---
title: Early Christianity Overview
alt_titles: [Jesus FAQ]
date: 2011-12-13
techne: :wip
episteme: :believed
---

Introduction
============

The reason I'm writing this is my personal obsession with the origin of mysticism in general and Jesus in particular. Unfortunately[^hobby], the source material is vast and multilayered, so it's hard sometimes to keep track of all the characters and crackpot theories out there. But then, I need something to do for the next couple of decades. Somebody needed to write a general overview, and I was looking for a new hobby. Seems like a good match.

Of course, I'm totally biased. What material gets included depends on what material I read, which depends on what looks interesting to me. But decades are long, so eventually I'll get around to a lot of literature. It just might take some time. 

## Higher Criticism

aka Historical Criticism

First rule of Higher Criticism: anything that survived in writing must have served someone's purpose.[^writing] Because writing was so expensive and time-consuming, no-one would've written anything down unless they saw a use in it. Thus, there are no quotes or stories in any text unless someone *wanted* them there.

TODO note on editing and original authors

[^writing]: This rule stops being true once we reach modern times with ubiquitous writing. It's so cheap to document stuff now that we get a lot of unintentional or at least un-edited text.

## Conventions

I'm sticking to a few rules in this overview (and the rest of my writing).

1. Whenever I use a name, I'll stick to the most common English version, but I'll give original names in their respective section. Some characters vary dramatically depending on the community, so to untangle them I'll use fanfic tags whenever I'm talking about a specific variant (e.g. catholic!Jesus or marcionite!Jesus). 

2. Texts are always linked in both original[^original] and translated versions. If it's unclear what the original language was, I'll mention all plausible candidates.

[^original]: There are three reasons for this.

    1. I'm a language snob. I absolutely hate translations. I'd rather fight hundreds of hours with a dictionary than read a translated work.

    2. Many names and stories are based on puns. You wouldn't notice them in translated works. You really need to look at the original to see some connections that would've been obvious to the original readers. Same goes for idiosyncratic word choices and so on.

    3. Translations are never precise. What can be elegantly expressed in one language, might need a whole paragraph in another. So when translating, you either sacrifice style or content for the other. That's really bad for an historical analysis. You really gotta read the original.
    
3. I often give probability estimates that reflect my own certainty in a particular belief, like so: "(muflax: 50%)". I sometimes also give them for other writers, but then typically without numerical estimates.

4. A "myth" is any kind of story, true or not. "Fiction" is not true, and obvious as such to the intended reader. A person is "mythological" if they appear in myths and "historical" if there is evidence to attest their existence outside of myth. Someone can be both at the same time: [Adolf Hitler][] is historical, but [Jetpack Hitler][] is mythological.

Dramatis personae
=================

Who are all these people?

TODO: Stammbaum

The groupings are a bit arbitrary and overlap somewhat, but I think they make the most sense this way. I've ordered them roughly by importance, but that's not a value judgment. I totally like Longinus too.

Prophets
--------

### Jesus

aka Joshu, Yeshu, the Son of God, Christus, Chrestos, Isa

I'll use "Jesus" as a collective name for all these persons and otherwise use the relevant specific version. This might be a bit confusing at first, but I do  this to separate the traditions and make it easier to see just how messed up the modern myth is.

### John the Baptist

aka John the Baptizer

### James the Just

Apostles
--------

### Paul

- Paulus, St. Paul
- Saul of Tarsus, Saulus 
- Simon Magus

### Peter

aka Simon Peter, St. Peter, Petrus

### Judas Iscariot

aka Judas the False One

Church Fathers
--------------

("Fathers?" No women? Well, honestly, not really. Most influential early Christians were men.)
    
### Marcion

### The Ecclesiastical Redactor

Stephan Huller and Robert M. Price think he's Polycarp.

### Augustine of Hippo

### Polycarp

### Theophilus

Historians
----------

### Josephus

Politicians
-----------

### Herod

Others
------

Bible Scholars
--------------

### Robert M. Price

### Stephan Huller

### F.C. Baur

Texts
=====

> The Old Testament is history, genealogy, a system of laws for a specific
> nation, a system of arbitration of disputes, building instructions for the
> temple, a guide to hygiene and manners, music (now poetry), and "Instruction
> in Wisdom". It would be like if there was single book that had the
> constitution, a record of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, the collected works of
> Walt Whitman, the family tree of George Washington, the layout of The Mall in
> DC, and the directions for running a session of congress. If we called the
> book, "The Book Of AMERICA", it wouldn't mean you need to chop down a cherry
> tree in order to be a citizen. 
>
> -- [Shamus Young][shamus bible]

[shamus bible]: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=12768&cpage=1#comment-231273

Q(uelle)
------

Ur-Lukas
--------

Apostolicon
-----------

Toledoth Yeshu
--------------

Historicity
===========

> The Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed walk into a bar. He orders a beer...

*But maybe there's a historical Jesus all the mythological accounts are based on?* 

I don't think so. (muflax: 70%) You may be able to reconstruct some plausible minimalistic accounts, or reduce him to some other figure like Siddhattha Gotama, but I think both of these approaches miss the point. Back in the old Soviet Union, people told this Radio Yerevan joke:

> The Armenian Radio was asked: Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich from Moscow won a car in the lottery?
>
> The Armenian Radio answered: In principle yes, but it wasn't Ivan Ivanovich but Aleksander Aleksandrovich, he isn't from Moscow but from Odessa, it was not a car but a bicycle, and he didn't win it, but it was stolen from him. Everything else is correct.

At some point you just have to let go and say "he isn't real".
