby about the key importance of methodology. My methodology is that all the texts are to be assumed religious pseudo-historical allegories used for political manipulation; the texts are fully driven by mystic-mythic allegorism interpenetrating with political dissimulation and to top it off, political allegory -- both to express mystic phenomena in terms of political elements, and to express political elements in terms of mysticism, not to mention astrotheological metaphor to describe political things and political things to describe astrotheology which describes mystic phenomena. Then there's the social allegory factor, too, interpenetrating the other realms of cross-allegorization.

What a wonderful maze and rat's nest of interpenetrating allegorism the Christian scriptures are -- yet typical, supposedly critical, HJ scholars read the scriptures as only 50% metaphorical -- though the scriptures are 95% metaphorical.

One of the most fascinating distinctions is between these two paradigms:

o Jesus was a teacher of the Mysteries of Jesus (Andrew Welburn)

o Jesus was a mythic figure encountered in the Mysteries of Jesus (Freke & Gandy)

Both paradigms are "esoteric" (regardless of whether proposed by a scholar who claims esotericism is empty hogwash or high Truth) and yet they take opposing positions about the role and existence of Jesus in esotericism.

For the time being, at least, I might keep Vermes in an esoteric category, because his Jesus is even much closer to mysticism than Vermes realizes. He should amplify his approach and consider whether Jesus like Dionysus is none other than mysticism itself.

I'll consider chacterizing "ways of thinking that are presented" rather than "scholars" -- something like changing my category label from "Modernist Mystics" to "Modernist Mysticism". Modernist mysticism assumes there was an HJ and that he was a mystic/hierophant -- Vermes assumes there was an HJ and that Jesus was a mystic/hierophant. I'm not *mainly* interested in Verme's own personal beliefs about the worth of mysticism, though a scholar's personal way of thinking certainly affects his presentation of Jesus' way of thinking, or the earliest Christians' way of thinking about Jesus.

This quandry presents the question and opportunity: would it be worthwhile to break out a separate column to differentiate:

o The scholar's *own* paradigm

o The paradigm the scholar proposes Jesus held

o The paradigm the scholar proposes the original Christians held

>I found no point at which Gregory Riley assumed that there was a man Jesus; Riley seems interested in exploring the mythological Jesus.

OK, I changed him from {Non-supernaturalist, Non-Esoteric, HJ} to {Non-supernaturalist, Non-Esoteric, no-HJ} with Doherty. Riley appears not to be *strongly* esoteric; he misunderstands the mythic-mystic hero in a literalism-dominated way. Riley doesn't recognize that the *heroic*-mythic actually is the *mystic*-mythic; I consider that heroism in religious writings was mainly allegorization of mystic experiencing, and was only secondarily used to support literal heroism in mundane life.

Again my current scheme has problems because Riley proposes a Jesus that is essentially esoteric, but Riley has no feel for esotericism and although a "mythicist", he is in his thinking style a "literalist", because he emphasizes the hero myth as a model to support mundane life, when actually the hero myth is drenched and hypersaturated with allusion to the phenomena of the mystic state.

Every initiate experiences the hero myth; the hero myth describes what every initiate experiences. Yes, ideas about the hero can also later be applied to mundane life, such as Burton Mack's and Rodney Stark's sociopolitical realm, but the hero myths reside first of all in the realm of esoteric experiencing, not in the mundane sociopolitical realm.

Here I need a distinction:

o Scholars who propose Jesus was esoteric myth without understanding what esoteric myth is about

o Scholars who propose Jesus was esoteric myth and who understand what esoteric myth is about

Those seem similar but are actually two highly contrasting paradigms. Because too many scholars have worked only on classification of Jesus theories within HJ-space (Kirby), and not enough have worked on classification of Jesus theories within no-HJ space (Hoffman), it falls on me to do something that is subtle and difficult: given that almost every scholar is unfamiliar with esotericism, classify these scholars into numerous groupings with respect to esotericism. Riley's mythic Jesus is esoteric but Riley doesn't recognize that; same with Vermes' "spirit-filled" HJ.

>You may wish to include Elaine Pagels in the same category as Riley, as neither talks much about a historical Jesus.

Right, she doesn't assert and base her ideas on the assumption of HJ. She focuses more on the thinking of the original Christians than on Jesus.

>Burton Mack does occasionally talk about a Galilean sage who contributed to the Gospels, but Mack's model of Christianity as social formation tends to say that the historical Jesus is not required for understanding the development of Christianity, so Mack would be classified as "no HJ" under the definition of "HJ" as a person necessary for the development of Christianity.

done

>Others [in addition to Mack] may also say that there was a man Jesus without saying that this man Jesus was the sine qua non of Christianity.

What scholars suggest "Jesus existed, but Christianity didn't need him and would have happened even if he didn't exist"?

Defining Christ Myth and Historical Jesus views

The worst problem with the Christ Myth'ers now is that it is not sufficiently defined what is meant by "the Christ Myth theory". If the Jesus figure is in some way "based on" multiple actual noteworthy people, does that mean that the Historical Jesus theory is true?

