By Thomas Verenna
I would like to thank April for continuing this dialog. She makes an excellent point.
If we are really going to talk about whether or not constructed myths have any historical value (which seems to me to be the ultimate goal of TJP), then we better get up to speed fast on what other fields are saying about it.
We should be looking outside the field of Biblical Studies. But I do not think that the appropriate area should be Social Memory in the manner presented on April’s blog. Unlike her modern-day example, we cannot know how memes transformed past social memories of Jesus. We only have what is left in written format which would have made up only a small percentage of the social memory that formerly was extant. April is repeating the mistake of so many past Jesus scholars and doing exactly what Albert Schweitzer criticized his colleagues for doing. She is applying modern perspectives of social trends to ancient social trends (of which we have barely any knowledge).
While Obama’s “own historical story is being framed in terms of our collective memory of Lincoln”, knowledge about social trends, media spin, the value of having an African American in office, comes about precisely because it is within our contemporary age. There are hard, irrefutable facts concerning the historical existence of Obama, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy (and for that matter, Abraham Lincoln). Video tapes, contemporaneous written documents recorded by the affectionate and the livid. by both friends and enemies–this is attestation that we simply do not have for Jesus.
Perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be that of Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. These American icons were shaped through (and helped shape) an American frontier and an American ideology. Broad social trends developed these characters, and later, these characters supplemented the development of social trends as they became popular among frontiersmen. These characters were developed from already existing socio-cultural memes which led to their popularity; they became cultural icons and influenced the socio-cultural memes that followed.
But let’s bring this back to antiquity. Let us look at socio-cultural trends in Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Could it be said that the Gospels represent politically-motivated messianism like we find in the Maccabees? Not really. With the exception of later Gospels (like Luke), Mark (assuming Markan priority) does not portray Jesus as a revolutionary leader or as a messianic figure (like Simon bar Kokhba or Loukuas, for example). In fact, if Jesus had been a revolutionary leader, you would see a very different account of him—you would not see the character portrayed in the Gospel of Mark who said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and he certainly would not have taken a Tax Collector into his entourage.
What then do the Gospels best represent? This is a question I feel needs to be asked. It is here that many misrepresent the mythicist position to some extremes (but perhaps that is because we’re not being clear). For example, it is not because “he is a fabrication of the ancient mind and their myths” nor is it because we can’t “trust an ancient author who makes things up.” It isn’t about the mythic mind (in the sense that we’re dealing with “myth”–I am hesitant to refer to Jesus as a “myth”) that we should question the historicity of the figure of Jesus and it certainly is not a matter of “trust.” That the Gospel authors “make things up” is beside the point (and “this is no new insight” either). The questions I posed were not about “what things the authors made up.” I clearly think that question is old hat (and according to my arguments, irrelevant—as I feel the Gospels are ancient novels not meant to be fractured and torn apart as they have been by scholars of the Jesus Seminar). My point is that the authors were (as April rightly point out) a product of their social landscape. The problem is that far too often scholars seem to presume what that social landscape is. Every time you say, with some certainty, that Jesus existed you take for granted that social landscape and ignore the underlying questions.
I said earlier that their social memory is something we cannot know beyond what they have written down. But even assuming that what was written constitutes as social memory is something we cannot know with any certainty at this point. We can hope that what we are dealing with represents social trends, but clearly when one reads any of the canonical gospels or epistles, they are inevitably faced with the reality that we are not looking at the originals; what we have are copies that have been tampered with. This means that each Gospel and each epistle may in fact represent multiple social trends over a period of four-hundred years. But even that may be stretching what Social Memory was like for that period. We cannot know because we do not have answers to underlying questions. So it is assumption alone that one formulates the idea that what the Gospels and the epistles are is “social memory.”
What can we say with certainty? What is certain is that the ancient Jews were proficient at manufacturing origin traditions (one might be inclined to say with some authority that the entire Hebrew Bible represents the sum of manufactured Jewish origin traditions). What is certain is that they used eponymic characters to supplement ideals (Job=Persecuted, Isaac=Laughter, Abraham=Father of all Nations, Moses=To Draw Out, Jesus Christ= Anointed Savior, Peter=Rock, etc…). What is known is that Jewish authors frequently adapted old traditions to new socio-cultural settings. What can be said is that Jewish authors searched through scripture to find passages that would be used for narrative and plot creation (see Josephus’ use of Judith to formulate his fictional narrative about Alexander the Great’s march on Jerusalem; See Acts author’s use of the conversion of Heliodorus from 2 Maccabees to supplement Saul’s conversion, etc…). Paul tells us that he is doing this very thing in Romans 16:24-26:
“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God.”
