THE JESUS PUZZLE
Was There No Historical Jesus?
Earl Doherty
Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case
One:
Bernard Muller
(with contributions from
Richard
Carrier and others)
Addendum
to PART THREE
Realizing The Mythicist
Case: Doherty vs. Muller
An Essay by J. Barlow
* * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Earl Doherty’s study of what
constitutes “the Jesus puzzle” has uncovered solutions to some
baffling
enigmas; Bernard Muller left his profession for two years and studied
the New
Testament to get to the bottom of things, and write a critique of
Doherty’s
reasoning for the mythicist case.
Their relevant websites are:
(http://pages.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm)
“The
Jesus Puzzle: a Critique” in “Jesus: a
historical case” by Bernard D. Muller (http://www.geocities.com/b_d_muller/djp1.html)
What
mysteries! Both examine the
data from the standpoint of
the glorification of reason, the
Frenchman Muller detective-like (“the explanation is knowable, inducible”),
and Doherty with Reason as the Ideal, perceiving in Hellenistic man a
wholly Platonic/primordial
inner landscape which assessed (and de-valued) factualness
in a way nearly incomprehensible to us.
Jesus must first be fit into a series of loosely
organized yet
thoroughly ingrained cosmological presumptions and dispositions that
were current at the time.
Doherty’s
theories rest largely on the insight that for
Hellenistic
man a fact became a fact no other way than by becoming a foregone
conclusion,
as
religious conviction. (Spiritual modes of grasping the
cosmos at large did not begin as hypotheses in those days.) Here
inevitability
(=Fate) and indubitability (=Fate) are synonymous, psychologically
indistinguishable certainties.
"When an idea struck people then as profound or startling or
glorious they had no other word to baptize such an 'insight' but to
call it
'true'," as Nietzsche noted.
Graeco-Roman people found themselves in the presence of a vast
cosmic
spectacle made, it would seem, just for them.
For
us, twenty-first century monsters of
sheer facticity: how can we comprehend a world where everything by
which the world
seems
‘known’ to us, was then unknown? Imagine a
world where nothing is known, where no laws of life have been
‘discovered’—where even the means of investigating them has
not yet
been
attained.
For
us, however, perplexed by chicken vs.
egg prioritizing in the name of a version of time that for these others
scarcely existed, to sweat over such issues as whether the idea of
Jesus
preceded the tangible man or not seems our lot. Let’s see: Jesus
means Yeshua means Savior. “Christos”
means “anointed.” The latter is a title,
could not the former
be as well? “Anointed Savior” therefore
merely a title, linguistically speaking.
But, linguistically speaking, words must denote something really
there,
and whoever heard of a title given someone who did not exist? Therefore the man we call Jesus Christ
existed. But wait: If
someone gives God, for example, a title
e.g. “Immortal One,” does it follow that “God exists”?
No. So
we are back where we began: for whether you believe Muller or Doherty,
no one
denies that the Anointed Savior was considered a divine being, whether
he actually existed on earth at some time or not.
The subliminal
point Doherty seems to be
making throughout is that our western, steel-clamp modern minds, always
on the
hunt for syllogistic validities based on factual premises, begin and
end with
one, solitary criterion of assessment that renders any and all
hypotheses
‘good’ or not. “Is it conceivable,
or
inconceivable?” And Doherty is simply
saying, “It may seem inconceivable for us that
billions
have believed in the historical existence of someone who did not in
fact exist,
but it was conceivable for certain first century Graeco-Roman
and
Semitic people to believe in a god-man who did not historically exist.” This is his point of departure that makes
the conclusion, because it makes said conclusion conceivable. All that he needs to show is that it is
conceivable for them, not that it is not inconceivable
or us, for
the hypothesis to stand as an hypothesis.
Did
Hellenistic man think all that
differently about things compared to the way that we do?
Was it really “a different world” to that
extent, so that it becomes unimaginable how they could have staked
everything
on a savior of humanity who was not himself human?
