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There Was No Historical Paul the Apostle
Contents
Multiplicity of Peters, Paucity of Method
Book: Arthur Drews: The Legend of
Saint Peter
Toward a resource page for "No
Historical Paul or Apostles"
Peter Kirby repudiates the
Historical Paul assumption
Discarding the Historical Paul
assumption
Importance of the mythic-only Paul
to mythic-only Jesus research
Book: Max Rieser: The True Founder
of Christianity & Hellenistic Philosophy
Book: Rieser's True Founder
Christianity & Helleni. Phil.
See also
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/saul-paul.htm
- Ken Humphrey's articles about the ahistoricity of Paul
http://www.egodeath.com/TheFabricatedPaul.htm
- Detering's book about the ahistoricity of Paul and inauthenticity of all the
Pauline epistles
Jim wrote:
>So what is the method here? In dealing with anything that purports to be an historical fact related to Christianity, use extreme skepticism, leave no stone unturned, identify every possible defect, doubt anything that can be doubted.
>But when dealing with something that seems to undermine the historicity of Christianity, hey, take it easy, don't be too critical, think creatively. Peter is Jesus, he's Mithras, he's a tomb, whatever. Who cares, as long as he's not Peter!
Good historical theorizing requires three phases:
1. Creating multiple hypotheses
2. Critiquing the hypotheses
3. Concluding which hypothesis is best supported.
In the orthodox faith approach, phases 1 and 2 are skipped, leaping from the single hypothesis that happens to be put forth by literalist Christianity, directly to phase 3 - the conclusion that the scriptural stories are historical reports.
In the uncritical approach Jim warns against, we jump from phase 1 to 3, skipping phase 2; we brainstorm for hypotheses and then take any of them as a sure conclusion -- skipping the critiquing phase.
We must not omit any phase. We have to define multiple hypotheses or viewpoints and not just settle for whatever single hypothesis happens to be suggested. The historical-literalist reading of the scriptures is just one hypothesis among many.
I could argue that the simplest and most immediate hypothesis is that the scriptures are purely allegorical - I can reject the literalist reading as an unnatural and complicated proposition.
So right from the start, we have more than one hypothesis that the scriptures pose: for example, the supernaturalist orthodox reading, the historicist reading, and the mythic allegory reading. How do we know which to choose? Scholars start from these three immediately obvious readings or hypotheses, to create additional possibilities or sub-cases.
This takes us to step two of the critical scholarly : critquing. Here is where evidence is culled and organized to support or reject each hypothesis we've identified. Before this step of judging the contestants (phase 2), we must make sure that we have a wide range of contestants (phase 1).
After identifying the candidates, then lining up the evidence, we can finally move to phase 3: drawing conclusions.
In a culture that is still struggling to be able to consider positions or readings other than the supernaturalist, it takes *time* and *effort* to even be able to conceive of the mythic allegory position.
A thinker must journey along this road for some time, to move from the default starting point of American culture (the supernaturalist reading), to progress to the historicist reading, to finally conceiving, formulating, and adopting the purely mythic-allegory reading.
Given that the starting point in American culture is largely supernaturalist, it takes a lot of conjecture to adequately formulate the historicist and mythic-allegory hypotheses. That labor of conjecture is a distinct activity in itself, related to but distinct from critical historical gathering of proof.
Good historical research must not be restricted to only judging whatever hypotheses are most obviously present and familiar. Historical research that only tries to support or refute whatever hypotheses happen to be already familiar tends to be used to simply justify that dominant hypothesis without giving the other potential readings adequate consideration.
We need more speculation, integrated with more demonstration -- otherwise we have a stunted and short-sighted use of historical method, that tends to support whatever viewpoint (about what is reasonable and possible) happens to be dominant.
There is a circular problem for sober historicists: is a proposed position even worth investigating and critiquing? How can you know until you've made the attempt? How can you make the attempt before even carefully and generously formulating the proposed position?
A hypothesis cannot even be conceived until you do so in a sympathetic way. You have to switch between attitudes toward a hypothesis: first, try being sympathetic; try embracing it. Then, critique and criticize it. Only such a twofold approach of giving credence *and* criticizing a position is worthy of being called scholarly historical research, *particularly* in the field of religion and myth.
Book
Review.
The Legend
of Saint Peter
Arthur
Drews. Translated into English by Frank
Zindler.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578849519
5 stars
Towards
mythic-only Peter, Jesus, Paul, apostles, etc.
Arthur
Drews is an important early 20th-Century author whose works should all be
available in English. Even in
There was
a pope Peter on the very
Drews
provides a substantial scholarly basis for understanding that the Bible is
essentially all mythic or, as I'd emphasize more, mystic allegory. A must-have for all mythic-only Jesus
scholars, because eliminating the hypothesis of a single historical person
underlying the Jesus figure goes hand-in-hand with doing the same for the rest
of his crowd: Paul, Peter, John, James, Mary, and all the apostles.
