Book Review: The Myth of Nazareth

[Digit]

When you get into a situation where you base a religion on such a person and then use it to kill millions of people throughout the years I submit that it becomes a slightly different thing.

Doesn't effect whether he lived or not though does it Min, which is the whole of my point?
Did a man that they based a violent religion live or not, what they did in his name does not bear on that question?
I have said that I think behind the hype was a man, you argue that because of what happened subsequently he didn't. The corollary of that is that if a peaceful religion had been founded in his name you would have been more prepared to accept the concept that he lived.
Gandi engineered the removal of British colonial forces from India. Millions died. Wasn't his fault.
As regards the number of people bearing that name, there may have been thousands of course as Judaism has very few names.
I have no interest in the Pauline religion at all and it keeps getting in the way of the debate.
Let's leave it at Min.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Did a man that they based a violent religion live or not, what they did in his name does not bear on that question?

I agree with that.... but where we part is that a 'founder' has to do SOMETHING. He can't simply live, procreate and die. What's the big deal in that? Other great men in history somehow manage to have left some mark upon the world.

My point is only that actual existence is not a sine qua non for a god otherwise we would have to expect to have gods all over the landscape as mankind has been proficient at creating them. What I am not willing to accept is the notion that the christian god is "real" but everyone else's is fake. Not without some actual evidence of that reality and the edited stories of believers do not make the cut for that level of actual evidence.

[Digit]

What I am not willing to accept is the notion that the christian god is "real" but everyone else's is fake.

Neither am I Min nor would I suggest so nor have I done so. In fact that is the argument I make against all preachers of all faiths.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

So what were we arguing about?

Shit. I hate getting old.

[Digit]

Nothing. We were debating whether there was a man behind the rubbish.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Ah.

I'll keep my bet on "probably not."

[jw1815]

Just adding my 2 cents worth to this interesting discussion. And it does seem more like a discussion, a sharing of different perspectives, than an argument.

Although raised as Christian, I don't practice or believe in any religion today. But I don't think that literal belief is the essence of religion, except among people who have a shallow, child-like, black and white view of life and the world.

I've learned to recognize that for many religious people, literalness is not important. The personal, emotional, psychological, social, and allegorical meanings they find in sacred stories - myths - is what's important to them. They need and want the structure and symbolism that a story-and-doctrine format of philosophy provides for them. Fine with me, so long as they're not encroaching on my disbelief, or promoting social lunacy (let them have their individual ones if it suits them) or killing in the name of faith and gods.

Min<

They did not think that Osiris or Tammuz or Zeus or Adonis operated on earth. This was the common view of religion until the christians came along and started this stuff about how it actually happened down here...

I think that what you - or the person you quote - are referring to is the historical literalness that exists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Some other religions don't have that. To the Jews, and later Christians and Muslims, a god's actions become part of the literal, linear history of human beings. But, even in religions outside of those 3, there's a belief in gods intervening in real life affairs, which is the source of prayer, sacrifices, etc. - to influence god(s) in their favor. The Greco-Roman religions were more cyclical than historically literal, at least in the worship of dying and resurrecting gods. But, they, too, intermixed historical events with religion in their semi-historical, semi-religious epics, which were much earlier than the time attributed to Jesus.

The Greek and Roman gods, did operate on earth, though. They had divine or semi-divine children by mortals. Zeus took the form of a swan to impregnate a mortal woman. The Christian god (Holy Spirit) takes the form of a dove to impregnate a mortal woman.

[jw1815]

On whether or not Jesus was a historical person, I'm inclined to think that many mythologies - especially ones that develop in societies with a tendency to religious historical literalness - contain at least a little portion of real events and people, embellished and tweaked to fit their religious world view.

So, I think that it's possible that long-standing mythological characteristics were attributed to a real person.