Let us reflect on the extent to
which we ourselves “have faith” in intangibles the
historical
existence or non-existence of which seem irrelevant.
Then think of the extent to which
our heroes and the like are known—or rather, unknown to us. Indeed,
for a hero to remain a hero,
that is to say an ‘ideal,’ he must remain unknown.
I am thinking now of the pro football player
who gave up millions in salary to volunteer for the army, only later to
be
killed in Afghanistan. He wasn’t by all
accounts a particularly ‘great’ player, with a huge following of
admirers and
fans. Nor did he have a great reputation
as an oratorical spokesman on behalf of patriotism.
It wasn’t until his death that people
admired him for “going against the grain” of what our culture normally
suspects, understands, even condones: that the prime motivation of our
existence here is to behave in such a way that it is clear one is
always acting
on behalf of what is one’s own best self-interest.
Because
he was admired as one who “had made
it,” his sacrifice of himself appears huge.
Because he died, he became noble.
And the last thing we want to hear about him would be if he
complained a
great deal, or if his dying words contained regret for the sacrifice he
had
made, if he’d said something like “I shouldn’t have left Arizona” at
the very end: for that would mean his sacrifice was not a sacrifice for
us.
Something
similar happened with regard to
President Kennedy and John Lennon. The
answer to the question, “Why did he have to die?” is always rendered
commensurate with the intrinsic nobility of the character of the one so
sacrificed, in order for it to obtain as a sacrifice made on our behalf. Lincoln, too, had largely been re-interpreted
as a man of peace. But who or what these
men really were, beneath their public persona, only
those who
really know them can say; and typically, they are not talking, or if
they are,
it is only to enhance the legendary larger-than-life quality of their
lives,
albeit often enough in rather human, down-to-earth terms.
In
the case of Jesus, something similar if
not identical appears to have taken place.
He was merely the occasion of a cluster of spiritual forces
ready to be
unleashed, which could only be unleashed in terms of something uncanny
and unpremeditated. True, Jesus was
unprecedented; but so was Philo. Really, Muller and Doherty agree in
the sense
that, even if a human being named Jesus did exist, there was no
historical
Jesus. He did not instigate the occasion
of the legend about him that began with him.
But
I do not think that Muller fully
appreciates the hypothesis Doherty seeks to develop; namely, the extent
to
which individual psychologies were wholly enveloped in the world-view
then
prevalent: a cosmic understanding permeating and coloring the
thought-forms by
means of which all metaphysical ideas were expressed because
there was no
other set of assumptions by which
they could
be expressed. And there were few, if any
(Lucian of Samasota comes to mind) champions of sheer facticity
available to
question, or even raise questions e.g. whether or not there really was
a Jesus
of Nazareth who really was verifiably a descendant of David, and so on. Things worked quite the other way: a man
bitten by a poisonous snake who survives must be a god!
A
cosmic redeemer sent into the sublunar
realm to heal humanity of its penchant for falling beneath the sway of
demons
and idols must be a son of David, if the Scriptures so intimate. Philo in his ecstasies realized a divine
intermediary, the Stoic logos, by means of which all of creation became
organized along the lines of Platonic sensibles and intelligibles; even
stories
and persons of the Old Testament were so allegorized.
In this light, the personification of the
Logos is almost a psychological necessity, if indeed it is true that
material things are but copies of things in the divine mind. The identification of the scriptural Messiah
with
the Greek logos meant an enormous archetypal shift in the unconscious
which
could
only result in the visionary experience of the tree of life in Paradise
(Odes
of Solomon) becoming the sacrificial agent of the
Creator
himself, or his surrogate, the “only-begotten.” Creation
becomes
redeemed by means of the uncreated and eternal;
the
corrupted and fallen material world is revivified by the ideas and
ideals from which it came to be.
Human dignity was at stake, and Platonic and
Judaic monotheism combined to effect its rescue.
