Calebin F, your argument from a Jewish
perspective for Jesus as a real human is: Why would Responsa (formalised
rabbinic replies) develop antithetically to a non-existent person? Superficially
a fair point but not necessarily valid. I suggest that the body of sacred
Jewish writings, however revered, is itself inherently the product of
politico-religious and nationalistic bluster and myth in the first place. In
other words a system of beliefs not founded on fact but from mainly
non-existing i.e. fictional characters such as Moses and the twelve sons of
Israel. (All have precedents in earlier exotic tales mainly from Egypt).
Therefore the credibility of Jewish pronouncements on other heroic figures is
suspect. It is easier to diminish the importance of an individual than it is to
suppress a myth. All religion, since it is mostly devoid of testable evidence;
is just propaganda. Religious argument therefore, to put it crudely, it is a
case of “My myth is better than your myth.” If human evolution is true but not
readily observable, then the evolution of ideas and mythology is more readily
accessible to the textual scholar. To disentangle deeply entrenched and
strongly felt beliefs, require research into the facts and not just repeating suppositions...as you are well aware.
The God-men tales of the near East and western
Asia was the template for the “christ stories” of which Jesus was the last one
of note. The reason for his prominence being that this character was promoted
by the Roman state and through the agency of its Catholic Church; left a legacy
of dominant small O orthodoxy of ‘Christ belief’ right up until today. However
prior to the fourth century we have a string of heroic messianic celebrities
supplying the answer to the greatest existential problem facing humanity; how
to overcome death. It was a preponderantly illiterate world, the transmission of belief
outside of the temples and synagogues would have been for millennia; through
passion plays. They still exist today, even in my nearest village in civilised
and literate England, the nativity is re-enacted on Christmas Eve every year.
Joseph and a Mary (played by the last couple to be married at the local church)
travel round the village with Mary riding a donkey, and knocking on doors looking
for a place to stay, rejected, they stay at a barn at the manor house replete
with oxen and a baby Jesus in a straw filled manger.
A mordant is the chemistry which fixes colour
in the process of dying cloth... for the illiterate throughout history; the
nativity play or any such play as the Passion of Christ would surely be the ‘mordant’ to fix a “belief” into the
cultural fabric. (It is also a strong clue as to the how and why, many of the
Bible stories came to be recorded... they are transcripts of folk plays).
So if you believe that Jesus existed as a
breathing human, why not believe the pedigree of his literary forebears: the
fictional crucified Dionysus who had the same history attributed to him, why
not the mythical Osiris, born of a virgin (Meri) whose step father was Sep,
born in a cave with oxen, who had twelve disciples, walked on water, preached,
healed the sick, cured leprosy and resurrected his friend Lazarus (El Osiris)...
a thousand years before Jesus?
The character or role of the God-man and its
story-line was well established in the peasant consciousness. This belief was
retained without critical thought, with minimum education other than a religious
tradition, and maximum gullibility. The God-man hero existed independently of a personal name
of the lead character; it had already done the rounds for many centuries before the
first century. He was the son of the Sun
God he was the saviour of mankind, the Christ. The Jewish authorities would
have needed to challenge the belief adopted by some of its number in joining a
Christ –cult. They would not investigate whether he existed, since the unbelievably
exciting message of the magic belief was that “the word had been made flesh”
and many Jews had declared this as it was the founding cry of Jesus-
Christianity and axiomatically held to be true. The Jews would have fought
against the belief and the implication of losing power to the new cult and not
the facts of the case.
So I suggest that the Jewish stance was to
decry the Christ cults with a mythical founder who had a Jewish sounding name called
“Jesus”. A man unknown to any credible historical source although conflated
with other Jesuses over time. We are in the territory of folk myth, gullibility
and messianic hope...not reality.
Osiris was not real neither was Dionysus: why should anyone else sharing the same fictional characteristics attributed to him have been a live person? That he could have existed is not germane to
the foregoing and is a misleading sentiment.