Messianism had reached a near frenzy among Jews under Greek and then Roman rule. There was no shortage of claimants to the title in the time period attributed to Jesus. If I remember right, Josephus mentions the names of two of them, neither one being Jesus/Joshua/Yeshue. One, I think, was named Judah (Judas - interesting). Don't remember the other name. Perhaps the Christian Jesus is based on one of them or a composite of a few of them. It's not hard to imagine that a few messiah claimants were executed for their potential to arouse subversion and insurrection among the people. Messianism was essentially a nationalistic religious fervor among many Jews of the time period.

My doubts about a real messiah claimant being named Jesus are 1) a little too convenient that the name means savior, and 2) also a little too convenient that it was the name of a Jewish hero in the stories of the conquest of Canaan. Sounds like a literary or story-telling device intended to invoke special meaning and reverence.

Agree with Digit that the first Christians were a Jewish sect believing that their messiah had come in the mortal form that Jews expected their messiah to take. The later Christian doctrine of the messiah as a divine incarnation from the union of a god and a mortal woman sounds like a Greco-Roman interpretation added on later.

[Rokcet Scientist]

The Greek and Roman gods, did operate on earth, though. They had divine or semi-divine children by mortals. Zeus took the form of a swan to impregnate a mortal woman. The Christian god (Holy Spirit) takes the form of a dove to impregnate a mortal woman.

They were the original motherfuckers!

[jw1815]

The Greek and Roman gods, did operate on earth, though. They had divine or semi-divine children by mortals. Zeus took the form of a swan to impregnate a mortal woman. The Christian god (Holy Spirit) takes the form of a dove to impregnate a mortal woman.

They were the original motherfuckers!

Well, if you take a close look at the Trinity doctrine, the Christian god is father, son, and consort all at the same time. Or, in other words, he screws his mother in order to produce himself. He's both the chicken and the egg (or spiritual sperm).

[Minimalist]

The Greek and Roman gods, did operate on earth, though.

Any particular reason you chose the verb "operate," there, jw?


You are correct although I'd submit there is a bit of a difference between a god sneaking down for a little nookie and a god living his whole life on earth.


The Moses fantasy sounds a bit like Mohammad (or Joseph Smith, for that matter). Some guy claims that he is god's intermediary. I don't know if we can blame 'god' for either the delusion or the mass delusion which follows it.

[Minimalist]

(Judas - interesting).

Judas the Galilean...again "interesting!" Was named by Josephus with starting off the disturbances which accompanied Quirinius' census in 6 AD and which started the zealot movement. Also there was a Theudas.


A procurator, Tiberius Julius Alexander, (who coincidentally was the nephew of Philo of Alexandria!) condemned two sons of Judas the Galilean ( James and Simon?) to death after the province reverted to Roman rule after the death of Herod Agrippa.

[Minimalist]

Messianism had reached a near frenzy among Jews under Greek and then Roman rule.

That is the story they tell, alright. Question is, is it true?


We now know that Judah spent the first 1/3 of the first millenium BC as an insignificant village in a poor and primarily pastoral region of herders. C. 720 an enormous population explosion takes place most likely reflecting waves of refugees from areas which had been attacked by Assyria. The urbanized area expanded rapidly and Jerusalem grew from a village of perhaps 1,000 to a town of 15,000 in a generation or two. They apparently did this as an Assyrian vassal state judging from the Assyrian records of tribute paid by Judahite kings.

If Israel Finkelstein is correct, the first taste of Judahite freedom as a recognizable kingdom came c 610 BC as the Assyrians withdrew in the face of Babylonian aggression and the Egyptians moved in as allies of Assyria. Such freedom was short-lived as first the Egyptians and then Babylonians cracked down on them. By 586 BC Jerusalem was destroyed and a Babylonian occupation was set up just down the road from Jerusalem. Things remained this way until c 539 when the Persians either freed the "exiles" to return or, created a ruling class with Jewish doctrine to rule the Persian province of Yehud (the view of Philip R. Davies, and others.) In any case, the Jews were loyal subjects of the Persian empire until Alexander the Great smashed Persia in 332. The Jews apparently surrendered to Alex (smart considering the fate of Tyre.)