The best theory lies in between the HJ and CM views. The Jesus figure is only *loosely* "based on" particular actual people, and is not essentially dependent on any one actual person.

There are multiple underlying actual people, not just one -- unlike the assumption of the conventional Historical Jesus view, which assumes there was a single person who was the basis for the mythic Jesus figure.

Better than the vague and unclear "Christ myth" theory and the narrow HJ theory, when I say "Christ Myth" I really mean the theory that the Jesus figure is essentially an open-ended almalgamation constructed from many kinds of characters and gods and actual people.

I could call this the Independent Almalgamation Jesus Figure view. That figure was drawn from multiple experiential mystery-savior figures and multiple actual persons.

The Christ Myth'ers basically hold my Independent Almalgamation Jesus Figure view. The Christ Myth'ers agree that there were various noteworthy Jesus-like actual persons, but the point that differentiates CM and HJ the most is whether there was a single remarkable man that gave rise to the Jesus figure, or whether instead the Jesus figure is a radical composite based on "multiple sources".

This "multiple sources" insight is the door through which multiple *kinds* of characters can enter, including mystically encountered mystery-religion saviors.

A clear definition of the Historical Jesus versus Christ Myth views:

o The Historical Jesus view: The Jesus figure is based on a single remarkable man.

o The Christ Myth view: The Jesus figure is a radical composite loosely based on multiple sources but dependent on no one source.

These clearest two positions can be used to define a spectrum. At one extreme you have a single very remarkable man who was the sole source and inspiration for Christianity. At the other extreme you have the pure mythic view which asserts that there were no noteworthy individuals that provide a "basis" in any significant sense for the Jesus figure. What would be the exact centerpoint between the HJ and CM views as defined above -- the "perfect compromise" between, or average of, the HJ and CM views? It would be the average semi-consensus that reflects the average view in the Jesus Mysteries discussion group.

o The semi-HJ, semi-CM view: The Jesus figure is based on several noteworthy men who each match an aspect of the Jesus figure, with mythic/mystic characters blended in. The Jesus figure was inspired both by the noteworthy men and by the popularity of the mythic/mystic characters of the day.

I will lay out these positions as an even, smooth spectrum -- the clearest and simplest I've been able to draw up so far. This spectrum is defined by two clear main views, with extremes then extrapolated onto either end and an average interpolated into the middle. The naming is based on the two popular phrases most people use in this discussion group, "HJ" and "CM".

The Extreme HJ View -- A single very remarkable man was the sole source and inspiration for Christianity. Any popular mythic-savior figures of the time were superfluous to the creation of Christianity. This man, plus some exagerrations and supernatural additions, produced the orthodox Jesus figure.

The Standard HJ View -- The Jesus figure is based on a single remarkable man, who was distinctly the main inspiration for the creation of Christianity. Popular mythic-savior figures helped support this development to a moderate degree. Mystic and mystic ideas were in the air and the Jesus figure is, to a moderate degree, based on these as well as on the remarkable man.

The Semi-HJ, Semi-CM View -- The Jesus figure is based on several noteworthy men who each match an aspect of the Jesus figure, with mythic/mystic characters blended in. The Jesus figure was inspired both by the noteworthy men and by the popularity of the mythic/mystic characters of the day. The Jesus figure is a composite of this handful of noteworthy men and a few mythic gods of the day.

The Standard CM View -- The Jesus figure is a radical composite loosely based on multiple sources (including noteworthy persons and mythic characters) but dependent on no one source. The creation of Christianity was inspired by this composite figure, but not *directly* inspired by any actual Jesus-like persons. The mythic/mystically experienced characters of the day played a major role in the origin of Christianity, which began mostly as a mystery-religion.

The Extreme CM View -- There were no noteworthy individuals that provide a "basis" in any significant sense for the Jesus figure. The Jesus figure is based on mythic characters and completely mythicized, purely legendary characters, who were mystically experienced in mystery-religion form, and is not directly inspired by any actual Jesus-like persons. It is completely futile to look for Jesus-like actual people, because such would only be a coincidence. The Jesus figure is based on types -- it is not in any significant way based directly on individuals.

The Extreme HJ view is quickly disproven by historical research. It's an extreme hypothesis that is not supported by evidence, and is counter-indicated by the evidence. Any such influential single man would have left clearer evidence. And it dismisses the importance of the mystery-religions of the time, including the mystery-religion aspects of Christianity. It neglects to study the various Jesus-like men scholars have been finding out about, and dismisses too readily these various other characters as inputs from which the Jesus figure was synthesized.

The Standard HJ view greatly overestimates the influence of individual particular men and sorely underestimates the power of the experienced mystery-religion savior figures, and also grossly underestimates how much the State Church needed to construct an abstract figure that is independent of particular people.

I don't sign onto the Semi-HJ, Semi-CM view, because I feel it makes the Jesus figure overly dependent on some actual noteworthy men; I think it overestimates how much these particular men directly inspired the origin of Christianity and it underestimates the self-propelling power of the free-floating mythic, pseudo-historical Jesus figure.

