{"id":2991,"date":"2020-12-20T21:15:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-20T21:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2991"},"modified":"2020-12-20T21:15:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-20T21:15:18","slug":"is-jesus-wholly-or-only-partly-a-myth-the-carrier-macdonald-exchange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mythikismos.gr\/?p=2991","title":{"rendered":"Is Jesus Wholly or Only Partly a Myth? The Carrier-MacDonald Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Last year Dennis MacDonald and I had a\u00a0moderated conversation<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0PineCreek channel<\/a>\u00a0regarding the plausibility of Jesus never really being a person in history. MacDonald is famous for proposing the Gospels construct myths about Jesus partly from Homeric and other Gentile models, and partly from Jewish Old Testament models. His\u00a0Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark<\/a><\/em>\u00a0is still an enduring classic. His equally important work on the Septuagint parallels is the lesser known\u00a0Two Shipwrecked Gospels<\/a><\/em>. But his latest survey of both features in constructing the mythology of Jesus is\u00a0Mythologizing Jesus: From Jewish Teacher to Epic Hero<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Richard Carrier<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all of this MacDonald is a minimalist but not a mythicist. He believes almost everything said about Jesus in the Gospels is mythical. But he also believes there is some, albeit scant, data supporting some sort of real historical Jesus. I\u2019ve addressed his case for that before<\/a>. But on PineCreek we got to go into more depth about it. Following is a partial transcript and commentary. I did not vet the transcript\u2014it was provided by a reliable colleague\u2014but it should be accurate enough. Though if anyone catches any errors in it, do let me know and I\u2019ll correct them here. Some things in it have also been edited for this medium, for flow and clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MacDonald\u2019s Opening<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Dennis speaking:<\/strong> [N]either of us is a theist, but we do have different attitudes toward the historical Jesus. We\u2019re both historians. I do not call myself an atheist. I call myself rather \u201ca frequently outraged Christian humanist.\u201d And I own all of those. I\u2019m not always outraged. I\u2019m usually outraged. I understand myself to be in the Christian tradition and Christian discourse, and I own that, but I also am a humanist and I don\u2019t make any claims of revelation, or special divine inspiration for my worldview. But it\u2019s something that sustains me and I\u2019m proud to be identified with that tradition and would say that often, but not often enough, the Christian discourse produces things that are good for human life. I would say the same thing about Buddhism and Islam and Judaism, and so that\u2019s where I would locate myself. So the issue is\u2026not whether [there is a God] but rather [the historical Jesus].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do believe in the historical Jesus, that there was a Jesus. But not because of the depiction of him in the New Testament directly. As I\u2019ve tried to show\u2026that the Gospels\u2026are all derivative of earlier traditions and all have been heavily mythologized, in order to make Jesus competitive in the religious world of antiquity, which Richard [Carrier] has studied as much as I have. And so that<\/em> Jesus variously competes with Dionysus, as in the fourth Gospel, or with Odysseus and Hector, as in the Gospel of Mark; or with Socrates, as one finds in Luke Acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so this heavy layering of mythology needs to be appreciated and discounted in any claim to the historical Jesus, but too often, people who deny the existence of Jesus do not pay enough attention to the so-called Q document, which is a hypothetical but highly plausible document that\u2019s earlier than all of the [extant] Gospels and does not show signs of heavy mythologizing that we find in the Synoptics [Mark, Matthew, and Luke]. The amazing thing about the Q document\u2014which I prefer to call \u201cthe logoi<\/em> of Jesus,\u201d and my reconstruction is more than twice as long as standard [editions] and is sometimes known as \u201cQ Plus\u201d\u2014[is that it] clearly is a Jewish document. There\u2019s no faith in Jesus that gives eternal life. Jesus is a Jewish prophet. All of his followers are Jewish. There\u2019s a command not to go to Gentiles who likely are called \u201cdogs\u201d or \u201cswine,\u201d but only to the lost sheep of Israel. But this is the Jewish document that portrays Jesus as the coming prophet like Moses, but who challenges traditional Mosaic law on a principle of compassion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many of the debates that one finds in the Gospels about observing the Sabbath, dealing on the Sabbath, tithing and so on, are coming from the Q document, that portrays Jesus in competition with other Jewish interpreters, in order to make the Jewish law more compassionate. I find that to be very appealing, and think that there is reason to trust the author, that this vision\u2014which is related to the Kingdom of God, according to the Q document\u2014comes from the historical Jesus, but not to the letter, word for word. But the moral vision probably comes from Jesus. Now one could say that that\u2019s not very good historical proof. But I think there are two different kinds of historical evidence that I find to be helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One is that we have confirmation of the content of Q, to some extent in the Pauline Epistles, the seven authentic Pauline Epistles. And to some extent in Josephus. And I\u2019m sure that Richard is gonna wanna attack me on the Josephus stuff; I\u2019m prepared to give my interpretation of it. But for example, Josephus and Q both talk about John the Baptist in similar ways. There seems to be a knowledge of who Jesus was in Josephus and he in fact identifies James the Just as the brother of Jesus. So one would call that in the discipline \u201cmultiple attestation,\u201d that Josephus doesn\u2019t know Paul, or Q; Q doesn\u2019t know Paul, or Josephus; Paul doesn\u2019t know Josephus, or Q. So At least we can press this back in to the tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the other thing that I find to be quite amazing, is that there are lots of details in the life of Jesus that are not mythologically freighted, they\u2019re not theologically \u2018heavy duty\u2019. [As I explain in] my book Two Shipwrecked Gospels<\/a><\/em>, each of the Gospels, as well as the Q document, contains neutral, or apparently unfreighted details\u2014what one might call adiaphora<\/em>\u2014that seem to have been generated neither from Judaism, nor the Christian movement. As I understand it, there\u2019s no reason to challenge the accuracy of the following information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n