From 332 to c 160 they were under the control of first Alexander, then the regent for Alexander's son, then the Ptolemaic Greeks and finally the Seleucid Greeks. Finally a successful revolt casts out the Seleucids and by 100 an expansionist regime under the Hasmoneans has overrun what is effectively an area the size of modern Israel.
Within 20 years the kingdom was ravaged by factionalism and by 63 the Roman general, Gnaeus Pompey had sacked the city and temple. For the rest of the first century BC and beyond the Romans were the de facto overlords even if they elected not to rule directly, at times.

Thus an actually independent Judaean kingdom exists for just under 100 years out of the entire first millenium. In this entire litany of subjugation there are a couple of periods of actual prosperity. One is under the Assyrians except here we don't really know how "Jewish" these people may have been. A second is under the Persians who maintained the peace for a couple of centuries. One is under the Hasmoneans before they self-destructed and the last was in the time of Herod the Great with an interruption upon his death when the Romans had to suppress revolts and resuming under Augustus and Tiberius when Herod's building projects and the port of Caesarea had enriched the country and the Romans had granted certain exemptions from taxation and military service. If ever the Jews did not need a savior it was under Tiberius. Things were pretty good for them and would only get worse once Caligula came to the throne. But the Christians insist that this is the period when their "deliverer" showed up.

No wonder the Jews didn't recognize him. He was either early or late.

[jw1815]

Min,

I've been busy the past several days, so I'm just now getting around to answering your questions and points.

Any particular reason you chose the verb "operate," there, jw?

Yes. I was quoting you, where you said that those gods didn’t “operate” on earth.

I'd submit there is a bit of a difference between a god sneaking down for a little nookie and a god living his whole life on earth.

Agree, for the most part. The gods had many human attributes in addition to their godly ones, but were not generally believed to live their lives among people, only to slip in and out of human lives from time to time. But, they were interwoven with historical events, e.g. the Trojan War, in early epic poetry. Although once considered purely mythology, modern scholars see some historical basis for the Troy story in the conflicts between people of the Greek islands and the inhabitants of what is present day western Turkey over control of the Dardanelles around the 11th or 12 centuries BC.

The Moses fantasy sounds a bit like Mohammad (or Joseph Smith, for that matter). Some guy claims that he is god's intermediary. I don't know if we can blame 'god' for either the delusion or the mass delusion which follows

Yes. Religions are full of leaders who claim an inside contact with god(s) through dreams, visitations of angels, meditative insights, etc. I guess Moses falls into that category, if he was a real person. How much of the Exodus story is based on fact and how much on embellished legend is almost impossible to sort out today.

[jw1815]

I'm not directly familiar with Israel Finkelstein, only indirectly through references to him made by others. So, I don't feel qualified to comment on writings that I don't have first hand knowledge of. I will say, though, that regardless of when a Jewish political identity was established or how long it existed, a separate cultural and religious identity for Jews did exist by the time of Roman rule in the Middle East, and that's essentially what matters in looking at the Jewish messianic movement of the time period. I'd also point out that people do maintain separate cultural and/or religious identities, sometimes for several centuries or millennia, despite lacking a political identity as a nation state. Modern examples are the Basques of the French/Spanish border region (who once did have the political unit of the Kingdom of Navarra in Medieval times); the Kurds who transcend political boundaries of the modern ME; and individual Native American cultural pockets within the US and within other nations throughout the Americas.

Messianism had reached a near frenzy among Jews under Greek and then Roman rule.

That is the story they tell, alright. Question is, is it true?

The short answer is yes. I think messianism did reach a near frenzy under Greece and Rome because the Babylonian, and especially the Persian empires, introduced religious ideas that led Jews to a zealous re-interpretation of their concept of a messiah. How the messianic movement evolved and what the movement was like during the time of Roman rule, takes a longer answer.