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148 lines
4 KiB
Markdown
148 lines
4 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Jesus FAQ
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date: 2011-12-13
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techne: :incomplete
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episteme: :believed
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---
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Introduction
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============
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I'm totally biased.
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## Higher Criticism
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aka Historical Criticism
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First rule of Higher Criticism: anything that survived in writing must have
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served someone's purpose.[^writing] Because writing was so expensive and
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time-consuming, no-one would've written anything down unless they saw a use in
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it. Thus, there are no quotes or stories in any text unless someone *wanted*
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them there.
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[^writing]: This rule stops being true once we reach the modern times with
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ubiquitous writing. It's so cheap to document stuff now that we get a lot of
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unintentional or at least un-edited text.
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## Conventions
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I'm sticking to a few rules in this overview (and the rest of my writing).
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1. Whenever I use a name, I'll stick to the most common English version, but
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give original version the first time I mention them. There are a few exceptions.
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Some characters vary dramatically depending on the community, so to untangle
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them I'll use different names for different versions, either by using an obvious
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alias (Chrestos for the Marcionite Jesus) or by using fanfic tags
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(catholic!Jesus).
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2. Texts are always linked in both original and translated versions. If it's
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unclear what the original language was, I'll mention all plausible candidates.
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3. I often give probability estimates that reflect my own certainty in a
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particular belief, like so: "(muflax: 50%)". I sometimes also give them for other
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writers, but then typically without numerical estimates.
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4. A "myth" is any kind of story, true or not. "Fiction" is not true, and
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obvious as such to the intended reader. A person is "mythological" if they appear
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in myths and "historical" if there is evidence to attest their existence outside
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of myth. Someone can be both at the same time: [Adolf Hitler][] is historical,
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but [Jetpack Hitler][] is mythological.
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Dramatis personae
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=================
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Who are all these people?
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TODO: Stammbaum
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The groupings are a bit arbitrary and overlap somewhat, but I think they make
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the most sense this way. I've ordered them roughly by importance, but that's not
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a value judgment. I totally like Longinus too.
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Prophets
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--------
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### Jesus
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- Joshua (a jewish prophet)
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- Yeshu (an evil prophet)
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- the Son of God
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- Christus (the messiah)
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- Chrestos (the Marcionite version)
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- Isa (the ascetic)
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I'll use "Jesus" as a collective name for all these persons and otherwise use
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the relevant specific version. This might be a bit confusing at first, but I do
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this to separate the traditions and make it easier to see just how messed up the
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modern myth is.
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### John the Baptist
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aka John the Baptizer
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### James the Just
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Apostles
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--------
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### Paul
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- Paulus, St. Paul
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- Saul of Tarsus, Saulus
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- Simon Magus
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-
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### Peter
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aka Simon Peter, St. Peter, Petrus
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I'll typically just
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### Judas Iscariot
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aka Judas the False One
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Church Fathers
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--------------
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(And "fathers?" No women? Well, honestly, not really. There is exactly one and
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she is mythological.)
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### Marcion
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### Augustine of Hippo
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Historians
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----------
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### Josephus
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Others
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------
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### Herod
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Historicity
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===========
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> The Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed walk into a bar. He orders a beer...
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*But maybe there's a historical Jesus all the mythological accounts are based on?*
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I don't think so. (muflax: 70%) You may be able to reconstruct some plausible
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minimalistic accounts, or reduce him to some other figure like Siddhattha
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Gotama, but I think both of these approaches miss the point. Back in the old
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Soviet Union, people told this Radio Yerevan joke:
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> The Armenian Radio was asked: Is it true that Ivan Ivanovich from Moscow won a
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> car in the lottery?
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>
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> The Armenian Radio answered: In principle yes, but it wasn't Ivan Ivanovich
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> but Aleksander Aleksandrovich, he isn't from Moscow but from Odessa, it was
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> not a car but a bicycle, and he didn't win it, but it was stolen from him.
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> Everything else is correct.
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At some point you just have to let go and say "he isn't real".
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