___________________________
Additional
comments:
The Legend
of Saint Peter, by Arthur Drews, who wrote the book The Christ Myth. bn.com beat Amazon.com at getting this to me
(5 wks vs. at least 8).
>Arthur
Drews: The Legend of Saint Peter.
>I
might order it to read about the similarities of Mithraism and Christianity.
>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.
From:
Frans-Joris Fabri:
>Well
Michael, I've got "Die
Petruslegende" (3rd revised edition,
>p. 52
(my translation from German)
>"No
doubt: the Cristian Peter is nothing but a reduplicated and humanized Persion
Petros or Mithra, who got that way into the Gospels. The papal Church is
nothing but the immediate continuacion 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
>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 a basis whatsoever in
historical facts. ( I've not found the time yet to read the book, having to
spend all my time on trying to follow the discussions on this list -J )
>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 Vφlker und des
Christentums"(1924)
>I
don't know whether those works ever have been translated inte English, but even
here in
Jesus as a
single individual serving as a single necessary kernel for the Jesus figure
didn't exist, and postulating him introduces horrible complexities and
unlikelihoods into a historical reconstruction of the origins of early
Christianity. The same is true of all of
his gang -- Paul, John, James, Mary, Mary, Mary, the other Maries, and the
crowd of confusingly named disciples and apostles, and Judas. Probably strike out Ignatius and others
too.
The kind
of modern scholarship that begins with an optimistic assumption of historicity
immediately makes a colossal category error of the first degree, completely
misunderstanding what kind of thing early Christianity was. van Eysinga's article "Does Jesus Live
or Did He Only Live Once?" raises this question and answers with a correct
but insufficiently detailed answer.
van den
Bergh van Eysinga, 1930
Does Jesus
Live or Did He Only Live Once?
http://www.egodeath.com/eysingadoesjesuslive.htm
What kind
of thing was early Christianity? That is
the direction of questioning which the question of the historicity of Jesus
must properly lead to. Christianity was,
overall, a socio-politically styled expression of the standard Hellenistic or
Greco-Roman philosophy-religion-mysticism, which was an experiential gnosis.
What kind
of thing was this standard Hellenistic experiential gnosis? The trigger for such experiential gnosis was
Dionysus' mixing bowl, in which mixed wine was mixed. The resulting intense mystic altered state
involved personal power being trumped by the feeling of vertical determinism --
an imprisonment and subjugation experience -- followed by release back into the
ordinary accustomed feeling of personal sovereignty.
All the
terms in the Bible have to be read first and foremost in an allegorical sense,
where allegory is understood to serve above all as description of aspects of
the intense mystic altered state, or experiential gnosis. This includes concepts such as martyrdom,
sacrifice of one's firstborn child, resurrection, reincarnation, the Jews, the
law, salvation, prophecy, repentance, heaven, death, eternal life, king,
possession, demons, healing, the end of time, and kingdom of God.
The Dutch
Radical Critics focused on questioning the historicity of the two main pillars
for the literalist error: Jesus and Paul, "the evangelist". The correct view of the nature of
Christianity, of what Christianity was about, is an emperor-worship styled set
of metaphors for intense mystic-state experiences, concerning the experience of
mystic death and entering into the more lasting, stable, imperishable mode of transformed
thinking about the nature of self and self-power -- rather than a literalist
big bang miracle of bodily resurrection and going to heaven upon literal bodily
death.
Starting
with the axiomatic assumption that Christianity was metaphor for Dionysian
intense altered-state experiencing, the simplest assumption to start with is
that all the Bible figures are mythic allegorical figures, including Jesus,
Paul, Mary "John" Magdalene, Peter, James, the Virgin Mary, and the
apostles.
It's much
easier to list the Bible characters who *are* based on a single historical
individual serving as a lone kernel, than to list the characters who are
essentially mythical and are only very loosely based on an abstraction of
traits from various historical individuals.
Even those who are based on a single historical individual, such as the
figure of Pontius Pilate, are characterized so ironically, the result is
sometimes a comically inverted misdrawing of the historical individual's
reputed character.
The books
in the New Testament are generally placed in reverse order; the gradual
hyper-reification of Jesus and crew is seen clearly when the books are
reversed:
First
conceived was Revelation, clearly concerned with visionary-state description.
Then the
Paul figure with his writings about the mystic-only Christ.
Then the
essence of John was conceived.
Then Mark
was conceived, the most gnosis-oriented of the synoptics.
Then Luke
and Matthew.
Then Acts.
Then the
bunk, later, Catholic Hierarchy letters.