The great debate in my mind is between the Semi-HJ, Semi-CM view and the Standard CM view, because it is fairly certain there were multiple Jesus-like noteworthy men, but the question is, to what degree did they directly inspire the origin of Christianity? Is the Jesus figure directly dependent on these men, or would it have been created and reified even without them?

I can't justify the extreme CM view, because there surely were some moderately noteworthy men that were used as *partial* sources for the Jesus character -- there's no reason why the constructers of the Jesus character wouldn't have drawn from the knowledge of such actual men to some degree.

The 5-position spectrum I defined is also a 2-position spectrum. I defined it via two levels of abstraction. The initial spectrum defines a pair of positions: the typical Historical Jesus and typical Christ-Myth (Mythic Christ, Mythic Jesus).

I divide the discussion participants into just two groups and characterize and contrast the tendencies of those two groups. Then I define a compromise position in the middle (suggested by postings about the Jesus figure being loosely based on multiple persons), and extremist positions, resulting in a "5-from-2" position spectrum.

The result is both as simple as possible (2 most typical, definitive positions) and flexible (5 positions, including intermediate positions). At one level of abstraction, it's a 2-position spectrum, making for easy constrasts and generalizations (by comparing moderate opposing positions, or by comparing extreme opposing positions). At a more detailed level of abstraction, there are 5 positions.

____________________________

[slightly updated post]:

Michael wrote:

> > There are multiple underlying actual people, not just one -- unlike the assumption of the conventional Historical Jesus view, which assumes there was a single person who was the basis for the mythic Jesus figure.

Peter wrote:

> I was wondering how we could go about establishing that? So far you seem to have talked about the possibilities purely in the abstract. Maybe your view will be born out by an exegesis of Mark that deconstructs the multiple underlying actual people into their separate strands of tradition? I guess the way to approach the question would be to (1) determine what is non-redactional in Mark and (2) determine whether that non-redactional...

> Without dealing with the texts themselves, we're just building castles in the sky.

Wait, could we please back up first? I should've posted two separate messages to start this thread. In the first message, I only wanted to define the two general positions (HJ, CM) and then extrapolate and interpolate to produce a 5-position spectrum based on:

o The two positions

o The extreme versions of them

o The average between them.

If I could ask just one question in this thread, it is: What do you think about this spectrum; how well does it represent the spread of views in this discussion group?

A completely separate discussion would involve accepting this spectrum and then debating which of these 5 positions is most likely the case. Basically this spectrum is a denial that the fundamental problem of this discussion group has been set forth in a solvable way.

The question "Did Jesus exist, yes or no?" is a highly biased and oversimplistic question, and the effort to answer the question by solid serious scholarly textual proof is not going to be fruitful.

The question itself is hopelessly garbled and puts far too many constraints on reality. It says "reality must either be that Jesus existed, or that he didn't exist." But who are we to pull this assertion out of the air and insist that we somehow know ahead of time that Jesus either simply existed or simply did not exist?

The question as usually posed has already made too many assumptions about what the possibilities are. It says "We know that it's impossible that Jesus have any other status than existing or not existing." But it thus assumes we already know facts about what is possible in the very area we are proposing to investigate. We are assuming the conclusion, or a strict pair of alternative conclusions, before we have begun to investigate.

In short, the correct and more sophisticated question to begin with is, "What is the nature of Jesus' existence? In what senses did he exist and in what senses did he not exist?"

This way, we begin the investigation without taking it for granted that there are only two narrow options: either a wholly recognizable, single, and unique Jesus existed, or he did not. We veer surprisingly close to the extreme positions Neville advises us not to waste time refuting. At the extreme of the oversimplistic question "Did Jesus exist or not?", you end up beginning the discussion as follows:

Either Jesus existed, or he didn't. There cannot be any other options. So which is it, yes, or no? Did Jesus Christ, God incarnate, our savior exist? Or is there no such man whatsoever? We know that the answer has to be one or the other.

That extremism is implicit in saying "This discussion group is to determine whether or not Jesus existed." Such a pre-assumed dogmatic polarity is just not complex and subtle enough to define a viable and realistic plan of scholarly case-building.

We need more alternatives left open and put forth for consideration. What are those alternatives? I propose a simple spectrum in this thread, based on the technique of proposing two essential main positions and then averaging them to obtain a middle position and diff'ing them to obtain end positions.

We have to work on carefully formulating the overall questions we ask, not just work on answering the original questions as they happen to have been worded in our earlier, less-informed state. Research progress improves research goals. We learn only gradually to ask the right questions.

The group should pay full attention to formulating the questions and the various positions to be researched, not just researching the original simplistic first-generation version of the question, "Did Jesus exist or not?"

_________________________

What do you think of this spectrum of positions? Does it capture well the variety of positions debated?

The Extreme HJ View -- A single very remarkable man was the sole source and inspiration for Christianity. Any popular mythic-savior figures of the time were superfluous to the creation of Christianity. This man, plus some exaggerations and supernatural additions, produced the orthodox Jesus figure.

In this discussion thread, I am not primarily asking which position you promote and why. Rather, I'm asking if these position descriptions reflect efficiently the positions which people debate in this discussion group.

I would also like to put a revised version of Neville's list of worthwhile positions side-by-side with this list and discuss which list of positions is more useful as a reference point or as debate guidelines.

