4 KiB
| title | date | techne | episteme |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jesus FAQ | 2011-12-13 | :incomplete | :believed |
Introduction
I'm totally biased.
Higher Criticism
aka Historical Criticism
First rule of Higher Criticism: anything that survived in writing must have served someone's purpose.1 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.
Conventions
I'm sticking to a few rules in this overview (and the rest of my writing).
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Whenever I use a name, I'll stick to the most common English version, but give original version the first time I mention them. There are a few exceptions. Some characters vary dramatically depending on the community, so to untangle them I'll use different names for different versions, either by using an obvious alias (Chrestos for the Marcionite Jesus) or by using fanfic tags (catholic!Jesus).
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Texts are always linked in both original and translated versions. If it's unclear what the original language was, I'll mention all plausible candidates.
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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.
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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
- Joshua (a jewish prophet)
- Yeshu (an evil prophet)
- the Son of God
- Christus (the messiah)
- Chrestos (the Marcionite version)
- Isa (the ascetic)
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
I'll typically just
Judas Iscariot
aka Judas the False One
Church Fathers
(And "fathers?" No women? Well, honestly, not really. There is exactly one and she is mythological.)
Marcion
Augustine of Hippo
Historians
Josephus
Others
Herod
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".
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This rule stops being true once we reach the 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. ↩︎