Arguments
about dating the gospels can go on forever until we keep in mind that *all* of
the gospels were heavily redacted over a long time, so that they all contain
relatively early content and relatively late revisions, so that any simplistic
single date on a gospel immediately commits the main category error of
misunderstanding what kind of thing Christianity was, and what the character
and duration of the process was in constructing the writings as we have
received them.
If you
believe the big bang theory of Christianity, then it makes sense to talk
simplistically about the date at which a gospel was written. If not, then the story inherently becomes too
complex to talk simply about the date of a gospel; one must talk about the developmental
history of each gospel over a longer period.
____________________
What are
the books, magazine articles, and Web pages on the subject of questioning the
historicity of Paul, Peter, and the other apostles?
Peter is treated
alone in Drews' book that was originally an appendix to The Christ Myth:
The Legend
of Saint Peter: A Contribution to the Mythology of Christianity
Arthur
Drews. Translated into English by Frank
Zindler.
http://www.atheists.org - Publisher's site: American Atheist
Press. In stock. Click Shopping: Start Shopping: Books: The
Legend of Saint Peter.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578849519
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookSearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=1578849519
http://www.addall.com/Browse/Detail/1578849519.html
The Christ
Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932813747
Acharya is
operating basically within the right paradigm, in which all the figures are
approached as essentially mythological.
Like most scholars, she has only a lower type of grasp of esoteric
religion, but she knows that whatever esoteric religion, mysticism, and gnosis
amounts to, Christianity was that rather than a literalist scenario. She argues that the apostles are all
mythic-only, and more notably, argues that Paul is ahistorical.
Even
though she has had only a lower type of grasp of esoteric religion, she
nevertheless contributes a lot of preliminary prolegomenon inventory of the
astrological aspects of the Bible, forming the esoteric intermediate body of
astrology, or lower astrology.
That kind
of "allegorism" is middle-level interpretation.
o Literalism thinks the scriptures are literal
rather than symbolic.
o Mid-level esotericism thinks the scriptures
are symbols, but symbols of material things such as planets, stars, and
crops. This is the "ordinary
state-of-consciousness fallacy".
o High esotericism recognizes that the scriptures
are symbols of the phenomena of the intense mystic altered state.
How can
one find books, magazine articles, and Web pages on the subject of questioning
the historicity of Paul, Peter, and the other apostles?
Michael
wrote:
>the
gradual hyper-reification of Jesus and crew is seen clearly when
>the
books are reversed:
>
>First
conceived was Revelation, clearly concerned with visionary-state
>description.
>Then
the Paul figure with his writings about the mystic-only Christ.
>Then
the essence of John was conceived.
>Then
Mark was conceived, the most gnosis-oriented of the synoptics.
>Then
Luke and Matthew.
>Then
Acts.
>Then
the bunk, later, Catholic Hierarchy letters.
>>This
redating of the writings would create more problems than it solves.
The problems
are not difficult to explain within a gnosis-oriented interpretive framework or
paradigm, with a much simpler overall result.
For some components of the answers, see Peter Kirby's site http://www.didpaulexist.com [my wishful
thinking; still doesn't exist] which lays out the arguments of the Dutch
Radical Critics in conjunction with his own clear timeline defined at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com,
a timeline which also supports the site http://www.didjesusexist.com.
_________________
>How
can one find books, magazine articles, and Web pages on the subject of
>questioning
the historicity of Paul, Peter, and the other apostles?
In
addition to "books", I need to cite sections within books.
Book list:
Lives of the Apostles
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/3QC7FJVG4N27N
From
Acharya's book The Christ Conspiracy:
http://www.egodeath.com/ChristConspiracyTableOfContents.htm
Chapter:
The Disciples are the Signs of the Zodiac page 166
Peter the Rock
167
Judas the
Betrayer 169
Matthew
the Scribe 171
Thomas the
Twin 171
Paul the
Apostle 173 - "Like so many other biblical characters, Paul is also
fictitious. ... Like Jesus, Paul is a patchwork of characters..."
It is a
great joy to read such plain-spoken, to-the-point writing, which has earned
Acharya her book's popularity ranging between 3000 all the way up to 1000
sometimes (very popular) at Amazon.com.
She beat Freke and Gandy to this punch -- she scooped them. Freke and Gandy didn't seem to have seriously
considered whether Paul existed; at least, they said that it's unknown.
I surmise
that they hadn't seriously questioned the historical Paul assumption, but made
the error of continuing to accept huge areas of the conventional history, as
though we could pluck away the Historical Jesus while retaining so much of the
rest of the framework of the circle of historicity around him.
Doherty,
like Freke & Gandy, seems to fall into the Historical Paul trap. In this respect, Acharya is closer to
comprehending the true nature of early Christianity and the actual history of
Christian origins. I have yet to argue
why Paul's historicity is so very important in converting to a new view of what
Christianity meant and Means. Two
figures stand out as most real, most present, and most historical in the NT:
Jesus and Paul.