The conversation needs this abstract approach, or else it ends up being too narrow and risks missing a lot of potential insight. We should not assume too quickly we know for certain what the possible alternatives are.

We should not hurry too quickly to research only those original alternatives while neglecting to consider other possible alternatives. After burying our noses in books, we should periodically come back up to revise our ideas about formulating the overall question and the possible alternatives to investigate, promote, refute, and defend.

The question "Does X exist, yes or no?" has very often led to perpetual standoffs, because that way of constructing a question shows a lack of intellectual sophistication. The world is often more complicated than such simple thinking. Does ego exist? Does time exist? Does free will exist? Does a fictional character exist? These are all questions that would be better formulated, and would then become answerable, by asking: "In what sense does X exist, and in what sense does X not exist? That is, what is the nature of X?"

In reply to Earl Doherty, author of The Jesus Puzzle

The first problem that lately arises every time I try to explain the experiential allegorical meaning of the Jesus story is, *which* Jesus story? The Jesus story at which point in time:

o Early, when there was an early messiah wish and a separate minimalist dying-and-rising crucified savior mystery-god?

o The much later Jesus construct that the State Church pulled together -- the doctrine-burdened Jesus?

Looking at different schools and eras, there is an entire bevy of Jesuses that are candidates for allegorical explanation. I decided the main task is to explain the allegory of the crucified usurper of sovereignty, because if there is just one component that is essential to Christianity, it is the story of the would-be king who was willing to be judged a rebel and was willing to die to his sovereignty.

I think that that core idea describes the early Jesus of the Galilee tradition as well as the early Christ of the Pauline tradition -- and leads smoothly enough into the later Jesus-construct of the State Church.

We should introduce the issue of development-over-time into any analysis of the meaning or reality of Jesus. How does the HJ mentality view this issue? How does the CM (or Mythic Jesus) mentality view this issue of development of the Jesus figure over time?

As a starting point, almost everyone can at least agree that there were two different emphases early on (Galilean and Pauline), and that these came together in the scriptures to more or less form a single Jesus figure, and this was developed into the Orthodox Jesus figure as theological details were worked out.

By "Christ Myth" I intend "Mythic Christ", as in an experiential, mystery-religion, purely spiritual, dying-and-rising savior figure with whom the initiate unites, dies, and rises transcendently -- as opposed to a man who existed bodily at one period in time and died bodily and then regained bodily life or spiritual life.

I do not mean that the typical Christ-Myth'er believes in mystery- gods, but that the Christ-Myth'er believes the Jesus figure was originally understood as being strictly such a mystery-god. This latter phrase, however, implies that the Christ-Myth'er believes the Jesus figure was originally conceived in only one way -- too simple of a generalization.

The CM advocate would be interested in the view that Peter and Simon too are but historicized mythic allegorical figures, as argued by Arthur Drews in the book The Legend of Saint Peter.

In this case, to "discover" that Jesus "was actually Simon/Peter" is to discover that Santa Claus was really the Tooth Fairy, or that the real identity of the man code-named "Dionysus" was really Orpheus. According to the CM view, the scriptures are all a network of fiction, a giant allegorical soap opera -- more or less highly structured fairy tales, a serialized comic book.

Christ Myth advocates can be called "Mythic Christ" or "Mythic Jesus" advocates, though these can be considered slightly different groups of people. I'll use the abstract "CM" designation to keep things basically simple.

Strictly speaking, the Mythic Christ advocate would claim there is valuable mystic insight in such a network of allegorical fiction, helping raise up consciousness and subtle intellect, while the Mythic Jesus advocates would condemn it all as worthless and actually harmful "fairy tales" serving to injure, stunt, and oppress mankind.

What does the typical HJ or CM advocate think about the Q tradition and the Pauline mystic Christ?

Instead of surveying the phenomenon of early Christianity be surveyed as a single unit, we should address it as two rivers that were joined together around the time of Mark. In studying the history of ideas, we should cross-index the 5-position HJ/CM spectrum with not simply a single unit, Christianity, but rather a bi-fold entity comprising more or less distinct Galilean and Pauline contributions.

We should adequately relate the 5-position HJ/CM spectrum to the 2- fold Galilean/Pauline co-joined construction of Christianity and its possibly single central figure, Jesus.

We should construct questions and define HJ/CM spectrum positions differently when considering the Galilean versus Pauline traditions.

First, to characterize and define the two traditions:

The Galilean tradition: Galilee, with the early Q and CST portion of Thomas. Jesus as the perceived founder(s) of the Q sect. The teaching Jesus, a Zealot Jesus, a Cynic sage (individual or multiple), the Kingdom of God preaching milieu, teacher, miracle worker, prophet, public agitator, with disciples, brought about the change of the ages, second coming at the Parousia. Ministry elements, teachings, miracles, the apocalyptic prophecy.

The Pauline tradition: The Pauline Christ cult, cultic elements, the kerygma of death and resurrection, and the Eucharist, the cosmic figure, biographical elements of the Krishna/Dionysos variety, dying and rising, cosmic Son.