Why is Mark’s Jesus the messenger of Malachi, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 51-53, who is to be pierced through hands and feet in the manner of a slave with lots casted for his clothes as discussed in Psalm 22? Why was Paul’s Jesus crucified by the archons of the aeons instead of the Romans or Pilate? Why not the Sanhedrin? Where is Judas in all of this? What about Jesus’ parents? Can we, as a community of enlightened thinkers, accept the conclusion that Paul just didn’t care about these details? Why does Paul never directly quote Jesus to solve a dispute among the churches? He certainly goes through a drawn out process of scripture interpretation when all he would need to do is say “Jesus told his followers thus” and it would end right there. When you remove all of the assumptions from the narrative, the assumptions of historicity, you can see how hollow and ineffectual they really are. The questions that should be asked are not being asked at the expense of more assumptions.
So while you may think that by questing the historicity of Jesus is “so flawed that” you “do not even know where to begin to deconstruct it” (nor do you seem to know what it even is), I already know where many historical Jesus scholar’s (in the vein of those of the Jesus Seminar) reasoning happens to be flawed: It starts at one assumption and builds off of others. I also know where to start deconstructing it: You start by removing assumptions. If we can come to common ground, if we can accept that we need to start asking questions that need to be asked (like “did Jesus exist”), then two conclusions will develop from them: (1) Jesus existed and we have to ask more questions (Who was he? When did he live? Where was he from? Can we even know anything about him?) or (2) Jesus didn’t exist and we have to ask more questions (Why did the Gospel authors write? Who were they written to? At what point were they believed as historical? What did Paul convert into? Can we even know the answers?)
From either of these two conclusions, our work will begin. But if we want to avoid the same failures of the past quests, we cannot start with the conclusion in advance. We must first develop methods that are rigorous, logical and stand up to criticisms. From there, we will have a springboard with which to ask the questions that need to be asked, one of which includes the question you feel is ridiculous: Did the figure of Jesus exist historically? Like all other important questions, this question cannot be taken for granted. If we do not proceed this way, we will not succeed.
January 27, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I am reminded of E.O. Wilson’s analogy to Theseus’ journey into the Labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. It is a metaphor for the difference between synthesis from the “core sciences” like physics, as opposed to synthesis from the “outer sciences” like psychology. In short, final product complexity creates an almost insurmountable obstacle if we are trying to scientifically move from simple to complex. The only way to have a reasonable shot at explaining a very complex phenomenon is to start at the outside — where there is the most specific knowledge, and work your way down towards the simple beginning. (Read “Consilience,” chapter 5.) In other words, starting with a million atoms, there are millions, maybe billions of possible ways they can interact. However, if we are starting with a microchip, there really are only a very few number of things that could have happened. The job of explaining the origin of a microchip is much easier than guessing that a microchip will result given only the description of the atoms that are necessary to make one.
This applies equally to history, I’m afraid. If we try to begin with “what might have happened” and try to then construct historical figures, we’ve set up a prohibitively difficult task. There are simply too many conceivable paths that history might have taken. Edmund Standing has written an article that illustrates this point extremely well, even though he thinks he has proven the opposite point.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=378
His excellent example of a man who became myth is in fact proof of just how difficult it would be to construct reality from fantasy. Standing believes that by demonstrating that men can become myths, he is making a strong case for a historical Jesus. While this is true to a certain extent (it does establish a precedent) it also causes more problems for Jesus historians than it solves!
Suppose that you had been given several versions of the myths about Haile Selassie by several devout and uneducated Rastafarians from different countries. What legitimate hope would you have of arriving logically at the despot count who became emperor of a more or less geopolitically insignificant country? If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that the possible historical inspirations for the Selassie myth are almost as numerous as the number of minds that could invent them. Perhaps even more notable is that these myths have grown in spite of the fact that we live in the information age! How much more could myths have grown and radiated in random directions when there were almost certainly no reliable records to begin with?
We must face the distinct possibility that the “historical Jesus,” if he existed, might very well be beyond the sight of modern history at this time. This does not mean that we can say there was no such man. However, any good scientist knows that making up answers with less than sufficient data is never a good idea. Sometimes, the correct answer is “I don’t know.” I hope that the Jesus Project is prepared for the reality that “We don’t have enough information to know” may well be the answer to the Historical Jesus question.