If *these*
two figures are revised and reunderstood as nonhistorical, only then does the
entire way of thinking utterly collapse.
A twin-engine airplane can still fly on one engine -- but immediately
falls, with no engines. The historical
mode of thinking continues until these two particular figures are both revealed
as ahistorical. Only then does the mind
turn and rethink its most basic assumptions about what kind of thing and
thinking Christianity was.
John the
Baptist/Baptizer 177
Andrew
179
Philip
179
Bartholomew
180
James the
Brother 180
James the
Greater and John the Evangelist, the Sons of Thunder 180
Mark 181
Luke 181
Thaddeus/Jude
and Simon the Zealot/Canaanite 181
Max Rieser
definitely portrays Paul as fictional -- like Michael Conley, he's attuned more
to political aspects of early Christian strategizing than to the mystic altered
state allegory aspects.
Michael
Conley
http://thecosmiccontext.de/christianity.html
The True
Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy
Max Rieser
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812
Messianism
and Epiphany: An Essay on the Origins of Christianity
Max Rieser
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9060320239
How can
one find books, magazine articles, and Web pages on the subject of questioning
the historicity of Paul, Peter, and the other apostles?
_________________
I
tentatively propose that the Paul figure is a composite figure that was
gradually formed by combining Catholic (hierarchical) rebuttals of gnostic
views with teachings of more than one group, following more than one leader,
leaders that are more or less Paul-like.
I look for
the greatest diversity and multiplicity of what *could* be called
"kernel" figures on whom the Paul figure was *very loosely* based --
so loosely that, in the extreme end point, the Paul figure is not dependent on
any single individual who served as one of the models for the Paul figure. So historicity is a matter of degree; it is a
meaningless beginner's move to assume that the question can be answered with a
simple yes or no, did Paul exist.
We can be
sure that Paul in some sense existed and in some sense didn't exist; same with
Jesus. Some maintain that there was
*some* sort of historical Jesus, *some* sort of historical Paul, but that
immediately implies an emphasis on a single person on whom the figure is
dependent, and it's that singleness of the original model that I doubt.
I think
these kind of religious figures were generally composite stereotypes or
figureheads -- so we debate about what sort of process the ancients liked to
use when forming religious figures. Is
Paul simply a figure representing Marcion, or is that oversimplistic and
unfaithful to the mode of character construction the era liked to use?
Peter
Kirby wrote:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
-- Historical Jesus Theories
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com
-- Early Christian Writings
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16043
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16044 - restates the previous message
Message
16043 ends:
>>Will
the above convincing and critical exposition [against Paul's historicity] go
down in the annals of "History of Mysteries Scholarship"? I truly
hope so.
>>Paul
did not exist. Fact.
>>Forget
Jesus. I want to know about the mythological apostles. That is why I have
picked up about twelve standard reference works for the _Twelve_. They were
cheap pulp books mostly, as "real scholars" don't find the lives of
the Twelve an interesting question. As the first book by an amateur proving
decisively that all the researchers before me have seen in the apostles what
they wanted to see, inventing just so stories and believing incredible fiction,
to rationalize implausible narratives of Peter and James and Paul and Judas and
Matthias and John. A ridiculous mythology to imagine playing out to the times
of Trajan, if even to the times of Nero. ...
>>I
am sure that I would make Michael Hoffman blush now.
>>The
moral of the story: what we are talking about is not the historical existence
of "Paul," nor the historical existence of "Jesus," **but
our personal understandings of the nature of Christianity**, and our
preconceived notions of how early Christians wrote documents, and how the
dynamic of Paul and Jesus played out in our minds.
>>best,
>>Petrus
"Michael" Kirbinator
Peter
Kirby announces in messages 16043 and 16044 that he has made a scholarly breakthrough,
having demonstrated almost by accident that there was no (single, individual)
Historical Paul. That unexpected
discovery next led to Peter Kirby's further apparently speechless and shocked
statements that it's all just mythic poetry, including Paul and the apostles
and Jesus.
I have
held these views for two or three years and have tried to convince Peter Kirby
of this mode of thinking. As I recall,
my views on Paul's ahistoricity was based on the http://www.radikalkritik.de Website and
on
Did Peter
Kirby's postings 16043 and 16044 contribute new important arguments for the
ahistoricity of Paul, or is Peter only rediscovering what the Dutch Radical
Critics already knew in the 19th Century?
>Peter
Kirby wrote:
> http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
-- Historical Jesus Theories
> http://www.earlychristianwritings.com
-- Early Christian Writings
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16043
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16044 - restates the previous message
Peter
Kirby is important. He is
precocious. His no-Historical-Nothin'
conversion, happening as we speak, is a notable example. He was an annoying fence-sitting holdout for
the longest time, making me throw up my arms crying "Jesus Christ, if
these boneheads don't get it yet, that it's *all* mythic allegory, they never
will!"