Prior to the writing of Mark, what are the views of each of the 5 positions of the HJ/CM spectrum on the subject of the Galilean versus Pauline traditions?

In some views, the various Jesus precursor alternatives are different when considering the Galilean tradition than when considering the Pauline tradition.

Here is a CM view of Galilee vs. Pauline traditions: even if there were a very remarkable man at the root of the Galilean tradition, he didn't have anything to do with Paul's beliefs. Paul may have seen his Jesus man-god as having lived in the distant past, but that past person has no historical reality.

Early on, the Pauline Jesus figure was not at all based on any remarkable men who may have existed, and even lacks the little bit of pseudo-biography of the other mystery-saviors.

The Jesus figure is a composite of a handful of noteworthy men and a few mythic gods of the day. Here when I say "the Jesus figure", I think of the Jesus figure[by the time the orthodox church gathered various conceptions]. Not the Jesus figure[in its earliest or near- earliest guises].

Earl tends to move the other direction relative to Mark -- looking at the earliest era, during an early period when the threads were more or less separate and the term "the Jesus figure" is somewhat of an anachronism. HJ and CM advocates tell different stories about why and when the early threads were separate.

HJ advocates sometimes say there was originally a single figure, but then traditions split apart due to various reasons, but then they converged again and it only *appears* that the Jesus figure originates in radical disunity. They say it merely *appears* that the earliest churches were marked by diversity where we would expect original unity and conformity, assuming an HJ.

When we consider the early conceptions of the Jesus figure, we can see a Galilee tradition that has diversity of character aspects, and a Pauline minimalist spiritual Christ figure, and the context of the surrounding mystery-religions and esoteric schools. HJ and CM advocates can agree to these early elements, but they tell different stories about the origin and relationship of these different aspects.

HJ advocates say that the various character elements of the Galilee tradition are generally historically accurate. They consider the scriptures to have been written largely as serious literalist history, joined with some religious allegorizing. HJ advocates say that Paul had a vision of the HJ but only expressed the vision in mystery-religion terms.

They say Jesus really existed bodily but Paul didn't know him personally and knew only mystic visions of talking with Jesus. They portray the mystery-religions as influencing Paul's visions but considered the mystery-religions to be basically separate from the Galilee Jesus.

HJ and CM advocates can pretty much agree on these historical background findings:

Mark and the late Q were possibly inspired by various actual men. But for Paul, as we find him in the presumably authentic Pauline scriptures, it doesn't make sense to claim he was inspired by any noteworthy men. He may have been inspired by the various mythic savior-gods of the era, though he kept his Christ mystery-god quite minimalist.

I'm not sure just how minimalist Paul's Christ is in the authentic Pauline scriptures -- perhaps no more detail than, a crucified would- be sovereign who was judged as a rebel against higher sovereignty, and willingly died as a just punishment for his insurrection. But nothing more, no more story details, no detailed elaborate realistic fiction-like framework -- just a sequence of abstract allegorical and spiritual concepts.

>There was no blending by Paul. He simply has a cosmic Son whose features are determined by scripture and general mystery-cult soteriology. The "composite" aspect is post-Paul.

The CM advocate would consider the later Jesus to include composite elements -- multiple elements drawn from the early Galilee tradition, and the single minimalist mystery-concept from Paul, and additional mystery-concepts added post-Paul. The HJ advocate might agree but describe the development of the Jesus figure somewhat differently.

The CM advocate emphasizes the development over time of the Jesus figure. The extreme HJ advocate might feel less comfortable admitting that there was so much development of the figure over time - - they would portray development as degradation and deviation away from the early true Jesus, whereas the CM advocate thinks in terms of the gradual transformation of multiple source rivers to merge and finally form a single figure out of *originally* separate standalone figures.

The HJ mind considers Jesus having existed most strongly and really in the beginning of Christianity; the CM mind considers Jesus as having no distinct origin at all, but only gradually coming into existence as the pieces of Jesus were gradually gathered together and pieced together, then back-projected by the orthodox Church -- out of many Jesuses, finally and gradually was born our single Jesus.

HJ and CM minds approach the scriptures differently. CM advocates are likely to approach the scriptures like Jung -- the scriptures are written in the *form* of political history, but in function they are actually spiritual, for a religion that thinks always in political allegory.

The HJ mind approaches the scriptures as being driven by accurate historical and political reporting. Looking at the scriptures, the CM mind sees political *allegory* in the service of a historical- style religion; the HJ mind instead sees political and historical *reporting* by a religious group that thought in historical and political terms.

Michael wrote:

>>The Extreme CM View -- There were no noteworthy individuals that provide a "basis" in any significant sense for the Jesus figure. The Jesus figure is based on mythic characters and completely mythicized, purely legendary characters, who were mystically experienced in mystery-religion form, and is not directly inspired by any actual Jesus-like persons. It is completely futile to look for Jesus-like actual people, because such would only be a coincidence. The Jesus figure is based on types -- it is not in any significant way based directly on individuals.