The paradigmatic shift is not unlike that of the latter half of
the 20th
century, where awareness of the vast strangeness of the cosmos and the
popular
sense of the relativity of all things to one another at the core of
everything
resulted in prodigious visions of man traveling through vast galaxies
and
experiencing alternate dimensions commensurate with an expanding
consciousness.
Muller
comes close to comprehending
Doherty in an unexpected place: the story of the empty tomb in Mark’s
gospel. He concludes that the way the
gospel ends, at 16:8, is precisely what the author intended: the women
depart
literally “not telling the story to anyone, for they were afraid.” But he fails to grasp the extent to which the
author’s intention was apologetic and meant as an explanatory device
for
something, something nearly incomprehensible to us.
Was Cephas perhaps among those preaching “a
different Jesus,” as Paul somewhere says, an earthly, quasi-messianic
“son of man”
figure who championed the poor yet who was this very ‘cosmic Adam’ come
to
earth, unbeknownst even to him and the eleven?
Why is it, in Mark that the disciples fail over and over to
understand
this Jesus or comprehend his miracles?
Did Peter fail to see that this shadowy figure he’d chosen to
follow
really was an earthly being? Did
the historical Peter in fact believe in and preach a Jesus who did not
resurrect, so that the later cosmic Christ of Paul could be given an
earthly
locale as just that “other Jesus” Peter and the others spoke of? Try to imagine Doherty’s thesis as true: what
follows? First, the Christ of Paul’s visions, the “Son” of the “Odes
of
Solomon,” who redeems by and assures the redeemed by
holy
spirit. Then into this mileau of Judaic
hellenism comes the Galilean fisherman and the zealous James of
Jerusalem fame
who say, “Oh yes, we knew him. He was
here among us, yet we failed to recognize him for who he was at first.” This has at some time to be explained, and the
ending
of Mark’s gospel would serve at best as a partial explanation. The question remains if that indeed was the
purpose behind Mark’s attempt. Let
us imagine this possibility: Mark
as companion of Paul, and interpreter of
Peter, seeking to justify the “other Jesus” of Galilee in Pauline
terms,
seeking to turn the Pauline cosmic Christ into an historical entity.
(We
can dispense with the
notion that the story of the denial of Jesus by Peter has to be true
because no
one would include it in a document meant to persuade anyone of anything
unless
it had to be. Anyone who has been heedlessly—yet with profound moral
propose—slandered knows how such stories “become true”
in the ears of their
hearers. It should be read cum grano
salis.)
How
does Mark achieve the absorption of an
historical “other Yeshua” into the cosmic redeemer ideology, if not by
(1)
asserting that the earliest of disciples could not grasp who he
was
without said ideology (=”baptism in holy spirit”) and (2) by
identifying the
two Christs by means of unawareness of how the exalted redeemer
became
exalted? (I.e., by not knowing of
his resurrection). Regarding the latter,
what did Paul use as explanatory material on behalf of his pharisaic
doctrine
re. resurrection generally? Sheer logic
(of a kind): “If there is no
resurrection in general, then Christ in particular has
not been
raised.” Remember too how Paul’s sermon
in Athens has been described in Acts: the philosophers who heard him
“preach
Christ” thought they were hearing about some new deity called ‘Resurrection.’ And this is inconceivable if Paul is
describing an earthly rabbi in Judea and his
empty tomb.
Muller’s
critique of Doherty’s elucidation
of “born [come] from a woman” ought to be telling, insofar as little
can often
be made of the exegesis of a single word, and its usage.
But that
Doherty insists the use
of the verb in question need not necessary strictly imply a biological
function
is borne out from two considerations, neither of which have to do
with
etymology: (1) its place in Paul’s line of argumentation; (2) Doherty’s
interpretation of the apostle’s meaning as a genuine possibility in
terms of
the thought-world of contemporary thinking.