Every
posting in the Jesus Mysteries discussion group, with over a thousand members,
has two links to his websites:
-----
Don't miss
Peter Kirby's, "Historical Jesus Theories":
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
or his "Did Jesus Exist?" page:
http://www.didjesusexist.com
-----
Since at
the end of posting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JesusMysteries/message/16043
Peter Kirby essentially credits me as his teacher of awakening into the
ahistoricity of Paul and the apostles and the wholly different, non-literalist
nature of early Christianity -- it's all mythic/mystic poetry -- I may assign
him penance of adding the book Christ Conspiracy to his page Historical Jesus
Theories.
I am
posting my argument for adding the book Christ Conspiracy to a related
discussion group, but I don't want to contact Peter yet. I want this to be his own self-conversion,
aside from my previous discussion with him.
This is a rare opportunity to see a self-conversion experience in
process. People should appreciate the
stature he has within his community, the amount of work he's invested his dull
brilliance in, in his web resources and postings.
Here is a
bright, prominent, energetic young man very deeply invested in a certain
thick-headed perpetually agnostic fence-sitting paradigm of studying the
texts. Suddenly an irrelevant comment
about an ancient writer possibly meaning Paul, "causes" his entire
framework of background assumptions to come crashing down all at once. I suppose Acharya has seen her share of
conversion experiences, but Peter Kirby's conversion is spectacular.
I loathe
tepid fence sitting regarding Jesus' historicity -- beyond a certain point,
after reading a stack of books laying out the arguments for no literal Jesus,
it becomes frankly irrational to remain a fence-sitter.
In
addition to the book Christ Conspiracy and the RadikalKritik site, I also got
the no-Paul idea, perhaps 2 years ago, from Max Rieser's 1979 book:
The True
Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy
Max Rieser
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9062960812
1979
I
certainly didn't get the no-Paul idea from Freke & Gandy; their response to
the question of Paul's historicity was a blank stare, so it felt. A glance at their index on Paul confirms that
they treat "
You can't
count on Freke and Gandy to run to confidently defend the existence of the
historical Paul. I asked them, "Was
there a Historical Paul?" They said
"I don't know." That implies
uncertainty about the 7 Epistles being authentic, and calls into question the
very possibility and coherence of any "authentic" epistles. If there was no single Historical Paul, this
would enable a much simpler and more interesting scenario for the historical
origin of Christianity.
There are
some scholars who doubt the existence of the Historical Paul.
I have
long abandoned interest in the question of the Historical Jesus, concluding
Jesus is essentially a composite, not a single historical person. The question isn't as interesting, any more,
as the question of the Historical Paul, which is in some ways more
important.
If we let
go of the Historical Jesus, our thinking isn't completely changed, but letting
go of Paul as well finally forces the whole army of founder-figures to turn
upon each other, leaving a rubble of the old modern consensus way of thinking,
replaced by a truly changed way of thinking.
The
current day historian or textural critics are idiots and their reasoning -- or
rather, framework of assumptions -- is flawed.
This is proven by their thoughtless assumption that there was a single,
historical Jesus and that the only question is the details of that man's
life.
No truly
critical investigator who stops to call Paul's existence into question, rather
than taking it as a given, would agree with the ancient, outdated opinion, or
rather axiomatic assumption pulled out of thin air, that Saint Paul is a
single, literal, historical man.
We should
cite scholars who acknowledge their network of axiomatic assumptions. Which complete, closed, wholesale,
self-consistent paradigm seems more plausible?
A. There was a Paul; some epistles are
authentically by him, and he clashed with Peter.
B. There was no Paul; Paul is a fictional
mouthpiece first for Gnostic Christians and then later was taken over by the
Roman church officials and turned against the Gnostics that invented him, and
all the Christian scholars are really apologists who are invested in the
historicity of the Paul character even more than in the historicity of the
Jesus character.
In some
ways, the historical Jesus assumption rests on a foundation of the historical
Paul assumption. In some ways, calling
the historical Paul into question is even more of a paradigm-shifting change of
axiomatic assumptions than calling the historical Jesus into question.
It's
easier to discard the historical Paul together with the historical Jesus than
to just discard the historical Jesus while attempting to coherently retain the
historical Paul. To some extent, in some
ways, the historical Jesus stands or falls with the historical Paul. Actually, a large crowd of such figures
stands or falls together.
The
question at hand for finding more plausible historical scenarios is to ask:
Which and
how many of these heroic, larger-than-life Christian founding figures must be
converted from assumed-historical to assumed non-historical, to enable a more
plausible and likely account of the origins of Christianity?