Earl wrote:

>if the only basis were "mythic characters mystically experienced in mystery-religion form,"

I also suggested that "purely legendary characters" were sources for constructing the Jesus figure. This includes the CM view of scriptural characters as being all just *pseudo*-historical characters. The extreme CM view is that the Jesus figure was eventually put together with nothing but the following components:

o Mystery gods

o Stereotyped pseudo-historical characters

o Wished-for political leaders

o Legends and fictional-entertainment stories of the sort woven around famous characters

The following ideas might be closer to the thinking of CM advocates than HJ advocates. The Jews were distinctive and interesting to the Greeks because the Jews cast their religion in the form of (pseudo) historical and political stories, while all the Greek mysteries were expressed as mythic stories that were not posed as literal history or political records.

The syncretizers of the day saw a fascinating way of merging the form of the mystery-religion mythic experiential allegories with the pseudo-historical/political form of the Jewish religion.

One close point of overlap between mythic thinking and political thinking is the figures of Prometheus chained in punishment, eagle- pecked, and then freed, and Jesus crucified in punishment, stabbed by the Roman eagle-standard army spear, and then removed/rescued from the cross.

It was a natural syncretism that fell into place: the vision of the crucified rebel Jewish would-be king, and the vision of Prometheus -- this represents a natural fusion and crossover between the mythic and the political forms of religious thinking, between the Greek and the Jewish religions.

Earl wrote:

>What do you do with all the ministry elements in Mark, the teachings, the miracles, the apocalyptic prophecy? Those elements come from a different dimension, which I don't think had any real grounding in the mystery myths.

You might call it Galilean in the case of the Jesus figure, but I call this general way of thinking Jewish as opposed to the general Greek way of thinking. The HJ mind and the CM mind will tell different descriptions about how, when, and why the Jewish and Greek forms of religious expression came together to form something refreshingly novel to many Greeks -- a new, pseudo-historical twist on the mystery-myths *by* combining two different kinds of Jesus -- the Jewish historical political type, and the cosmic mystery mythic type.

It is easy for the CM advocate to explain where this bifurcation came from and why and when it came together. The HJ advocate claims that the earliest Christianity was perhaps momentarily one thing but basically exploded into all different directions because of the intensity of the character of Jesus, and the confused muddle- headedness of the cohorts of Jesus, and all the ensuing chaos only slowly and partially came back together to reveal the singular original man again.

Earl wrote:

>It was Mark, I maintain, who combined the two together and created a confusion that still needs unraveling.

The CM advocate should consider reversing several assumptions about timelines. Perhaps the Johanine gospel was the first gospel, the first and easiest way of combining historical/political allegory with mystic experiencing.

It was the author of John, I maintain, who initially combined pseudo- historical form and political allegory with mystery-religion mythic allegory, to create a confusion that still needs unraveling.

It's a problem that scholars spend their time responding to non-scholars, and that background knowledge that is required for certain high-order discussions to occur.

I don't waste time covering material that other people have written a lot about. I cannot provide all the background that is needed for everyone to agree to all my points. The first thing to do is simply describe *what* my position or theory is -- *not* to defend the position and certainly not to persuade skeptics.

This is a hard problem for me because I consider young people and non-scholars to be my most important audience, but when it comes to interacting with particular young people and non-scholars, there are huge challenges to communication and use of time.

_______

Have you read several Christ Myth books? I will not spend time going over the basic points covered in those books. I am writing to the audience that is the people who have posted in the JesusMysteries discussion group.

>No other religion to my knowledge claimed a Messiah...prophet yes..Savior no...please expand...

I do not want to be rude, mean, or dismissive of anyone. But I can't spend my time explaining these well-trodden topics. I encourage you to read the Christ Myth books and books about the mystery-religions and the Israelites.

In my criticisms here of the 5 points along the spectrum I've defined, I only intend to be as brief and concise as possible. I am not interested in going into full detail here. I am proposing a spectrum that is at a very high-level of abstraction in order to divide and organize the various positions.

My own position statement about where I fall in the spectrum and why, is only provided as an incidental commentary. My real purpose here is to propose the spectrum itself. I list my own critique of each position only so you can see what a critique might generally look like.

I would like to know what other people think of the spectrum and what their general critique of the 5 positions is. I would not expect them to go into full detail of explaining all their beliefs. My approach is more abstract than that of most people.

I've read the detailed arguments elsewhere -- in a variety of books. I am not really here to work out those detailed arguments, but rather to propose a spectrum to sort the people here into distinct groups, rather than having people vaguely associated with some unspecified version of a vague and undefined "Christ Myth" or "Historical Jesus" view.

It is noteworthy that you did not comment upon my first of 5 positions in the spectrum:

> The Extreme HJ View -- A single very remarkable man was the sole source and inspiration for Christianity. Any popular mythic-savior figures of the time were superfluous to the creation of Christianity. This man, plus some exaggerations and supernatural additions, produced the orthodox Jesus figure.

I gather that of the five positions on the spectrum I defined, you would pick The Extreme HJ View.

Poll about the nature of Christ

>Do You believe that Christ was

> o God in the flesh

> o Son of God

> o Only Begotten Son

> o was a great prophet

> o just another man

>To vote, please visit the following web page:

>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesdiscussion/surveys?id=1110953

Jesus was essentially a composite figure based on many historical and mythical figures. Insofar as eating his flesh and drinking his blood produces visions of God's kingship, he is a visionary plant, the flesh of God. So the answer then is Son of God and God in the flesh.