(1)
“born of a woman, born under the law”: Paul’s
purpose
in humanizing Christ in an ideal sense is to make him subservient to
the law,
in order to render him capable of overcoming and surmounting the law. For Paul, the law’s
purposes, since Adam, is to (a) justify the spiritual death made
explicit
since the Fall, and (b) prove to humanity its ongoing, ineradicable
propensity
to sin. Christ has done away with all of
this through the sacrifice he made on behalf of humanity in the
realm of
the real, “according to the flesh” and “by the will of the eternal
Father.”
Given that this ideational realm was composed of the
constituent
elements of all reality of which the material were merely shades, such
a
sacrificial death would have been unreal or of little salvific
effect
if it had taken place in the
material realm of shadows. In
effect, the whole spiritual logic of what Paul proclaimed Christ had
accomplished, and with it the force and appeal of his gospel, would
have been
rendered moot by any literal “Incarnation.”
Why or how this had changed by the middle of the second century
should
thus become one of the most important questions in the History of
Ideas: and
here, one may rightly suspect an entire cultural shift in
soteriological
interest and emphasis toward the realizability of the
redemption of
matter.
(2)
It is presumably given as inconceivable, by Muller and the bulk
of
historical scholarship, that “born of a woman” could mean anything
other than
what it literally imports, because there is no other conceivable way a
man
could be “come,” or derived from a woman.
Thus counterskeptics ask: Where
in the New Testament thought and/or in its presuppositions is anything that
mythological presumed at its explanatory ground? And
I think the answer is clear, that such a
ground exists: in Revelation 12. This
intriguing allegory, whose female figure has been variously interpreted
as
“Hagia Sophia,” as Virgin Mary, or merely as the figurine for a cosmic
parable,
acts as a counterweight to trinitarian dogma if taken
literally. The divine son is “born” not in
a manger on
earth, ‘in the flesh,’ but in the heavens; conversely, he is a man, and
more
than mere abstract pre-existent logos, and even more than an
“only-begotten” of
God. As the vision progresses, it
becomes apparent that all of this is taking place “in the world, but
not of the
world” (as Paul enjoins his Christians to so consider themselves), in
an ideal
realm where the words are in earthly terms but refer to their
ultimate,
primary meaning.
Mark’s
gospel developed a real
audience with the waning of the parousia. The
‘great secret’ revealed by Mark was that the Cosmic Adam and emanated
savior had
put in an appearance on earth, that “Jesus” referred to someone who had
‘taken on
flesh.’ (Anyone reading Mark’s gospel without
presuming this flesh as divine flesh has misunderstood the purpose of
midrash
here. In this connection see Stevan
Davies’
excellent work delineating in earliest Christianity a continuum
of
extraordinary ‘religious’ experience requiring explanation: the docetic
element
being that his flesh seemed paltry, material, like that of
animals in
the temple sacrifice. Likewise, he seemed
to be dead on the cross. His
resurrection, as Muller explains, was not known as such for the longest
time. Now the Holy Spirit, the same
Spirit at the baptism of Christ, reveals all of this.
Mark was the first Gnostic tract, a novella
in which it did not matter whether Galilean preachers were
idealizations of
heavenly entities walking the earth or not.)
What
really took place happened as
it did according to Revelation 12; Mark’s events are their pale,
earthly
representation with no substance whatsoever.
That he was conscious of this as he wrote does not mean,
however, that
he was aware of his fiction as fiction at the same time. For the Holy Spirit, the “spirit of Jesus,”
not only reveals what he directs, but directs whatsoever he revealeth.
What gives Doherty's hypothesis its tremendous weight is precisely what his opponent Muller thinks ought to undermine it, but he is wrong. It is psychologically conceivable that the historical Jesus, whoever he was, was largely an ahistorical concoction begun by a myth-making propensity intrinsic to humanity at all times, on the one hand; on the other, a careful perusal of the New Testament and associated documents of the era give credence to Doherty's claim. It is more consistent with what we know of the Roman Empire for Doherty's hypothesis to be judged coherent, than it is conceivable the Jesus of the Gospels could have said and done all that he is reputed to have said and done with so little being reported about it by secular historians of the time.
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