This
question goes far beyond the thoughts of current day historians and textual
critics, safely contained as those thoughts are within the reigning
paradigmatic network of axiomatic assumptions.
It turns out to be easier to change a thousand axiomatic assumptions
than to change one, the historicity of Jesus, by itself while trying to leave
the remaining framework coherently intact.
When it
comes to a contest between whole paradigms, entire frameworks and ways of
thinking about the origins of Christianity, modern scholarly opinion adds up to
nothing, as measured by a framework that they haven't even thought to
consider.
In this
alternative framework, converting a figure from assumed-historical to assumed
non-historical isn't hard at all; in fact the more figures you shift this way,
the easier it is to shift any one figure, such as Jesus, Mary, Mary, Mary,
John, Lazarus, Peter, Paul, or Ignatius.
If you attempt to retain the consensus paradigm of the modern scholars
while removing only one historical figure, that's improbable and a hard
scenario to defend as plausible.
If you
subtract another, another, and several more, it becomes easier. At this point, it seems that the strongest
contender paradigm to defend as more plausible than the consensus paradigm
involves de-historicizing some larger number of heroic, larger-than-life
Christian founder figures. It's actually
easier to list the canonical scriptural figures who *did* exist, than those who
*didn't* exist.
All the
figures in the canonical scriptures except for a small number of kings and Roman
characters were mythic, fictional figures.
Read these
sites, try on a different, "ancient and outdated" way of thinking,
and see how much more plausible and sound "today's modern scholarly
consensus" is.
http://www.radikalkritik.de - Hermann
Detering
http://thecosmiccontext.de/christianity.html
- Michael Conley
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812
- Max Rieser
http://www.truthbeknown.com -
Where can
we look up the modern scholars' principled, careful refutation of the
"ancient and outdated", not to mention "idiotic", Dutch
radical critics? The most careful modern
scholarship adds up to nothing if it is founded on an incorrect network and
framework of axiomatic assumptions, such as that nearly all the heroic,
larger-than-life founding Christian figures are literal, historical
individuals.
The
importance of mythic-only Paul to mythic-only Jesus research
The
non-existence of
Convention
says that Christianity was created by Jesus and Paul. A full non-orthodox explanation must say that
both figures are creations.
Surprisingly, merely revising Jesus to be fictional (while leaving the
official framework in place) isn't enough to tell a different origin of
Christianity. The framework must change;
the way of thinking about founder figures must change -- Paul must change.
Max
Rieser,
Ways of
thinking are far more important than revising any isolated idea or
assumption. Most mythic-only Jesus
researchers revise the assumption of the existence of a single historical
Jesus, while leaving all the rest of the official story of the historical
origin of Christianity intact and unaffected.
The result is merely modified official history, not an alternative
history.
A modified
official history is still dominanted by implausibilities and magical,
unrealistic thinking. Only a wholly
alternative, completely revised history with a different framework of thinking
can be plausible and realistic.
Peter is
also centrally important. It's
irrational and inconsistent to study the existence of Jesus without also considering
the existence of Paul and Peter. Arthur
Drews, in addition to writing the book The Christ Myth, wrote Saint Peter,
showing his non- existence as well. One
cannot study Jesus' non-existence in isolation from the entire framework of a
completely revised model of the origin of Christianity.
The main
action in revising our explanation of Jesus' non-existence is at the level of
ways of thinking, or paradigms, not down at the level of isolated elements of
official history such as the existence of a single figure.
We are
also practically required to study how allegorical religious myth works; you
can't understand Jesus' non-existence and tell a coherent, plausible, rational
story of the rise of Christianity without a firm understanding of how allegorical
religious mythic thinking works. Such
thinking underlies the production of characters such as Jesus, Paul, and Peter.
First I
posted a pair of review postings to the egodeath discussion group.
Then I
merged those and cleaned up and emailed to some scholars.
Then I
compressed and cleaned it up some more, including the experiential
mystery-religion wording, and submitted to Amazon.com (for the True Founder
book). It should hopefully appear in a
week. That version is shown here.
Most of
this is repeat material for this discussion group, but has, as always, a
increment of improvement. The more I
write about the mystery religions, in different forums, the clearer my proposal
becomes, and also the more compatible with mainstream ways of thinking.