Poll for JesusMysteriesDiscussion Discussion Group

The Jesus figure is loosely based on a several noteworthy actual people, combined with myths. If you eliminate any one actual person, the Jesus figure still remains. There is no single actual person upon whom the Jesus figure is dependent -- thus there is no Historical Jesus in the sense expected by liberal theologians. They expect one actual person upon whom the Jesus figure depends, but the dynamics didn't work like that.

Picture a solid line coming from the sky and then splitting into various dotted lines of various width that touch the heads of various actual people. The dotted lines imply that the divine Jesus is independent of any particular actual people, and that the Jesus figure is only loosely based on, or connected with, or dependent on, particular actual people.

Did the Jesus figure come from the mythic realm and become associated with certain actual persons? That is the Christ Myth view (or "No HJ" view). Did certain actual Jesus-like persons, through strength of influence and personality, give rise to the Jesus figure? That is the HJ view.

Did the figure of Jesus first come from heaven and then become associated with particular people? That's in the spirit of the Christ Myth view, with the addition that there *were* some noteworthy Jesus-like actual people.

Did the figure of Jesus first arise through the stature of particular people, and then become deified? That's in the spirit of the HJ view, but with multiple actual people instead of just one remarkable person.

I have some sympathy for the arrows pointing both ways. To express this, I say the Jesus figure was "loosely based on" multiple actual persons. He is abstracted out from them but not simply created by merging the actual people. The abstract figure starts from the mythic realm and comes down, and he goes up by abstracting from several actual people, but only with a dotted-line arrow that represents the independence of the Jesus figure from any particular actual persons.

>What was the actual basis for the Jesus figure?

o There was one remarkable man; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure

o There was one remarkable man and other noteworthy men; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure

o There were various noteworthy men, no one dominating; myths were added; this all condensed into one figure

o There were various noteworthy men but they weren't a basis for the figure; myths alone condensed into one figure

o There were no really noteworthy men; myths alone condensed into one figure

To vote, please visit the following web page:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteriesFreeDiscussion/polls

Versions of Jesus in versions of Christianity

The Episcopal church is the U.S. independent breakaway version of the UK's Anglican church. The Anglican church is a balanced hybrid of, and historic religio-political compromise between, the Catholic and Protestant versions of Christianity. It is usually considered halfway between Catholic and Protestant, rather than being very close to Catholicism at the expense of being relatively farther from Protestantism.

Saying that Episcopal is "close to" Catholicism raises the question of whether Episcopal is likewise "close to" Protestantism. We can plot the relative distance between religions or denominations or versions of a religion. A Protestant hardliner is hard to find these days, since casual, theologically uninformed Evangelism has become the main popular form of Protestantism or U.S. Christianity.

Hardliners in any version stress the great distance between their version of the religion and other versions, but this emphasis is particularly visible in Calvinist-Protestant rejection of Catholicism.

From the mystic/gnostic/universalist perspective, there's no significant difference between Protestant, Catholic, and the hybrid or average which is Anglican/Episcopal: all those are clueless, uninitiated, superficial, State-aligned, literalist, cargo-cult or per Alan Watts, monkey (uncomprehending mimic) versions of the Christian family of religions.

Saying that Anglican is close to Catholic is most true if you focus on the liturgical aspect -- the style of worship, which is colorful formalized ritual. The hallmark of Protestant liturgy or official worship-style is the sermon: preaching from the Bible; one is saved through hearing the Gospel preached. The hallmark of Catholic liturgy or official worship-style is the ritual of transubstantiation; the religio-magical performance of the Mass; one is saved through participation in the performance of the Mass.

The potential then for the Anglican hybrid is to be "close to" the truest aspects of Protestantism and Catholicism, combining the best of both worlds: hearing the Gospel in the best way *and* participating in the Mass in the best way. The Anglican church started in 1534 when the English monarch, rather than the Bisphop of Rome, was recognized as the head of the chruch on earth.

Anglican leaves undefined the nature of the Communion bread and wine, regarded as a spiritual mystery, and there is no central authority. Its sources of authority are the Bible, the tradition of the church, and reason. Anglican is most distinct from Catholic in terms of political control and authority, rather than in terms of religious belief or worship style as such.

In the U.S. in 1783 the name of the church changed from Church of England to Protestant Episcopal Chuch. It was the only major Protestant denomination not to split during the Civil War. This church permits great liberty in nonessentials, allowing independent thinking and religious liberty. It recognizes the two sacraments, not seven, as "certain sure witnesses and effectual agencies of God's love and grace."

These are the standard two Protestant sacraments of baptism (required for infants and adults) and the Eucharist, but also recognizes a sacramental character in the other five sacraments. High Episcopal uses elaborate ritual; Low Episcopal is more evangelistic.