The True
Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy
Max
Rieser
June
1979
John
Benjamins Pub Co; ISBN: 9062960812
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812
Messianism
and Epiphany: An Essay on the Origins of Christianity
Max
Rieser
1973
ISBN:
9060320239
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9060320239
Political
reasons Christianity was created in urban empire
Rieser
covers the motives of the Diaspora Jews and then the Hellenes in creating the
Christian myth-system. Historical Jesus
scholars assume Christianity began in
Rieser has
his theoretical feet firmly planted in the urban
Rieser
recommends we study the detailed socio-economic realities of
Christianity
arrived last, not first, in
The
heavily Hellenistic communities gradually invented and pulled together the
pseudo-historical single figure and retroactively set him into the pre-70,
Once you
abandon Historical Jesus -- and Historical Apostles and Historical Paul and
that whole way of thinking -- many superior theoretical options open up for
understanding the early Christian religion in terms of a mythically allegorized
socio-political counter-religion to the hierarchical honor-hyperinflating
system of divinized Caesar. (I would
point out that it also opens up the researcher's ability to think of earliest
Christianity in terms of mythic allegory that describes and conveys primary
religious experiencing.)
Christianity
was almost immediately co-opted by the gentile lower class of the large cities
of the Roman Empire, especially Rome, Alexandria, and the cities of Asia Minor
(just to the east of Greece, including Byzantium/Constantinople), with
increasing animosity between the Hellenists and Jews. The Hellenist lower class found the Hellenic
transformed version of the Jewish Diaspora messiah religion to be useful politically.
When
Christianity finally arrived in
Rieser
mentions the central importance of sacred meals in mystery religions and
mentions Jesus as the "drug, or pharmakos, of immortality", but has
no insight into entheogenic experiential allegory. Why would wine and bread deserve to be placed
at the center of any Hellenistic religion?
Historical and socio-political treatments such as this tend to
completely omit religious experiencing from their theory of Christianity.
They
assume that the ritual makes the eucharist or sacrament seem potent, rather
than vice versa. Though Rieser explains
how the Hellenized transformation of the messiah story was politically meaningful
and useful to the Hellenes, he doesn't mention that it was also fully amenable
to allegorically expressing the standard core mystery-religion with a storyline
that is fictionally set in Palestine rather than in the mythic realm as such.
Instead of
a story about a mythic Prometheus chained to a rock, or a mythic Attis tied to
or encased in a tree trunk, or Isaac bound to the altar, the pseudo-historical
Jesus figure is fastened to a cross, just like (as Rieser states) the actual
rebel slaves and underclass in Rome or in Judea.
Rieser has
only passing, shallow coverage of the mystery religions. But if the Hellenistic mystery-religion
mythic storylines were intended to describe the initiation experiences
encountered by the mystery-religion initiate after consuming something sacred,
the pseudo-historical Jesus storyline may also be experienced firsthand after
the Christian initiate partakes of a Last Supper before entering the
Rieser
provides plenty of hooks for such an explanation, but, like almost all the
overly historical-oriented modern researchers, is unable to treat this
experiential allegory dimension which calls out for coverage.
Rieser
reduces religion to the socio-political realm instead of recognizing the
overlaid, richly interpenetrating layers of political allegory and mystic-state
experiential allegory. The mythic-only
Christ theorists Freke and Gandy, conversely, explain experiential initiation
in the original Christian religion, in The Jesus Mysteries, and in Jesus and
the Lost Goddess, but omit the socio-political layer of allegory.
The
socio-political perspective without mystery-religion experiential allegory is
less than completely convincing, because it implausibly omits Hellenistic-style
primary religious experiencing from early Christianity.
Rieser's
plausible and realistic view of the Roman Empire and the changing
Hellenistic/Jewish relationships is still ahead of current research in the
I have
read The Jesus Myth, The Jesus Puzzle, The Jesus Mysteries, Deconstructing
Jesus, The Christ Myth, The Christian Myth, and The Christ Conspiracy. See also Rieser's book Messianism and
Epiphany: An Essay on the Origins of Christianity.
The True
Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy
by Max
Rieser
Paperback
(June 1979)
John
Benjamins Pub Co; ISBN: 9062960812
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812
His
out-of-print 1973 book on the subject is similar but incongruously,
uncritically hangs onto the assumption that -- though Jesus, all the stories,
and all 12 apostles are fiction -- Paul is the only real apostle. The only real difference I can see in his
in-print 1979 book six years later is that, thank goodness for relieving
cognitive dissonance, he firmly asserts that Paul is completely fictional.
Rieser was
a huge relief from reading the Historical Jesus scholars, who all make the
mistake of assuming Christianity began in
Rieser has
his theoretical feet firmly planted in the urban
As is
standard, Rieser declares the sacred wine and bread to be ritually central, but
fails to ask why mere wine and bread deserve to be placed at the center of any
Hellenistic religion. These historical
theorists have only historical and socio-political insight and thus omit
religious experiencing from religion.
They are able to make this error because our age thinks its empty
charade of the placebo eucharist is experientially equivalent to the
Hellenistic sacred meals, which were actually, in the most authentic instances,
psychoactive.
The nature
of religion is such that it doesn't always need full-blown religious
experiencing, but if there is never full-blown religious experiencing, there is
much less incentive to bother with religion.
It bothers
me that there is so little clear proof of entheogens -- after about ten years
of a handful of investigators looking for such -- in Hellenistic
religions. But I at least am committed
to the axiomatic assumption that entheogens were used sometimes and are
virtually central and are the most important source of religion, even though
they are so often suppressed and forgotten.
But to compare existing Historical Jesus books, we must bracket the
entheogen dimension and put it aside.
Rieser is
a real breath of fresh air. He writes
with a zealous intensity and has no time to worry about obscuring his
enthusiasm with proper copyediting and punctuation -- his writing reads like a
good friend announcing his findings excitedly.
He is perfectly clear and has great perspective -- that is the most
important attribute; the goal is clarity and perspective, not formal
correctness.
He
dispenses with introduction and explicit structure, and sometimes dispenses
with paragraph breaks. Like Dan Russell,
he provides pure, solid content. He is
intense and makes the cautious scholars look like plodding hidebound worriers
who will never reach the goal. He bounds
over them and expounds from atop the goal, from which viewpoint the mainstream
scholars are seen to be busily building elaborate san
Rieser
hasn't time for nonsense. He was 30
years ahead of his time, and too good a thinker to be compatible. As I evaluated which of the contemporary
leading Historical Jesus scholars to focus on, I realized that the field is
moving extremely rapidly and I was the very most recent books. Some 1994 books are on topic but that is eons
ago in this field.
But Rieser
makes all those distinctions of early 80s to early 00s irrelevant, because his
1973 and 1979 essentially 2nd edition work is more "advanced" or
soberly grounded in a plausible and realistic view of the
A genius
30 years ahead of his time. I'm
surprised a book this good and this radical is in print. I've had poor results ordering "4 to 6
week" books from Amazon, so you might want to buy it used online -- I've
had great, fast results that way. His
style and sensibility is neither that of the early 20th century comparative
mythology school, nor that of the 1990s Historical Jesus or
context-of-Christianity school. He
centers his attention not on
Yes, we
must study the detailed socio-economic realities of
The
heavily Hellenistic communities gradually invented and pulled together the
pseudo-historical single figure and retroactively set him into the pre-70,
>The
True Founder of Christianity and the Hellenistic Philosophy
>by
Max Rieser
>Paperback
(June 1979)
>John
Benjamins Pub Co; ISBN: 9062960812
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9062960812
Rieser
explains that the Jewish Diaspora started Christianity. It was soon taken over & fully Hellenized
by the lower class throughout the
Christianity
was almost immediately co-opted by the gentile lower class of the large cities
of the Roman Empire, especially Rome, Alexandria, and the cities of Asia Minor
(just to the east of Greece, including Byzantium/Constantinople), with
increasing animosity between the Hellenists and Jews. The Hellenist lower class found the Hellenic
transformed version of the Jewish diaspora messiah religion to be useful
politically.
I note
that this Hellenized transformation of the messiah story was not only
politically meaningful and useful to the Hellenes, it was also fully amenable
to allegorically expressing the standard core mystery-religion with a storyline
that is fictionally set in Palestine rather than in the mythic realm as
such. Instead of a story about a mythic
Prometheus chained to a mythic rock, or a mythic Attis tied to or encased in a
tree trunk, the pseudo-historical Jesus figure is fastened to a cross, just
like the actual rebel slaves and underclass in
These
storylines, whether given as mythical or pseudo-historical, express initiation
experiences encountered by the mystery-religion initiate after ingesting the
sacred meal, consubstantial with the dying/rising savior's body. Rieser provides plenty of hooks for this
explanation, but, like almost all the overly historical-oriented modern
researchers, is unable to treat this experiential allegory dimension though it
clearly calls out for coverage. He
reduces religion to politics instead of recognizing the overlaid, richly
interpenetrating layers of political allegory and mystic-state experiential
allegory.
When
Christianity finally arrived in
Messianism
and Epiphany: an Essay on the Origins of Christianity
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/9060320239
by Max
Rieser (1973)
This book
mentions Paul as fictional, though apparently less forcefully than Rieser's later
book.
Both are
fairly short books and I recommend obtaining them both and reading them as
though a single book.
These are
excellent books about the motives of the diaspora Jews and then the Hellenes in
creating the Christian myth-system.
These books are essential for Mythic-only Christ theorists. As one who has read many such books, I give
these my highest recommendation.
As in all
mystery-religion treatments, there are the usual mentions about the central
importance of sacred meals. Rieser
mentions Jesus as the "drug [pharmakos] of immortality" but has no
insight into entheogenic experiential allegory."
Earl
Doherty wrote:
>I
read both these little books by Rieser fairly early on in my own research, and
was extremely impressed by them. I should reacquaint myself with them.
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)