Some main versions of Christianity are:

Gnostic

Eastern Orthodox

Catholic

Protestant

Anglican/Episcopal

Charismatic/Pentecostal

Each main version of Christianity has a version of Jesus. We could plot styles of worship, and separately plot versions of Jesus for each main version of Christianity. Then we would see that Anglican is very close to Catholicism in worship style and is farther from Protestantism, particularly principled Calvinist Protestanism, but as far as versions of Jesus, Gnosticism would stand furthest out, Catholic and Protestant and Anglican would be clustered together in the dominant middle, and Eastern Orthodox and Charismatic/Pentecostal would be halfway between Catholic and Gnostic, with Eastern Orthodox being more theological, but Charismatic being more experiential. We could also attempt to delineate an esoteric versus exoteric, or mystic versus official, half of each main religion.

Gnostic esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Gnostic exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

Eastern Orthodox esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Eastern Orthodox exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

Catholic esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Catholic exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

Protestant esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Protestant exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

Anglican/Episcopal esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Anglican/Episcopal exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

Charismatic/Pentecostal esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Charismatic/Pentecostal exoteric/official/literalist/superficial

What is the typical balance of esoteric/exoteric emphasis in each version of Christianity?

Gnostic - 80% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Eastern Orthodox - 50% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Catholic - 35% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Protestant - 20% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Anglican/Episcopal - 25% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Charismatic/Pentecostal - 65% esoteric/mystic/allegorical/experiential

Arranged in order of esoteric emphasis:

Gnostic - 80% esoteric

Charismatic/Pentecostal - 65% esoteric

Eastern Orthodox - 50% esoteric

Catholic - 35% esoteric

Anglican/Episcopal - 25% esoteric

Protestant - 20% esoteric

The quest for the Historical Jesus is the extreme endpoint of demythicized Protestantism: he is entirely humanized and literalized, almost despiritualized. The other extreme is the purely and entirely spiritual Jesus of Gnostic Christianity. The Catholic or Orthodox version of Christianity most tries to have it both ways, so that Jesus is fully spiritual/ mystical/ supernatural/ allegory-packed, and fully human/literal.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html - Summarizes the theories about the nature of the historical Jesus, the origins of the Christian religion, the nature of the early Christian documents, and the origins of the Christian idea of a risen Jesus.

Obstinate Agnosticism about Jesus' Existence

I arrange and relate the following elements differently than you: heaven, hell, ego death, love, drugs, brain changes. I don't exactly oppose ego death to hell, or to love. Your description or story is sort of tangential or at right angles to mine; we aren't directly or simply opposed. You advocate one arrangement, I another.

Bryan wrote:

>> We're the blind leading and being led by the blind. To put a

>specific

>> name on a supreme deity isn't useful, and only leads to arguments

>and

>> dissent and doesn't help anyone find the guiding light. If the

>herbs

>> of the planet Earth helps you to see that you should have love for

>> brothers and sisters of the world, then surely that is a good

>thing.

>> How lucky you are to have been fated to have that view. It

>shouldn't

>> matter how you came by it, whether it was from years of meditation,

>> taking drugs, or by having faith in the words of Jesus Christ.

>What

>> matters is that you understand.

>> Technology is advancing rapidly. There are artificial intelligence

>> programs that can fool child psychologists. Quantum computing is

>just

>> around the corner, and humanity is working towards realizing its

>> ultimate dream -- creating a universe in a box. That is, a device

>with

>> an artificial human mind that has the power to create for itself

>> anything we tell it to create. We then could see how that "man in

>the

>> box" reacts, otherwise leaving it to its own devices in its own

>world

>> of our own design. All intelligent life in that box would have to

>be

>> acted out by the ai program.

>> Such a device wouldn't have the same temporal constraints as the

>world

>> has. What could take millions of years in our time frame could

>happen

>> in days or less in this simulated world. It could load a

>particular

>> state as needed with history in tact so as to not have to

>recalculate

>> all of history when it needs to try a different scenario.

>Moreover, it

>> could even simulate itself from within itself.

>> Humans are chauvinistic. I could easily see us putting such a

>device

>> to uses to torture the artificial mind inside this box in the name

>of

>> science, without giving it a second thought. I've considered that

>I,

>> myself, could actually be a fragment of such a program inside such

>> device, at least by analogy, and that fate has a funny way of

>coming

>> back to bite you on the ass.

>if i understand you properly mate,then "WELL SAID,WELL SAID!!"at least someone here is open-minded enough to know that there might be something better than a drug induced ultimate experience.

>just because it SEEMS like the ultimate doesn't mean to say that it is.i have experienced full blown lsd induced ego-death,and for years thought that it was the holy grail-better than ANYTHING.then,one day (a few years after realizing and then beliving in jesus),i thought about love,and how much i love my friends and family.then i thought,which means more to me-the drug induced "ultimate bliss",or the LOVE that i have for people.others should realize this,then they would realize just how lucky they are,get their priorities right,and even maybe be grateful.

>put it this way-if you had a choice,"bliss",or LOVE,which would you pick,eh?bliss is just a concomitant of love. BTW,have you-ANYONE-ever been to HELL? a puzzle-what goes UP,must come DOWN-and it is good to know that "something"is there to "catch" you.try to work the meaning out the MEANING of that "puzzle".

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